The rest of my classes continued on, the increase to my Int seemed to make a huge impact to my learning curve, with everything coming to me so much easier then it used to.
As a result, I finished a lot of my tasks early and had a lot of free time to think over a game plan.
First off, it’s worth explaining that Abe is easily a head taller then me or Jacob, in fact he’s one of the tallest guys in our year group and that’s always been the case. In Year seven, back when we where eleven years old, he was tall enough to outright scare away potential bullies, by the time he was twelve he started growing a beard. Despite that he’s not very active, so I wouldn’t surprise me if he wasn’t very dependable in a fight.
Next there was Jacobs, the kind of guy who tried everything he’s been in almost every school play, and has been a core member of our schools rugby team since forever. I sent each of them a text in the middle of class, as the conversation stood, we where considering what kind of weapons we could get a hold of.
Abe- “So with your inventory ability, we can hold one weapon for each of us, plus something extra.”
Jacob- “It sucks that you only have four slots”
Me- “Thanks, anyway, what do you guys think?”
Jacobs- “I could probably get my hands on a couple hockey sticks. There's so many of them no one will miss one or two.”
Abe- “That’s cool. there are knives in the food tech rooms we could try those?”
Me- “We’d never get away with those.”
Abe- “Fair enough. Meet by the supply cupboard then?”
Jacob- “Cool.”
When the lesson was finally over, the bell rang signalling the start of lunch. Naturally I got away without getting caught on my phone, my teachers considered me to be a good kid, and probably wouldn’t dream of me doing anything wrong, especially with the sudden leap in performance.
I walked around the other school building to the field, there was a large locked container where most of the P.E equipment was held of course Jacob beat me there. When he saw me, he stuck his tongue out and raised a set of keys.
“How did you manage that?” I asked.
“I offered to put away the balls,” Jacob gestured to the large sack filled with footballs that he was dragging behind him, “It helps that Mr O’Dell actually likes me.”
The mention of that man made me cringe, the guy wasn’t bad, I would just forget my P.E equipment so often that he seemed constantly disappointed in me, over the years, his being disappointed in me made me hate him. Still, I followed Jacob to the supply container. He unlocked it, and dragged the bag in.
“Okay, so let’s get this done quick.” I said. Jacob looks at the selection of hockey sticks with a frown.
“Hey,” Jacob calls out, “Do we want the quality stuff, that will probably be missed, or the shitty stuff, that no one would want to touch anyway?”
“Play it safe with something in the middle.” I said, standing outside looking around.
“Aren’t you going to need to move the stuff out of your inventory?” Jacob asks as he hands me two hockey sticks, “Damn that’s cool to say.” He remarks before I can answer.
“Nah, since its just hockey sticks, they will probably stack on top of each other.” I said, taking them both into my hands and making them disappear. Jacob hands one last hockey stick to me and again I make it disappear.
“You know that’s a really cool power you got,” Jacob said as he walks out into the open.
The field was large bordered on one side by a school building and on the other three sides with nothing but trees and fences.
“Its cold,” I said, in response to a strong breeze.
“Yeah, let’s get out of here.” Jacob said.
On the way back, we run into Abe who had brought lunch with him. We make our way to the hall, which was bustling with activity. We took some of the seats that were stacked on the side of the hall and we started eating.
Finally done, Jacobs started talking about the funny glitch he found on FF10.
The bell rang again and we left for our respective lessons. After two more boring lessons in which very little of note happens. I found myself getting excited about what would happen at the end of the school day.
I walked over to the main gate, running into Abe on my way there, Abe wanted to talk about the rogue-like, Dwarf Fortress, a request I was happy to oblige.
When we reached the gate, Jacob was waiting and talking to a group of girls from our year group. He played the violin in the schools orchestra, which meant that despite hanging out with us, he was on good terms with a lot of girls, both the girls who made up the orchestra and their friends. He made a joke that I didn’t quite hear and they all started laughing.
When he saw us he said good bye to them and we, Me, Abe and Jacob, started walking out of the gate.
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“You know something better happen on this little trip.” Jacobs said as we crossed a road, “I’m not joking, you’ve been building this up so I have high expectations.”
I couldn’t reply to that at all. Now that we where outside all I could think about was the zombie, and how at any moment another one could end up attacking.
Abe saw and recognised my discomfort. Putting a hand on my shoulder to catch my attention. As I looked up, he gave me a nod, “Don’t worry about it, we’ve got your back.”
It was while walking down a path that I realised that it was happening again.
My vision started to feel blurred and I reached out to both Jacob and Abe on either side of me.
“Wha-” Jacob and Abe said as I grabbed them. The street seemed to distort around me, stretching out right up until there was a large area around us. Abe looked about him, “Wow, it worked.” He said as he looked down at the ground.
A message popped up:
[You have received a new sub-skill, The Gamer’s Party]
[A skill has levelled up, The Gamer is now level two! All Gamer related sub-skills have received a boost.]
Jacob quickly said, “Urrh.. guys, we’re not dealing with just one zombie.”
“Hey, Alan, the messages that you were talking about, do they appear in front of you all luminescent and stuff.” Abe asked looking at an empty space in front of him.
“Yeah I see then too.” Jacob said.
“Seriously?” I asked and used examine on both of them.
[Info: Abe Rahmanzai, a 2nd Generation Gamer, currently at level 1]
[Info: Jacob Adams, a 2nd Generation Gamer, currently at level 1]
“Can we please try focus at that later.” Jacob said as he backed away, “Hand me the hockey stick.”
So I plucked the hockey sticks from my inventory and handed it to Abe and Jacob. At the same time I took a good look at the monsters several yards ahead of us. There were two zombies in front of us. Both looked very much the same as the first one, with gaps in their grey shrivelled skin. The two of them were spewing and dribbling green puke, at the same time it they were covered in large lumps of writhing flesh.
Abe looked dead scared at the monsters while I wasn’t exactly faring much better. Jacob looked at the two of us, and he must have seen the terror in our faces, because he turned on them and screamed, “DIE FUCKERS!” he ran at the two monsters, swinging his hockey stick at one of them. The end of his hockey stick cut into the side of the monster’s head, knocking it to the side.
I almost felt ashamed, so much so that I couldn’t help but follow. The second zombie was closing in on Jacob and I wasn’t about to let that happen, so I screamed “Charging Strike!” as I ran at it, raising the hockey stick over my head and bringing it down on the zombies head.
[You have used up 15SP, now at 57SP total]
[You have dealt 71HP worth of damage]
The attack dropped the zombie to the ground where it started to pull itself up. Its skull had been caved in and its rotten blood spilled out onto the ground. “Holy crap,” Abe remarked.
“Dude, you have a fucking special attack!” Jacob called out as he swung his hockey stick back round into the monsters head.
I backed away from the zombie on the ground and looked over to Abe, who had backed away from the entire conflict. I used examine on the two zombies, after which I learned that both zombies were only level 2.
In that time, the zombie on the ground reached out to grab at Jacob while he was focused on his own zombie. Somehow, Abe was on him before I could get back, in an episode of desperation, Abe struck at the monsters neck, putting all of his weight behind a blow that ultimately ended it.
At the same time, Jacobs had brutally ended his own zombie, he swung at it for the five times, striking the flat side of the hockey stick against the sluggish monsters chin. The blow sent the monster flying backwards before hitting the ground head first, its neck crunched against the hard ground while blood and bile oozed to the ground.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Jacob said, looking at Abe and me as the nausea kicked in, “Shit, I spoke to soon.”
[Each member of your party has earned 73EXP from killing the zombies]
[Each member of your party has earned £18.67 from killing the zombies]
[The Zombies have dropped "Rotten Flesh" and you have the space in your inventory to collect it. Would you like to take it? Y/N]
I thought no, again. As the world returned to normal.
"You're right," I said to Jacob, "It wasn't that bad."
Abe looked at the two of us like we where crazy, "That was really twisted." Then he started laughing, Jacob was quick to join and pretty soon we were all laughing over our first victory.