Running the 3 miles to the next bridge was surprisingly easy with the upgrades, I had always prided myself in staying fit even after getting out of the service. I’m almost 42 so by all rights I should feel like I’m close to dieing running at the pace I am with an maybe 160 lbs of woman and 60 lbs of bag on my back. I've already overtaken my peak physical performance compared to when I was in my prime. It felt oddly good, like I was getting younger instead of older.
I take a look in Hectors direction, he seems even less winded than I am. It’s hard to understand how the stats work. You’d think with stronger muscles you’d be able to push harder to gain more speed but even with all the extra points into BS I’m still faster. By the looks of it muscle strength is a combination of Strength, Constitution and endurance. BC looks to be the dexterity and agility based stat.
Bringing up the nanite screen in the corner of my vision I look through my vitals. Heart rate is only 107, I start mentally scrolling through the screen. Pausing at a few of the tidbits I’ve found interesting to keep track of, body fat 11%, telomere degradation 46%. Sighing at the last entry, telomeres are one of the things responsible for aging, not the getting wrinkles part, the more deadly kind, cancer for example. The higher the %, the higher your chances are of getting some type of cancer or other age-related illness. So much for getting younger, the degradation spiked over the last couple days, if that trend continues I probably wont last another 10 years. I do a quick scan of the area for any mutts, ‘I’m more likely to die from these things rather than anything else’ The thought coming unbidden.
The bridge just came into view, it’s one of the old style bridges with metal supports along the whole top-side instead of the usual suspension type bridge. It might be ugly and use a ton of materials but at least it’ll last for some time. Relief is evident in the group, as we’ve had to skirt around 4 groups of mutts and fight just as many. They wander randomly until the find one of their own and about 60% of the time they part ways but if they stop nearby each other they have a tendency to follow. I’m starting to see how the horde formed. The smallest was a group of 4, the largest was a group of probably around 30. Coming to a slow trot we round the rusted pillars on the edge of the bridge.
“Fuck!” I yell without thinking. There's a group of 2, oddly short, human shaped mutts already turned in our direction. “Run!” Hector and I kick off the ground from our previous direction. An ear piercing screech sounds behind us. Cringing at the sound we round the edge of the bridge as a couple large dog shaped mutts cut us off. Skidding to a stop I go to change direction, just as I take my first step in another direction I hear another screech rip from the things throat. Another two mutated animal cuts us off, the other two circling behind us.
Running out of options I do a quick sweep with my eyes before they latch onto a small maintenance catwalk. I sprint towards it, trusting Hector to follow, the dogs follow while the two small humanoids watch from a distance. Jumping onto the catwalk we start to sprint, it’s only a little over the width of 2 people so with the girls on our backs we have to go single file. Heading down a right turn the catwalk leads to the underside of the bridge before hitting the center and making another left.
What I see next makes my blood run cold. It ends at the center of the bridge, walled off by a section of steel. The catwalk must have been used to put the oversized rivets into the connecting portions of the bridge. Shouting over my shoulder, “Dead end, get the girls behind us, I’ll take the right.” With a turn I drop my hands and let the redhead down, freeing my glaive from the band I put on the pack.
Hector follows up behind a half second after, I lunge out at the chasing mutts and spear the one on the left side of the catwalk. The second one jumps, it’s maw opening wide. With a bit of panic I angle the shaft of my weapon, tip still buried in the other one, to intercept the incoming attack. Unable to completely get the shaft in the way I continue pushing it upwards while I bend my knees to drop down. His jaws snap inches above my head, the shaft of my spear catching his back legs sending him for a tumble. Hector, having gotten his axe swings down onto the beast. Cutting the thing in two with little resistance. I push the mutt still attached to my glaive over the edge of the catwalk, letting its own weight remove it from the blade. The other two mutts, thankfully just as dumb, rush us with nothing but offense on their minds. Making for easy targets.
Realizing in my haste that I effectively tossed a stat boost into the river I grit my teeth, angry at the waste, even if I had to clear the catwalk to fight properly. Hector starts forward, gripping my glaive and turning back to the two women, “follow us up, keep a small bit of distance while we clear the way.” Not waiting for a reply I followed behind Hector back towards the two things still on the bridge.
We round the pillar of the bridge once again, instantly sprinting to close the distance before the thing gets a chance to summon more of his minions. Hector, in the lead, takes a baseball swing at the screecher who keeps summoning the animals. Right as the axe connects it rebounds, pushed away by a thin blue bubble. Shocked at the outcome we both freeze for a second, the unexpected shield forcing our minds to process exactly what just happened. The second humanoid takes advantage of our pause and raises a hand. Fire comes to life over its open palm, growing half the size of a baseball before it sends to flying towards Hector.
Eyes wide he stumbles back and to the side, still unbalanced from the rebound off the shield, trying to dodge the incoming ball of fire. The move makes it miss his throat , if it was traveling in a straight line it may have missed him completely but the lob made it fall in an arc and it impacted him on the left shoulder. The fire hisses, burning through his shirt and scorching the skin, I expected an impact but there wasn’t even a bit of weight behind the attack. Roaring in pain and angry Hector abandons the shielded one knowing he can’t really do any damage at the moment in favor of taking out the damage dealer.
Seeing his moment the shield comes down and the screecher lets out another of his cries. A scaled cat comes running from the nearby houses. I take a swing at the screecher but his cry ends and the shield pops back into place. With no time to try and break his shield I meet the scaled cat slashing in a horizontal arc. The big cat jumps over the attack, landing in front of me while I’m wide open. It’s claws rake through my midsection, my attempted backpedal failing to get me out of the way. Contracting the muscles that were nearly cut through I tense up and shove the spike on the butt of the glaive straight through the cat, the adrenaline rushing through me dulling the pain.
Turning to the shielded screecher I felt for my mana, pushing it into the tip of my glaive I thrust straight at the little bastard hoping my mana imbued strike will at least weaken the shield. To my surprise the strike penetrates the blue bubble with only a bit of resistance, catching the screecher near the center of the chest. Giving the thing a kick to get it off my weapon I look over to Hector only to see that he’s already finished his side and is heading towards me.
I look to his shoulder and grimace, instead of the usual fantasy fireball that seems to act more like a shell of compressed with a bit of heat this stuff was much nastier, acting like napalm and just sticking to the target and burning inward. Instead of getting pushed back the fire ate a good half inch into his shoulder before running out of juice. I point to the opposite side of the bridge, “lets head to the toll booth, we can patch up there.”
The two women walk up to us, clearly winded from carrying the heavy packs. Wincing I grab mine from the redhead. Using my core after the cat nearly gutted me hurts like hell but even injured I can move faster than the them with the pack. Hector does the same, opting to sling the bag over his right shoulder. Taking a moment to collect the stones, calling up the hud mentally and blinking I took a look at the stones, luckily I didn’t need to wink, it was just a coincidence that it activated when I did it before. The dogs dropped 3 red stones and the two humanoids both dropped the blue pyramids, “cards?”
The confusion in Hectors voice makes me turn lying underneath the closest blue stone was a card, looking at the disintegrated remains of the screecher there are two cards.
Skill Card
Blue Magic
Inferior Mana Barrier
Skill Card
Blue Magic
Call Allies
With a bit of glee I jog over to the other little blue gleam on the bridge where the blue stone is at, underneath is another card.
Skill Card
Blue Magic
Inferior Fireball
~Eeeeeeeeeee~
Another piercing shriek sounds behind us, “grab the stuff and run, give the girls a red.” We got lucky this time and got 2 red pyramids and one of the round stones. Giving each girl a red pyramid, if it followed the same as the blue then they’d likely get 1 in BS and BC each. Not knowing what to do they stand there dumbly for a second, “just crush it in your hands. They both squeeze, the pyramids shatter, the pieces turning to fog that seeped into their skin.
They both turn a shade of scarlet, blood rushing to the surface to let out the additional heat that comes with a stat change. Even their legs had turned a shade of pink. If one point in each can do that they must have only had a value of around 6 or 7. Not willing to waste any more time I shifted the pack, “we’ve got to go now, adjust to your new stats while we run.”
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The screeching was getting closer, we wouldn’t be able to stop by the toll booth at this rate. Running past it, with a jolt of pain in my stomach every step we take, I try to concentrate on my breathing to distract myself from the pain. It’s much slower going now that we’re injured, after a couple minutes the screeching finally stops. Another few minutes of running and we stop to take a break, the women are getting winded and we’re already starting to leave the city behind. Hector and I are also becoming fatigued from running with injuries.
The edge of the city had plenty of apartment and housing complexes but now that we were on the far edge it was mostly family homes or duplexes. Still being fairly close to the city we were in the somewhat richer housing area. Close enough to the city to be able to commute with little hassle, far enough to not have to deal with all the things that come with living in the big city, which now includes hordes of ravenous mutants.
Finding a relatively undamaged house, all four of us finally settle down. “You ladies think you can help patch us up?” They both look at us, a bit of hesitation, before they each move towards one of us. “There’s some gauze wrap in the bag, we don’t have any alcohol to clean the wounds but there might be some in the bathrooms.” I pause for a second in thought, “If there's any liquor we could use that as well.”
The girls turn and each go to search for things that could help us clean and dress the cuts and burns. They return shortly after, “By the way, the names Allen.”
“And mines Hector” he says, giving a slight wave of his hand, seemingly disinterested, turning his gaze back towards the window after a furtive glance at the two women.
The brunette brushes her hand behind her ear with her fingers. “Uhh, yeah, I’m Victoria, Vicky for short.”
The redhead brushes off some invisible dust from her clothes for a few moments before replying. In a quiet voice she says, “My names Kate, nice to meet you.”
Hearing the shyness in her voice I can’t help but smile. I give them both a once-over, not having a chance to do so before. Vicky looks to be in her early thirties, only a few signs of aging visible that give it away. Long legs for her size, normal physique, well proportioned a bit on the shorter side at 5”1. The redhead on the other hand was 5”4 who was just as well proportioned as her friend and a size larger in all the right places. Tearing my eyes away from her I distract myself by taking a deep breath and looking down at my stomach. ‘Yep, that’s an instant fix for that problem,’ I think to myself.
With a sigh I stand up and struggle to take the shirt off, the blood had started to dry so it’s sticking to the skin and some to the cuts themselves. Taking a second because I know it’s going to be painful I lift the shirt and take it off in a quick motion, pulling off the scabs that had just starting covering the wound. The pain makes me nearly lose my balance, ‘was it that bad when i got cut?’
Collapsing back onto the floor, Kate quickly comes up and starts cleaning my chest and stomach. “You shouldn’t have done that, we could have just cut the shirt open.” When I open my mouth to reply she dumps the rubbing alcohol on me, all thoughts escape me as all I can think about is the intense stinging covering the front half of my body. “Argh!” I nearly scream but clench my teeth. Suffering through as she wipes and cleans the blood and dirt off of me. A few minutes later I have my chest and stomach covered in bandages. It’s not even or neat but it’s clean and covered at least.
Glaring at the redhead, she smiles at me, turning around to go sit on the couch with a satisfied expression. Not understanding what I did to earn her ire, the smirk on her face is enough to show that she feels like it’s evened out, whatever ‘it’ is. Deciding that the best course of action is to just ignore it I grab a spare shirt from my bag, “thanks for, uhhh, patching me up” I say while looking down at the shoddy wrapping she did. She twists a bit and shyly says “No problem.”
Not sure what to think about the constant attitude switching, she went from shy to fairly confident, if a bit mean, right back to shy. Was it because she was busy doing something, or whatever I had done to irritate her made her shyness fade? Abandoning the useless train of thought I pull out one of the spare strength crystals from my bag, my BS has been sitting at 19 while we were running, I figured it was time to even it out to 20. Crushing it in my hand my body warms, flashing in the top left corner of my sight is a notification icon. Not sure what to make of it I open my status screen.
User Allen
Level 1
Profession none
HP 87%
Mana 43%
Body Strength 20 ***
Body Control 31 +
Mental Strength 22 +
Mental Control 22 +
Stat Points available 0
Character Initialization 1/4
“It changed!”
All three jump at my shout, too excited to care that I probably just scared the hell out of all three, I sit up. “Open your status,” waiting for them I look over the changes, looking a the body stats they have 3 stars over them. Focusing on the stats brings up another window.
Genetic predisposition found
Extreme fast twitch muscle tissue
Note: Due to the speed at which your muscles are able to move and react The System has deemed it a specialized disposition. All future crystal gains for body strength will be transferred to body control at 50% efficiency and stored until a full point has been accrued. BS has been capped. Trait gained - Second Breath
Second breath Lv1 - Stopping for a single breath of time after stamina consumption mitigates 10%* of stamina usage over the last 3* seconds, can only occur once every 10* seconds.
Note: values with * denote that the values will change as the skill level increases
windows pop up too quickly for me to read them, first is the tooltip, followed by the skill and finally info on my so-called genetic predisposition. I stop dead, ‘Capped? As in I can’t increase that stat anymore, but Hectors physical stats are already both higher than mine.’ Thoughts flowing one after another too fast to keep track of. “I hit a stat cap for body strength at 20…” Letting my words trail off and letting the info sink in, Hector paused, not understanding at first, his face hardened as realization dawned. “Do you think its a stat cap based on level?” I shrug at his question, “we can’t tell until we gain levels, speaking of which, we’ve killed a ton of these fuckers, where’s all the experience?”
Hector looks over my stat screen, and points at Character Initialization, “It says ¼, and you’ve found the cap for ¼ of your stats, or one out of four. If I had to guess, right now is like an alpha test, it’s testing the system and us at the same time to figure out how to best implement it’s design. The changes in the system support that guess, even though leveling is unlocked we, the characters if you will, are going through a tutorial stage that doesn’t give experience.”
“If that’s the case then that means all the shit that’s out there now is currently just tutorial opponents. Capping stats in the beginning like this is similar to character creation, only our stats are set by our bodies limits and predispositions.” Pausing I flip over the facts in my head, the pit of my stomach growing heavier. “So basically we aren’t even at a strength where we could start to contend with the lowest level, easiest enemies that we are most likely expected to go against…”
After finishing my thought the room is silent, every new realization about what’s happened and what’s to come is making the atmosphere worse. The system is giving us the strength to fight back but at the same time it feels like it brought what we are currently going through to us forcibly. ‘Is the rest of what’s to come just a sick game being played out by the system or is this preparation for an inevitability?’
I had read too many light novels to not know that sometimes the system is a support, while other times the system was created by some big badass who just wants to keep you under his thumb for all eternity. Figuring out which was probably going to be a huge indicator of how everything was going to play out.
Fiddling with the red BS stones in my bag I toss it to Hector. “You should just go ahead and use all these, I’ll only get about half of what they’d do for you.” Taking the spoils that we had been collecting along the way he uses them one by one. Before pausing, he opens his status screen and pushes it in my direction, along with a notification.
Genetic predisposition found
High density muscle tissue
Note: User possesses unique musculature that gains strength via hyperplasia as opposed to hypertrophy. Trait gained, Monstrous Physique
Clicking on each of the words a tooltip pops up for each.
Hyperplasia - Strength gain is primarily due to an increase in quantity of existing muscle fibers
Hypertrophy - Strength gain is primarily due to an increase in size of existing muscle fibers
Monstrous Physique Lv1 - User possesses a body that can exceed level (body) stat caps by 5%* leaning primarily towards body strength.
User Hector
Level 1
Profession none
HP 90%
Mana 100%
Body Strength 36 *
Body Control 25 ***
Mental Strength 9 +
Mental Control 13 +
Stat Points available 0
Character Initialization ¼
“It’s strange”
Hector looks up from his screen towards me, brow furrowed, “what’s strange?”
“The skills, stats, traits, they all seem so well ordered.”
“I don’t get what you mean, it’s a system it’s supposed to be ordered.”
“That's the thing, all the things we’ve been given are so orderly, as if it was made and perfected, adding only slight tweaks to make it easier for us in general. The execution of the system itself with how I got the smartass quest in the beginning. How leveling has been unlocked but experience can’t be gained right now.”
Pausing to catch my breath Hector nods, “It’s like the system wasn’t prepared and something had to step in to help smooth things over. Like when one of the newbies would break the network by using the wrong protocol and we’d have to come in and fix it”
“It feels more like when something unexpected happens and you have to scramble to support the change. Like the unplanned switch between python2 to python3.” With a laugh he leans back, “yeah that was a nasty one. Still remember how pissed you were that they did that during down hours on a weekend. You kept griping about 36 hours of no sleep”
Glancing to the two women they seem to be absorbed in a conversation of their own. Noticing the silence in the room the Vicky looks up, as she does Kate also turns towards us. “Yes?” Vicky asks. Put on the spot I look out the window. The sky was already darkening, had it really already been another entire day? “It’s already starting to get dark out, I was going to suggest staying the night here. There are 3 bedrooms upstairs, I’ll watch here for the first 4 hours and switch with Hector. You two can share a room or have your own if you’d prefer. It honestly might help to share, sense of security from having someone you know nearby might help.”
“Yeah..” Vicky replied, pausing as if she wanted to say something else. Her and Kate both went upstairs locking themselves into the master bedroom apparently choosing to share a room. I chuckled, “they took the best room.” Hector just gives me a smile, grabbing his axe and heading upstairs, “wake me up in 4, if I don’t wake up first.”
Heading into the kitchen I grab a stool, it has a single support with a round base making it look like a dumbbell turned sideways. I break off the bottom half, leaving the seat attached to the pole. Satisfied I sit it on the floor before putting my weight on it. If I started nodding off or fell asleep I would almost instantly fall over. Settling back for the long haul I lean back, ready to hold out for the night. Wondering who should get what skills, we only had 3 skills but 4 people. Well I had a few hours left to think about it and I'd tell hector to give it some thought as well.