[Welcome to the System]

The panel vanished, and aside from the filth and the lightness of his body, no evidence remained that Ike had activated the System at all.

Ike’s eyes widened. He grinned. Everything could come true now. All his dreams. Becoming an adventurer. Surpassing his uncle’s rank, and leaving everything behind. Striking out on his own and building a life for himself. All within his grasp. All attainable.

“We’ve waited long enough. Private Jones, go ahead.”

A wave of force washed over the hut, snapping the hides on their frames. Power built up, palpable on the air, and bright light glowed from the guard’s sword, backlighting his hand to a silhouetted claw, so bright as to sear through the hides.

Ike drew a quick breath. No time for celebration. System, skill! What skill did I get?

Dutifully, a panel appeared. Time seemed to slow as Ike searched for the answer.

[Name: Ike | Age: 15 | Status: Nm | Rank: 0 [Newly Awakened]]

Skills: Common: 3 | … | Unique: 1

Common: Sprinter Lvl 2 | Distance Runner Lvl 3 | Razor Handling Lvl 2

Unique: Lightning Dash Lvl 1

Move by borrowing speed from lightning. May attract lightning strikes. 

Dash. Lightning. Pieces of information darted out at him. He pressed his lips together. Running now would be admitting guilt. No. Escaping wasn’t the answer.

Why didn’t I get an attack skill? The thought jolted through his mind for a split second before he suppressed it. He narrowed his eyes at the skill, grinning quietly to himself. Who needs an attack, when you have speed? Besides… His eyes darted to the last few words. Lightning strikes. Lightning strikes!

From the other side of the room, a sharp sound rang out. The first row of hides dropped to the ground, sliced down. The next row of frames trembled where they stood, barely holding on. Two rows remained between the guards and Ike.

He rolled onto his back and lifted his feet into the air, afraid the skill would drag him toward the guards unbidden otherwise. As loud as he could, he thought, Lightning Dash!

A trickle of energy rolled through his body, from his stomach down to his legs. Lightning flashed around his ankles for a split second, then nothing. Ike frowned, confused. Activating the skill again, he tried pedaling his legs this time, pushing the strange new energy toward his feet as he did so.

Instantly, lightning began building at his ankles. Understanding flashed through him, clear as day. Skills didn’t move the body. They didn’t move magic. They were a formula. A method to move magic, through the body, in order to create an affect. He moved his body. He pushed that energy—mana—through his body, to where Lightning Dash needed it to be. Once his mana grew close enough, the skill gripped it and shaped it, creating the spell, the magic, Lightning Dash.

As he used the skill, he observed the way the skill shaped his magic from outside. A stray thought entered his head. If he memorized it, would he be able to use the technique without activating the skill?

Thoughts for later. He shelved the idea, focusing only on the moment.

Lightning Dash, the skill, only remained active for a few seconds at a time. Ike activated it again and again, forcing his legs to keep going. The sky darkened. Thunder rolled in the distance. Ike panted. Sweat coursed down him. His whole body shook with the intensity of his still running.

Once again, light built on the other side of the hides. A sword slash rang out, slicing through the next row. One final row of frames stood between Ike and the guards.

Ike’s legs pedaled faster than ever. With the repeated activations of Lightning Dash stacking on top of one another, the lightning flickering around his ankles grew thicker, from the circumference of a hair to the width of a fingernail. His feet blurred faster and faster, whistling through the air. A faint purple mist appeared around his feet. His stomach cooled as the energy flowed out of it, draining steadily toward empty.

Overhead, thunder grumbled, louder than before. The light filtering in through the holes in the roof took on a bruised, purplish cast, a thick cloud growing overhead.

“I see you there. Come out now, and you can still escape death,” one of the guards announced.

Ike said nothing. Single-mindedly, he spun his legs, faster and faster, calling the lightning to him with his whole heart. His stomach pulled tight to his spine, cold as ice, but he pushed a little more mana into the skill anyways. Come on!

Light built up, pouring from the hilt on the man’s waist. Silhouetted through the hides, the guard reached for his sword.

CRACK!

The whole room went white. Thunder roared, deafeningly loud. The hut fell in on itself, clumps of burning thatch tumbling down with the roof beams and the walls. The heavy roof beams crashed into the rotting floor. The beam beneath Ike snapped, dropping Ike down to the earth beneath the crawlspace. The guards cursed, falling back. One still lashed out with his sword, blindly, and a wave of furious energy surged into the sky.

Thick smoke filled the remnants of the hut, blinding Ike and the guards alike. Unlike the guards, though, Ike knew the space like the back of his hand. Ike leaped to his feet. Still operating the Lightning Dash, he darted by the guards. Even without his vision, he knew exactly where to step, his instincts guiding his feet toward the solid boards. One of the guards shouted and reached for him, but the guard’s foot dropped into a hole, and he tipped over, forced to catch himself rather than Ike.

Out of the smoke. Ike sprinted directly out of the hut toward Sean, who stared at Liz, still stunned. Ike tried to turn, but his feet refused to follow his orders, clutched in the grasp of the skill. He dug in his heels in and canceled the skill, barely skidding to a halt, then cut a sharp turn and sprinted in a straight line out the door. By the time Sean turned, he was a blur on the horizon.

“Who was that?” Sean asked, looking at the workers around him.

“Huh? Who was what?” Nora frowned at him, lost.

 “I thought…” Sean frowned. He stared out the gate, but no one stood anywhere close to the plant. He shook his head. “Must’ve been a mistake.”

The guards stumbled out of the smoke, coughing and waving their hands. They glared at Sean. “What was that? A trap?”

“What? No.” Confused, Sean squinted at them. “How would I even make lightning strike? I don’t control the weather.”

One guard backed toward the door, blocking off his exit. The other one slapped a pair of slender silvery cuffs on Sean’s wrists. “You’re coming with us.”

“I…what?” Lost, Sean followed after them.

“Hey! You can’t take him! He didn’t do anything!” Nora shouted.

One of the guards approached her, holding out cuffs.

“It was me, just me. Don’t touch her,” Sean spoke up suddenly, pulling at the guard’s hold. “She had nothing to do with this.”

“Private Jones. Let’s not waste more time. Even the air here is full of filth. It’s making my nose run,” the guard holding Sean called.

The other guard stopped. With a nod, he turned around, walking back to the other’s side, and together, they walked Sean away.

From high on a nearby hill, Ike paused, watching the scene unfold from over his shoulder. Seeing the guards lead Sean away, he allowed himself a little smile. A second later, he turned away and sped off, leaving the plant behind.

--

A blade scraped over hide. Fur dropped to the ground. Sitting quietly, Ike worked down the line of hides as usual. And yet, everything was not ‘as usual.’ A gray-uniformed guard peered in the gate on her patrol, eyeing them all with suspicion before she moved on. Pasted on the board at the front of the plant, next to the cafeteria’s menu and the week’s ratios, was an image of the fireballs, painted by a skilled hand, and an offering of a hundred silvers for anyone who came forth with information on any of the stolen skill orbs.

It hadn’t taken long for the guards to realize Sean wasn’t their man. No time at all, in fact. Sean hadn’t reappeared, but neither had they stopped looking for whoever had claimed the orb. They swarmed the slums, poking their noses into every little thing. It set the entire slum on edge. Everyone kept quiet, heading straight home from work. The bars laid empty, save the most devoted drunkards. It grated against Ike, but there was nothing he could do about it. Not yet.

He had to keep quiet. Keep his skill under wraps.

If he admitted he’d awakened, he’d draw far too much attention. His uncle knew he had no money, so there was no playing it off as having bought one. He’d played with claiming that he’d killed a monster and found a skill orb on its corpse, but the story had too many holes. The few people he knew who’d killed monsters looked more like Sean than him. Plus, most weak monsters didn’t possess skill orbs. One in a hundred, one in a thousand, he wasn’t sure of the exact chances, but he knew they weren’t good. With no way to explain his awakening, he did what he did best: kept his head down, and laid low.

For the three days after he’d blasted the guards with lightning, he’d barely been able to drag himself out of bed. Icy cold had suffused his body, and his limbs hung heavy from his body. The first day, he’d been terrified, afraid that he was dying, but as he slowly strengthened day after day, he understood. Not death—low mana. As little as he knew about skills, he knew skills required mana to function, and putting two and two together, the space in his abdomen that felt warm, now, and cold immediately after using his skill, was what held his mana. Using the skill repeatedly depleted his mana, and the exhaustion was the cost of mana depletion.

Ike squinted up at the sun. A broad, gorgeous blue sky stretched above him, save where the overcity hovered, a permanent cloud in the sky, just as white as the clouds themselves. 

“Good to see you out here, doing some real work,” Nora said.

Ike grunted, expression collapsing back to his usual poker face. “It’s a nice change of pace.”

“A pity about the hut, though.” She glanced over at the blackened ruins of what had been the hide hut.

“Luckily I wasn’t there,” Ike commented.

“Lady Luck smiled on you, surely. Although…you know, I could’ve sworn I saw you go in there that morning,” Nora commented, giving him a look.

He shrugged at her. “I don’t know who you saw, but it wasn’t me. I overslept. I wish I was there, honestly. My uncle clapped my ears good when he found me snoozing.” Rubbing a still-swollen ear, he grimaced a little.

Although he’d healed when he’d activated the System, his new role as an awakened didn’t seem to have permanently boosted his healing rate. Fortunately for him, from his point of view. He would’ve hated to have to punch his own ears every morning.

Not that there were no changes. His body felt lighter. All the aches in his wrists and legs from his repetitive work were gone. His senses had sharpened, unfortunately for his nose, and he felt a slight warmth grow in his core every time he breathed. Mana, entering his body and setting into his core. If he breathed deeply, as if falling asleep, more mana flowed in. With the tannery next door, he didn’t dare try it at work.

Nora kicked the charcoal lump of what had once been a support beam. “Bet he was glad when he saw the hut.”

Ike said nothing. The razor dug a little deeper against the hide.

Leaning against the frame, Nora sighed. “You don’t know how good you have it, kid.”

“Hey! Kid! Get here, right now!” Jaco howled, stomping across the plant.

Ike stood, setting his razor down. He gave Nora a close-lipped smile and walked over to his uncle, every step heavy.

A fat hand clapped around his neck, pinning him where he stood. His uncle drew him in, exerting his strength to give Ike no other choice. Closer and closer, until he could see the filthy pores in his uncle’s face, smell the alcohol on his breath.

His uncle lifted his lip. “Guards are crawling all over town. You know anything about that?”

“No, sir,” Ike replied.

Drawing him even closer, his uncle growled, “I know you left the villa, that night. My ears are better than you think. Where did you go? Did you see that thing that dropped out of the sky?”

Ike swallowed. “I didn’t see anything. I—I just went for a walk. That’s all.”

“Went for a walk, huh?” His uncle gave him a long, slow look, then released him, stepping back. “You’re just a stupid-ass kid. Probably snuck out to buy some powders or see some dumbass girl.”

Ike deliberately flinched, lowering his eyes to the floor.

His uncle smirked. “A girl, huh?” A second later, the smirk vanished. He grabbed Ike’s arm and yanked him back in. Another wave of foul breath and alcohol washed over him. “Don’t you dare go having children on me. Not until you pay off that debt. I’m not cutting you a single ounce of slack, even if you come up to me with a snot-nosed brat. Gods know I should’ve cut your mother off the second she pushed you out.”

Ike’s lip twitched, but he suppressed it. There was no point arguing, no need to point out that his mother and father had both been powerful, successful adventurers. He knew it as well as his uncle did, but if his uncle had made it up in his mind that Ike’s parents were powerless, nothing on this earth would change his opinion, much less something as weak as the truth.

One day soon.

With one last glare, his uncle marched off. Ike watched him go, legs subtly tensing. He couldn’t wait for the guards to forget the theft and pass on to the next problem. He had to leave before his uncle sniffed him out, and the sooner, the better.

Money. I need money. Money to register at the guild. Money to buy more skills, rank up, grow stronger. Money to buy gear, armor, tents, backpacks, everything he’d need to survive an excursion outside the wall, or better yet, to a true dungeon.

He looked at the hides, then shook his head. His uncle would never pay him enough. Even if he worked all day and all night, his uncle would come up with an excuse to siphon the majority of whatever he made off. He needed something else. Something his uncle didn’t know about. Something he could do, now that he had speed.

He lifted his eyes, staring at the distant wall. Rank 0s weren’t allowed outside, not to mention that he wasn’t officially awakened or Ranked, but sometimes, smaller monsters made it over the wall and ranged around the wilderness left as buffer on the inside of the wall. Small, weak monsters, the kind most Rank 1s didn’t bother with, let alone Rank 2s or higher ranks. Nonetheless, the monsters threatened the ordinary farmers who worked in the farmland adjacent to the wilderness, and sometimes possessed valuable materials, too.

The little ones aren’t worth much, but it’s still far more than I can make working in this shithole.

Night found Ike in the wilderness near the wall. He carried his razor in one hand and a rudimentary cloth sack of supplies over the other, with the entire weekend ahead of him. Stepping into a gap in the forest, he drew out the notice he’d snatched from the local tavern’s message board. A small squirrel-like monster bared oversized fangs at the poster’s artist, four limbs outstretched to show the thin membrane that allowed them to glide from tree to tree. A pest to man and crop alike. Sabertoothed Squirrel. Five copper a head.

At the bottom of the sheet, a hand-drawn map showed a run-down barn with a five-pointed star on its side and a run down shed, then pointed at the forest beside it. He looked up, checking again. A barn, star and all. The shed, just as drawn. And before him, the forest.

Dark. Deep. From the moon-drenched field, his eyes failed to penetrate the first row of pale trees. Dense foliage clogged the forest, vines and brambles close around the trees’ trunks. Strange rustling sounds came from the trees, and despite seeing nothing, Ike felt the eyes of a thousand unseen things watching him from the forest.

Ike swallowed, forcing down his fears. It was nothing intimidating. A squirrel with sharp teeth. He’d taken down squirrels by the dozens in his past, chopping up the gamy meat for stew. And yet…a monster. It was a monster. A true monster. Vicious beasts to the end, with magic imbued in their blood, muscles, even bones. Even the smallest monster posed a serious threat to grown man.

A grown unawakened man, Ike revised, folding the paper and sliding it away. He was awakened, now. Able to use magic and skills. Even as a Rank 0, he couldn’t be considered the same man who’d scraped hides only a few days ago.

He took a deep breath. Out here in the wilderness, cool, fresh air filled his lungs. A faint warm trace entered him with his breath, settling into his core. Mana. This close to the wilds, mana floated on the very air. It’d be harder to deplete his mana out here.

Letting his breath out, he stepped into the forest.

Leaves crunched underfoot. The occasional branch snapped. Ike tugged past thorned vines and kicked through brambles, forging his way deeper, ever deeper. The full moon beamed through the forest’s canopy, bright enough to cast sharp shadows on the forest floor, where it trickled down between the leaves. Eerily quiet, only the distant hoo-hoot of an owl broke the silence. Ike cruised as quietly as he could, but still stood out as the loudest thing in the nocturnal arbor. Desperately aware of how loudly he moved, Ike clenched his razor tight in his fist and kept his head on a swivel.

A branch swayed, sudden motion in the dark. His head snapped around.

From behind him, a chittering cry. A rush of wind.

Instinctively, Ike threw himself to the floor. A small, furry body swooped where his head had been seconds ago, chittering fiercely. It landed on the tree in front of him and rebounded, leaping at his ducked head.

Lightning flickered around Ike’s ankles. He burst forward, rushing under the squirrel’s leap.

The squirrel soared over his head, snarling, little limbs pedaling for his hair. It just brushed the crown of his head, but failed to land a solid hit. Its claws sunk into a tree behind him, and it scurried up, repositioning itself for the next attack, then jumped again.

Ike whirled, only to find the squirrel already airborne and hurtling at his neck. Throwing himself backward, he kicked with his lightning-clad feet, using all his strength to kick high enough to hit the squirrel.

The squirrel extended its limbs and caught the air, flinching away at the last second. The pad of his foot passed by its chest fur. A single spark transferred to the beast, but no more.

The squirrel soared up and caught itself on a branch overhead. Pausing for a moment, it bared its vicious teeth and chittered angrily at him, every single fur on its body puffed up.

Ike backed away, raising his blade. Fast. Faster than him. So fast he struggled to find a clean hit. Attacking from overhead meant his feet couldn’t reach. He couldn’t utilize Lightning Dash to kick it. Ike gritted his teeth, mind whirling. There has to be something. Something I’m not thinking of.

Swoosh.

Something rushed at him from behind. Ike dodged, but not fast enough. Claws raked through his scalp as a second squirrel flew by, crashing into the tree just to the right of the first. The two of them chittered at him, the sound almost like laughter.

“Fuck.” Wiping the blood from his forehead, Ike backed away. Two? Can I handle two?

A fierce cry. He threw himself to the side, but something sliced the side of his neck as the squirrel swooped by. Clasping his hand to his neck, Ike squinted after the squirrel. How…?

The membrane between its legs glittered in the moonlight. The squirrel swirled sideways on the air as it flew toward a tree, and the membranes sliced through a few small branches as it careened to a landing, the edges as sharp as a blade.

The other two squirrels chittered, scuttling through the trees, branches rustling. Ike ran, barely dodging as one of the squirrels dove at him. The squirrels kept pace with him. They leapt at him from the left and right. Ike slashed with the razor, but by the time he lifted his hand, the squirrel had already escaped. Cursing under his breath, he ducked and dodged, slashing wildly, but the squirrels landed cut after cut on him. In a few seconds, he bled from a dozen small slashes.

Ike lifted his lip, frustrated. He looked at the squirrels, all-out sprinting to keep up with him. He wasn’t slower. His feet weren’t at least. But his hands… He slashed again, missing the attacker by an inch. Too slow. Seconds too slow. Cut after cut, the cuts building up on his body. Blood ran down his limbs, soaking into his clothes. His body stung all over. Exhaustion began to build, mixing with lightheadedness as his blood ran out.

He wasn’t going to escape. The squirrels were as fast as him. If he kept running, he’d only die. He had to fight. But if he stopped to fight, if he even slowed, the squirrels would slash him to death. Ike gritted his teeth, face to face with reality. Something. I need something to tip the scales!

An idea came to him, welling back up from the recesses of his brain. He glanced at his feet, and the shape of the spell appeared in his head again, the way the skill shaped his mana. From the wide channels through his body, it narrowed, and as a result of narrowing, grew faster. It accelerated out of his feet, and as it did, it zipped back and forth in a stable, consistent pattern before crackling out in the form of lightning.

He didn’t fully understand the principles, but he could see the shape, feel the arc of it, the form as it shaped in his body. Even without a full understanding, he could replicate it. Copy it, pull it somewhere else and release it through another part of his body.

Ducking a squirrel, he lifted his hand. In his mind, he created a model of the spell’s shape, imagining the flow of the mana through it. Once. It collapsed, the model disformed even in his mind, the mana flows clashing with one another. Twice. Another collapse, but this time, he understood the failure and reshaped it. A third time.

The squirrels slashed him left and right. Blood ran down his body. Precious seconds wasted away.

No more time. He turned his attention to his hand. Taking the model from his mind, he replicated the shape in the real world, tightening his hold on the mana, then forcing that mana back and forth, replicating the zip as the skill shaped his mana into lightning. A tiny flicker of static electricity shaped around his hand.

Ike stared. It should have worked. The model was—

He rolled his eyes at himself and jabbed his hand forward.

Lightning flickered around it for a single split second as it darted forward so fast it blurred. In the next instant, the skill collapsed, mana flows clashing with one another, the back-and-forth zip weakening to a straight line. But for just a moment, his hand moved with the same speed as the Lightning Dash skill gave his feet.

Good enough. Ike ran on, watching the squirrels as they ran alongside him. Abruptly, one jumped from his left side, arcing toward his neck.

As it drew near, Ike activated the lightning skill on his hand for that split second. His hand accelerated, and the razor swooped toward the squirrel. The squirrel widened its stance, attempting to bank.

Lightning crackled. Ike closed the distance, hand and feet acting in concert. The razor slashed it open from neck to belly, and in a spray of blood, it spiraled to the ground.

Ike grinned. The skill collapsed around his hand, but he didn’t mind. Spinning the razor, he caught it and pointed it at the other two. “Who’s next?”

Enraged, another squirrel leapt at him even as he spoke.

Once more, Ike forced Lightning Dash out through his hand. His hand leapt forth, surging toward the squirrel with surprising speed. Another tiny head struck the ground, the body slapping to the forest floor a moment later.

Ike skidded to a halt. He turned to the third squirrel, no longer afraid. Raising his razor threateningly, he stared it down, gazing deep into its soulless black eyes.

The squirrel clung to its branch, its tail flicking back and forth desperately. Suddenly, it leapt up and sprinted away, leaving Ike alone in the forest.

Exhausted, Ike dropped to his knees. He looked down at the corpses before him, the two dead monsters. Lifted his arms, watching the blood run down his hands from the cuts on his shoulders.

All at once, he laughed, shoulders shaking, whole body trembling with relief. I did it. I killed them. I killed the monsters. Me. Ike. I did it! I—

He took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. One of the squirrels had run away. Doubtlessly the forest held more squirrels. If he sat around and celebrated, they’d come back with reinforcements and finish him off for good this time.

Picking up the monsters’ bodies, Ike wiped his face and climbed back to his feet, slogging his way back to the edge of the forest. Despite his exhaustion, though, his steps felt light, his heart all but floating. He’d killed monsters. Him. A nobody from the slums.

No. Not a nobody.

Not anymore.

---

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