The beamling fell to the ground, dead, blood leaking from a few puncture wounds that Cuby had made in its neck and sides.

This one was my loot—we were alternating—so I rushed forward, looted the corpse, then grabbed the demon stone and dropped the corpse back onto the ground.

As I was doing this, Cuby cupped her hands to her mouth and screamed as loud as she possibly could.

We both paused to listen. In the distance, we heard a cry answer—one of the warped howls of the beamlings. It was the best way we’d thought of to find them quickly: they were too spread out to just spot, especially through the uneven terrain and the trees, but they tended to cry out when they heard a loud noise, probably to help them group up if they found someone.

“Let’s go!” she said, bounding away with enthusiasm.

Cuby was a rogue, and her starting equipment was a set of padded armor, a sling, and a long dagger. I could cast my Mana Shield on her, and one of her abilities was a low-cooldown roll that functioned as a dodge, and so she was the one who engaged, her Hit Points protected by her natural defenses as well as our active ones.

Her damage was a little less than mine, but every now and then she’d make some vital stab—a critical hit—that dropped a beamling to 0 no matter what its HP had been. We killed them quite quickly working together, but the real advantage was that we weren’t using many resources—I threw a single Magic Arrow and she did the rest, never taking enough damage to lose the Mana Shield and rarely even taking enough to cost more than 1 or 2 mana to replenish it.

I glanced down at my mana bar:

Mana: 81 / 135

We’d been at it for about an hour. My experience bar was a third full: it looked like it would be a close call as to whether I’d need a mana potion to hit level 1. I’d also found that jogging and sprinting didn’t tire me at all—just depleted the little stamina bar that I didn’t use for anything else, and which recharged faster than mana.

Ahead of me, Cuby pulled up short: she’d spotted the beamling. This one was a small one—it looked like it had once been a badger. Once I’d caught up, she charged in, and we finished it easily like we’d done to so many others.

I let out a shout as she looted it. We listened, but heard nothing.

“This way, then,” she said, taking off down the mountain. We’d agreed that settlements were more likely to be downward than upward, since downward was where water flowed and, potentially, gathered into larger rivers or streams.

I’d learnt a few things from her as we traveled. The adventuring clock, which was now reading just under eleven hours, was a cap on the amount of time you could spend earning experience and loot each day. At 00:00:00, you got neither for anything but PvP, which only gave loot. It ticked up in a safe zone, to a maximum of 36 hours, and ticked down whenever you were outside, no matter what you were doing. Essentially, it made it so that people could sleep, craft, and interact in town without feeling pressured to get back out and farm as quick as possible.

I’d asked about skills and taken a bit of a look at them—there were crafting skills like blacksmithing and more adventuring oriented skills like survival, or lore skills that gave you more information when you tagged things. I didn’t know what I’d pick yet, but Cuby had told me it didn’t matter much if I saved my points until we got to town.

Mostly I was wondering about how they worked. Would the sneak skill just change the way the world responded to my movements if I tried to sneak, or would it actually fill me with new knowledge, new training and, well, skills that I didn’t have to do any real work to learn? After all, my spells had basically given me a bunch of un-practiced muscle memory.

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I hadn’t asked much about the Hierarchy of El, which was the name of the interstellar civilization that owned the Colosseum, or about humans. I had enough to think about already, and I didn’t want to make her suspicious.

“Hey!” Cuby suddenly said in a hushed tone, holding out her arm. She jerked her head forward, to the edge of the trees. “Look.”

I saw the monster ahead of us, rubbing its head against a few stones for seemingly no reason. It was much like a beamling, except its body seemed to be that of a deer, making it larger than any we’d seen.

It’s head, however, was a heavy mass of metal parts, including what looked like a pressurized air tank and several turning gears. I tagged it:

Jawspray - Level 2

“Nothing else around,” I said. “I’m sure we can take it—but that thing’s probably also a demon.”

It moved to grind a different part of its head against the rock face, and I caught sight of the glowing red stone where its eyes should have been.

“Definitely,” said Cuby.

“If this area is full of demons, I think I want to take my first skill,” I said. “One second.” I opened my Skill pane: I had 4 General Skill Points that could be spent on anything and 3 Mage Skill Points that could be spent on magic and lore. I skimmed the long list of skills, most of which I hadn’t read, then found the one I was looking for:

Skill – Lore – Demonology (Costs 3)

Lore skills increase the information you gain about an item or creature in their field when you identify or tag them. They also provide you with some general knowledge in that field.

Lore – Demonology pertains to all demons, devils, and to certain abilities and hell.

I spent all three of my mage skill points to unlock the skill. A moment later my head ached a little, then stopped: then I felt a soothing tingle along the inside of my skull. My mind wasn’t suddenly flooded with information, though—I didn’t feel like I knew anything I hadn’t known before.

I looked back up at the jawspray. I tried tagging it again, but nothing happened. I focused on my lore skill in my mind, then tried to make that thought interact with the jawspray—bingo. A new pane appeared under the sprayling’s HP bar.

Lore – Demonology – Jawspray

A jawspray is a creature that has been corrupted by a demonstone and haphazardly fused with metal scraps. It attacks its prey by locking its metallic jaw around one of their limbs, then releases a gout of acid while they can’t get away.

A jawspray has low psychic resistance. They are fairly unintelligent, but will follow the commands of more powerful demons without regard for self-preservation.

“Hey!” whispered Cuby. “I can see that too! Must be because we’re grouped up!”

“Great,” I said. “Though we don’t have any psychic stuff to attack it with. If it doesn’t have a ranged attack like the beamlings, though, how about I start us off by laying into it with some Magic Arrows?”

“Fine by me.”

I stepped out of the woods, and the jawspray seemed to detect me almost as soon as I got in range to cast my Magic Arrow. It charged, but not before I’d finished the spell—and before it reached me, Cuby had stepped out front to protect me.

It missed a headbut against her, then tried to clamp its misshapen, mechanical jaw around one of her legs—but the Mana Shield simply took a couple of damage and the thing’s metal teeth seemed to slide off the invisible barrier, gaining no purchase on Cuby’s leg like it intended.

By that time I’d finished casting another Magic Arrow, and Cuby had already stabbed it a couple times herself. It made one more attempt at grabbing her, then fell with a gaping wound in its neck.

“Great!” Cuby said cheerily as it twitched on the ground, blood pooling out from its neck.

That was the thing about 0 HP—you didn’t die, you just started taking damage for real. Weapons stopped passing through you and leaving a little scrape or bruise—and instead started cutting you to ribbons.

Cuby knelt down and stabbed it in what I guessed was the heart.

You have gained 2 experience points.

Double what we got from splitting a level 1 beamling.

“That was way more experience!” Cuby said cheerfully, yanking free her knife. “We’ll be level 2 in no time!”