“Attention sapient species this newly oriented world. Welcome to the system! Newly oriented planets usually have some growing pains. Between non-system-run technologies no longer being viable, differences in weather and physics, and new dangerous flora and fauna a certain loss of life is inevitable. For that the creators of the system are apologetic. This does not change the benefits will outweigh the pain in the long run. If you survive, expect longer lives, slower aging, and many other benefits! Within the first system year, no other sapient species from the larger multiverse will be allowed to visit. Hopefully, this will give you enough time to acclimate to the system. The Creators Congress wishes you luck!”

“Well... today has been fun can I wake up now?” Tony asked the group his voice dripping with sarcasm. I knew exactly how he felt. The weapons were cool and now I could fire a bow with some level of accuracy which I’d never even thought about trying before. This was all too much though. A part of me was with Tony still clinging to the hope that this was just a crazy mass hallucination or a dream. I could feel that it wasn’t though. This was real and now we just had to push forward.

“So, what should we do now?” Susan asked.

“Well, the storm has stopped we should head up to the main house, maybe my parents are home, and they’ll know what to do?” Josh responded. We all thought that was as good an idea as any of us had. So, we started unstacking our barricade from the door. Josh felt weird about still living at home after he’d turned 18 but he didn’t wind up moving out until he was 21. Of course, he only moved down to the unattached garage we did band practice, but still, it was a big step for him.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t get out of my parents’ house fast enough. I got a job and moved into this shitty one-bedroom apartment. It had a roach problem since before I’d even moved in, and the thermostat stayed broken. But I needed room to be myself, and so did Josh therefore garage. We opened the door and stood awestruck at the scenery in front of us. Many of the trees had grown to be so enormous the canopy almost blotted out the sun and the little sky we could see wasn’t the blue we were used to but the colors from the mana distribution had stayed. There were also several crystal lightning strike locations speckling the ground.

We could hear the loud cacophony of birds in the background, but we couldn’t see anything except a shadow occasionally moving through the trees. The grass had changed as well, it had grown slightly taller and when Tony bent down to touch it, he pulled his hand away quickly and shook his hand as if he was in pain.

“Son of a see you next Tuesday Margaret Thatcher! That fuckin hurt!” I snickered a little at his pain.

“I guess we can’t go touch grass anymore. You, ok?” I asked, checking on Tony’s hand. There was a small pinprick of blood, but he seemed to be alright.

“Yeah, I’m fine man, are we even gonna be able to even walk on this stuff?” He asked. Susan let out a heavy sigh before stepping confidently onto the grass.

“I do everything for you guys you know that?” She said with a small smile.

“And we love you for it, baby!” Tina responded waving over to her. Susan bent down and placed her hand directly above the grass and I could see it reaching up for her hand.

“Looks like it likes meat! Sneakers not so much.” She explained. It seemed feasible so I tentatively reached my foot up and stepped onto the grass.

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“She’s right guys it seems safe, I wouldn’t recommend falling though,” I said the last part with a grimace and Tony gave a large frown.

“What’s wrong?” Josh asked him.

“I just realized… flip-flop season might be over forever! I need a moment!” Tony turned around and fake cried into his elbow. Tina walked up to him and smacked him lightly in the back of the head.

“C’mon stop fuckin around we gotta get going.” She told him. He rubbed the back of his head and grumbled something about “Don’t gotta be violent.” But with that, we all stepped on the grass and started moving up the hill in the direction of the main house. We couldn’t see it because of the new tree growth but we were hopeful it would still be there.

The weather felt surprisingly nice, and warm but with a light breeze. You’d rarely know that a crazy storm had ravaged the area for the last four hours. I was looking around taking in the changes to the environment when suddenly I felt something hit me from behind. I slammed face-first into the grass and screamed as the grass stabbed into my hands and face. The others rushed over to me but Josh got to me first and yanked me up. I screamed, feeling each blade of grass pull out of my flesh hundreds of tiny cuts covering my face and arms. Trying to ignore the pain I looked back to see what attacked me. About 60 meters away a grotesque creature stood. Its limbs were long twisted things, it had a bulbous head with four eyes and grey skin. It screamed viscerally then locked its gaze on me. As I looked back at it a red bar appeared above its head with a name.

“Level 3 Flesh Mongrel” I didn’t even have time to understand the information when suddenly it bent its knees and sprang forward.

“Run!” I yelled as I turned to take my advice. We sprinted as fast as we could trying to get away from the monster, but I was stumbling and half-blind with blood running down my face into my eyes. I hit my hip on one of the crystal lightning strike formations and fell again.

“I got you come on!” Suddenly Josh was by my side slipping my arm over his shoulder. We stumbled away as fast as we could, but the Flesh Mongrel had almost caught up. “We’re not gonna make it.” I heard Josh say. I could see the panic in his eyes trying to get me away from the creature. As it caught up to us, we turned around Josh placing himself between me and the monster. It rose lifting a clawed hand to strike him down. Before it had a chance to bring it down though Susan ran up grabbing the monster’s shoulder and yanking it down while simultaneously kicking its legs out from under it.

It hit the ground hard, but it didn’t even seem to phase the creature. It twisted its body quickly and lunged at Susan. The disgusting creature sank its teeth into her shoulder and ripped out a chunk of her flesh. She screamed in pain but adrenaline being a hell of a drug she kept moving. She grabbed the monster’s throat and swung herself around swiftly wrapping her arm around his neck grabbing her bicep and pulling back as hard as she could her new gauntlets cutting slightly into the monster's neck.

The beast was hardly affected though it began thrashing around trying to throw her off, but she held tightly.

“I’m coming, baby!” Tina ran in, pulled back her foot, and rammed it directly up the center of the monster’s legs trying to hit a sensitive area. It worked but only seemed to make the monster even more angry, it raised one of its hands and backhanded Tina. She flew back and rolled back onto her feet, her face was already swelling on one side of her face and she was bleeding from her forearms were cut up from hitting the grass as she rolled. That was when Josh slipped in between the monster's arms and grabbed its bulbous head.

“SLEEP!” He yelled and the monster immediately slumped to the ground. Susan let go and stepped back from the monster.

“Is it dead?” She asked, but Josh didn’t respond to her question. Instead, he turned around to all of us and spoke loudly.

“My skill only lasts eight seconds get your weapons out already!” That was when we realized we hadn’t even thought to grab the weapons that we’d been practicing with. We all rushed to do exactly that. “If it’s attacked the skill automatically ends so make it count!” I took an arrow and nocked it aiming the tip directly at the monster’s head. Tony ran over and held his chakram slightly over its neck, and Tina took a knee aiming her gun. Josh ran farther away since he didn’t have an offensive weapon and Susan lifted her fist ready to start pummeling the Flesh Mongrel. Josh’s’ skill was only going to last a couple more seconds, so I activated Steady.

“NOW!” Josh yelled as his skill went on cool down. Tony slammed his blade down drawing blood, but the wounds weren’t deep enough to cause fatal damage, the grey skin being much tougher than we thought it would be, but Susan kept it pinned to the ground with punch after punch. I thought that she was going to be able to finish it off when the monster started emitting a red aura. With strength it didn’t look like the beast could have with its spindly arms it threw Susan back and jumped to its feet.

Tina fired her gun winging the Flesh Mongrel in the side. At the same moment, I released the arrow from my bow. With a sickening thud and squishing sound, my arrow sank deep into the creature’s eye burying itself halfway up the shaft. The grey-skinned monster paled and took a few staggering steps towards me before slamming face-first into the ground impaling itself on the grass. Once it stopped moving golden motes rose from the corpse and flowed into each of us.

“You have defeated one Level 3 Flesh Mongrel. Kill Shot! No bonus essence awarded. 75 essence awarded.” I didn’t see the notification though because I had passed out as soon as my arrow had left my bow.