Emma’s hands were glowing, but Wyatt wasn’t sure he felt anything.

He’d used his own skill on Kevin—who was still vomiting occasionally—so he knew it was possible to use on people.

“Are you sure you’re targeting me?”

Emma only nodded. The glowing light around him pretty much confirmed this as well.

Her skill was channeled rather than a one-off like his, so she was concentrating to keep it up.

Quite a lot, by the look of it.

“The ahuitzotl definitely felt it when you used it,” he mused. “And it was level one but I’m only level zero…”

The others were looking on in horror.

Kevin, who had been excited at the prospect of Wyatt getting a taste of his own medicine, now looked disappointed.

“Come on,” he complained, “we’re—” he vomited up bile, wiped his mouth, grunted, “we’re wasting time.”

“Experimenting is never a waste of time,” Wyatt said absently.

It’s called Willbreaker. So maybe I need to have a will to break?

He focused hard on walking toward Emma, then took a step.

It felt like a normal step.

“Emma, can you put more into it?”

She shook her head.

She doesn’t talk much.

He walked up to her. Then he flicked her nose.

She flinched but didn’t stop channeling the skill.

Well, it definitely doesn’t protect her. Maybe it just doesn’t work on people? Or maybe she assumed I wouldn’t hurt her? I could punch her, but that seems wrong.

Is that the effect of the skill affecting me?

Wyatt punched her in the gut.

Nope.

She doubled over and the skill dropped.

Several people shouted at him. Kevin charged over, but Emma waved him off.

Wyatt was a little disappointed he wouldn’t get to use his skill again on Kevin, but pushed the feeling down. Those types of thoughts weren’t productive.

Emma looked up at him, but surprisingly didn’t seem upset. “Will, not mind.”

He frowned. “What?”

She shook her head, straightening with a wince. “Want to try it again? I still have Energy.”

Wyatt sighed. “Maybe try it on somene—”

“No!” several people interrupted at once.

Despite having been the one to offer, Emma let out a relieved sigh.

Wyatt considered pressing the matter, but he didn’t need the whole group against him.

Several of them looked like they agreed with Kevin that this was a waste of time. A few had suggested finding shelter, which wasn’t a bad idea.

They were out in the open. Better to get somewhere more defensible, and with a better view.

Plus David had not been subtle about voicing his concerns that Emma could mind-control them with her skill, which seemed rather paranoid to Wyatt. The monster clearly hadn’t been, and he hadn’t been either. Plus, for both [Debuffer] and [Willbreaker], there was an obvious visual indication when the skill was used.

Unless she can hide it…

‘Don’t let possibilities cloud reality, Wyatt. That’s how people like you lose themselves.’

Ms Madison never expected him to be in a situation like this, though.

There wasn’t anything he could do about it in any case. He’d remain vigilant, but that was no different than normal.

In the meantime, finding shelter would be a good idea.

He clapped his hands together to get everyone’s attention, only to realize everyone had already been looking at him.

“Right, we can experiment later. For now, let’s see about getting somewhere not so in the open.” He glanced at the temple a few hundred yards away. “Oh look, a fortress. How convenient.”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Emma laughed.

Why is she so weird?

🞠

“Why are we even bothering?” Faith—twenty-one, always late for class, has a boyfriend but that doesn’t stop Brandon from shameless flirting with her—complained as she dragged the ahuitzotl by the tail. “It’s not like we’re going to eat it.”

“Speak for yourself,” Brandon chuckled. “There’s nothing like fresh meat.” He leered at her, but she ignored him.

“I can’t wait to try monster meat,” Tyler agreed, swinging his sand-filled sock around. He’d taken off one of his socks and filled it with sand to use as a weapon.

Wyatt doubted it would do much good. It was much lighter than Maria’s purse.

“Then you should be dragging it,” Faith huffed.

“You have the lowest Soft Tissue stat,” Wyatt said. They’d already been through this. “We need to experiment. See if you can increase it without using augment points.”

Not that he expected it to increase so quickly, but you had to start somewhere.

He shielded his eyes from the sun, glaring at the temple in the distance.

It was a lot farther away than it had looked. They’d been walking for what he estimated as at least a mile, and it still hadn’t seemed to move.

He worried that they would never reach it, that it would stay the same spot in the distance like in some old 8-bit videogame.

He glanced at the spiral in the sky. He’d pointed it out to the others, but none of them recognized what it was. Dave had jokingly suggested a space escalator, which was close to Wyatt’s initial thought.

Faith swore and wiped sweat from her eye, but didn’t stop pulling the corpse.

For as much as she’d complained on their trip so far, she always persisted. The site they’d visited the day before had them riding ATVs over mud-slick roads then trekking through jungle. Despite having been in a skirt and strappy shoes, she’d kept pace with everyone. And complained the whole way.

She must run. She has good cardio. Even I was a little out of breath.

And she’d outdrank them all last night. If she’d been feeling a hangover before all this, she hadn’t showed it.

Maybe that’s because she has the second highest Immune System?

“I’m down to try monster meat,” Jack put in.

He and Tyler bumped fists.

“I had giant squid once,” Patrick said. “That’s like monster meat.”

“Where’d you managed to find that?”

Patrick beamed, and went into the details, but Wyatt tuned him out, watching Emma.

She was walking a few feet away from him, opening and closing her hand.

I wonder if she got something for helping me kill the monster.

He looked around for Akira, who had stabbed it with his pocketknife, but didn’t see him. The man wasn’t super tall, so that wasn’t a surprise.

The entire group was clustered so close together that they were bumping into each other.

At least most of the others were giving Faith and the monster some distance.

Also, they all seemed to be following Wyatt.

‘If you don’t want people looking up to you, don’t do things that make them.’

Yeah Ms Madison, the problem is I don’t know when I’m doing it.

He looked at Emma again.

I should ask if her skill leveled up.

Mine didn’t, but I didn’t use it on an enemy. Or at least not a monster.

He glanced at Kevin, who did indeed seem lighter, walking ahead of them all at an impressive pace for a man of his bulk.

That or he was just angry.

Surprised he’s willing to turn his back to me.

Maybe because I promised I wouldn’t do that to him again.

Which was true, Wyatt had no plans on doing it again.

He would if he had to, of course. But he didn’t plan to.

He considered his stats as they walked. He still had four augment points remaining.

Messing up a build was always a bad thing, but it was infinitely more so when it was your own actual body instead of an avatar in a video game.

But the only way to test out anything would be to use the points.

He was fairly confident in what each of the stats represented, but once they got to the pyramid he was getting people to arm-wrestle him, no matter how much they complained.

He’d tried getting people to lift the ahuitzotl corpse to see who could do the most reps, but other than Brandon and Tyler, everyone refused, and Wyatt didn’t want to waste time out in the open arguing with them.

“Emma, did you get anything when the monster died?” Wyatt asked.

She looked over at him, then looked away. She shook her head.

Was that a no? She is so strange.

“Was that a no?”

“Yes. My status hasn’t changed.”

Why don’t I believe her?

🞠

When they finally reached the pyramid, they all just gaped up at it.

It was way taller than it had seemed from a distance. Wyatt had initially thought it was only a few hundred yards away, but in reality it had been at least two miles.

“That’s a lot of steps,” Tyler said uncertainly. Long, narrow steps went from the bottom to the top.

There were indeed a lot of them.

Wyatt was scanning the base, but there was no entrance, at least on this side. He didn’t like how close to the jungle it was, but on the upside, it limited the directions they could be attacked from.

“Aren’t these supposed to be hollow?” Wyatt asked Camila. They hadn’t been allowed to climb or go inside any of the others they’d been to on the tour so far, but Professor Dave had showed them videos of the insides of some of them.

She didn’t respond, staring blankly.

“Camila?” he asked gently.

She blinked, looked at him. “Hollow? Like in a videogame?” She barked a laugh. “Why don’t you try mining it! Maybe you’ll find a diamond. Or a zombie!” She laughed again.

Is she having a breakdown? I wouldn’t have expected it from her.

They were almost a week into their tour, and she’d been nothing but capable.

But you never really could know how someone would react to a situation until they were put into it.

But she had possibly the most useful skill of all, [Restorer].

Of course they didn’t know for sure what it did yet, since she didn’t have any Energy, but thus far their skills did what they sounded like they would.

Then again, they only had a sample size of two, and Emma had distracted and or enraged the ahuitzotl with [Willbreaker], but it hadn’t worked on him, so he didn’t know precisely what its effect was.

She’d said she didn’t know either. He had no reason not to believe her—when he’d used [Debuffer] on Kevin he hadn’t gained any additional insight into the skill—but for some reason he didn’t.

“Oh my god!” someone laughed.

It was Regan. She was pointing and smiling.

Is she having a breakdown as well?

Then Wyatt saw what she was pointing at. It was a monster. Sort of. But also, not really.

“It’s adorable!” Olivia cooed.

Standing at the edge of the jungle to their left was a little green creature, wearing a big round hat with feathers sticking out, watching them from a distance.

It was too far away to scent, maybe a hundred yards—though Wyatt didn’t trust distances in this place—but it wasn’t making a move toward them and didn’t look hostile.

All it was doing was jumping up and down, waving its arms at them.

“It’s excited!” Maria said with a laugh.

“Don’t get any ideas,” her husband Carlos replied. “We don’t need any more dogs.”

“It’s not a dog,” Bailey said. “It is cute though. Is it dancing?”

Wyatt suddenly started to get a bad feeling.

Like it was trying to warn them about something.

He turned to the direction it was facing just before the scent hit him.

“Well crap.”