Once Mark was sure that they were headed in the right direction, he passed off the compass and told Adam the direction to follow and let him take the point of the formation. He also had his men pull into a tight wedge formation due to the decreased sight distance in the forest. Once they were a good 500 yards from the sight of the battle, he pulled up his character menu to take a look at the notification he knew he had from the slight pulse in the back of his mind.

[Skill Learned: Land Navigation (Tier 0; Level 1)]

[Skill Level Up: Identify (Tier 0; Level 1 -> Level 2)]

[Skill Level Up: Rifleman (Tier 0; Level 1 -> Level 2)]

[Skill Level Up: Rifleman (Tier 0; Level 2 -> Level 3)]

[Skill Level Up: Leadership (Tier 0; Level 1 -> Level 2)]

[Wolf - Level 3 Slain. Experience awarded. Bonus Experience earned for killing an enemy above your level. x25 Basic Resources gained]

[Wolf - Level 2 Slain. Experience awarded. Bonus Experience earned for killing an enemy above your level. x20 Basic Resources gained]

[Wolf - Level 2 Slain. Experience awarded. Bonus Experience earned for killing an enemy above your level. x20 Basic Resources gained]

[Wolf - Level 2 Slain. Experience awarded. x20 Basic Resources gained]

[Wolf - Level 2 Slain. Experience awarded. x20 Basic Resources gained]

[Class Level Up: Commander Level 2]

While he recognized that it was helpful that it showed him detailed information on what he had killed, and appreciated the detailed report, he did not want to have to scan through pages of notifications if he happened to take part in a large-scale battle. He also did not need the full breakdown of the skill level. Without dismissing the notifications, he tinkered with the settings until he found something that still showed him the necessary information.

[Identify Lvl 1 -> Lvl 2]

[Rifleman Lvl 1 -> Lvl 3]

[Leadership Lvl 1 -> Lvl 2]

[Wolf Lvl 3 Slain. x25 Basic RES]

[Wolf Lvl 2 (4) Slain. x80 Basic RES]

[Commander: Lvl 1 -> Lvl 2]

Looking back over his notifications, it all seemed fairly normal, although he was surprised at the rapid skill growth. What didn't make sense was the Basic Resources. The only thing he recalled was from the Tutorial where some people who were heavy into the crafting professions had mentioned the cost of resources or where they could be found, but he had always assumed that they were talking about resources in a broad sense.

[Status]

Name: Mark Anders

Race: Raxxor (C)

Class: Commander (Level 2)

Profession: N/A

STR: 17 DEX: 15 CON: 16 INT: 9 WIS: 9 CHA: 17

Hit Points: 42/42

Vitality Points: 10/10

Stamina: 40/43

Units:

Rifleman: 3/8 (Gain access to a barracks or similar building to gain reinforcements)

Skills:

Leadership (Tier 0; Level 2): NPC soldiers respond to all reasonable orders.

Rifleman (Tier 0; Level 3): Basic understanding of how to aim and fire a rifle including during combat.

Identify: (Tier 0; Level 2): Focus on a target to gain information.

Land Navigation: (Tier 0; Level 1): Basic understanding of how to navigate using a compass and map.

Titles:

Sergeant (Rank; Class Specific)

Basic Resources: 105

Even though it had not been long since he last looked at his stats, Mark was surprised by the changes. The first thing that caught his eye was that the number of riflemen he could command had more than doubled unless it counted him as a rifleman. That would give him a total of nine which made more sense as that would bring him up to a full squad. He assumed this to be the case since so far everything had been patterned after a modern military.

Mark also noted that not only had the Rifleman skill leveled twice, but that the description had the addition of "including during combat." He wasn't sure if this was because he had used the skill in combat, or if it was the natural progression of the skill. The identify skill was almost a joke as the 'information' it provided only told him what he could learn by looking at something normally, at least that was the case with the wolves.

As he finished reviewing the changes, Adam raised his hand in the signal for a halt and motioned for Mark to come up. Without needing a command, Ben and Charlie took cover behind trees on either side as Mark approached.

"What's up?" Mark whispered though he hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary.

"We've gone nearly three miles, but there is no sign of anything here. I wanted to check to see if you wanted to still proceed to the point," Adam whispered in reply.

Mark nodded in agreement and pulled out the map to see if they had somehow gotten of course, though he did trust Adam to keep them pointed in the right direction. Mark immediately noticed that the map had changed. The topography shown on the map looked almost nothing like the topography he had looked at barely an hour earlier. The thing that hadn't changed was the red dot. It was still on the same edge of the map.

As Mark continued to scan the map and look around, he realized that the topography had not changed, it had zoomed out, and the scale on the bottom of the map had changed accordingly. It was also disappointing to see that whatever was at the dot was further than he had anticipated. Judging by the land features around him, Mark was able to find his location and saw that the edge of the map, not necessarily the dot, was still three miles from where he was.

Looking up at the canopy of the trees, Mark could see that the Sun was starting to set as the light filtering through was turning orange. Deciding to make a camp for the night, he picked a spot that was only a mile away and not too far from a river where they could get water from. Telling his men the plan, they set off for the location Mark had selected, with Mark taking point this time.

After only a fifteen-minute walk, impressive considering the weight all of them were carrying, they arrived at the site. By the time they had gotten there, the Sun had sunken lower and it was starting to get hard to see. As soon as Mark had determined that it was unlikely any creatures would sneak up on them in the night, he told the men to go ahead and get some sleep and that he would take first watch since he did not feel tired.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Not a minute had passed, and all of his men had pulled sleeping bags and mats from their rucksacks. Mark had completely forgotten about the rucksack as he didn't even notice the weight. He figured those were the perks of all the strength he had gained for free. While he would like to go through the rucksack and see what the system had given him to start with, he didn't want some unknown danger to catch him unaware, so the rucksack would have to wait.

Mark's two hours of watch had passed, and he woke Adam up to take over the watch. Since he wasn't tired, he decided that now would be as good a time as any to go through his rucksack. He started pulling stuff out and marveled at how well it was packed. He then began to worry that he wouldn't be able to get everything back in there, so taking care to only unfold what he couldn't immediately recognize and set it around him in an organized manner.

Within the pack, he found four more uniforms, a sleeping bag, a hydration pack, and a pair of plain clothes. All in all, he was not very impressed with what he found within. To be honest with himself, he wasn't sure what he hoped to see since he had gotten a gun as well as ammo for it. Now that he thought about it, he realized he had no way of getting more ammo. Since he didn't know the first thing about making his own, he became very concerned with what would happen if he ran out of ammo. The fight with the wolves had caused him to empty an entire magazine or thirty rounds. He went over to his vest that he had pulled the first magazine out. Mark searched through the vest, but only found another three magazines for a total of ninety rounds remaining.

Mark started to panic slightly as he had no clue how close any form of civilization was and pulled his map out again. Even though they had walked a little further in the general direction of the red dot to reach the campsite, it still showed as being on the edge of the map. He wasn't even sure that there would be anything there, but with the absence of any other direction, it was his only hope. He didn't even know if there was anyone else in this forest that he felt trapped in.

Feeling that he was about to lose it, Mark took some deep breaths to attempt to calm himself down. A few minutes of deep breaths later, he regained his composure, but his hands were still shaking as he repacked his rucksack. He thought back to the meeting with the strange being that he had met and tried to give himself some hope that it wouldn't recognize his accomplishments, not that being decent at a video game seemed like an accomplishment in his current predicament, then put him in a situation where he would not be able to survive. Part of him recognized that it was possible. The being he had met with had seemed somewhat unhinged but also seemed to be omnipotent. Realizing that line of thinking was getting him nowhere, he decided that the best thing he could do was get some sleep and attack the problem again in the morning.

Just as the first light of dawn was breaking through the treetops, Charlie woke Mark and the others and they prepared to set off towards the red dot. Once they had repacked everything and refilled their hydration packs in the stream, Mark took point and they reformed the wedge they had been using for travel.

As they walked, Mark thought back over the events of the previous day. How well he had responded to everything that had happened surprised him. He had never killed anything bigger than a spider before yesterday. In a short amount of time, he had gone from a homebody to someone who had fought and killed a pack of wolves, and while he understood that if he did not act, he would be wolf food right now, that he could just kill so easily concerned him. He reminded himself that the violence was necessary, and if he wished to protect anyone, more would be required.

Mark knew that this abstract goal of protecting people seemed rather pretentious, but he knew that not everyone in this new world would be as well prepared to defend themselves. He hadn't even considered what would happen with the kids. Maybe he was just stranded in the woods because that thing liked to mess with people and everyone else was dropped peacefully into some futuristic city. That thought didn't sit well with him but his gut told him that wasn't true. Tired of trying to figure out all the mysteries with no evidence to work from, Mark took a few deep breaths and focused on his walk through the woods.

After a solid hour of hiking, Mark pulled his map out to see if they had made any progress on the red dot. Seeing that the marker had still not moved any, Mark was growing increasingly frustrated. That's when he heard the screams. Looking around, Mark saw that the rest of his team heard them as well. Nodding to his team, they set off at a run in the direction they heard the screams from.

Gunfire followed the screams only thirty seconds after Mark and his team began to approach. It sounded like only one gun, but Mark didn't want to risk running straight into someone's line of fire, so he motioned for his team to slow down some. They approached in a spiral until they could make out a clearing through the trees.

In the clearing, Mark saw one man with a gun firing into a pack of five wolves like the ones Mark had fought on the first day. It looked like he was less trying to kill the wolves, and more like he was trying to keep them at bay, but the fire was still highly accurate. Hoping for something more detailed, Mark used identify on the wolves. Nothing had changed, but Mark still saw the [Wolf] tag above the heads of the five wolves. Behind the man was another man and a woman. Both appeared to be unarmed, but the guy without a rifle appeared to have something on his wrist, though Mark didn't think it looked like a weapon. He called over his team and started to explain his plan.

"They look like they could use some help. Luckily, we're here. Move up to the trees twenty yards from the edge of the clearing and form a line and on my mark open fire. Focus on staying accurate and take down the wolves focusing on the ones closest to us first."

"Roger, Sergeant," the men said as one. They moved into position quickly, covering the distance before the man was forced to switch magazines. Mark was impressed by the switch from somewhat relaxed to ready for action and professional his soldiers had made in only seconds.

Once Mark had confirmed his team was in position, he opened fire and his team followed his lead. The smell of gunpowder filled the air and Mark heard a scream from the direction of the other group. Once three of the wolves were lying dead in the grass, Mark risked a glance over and saw that the other man had dropped to a crouch with his hands over his head.

Mark's team finished off the last two wolves and the gunfire died down. Hoping to assuage their fears, Mark called out to the other group, "Friendlies, we're friendlies."

The man with the rifle lowered his weapon but still kept a two-handed grip on it. Mark gestured to his team and they rose from their positions and walked into the clearing.

"Hey there, we saw you could use some help. We don't mean any harm." Mark hoped that his high charisma might help smooth some things over. His hopes were realized when the gunman visibly relaxed, and the other two stood up but still looked shaky. "My name's Mark. Did you guys wake up in this forest as well?"

"Hey, I'm Arlo, and this is Mike and Naomi. Yeah, we woke up here together, but we didn't know each other before. Who are the other guys?" he responded.

"What's up with your skin?" the guy he introduced as Mike interjected in a nasal voice.

Mark blinked, a little in shock, at the volume of the question. He had forgotten that his skin was an odd color. Not wanting to freak them out as he had become not human, so he lied, hoping to get out of more questions about it. "It's a skin condition. It's always been like this." He had to assume that his face must still look pretty human if he was only asking about the odd skin color. "To answer your question, though, that's Adam, Ben, and Charlie. My class grants soldiers to me." While he wanted to hide that he was now a different race, he figured that telling them in vague terms about his class wasn't giving away too much. Plus, he needed real people in his army. Though he would be making sure he could trust Arlo before he recruited him.

"Oh, that's cool. I didn't see anything about a class like that, otherwise, I definitely would have picked that. I'm just a soldier right now. Mike is a hacker, and Naomi is a pilot, but you can see how much good that is doing us right now."

"I gotta say, you seem to be handling this whole 'life is now an RPG thing pretty well'," Mark observed.

"Yeah, if I'm being honest, this is really cool to me. I was a bit of a shut-in and didn't have very many friends, but this has given me a fresh start. I'm just mad that I didn't play the Tutorial more 'cause all I got was a single lousy attribute point."

"Nah, man, this whole thing is bullshit. Ripping us from our lives and dropping us in the middle of fuckin' nowhere." Mike interjected again, but Arlo ignored him, and Mark followed his lead.

"Well, if you want, we should probably stick together. Strength in numbers and all that." Mark said.

"Yeah, I'm good with that." Arlo glanced at Naomi and Mike. "I don't know about them, but I can certainly help in combat if we need to fight anything bigger than some wolves. Great shooting, by the way."

Not wanting anyone left out of the conversation, Mark turned to Naomi, "What do you say? You've been awfully quiet."

"Yeah, sure, that's fine," Naomi replied, in a quiet voice.

Curious, but not wanting to press the issue, Mark moved on. "We should probably be moving on. I don't know what would be attracted by the sounds of battle, but I don't want to find out."

"Yeah, but where are we gonna go? We don't even know where any food is," Arlo said. This did bring up an issue Mark hadn't thought about. He wasn't hungry, so food had never been a thought. He did now remember that there were some heater meals in his rucksack and had seen his soldiers eating them last night and this morning. Wanting to garner some goodwill, Mark pulled out three spare meals that he had.

"As far as food goes, I'm afraid this is all I have, but where to go is a bit different story." Mark pulled out his map to show them the red dot he had been seeing. "I have a map that seems dynamic. It keeps expanding as I move. I haven't gone far, maybe 10ish miles over the course of the last day. It does have this red dot on it that I think is some kind of point supplied by whatever did all this." Mark gestured vaguely to the woods and the gear they all had now.

"Well, I guess that's as good a place as any. I do hate to leave the wolves here, but none of us really know how to skin an animal or have the tools to do so. Lead on then."

Mark formed his soldiers back up with the addition of Arlo making it two on each side of him in the wedge. Mark had Naomi and Mike walk 20 yards behind the formation so if they ran into anything, the team would be able to protect them. With everyone in position, Mark consulted his compass and map and got them on the move again.