I had to get off the rooftop. What was below? How far would I get? I didn’t know. I knew I had to move south. I had to get out of the city. What else?

I wished I had some form of a notepad to keep track of everything. I was learning a lot of systems and a lot of details and it was hard to not just start vomiting from the stress. It seemed like the easiest thing in the world to stay up on the rooftop and just not risk anything down below. I knew that, eventually, I’d run out of water and I’d run out of food. Also, I wasn’t sure how long I had until those stat caps went away. When that happened, I knew I’d be dead immediately.

I made up my mind and started walking on all fours. While I felt weird, I definitely didn’t feel useless. It was as if, upon shifting, I was given base knowledge on how to move and function in my new form. I trotted over to the entrance to the stairwell and paused. The door was close. Right…no hands.

After shifting back into human form, I opened the stairwell and began to walk down the 18 flights. I kept hearing random bangs, shouts, and explosions from outside the building. Each one sounded shockingly close in the silence of the remains of a massive city like San Diego. Each one made me flinch and grip the stairwell guardrail until my knuckles turned white.

I made it to the first floor. On my way up, I was huffing and puffing and just generally feeling like I was going to die. On my way down, I felt a little winded, but I was generally okay. I wasn’t sure how much of that could be attributed to the fact that I was going down the stairs instead of up them, and how much could be attributed to the points I had put into improving my stats.

As I walked out of the building, I saw a glowing yellow icon over a body. I jogged over to it. The body was not human. Instead, it was the splattered remains of a Goatman. I realized it was the one who I had led to jump off the roof.

I pressed the yellow icon with shaky fingers and a menu appeared.

Goatman’s Axe (16C) [+8 Strength] Goatman’s Bonevest (14U) [+5 STR, +3 AGI] Gold (48)

“Sweet.” Not only had I found some pretty cool gear, I had gotten some gold as well. I wasn’t sure what it was good for, but I knew it had to be good for something. I happily went to tap the gear to loot it. I then went to my Inventory and attempted to equip it, staying wary of being on an exposed street like this.

ERROR! You must be Level 16 to equip (Goatman’s Axe).

ERROR! You must be Level 14 to equip (Goatman’s Bonevest).

Oh…come on, man. Really? Not only could I not catch a break, there was nothing here that was going to be remotely useful to me. I couldn’t use the gear, I couldn’t kill the enemies, I couldn’t use my cellphone to navigate out of this hellhole. Once again, I found myself being incredibly envious of those in the middle-of-nowhere.

I took a deep breath and decided now was the time to leave. I used [Shift Wolf] and quickly moved into my new form. However this game worked, it allowed me to keep my clothes when I transformed. It seemed to be the single good perk I had from this system.

With my [Silence] skill mentally activated, I could hear the noise, or lack thereof, that my footsteps were making on the concrete and gravel. I was moving like a ghost. I had moved south, or at least what I thought was south, for several minutes before encountering any trouble. Sure, I had seen a dozen or so people running for their lives and had seen the black silhouettes of vampires and other creatures flying in the sky above me. Those hadn’t posed any threats. When I got shot, that was a problem.

I let out a yelp that sounded incredibly wolflike, turning my head to see at least a dozen S.D.P.D. Officers in full riot gear. They all had rifles in hand and were firing directly at me. When the second bullet hit me, I saw a notification appear in front of me that informed me that my health was now “Yellow”. I made a break back down the alley I came in. I waited for any of them to follow me, and none of them ever did. “Okay…new route.”

I found another street moving south. After another 5-10 minutes, I realized that the bullet wound in my shoulder was slowly disappearing. 5-10 minutes after that, a new notification informed me that my health was now “Green”. That was a good thing right? I silently prayed that Green Health did not mean sick or infected or some other weird status I wasn’t aware of and moved on down to Chula Vista.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

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“Shit…shit….shit….shit….” I was shocked at how fast I could run. I was also shocked at how fast the Vampires could fly. I was doing great, just trotting along down the street. When I made my way underneath an overpass tunnel, I saw at least a dozen of the creatures above me. I had mentally shrugged and figured my [Silence] would keep me quiet. When my paw hit the broken glass bottle on the road, I couldn’t stop myself from letting out the smallest of yelps. They were on me like soy sauce on rice.

Additionally, it turns out that [Silence] doesn’t work when I’m in a full on sprint. I had to get somewhere to hide and quickly. Why was I on a highway? The Vampires seemed to be just ever so slightly faster than I was. Either that, or I was slowing down. I huffed and puffed and pushed on. If I stopped running, I was the newest blood donation to the red cross.

The open highway just kept going and going. I couldn’t take an exit without slowing down and getting caught. I just had to keep-….where’d they go? I turned my head to see a dozen floating Vampire creatures just flying at a random point in the highway. I couldn’t figure out why they stopped. Were they scared of something? I kept moving and after another step, a new notification appeared.

Now Entering: Chula Vista West (Hostile)

Recommended Level: 91-100 (Stats Capped at 18-20)

Well…that was lucky. I gave a theoretical pat on the back to myself. I was safer. It wasn’t by much and I was still dead the second something got me, but I was safer. Maybe that little bit would make the difference. As I looked back, I watched the Vampires devouring something on the road. Some poor soul had had the same idea as I did. I wondered quietly if he would have made it had I not led the Vampires to the San Diego/Chula Vista border.

With no more time left to worry about things, I kept moving. I looked over to see a sign.

“E H ST - 1”. Alright, 1 mile to get to where I was trying to go. E H Street would lead me straight form Chula Vista West to Chula Vista East. I opened my Map and saw that the eastern part of this city was rated for players 81-90. It dropped another 10 levels. That was good. That was really good. After that, it was just open wildlife refuges. Who knew where I could go from there?

I moved my paws at a decent pace. I was exhausted. It took half a mile before the adrenaline wore off and I started to feel the pain. Every muscle in my body hurt. Every muscle in my body had been rearranged into an entirely new shape, forced to sprint a mile away from death, and was now being informed that we were going to keep moving another ten miles until we were somewhere we had never been before. My body hated me. I wasn’t the biggest fan of it either at this point.

As I contemplated stopping, a large roar above me made me look up. “What now?”

A dragon flew overhead towards San Diego. The dragon looked exactly like every dragon one would expect. While the Vampires were faceless over than mouths and the minotaurs were goats instead of bulls and the sea urchins were the sizes of basketballs, this looked like a normal RPG monster. The creature flew with determination towards the city. At least, it looked like determination from however far away I was.

I watched as it hit the city and another accompanying roar was heard. The whale. I watched the sky get filled with blue lightning and orange flame behind me and made the wise decision to pick up the pace a bit. Was this what I was going to have to fight at some point? It didn’t seem very fair. How were land creatures like humans supposed to take out these behemoths without air vehicles or anything like that? I sighed and figured I still had 95 levels to go until that was an issue.

As I finally made it to E H Street, a notification appeared. The notification informed me that I was now back to full health.

Awesome, I was back to 100%. That was a good thing. The not good thing was the fact that I was back to crazy town. People had ran off the highway for one reason or another over the last few hours. The highway was more or less entirely abandoned and I didn’t seem to attract any attention from the monsters in a wolf form with [Silence] activated. On the streets, however, I saw swarms of survivors still trying not to die. It didn’t take me long to realize that every single one of these people were Level 1. None of them had managed to kill a monster yet.

Was everybody still Level 1? I realized that, especially in the big cities, no one was winning a fair fight against any of these creatures. Even the Sea Urchins were Level 12 with the stat reduction. We had all been thrown in a tremendously unfair situation. Was I the only one who had gotten lucky enough to take out one of these massive creatures? I decided to finally open up the Leaderboard tab. It only had two tabs available. “Top 100 Players in Earth” and “Top 100 Players in California”. That’s it? No USA tab? Also, what the fuck was ‘in Earth’? It was obviously ‘on Earth’. I rolled my eyes and checked the available tabs. When I clicked the “In Earth” tab, ignoring its stupid name, it was simply grayed out. There was no information or any message. Cool.

When I opened the “in California” tab, I was shocked to see that I was number 1. I was numero uno in a state of 40 million people. That was insane. I was literally the best. Out of 40 million people, I was now the-….I watched as I quickly went down to second. I kept watching as I was down to third just a minute later. I closed the menu and sighed, deciding to brave the streets and keep moving.

I kept walking, trying to ignore the hordes of people on the street. Most of them seemed to be too focused on demons and ghouls and dragons and whales to be worried about a wolf. Some of them were worried about me, and that made it easy to have a clear shot down the street. I kept moving down E H Street, hoping to avoid any unnecessary confrontations. My hopes for that were cut short when I came face to face with a baseball bat. The last thing I heard before my eyes closed was: “HONEY! I GOT ‘IT!”