Ch-4 ****

30:00
29:59
29:58

Chris came awake and sat up gasping for air. His hands salvaged around his neck to get rid of the noose. His eyes were burning red. Nostrils flared to breathe air. There was a red bruise around his neck, a phantom of his last death. He didn’t carry the pain from his last death, but he carried the fear, the emotional trauma, and the mental image.

Tormented and scared, Chris crawled away from the place he had woken up and stood up running into the forest to get away from the bandits.

He staggered and fell behind the burning car. The fire burnt him, but he didn’t want to be seen or to be dragged by the horse. A voice in his mind told him the horse wouldn’t come so close to the fire. Fire scared beasts and humans alike. Only humans were more foolish, believed they could tame fire, own it when in reality they were nothing but food for its hunger.

Tears fells from his eyes. He wanted to scream. There was a fire in his lungs that wanted to be released, come out, and burn everything in his surroundings. He had died and revived, but his mind remembered the noose tightening around his neck and his body reacted to it.

Chris had never felt so vulnerable before, so weak. Not even when he didn’t awaken his flame by the age of fifteen, or while being bullied by Hank, when his classmate laughed at his dream to enter the agency, or when his wife divorced him and married someone else -- not even when his mother died three years ago. He had cried, felt lonely and desperate, but not broken or useless. That was how he had felt while being dragged by the horse, watching the men defile a mother in front of her daughter, unable to help them. He had survived the wounds but carried the scars, and they reminded him of his powerlessness.

He gritted his teeth and screamed in his throat without caring about anything.  

He lay on the ground, embraced his legs, and grabbed his hair to hold out. He kept imaging the woman wailing even though he hadn’t heard anything. He lay there until his heart stopped screaming and his mind calmed back to the present.

He settled there for a few more minutes. Controlled his panic but could not defeat it. He would have run away if not for the woman and her child. He would have run away if he hadn’t remembered the child’s name, remembered the feeling of the man he possessed, his desire to have a child with his wife and to protect them.

The minute passed and he was himself again. He found himself staring at the fire; it looked beautiful in the destruction. His breaths howled in his ears, while his heart continued beating normally in his chest.

“SIMP,” He called out just for the sake of it. He needed t talk to someone. SIMP might be an artificial person, but she knew him better than a real person did. She had grown up with him. They had been together for almost a decade, which was longer than he was married to April, who was apparently the love of his life.

“I’m too weak SIMP. I’m too, foolish too vulnerable. I took injuries too lightly, forgetting not all wounds are physical. Isn’t there anything I can do to get out of this? If things continue… I’ll be a bumbling idiot long before the end of the loops.”

SIMP didn’t answer him. He knew by now she wasn’t there with him. He was alone, but everyone needs someone to hold hands when the night falls.  

Sighing, he closed his eyes and started remembering the past loop. The pain returned, but it was manageable. His mind wandered and made him helpless. His memories were vivid and fresh. He was looking through the last of them when one moment struck out to him. He had received another set of holographic messages —he didn’t try to figure out their origin this time, dubbed them God's voice, and left it at that.

They were more or less the same, notifying about things he had no understanding. Among the few holograms, projections, messages, one interested him the most; it was a suggestion rather than a message.

“Status,” Chris said vigilantly, ready for any kind of trouble that might crop up next.

Nothing of the sort he was imagining happened. Another hologram flashed open in front of his eyes. It was bright, almost scared him.

Chris worried the bandits would see this board of light that hovered in front of his face, but something told him only he could see it. Shocking was the realization that he knew everything about it as if something had poured a bunch of knowledge directly into his mind. With the knowledge came a familiarity with the system that was foreign to him as the vehicle he hid behind.

It made him doubt everything, even his sanity.

Perhaps his flame was the cause of his troubles. However, there had never been a flame-like that. Everyone flame either belonged to the elemental or physical category. There were no records of people having out-of-body experiences after ignition.

Was it possible? Did he want to consider that question after everything he had gone through?
Chris shook his head. No, he didn’t need nor want to.

His newfound knowledge told him John vest was the name of the person he was possessing.

He knew that, but the confirmation hit him hard. He cleaned his hands on his shirt and looked at them again. Yep, they were not his hands. He then crawled up the road and grabbed a sword before making his way back, the bandit's none too wise of his actions. He cleaned the blood on the white satin cloth of his already bloody shirt, then resolving his heart looked at his reflection. The fire burning ahead of him gave a nice orange tinge to his skin tone, but it couldn’t hide the wrinkles and dark circles underneath his eyes. The face in the refection was old. John was also completely bald though slim for his profession.  Most important, he had eyes that sparkled like a sapphire in the fire.

Chris’s eyes had always been pitch black, dark as a moonless night and deeper than a shadowed groove. Hank hated him because of them. He could forget the color of the sky, but the color of his eyes would remain deeply etched on his heart because of the pain they had brought him and the thing they represented. Even Ashers had grey eyes. He was the only one in the world with black eyes.

John was an old trader of goods and a capable merchant. His forty-four levels represented his ability as a merchant, the job he opened after trader. Now he was dead and that was the reason behind his double negative suffix.

Chris had a hard time understanding everything but he got a gist of it. Firstly, a class represented one’s job. There were production classes, business classes, and combat classes. Merchant, which was John’s class, was a business class, while Magician, which belonged to him, was a combat class.

Each level gave one skill point and one attribute point. The attribute points improved one's body, while a skill point could unlock skills, like the ones John had. Chris realized that he couldn’t put any skill points into the merchant class since it belonged to John, but his magician class easily accepted it.

As for how to gain more levels... it was straightforward. Chris had killed the boy and gained a level, goes to say killing more people would gain him more levels, more skill points, and more skills.

Obtuse and deranged as it sounded, the statue was real as was everything else. It bothered him that this metaphysical manifestation —which Chris was sure every person had— encouraged murder, at least for the combat classes. Production classes could only gain level producing goods, while John had leveled up selling goods as a trader and later as a merchant.
However, things were different for Chris. To improve his class he needed to kill. Thankfully, killing people with rogue classes wasn’t frowned upon, even praised and rewarded. So even killing the bandits wouldn’t make him a murderer, according to the rules and laws of this strange world.

Yes, Chris was now sure he was not on Earth, although the knowledge he had received didn’t include even a single letter of information about the world.
He connected the dots.
He was confident the system wasn’t an entity of his world. No one had it or seen it. The agency would have known otherwise.

Suddenly a memory popped up in Chris’s mind. He was together with the woman, the one caught by the bandits – John’s wife, Helna. They were going to a nearby town to get their daughter blessed by the temple when the bandits ambushed them. “John,” She called him moments before something collided with their vehicle. John saw them flying out of the window as the vehicle derailed. He extended a hand to grab her, but she flew out together with his daughter—

“Elissa,”

Mannat looked over the burning vehicle car, the bandits had caught John’s wife and the child was her daughter. He had already decided to save them, but the memory turned the act into resolve; now it was personal. He had been looking at them as people in need of help, but now he was acting in John’s interest and he didn’t shy away from making it his interest as well.

“Forget it,” Chris set aside all the questions. He felt insane thinking about the status, but it was the chance he had been yearning for, his one way to make things right. He was skeptical of the classes and the magical points business, but it was nothing compared to the lighter and ignition stuff going on in his world.

He put the only point he had into the water element, confirmed his action and another projection appeared in front of his eyes.
He wanted to know how the projections worked. Was there a device implanted in his brain? Because he sure as hell hadn’t found anything when looking for his N-chip.

---

[You have unlocked Shield]

---

[Shield][Water][Tier-1]
[This skill conjures a transparent shield that can block a certain amount of damage depending upon the value of your Wisdom attribute.]
[Effect: The shield remains active until broken.]
[Cool down: Five minutes. A new shield can be instantaneously conjured after five minutes once the old one breaks.]

Chris already knew to use a skill all he needed to do was to speak its name.

“Shield,” Chris said skeptically, even feeling ridiculous not knowing what to expect.

He was stunned for a variety of reasons when something with the dimensions of a book appeared floating one meter away from his left hand. It was transparent to his eyes, but he could sense it with his mind. It was neither small nor large. It moved with his hand, jumped to his right hand when he willed it or became pinned to his chest at his direction.

The thing could even change shape!

He could model it any way he wanted but chose a convex shape to upset the trajectory of the arrows. A smile fluttered over on Chris’s face. He felt like a child who had just received a new toy.

Chris wasn’t new to the elemental phenomenon. What was a flame if not the physical manifestation of a person’s ability? What hadn’t he seen as a worker of the agency? The people of Earth were all kinds of mad. A transparent shield was mild in front of them, but it was also amazing in a sense. He had seen it before, but only in the file of yellow coat agents or category five lighters. Not everyone wakes up category five from the start and neither had he. The shield he had seen could protect a lighters head to toes, which was a tall task for his 9x7 inches long and wide transparent membrane.

He touched it with his free hand, which spread a calm ripple on its surface. The ripple bounced around the ends of the shield for a few seconds before disappearing completely, turning the shield invisible to naked eyes.  

The projection said the shield could absorb damage equivalent to the value of his wisdom… so thirty-five points, however much that was. He would figure it out on the move. He tried to conjure another one and failed since the skill was still in cool down and he already had a shield conjured.

Time was trickling down. Now only seventeen minutes remained. The clock was still in the red; he hadn’t figured out when or why it changes color to green, but that was just another question to be answered, nothing big. He put it back in the line with the other bigger, more urgent questions. Here was one that was just on the top of his nose and irking him quite a lot: What was the plan?

He wondered what would happen when the time runs out. It was a fascinating question with an easy answer. He only needed to hold until the end of the loop, but that would mean abandoning Helna and Elissa to the bandit’s hands. Something he couldn’t digest.

Sharp pain in his stomach reminded him of his mortality. He removed his coat; it was burgundy, dark and heavy -- not a color of his choice-- and cut the arm into strips with the sword. He bundled together a few of them and pressed the makeshift gauze tightly on the wound. A groan escaped his mouth. He gritted his teeth and fought through the pain then bandaged it all together with the strips of cloth. It was a job well done. At least he wouldn’t be on the verge of death from just running to the forest a couple of meters away like last time.

Fifteen minutes on the clock, the bandits were tired of tossing Helna around. Chris didn’t want to see what happens next so he stood up, called the bandits, and ran to the forest. They spotted him. There was a shout, and the same three people chased him into the darkness of the forest.

An arrow whizzed past Chris’s shoulder, sticking a tree ahead. The archer hadn’t attacked him the last time; he wondered what changed this time. Was it the lack of speech or something else? There was no time to wonder. Chris ran until he was a decent way in the forest and hid behind a tree, just like the last time. He stopped early because…time; he had wasted too much of it wallowing in his misery.

Thirty minutes was barely enough time for a person to shower, and here he had to kill five people at the same time; it was crazy, but he had to do it. There was no other choice.

The bandits would have spent ages looking for him if he had gone deeper into the forest or gone to his last destination. Not that he remembered where that was. The forest looked the same everywhere. It was frightening actually.

He started planning the next loop while the bandits looked for him. He decided to wait for five or so minutes in the next loop to catch his breath and then run directly to the forest. Maybe he’ll perform the speech next time to confuse the archer. Or he could run straight at them. He now had his shield, and he was very proud of it although he hadn’t seen it in action yet. Its presence alone meant he was now a lighter, though obtusely confined to only one trick, which would raise many eyebrows on earth.

Adrenaline kept the pain low. Everything was great until he was running, but now that he had stopped, his heart rate was calming down. The rush was fading and the pain was having a second coming.

Chris counted the seconds pass with gritted teeth.

Thirteen minutes remaining. He was sure the clock would turn green in a few minutes.

He wasn’t afraid the bandits wouldn’t be able to find him. They all had the system and its skills. John had a plethora of skills at his disposal. Chris guessed so did the bandits. He couldn’t help questioning the very existence of the system.

Why did the people need it?

It encouraged murder! That alone should have warned the government. He couldn’t deny its strength and the effect it might or did have on the civilization of John’s world, but it also unfavorably tipped the scale toward the bad guys who weren’t hesitant to kill people. Levels were everything for the system and there was no legal and logical way forward for the good guys.

 Perhaps everyone had production classes, and only a niche few including and possibly the police had combat classes.

Chris was interested to see what kind of society such a mismanaged and misaligned system had raised. However, as with all of his other thoughts, he put these questions aside to concentrate on his enemies.

Once again, the young boy found him. He sneaked up on Chris and produced a familiar vertical slash at Chris’s neck. Chris let the shield take the hit this time. The sword clanged against the shield like it had hit a wall it rippled but held on. The sword bounced back. The boy lost his momentum, staggered, confused. He was wide open.
Chris didn’t miss the opportunity and drove the point of his sword straight into the boy's chest. It didn’t slide in easily; Chris had to put all of his weight behind it and only then did it pierce the boy's flesh.

Warmblood slid down the swords fuller before stopping at the guard, tricking down as red beads and nourishing the forest ground. The betas of the boys dying heart rode up the sword's spine and registered at Chris’s hands.

Chris stood still as the boy took his last few breaths, as the light in his eyes grew weaker and weaker, as his head bowed because his neck could no longer hold the weight, and when eventually, his legs buckled and he fell to the floor a lifeless sack.

It was a murder and its weight was immense on Chris’s psyche. It had made him stall once in the last iteration of the repeating time loop, question himself and his deeds. Not this time. Chris was stronger and had the courage to get away from the corpse upon hearing heavy footsteps coming toward him. His motive was neither murder nor revenge, but the protection of a scared mother and her innocent daughter. 

Chris held onto the thought like a hook sinking into a fish’s mouth. He took the boy's dagger and hid behind a tree close to the body. The dagger was the right size and weight; he liked it instantly. Then the large man appeared from the darkness and reserved all of his attention.

The man had looked big from far, but it was only in his presence did Chris realize how actually huge he was. They had a foot of difference in their heights. The man wasn’t just tall, there was meat on his bones and muscles underneath them. Who knew how many people he had eaten to get that big? He held an equally large hammer in one hand and carried a length of rope coiled around his shoulder.

Chris’s neck tightened at the sight of the rope. His heart sped up and his throat constricted. It was hard for him to gulp. The saliva lashed at him as if he was the enemy, scratched at his throat while sliding down. It was not a good experience.

Chris was sweating from nervousness while the giant bandit approached the corpse. His eyes wandered from the giant's face to his hammer. He feared his shield would break from the slightest touch of that thing. It had held against the sword's blow, but a boy had struck that, the man he would be facing next was a beast. The hammer was too big, too heavy. He imagined going against it and getting the shield and his skull crushed in one swing. It really was not a joke anymore. And he had to fight this thing. If only, there was a way to know his enemy.

Chris’s sight fell on his shield. It hovered unnaturally in front of his chest, unaware and unrestricted by anything. It was a skill, his skill, but it wasn’t the only skill he had. He had John’s skills too. Seen the way, he called the status and looked through all the skills he had and found one that could help him.

Quickly, he turned back toward the giant who now stood next to the corpse, but too far away from Chris.
“Appraise,” Chris whispered quietly and a transparent blue screen appeared in front of his eyes. It was glowing, but as the foreign knowledge in his mind told him, the man didn’t see it.

---

[Charlie Wedman][Lv-35][Age:32][Pugilist[30] ->Warrior[5]]

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[Strength:19x2][Agility:9x1][Constitution:12x1.4]
[Skills: Coagulation, Tough-> Hard, Throw, Wild Punch, Giants strength, ->Heavy weapon wielder, Grapple]

---

He saw the man’s status and came to the realization that different classes modified the stats differently. Unlike John, whose business class mostly only modified his mental attributes, Charlie, the giant’s skills modifiers had a direct impact on his physical attributes and his physique. Everyone earned the same amount of points, but it was the skill they unlocked that made the difference.

For eg: John's intelligence stat was: 5+5+3=13x1.5. So the formula becomes, Base stats + points earned from trader Job + Points earned from Merchant Job = Sum x skill modifiers.

Truthfully, Chris didn’t know what he was looking for so he decided to ignore it. This was as much help as his gun training.  He looked at the clock in the corner of his sight and noticed it coming down to eight minutes, thirty-four seconds, and then suddenly turn green.

At the same time, the man’s nose started bleeding and his eyes grew wide.
“Huh?” Charlie, the giant, uttered in confusion; his brows furrowed.
“What happened?” He said and looked around as if in a daze and then suddenly turned toward the road.

Chris didn’t know what happened, but the man was distracted and this was the chance he had been waiting for. He inhaled a deep breath then charged at the giant man holding the sword parallel to the ground.

The man heard him and started turning, but it was too late. Chris shoved the sword into his gut. There was enough force behind his thrust to cleanly penetrate the man’s skin, fat, and muscles. The sword didn’t go all the way in though. The leather armor leeched the force behind the sword and stopped it just shy of the giant's gut.

The man staggered and growled like a beast, but kept his feet. He swung his fist at Chris, but the shield came into effect this time. It defended the blow, but the shield was only as stable as Chris’s feet.

Chris lost grip on the sword handle and was blown back. He fell a few feet away from the giant, a blessing in disguise considering the giant was angry and seething in pain.

Charlie, the giant, glared at Chris as blood leaked from his wound, every movement a lesson in pain. Their eyes met and the man was stunned for a second before he barked at Chris.

“YOU! WHY AREN’T YOU DEAD?”