Nathan couldn't focus on the ball of white—nope. The panther simply glared at the offender who hopped a few feet away before opening its jaws to bite out his throat. He watched with crossed fingers as the panther seemed to freeze mid-attack, its hot breath hitting his face.

Yeah, I've been there before.

The memory of his body seizing up after touching the bunny was enough to make Nathan involuntarily shudder. The motion caused him to get back in the game. Quickly pushing the panther off of him, he watched it fall to its side without a sound. Its muscles probably weren't going to respond to such commands even if it had wanted to be vocal about its displeasure.

As soon as he was on his feet, he dashed for his sword, sparing a glance at his savior—the bully rabbit. The bunny stood a couple of feet away from the panther with a look of innocence on its face.

Shaking his head, he made his way back to the panther, raising his sword with his uninjured hand gripping it as he hacked and hacked. His sword only went about three inches deep no matter which part of the panther's body he hacked.

This is bad.

He didn't know if the bunny's increase in level meant that the skill it used to incapacitate him that day—Paralytic Slime—had seen an increase in duration. But if it hadn't, he had only seconds before the skill wore off.

This is a bad idea.

Even as he got into position, Nathan knew it was a bad idea—not that it wouldn't work against the panther, it probably would. The bad part about the idea was that if the bunny was smart, it'd probably use this tactic the next time it used its skill against him.

Fuck it.

Nathan thrust his sword through the eyes of the panther. An audible—Squelch—echoed across the clearing. The blade easily slid into its eyes killing the beast.

A wave of euphoria passed through him, but Nathan kept his eyes on the bunny, quickly pulling his sword out and watching it carefully just to see if it'd attack him. It didn't. It just looked at him, as though waiting for something.

"Alright, thanks for saving my life."

The bunny didn't seem interested in the acknowledgment from Nathan, and he didn't know if it had been because he'd said it begrudgingly. While words might have failed, he had a good idea of what wouldn't.

With his free and now fully healed hand, he took a fruit out of his bag of holding and tossed it at the bunny, his sword in his hand just in case it had other ideas on how the night should end. Turns out his fears were unfounded as the bunny simply gobbled up the fruit before hopping away, probably back into its lair of bones.

Huh, you really wanted that additional fruit.

Nathan was left facing an empty direction as the bunny had already disappeared into the night. How it had entered his stronghold, he still had no idea. Sighing at the unanswered question, he turned to face the panther. Its body was much more massive than he'd initially imagined when he'd been fighting it.

Now dead, he could settle down and look at it properly without the thrill of battle clouding his senses. He went around the corpse, poking at it from different angles. A picture of its muscles was definitely something to hang up on the wall of a gym. The damned beast was ripped, unnaturally so—probably the system bulking it up as it did him whenever he added to his strength stat.

Nathan rubbed his arm, the cold getting to him as his adrenaline faded. Winter was almost here. He stared at the corpse, trying to decide if it'd be worth it to make a coat out of the panther's fur, but stopped himself with a short chuckle. For goodness' sake, he didn't have any idea how to skin the damned thing, let alone make a fur coat. Plus, there was the fact that the system degraded corpses much faster than usual, and he had no idea how to preserve anything like that.

He let out a sigh at the lost opportunity. A fur coat would definitely serve him well when winter fully began. The fireplace in the cabin worked pretty well, but he highly doubted that he'd be in the cabin all that much. He had to level up fast and simultaneously get enough coins to build up the defenses of Blood Rock.

"Level Up"

Status

Level Up! 20 -> 21

Level Up! 21 -> 22

Level Up! 22 -> 23

Level Up! 23 -> 24

A triumphant grin spread across Nathan's face at the notification. He'd leveled up eight times this night alone. A wild part of him thought about marking this day down as something special, but he didn't have his phone on him, and he didn't really think it should matter much.

I plan to level up way more times than this.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Seven was impressive, but it wasn't anything special in the grand scheme of things. If the system was sending the weakest monsters first and this panther was already at level 27, then Nathan had a lot of work to do to catch up and surpass whatever monster was of the highest level right now.

He poked at the panther some more, trying to figure out if he should wing it and just experiment with eating the meat. Maybe he might even gain some extra levels just by eating up the monster. Of course, there was the chance that he'd not be able to actually survive eating the food and he'd die from food poisoning, or maybe he'd eat it and it'd mutate him in some weird way by giving him something like whiskers or claws.

Claws would be cool though. I'm not so sure about whiskers.

He imagined how weird he'd look walking around with whiskers. A human with cat features—what would be terrible about him mutating like that was that it'd be a lot harder to explain it to other humans. He was pretty sure if he saw something human-looking with only the difference being whiskers, he'd attack. No questions asked, maybe a few questions asked after he'd neutralized it as best as he could.

Too many uncertainties.

Eating the panther had the probability of doing more harm than good to him at the moment. Yes, he had fruits, but it wasn't infinite. Three hundred fruits wouldn't last him through two months, and he had way less than three hundred fruits right now. Then there was the issue of having another mouth to feed.

Freaking bunny.

The killer bunny had probably seen fit to mark Nathan down as a free source of food. With what had just transpired between them, he'd be heartless not to share. A bunny saving his life was definitely not one of the things that he'd expected when he'd finally accepted that the apocalypse was real.

His new reality had started to sink in around two days ago. This was the new world, and he was more than prepared to make the apocalypse nothing more than his playground. Grow stronger beyond till nothing could bother him—that was the path of the introvert.

Path of the introvert.

Nathan chuckled at the name, but that was his reality. Like every other introvert, he just wanted to be left alone. If the monsters stood between him and achieving that goal, then they'd be dead before they even knew it.

Shaking his head, he dismissed the notification as he called forth his stats.

[Name: Nathan Orion

Moniker: N/A

Level: 24

Archetype: Blood Berserker

Class: Blood Pawn

Imprints: Balls of Steel, Skull Crusher, Bronze Dungeoneer, Wrong Underdog

Strength: 24

Dexterity: 13

Vitality: 12

Constitution: 16

Perception: 11

Dao: N/A

Ra'hal Coins: 16,790

Free Points: 8

He glanced at his stats. While the battle against the panther had taught him that he was still a long way from being ready to take on the heavy hitters, the stats here would probably help him close the gap a little. Right now, he was thinking about holding off before he'd make a hasty decision.

I'll do it tomorrow.

Nathan dismissed the screen. He couldn't make a crucial decision like this right after a big fight like this. The fight against the lich had him fight logically, using his head to piece together tactics on the fly. The fight—if you could even call it that—between him and the panther had been scrappy.

He'd been desperate for anything. He had no sense of direction or a particular tactic that he could have even applied. The power gap between the two of them made it difficult for him to even visualize something remotely workable. A power gap that had made him feel the need to up his game. The apocalypse wouldn't toy with him. He'd toy with it. He'd make sure that whoever was responsible for overstepping on human territory would regret that decision.

Exactly my point.

Nathan shook his head to clear his bloodthirsty thoughts. He was definitely not going to make the right decision allocating the points he had. As it was, his entire body just wanted him to chuck all the free points into his strength stat. It didn't sound bad for a Berserker to want to throw all their stat points into the most utilized stat by the archetype, but Nathan just wasn't any Berserker.

He was smart—at least he thought he was. Sure, he'd made a couple of dumb decisions here and there, but nobody was perfect. Plus, he was young; he'd learn, and he'd learn fast. What little experience he had right now was telling him that dumping all his points into his strength stat would be nothing more than a huge mistake.

One that only an amateur would make, and Nathan was no noob. Even when he was playing a game, he never considered himself a noob. For him, the apocalypse was nothing more than a very elaborate game—one that he was going to dominate until he found the off switch and flicked it.

"I wonder what Deucalion is doing right now."

He'd never met the person behind the nickname on the game server, but they'd spoken a couple of times over multiplayer games, and he seemed like a pretty chill guy. There was also Kora, and if he had to hazard a guess, he'd say the short girl had probably gone for the Monk Archetype.

With one last look at the corpse, Nathan headed up into the cabin. The warmth from the fireplace enveloped Nathan as he closed the door behind him.

Normally, Nathan would have gone to have his bath immediately, but right now he was way too tired mentally to bother. Sitting on the cabin floor and looking at the magical fire as it crackled, he tried to put a stamp on what he actually planned on doing about addressing his current problems.

For one, a single trap that had already been used on the panther wasn't going to protect the entire place. There was a good chance that the trap could be reusable, and he'd check tomorrow once the corpse had degraded enough for him to easily take it off the panther's paws.

That was a step, but like he'd already realized, he needed way more in the way of protection than a single trap. The system had offered him one way, but that wasn't the only thing he could do. Sebalos' hand had cost him four thousand Ra'hal Coins, and he'd had to disguise it himself.

It was certainly much more advanced than anything he could have made himself, but he didn't really need an exquisitely made trap. He just needed traps—lots and lots of traps.

I'll try doing it myself.

With that settled, Nathan stretched out on the cabin floor, and for the first time since building the cabin, he slept beside the fireplace.

He'd slept for maybe a handful of hours at most when a loud chime echoed in his head. Nathan groggily woke up to check what was happening, running a hand over his face he cleared his eyes enough to see what was happening, and a grin spread across his face at the new notification.

[Tutorial Period has Ended]