“John wake up,” Candice said rousing me out of my slumber with a gentle slap across the face. “The showers are working and hot and the lights are working, if you want one take one now.” I opened my eyes and looked out the windows, it was starting to brighten up but the sun wasn’t up yet.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Don’t know, nobody has a working clock,” Candice said. “But it should be light out in an hour or so, so we should get ready now, so we can leave as soon as possible.”
“So it’s not just my mother that does that?” I asked. “It’s a generic mom thing?”
“What thing?” Candice asked.
“The whole wake people up far earlier than you really need too thing,” I said.
“It leaves plenty of time for unforeseen things,” Candice said.
“OK mom,” I said getting up and going into the mens locker room to take a shower. When I emerged I found that everybody was now awake, including the girl we had picked up. Everybody had gathered around her, I made my way over. “OK give her space, this is probably a lot to take in all at once.” I gave her a quick look over, she was either still in high school or a recent graduate, her expression seemed to be a mix of fear and confusion. “Jackie get her caught up to speed and make sure she gets equipped with her gear see if she wants to go with us or go her own way. Samantha, Candice and Melissa go outside and check the wagon, make sure nothing decided to stop in there for a nap or that it hasn’t been tampered with. I’m going to go take stock of the vending machine see if there’s anything we need in it.”
Puny Healing Potion 10 cp Puny Mana Potion 10 cp Puny Stamina Potion 10 cp Puny Recovery Potion 1 sp Tiny Healing Potion 1 sp Tiny Mana Potion 1 sp Tiny Stamina Potion 1 sp Tiny Recovery Potion 10 sp Basic Arrow X 10 1 sp Basic Bolt X 10 1 sp Basic Ration 20 cp Water 20 cp
Puny Recovery Potion Misc Consumable Potion, 1-use, Magical Quality Restores 10 each of HP, MP and SP, modifiers are applied separately
Tiny Healing Potion Misc Consumable Potion, 1-use, Magical Quality Restores 50 HP
Tiny Mana Potion Misc Consumable Potion, 1-use, Magical Quality Restores 50 MP
Tiny Stamina Potion Misc Consumable Potion. 1-use, Magical Quality Restores 50 SP
Tiny Recovery Potion Misc Consumable Potion, 1-use, Magical Quality Restores 50 each of HP, MP and SP, modifiers are applied separately.
Basic Arrow Weapon, Ammo, (Bows) Basic Quality Damage 2-4
Basic Bolt Weapon, Ammo, (Crossbows) Basic Quality Damage 3
Basic Ration Food, Consumable A large cracker with the consistency and flavor of cardboard. Replaces 1 meal
Water Drink, Consumable Do we really need to tell you what water is? Enough for 1 humanoid creature for 1 day.
I had no idea what the exchange rate was on copper pieces and silver pieces, I could guess at 100 copper pieces per silver piece, but only guess. I apparently had spent more time in deep thought than I realized because before I knew it everybody had emerged from the main room. The new girl was dressed in what I assumed was her gear, a plain light brown gi that you’d see at a karate class and padded leather gloves. The impressive part was her belt.
Goblin Skin Belt Armor, Belt, Leather Mastercrafted Quality Part of the Goblin Skin Leather Set. Any Goblin within visual range of the belt being worn receives a 25% morale penalty
“You must be John,” she said sticking out her hand. “My names Stephanie.”
“I am John,” I said shaking her hand. “Little tight there.” I pulled my hand out of her vice-like grip.
“Yeah you gotta be careful with him,” Jackie said. “His stats are all really low.”
“Sorry,” Stephanie said. “I’m still getting used to this.”
“We all are,” Beth said with Heather nodding on her back.
“So are you going to stick with us or go your own way?” I asked.
“I guess I’ll stick with you guys,” Stephanie said. “When the voice rang out and everything changed I was in the car with my dad. The car just stopped suddenly and when I looked at my dad he was gone.”
“What do you mean gone?” I asked.
“We were talking, the voice started I looked out the window to try and see what was making the noise, then the car came to a halt and I turn back to my dad and he’s not sitting in the drivers seat. It was like he was never there.”
The internal gears in my head were working overtime. “Did the car come to a sudden stop or coast to a stop?”
“Sudden stop, no braking sound or nothing.”
“Why does that matter John?” Jackie asked.
I took a minute to think on the matter again before saying anything. “I can now say with a reasonable level of assurance that there is some form of intelligence behind everything that’s going on.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“Well yeah the voice we all heard,” Jackie said.
“It’s worse than that though,” I said.
“Worse how?” Jackie asked. “The world basically ended and now we have to travel across town to pick children up from daycare and now that we’ve heard about Stephanie’s dad they may not even be there. How pray tell could things get any worse?”
“The intelligence behind all this is fallible.” I said.
“Fallible how?” Jackie said. “What does it even matter?”
“Read the description of the Tiny Stamina Potion in the vending machine. It says ‘potion period one use comma magical quality’, all the other ones say ‘potion comma one use comma magical quality’ the intelligence made a typo.” I explained.
Jackie looked at me for a moment. “Just give Stephanie a group invite so we can get out of here. A typo, really?”
“What?” I asked sending Stephanie a party invite. “It’s a big deal.” I looked over the party window once Stephanie joined, it said Monk 1 for her. “Stephanie you need to level up, do you have any stored? Jackie walk her through that.” I looked at Amanda’s status and it was back to reading Acolyte 3. “Amanda how did you change your class to berzerker and back?”
Amanda was walking around in an almost fully humanoid shape now, she was still blue, still had a red sphere in her but her form was much more identifiable as human and female. She just shrugged her shoulders, speech still eluded her it seemed. I sighed and turned my attention to my own status screen, I had a couple levels of my own stored it seemed. I was now a Titleist 5 and I received a new notification.
New Class Feature Unlocked Ability: Titleist's Eye Allows you to discern what Titles can be bestowed on a person. Use a Soul Shard or visit a Soul Crystal to enable.
“Good news everybody,” I said. “I’ve gained a new ability that comes with a description that is vague at best and I can’t even use it without one of two things I’ve never even heard of until now.”
There was a moment of silence as everybody looked at each other.
“How is that good news?” Stephanie asked.
“It’s not,” I said. “It’s really not.”
"So where were we on figuring out how to divvy up loot and share money or was I just thinking that?" I asked.
"You were just thinking that," Jackie said. "But it does bring up a good point how do we divvy up loot that isn't assigned to a specific person? We should probably figure that out before we open that crystal that we got for defeating James."
“What about just giving it to the person who could make the most use of it?” Kelly asked.
“I’m okay with that if you all are,” I said. “To be clear I’d be the one deciding who gets what because putting everything to a vote would be time consuming and cumbersome.” Nobody objected so I pulled out the crystal we got from James Clungly.
Loot Crystal James Clungly Level 8 Group Loot Expires in 91:27:51
I opened up the loot crystal, a screen popped up with a list of what was in it.
Crossbow of Accuracy Weapon, 1 Handed, Crossbow Magic Quality +10% of base accuracy bonus minimum of 1 maximum of 10
Soul Shard X2 Power-up, Consumable Allows Access to the power-up screen for 1 person once. Maximum duration ten minutes.
40 Silver Low-Quality Leather X4 Currency Raw Material
Elixir of Minor Fortitude Buff Consumable Elixir, 1 use, Magical Quality
Increases all physical defensive bonuses by 5% to a maximum of 25
Level 1 Dungeon Crystal Consumable Infrastructure, Permanent, World Quality Can be used to create a level 1 dungeon in the area or to edit the settings of an existing level 1 dungeon that you have admin access to.
I considered what we had for a moment. “My thinking is to give the crossbow to Heather so she can attack from her seat on the wagon, use some of the money to buy some bolts for her, use one of the Soul Shards so I can activate my new ability and store the rest for later use.”
“Why do you get to use one of the Soul Shards to use this power-up screen?” Kelly asked. “Why only you?”
“Because the ability I need it to activate, according to it’s description let’s me know what titles I can give to people, that will be the first step towards hopefully being a bit more useful. I’ll be the only one using a Soul Shard because I’m the only one that has a reason to, unless one of you has an ability to unlock you haven’t shared with the rest of us.”
“OK,” Jackie said. “Go for it.”
I assigned the loot to the people it should have gone to, giving Samantha the rest as she had the highest strength score and thus the highest carrying capacity, then I used the Soul Shard. A screen popped up, it had a list of all my stats, skills, and abilities, and a point value next to it. I looked for Titleist’s Eye, it required 100 points to unlock and I had 112. I guess I was lucky I hadn’t considered that I may not have enough points to unlock it. I unlocked it and spent the remainder of my point increasing my stamina by 1. I closed my power-up screen and looked at Jackie, I intuitively knew what titles she could receive now and I also somehow knew that I couldn’t give them to her. I picked one that looked good, “the Resolute” and looked deeper.
The Resolute Suffix Title +500% bonus to resist morale penalties applied by enemies. Base morale cannot fall below +200%. Allies receive a morale boost equal to the combined levels of the Resolute one. 2000 MP and 500 SP to apply to current target with current penalties.
“What are you staring at?” Jackie asked breaking my concentration.
“Seeing what titles I can give you,” I said. “But there are too many penalties right now and my stats are too low.”
“Well unless you have some titles to give,” Candice said. “Let’s get going.”
“Right,” I said. “If we hurry we can get to both Happy Tots and Angels Touch today.”
It only took us two hours or so to finally get to Happy Tots Day-Care. It was a smallish building with a decent sized parking lot and play area outside, and something felt very very wrong.