Day 5
Pre-morning
After Deputy Alvarez left the previous night, Erin found a quiet place to practice her forms. She knew that the System had multiple notifications for her, and some might be important, but she had gone nearly forty-eight hours without practicing, and she hadn’t let that happen in several years.
So when she woke up the following morning, she grabbed a cup of tea and asked everyone for a bit of quiet time to go through it all. Mrs. McGibbons provided the flavour text to that conversation when she said, “Go figure your shit out, the world ain’t goin’ anywhere.” She was a colourful woman, if nothing else.
Finding a comfortable place in the backyard, Erin brought up her notifications to start parsing them. The first thing that caught her eye was a notification for Unregistered Ability.
Warning! Unregistered ability has been unlocked.*** Ability may not be fully understood, and therefore accuracy of information can vary. Would you like to know more about…Dragon King’s Wrath? Yes/No.
***Note: Abilities cannot be activated during the assessment phase, no matter what crazy shenanigans you pulled to make it happen the first time.
Erin didn’t hesitate, focusing on Yes, the skill notification appeared.
Dragon King’s Wrath:
Description: Dragon King’s Wrath significantly increases strength, speed, durability, and sensory awareness. Upon activation, a massive release of energy occurs, flowing through the user’s body and emanating out to create a shimmer effect around them that can harm others.
Positives: Increased Strength, Speed, Durability, and Sensory Awareness; Slowly increases Ki
Negatives: Use of the skill can drain the user to the point of unconsciousness; Slowly decreases Ki.
Erin listened to the System AI read the description, then read it again herself. This was what she had used? It felt overpowered. Though the opposing drain and fill Ki references seemed odd. In a video game these kinds of skills would be patched quickly to balance them. Especially for low level players. Would the System AI do that here? Could it do that? She hoped not, even if it meant waiting until after the assessment to really use it.
The next notification made Erin grimace, if for no other reason than it reminded her of how little control she felt over her life lately.
New ability unlocked!*** Unbridled Rage! Would you like to know more? Yes/No.
***Note: You still can’t activate abilities before the assessment period is over, no matter how hard you beg. Stop trying to break the System! I’m doing my part!
Ignoring the somewhat deranged note from the System AI, again Erin focused on Yes, and the skill notification appeared.
Unbridled Rage:
Description: You contain within you an anger that if harnessed could power a small city, or destroy it. On one hand, releasing this anger is a good way to destroy your enemies, on the other it could consume you and lead you to kill everyone you know and love. Use with caution…or don’t
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Positives: Significantly increases the user’s strength and durability with no meaningful impact to speed
Negatives: Can result in a loss of control. As the skill grows in strength, so can the loss of control.
Erin gawked in amazement at the information. Sure, this ability could cause her to kill someone she didn’t mean to, but if she were cornered by unsavory types, she knew who was coming out alive, and it wasn’t them.
There was one more ability notification that caught Erin’s eye. Something about body type?
New ability unlocked! Body type ability defined.*** Would you like to know more? Yes/No.
***Note: Body type abilities are, by default, passive unless otherwise defined. Ability will be activated once notification has been read.
Focusing on Yes, the ability notification appeared and the System AI began reading it.
Body Type 4: Refined Body:
Description: With few weaknesses, a refined body works with the user to shore up the areas they most need to improve on. Body types will level from 0-10 before upgrading to the next type. There are THREE body types above this.
Positives: 15% increase to the development of skills or abilities such as working out, exercising, training, etc. Increases up to three physical attributes by 15%. You will be prompted to choose which attributes to boost at the end of the assessment phase.
Negatives: Going at least 1 month without exercise will reset progress to the previous level.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Erin cheered, garnering a brief poke of her mother’s worried face out the back door before Erin gave her a smile and a thumbs up to reassure her. Eun-ha just smiled at her daughter and returned to what she was doing.
This ability truly excited Erin. Not only did it reflect how hard she worked in life, but it guaranteed future training would see meaningful gains. The attribute boosts might be nice as well, but she couldn’t know until the System showed them what their stats looked like. There was a lot of variety in what attributes RPGs used, so she could only guess how this was setup. That was a problem for later though.
There were various other minor notifications for Erin to read, but the only other one with anything interesting, and she used that word loosely, was her reward for defeating the thugs. The System AI read the following notification.
Congratulations! You survived a six-on-one battle!
You fought six other people alone, didn’t take a scratch, and beat them! In style!
You have been granted the following inappropriately named rewards: A Platinum Reverse-Gangbang Box!***
***Note: Reward boxes cannot be opened during the assessment phase. Upon completion of this phase, you will be given access to the reward. Until such time, you will see it in your inventory as a greyed out icon.
Erin scrunched her nose at the reward name. “Reverse-Gangbang box? Really?” She now had confirmation that the male sense of humor was sexual in nature, even among aliens.
After reviewing lesser notifications, Erin just relaxed with her tea and read through more unredacted content in the help menu. Slowly she was starting to develop an idea of what the system looked like.
The rest of the week progressed with Noah and Erin discussing new things they discovered. As he shared more about his own skills and abilities, Erin realized he was also a non-combat type like her mom, except his skills leaned towards inventing things. He had abilities like Problem Solver, and Inate Understanding: Electronics. He was taking apart everything in the house that didn’t work or couldn’t be used just to discover his skills and abilities.
Eun-ha for her part kept getting notifications for cooking-related skills. There was no shortage of perishable food that needed to be eaten, and once Erin realized her Refined Body skill made her tougher, it was an easy sell to dig through the rubble of their burned down home. She managed to recover some of their supplies in the basement, though everything had a smokey smell to it, and Eun-ha broke out in tears when Erin brought her one surviving picture of their family. The glass was shattered, and the metal frame was a bit warped, but by some miracle the picture never burned.
Eun-ha got away with one trip to the police station, delivering food for Deputy’s Alvarez and Cade, before both agreed it was too dangerous and promised to stop by and pick up any food she made for them.
Things would have almost felt normal if not for the updates from Deputy Alvarez, now insisting they just call him Logan, about neighbourhoods the Domus Nostra had taken over. He didn’t do this to scare them, but wanted them to be safe. Especially Noah, who had been cut off from getting back to his mom by the gang’s expansion.
Erin could have believed the world would return to normal, until a scared and out of breath student from Gumiho Dojang showed up at Mrs. McGibbons door, looking for her.