As I walked back to the orphanage, I practiced my Blink. I would stop, teleport, and then keep walking while the cooldown elapsed and I got less dizzy. Eventually, I moved on to running while Blinking. I learned that I would appear in the same position as I was in when I teleported, but my momentum was completely gone. It took some getting used to, but by the time I arrived back at the orphanage, I had Blinked while running multiple times without failing. That would be good in combat, where it's impossible to stop moving for a few seconds. After making it back to the orphanage, I made my excuses about where I had gone. I managed to ingratiate myself enough with Mrs. Olfson that she didn't attack me. All I got was a suspicious glare.

I walked into the dor and sat down on my bed. I pulled out my knives and sheathes and strapped them to my belt. I summoned the Training Facility cube from my inventory and squeezed it. "Enter," I said without even looking at the notification. Immediately, I disappeared and the cube bounced onto my bed as the supporting force disappeared, leaving it stranded in the air. I appeared in the Training Facility, once again facing the zombie I had gotten to know so well before. I killed it immediately and dismissed the requisite notification. A new notification popped up after I had acknowledged the zombie's death.

Would you like to advance to the second round?

"Yes," I said, right before the arena flashed. When I blinked the light out of my eyes, I found myself facing five zombies. Immediately, I settled into the now-familiar dagger combat stance. I darted forward toward the zombie farthest to the left. I stabbed him in the eye before he could notice that I was anywhere near him. I was able to take out one more zombie immediately by slicing across its neck and nearly decapitating the poor thing. The other zombies were not turned toward my location, so I blinked behind the rightmost one. Before they could recover, I spun around and drove my dagger right into the brainstem of the zombie.

It collapsed to the ground, and I darted toward the zombie directly in front of me. It was able to spin quickly enough to spot me, however, so I dodged around it, kicked it in the shin to immobilize it, and Blinked to behind the only untouched zombie. It also went down to a sneak attack at the brainstem. I turned around and faced the troublesome zombie that almost managed to touch me and clicked my tongue at it. I bent down, as it was still on the ground, struggling to get up with a broken knee, and sent my dagger through my new favorite spot on the back of the neck.

I chose to advance to the third round immediately and looked around. The arena was bigger this time, and, instead of lining all of the zombie s up in front of me, they placed groups of five around me like a pentagon. I dived into the fray with reckless abandon, stabbing and kicking like a maniac, though I do use Blink judiciously to make sure I am not ever actually hurt. I stabbed the first zombie in the eye, pull the knife out, impale a second zombie through the neck, do another eye pierce on the third, and shoot over to the other side of the room in a Blink to begin the slaughter once more. By the time I've killed fifteen zombies, the others are all grouped together in one clump, which makes it much easier to pick off the ones on the outside. I whittled them down and slaughtered every last one of them in a display that is awesome, terrifying, and cathartic all at once. Before I can hesitate on my course, I yell, "Start the fourth round!"

The arena flashes and I come face to face with my first skeleton. Unlike the name, it is not a true skeleton. Instead, it seems like a zombie that was beaten and bruised until most of its flesh was removed. It is made of bone, glistening with blood and fat and clumps of grayish, disgusting flesh. I throw up a little bit in my mouth. I can't wait to kill this thing.

I shoot forward and it shambles toward me with much more alacrity than its body would suggest is possible. I dodge out of the way of its first clawing attack and duck under a second one before shooting a knife strike out to remove an arm. To my surprise, instead of dying immediately, the bone holds with a large scratch along its length. I Blink back and hold a hand up to my mouth. "Jesus, what is this thing made of? Master Identify!"

Skeleton

Level: 5

HP: 134/160

Strength: 10

Endurance: 6

Intelligence: 3

Willpower: 1

Control: 4

Perception: 2

Holy shit! It has more than my starting strength! This thing is fucking strong. I danced back to the edge of the arena. Okay, how do I deal with this? On a whim, I activated mana manipulation to observe the skeleton's inner mechanics. I saw that it had a brain made mostly of dark, sickly-looking, black mana that reeked of death and destruction. I assumed it was death mana. Thankfully, and quite gratifyingly, it had a brainstem made of mana connecting the brain to the limbs and their mana. I knew without thinking that I was going to attack that connection.

I looked around for a strand or two of life mana, which I assumed would counter death mana perfectly. Before I could find some, I had to dodge away from the irate skeleton charging at me. I wanted to avoid using Blink as it was hard to quickly reorient myself and continue searching after using it. Instead, I did the classic dodge-and-roll, diving to the side and bounding up in a roll that shot me to my feet. I assumed it was a bonus effect of my high Control, but I didn't have too much time to speculate when I spotted life mana across the room. As the skeleton charged me again, I shot across the room and grabbed the life mana. I didn't have any chance to make it into a fancy beam or bomb, so I simply wrapped it around my knife's blade. When I accidentally touched the mana to the dot that was half of the umlaut, however, the life mana entered into the inside of the knife, ready to be distributed into its target.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

The skeleton had found only disappointment as it arrived at where I just was, so it turned toward me once again. Little did it know it would have to deal with something a lot more painful than disappointment. The skeleton charged at me and I held mu life-infused knife in my right hand after sheathing the other. I decided it wasn't worth it to hold the other when I would do almost negligible damage. I might have been exaggerating, but the damage I could do with my new spell was immense.

Just as the skeleton raised its hand to claw my eyes out, I shot to the side and sliced my knife across the armpit of the skeleton. I knew I could have ended it all with a quick shot to the brainstem, but I needed to test how much damage it would and what the mana the knife would inject would do. After the knife made contact, the skeleton shrieked in pain, which was surprising enough in itself because skeletons don't have vocal cords. What was more surprising was that, after I used Master Identify, the skeleton had gone from 134 health to 52 health! That was a major dip, meaning the attack cost the skeleton 82 health in one strike alone.

As I watched the skeleton's status screen, the health dropped bu another few points. That must have been the injection of Life mana destroying it from the inside. If the skeleton were any other creature, I might have felt bad for the dying thing, but I couldn't feel too bad for a pile of rotting flesh. Since I had determined the injection was essentially a poison, I ended the skeleton with a quick slice to the -- you guessed it -- mana brainstem.

As soon as the skeleton died, I received a notification:

8 (40 x 20% Training Reduction) EXP rewarded for killing a level 5 skeleton. 0 (25 x 0% Training Reduction) Shop Chits awarded for killing a level 5 skeleton.

From my experience so far, I knew that eight experience was a lot from one enemy. In fact, it brought my total experience earned up to 70 EXP. I just needed to do it a couple more times. That skeleton was hard enough, so I decided I wouldn't add any more rounds with that bugger to my list. I left the Training Facility and reappeared on my bed to the gaping stares of the kids who were awake and the loud snores of those who had passed out. I checked my watch and noticed that the whole run had taken me a half-hour. I decided that, since it was only eight-thirty, I would run it four more times to get to around ten-thirty, and I would do some more work tomorrow. I did just that and, though I skipped assigning my points, my status screen looked very different from the beginning of today.

Hector “Blink!” MacAvoy

Class: Blink

Level: 3

EXP Req: 150

HP: 240

Health/min: 2.6

Stamina: 70/120

Stamina/min: 1.2

Mana: 130

Mana/min: 1.3

Strength: 12

Endurance: 12

Intelligence: 13

Willpower: 13

Control: 10

Perception: 12

Free: 20

So continued my journey in the new world of our apocalypse. Just like I said, I didn't go to school the next day or the day after that, instead staying home to grind levels and spells. The only skill that didn't get any use so far was Blacksmithing, and that was mostly because I didn't have the proper equipment. I made good progress during those days. I leveled up to 8 and got Lesser Dagger Mastery up to 65%. I think that only fighting undead wasn't helping my need for an evolution.

I managed to create a few new spells and finalize some old ones. Purely inserting life energy into my daggers turned out to not qualify for a spell. I figured out how to wind it around the knife and coat the entire outside before touching it to the dot on the hilt to put it inside. This worked and created the spell Life Infusion, which can apparently be used on anything. I even cut myself -- not a large cut, mind you -- and manage to heal myself with it. It turned out to be a very helpful spell.

The second spell I learned was Quick Lava Dart. I took three strands of earth mana and wound them together in a braid before doing the same with three strands of fire mana and three strands of the same ethereal mana of which I still don't know the identity. I braided those all together and molded them into a dartlike shape. When I launch the spell, it costs over 100 mana, so it is a solid chunk of my mana. Still, it is an incredibly destructive spell. It forms a lava dart bigger than my fists together and launches it toward the target while blinking in and out of existence to confuse the target and make it harder to dodge. It also automatically tracks the target and rips through anything in its way.

The other important thing I learned was about milestones. When I raised my Perception to 50, I received a notification.

Congratulations! You have reached the first milestone of Perception! You now sense everything going on in a half-circle arc in front of your face. You will know what it occurring without needing to look. Keep growing!

It turns out that my perception aura, as I'm now calling it, extends as many centimeters as my perception stat. Right now, even if I had my eyes closed, I would know everything going on in the half meter in front of me, and it is not a short distance.

I think I am prepared for the monster spawns. I can't wait for the fun to begin!

Status of Hector “Blink!” MacAvoy

Class: Blink

Level: 8

EXP Req: 770

HP: 740

Health/min: 4.8

Stamina: 287/370

Stamina/min: 3.7

Mana: 300

Mana/min: 1.8

Strength: 37

Endurance: 37

Intelligence: 30

Willpower: 18

Control: 20

Perception: 50

Free: 0