Chapter 24
More Training
Mom noticed Leo had left the house and confronted him when he returned. He told her he'd felt better and walked to the park.
After a lecture from Mom about telling people where he was, and how he was definitely going back to school tomorrow, he dropped by the backyard. Like the rest of the house, it was smaller and less impressive than he remembered.
“Imp, put 10 Demon Tears into intelligence and 10 into agility.”
“Right away, Leo.”
In his backyard stood a large tired-looking elm tree. He remembered climbing it as a kid. Today, he had something different in mind. He wrapped the trunk in an old blanket and, in turn, wrapped the blanket in duct tape to make it stay put.
For a second, kids screaming and playing in the distance sounded like the screams of Afflicted. He shivered.
He grabbed his bat and swung at the tree. Mom's room was reasonably soundproof and once she fell asleep, she tended to stay that way. He started with basic swings and moved to combos. High swing, low swing, jab the tree. Jab, low, high. Repeat. Time to level up his swinging skills and hit the tree until his arms fell off. After that, he'd work on his punches and kicks.
***
“Jason, is there a way to conceal my identity online? I've heard there are 'plant user chat sites, and obviously, I wouldn't want them to trace anything I said back to me.” Leo was careful to whisper 'plant. The last thing he needed now was unwanted governmental attention.
Jason had dropped by after school and they were hanging out. That is, Jason ate some chips while fooling around with Leo's laptop, and Leo lay in bed groaning. Leo had managed to strain or hurt every part of his body, even his head, by head-butting the tree. He'd leveled up a bunch of skills, though.
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Jason shook his head. “You heard of the Super Secret app? Or S.S.?”
Leo painfully shook his head.
“It was an expensive security program, supposed to be the best online stealth software you could get. Well, after you installed it, S.S. recorded every communication, every transaction and sent them to law enforcement agencies around the world. Thousands of people got arrested overnight. Hundreds were executed.”
“That sucks,” Leo said from where he was lying in bed. He forced his sore, aching arms to pick up a textbook and page through it.
“Won't say it's impossible to conceal your identity online, but you want to be careful. I'll talk to my brother. He's a tech guy. He might have some ideas.” Jason stuffed some more chips into his mouth. “So when you killed zombies in the apocalypse, you leveled up and got Demon Tears and superpowers?”
“Pretty much. Did you get our homework?” Leo slowly sat up. His tee shirt was soaked in sweat from his workout. The thermostat was turned down, as always, and he was starting to shiver.
“How do I get a 'plant?”
“Told you what I know. An old man gave me mine after I helped him with his groceries. I tried to find him afterward, but he seems to have vanished.” Leo took off his wet shirt and dumped it in the hamper. “That's why I've been grinding my stats.” Unable to find a clean replacement, he returned to his hamper and pulled out the least dirty shirt he could find. He should do a wash. “I need to improve and complete as many of Imp's quests as I can, to get a decent character class. Last time I was given a choice between Swordsman/Common and Garbage Collector/Common. Both are bottom-of-the-barrel choices. I took Swordsman because everything was trying to kill me.”
“So what's a good character?” Jason asked.
“Assassin/Uncommon was a good one. I heard one of them took out a High-Level Boss on their own. Power Wielders start weak, but gain strength quickly,” Leo paged through his math textbook. “Could you explain how to calculate the area of a circle? This doesn't make sense. How does this pie thing work?”
“You know, if the world's going to end in a month, we might as well blow off homework. Not like it will affect our GPA.” Jason upended the bag of chips and the remaining crumbs into his mouth.
“I'm trying to save the world, Jason, and among other things, I need to raise my intelligence. Are you going to help me or not?”
Jason sighed. “Okay.”