Jax woke up, buried under snow. He wasn’t cold, though. In a panic, Jax jumped, and realized only about an inch had covered him. Still, he shook the rest off, then took a look at his status.
[Status]:
Name: Jackson Emmory
Alias 1: Jax
Alias 2: Undecided
Class: ??? (lv.10)(+5int, +3wlp, per, str, agi, +2 other stats, +1 Free point)=20
Profession: N/A
Race: Elf(lv.10)(+3cog, +2 all stats, +6FP)=20
VE:480/480
IE:960/960
ME:350/350
Strength: 96
Toughness: 48
Agility:49
Perception: 36
Cognition: 24
Integrity: 35
Willpower: 26
Free Points: 7
Class skills: [Warrior’s Strength](fledgling), [Sword and Shield](uncommon)
Profession skills:N/A
Race skills: [System Assistance](unique), [Identify](universal), [Enhanced Magic Sense](common), [Quantified Resources](uncommon), [Elven Grace](Rare)
Titles: [System Pioneer]
Integration Variables: [ERROR]
Initiation Event Points: 407
A lot had changed. His energies were now quantified, and… he had a title? Confused, Jax recalled past System notifications, and found a few he had missed while asleep.
Congratulations! For your bravery in diving into the unknown and allowing the System to gather records related to this new path you are walking, you have gained the title [System Pioneer]: You are a window into an entirely new Path for the System. Gain a massive influx of records. +25% to all stats.
Jax was very surprised. That seemed excessive, especially with how fast his stats were growing. If those were even a little bit common, his stats were sure to inflate exponentially.
Anyways, he had new skills, new status components, and a new title. Jax was nearly happy, until he looked up and saw Mark’s nearly buried body. Jax stood up, felt a little bit lost, but shook his head and began to make his way back to the cave. The snowstorm was getting even worse, and Jax needed that alpaca’s coat. While he wanted to bury Mark, he knew it wasn’t feasible. So, Jax grabbed him and threw him over his shoulder. He tried not to think about the headless state of Mark’s body. It was a tough journey back, and it took nearly an hour and a half, but he got there.
Jax almost thought he’d gotten lost, then realized the entrance to the cave was almost buried. It took another thirty minutes to excavate the snow. Jax walked inside and restarted the fire. Every time his gaze passed over Bradley’s body, he flinched. It felt fresh each time.
Jax shook his head, deciding to do it then, rather than later. He picked up Bradley’s hatchet, then went out to chop down some trees. He gathered a few, then it started to get dark. Absently, as he was dragging back three full-sized logs, Jax really thought about how much stronger he was. It was ridiculous how he was already superhuman, stronger, faster, and tougher than even the ten strongest people put together.
Jax assembled the rest of the pyre in the dark, eventually managing a shoddy one. Jax sat in the snow next to Bradley and Mark. He sniffled, tired from the labor, the cold, and the sadness. It sucked.
Sure, it was bad before too, but at least he had some friends to share the load with. Now, though, they were dead. Jax sniffled, holding back to the tears. They were gone, and he was here. Now wanting to continue dwelling on it, Jax wiped his eyes and laid the two bodies on the pyre. He lit some dead wood on fire from the fire in the cave, then brought it out and lit the pyre. It took quickly, and Jax watched silently.
He felt reborn, in a strange way. After an hour, the fire still burned strong, but the bodies were gone, reduced to ash and spirits free in the howling snowstorm. Jax shook his head and went into the cave, beginning work on his cloak. He had learned a good deal from Bradley, and while he wasn’t master, Jax could do what he did, if it was of lesser quality.
Jax lost himself, focusing wholly on processing the alpaca. He didn’t know if alpaca was good, but he butchered it anyway. As he worked on the animal, he made mistakes here and there that either lost material or lessened the quality of the final product.
After a whole night of work, which Jax noted absently wasn’t that tiring, he held up a thick woolen cloak, tinted an incredibly light pink. Shrugging, Jax spun it around his shoulders, quickly replacing his old cloak. Jax wished he could know how effective it would be… When Jax realized something that made him feel like an idiot. He tried identify on his sword first:
[Fledgeling Warrior’s Sword(fledgeling)]: A sword mass produced by the System, designed to impose absolutely no contaminate records in any Path. It is sturdy, adaptive, and will crumble to dust after the initiation event ends. Enchantments: Record Purity, Level Scaling, Expirational.
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Shield:
[Fledgling Warrior’s Shield(fledgeling)]: A sturdy round shield made of metal, mass produced by the System, designed to impose absolutely no contaminate records on any Path. It is stalwart, adaptive, and will crumble to dust after the initiation event ends. Enchantments: Record Purity, Level Scaling, Expirational.
Lastly, Jax Identified his cloak:
[Coarse Flame-Spirit Alpaca Cloak(inferior)]: A cloak made for no reason other than the properties of the material itself, with absolutely no magical abilities, enchantments, or even a Maker’s Mark to give the maker benefits from the item being used. It is slightly warmer than usual. No enchantments.
Jax smiled ruefully. While he didn’t think it was a good cloak by any means, the way it was described still stung a little. Shaking his head, Jax stood, kicking some dirt into the fire, putting out the last embers.
Jax walked out of the cave, pausing as he looked at the nearly-buried ashes of his brief companions, then turned to the center of the Battleground. “I will remember you,” Jax silently promised his fallen friends, as it was about all he could do that would mean anything. Snorting, Jax wrapped the cloak tighter around himself as he began treading the deep snow and walking against the horrid winds that seemed to want to strip his flesh.
Jax didn’t fail to notice after even a few minutes how he was still warm, in spite of the harsh elements constantly bombarding him. Jax wasn’t sure if his higher stats gave him more resistance to that kind of thing, or if the cloak was really that much warmer. Maybe both?
As he traveled, Jax idly wondered about many things. The most relevant was how would people deal with this weather? Jax didn’t think it was even a little bit common to have someone like Bradley in the group. Perhaps they simply camped in a cave or similar shelter and just hunkered down and hoped for it to pass? That sounded like it was doomed to fail. Then again, that’s probably what Jax would have done if he hadn’t had a person to help him get a foot out the door in terms of wilderness survival.
Speaking of survival, Jax noticed something else: he could customize his status sheet. As he walked, Jax kept switching stuff around, changing, deleting, and adding. When he was done, Jax nodded, finalizing the changes.
[Status]:
Initiation Event Points: 407
Name: Jackson “Jax” Emmory
Class: ??? (lv.10)(+5int, +3wlp, per, str, agi, +2 other stats, +1 Free point)=20
Profession: N/A
Race: Elf(lv.10)(+3cog, +2 all stats, +6FP)=20
HP:480/480
Stamina:960/960
MP:350/350
Strength: 96
Toughness: 48
Agility:49
Perception: 36
Cognition: 24
Integrity: 35
Willpower: 26
Free Points: 7
Class skills: [Warrior’s Strength](fledgling), [Sword and Shield](uncommon)
Profession skills:N/A
Race skills: [System Assistance](unique), [Identify](universal), [Enhanced Magic Sense](common), [Quantified Resources](uncommon), [Elven Grace](Rare)
Titles: [System Pioneer]
Integration Variables: [ERROR]
Jax had started by getting rid of the Alias one and two parts, as it seemed redundant, at least for now. Next, he’d turned the vital energy bar into an HP bar, internal energy into Stamina, and the yet-to-be-used magical energy into an MP bar. It was an idle change, made in remembrance of some games he had played during high school. Jax next moved the Initiation Even Points to the top, fearing he would forget about them, so he made them relatively unmissable.
Despite trying, Jax couldn’t get rid of the Integration Variables part, or even move it. It was strange, like it wasn’t really part of the status sheet. Briefly, Jax considered getting rid of the profession and profession skills parts, but decided to just leave it, as a reminder to try and find one.
Jax yawned in the dawn light, the sun barely visible through the unceasing snow flurry. It was comforting, though. It was something normal, in this very not-normal world. Jax breathed out fully, trying to put himself at peace, taking solace in the crystallized breath flying from his mouth and being whipped away in the wind.
Jax was probably a few days' travel from the center, and it seemed like the snowstorm was getting worse. Jax had a strange feeling that something strange was going on there, but perhaps he was just a bit too open-minded after the crazy things that had happened recently. Surely things weren’t that crazy everywhere… Right?
…
Oliver laid in the cave, a fire on his right side and an unwilling bed-mate on his left. She had tried escaping, but that had only gotten her rougher treatment. She silently wept, trying to stop feeling the man next to her who wore nothing save a loincloth: the standard garb of the few who chose the Barbarian fledgeling class.
Oliver grunted in pleasure as he touched the woman next to him, reveling in the feeling of power from her defeated and hateful gaze, as well as the way she tried to escape her reality in fantasies born of her mind.
“Rub my shoulders.” Oliver commanded, sitting upright and cross-legged. She complied, moving to get behind him. Oliver quickly raised a hand to stop her, “Stand in front of me.” The woman’s face twisted, fear, rage, defeat, and a strange form of hope mixing to form a face that brought her oppressor joy.
She nearly considered just trying to kill herself, but a brief glance at the hatchet laying next to her and truly considering suicide, she paled, then moved to Oliver’s front, silently swearing that she wouldn’t give the man the pleasure of knowing he’d broken another woman.
Now, another person who had never met Oliver would ask her, “why don’t you just grab the hatchet and kill Oliver?” That wouldn’t even cross the mind of the people who traveled in Oliver’s band of loons. The man was powerful, and not just in the way the System could make you. He had a willingness–no, a want to do absolutely anything, no matter how dirty, evil, dangerous, or even painful it was.
The first time the woman, Marcella, had met Oliver, he had seemed like a hero: She and her group of three were being assaulted by some strange otter-like creatures that were the size of grown men. They had been running for their lives, and Oliver had just appeared, alone, unarmed, and absolutely unafraid as he charged the creatures, tackling one, instantly breaking its neck, then punching the other one in the face. It had lived, and retaliated quickly by sinking its huge teeth into his shoulder.
It was then that Oliver had become more than a man in her eyes; he had become a devil. As the teeth sank into his right shoulder, Oliver smiled maniacally, then laughed crazily. It had rattled Marcella to the core, and apparently the otter too, as it stumbled backward, reeling.
Still maniacally smiling, the man stepped forward, grabbed a handful of its chest fur, pulled it towards himself, and sent his own head straight down–and through–the otter's skull. The visceral scene still made her queasy, but not quite as badly as the moment later, when Oliver turned a look on her that could only be called evil.
“You know you have to repay me, right? I’ve suffered grievous injuries in your stead, and saved your lives.” He said. They had both tried to believe in the better part of humanity, but were quickly proven foolish. Marcella’s friend had died a mere two days later, and Oliver hadn’t even bothered trying to hide how it had happened.
“I grew bored of her, and she didn’t put any effort into satisfying me, so I killed her.” Marcella had stood among the crowd of followers, or more accurately, slaves, of the man, and puked, grabbing his attention. He seemed to remember how Marcella was the previous toy’s friend, so he had simply pointed at her and one of his lackey’s came forward and snatched her from the crowd in spite of her feeble attempt at running.
And then she was here, standing in front of her captor, rubbing his shoulders as he stared vulgarly at her chest, free of clothes, as she could do nothing but swear that one day, he would pay.