Chapter 2 - In Which Some Things Get Reinforced_The Survival Plan (LitRPG)

“What the hell is going on?”, I asked the empty air around me and slumped down on the floor. The night had already fallen, and I couldn’t see much into the woods. However, the sounds of birds have returned, but they weren’t as loud as I was used to them being. Or perhaps my imagination was running wild.

“Okay, what do I know so far?”

One, there is some strange monster bear thing lurking outside. Two, aliens? I wasn’t sure how much more I could speculate about that. Three, I now had some character sheet I could call up anytime.

To make sure I still could, I focused on the ever-present eye in the corner of my vision. Like before, a window hovered in front of me and followed my gaze. I focused on the Status tab.

Name: Diana Mond

Age: 25

Class: N/A

Level: N/A, 0/100 exp.

Strength: 2

Constitution: 3

Intelligence: 4

Wisdom: 3

HP: 30/30

Points to distribute: 0

I didn’t know what those numbers meant other than what they represented at face value. But I wasn’t too stupid to understand that there was a levelling component in this situation. I wasn’t much of a gamer by the standard definition of the word. I dabbled in RPGs, but I mostly enjoyed crafting and strategy games.

“Okay, I guess I can work with this.”

I then focused on the Skills tab. It turned up empty.

“No skills, huh?”

The Inventory tab was a different story though. Earlier in the day I had mindlessly put some rubbish in my pockets and there it was: a crumpled nut bar wrapper. I focused on it with the intent to take it out of Inventory. In the blink of an eye, I had the wrapper in my hand. I let it drop on the floor.

I looked at the side table and picked up one of the many little porcelain figurines my grandmother left behind. I put it in the pocket of my sweatpants. I wasn’t surprised when it showed up listed in the inventory tab. My pocket felt suspiciously empty when I patted it down, and I put my hand into it, grasping at nothing.

That was weird.

I kept my hand in my pocket and imagined the figurine appearing in it. Sure enough, that's exactly what happened.

I took it out and imagined it phasing out of my hand and showing up listed in the Inventory space. The figurine disappeared. I pulled up the Inventory tab and there it was.

“This is so weird.” I dismissed the inventory. I decided to put the whole system out of my mind for now.

I felt a strange sense of calm wash over me. I guess I ran out of panic. A scary beast was roaming outside and I was positive if I stepped in front of its path it would attack and kill me. There was no doubt in my mind that I wasn’t equipped to deal with it as is.

For a brief moment I contemplated getting into my car and driving back into the city, but it was already pitch black outside and I didn’t like to drive through the woods at night in the best of times. And this didn’t qualify as the best of times.

I looked around the cabin, a plan forming in my mind.

There was a lot of furniture I could pile up at the door to block them off. There were two bunk beds and a few small side tables that were littered around the place. If push came to shove, I could jump into the basement and close the trapdoor. The Grizmorph didn’t seem to possess opposable thumbs, so it wouldn’t be able to open it. I would be trapped but there was food down there and I could wait it out.

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“This is a really dumb idea.”

So I set about to see my vision come to life. I had to choose between either working quickly or working quietly. Afraid that the beast would come back, I chose the former. I decided to chop down the posters that separated the top and bottom bunk to make them easier to stack. If I put them sideways, they would just slide down on the floor and make a racket.

My muscles burned as I removed the old dusty mattresses from the first bunk bed. I wasn’t particularly strong, so every movement hurt like hell. This was the first time in my life that I felt regret about not working out more. I knew that by the end of this exercise, I would be completely useless, but the sense of danger lurking outside kept me going.

Somehow I managed to flip the first bunk bed on its longest side. The strain of physical exertion made me feel like I was going to be sick, so I took a break that was long enough to settle my stomach. After I took a few sips of water, I grabbed the small hatchet in my hand and steeled my resolve.

A chiming sound went off in my head, like a bell you trip off when you walk into a store. I opened up my character sheet and saw that I now had another tab called Log. I opened it up and I saw a notification:

Due to your actions, you have earned an increase in an attribute: +1 Strength

I stared at the words floating in front of my face. I flipped over to the Status tab and there it was; my Strength attribute now equaled 3. The hatchet in my hand felt a lot lighter than it did mere seconds ago.

Deciding that there would be more time to process whatever the hell there was to process, I turned back to the bunk bed on the floor.

“Let’s get this done,” I said and went back to swinging my hatchet at the poster.

After some time, I was interrupted by another notification sound.

Skill Unlocked: Wood chopping, level 1

“Huh. ” I guess I had a skill now.

Pushing the thought away, I dismissed the notification and went back to work.

I would lie if I said that the idea of having quantifiable skills didn’t appeal to me. I had always had a mind for numbers, and perhaps I could have gone into hard sciences, like physics or mathematics, but I was too practical for that. So I became an accountant.

It wasn’t a glamorous living, but it was stable and reliable. I made enough money to have a decent life and put away some cash for a rainy day. That’s all that mattered to me.

It took me the better part of an hour to finish my makeshift barricade. I occasionally peeked outside to see if something was coming to the cabin. So far, nothing was lurking out there.

I examined my handiwork. The extra point in strength made it much easier to move the beds. However, even with a 50% increase in this stat, I was only able to stack three beds on top of each other, as the fourth one would simply be too high for me to reach. Three beds and two mattresses divided me from whatever danger lurked outside. I had no illusion that they would stop anything, but I hoped that I would at least slow down whatever came knocking on my door.

My inspection was cut short by another notification. But this one was way more interesting than the previous one.

Skill Unlocked: Reinforcement, level 1

It was pretty self-explanatory what this skill was about, or at least I hoped so. I reinforced the front door, and therefore I received the Reinforcement skill.

“I may be getting the hang of this. ”

I moved on to the next part of my plan: making my last stand spot in the basement. The basement was about half the size of the cabin above it and its ceiling was barely tall enough for me to stand in it. Even though I could stand up straight in it, I always bent my neck subconsciously whenever I went down. The shelves with canned food were on two opposing walls and there were a few boxes with wine bottles in one corner. The air smelled musty and there was some mold on the walls.

For whatever reason, whoever made the cabin decided to give it a reinforced concrete basement, instead of digging a hole in the ground and putting some wooden planks to keep the dirt at bay. I wasn’t one to complain because it gave the cabin more structural integrity. I was grateful for that.

I dragged a few pillows and blankets downstairs and all of the water bottles I had with me. I had brought a few litres just in case, even though I usually drank the water from the well unless it was raining. As it was, I could be right in the basement for three or four days, if I rationed my water.

I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

Finally, I propped up the trapdoor that led to the basement and tied a piece of rope around the ring that was used to pull it open. If worse came to worst, I would be able to just grab the rope and slam the basement trapdoor closed.

With that done, all there was left for me to do was to pull up a chair and keep watch through the curtains.

The world outside kept still.

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Diana's character sheet