Hands still raised above his head, Zed looked at his new assailant. “What?”

“Your level,” the person repeated.

He ran through his memory, the little he could remember, looking for the word. He found it in the archives of his mind where a child had played video games and laughed with his brothers. There was no sense in being asked about a video game in such a situation, so he thought better of it. He dug deeper as he stared into the barrel of the shotgun.

Fear still held him and his adrenaline was refusing to wear off. However, where it had once goaded him towards fight it now provoked him to flight.

You can fight a spider-legged sloth monster but tremble at the sight of a gun, he scoffed himself.

“Don’t make me ask again, mister!”

His assailant pushed her green hood from over her head and scowled at him. Surprisingly, putting a face to the voice eased Zed slightly. She was pretty in the way an innocent girl who’d been forced to suffer the bullying of school was. She had an oval face, round with a small smear of blood on her left cheek. Her cheeks were rosy but were also dirty, and she looked at him with hazel eyes and scowling pink lips with a haggard mess of long blonde hair on her head.

“I don’t have a level,” he answered when she took a threatening step forward.

Apart from the glint in her eyes that claimed she was someone who would do whatever she felt she had to, she looked nothing but harmless. He had to fight a momentous battle to remind himself that the harmless girl had a gun that could do a lot of harm.

There was a good distance between them, at least seven feet, and she inched forward again, reducing it slowly.

She looked over to the woods and shouted, “Ollie!” Then turned back to face him.

You know, he thought to himself as she looked back at him, if I’ve learnt anything today, it’s that I handle pain well.

The thought slithered through his mind like a hated advisor’s words in the ears of a king: truthful with gradients of lies sprinkled within. He took his pain gravely, and forgot it just as quickly, that much was true. However, there was another thing he’d noticed, a possibility his mind had conveniently left out. On the few occasions were something pierced him, the pain only lessened a while after he’d removed it. As long as it remained inside him, there was no handling the pain to be done.

And as far as he knew, bullets didn’t come out as easily as sticks and lengths of bone.

“Ollie!” the girl yelled into the woods, again, before turning back to face him. “Don’t you move a muscle. And everyone has levels.”

“Well I don’t.”

“Liar,” she spat. “Everyone has levels, and I can feel yours.”

With a scowl on her face she looked less like a girl and more like a woman. Zed put her somewhere in her twenties.

“If you can feel mine,” he said cautiously, “then what is it?”

She raised the gun but lowered her aim, and it trailed a path below waist level. “Want to keep being smart with me, Red?”

Zed’s hands twitched beside his head and he fought—against every fiber in his being—against lowering them to cover his crotch.

“I swear to you,” he said, hoping it wasn’t a tremor he heard in his voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I swear I don’t have any level.”

Just then, a boy with dark brown skin rushed up beside her from somewhere beyond the clearing and drew up to a stop.

“What’s u—whoa! That’s a lot of blood.” He paused, meeting Zed’s eyes. “It’s blood, right?”

Zed raised a brow at him in bafflement but answered. “Most of it.”

“Do I want to know what the rest of it is?”

“Well, I can’t say I’m sure.”

“Ollie,” the girl interrupted them, gesturing at Zed with her gun. “Check his level.”

Oliver turned to her, then back to Zed. He must’ve seen something on his face because he looked back at the woman with wide eyes.

“Whoa, there, Ash!” Oliver placed a hand on the shotgun and moved the aim up. “I’m all for pointing guns at deadly looking strangers but you don’t threaten a man’s gonads unless he’s done something to deserve it. And even then, I’d hesitate.”

The boy was tall with short black hair. The girl—Ash—barely reached his shoulders. He wore a torn green jacket and jean pants that fit him snug and carried a green backpack. He seemed just as relieved as Zed when she didn’t lower her aim back.

“Alright.” Oliver rubbed his hands together as if trying to generate heat, paused, then turned back to the girl. “What did you say you wanted again?”

“For god’s sake, Ollie. His level.” She shook the gun at Zed. “Check his damned level.”

“Can’t you tell?” Oliver asked, suddenly confused. “You were the one that taught me how to check it, after all.”

“Well I can’t—”

Another girl walked into the clearing with a boy in tow. While Zed had spotted them before they’d entered the clearing, he’d kept his silence.

The new girl was tall for a girl. She was slim with raven hair. She walked with a bounce in her step and chewed a piece of gum in a way most mothers tend to hate; with a lot of sass and an open mouth. She wore a simple shirt and trouser, and while she led the way, Zed’s attention was fixed on the guy behind her.

Much like Oliver, the new guy was tall and athletic but his skin was fair where Oliver’s was brown and he looked older with a squared jaw, blond hair and blue eyes. A shirt and trouser kept him from being naked and he had that all-American look to him. But what had Zed’s attention was the thing hefted over his shoulder and held in one hand. Clearly, it was a gun, but it looked like something from one of the few comic books he remembered reading as a child.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

It was a dull grey in color. Its chamber, or what he assumed was its chamber, was translucent and it glowed a soft, dim purple within. There was a symbol engraved at the end of the barrel just before the muzzle and another just above the guy’s hand close to the trigger.

The new girl was the first to speak and her words were as crude as the way she chewed her gum.

“The thing’s dead,” she was saying. “Jason shot it in the—holy mother of balls that’s a naked guy!”

She was looking at Zed now. Staring.

“Just out of curiosity,” Zed said to Ash, “can I put my hands down?”

Ash shrugged. “I never told you to lift them up. Just told you not to move.”

Zed opened his mouth to protest, then realized she was right. With a mental grumble, he lowered his hands slowly and covered his crotch.

“By any chance, can I—”

“Why’s he so red?” the new girl asked.

“Some of it’s blood,” Oliver answered.

“And the rest?”

Oliver shrugged. “Dunno. He says he’s not sure, either.”

“And he killed the blob?” Jason asked, coming to stand beside the new girl casually. He leaned forward to peer at Zed, bending slightly at the waist, before standing straight again. “Color me blind. Don’t tell me he did all that with a hatchet.”

“Tomahawk,” Ash corrected absently.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a Tomahawk.”

“What’s the difference?” the gum chewing girl asked.

“One’s a tool, the other’s a weapon,” she answered absently, as if dealing with an idiot she was already used to. “Ollie, please check what I asked you to.”

“Oh,” Oliver pulled himself to his full height and paused. “That’s odd.”

“Told you,” Ash smirked. The presence of her friends seemed to put her at ease. That, in turn, put Zed at ease.

If she wasn’t scared and alarmed, then he didn’t have to worry about a twitchy trigger finger.

“What’s odd about him?” Chewing gum girl asked. “I mean besides his color. Wait, is that racist?” She turned to Oliver. “Have you seen anyone with a new skin color since the Awakening, because he’s all red and I can’t really see any other skin color, and I swear I’m not trying to be racist.”

Ash waved the girl’s words aside with a tired hand. “Don’t worry about it, Chris. It’s not racist. At least, you’re not racist.”

“It’s his rank,” Oliver cut in. “His category, to be specific.”

Jason moved his weapon from his shoulder and casually aimed it at Zed’s head. “Just say the word, kiddo.” The air around it trembled as the dim purple glowed softly. “Is he a threat?”

“Dunno. His aura is weak, Beta rank at best, but it’s kind of a lot. I mean,” Oliver strained as if trying to concentrate on a specific thought, “It’s definitely Beta but it doesn’t feel the way a Beta should feel. I can’t tell his category.”

“If I may,” Zed interrupted. He waited to have their attention before continuing. “I just got to Beta rank.”

“That makes you category one,” Ash said in disbelief.

Jason lowered his gun and the glow dimmed back. “Just Beta.” He turned to Ash. “You had me worried there for a moment, Ash.”

“Yeah,” she lowered her gun. “I had myself worried too.”

Zed released a slow breath and it drew their attention back to him.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Oliver said. “But how did your aura get like that?”

“And how did you get here?” Ash added.

Zed watched the team of four. Jason stood casually to the side now that he knew Zed was Beta rank, and Chris didn’t seem to care beyond chewing her gum. Only Oliver and Ash still seemed interested in him.

“I’ll answer the one I can,” Zed said. He took the hand holding the tomahawk from his crotch and pointed the weapon in one direction. “I came from the woods on the other side. As for my aura. I’ve got no idea what that is.”

Somehow that got Chris’ attention. “Are you looking for the mana surge, too?”

There was a certain enthusiasm in her voice, a dark alertness that made Zed wary of his next words.

“I’m not sure what that is either,” he said carefully, returning his other hand back to his crotch, “but I was promised there was some pants—no.” He took a deep calming breath. “I saw this place and was hoping there’ll be something I can wear. I just,” he made an empty gesture. “I just need something to wear.”

“Well, that’s useless to us,” Chris said, bored. “Anyway, Jason’s killed the other blob and,” she took something out of a fat pouch strapped to her side and held it up, revealing a fist size ball caked in something brown that reminded Zed of dried manure, “we’ve got the core. All that’s left is to get the other one and be on our way.”

She took a step forward and Zed moved the tomahawk slowly to the side. He wasn’t sure why he did it but it seemed the beast core was important. And while he certainly wouldn’t fight them for it, a part of him didn’t want him to let them have it without putting up some kind of resistance.

He had fought the beast alone, after all.

“Big boy’s got a fight in him,” Chris chuckled. “Jason, show him why that’s a bad idea.”

Beside her Jason stepped forward and Zed’s muscles tensed for whatever was going to happen next. At least Ash wasn’t pointing her gun at him, so if he moved fast enough, he could get to Jason before she could take a shot.

The problem, however, was Jason’s gun and his casual confidence. While Jason was clearly underestimating him, Zed couldn’t help but feel his confidence wasn’t arrogance. It seemed Beta rank wasn’t a threat to them.

However, Zed had seen underdogs win enough fights to know it wasn’t impossible. In fact, he had been the underdog in some of the fights he’d been in before everyone started fearing him. Strength wasn’t the only thing that mattered, sometimes skills were just as important, and they were just kids, he was the one with the…

The Berserker, he corrected himself, deflating slightly. The Berserker is the one with the skill. Not you.

Still, he wasn’t going to let it go without a bit of resistance.

“How about…”

His words trailed off when Jason started scratching the back of his head in frustration, looking conflicted. After a moment of scratching he turned to Chris and sighed.

“Sorry, Chris,” he said. “Can’t do it.”

“Why not?” she asked, confused. Then she pointed a casual finger at Zed. “He's just one guy. And a Beta at that. Even Ash can take him.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Jason shook his head, his tussled blonde hair shaking with it. “He has right of conquest.”

Chris barked a short derisory laugh. “You have got to be kidding me.”

Ash slipped the shot gun behind her and Zed guessed there was a holster there because the thing was too big to be tucked into the waist of her pants.

“Jason’s got a point,” she said with a gesture that implied she wasn’t going to argue the issue. “He’s got right of conquest.”

Chris grumbled and stomped her foot like a cantankerous child but said no more on the subject.

“How about this,” Zed said. “How about I give you the core from this one,” he pointed at the corpse of the arachnid blob, “and one of you give me some clothes to wear; shirt and pants to be specific? Sound fair?”

Oliver opened his mouth to say something but Chris beat him to it. “Deal.” She turned to Oliver. “Give the man some clothes.”

Oliver frowned at her but took off his back pack. He opened it and the others surveyed the surrounding with casual glances.

Oliver rummaged around in the bag then held up two clothes. “I’ve only got a shirt and some pants. No shoes.”

Zed shrugged in acceptance. It wasn’t like any of them was wearing shoes that would pass off as adequate, and he hadn’t even been expecting any.

Oliver tossed them at him and Zed snatched them out of the air.

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Quest: [The House in the Woods]

* Objective complete: Go to the house 1/1.

* You have received simple shirt and pants.

* Bonus objective complete: Defeat [mana beast] 1/1.

* You have received 1 [Mana beast core].

* Quest complete.

----------------------------------------

“Thanks a lot.” he said, slipping into his new pants.

“He’s going to get blood all over it, though,” Oliver grumbled quietly.

Ash patted his back softly, smiling. “Don’t worry, since it’s your clothes you’ll get the largest share of the loot.”

That seemed to appease him a little and his frown eased.

A new notification came up and Zed waved it away.

----------------------------------------

* You have acquired simple shirt and pants.

----------------------------------------

“Yeah,” he grumbled. “but no mana core yet.”

“Good.” Ash slapped her hands together to get his attention. When she was certain she had it, she continued. “Now that we’re all acquainted, clothed friends, just who exactly are you? And how’s there someone your age that's still a category one Beta mage?”

Zed stared at her, unsure of how to answer and Oliver chuckled in embarrassment.

“What my beautiful sister is trying to say,” he explained, taking her by the shoulder, “is what’s your name?”