Victor frowned, his ears twitching. It wasn’t like he was mad at Waverly. It was just like her to forget stuff like this, and he wasn’t the kind of guy to take that stuff personally. Still, he didn’t exactly want to fight, in a pub he didn’t know, in the middle of The Dregs. He wasn’t scared, per se, just… if he had fur, it would probably bristle a little bit right now.

“Oh man, like, I’m so sorry, I thought I told you, but like, it’s not like a super hard rule, you know, I am sure I can talk it over with Jim and The Host, and just let you watch instead!” Waverly offered, and Victor believed her.

If he took Waverly up on her offer, though, what would he do instead? Slink in the shadows and watch everyone else have fun instead. No one would even know he was there, except for Waverly. He’d be invisible again.

Sometimes, hiding was a good thing, right? But did he want to do it here?

He scratched his nose, because it was itchy, while he forced himself to think this through. Every instinct from the tip of his ears to the bottom of his pads told him to just hide somewhere and watch, or better yet, just go home and take a nap.

“What’s wrong, Vic?” Waverly asked, ears swiveling with curiosity. She’d tilted her head, too, which meant she really wanted to know. Victor appreciated that.

“Dunno. I really appreciate your offer, Wave. Should probably just take it.”

“No, come on!” Waverly said. “Spit it out. It totally helps, I promise. It’s like, cathartic and stuff!”

Victor had to smirk at that. “Of course you’d say that.”

Waverly swished her tail innocently and said nothing. Man. She really wanted to hear what was on his mind.

So Victor scratched behind his ear and said: “You saw it yourself. I don’t have any fighting skills.”

“You, like, were all cool and ready to fight with Chad though, right?” Waverly asked.

“True,” Victor said. “But Chad was a pushover. You could tell by the fact that he wanted to start a fight in the first week of college. He clearly wanted the Xp from it, perhaps even more so than the social status. This is different, though. You said they’re all really good.”

“Oh, so, are you like, scared of getting hurt? Because they got some priests who deal with that sort of stuff, they got willpower buffs and all that, and they also will totally patch you up right after.”

Waverly said it as neutrally as possible, but the idea itself was ridiculous. What did she think he was, to be scared of a little pain? A Human? Still, Victor knew she meant well. There were monsters out there with psychological disorders like that, but Victor was not one of them.

“Nah,” he said with a smile to show her he appreciated her concern. “Just, you know…”

Wait, what was he scared of? He bit his lip, thinking, and really only one thing came to mind.

“I’m scared of looking like an idiot, to be honest.”

Waverly nodded. “I totally looked like an idiot when I first fought, but I was also, like, level 12 or something, so it’s like, different.”

“You were level twelve? How old were you?”

“Barely more than a pup!” Jim boomed, finally giving up on pretending not to hear them. The Minotaur walked over as spoke.

“She’d been coming here for almost a year and we always forbade her from participating.” He put his meaty hand on her shoulder, and she didn’t budge an inch.

“Caw!” The Host said after he landed on Jim’s shoulder. “She just jumped into the ring one night when no one was watching her. Punched an Orc in the nuts. It was pretty hilarious.”

“Did she win?” Victor asked, and the three others laughed.

“Oh, like, absolutely not. The Orc just kinda spanked me and threw me back out. But the people still, like cheered, and that was super cool. But yeah like I said, you can just stay and don’t have to fight.”

But Victor didn’t miss that the crow and the minotaur exchanged a glance.

“Everyone fights, right?”

Waverly nodded, tail drooping a little. “Yeah, almost everyone. Like, I’m super sorry, I should have remembered to tell you, I was just so excited…”

“What about the people who don’t fight?” Victor asked.

“They usually don’t come back to Fight Night,” Jim said.

And there it was.

Victor’s ears flicked as he thought it over. On the one hand, he could just stay in the shadows and watch, then leave after a while. Waverly wouldn’t mind. She had enough friends here. But he knew that he would never connect to the crowd this way.

He liked The Host and Jim. They were nice. He doubted they’d become great friends like Waverly, but he’d like to hang out with them together with her, he thought.

On the other hand, he could fight, and perhaps make a fool of himself, but stay. And the longer he thought about it, the more he understood that he was actually scared of the reaction people would have toward him, and not the part where he put his foot in his own mouth instead of someone else’s.

“I’ll do it,” Victor said, and his quiet smile returned.

Waverly’s tail wagged so hard, Jim had to step to the side to not get slapped by it repeatedly.

“Ohhhhhhhhh! It’s going to be… wait, what?”

Bravo. For accepting a challenge to a duel to defend your honor in this court, instead of slinking away like common rabble, you have been awarded 1500 [Vampire] experience.

Excelsior! You have reached level 5 in your [Vampire Class!] To commemorate this achievement, you have been awarded a choice between three exquisite Skills befitting your new station.

Your overall level is now 19.

Waverly trailed off as that familiar hellish glow enveloped Victor’s form.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Did you just get a level-up for just agreeing to fight?” Jim said, one meaty eyebrow raised so high it almost touched his horn.

“Caw!” “Damn, that’s broken.”

Victor smiled as the warmth receded. Should he tell them about the best part? Actually, why not? There wasn’t much to lose here, and if Waverly trusted these two, then why shouldn’t he?

“Yeah,” he said, tilted his head, flicked his ears, and let his smile grow wide enough to squeeze his eyes shut. “Got a new skill too.”

“Caw!” “Congratulations!”

“Congrats!” Said Jim.

Waverly’s tail wagged so hard that Victor wondered why she hadn’t lifted off the ground already.

“Like, ohmydevs, that is, like, so amazing!”

She was bristling with questions. Victor could almost feel it, like static in the air. And because he liked her so much, he chuckled and punched her on the arm.

“Wanna help me choose, Waves?”

Waverly just let out a squeal so loud and long that he would have covered his ears if it hadn’t made him laugh so hard. Waverly was easy to amuse. It was one of the many things he liked about his best friend.

Jim and The Host took that as their sign to go and do something else. The crow started readying the bar for the night by psychokinetically shifting the furniture around, while Jim went back into the kitchen, probably to prepare more food.

Waverly, for her part, dragged Victor over to a rickety-looking set of stairs and pushed him up, then followed close behind him. They hadn’t been in the relative privacy of the second floor for more than a second before the floodgates burst.

“Oh. Em. Dee. You have to tell me ev-ray-thang-uh!” Waverly said. Her eyes were wide with excitement, and at this point, Victor couldn’t even see her tail anymore, it was wagging so fast.

“Like, obviously not the trigger, but like, everything else! That you wanna say, of course, but like, everything! Please! Was it a lot of XP? Do you think it’s a good trigger? Will you use it a lot? Please say you’re going to use it! Oh, oh, and also, what skills did you get? You said choose, right, so more than one? Choice of three? Five?” She gasped. “TEN?”

Victor quietly opened his mouth and held up a finger, and Waverly finally came to an end. He waited for a second, but there was only excited panting and the swish-swish-swish of her tail.

“Yo, Waves,” he said, chuckling. “Chill. It’s just a level five skill.”

“How did you only hit level 5 now? Did you not use the library? Ohmydevs! Do you not know about the LVL? You do know about the LVL, right? Should I have told you? Oh devs, I should have, shouldn’t I?”

“I know the Libri, Waves. Chill,” he said, still grinning. “One question after the other, okay?”

Waverly just nodded eagerly, almost as if she were scared that if she spoke again, she wouldn’t stop for hours. Victor knew that was probably true, and that was another thing about her that he liked. She wanted to talk, yes, but she also wanted to know, and she wanted to give him space to talk when he felt like it.

Yeah, Waverly was pretty dope. There weren’t many others he’d offer to weigh in on a skill choice, no matter how low their level.

“I got three skills to choose from,” he said. That was pretty much standard. Sometimes the System gave you one skill only, and it was generally a powerful, universally useful skill. Other times, it gave you a selection. There were rumors that the System changed its behavior depending on what you chose, but since no one really liked to talk about their personal stats, research on it was scarce.

He focused and pulled the three skills offered to him to the front of his mind, and then he went through them one by one, voicing what he felt was true about them for Waverly’s benefit.

Choose wisely between these three skills: Haughty Sneer / Vampiric Hunger / Advanced Fencing

“So, first I got Haughty Sneer. It will mostly be useful in debates and stuff like that. Basically, it allows me to throw people off of their game in an argument, at base level. Could be really cool for class, I guess? Or perhaps for after college, you know, for working in a Dungeon.”

Waverly, for her part, just nodded, even though it looked like she was going to explode any second, trying to hold in her words.

“Then there’s Vampiric Hunger. I think it has something to do with blood-sucking, but I’m not quite sure that’s the only thing. This one feels…. I dunno. It has a pull.”

Waverly nodded at that, suddenly a bit more cautious. “Like, to be honest, it sounds kind of… strong, you know? Maybe even Integral. But also, like, it’s a bit weird, because… you know.”

‘It doesn’t really fit you.’ She didn’t say.

She would have been right. Integral skills were skills you could design an entire build around. His [Stealth] was like that. When he’d picked it as a kitten, he had been drawn to it, much like he was drawn to Vampiric Hunger right now. It had become part of who he was. It wasn’t mind control or anything. He just liked being stealthy. Sneaking around, listening to stuff he wasn’t supposed to hear. It was fun.

Actually, he enjoyed it perhaps a bit too much.

But Vampiric Hunger? That didn’t sound like him at all. He liked naps and staying out of sight, not running around, and… dunno. Feeding? Drinking blood? He liked blood as much as the next Vampire-Catboy, but he wasn’t crazy about it.

He shook his head.

“Last one: Advanced Fencing. Pretty standard.”

“Oh! You could use that later tonight!” Waverly said, her ears perking up as she wiggled her eyebrows.

Victor laughed at that. She knew as well as him that it was a dumb idea to pick a lifelong skill for one single night. She just… huh. She wanted him to come back, he guessed. Or…

“You could toootally win with it!” Waverly said, walking over and grabbing a broom from underneath one of the benches that stood against the wooden wall. Victor didn’t know why she knew where the brooms were in this place, but he could take a guess. Unaware of his thought, Waverly just assumed a very sloppy fencing stance and started stabbing the air with her wooden “rapier”, then tossed it to him. He grabbed it out of the air and put it aside with a chuckle.

“Nahhhh, not for me, Waves. I don’t like fencing. It feels… I don’t know. Pretentious? A bit fake, I guess. Do you even allow weapons at Fight Night?”

Waverly nodded. “Yep! We got Scrolls.”

“Ah,” Victor said. That made sense. [Scrolls of Dark Resurrection] were almost a commodity these days, if they hadn’t still been regulated because they needed them for the Dungeons. Victor didn’t ask where the CrowBar got them from, because he was sure he wasn’t supposed to know. He suspected that shady Crab in the back alley had something to do with it.

“Anyhow,” he said. “No fencing for me. So it’s probably the sneer.”

“Oh,” Waverly said, her smile growing a bit fainter, like a cloud had moved in front of the moon. “I guess you could use it in the duel, too! You know, throw people off.”

“Waverly!” Victor laughed. “I’m not going to win that fight!”

“Why not?” Waverly asked, and she sounded almost affronted on his behalf. “You’re like, level 19 now, right!? That’s plenty! You can totally win!”

“Yeah, but you said it when we first met. Levels aren’t everything. Give it to me straight. Are there any other first-timers tonight?”

Waverly did that thing where she lowered her head just a little bit when she was feeling bashful about something. “No…” she admitted. “But still, like! I believe in you!”

Victor grinned. Of course, she did, so he went over and punched her on the arm.

“And I appreciate that. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m not going to win. I’m just going to go down there, give it a good try, and then hang out with you and the guys after.”

But his own words rung hollow, somehow, and not just to Waverly. There was something wrong with what he’d just said, and he couldn’t really tell what.

“Alright!” Waverly said, bumping shoulders with him. “I mean, I really appreciate you fighting in the first place. It kinda means a lot, so, like, I just want you to be comfortable, and not stress you out, yeah?”

Victor just frowned and didn’t answer.

So, you’re going to pick Sneer, right?” Waverly asked, a bit more concerned now, but when he put up his finger, she kept quiet. He shot her a quick smile to show him he appreciated that, but then his mind went back to circling around that peculiar feeling that was growing in his heart.

He… didn’t want to lose that fight. Yes, it would be easy and quick, and he could just relax after, but… he didn’t want to relax.

He wanted to win.

A sudden, vehement truth settled onto his soul, like a cat’s eyes settle onto a curious new toy.

“…Actually, I’ll pick Hunger,” he found himself saying, and the System obliged.

Vampiric Hunger

Sign of the Hunger / Sign of the Predator.

You are hungry for life, Fledgling.

(F) Rank - Drain the Will to Live from those who would oppose you. Requires Physical contact.