As I ran forwards, my mind managed to conjure up images of the worst kind. Cindy and Taylor, surrounded by the crazy people. A child trapped under a tree with a grievous injury, parents already dead. Two rapidly cooling corpses, dripping with blood from wounds that I inflicted.

Pushing the terrible thoughts to the side, I continued running towards the sound of commotion. I knew, somewhere in my mind, that my bleeding heart would get me into trouble someday. That there would come a time when the correct decision would be to ignore the sound completely and mind my own business.

I also knew that I would never be able to do it. I just couldn’t forgive myself if there was something I could have done to save someone, and then I didn’t act. I remembered vividly something Mom told me when she decided to divorce my father. It was just after she had been hit for the first, and last, time.

”Vic, sweety. Inaction IS a form of action. If I chose not to respond and ignore the abuse, I would have simply encouraged more of the same. Sometimes doing nothing is the right choice, but when someone’s safety is on the line, doing nothing is taking the side of the abuser.”

She was perfectly right. Even still, a part of me wanted to turn away and run. Flashes of imagery painted with a bloody knife filled my mind, begging me to leave. But that’s not what Mom would have done.

Fear in my heart, I set my resolve and hunted for the source of the noise. As I found it, though, tension flooded from my body, replaced with abject confusion.

In a small clearing between two trees, Kaitlyn faced off against a two-foot-tall squirrel. She seemed fine, save for a small cut on her right arm.

The animal, on the other hand, looked terrible. It was growling and chittering, foam running from its mouth. Its fur was matted and rough and was also a shockingly bright green. What the hell was it? Unbidden, a memory slipped into my mind, an idle comment Cindy made when discussing the Identify skill. That it might only be able to be used on system creatures and objects.

I mentally urged the skill to activate, focusing on the squirrel.

Lesser Gale Treerat: T1

A monster created by infusing wind mana with an Eastern gray squirrel.

It was a monster. But monsters shouldn’t show up until the third wave! Something was very, very wrong.

With a shriek, the squirrel lunged forward, attempting to attack Kaitlyn. Diving forwards, I activated Storm Cloak and shifted into the lunging attack from my sword forms, ripping the machete across the monster in a quick horizontal blow.

My weapon struck true, the beast distracted by its prey and paying me no mind. That was a mistake, as my machete tore an eight-inch long and several-inch deep cut through its side and batted it from the air.

As the squirrel landed, it twitched lightly on the ground, blood pooling around it. Finally, after a few death throws, the monster died, sending a wispy fog into the air. The fog split apart into two streams, one flowing into me, and the other into Kaitlyn.

As the gas entered my chest near my heart, I felt a comfortable warmth, followed by a system notification.

Mana Absorbed:

Core Quality 0 -> 1

This… was bad. Very, very bad. Way worse than just some crazed people running around. Monsters were showing up before they were supposed to.

“Kaitlyn, what are you doing here? You should be back at the hotel,” I barked.

She vigorously nodded her head, still too shocked to speak, a slight tremble in her limbs. I hadn’t noticed when we were walking, likely due to the darkness, but she was a lot younger than I originally thought. In the woods, I had guessed she was close to my age, but in actuality, she was probably still a teenager.

At my severe tone, she looked like she was ready to burst into tears.

I sighed and softened my voice.

“It’s okay Kaitlyn. You’re not in trouble or anything. I was just worried. How old are you, by the way? And what were you doing out here?”

She gulped, clearing her throat before responding.

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“I’m 16. I… I heard you were training to fight. I wanted to join you.”

Yeesh. Given what happened to her, I couldn’t fault her for that. It was partially my bad, going such a distance from camp.

“I don’t think that’s a bad idea. We can look at your menu and skills when we get back to camp, if you want, then I can show you what to do.”

She looked excited at my words, her ears perking up and twitching happily.

“That said, we really need to get back. I’ll grab this giant squirrel here, and we can show everyone. Let’s go.”

This time, I flew a few feet off the ground carrying the squirrel while Kaitlyn ran behind me. When I checked back, I noticed that she wasn’t even breaking a sweat, even while I was moving at a pretty decent clip. As I suspected, those fancy feet were made for running.

We got back to camp quickly. When you could navigate with the accuracy of a homing pigeon, getting from point A to point B was trivial. Donny was on the right side of the hotel under an awning. He had just started getting his gear set up.

As I threw the giant rodent on the ground next to him, he jumped slightly, a tiny gout of flame puffing from his nostrils.

“Vic, what the hell is that?”

“That, Donny, is a monster. Where’s Cindy?”

His expression shifted first to disbelief, then to shock, then to determination.

“Follow me.”

Dropping everything, Donny dashed into the hotel, and I followed, hot on his tail. Kaitlyn scurried after us both.

The entryway of the hotel had a large counter in the back where a concierge would check people into their rooms. There were beautiful stairs on either side of the door leading to the second floor, where most of the rooms were. Behind the check-in counter was an opening leading to the in-house restaurant, complete with a bar, kitchen, and sizable dining area.

Ignoring the first floor for now, though, we walked up the staircase to the second floor. Donny led us to the back, into one of the rooms with a placard posted out front, reading “Administrator’s Office”. Inside, I found Cindy and two other people I hadn’t met yet busy cleaning, and getting the workspace into order. Cindy sat at a large official-looking desk and was sorting through a stack of papers while the others hurried around with a broom and a mop.

At my entry, she looked up and caught my eye.

“Vic. What’s wrong?”

It was somehow both incredibly touching and annoying, that she could read me so well.

“I’ll cut to the chase. I just fought and killed a monster out in the woods. Based on its system description when I identified it, it looks like it spawned naturally.”

Her eyes narrowed, and a frown rose to her face. Resting her elbows on the desk, she made a triangle with her hands, clasping them together as she rested her chin against them. The cumulation of it all made her appearance quite imposing.

After a moment, she reached into a drawer of the desk, bringing out a familiar notebook that I noticed was quickly wearing down. It had passed through many hands already and was starting to be filled with pages and pages of notes. I was not the only one exploring the system today, it seemed.

In a somber tone, Cindy started to read out the description of the four waves from the original letter, written by the mysterious H.G.

“Here it is.

Be warned:

The first wave is a beta test, determining if the human race will survive these changes, or will tear itself apart immediately afterward. Small pockets of connected individuals have been changed across the world. It will also establish character archetypes.

This wave seems to have happened as it was written. Small pockets of transformed individuals, character archetypes, the works. The following waves are where things start to get… blatantly incorrect.

The second wave will introduce changes to the rest of humanity, ending the human race as we know it forever. This will also unlock the job and class system for all individuals.

The third wave will change the environment, expanding the sandbox of reality with new bounds. It will also introduce wild monsters. Be prepared to fight; infinite growth comes with a cost.

The fourth and final wave will add the dungeon system to the world and release the gods from their fetters.”

I could immediately see where the waves started to go wrong. Donny beat me to the punch, though.

“Didn’t the environment already change? That was supposed to be the third wave, but it definitely happened during what the system notice called the second wave.”

Cindy tipped her head towards Donny at his comment.

“Correct. Equally concerning, we have heard no mention of ‘jobs’, which were supposed to come with the second wave. There are no additions to our statuses as well, even though classes seem to be working as intended.”

I slowly turned to Cindy, realization donning my face.

“So, we can’t trust the system messages at all, can we? They can lie, omit information, or be blatantly untrue. Do you think the fourth wave has already happened as well? It seems like that one would be harder to notice.”

Cindy’s expression turned grim.

“It’s possible. Very possible. Only this ‘Luna’ character has been somewhat truthful, and even that is nebulous. I’m particularly concerned about these ‘gods’. What is their purpose? Will they have motivations as well that we need to contend with? In most fantasy settings the pantheons aren’t necessarily helpful.”

“And sometimes they’re evil outright,” Donny interjected.

I twisted to look at him.

“What are you thinking, Donny?”

A low growl rumbled in his throat, as his reptilian eyes twisted into a scowl.

“Remember what those crazy people shouted at you? They called you ‘unworthy’. That’s not the talk of someone strung out on drugs. That’s the talk of a fanatic. They were covered in runes and symbols and had been enhanced with some kind of system-based power we haven’t seen before. I thought it might have been a skill at first, but now, I’m not so sure.”

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, blowing out scorching hot air after a pause.

“I think they were probably followers of one of the gods. Cultists, or something.”

Cindy slowly nodded. Suddenly, I could see the weight of the last two days on her. She was deeply stressed.

“You might be right, Donny. You might be right. But what does this mean? What can we do?”

We were all silent, trying to come up with solutions to a problem we didn’t think we could solve.

“I… I think I know.”

Turning, I stared at Kaitlyn who had just spoken up. The room stilled as every eye focused on her.

“The… cultists. They wanted something inside the police station, but the way they talked about it… they were afraid. Or at the very least wary of it, whatever it was. They couldn’t get through the sealed doors into the detention area, everything was locked down. What if… what if we got whatever it was first?”

Cindy’s eyes seemed to glow with a cunning light.