[This interface allows you to change your personal upgrade settings.]

Logan mentally scrolled down, but it was the same as before. It allowed him to change his leveling options, but there was no hidden text icon, no hidden instruction manual. He willed it closed and then kicked an empty cardboard box in anger before guiltily glancing upstairs.

This wasn’t something he could turn on like flipping a switch. The name could be a clue. Karma. What was karma? If his phone still worked, he’d be looking up the definition right now. To him, that meant reflection, meditation… was it more wizard-shit? After all, he could already sprout trees with his mind; what was one more feat?

Logan sat down on top of his blanket in the lotus position, his legs crossed. He had to be careful; if he accidentally used karma rather than generating it, he might have another strangulation episode. Closing his eyes, he first pictured his stat sheet without pulling it up, mentally focusing on the karma points and willing it to move, like pressing on a plus sign. Seconds ticked by, then minutes, then… how long had it been?

Logan opened his eyes, grimacing at an empty Ramen soup cup. Well, he hadn’t expected it to be easy.

He shut his eyes, taking deep breaths, regaining his calm. Instead of picturing karma as a number, he changed his perspective. He thought of karma as a way to pay it forward. A good deed receiving a reward. What had he done that qualified? He’d tried to save the people in the clearing, but they’d died. That couldn’t be it.

He’d jumped off a cliff, sacrificing himself to save Jack, but had he really? If he was being honest, he knew the chances of dying were low, trusting in his constitution score the whole time, hoping for his luck to work out.

This wasn’t getting him anywhere. It had to be something else.

Logan tapped his finger against his knee, mulling over his options. Visualization had helped with the [Life Cycle] skill. Could this be similar?

Logan took a deep breath, a meditative breath, and tried to open his mind. Karma wasn’t a deed, it was a deep pool, a reservoir of water, so endless you couldn’t hit the bottom. It was an aquifer with glacier water, untouched for thousands of years. The water was still. But within the cavern, a single silver droplet fell miles. In slow motion, it continued to fall, until it finally reached the water and plopped onto the surface, ripples radiating out in all directions. The cavern was so quiet that you could hear the plop of the water, like a dripping faucet.

The silver droplet and the water merged to create a reaction, a fission. Another droplet fell, followed by another, and another. Now, the drop wasn’t one drop, it was a waterfall, combining into the pool of immense, unlimited water, creating a chain reaction of give and flow. It was his to use. His to manipulate.

Logan opened his eyes.

Ding!

[You have activated your karma pool! The rate of karma generation depends upon wisdom attributes. Wisdom is antithetical to idiots, you know.]

Logan ignored the saucy message and pulled up his stat sheet, his heart racing in excitement.

Karma: 59/246*.

There was an asterisk next to the stat and when he focused, willing it to expand….

[29 karma generated per minute. Upgrade your wisdom attribute to increase the generation rate.]

Yes! Logan jumped to his feet and fist pumped the air. His wisdom was at 29, so that meant if he kept upping it, he’d eventually receive enough to endlessly sprout trees. That could be a lot of money if the tree fridge made it worth it.

Feeling optimistic, he gathered the blanket and pillow and turned in for the night. Logan kept the front door in his direct view, the baseball bat in reach.

****

[Countdown: Day 3 of Day 365 before species culling. Only the worthy survive.]

[Current rank: 99,940 out of 7,439,159,928.]

[You are currently in the 1%.]

[Advance and grow.]

Logan jerked awake with a strangled shout, the system ding! interrupting a nightmare about a spider rat coming out of the shop’s floor and chomping on his head. That was going to be a hell of an alarm clock every morning.

Bright sunlight shone through the windows, and with his phone dead, he had no idea if he’d overslept. Jack could be at the dock right now. He needed to make his way to the resort.

Tasha must be asleep upstairs. Logan slung his baseball bat over one shoulder and then headed to the hallway, then paused. Something underneath his feet vibrated and a rustling, like the sound of dirt falling, came from the direction of the locked storage room.

Logan could hear sand and rocks falling, this time from underneath his feet. An earthquake? What the hell was going on?

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Logan tensed, unlocking the door and turning the knob as silently as he could. The door crept open, the rusted hinges creaking. Inside, he was confronted with the same empty cardboard boxes, plus the stacked carboard boxes Tasha had set in front of Martin’s body. Odd. Everything looked the same. He inched forward, tightening his grip on his bat, then kicked the boxes aside.

Fuck.

In place of the corpse, there was a hole in the floor the size of a large sewage pipe. He peered down the hole, gaping. A tunnel. Nothing but dirt, and more dirt, with no end. What the fuck? Tasha had killed the minion; she’d said she received a System confirmation! How could it be up and walking around? Shit. If the corpse was on its way to the resort, it would be going after defenceless, unleveled people. He had to warn them.

“Tasha, wake up!” he shouted upstairs.

There was a crashing sound, as if something had been dropped to the floor, and then she peered down the stairs. “Jesus, you don’t have to yell.”

“You told me that you killed Martin! He’s not dead!”

“The hell are you saying? I killed it! You watched me!” Her eyes widened and she suddenly looked uncertain. “Is it down there? Walking around…?”

“It tunneled out.”

Something didn’t make sense. Tasha had said she’d received a System notification. If she had been telling the truth, she’d even leveled up. That didn’t happen unless you killed something. What was going on?

“Somehow, it’s still alive and it tunnelled out. I need to warn the others. You can come with me to the resort, or you can stay; it’s up to you, but I’m leaving.”

Her eyes widened and she seemed to hesitate. “Hold on,” she said, rushing back and then returning with a barbecue fork in one hand, the cleaver in the other.

“What are you going to do with that?”

“It’s better than nothing, isn’t it? I’m assuming you want your knife back.” She clattered down the stairs and followed him to the counter.

He couldn’t have her facing down a monster like a spider rat with a fork. “You can keep the cleaver,” he said. He’d just as likely do himself an injury if he continued holding both weapons and he was fond of the baseball bat. After all, he’d made it with his own hands.

Tasha shrugged before tucking the fork in her waistband and then followed him out of the store.

He’d have discarded the fork, but each to their own.

****

They made short work of the path and soon reached the mushroom clearing.

“What the hell happened here?” Tasha asked, giving a corpse a wide berth. That was the remains of the teenager with asthma. The flesh had bloated, and flies buzzed around the corpse even in the morning air.

“There’s no time,” Logan said, leading them past the bodies. They deserved a burial, and in absence of that, at least a decent hole, but he didn’t know what Martin was capable of, and if he lingered over the dead when he could be saving the living, the living might soon join them.

When they reached the resort, he thought at first that they’d rushed for nothing. At the base where sand met grass, patio furniture and sun umbrellas littered the property. It was quiet. Dead quiet. Yesterday, there had been dozens of tourists milling around. It was morning, but it wasn’t that early. Were they all still asleep?

“Is it just me or is this place creepy as fuck?” asked Tasha. “Where are the birds, the insects? There’s nothing.”

She was right. On the way here, even in the clearing, there had been flies buzzing and insects crawling on the ground. Birds nested in the trees or flew in the sky, looking for a meal. Here, it was so quiet you could hear nothing but your own footsteps.

And then it became clear. As they crested a hill overlooking the entrance to the hotel, Logan could see bodies scattered, five at least, frozen on the ground as if they’d fallen asleep. There were no visible injuries, but they were pale and lifeless.

Tasha lowered her voice. “Are they dead?”

Before Logan had a chance to use [Idiot’s Inspect], the front door banged open and three tourists exited, preoccupied and not looking where they were going.

“I’m telling you; it’s only going to get worse. Today they run out of bacon, tomorrow it’s eggs!” said a man with a receding hairline.

“You think of nothing but food. Aliens have invaded and you’re worried about your complimentary breakfast,” snarked a lady, fiddling with her purse. She had short brown hair streaked with grey, dark brown glasses giving her a bookish appearance.

“You’ll be worried too when—"

“Something’s wrong,” interrupted a man in his early twenties. He resembled the couple, with the woman’s same sharp cheekbones. In board shorts and a blue tank top, he had a pair of sunglasses perched on his head.

They stared at the people on the ground, dumbfounded. Logan used [Idiot’s Inspect] on the closest body.

[Level 1 Gestating Undead Minion]

Ah, shit. Logan raised his voice. “You need to get out of here! They’re undead minions!”

The couple looked between Logan and the bodies in confusion before scrutinizing Logan’s outfit. As one, they gave him a once-over and then just as quickly averted their gaze.

The son sneered. “Are you crazy?”

The mother hissed. “Charlie!”

For a second, Logan didn’t understand why a glance over of his clothes would cause the kid to call him names, but then he looked down at his outfit and winced. Kitten patterned swim trunks, a fancy long sleeve white dress shirt, torn on the edge, full of blood stains and dirt. There was no brush in the dinky bathroom in the convenience store, and with monsters roving around, his appearance had been the least of his worries.

He had a bandaged finger, morning stubble, and brown hair that was standing on end. The encounter with the noxious mushrooms had eaten away his eyebrows, and he had patches of bare skin all over his scalp. Not an appearance that exuded confidence.

The older man rested his hand on Charlie’s arm. “We don’t use that word, son. It’s offensive.” Glancing at Logan and giving him a wary look, he raised his hands. “I’m a doctor. Will you let me help these people?”

“Not that kind of doctor,” Charlie muttered.

After everything that had happened in the last three days, how could these people still be this slow on the uptake?

To give them some minor credit, the people who stumbled into the mushroom clearing had died. With no one to tell the tale, and with no other monsters hitting the resort, they might not have had a chance for a reality check.

Before Logan could say anything, someone came around the corner.

At first, Logan thought it was another tourist. In a short yellow sundress and white dress sandals, she looked normal. From afar. Was that…? It was the woman from the clearing, the one with the crowbar! He’d suspected she’d managed to stumble out, but seeing was believing. Logan felt a tension he hadn’t known he was carrying lessen. All those people in the mushroom clearing weren’t dead after all. One had survived. His efforts weren’t for nothing.

“Fuggly ass ugh,” said Tasha, shuddering.

Logan’s thoughts abruptly took a nosedive. As she grew closer, it became clear that there was something wrong with the woman.

Extremely wrong.

Just like Martin, thread had interwoven into her skin, like the weave on a basket, but instead of purple, it was gold. Her hair had transformed from a short blonde bob to tiny fungus heads, as if hundreds of snakes with mushroom caps swayed in the breeze. In place of her eyes, two golden flowers bloomed, the pollen white pupils. The woman moved towards them with jerky, stumbling steps, before pausing and staring unseeingly.

[Level 10 Undead Minion.]

That wasn’t a woman anymore.

“Get ready,” said Logan.