I left early the next morning and rushed over to Perama. Once I was let in through the gate, I looked for Constans but didn’t see her. I must have arrived too early or she was guiding someone else. I hoped she was doing well and staying safe.
My memory was good enough that I could find my way to Momma Lena’s place without her, but I had wanted to hire her just because I enjoyed her company and wanted to help her out. But since she wasn’t around, I just walked myself over to Momma Lena’s. This early in the morning, out on the streets were a few unsavory types I hadn’t seen the last time I was here. They looked mainly like drunks still working off their buzz from the night before or street toughs looking for vulnerable marks before the shops opened for the day. I avoided them easily by activating Stealth and sneaking right past them, the darkened streets making it easy to get by without being seen. Like I had done with the goblins, I could have easily snuck up on them and slit their throats before they had any clue I was there, but I restrained myself. They weren’t worth the trouble.
Momma Lena’s wasn’t open when I arrived, so I leaned against the parapet that stopped people from falling off the bridge and watched the water and the land in the distance as the sun finished rising. I could see why Nova Roma had been considered the center of the world for almost a thousand years. It was a beautiful area of the world, and the city had a majesty that was hard to tarnish, even overrun as it was with monsters. I wished that I could have seen it at the height of its power. It would have been even more breathtaking.
Eventually, Momma Lena opened her door behind me and I turned around to greet her.
“Oh,” she said, giving me a tired look as she saw me waiting, “look who made it back in one piece. Surprised to see you, honestly. I wasn’t sure you’d make it.”
I hesitated, unsure of how to reply.
“Never mind,” she said, snorting. “Get in here. I have your book ready to go.”
“Thanks,” I said, grinning shyly at her, afraid she could tell I was as eager as a small child at a candy shop.
I followed her into the shop, and she rooted around in a drawer of her desk until she pulled out a leather-bound tome. She handed it to me.
“It seems a bit much, I know,” she said as I took the book and admired the fine leather, “since it will just get destroyed when you learn it, but it turns out such craftsmanship is required to make the book work. Don’t ask me why. The gods must not have wanted us to save money or something.”
I took out forty blue orbs and eight gold orbs and handed them to her. Her eyebrow rose in surprise at the number of gold orbs I handed her.
“Where did you get these?” she asked, eyeing the gold orbs. “Only the army or the Emperor’s people have access to so many gold orbs. I thought you told me you weren’t with them.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I have been lucky with my scavenging in the city, that’s all.”
She gave me a pinched-face look, clearly thinking I was lying. I could see her debate whether to confront me or not, but after a moment, she sighed.
“Alright,” she muttered, turning to put them in her lockbox. “I don’t really care. Good doing business with you. I’m too tired in the mornings to worry about who you really are.”
“Uh,” I said hesitantly. “So how do I learn the class exactly?”
She gave me a look like I was the biggest idiot she had ever seen and then laughed. “I forgot you were so clueless. Maybe you really aren’t with the Emperor.”
I tried to smile innocently at her but she just snorted at me, some of her good cheer returning to her face.
“Just read the book,” she said, pointing at the book. “It will do the rest. That will unlock the class for you. You start at level zero like with any other class. You have to earn at least one hundred experience to level it to level one. Once you have done that, you unlock your first skill. Pick wisely. And remember, for you, don’t pick a magical skill.”
“How will I know which ones are magical?”
“You’ll be able to tell when you examine them,” she said. “You’ll feel the difference.”
“What do you mean? It seems like some of the skills that are physical still have some kind of magic to them. How will I know which ones are really physical if they are all magical in some way?”
“Nah, it doesn’t work that way,” she replied, shaking her head. “It’s true that physical skills are still magical in nature, but the magic is drawn from the world itself and based on your physical attributes. Magical skills draw from your own mana and depend on your magical attributes. They are similar, and truly, you can do some very magical things that seem beyond the realm of the possible with physical skills, but they technically aren’t magical since they don’t draw from your mana to power them. Don’t stress too much about it. Thinking about why it all works the way it does just causes headaches. Trust me.”
“Do you know how much experience is required to level a class? I forgot to ask you last time.”
“Sure. That’s an easy one. It’s one hundred experience for every level. So level 1 requires one hundred experience, level 2 is two hundred experience, and so on. The prior level’s experience does not count toward the requirements of the next level, so when you want to get to level 2, you need two hundred experience all over again. The one hundred you spent to get to level 1 is essentially gone.”
“Ah,” I said, “that makes sense. Thank you.”
I tucked the book away in my backpack and thanked her again, bowing slightly. She gave me a strained smile and then turned back to start her day’s work, but I realized I had one more question before I left.
“Sorry, one more thing before I go. Do you know where I might be able to get an Enchanter class?”
She turned back to me with a raised eyebrow. “Enchanting already, eh? Do you know how expensive that profession is? Only the richest of craftsmen pursue that class. Just to unlock level 1, you have to enchant a hundred items. The cost in orbs only goes up from there.”
“I figured it was expensive,” I told her, shrugging, “but still, I was hoping to buy the class.”
“Hmmm,” she said. I saw her eyes slide down to the lockbox where she kept all the orbs I had just given her. “Well, you can pay an enchanter to teach you the class directly, although most of them don’t have the time, unless you pay well for their time. The best way is likely to travel over to Sycae and see if one of their non-combat class crafters has unlocked the skill for it or see if you can get it through the trade caravans, although that is more costly as well. Most of our enchanters here indentured themselves to another enchanter for years to learn the class, but I don’t think that is something you want to do.”
“Ah, okay. Thank you,” I said, shaking my head at the idea of indenturing myself. “I’ll look into it.”
“You’ll also need to learn how to enchant, just to get your first level. You start with no experience and need one hundred experience to get your first skill, just like with a combat class. Nobody can teach you how to do that except another enchanter. So if you buy the class without someone to teach you more than the basics learning the class will teach you, you can get stuck never being able to get one hundred experience to get your first skill. And I have heard it is very dangerous to try enchanting without a proper teacher, even with the basics of the class from a skill book.”
She looked at me like she was sure I was going to go try it on my own no matter what she told me, which was a bit too close to exactly what I was thinking.
I said my goodbyes and left her shop before she could figure me out any more than she already had. Even grumpier from waking up early, she was too insightful for my comfort.
Outside, the streets were still relatively empty, so I made my way out of the enclave and back to my villa with no problems. Thanks to the +2 I had received to all of my attributes, I could move a lot quicker through the city while still maintaining my Stealth and avoiding the daytime monsters. I hadn’t taken to traveling over the rooftops quite yet, afraid I might draw too much attention to myself up there, but even running through the streets, I was so fast I could make it to Perama and back before the sun had reached noon in the sky.
Once safely ensconced back in my villa, I got comfortable in the center of my courtyard and opened the book, excitement coursing through me at the prospect of learning a real class.
As I started to read, the words in front of me blurred and I couldn’t look away from the book. It was like I was reading, but also dreaming. Knowledge filled me. Much of it was murky and unclear, but I could still feel the knowledge entering my brain, ready to be called upon at a later date when I had unlocked the knowledge. I could feel traces of knowledge about hunting, tracking prey, and using a bow, sling, throwing weapons, and other ranged weapons. I gained traces of knowledge about the way to calculate wind resistance, the way to judge distance for extending my shots, and many other, more esoteric things that could assist with any form of ranged combat. As soon as I felt like I understood the concept, it blurred in my mind and then disappeared, leaving only a vague impression of its passing.
When I looked up from the book, it was midday and the sun was beating down on me. My body was warm and covered in sweat. My mind felt raw, as if it had been plugged into a computer console and had entire books downloaded directly into it with no filter or restraint. I closed the book, and it disappeared in front of me as if it had never existed.
Class unlocked: Archer.
Pooled experience detected. Experience applied to your Archer class.
I felt a rush of energy escape me as if it had been sucked into a funnel inside of my body. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation, but strange. I had 11,848 pooled experience, so the sensation lasted for a long time. Once it was done, I was assaulted with a number of announcements in my head.
Congratulations, you have received enough experience to level your Archer class. You are now level 1.
Congratulations, you have received enough experience to level your Archer class. You are now level 2.
Congratulations, you have received enough experience to level your Archer class. You are now level 3.
Congratulations, you have received enough experience to level your Archer class. You are now level 4.
Congratulations, you have received enough experience to level your Archer class. You are now level 5.
Congratulations, you have received enough experience to level your Archer class. You are now level 6.
The announcements continued until I reached level 14. That many levels took 10,500 experience, leaving me with only 1348 experience and needing 1500 for the next level.
Please choose a level 1 class skill:
Penetrating Shot: Fire a shot that penetrates deep into an enemy, bypassing most armor.
Arcane Shot: Power up an arcane shot that does magical damage.
Split Shot: Your shot splits into multiple projectiles that strike additional nearby targets.
Dash: Dash through the air, ignoring wind resistance until you land.
Hunter’s Mark: Target one enemy. You will be able to track and find this enemy anywhere it goes until you remove the mark or the enemy dies.
I reviewed the skills carefully. As Momma Lena had said, I could tell that Arcane Shot and Split Shot both scaled off of magical power. Somewhere inside my brain, knowledge from learning the class told me exactly how the damage from Arcane Shot scaled off the magic power attribute, as did the number of projectiles a person could make with Split Shot. Hunter’s Mark didn’t appear to scale at all; it was simply a tracking tool.
Dash and Penetrating Shot scaled off physical attributes. I knew that Penetrating Shot would penetrate more armor and potentially even pass through enemies, the power of its penetration going up based on the person’s strength and coordination attribute. Dash was similar, allowing for a longer dash based on a person’s strength and coordination. The stronger I was, the further I could travel, while the more coordination I had, the faster I moved during the dash.
I already had the ability to penetrate most enemies, since my Penetration Bullets were so powerful, although it was clear there were plenty of enemies that could resist even my bullets. I just didn't want to specialize so much into penetrative attacks that I became vulnerable to another type of enemy and my bullets were enough to give me a leg up over most heavily armored enemies, even if they weren't perfect. The other abilities were useless or lackluster for me, given they were magical or would only let me track a single person, which I had no need to do at this time. Not seeing a better option, I decided on Dash. It would allow me to put distance between myself and enemies if needed or close the gap if I needed to get in melee range with someone rapidly. It should also allow me to move around the city quicker. Images of me dashing from rooftop to rooftop like the other scavengers could do played through my mind. While more penetration on my bullets would be useful, the flexibility of Dash made it more likely to contribute to my overall survival at this time.
Once I selected the skill, I felt a rush of energy enter me just like when I had absorbed the skill stone for Stealth.
Skill: Dash learned.
Coordination +1
Coordination +1
Strength +1
Strength + 1
Endurance +1
Announcements of my attribute enhancements rolled through my mind now that I had selected my level 1 skill. I kept track of the changes to my body, interested in measuring the results after gaining so many points in my physical attributes. At level 10, I got another announcement to select a skill.
Please choose a level 10 class skill:
Sneak Shot: Any projectile that strikes an enemy unaware of your presence does significantly more damage.
Seeker Shot: Guide a projectile with your mind.
Death Shot: Launch a projectile that kills anyone struck by the shot unless their endurance is high enough to resist the effect.
Hail of Arrows: Your projectile splits into an overwhelming volley that blankets a chosen area.
Perfect Coordination: Receive a passive boost of 20% to your coordination.
I could tell that Seeker Shot, Death Shot, and Hail of Arrows were all magical-based skills, so I ignored them. That only left me with Sneak Shot and Perfect Coordination, which was a bit disappointing. Sneak Shot would be useful, especially given my Stealth skill. At the same time, if I was able to take a shot at someone that was unaware of me, chances were good that I was already going to do significant damage to them with my bullets. The Sneak Shot would have limited situational usefulness because of that, ending up being a powerful in some circumstances but useless if I didn't get the first shot at something.
Perfect Coordination was interesting, but I needed to know how it was calculated with my attributes. I pressed on the concept of the skill in my mind, seeking greater information about it. It slowly came to me, as if resisting the level of detail I demanded, but it eventually gave in. The knowledge flooded my mind, and I learned that the bonus from the skill was added after my base physical body and my increased attributes were added together, applying the increased percentage only after calculating my total attribute score. That was significantly higher than if it added the percentage to my base body first, then the attribute enhancements. That made it a more appealing option.
I selected Perfect Coordination.
More attribute enhancements rolled in until I hit level 14. In total, I received +6 to coordination, +4 to strength, and +2 to endurance. That made my coordination nine, strength seven, and endurance five. My memory and magical power and magical capacity were all at three, only having a +2 from the achievement I had earned. Despite my magical power and capacity being three, they were still basically zero, though, because zero times three was still zero.
Despite my coordination only being a nine, it was actually the equivalent of a person with a score of thirty now, since my body was around a sixteen originally, plus the nine from my class. The twenty percent increase from my new skill then added another five points on top of that. And if a standard human was around a starting attribute score of one, and each +1 was an increase of approximately twenty-five percent on top of that, then my score of thirty meant I could move eight times faster and be eight times better coordinated than a normal human.
After the attribute enhancements stopped rolling through my head, I tried standing but shot off the ground, my strength and speed unbalancing me and sending me careening wildly into the nearby wall of my villa. I tried to brace myself against the wall but instead slammed my hands against the stone hard enough to feel my wrists sprain slightly from the impact. I groaned in pain as I let my body go limp, collapsing to the ground.
I stopped moving, trying to think of what to do. It was like I was back in my body for the first time, my mind struggling to coordinate the bodily impulses that didn’t fully align with my brain. I slowly raised my arms above my head, but moving them felt as if they were controlled from a great distance, like I was trying to move a tiny surgical tool from a mile away. Any small signal I sent to my arm was magnified, causing me to overshoot where I intended to move it and causing the arm to flail wildly when all I intended was a tiny movement.
I stood slowly, like a toddler taking their first steps, carefully bracing myself against the wall. I flexed my legs, moving them slowly and carefully until I was confident they weren’t going to send me careening across the courtyard once again. When I felt some measure of control, I began to practice walking, making each step carefully and slowly. I walked around the courtyard, my steps exaggerated and painstakingly slow, like some villain from a silent movie.
By midafternoon, I was finally able to walk normally again. I still had moments of dizziness if I went too fast, but they passed after just a few moments. Time seemed to be moving slower than I was used to, as if the sun was taking longer to rise than it usually did. I felt like I was trapped in molasses, the world around me trapped as well. Only my mind was able to think clearly. Everything was slower, or more likely, my perception and speed had increased so dramatically that everything seemed slower to me now.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
I spent the rest of the day adapting to my new body, moving slowly around the courtyard, moving my arms and legs in different patterns to regain my sense of balance. If someone had been watching, they would likely think me insane, but I persisted, not caring how strange I looked. Before night fell, I managed to make it to my safe room. All night, I practiced different yoga routines I had access to from my memories of Earth.
By the time morning dawned, I felt relatively normal again. I ate a small meal and drank some water in the courtyard, a bit dismayed by what had just happened. The adjustment to so many attributes at once had been significantly worse than when I had first taken over my body back on my Earth, which was pretty surprising. I’d had some experience pretending to control a body in my past life when I played virtual reality games with Michael, so the initial adjustment to actually being in a body wasn’t quite as hard as I’d thought it would be, but this adjustment had felt worse. If I had been less patient and learned the class away from home, I could have found myself incapacitated in the streets of Perama, surrounded by people more than willing to take advantage of me. I was fortunate that I had waited until I reached my villa.
When I first received the +2 to my attributes from my dungeon achievement, the adjustment hadn’t been nearly so bad. It had actually felt completely natural, my body and mind easily able to adapt to the changes. I must have received too many physical attributes at once this time for my mind to keep up with the changes. I would have to be careful in the future, although after learning to center myself in my body twice now, I felt more confident that I could do so again in the future. Practice made perfect, after all, and I was apparently getting more practice than I had anticipated.
I took it easy for the rest of the day and got some sleep the next night. When I woke up, I felt good enough to practice my new Dash ability. I wasn’t sure how far Dash would send me, given my new attributes, so I found the longest stretch of street near my villa before testing it out. Once I was at the far end of the street, I activated the skill by stepping forward and launching myself through the air. I knew I didn’t need to say or do anything to activate the skill, but it felt easier to step in the direction I wished to go for now. As soon as I did, I went flying forward, skimming above the street like a ghost floating off the ground, my body pointed forward as if I was running without having to touch the ground. The wind offered no resistance as I flew, allowing me to see perfectly as I skimmed above the ground. I looked to the side, realizing I was going significantly faster than I had anticipated. I measured the distance I was traveling relative to the buildings next to me, doing some quick calculations. If I was right, I was easily going over one hundred miles an hour through the air, with no sign of slowing down.
I thought my Dash would stop at any moment, but I just kept flying forward, gaining even more speed as I traveled. I began to panic as I saw the end of the street approach. A stone building loomed in front of me, where the street turned to the right. I had given myself almost a quarter-mile of street to practice on, but I stared in mounting horror at the rapidly approaching wall in front of me, realizing I had misjudged horribly. I tried frantically to stop my Dash, doing everything I could to order my body to freeze, stop, or refuse to move another inch. Stop flying toward the solid stone wall in front of me, please, I screamed internally, but nothing worked.
“No!” I yelled, closing my eyes and trying to brace myself as I slammed into the stone wall at over one hundred miles an hour. The world flashed white around me, and I felt my body crumble. Even my biomechanically enhanced bones broke from the impact. I tried to scream, but I choked on the dust and debris from the wall as it shattered from the impact as well. I tumbled with the collapsing wall, falling forward into the building until I felt something heavy strike my head. My thoughts then became confused, colors shifting and blurring together. I lost track of where I was. The only thing I understood was the pure agony of my existence. It felt like every bone in my body was broken, my muscles punctured and bruised, my organs strained to the point of collapse, until finally blackness engulfed my mind and I fell unconscious.
An unknown amount of time later, I felt my sense of self start to return. At first, my thoughts were still confused, a strange mix of waking dream and consciousness. I could only vaguely remember a dream filled with pain, but as my mind began to clear, I realized it hadn’t been a dream. My whole body was racked with pain. I tried to shake my head to clear it, but that just caused pain to shoot up my neck, and my vision went white again from the agony.
Freezing in place, I opened my bleary eyes, glancing around me in confusion. I was lying on the floor of a large warehouse, partially buried under the collapsed wall. I tried to get a good look at my body, but all I could see were bits and pieces of myself covered in stone blocks, many of them covered in my blood.
Fuck, I thought. I had been a complete idiot. I had known how extreme my new attributes were, especially when combined with my already powerful body. I had been too eager to test my new skill, like a child with a new toy. I had completely underestimated how powerful my attributes truly were. How could I have possibly known that my Dash could send me flying forward so fast and for so long? I had tried to give myself significantly more space than seemed reasonable, but it hadn’t been enough. I felt like such an idiot. My shame mixed with the pain of my body, causing me to leak tears from my eyes, something I had never done before.
I slowly turned, forcing my body to move, despite the torture I endured. Despite my shame, I refused to lie here until I died. I wouldn’t let a single mistake spell my downfall after surviving for so long when many would have already died.
Stones fell around me as I moved, but I was able to twist around enough to look behind me. As I did, my already strained heart skipped a beat at the sight that greeted me. The large hole I had knocked in the side of the solid stone wall behind me was still there, but what caused my heart to stutter wasn’t the hole itself but what was revealed through it. The street outside wasn’t lit by the sun any longer. Long shadows stretched up the nearby buildings, signaling that I had been unconscious for far longer than I had initially thought. The sunlight was fading. Night had come again.
I heard the telltale signs of monsters beginning to stir across the city, their bloodthirsty cries echoing through the empty streets. I became hyper-aware of the blood that covered me and the stones around me. The coppery smell of my own blood overwhelmed my nostrils as I registered what my senses had been telling me this whole time. I was a monster magnet now, my blood everywhere. The stench had likely spread long and far on the wind that blew through the hole in the wall I had made.
I tried to stand, but the right side of my body wouldn’t obey my will. I could immediately tell that my right arm was shattered and that the ribs on that side of my body were cracked. When I tried to shift my legs, I felt my pelvis object, sending more shooting pains through me. I could sense my nanobots had gone into emergency mode and were working to fix critical injuries to keep me alive, but that hadn’t extended to my many broken bones yet. They had been too busy keeping me from just bleeding out where I lay. It was only in the last hour that they had been able to do more than life-saving procedures, which was why I only woke up now. My nanobots had kept me unconscious as they struggled to keep me alive, having determined that keeping me conscious was less important. Part of me wanted to curse them for not waking me up sooner, but if they had, I would have likely tried to force myself to move and could have undone all the critical work they had done to keep me from dying.
I felt sure that if I hadn’t gained some points in the endurance attribute recently, even the self-healing nanobots wouldn’t have been enough to keep me alive. I could feel hunger gnawing at my belly, the nanobots having drawn heavily on my resources to save me. If my body had been any weaker, I wouldn’t have survived my own stupid mistake.
I cursed myself again, my thoughts turning to self-recrimination even as I knew I needed to do something about the falling sun. I couldn’t stop thinking that I knew my attributes were too high. Dash was meant to be used by a level 1 person, who likely had barely any attributes at all. If they used the skill, it probably sent them flying forward a few feet at once, allowing them to practice over and over until they mastered the ability to start and stop the skill at will. I should have guessed using a skill that scaled based off my attributes was a bad idea.
I had barely been able to walk after gaining my attributes. Why had I rushed to test my skill so soon after barely recovering? My drive to push myself was going to get me killed if I didn’t take the time to learn more about the systems that governed this world before I experimented with them. I had to remember, if I survived this night, that this wasn’t my old world. These skills could do insane, absolutely unrealistic things that I really had no way to properly understand since I hadn’t been raised in this world. I lacked a fundamental sense of scale when trying to grasp what could be done in this reality.
The sound of something prowling in the street outside broke me from my spiraling thoughts. I blinked, realizing I had let myself forget how dangerous my situation was. I must have a serious concussion of some kind, because my normally focused mind felt scattered, as if I wasn’t fully in control. I swallowed nervously, feeling extremely vulnerable that I wasn’t able to rely on my mind or body at a time when I needed both more than I ever had before. I needed to focus. I needed to survive.
My left arm was still functional, likely because I had struck the wall with the right side of my body first. It was still deeply bruised, but I ignored the discomfort and fumbled under my armpit until I could slide my revolver out of its holster. It was fully loaded with Penetration Bullets. I turned it over in my hand, grateful it wasn’t damaged. A small sense of control returned to me as I felt the weight of the powerful revolver in my hand. It would have to be enough.
I lay in complete silence after that. The only sound was my soft, pained breathing. I heard the scuff of feet against the ground outside but couldn’t see anything from where I lay. I held my breath, hearing nothing but silence around me, but I could feel something nearby. It was standing right outside the hole in front of me.
Slowly, agonizingly slowly, I saw something begin to poke into the hole on my left. The crest of its head appeared first. Then, slowly, the rest began to lean further and further out. I shivered at the sight. The face had no eyes, no nose, and no mouth. It was a blank mask of pure black, but even though it lacked eyes, I could tell it was staring at me somehow, measuring whether I was weak enough for it to kill.
I swallowed nervously and forced myself to take a breath, trying to focus.
The creature, seeing that I hadn’t responded aggressively to its appearance, seemed emboldened. It moved more fully into the opening in the wall, exposing more of its nondescript body. It cocked its head to the side, like a curious bird evaluating its next meal. Its body was black and featureless, like a being made entirely of shadow.
It took a slow step toward me, walking through the hole in the wall. It paused, seeing if I was going to attack it now, but I didn’t move. It straightened its neck and seemed to relax more fully. I got the sense that if it had a mouth, it would be smiling at me in anticipation. With an angry grunt, I raised my revolver and shot it. The shadowy figure dodged to the side in an instant, my bullet only clipping it slightly in the side as it retreated around the stone wall. I had hit it, but I didn’t see whether my bullet did any damage to the creature or not.
“Dammit,” I muttered to myself, lowering the revolver. I stared at the opening in the wall, sensing the creature waiting on the other side. After a moment, it slowly began to peek its head into the hole, watching me once again. I stared back at the creature’s blank face, refusing to be cowed by its stare.
My body was mending itself, but so slowly. Even if I could move, I didn’t think I could escape a creature like this on the open streets. My single saving grace was that the only entrance to the warehouse was the hole I had made in the wall, meaning it had to come to me through a small opening where I would have a chance to shoot it.
The two of us stared at each other, and I was afraid to blink in case I missed it trying to attack. Its head began to slide downward as it crouched, and I saw an arm slowly reach down and pick up a loose stone from the pile of rubble my crash had created. It grabbed the stone and stood back up, all while staring at me.
“Don’t,” I tried to say, but the creature moved with lightning speed, hurling the stone at me before I could finish speaking. The stone struck me in the chest, slamming into my already bruised and broken body. I screamed, the agony of my injuries overwhelming me. My vision dimmed, but I raised my gun and fired blindly through the hole in the wall, hoping to hit the creature if it was trying to charge me.
When my vision cleared, the creature was still staring at me from behind the wall, only its head visible where it peeked out around the hole, watching me. It had been toying with me, making me waste a bullet while it stood back and watched me struggle.
“Leave me alone,” I grunted. “You piece of shit.” Anger filled me, a more primal anger than I had ever felt before. I had been angry at Michael’s father before, angry at the world that birthed me and forced me to be something I wasn’t, but the anger I felt now was orders of magnitude greater. My body fueled my rage, pumping me full of adrenaline and making me want to leap upward and choke the life from this faceless creature toying with me.
The creature didn’t care, continuing to watch me silently. I shook with rage, unable to act on the feelings that surged inside of me. I could hear other monsters beginning to move around us, the roars and growls becoming more common, many of them nearby. This creature wasn’t even the biggest threat out here at night, I was sure, but it was disturbingly and frighteningly smart. It was testing me, making sure I was truly wounded, finding a way to get to me without getting injured. And it recognized the danger of my weapon and was trying to get me to waste my bullets, as if it could understand what I held. Another surge of anger and hatred for it ran through me.
I fired at it again, even though I knew I couldn’t hit its face, but my bullet forced it to duck backward and hide for a moment. I flipped open the chamber of my revolver with a flick of my wrist and then dropped it on my stomach while I reached down to my belt and grabbed a handful of my Multi-Bullets. I reloaded with only my left hand, awkwardly wedging the gun between my stomach and a piece of stone until I could get the bullets into the chamber. The creature darted its head out rapidly, but I had managed to finish reloading by the time it did. I quickly picked up the revolver and rotated the chamber so my new bullets were the next to be fired and then flipped the chamber closed, pointing it back toward the creature.
Then I waited. I could hear more creatures approaching, the smell of my blood bringing them toward me. The monster in front of me heard them, too, turning to look behind it for a moment. It turned back to me and seemed frustrated, clearly wanting me for itself. After a moment of staring at each other again, the creature raced forward, trying to get to me before I could fire my revolver.
Unfortunately for it, I moved pretty fast these days and my Multi-Bullets were pretty damn hard to dodge. I fired both Multi-Bullets, one after another, the area in front of me filling with flashing steel, like an angry swarm of bees that left no room to escape. The creature tried to turn sideways and dodge to the side, but it had absolutely no chance as the bullets filled the entire space in front of me and the hole it was racing through. Twenty bullets impacted against the monster, blasting it backward like a ragdoll. A shower of black blood erupted from its body, coating the walls behind it in an instant. The creature flew backward and out of the hole, its body ragged and torn, and I lost sight of it as it landed several feet away outside.
I dumped the remaining bullets out of my gun and reloaded all six chambers with Multi-Bullets. I heard several growls from the street outside, and the sounds of a fight soon followed. I tensed, listening to the brutal fight right outside the hole in the wall, until silence fell once again. I stared at the hole, waiting to see what had won the fight and whether it would come for me next.
A large pale tiger appeared in the entrance, proudly walking into the hole as if unafraid of what might be waiting for it inside. It stepped onto the mound of fallen stonework, large eyes taking in the warehouse and my broken body lying in front of it. It sniffed deeply, inhaling the scent of my blood on the air, and began to lazily walk toward me as if I was nothing but a free meal. I disabused it of that notion quickly, firing a Multi-Shot right in its face, all ten bullets blasting into its face and chest. The tiger didn’t even have a chance to react as the bullets killed it. Its body spun sideways and tumbled backward down the rubble, rolling down until it stopped on the other side of the hole.
I waited to see if it would get up from its injuries, but it didn’t return. I hastily reloaded another bullet, wincing at the pain; I had to jerk my left arm to free the bullet and load the gun. Once my revolver was fully loaded again, I settled down and waited, watching the hole with deadly focus. When nothing immediately appeared, I looked around the warehouse, just to confirm what I had seen before, and saw that there were no other openings in the walls. The only doorways were still solidly attached to the stone walls, with doors that looked solid enough to give me warning if anyone tried to open them.
Another fight broke out in the street, and after a moment, the sounds of something ripping into the bodies I had left outside followed. I listened as something messily ate the bodies. The sound of flesh being torn and consumed was the only thing I could hear as I waited for the monster to finish. I urged my nanobots to work faster at repairing my body, especially whatever bones I had broken in my pelvis and legs so I could try to run if I needed to.
When the sounds of feeding ended, another creature appeared in the hole in the wall. This one was a bloody-faced lizard, its large tongue flicking out and licking at the blood that coated its face. I didn’t hesitate, firing another Multi-Bullet into its body, sending it flying backward as if it had been blasted point-blank by a powerful shotgun. Which, in many ways, was exactly what my weapon was with these bullets.
Some time passed before something else disturbed me. I was alerted to the intruder by the sound of several tiny metal feet click-clacking on the stone outside, followed by the incongruous sound of a clock ticking. I waited patiently, staring at the hole in the wall, where the dim moonlight illuminated the opening. After a minute, a clockwork construction that resembled a beetle appeared, carefully picking its way up the rubble of the hole on small metallic feet. As soon as it was fully exposed in the center of the hole, I shot it with a Multi-Bullet. My bullets didn’t send it flying backward like they had with the other monsters. All ten bullets struck its armored, metallic body, but they only pushed it back a foot or less. The creature’s feet reacted swiftly, catching it on the unsteady ground, and then it began to pick its way forward once again.
“Damn,” I whispered, seeing how little effect my bullets had on the monster. My Multi-Bullet didn’t have the penetrative power to seriously harm the clockwork beetle. I frantically dropped my revolver on my stomach, reaching for the pouch that contained my Penetration Bullets, but before I could, the beetle unveiled a series of gossamer, metallic wings that seemed to glow in the moonlight and leapt down toward me. I dropped the bullets I had grabbed and reached up to try stopping the monster as it landed on my body. It wasn’t enough to stop the beetle’s legs from piercing me in several places. Its weight reignited the pain of my injuries, causing me to cry out as the heavy clockwork monster crushed me.
I didn’t black out from the pain this time, though, and was able to think clearly enough that I clenched my fist and drew it back before throwing a weak punch at the beetle’s clockwork head. Such a weak punch would normally have little to no effect on such an armored foe, but I activated my Gloves of Golem Strength. My fist was covered by the illusory image of a golem’s fist, and when I slammed my knuckles into the beetle’s face, instead of barely doing anything at all, the beetle was shattered into a thousand pieces of clockwork parts. Metal sprayed away from me and cut deeply into the stone wall and wooden ceiling. In a single punch, the creature was turned to nothing but dust and scraps.
As I gaped in shock at the power of my gloves, it took me a moment to remember to reload my revolver. This time I loaded three Penetration Bullets, keeping three Multi-Bullets as well just in case I needed them.
I settled down again, my stomach churning at how close the beetle had come to killing me. I listened to the street outside again, but there was another lull, so I was able to relax slightly.
An hour passed. I silently listened for any sign of an approaching monster as I urged my nanobots to work faster than they had ever worked before. My hunger and thirst grew, but I ignored them with ease; the pain from my injuries was still so bad that it was easy to ignore the other complaints of my body. By the end of the hour, I could finally sit up enough to shift the stones around me, slowly scooting myself backward and clearing the area around me.
A part of me hoped I might have discouraged the other monsters by killing the ones that had approached me so far, but my hopes were dashed as soon as the sound of more fighting broke out in the street in front of me. This time, it was like a swarm of monsters had descended, maddened by the smell of my blood and the dead creatures outside.
My only saving grace was that the monsters were so busy fighting themselves that they never coordinated in killing me, and many of them were already injured by the time they tried to enter the warehouse. Hours passed in a blur. I killed anything that dared approach me. The hole in the wall was a perfect killing spot, narrow enough that my Multi-Bullets could seriously injure anything that tried to get through it while also guaranteeing that nothing could sneak up on me.
Halfway through the night, I ran out of Multi-Bullets. I groped blindly at the satchel on my belt, looking for another bullet, before I realized I was out. Refusing to panic, I hastily switched to using Explosive Bullets, sliding myself backward further from the hole so I wouldn’t be caught in the explosion myself. Because of the momentum of my bullet, most of the explosion was blown away from me anyway. I was still singed by the heat of every blast, but the discomfort was nothing to me at this point. I barely noticed my own injuries anymore. I was focused on nothing but the moonlit entrance to the warehouse, waiting for the next monster to enter so I could kill it like I had done to all the others.
When I heard a large number of monsters fighting outside, I pulled a Confusion Grenade from my bandolier and tossed it out of the hole. A second later, the sounds of fighting escalated as the creatures went mad and the grenade multiplied and covered the area. Only one survivor tried to come after me from that fight, a large goat, of all things, its head and chest covered in gore and blood. It limped up the rubble, into my line of sight, and didn’t even seem aware I was inside the warehouse, possibly just looking for a place to hide now that it was so injured, but I didn’t hesitate to kill it with a single Penetration Bullet.
As the night wore on, the smell from the street outside became so repugnant I had to breathe through my mouth to avoid gagging. My own blood was buried under the stench of so many monsters that I was largely forgotten. The abundant food on the street outside drew more and more monsters to the area but drove them to fight each other instead of searching around the area for any free meals. Anytime things became especially loud, I tossed a Confusion Grenade outside, driving the monsters into even more of a feeding frenzy.
My arm, ribs, and pelvis finally healed as night began to turn into early morning, but even without my broken bones, my body was so stiff from injured muscles that it was difficult to move. I didn’t even try now that I was being left alone. Instead, I just lay there, staring at the hole in the wall and trying not to dwell on how much of an idiot I was for getting myself into this situation in the first place. I vowed to never take this world for granted. I had underestimated the power of the skills in this world once. I would not do so again.
Finally, exhausted mentally and physically, I watched the sun’s rays begin to illuminate the street outside. The sound of the monsters fighting began to diminish until slowly the city returned to the complete silence of daytime. Still, I waited a full hour, making absolutely sure I wouldn’t be caught by a monster on my way home, then carefully stood and limped up the blood- and viscera-soaked rubble to look out on the street outside.
The area in front of me was a slaughterhouse. Half-eaten corpses of monsters littered the street. Disemboweled and dismembered humanoid and nonhumanoid bodies were everywhere. Body parts, many of them completely alien and unrecognizable, lay in pools of blood and other bodily fluids.
As I stared at the butchery in front of me, the announcements for the experience I had received began to hit me. I staggered at the unexpected intrusion, forgetting for a moment that they were coming. I counted at least two hundred monsters lying dead in front of me, possibly more. I hadn’t received experience for all of them, but I did get credit for almost fifty, including the ones I had killed when they entered the warehouse. Several of them were sub-bosses, and a couple were actual bosses, although I hadn’t taken the time to notice if anything I shot glowed gold or blue. My Confusion Grenade must have earned my credit for the other kills, like it had done for the brawl I had instigated with the dire rats a few weeks ago. In total, I received over two thousand experience for surviving the night. I wouldn’t ever do it again, but as I stared thankfully at the sun’s warm light, it was a small blessing to get so much experience on top of the fact that I had somehow managed to survive.
I carefully climbed down the slick and unsteady rubble and made my way through the grotesque street, heading back toward my villa. The experience continued to accumulate until I reached level 15 and then level 16, awarding me +1 to my strength for each level. I really needed an enhancement to my endurance to help me heal right now, but I didn’t complain. Before I left, I hobbled over to the glowing bodies that were close enough for me to reach without having to climb over too many corpses. I collected six blue orbs and one gold one before I limped home and fell into an exhausted sleep.
