I heard an alarm go off beneath me, waking me up from a deep, dreamless sleep. I quickly sat up, slamming my face, once again, directly into the ceiling. I instinctively clenched my fist and charged it with lightning, but decided against destruction of property. You win this time, ceiling. For now.

Looking beneath me, I was startled to realize that the young boy had woken up. He was sitting on his blanket bed, playing with one of the desk toys from my room, a toy stegosaurus. Young boys were so easy to understand. Dinosaurs, then trains, then soldiers were the way it almost always went. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and floated to the ground. Looking around me, I could tell that Cindy had already woken up, as coffee had been made and the kitchen was spotless, as usual.

The alarm belonged to Steph actually. She was laying down still, but I could tell she had woken up already. Kaitlyn had woken up as well and was reading a book currently. From the position I was in, I couldn’t quite make out what it was about, but it looked like non-fiction for sure just based on the size of the book.

“Morning Steph. Morning Kaitlyn. Did y’all sleep well?”

At my question, Steph just groaned and rolled over to face the back of the couch. Definitely not a morning person then. Kaitlyn on the other hand seemed pretty perky. Her tail twitched back in forth in interest, and her ears were alert on her head.

She peeked over the edge of her book, respond quietly, “Hey... Vic. I was just doing some reading on Cheetahs. I figured it would help me get a handle on my more 'beastly' side.”

I nodded in agreement, “That definitely sounds helpful. I wish I had a manual on Storm Elementals. I couldn’t really find any solutions though that didn’t depend on barometers. Not a lot of sentient weather out there, before all of the waves started happening.”

She snorted at that hiding a smile behind the book, and I could hear Steph lightly chuckle.

“If you can’t smell it, we have coffee in the kitchen if you want some. Mugs are in the cabinet by the sink.”

I went ahead and got myself a cup, and started on some leftover beans and rice for breakfast. Cindy had made some last night, and it was as good as anything to fill you up in the morning. I went to my bedroom, knocking on the door before I entered. From inside, I heard nick say, “Come in.”

I stepped through the door and gave him a look over. He was shirtless, and that strength increase certainly had done him some favors. I discreetly caught an eyeful as I walked to my dresser for a change of clothes.

I decided that I would wear some sturdy jeans and boots today, with a nice cotton shirt. I grabbed some underwear and socks as well, taking my clothes into my bathroom to change. Once I was ready, I went to find Cindy. I went to her door, knocking. I could hear her within call, “One second. I’m getting dressed.”

I waited until she was ready, then headed into her room. She was sitting at her desk. The window was fully open to let the morning light in. On the desk was a bunch of papers outlining various court cases that she was working on for her college courses. I could also see a newer pile, classifying some of the information that we had begun collating yesterday night. It seemed that even after everyone had passed out, she had stayed up documenting information. What a girl.

“How’d you sleep Cindy?”

“I slept fairly well Vic. Judging by the way you’re dressed, I assume you have a plan for today?”

I nodded, continuing, “Yep. If you’re up for it, can you track down Donny? I doubt he’s doing anything besides working in his house, and I think we could seriously use his help.”

Cindy was confused, and it showed. She quirked her head to the left, asking, “Why do we need Donny? I remember he did HEMA. Did you want him to teach you?”

I chuckled at that. “Nope, wrong again. I think you underestimate how much of a dork Donny is. The reason he did HEMA was to more accurately cosplay. What I want Donny for are his crafting skills. He makes some ridiculous armor pieces. I know he has some portable blacksmithing stuff. I want to get him set up somewhere, and I want him to help us get kitted out. I know he’s going to flip out when we ask him. I also want you, Taylor, and Kaitlyn to try and train up some combat skills by practicing, and I think Donny could help with that.”

“Alright, that sounds like it could certainly be helpful. I still have his address in my organizer, and I had Taylor check on him a few days ago while you were at the ranch. Did you know that he’s a golden dragon? He got changed during the beta test, just like us. He’s covered in scaled head to toe, and apparently is close to nine feet in height now.”

“Holy shit, really?!? That’s fucking perfect. I bet he freaked the fuck out when it happened.

Anyway, while y’all are doing that, I’m going to head out and try and explore around town a bit. I think I can level up to 30 pretty fast, but any amount of levels I could get would help. I want to find some places where monsters spawn, and maybe clear a ruin if I can. My flight is immensely useful for travel, and I have been neglecting hunting for a while. It’s really the only way I can go about leveling due to my Character Archetype.”

Cindy looked worried, but she set her expression and nodded. “I agree that leveling you up in our best bet. Just be safe. James is my friend too, but he’s not worth dying over. He wouldn’t want that, and there are too many people that care about you.”

“It’ll be okay Cindy. I can always fly away if it becomes dangerous. Plus I’m nerdy enough to understand typical dungeon traps, and I have enough constitution and strength to just tank most hits. I plan to try and be out there grinding for two days. Ill pack a bag and find someplace to sleep, but I don’t need much anymore besides food.”

“Alright Vic. Be careful out there.”

I felt bad for James, but I definitely knew that a group that could take on a dozen heavily armed police officers was way too much for me at the moment. They had put a target on Taylor, and our only hope was to destroy them before they took over the whole area, and we ourselves were destroyed.

I left the room, moving to the kitchen. I packed a small backpack full of supplies, including food, a fixed blade knife, hatchet, and an extra brick of 9mm ammunition. The pistol has shown limited effectiveness in the past, as my punches have become more lethal, but it’s still instant damage over a distance, and I couldn’t pass up the added protection. I put my personal every day carry a pocket knife, a CRKT M16, into my pocket, and I was almost ready. The last thing I decided to take was a spool of paracord. You never know when some cordage would come in handy, but it was better to have and not need, than need and not have.

With that I was all packed up and ready to go. I bid farewell to Kaitlyn, Steph, Taylor, Nick, and Trevor, then I was off into the wilderness, back to my element and ready to try and grind for a bit. I set an alarm on my watch for every morning at 8 am, so that I would be ready to wake up and go, and then I rocketed off towards the southwest once again. Thinking for a bit, I decided that on the way back to the apartment, I would make another trip out to the ranch house to deliver supplies. It seems like we might need the extra food and resources to feed the growing number of our little posse. It was a good idea to work ahead of the need.

Flying through the air at my max height, I used aerokinesis to bend the air around me out of my way and push me through the air faster. Finding my equilibrium once again, I rocketed through the sky. I didn’t get the rapid level ups that I received before, but I could tell that I was steadily making progress in my skills once again.

Hovering over some lightly forested areas, I began looking for my quarry. Before long, I was able to find what I was looking for.

 

OOOH! A table! How convenient. I only used identify one time, and I got all of this information. I wonder if they’re in a party. They are definitely pop monsters though because of those weirdly limited information screens.

Fortunately perhaps, these were the pig-orc that you see in lots of Japanese fiction. The lord of the rings style orc would be a bit too much for me to handle, at least mentally. Those guys always grossed me out. I would definitely enjoy killing them though.

These guys were speaking to each other, but it was in some other language. I could tell that the statements were rudimentary and curt. I bet the wild pigs all across Texas turned into these guys. We’ve always had problems with wild pigs in central Texas. They escape from farms and then go feral in a matter of months. At that point, they get hairy and aggressive, and they’ll attack people or other animals for territory. They move through the countryside in massive herds, destroying acres of land and forests.

If all of those pigs turned into orc, then the people of Texas might have a serious problem on their hands.

If being a civil servant means taking out my stress on some orc, I’m totally willing to become a servant of the people. I’m really freaking stressed right now with everything that’s going on, so I might as well do some good. Fight the good fight, for VIOLENCE, *cough*, I mean justice and safety and all that jazz. 

First though, I wanted to see if they were hostile. Pop monsters or no, I didn’t feel like slaughtering some non-hostiles because they looked kind of nasty. I flew in front of their group, hovering in place about thirty feet away from them. Their leader quickly saw me and pointed.

*thunk*

I heard a sound from the trunk of the small tree right behind me.

Was that a freaking arrow? Really? Let’s go ham.

I charged at them, deciding that I needed to take out the big guy first. I prepared twin sparks, one in each hand, though this time I wanted to try and use my Electrokinesis to empower them a bit. As much as I wanted to pepper them with bullets, the skills that I wanted to try and level the most were unarmed combat, rapid regeneration, and Enhanced Physicality. It seemed that the best way to go about that was to take some hits and heal it off. I was planning on killing these orc, then hopping into a creek I saw about a mile back.

I ducked between two of the lesser orc that had charged me and started a swift approach to the big one in the middle. He was the one with the bow, and as I got within ten feet of him, he managed to let off another arrow, albeit at half draw. I decided to take this one to see what the damage was like.

It thudded into my left shoulder, causing a piercing pain, but I fought through it. The damage number popped into the corner of my vision. -30

Ouch, that was way more than I was expecting.

In response, I let off a salvo of lightning, right into its head.

Critical Hit x2! -34, -34

I guess charging the spark did increase their damage by a bit, but the cost also increased by a single mana.

The Orc Warrior was fast though, much faster than I originally gave it credit for based on its stocky frame. Let’s finish this.

I charged storm fists in both hands, bringing a mighty punch straight into the warrior’s gut. He doubled over, blue blood sprouting from his lips.

-26, FATALITY

The kill announcement was nice. Was there a new 'patch' that I didn't notice? I turned to the next, closest orc, who was swinging down with a large club. I ducked to the side and brought another two quick storm jabs into his chest.

-26, -26, FATALITY

Easy peasy. With charged storm fists, I made short work of the remaining orc. They either died outright or were bleeding out as I watched. The only gear they had on them was some simple metal caps to protect their heads, but I had no desire to take those from them. They made nice lightning rods though. The most interesting thing I saw was one of the orc using a car bumper as a club, but it obviously didn’t help him much. These guys were pretty weak, all things considered, all except the warrior. 30 damage from a single ranged attack was pretty terrifying, and it made my pistol look like a joke. It seems like bows had damage increases associated with them, while pistols were dependent on ammunition. I suppose that made sense, in a way.

 

 

 

Looking through the abilities, I could tell that my leveling had borne fruits. I definitely needed to keep this up. The fact that I didn’t get status increases at level 10 was annoying, though. I thought that I would get them every five levels, but I guess that was incorrect. Only time would tell how they worked.

The new skill, pain tolerance, looked immensely helpful. I’ve already seen how useful ignoring hits could be when I fought that badger early on. The Derivations look crazy though, and while pain nullification and berserker are easy enough to guess, what the hell is blood of my blood?

The next thing I noticed is that the arrow that was fired at me, which was currently still sticking out of my shoulder, seemed to be imbued with magic. Damage resistance seemed like it was useful early on against plants and rocks and things, I was in for a rude awakening. I had thought the skill was overpowered, but it looks like I was pretty mistaken. I only had the damage reduction to weapons not wielded by people with skills, because that seemed to charge them with mana passively, which is where the increase in damage came from. This means the reduction applied to things like getting scratches while running through trees, getting burned on a campfire, things of that nature. That made it surprisingly not particularly helpful in combat, which was really unfortunate. The increase in health regeneration was awesome, though. I should make sure my friends get this skill as well. The free status increases were immensely useful.

The ranks on the orc were also strange. These were Rank 1 monsters. I assume from this that higher rank monsters can spawn elsewhere, but I haven’t read anything in any menu about monster ranks quite yet. Its probably going to release in the next wave.

I pulled the arrow out of my shoulder with a grunt, looking at the strange glowing white blood that ran down its point. It seemed like every day I was moving further and further away from the annoyed human girl I was about a week ago.

I backtracked to the stream that I had seen. I was going to heal, then try and wipe out a few more orc packs before the end of the day.

---

I splashed down into the water for the 8^th time today. Holy shit, there were a lot of pigs here. The amount I had killed was quite frankly ridiculous. I could tell they weren’t just respawning either because they all looked slightly different. My grand totals for the evening’s carnage were pretty nice, also. I managed to level up a bunch.

 

 

The second milestone came at level 15. I have a suspicion that the next one will only drop when I hit level 30. If there’s one thing I noticed, its that curved tended to be exponential. I had almost managed to figure out the exponential curve for my level as well.

Skill Page:

 

I got a whole slew of current status upgrades to match my max status increases, as well as a new spell. I was even able to max out two skills, Athletics and unarmed combat. At this point, I figured that my skill with unarmed combat was that of an experienced, however never formally trained, fighter. It was hard to tell, because using the skill I could sort of glean where to position my body to get the most out of an attack, and I knew how to punch really strong, but I also knew that the skills I was using were very undisciplined. My skill in dodging attacks could use some serious work, and I knew basically nothing about combat footwork.

From maxing out athletics, I was able to get a skill derivation as well. It seems like athletics wouldn’t disappear as physical resistance did. I pulled up the alert for it and started to read.

 

Greater Athletics seemed decent, but not really what I needed. I had Physicality to increase my stamina, and it was constantly increasing with my agility as well. Sprinter seemed cool, and I would definitely let Kaitlyn know about it, but half of combat I was flying out of the way of blows. I didn’t use running to go places either, so there was really no purpose for it as well. The last one, Acrobatics, seemed interesting. The skills that provided ‘corrections’ tended to teach you how to use your body better, and this one seemed like it would allow me to increase my flexibility, and ability to dodge as well. Given that stamina regen was currently my weakest regeneration stat, Acrobatics was a bit of a no brainer. Plus, it reminded me of a D&D character sheet, so I was totally on board.

 

I had a second alert as well, I presume for unarmed combat. This was the one I was really excited to try and get derivations for.

 

Well that was incredibly underwhelming. Nothing to be done about it though, I suppose, but wait for the next wave to happen. My melee damage was already really strong though, so I wasn’t super broken up about it. I had figured out that the damage numbers were a combination of my Strength stat, my unarmed combat stat, and my storm fist damage, so currently I was rocking 18+14+10 = 42 damage per attack, which is not including critical hits.

After looking over my menus and alerts, I decided to call it a night. There was actually still some daylight left over, and I knew that I would regain health faster during sleep.

As I began preparing for bed, I realized something. The third wave just happened! Meditation had been unlocked in my skill sheet! I am such a putz. Victoria Gale, mighty slayer of orc, the girl who can’t remember what happened three days ago. After I had finished feeling like an idiot, I looked deeper into the situation.

I hadn’t seen it during or after combat, but after working for two days to get the damn skill, I sure as hell wasn’t going to give up on it. I decided to try and meditate again, to see if I could trigger the unlock one more time.

 

Wow, that was actually pretty good. It would certainly make my encounter rate faster, and it looked like I could increase that to a 100% increase in my total regeneration at max level.

I shook my head, and flew into the air, looking for a good place to sleep for the night. I was tempted to just tie my ankle to a tree branch, but I wanted to try and find a nice covered place if I could. Once I was in the air, I looked around the forest, but I didn’t find what I was looking for. What I DID find was a strange stone pillar barely poking out over the forest. The only reason I could see it was because it was surrounded by small campfires.

I approached just over the treetops, making sure I was hidden.

 

Neat. I guess I know what I’m doing tomorrow.