Tom buckled Chloe into the middle seat as he and Alex sat on either side of his little sister. Skippy sat in the shotgun while Hector tried to squeeze himself into the driver's seat. Lucy was sitting in the back of the car, just behind Chloe.
"Hey Hector, are you sure you can do this?" Skippy asked.
"Abaddon."
"What," SKippy asked.
"When I'm like this, you call me Abaddon." Hector no Abaddon stated.
"Are you still roleplaying?" Skippy asked. "Every game, it's Abaddon this, Abaddon that."
"It's comfortable," Abaddon protested.
"Leave it, skippy, just let Abaddon have his thing. We don't tell you to shut up." Tom said
"Hey," Skippy protested
"Despite how much we may want to." Tom sighed
"I'm still here, asshole." Skippy moaned.
Abaddon smashed his foot onto the gas, and the car flew forward, shoving everyone into their seats. As he pulled the car out of the driveway, they smashed into the trash cans with enough speed that they nearly ended up in the driveway across the street.
"What the frack man?!" Alex called out. "This is my dad's car. If he comes back and finds this thing wrecked, I am dead."
"Sorry," Abaddon grumbled. It's these bloody feet. It's like I'm wearing flippers."
"At least you aren't slurring like a retard anymore." Skippy groaned.
"Chloe, are you ok?" Tom asked.
"That was awesome. Do it again. Do it again." Chloe called out.
Abaddon crashed into another set of trash cans, possibly on purpose.
"Abaddon, if your bad driving kills us, I'm going to haunt you," Alex said
"Wouldn't he be dead too?" Skippy asked.
"He's the tank, remember," Tom muttered. "If anyone can survive a car crash, it will be him."
Abaddon actively ignored them as his new clumsy lizard hands worked to steer the car on the icy road.
The car slid into and then out of the neighbor's parking lot and onto the road.
"Hey, is there anyone we want to pick up?" Skippy asked.
"Alex's Dad and brother are in Vancouver, and we aren't picking up my parents," Tom stated.
"Ummm, my parents are fine," Abaddon said sheepishly
"What does that mean?" Skippy asked.
"I don't want to talk about it," Abaddon said.
"Why do you never talk about your parents?" Skippy asked.
"I don't want to talk about it," Abaddon said.
"Just leave it alone, Skippy. What about your dad?" Tom said.
"I don't even know where he is," Skippy said.
"Alright, so no one is getting picked up, and we're going straight to Hopkins. Abaddon away," Alex cheered as Abaddon crashed into another set of garbage cans.
"Hey buddy, you want to go back, I think you missed a couple," Skippy said.
Tom briefly wondered how it came to this. Gliding down the road, somehow hitting every single trash can along the way with a giant lizard man bundled up in winter gear in the driver's seat.
The car slowly petered down the once familiar road, but now it was all so different. The blue sky was a slightly different color, and two moons, one orangish red and a pale blue one, sat in the sky. Neither of them appeared to be the moon Tom had grown up with, and if this were Noralon, there would be one more moon, a green moon somewhere up there.
Zoo animals roamed in the distance, moving through the suburbs like a new safari zone. The group could see places where animals had attacked people, fresh corpses still on the ground. But those were still in the minority. Many more animal corpses littered people's lawns. Boars, buffalos, hyenas, and even a giraffe all had been shot to death after attacking somebody's house.
Tom wasn't worried about that, though. He was worried about the fact that every dead animal had the same prefix when he appraised them: [Dungeon Born]. This meant that the wild safari zoo was still spewing out monsters, which was not a good thing.
"Alex," Chloe said. "Why are there dead animals everywhere?"
"They're not dead, sweety. They're just sleeping," Alex said.
"They are bleeding," Chloe pointed out. "And that one is missing a head."
"Um," Alex said.
"They attacked people," Skippy said. "They attacked people, people fought back, animals died, people died."
"Oh," Chloe said.
"Really Skippy?!" Tom hissed into his friend's ear.
"Dude, I just got killed by a bear." Skippy reminded him. "I don't think now is the time to fucking coddle her, you know?"
Chloe was quiet after that, and it broke Tom's heart to see her looking at the dead animals like that. Was this the right thing to do? Just picking up everything and running off?
Sure, there had been some animal attacks, but people weren't running and screaming. The sky wasn't falling, and the world wasn't ending. There was nothing to indicate that society was ending. Was he doing the right thing for Chloe? He picked up his phone and started to look up news articles to check and see.
The System: A Shared Delusion? Screens have appeared in front of people's faces, claiming the world has been changed into a video game. Experts are claiming this is a case of mass hysteria and …
Cities across the globe are experiencing widespread riots as tensions flare over multiple animal attacks at public locations. Local governments are calling for calm while law enforcement agencies are struggling ….
Several members of the prepper community claim the end times are near and have left their homes for their personal bunkers …
A large creature has been sighted attacking people off the west coast of Los Angeles. Witnesses are claiming it's a Kraken from the myths of ….
Never mind. If anything, he might have been underreacting. He was completely justified in doing whatever he needed to do to keep his family safe.
Fortunately, they arrived at the school before he could spiral down that particular rabbit hole. They drove into the school's parking lot, which was just below street level with a concrete wall to the left of the parking lot, leading back up to the road and the gym building to the right of the parking lot. The front entrance was located on the ramp that came down from the street.
"Alright, now that the escort mission is done, can we please get back to killing monsters and gaining levels," Abaddon complained.
"Oh, relax, you big baby, it wasn't that bad." Alex teased him.
"We hit every garbage can on our way here. I wasn't even trying to do that. My dexterity is just too low."
They stopped in the large parking lot at the front of the school. Tom and Alex got out of the car while Skippy and Abaddon argued.
"I'm going to do some scouting. Wake me if we get attacked." Tom told Alex.
Tom drowned them out as he activated [Far Sight]. Immediately, his vision became divorced from his body. He pushed forward towards the entrance of the school. He found a pool of blood that started directly at the entrance to the school, making the boundary between the outside world and the settlement inside.
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Tom tried to enter the school, but his [Far Sight] bounced off the entrance.
DING!!!
[Far Seeing] cannot enter an [Monster Lair]
DING!!!
Quest: Settlers of Noralon Ⅰ
You have arrived at Hopkins with a potential settlement. Double all XP gains for the next twenty-four hours.
DING!!!
Quest: Settlers of Noralon Ⅱ
You have arrived at Hopkins. Hopkins has become an [Instant Dungeon] , clear it, kill the three mini-bosses inside and the final boss to transform the [Instant Dungeon] into a settlement.
Objectives:
* Kill the Mini-bosses 0/3
* Kill the Boss 0/1
Rewards:
* Ownership of the Hopkins Settlement
That was bad. He couldn't enter the school but could see through the windows. Six imps were running around like a gaggle of cats inside a classroom.
His perception flew around the school, searching through the windows. He found imps—Legions of imps running around the school like a pack of teenagers hopped up on all the drugs. Then he found Mr.Chen. The imps were ripping apart his chemistry teacher. Tom vomited at the sight, but he kept watching. He was planning to use [Hand of Mercy] on his teacher when his remains started to dissolve into nothing. Tom spat out the remains of bile in his mouth.
The lair behaved like a dungeon then. If they died inside, Tom would need to resurrect them immediately, which he couldn't do because of the massive mana costs. Hardcore mode it was.
Tom exited [Far Seeing].
<[Far Seeing] has Reached Level 2>
<[Far Seeing] has Reached Level 3>
<...>
<[Far Seeing] has Reached Level 11>
"What happened?" Alex asked, holding his arm.
Skippy and Abaddon were already out of the car and looked ready to listen.
"Well, Mr.Chen is dead," Tom said. "Ripped apart."
"Fuck" Abaddon groaned.
"It's worse. The lair dissolved them."
"The school is full of demons," Tom stated.
"YES," Abaddon roared in joy. "My brain is better than everybody!!"
Tom and Alex smiled at their friend while skippy rolled his eyes.
"How are the demons a good thing?" Chloe asked, confused.
"Hector grabbed the [Siegebreaker] skill," Tom explained. Demons aren't flesh-and-blood creatures; they are purely magical, so if I chopped off a demon's arm, he could simply reform his body without the damage. With [Siegebreaker], any damage Abaddon inflicts is permanent. It's a very broken ability."
Chloe looked up at him as if he had been muttering French. It occurred to him that his little sister probably didn't know anything about demons.
"What type of demons are we dealing with?" Alex asked.
"A couple of imps are wandering the school, a fiend is in the gym, a beholder is in the library, and a succubus is on the third floor. There might be more, but I can't find them. Also, they're all labeled as mini-bosses. So there's at least one more I can't find."
"Alright, this is going to be fucking fun!!" Skippy said as he stretched. "I'm going to do some light scouting before we start."
Skippy ran off to look around the school entrance for traps or loot.
"Do we need to do any prep work?" Hector asked.
"Yeah, I do," Tom admitted.
"Same. I need to [Meditate] until I can get all my mana back," Alex stated as she sat back in the car and settled down. "I've got a couple of potions of increased mana regeneration from the tutorial. I'm going to try to speed-run it."
"I'm just making a shit ton of scrolls," Tom said with a shrug. "I grabbed the ink heart bloodline, and my second class was supposed to be a scribe. soooo." Tom's voice trailed off as a smile played across his lips.
"Oh, Fuuuck you," Abaddon shot back.
"Fucking hacker," Alex said.
"What?" Skippy asked as he came back. "Whose cursing without me in the conversation?"
"Tom's giving wizards a bad name; he's doing a paper angel build," Alex stated.
Skippy turned to him and gave him two middle fingers
"Tom, I know it's the literal apocalypse, but fuck you, you fucking hacker," Skippy said.
"Hey, you assholes wanted me to be the healer and the face of the party. Don't blame me if I have to cheat just to keep up." Tom said.
Jokes aside, the Paper Angel wasn't a cheat, as much as it was an in-game exploit. When someone used a scroll, they could cast a single spell at no mana cost. If you could create your own scrolls, a person could build up a large arsenal to be used without burning through any mana. But suppose a person specialized in paper magic and created a large reserve of spell scrolls. In that case, it becomes possible to simultaneously use several hundred scrolls at almost no mana cost.
Yeah, it got very broken, very fast. But It wasn't without problems. Unlike his light magic, his scrolls wouldn't receive any bonuses from his magic skills. In his case, it was a very quantity-over-quality approach.
The other reason the paper angels hadn't dominated the legend of Noralon was that they tended to get blown out of the sky almost immediately. Tom figured it wouldn't matter in his case as he was primarily the healer. What were they going to do? Try and kill him even harder?
Tom pulled out a piece of desk paper and some pens and got to work—right there in the middle of a snow-covered parking lot. He drew the glyph on a piece of paper and pushed his mana onto the page. In a little under a minute, he created a glyph on the page and was immediately rewarded for his efforts.
DING!!!
Congratulations!!!
You have created a scroll of fireball.
You can use this scroll to conjure and launch a fireball at no cost to your person.
Or you can give this to a person to attempt to learn the fireball spell. The Chance of learning the fireball spell: 14%
<[The Pen is Mightier than the Sword] has Reached Level 15>
<[The Pen is Mightier than the Sword] has Reached Level 16>
<[Words Will Always Retain their Power] has Reached Level 14>
Tom smiled as he pulled out a stack of papers from the shared inventory. It was time to get to work. He absently wondered how everyone else was handling the apocalypse.
You may skip to the next chapter.
Name: Abbadon (Hector Fortane)
Race: Lizard-Man
Type: Humanoid / Giant
LVL: 11
SubRace: Crocodile
Age 18
Health: 1140
Stamina: 1950
Mana: 220
Health Regen: 9.9 per hour
Stamina Regen: 19.5 per min
Mana Regen: 4.4 per min
Titles: Beta-Tester
Immune
Poison
Resistances
Physical 50%, Disease 50%
Weakness
Mental 50%, Frost 50%
Bane
Manslayer, Scaleslayer, Giantslayer
Classes: Giantslayer 11
Total
STR: 66
AGIL: 33
DEX: 11
CON: 66
END: 96
PER: 44
INT: 11
WILL: 11
SPIRIT: 33
EGO: 11
CHA: 11
LCK: 11
Base
STR: 66
AGIL: 33
DEX: 11
CON: 66
END: 88 +10%
PER: 44
INT: 11
WILL: 11
SPIRIT: 33
EGO: 11
CHA: 11
LCK: 11
Personal: +4 END, +3 STR, +3 CON, +2 PER +2 SPIRIT
Racial: +3 END, +2 STR, +2 CON +1 PER
Giantslayer Skills: +2 AGIL
Level Bonus: +1 to all Stats
Skill Slots: 14/60: Skill Points: 0
Personal Skills
- [Natural Arms and Armour] - Level N/A
- [Aquatic Predator] - Level 1
- [Storage] - Level 10 >> Level 22
- [Mapping] - Level 6
- [System Wiki] - Level 7
- [Immortality] - Level 4
- [Siegebreaker] - Level 22
Giantslayer 6/16
- [Immortal Fists] - Level 23
- [Monster Lifeforce (Giant)] - N/A
- [Giant Slayer] - N/A
- [Secound Wind] - Level 5
- [Endless Bralwer] - Level 9
- Capstone: [Legendary Strength] - Level N/A
- [Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum] - Level 1