The rest of my walk to school happened without incident, I relied on auto-pilot for the majority of the trip and I watched my health and stamina improve gradually, it would seem that the skill actually increased my natural regen. In around two minutes I was able to fully recover my health, and recover some of my stamina. It seemed silly, but I really needed the distraction.
When I finally reached the school gates I gave a sigh, if I was safe at home, then I was probably safe here too, that was my thinking, I was definitely safe in school. The time was 8:17am, which essentially means that most of my friends probably weren’t in school yet, despite that I really needed to talk to someone, anyone, so I started for the main school building.
High-Gate Secondary School has three separate buildings, including three separate canteens, four halls and two sets of changing rooms. The newest of the buildings could be seen in front obscuring the other two. There was a corridor bisecting the building while leading out to the grounds of the school, there the other two building could be seen, the main building was the larger of those two.
The three canteens were seemingly made to separate each several year groups; years seven and eight had one canteen while nine, ten and eleven had another, years twelve and thirteen (or rather sixth form) had a canteen to themselves. As I’m in year nine, it was the canteen in the main building where my year group congregated.
I walked around the school the garden that sat in the middle of the school grounds, making my way right to the main building. Once I was in the canteen, I scanned the area for my group, no one caught my eye. On the other hand, I managed to catch the attention of a completely different group of guys. They were a loud bunch who regarded me with distain. I counted my blessings and kept my distance, sitting on as far away from other people as possible.
I sat down and stared at my phone, no I need to tell them in person.
After several minutes Abe opened the entrance to the canteen. The tall Asian guy walked into the canteen with a satchel hanging by his side. Abe sees me and sits down on the other side of the table, “morning.” He offered, tagging m on the shoulder as he came past, “Something wrong?” he said, no doubt seeing the distress on my face, he looked back around, “If they did something you should go to Mr King.”
“No, its nothing like that, you haven’t seen Jacob yet? I’d rather tell you all at once.”
“Nah he’s always late,” Abe said, “But more importantly did you see the news this morning?”
“I never watch the news.” I respond.
Abe nods takes his tablet out of his bag, after a few swipes at the screen he faces it towards me, “people are disappearing over-night,” He reported, looking down at the screen, He showed the article to me, there were pictures of these people and I recognised one of them, a girl, but I couldn’t for remember where from.
“Who is that?” I asked, pointing to the picture of the girl.
“Harriot, she went to our primary school,” Abe said, “Apparently she’s been missing for days now and she’s not alone.”
I remember Harriot being pretty cool, hung around the guys a lot and tended to play video games along with the best of them, it’s a shame she’s gone.
Abe scrolled down, showing a number of other people.
“I don’t recognise anyone else.” I say, entrapped by this news story.
“Not surprised, their from all over the world,” Abe starts, “America, Japan, France, all of them are missing and the police think some kind of international gang is behind it.”
Forgetting my own problems for a second, “Wait, how did the police link these things altogether?”
“Apparently,” Abe started, “The gang leaves a calling card.”
“Seriously,” I stare at the article in disbelief, “what’s the calling card?”
“They haven’t realised that information to the public,” Abe said grimly, “which is why it has to be the same people-“
The bell rang, signalling everyone to get to their form rooms for registration.
School drones on without incident and I’m in math class staring down an impossible question when I remember that I have stat points I have yet to allocate. “Menu,” I whisper in hopes that the other people sat at my table don’t notice me.
The menu opens and I mentally navigate to the stat page where an extra tab indicating that I have nine stat points hovers over the window. Next to all of my tangible and intangible stats were two buttons, one “plus” button and one “minus”, at the bottom was a “confirm?” button.
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When I’m done I press confirm and I receive a number of messages as I close the menu.
[Str has increased from 6 to 11]
[Vit has increased from 10 to 11]
[Int has increased from 11 to 13]
[Wis has increased from 8 to 9]
[As a result of the change in core stats:]
[Max Hp has increased from 68 to 74]
[Max Mp has increased from 59 to 67]
[Max Sp has increased from 65 to 72]
For a second I felt a rush of nausea, “Are you going to be okay?” someone asked, then everything became clear. I looked down at the simple quadratic and almost laughed at how simple it was.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” I put pen to paper and started on the answer.
By the time the bell finally rang I had breezed through all the work my maths teacher had planned and spent the last couple minutes doing shit all as everyone else tried to figure out how I did it. Jeez this was boring.
Finally the bell rang and I left the lesson, it was break time and I would finally be able to share my gift with the guys.
As I left for the canteen someone grabbed me by my bag, “I bet you think you’re so smart, huh, fake.” I broke free of the punk and pushed him away from me, “Hey,” The asswipe said, “guys,” he called out to, “fake here’s trying to step up to me.”
I start walking away, aware of the growing group behind me, “hey where’re you going?”
“I’m not going to fight you.” I said plainly and continued to walk away.
I all but ran down the stairs as I made my way to the canteen.
Spotting Abe and Jacob I quickly bought a slice of pizza from the canteen and sat down next to them, Abe nodded to me while Jacob said “hi,” I returned the greetings in kind as I sat down.
“So I was telling Jacob about the missing people,” Abe said.
“I can’t believe someone you guys know has been kidnapped,” Jacob said.
“Yeah,” I said, “Its pretty weird huh?” I looked at Abe and he seemed to nod in agreement. “Anyway, I have something I need to tell you guys.” I said, and gestured for Jacobs and Abe to follow me out of the canteen. We quickly made our way to a corridor that seemed devoid of other people.
“Okay,” Jacob smiled as he looks around, Jacob joked “You’re not coming out are you?”
Abe giggled at that, “Y’know,” Jacob continued, “It would be really awkward if you actually came out now, I mean, I’m not homophobic or anything but Abe just laughed so we know where he stands.”
Abe said defensively, “There’s nothing wrong with being gay.”
“No, I’m not gay,” I said, “Last night-”
“Are you sure we want to hear this?” Jacob joked again.
“Shut up” I glared at him, and he ‘zipped’ his mouth. “Okay,” I gather myself again, “Last night I developed some kind of power.”
I proceed to tell them everything, and at first they didn’t take me seriously, but then I made by books and hammer appear from nowhere and they quickly became dead serious. Jacob went silent and Abe started to look down at the ground really intently.
Jacob was the first person to say something, “So your life is subject to game mechanics right?”
I nodded.
“So,” Jacob started, “Maybe there's a multi-player option, if we can help you directly, then fighting the monsters might not be so bad.”
I check my menu for an option like that.
Meanwhile, “From what you said,” Abe muttered, “You’ll level up and grow stronger, so it won’t be long before zombies aren’t a problem.”
“Yeah,” I chimed in, “I tried checking for a multi-player section but a lot of the functions in the main menu isn’t available. Also, calling it a zombie doesn’t really give it credit, it was a freaking nightmare also my examine skill made it sound like there where things way stronger than a zombie.”
Jacob nodded “We could always walk you home, if anything popped up we’d be right there with you.”
I sighed and smiled. “What are you smiling about?” Jacob asked.
“I thought you guys wouldn’t believe me.”
“I didn’t say I did.” Jacob said.
Abe looked mystified by that statement, “He made a hammer appear out of thin air.”
“I know,” Jacob said, “sorry, that was a dumb joke.”
“Most of your jokes are.” Abe said “But we’re definitely walking you home, just let me text my mum to give her an excuse.” With that the bell rang signalling the end of break time.
“This stays between us right?” I checked, as I walked off to my next class.