The last message was certainly interesting. It confirmed some things and implied others. But first, there was something more important.

I looked at the girl, whimpering in pain.

Suddenly, her eyes shot open and she put a panicked expression on.

"No! Stop! Don't... Ha... hahaha... haaaaaaa.", the girl cried out in panic, then she laughed maniacally for a moment, only to sigh in relief.

"What happened?", I ask her.

"My HP hit zero.", she simply answers.

"And you are still alive?", I ask her, a bit confused.

"Yes."

"Can I take a look at it?"

Without a word, she takes her hands off the wound and I get closer. It was hard to notice through all of the blood, but I could clearly see how the wound was already starting to close, slowly, but steadily. Give it two to three minutes and it would be completely gone.

"So, our HP don't indicate close to death we are but are used to regenerate from wounds. Good to know."

Definitely good to know. And even better I didn't have to learn that on my own body.

"Let's take a break. You can't move until your leg has healed a bit more."

The place wasn't exactly the safest, but I had to take a rest as well. My [SP] had hit 4 points after this fight and I didn't want to know what happened once they reached zero. At least not until I would be safe despite any possible consequences.

I stood up and quickly dislodged my ax from the monster's neck, putting it in my lap as I sat back down.

Now to the message. It had two important bits about it. One was, of course, the level up. The other was the second line: "You committed a worthy deed!"

Of course, killing monsters seemed to be considered a worthy deed. But it didn't specifically say that I killed a monster. That means there are probably other deeds considered worthy. With the first message sent by the gods entering the picture, it is easy to assume that any deed helping with the survival of humanity can be considered worthy.

But it also implied something else. Killing humans might not be considered worthy if they are not acting in ways that endanger humanity, and it might even be possible to commit unworthy deeds, losing levels in the progress. Though that were only assumptions. It was still possible that this was all a hugely fucked up TV show for alien races or some other bullshit. But there was no use worrying about things I had no proof for.

Then, there was the level-up. I instinctively knew that I had two stat points ready for distribution, so that was another theory proven. I also quickly noticed that, despite not distributing my stat points, my maximum [HP] had increased by one reaching 18, my [SP] had increased by two for a total of nineteen, though my bonus from my skill had decreased by two, making it 73. Lastly, my [MP] reached 21.

That definitely meant that the resources scaled with both, stats and levels. Though one thing that was a bit disappointing was the level-up didn't fill up my resources. My [HP] and [MP] both still sit at their original value.

Taking out the notebook, I quickly rip out the first few pages and note down my original and my new status, and made notes of all my other discoveries.

"Ah! My note... never mind.", the girl interrupted my thoughts.

Now that I think about it, the backpack was right in front of her hiding place. This stuff had probably belonged to her. I wouldn't give it to her though and it seemed like she had already given up on them.

Another thought crossed my mind. Maybe, saving her had also been part of my "worthy deed"? I quickly note it down. I still won't give her back her stuff though.

Now to my stat points. The answer came to me quickly. [CONSTITUTION] was my lowest stat and there would be a lot of running around from now on. Even with my [fat] skill bolstering my [SP], it was far from enough. I ad first one, then the other stat point to my [CONSTITUTION], noting down the increase of maximum [SP] after each. It increased first by two points, and then by another three for a total of 24 [SP].

By now, my current [SP] had also already regenerated to 11 points. I don't know if it's thanks to the system itself, or because my [CONSTITUTION] is now higher ever before in my life, but my stamina clearly regenerated faster then before now. And maybe it was because my [CONSTITUTION] got almost doubled compared to before, but I could slightly feel that more then just my maximum [SP] had changed, though I can't clearly tell what yet.

We wait a few minutes longer before the girl finally speaks up: "It hasn't healed completely just yet, but I think this is how far my HP will get me. I shouldn't have any trouble moving, though it still stings a little."

"Very well, let's go. I was planning on going to the cafeteria and stock up on food. What are you going to do?", I ask the girl as I stand up.

"I think I will do the same if you don't mind me coming with you.", she answered.

"I don't, for now. Once we are out of the school, we should split up. I'm planning on going home and hopefully meeting up with my family. I would guess you would want to try the same, right? Oh, I never got your name.", I explained.

"Mary, my name is Mary. And yes, that sounds like a good plan.", the girl, Mary, agreed before taking a look at her smartphone.

"Shit, I still can't get a connection.", Mary cursed.

I hadn't even thought about calling my family until now, though it was a good thing to know that it didn't work.

Of course, going home was just an excuse to split up with her. As the lone-wolf I am, I'm planning to live and die with my own decisions. Though this isn't because of some stupid pride or arrogance. I'm simply self-aware enough to know that I would try to become the leader in any group I end up in despite how unsuited I am for the position. And in this kind of situation, that is a very dangerous characteristic to have, dangerous for everyone involved including me.

In the first place, it is extremely unrealistic that anyone from my family made their way back home. My family lives in a big house in a nice area, it is also in the outer area of the city. Just to get to the city center from home takes half an hour with the subway, and it takes forty-five minutes for me to get to school.

Even if I knew the way home without taking the subway, which I don't, it is an incredibly unrealistic and dangerous undertaking when just surviving was already hard enough.

And the situation wasn't much different for the rest of my family. My father should be working somewhere in the city center at this time of the day. My mother is working as a teacher in the next city over, and my one-year younger sister is still on a field-trip with her class, even further away.

It is stupid to try and meet up with my family, we will meet again if fate or destiny will have it. Not that I believe in either.

Well, I am hoping that my sister survives. Of all people in existence, she is the only person I trust completely. She is also the person who knows me the best, probably even better than my psychologist did. And I believe it's the same the other way around, not that she had a psychologist but I was trying to talk her into meeting one for a while already. She needed that a lot more then I do. We always made for a wonderful pair, and I'm still wondering what it was that our parents did wrong for both of us ending up like this.

Hoping to get a better look at the situation before we make our way to the cafeteria, I step over the corpse of the hunter into the middle section of the building and look out of the window. From there, I could perfectly see through the glass front into the cafeteria. At that point, I realized that I already made my first big mistake.

The moment everything started, I had told myself to act based on the saying: hope for the best, but expect the worst. The problem is not that my expectations were wrong, but that I hadn't expected anything in the first place.

What I saw in the cafeteria, was a gory mess of countless corpses and at least twenty hunters. It should have been obvious that, even with five crunchers, the five hunters I knew of were by far to few to kill the majority of the students in the time between me hearing the first screams and looking out of the window for the first time.

The two hunters in the old building must have been scouts of some kind, looking for more targets and possible threats while the main force dealt with the humans inside the cafeteria.

The good thing is: now I know that there are a lot of hunters in the cafeteria.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

The bad thing is: now I know that there are a lot of hunters in the cafeteria.

Luckily, the place we want to get to wasn't the cafeteria itself, but the storeroom where they held the extras, snacks, and desserts. What I was after are the cereal bars. While they wouldn't make for a balanced diet, they were definitely on the convenient side of things.

"Seems like getting food from the cafeteria is not going to work.", Mary comments.

I look down to where she was peeking through the same window as me.

"Hmm... What we want isn't in the cafeteria itself, but the storeroom. While we can't enter from the front, you should be small enough to crawl in through the skylight behind the building. Though I have no idea how good the hunters can hear, so breaking the glass might be loud enough to attract them already."

"Hunters?", Mary asks.

"It's what I call the little ones. Like the one we killed."

"Well, I doubt that that skylight is the only one in the building that's different from the rest. In that case, we won't have to break the glass at all.", Mary says.

"Why's that?", I ask her.

"The skylights in the entire building are faulty. It's an ongoing issue that they can be pushed open from the outside with enough strength. Every now and then there are idiots who have problems with the fact that we can't enter our classrooms during break time, so they climb in using that way.

They get punished every time, but they still... urrrgh... baarghh... huuurrk..."

Just in time, I manage to jump back and avoid the vomit splattering all over the floor.

After a while of retching and heaving, Mary finally calms down.

"How the hell do you manage to stay calm like that in this situation?", the girl mumbles a question.

"Believe me, I don't. I just don't show it as much.", I went with my standard excuse. I'm not exactly sure what brought this on, but as I thought, life is easier if you don't care.

Then, I noticed another problem: "That's all good, but how do we get behind the building in the first place? The only way to make our way to the new building without the monsters seeing is by using the bridge, but that way we can't get to the ground floor without ending up right in front of the cafeteria."

"We could use the fire-escape."

"But aren't those inside the classrooms? It was break time when shit went down, so they should still be locked. And breaking open a door with an ax right on top of the monsters? We could just as use the stairs."

"Well, lucky that I'm a class rep. We are the only students who have keys to the classrooms.", Mary smugly explains.

"Lucky indeed.", I remark uncomfortably. As someone who doesn't believe in fate or destiny, I was acutely aware that my survival until now had depended almost entirely on luck, and it hasn't even been a day. Hell, not even an hour had passed. And I am even more aware of the fact that this lucky streak would end at some point. I really have to get strong fast enough to be able to defend myself once that happened.

Quickly, we make our way over to the bridge connecting the two buildings while staying away from the windows to make sure the monsters can't see us from the outside.

"You did say that the bridge was the only way to get to the new building without getting noticed, but how exactly did you intend to do that?", Mary asked a valid question. After all, the bridge was more of a tunnel, and both walls were glass ground to ceiling.

But I had an answer to that problem already: "Crawling over while lying flat on the floor. If we keep to the far wall, the angle should be just right that the floor hides us from the monsters on the schoolyard."

"That's your plan? You do realize that that is pretty much the most exhausting way of movement in existence? Double, no triple that for you."

"Don't worry, it's only ten meters and I got a level after we killed the hunter and put the points into [CONSTITUTION], I will manage."

two minutes and five meters later, I regret what I said. My [SP] had already dropped by eight points, and I was only halfway there. Mary on the other hand was already waiting for me on the other side. Supposedly, she did parkour as a hobby, so she was a lot fitter then she looked.

That my weight would make it harder to move like this had been something I expected and judged as something I could overcome, what I didn't was that the soft mass that is my fat maximized the surface area of my body, thus maximizing the friction.

Soon, Mary disappeared in one of the classrooms only to come back with a three, tied-together, ropes. She threw me one end and we both worked together to get me across the bridge. It went a lot faster, but in the end, we both broke down exhausted.

Those where the hardest to cross ten meters in my life, and suddenly I feel a lot fatter than I ever did before. Even if I can find enough food to sustain my normal eating habits, there is no way I would be able to stay alive for long if I don't slim down a bit.

As exhausted as I am, my [SP] sitting at an uncomfortable 4 points once again, I quickly stand up again: "Let's take a short rest, but let's do that inside the classroom. We won't survive I a hunter comes up here right now."

Slowly, we drag our tired bodies into the classroom and Mary locks the door behind us.

"I committed a worthy deed?", the girl suddenly mumbled.

"Oh? You got a level?"

"Mh... Yes."

"As I thought, you can get levels for other things than killing stuff."

"Yes, seems like it."

"It's definitely the best situation possible. Might actually be even better than getting levels for free. Though I could definitely use some right now.", I exclaim.

"Well, it's true that it's good, but why do you say it's better than free levels?", Mary asked confused.

"Think about it. If it were like in an RPG where the only way to increase your level is killing monsters, it wouldn't end well. People would either die because they are too weak or die while trying to get stronger. And those who survive would mostly be those who did so by sacrificing others. And if that process is repeated a few times, there would be quickly no one left.

As for free levels... Well, humans are selfish creatures, it would take longer, but we would end up the same way as with the first version. Well, maybe a few would manage to create communities capable of surviving.

But with the way things are, at least if my guess is correct, you get rewarded as long as your actions help with the survival of humanity as a whole, maybe even punished if you do the opposite. Every human will want to get strong enough to survive, and they can do so by helping others survive. While strength may not necessarily be equal to kindness, it would at least guarantee competence and a certain set of base principles.", I explain my thoughts.

"That's, true at least. But won't the gods be able to completely control human society like that? If they give preferential treatment to certain mindsets, let's take national socialism for example, and make acts committed with that mindset 'worthy', won't those people automatically become stronger and seen as more competent?", Mary argued.

"A very good argument. But I don't think there is anything much we can do about that. At least not anytime soon. By the time humanity has regained enough freedom to worry about something like that, we will probably already be changed into whatever the gods want. This might all be a giant, godly conspiracy, or maybe this is all a fucked up TV show and billions of aliens are currently watching this discussion and laughing themselves silly at our stupidity. Or, maybe we only think we have freedom of choice but in reality, this is all a story, and the only reason we can even think these things is that the author wants us to. And maybe, just maybe, the universe has only been created a second ago to be exactly the way it is right now. You get my point?

Well, it's still a good argument though...", I finish my little rant.

"Nothing we can do about it? Isn't there?", Mary asked dejected.

"At least not as far as I know.", I answer.

Our discussion stops at that point and we fall quiet.

While we both take a rest, I realize that my status page had changed a little. I probably didn't notice instantly because there was no notification and the change was small, but I guess it must have happened while I crossed the bridge. Also, I didn't expect the skill to level up this quickly. It probably only went up that fast because it's of low level and rank.

NAME Richard Anderson CLASS [???] TITLES [???], [???], [Sealed] LEVEL 12   HP 19/19 SP 24/24+108 MP 21/21   STRENGTH 4 CONSTITUTION 5 CONTROL 7 INTELLIGENCE 4 WISDOM 4   SKILL LEVEL RANK fat 2 F [???]   X [???]   X [???]   X

With the skill level increasing, the extra [SP] that had been stored in the form of my fat had increased despite me eating nothing. Though I knew that that wasn't exactly the right description of what had happened. While it didn't give me precise numbers, just by thinking about the skill I gained a certain level of understanding, similar to how a person could feel their arm and knew how to move it, but may never understand the chemical and biological processes involved.

It wasn't like the SP stored in my fat had become more, or I had suddenly gained weight when my skill increased in level, rather I should have lost some weight already as I turned some of my fat into [SP], but the process had become more efficient. The same amount of fat would now be turned into more [SP], and I could even use more of it at once. Before, maybe ten percent of the total [SP] I used had come from my fat reserves, but now I would be able to use just a bit more.

Also, if my understanding wasn't wrong, my fat had also become slightly compressed. While it doesn't decrease my body weight, I realized that I could make my belt a whole hole tighter.

A heavy body had its advantages. If the skill level increased further, a diet may become unnecessary, or even counterproductive.