The longer I walked, the more intrusive the words in my vision became. They grew larger and larger, until I couldn’t see anything but ‘hint, hint’ flashing angrily before my eyes.

After about ten feet, I stopped for fear I’d run into a shipping container or other obstacle.

The words shrunk a bit, becoming legible again. I glowered at them. There has to be a way to see past this. It’d be a danger otherwise.

While I’d tried willing the messages away before, I’d never actively thought about trying to make them less obtrusive. Apparently, that was the trick. No sooner had I groused about the message than the letters turned translucent. I could still see them in front of me, but they no longer impeded my ability to move around. Even the blinking seemed a bit muted from before.

Wagging my tail, I set off again.

It didn’t take me long to locate the source of the delicious smell. Another shipping container, either left open or cracked like an oyster sometime in the recent past. Even from here I could see the wooden crates inside of it, half of them broken to pieces.

Cavorting inside of the shipping container were a trio of raccoons. Raccoons!

Filthy, disgusting creatures. I’d had more than my share of run-ins with them throughout the city. While they couldn’t win against me in a direct fight, they were clever, and more than once had stolen food away before I’d even realized it had happened.

Clever... I was clever now, too. More than I’d been before anyway, I knew that much. My tail started to wag.

I was clever. Much more so than a bunch of flea-ridden, stinking raccoons.

I looked around. The shipping crate they were in was right in the middle of a long row. At the end closest to me were several pallets in various piles. I eyed them, then the top of the nearest shipping container.

Yeah, I could make that.

My first jump carried me to a pile just above my head. The pile wobbled and almost toppled over. I danced back and forth a moment until it stabilized, then jumped to another pile. This one was solid, and it was the work of a moment to reach the top of the container.

My paws rang softly on top of the container, and I peered over the edge to see if the raccoons had heard me. They hadn’t, and I could still hear them snuffling about inside. Whatever was in there must sure taste good.

From the top of the shipping container, I finally had a good view of the shipyard. It was much bigger than I’d realized, stretching in all directions almost as far as I could see. The place was eerily quiet. Even though it was the middle of the day, the cranes by the docks were still. I couldn’t remember ever seeing them unmoving before. Maybe it was a holiday.

Or maybe... in the far distance, I could make out the skyscrapers of the city. One of them looked strange. Part of it was missing, like it had sloughed away, and there was smoke trailing up from the top. From at least two others as well.

Whatever the reason, it wasn’t my concern. Human problems were for the humans, dog problems were for the dogs. And my problem right now took the form of three furry little deviants.

I padded along the top, leaping over small gaps between containers. When I was about halfway there, I froze in place. My nostrils flared.

Three white dots had appeared in the air in front of me. When I twisted my head about, they disappeared from sight entirely. The dots lined up almost perfectly with where the raccoons were.

This must be that Enhanced Smell skill. If I forcibly held my breath, the dots disappeared. The moment I began again, they reappeared.

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Interesting. But what did the color signify? Friendly, enemy, or unknown? Given what I knew about raccoons, it had to be one of the last two.

I continued padding along, slower now, quieter. My tail had begun wagging of its own accord. Excitement coursed through me.

I reached the shipping container they were in. The raccoons were fighting about something below. I could hear them chittering, and several crashes. I braced my legs.

Then I jumped.

When I landed, the shipping container rang like a gong. The raccoons all froze. I could tell by the white dots.

I jumped again. And again. When I landed this time, I let out a howl, long and mournful. The sound echoed through the shipyard, bouncing off the containers and reverberating back at us.

That was the last straw for the raccoons. They scampered from the container and took off running. I wagged my tail enthusiastically as I watched their hasty retreat. Once they were out of sight, I dropped off the edge in front of the opening.

Mine. All mine. The smell from inside alone was making me drool.

It wasn’t meat, sadly. The container appeared to contain bags and bags of chips. Most of the packaging was in another language, Korean, I think. Sadly, I didn’t know how to read Korean.

I paused in the middle of shredding open a bag and blinked. How did I know it was Korean in the first place? Or know how to read at all? It had simply made sense when I saw the words floating in the air, but seeing words in real life felt... different, somehow.

Just to check, I padded outside and looked at the side of the container. In large letters, it said ‘MAERSK’.

I could clearly read the individual letters, and while the word they spelled didn’t make sense to me, I could at least intuit that it was a name of some sort.

Okay. So, I could clearly read, even words in the real world. I wasn’t certain, but I thought that might be limited to English. Or maybe I knew other languages and just hadn’t encountered them yet.

I was about to return to the container and resume my feast, when once again my nostrils flared and my Enhanced Smell skill activated. I glanced about and saw it.

Another dot, moving slowly around the row of containers across from me. Unlike the raccoons, this one was an angry yellow color. I cocked my head and watched as it drew closer.

It reached the edge of the containers. The dot blinked away as what it was attached to came into sight.

My breath caught. I felt my hackles rise, but no growl escaped my throat. It was like some innate part of me knew just how bad of an idea that would be.

The creature looked like a human, but it clearly wasn’t. Not anymore. Wide eyes stared sightlessly, their whites stark against the gray skin of the creature’s face. It was missing its right arm, and there was a hole in its chest that should have been the death of anything living, yet it didn’t seem to faze the not-human in the slightest. One leg dragged behind as it shuffled forward.

Despite the white, sightless eyes, I got the impression the creature could still see somehow. Its head pivoted one direction and then the next. I began to back up, hoping I was far enough away to avoid its attention. As I did, the text on my eyes disappeared, replaced by a new message.

Zombie (Basic)

Level 1

The first and simplest of CGI’s generated entities, a zombie is slow, stupid, and straightforward. The star of a hundred horror films and way too many television shows filmed during the twenty-teens, fighting one of these monsters works about as you would expect. Aim for the head.

No sooner had that message appeared than another one followed.

New quest available!

First Enemy

You have encountered your first CGI generated entity, or monster. This is a perfect time to test out that new class skill you just got. Sally forth, defeat thy enemy, gain some experience and some extra loot to boot!

Task: Defeat (1) zombie

Time limit: 5 minutes

Reward: 500 XP, White Quality Loot Box

A zombie? I’d heard that word before. A human telling a story about zombies. And shuddering. Maybe this was just what happened with a human when they died.

Then again... what did the words say? This creature was... generated? My system-enhanced brain filled in the blank, giving an impression of something artificially created. Not real.

So, it wasn’t a real human. It was fake. Meant for me to fight it.

I could handle that.

Except I hadn’t picked my class skill yet. I could almost feel the judging tone of the quest description. Time to remedy that little mistake.

With another quick glance at the zombie, who was still standing there, looking back and forth with that blank expression on his face, I pulled up the class skill prompt and chose ‘Select’.