6. Dave Brubeck – Take Five
You have slain a [Demon – Lv. 5 Cadaver Collector (F)]!
Experience awarded!
Experience has been reduced from acting in a group.
Experience has been reduced from not directly engaging enemy.
Experience has been increased by defeating a higher-tiered enemy!
Experience has been increased from strategic actions [Improvised Explosive] and [Incendiary Device]!
Level Up!
[Initiate Mage (G) Lv. 0] -> [Initiate Mage (G) Lv. 1]
5 attribute points available to distribute.
Congratulations on your first level! You are now on your way to becoming a productive citizen of the Imperium. Take fate into your own hands, increase your status and become the best you can be!
Status page unlocked!
The silence was deafening for a while as everyone processed their notifications. At least it looked like we had all gotten the first one. I couldn’t see their notifications, but oddly enough I could feel them in the mana around me. A straight pane of order in a swirling breeze. Weird how the system displayed it in physical space like that, I would’ve made it appear on my iris or something. It couldn’t be efficient to create a plate of mana for billions of people at a time, right? Eh, who knows. This Imperium might be post-scarcity or some shit, what do they have to care for efficiency on a supreme System anyway? Throwing hardware at a software problem, it felt like. I swiped away the notifications with a mental flick. I’d check my status here in a minute, I just had a few more pressing problems than looking at more numbers. 5 more problems, to be exact.
The family surrounding my precious truck couldn’t look more relieved. How long had that thing – Demon been chasing them? Either I arrived just in the nick of time, or they really had run marathons to try escaping from it.
“Hey, Mom, did you level up too?! That managed to push me up to level 3!” The teenage girl with the quick thinking seemed to beam with enthusiasm. I only shook my head, still reeling from the near-death experience. I couldn’t understand where she got the energy from. The boys, on the other hand, I could completely understand.
The youngest, a 13-, maybe 14-year-old boy, looked like he was on his last breath before he’d pass out from exhaustion. He didn’t even try to move away from the bed of the truck, even as everyone else started to group together. The middle child wouldn’t look out of place at any high school varsity basketball court in the US. A tall lanky fellow with an expression that made you question if the demon had dragged his soul out. The man with the lighter was cut from stone, but just as similarly frayed along the edges as the rest of them. I let them be for a minute, turning to unplug the battery so I could stop forcing myself to keep the bubble up. At some point it had gotten larger and even firmer than before. A trial by fire would do something like that, I supposed. But I couldn’t keep it up for even a minute longer, I’d already hit and passed my limits around that first chaotic turn. Popping off the connection, I turned and leaned against the grill.
The road ahead had been completely thrashed by falling rocks. The peak above us was broken, thanks to a certain obscenely tall and powerful individual with no respect for the scenery. The rockslide dragged an entire section of the wall down with it, and there was no way we were going to be able to continue in this direction. I was close enough to Evergreen by now that I would probably be able to backtrack and take one of the bypasses into the town, either heading straight for I-70 from there or trying to find another path into Highway 74. At first I was afraid of going to one of the mountain towns because I wasn’t sure what would be left of them, now I was afraid of going to them because they might be filled with Demons. Just a few days back that would be complete nonsense with how nice the townsfolk are, but now it was a completely reasonable fear.
“Hey.” The lady circled around the truck to find me sitting there with a frown on my face. I quickly wiped it off, replacing it with an easy smile. I patted a spot on the truck next to me, inviting her closer. She curiously peeked into the hood, and only got more curious when she saw the disconnected battery. She dropped it almost immediately though.
“Thanks for saving us. Without this truck we’d have all been added to that monster’s collection. My name’s Marie, it’s nice to meet you.” She held out her hand, and I gladly accepted it. I had a feeling I’d need a few friends, but there was one small issue. Marie stared at me weirdly for a second, at a loss when I hadn’t responded but shook her hand anyway.
I smiled and tapped at the scar on my throat. She flushed for a moment, embarrassed for no reason, then stumbled over her next few words. “O-oh, I see. Did that happen, um, when all this started?”
I shook my head and thumbed behind my shoulder. A little while back. I took out my phone, relieved to see that it still had a bit of charge left in it. I opened up my notes app and scrawled something down before showing it to her.
[We can talk like this for a bit, but I have no clue what to do when the battery dies. My name is Will.]
She breathed out in relief before nodding her head seriously. “Nice to meet you, Will. I bet you’re glad your phone works in all this mess. They aren’t all that useful for anything else right now. Phone service has been down since the flood.”
I knew exactly what she was talking about, but… [Do you have to make it sound so biblical?]
“It’s the apocalypse, Will. I can’t think of any other time more appropriate.” She giggled without putting any humor into it. I supposed that was a bad time to notice the cross on a necklace hanging down from her neck.
[Sorry, bad question. Is this your family?]
She put on a sad smile, and I felt like I had fallen into another social pit. “The girl’s mine, my daughter Sarah. The rest were all strangers until yesterday. The youngest is Jake and the giant over there is his brother Stephen. That gentleman is Moore.”
I wanted to hear the story there, but I gave her a gentle look, not wanting to pry. But she seemed to think it was important to hear it, and continued after thinking it through in her head.
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“You know where the Demons come from, right?” She stared at me with a strange intensity. I shook my head, and I could tell she was struggling about how to break the news.
"So... here’s the thing. People can turn into Demons. Some people just got hit by the flood and transformed into something else. In front of our eyes. Best friends and family you’ve known forever, turning into monsters. It affected a lot of people. I think way more people turned into demons than came out of it normal like us. Me and Sarah were out on a mother-daughter camping trip for her 17th birthday out at Chief Hosa, I was chaperoning for her and a few friends. It… It didn’t end well. Sarah doesn’t think this is real. And I’m not about to correct her. Jake and Stephen were there at the campgrounds too. Moore came into the picture kind of like you, he just happened to be there at the right time.”
I pushed off against the hood, wanting to take another look at the charred demon tens of feet down at the base of the ledge. I absorbed the news pretty calmly, all things considered. I took a detached, clinical approach to it and decided that my entire family was probably dead. Praise be. But it also meant that the nice people I interacted with every day were probably gone too. The sweet old landlady that always checked in to make sure everything was alright (and collect rent like a vulture), my boss appreciating my work ethic more than my communication skills, my next-door neighbor who had pretty much turned into my best friend without either of us realizing it. I’d miss them all dearly, but I probably wasn’t going to see them again. I was wrestling with that earlier, when I’d seen the numbers get smaller. But now that the numbers were attached to getting forcefully converted into a monster? Or getting consumed by one? One that was like this?... I could still hear the flesh popping as it pushed itself after us like a savage animal. I only had one, maybe two people I’d ever wish that fate on.
“…You alright, Will?” Marie had given me some time, but eventually there was a question that had to be asked.
[Do you need a ride to Denver?]
***
Name: Will McGranahan
Class: Initiate Mage (G) - Lv. 1
Species: Human
Perks:
[Internet of Things]
[Envy]
[Assimilative Multiculturalist]
[Mana Sensitive]
Titles: N/A
Attributes:
Strength: 9
Vitality: 12
Dexterity: 8
Perception: 22
Intelligence: 19
Willpower: 34
Free Points: 5
Skills:
[Inspect – Lv. 1] [Universal Language – Lv. 0]
Both a lot and very little to unpack there. We had stopped to pick up some of the supplies we’d thrown at the demon in desperation, but would probably need later, so I was checking on my newly unlocked status while picking up a spilled ice chest’s worth of packaged food from the road. Once I was able to access it, doing so came naturally, just like everything else associated with the System. With a thought, the menu was up. My physical stats were lacking, but that was never going to be a surprise. I wasn’t a thick and rugged woodsman just yet, but that was a life goal eventually.
My mental stats were much more impressive, but it left me wondering whether or not the Elemental was able to see at all. If my eyesight was only in the realm of ‘won’t need glasses until I'm 70’ with the stat only in the 20’s, a 3 might as well be blind. Maybe it was actually impressive that thing had any mental stats at all, having a rock for a brain.
The only other outliers I could see being my Willpower, at a startlingly high 34 to overtake my other stats, and two perks I’d never seen. As far as my Willpower goes, I didn’t know what to compare it against, but even that elemental had a lower willpower than that, and it could move chunks of mountains with mana and its skills like it was nothing. It didn’t make a lot of sense, and I even thought its other skills or its sheer size might have made an impact there instead. Maybe it was totally automatic and didn’t rely on Willpower at all. It could’ve even relied on a Perk instead. After all, those were clearly magical and broke the norms.
[Globalist (D)] Species Perk!
One people, divided. Unique yet the same. Your kind has managed to conquer and unify the globe under a common identity, but still separates itself with a kind of diversity and culture rarely seen.
[Assimilative Multiculturalist]
System-recognized Cities owned by this species are connected to the global lattice automatically. Grants [Universal Language] as a racial skill. System Credit taxation for in-system trades on worlds owned by this species is eliminated. Culturally relevant classes are easier to obtain.
Death and Taxes, huh. Well that threw out the ‘clearly magical’ theory behind perks. This one read more like a trade agreement between humanity and the Imperium we were forced to sign. Like Americans forcing Indian tribes to sign away their land for the cheap, this one had an implicit notice on it saying, ‘hey we’re going to give you this really good deal in exchange for your soul.’ It felt more bureaucratic and hollow than a real benefit. Though maybe that was since I didn’t know how things normally operated. I had an inkling of what it meant though, but theories would stay theories until they were put to the test. Maybe the other perk would prove to be more magical.
[Mana Sensitive] – Personal Perk
You were born with a better-than-average affinity to mana.
You can inherently feel the mana around you.
By definition I guess this perk wins the ‘clearly magical’ crown. It doesn’t explain my higher base willpower at all, so I’m left with no choice. I have to assume that my willpower is higher because my name is Will. Which naturally means that Will Power is the best stat, and I should dump all 5 of my points into it, bringing it up to 39. It might not be the wisest way to go about things, but I had no idea what’s right or wrong here. So I chose to play off of a supposed strength than to try and shore up a weakness that might not exist, just going from raw numbers. It just made the most sense with the context I had available. Which was shockingly little, still.
I shook my head as I hefted up the ice chest, keeping an eye out for anything else on the path that I might have missed. Moore was helping me grab some of the things he, Jake, and Stephen had thrown out. The two younger boys were taking a well-deserved nap in the cabin of the truck while Sarah and Marie were on the truck bed chatting about something.
Curiosity took over, and I used [Inspect] on Moore, trying to fill in some of the context I was sorely missing.
Bobby Moore – Human [Initiate Agent (G) Lv. 4]
Attributes:
Strength: 20-30
Vitality: 10-20
Dexterity: 20-30
Perception: 10-20
Intelligence:10-20
Willpower: 9
Skills:
[Inspect (F) – Lv. 5] [Universal Language – Lv.1] [Explosives Handling (G) – Lv. 1] [???]
The page raised more questions than answers. The first question being, what the hell did he have to do to get level 4 already? Four skills, and a somewhat-scary sounding class name. Was it supposed to be similar to a rogue archetype? No, I felt like it was keenly different. A rogue wouldn’t have [Explosives Handling], otherwise I think they’d be demoted to [Terrorist] or something. I idly wondered if I had to see the skill in action for it to register during an [Inspect] or not, and if so, how throwing a lighter would have counted towards that. It was a pretty good throw, but the flame probably would’ve died by the time it hit the ground. Did he earn the skill just then? Damn, I was starting to get antsy. I wanted to start earning skills just to see what they did. [Envy] was a scary thing.
“Something the matter?” I jumped a bit, dismissing the status screen on a beat. Moore was staring at me with a Cheshire smile that caused me a bit of grief. I had a guy with [Explosives Handling] smiling at me funny. Not a good sign.
He just laughed it off. “First time [Inspecting] someone else, huh? Don’t worry, I understand. It felt weird at first to me too. With a glance you can tell if someone can beat you at arm wrestling or not. It would be strange not to be freaked out by that. But it’s already helped me a ton. One look at that demon’s Dexterity and I knew I’d never be able to outrun it. So, uh, thank you, by the way. I’d be a goner otherwise.”
Well thanks for the sentiment, but then I felt ridiculous for not using [Inspect] at all. It was supposed to be a great tool, a tool an entire species could use. Moore already had it to level 5. Maybe I was severely under-utilizing it. There were a lot of things I fell behind on, it looked like. [Envy] was a very scary thing.
I passed the freshly filled ice chest to Sarah, who enthusiastically stacked it with the rest of my retrieved camping materials on the cargo bed before settling into a spot with her mother. We started off again, this time headed towards Evergreen. I made sure to keep a C battery in my pocket, this time.