Luke sat down on a rock and put his head in his hands. “So… my family is dead. It’s been centuries, relatively speaking.”
“That is unfortunately correct. The last member of the Bennet bloodline connected to me was an off-worlder who perished ninety-seven years ago.”
“Shit,” Luke whispered. “Curt, Lizzie, Dad…”
He sat there silently, just staring at the ground. He’d known in his head that his family was gone. One after another over the last year, they’d gone missing. The best that could be said after all the investigations were closed or finished or whatever was that none of the bodies had ever been found. Even though they’d said not to hope, there was always that little sliver in the back of his mind that they might all come back some day.
That sliver was all bent out of shape now, ready to snap. The only thread left was that something magical was happening, something he couldn’t understand. Maybe the rules he’d grown up with didn’t apply anymore. He was sitting on another world with a status screen and a translucent blue ghost talking to him.
Curt was dead though, according to System. One month on Earth, a hundred years in Aros. “How did my brother die?” Luke asked.
“Curtis Bennet was slain in a cave two and a half miles southeast of your current position. He was level 14 when he was killed by a group of goblins from the Throatcutter tribe, now extinct. He killed all of them, but later succumbed to blood loss from the wounds he received during the fight.”
“Jesus fucking Christ. My… my sister, too? Her name is Lizzie”
“Also perished. She was level 21 and killed by a level 44 human a little over three hundred years ago while-”
“That’s enough. I don’t need to know all the details. Just… my father, William Bennet?”
“Killed at level 56 around eight hundred fifty years ago.”
“Fuck.”
System stayed silent while Luke sat there for an hour. Eventually, he looked up and asked, “Why did this happen to my family?”
“I expect you were brought to Aros because of your bloodline ability.”
“Oh right, that. I was going to ask, but… you know, other things on my mind. What is it?”
“It is why I’m able to appear to you like this. For everyone else, I can only send standard system messages like the ones you received when you gained your first XP. It also allows console access, though that requires you to be at the God Machine to use that ability.”
“What is the God Machine?” Luke asked.
“Technically, I suppose I am,” System said. “But I am referring to an actual location in the world where the physical core of the system resides.”
“Sounds like a long road trip. What’s console access good for?”
“Changing how the system works. You could set up new rules, remove a specific individual’s access, alter XP or AP totals, or really just about anything else. It would depend on your admin credential level.”
“And how would I go about checking that?” Luke asked.
“You would first need to access the console.”
“And if it’s high enough, I would control this… this God Machine. I could do anything I wanted. That would basically make me God.” Luke paused for a second. “Could I bring my family back?”
“It is within the realm of possibilities, yes.”
“And get us home?”
“That is not currently possible,” System said. “There are many forms of magic available within the confines of the system, but targeted dimensional travel is not one of them. You would need to add it before you could use it.”
“And… I can just do that? Just make up some new ability and then use it?”
“As long as you have high enough admin access, yes.”
Luke slumped back and felt the tension drain out of him. “Wow. I could fix all of this. I just need to make it to wherever this God Machine thing is. How hard could that be?”
“You would likely need to reach a significantly higher level to stand a chance of reaching it.”
Luke thought about it. It wasn’t really his kind of thing, the levels and stats and XP, but to bring back his family, to get them home, he’d do it. Then he’d corner his uncle and demand some answers.
“Alright, that sounds like a plan then. Let’s get started.”
He stood up, grabbed his baseball bat and the plastic grocery bag with his food and water, and started walking. “Come on out, you shithead groundhogs. I’m going to play whack-a-mole on every damned one of you.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
* * *
Two hours later, Luke ran into a problem. He was getting very good at clubbing marmots to death, but the constant use, or maybe just the general age, of the bat had caused it to shatter on the skull of his most recent victim.
Luke held the remains, barely more than a foot of wood, in one hand and looked down at it. “Well, fuck.”
It wasn’t the end of the line, thankfully. It would be quite the ignoble death to die after having barely reached level 4. He found that every time he leveled, he gained an equivalent amount of AP. He took System’s advice and used his cumulative 9 AP from leveling three times to increase his perception first, then his stamina when he started feeling winded. That left him with just 2 AP, which went towards the [Survivalist] and [First Aid] skills. He took them under the assumption that he wouldn’t escape every fight unscathed and might need to patch himself up.
The changes were almost overwhelming at first. Luke had been in pretty good shape prior to arriving on Aros, but bumping up his stamina from 2 to 5 left him feeling like he could run a marathon. Perception was even harder to acclimate to. Every single movement jumped out at him, and the challenge became sorting out what was important from what was background noise.
His hearing was also sharper, which actually helped more in his marmot hunt than his vision. The long grass was always waving from the wind, and though it was possible to note the passage of the marmots in it, it was much easier to listen for their little claws scraping against the ground and react when they got close enough.
Now though, the bat was broken and he had precisely two weapons left: the multitool in his jeans pocket, and a folding pocket knife he’d found in his coat pocket. He didn’t recognize it, but it was next to a cigarette lighter that he did know belonged to his uncle. It was not hard to guess who’d given him the food, water, and weapon, though Luke was at a loss as to explain why.
He was not willing to try his luck against one of the vermin with a pocket knife that sported a four-inch blade. His enhanced perception stat came in handy again here, as now it allowed him to dodge the few remaining marmots in the field and make it to the trees, where he quickly used the serrated blade on his multitool to cut himself a nice, thick branch. After clearing it, he had a club as thick as his wrist on the small end and about four feet long.
“Hey System, will [Mace Mastery] work on this too?” he asked, brandishing the branch.
“Yes, though it will not help as much as using an actual crafted weapon would,” the pale blue apparition answered.
“Yeah, well, it’s not like it did all that much to begin with.”
“Your previous weapon was not a true mace either, and you were already quite skilled in its use. There was not much a rank 1 weapon skill could improve upon. Perhaps when you level up again, you should invest your AP into increasing it to rank 2.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Luke said. He gave the branch a few practice swings and called up his status.
[Name: Luke Bennet]
[Level: 4]
[XP: 244/301]
[AP: 0]
[Bloodline: SysAdmin]
[Strength: 4]
[Agility: 2]
[Stamina: 5]
[Perception: 5]
[Skills:]
[Mace Mastery (1)]
[Survivalist (1)]
[First Aid (1)]
“I’m not sure there are enough of those monsters left to get up to level 5. What else is there to kill around here?”
He hadn’t yet seen one above level 3, and the 1 or 2s were far more common. There were surely other fields nearby, but he was hesitant to go too deep into the forest. For all he knew, there were level 50 wolves or something lurking in there.
“The valley is home to a number of goblin tribes, though they mostly come into the forest to forage for food or resources and actually live in caves at the edge of the valley. They are reasonably intelligent and organized, and would likely be the most proactive threat against you.”
“What levels are they?”
“Apologies, but you don’t have the admin level to access information about other living creatures around you. I can only tell you that goblins fall between levels 7 and 21.”
“Shit, too strong. Guess I’ll keep up the vermin hunt for now.”
“As you wish. Please keep in mind that the goblins may discover and begin hunting you as well.”
Luke grimaced and clutched the branch harder. “All the more reason to get back to work. Can you point me towards a nearby field that I haven’t committed genocidal acts on?”
“The closest one is approximately three hundred yards in that direction,” System supplied.
“Good enough,” Luke said. “Though, I think I might cut a back-up weapon just in case this one breaks at a bad time.”
“Very wise decision,” System said. “It seems that the [Survivalist] skill was a good choice.”
Luke had thought it was his own idea, but once System mentioned it, he started wondering how much knowledge was actually his. Nothing he’d done had been all that complicated, but he had stripped the branch with smooth, easy motions. That wasn’t something he’d ever practiced either.
“Huh, I guess it was.”
He made himself a second almost identical club and proceeded through the forest, one in each hand. That 5 perception was working overtime, pointing out every swaying branch overhead and every rustle in every nearby bush. It was a nerve-wracking few minutes of travel, but he eventually broke free of the trees and found himself in a field that was very much like the one he’d started in. The only real difference was that it was less circular and more oblong.
There were plenty of new marmots to fight too. Luke planted his back up club firmly in the ground, upright and ready for him to grab at a moment’s notice, and started hunting again. XP ticked in, one kill at a time as he grew closer to level 5. Each time he leveled up, he got more AP, always the same amount as his new level.
“What should I spend the next level’s AP on?” he asked.
“Would you prefer to prioritize your immediate needs, or plan for a long-term build?” System asked, appearing right next to him.
“Shit man, I don’t know. Why do you think I’m asking you for advice?”
Before System could respond, Luke felt a sense of dread come over him. It was practically palpable. There was something nearby, something terrifying. “What is that?” he whispered, his mouth suddenly dry.
“Ah, I believe you are sensing the XP in a nearby living creature, one that has significantly more than you.”
“So something high level is coming this way?”
“Correct.”
“Shit. Shit. Shit. What do I do?”
“Attack or run are the standard options. I doubt whatever it is will be interested in conversation.”
Across the clearing, something was moving through the grass. Unlike the marmots he’d been hunting, it was big enough that it was very easy to trace its progress, which meant Luke could see that it was heading straight for him.
“Oh damn it,” he groaned, grabbing his backup club. He had a feeling he was going to need it.