I secured my borrowed books in my room and went to the backyard. The errands had only taken just over an hour, so there was plenty of time left before lunch to get started on the physical quests.
I decided to start with Leg Day while incorporating some of the Daily Steps quest as well. To the right of the backyard—when facing the back of the house—was a short set of stairs going up about four feet to a ledge. A minute of testing showed that climbing it thrice counted as one floor, while jumping off the ledge onto the yard below counted as a jump.
Doing all of that while running made the steps all count for the running portion of the Daily Steps quest, which made my efforts rather efficient. It also tired me out quickly. That was fine. I had the mental quests to take care of while my heart rate settled. Getting the math workbook and the puzzle book from my room necessitated a run up yet more stairs—something that got me closer to my goals even if it made me curse my own lack of forethought.
Once back outside, I sat at a small table on the side of the house above where the stairs I’d been running up were. It was still a little too early in the year to enjoy the honeysuckle that was to my right. For as invasive as it was, the couple drops of liquid in each flower were rather delicious—almost enough to balance out its inherently aggressive nature.
I began with an easy addition problem. It was—as the section stated—rather easy. I was able to solve it in around ten seconds. Then I tried a word search puzzle as a test—which took about five minutes.
Milestone: Completed 1 puzzle
Exp Gained: 1
I shuddered to think of just how long doing a puzzle quest would take. Just doing the fifty—the same as the Daily Arithmetic quest—would take me five hours. Five hours. Just for one quest! Nine puzzles later—ten total, counting the first I’d done—I was finished with doing the puzzles. The three experience for the first two milestones was always welcome, and it was time to go back to running and jumping all over the place.
By the time my stomach was grumbling for lunch, I had completed the running steps and the jumps. The floors part was more than halfway complete as well. With how many steps I’d walked while shopping, that quest’s completion was just a walk in the park. Another 20 experience to the growing pile, bringing my total to 59.
After I was done eating a ham and cheese sandwich, I went up to my room to put the puzzle book back and take the notebook outside with me. I placed it on the table with a pen I’d pilfered from Dad’s mug of writing instruments in the kitchen. From there, it was back to the grind. Instead of running or walking back to the front of the stairs after bumping, I moved by skipping.
When it was time for my next break, I was just down to the squats. My muscles burned. For as much as the quests gave experience, they were also toughening up my body. There was no way I was going to have a six-pack or guns to flex given my age and growth rate eating up whatever gains I might have. Still, I would get used to the strain eventually, and that would be good for whatever the apocalypse would bring later down the road.
I wrote out a simple diary entry over the next hour or so. Writing was much slower by hand—especially if I wanted it to be legible—and my body just didn’t have the ingrained muscle memory I would get over the years. I focused on trying to remember anything I could from system apocalypse stories and noting that down in case I forgot later—hence the need for legibility.
With the chime indicating quest completion ringing in my ears, I finished my final thoughts on the page before snapping the notebook closed. It was squat time.
Those hundred squats were hell on my legs. Even in sets of ten, I cursed the quest. I did it both because of the reward and because I’d already completed all the other parts of it. I hated exercise in general. It was only bearable because it felt like a game still. The experience was a nice hit of happiness that didn’t hurt, either.
I checked the timer on the remaining quests and saw that it was just about 4 pm. I had gained a lot of experience throughout the day thanks to the quests and to the few milestones that had come up along the way. 126 experience sat on my status screen just begging to be spent. I knew exactly where that was going. Without enough to spend on silencing notifications and with my desperate need for more information, the System Help function was the obvious choice. I had so many questions.
Feature Unlocked: System Help
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Current Exp: 26
I pulled open the screens one after the other, starting with the status screen. The help I got was better than nothing, but there wasn’t a ton of help to get in most places. There were a few tidbits that came up that were important, and a couple that were downright frightening.
The nice-to-know information came in the form of general descriptions of what the unlockable functions did. For example, Notifications II would not only allow me to mute notifications or group them together and summarize them, but also to change the sounds different notifications made and selectively mute the ones I didn’t want bothering me.
That unlock screen was also what scared me. Hidden in plain sight was what the distinction between unlocking for personal use and for universal use actually meant. According to the System, universal use meant two things. First, when the apocalypse happened, anything unlocked for universal use would apply to everyone. Second, unlocking something for universal use also unlocked it for personal use.
It was the personal use unlocks that made my heart drop. In addition to being exclusive to me only until the apocalypse would begin, spending on myself rather than on the universal unlock was what actively made the monsters stronger! The System claimed this was not the case for universal unlocks, but did not explain why that was the case. So in exchange for the discounted cost, I was getting something temporary that was also making the apocalypse worse! I hastily pulled up the screen showing the countdown and the monster tiers.
Average Monster Level: 2
Monster Strength Tier: 1
Exp To Next Tier: 90
Time Until Apocalypse: 14 years, 7 months, 11 days, 8 hours, 44 minutes, 01 seconds
Cumulative Monster Strength Bonuses: Average Monster Level +1
Next Tier: Average Monster Level +1
The experience I had spent to get more experience and to figure anything out was being used against me. Not only had the errant drunk wish screwed everything up, but even my attempts to do something about it were fucking it up more—not less! I was angry and frightened at the same time. On the one hand, fuck the System and the god it rode in on. On the other hand, oh shit! Monsters!
It was several minutes before I was sufficiently in control of myself to delve farther into the screens. That it took so long shocked me. Normally, I was rather cool under pressure to the point that I’d been called cold and callous by more than one ex. I wondered if it was the influence of being young again or that I’d somehow changed due to the existence of the System and higher powers. I clamped down on that line of thinking and shunted those thoughts into the hungry void that was the part of my mind filled with ‘stuff to think about later’.
I dug into what exactly each line meant. The rather scant details were that the average monster level was just that: an average. Which type of average wasn’t stated, nor were the distributions of those levels. There was some opportunity to spend experience modifying the level distribution, but it was incredibly expensive to purchase and not something I’d be able to do for a long time. Another thing to file away in ‘stuff to think about later’.
The monster strength tier was simple to understand. It was an overall strength class for the average monster like a weight class in boxing. In order to get enough experience to buy things for everyone’s use during the apocalypse, I would need to almost exclusively focus on buying experience boosts for myself. That meant stronger monsters and even more pressure on me. Doing nothing was the end of humanity—of that I was sure—but trying to fix it might also be the end of humanity if I wasn’t careful!
Doing something and maybe failing is better than doing nothing and definitely failing, I reasoned with the pit in my stomach as if it could hear me.
Normally, I lacked motivation for plenty of things I dreamed of doing. Fear would be a good short-term motivator, but I knew I’d need to have something more than that to keep me going. I needed my own personal goals and quests to accomplish beyond what the system set for me daily. Those would help with their small boosts to my mood upon completion, but that would fade with time and become normal as well. I mentally shrugged. Yet another thing for the ‘stuff to think about later’ void to chew on.
Regardless of future motivation issues, I made the decision not to let the impending doom bring me down. I’d face it head on. Succeed or fail, I was at least going to try and put up a fight rather than consigning myself to await death.
The last thing I noted before closing the screens was that it looked like the experience required to increase the monster tier had gone up by 100 to 200 for the second tier. I didn’t know if it would be 300 or 400 for the third tier, but I hoped it was the latter. Doubling up meant I had a lot more to work with before the monsters became oppressive to the point of human extinction.
I wrote these findings in my notebook. Now that I had more information to work with, I had a bunch of things to try so that I could come up with a reasonable plan of action that would get me where I needed to be by the time the apocalypse arrived.
I took a look over the features I knew about. Getting more experience sources was still at the top of my list. The cheapest option—the Daily Reward—topped that list even with the potential downside of waking me up at midnight or annoying me some other point in the day. I wanted to get Notifications II as a universal unlock rather than just for myself, and if the misery and annoyance of the notification was bearable, I would get it later. On the other hand, if it kept me from sleeping nightly, I would absolutely spend the extra 50 experience on it.
While I waited for dinner, it took me about an hour to finish the arithmetic quest for another 10 experience. That was longer than it should have been due to my mind reeling from everything I had discovered.