I exited the orphanage a couple of minutes before the monsters spawned. The street was dead silent; everyone was either hiding or making preparations, both of which occur inside their homes. I had asked the System, and it had informed me that the first spawning of monsters would occur at 4:30 p.m. Here I was, at 4:25, ready to fight off the newly created monsters. A couple of minutes later, just as I was hyping myself up for the monster fight, Mrs. Olfson came running out into the yard. She fell to her knees, clasped her hands together, and, shouted toward the sky. "O, Lord! I call upon you to take me with you when you pull those pure from this world! I know that I have sinned, but I would repent! Please!"
I could see people in other houses peeking out at us, and I could tell from their faces that they were thinking something along the lines of, "What in the world is she doing?" I could see some children coming out of the orphanage to peek at Mrs. Olfson and the idiocy she was participating in, but I was quick to shoo them back inside. I had already told them to lie underneath their beds when the time came, and that was doubly important now that I couldn't let them see Mrs. Olfson be slaughtered and, quite possibly, eaten. I had tried to inform her that the rapture was not what was occurring, but she wouldn't hear it. She assured me that she was aware of the fact that I was a heretic, and she wouldn't hold it against me.
When the clock struck 4:30, the monsters spawned. It was immediate, not unlike when I teleport. One minute they were not there, and the next minute they were. Unfortunately, most of the monsters were decently tall, so I almost immediately lost sight of the dearly departed Mrs. Olfson, but I could hear her. One might have said that a sixteen-year-old kid should not have to be subjected to such things, but one might also have said monsters and floating messages didn't exist, so we don't listen to "one" anymore.
The monsters had little diversity. Of course, there were some never-seen-before abominations, and there were some classic monsters like goblins and massive spiders, but what was really prevalent were the rabbits. They weren't normal rabbits either, unfortunately. they were about three feet long and two tall. They had ears that stretched three feet into the air when straight, but they also couldn't stand up straight, and, as such, they folded down about halfway through the ear.
The really messy parts of those abominations were the fangs. Most people, including the earlier-me, would have pictured rabbits with fangs as normal bunnies with long teeth. No. The fangs were massive, at least the size of the ears, and threaded with nasty-looking black veins, The worst part was that they did not go outside of the rabbit's jaw. No. they went through the bottom of its mouth. The first thing you heard when these monsters appeared was them screaming in pain as their teeth pierced the bottom of their mouths, and then there was more screaming as they scraped their teeth across the new stigmata in their mouths.
As the rabbits screamed, I thanked God I had remembered to tell the kids to hide in the orphanage and Master Identified one of the rabbits.
Deathfang Rabbit
Level: 2
HP:
Strength: 3
Endurance: 7
Intelligence: 1
Willpower: 3
Control: 1
Perception: 1
I suppose enduring the immense pain their fangs must be causing them was justified in their high endurance and willpower. At least they barely had any control over their bodies. I quickly darted over to one, and it lunged up into the air. I blinked behind it and was able to stab it in the -- you guessed it -- brainstem. The fact that it was able to jump three feet into the air should have been troubling, but I was more excited. The undead had been fairly monotonous and hadn't earned me any shop chits, so this was already an investment.
You have earned 17 EXP and 15 Chits.
That was a great amount, especially now that it didn't have a Training Facility deduction. Immediately, I purchased Lesser Blink, which got rid of the disorientation of teleporting and reduced the cooldown to thirty seconds instead of a minute. It wasn't much, but it would allow me to teleport twice as fast as I could before.
I stated at the sea of rabbits. The sea of rabbits stared at me. Then, we both let out a battle cry and charged each other.
I jabbed the first rabbit in the stomach, not ending it immediately but fatally wounding it and disrupting its jump. The second rabbit got decapitated as I dodged to left, avoiding the third leaping at my stomach. I smashed it to the ground with the back of my hand, my high strength flattening it against the concrete. I sensed something coming at me from the left and swung, using my high perception bonus to avoid attacks while focusing in other places.
The perception upgrade proved it's worth thousands of times during that battle. I was forced to fight my way into the middle of the swarm, and they surrounded me and began to attack from all sides. Without the perception bonus, having to focus on my back would have left my front completely unprotected. When your front is unprotected, a Deathfang gets to eat your throat.
That isn't to say that I was never injured during these confrontations, because I was injured. I would just always activate Life Infusion immediately after being injured. This managed to stop any effects the poison may have had on me and also healed the cut.
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Lava Dart came into the battle too, although it wasn't used as much as I would have liked. I only had so much mana, and I always saved some for a life Infusion. Nonetheless, whenever I was bogged down with massive rabbits, I would launch a lava dart and follow its path. The lava dart would go through every rabbit it encountered and emitted only smoke in return. Upon entering, the rabbits were entirely annihilated. Of course, the entire rabbit was not always entirely in the flame. It often left massive chunks taken out of the rabbits, and many rabbits were whimpering in pain from missing their hind legs but still being alive because the wound was cauterized. Of course, I immediately put them out of their misery. After nearly an hour of slaughtering rabbits of various levels, although usually from two to six, the System gave me a notification of all of the EXP and Chits I gained, including the first rabbit.
You have earned 26741 EXP and 23595 Chits.
Those were ridiculous gains, enough to level me up multiple times and possibly get me to another stat bonus. I assumed the other stat bonuses would be at fifty because Perception's bonus was. I didn't have a major test group, but it seemed like that made sense. Unfortunately, my guide to the System didn't include much information on these, instead focusing only on the most basic effects of stats. It really shined when talking about skills and classes.
Just after I leveled up and was about to check my status, a roar sounded across the now corpse-filled battlefield. Drawing on my gaming knowledge as I headed there, I gathered that it must have been a boss. After I killed it, I would gain more EXP and Chits, which could only be helpful. I met the boss, and I was shocked.
It wasn't a rabbit at all. I was expecting a massive Deathfang Rabbit, maybe with longer or more dangerous fangs, but nothing too bad, Instead, it was a fox. A massive, size of a car fox, but a fox nonetheless. It had fur in the same black as some of the rabbits, but other than that it looked nothing like the other monsters. It had fangs, but they were normal, on the outside of the mouth, pure white, and only a few inches long. The really interesting part was its ears and paws.
They were both a fiery red color instead of the usual black of the body. They were actually the exact color of the fire mana I manipulated...
Oh, no. If this fox can use abilities, it will make my job much, much harder. I huddled near the scorched remains of a house I now realized were probably caused by the fox and Master Identified it.
Fire-touched Fox
Level: 50
HP:
Strength: 20
Endurance: 30
Intelligence: 50
Willpower: 23
Control: 32
Perception: 18
Okay. It didn't seem insurmountable, and it definitely had some weaknesses. Unfortunately, it had a massive store of mana and was most likely able to sense and avoid my Lava Dart, which was partly fire mana. I would have to face this thing with my daggers and my Blinks, and I am sure the massive horde of bunnies would have helped improve those, as well as my stats. Before opening my status, though, I asked the system to upgrade all of my evolvable skills. I received the following notifications:
Congratulations! Lesser Blink has evolved into Blink! Basic Mana Manipulation has evolved into Lesser Mana Manipulation! Lesser Dagger Mastery has evolved into Dagger Mastery!
With that done, I opened my status to distribute my new gains.
Status of Hector “Blink!” MacAvoy
Class: Blink
Level: 24
EXP Req: 429
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: 320
Holy shit! 320 free stats! I can do so much with this. This means I have an effective level of 96, which should be more than enough to deal with this fox. To start off with, I brought all of my stats up to fifty and received the following bonuses.
Strength - Muscle was added to my body, causing me to grow 2 inches.
Endurance - My muscle density increased, making them harder to injure as well as stronger.
Intelligence - Every memory I would make from that point forward would be immortalized in my mind and would be easily accessible.
Wisdom - I now had some measure of foresight in an area with a radius of my wisdom stat multiplied by a tenth of a millimeter. It wasn't useful now but could help later with a higher wisdom stat.
Control - Every effect was now completely affectable as long as I stayed within the requirements.
In my opinion, they were all useful, but the control stat was the best. It would allow me to switch my perception to 180 degrees behind me, which would help a lot with sneak attacks. I did just that and also changed the wisdom bonus so it would doubly affect my front because I already knew what was going on behind me.
Nonetheless, those improvements left me with a qualitative increase as well. The massive change made me simply feel smarter, as well as stronger and in more control of myself. I felt like I could dance ballet better than the best ever could before the System, though with the fire fox near I wasn't tempted to try it out. I was left with 212 stat points, so I dumped them into strength, intelligence, control, and perception. Strength for more attack, which should help with a massive fox; intelligence for enough mana to make using lava dart feasible; control because it would help me make sharper movements during combat, and because I really liked the dancing idea; and perception because I wanted a bigger knowledge aura.
Status of Hector “Blink!” MacAvoy
Class: Blink
Level: 24
EXP Req: 429
HP: 1370
Health/min: 13.7
Stamina: 568/870
Stamina/min: 5.0
Mana: 87
Mana/min: 5.0
Strength: 87
Endurance: 50
Intelligence: 87
Willpower: 50
Control: 88
Perception: 150
Free: 0
I stood up and almost shot myself into the air. I marveled at the new feeling of strength running through my body, and then I turned toward the fox. It was time to kill a boss.