The swordsman barely had enough time to block my blasts with his sword while I got close to him to line up a perfect shot. I was a second too late and got hit by the side of his sword. I saw the archer right as I hit the wall and didn’t have enough time to run away.

“Arrow barrage!” She screamed and triggered her skill. She shot ten arrows with one swift move, all of which were poisoned. The pain was excruciating, whatever poison she put in this was too much for anyone to handle. Wait, the blessing!

My body could be considered a weapon, so I should’ve been able to dissolve away the poison if I gave myself a water attribute. I pulled away all the arrows. The poison should’ve sterilised everything, and the holes would have allowed the water to not just escape.

“Still standing? Impressive. You must’ve been really lucky to have pulled incredible dexterity and endurance.” Did he really think this was about my stats? At least the archer isn’t peppering me with arrows for now.

I reconsidered my tactics. The archer could barely track me, which still made her a threat. My best course of action would’ve been zipping around as unpredictably as possible, and then shooting her from afar. The swordsman simply caught me off guard, so he doesn’t matter. I’ve had him fully figured out by now.

I could see the archer trying her hardest to track me. She knew my general area, which was strange, but was probably just a skill. I lined up a shot that got both of them and used the blessing to give the bullet a poison attribute because irony was as sweet as honey.

My shot pierced through the skull of the archer and barely grazed the swordsman. The poison would kill him anyway, especially since I could use all of the Coming Quiet’s aura on him.

“No… nononono! This can’t be happening. Joan! Wake up, I beg you.” Even as the aura slowed him down, he rushed to her, crying over the corpse. I guess people only realised the true meaning of death when it affected them or someone they loved. He started coughing blood and got up with an unquenchable fire that swallowed his entire soul. “You’re a dead man walking. Great goddess! Allow me to sacrifice fifty years of my life for enough power to destroy this cretin!” He held up his shaking hand to the sky, putting all his hope in the goddess.

“Keep praying, nobody is coming to save you–” I got cut off by a spear of light that pierced through the sky and landed on his palm. His muscles bulged out of his armour as his face became more wrinkled with each second that passed. “Lucky bastard.” I said as his transformation finished, and the swordsman stared at me.

“Like I said, you’re a dead man walking.” He launched himself at me. I barely managed to dodge, which made him hit the building behind me. The building was destroyed in one blast. Oh no.

“Nano-chatte! I need my desert eagle back, and some really heavy weaponry.” Considering the nano-chatte’s guns were all impossible to identify, it would’ve been useless to give it any more details. The nano-chatte launched the desert eagle at me as I put my rifle away in favour of a shotgun.

“Haha! Asking that cat for help? Are you mad?” He rushed back, and the real fight began. He was faster than me, and stronger, and more durable. The only thing he lacked was battle intellect. He couldn’t predict my movements, which let me barely keep up with him. My shotgun pellets were just bouncing off of him. Even my desert eagle was barely grazing him.

I managed to make him strike the ground by dodging away at the last second, which barely stopped him, as his sword dug through the asphalt like a shovel dug through dirt. Suddenly, like a guardian angel, a helicopter appeared through the horizon.

“Nano-chatte! Hand me over whatever you made and get to the helicopter! It should have something to hurt him with!” The nano-chatte launched towards me. It grabbed Ruby and left a rocket launcher on my shoulder. I grabbed it and fired it right as he got close to me. It launched both of us back, as my feet dug into the road to stop myself. The man just stood there, with a mere burn.

“How annoying. Is that all you have? Magnifique.” The swordsman rushed at me again but stopped as the helicopter shot several thousand bullets at him. I saw an opportunity to strike, so I put every attribute I could think of on the shotgun, and went in for it. I shot him right in the face and backed off, with only one bullet wound in the arm. The helicopter launched two missiles at him. I prayed it was over. Who was I kidding? Of course it wasn’t.

“Ouch, that stung a bit. I’ll definitely need some sunburn relief cream after this.” The gun of the helicopter stopped, cooling down. The swordsman started attacking me again. I couldn’t keep dodging forever, so I jumped at the helicopter right as it started firing again. He couldn’t have chased me for now, and the helicopter was my last hope, so I might as well bank on it killing him. I used the Revifier’s blessing on the helicopter, so that every bullet became a mini explosion of elements.

The helicopter started flying down right as its gun heated up. I jumped away right as I saw an oversized nano-chatte jump out as well. The helicopter exploded, and the swordsman layed there.

“Don’t worry, primitive. The thing is dead.” The nano-chatte released three soldiers and my cat. Ruby immediately jumped back on my shoulder as I looked at the corpse, making sure it was dead. He got a pretty bad deal. Fifty years for that amount of power? Pretty disappointing if you ask me.

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“What the actual fuck is happening?!” One of the soldiers yelled out.

“I know you’re confused, but I’m on your side. The rock creature is also on your side, even if they call you a primitive.” The nano-chatte took the incomplete rocket launcher back, absorbing it. “Give me a quick report on what’s happening.”

“Well… we’re screwed. The president is going to a bunker in god knows where, and the commander couldn’t deal with managing a losing situation anymore. Asia and most of Europe have already fallen. Africa is becoming an even bigger mess, and Britain has already nuked half of itself. The only two places that haven’t fallen are Japan and Korea, because they just accepted being taken over by those… things. We’re not going down like them, we’re in this until America is free, or we’re dead.” Ah, they were true patriots. I couldn’t really have done anything to help them at this point. I was outnumbered one to one thousand, so my best option was to find the president and hide with him.

“The situation isn’t improving. You’re outnumbered and outpowered. You’re better off with me. I’m sure this guy can find where the president is hiding.” I tapped the nano-chatte on the head, feeling my hand start freezing before I took it away.

“Sorry, but we can’t just hide. We gotta show these monsters what we’re made of.” Their determination was commendable. I gave them a respectful nod before the soldiers went towards the explosions.

I felt another aura around me, almost like the Coming Quiet’s aura, but not quite. Where his aura tugged on my soul, this one tugged on my physical body. I looked around, before seeing the nano-chatte already jumping at the person exuding the aura. It just backhanded the nano-chatte into another building.

“Hello.” The creature was at least nine feet tall. It was a vaguely humanoid mushroom creature. I could hear its muscles rub against each other as it moved.

“Don’t listen to this thing! It’s a fool, a liar, a–” The nano-chatte was cut off by the creature.

“It’s your fault if you believe this bootlicker. I’m just here to give a better blessing than you’ll ever get from the gods.” He held an orb in his hand, which shone with grey light. I absorbed the orb, and the nano-chatte reformed itself as a motorcycle, which picked me up and carried me away.

“Don’t listen to anything he says. He’ll doom us all.” I felt something within me, a new blessing, and got two notifications. I absorbed the XP of both the archer and swordsman. With their XP, I was only forty-eight XP points away from level three.

“Why did he call you a bootlicker, and why is he gonna doom us all?” I was missing some major info here, and probably couldn’t trust his reasoning. It was time to read between the lines.

“The General is a fool. He thinks we can’t coexist with the gods, and refuses to offer us any solutions that don’t involve him absorbing both of them, and then he thinks we’re the fools! He’s a smart fool, but a fool nonetheless. Why would he bother giving you a blessing? Isn’t he busy managing his empire or something?” If he gave me the power to absorb the XP of people I killed, then he probably wanted me to continue killing people instead of going to dungeons. “What makes you so special? You got the attention of two and a half gods.” Two and a half?

“Is he a demi-god or something?” The nano-chatte sighed despite lacking a mouth and then healed me. He filled in all my wounds with nano-machines, so it looked like I had a bunch of black scars.

“No. I said that he was half a god because of his power. He may not be of divine origins, or control a concept, but he is strong. We’re heading to the president by the way. He should be in the Appalachians.” That checked out. The Appalachians were close to D.C.

“How’d you know that?” I was glued to the motorcycle, holding my cat and not budging an inch as it accelerated past the speed of sound. The road was being torn up because the tires were also made from the rock-solid nano-machines.

“Quantum decryption.” Of course.

“Forget I asked.” I did not have time for technobabble, I needed to think of a plan. Staying with the president would’ve been an ok short-term plan, but I would’ve probably played a major role in the upcoming war if I got blessings from all two and a half gods, so I would’ve been wasting precious levelling up time.

“We’re here.” The nano-chatte decelerated and turned back into its usual rocky form. “I only sense one life form inside.” The door going to down was torn open as if someone ripped through it. I went down and found nobody. It was all just… corpses…

“Where is the life form?” I asked the nano-chatte. I would need to take revenge on behalf of all these people.

“T-Three rooms down.” Wait, why was it panicking? It must’ve been nothing, a glitch, we knew how machines work. I just went down the hallways, seeing the storage rooms completely full and unused, except for the weapon storage room. I finally reached the room and… oh god… I had to look away. What the fuck? God… the president and his daughter are dead. Who was that giant guy sitting on the desk?

“Who are you?” The guy rushed over and grabbed me by my head in a fraction of a second. He had a weird gold and white sword, shining brightly as its power emanated through the room. “You’re interrupting my conquest, peasant.”