They could hear as the beast smelled the air. The sound of the air as it passed through the creature's snout reminded Mare of wind blowing through a cave. Fortunately it didn’t seem to smell them and they heard it moving around knocking things over here and there as it explored the garage. Luckily the creature had knocked over a shelf of tools creating enough ruckus that they could take a breath without being heard. 

Shortly after, the creature walked out of the garage and into the house. Mare listened in bated silence to the noises of crashing coming from the house for several minutes until finally it sounded like the creature was on the opposite side of the house.

She then crawled towards the stairs at an achingly slow pace, to the widening eyes of Mary. With a dexterity and quietness that she didn’t know was possible for her, she had lowered the stairs and made her way to the door. Along the floor she could see deep gouges in the concrete displaying just how dangerous those claws really were. 

Slowly, she closed the door and locked it. Although it was a simple metal door and wouldn’t stop anything determined to get in. It definitely wouldn’t halt that thing, but it would at least mute the noise of their breathing and also alert them if anything tried to come back into the garage.

With that done, she made her way back up to the attic and raised the stairs and rope. Mary reached out and grabbed her hand as she sat down, giving it a hard squeeze. She was unsure if it was supposed to be a supportive reassuring squeeze or one of ‘that was stupidly dangerous, don’t do that again’ type of squeezes.

The fear in Mary’s eyes was palpable. Mare squeezed back lightly before she closed her eyes and tried to calm her beating heart. It had been really stupid and dangerous to do what she did, but it was honestly something she felt she had to do. She didn’t want that thing to hear them if it happened to walk by or into the garage again, and she also didn’t want it, or anything else, sneaking up on them. Even with the door closed, neither dared to speak.

 It took a few minutes for Mare to finally get a hold of her heart rate again. She opened her eyes and could see in the faint flickers from the candle down below that Mary had a distant stare that showed she was looking at her screens. Mare followed suit, it would be a good idea to look more into the system and get a better handle on it. 

She quickly found that the XP icon was a buff for extra xp for the next few weeks. She knew that this would be very helpful to their survival. She put together that in this new world only the strong survived, and she intended to be strong. She had to find Jake. 

She had an idea how to get XP. One way was that there were quests. This had already been seen and it was a logical step that they would offer XP. Another way she assumed would be from killing monsters. This was a supposition from games or stories she had read. It could be wrong but it felt like a safe bet to her. Either way, this buff would help them get stronger and in turn help them stay alive. Going back to her quests, it was time to figure out what the other quest was that only she seemed to have.

You are part of a lucky few. You have found your soulmate. Your other half may be in trouble and needs you. His call to you has been heard.

Difficulty - Medium

Success Conditions - Locate Jake

Rewards - The true bonding, 6,000 XP

Failure Conditions - The death of either you or Jake

This quest can not be refused.

Mare bit her lip slightly as both excitement and worry passed over her face. The first thing that went through her head was that he was alive and this made her exceedingly happy. On the other end though he was still out there alone and he needed her. Her heart was a little more at peace though, because she now had a way to know for sure that he was still alive. Also she noticed that this quest offered XP proving her first theory correct. Not knowing what a true bonding was she just went past it. It wasn’t something she could figure out at the moment either so she didn’t fret over it. Also, it was a reward and sounded to be a good thing.

Having closed the quests tab she noticed that the quest icon was no longer in her view. With a thought she pulled up the quests tab to make sure she didn’t need an icon to access anything, thankfully she didn’t. With this realization, she started to explore with different thoughts. Of course the first thought would be the character sheet. It came up without any issues.

Character Sheet

Name: Miranda Cain

Gender: Female

Age: 26

Race: Human

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Level: 1

XP Needed: 900

Current XP: 0

Health: 138

Mana: 82

Mana Regen: .951 m/s

Combat Classes: N/A

Non-Combat Classes: N/A

Stats

Stat Points: 0

Physical

Strength: 5

Constitution: 6

Agility: 7

Mental

Intelligence: 8

Willpower: 6

Wisdom: 6

Other

Luck:  5

Titles

There wasn’t anything on the sheet that seemed too out there. It seemed pretty similar to what she would expect from a game or something: basic stats, classes, titles. She could take a guess on what each stat did at least to a point. There was sure to be some differences as they tended to change slightly from game to game or story to story. She knew that she would have to explore this deeper to get a better understanding. She wouldn't  do things blindly if she could help it.

Classes showed ‘N/A’ so she either didn't meet the requirements or she just didn’t have any. Nothing came up when thinking about classes so she assumed it was the latter. It was the same for titles as well.

Mare had noticed the health and mana on the sheet and wondered if it was possible to adjust her UI to show them as this would allow her to keep track of them in situations where she wouldn’t have the time to open her sheet. If she could adjust things, she thought that would be great. After trying to think ‘menu’ or ‘settings’ and nothing happening she decided to just try to adjust things independently with a thought. This seemed to work and shortly she had been able to adjust the UI to her liking, including changing the transparency of the screens. She added some bars for them in the top left and made them semi transparent. She had also been able to figure out a way to make them only show when they changed or when she specifically thought about them.

With this she couldn’t think of anything else to explore so she closed all of her screens. She had already tried a few other screens but they were empty or didn't  exist. At this point she noticed that it had gotten quiet in the house. She could no longer hear the crashing or rustling of the creature. If not for the fact that the house was barricaded, though rather lightly, she would have hoped that it had left. The screams and sounds of gunshots had started to taper off by this time as well. Looking to her right, she could no longer see Mary as the candles had died out an unknown amount of time ago, but she could feel her leaned against her and hear the slight sound of her sleeping.

Honestly she was kind of jealous at that moment. If only she could fall asleep as well, she was exhausted. She sat there and stared into the darkness for a bit of time when a heavy crash and roar came from inside the house. This startled Mary awake and Mare had to grab her to calm her down and try to keep her from making any noises. 

The cat was no longer the only thing in the house now.

They could now hear an intense fight going on inside. Two distinctly different roars and squeals of pain came from behind the now seemingly much thinner door. The house constantly shook, letting them know whatever was fighting with the cat was just as large if not larger. Another loud crash came from the house followed by a pained yelp and then silence. Not long after, a loud victory roar shook the house. Something had won. 

Whether this was a good thing or not for the two terrified women was still to be seen, but there was nothing they could do no matter who or what won. After the roar it had become eerily quiet in the house. What worried Mare was that that victory roar didn't sound like it had come from the cat. The thought of something that could fight and kill that monstrous cat scared the shit out of her. She just hoped whatever it was didn’t have better hearing or smell than the cat had. The fertilizer seemed to hide their smell before and hopefully it would continue, but who knew if it would fool whatever had won. After some time with nothing trying to come into the garage, they sighed in relief.

At some point they had fallen asleep because the next thing she knew it was morning again. The light of dawn had started to seep through the cracks of the garage door. Mare lightly shook Mary’s shoulder to wake her. The startled Mary looked around her in fear for a second before realizing that they were still safe, relatively speaking. They sat there for a short time, listening. Not hearing anything, they looked at each other grimly and then started to quietly search the attic for anything that could work as a weapon. It was at this time that Mare had really wished she hadn't forgotten to charge her cell phone the other day, and Mary still didn't  own one. She could have really used the light.

After some time, Mary happened to find a small hatchet and Mare had found George’s stock of wood he had for his carpentry. There happened to be a couple of thick hardwood branches that were probably going to be made into walking sticks or something based on their length. Mare wanted Mary to have the bladed weapon so she took the thick branch.

With one last look to each other affirming they were ready, Mare lowered the stairs back down. Slowly they crept down and over to the door. Their hearts beat so hard in their chests, they were sure that whatever was on the other side could definitely hear it. With shaky fingers, Mary unlocked and slowly opened the door while Mare held her branch like a baseball bat, ready to swing for the fences at whatever was there. It wouldn’t be until later that she would realize that the branch was too long. If there had been something, the door frame would have protected it from her swing.

What met them on the other side of the door was a disaster zone. Mare was surprised that the house was still standing. The mudroom wall was destroyed, allowing her to see into the living room and kitchen. There were holes in most of the walls and all the furniture was mostly destroyed and flung around everywhere. She didn’t see anything alive so she nodded to Mary and slowly walked through. Once past the mud room she came to a sudden stop. To her right there was a large hole through the patio doors to the backyard. Outside that hole, hunched over was a small grotesque creature with its back to them. It seemed to be feasting on what was left of the corpse of a cat-like creature.