~~~Stanley~~~

A tongue smacking his face brought him back. Caff...

Stanley opened his eyes to a flickering orange ceiling, at least what he could see past the frantic pug. Caffeine was little more than a dark shape in the dim room, but Stanley held him gently as his fingers probed the pug for injury.

He found nothing obvious and no flinching or crying from his touch, either. Thank god...

Caffeine was whining, but it was the cry of missing Stanley when he was left alone for too long. He was okay... but Stanley's fingers were shaking...

Then the pug abruptly ceased his crying and turned to growl at something near the windows, right before the cooing echoed into the room.

Stanley was already lashing out with his power as he sat up, and he hit the four-foot-tall pigeon before it made another sound. It hadn't even landed on the floor when it sailed back out of the opening, wings flapping uselessly before abruptly stopping in midair when Stanley's hand stretched out in a mirror of his will.

It wasn't enough to knock the pigeon away; he needed to make sure it died, and more than that, he needed the core if it had one. Stanley's outstretched hand closed into a fist, and his power responded in kind, crushing the bird into a wet, feathery ball.

The sensation of crushing a living creature was... quite disgusting, and he felt more than he wanted to with his mental touch, but Stanley was pissed enough to ignore the nausea and discomfort as he pulled the now bird-ball back inside.

He dropped it into a wet pile on the floor as his head throbbed and inspected his surroundings for more targets.

They were alone.

The broken window Stanley had come through was the only one of its kind. Though he saw more than a few more lumps near the window that might have been additional birds. Dead by the looks of it, though it was hard to tell in the flickering light.

Stanley wasn't sure how they died. Maybe they also crashed into the building while chasing him? That was pretty stupid of them, given that none of the other windows had been broken yet by the swarming birds outside.

Assuming they were actually dead... Stanley tensed up, then finally noticed the glowing spots below some of them. That probably meant what he thought it did. He pulled one over with a thought.

+0.1 Wisdom

So they were dead. It also helped that Caffeine wasn't growling anymore, and he apparently had no problem with the display of violence because he was trying to curl up into Stanley's lap. Luckily, by some miracle, he truly didn't seem even the slightest bit injured by the crash landing.

Stanley himself felt far too... undamaged from the instant of terrible pain he'd felt before.

The concrete pillar that had halted his flight... hadn't done nearly as well. The entire thing was cracked and slightly cratered at the impact site, with rebar showing through the gaps. Honestly, Stanley couldn't believe he had survived the collision. They had to be going highway speeds... or faster. He felt a chill just looking at the shattered stone. I should have died. Maybe he had slowed himself down before impact? Or blocked it... somehow?

The terror of the birds, and the sudden extra jolt of adrenaline right before the crash, it had all faded by the time he opened his eyes. As if none of it ever happened.

It was coming back now and in full force. That sickening rush that left him twitchy and anxious. Or maybe it was the freezing wind blowing through the window...

Occasional shapes still flew past the unbroken windows, and a variety of unpleasant noises came through the single broken one, but the inside was calm for the moment. Stanley used the relative safety to look over the messages waiting for his attention and to distract himself from his shaking hands and racing thoughts. I almost died...

Skill Level Up: [Psychokinesis]

Class Level Up: [Psionic]

Debuff: [Internal Bleeding]

Debuff: [Concussed]

Debuff: [Crippled]

Debuff Removed: [Internal Bleeding]

Debuff Removed: [Concussed]

Debuff Removed: [Crippled]

+1 Vitality

Debuff Upgraded: [Famished]

That didn't make him feel much better.

He wasn't sure what leveling up the skill did exactly, other than adding a percentage to willpower. The class level was better and should give him three percent more willpower… three percent of ten… great.

As for the rest of it... It sounded really bad. The building had appeared out of nowhere... so fast... no time to stop or swerve... How am I alive? How is Caffeine...

His trait had mentioned regeneration, and he had clearly just healed from a lot of... stuff.

The famished debuff seemed pointless. He could feel his hunger growing just fine without a damn message telling him he was hungry, and he was pretty sure the spike in hunger had something to do with his miraculous survival.

Like he just needed to eat and could regenerate from... anything? Did everyone have this? Or was it because of the trait?

Seeing that he gained a full point of vitality was also a great bonus for... well, he had hit pretty hard.

The last lingering and far too minor pains faded, and Stanley wondered if maybe his regeneration was better than it should be. If so, then their trait might not be such a terrible trade after all... He could have sworn the birds had sliced him up. Even his clothes had gotten shredded, yet his skin was unblemished now.

Debuff Upgraded: [Starving]

And now he was starving... It was definitely his regeneration.

Focusing on the debuff, it surprised Stanley when it actually gave him more information.

[Starving]

All Resource Recovery -75%

That sounded less than ideal. Unfortunately, Stanley's backpack was no longer on his back or anywhere nearby that he could see, and his shredded pockets were empty. Fucking birds!

Stanley yanked the rest of the cores from the floor to his hand, and they hit with bruising force when he overdid it. Damn it!

+0.1 Vitality

+0.1 Dexterity

+0.1 Strength

+0.1 Vitality

Better than nothing, but he needed to kill a lot more birds... which sucked because the thought of going back outside made his stomach twist. I have to do this! It's my fault that Lee is alone...

Caffeine started twitching in his lap, and Stanley stared at him in surprise. How could he sleep with all that racket? Much less with monster birds flying past right outside...

Beyond the birds, Stanley still needed to find and kill the invaders. A prospect that was a bit more daunting at the moment. I can do it... I have to! But maybe he could collect some cores first. Getting to F-Grade had to be better than what he was now. Hopefully, it wouldn't be too hard to accomplish.

Instead of getting up, Stanley let Caffeine sleep. It was a good excuse to stay where he was while still accomplishing something useful. Namely, attacking the birds outside without going out there himself.

This also let him continue sitting with his back to the slightly broken pillar. The concrete had stopped him cold. Hopefully, it would do the same for any birds coming from behind.

It took him a few tries, but Stanley soon caught himself another pigeon as it flew past the broken window. It was a strangely jarring sensation in his mind when he grabbed it, a squirmy and far too heavy sensation, even for a giant bird.

Stanley didn't need to hold it for long. He raised two hands toward the suspended bird and made a twisting motion; the physical gestures were unnecessary but helped him to focus on the mental intention. Feeling the bird's neck snap through his mind was still unpleasant but less so than squishing the entire thing.

The strangest part was how it got noticeably easier to hold after the snap, and not just to restrain but also to hold aloft. How did dying make it lighter? That didn't even make sense... unless it shit itself, like a lot.

He dragged the corpse inside and watched it dangle in the air until a spot of light appeared, falling down from the body. It almost looked like it came from inside... Stanley decided he didn't care. As long as he got the core, it didn't matter how it worked.

One more bird met the same fate, except that time, another pigeon dove through the window after the corpse. It didn't even seem to notice him where he sat and instead started pecking at the other dead birds as if... no, it was definitely eating them. Pigeon carnivores… not something he’d thought about before, and not an actual concern until they were as big as he was…

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Stanley killed it and threw its corpse, as well as all the others, back out the window. He only wanted the cores, not the meat; he would not eat pigeon, no matter how hungry he was.

As if in mockery of his food preferences, Stanley felt his stomach grumble loudly, almost painfully.

Turned out he couldn't ignore the hunger pangs, at least not if he wanted to keep using his power. Stanley couldn't tell how much power he had left at the moment or if his class even worked that way. It had said he didn't use mana... was it all just mental? Did he wait for a headache to tell him if his power was low?

He had some practice with his power after all these months, but it had always been the headaches that stopped him before, not a lack of power. It was something to figure out, but later. Right now, he wanted to eat.

Instead of venturing into the hellscape outside or eating a pigeon, Stanley remained in the building and looked for a vending machine. An office this big had to have something.

Caffeine was still curled up in his lap asleep, so Stanley gently lifted himself up without moving his legs. It worked, though he felt and probably looked ridiculous with his legs crossed in front while he floated above the cubicles. Caffeine kept sleeping, though, and that was all he cared about.

Along the way, he cautiously approached one unbroken window and looked down at the street below. It wasn't far; Stanley had crashed even lower than he thought, and he didn't have to wait long before spotting another human in the glow of a burning car. More than one, in fact.

A whole crowd of them were running down the street while something chased behind them. Stanley couldn't tell what was chasing them, but it was a dark color, and there was a lot of it. He saw people falling behind and getting swallowed up beneath the tide... There was a lot of screaming, and Stanley turned away.

Of course, Caffeine woke up for the food. He didn't stir for the breaking glass on the vending machine, but one crinkle of plastic and the pug was wide awake.

Stanley shared, obviously. He ate everything with chocolate and Caffeine got the rest.

Debuff Downgraded: [Famished]

Debuff Downgraded: [Hungry]

It turned out to be fairly even split, and the closed-up windowless breakroom was a soothing balm on Stanley's mind. Especially when he stopped hearing the screams from outside.

They'd been declining ever since he woke up in the building, and the air remained blessedly absent of screaming even when he came back out of the snack room.

The cooing was, unfortunately, loud as ever.

Only now, he was hearing new sounds on top of those... a high-pitched squeaking and distant scratching.

Stanley quickly realized that the squeaking sound wasn't coming through the window. It was coming from inside the building...

He moved proactively this time, not waiting to see what fresh horror might jump out at him, and headed for the stairs with Caffeine in his arms.

The sounds were exponentially worse in there but sounded like they were coming mostly from below... at least; he thought they were. Either way, Stanley went up. He needed more vending machines after cleaning out the ones on this floor, and getting further from the nightmare in the streets seemed better than the alternative.

He considered leaving. Just fleeing the city and getting back to the relatively peaceful countryside, but this hellhole was also an opportunity.

The birds still weren't breaking through the windows, and he could pick them off in relative safety. Though the sound of something coming up the stairs was a new wrinkle in the plan.

Worst case, he would go through a window himself and leave the city, but until then, he would kill anything that came after him.

Caffeine fell asleep like a flipped switch when he started flying up the stairs. Just went completely limp in his lap and scared the shit out of Stanley. Then woke up immediately from Stanley's panicked attention and seemed fine... He also immediately fell back to sleep when Stanley sat down to hold him close in worry.

The small dog was still breathing smoothly and even started dreaming moments later with small yips and twitches. Don't do that to me... Stanley curled up over Caffeine while trying to let his new panic subside. The pug had eaten like he always did, aka, like he was literally starving. He still didn't have a scratch on him, either. He was fine.

Stanley let Caffeine keep sleeping in his crossed legs and lifted both of them into the air. Maybe he was just tired... that was all it was. It had been a big night...

Unfortunately, the scratching and squeaking from below were getting louder, and Stanley had a terrible feeling about what was making the racket.

Not wanting to meet whatever it was in the stairwell, he flew higher. All the way to the top floor.

Stanley wasn't ready to face the outside again or the birds that filled it, not just yet. So he stopped there and took it in.

It was nice and very fancy from what he could see in the much dimmer light this high above the fiery streets, but he didn't waste time enjoying the luxury. Instead, Stanley ripped apart the luxurious decor and used it to barricade the stairs. He used a bit more for the elevator, just in case.

Then he picked the nicest penthouse on the top floor; part office, part condo, and with a fancy bathroom that was relatively closed up from the outside. Stanley barricaded the penthouse with more furniture and then the bathroom. There, he blocked the doorway with the ridiculously oversized desk. It left a sliver of a gap on one side, just enough to peek through.

Caffeine slept through all of it and then continued to sleep while Stanley settled in to wait for whatever was coming.

He didn't have to wait long.

The scratching grew louder and louder, and then the tide swarmed into the room like a flood. They barely even slowed down as they dug and scrambled over his barricade... Stanley let them advance, motionless except for his eyes, as he strained to make out his hunters.

As expected, they were rats.

They were varying in size, with many no bigger than Caffeine and a few as large as Stanley. The floor became a squirming mass before he reacted, and react he did, right after an even larger creature squeezed through the doorway with a high-pitched and ear-piercing squeal.

Stanley grabbed the big one and immediately regretted it when it turned out to be even heavier than the birds. So instead, he picked up the smaller ones and started chucking them at their larger friend.

As he'd hoped, they didn't like that and started biting each other in retaliation. Apparently, they couldn't tell he was the one fucking with them, or at least not the one getting pelted by smaller rats. Some of those he threw that survived the process didn't stick to fighting each other and started trying to sniff him out.

It was easy enough to snap the necks of any coming too close, but the big fucker was taking a pounding and didn't seem to be any worse for it. At least until Stanley ripped apart a metal desk and used the sharp instruments as flying weapons.

Unfortunately, he failed to grab the core in time after killing it. The smaller rats absolutely swarmed the moment it died, and by the time he killed all of them, there was no sign of a core. They also ate a lot of the body...

Even then, he only had moments to look for it before more of the nasty creatures swarmed into the room. The flood was never-ending, and the more he killed, the more showed up. Like they were being drawn by the bloodshed.

His weapons got lost among the bodies, and even the cores got harder to grab, much less spot in the gore. The smell also got worse...

Eventually, Stanley had to change it up, and he did so by throwing a hefty pile of dead rats through one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, along with more than a few still-living ones.

It took a lot of power, and Stanley felt a headache fire up behind his eyes, but they all went through the glass. Rats squealed and then went sailing out into the open air hundreds of feet above the ground. He wouldn't get the cores from the ones that fell, but given the flood still spilling onto the floor, it wouldn't matter.

It took a few more piles before the mess cleared out enough for him to find more cores, and he got a few before the next wave came in. Stanley didn't send them out the window; instead, he slammed a dozen rats into the ceiling. Then the floor. Then the ceiling again. Then the floor.

The wonderful silence that followed was only broken by the sound of something wet dripping. At least for a few seconds...

More rats ran in, immediately going after his cores, and Stanley threw them at each other while claiming his loot. Without cores in sight, they all switched to eating the dead instead... Then another of the large ones climbed into the room, and its squeaks stopped the feeding frenzy. Under its direction; because it definitely seemed to be commanding them, they started searching and ignored the corpses. All while the so-called leader started sniffing through the dead itself.

Then a giant pigeon flew through the open window and snatched up a dead rat before launching back outside with its prize. It wasn't the last bird either.

Not wanting to lose too many cores outside, Stanley didn't toss living rats at the birds and instead pelted them with the corpses they were trying to eat.

Debuff Upgraded: [Famished]

It was annoying how fast that went back up, but Stanley had prepared.

He'd found more than a few refrigerators on this floor, all much better stocked than the vending machines. That food was in the bathroom with him now, and given the extra cool air coming from all the recently broken windows around them, it should stay fresh for a while. Not that it would last all that long... especially since Stanley's meals always resulted in Caffeine getting a share of everything.

The pigeons didn't stop coming, flying in the broken windows to either snatch a corpse and retreat or land and eat where they stood. Stanley had no issue with that and threw rat corpses at all of them.

He missed a lot, but it didn't matter because when the birds came inside and started eating the dead or attacking the living rats, war broke out between them.

Stanley tried to make himself invisible even as Caffeine kept sleeping... and he smashed rats and birds alike, crushing skulls and snapping necks as they went after each other. He was especially murderous towards the ones that didn't fight and instead tried to grab cores.

He had to stop that behavior. Those were his cores...

Stanley dragged the cores away the moment he spotted them, flying each one across the room and squeezing them through the narrow gap he was looking out from.

His actions didn't go unnoticed, and more than a few rats and birds tried to catch his flying cores. When they failed at that, a few even tried to dig their way past his barricade into the bathroom.

They all died for their efforts, adding more cores to the pile, and while occasionally a small mob would seek him out, once he killed them all, the newer arrivals wouldn't even know he was there.

It worked well. The dead always drawing more because of the smell or maybe something else. Whatever it was, they kept coming, and Stanley kept killing the survivors of the fights.

Along the way, Stanley tested the limits of his power in this new reality.

He was strong, extremely so. Nothing that he saw could resist him simply crushing it into a pile of goo. It drained his energy to do so, and his headache never really went away again, but the food seemed to help. Whether because of his trait and its boost to regeneration, or something else, he didn't know. But it looked like he would never run out of energy. So long as he had food...

Unfortunately, getting a fancy new class hadn't changed the need for food that had dominated his training in the truck. In fact, it seemed to have gotten worse with how fast his hunger grew now compared to before. There he'd been moving thousands of pounds for hours at a time, and now he was getting just as tired from throwing around a few hundred pounds of rat and bird.

More testing cleared up some of his confusion as Stanley experimented with new and exciting ways to murder stuff. Turned out, it was definitely much cheaper energy-wise to hit the monsters with something else rather than hurting them directly.

Throwing corpses or office supplies killed them all the same, but it didn't take nearly as much energy as if he broke necks or crushed heads. Something to do with how the dead birds felt lighter than the living ones... and he hadn't really ever trained on moving other people.

Stanley had technically carried himself and Caffeine, or at least pushed them in the truck, as well as Lee before he left... and even now, his own body felt far lighter than even the dead animals, almost effortless to move. He felt like that made some sense; it was his power, after all, but Caffeine felt just as light...

Despite the yet unsolved mysteries, Stanley improved his killing-to-eating ratios by switching to second-hand murder of the monstrous beasts. It was more efficient to use external weapons but required a bit more competence in the aim department. Luckily, Stanley had all night to practice.

At some point, Caffeine woke up from his nap, and Stanley was very relieved when the pug resumed his normal behavior of growling at every noise he couldn't see and then begging for food whenever Stanley ate anything.

Stanley didn't want to waste his limited and in-high-demand food on the dog, but couldn't resist giving Caffeine a few bites. He had to ration it, not wanting to be forced outside in the dark looking for more. This meant that his killing suffered, and more than a few of the cores got stolen by the monsters when his aim was off.

The food lasted long enough for the new day to dawn, and it got much easier to deal with the birds in the light. Also much easier to aim his improvised weapons.

That helped stretch the food further.

Unfortunately, the flood of monsters slowly trickled off as the sun climbed higher, and his food eventually ran out. Stanley killed the last rat inside his area by impaling it in the head with a bird's beak, and then the seagull that tried to eat its core using a metal letter opener.

The seagulls had shown up closer to morning... neither Stanley nor Caffeine liked their annoying squawking. The cores they dropped were the same, and the latest two were equally disappointing.

+0.1 Wisdom(+0.1 Wisdom Fortification)

+0.1 Intelligence(+0.1 Inteligence Fortification)

Stanley looked over his improved status.

Status

Name: Stanley Cascade

Race: [Human](UnGraded)

Traits: [Adaptable] [Energetic Resilience]

Class: [Psionic(Rare)](Novice 4)

Class Skills: [Psychokinesis(Uncommon)](Novice 6)

Attributes:

Strength: 8(0%)8

Vitality: 9(0%)9

Dexterity 9(0%)9

Wisdom 10+(+12%)11

Intelligence 10+(+12%)11

Willpower 10+(+12%)11

Twin-Soul ???

Non-Class Skills 0/1:

Buff:

Debuff:

He'd somewhat figured out what it was saying, though he still didn't know what the Fortification meant. It didn't seem to affect his attributes at all. Unfortunately, he'd gotten far too many cores that he didn't need at the moment. Why would he get intelligence cores from obviously idiot birds?

Stanley had considered holding onto the excess mind attribute cores. It wasn't unlikely that other people were out here killing shit, and they might trade some physical cores if they had come up short on mind instead. But it seemed an unnecessary trouble.

He was a little tired and hungry after the morning he'd had, and hadn't ventured out to raid the lower-floor vending machines. He hadn't wanted to mess up his hiding spot. Doing so now wasn't appealing, but he needed some real food today.

Stanley emerged from his hidey-hole, the scent of blood and death thick in the air. Caffeine didn't seem to mind the smell, and he ran about the room, sniffing at everything.

There weren't many corpses left, Stanley having thrown them out the windows to reduce the incoming monsters looking for food, but there were a few around corners that he hadn't been able to see from his hiding spot.

Caffeine sniffed one of the fresher and extra large rat corpses deeply, then tried to take a bite...

Stanley dragged him away in disgust, and Caffeine whined while staring at him with small tail wags. "Don't eat that, Caff."

Caffeine whined again, but Stanley held onto him and as he stared out the open windows. Boston spread out below him, the view quite spectacular from his penthouse. It looked... normal. At least from a distance. The streets directly below looked... messy. Crashed cars, trash, stains that might be blood, but no corpses that he could see... animal or human. Not even the ones he'd thrown out the window all night... Did they eat all of them? Just how many monsters were down there?