[Entering the Settings Mainframe.]
[All new users start at Level 0. You will not be granted personal statistics until you kill your first entity. Once the user reaches Level 1, the System will automatically allocate stat points based upon personal characteristics. What, you thought we’d waste our time if you can’t even kill a Level 1 entity?]
Logan mentally willed the page down.
[This interface allows you to change your personal upgrade settings.]
[Current settings: Confirmation required before commencing leveling or allocating attribute points.]
[Optional setting: Automatically level and allocate without confirmation.]
[…Would you like to change your settings, Idiot?]
This was one sarcastic fucker. Logan mentally confirmed his acceptance.
[Changes accepted.]
There was no noticeable difference, but the settings had now changed to [Automatic]. This whole thing was beyond him, but why would this ‘System’ even have that as an option.
[Leveling up can create a feeling of euphoria in lesser species. This can cause some to overestimate their capabilities at key moments.]
Logan jumped, glancing around with narrowed eyes. This fucker was creepy. If it could read his mind, what else could it do? He didn’t fancy having a sarcastic backseat driver in his mind.
He pulled up his stats one more time before….
Wait a minute. Was this information updated in real time? He didn’t have a photographic memory by any means, but he could have sworn the last time his rank had been 5.9 billion out of 7.5. Now he was ranked 5.8 billion out of 7.4. That was a drop of millions of people in only a few minutes. Millions! What the hell was going on out there?
That creepy fucker was at fault. A mass murderer was sending messages and killing people. Logan’s blood pressure skyrocketed as annoyance at the sarcasm turned into something more sinister. Once NATO got their shit together, someone was in for an ass whooping.
But NATO was far away, and fantasizing about revenge wasn’t getting him closer to figuring out what was happening locally or in the world.
Now that he could walk, he had more options. However, the city was an hour drive by car. He had no car. If he walked, it would be hours and hours and he had no confidence that his newly healed foot would hold up for such a long journey.
Eleanor was the closest and best option. Unlike his ruined cabin, she had a television. The internet situation was uncertain, but Eleanor was old-school. She had to be connected directly to cable.
Logan used the broom handle to lift himself to his feet and headed down the stairs, each step tentative as if he were stepping on ice.
Although his toe didn’t hurt anymore, it ached, a persistent ache, like pulling a muscle or stretching the wrong way. He was unused to the distribution of weight which wasn’t helping with keeping his balance. It was going to take a while to get used to this.
A rustling in the woods on his right made him freeze. The sun was still bright in the sky, no clouds to be seen, but the pine trees on either side of the staircase cut off the direct glare, making everything seem ominous. The branches on a tree twenty feet away moved, and Logan’s fingers turned white-knuckled on the broom handle.
Light brown fur. Four slender legs, two alert ears, and of course, antlers.
A deer.
“Christ,” Logan laughed in relief. Now he was jumping at deer.
The woods in the Okanagan were infested with deer and it was common to see them crossing the street in the city. As long as you didn’t come across a doe and her fawn, you were fine. But those mothers could be vicious if they thought you were a threat to their babies.
Logan focused on his feet again, taking another step and keeping the broom handle in one hand for support. A further rustling in the woods had him looking up at the deer, just in time to see it charging towards him with powerful leaps, mouth open and frothing with saliva.
“Oh, fuck!”
It leaped through the wooden railing and barrelled towards him at full speed, its antlers slamming into his chest like a sledgehammer on its way through the other railing and onto the hill on the other side.
Logan went flying and landed on his back on the rocky ground, the wind taken out of him as he gasped for air. He was on an incline and boulders were digging into his back, pinecones scraping his bare legs. Adrenaline was the only thing that allowed him the strength to get to his feet in time to see the deer pivoting on its hooves and turning around, kicking its legs, eyes red and mouth drooling saliva.
It was another monster on steroids!
It pawed the ground, steam pouring from its nostrils and eyes all black pupil, red around the irises. And there was something strange about its brown fur. Black oily gunk was dripping down its coat, streaks of it trailing down its legs, puddling around the hooves and into the ground.
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Logan had seen a lot of deer in his life, and this was no normal deer.
It charged at him again, kicking its back legs and leaping.
One second.
Two.
He considered darting away, lying down and playing dead, and then the sight of the end of the broom handle within his reach made him go for the suicidal option. As the deer charged, Logan grasped the broom handle and swung with all his might.
He may as well have hit a boulder. As he struck the deer in the neck as it charged past, his broom handle snapped a third of the way down, leaving jagged wood at the end.
If nothing else, the deer had opted to swivel and adjust its charge. Instead of coming at him in the chest, it clipped his shoulder instead. He didn’t have a chance to feel pain, adrenaline surging through him as he tracked it with his eyes.
And he had to take another look, blinking, and then blinking again. No, he wasn’t seeing things. Beyond the black gunk, something clung to the thing's antlers. It was as if a shadow extended from the tips, trailing oily substance that played tricks on his eyes.
The deer shook its head, oily shadow extending from its antlers as it licked its lips and dug into the ground, pebbles and pinecones flying.
This thing was a powerhouse. There was no evidence his hit had injured it. And if hitting it with all his might hadn’t made a dent, he didn’t see how throwing a bunch of rocks or the shredded railing would have any effect.
If Logan wasn’t strong enough to kill it, he needed to use its own strength against it.
He could do this. It wasn’t impossible. His mother always said that majoring in Canadian Studies in college was worthless; little did she know that it would come in handy against a mutant stag-osaurus. A day ago, he’d been a call center rep who never hunted in his life.
Today, he was serving up venison.
Logan had seconds to scan the terrain before the deer charged again.
Pine trees.
Bushes.
Tall grass.
And two huge boulders that didn’t quite touch each other. Logan ran towards the rocks, his missing toe forgotten as he pushed for speed, the sound of the deer right behind him giving him that last desperate incentive to go ever faster.
He felt the puffs of its warm breath on his naked back as he leaped over the boulders and skinned the hell out of his knees. But that one maneuver gave him enough time to lodge the broom handle between the rocks, the jagged broken sharp end facing upwards.
It happened so fast it was a blur. Logan turned and faced the charging deer, holding the broom handle at an upward angle as it leaped at him, its legs kicking the air, its belly facing the sharp end of the broom handle.
The deer screamed as the weight of its own body forced it down onto what had turned into a weapon. Inch after inch, the wood went deeper and deeper into its flesh, until the deer’s puffs of air turned into bloody bubbles, and it exhaled a last weak wheeze of air.
Ding!
The cooking timer was back.
[You have defeated a Level 1 Pesticide Black Stag! This entity had pesticides in its blood that were in the process of metastasizing, turning it into a walking pesticide bag of meat. If complete, the black stag’s droppings would have spread the disease to other entities. Bonus experience awarded for defeating an entity antithetical to the planet’s survival.]
Logan collapsed to the ground, exhausted and disbelieving. He’d done it. He couldn’t believe it, but he’d done it. And it was only now that he took in the true size of the thing. It had to weigh 400 pounds, easy. The Okanagan didn’t have stags this size. If he believed the wacky text message, it had been infected, but even if it had cancer, cancer didn’t cause an animal to leak black oil.
First the crazy snake, and now a stag out of a horror movie? All of this had to be caused by that sarcastic fucker, the System.
Logan rolled his shoulder, the pain from the stag’s hit starting to seep into his awareness. He didn’t think it was broken, but he’d have a hell of a bruise. His knees were wrecked and bloody, but not that painful, surprisingly. And his toe—
Something moved behind the dead stag.
The pine needles next to the corpse rustled, the pinecones falling down the steep incline behind him. He heard a hissing and buzzing noise first, followed by the sight of a massive black reptilian head. A snake. It had to be ten feet long and as wide as a city sewage pipe. At the end of its tail was a distinct rattle, something you’d see on a rattlesnake.
Great.
Just what he needed. A venomous snake the size of an anaconda.
Ding!
[Eager Beaver title in effect! This title earns you the enmity of all snakes and causes them to attack you on sight.]
Thanks for the reminder, you sarcastic fucker.
Logan had no time to process the message before the snake reared, its mouth open as it darted for his face and almost stabbed him in the eye with a fang.
“Shit!”
The System wanted him to fight, and it was throwing everything it could at him. He’d had enough of this shit.
“Screw this!” he said as he backpedaled the hell out of there. The System wanted him to kill this monster; well, he wasn’t playing its game. Logan knew when he was beat, and he was no match for this behemoth.
Logan ran for his life.
Skidding down the hill, he skipped the stairs and didn’t bother avoiding the sharp rocks or stabbing pine needles.
Ding!
[Idiot’s Paradox is Level 2!]
He disregarded the message as he heard the snake slithering after him, the weight of its body crushing and snapping pinecones. But it was a snake, and it was no match for his speed—
"OH FUCK!” he shrieked as he felt it dart for his ankle, something wet touching his bare skin. Was that its tongue?!
Logan jumped down the hill, almost breaking his leg as he avoided a deep hole in the ground. Just his luck if he disturbed another snake nest on his way past.
He reached the base of the property and the flat ground and gunned it as he ran full speed towards the cabin door. The snake was making a hell of a ruckus as it continued in full pursuit behind him, but he must have gained ground since he couldn’t see it when he glanced over his shoulder.
If he could get inside, he’d have a chance.
One step, two.
The door was—
It was locked.
Oh no.
The keys were in the car. The blown-to-smithereens car! He was so fucked.
The thought of the System winning and killing him filled him with rage. After everything it had put him through, after all the people it had killed, to go out now and let it get away with that crap? Hell no.
He’d show it an [Idiot].
Logan vented his anger by smashing his fist against the closed cabin door as he rushed past on his way to the waterfront. Glancing behind him, for a second, he thought the snake had given up, but then he saw its head in a cobra stance, its big body slithering towards Logan with its tail rattling like crazy. Yeah, this thing wasn’t giving up.
Little did it know what was coming.
The utility shed stored everything they needed to maintain the cabin, but Logan’s grandfather had also preserved his equipment, storing things long past their expected lifespan. The oldest working machine was an antiquated weed wacker from the 1970s, so old it didn’t resemble any modern weed wacker. It was a clunky thing, rusted to all hell, but the blades were extra-large, and the safety guard had long since fallen off.
Logan took the wacker from the shed, gunning the gas engine with massive pulls. The ignition kicked on, antiquated blades clacking as he turned to face the incoming monster.
“Come and get it!” he screamed right as the snake made the turn around the corner of the cabin and charged towards him. “I’ve got a helping of shitstorm for you, you—”
The engine sputtered and died.
“Ah, fuck.”