~~~Stanley~~~

Stanley hovered in the sky, and the city spread out in a vast, sprawling metropolis below. It looked like a satellite image from so far up... only there was something different about seeing it in person.

It appeared rather calm from so high, especially because the swarming pigeons had vanished. In fact, most of the monsters had vanished from this vantage. Though he doubted it was at all calm down at street level. He could still see the occasional movement here and there on the ground, but no details from his height, and as he looked over the city, extending miles in every direction, he didn't know where to go.

He felt... fine. Great even. Getting to F-grade did wonders like that. Along with his regeneration, of course.

Except he wasn't fine.

It was only a few hours at most since he almost died. Yet he was completely fine now. No hospital, no rehab, no lingering pain, not even a scar. Like it never even happened. The... absence of proof made it feel all wrong. Almost dream-like, as if he hadn't felt death whispering in his ear... his life just a hair's breadth from the end.

He should have died. All of his enemies did. All the people they'd killed before he got there had died. Yet he lived. Untouched, unscathed. It was good. He couldn't ask for a better outcome.

So why didn't it feel that way?

Stanley sat in the sky, surrounded by flying bags of food, and watched the pug sleep in his lap. Caffeine was twitching and whimpering. I hope it's a good dream, Caff.

There was no point just sitting here. All his circling thoughts helped no one. In fact, it was probably an actively bad thing. Every moment wasted was another chance for one of these monsters to get stronger than him, and Stanley had started way behind.

Though, he had some more notifications after the little altercation on his way out of the store...

Trait Upgraded:

[Psycho]

Rage against the dying of the light.

You have found additional power by embracing rage. Keep the anger alive and become stronger as you rage.

+200% — +400% Effective Willpower

-10% Effective Physical Attributes

Stanley glared at the notification, then checked his status. It only showed the 200% from before. Maybe he wasn't angry enough? He could probably work up some more if he thought about... but no, he didn't want to be angry right now. It was a buff, albeit a very situational one, and he was sure it would matter. Eventually.

There was a whole city down there waiting for him. A city full of monsters waiting to kill him. Plus all the mutated animals...

Rather than go exploring just yet, Stanley went back to where he'd started the day. He'd killed a lot of pigeons and rats in that building, and if there were any left, it would be a good test of his strength against something he was familiar with before he found any new and horrible monsters.

It was easy enough to pick the building out on the skyline, and the southern corner of blown out windows on the top floor was a dead giveaway of his previous fight there. The movement he glimpsed inside the broken windows slowed his approach, though, and Stanley paused before entering.

The hint of motion resolved into a pigeon that rushed out at him in a flurry of feathers and cooing. It was just as big as the ones he remembered.

It died much easier, though.

Fortunately for Stanley, and unfortunately for the birds, its death prompted a response from the rest. They flocked from the open windows in a wave of flapping and more cooing... and they died. To a bird.

He didn't even need to use his knife, and didn't really have time to as they rushed out. He killed so many that he had to throw the bodies back inside before the cores started falling into the street below. Stanley didn't want to risk losing them while he was busy up here. Though he tried to pile them in one corner of the offices, hopefully to keep the pigeons from stealing the cores as well.

His slaughter eventually pushed the bird's battlefront back inside, and Stanley followed.

You have entered a Lair: [Winged Citadel]

That was new. He could have sworn this place wasn't a lair when he left... Did they just appear randomly? Or was something else going on?

Stanley flipped a table and used the underside as the lone clean spot in the building. A place to leave his bags, not that he was sure he needed to with the way they followed him around. Still, the amount of bird shit inside rivaled even the roof this morning.

He wouldn't stray far from the bags either way. The food in there was probably more important to him than to most people.

After killing everything that came to him, Stanley ventured deeper inside, and as an experiment, threw a dead bird at the floor to ceiling windows.

They didn't break this time. He also didn't get a message about attacking the lair... Stanley tried again with a bit more force, and also with a knife instead of a bird.

You have attacked a Lair Structure. All Lair Residents notified of the attack.

He got the message, but the window still held up, though with a tiny chip or scratch on the glass. None of the messages would give him more information, and Stanley frowned as his now slightly dented knife punched through every bird to show itself.

The lairs seemed to be monster nests of some kind. But why? What was the point of it?

Though, did it matter? A large collection of monsters in one place was just what he needed, and thanks to his attack, they were apparently all coming his way.

Stanley stayed where he was as birds flew, or rather, hopped out from deeper inside the building. It seemed strange that birds would choose to live inside, especially since they couldn't even spread their wings in most of the hallways and stairwells.

Then the smaller pigeons burst through the doorway in a cloud.

Stanley repeated a similar tactic from the store, of just hitting everything in a wide area. The small birds weren't as strong as the humans he'd spared, but they were definitely much more powerful than any regular pigeon should be. Faster too.

Smashing them all against the floor worked well enough, and Stanley smiled when he saw cores appearing among the dead birds. There were a lot of them. His smile faded when he considered their combined power against what he'd been capable of the night before. They probably wouldn't have killed him, not immediately, but might have forced him to run away...

Just how fast were the monsters going to get stronger?

He killed birds, big and small, using their own indestructible windows as a shield against his back. They came on, more and more, and he got hungry.

Caffeine woke up for the first time since they left the store, and Stanley gladly shared as much as he dared with the pug. He wanted to give Caffeine everything, as much as he wanted. Hell, he'd give it all to him. But he didn't know if the little dog needed it to recover, or if he was just as much of a glutton as he'd always been... So Stanley gave him half. That was... not fair, but reasonable.

It didn't feel reasonable, though. Caffeine had literally saved his life, and now Stanley was being stingy with snacks.

One thing he remembered, as birds died and food dwindled, was Caffeine trying to eat one of the dead rats the day before. So Stanley ripped apart one of the big pigeons and tried to figure out which gross pieces were for eating and which were bad.

"It's your lucky day, Caff," Stanley said to the watching pug as he cut pieces free. "You finally get to eat the dead thing you found on the ground, and this time I won't stop you."

One upside to the messy ordeal was that he didn't have to get his hands dirty while carving them apart. Psychokinesis was fucking great!

Caffeine came to his rescue regarding which pieces were good by eating some and ignoring others. It was right about then when the bird army stopped coming, too. A few still seemed to wander his way, but the flood was over.

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Stanley used the break to make a more thorough sweep for cores in the mess of dead pigeons. At first, he'd thrown the dead out the windows, after he got the cores, of course. But as he got deeper into the building, the trip back became untenable. So he started dumping them into the elevator shafts instead.

He still fed some to Caffeine, but the pug seemed much less enthusiastic about anything Stanley wasn't eating. He got full on the birds, allegedly. Then, if Stanley pulled out some meat or cheese, or even a can of cold and over-salted crap, Caffeine was starving again.

Classic Caffeine, and a nice touch of normalcy.

In between naps and snacks, Stanley fed Caffeine every single core he collected. That was until Caffeine stopped eating them. Then Stanley had to stick one in his mouth and pretend it was delicious.

Caffeine immediately decided he wanted more.

Stanley found out that he could absorb them inside his mouth and not just his hand, which was... good. That they felt like literal rocks when he tried to copy Caffeine and chew one himself...

He checked on Caffeine's status through the afternoon and into the waning light. It never changed. He worried more than once that the pug wasn't absorbing them. Maybe he was destroying them by chewing instead of what Stanley did? The theory he stuck with, for his own hope, was that Caffeine did indeed share the deficit to his gains. It made sense. Even if he had no way to check, after seeing Caffeine heal, plus fight the way he had... that had to be it.

Despite his lack of core consumption, Stanley still had something to show for the effort and dwindling food.

Skill Level Up: [Knife Work]

It was just the one level so far, but since he hadn't physically stabbed anyone yet, it meant the skill must be working as he'd hoped. Plus, he hadn't used the knife as much as he should have.

The next message was more interesting, especially because he thought he felt the change that time...

Skill Level Up: Psychokinesis

Psychokinesis has reached level 10.

No Evolution Available. Ranking up from Novice to Basic.

Stanley checked the skill to see what had changed.

Psychokinesis (Uncommon) - Level 10 (Basic)

I think it, and it happens.

Users of this skill gain the ability to control nearby physical reality with mental power alone.

Power of effects dependent on Willpower and Skill level.

(Basic) Rank. Your efforts with this skill have paid off and you can now use it with more power and for longer before becoming fatigued.

Skill Level Effects - (Basic)

+2% Effectiveness of Willpower

-2% Mental Fatigue

Sure, getting a single percent from each level was practically nothing, but hitting level ten and basic rank had jumped the bonus from one to two percent per level. It was retroactive too. Which meant he gained an additional ten percent to his willpower all at once. That was enough that he noticed.

As the sun dropped toward the horizon, Stanley had another issue. He was fucking tired. Apparently, his little almost-nap while hitting F-grade wasn't enough of a rest.

The problem was that he hadn't slept since this started, and now he wasn't sure how to go about doing so safely. His barricade in the pigeon building was fine and good while he was awake, but trusting his life to it while asleep... that was another thing entirely.

He couldn't actually think of any place that would be safe short of a bank vault... which might actually be a good idea. Why not? If anyone even cared about banks anymore, they couldn't stop him. Assuming it wasn't some fucked up lock, then he should be able to unlock and lock it at will. It was a great idea.

He just needed to find a bank...

It would have been a better task to undertake while there was more light outside... especially since without electricity, he couldn't simply look for glowing signs in the dark.

Turned out that flying really was great. Stanley felt like he might understand killing some random person if it would let him fly like this. Assuming he couldn't already, of course. Soaring through the sky on a whim and a thought was pretty fucking fantastic.

He found a bank.

It was filled with some bugs that he wasn't sure what they'd originally been, but they died like the rest. At least they did once he figured out he needed to pull open their back carapace for his knife to get in. Their shells were disturbingly tough.

The vault was more of a problem. It was closed when he arrived, and it stayed that way when the sun vanished behind the horizon. The damn thing was a complicated mess of shit when he tried to feel out the gears and locking pins with his mental touch.

He never got it open. Despite giving up on the unlock and resorting to just breaking stuff inside the door. That turned it into a new puzzle, and he was just too tired to deal with it by then.

Rather than rip the entire thing out of the ground in frustration, Stanley settled down in the entry room. The vault was on one side and the building only had a single door leading in his room from the other direction. He barricaded the shit out of the doorway and sat down with Caffeine next to the steel door.

He couldn't lock himself away, so he only hoped that Caffeine would make enough noise to wake him up if something tried to get in. It wasn't perfect, but considering the pug had saved his life already, he wasn't too worried about trusting him now.

Before he knocked out though, Stanley had a new notification to deal with.

Class: Psionic has reached the Threshold of Level 10

No Class Evolutions Available. Ranking Psionic up to Level 10 (Basic)

Stanley felt it before he checked. Something more significant had changed.

Psionic (Rare)

I think therefore it is.

A Rare Class that focuses on the power of the Mind.

Practitioners eschew the use of Mana, instead converting all external and internal energy directly into their mental energy.

Strong minds use this energy to force the world around them to bend to their will. Masters of this class can alter reality on a whim and a thought.

Class Level Effects (Basic)

+4% Effective Mind Attributes

-4% Mental Fatigue

Another extra percentage point, but it didn't change the text like his skill had...

For reaching (Basic) rank in your class, you may choose a new Class Skill.

It was even better than that. Not only did he gain another ten percent to willpower, but now he got more skills. They appeared in his mind, and Stanley focused on the first option.

Meditation (Uncommon)

I think, therefore, I am at peace.

Users of this skill gain the ability to refresh their minds through meditation, minimizing the need for sleep. Allows the user to enter profound states of concentration, attuning their mind and body to the flow of psionic energy.

Active meditation increases all regeneration at the cost of severe sensory restrictions.

Higher skill level will increase the positive effects and reduce the sensory restrictions.

Skill Level Effects - (Novice)

+10% to all regeneration while active

-1% to sensory restrictions

It wasn't... bad, and the not having to sleep part sounded good. But sensory restrictions? What did that mean? Also, regeneration wasn't really something he was lacking. So he looked at the next option.

Telepathy (Rare)

You think, therefore, I hear.

Users of this skill gain the ability to touch upon the surface layer of another's mind. There, you may attempt to glean the surface thoughts of the target or to implant new thoughts in the target's mind.

Can be used as communication between willing parties.

Higher skill levels will increase the range at which it can be used, as well as the depth a mind may be searched.

Skill Level Effects (Novice)

+1% Effective Willpower and Intelligence

-1% Mental Fatigue

Mind reading. With a potential for mind manipulation on the side. It was one of those things everyone thought about at least once; to know what someone else was thinking. If he'd had this earlier... he might have known the lair was a trap before he went inside. It could have saved him so much pain...

It was too late for all that now. He was alive despite their best efforts.

As for taking this as his next skill... it was tempting. He would see any ambushes coming. No more backstabbing out of nowhere. Stanley still checked the next one, and it was even better.

Premonition (Epic)

I think, therefore, I know.

One of the fundamental forces of reality is time. Tap into this force to gain a glimpse of the dangers that are yet to strike. A moment's warning is better than no warning at all.

Users of this skill can see into their own probable future.

Higher skill levels will increase the forewarning and clarity of premonitions.

Skill Level Effects (Novice)

+1% All Effective Mind Attributes

+0.01 Second Foresight

-1% Mental Fatigue

See into the future. Who cares if he could read minds when the alternative was seeing the fucking future? Sure, the actual time it would let him see ahead was total shit, but it would get better with levels. If it doubled at level ten and basic rank like his other one, that would be... two tenths of a second... so still not much. Eventually, though...

Stanley thought he remembered reading somewhere that humans reacted in tenths of a second, but he couldn't remember how much. His reactions felt faster after F-grade...

The other differences between the three were the attributes. Meditation didn't give any bonus, while telepathy gave an increase to willpower and intelligence, but Premonition boosted all of his mind stats. Was it the rarity? Going from common to Epic?

It wasn't really much of a choice. Meditation was crap. Telepathy was at least interesting, though Stanley wasn't sure how much he wanted to get inside anyone's head, much less the kind of person who would try to murder him. Or he could see into the future.

New Class Skill: Premonition (Epic) - Level 1 (Novice)

Nothing happened. Oh, he felt a slight... something in his mind, but so slight it could've been nothing more than his imagination. He considered sticking himself with a knife to see if the injury might prompt an effect, but he was too tired.

Instead, he lay down against the vault and stuffed a jacket under his head for a pillow. Caffeine curled up between his legs, and the darkness of the room pulled him down. Stanley had one last thought before drifting off...

I'll have to go shopping again tomorrow.