“Hello? Can you hear me?”

Sam almost jumped out of his skin.

“What? Who’s there?”

“It’s me! Rax. We can talk mentally now that I am in your party. For some reason, it's as if I already was a part of the System. I know how to work it. I don’t know why though.”

Sam closed his eyes and tried to connect with the reptile through the party link. It felt very strange, but he was able to extend a tendril of his awareness out through the System and into Rax’s mind.

“Hello? Are you there?”

Rax nodded.

“Yes. I'm here, and I can hear you clearly.”

Sam was satisfied with this. It would be useful in a fight as there would be too much noise and distractions to talk normally, but talking mentally required no medium at all. Rax got off of the table, landing with a thud. Not only had the creature gotten bigger, he had gotten a lot heavier as well. They walked into the front room to find Jeffrey still working on his machine gun.

“Hey. Check this out.” Sam said.

“If it's that damn lizard again-”

“I’m not a lizard. I’m a herpetopede.”

“What the hell!” Jeffrey jumped off of the seat and snatched up his shotgun from the floor. Cocking it, he pointed it at Rax. Before Sam could do anything, Jeffrey pulled the trigger. The shotgun fired with a deafening bang and Rax was blown backwards.

“No! Why did you do that?” Sam screamed as he rushed to the side of the lizard. He blinked. There were only a few shallow cuts. The bullets lay on the floor next to Rax, warped and bent. Checking his party list, he saw that his companion had only lost 20 health. This was the first inkling that Sam had about just how screwed humanity was.

“Never mind. He’s fine. But how?”

Rax got to his many feet with a grunt.

“That scruffy human is quite the specimen. Aggressive, unkempt and mateless.”

Jeffrey and Sam stared at the lizard in astonishment. Sam started laughing uncontrollably.

“What? Was it something that I said?”

“Hah! Jeffrey, you just got dissed by a lizard!”

“Not a lizard,” Rax said. The others ignored him. Jeffrey snarled at Rax, but Sam could tell that he had found it amusing as well.

“What are our plans? We can’t stay in this shack forever. We need to level up.” Sam said, trying to steer the conversation back to something more useful.

“Well, I was going to use this machine gun to take out some of them gremlins, but now that I saw how tough Rax was, it's probably useless. It’s going to be inefficient to kill the gremlins anyway and we need to find some stronger creatures.” Jeffrey answered. He threw the massive gun to the side in disgust, lifting it like it was a child’s toy.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Those weapons in the shed worked pretty well,” Sam suggested. “Wait, where did you get that healing crystal from? Do you have any more?” Jeffrey shrugged.

“Some big bastard dropped it. It was shaped like a gremlin, but the thing was about my size. I gave it the good ol’ double barrel treatment and then a few more times for good measure. It was very soft, but it seemed to empower the other gremlins around it. I remember that it had opened its mouth, like it was going to say something, but I shut it up real good. That’s why I’m level 8. It pushed me up from level 7 to the next one.”

Sam was intrigued by the thought of the gremlin commander or whatever the thing was.

“Did you get a chance to analyze it?" Sam asked Jeffrey.

“No, but my post battle log said that it was a mature gremlin.”

“So the small ones are basically babies?”

Jeffrey nodded. Sam wasn't sure about how he felt on the subject of killing baby creatures, no matter how vicious they were. Then he remembered the corpses in the town and his heart hardened.

“Well, they tried to kill us, so it's only fair that we kill them.”

“Damn right,” Jeffrey said. Sam and Rax left the shack, looking for some gremlins to kill. Jeffrey had stayed behind, professing that he needed to work on his gun. They walked for over 20 minutes before they found a trace of a gremlin, it was dead. There were no more in sight and Sam felt a chill run down his spine as he surveyed the empty woods.

Suddenly, he was bowled over by something. He was about to stab it with his machete, but he saw that it was Rax. The lizard had pushed him out of the way of a crossbow bolt that had struck a small sapling, where it vibrated. He looked at the source of the projectile, a woman in tattered jeans and a t shirt. She pouted as she looked at him.

“Pity, I guess I have to do this the hard way.” The woman pulled out a katana from a sheath as she holstered her bow and advanced on Sam. There was no point in trying to negotiate with her, the woman was clearly a murderer, as evinced by the dried blood on her blade. A crazed look overtook her as she neared him. She then did something that Sam had only ever seen in bad anime shows. The woman raised the blade to her mouth and ran her tongue down it, before laughing maniacally.

“Turns out, humans give far more levels than those monsters. You and your companion seem to be quite the juicy treat.” A red glow flared around her blade, only giving Sam a split second’s worth of warning. The weapon flashed forwards, far too quickly for him to see, and it was only a desperate jerk of his body that made the blade miss his neck. Instead, it bit deep into his left arm, sliding through without a hint of resistance. He tried to strike back with his machete, but the woman dodged it. Panicked, he analyzed the woman.

Lena Scarlet

Level 12

Human

She was double his level, and she had the skills to match it. It was very unlikely that he was going to survive this. She sent out her blade again, like a mosquito’s proboscis searching for blood. Sam rolled away and the sword came down on the ground next to him. The blade stuck into the dirt, but she ripped it out with ease and reversed her grip. Sam was in a bad position and he was unable to dodge in time.

He raised his hands desperately and something happened. A wave of blue energy rippled over his forearms and coated them with an almost transparent sheen of power. The sword crashed into them and he was sent flying backwards. Instead of having become a double amputee, all he had to show was a thin line of red running down his forearms. He knew that he couldn't use it again though, as his mana was almost out.

The woman let out a disgruntled snort and she prepared to charge him, but Rax latched onto her ankle with his fangs. The snake centipede hybrid tore at her limb and a spray of blood shot out, covering the surrounding grass with a thick patina of red. The woman cursed and she backhanded the lizard, knocking him backwards. He rose, unsteady, but she ignored him.

“Huh, I guess I misjudged you. I haven't found someone with any skill other than the analysis one so far. That means that you will give me a lot more power than the others.”

“Just how many humans have you killed so far?” Sam said, not really wanting to know the answer.

“Heh. I lost track after the first hundred.”

Sam felt sick. More importantly, a roiling rage filled his body. Humanity had to stay together if they were to survive, not turn on each other like rabid dogs. If this woman survived, she would cause havoc upon the world. Not only that, but there were probably many more like her out there. His veins started to pulse in time with his heart and he felt the world slip away.