Cade and Brandon managed to get back to their apartment without needing to fight any other monsters. They barricaded the door with the refrigerator, noting that it was no longer on, which meant it was basically useless to them. They covered their windows and finally sat down to check out their menus. Their weapons were kept very close, but both of them were exhausted from all of the crazy fight or flight endorphins, as well as the general stress they had started to feel after realizing how many people were gone. Brandon had started drifting off almost immediately, which didn’t bother Cade at all; he figured one of them should probably be on some kind of watch until they figured out a better plan.
Cade pulled up the menu mentally, scanning the options. The Guidebook was the first option available, and opening it with a thought Cade quickly flipped through the pages. It was blank. Completely and utterly blank. He laughed as he realized the bastard that put them into this hellish nightmare had gifted them a blank book. He did notice that there was an option to add something to the book, but while he was checking it out he watched as an entry appeared on the first page. It read
[Everyone is gone. I had to fight my puppy. My girlfriend died.]
Cade re-read this several times, the blunt delivery of the statement landing harder in his exhausted state. He selected the edit function and mentally pushed out the message,
[My friend and I are in Portland, we had to fight a massively oversized spider thing. It was called a Twisted Spiderling. It could shoot acid from its abdomen and we were only able to kill it with blunt physical attacks, my friends' knives just glanced off of it. When it died, we each received something called Void Coins, and I received an Acid Sac. The spiderlings Carcass also dropped.]
As he watched, several things were recorded below his own entry, people obviously having found the option to record their thoughts or advice down into the book. A lot of it was panicked and not easy to understand, but some of it was helpful. Cade read something about an inventory, and backed out of the Guidebook menu after reading that you could mentally summon your inventory just like you could your menu. He did so and found a basic display with the items he had received from the fight, his weapons, and other blank spaces. He closed out of it and picked up his sword, commanding it to store in his inventory. It disappeared as he watched, to his amazement, and he tried to resummon it back to his hand. It appeared without delay. “This is truly amazing,” Cade thought. “How can this just be integrated so suddenly? How long were we actually blacked out for this to be forcibly shoved into our heads?”
Picking up his shield, he commanded them into his storage, both disappearing. “What an amazing system.” Cade said aloud. Brandon woke up with a start, grabbing one of his Seax knives and raising it up wide eyed. “What, what happened?” He aimed his words towards Cade, and Cade gently raised his arms in an attempt to calm him.
“Nothing, I figured out some of the menu though, just got a little excited about it. Check this out!” He proceeded to summon both his shield and sword into his hands, then commanded them to drop back into his storage. “What the hell… how’d you do that?” Brandon asked.
“You just have to mentally tell it to return to your storage and I guess whatever Item you’re holding will just be unsummoned and vice versa?” Cade excitedly responded.
Brandon did what Cade said several times in succession, mouth wide as he watched them appear and disappear as if from thin air.
“Take a look at your menu too, and command your inventory to open, take a look at what you got.” As Cade said this, he also opened his menu again. This time choosing to select the Void Coin, but just one, to appear. The coin appeared in his right hand, an approximately dime shaped black hole sitting in his palm. He was taken aback by how dark this thing was, and turning it in his fingers, couldn’t understand how it looked like the entirety of space was contained in a fingernail sized coin.
“Wonder what these are for.” Brandon floated the question out loud. “Not sure, maybe there is some type of shop we can access or find? Seems like it would jive with what we have seen so far. I think anything is possible right now.”
“We need to figure out if anyone is still alive, you know, but how do we even go about that… My phone is dead and I don’t think anything else is working properly.” Brandon stated. “Who is the closest to us now, like who is the safest to check on?”
“Probably Kaia? Or Tara? If that announcement is to be believed, that thing said that all of the religious people are gone, that means my parents and siblings are gone.” Brandon had a shaky relationship with his family at best, so it didn’t feel like he was saying this to gain sympathy, but the heaviness of the statement still made Cade’s heart sink into his stomach. He thought about his own parents, gone nearly 15 years now. With no siblings, Brandon had become Cade’s closest family, along with some of their other friends.
“We should plan out a route to go find one of them, see if they are safe in their homes before we do anything else.” Cade said. Brandon had often mused about his feelings for Kaia, but had never tried to act on them and had never made them an issue before. Cade knew he was suggesting to go find them out of an emotional reaction, but he also couldn’t fault him for it. It was a decent enough idea to go try to find others to group up with, so Cade voiced his agreement, but with a caveat. “I do agree we should go find Kaia, she’s the closest and likely was home at the moment this all happened. I know she likes to stream around this time. But first we need to make sure we have a handle on how this menu operates. Any advantage at this point could save our lives. This shit is serious.”
Cade explained to Brandon the rest of what he had found, including the Guidebook, and they both also noticed several other options. Stats they had already looked at, and Abilities and Skills were grayed out, unable to be mentally selected. The other three options were; The One, , Communications and Party Menu. Selecting The One pulled up three lines of text.
----------------------------------------
The One: LOCKED
Divine Protectors: LOCKED - 15/15
Dark Scions: 100/100
----------------------------------------
This menu had nothing that was selectable, and none of the titles presented or the numbers shown next to them were selectable whatsoever. Clearly this was a purposeful feature meant to taunt humanity. Cade exited out, choosing to not give much thought to something he couldn’t do anything about. The Communication Center was completely blank as well. Moving on, he selected the Party Menu. It was simplistic, but had the option to invite someone to join your Party. He selected this option, and mentally willed it to add Brandon. The invite was immediately accepted and Brandon’s name appeared in his Party Menu highlighted in Blue. His name was flashing, and he mentally prodded it to see what it wanted. As he did, a sub menu opened and asked if he wanted to assign a nickname. “What do you want your nickname to be? Seems like if we have the option, maybe we should utilize it? Keep our names to ourselves? What do you think?” Cade asked Brandon. He was silent for a minute, obviously contemplating what he wanted his nickname to be. After another moment he said aloud, “Crow.” Cade changed the name in the Party Menu, and looking over at Brandon, noticed for the first time as a title appeared in his vision as he viewed Brandon. He also noticed a green health bar appear at the edge of his vision, with Brandon’s new nickname displayed directly above it. Cade figured this must be his health bar, noting that it was bright green compared to the sickly red that the Spiderlings had been.
“Looks like I can also select a new name for myself, and your nickname and healthbar are visible to me now. Is it showing for you?” Cade inquired. “Yeah, same here. I can see your real name for now, and there's a greenish bar below it. Looks like I can move that health bar around within my vision, that’s pretty neat.” Brandon’s eyes flicked around, obviously playing with the new HUD-esque menu that was now available to them. “Kind of looks like there are two more slots in our party menu, at least based on the space it shows, so maybe we can add another two people to our party?” Brandon shrugged but acknowledged Cades question with an affirming nod, not looking up from whatever he was checking out.
“Alright, let's see if we can pack some essentials; food, clothes, etc. and get out of here. We need to get to Kaia’s ASAP.” Cade got up and started gathering the clothing he had in his room and any food he could find. He wasn’t sure what they would be able to do with the food they had, if it would go off in their storage, or if storage was even possible. Cade decided to test it by commanding a box of cereal into his inventory. It disappeared, and opening his inventory was able to confirm it was still there. He brought it back out, and it looked completely unchanged. “Interesting, looks like we can utilize this inventory for food and hopefully other stuff too.” Cade remarked. He proceeded to stick his clothes into his inventory, pull them out, and noticed that they came out exactly the same way they went in. He pondered the implications of this, but they didn’t have time to test every aspect of their new world.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
Brandon had gathered his things and summoned his knives a few times, testing their newly found instant item deployment. “Pretty damn cool, you know… besides everyone dying.” Brandon mused dryly. They put everything away, freeing up their hands to climb up and out their back window, taking advantage of the fire escape to hopefully avoid any animals that may have been transformed within their apartment building. Brandon slowly opened the window, pushed the screen out, and looking around, quietly and carefully moved out onto the small landing. He motioned Cade to join him and they closed the window. They were only three stories up from the alley below them, but moving down this metal deathtrap would not be fun, or quiet. Brandon moved down to the next landing, Cade following a ladder length behind to not overload the old metal. Brandon dropped down to the bottom most landing and waited for Cade. They both knew they would need to drop the final ladder, likely causing quite the commotion and wanted to be able to quickly descend just in case they caught the attention of something or someone.
Brandon raised three of his fingers and mouthed a countdown, at zero he opened the latch and the metal ladder shot downward with a horrifyingly loud screeching sound. Cade exhaled loudly and grated his teeth, shooing Brandon to get down the ladder, following him closely behind. The three or so feet that the ladder left of open space between it and the ground was easy enough to drop from, but as Cade let go to land on the ground, a nightmarish chittering sound started echoing around them. Brandon had turned to face the south side of the alley, Seax knives drawn, looking for whatever had made the noise. Cade summoned his shield and gladius and moved to cover Brandon’s back. “Cade, my side, 20 feet.” Cade turned his head slightly to take a look and saw a monster come out of a trashcan placed against the side of the alley.
“It’s a fucking raccoon monster. Are you kidding me?“ Brandon muttered. “It still hasn’t done the fight teleport thing though. Let’s test out the distance for that. I’m going to slowly advance towards it, cover my back, but stay close.”
Cade acknowledged him and turned halfway around so he could easily see both sides of the alleyway. The chattering sound was absolutely coming from the raccoon, and it got louder as they approached. It was strangely enough the same size as a normal raccoon, but the portions of it that were normally black on a normal raccoon, had been transformed and turned into the same void-like coloring that their Void Coins held. At about 10 feet away the monster charged, but as soon as it moved, the world flashed and they appeared in the same type of situation as before. The alleyway had increased to probably five times the original space, and the monster was still ten or so feet from them. They could see the red bar above it, and the monster's name was displayed above it, Cursed Procyon.
The Chittering moved up in volume, nearly deafening them, which Cade noted was odd coming from such a small body. As it hit the height of its volume, Brandon shouted in pain and clutched his head, dropping both Seax knives around him. Below Brandon’s name appeared the words; CONDITION: Cursed - Shattering Screech. Cade’s own ears started to hurt near instantly after and he was also taken to his knees in pain. He managed to keep his eyes on the monster as the noise it produced dropped away. Cade also had the same condition displayed underneath his health bar, and noticed we was unable to hear. He pushed into Brandon with his shield, and tried to say something to him, but if sound had come out of his mouth, he was unable to hear it. Brandon looked up at him and mouthed something, but Cade couldn’t catch it. Brandon had picked up his Seax’s and pointed them towards the monster, and as Cade turned, he noticed that the raccoon thing was charging them. Brandon took a swing as it got into range and managed to take a chunk out of the right side of the Procyon, knocking it off its course. Its health bar dropped marginally, but the damage was enough to tell that they had hurt it. It still managed to get its claws into Cade’s left leg though, cutting into his jeans and the skin below as it moved past him. They both turned to face it, and Cade raised his shield in painful anger, sword held overhead ready to stab the thing if it charged again. Brandon must have been pretty pissed off at this point, because he started to run at the Procyon, making a bee line to cover the eight or so feet between them. As he got close the Procyon stood up slightly on its back legs and lunged forward. Brandons left knife flashed out in front of him, spearing the thing through the abdomen, his right knife coming around behind it to take it in the neck. The raccoon hadn’t had time to react, and cried out soundlessly as it died. Their vision flashed, and they appeared back in the real world alley.
Brandon looked back towards Cade, and Cade noticed that his hearing had started to come back, this time when Brandon spoke, he could hear the words, but they were extremely dull. He raised his hand in a waiting motion and pointed to his ears. He checked out their health bars and noticed that the Condition from before was gone, and Cade’s health, which had taken a slight hit during the fight, had started to regenerate and was almost back to full. It took close to another fifteen seconds before his hearing fully returned, and he heard Brandon cursing the family of the Procyon under his breath. Cade called his name and Brandon snapped his head around, realizing he could also hear again. “What did you get? It looks like I got a Partial Voidling Hide, 5 more Void Coins, and fuckin hearing damage. Hilarious.” He said the last part with as much sarcasm as he could muster. “Yeah, I got the Partial Hide and the Coins, but I also got a weird colored item, it says it’s called a Home Stone.” Brandon responded, and as he did he brought out the Home Stone, showing it to Cade. “What does it do, does it have some kind of description?”
“Not that I can tell. It has a bluish moving colored name, but it doesn’t come with an explanation.” Brandon informed him. “Okay, guess we just store it for now and take a look at it later when we are somewhere safe? We need to hustle to Kaia’s place.” Cade told him. They both moved to walk towards the end of the alleyway, peering out in either direction to look for potential danger. Seeing nothing, they turned down the south side of the road and started jogging down the sidewalk, weapons at the ready, swiveling their heads to look for any threats. They managed to get down four streets before they saw anything, but as they went to turn the corner of the street their friend's house was on, they nearly ran face first into a small group of younger looking humans. Jumping back and out onto the street, each member of the other group raised their weapons. Cade and Brandon raised their weapons as well. Cade spoke up first, “We don’t want to fight other people, we just want to get into that house.” He pointed to a small building several houses down from them. “You know Kaia?” One of the other party members returned harshly. The speaker looked to be the one in front, and Cade noticed how large his shield was. This must be one of the two handed selections, the Bladed Kite Shield. It was massive, dark gray, and had a lighter shinier edge to the entire thing, which Cade guessed was the offensive portion of the shield. He had it raised protectively in front of the group. He spoke up again, “Answer me, we don’t want to fight, but we will if we need to and you are outnumbered two to one.” Cade heard Brandon move back a step, probably trying to get a better angle to get around them if needed. “Hold on, no need to be aggressive. I’m going to unequip my weapons, can we agree to just talk for a minute instead of fighting?” Brandon whispered loudly beside him, “Cade, what’re you doing, we can’t trust anyone right now and we need to get to Kaia. She’s right there!” Cade calmly responded, “I know, but if we can resolve this quickly, we can get around significantly faster than if we run from them and we are severely outnumbered right now, so weapons down.”
“My name is Cade, this is Crow.” As he said his own name, he commanded the withdrawal of his weapons into his storage and raised his palms forward in front of him. “We don’t want to fight you, but we need to get past you fast to get to our friend. Please let us by, and we will not bother you.” As Cade said this, he saw two of the other three that hadn’t spoken up visually relax. The party looked to be made up of the shield wielder; a young man, hair tied behind him in tight dreads, a spear wielding kid shaking visibly, a very young looking woman - maybe 15 - with a longbow, and the fourth male comfortably and calmly held up a Khopesh and Buckler, almost mimicking what Cade had chosen. The shield wielder slightly turned his head, communicating quietly with his team before turning back to them. “We don’t want to fight either, and we are going to keep our weapons out, although we will lower them and let you by.” Brandon protested with a growl, but Cade raised his hand to stop him from commenting and told him to put his knives away. Brandon begrudgingly did so, and Cade called out that they could agree to that. The young shield wielder lowered his shield to the ground, point down in the ground, and called out to them. “My name is King. Obviously not my real name, but that’s how the world looks to be working now.” As King said his name, a notification appeared in Cade’s vision, the pinging drawing him to the Communication Center. King’s name was blinking, listed now. He mentally acknowledged the notification and saw King nod his head at him. “We found out you can contact others that have given you their Chosen Name if both people accept. A goodwill notion, if you get me.” The other group all lowered their weapons, looking visibly calmer as they eyed Cade and Brandon. The tension in their faces was still clear, but that was understandable with everything that had happened to their world.
“Thank you, King and crew. Stay safe, there are some insane monsters roaming around here and they suck you into some kind of separate dimension to fight.” Cade offered some information as thanks. King nodded appreciatively, “Thank you, we have yet to fight something as a group, but I ran into a massive hornet and it drew me into one of those pocket dimensions things. I wasn’t sure if it was the new standard, but I think we can agree it likely is.”
Cade and Brandon breathed out in unison, relaxing slightly as they moved across the street and past the small group on the other side. He heard King shout out, “Good luck, I hope Kaia is alright. Let me know via the Communicating thing, you can send messages there.”
Cade gratefully responded, “Thanks, will do. You guys stay safe too.”