Middleburg wasn’t like New York, where glass towers touched the clouds, a continuous skyline stretching as far as the eye could see, with enough steel around every corner to build a mechanical army. But it also wasn’t small - there was more to it than corn and scarecrows.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, Middleburg had been a major manufacturing force in the north; since then, the city's economic prospects had declined - a steady roll downhill toward poverty and desperation. Over the years, the once roaring brick and stone factories that had lined every corner stuttered to a stop, and without any other business willing to move in, most had been cheaply transformed into residential buildings, giving the city a uniquely humble and antiquated feel.
In recent years, on the back of a growing tech sector, Middleburg had a resurgence. Between stout aging brick settlements, now, new and modern buildings that wouldn't look out of place in an architectural magazine stood tall, towering over the rest of the city. There was even an unofficial competition among the executives and big shots of the city to see who could needlessly build the tallest tower. To Clover's knowledge, the tallest of which was 22 stories high - only held back from going further by local zoning laws.
For all the random trivia and history he knew about the city, as he nervously wheeled down its empty streets, Middleburg might as well have been a new world. Without the constant racket of bumper-to-bumper traffic and the buzz of hurried pedestrians, everything looked odd. Wrong.
The walls of glass and brick towering over him seemed to bend to block out the rising sun, casting long and odd shadows across his path.
Had things always been this way, or was it the System’s fault?
The group had expanded from what it was last night, ballooning to 25 odd members. Some carried weapons - some didn't. Some checked for danger behind every shadow - some didn't. There wasn't anything material tying the group together. From the whispered conversations he had overheard, most didn't even share a common goal or destination.
So far, they hadn't encountered anything dangerous - not a single monster had crossed their path since the sun had risen. Though, as they ventured deeper into the city, Clover saw firsthand many more examples of the System's "rearrangement of reality". Like the electronics shop, with no rhyme or reason, some buildings had been teleported to new locations - one of which had been planted in the middle of the road.
The group amusedly curved around it. And others, like the hospital, had been cleanly sliced, their other halves missing. The city looked like a snow globe that had been shaken too hard.
As they moved further away from the hospital, the effect lessened.
Paranoid of walking into a trap, Clover peered through every window he passed, searching for monsters hidden within the buildings. He was unsuccessful; he only saw his reflection staring back at him.
Clover continued his vigil, and after only a few minutes, he felt that he was already at risk of going insane, or at least he felt he'd be at risk of straining his neck if he continued to peer into every window he wheeled past.
He continued to do so.
The lack of apparent danger was enough to calm the group's tense edge, and as the atmosphere eased, a few light conversations emerged. Clover listened but didn't participate. As they traveled further away from the Safe Zone, the odds of encountering danger increased.
“How did you do it?” a teen, likely around Clover’s own age, asked - a pair of unfashionably thick glasses bobbed up and down as he spoke.
“Excuse me?” Clover said, stifling the urge to flinch away. He wasn’t used to people so freely approaching him, so he was taken aback, momentarily unsure how to react.
The teen readjusted the collar of his cheap pinstripe suit. “If you tell me, I’ll tell you a secret,” he said in a cheerful tone as he mimed Clover’s earlier performance, holding his palm up to the sky.
Clover quirked an eyebrow. He liked to believe he wasn't as paranoid as Rodger, who walked behind him, eyes constantly darting about, but he wasn't about to spill all his secrets to the first person who asked. He couldn't think of any real downsides to doing so, but still, something held him back.
“The museum,” the teen said cryptically after noticing his hesitation. He made no motion to complete his sentence.
Despite the danger of the situation, Clover couldn’t stop himself from grinning. It was such a stupid trick - the type you’d read about in some cheesy book about the dark secrets of social manipulation, but despite its clumsy execution, Clover couldn’t help but have his interest peaked. “What about it?” Clover asked.
"I'll tell you a secret if you tell me how you did it," he said with a certain levity as if he was playing a game. Clover couldn't tell if it was forced.
However, what he did know from watching countless TV shows was that in negotiations, if this could even be counted as one, it was essential to project an air of indifference. "You first," Clover said evenly.
The teen spoke softly so no one would overhear him, “Back in the first System Announcement, there was a section in there about how treasure and special items would appear in locations of interest." He smiled and rubbed his hands together. "I bet at least one of the artifacts in the museum was turned into something more magical."
“That makes a surprising amount of sense.”
The possibility of hunting down something like that hadn't even crossed his mind, but the more he thought about it, the more attractive the idea became. Maybe - just maybe, he could find an item to heal himself. Something like that had to exist.
“Thanks, I read a book about it. I’m something of an expert on the subject.”
“All of this happened in a book?” Clover gestured around.
"Well, not exactly, but the general concepts are the same. You know, really, how different are zombies and mutated animals. Practically the same thing."
“Anything useful in those books?” Rodger asked. Clover hadn’t realized he had been listening in, and from the teen's shocked reaction, he hadn't either. It looked like his secret plan wasn’t so secret anymore.
Clover pointed a finger back at the larger man. "That's Rodger. Don't worry about him; he looks scary, but he's cool."
The teen quickly recovered from his shock, again readjusting his suit collar. It didn't fit him well - it was a size too big. "Nice to meet you, Rodger. I'm Ron." Rodger nodded. "As for what I learned, well, it may sound obvious, but in most zombie-apocalypse books, not being able to find a clean supply of food and water is what does in most people who survive the initial change - not the zombies themselves."
"Do you think we could eat the monsters? Not that I want to, but if it comes down to it…" Clover said, then scratched his head; he had forgotten to introduce himself. "Oh, my name is Clover."
"Maybe. I wouldn't want to be the first one to try it, though; they could be poisonous or something," Ron said.
Rodger nodded. "I'd be careful about that. I heard that some of the deer down here have C.W.D. There's no way of knowing how the System affected things like that."
Clover did not know what C.W.D was.
Before he had a chance to ask, his shoulders tensed as they suddenly stopped at an intersection. The group gathered in a vague semi-circle around a dead raven that was easily four times as large as it should have been. Its wings were broken, and deep maroon lines were cut into its side.
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"What do you think got it?" Ron said as he knelt beside the fallen bird and prodded at its body. A blond woman stared at Ron in disgust as he worked.
Clover frowned; whatever had clawed the bird out of the sky must have been massive - the type of thing no normal person would have any hope of defeating.
Above, traffic lights blinked red on all sides, reflecting a deep shade of crimson onto the raven’s feathers. Clover wondered if it was a sign to stop - to head back to safety and forget his dreams for another day while he still could. He looked up at a sky filled with fluffy white clouds shaped like faces and took a deep breath.
He was still terrified.
After a short argument on what street to turn down, the group continued their tepid journey, trudging deeper into the city, till outside a trendy coffee shop, their luck turned for the worse.
Rodger drew his knife. “Get ready,” he said with no warning.
A moment later, Clover heard someone yell, “Holy shit! That’s a big ant.”
He turned. Holy shit, indeed. Clover's heart skipped a beat, and time seemed to slow as he watched a swarm of nightmarishly large ants crawl out of a busted sewer grate on the opposite side of the road. They pressed against each other in a ravenous rush as they skittered forward, their jet-black chitin legs furiously impacting the concrete. Red name tags hovered over their heads.
Deep Ant Lvl 3
Deep Ant Lvl 1
Deep Ant Lvl 2
By his estimation, there were more than 15 of them. Less than five feet away, to his left, a portly man raised a black handgun; a moment later, a loud crack rang out, and the front window of the coffee shop shattered.
Clover flinched away, his ears ringing painfully.
The man pulled the trigger again, this time catching a microwave-sized Deep Ant in between the eyes. Like a puppet with its strings cut, the monster collapsed. Heedless, The Deep Ants continued their mad advance, quickly and without care burying the corpse under a sea of black legs as they surged forward.
For a moment, that seemed to stretch on forever but was likely less than a couple seconds, Clover looked on, frozen, the enormity and the danger of the situation overwhelming him. He shouldn't have come. He was going to die here.
His wheelchair rocked precariously, threatening to topple over as a man carrying a makeshift weapon bumped into him as he rushed forward. Breathing heavily, Clover came to his senses; he had to act quickly, or else he would be overrun. He thrust a shaking hand forward, aiming at a particularly colossal ant.
All around him, action blurred - some ran, some fought; past the bare basics, Clover couldn't keep track of what was happening.
Amidst the chaos, he tried to focus inward to find the magical structure within himself that was needed to activate [Unstable Mana Bolt]. However, the terrible sound of hundreds of spindling legs scraping against the ground continually drew his attention outward.
Clover stifled the urge to scream. He needed to focus. The tide of monsters neared, growing dangerously closer with each passing second. He took a deep breath; the shaking in his hands didn’t stop, but it was now or never. He delved inward in a hurried manner.
Through some luck, Clover once more found the structure within his core. Like a lone star in a black sky, it wasn't hard to find once he focused. Guided by instinct and what he had seen in the Skill Stone, he reached out with his will and pressed against the structure, trying to rouse the Skill into action. However, his efforts were ineffective. Only when he uttered the words: "[Unstable Mana Bolt]" under his breath did the Skill respond.
The structure sparked, sending tingles down his arm as a powerful ball of pure blue mana formed in his flattened palm, growing to a baseball's general size and shape within a second. Almost of its own accord, the spell slipped out of his grasp and launched toward the approaching mass of monsters.
Congratulations! Unstable Mana Bolt has reached Lvl 2. +1 Skill Points.
The glowing blue bolt of magic went wide, whizzing past his target. However, due to how tightly packed together the Deep Ants were, it was impossible to truly miss. His attack smashed into a monster ant, blowing off one of its legs and knocking it over.
Immediately, he tried to use the Skill again, but nothing happened. Inward, he noticed that the structure felt dim - hollow, only slowly regaining its luster. When he tried to activate [Unstable Mana Bolt], it felt like he was scraping against an impenetrable barrier. After a moment's panic, he realized why: [Unstable Mana Bolt] had a cooldown. The System wasn't so kind as to tell him exactly how long it was.
The Deep Ant that Clover had shot broke off from the main group and charged past the brunt of the fighting, ignoring everything else as it made a bee-line toward him. Oh shit. He had made it angry.
Clover fumbled with his wheelchair's control stick, and after a brief glance behind him, he reversed away from the monster, counting down the seconds till [Unstable Mana Bolt] would come off cooldown. His stomach did somersaults as his wheelchair bounced roughly whenever he rolled over a bump or crack in the road. Luckily, he did not have to run for long - something clicked inside him, and he instinctively knew he could cast [Unstable Mana Bolt] again.
Wasting no time, he outstretched his hand once more. However, at the last moment, he hesitated. From this range, it wasn't guaranteed that he could land the shot.
In a maneuver that made Clover question his sanity again, he abruptly stopped and waited for the Deep Ant to come closer. One good shot was all he needed to kill it; the ants were relatively fragile despite their size. Adrenaline surged through his veins with a violent intensity.
The monster dumbly continued chasing after him in a straight line.
"Mana Bolt," he whispered after a few nail-biting seconds. The spell answered his call, blue motes of energy gathering in his palm. However, as the magic formed, he could immediately tell that something was different this time.
His arm muscles strained as a sudden weight pressed down against them. With wide eyes, he watched as a spiral of deep gray mana bloomed within the spell. Shards of rock began to jut out of the spiral, growing larger with each passing millisecond. A sharp pain bit into his hand.
Before the spell could mutate further, Clover released it. The bolt of mana and stone crashed forward, impacting the point where the monster's oversized head met its body with a sharp crack. Then the rock, as if it were a bamboo shoot in the spring, explosively grew, expanding to cover patches of the Deep Ant's body with crushing force.
The monster did not survive.
Congratulations! Unstable Mana Bolt has reached Lvl 3. +1 Skill Points.
Congratulations! You have defeated a Deep Ant - Lvl 1. +100 Exp.
Panting hard, Clover shook off a chunk of stone that had grown on his palm. The System had claimed that [Unstable Mana Bolt] occasionally had minor extra effects, but he hadn't expected them to be so severe. Still, he couldn't stop himself from smiling, he quite liked this magic thing.
A deep sandpaper-like series of coughs ripped through his lungs, dampening his mood and reminding him why he was here in the first place: He needed to level up, or he would die.
He narrowed his eyes as he spotted his next target. To his right, an old man who stood on top of a car batted away a Deep Ant with a cane as it attempted to climb the vehicle.
Clover wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and wheeled over to help.
The distracted Deep Ant didn’t stand much of a chance. Clover blasted it with a [Unstable Mana Bolt], and the older man lept on the opportunity and finished off the monster with a series of cane strikes.
Congratulations! Unstable Mana Bolt has reached Lvl 4. +1 Skill Points.
Congratulations! You have significantly contributed to the defeat of a Deep Ant - Lvl 2. +125 Exp.
Class: [Blank] has reached Lvl 2. +5 Stat Points.
The older man nodded. “Thanks for the assist.”
“No problem,” Clover responded as he scanned the street for threats. He didn’t find any - there weren’t any left. It couldn’t have been more than a minute, and they had already won. Together, they slowly traveled back to the main group.
The sun warmed his back.
He had done it. He hadn't acted perfectly - far from it, but still, he had managed to kill two monsters without getting hit once. A massive improvement when compared with his midnight brawl with the Bone Rat. He grinned. His dream wasn't impossible. He could win.
He opened his [Status Screen] and put a point into Vitality. He sighed in relief as a wave of healing energy washed over him. Before he could decide where to put his following Points, he arrived at where the group had gathered. Most of them had leveled up from the encounter. And most of them hadn’t sustained any serious injuries.
It was a resounding success, though the more Clover thought about it, the more dangerous the encounter became. If he had been alone, or anyone for that matter, the monster ants would have easily overwhelmed them.
Clover parked himself near the edge of the group. Those around him poked at the air, presumably taking the chance to relax and distribute their Stat Points. It was pretty weird to watch from an outside perspective. On the other hand, Ron hurriedly dug through the corpses of the Deep Ants despite being out of breath.
"Clover, are you alright?" Dr. White asked from behind him. His tone was off - strangely hesitant and confused.
Clover flashed a thumbs up. "I'm good. They looked scary, but they were pretty weak."
He turned to face the doctor. At least from a cursory glance, it looked like he had avoided serious injury.
The doctor's face shifted; Clover didn't know how to interpret the motion. "Have you ever been to a forest?"
Clover paused; that was a strange thing to ask. Doctor White had never asked him anything like that before. "Nope."
The Doctor nodded, visibly relieved. He glanced at the space above Clover's head, checking his Level. "Any progress with your condition?"
"I'll be fine." Clover didn't entirely believe the words coming out of his mouth. "As long as I keep fighting, I'll be fine," he spoke again, trying to convince himself.
Dr. White opened his mouth to speak, but he was once again cut off before the words could pass his lips.
"I found it!" Ron exclaimed as he hoisted a pitch-black stone from the Deep Ant's corpse. Before Clover could get close enough to get a good look at it, the stone shattered into a thousand pieces, releasing a dancing flow of black light that seemed to reflect off of itself.