Silence slowly descended over the valley as we stood among the corpses. I felt an overwhelming sense of victory and lifted my sword to shout.

Tony beat me to it by about a quarter of a second. His shout drowned out mine and all eyes turned to him as he laughed and threw his hands out wide. "Well done everyone. The plan worked perfectly."

I rolled my eyes and turned back to the cows I had killed.

"Would you like to harvest a spell from Soilstrider Cows?" Eva asked.

I considered that for a second. I still had a couple instances of Thunder Punch. Earth manipulation sounded awesome, but I'd been kind of underwhelmed by what the herd could do, so I declined the offer.

I considered triggering Soul Feed, but I hadn’t gotten any serious wounds at all. Energy Ward had again saved my life at least 20 times.

"Would you like to loot Soilstrider Cows that you defeated?"

"Yes."

That was very nice. I had figured I would have to touch each cow and accept the loot prompt individually. Many cows disintegrated into black, stinky smoke. Across the battlefield, other cows disintegrated also as the other team members looted too, so nobody could tell how many cows I defeated.

How many cows had I killed? I scanned my messages.

"Congratulations, Lucas! You have defeated Soilstrider Cow. Level 15. Bonus experience gained for defeating an enemy above your level. Experience shared among the group."

I counted 26 of those messages, with levels ranging between 14 and 18. That was pretty amazing, but I had already seen how fast experience gains dropped off when defeating multiple enemies of the same type. So with very little expectation, I scanned the rest of my messages.

"Congratulations, Lucas! You reached level 2. Two stat points automatically allocated."

"What the smolder? I thought I got 4 points per level."

Then I scowled. He’d changed my words. Could he change my thoughts?

Dammit. Nope, it still worked in my mind. Still, it was lame that he forced my words to change for another of his silly games.

Cyrus answered as I pulled up my stats menu and confirmed I'd only gotten 2 stinking stat points. Worse, they’d both been dropped into Wisdom.

"You're absolutely right, Lucas. Although you gained enough experience for another level as a tier-1 human, you only received half of the normal stat points.”

“Why?” I tried really hard to keep my voice calm.

“Unfortunately, you evolved to tier-1 far earlier than anyone was expected to. The mana density in this sector of the planet is designed to support only tier-0 players and monsters. As such, you would either need to gain twice the experience as usual to level up, or take half of the normal stat points. To help encourage you by rewarding levels more often, I figured you would want to just take the level and half stats. You're welcome."

For a second, I wasn't sure how to respond. I was so upset I was speechless.

"Let me get this straight. Not only does it take me 10 times as long to level up, but I only get half the stat points. How is that a positive?"

"You're forgetting that each stat point that you receive as a tier-1 player is equivalent to 10 stat points for tier-0. So in essence, you just gained 20 effective stats."

"In Wisdom!"

"With all that extra wisdom, I'm sure you will see that we've chosen the best course of action, given the circumstances."

I ground my teeth in frustration. This experiment that had seemed amazing at first was going to get me killed. Sure, I just got to level 2, but I killed almost 30 monsters to get to that point.

If I was a tier-0 person, I might've gained as many as 10 levels. If I had, I would've gotten 40 points, not the 20 measly points that I just received, all in wisdom of all things. I was falling farther and farther behind.

In a foul mood, I headed over to where Ruby and Steve were chatting with the other players. They all looked ecstatic and when Ruby saw me she exclaimed, "I received 2 levels!"

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That good news helped ease my own annoyance. "So you hit level 10. Perfect. Which spell are you going to permanent?"

"I forgot about that." Her eyes got a slightly unfocused look as she opened her menus.

Everyone else had gained 2 levels also, including Tony who was now all the way up to level 18.

When he spotted me, his smile faded and he said with forced cheer, "Lucas, there you are. Finally. And you even got a level. Congratulations."

His tone made it clear he considered that underwhelming. And if I really was only level 2 at tier-0, he would've been right. The fact that he hadn’t noticed that I'd killed half the herd all by myself rankled.

I wasn't in the mood to give my vague explanations like I had with Ruby and Steve, so I just shrugged and said, "It was a pretty good fight. I'm glad no one got badly hurt."

"You need to pay more attention," Tony said, glancing to where Sally was lying on the ground, covered in blood.

Somehow I had indeed missed the fact that her stomach had been badly ripped open by a spear. Natasha was pouring a standard healing potion into her mouth, but it would not be enough to entirely heal a wound that severe.

I approached, planning to offer one of my healing potions as well, but Ruby rushed over first. "Here, take this. It's a full healing potion."

She dropped to her knees next to Sally and poured it into her mouth. A soft glow enveloped her entire body and she sighed as her terrible gut wound visibly closed.

"That was very generous, Ruby. Full healing potions a rare," Tony said, giving her an approving smile.

"Not anymore," she laughed, holding up another potion. "I had a scroll to summon full healing potions. I just hit level 11 and I made that my permanent spell. Now I can make a new full healing potion every 60 seconds as long as I have enough mana."

That generated a round of cheering from the rest of the team. I joined in. She’d made a good choice.

"Brilliant idea. I never considered using scrolls as a permanents," Tony said, clapping her on the shoulder.

Ruby looked happy enough to burst, but pointed at me and said, "It was actually Lucas's idea."

Tony couldn’t hide his surprise as he too glanced at me. He gave me an approving smile, and curse the man if his approval didn’t make me stand up straighter and feel proud.

"Way to contribute to the greater effort, Lucas. Keep it up."

"Sure. My pleasure."

I marched off, feeling surly and annoyed. Picking a fight with the popular actor would not win me anything. So I checked my loot. I actually got a couple of loot boxes. I had skipped the notifications, so had to go back and see why I got them.

“For using your team chat for the first time in battle, you receive a copper Emoji loot box.”

“For joining another team to take on a larger enemy force together, you receive a silver Legion loot box.”

“For single-handedly defeating more than half of a large enemy force, you receive a gold Hannibal loot box.”

The loot boxes appeared in front of me in ascending value order. They made a pretty sight, the metallic loot boxes glittering in the light, lined up in increasing size. I willed them open with a smile.

I laughed when I saw that the copper Emoji loot box produced a sheet of bright emoji stickers. Cyrus’s jokes were getting better. I was about to toss them into my inventory when I noticed one of the emojis was a smiley face that was blowing up.

Each of the emojis moved when I studied it, like a bunch of GIF files printed on the page. Next to the exploding one was an emoji that looked like it was falling asleep, while a third showed a smiley face smacking into a wall.

“What?” I muttered. As I studied the page, Identify triggered.

“Sheet of trap emojis. Self-adhesive traps you can place just about anywhere. When touched by any living being, the trap will trigger. Each trap is a single-use item and will last for a maximum of 5 minutes.”

Wow, that was better than I had thought. There were 4 rows of 4 emojis, giving me 16 traps in all. I placed the sheet in my inventory, looking forward to studying all of them and trying them out soon.

The silver Legion loot box gave me a common quality square Roman Legionnaire’s shield. It was heavy and solid and my mother would have gushed over it if she got her hands on it. I didn’t see myself using it, but dropped it into my inventory.

The gold Hannibal loot box proved more interesting. It produced 2 scrolls.

“Spell scroll: Fractal Strike. Make up to 4 reflections of one strike to hit up to 5 enemies simultaneously. Uses remaining: 2.”

“Spell scroll: Knock Knock. Tells a random knock knock joke. Can cast up to 50 yards away. Uses remaining: 3.”

I whistled softly when I read the first one. That was a great single-use spell. Could I have paired that with Titan Strike? I could have killed the entire herd with 1 shot. I had to wonder what kind of final build I’d get if I made Fractal Strike permanent, assuming I could keep it that long. The knock knock spell just looked like a joke spell until I realized it would be a brilliant distraction spell.

I also got a surprising notification. “Congratulations, Lucas! Your ability Stick and Knife Martial Arts has upgraded to level 4.”

My first ability upgrade. That was great to see.

Looting the cows proved interesting too. I got 45 tier-one mana crystals, which was always nice, along with 3 more full healing potions and 7 more of their silver-tipped steel spears. They didn’t have any special properties, but looked pretty solid.

I also ended up with 28 quarts of whole milk, bottled in old-fashioned milk bottles, plus 300 pounds of hamburger, 58 steaks of various cuts, 9 horns, and 16 rolls of cowhide leather. When I pulled one out, it looked like it was already tanned and ready to be crafted into jackets, boots, or whatever.

They might have been sentient cows, but apparently they were still cows. I usually loved hamburgers and steak, but I’ll admit, I felt a little weird about eating the meat from those cows.

The final item was a cow bell. When I pulled it from my inventory, it looked like an old-fashioned cow bell. I chuckled when I remembered that SNL skit with Christopher Walken as the producer who kept saying, “I need more cow bell!”

“Cow bell of the herd matriarch. Rare. Enchanted so that all members of the herd can hear the bell and will answer the call. Grants authority over the herd when rung.”

“Huh. That would have been useful 10 minutes ago.” I guess I killed the matriarch. I hadn’t noticed any cow acting particularly heroic or standing out as a leader.