Brandon turned towards Cade and Kaia, letting out a long kept breath, feeling the tightness of the last fight and the visual of Cade’s dropping health wash away. He knew holding onto it would keep him from moving forward, and right now forward is the only direction they can go. Cade’s health was ticking upwards steadily, so his concern was lessened considerably. “Cade, see what you got. I’m going to check mine too.”

Pulling up his display, he realized that there was a similar light to before, this time though it had a golden illumination to it. In his inventory appeared an item that appeared to be glowing slightly. It read, “Cloak of the Void Cat,” and he summoned it into his hands. He heard Cade whistle, clearly impressed seeing the cloak appear. It looked to Brandon like light just melted into the fabric. Void really was an apt description for whatever this thing was. He tried to bring up some information about the cloak, willing it to show him what it did, and a small menu the size of his hand appeared in front of it.

Cloak of the Void Cat: Allows the wearer to melt into shadows and darkness. Provides advanced camouflage and gives a bonus to surprise attacks.

Brandon was impressed; this would work well with his knives and certainly wouldn’t hurt his new moniker, Crow. Giving him a bonus to surprise attacks and adding camo was not too shabby either.

Another ping was sounding in his head. He acknowledged it, and it showed a rank increase in his stats, two this time. Both his Durability and his Dexterity had ranked up to E. There wasn’t really a measurable way to tell at this time, but he did feel somewhat faster. Maybe fighting monsters was the best way to increase his stats. “Cade, you get any stat increases?”

“Uhhhh yeah, looks like my Durability jumped to E; bummer it didn’t before that fight, but also looks like my Strength made it to E as well.” Cade responded. “That’s good, my Durability did the same, but my Dexterity raised as well; not strength.”

“That’s good. Probably the right thing to increase from that fight. That was a mean bastard, can’t believe it was little, sweet Browney. I almost feel bad except for the part where it speared me in the chest, that hurt. I still don’t understand how a liquid managed to heal me, but seems like the new normal in this strange new world.” Cade mused. “I got a lot of coins from that one, 30 of them. Also got a Void Heart? Not sure what that is but it has a strange feeling to it when I view it. I’ll see if I can find any information about it in the shop or Guidebook. Maybe we can see about any other items we have as well.”

“Good idea. Thanks again for keeping me alive there. I won’t forget that.” Cade said as he looked Brandon’s way. He just nodded and grunted in response. That was the moment Kaia decided to interject, and they both remembered she was there. “So can one of you explain what is happening? I was frozen in my room, doing some paperwork on my laptop. I couldn’t look away, and then everything went dark. I woke up and had no clue what to do, I was able to choose a weapon, but after the countdown went away, I started to hear screaming and horrible sounds coming from the kitchen. I pushed my bed up against the door and tried to stay quiet, but I could hear that monster… Poor Brownie. He was such a good cat. And Bridget…” her voice dropped away, sadness becoming evident as she tried to hold back tears. “She’s dead, I know you told me, but what the hell is going on? What was that voice in my head?”

Brandon put a hand on Kaia’s arm and Cade sat up in front of her, his voice taking on a very gentle tone. “We don’t know much more than you do. It looks like every animal was changed into some kind of twisted version of itself. We had to fight a giant spider, a messed up raccoon thing, and now Brownie. Seems like it doesn’t matter what it was before, the animals have been changed.” Brandon continued by saying, “We got here sometime after Bridget had already been attacked. She likely got drawn into the… other dimension, the pocket dimension as King called it, and wasn’t able to beat it. All of the fights we have been forced into have taken place as soon as the creature was close enough to us to activate some kind of teleportation to another space. Each time the space has been relatively unchanged from wherever we were at the time of the monster appearing, but it is always much, MUCH bigger. The house we were just fighting in had to be at least five times larger than your actual house is. I don’t know how.” Kaia had turned a significantly lighter shade, her normally bronzed skin ghost-like. “Kaia, breathe. We are going to figure our way through this, yeah?” Cade said soothingly. “We need to prepare ourselves, and we probably should worry about getting out of here in the morning. I don’t know what time it is, but I’d guess it’s late enough we should try to get some sleep. I’ll take first watch.”

“Brandon, you want to help her into her room? Probably shouldn’t split up everyone entirely.” He said with a wink as Brandon nodded and helped Kaia to her feet, moving with her towards the door at the back of the room. A stray thought drew Cade’s attention, “Kaia, what weapon did you choose?” He figured if he was going to be up for a bit, he should probably try to gameplan their strategy a little with whatever knowledge they had. Kaia stopped before the threshold to her room and simply said, “I chose a longbow, just like my campaign character.” Cade smiled and nodded appreciatively, having guessed already what she would say based on what he knew of her and the choices that were presented. “Try to get some sleep guys. I’ll wake one of you up in a while.”

Cade sat down with his back to the wall near Kaia’s room. He could soon hear the sounds of Kaia and Brandon breathing, having fallen asleep quicker than he could have. Brandon had saved his life, fought a couple of monsters, and had been gassed up on adrenaline all day. It made sense that he would be ready to crash. He for some reason wasn’t tired, he guessed that was a side effect of the potion and his rest after the injury he had sustained. Curious as to the store Brandon had mentioned, he called up a Void Coin into his hand. Inspecting it gave him nothing new, but he figured trying to interact with it physically likely wouldn’t come with new details. He instead mentally prodded it and thought of a shop. A new window, a different color than his regular display, appeared in front of him. Void Market, in black lettering, headlined the menu. Options appeared below.

* Weapons

* Garments

* Consumables

* Items

* Sell

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Fascinated, and with plenty of time to spare, Cade delved into the market. The weapons tab was blatantly obvious. It had the same types of weapons from before, but the prices were astronomically higher than he would have guessed. The basic longsword from before was over 1000 Void Coins. Most of the basic weapons he had seen in the original menu were at that price point. The only difference between the menu’s he had seen and this one was the added weaponry available for purchase. There were previously unshown options. Some of them had prices in the thousands, others in the tens of thousands. He knew this wouldn’t be relevant to him right now and decided to move on. The garments tab was structured the same way.

* Head

* Body

* Legs

* Feet

* Accessories

Cade browsed through the different categories, unable to truly purchase anything with the meager amount of Void Coins he had. The Accessories tab caused Cade’s jaw to drop, the pricing on them being many times higher than any of the other items. Their abilities ranged from stat bonuses, to protection skills and abilities. Cade had seen some clothing options that had similar usage, but these were on a different level. He would have to keep a close eye in the future on these, and hopefully get enough coins to get some good equipment.

Consumables were a game changer. He knew first hand already how tough this new world was going to be for humanity, and seeing the options available for consumables had him building all types of gameplans in his head. There were throwable items, consumable items, as well as temporary stat boosters. Cade browsed through the potions, noting the potion that saved his life and its upgrades. He made sure to bookmark some of his coins to give to Brandon in return, and also purchased another Elixir for himself. “Good use of 14 coins” he thought. Looking at the other options, which weren’t affordable at all right now, was a hit to Cade’s non-existent coin stash ego. The one thing he did see that was going to stay a constant was the food and water options available. Looks like Nutrient Packs and Water Flasks were available for purchase, which meant we have something to survive on, but also meant that people would need to earn Void Coins. Right now the only way he had earned any was through fights with monsters.

Next on Cade’s list was to send a message via his Communications tab to King. He had told him he would, and figured that might be a good relationship to build in this messed up world.

[King, we found Kaia, she’s alive and well. Going to add her to our party and get out of town if we can. Let us know if you guys need anything, I think we should make a habit of building up some relationships. Not many of us left anymore. Stay safe. - Cade]

He closed out of his Communication tab and decided to add Kaia to their party. She could accept when they woke up, but Cade was going to be up for the whole night. No point in waking her or Brandon up, and the Home Stone thing seemed to be doing something to keep them safe… at least for now. Opening up his display again, he decided to check out the count listed under the tab, The One.

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The One: LOCKED

Divine Protectors: LOCKED - 15/15

* 1/15 Locations discovered. 14/15 Unknown

* Sistine Chapel, Vatican City, Italy

Dark Scions: 98/100

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Cade was impressed to see that two of the Dark Scions had been found and killed already, and even more so impressed that a Divine Protector had been found. He realized opening up the Guidebook to check if anyone had anything to contribute was probably something he should do more. There were now so many entries into the Guidebook that it was hard for Cade to parse through individual things. He pushed at the Guidebook mentally, prodding through it, trying to find out if there was some way to organize it. Eventually a basic organizational structure took hold, based on his own wants and needs. People that were not contributing actual information about new things were sorted into a separate area, and he dryly realized that he had just turned this into a post apocalyptic email service. Any entries on items had their own tab, any mention of monsters found their own tab, and any general information about The One was sorted into its own tab. Cade shrugged, figuring it was probably fine for now. He sent a note to Brandon explaining how he had added parameters to it and also submitted a new entry into the Guidebook saying much the same.

Cade’s next task was to figure out how to incorporate Kaia into their team effectively. She was going to likely be long range, of course, but they needed to make sure she was protected as well. They needed to find a 4th member, someone with defensive specialties. “Damn, if only King hadn’t already partied up. Big ass shield would be perfect.” Cade muttered to himself. Cade had a sudden thought- albeit a somber one - Did Bridget drop her weapon somewhere? Cade got up and, holding his breath tightly, uncovered Bridget’s body. He hadn’t even thought to check before, but she had dropped her weapons. He wondered if she had chosen it herself or if she had been given it at random. Cade picked up the two knives, remembering from the menu that these were Ka Bar military type daggers. Long 8 inch single sided blades, serrated on the lower half of the blade, tightly wrapped grips with a small crossguard. No way had they gotten this lucky. She definitely had not chosen these, she was a druid in their D&D campaigns- at least when she played, that avoided fighting and generally tried to befriend every damn animal she could. He could see why she hadn’t done much against her twisted cat monster pet. “Sorry Bridget, you didn’t deserve this fate, but your daggers will not go to waste.” Cade took them into his inventory, making a mental note to give one to Kaia for close quarters protection. He would keep the other one for now, planning to utilize it if his gladius was too big for a space or if it got knocked away or he dropped it in a fight.

After covering Bridget's body back up, he walked back over and sat down on the couch in the living room. He knew he needed to research as much as he could, so back to planning he went. Kaia would at least have a dagger now, but they needed to collectively practice and get used to fighting together. That meant purposefully finding trouble whilst staying as safe as those parameters would allow.

He would frontline for now, giving Brandon as many opportunities to use that new cloak of his to sneak up on their enemies. Rolling his eyes, he realized that meant tanking, which meant the most danger and likely more injuries. But, if he could keep his friends alive, it would be a small price to pay. Kaia can stay behind them at an angle and fire arrows off, with Cade providing protection for her. Basic enough, but would have to work for now.