Derrick laid in his bed, his face as stark white as a ghost. His mind ticked on, grasping at the hidden, fragile, strands of lucid thought available to it. Bloody images replayed over and over, the gory details imprinted into his mind. He shuddered, shaking horribly and haphazardly, a chaotic terror rushing through him. And yet, even the darkest terror must have some respite. Eventually, slowly, the shaking fear left him, his shudders slowly dwindling to nothing. He lay there, as unmoving as stone, for only a moment before he forced himself out of his bed, into motion. He rose methodically, sitting up with a clarity returned to his eyes that had not graced them in all of his hours of panic. He shot a surveying look to his new status screens, which he had neglected until now.

You have received the skill: Sprinting, Level 1, increases sprinting speed and reduces stamina usage with each level

You have received the title: Coward +15% effectiveness when running or hiding

Derrick winced at the title, a terrible feeling spreading from the pit of his stomach. It was true, wasn’t it? He was a coward. If he wasn’t he would have helped the man, at least tried to do something to save him from those beasts. Hurled knives at them, done anything at all.

He would’ve died.

The thought struck him suddenly, a whirling truth in a sea of doubt. If he had tried to help that man he would’ve died.

What could he do against that huge pack of wolves? How could he kill so many? He couldn't. The wolves wouldn’t care about his heroics. They would’ve just eaten him, the same as they ate that man.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a treacherous voice sounded, and all at once Derrick thought “It's better to be a coward than to be dead” Horrifyingly, he found that he agreed with the sentiment too much for his liking. Would he really leave someone to die like that again if he could save himself? The answer came ruthlessly. “Yes, yes he would.” Derrick clenched his teeth as bitter tears fell from his eyes. He guessed he really was a coward.

A few minutes later the tears ran out and Derrick wiped his face and let out a deep sigh. Oddly enough, the more he called himself a coward, the more he accepted it, the less it fazed him. It was funny how things worked like that sometimes.

Derrick slowly climbed out of his bed and stepped methodically through his house, towards the same old downstairs kitchen in which he prepared all of his meals. A melancholic aura surrounded him, a resigned acceptance of self, even though that very self disgusted him.

He went through the same motions he had gone through that afternoon, opening one of the old cans his family had and putting it in the microwave. His fingers quickly pressed the right combination of buttons, and he started to move to one of the seats scattered around the kitchen to allow the can to cook.

Abruptly, Derrick stopped, a frown showing itself on his face. He turned and glanced back at the microwave, only to find out the issue with the erroneous machine. He cursed under his breath. He had wondered why the microwave wasn't making any noise.

The tiny display it housed was dead and bleak, no longer filled with numbers. The oven too suffered from this, and when Derrick flicked an outlet to his right, nothing came on. The power was out. Someone or something had shut it off, or torn a cable out, or something.

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He had expected this, yet it surprised him. The power had gone out before, of course, but inevitably his house’s bright lamps would shine back on, and all would be in its proper place again. Derrick didn’t think that would happen this time. Nothing was in its proper place, not anymore.

Sighing, Derrick took the can out of his microwave and fetched some bread from the pantry. He bit his lip. He knew that the food in the pantry would decay in just a few weeks, and Derrick could not cook the nonperishable food available to him. He had no doubt in his mind that if he tried, whatever that he attracted with the smoke of a cooking fire would swallow him whole.

He shivered, a creeping cold up his spine that had nothing to do with the temperature.

This was the world that he lived in now?

Derrick refocused his attention on his sandwich. His hands had already started to spread peanut butter on the bread, and unlike before, when he spread odd sized gobs along mismatched patches of bread as part of a morning routine, the peanut butter was evened out, something that looked like the work of a professional chef.

Even if it was a small change, his dexterity had increased, giving him a grace that he had never had before. This dexterity stat was much more overpowered than he thought.

And yet, Derrick continued to look down upon the bread with the same drained eyes. This discovery did not hold up enough excitement for him, not with everything else dragging him down. He finished the sandwich and began to eat quietly, the only sounds being the quiet smacking of the lips that accompanied chewing.

Just being a sandwich, it did not take long for Derrick to finish his quick meal, and when he was done, he fell upon his coach and wrapped himself in blankets. The blankets felt warm and he was almost tempted to cocoon himself within them and just forget about everything, but he resisted. He knew what fate awaited him if he simply waited here and did nothing.

He knew, and he did not want to die here.

Derrick had known, for a while, that the world had changed. The place he was now in was one that was much more brutal than the one that he had been born in. In his mind, he was sure that the world was dangerous.

“So why . . .”

So why was he so surprised now, when he had known that this place was different, When he had known that the town he knew had been transformed into some kind of hellscape?

Knowing something and accepting something as reality are two different things, it seemed. Somewhere in his heart, or somewhere within his mind, he had begun to deny the world that was in front of his own eyes. He had adopted the gaming -like mindset that, as long as he diligently trained, the terrors that were outside his door would helpfully wait for him to get stronger so that he could kill them. That was why he wasn’t that bothered when he had walked outside to be greeted by the devastation that was his neighbor’s house. After all, something like that couldn’t possibly happen to him.

But the truth was, it could happen to him. Whatever happened to the neighbor’s house could happen to Derrick’s house, and he would probably just die, and that would be it for him.

He almost chuckled as he remembered his own idea, just hours earlier, to hunt mobs around his house. The monsters in this world now were not game-like entities, and that was not so easy to hunt. The monsters of the world he lived in now were vicious beasts that ripped people open as soon as they got their jaws around them in a ruthless clash for survival. There were no “easy ones” and if Derrick ran into the wrong monster, he would die before he knew what was going on.

That was what Derrick was up against. The wolves, and what they had done, had helped him to see reality.

He knew now that if he went up against the monsters of this world while being unprepared, the only thing that he would get from the monsters was an ungraceful death.

And as he thought about that again and again, another thought popped up, and as it did, something flashed through Derrick.Light reentered his eyes. His muscles tensed, and he bolted up from his seat as if he had felt an electric shock.

If death awaited him for being unprepared, then that just meant that he had to be prepared, for whatever situation he might encounter within the future. He had to prepare himself to be able to live in this new earth as he wanted to.

And yet as he thought that, he felt himself deflate. Even if he said that he did not think that he would be able to prepare for everything. It was totally possible that he could be blindsided by some strong monster some day and die.

And yet that didn’t mean that Derrick shouldn’t live his life, did it? Even with how broken the world had become Derrick still thought that life was worth living.

Derrick resolved himself then, to try and be as prepared for the world as he could, and to hope that that would be enough in front of all of the monsters that had scattered themselves across the earth.

And if he did die, at least Derrick could say that he had done his best against this unbalanced world.