The next morning’s chores were handled quickly. Yesterday’s slimes hadn’t left any bodies, and I’d once again forgotten bodies somewhere, so my first task of the day was to go clean up the library.
When I got there, I noticed that a few cars were parked outside, and I went in to investigate. Right at the register was a cute brunette with glasses who welcomed me in.
“Hi there! Sorry if you tried to come by in the past few days and we weren’t open– we had a bit of a… pest problem?” Her smile looked a bit pained. “If you’re looking for a certain book, I could help you find it?”
“Uh, no thank you, I’m actually here to clean up the bodies? Did you… happen to move them?” I gave her a nervous smirk as her face went pale.
You’re great with the ladies, Kenny.
Shut up, I bit back.
“Uh, n-no, I didn’t touch them.” She seriously looked sick. I almost asked if she was okay, but figured that the sight of dead bodies, even if they were just monsters, was probably still shocking for most people.
I lugged all the corpses out of the library and chucked them into the back of my car before heading back into the library out of curiosity.
The desk girl gave me a nervous smile as I leaned over the desk. “Say, why are you here? Surely you’d rather be at home right now? Y’know, where it’s safer?”
She tapped the desk rapidly– some sort of tic, probably. “It’s my job, and I feel… safe, here.” She laughed. “It probably doesn’t make any sense, there were monsters in here just yesterday, but the library has always been… my safe place. That’s why I took the job in the first place.”
I nodded idly, grabbing a sticky note off the desk and quickly writing my phone number in it. I held it at eye level in front of her face. “If you’re ever in trouble, call this number. I’ll do what I can to help you out.”
Her expression seemed frozen, like she didn’t know quite how to respond. “Uh, thank you?”
“No problem. By the way, what’s your name?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s Olive,” she responded, her smile seeming a bit more real now.
“Kenny. Good to meet you, Olive.” I headed out of the library with a smile and a casual wave.
I stand corrected. Maybe you actually are good with the ladies.
“Once again, shut up,” I muttered.
Hauling the bodies back home and burying them all took a couple hours, but the task’s completion brought with it a wave of relieving Mana Regen and a further improvement in the power of my Garden, which showed itself as I watered my plants and found that every single stream seemed to flow straight and evenly to the plants they were intended for.
That actually gave me an idea, and I placed the hose between all the plants before going and turning the pressure way down. Just like I’d been hoping, the tiny water streams defied gravity to flow to every plant evenly.
Patting myself on the back for that idea, I got back in my car and started driving.
Where are we headed today? Karl queried, having not been let in on my plans yet.
“I want to go check on the gun shop and the gas station. Gotta make sure the old man’s okay, and we ran into some goblins the other day at the station, so it’s possible that’ll happen again. After that, I might want to go visit the park and see if anything’s afoot there.”
Understood.
Karl and I locked in on the tasks of the day and stopped by the shop first.
Another window was smashed, which wasn’t a good sign. The owner, though, was completely fine, and even had four more kobold corpses for us to nab. I finally caught his name, too– Bob. It fit him well.
“Why do you think it is that he keeps finding kobolds? I haven’t seen a single one yet and he’s killed five.”
Kobolds search for dragons and, in their absence, hoards. It’s likely that all those weapons are considered a “hoard.”
“Huh.” I nodded gently. “Wait, but then why was there a troll in the grocery store? And mimics?”
Trolls are found near swamps or large amounts of food. They’re distantly related to pigs, after all. The mimics likely spawned due to the large amount of items, being drawn to “loot,” things that mortals would desire. They would normally only spawn in places that aren’t frequently travelled, but the Mana System likely decided the place was abandoned since people were staying away in fear of the troll.
“That’s kind of messed up. It was just a couple days.”
And most of the Mana System’s presence in this world, Karl reminded me.
I grunted and refocused on driving.
Before long, we got to the gas station, where I got in for a quick refill and started investigating. Luckily– or perhaps unluckily– there was nothing to kill, so Karl and I moved on.
The park was a little bit away, so I snacked on some Fire Clubs while I drove, Karl practically going crazy over the capsaicin in the back of my mind.
“Why do you even like it that much?” I asked as I pulled into the park’s driveway.
You’re aware that dragons breathe fire, yes?
“Yeah.”
That’s a natural part of our bodies, not a Skill or Passive. It uses Mana, yes, but it’s not a traditional form of magic. As such, there is no way to empower it like one would with a Skill.
I raised my eyebrows, cutting in, “But capsaicin does something, I’m guessing?”
Indeed. Capsaicin has a transformative effect on the glands that produce our flames, stimulating them and reprogramming them. It causes our fire to burn hotter and hotter. Even an Ancient Dragon’s breath, large and endless though it may be, will be no hotter than that of a drakeling without access to this glorious drug.
“I guess I can see why it’s valuable, then.” I stepped out of the car and straightened my shirt. “You ready to kill some… I dunno, something?”
Always.
I stepped into the grass and started marching, trusting Karl to keep an eye out for danger.
I wasn’t exactly a nature guy, but I had been to the park a few times, and my eyes noted all the familiar features. At the center was a fountain where the kids would make wishes and toss in pennies. Behind that was a jungle gym-style playset for the kids to play around on.
All around were lush trees, the one that I’d sprained my arm falling out of when my family was visiting my aunt as a kid, the one the kids would always play tag around, the one that was staring at me, the one– huh?
I locked eyes with the tree. Something in my brain told me there wasn’t anything to look at, but clearly there was an eye on this tree.
“Karl?”
Yeah, that’s a fae ent, I’ll handle this.
My body moved of its own volition to grab the two katars by my sides, which caught flame the second they were unsheathed. Translucent scales flickered along my otherwise-invisible Avatar Reinforcement barrier.
Karl rushed into the fray, slicing at the monstrous tree's eye as vines sprouted from the earth and tried to bind him in place.
The plants were too slow, and a sound like a tree falling echoed through the clearing– or at least, what I imagined that would sound like.
The tree had sprouted a vicious, blade-toothed mouth with which to scream as Karl's blade burned through its eye, reducing it to globs of white and pink slime as the humor that made up the bulk of the eye was melted and dripped down the ent’s oddly fleshy bark.
More vines sprouted all around my body, thrashing violently, but they burned on contact with Avatar Reinforcement, courtesy of Karl. I was glad to note that the barrier now extended to my clothes, meaning my stuff wouldn't be getting ruined every time I got hit.
While the monster was distracted, Karl began cutting at it with his katars, not chopping into it with the punch daggers but gracefully slicing just past the bark. Pink sap started to well up wherever his blade glided, then quickly caught flame and started popping against the tree.
A few bits of sap tried to stick to me, but it, too, glanced off my barrier, doing far less damage than I'd expected.
At this point, Karl was practically torturing the monster, and I was honestly starting to feel a bit bad for it. The abomination soon fully caught fire, at which point Karl backed off to watch it burn.
Dude, that was… disturbing.
“Fae ents use suggestion magic to draw in easy prey, their favorites being mortal young and animals seeking shelter, and hide themselves from consequence,” Karl growled, “They are malicious and cowardly creatures. No other death would suit such a being.”
I silently watched the burning monster scream out sounds of creaking wood and rustling branches. Even in death, it seemed, it was programmed to deceive.
Karl and I ended up doing a quick patrol of the rest of the property, but found no other monsters.
How long do you think this thing was here? Would it have had time to… you know?
Karl shook my head. “It's unlikely that the fae ent was here more than a day or two. It's possible that it may have killed someone in that time, but I prefer to imagine that we struck it down before it harmed anyone.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Eventually, the burning stopped. Luckily, the grass itself didn't catch fire, otherwise we would've had a problem on our hands.
Karl gave me the reins and briefly abandoned me to absorb the ent’s Echo, leaving me with only my base stats for a good second. The temporary weakness reminded me of how little I was without him.
Ghastly Banquet (Lv. 5) → (Lv. 6)
+2 Mana
+1 Attribute Point (Human Versatility)
+1 Skill Upgrade
Devouring Phantasm or Souldrain Spirits
I have received a point of Mana! Karl's voice boomed inside my head.
I quickly checked to see if that had carried over to me.
“If my memory's right, I think I got that too.”
Karl hummed happily.
I pulled up my Skill Upgrade choices.
Devouring Phantasm (Lv. 6)
Allows the user to speak a word while touching the body of a deceased creature, gaining an Echo of that creature associated with the word spoken. Each corpse may have a number of Echoes harvested from it equal to the level of Devouring Phantasm. Alternatively, the user may have one of their Echoes consume the energy that would be harvested from a corpse, instead using it to strengthen themselves by a percentage of the corpse’s Attributes equal to the level of Devouring Phantasm. The user and their Echoes will additionally gain access to a hidden “Connection” Attribute, which improves the potency of all other other Skills and Passives that rely on Echoes.
Souldrain Spirits (Lv. 6)
Allows the user to speak a word while touching the body of a deceased creature, gaining an Echo of that creature associated with the word spoken. Each corpse may have a number of Echoes harvested from it equal to the level of Souldrain Spirits. Alternatively, the user may send out Echoes in their possession to temporarily drain Attribute points from nearby foes. The amount of Attributes gained and lost from each targeted creature is based on the power of the Echoes, as is the radius of Souldrain Spirits.
“I think the choice here is pretty clear.” Losing out on Karl’s ability to gain stats would be silly, especially right after we’d both just gotten a new point to our Mana and had plans to get tons more mileage out of it. Plus, that Connection thing sounded strong.
It was a bit sad passing up Souldrain Spirits, just because it sounded really cool and would probably let me use powerful Echoes to simultaneously weaken my enemies and strengthen myself, but I preferred the permanent scaling for now.
I locked in my
Name: Kenny Bert
Race: Human (Earth)
Role: Speaker for the Dead
Strength: 5 (+19)
Mana: 18 (+26)
Dexterity: 5 (+8)
Mana Recovery: 13 (+13)
Connection: 5 (Karl)
Passives: Human Versatility, Echo Garden
Skills: Devouring Phantasm (Lv. 6), Avatar Reinforcement (Lv. 6)
Quests: Reintegration (6%), Impossible Task (3/8) (0/1)
“My Mana went up again? I guess that’s probably an effect of Connection. I bet it’s a percentage boost to what’s already there based on the raw Connection stat. I wonder if I can put points into it to raise it, or if it uses some other sort of growth?”
It specifies that the Connection is with me. It’s likely that each individual Echo would receive its own Connection Attribute, but then what is it based on? Five cannot be the base, else your goblin Echoes would be listed at the same level.
“Huh. We’ll have to figure it out together, I suppose.” I quickly checked the time on my phone. “It’s only midday. We’ve still got plenty of time if you want to check out some other spots.”
Of course. Where are we headed?
“Well, since we’re sticking to places people tend to hang out around, I was thinking the high school here would be a good spot. I doubt classes are still in session– maybe they were at the start of this mess, but if the schools are still running on a Monday, in the apocalypse? I’d eat my shoes.”
I will hold you to that bet.
“I guess we should go check if I’m right, then.”
----------------------------------------
My dinner would not consist of rubber, much to Karl’s disappointment.
The school was completely abandoned– and it’d been done in a hurry, too. Papers were scattered all around, bags had been dropped in a hurry, and lockers were left open.
Yet, there were no immediately obvious threats. No bodies, no blood, no claw marks or anything.
There was, however, an odd stickiness to the floor, like how a kid’s hands get after they eat candy. It wasn’t impeding my movement at all, but it was off putting.
“Any clue what this is from?”
Hmm. Karl considered the environment. I’m unsure. Creatures that would naturally spawn in places of learning aren’t too common, and I don’t know of any that would do something like this. Perhaps a form of mutated honey bee, but they would have needed to wander in from a field of flowers, and I didn’t see anything suitable as we approached.
“I guess we’ll just have to figure it out, then,” I commented with a slight shrug of my shoulders.
I started moving through the halls, hunting for the source of the floor’s condition.
It didn’t take too long before we ran into something.
In the second classroom we checked, there was a huge, hairy wolf-man, but not quite like a werewolf. Its eyes and ears were too large, and its fur seemed way too fluffy and colorful, mostly white with spots of light brown interspersed.
The disturbing sight set me back for a moment, and Karl took over as it pounced, plunging a katar straight through the thing’s heart and setting it alight.
“What the heck was that?” I questioned as he devoured the spirit of the… thing.
Looks like a werewolf or beastkin, but neither is quite so… extreme, and the latter aren’t spawned as monsters. Different cultures tend to affect the appearance and abilities of monsters, would that have anything to do with this?
I thought for a long second, then facepalmed.
“It’s a furry.”
A what?
“It’s–” I sighed, hating the words that were coming out of my mouth. “It’s a person who pretends to be part animal. Usually. Sometimes they do other stuff too.”
…Is this a normal behavior for humans, or is it a mental illness?
“I think some of them are normal enough, but a handful of them are problematic and give the rest a bad reputation,” I explained, “I imagine it’s just like… roleplay. Like, there are some people who get together and pretend to be knights or wizards or soldiers and do mock battles or play games and stuff. It’s probably usually just like that, but like I said, some of them take things too far and it gets a lot of publicity. Like, barking at people in public and stuff.”
I imagine barking at one another is not a normal behavior for humans?
“Absolutely not.” I shook my head at the ridiculousness of the situation. “Can we move on from this topic? I don’t think this… werewolf was the cause of the problem in the hallway.”
Of course.
We started checking the other classrooms one by one, having to chop up a couple more “werewolves” while we were at it. The gains weren’t too good, but some progress was better than none at all.
Eventually, we ran out of classrooms and checked out the cafeteria. That’s where it was.
A giant snail. Kind of. It was a bit too long, and had long tentacles on its face that reminded me of an octopus.
Carloch, Karl explained, taking over. This shouldn’t take long.
The carloch was slow, so Karl just moved in and got to work, not worrying about its small tentacles slowly moving towards him.
Karl’s katars punched into the unarmored bits of the beast, cauterizing the wounds they caused in the same instant they created them.
Then one of the tentacles brushed against my body.
For a second, we were airborne. Then everything came to a brutal halt as my body shattered the wall above the cafeteria’s doorways. My Avatar Reinforcement held, but just barely, and an awful migraine pulsed in the back of my head, purging all thoughts from my mind and rendering me a complete mess.
I felt my barrier give way as Karl landed gracefully upon the ground, causing the flame on the katars to putter out and my bones to ache. Luckily, I hadn’t completely lost Karl’s stats or his control, else I would’ve struggled to just get away, and finishing the fight wouldn’t have even been a consideration.
“That was completely uncharacteristic,” Karl noted with a scowl. “Its Dexterity is lower than it should be, but its Strength more than compensates for that.”
My screaming mind latched onto the idea of the Immortal Snail– an incredibly slow enemy that could never die but would kill you if it so much as touched you.
“Oh great,” Karl growled, “Of course your people would come up with something like that.”
My brain was completely empty, which made it easy to focus on Karl whipping out the deagle and pumping a shot straight into the carloch’s face.
Disappointingly, the monster did not die, instead healing around the injury like the troll had done.
“Regeneration,” Karl bitterly commented. “I hate this even more now. And, of course, its core is going to be inside that shell which is undoubtedly impossible to crack.”
My companion turned and started walking away.
“Sorry, kid, but I’m not dealing with that crap right now. We can come back later when your Mana has recovered some and I can use the fire to get around its healing.”
Mentally agreeing with his decision, I shut out my senses and took a little “nap” inside my own mind.
By the time Karl nudged me awake by swapping spots with me, we were home and a trio of holes had been dug up, with the “werewolf” bodies set to the side. My Mana was completely recovered, and a bag of Fire Clubs sat at my side, dust from the snack coating my fingertips and my tongue burning slightly.
I figured that was enough time. You want to bury these things and head back out?
I looked up at the sun, which was maybe a couple hours from setting.
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.” I didn’t want to lose any ground on my quest, and I’d effectively just gotten a huge nap so my brain was feeling healthy enough to keep going.
Realizing that I’d gotten better at burying bodies was always a weird thought. My improved stats and experience meant that I was indeed faster at digging makeshift graves, but it still felt a bit too serial killer-ish to put it like that.
The assistance of my Echo Garden made things go even faster, as once my intentions were clear, small piles of dirt started dropping themselves into the holes as well, which was new. Previously, my Passive had just made the graves a bit neater, but it seemed that they could actually help with the rest of the process as well.
I soaked in the extra Mana Regen, enjoying the contrast between it and the deprivation-induced migraine from before.
I went inside and heated up a quick meal in the oven, setting up at the table and scrolling through social media as I ate.
Some info on different sorts of monsters was popping up– apparently some giant, man-eating moth had caused a bunch of destruction in a small Mexican town before someone got in close enough with a shotgun and knocked it out of the sky. The damage wasn’t too heavy, but it wasn’t anything to scoff at. At least two dozen people had died, some from meeting the moth skull to proboscis and others from being caught in the rubble of any of the seven buildings it had wrecked trying to get at the hiding meat.
That was one of the worst cases of monsters causing mass destruction, but this was only the sixth day. If this were just a week later, there would have been two of those moths, which likely would have created more than twice the death and devastation.
I shook my head, swallowing a bite of pizza.
Just then, a call came to my phone from an unknown number. I hesitated for a second, then picked up.
“Yes?” I spoke into the device’s speaker.
“Kenny? Is that you?” The voice was quiet, and was shaking so badly that I barely even recognized the speaker.
“Olive? Is that you?” I quickly got to my feet, making my way to the door. I’d told the young librarian to call me if she was in danger, so if she was on the phone… “Where are you?”
I heard a muffled voice and something banging in the background.
“I-I’m at home. Please, it’s my–” The voice from before grew louder and angrier. “Two forty one South Bancroft, please be quick.” The line went dead as Olive hung up on me.
I slipped my phone into my pocket and started running.