His pistol wouldn't fire. Solomon figured that he could put that down to whatever the system was doing to mess with physics. Still, it was a nice heavy chunk of metal. He didn't have anything better immediately on hand that he could use to beat the little monsters to death.

He didn't have time to fish anything out of his backpack, not with his left hand pinned under a rock. That meant his options were pretty limited if he wanted to try and nail one of the furballs from a distance.

Solomon set down his pistol, grimaced, and grabbed the dead body of the first furball. He let the new ones draw a little closer before he chucked the body at them.

It flew right past the furball in front to catch the one in back smack dab in its center of mass. The little monster was knocked backwards.

The furball jumped right back on its feet, as he'd expected. Then it opened up its inordinately wide mouth in a scream of triumph. Once it finished its primal yell, the furball took a big bite out of its dead cousin.

That, that he did not expect. Nor had he expected that the other furball would slam on the brakes right before it ran to within his arm's reach, spin, and launch into a flying bite-tackle on its erstwhile teammate.

Bemused, Solomon stared at the impromptu death match that had broken out in front of him for a moment before he remembered that he had a prize to explore. The mysterious system interface.

"All right, interface," he said, "do I get a menu or what?"

Name: Solomon Gragg

Skills: Improvised Weapons Mastery (1)

Grids: Tutorial (1/6)

Free grid points: 0

Strength: 12

Constitution: 12

Dexterity: 10

M. Capacity: 5

M. Intensity: 5

Free attribute points: 1

HP: 9/120

MP: 50/50

Seeing the system interface raised a few questions in his head. By far the most pressing concern was the alarming report of his low HP. He needed to do something to top that off as soon as possible.

As he watched, the HP counter ticked up, reaching ten points. A heartbeat later, a calming wave of healing energy flowed down to his left hand, soothing away the pain that had become part of the background noise in his mind. As soon as the energy faded, there was a crunch and the pain was back with startling clarity.

His HP counter now read zero.

"My HP!"

HP is a pool of energy used by the System to heal your injuries. When HP falls to zero, you will heal at your natural speed until your HP has recovered enough to heal your injuries.

Solomon glanced down at the furball fight. The system boxes were sufficiently transparent for him to be able to see what was going on. The little monsters had torn chunks out of each other, but they were still going at it with enthusiasm.

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He could take a minute to think things through. It seemed clear enough that falling to zero HP didn't mean he would fall unconscious or die or anything like that. The system's HP was a separate resource from his own health. It was unfortunate that the system seemed determined to squander that resource healing damage that was immediately re-inflicted by the boulder that had his hand pinned down.

At least the system had been courteous enough to heal all of his other wounds before it wasted its remaining energy.

"Can I turn off HP healing?"

Warning! If you disable automatic healing, you will likely die if you suffer a mortal wound! Are you sure you want to disable automatic healing?

"Yeah, yeah, I get it."

The message box disappeared. He wouldn't know if he'd actually managed to accomplish anything until his HP ticked back up to ten, though.

He glanced down at the edge of his vision. 23:12:49. The timer kept ticking down one second at a time.

"What's up with that thing?"

Earth's second Grace Period will expire one day after the end of Earth's first Grace Period.

Right, the first message had said something about a grace period. Solomon looked back to the fight. The two fluffballs were warily circling each other. The earlier manic energy that had driven them seemed to have been worn away.

Solomon found himself wishing for a better view. The system boxes vanished. Taking a clear look at the fluffballs, not just their anatomy, but also their dogged insistence on fighting to the death struck him as unnatural.

He'd bet his left hand that the end of the first grace period had something to do with the appearance of these fluffy little monsters.

One of the fluffballs finally stumbled and fell. The other let out a shriek of triumph and jumped forward. One very disturbing moment later, both of the dead fluffballs had vanished and the survivor turned its eyes to Solomon. The blood matting down its fur had made it look less fluffy and even a little smaller than it had been before, but the overall effect was not reassuring.

He picked up his pistol and held it out before him. "Come on buddy, we don't have to do this. Just walk away. It's not worth it. Just walk away. Go find a lady fluffball and live a happy life together. We can both walk away from this."

The monster disagreed. With another blood curdling scream, it leaped into the air and chomped down on his pistol. Solomon cursed as he yanked back the finger that he had been resting on the trigger guard. The little bastard's bite had reached farther than he expected.

Fortunately, even if this monster was bigger than the others, it wasn't any smarter. Having his left hand locked in place made everything awkward, but Solomon was still able to roll over and slam it against the rock. He yelled and smashed it a few more times for good measure. It took more of a beating than it had last time, but finally the fluffball fell to the ground, dead.

The system remained silent. Solomon looked up at the sky.

"Where's my XP? Where's my loot?" he complained. "What kind of lousy system is this?"

His line of sight remained stubbornly free of blue boxes.

Solomon sighed, then returned his attention to his left hand. Adding a single point to his strength wasn't going to be nearly enough to let him dislodge the boulder. Staying in one place and hoping the system would hand out some kind of magical escape hatch seemed like a good way to end up as monster food.

He especially wanted no part of being pinned down out in the open when the second grace period ended.

All right. Even an animal could gnaw its way out of a trap when it was a matter of life and death. This wasn't anything special.