After defeating the insect, and securing the bathroom window, the four strangers finally had a chance to take a breath. Lucius took this opportunity to try to figure out their situation. He introduced himself "Uh, my name is Lucius, as you can probably tell by my dirty clothes, I'm not exactly... rich."

Second to speak, was The Clerk, "I'm Jack. This store belongs to my family, that's how I got stuck working here. Try not to break anything, I will be the one fixing it!"

Lastly, the boy and his mother spoke up, "I'm Mary, this is my son James." the woman seemed distracted, maybe it was fear, but she didn't say much. Her son shot out a cheerful-"Hello!" as soon as the woman said his name.

“So, you all saw that vision too, right?” Lucius asked, continuing-“Before, when the sky darkened and the bugs attacked, I saw a man fighting with a giant monster, in my mind.”

Everyone agreed, they had seen the vision, but no one had any real idea what it was about.

“I felt really sad, when, um, when I saw the man fighting the monster.” said James.

“Yeah, It felt like... I was losing something precious, forever." Jack added.

“And, what about the messages floating in front of my eyes? They said I leveled up, and I gained a talent called Sense Danger.”

“I got the message that I leveled up, when we killed the bug, but I didn’t get any talents.” Jack replied.

Before they could continue their discussion, more screams came from outside. Jack and Lucius moved to the makeshift barricade, and glanced outside between the tables. There was a man, stuck inside a car, the terrible bugs had him trapped from all sides. He was the one screaming for help.

“Why doesn’t he just drive away?” Jack asked, not concealing the small amount of derision in his voice.

“He can’t, I have the keys! That’s my husband-Patrick!” Mary exclaimed, revealing the reason for her sunken demeaner, she wasn't just trapped, she was trapped and separated from her husband.

“Is Daddy gonna be okay?” James asked, the terrified tone in his mothers voice caused the child to fear the worst.

“Let’s wait, maybe the bugs will lose interest and leave?” suggested Jack.

They weren’t so lucky. The small group waited like that, feeling helpless, for hours. Not a single bug moved on from the area around the store. It was hard to tell, though, with so many swarming around.

“We have to do something.” Mary insisted, “We have enough food and water here, but Patrick doesn't! We cant leave him like this!” The gruesome idea, that she would be forced to watch her husband die, helplessly, and slowly, from 15 feet away, was a fate she was unwilling to accept. She prepared herself mentally, she would risk her own life to escape that fate, if she was forced to.

“I’ve got an idea, leave it to me!” Lucius replied eagerly. The young man had always been hungry for approval. A life devoid of loving relationships, with no one to offer an encouraging word, would leave any young man starved for positive attention. Lucius was no exception, so he had developed the habit of people-pleasing. If someone needed something, he would sacrifice just about anything to give it to them.

This was not a noble trait, like some of you might be thinking. This was a compulsion. Just like a man, starving for food, might eat from a maggot infested dumpster, so too might a young person, starving for emotional connection, take to getting it any way they can, even in ways that the well-satiated among us might find truly demeaning. Until you have felt the desperate pain of starvation, in your own body or soul, you have no right to look down on them.

Lucius ran around the store, gathering supplies, and setting up something in the bathroom, near the window. A few hours later, Lucius called Mary and James into the bathroom, showing them what he had created. There, at the far end of the room, was a cage, it looked hastily built out of chicken wire, pallets, and tape. Lucius, had placed the cage with the opening pressed up against the window, so anything that came in through the window would be trapped inside it. Next to the cage, was a pile of broom handles sharpened into spears.

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"My brooms!" Jack lamented.

“Okay, here’s my idea,” Lucius ignored Jacks despair over the ruined broomsticks. “I’ll open the bathroom window, lure a couple of bugs inside, and shut the window so they’re trapped in the cage. Then, we’ll use the spears to kill them. They won’t be able to reach us, but we can reach them with the spears! It won’t be fast, but we can kill a few at a time like this, until they’re all dead.”

“That's.. Kind of genius...” said Jack.

“I want to do it too!” James said eagerly.

“Absolutely not.” shot back Mary.

“Okay, take James into the store. Jack and I, will give it a try and see if this plan can work.” said Lucius. "Anyway, if we screw up and die, just leave the bathroom door shut, and you two should be fine."

"If we, WHAT?" asked Jack, Lucius verbalizing the severity of the situation had erased some of his courage.

Confident in his idea, and without any warnings from his danger sense, Lucius was ready to give it a try. He and Jack opened the window, just wide enough for the creatures to squeeze through, and waited. Nervous excitement turned into boredom, as nothing happened.

“Maybe, we need to make a little noise? They seem to be all gathered around the car in front.” Jack theorized.

“Be my guest…” Lucius quipped.

Jack took in a big breath of air and shouted, “HEY, TERRIFYING NIGHTMARE BUGS!”

BzZZzzZzzZ…

“Grab a spear, dude! Here they come!”

Lucius got ready above the window, while Jack held up a spear to one of the small holes in the cage. A cloud of swarming creatures came flooding around the building, and into the window. Lucius slammed the window shut, but not before three creatures had already wiggled inside. The creatures seemed to realize they’d been trapped, and went absolutely insane, slamming their armored bodies into the sides of the cage. The cage walls held, but it started scraping along the floor away from the wall, moving a centimeter at a time with each strike.

“I got it,” Jack said, pressing the back of his spear against the cage to leverage his body weight, and keep it firmly pressed against the window.

“Thank God that window is tempered glass.” replied Lucius. “Hold the cage for a minute, Jack, I’ll find something heavy to wedge it in place.” Jack responded with a thumbs up, while Lucius dashed back into the main room of the store. Mary looked up at him, with fear in her eyes, she obviously thought something had gone wrong.

"Don't worry, just need to grab something!"

He returned, lugging a cinderblock in his stretched out arms.

Lucius made three trips, stacking a cinderblock in front of each front leg of the cage, and placing one on top for good measure.

“That should do it.” he said.

“Okay, are you ready?” Lucius asked.

“Uh… you go first,” Jack stammered, looking a bit queasy. “I don’t like killing even regular-sized bugs, and these are the size of cats!”

“No, unacceptable.” responded Lucius.

“Wha… What?” Jack asked.

“Absolutely unacceptable. The whole world just went to nightmare town. Giant bugs are trying to kill us. We just watched an old woman, and her husband, get ripped to shreds by these monsters. So, I will not accept, that you’re uncomfortable with killing something, that wants to kill you. Come on, pick up your spear; we’ll do it together.”

It wasn’t lost on Lucius, that he’d gone from begging for money in front of Jack’s family’s store, to barking orders at him within a few hours. But he wanted to live, and even though it went against his eager to please nature, he needed Jack to be strong if they had any chance of surviving.

“damn, damn, damn! Okay, fine! Let’s just do it!” Jack rallied his courage, Lucius was relieved, and impressed, Jack was able to control his emotions so quickly.

“Alright, ready? One… two… three… go!”

What followed, was a series of crunching, squelching noises, accompanied by a liberal splattering of blue blood and entrails.

“Yuuuuuck… blargh!” Jack complained loudly the entire time, and it took a while, because the bugs were tough, but eventually, Jack and Lucius figured out how to aim for the weak areas around the eyes, mouth, and… bug booty.

You have defeated juvenile abyssal insectum level 1.

You have defeated juvenile abyssal insectum level 1.

You have reached level 3. You have 2 attribute points available for distribution.

Through effort, you have gained +1 to the creativity attribute.

You have defeated juvenile abyssal insectum level 1.

Through effort, you have gained +1 to the stamina attribute.

Latent talent detected

You have unlocked the talent “Assassinate”

Assassinate - Level 1

Lucius and Jack stood over the bloody mess they had created, breathing hard from exertion.

“I just thought of something, what are we going to do with all the bodies?” Lucius asked, between heavy breaths.

“Uh, we have a big freezer in the break room. We just emptied it out, to get ready for a shipment of frozen food, for the store.”

“Works for me.” Lucius replied. “By the way, did you get any more of those status messages, while we were killing the bugs?”

“Yeah… I got to level 2, and even got something else this time!” Jack said. “It said something like, 'You unlocked a passive ability, called ‘Harden Heart’.”