Devi woke up to someone gently shaking her. Her eyes snapped open as adrenaline coursed through her veins. Fuck. How did someone manage to get in? Why are they touching me? Those were the first thoughts that raced through her head as she looked around.

Instead of seeing her familiar blue walls, a smiling face with a crooked nose greeted her.

“Hey, thought you would want to get up,” Mars said as she backed up a little, seeing the panic in Devi’s eyes. “Sorry, was that not okay?”

Devi took a few moments to calm herself, sitting up and scanning the area around her. Her heart rate slowed as she remembered she had gone to sleep on the grass of the alien clearing she had found herself in after the sky and fallen down while getting coffee. She wasn’t in her house, so that meant her space hadn’t been invaded. The end of the world is much preferred to having random people in my apartment.

“Thank you, I did.” Devi leaned forwards and stretched out to touch her toes before arching her back. “It was fine, just did not know who was touching me right away. Not quite used to being woken up like that.” Man, I do really miss my alarm.

“So, you ready to go out and explore,” an excited Matt asked as he fidgeted with the straps of his armor.

“Would say we should have breakfast first, but,” Devi gestured around herself. “We do not really have anything to eat.”

Mars let out a chuckle as they started putting their breastplate on. Devi followed suit, having taken all her armor off to sleep.

“Hopefully we can find something out there to eat then,” Mars said. “Good motivation to hunt something.”

Devi remembered the charrd corpse of the squirrel she had left in the forest and made a face. She had no desire to go back and find it. And other scavengers had probably already gotten ahold of it by now.

“Do either one of you know how to cook an animal? Because I do not,” Devi asked. Hopefully one of them knows, or else, we are screwed.

“How hard could it be, really?” Mars said with bravado. “I could probably figure it out. People do it all the time on TV.”

“Actually, I might know a bit,” Matt said from the ground as he struggled with the last few straps of his armor. “I went hunting with my dad. Once, a long time ago, back when we were still talking.”

“Oh right, I think you told me about that. Didn’t you throw up on that trip?” Mars asked innocently.

“I deny everything, you have no proof!” Mat exclaimed. “But yeah, that was not a fun trip.”

“It’s okay, I can handle it. Don’t want you puking again,” Mars jocked as she finished strapping her forearm guards on. “Shouldn’t be too hard. And besides, you can just tell me any tips you remember.”

Devi thought back to her brief excursion, remembering the odd plants that had been around. More importantly, the few that seemed to have berries on them.

“Or we could just look for edible plants while we're out?” Devi suggested. “I saw a few bushes with berries, and who knows, maybe a few of the pants are edible?”

“That’s an idea, no needing to mess around with trying to cook something we kill,” Mars said. “And probably easier than finding prey in the first place.”

“But how do we know what’s edible or not?” Asked Matt, stumbling to his feet. “It’s not like we can expect the plants to be the same as back home.”

“I did see some odd plants in the forest when I went out yesterday,” Devi supplied. ”Though, pretty much any plant would be unfamiliar to me. Do not leave the city much.”

“I’m not so sure we should be eating random plants here. Sounds like a great way to get poisoned,” Mat argued.

“Why don’t we just collect a few berries and things and go from there? Maybe eat one or two before eating the rest? Should work out better that way,” Mar suggested. “And hopefully we don’t die of food poisoning as well.”

“Sounds good to me,” Devi said while shrugging.

“I was hoping we wouldn’t run into anything while we were out there anyways, so that is very fine with me,” Matt said.

“Sounds good!” Mars finished putting on her last bit of armor. “Well, looks like we’re about all geared up. You guys ready to get out there?”

Devi could see Mars was anxious to get going, almost bouncing with energy as she stooped to help Matt with the last few buckles of his armor. She did a brief check of all her equipment. Her armor was on, and her crossbow was already pulled back and loaded. She had the fire starter magic tool that she had used to burn the squirrel yesterday, and the new magic tool she had completed last night both tucked into her pockets.

As she moved, she realized the multiple cuts she had received yesterday did not hurt quite as badly as when she went to bed. Many of them had scabbed over, and a few shallow ones had already closed, leaving only faint red lines in their place.

Well now, that sure is interesting, she thought to herself. That sure is not normal. I do not heal that fast. Those should still have been nasty cuts today, not looking like I got them a few days ago.

She pulled up her Status sheet and saw her health was back up to full, along with her stamina. Her mana, however, was sitting at 98/253. Well, that might answer some of those questions. Maybe full health means I heal faster? Or could be that people recover faster in the clearing, or just in general now?

She let out a frustrated growl.

“Wow, easy there, is everything okay?” Mars asked, concerned.

“Just frustrated at the complete lack of knowledge here,” Devi complained. “I got cut pretty badly yesterday, but now, they seem days old. I do not know if that is because of my stats, or what. Nothing is being explained, and it is very frustrating. I just want everything to make sense.” Devi almost was growling the last few words. She took a deep breath to calm herself. “Sorry about that.”

“No worries, there’s a lot of stuff that’s really frustrating,” Mars said, trying to comfort her. “It’s okay to be frustrated. But hey, we’re going to go explore a probably magical forest together, how cool is that?”

Devi gave a small chuckle and took a couple of deep breaths.

“Yeah, there is a whole magical forest to go explore. We should get going then.” Devi gestured with her head over towards the pillar where small groups of armed and armored individuals were already congregating, all centered around Mr. McCallistar. “Probably want to beat those guys out into the forest.”

“Wouldn’t want to run into John out there. Probably so dumb he’d bring all the monsters down on him,” Mars joked.

“Probably the worst thing to run into out there would be him,” Matt agreed.

“Give me just a sec, I want to see if I can distribute some of the free points I have,” Devi said as she looked over her Status screen, seeing she still had 10 sitting there that she hadn’t even thought about.

“It’s pretty easy to do that, just focus on the free points and you’ll be brought to a screen where you can distribute them,” Mars chimed in. “Or at least, that’s how it was for me. Don’t know if it's different for everyone.”

Devi shrugged and pulled up her Status, focusing on the free points. A new screen popped up, exactly how Mars said it would, allowing her to assign her free points to whatever Attribute she wanted. With 10 free points, she was tempted to just evenly distribute them to all her Attributes but decided against that. After all, every Race level she had gotten gave her one to every stat, so she figured it might be better to focus on a few specific areas and let the levels in her Race bump all her stats up instead.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

She had a few specific Attributes she wanted to focus on. First was her health. Having more was never a bad thing, and so she put Vitality on her shortlist. The next was Strength and Agility. Being stronger and faster seemed very important. After all, that is what is the basis of every superhero I feel like. Super strength and super speed.

The next on the list was intelligence. Ever since she got the +10% boost from her title, she had realized how amazing the Attribute was. She had been able to recall things easier, which was incredible. But even better, she had slowly realized that her control over her mana had improved greatly. She had first just assumed that it was because she had been working at it for a while, but the jump in the ease at which she could move her mana around was more than she felt a few hours of practice could produce.

The other attributes were a little more nebulous, except Wisdom and Endurance. She had enough Mana for now, and while having more Stamina would be nice, she didn’t feel it was quite as important as the other four she had listed.

She assigned two points to both Strength and Vitatly and three to both Agility and Intelligence. Better to just be able to avoid getting hit than have the Health to tank it she figured.

Feeling satisfied with her choices, she mentally hit the confirmation button, locking in her selections. A wave of multicolored light washed over her, and with it, the familiar tingling sensation.

“Wow, how many free points did you use?” Mars asked as she stared at Devi. “I don’t think it was actually visible when I did it. Though maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough, the light show was kind of faint.”

“Not too many,” Devi said, sidestepping the question. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Mat and Mars, but she didn’t quite feel comfortable saying how many free points she had. She felt that 10 was probably more than most people had at the moment. “We better get going though, do not want to run in with John, right?”

“Let’s go then,” Matt said, and the three of them quickly walked up to the iridescent barrier surrounding the clearing.

“You sure that it’s safe to pass through?” Matt asked as they got up to it. “It just seems very magical, and who knows what it could be doing.”

“It is fine, nothing to worry about,” Devi said as she walked through. “Just do not run through, that can be weird.

Mars shrugged and stepped through, waving for Matt to follow suit. He took a few breaths before shutting his eyes and walking forwards.

“See, nothing to worry about,” Devi said when he got to the other side. “Now, let's start exploring.”

The three of them advanced slowly into the forest, keeping their eyes out for anything to jump out at them. Mars had her shield up, sword in hand, ready to slash at anything that came at her. Matt was scanning the trees, knuckles whitening as he tightened his grip on his spear. Deiv was keeping an eye out, crossbow up at the ready, but a little more relaxed. After the first few minutes of nothing attacking, they all relaxed their vigilance and began to explore a bit more, feeling a bit more comfortable.

Mat cautiously began looking in the surrounding bushes, trying to find anything edible, but also didn’t seem too dangerous to eat, passing up the white berries he saw at first. Mars kept close to him, eyes scanning the alien trees that twisted up around them, blocking out the majority of the morning sunlight.

Devi started poking around in the undergrowth, trying to see if she could find any magical looking plants she could use in her magic tool-making. Would very much prefer not to use my own blood in order to craft. There has to be something around here I can use.

The only problem was that Devi had no idea what a magical plant might look like. Sure, if it was glowing, that would be a pretty big giveaway, but other than that? Anything in the forest could be magical since it was a forest that she had to pass through a magical barrier to get to. She decided to just take samples from a variety of plants and test them all later.

The three of them continued their exploration of the forest for a while, Mars and Matt keeping up a constant chatter of conversation while Devi elected to keep quiet, more focused on collecting interesting plants than asking why they kept laughing over an oddly shaped tree.

As they were laughing, Devi heard the bush next to them rustle, and before she could call out a warning, a red streak burst out of the bushes.

The squirrel slammed into Mars’ back, making her stumble to the ground with a crash. Matt turned around startled, and wildly swung his spear out. Thankfully, the swing went wide, missing both the squirrel and more importantly, Mars.

Mars scrambled to her feet, throwing off the squirrel as it failed to dig its claws into her armor.

“Fuck, you never said how terrifying those things were,” Mars called over to Devi as they raised their shield to fend off another attack.

Devi sighted down her crossbow at the squirrel as it got ready to pounce again. She pulled the trigger and watched as the squirrel twist mostly out of the way, but wasn’t able to fully dodge as the bolt cut across its body.

“But I did, they are fucking terrifying,” Devi called back as she bend down to start pulling back her crossbow for another shot.

“Watch out!” Matt yelled as he dove to tackle Devi out of the way of a stream of scarlet sparks arced through the air towards her.

He didn’t get there in time, the sparks slamming into Devi’s unprepared side, sending jolts of pain up her arm. And then she got tackled to the ground, Matt landing on top of her.

She let out a muffled grunt and tried to push him off of her.

“Sorry, so sorry,” Matt said as he awkwardly stumbled off her, “Just wanted to get you out of the way of that.”

“It is fine,” Devi said as she quickly scrambled to her feet, eyes scanning for the blasted creature that just shocked her. “Just do not do it again.”

“Yeah, of course, sorry about that,” he said awkwardly.

“Can the two of you stop flirting and help me over here,” Mars called out as she fended off another attack from the angered squirrel, shield barely managing to get in between them and the squirrel.

“Was not my fault,” huffed Devi as she pulled back her crossbow.

Matt scoped up his fallen spear and charged at the squirrel as it made another lunge at Mars, this time managing to slip past their defenses. Mars let out a yell as the squirrel left a large gash on their upper thigh.

“[Attribute Enhancment],” Devi called out, mentally focusing on Mars, trying to enhance their Agility hopefully to give her a helping hand in avoiding the squirrel.

Mars stumbled a bit as the magic took effect, not used to the sudden bump in her Attributes. Unfortunately, the squirrel decided not to wait around until they got their barrings, jumping straight at them.

Mars was still off balance from the enhanced Agilgity that they didn’t see the squirrel until it was already clawing their side. There was a screech as the squirrel encountered Mars’ breastplate.

Raising the butt of their sword, they hammered down at the oversized critter, that was trying to cling to Mars’ side. A solid thunk sounded out as the squirrel dropped to the forest ground in a daze.

Not one to miss an opportunity, Devi raised her reloaded crossbow and shot the grounded monster. This time, the squirrel was in no position to dodge, and the bolt struck true.

The red-furred rodent let out a high-pitched screech as it righted itself and hurled its body at Devi, its beady black eyes full of rage.

Its flight was stopped short by a solid metal shield swinging out, imposing itself between her and the flying ball of anger.

Mars gave a nod to Devi and the squirrel bounced, landing once again amidst the fallen leaves.

“Thanks,” Devi said as she took the brief respite to reload her crossbow.

“No problem,” came the reply as Mars kept their eyes on the squirrel.

Matt rushed in from the side, spear jabbing downwards as he stabbed at the monstrous rodent.

It spotted the attack at the last moment and the spear sank into the earth instead. The squirrel managed to twist its body out of the way of the spear just in time, and lept at Matt, clambering over the hastily raised shield and started trying to claw at his eyes.

“Fuck, help! It’s trying to eat my face!” Matt yelled as he desperately tried to keep the rodent away from him.

Mars quickly dropped their sword and yanked the rodent off the shield.

“Fuck off!” They yelled and drop-kicked the squirrel into a tree.

Devi looked at them for a moment in stunned silence, before snapping out of it. She aimed her crossbow at the equally stunned squirrel and fired off a shot.

The bolt lodged itself a centimeter away from the squirrel, quivering in the trunk of the tree as if to spite her.

She muttered a curse as she started to pull her crossbow back again. Mars just jogged by, smirking good-naturedly, and scooped up her sword.

“Don’t worry, I go this,” they said as they chopped viciously down at the squirrel that just barely stumbled to its feet after being kicked into a tree.

It still managed to dodge mostly out of the way, but the sword still clipped it, sending it tumbling to the ground once again. Mars didn’t let up either, they kept stabbing their sword at it, keeping it on the defensive.

The squirrel dodged one of the sword strikes and sent out a flurry of sparks in retaliation. Mars raised their shield to block the sparks, only for the squirrel to dart away while they were distracted.

Only for a bolt to come flying out, and this time, hitting the squirrel squarely in its side as it tried to circle around the preoccupied Mars.

It let out a shriek as it collapsed amidst the leaves, and Matt took that opportunity to stab his spear into it.

The scream gurgled to a stop, and the squirrel lay limply on the ground, skewed by Matt’s spear.

Mars came over, sword at the ready in case it tried to do anything, but at that moment, a blue box flashed into existence in front of Devi’s eyes.

Congratulations

You have defeated your opponent

XP has been awarded

Mars turned to Devi.

“You were right, squirrels are fucking terrifying.”