Cursing internally and externally, I start ripping off pieces of my shirt and wrapping them around my left bicep and forearm.
“Shit, I can’t believe I forgot to scavenge for medical supplies, even a few first aid kits would have been nice right about now.” I say aloud bemoaning my stupidity.
As rational thought starts seeping back into my pain addled mind, I can feel the nagging presence of a system notification. Ah hah, how could I forget my level up! I was close to reaching level 3 before I killed two Night Stalkers instead of one. I allow the System notification to be displayed, confirming my level up.
Congratulations, you have reached Level 3.
For reaching level 3, you have received stats according to your class.
+5 Intelligence, +4 Wisdom, +4 Agility, +3 Dexterity, +4 Free stats
Without waiting any longer I open up my status and allocate all of my free stats into Vitality, hoping to stem the flow of blood from my injuries.
Name: Cassius Heart
Titles: Primus
Class: Void Tainted Spell Blade (Lvl 3)
Unallocated Stats: 0
Strength: [10] +20% effectiveness
Vitality: [15] +20% effectiveness
Endurance: [13] +20% effectiveness
Dexterity: [19] +20% effectiveness
Agility: [20] +20% effectiveness
Intelligence: [27] +20% effectiveness
Wisdom: [26] +20% effectiveness
Skills:
Energy Blade
Energy Control
Burst
Void Tainted Sight
Void Tainted Cowl
After upping my Vitality by nearly double, I can feel a small difference in my arm. Being at least 50% higher in Vitality than a standard human when you include my bonus stat effectiveness, seems to be helping to increase blood clotting and likely many other things I don’t even know. However, this doesn’t mean my wounds are healing over at a visible rate like in the books I read, nor is the pain instantly gone.
With my night adventure decidedly over thanks to my injuries, I climb the stairs and make it back to my apartment. The first thing I decide to do after returning is replace my dirty shirt bandages with cleaner shirt bandages and clean the wound. I keep a small tube of neosporin in the medicine cabinet in my bathroom, and decide that it couldn’t hurt to dump some into the wounds. While I’m sure there’s all kinds of new diseases and viruses out there with magic now a thing, it can’t possibly hurt to try and combat the ones I know of. After my best attempts at cleaning and dressing my wounds, I lay down to sleep.
Morning arrives with a side dose of pain. Fortunately my bandages aren’t soaked through, but they’re damp enough I decide to change them using the other half of the shirt I shredded last night for my current bandages. Checking my wounds in the process I don’t spot any signs of infection, no rash, itchiness, or increased redness other than of course my blood. With my improved Vitality and therefor apparent recovery speed I decide to continue with my plans for the day. Those plans include taking my companions out to hunt, but now that they are traveling with me, I feel like I can roam further from my building than I have been and actually explore the city. Until now I’ve always felt like I needed to stay close enough I could get back reasonably fast enough to help if anything went wrong. While I was probably being foolish considering I wouldn’t know if anything happened even a few blocks away, I just couldn’t allow myself to leave the general area.
Today I will wear a long sleeve shirt, as I have no intentions of showing weakness to anyone, not even my companions. With my wounds concealed I check my supplies and move to gather Andy and Lilly. My arm still hurts but during breakfast I do my best to keep pain out of my voice and actions. Neither of my companions shows any reaction that they think anything is different from any other day. Over breakfast I tell Andy and Lilly about the Night Stalkers I killed last night, I don't think they quite understand how freaking crazy these monsters are. However, even though they don't fully understand the threat, they seem to take my warning seriously, and that's all I can really ask for.
Our day starts much like yesterday, as far as killing monsters. I kill all Raptors, Barbed Panthers, and nine out of 10 Saber Wolves we encounter, with Andy taking a single wolf, and both of them teaming up to take down any and all beetles. I pick a direction and continue in as much of a straight line as possible. The direction I chose was east, though I had no reason to choose this direction over the others, it was the direction I explored the least. Even with my arm injured, I was able to easily kill anything we came across. After my third level up, I not only had more energy at my disposal, but I was faster, and nothing could get into range before it was dead, stats are incredible and I want more.
After only five or so wolves and his portion of six different beetle groups, Andy leveled up to Warrior Level 2. He was ecstatic and couldn't stop talking about how strong he felt now. I wasn't certain what he was spending his extra stats on, and I didn't ask, but I would not have been surprised if he could bench my solid 220 pounds without too much trouble. That wasn't a concern in my mind though, If it ever came to a fight and he reached me, I was asleep or three quarters dead already. I internally scoff. Even three quarters dead I could destroy his heart before he made it two strides towards me. I didn't actually think me and Andy would ever come to blows, but it didn't stop me from war gaming situations as we continued east.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
As buildings started to thin and we reached the east side of the city where the ones left were only two stories tall, I could tell there was something wrong. I wasn't sure what it was yet, but I knew somewhere in my head I was missing something. A few fights later I noticed my companions could tell something was off too. It wasn't until I turned a corner down a straight street that I saw what was needling at my brain the past few minutes. I stopped dead in my tracks, Andy and Lilly took two more full strides before they too froze. There was nothing at the end of the street. I mean, there was something, but it was just a flat plain of grass extending for miles. The road just ... stopped. It was like there was some invisible line that bisected the street, cars, even entire buildings. The city just stopped, and plains began. It was as simple and complex as that.
"Holy shit ... w-what? How is that even ..." Andy stammered.
I couldn't have agreed with my neighbor more.
"Where is the rest of the city?" Lilly asked to no one in particular.
"That's a damn good question." I said, deciding I wanted to know the answer, I started forward once more, though slower, and much more carefully.
"What are you doing? Where are you going Cass." Andy asked, reaching out as if to stop me.
"We can't just stand here and expect someone to drop from the sky and give us an in depth lecture on the matter now can we." I responded.
"Come on, we'll be careful but I want to see if there's anything I can find out." I waved for my companions to follow me.
They were hesitant at first but followed after me. There were still monsters walking about the city, and I could see some in the plains area after it. I'm hoping that means the edge of the city isn't insta death. As we reached the edge of the city, I killed a pack of Saber Wolves, and had Andy throw one of their bodies across the dividing line. Nothing happened to the wolfs body, so I stepped up and extended my left pinky finger, and slowly pushed it across the threshold. When nothing happened I kept advancing at a snails pace, until my entire body was across and I was outside the city standing at the edge of the sprawling plains. What I noticed after confirming that I was in fact not dead, was that to the north and south the plains ran into a smaller town and a forest respectively.
Coming to the only conclusion that made sense to me, I surmised that for some reason when the Earth was integrated the System decided to rearrange it. This explained multiple things including the lack of power, cell service, and a response from the government or local authorities. The thought that immediately slammed into my mind after coming to this conclusion was that it was going to be extremely difficult to find my family now. I took a minute to internalize this, but afterwards my resolve hardened. To find my family I needed to be powerful enough to not just protect them, but scour the randomized jigsaw puzzle that was now Earth in order to find them. I needed to make sure nothing could come between me and my search for them.
When I explained my conclusion to my companions, including the fact that unless their families were in the part of the city we were in it was going to be difficult to find them, Andy immediately paled and breathed a curse. I knew that Andy was the black sheep of his family, but he still cared for them, and he knew they still loved him, this was a pretty big blow for him. However, Lilly didn't seem to be nearly as disheartened about the scenario. I didn't know if her reaction stemmed from her family being close, or that she wasn't very fond of her family, maybe they were already gone and she had no one left.
After a few minutes of silence passed, I decided that we should get moving, and I wanted to move towards the corner where the city, the plains, and the smaller but decent sized town intersected. With such clean corners I assumed that there was a fourth biome for lack of a better term, located opposite the plains, and I wanted to know what it was. I explained my thoughts to Andy and Lilly, and they assented. We started moving north, using the plains side of the line to make better time. There didn't seem to be any change in the monsters we killed coming from the plains. I didn't know if this was because these were the kinds of monsters now inhabiting all of Earth, or if the types just covered more than one area.
I couldn't determine the size of the areas even with a clear view of the entire plains leading from town at the north several miles south until it reached the forest. This was of course assuming the System split everything into equal and even chunks. We were further north than south, but it was still going to take us a decent amount of time to make it to the corner. It was an hour of killing monsters and walking later, when I sensed four humans at the edge of my Energy Control skill. They all had classes and they were on the city side of the border. I waved for my companions to stop and moved into the city to take cover. I didn't want to give away our advantage of knowing where they were by standing out in the open.
"Okay listen up. There's four people about 250 feet north north west of us." I told Andy and Lilly after we had taken some cover.
"They are moving at a leisurely pace from what I can tell, so I doubt they've noticed us." As I continue telling them the scenario, they look at me with weird expressions.
"How do you know that?" Lilly asks, confused. Andy nodded his support of the question.
"Ah, its a part of one of my skills." I quickly say, forgetting they wouldn't know how I could sense people.
"Woah, really? That's so cool dude. Since when could you do that?" Andy asked, full of excitement.
"Its always been a part of my skill. Now, lets get back to the situation. There's four people in front of us. What should we do." I asked them.
"I know last time we encountered new people it didn't go well, but not everyone can be an asshole." Lilly said.
I was inclined to agree with her, I knew well enough that not everyone who would survive the initialization would be murderers or criminals. Not many saints would survive the initialization, but there was enough of a middle ground for me not to give up on humanity, just considering that I made it was enough. I didn't just agree with her because I had hope for humanity though. I was confident enough even with my injury that I could take these four if they decided to attack us. It might not be as easy as before, but with my third level, I was fast, in mind, and body. I looked to Andy to see how he would react to Lilly's opinion.
"I'm fine with giving people a chance, especially considering we're not defenseless." Andy looked to me at the end. I understood his meaning.
"I think you're both right, lets give these people a chance." I nodded to them both.
With our decision made we wound through the city towards our newest encounter with the remnants of humanity. I again took on all monsters during our approach to keep sound to a minimum. Knowing where they were and which direction they were moving I led us into their path and waited for them to approach. Waiting for them to arrive I looked to Andy and bored a hole into him with my gaze and reminded him not to disclose important information and what had happened the last time he carelessly gave away our secrets. He sheepishly agreed to be more careful this time. Before they fully closed the distance I led my companions out with our hands in the air. Raising my arm still hurt but surprisingly it was already feeling better.
"Greetings, we mean you no harm." I said loudly.
The four people in front of us stopped as soon as we rounded the corner. There were two men and two women, all four had their hands on their weapons. The man farthest to the left was tall, taller than my six feet two inches, and heavily muscled. He had light brown short hair and a no nonsense blocky face, and he had his hand on a metallic baseball bat. What's with people and baseball bats, I mean I get that there's a lot of people who had one laying around but it wouldn't have been my first choice. The woman to the right of him was a short thing, maybe five feet tall. She was pretty, lithe, and had modest assets. She had black hair that fell over her shoulders and stopped above her chest. She had her hands on two knives at her belt. Continuing from left to right the next person was the second woman. A much taller blonde at about five nine if I had to guess. She had wide hips, but not much of a chest, though that didn't stop her from being pretty. She was reaching to a recurve bow and a quiver of arrows that were both slung behind her. The last man of the group was probably six feet tall on the dot with dirty blonde hair, he was a good looking guy and had his hand on the hilt of a machete at his waist.
"Well, isn't this interesting." Machete guy says.