Logan stared down at the wacker in incomprehension, and then he didn’t have time to do anything but run, trying to restart the motor with frantic hands as he went.
Rushing past the weeping willow, he trekked through the grass in front of the cabin and then got bogged down as the ground transitioned into sand. The sand had been baking in the sun, and it felt like a hot iron on the wound on his foot. He danced in place, treating his feet like hot potatoes while yanking on the engine line, all the while keeping the snake in sight.
With a sound like a backfiring engine, the wacker kicked into gear, blade whirring and clacking. Not trusting that it wouldn’t stall again, instead of backing away, he ran towards the snake, pushing the wacker forward. The blades slammed into the sides of the thing with a smack, kick, kick, kicking as if it was striking against stone instead of snake scales.
If the snake wanted to kill him before due to an interfering sarcastic System, it now had personal incentive.
Each hit of the blade against its hide seemed to enrage it more as it darted for him with cobra strikes. Whatever he did, Logan needed to avoid its bite. If it was anything like a true rattlesnake, it had venom in its fangs. Death was in its mouth.
As if to confirm the thought, the thing seemed to grin, eyes flashing red before it darted too quickly to track. Each snap of its mouth was emphasized with an explosion of sand as it aimed for his injured foot.
Mother--!
One inch closer and it would have bitten him. If he still had a toe, it would have latched onto it!
What was up with snakes and toes?!
Gritting his teeth, Logan pushed the wacker against that same spot on its body repeatedly, the force of his hit adding extra power to the blades while he darted away from the snake’s striking mouth.
If these monsters had stat sheets like he did, this thing’s constitution had to be a bitch.
With a sound like grinding stone, the blades finally burrowed into the snake’s hide. That first puncture opened the floodgates—the wacker sawed through the snake’s flesh like a knife through butter, bits of gore and blood flying at Logan’s face and saturating the sand a deep, dark red.
The snake’s tail kept rattling despite the gashes and cuts on its body. Even though it resembled something that had gone through a cheese grater, it continued to lunge for him, single-minded in its intent to kill him.
The solution? Go for broke. He was going to cut the fucker in half.
This wasn’t a normal snake, though. The width of its body at the skinny end was the width of a fire extinguisher.
Targeting that same injured area, Logan pushed the wacker deeper into its body, cutting through muscle, what had to be its stomach, and then out through the other end. A noxious odor like day old soggy socks left to mildew wafted out of the remains, and something that resembled a furry tabby tail plopped out of the torn stomach.
Ding!
[You have defeated a Level 4 Bog Snake! Extra experience granted for defeating an enemy above your level. Sorry to say, though—it’s too late for the cat.]
[You have leveled up!]
[You have leveled up!]
A surge of euphoria surged through him, making him feel as if he could take on ten snakes at once, followed by a feeling of what he could only equate as dopamine. If this was supposed to encourage him to level up, it was effective as hell.
Logan turned off the wacker and then finally gave his bare feet a break by leaving the sand behind. He collapsed to the grass in front of the cabin, staring at that last System message in disbelief.
Despite the odds, he’d done it. Logan had never thought of himself as competent. Past events had shown evidence of that to both him and his family. The cabin, his failed career, his failed relationships. It had gotten to the point that he believed he shouldn’t even try. After all, why bother when everything he did ended in failure?
Now, for the first time, Logan started to believe that there was one thing he may be good at after all…. And it was killing the hell out of shit.
He pulled up his stat sheet and studied the changes.
[Free Attribute Points: 10].
That was new. He was now level three instead of one, going up two levels from one kill. Did that mean that every level would give him five attribute points? To that end, the monstrous deer had only been level one? Holy shit.
The System made it purposely difficult to monitor your progress though. If it wanted people to level up, wouldn’t it make sense to give them a progress tracker, something like a step-monitor?
His ex-girlfriend gave him one of those electronic health bracelets and it had made him walk an extra few thousand steps every day. It was motivating before he threw it away (the relationship ended explosively and throwing it away might have been a waste of money, but boy had it felt good.)
In the same vein, the System should give everyone a ‘level tracker.’ That way he could monitor his progress with the rest of his stats.
[Turn on the option: Display XP Tracker?]
Logan paused. The creepy fucker was back.
Yes?
[XP progress will now be displayed in your stat sheet.]
Logan was starting to suspect that you could manipulate the System, at least to some degree. Despite it being a sarcastic ass and a massive mental privacy violator, it was being helpful, in its own murderous way. He only had to suggest something or be annoyed at the display options, and it accommodated him. Was it a case of ‘you never receive unless you ask?’ There was something there, something nagging at the back of his thoughts that needed to be explored.
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Logan furrowed his brow as he concentrated, mentally projecting words. System, are there any other options or settings I can turn on?
A dragonfly buzzed around his head in response.
Logan waved it away and tried speaking out loud instead. “System, are you there?”
The dragonfly almost buzzed into his mouth this time. Logan sputtered.
Okay, okay, so obviously the System was a temperamental fucker as well as sarcastic.
For now, Logan pulled up his stats again. There was a new line underneath his listed titles, [XP Progress: 456/6000] which he had to assume meant that he needed 6,000 XP—whatever that was—until his next level. He must earn ‘XP’ as he killed mutant-sauruses.
He needed to allocate his new attribute points.
Logan was less sceptical about this whole thing, and he knew whatever decision he made could have real world consequences. His foot injury was still bothering him—the fight hadn’t helped—and his shoulder was killing him, but if he’d been dealing with the same injuries a day ago, he’d be in the hospital comatose, not debating a stat sheet. Constitution, although important, might be high enough for now.
No, what he needed was help in a fight. He’d tried hitting the deer and he may as well have been slapping it. Both the stag and the snake had also outmaneuvered him, turning on a dime when he’d struggled to keep them in sight.
Logan knew what he needed to do.
[Strength: 6]
[Strength: 7+]
[Strength: 12]
[Agility: 6+]
[Agility: 8]
He raised agility to eight and increased strength to twelve. Although Logan tried to go to the gym, he wasn’t in the best shape. Back in college, he’d been a daily runner, but an office job and the stress of his financial situation hadn’t been the best motivator. Now, he was lucky if he ran once a month.
The system had helped him heal with a constitution upgrade; did that mean it would increase his muscle bulk if he improved his strength attribute?
As soon as Logan made the changes, a tingling washed over his chest and stomach. It was followed by a rush of heat over his upper arms that—
Fuck’s sake, what was it doing to him; it hurts, it hurts, it—
The pain in his shoulder was gone so fast it was as if he’d imagined it in the first place. Note to self: be prepared for agony if you up your attributes while dealing with an injury.
Logan took in a gulp of air and then glanced down at his belly. It was hard to tell through the layer of dried blood and dirt covering his bare chest, but the belly fat he’d managed to gain the last few years wasn’t as pronounced, and he could swear that he saw the first hint of abs. Holy crap, it didn’t just make him stronger, it changed his body!
This couldn’t be possible. It was wacked to hell.
He was starting to suspect they weren’t dealing with a regular old enemy anymore. What country had this type of technology? Logan wasn’t naïve. If one of their enemies had this, the US and its allies would have known. No, this was something else.
After making the attribute changes, he was still close to what he was thinking of as the ‘factory settings,’ but it was better than nothing.
He reviewed his full stats again:
Name: Logan Hart [Hidden Name: Idiot]
Rank: 3,461,873,651 out of 7,476,043,546
Level: 3
Class: None
Grade: F0
Species: Human
Skills:
* Deepwater Idiot Lv. 1
* Idiot’s Paradox Lv. 2
Titles: Eager Beaver
XP Progress: 456/6000
Intelligence: 6
Constitution: 15
Strength: 12
Agility: 8
Dexterity: 5
Endurance: 5
Perception: 5
Wisdom: 4
Luck: 10
Free Attribute Points: 0
KarmaCoin: 0
It was everything he expected, except for one thing. His rank had gone up again—and by a massive amount. Thankfully, he wasn’t seeing that huge drop in population again, but he’d jumped billions in rank—from 5.8 billion to 3.4. The only difference from then and now was the death of the stag and snake.
The System was ranking everyone based on levels. And after all he’d been through, just how far behind was he to only be in the 3.4 billion rank?
Ding!
This time the sound wasn’t the System kitchen timer; that was his phone.
Logan scrambled for his smartphone and yanked it out of his back pocket, his hands unsteady as he viewed the first message he’d received since everything went to crap.
It was a news alert from his news App, and it was barely readable through the cracked screen:
Alert: Over a billion estimated dead worldwide. The CDN Prime Minister was in a convoy enroute to parliament when all gas operated cars were eliminated by the unknown entity calling itself ‘the System.’ Reports of animals attacking across the world. Authorities recommend that all citizens shelter in place. Lock all doors and windows.
Logan opened his phone which promptly gave him a 15% low battery warning, and toggled to the news App. It wouldn’t load. He tried a browser. Nothing. Holding up the phone to the sky, he squinted at his cellular status and tried waving his phone around. Zilch. It must have connected with something though; how else would he receive the news alert?
Regardless, he now had his first evidence that everything wasn’t an isolated instance or him going off the deep end. It was happening to everyone. And if everyone was impacted, that meant his sister was too.
Logan tucked his phone back into his shorts pocket and then powered through the property as if he still had the snake on his ass. He needed to get to Eleanor’s, and stat. His sister was out there and the panic he’d managed to push back was rapidly descending again.
He cut through his property, past the weeping willow and into the rocky, unkempt ground that separated his property from Eleanor’s.
The land in front of the beachfront was flat but full of uneven limestone, bushes, and untamed dry weeds. Every step jarred his shoulder and made his foot injury worse, but still, he powered through, pushing his body without a break until sweat poured down his forehead and stung his eyes, his lungs filling with air at a rapid rate.
Gradually, the ground turned from unkempt to manicured grass, smoothing out and allowing him to run faster. Eleanor’s dock was on the horizon, followed by the first hints of her property.
Unlike his family’s cabin, Eleanor had used her retired banker’s pension to modernize. It wasn’t something that could be classified as a cabin anymore—more like an architect’s dream lake home.
The building had two floors with sleek, large windows that reflected the sun in a prism. There were even solar panels on the roof.
Ding!
[You have earned one Endurance point! Endurance daily limit capped for the next 24 hours.]
What.
Logan came to an abrupt stop, gasping for air as he took in the System message. He hadn’t killed anything, but it had awarded him a point. Strange, since unlike the strength attribute point increase, he didn’t feel any—
Feel any—
Holy fuck, let’s take that back. One point couldn’t be a lot, but although he’d been flagging a minute ago, he now felt refreshed as if he could run outright for another 10 miles, easy.
So, you could advance through working out, not just violence. Did that mean that if he read a textbook tonight, he’d increase his intelligence stat? He held back a hysterical chuckle at the thought.
Hell, he may as well give his sarcastic buddy another try.
“System, if I advance my knowledge by reading, will I increase my intelligence attribute?”
Crickets. And he really meant crickets; the pests were all over the place.
Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he mentally threw the attribute quirk in with everything else he had questions about and then picked up the pace again, making short work of the rest of Eleanor’s property until he reached the sliding glass door in front of the lakeside.
Logan knocked.
The curtains were drawn, which wasn’t normal for Eleanor. It was late afternoon, and the sun was blasting. He knocked again, his knuckles clacking against the glass.
“Who’s there?” said a male voice.
That wasn’t Eleanor.