After my spending spree, I looked back at Howard and his family, they were arguing and Howard was doing his best to calm the others down. I looked at them then back at the dead goblin, the goblin suddenly started to deteriorate while we were staring at the process in wide eyed amazement. A wind out of nowhere seemed to disrupt the very particles that made up the goblin and blew them apart, the whole process looked very similar to what one would expect if you blew into a pile of ashes.
At the end of the process nothing remained of the goblin, the only thing left where it once lay where a handful of copper coins. Being quite the gamer myself I recognized them as a standard game currency. Of course the fact that this happened in real life and not in a game was still a shock, I did not fear this change however, on the contrary I welcomed it. Life had felt boring and empty for me these last few years, and now the whole world changes and turns into a game of life and death? It definitely sends blood rushing through my veins.
“What the blazin bushes just happened?!” Howard asked me gesturing wildly.
“Unless I'm mistaken th-”
Before I could finish another window popped up, by their reactions it seemed the others had the same window pop up in front of them. Explaining to them exactly what I was about to tell them. The world had turned into something with game elements. It also notified us that we had 120 days before our world would be connected to the others of the HUB, what this meant however wasn't explained. If I had to venture a guess I would say other worlds were similar to ours and we would all be connected to each other.
I grinned “Well this is all rather exciting isn't it”
“Exciting?” Howard exclaimed with his mouth wide open. “How is this exciting, its dangerous as the outback bush it is!”
“Might be true but look!” I pointed to my arm which had been wounded by the goblin. Right in front of our eyes the wound was closing in on itself. The flesh mending as if someone had sped up natural healing by an incredibly large margin, I expected the accelerated healing was only possible when out of combat. I would have to experiment with that later.
Howard and the others watched in awe as the wound closed itself, once there was nothing remaining of deep wound Tali walked forward with her eyes open in amazement. She poked at my arm as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Her little mouth wide open in amazement, she stared up to me and then back to the now fresh arm. I smiled and patted her head, then turned my gaze back upon Howard.
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“Think status screen in your mind and take a look.”
Howard looked at my with a frown but as he jerked his head in surprise I could see he had tried it, Jacob also started so I guess he had tried to do it as well.
“All of us now have status screens similar to those used in most games, I can confirm that there is an actual increase when you upgrade the stats.” I explained
What I said was true the increase in intelligence made me feel like I had one of those rare perfect naps, where you wake up and your mind is crystal clear and you feel like you can understand and do things that you couldn't before. My intelligence although a normal individuals would be 10 right about now, mine was a whopping 39, which was an insane difference. I could also feel the increase in the other attributes, I felt lighter, stronger, the feeling was intoxicating. It reminded me of the one time in my life I had tried a drug, I had felt invincible after I had taken it and this was very similar.
I also recognized how dangerous it could be.
I started to explain to the rest of the family how the stats worked, Jacob however wasn't really paying much attention and pointed his hand at the wall as he frowned in concentration. Before I could ask him what he was doing a blue ball of energy shot from his hand and crashed into the wall, leaving a sizeable dent. We all stared at him, eyes wide. Jacob looked even more surprised than us as he seemed to be reading something in front of him. He glanced over at me and grinned widely.
“I can do magic!” He shouted. “And the game gave me this kill Arch Magus! It said I was the first one to use magic!” He puffed his chest forward in pride as he started putting more of the blue energy in his hands and started playing with it. Howard and Ginella where completely swamped and just stood there thunderstruck not sure what to do with this new development. Suddenly a loud pop made all of us start as I twisted around to see what had happened and before me stood a black skeleton with blazing red eyes. I raised my fists ready to fight but a small figure burst past me and jumped into the skeletons arms, the skeleton picked up little Tali as if she weighed nothing.
I could only stare in complete shock as she patted the skeleton proudly on the head.
“My Skelly!” She exclaimed with gleaming eyes.
I looked from the skeleton to the girl now sporting a radiant smile and back to the skeleton. Holy jezus mother mary and her twenty-seven nipples. The girl had summoned a friggin skeleton, out of nothing, with no prior knowledge. A SKELETON! Why a skeleton?! Why not an overly large fluffy bunny or something.
Howard saw my shock and patted my shoulder. “Ever since she saw a skeleton at school she has been dazzled by the things, drawing them every chance she had and talking about how cool skellies were.”
“I have to admit Howard, your grand-kids are extremely adaptable, and even more talented. I don't even understand how they managed to pull this off.”
Howard sighed and twirled his moustache around his finger. “Well I'm atleast happy the blighters have some manner of defending themselves in this new world. By all chances ill think the kids will do better than us older folk.”
“You might be right, kids are certainly remarkable.” I said as I watched Tali playing around with her (pretty scary looking) skeleton as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Jacob was waving his hands around trying to do all kinds of fancy things with his hands and magic. And here I had dumped all my points into intelligence planning to bank on the fact that I got triple stats and dumping them all into magic focused abilities. But there are two kids who seem to have beaten me to the punch. I was pretty sure that Tali had received a skill for her summon as well, it was extremely unlikely that anyone had beaten her to the punch. It was even more unlikely for 3 people to be the first on the entire planet and that they were in one room. Granted it was all trigered because of our early experience with the goblin. It was still more than a little coincidental however.
Thinking about the skill Tali might have received I kept it to myself, I wasn't looking forward to explaining to Howard that his granddaughter was now a necromancer and would likely lead legions of the undead in the future. Definitely not the kind of conversation I want to have with anyone's relatives.