Head spinning, I opened my eyes to a large plain. Two scorching suns blaze bright beams of sunlight across the land. Rich emerald grass covers the ground. I could see a forest further away.
“Hey, do you know what the hell is going on?” I jumped in surprise. Turning around, I saw a balding middle aged man standing near me. He was wearing a blue shirt with a grey sweater, black jeans, socks and a pair of trainers. Does this mean that each tower floor is not per person and instead everyone is on it together?
Before I could get a chance to respond, around 30 people appeared around us. These people must all have been in the towers area when it spawned. So that means the tower's size is around...very big. There were 22 adults, 8 teenagers and 2 children - about 5 to 6 years old. Out of all the adults, only about a third of them looked to be in good health. If there were going to be monsters like I thought there were, this was going to be a disaster. However, we should have all gotten the trailblazer achievement which I assumed would make life a lot easier.
"Hi everyone, my name's Mark! I know a lot of you are my neighbours so I thought I should ask who wants to start planning our way out of this alien abduction." Mark was a tall, athletic young adult that I had seen once or twice in the area. I recognized most of these people from my neighbourhood, but I suspected a few of them would have being driving or walking nearby when the Great Tower spawned.
"I think we should wait it out right here: we are safe and somebody from the military will come save us soon," said a middle aged woman. A lot of other people were nodding at that, not wanting to take any risks.
In my mind, I was face palming. The chances that an organised group would enter the Great Tower before we'd run out of water or food was limited. Furthermore, did they not hear that you cannot escape without climbing to at least the 5th floor?!
I could already tell that the group was going to take it slow or steady, or perhaps just not do anything at all. Maybe I was stupid and naïve, but I didn't want to waste my time standing around. I wanted to be the spearhead of humanity! To be able to protect my family from all the dangers that would come. Instinctively, I knew that there would be harder challenges up ahead and that I must be strong to beat them. Also, it's floor one. How hard can it be?
While they were discussing, I snuck out from the back of the group and sprinted across the grass. A few people called out but I ignored them. I could feel the extra power and endurance that the stat boost gave me and boy did it feel great! I ran at the fastest speed I had ever before and was at the forest in no time.
There were a few critters and flowers around which reminded me of something. In most books I read, there was a skill called either 'identify', 'analyse' or 'examine'. With that in mind, I stared really hard at a beetle for a few minutes and a prompt appeared.
Red Beetle - LVL 1
That didn't give very much information. Just to see if it would give any experience towards levelling up, I stabbed the beetle with my kitchen knife, instantly killing it.
You have killed [Red Beetle - LVL 1] - 2 EXP [Extra EXP gained for killing an enemy above your level]
I checked my status screen and my level went from 0 (0/100) to 0 (2/100). Only 50 more beetles to go!
After a boring 10 minutes of killing the incredibly dangerous beetles, a bigger animal rushed me:
Young Killer Rabbit - LVL ???
The killer rabbit was about as big as a normal earth rabbit but had much longer and sharper teeth. It jumped towards me but I dodged to the side while slashing my knife across its side. It howled in pain before leaping at me again. I jumped backwards but it still managed to bite my arm and hold onto me. Gritting my teeth in pain, I stabbed my knife into its skull over and over again before it released my arm, lifeless.
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You have killed [Young Killer Rabbit - LVL 4] - 15 EXP [Extra EXP gained for killing an enemy above your level]
Congratulations! You have leveled up! +3 free stat points. Happy Climbing.
I checked my stats to see what I should use my points on:
Status:
Name: Cad Cooper
Level: 1 (5/150)
Class: N/A
Race: Human
Health Points (HP): 72/100
Mana Points (MP): 110/110
Stamina: 54/100
Stats:
Strength: 11 Agility: 12 Endurance: 10 Vitality: 10 Toughness: 9 Wisdom: 12 Intelligence: 11
Perception: 12 Willpower: 8 Luck: 6
Free points: 3
Skills: Identify
Titles: Trailblazer
Quests: N/A
My luck, toughness and willpower were pretty low but I also didn't think they would be very useful right now. After a couple minutes of thought, I realised that having more strength and agility will directly help my fighting, and endurance will allow me to fight for longer which is always good. I thought that having an extra 10 health wouldn't be as useful as fighting for longer due to the dangers on this floor being relatively low.
I added 1 to strength, 1 to agility and 1 to endurance. After that I vigilantly waited for my health and endurance to go back to full, watching the cuts on my arm magically heal themselves. 10 minutes later, I drank some water that I brought with me and moved deeper into the forest.
There was a multitude of flowers which I attempted to identify, but most came up as question marks or as useless cosmetic flowers. I did manage to find a few good ones though.
Inferior Healing Petal: +25% health regeneration for 2 minutes.
Inferior Stamina Petal: +25% stamina regeneration for 2 minutes.
Inferior Snake Poison Cure: cures weak snake poison.
Not the greatest, but I'll take what I can get. I grabbed as many of these petals as I could find and ended up with 15 inferior healing petals, 11 inferior stamina petals and 3 inferior snake poison cure.
I was somewhat confused about why there was specifically snake poison cure - maybe that means that there are poisonous snake enemies upcoming? As if on cue, I heard a loud hissing noise in front of me and my thoughts were proven correct.
Creeping forwards, I spotted a large, thin, blue and red snake. It hissed at a woman gathering wood near me, and I watched wide-eyed as she backed away slowly. My mind was screaming for me to escape but, silencing my flight response, my body moved stealthily towards it.
It was advancing on the woman, hissing angrily with its thin, grotesque tongue. I decided not to distract myself by identifying it as I knew I'd run away if I saw what its undoubtedly high level was. Dagger in hand, I crept up behind the snake and sliced straight through its neck. Well...I attempted to.
I ended up only drawing a moderate amount of blood from it due to its assumedly high toughness and vitality stat and also because the dull kitchen knife that I used was meant for cutting a steak. The snake hissed even louder and spun around, snapping the air beside me with its serrated, hideous teeth. I barely managed to dodge to the side and propelled myself to the ground in my haste. I scrambled to my feet just before the snake advanced at me again.
This time it managed to graze my knee but I still got a good couple of slashes on its body, smears of blood splattering onto my clothes. Instantly, I felt the cold poison penetrate my bloodstream and my vision begin to darken. I must finish this fight now! I met the snake head on and rapidly slashed at it as many times as I could. I took a few more bites from it and I could tell that we were both were almost dead. Screaming, I stabbed it one final time before collapsing to the floor.
The snake was still crawling towards me! I had no energy left to put up a fight. This was it: death was rapidly approaching. I stared at the snake, unable to do anything with the poison and my wounds weakening me. Suddenly, I heard a loud crash and the snake fell over, dead. The woman the snake was hunting before dropped a log of wood on the ground and ran up to me.
"Don't die on me now, I haven't thanked you for saving me yet!" She ran up to me and started covering my wounds with her jumper.
"In......in my bag....poison cure petals...green colour" I mumbled, trying to speak through the pain. She luckily heard me, opened my bag and gave me the poison cure petals which I barely managed to eat before I spiralled into unconsciousness.