Evelyn Barker blew on her steaming hot coffee before taking a sip of the strong instant brew. It was a cheap mixed drink, but the caffeine would help her stay awake and combined with the two ibuprofen she’d just ingested, might just help her kick the throbbing headache she’d woken with earlier.
She set her mug down on the table and took a bite of a raspberry-filled donut. The highly processed breakfast was full of lab-made flavorings and carbohydrates but she didn’t have time to make herself a healthy meal. In fact, if she didn’t leave the apartment in four minutes she would be late to work and she couldn’t afford to lose her job. Not with the new hospital bills she had to pay.
Stupid health care system.
Boom.
An ear-shattering sound came from outside.
Crash.
The kitchen window shattered into pieces and dust filled the air. The chair under Evelyn shook, no, everything was shaking. Her threadbare bookcase toppled over and the pictures on the wall were all swaying back and forth. Was this an earthquake? Evelyn knew that there were fault lines near Portland, but she’d heard that the chance of them shifting and causing a high-magnitude earthquake was low.
What do I do in an earthquake?
She’d had so many drills in school. Yet in her panic, she couldn’t remember anything.
‘Protect your head.’
Ms. McDonald’s voice echoed through her mind. It had been years since she’d been in 9th grade Earth Science, but her teacher’s advice started to come back into her memory.
Evelyn crawled under the kitchen table and held her arms up over her skull to protect her brain. She lived in a four-story apartment building on the third floor.
How old was this building? Was it built to code? The floor moved and she couldn’t help imagining the whole apartment complex collapsing with her inside of it.
Evelyn closed her eyes tight and focused on breathing. This was not the time to start thinking about every possible problem that could go wrong. She took air in through her nose and out of her mouth. She twirled a strand of hair between her fingers as she protected her head and then everything stopped shaking.
Is it over?
Evelyn peeked out from under the table. There were cups strewn across the floor and the TV was on the floor. Hopefully, it wasn’t broken. Evelyn stood up and rubbed her aching knees. Kneeling on the hard laminate flooring had left them feeling flat and painful. She stepped toward the window and gazed outside.
The KOIN center, one of the tallest buildings downtown, was on fire, and leaning precariously at a 45-degree angle. Standing on top of the wreckage was a giant dragon. Evelyn rubbed her eyes, but she still saw a dragon, and not only that there were little spots moving all over town.
She didn’t have binoculars, but her phone camera had a decent zoom feature. Evelyn pulled her phone out of her back pocket and zoomed in on the fast moving dots until they came into view. Goblins and Knolls were running around outside of the dungeon. What in the hell is happening?
Her system window popped up, and another one appeared to the right.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
-CONGRATULATIONS YOU SURVIVED THE TUTORIAL-
5 years of hard work has prepared you for today, the glorious day of the true beginning of the Game. The difficulty level of the Game has been reset and untold dangers and rewards await you. To celebrate this momentous occasion you may choose to level up an existing skill or choose one of the new skills available.
1- Healing Wave: Waves with healing power will emanate from your body giving a +5% health boost every minute for 5 minutes to anyone within a 5 meter radius of you. This skill has a 10-minute cooldown. (NOTE: choosing this skill will lock you into the Healer subclass.)
2- Barkskin: Your skin will become as tough as bark. Damage received will be minimized by 50% and any small cuts and wounds received while using Barkskin will disappear when you release Barkskin and shed your skin. It can be used for up to one hour per day.
3- Shapechange: You can change your human form into an animal. Fight as a bear, or hide as a mouse. The more you practice the more species you can become. (NOTE: choosing this skill will lock you into the Shapeshifter subclass.)
So every part of the Game so far had just been the tutorial? Evelyn looked back out the window and saw smoke rising from four or five locations. It looked like the apocalypse and if she was going to survive she needed offensive power. She already had heal, and while healing wave sounded amazing, it would not be enough to keep her alive with the hordes of monsters leaking out of the dungeons. The only option that could give her the power to defeat creatures on her own was Shapechange, as a bear she would be larger, stronger, and have claws.
Evelyn reached out to press Shapechange, then paused. She’d really wanted to be a Druidic Naturalist, which was the only subclass unavailable to her at the moment, but could she survive another five to ten levels until she had the chance for another skill with only Barkskin and Heal? Barkskin was a generalist skill that would not lock her into a subclass.
A blast of fire erupted from the dragon, melting half of a nearby building. Barkskin could not save her from a dragon, but Shapechange might just keep her alive long enough to see tomorrow. Evelyn pushed the button and accepted her new skill. She then looked at the other system windows she’d been ignoring. One was telling her about the opening of a Game Shop and the other was a quest.
The quest had two parts. She could either save 50 people with her healing ability or she could kill 20 monsters in order to earn a skill point or in game coins. Evelyn closed all of the system windows once she read everything in order to focus on the battle to come. It was time to put her skills to the test, but first, she needed to grab her essentials bag that she took with her any time she visited a dungeon. It had food, a medical kit, emergency blankets, hand warmers, and a little spare cash.
Evelyn clipped her essentials bag around her waist and shoulder, double-checked her daggers were secure, and opened the door. The hallway was mostly clear and she remembered to use the emergency staircase instead of the elevator. She skipped down the stairs quickly reaching the ground floor. Once she was clear of the building she felt marginally safer. It wasn’t really an earthquake but it still felt as though that place was about to fall under her feet.
Evelyn walked East towards downtown Portland. A scream to her left alerted her to danger. A pit of worry wiggled in her stomach. Can I really fight monsters all on my own?
I’ll never know if I don’t try.
Evelyn pulled out a dagger from her tool belt and snuck into the alleyway from which the cries had originated. Evelyn peeked around the corner and only a few feet away were two teenagers facing a gnoll. The larger girl was swinging a hockey stick around. The younger girl was hiding behind a garbage bin whimpering and the hairy humanoid dog was growling and preparing to strike with a primitive wooden mace.
It was time to see what her new spell could do. “Let me have sharp teeth and be deadly. Sharp and deadly,” Evelyn murmured under her breath, “Shapechange.”
She shivered and her muscles seized as her body shifted. At least there wasn’t any pain as her form morphed. Her vision blurred for a moment and then everything cleared and the world looked different.
Muted.
Was the sky always that color?
Evelyn stepped forward but didn’t move. She looked down at her body and saw scales. She turned her head back and saw a long narrow body and tail, with no arms, and no legs. I’m a snake!
How do snakes move? They slither sort of back and forth. She definitely turned into something with teeth, hopefully, she was poisonous because she was ready to take down that gnoll and save those teenage girls. She just needed to figure out how to move first.