Ethan looked down at the dagger, then back at the panting woman. “Hey. Come, take the fragment. Does it feel empty? In your chest?”

She nodded.

“Then come take the fragment. You need to increase your mana regeneration,” said Ethan as he dismissed his claws.

The man lowered his sword, and Ethan raised an eyebrow at him.

What was that about? Was he worried I was going to attack them or something?

Well. To be fair, it did happen to Ethan earlier, so it wasn’t that strange of a possibility.

The man stared back for a moment before he looked away and began making his way past Ethan, only to find his path blocked by an arm that seconds before had been covered with fire.

The man glared. “What?”

“Where are you going?” asked Ethan.

“For the fragments? Like you said?”

The man said it like Ethan was a particularly dim child. Ethan tilted his head and blinked at the man. “The ones behind me? The ones I killed? Those aren’t yours to take.”

Red began creeping up the man’s neck. “You let her have one,” he said, pointing at the young woman who confusedly tapped the lizardling with her foot. “We were both fighting!”

“Yeah. But she wasn’t being an ass about it,” and turning toward the girl, he added, “Touch the dagger with your wand. It’ll absorb it.”

The man was trying to shove his way forward, but to the level 2 human, Ethan’s arm might as well have been a metal bar. Still, Ethan ignited his arm, and the man recoiled, eyes wide.

“I’m going to need you to watch your tone. And yourself. Do you know what my experience with people has been since this crap started?” Ethan let the silence linger for a moment. “I got shot. In the head. No words. No hellos. No reason. I turned a corner, and a man smiled and shot me in the head.”

Ethan let that sink in. Then he added after a moment while the young woman finally touched the dagger with her crossbow, and the fragments dissolved into the weapon. “I’m not threatening you. But this isn’t a place where you can say or do whatever you want, whenever you want. So. Back up.”

The man took another step back, and Ethan dismissed the wand once more. He could have it back up in an instant, so he wasn’t worried much about ambushes.

“Where is he now?” asked the third woman, eyes glued to Ethan’s hands.

“He's dead. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the first person he tried to kill, so… yeah,” Ethan said, then turned to collect his remaining fragments.

He left them standing there and went to the lizardlings. Still wincing at his earlier injuries and the new ones, he summoned his claws once more and went through the dead lizardlings, absorbing the fragments. When he was done, he sat down against one of the wide room’s walls and checked his notifications.

Wand #1: 6 fragments collected.

Congratulations. Side quest completed.

3 stat points awarded. 1 trait token awarded.

New side quests unlocked.

Side quest:

Reach level 20 and upgrade your wand to tier-1

Reward:

1 trait from a list of tailored options.

1 tier-1 spell token

5 stat points.

Ethan smiled. He just needed the levels for this one. His wand was already at tier-1.

Next, he activated the trait token. After that, he'd assign his stats and see if there was anything worth upgrading in the wand, then get a move on.

Select a trait from the list below:

Enduring Brawler: Get more out of your Toughness stat and recover faster.

Enhancer Specialist: Enhancer wands provide 10% extra stats.

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Lucky Harvester: Improve chances of finding spellcores on dead opponents.

Ethan leaned forward, eyes wide as he read the three options, then re-read them again before he ran a hand through his hair. He vigorously scratched the back of his head in frustration. “Shit.”

All three options were good. Too good, even. The system wasn’t lying when it said they’d be custom-tailored for him. What was he supposed to do now?

Enduring Brawler would allow him to rack up levels and fragments at an increased pace, as he’d need less time to recover. He’d probably be safer, too. It was a good edge to have on other competitors.

Enhancer Specialist would boost his stats, and clearly it was meant to be a long-term thing. It would also incentivize him to stick with Enhancer-wands, but then again, how many wands could he have? Two? Five? 10% extra stats on every wand would add up. It would cost a fortune to upgrade them all, but the gains would be tremendous. The cost was a problem that the third option might alleviate.

Lucky Harvester. Which also taught him something he hadn’t known: dead enemies could drop spellcores. He wasn’t 100% sure what that was, but he had a safe guess. If this trait improved his odds of getting spells and modifiers out of his enemies, it might be worth a lot as well. Clearly, spellcores were rare, as Ethan was pretty sure he hadn’t seen any such things yet.

Okay. I love Enhancer Specialist. But that’s a big commitment, and I won’t see many benefits out of it for a while. If I got it now, I’d get 0.5 stats. Was that even possible? Yeah. Not the best.

Which left Lucky Harvester or Enduring Brawler. Now, he was making guesses, but how much better would Lucky Harvester make his odds of finding these spellcores? Were there any guarantees? Because if it doubled the incredibly low rate of their appearance, then it wasn’t that good. Double of 1% is still abysmally low. It could be like 5% or 10%, but even then… He didn’t know. He also didn’t know if a spellcore had dropped before and he hadn’t noticed.

Lots of ifs and maybes with Lucky Harvester. While Enduring Brawler was straightforward. Clear and to the point. And it’d give him a significant boost right now.

“I guess that's it,” he mumbled to himself. “Hopefully, these options show up on the next trait selection. I might know more by then.”

With that, Ethan selected Enduring Brawler. As soon as he did, a rush of warm energy rushed into him, sinking into his flesh and bones, and Ethan closed his eyes.

It felt like sinking in a hot bath. Something he definitely hadn’t gotten to enjoy much.

Maybe in my next place. Maybe if I do well in whatever this is, I’d be able to afford something nice.

The soreness from his previous injuries faded even further into the background, while the tail-hits from the chieftain lost their edge. Looking down on his arm and thigh, he noticed that both stab injuries were fully scabbed, though his thigh still felt pretty tender to the touch.

Even before selecting the trait, Toughness was speeding up his healing to a supernatural degree. Seeing the state of both wounds, it should have taken days for them to get to this point. Was his healing about to become even faster with Enduring Brawler?

I’ll make note of the time, see what happens. Maybe I should experiment with that as well.

It was incredible to see how fast he was recovering.

Ethan shook himself out of his astonishment and focused on the task at hand. There’d be a time for that. But not now.

Next, Ethan looked through his points. With the side quest done, he had 5 free points to assign.

Still not sure about Spirit. But now that I have Enduring Brawler, I should probably make sure my Toughness and Might stay high. Also, everything but Toughness is still pretty low, once I take away the wand boost.

Ethan hummed for a moment, then decided to divide his points somewhat evenly. Toughness was so close to 10 he couldn’t resist pushing it to the threshold, and he gave the other three stats one point each.

Another surge of energy went through him, sinking into his flesh and bone. He even thought he felt the energy disappear somewhere in his chest… Was that the Mana stat’s portion? Or the Spirit’s portion? He’d have to find out, eventually.

With that done, he turned to the last item on the docket.

And now, for the wand—

Before he could bring up his wand menu, a close coughing sound made his head jerk up.

The crossbow-wielder was in front of him, a nervous smile on her face. Ethan blinked. How long had she been standing there?

There were still grease marks on her overalls and her hand. It seemed like she was in the middle of something when the messages had arrived.

Ethan realized he was staring, so he looked away for a moment as he slowly stood up.

What does she want?

The young woman gave him a wide, practiced smile. “Ah, sorry if I interrupted something. Just wanted to say hi. And thanks. Saved our bacon back there. I’m Liz. I’d shake your hand but um,” she showed him her still greasy palm. “Didn’t get a chance to wash up before this all started.”

Ethan nodded and gave her a smile back, though he was still a bit on edge. He wasn’t keen on having the head shot scenario repeat itself. “No worries.” And then, because he didn’t want to be an ass, he added, “Ethan. Nice to meet you.”

“Ah. Nice to meet you, too. And thanks for that wand stuff. It worked. Now I can shoot more than one arrow every five minutes.”

Ethan nodded, and she nodded back, and then an uncomfortable silence stretched for a few seconds before she spoke again.

“Listen, cards on the tables here. You clearly don’t need our help. But do you mind if we go with you until we find some other people? At least until I can drop those two off. I don’t think we’re strong enough to be safe.”

Ethan gave her a surprised look. “You want to strike out on your own? You’re not all together?”

Liz went to scratch the back of her neck but caught herself. She looked down at her greasy hand and sighed. “Yeah… We’re not together. Martha’s nice enough, but she needs help, and I don’t think I can afford to hold her hand. She’d probably do well with more people around. The dude’s an ass. But I’d feel bad if I left them alone to die, you know? I’d rather find a bigger group, drop them off, then go get some levels. Can’t always count on someone else to come and save the day, can I?”

She gave him an apologetic smile and Ethan had to nod at her logic.

“But um, yeah. That’s basically it. We all got caught flatfooted with the end of the world and all that, and we could use a small push to set us back on track. We’ll be out of your hair pretty quick. I promise.”

She smiled, but Ethan could still feel her nerves. Looking around the camp, he could see how tough it would have been to be caught by the lizardlings with such low levels. He didn’t mind having them tag along for a few hours until they found more people, though he’d have to be careful and watch his back. They shouldn’t be able to hurt him anyway with the difference in their levels.

Besides, he appreciated the honesty and straightforwardness of the woman.

As he was about to agree to her request, Ethan then stilled, recalling something she’d said. His eyes met the woman. “What do you mean, end of the world?”

Liz blinked at him and her mouth formed into an ‘oh’. “You went in pretty fast, huh? You didn’t see what happened to the animals?”

When Ethan shook his head and said nothing, she explained, “We weren’t the only ones who got powers. Everything went to shit really quickly out there.”