《Blink》 Chapter 1 Coincidentally, I was sitting in my game theory class when it happened. The teacher was droning on and on when she suddenly stopped. I didn¡¯t know why she stopped, but I assumed it was for the same reason I did. Some words had popped up in front of my face. They came out of nowhere and didn¡¯t have anything supporting them. Unusual. I waited a second for the words to disappear. When they didn¡¯t, I blinked to make the process go faster. When I reopened my eyes, I found that the words had gained an entourage. Multiple windows had popped up in addition to the one that was already there. So, with surprising calmness, I began to read them. Congratulations, humans! You are now being inducted to the glorious ranks of the System! You will learn to level up, buy skills and weapons from the Shop, and, best of all, slay monsters! Fortunately for us and less so for you, we believe that the best form of teaching is not at all. You have three days to figure out what the hell is going on. Good luck! Congratulations, human! You are the first person on your planet to blink since the arrival of the System. You have earned the class Blink! You have earned the title Blink! You have learned the skill Basic Blink! You have learned the skill Master Identify! You have learned the skill Lesser Dagger Combat! You have learned the skill Basic Mana Manipulation! You have learned the skill Basic Blacksmithing! You have earned 25,000 Shop Chits! You have reached your skill cap; no more skills may be learned. Title: Blink! Removes mana/stamina cost of Blink. Skill: Basic Blink (Active) (0%) Allows you to teleport to anywhere in sight. As skill level increases, there will be a decrease in disorientation. Cost: 20 mana, 20 stamina No cost due to Blink! title. Cooldown: 1 minute Skill: Master Identify (Active) (0%) Allows you to identify many beings and objects without them noticing. If you try to identify someone who can notice, you will be asked for confirmation before continuing. Cost: None Cooldown: None Skill: Lesser Dagger Mastery (Passive) (0%) Allows you to single wield or dual wield daggers with the skill of someone who has been training the past two years. Skill: Basic Mana Manipulation (Active) (0%) Allows you to manipulate mana on the same level as acolyte-level magicians. Skill: Basic Blacksmithing (Passive) (0%) Allows you to blacksmith on the same level as acolyte-level blacksmiths. Okay. That is something. I¡¯m not sure what it is, but it sure is something. As I read through the notifications once more, I realized that it seemed a lot like those games we were studying. They had skills that progressed and shops that you could access anywhere and monsters to fight-- Holy shit! We¡¯re going to have to fight monsters! That¡¯s why Mr. System was giving humanity three days to prepare! We are going to have to fight monsters! Okay, okay, okay. Calm down. First off is viewing my status, if there is one. Actually, first is getting rid of these pesky notifications. As I removed my focus from the words floating in front of my face, I noticed that the classroom was empty of people but still full of belongings. Seems many people didn¡¯t realize we still had three days. I stayed seated, though. ¡°Clear notifications.¡± With those words, the text in front of my eyes whooshed off to the side and out of the right side of my vision. ¡°Status.¡± Oh, good, now I¡¯ve got some more floating words. Status of Hector ¡°Blink!¡± MacAvoy Class: Blink Level: 1 EXP Req: 100 HP: 180 Health/min: 2.4 Stamina: 100 Stamina/min: .8 Mana: 110 Mana/min: 1.3 Strength: 10 Endurance: 8 Intelligence: 11 Willpower: 13 Control: 5 Perception: 9 Free: 0 Skills: Basic Blink, Master Identify, Lesser Dagger Mastery, Basic Mana Manipulation, Basic Blacksmithing TEMPORARY NOTICE: Class: Blink quadruples requirements for level growth but also quadruples rewards. So, if 10 is the average stat, I am just below average, which I guess isn¡¯t terrible. I¡¯ve got mana and stamina and my skills, but what in the world is this temporary notice? Everyone else only needs 25 EXP to level up, but I need 100? Why do I have this class? I didn¡¯t ask for it. I didn¡¯t even know it was a thing! What the hell is a ¡®Blink¡¯ anyway? That isn¡¯t a class. Whatever. When life gives you lemons, I guess. Can I change the layout? I don¡¯t like the skills being there. Apparently, my skills are capped, so I can¡¯t learn any more. As soon as I thought about it, my skills disappeared from the status screen. Okay, the System can read my thoughts. Good to know. I closed my status and opened the Shop. Hello, Hector. How may the Shop serve you today? Your current balance is 25,000 Chits.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. ¡°Um, hello,¡± I hesitantly said. ¡°I would like to look at a guide to the System, please?¡± Searching for guides. 5,778,936 guides found. Please state your price range. For comparison, 1 American dollar is worth about 1 Chit. ¡°Um.¡± Wow. That is a lot of guides. ¡°I would say, maybe, under 50 Chits?¡± Recalibrating. 34 guides have been found. Please state any more criteria. Honestly, that was more than I expected. I was hoping for 1 guide. ¡°Can I have your recommendation, System?¡± ¡®Gruhn¡¯li¡¯s Guide to Your Apocalypse: the System and How it Works¡¯ is the highest rated guide on the Shop in your price range. Many reviews state that it covers the basics, but you may need a more detailed guide later. Price is 40 Chits. ¡°Thank you, System. I will take it.¡± All of a sudden, I heard a dinging noise. A thin beam of light descended from the sky and somehow came through the building to reach my forehead. As soon as it reached my head, I knew. I knew how to level up. I knew how to use skills. I knew how to receive a class and evolve it, not that I needed to worry about receiving my class. ¡°So, I need to level up to get stronger to help people withstand the monsters, and to do that I need to kill more monsters, but I don¡¯t have monsters to kill.¡± I thought for a while before I realized that I might as well ask the Shop for a way to kill monsters without monsters. Searching for training facilities. 67,168 found. What is your price range? And I forgot about the mindreading part again. ¡°Are there any facilities where I can sort of carry it around instead of putting down a building?¡± Yes, but they are more expensive. 3 found. Displaying items. Sands of God Training Facility Grade: A Rarity: Very Rare Training Facility that spawns thousands of different creatures all at once, where you cannot leave until you fight and kill all of them. Does not offer respawns. Contained in a pocket space. Price: 20,000 Chits D¡¯hurka¡¯julilie Training Facility Grade: A Rarity: Very Rare Training Facility that spawns mainly undead type creatures in waves that are preset by the owner. Does not offer respawns. Contained in a pocket dimension. Price: 22,500 Chits Ankle-Breaker Training Facility Grade: B Rarity: Rare Training Facility that spawns spiders. Hundreds of spiders. These spiders do not do much damage but you may not leave until all are killed. Does not offer respawns. Contained in a pocket dimension. Price: 15,000 Chits. Well, that makes my life that much easier. The first one will get me killed almost immediately, and the third one¡­ the third one gives me the willies. So, the second one. ¡°System, buy the Durk-- D¡¯hor-- Buy the second one, please.¡± I heard a familiar ding and saw the same beam of light, but that was about it. I checked around me and still saw nothing. No pocket dimension training facility. Not even a normal dimension training facility. ¡°Uh. System, where is it?¡± In an apparent response to my question, a new window opened up. Inventory: 1/30 slots filled - D¡¯hurka¡¯julilie Training Facility Okay, I should have known that. That was in the guide. Now, how to remove it. Just focus and it will appear in your hand. I concentrated on my palm and imagined the fist-sized cube that was the Training Facility appearing. It would travel through space and time, from my inventory to my hand. And, just like that, it did. I looked at it. It wasn¡¯t anything remarkable, but it was very smooth, and it seemed like any disease that dared to step foot onto its sterile magnificence would feel its wrath. Once again, as this had happened too many times during the day for me to not be irritated, a window appeared. Would you like to enter the Training Facility or modify the programming? ¡°Modify,¡± I said out loud. Once I realized how idiotic I looked, my head darted around the room to make sure no one heard me. Still, no one did. I suppose they were all making peace with their lives and loved ones. I don¡¯t really care. Loner orphan, so no family and no girlfriend. Being forced through high school until I hit 18 and am able to move out. Fortunately for me, it seems as though my chance to move out was moved up. I turned my attention back to the window. First wave: 1 zombie Second wave: 1 skeleton Third wave: I skeleton and 1 zombie I removed the second and third waves; although I was confident I could handle them, I didn¡¯t want to take any chances. Now, when I entered, I would be able to kill a zombie and then leave. First, though, I needed a weapon. ¡°System, how many Chits do I have remaining?¡± Your account holds 2460 Chits. Okay. That seems like a solid amount, but I suppose I really have no way of knowing. So. My skills include Lesser Dagger Mastery, which means I should probably buy daggers. ¡°System, how much for a set of dual daggers with their sheaths? What you recommend, of course.¡± Umlaut Dagger Set Grade: C Rarity: Uncommon Plain daggers with an enchantment to make sure they stay sharp and another to make sure they stay clean. Price: 2400 Chits total ¡°I¡¯ll take ¡®em. Now, for sheaths. I have 60 Chits left, so maybe thirty per sheath. Nothing too fancy.¡± Basic Dagger Sheath x 2 Grade: F Rarity: Common The worst quality dagger sheath there is. It will hold your daggers, though. Price: 60 Chits total ¡°Perfect.¡± All of my purchases items were sent down to my inventory, and I immediately focused and took out my daggers. They were perfect. They curved back just the slightest bit and had a serrated edge on the inside of the curve. The steel of the daggers gleamed in the barest sunlight of the room, a testament to their power. The leather wrappings were basic but well maintained. The feature that gave the daggers their name, however, was a dot on each of the daggers in the center of the hilt. When put next to each other, they resembled an umlaut. I pulled the sheaths out and hooked them onto my belt, then slid my daggers into the leather with a slight hiss. I focused and removed the training facility from my inventory. Would you like to enter the Training Facility or modify the programming? ¡°Enter,¡± I said. Chapter 2 I appeared in a sterile, white room, in one of the corners. In the other corner appeared a zombie. Its skin had mostly rotted away, leaving clumps of gray skin hanging from different parts of the body. It had long, stringy hair that had fallen out in patches, leaving bald chunks. One of its eyes had rotted away, leaving an empty socket. Its mouth had fallen open and revealed at least a dozen missing teeth. It groaned and shambled forward. All it was missing from the stereotypical zombies was its arms out in front of it. I pulled out my daggers and raised them in front of me. Immediately, I readjusted my stance. I bent my knees and put one leg behind the other in a classic stance with my feet perpendicular to each other. I raised one dagger in front of me and held the other one close to my body, near my center of mass. That must be my Lesser Dagger Mastery kicking in. Helpful, very helpful. From my mastery, I also know that while more people would use one dagger and grapple with their off-hand, it is not a good idea to try and grapple with a zombie or, for that matter, most monsters. Hence, double daggers. Immediately after appearing in the room, I decided it would be a good idea to test another one of my skills. ¡°Master Identify!¡± Status of Zombie Level: 1 HP: 50 Strength: 5 Endurance: 5 Intelligence: 1 Willpower: 1 Control: 1 Perception: 1 Zombies really do not have luck stat-wise. Okay, so how do I fight him? I can feel my Dagger Mastery taking over as I rush the approaching zombie. First, dash to the side and slam the blade up underneath the chin. Second, leave the dagger behind and-- Actually, it seems as though the first step was all that was needed. I got a critical hit notification alerting me of the 57 damage I did to a level 1 zombie. The second notification I received was more interesting. 2 (10 x 20% Training Reduction) EXP rewarded for killing a level 1 zombie. 0 (5 x 0% Training Reduction) Shop Chits awarded for killing a level 1 zombie. Pity I didn¡¯t get any Shop Chits and that the EXP was reduced, but I suppose getting a head start was worth it. I grabbed my dagger and pulled it out of the zombie¡¯s corpse. As soon as it was removed, the corpse faded away. Suddenly, the world started to swirl around and I reappeared in my game theory classroom. I checked my watch and noticed that the whole ordeal had taken about 1 minute. If I stay here for about an hour and grind, I would be able to make it at least a level into humanity¡¯s new existence. Well, then, it¡¯s decided. First, I want to check my status and skill progression. Status of Hector ¡°Blink!¡± MacAvoy Class: Blink Level: 1 EXP Req: 98 HP: 180 Health/min: 2.4 Stamina: 97 Stamina/min: .8 Mana: 110 Mana/min: 1.3 Strength: 10 Endurance: 8 Intelligence: 11 Willpower: 13 Control: 5 Perception: 9 Free: 0 Well, the EXP was removed from my distance from the next level. The System seems to be working in that fashion. I guess that I used 3 stamina to move around and fight? I need to increase my stamina regen. Next up is skill progression, which I learned about from Grun¡¯li¡¯s guide. On each skill is a percentage. When it is 100%, it is possible to evolve the skill. If it is a level below Master, it will evolve to its next level. If it is at Master, it has a chance to evolve and specialize in a new skill that begins at Basic, but it is supposed to be a very rare option. Skill: Lesser Dagger Mastery (Passive) (5%) Allows you to single wield or dual wield daggers with the skill of someone who has been training the past five years. Well, 5% isn¡¯t much, but it¡¯s something. Time to get back to training. I continued on and on, killing zombie after zombie after zombie. It was somewhat boring, but I learned new dagger techniques as I fought. Now, instead of just stabbing the zombie through the chin, I would slash across its neck in a smooth motion that almost decapitated the zombie. Lesser Dagger Mastery increased to 25%, but it doesn¡¯t seem like it will go up even more. I think I need to fight different creatures. Master Identify actually went up 1%, but it isn¡¯t rising anymore either. I don¡¯t know whether that is because Master-level skills are harder to progress in or because I¡¯ve been essentially identifying the same zombie for an hour. I decided not to risk trying skeletons or anything more advanced because the zombie is working well enough for gaining experience. After killing my 50th zombie, I received the normal kill notification as well as a new notification. Congratulations, Hector! Do you want to increase your level to 2? ¡°Yes, please,¡± I say tiredly. I¡¯m not used to doing this much work. Nearly an hour has passed, and I¡¯ve been working the same muscles over and over again. Usually, I sit on my bed and work or listen to music. Everybody ignores me and I ignore them. That¡¯s how I roll. I sit in the back of all of my classes, only do as much work is necessary, and botch the questions I must so I maintain a solid C+.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. Back to leveling up, another light descended from the sky, just like when I bought items at the store. This light, however, was much larger and encompassed my entire body as opposed to a small point on my body. Immediately after the light touched me, a sense of euphoria shot through my body. My body twisted as waves of pleasure shot through me. My muscles didn¡¯t ache anymore, the blisters forming on my hands seemed to heal over immediately, and I felt, for the first time that I could remember, good. I was fine. I was safe. Then, the light vanished, taking the feeling with it, and I collapsed into a chair, breathing heavily. I checked my status screen for updates as soon as I recovered from the abrupt departure of the pleasure. Status of Hector ¡°Blink!¡± MacAvoy Class: Blink Level: 2 EXP Req: 200 HP: 180 Health/min: 2.4 Stamina: 50/100 Stamina/min: .8 Mana: 110 Mana/min: 1.3 Strength: 10 Endurance: 8 Intelligence: 11 Willpower: 13 Control: 5 Perception: 9 Free: 20 So, the 20 free stats I have now are four times what everyone else will get, but they will level four times faster than I will. Unless there¡¯s a level cap, this isn¡¯t that great of a deal. If there are skills or bonuses that occur at higher levels as a prize for reaching that high of a level, that¡¯s also worse for me because people will level faster. Maybe those are quadrupled too? I don¡¯t know. It seems like it isn¡¯t that great. Well, all I can do is try to level faster. I decide to assign my stats before I start training again. To start that off, I assign enough points to bring all of my below-average stats up to 10, which costs me 8 points. I split the rest between Strength, to hit harder, Endurance, to last longer, Intelligence, so I can cope with this apocalypse better, and Perception, so I can be better at avoiding sneak attacks. When I finish, my stats look like this: Status of Hector ¡°Blink!¡± MacAvoy Class: Blink Level: 2 EXP Req: 200 HP: 240 Health/min: 2.6 Stamina: 70/120 Stamina/min: 1.2 Mana: 130 Mana/min: 1.3 Strength: 12 Endurance: 12 Intelligence: 13 Willpower: 13 Control: 10 Perception: 12 Free: 0 So, I think I have the stats of a normal level 5. I should probably be able to try a skeleton now, but I¡¯m not sure I want to take to many risks yet. Plus, school would normally be over now, and all of the panic on the street means that I should probably get back to the orphanage. I have some stuff there that I want to keep. I began to walk back to the orphanage and got as far as the door to the building before I thought about what I would find. Would people still be here? Would everything be gone, looted by people concerned only with themselves? Would there be dead people in here? I burst into the orphanage and saw... well, nothing out of the ordinary. Mrs. Olfson was beginning to cook dinner and welcomed me when I came in. I said hi to her as I passed, and she said hi back. I passed through the kitchen and walked into the room where all of the beds were. I was shocked once more that everyone was just sitting on their beds. The older ones were reading or doing homework and the younger ones were playing together. Did I imagine the whole apocalypse thing? But that can¡¯t be true¡­ I fought zombies! I conjured stuff from nothing! I know how to use daggers! There is floating text, for Pete¡¯s sake! I walked over to my bed and grabbed some clothes to pack. Before I did that, I remembered that the appearance of the System and the machinations of the Shop granted me an inventory. I placed my clothes into a bag and popped the bag into my inventory, breathing a sigh of relief when I realize that it only took up one slot. I pulled out the rest of my clothes, of which there weren¡¯t many, and put them into my inventory as well. I managed to fit about half of them into my bag, so they only took up 20 inventory slots. It turns out things in this world do not stack in the inventory, which is sort of annoying, but I couldn¡¯t really complain too much because the inventory in itself is cool. I decided to practice some of my other skills and stay here for the rest of the three days. I might be able to save some of their lives if they aren¡¯t doing anything to protect themselves. I knew there wasn¡¯t much they can do, but at the very least they could have practiced with other weapons or bought food. There were plenty of options. Probably. Anywho, I began to practice my Mana Manipulation. After activating the skill in my mind, the room filled with color. It drifted around me. I could see every color of the rainbow as well as more colors that I¡¯ve never seen before. I reached out and plucked a blue strand out from the background, pulling it back over to me. I began to wind it like you would a ball of yarn, starting with a small ball of blue and working my way up to something that comfortably fits in my palm. When I wound it to the size I wanted, I instinctively knew what to do. I reached out and grabbed and bright red strand and brought it closer. I wrapped it around the extra length of the strand of blue and pulled hard. Immediately, the ball separated from the blue strand of mana and started to unravel. I quickly used one hand to hold it in place and used the other to grab the red mana once more. This time, when I tried using the red mana to hold it in place, the blue ball started deteriorating faster. So, the red mana will make the blue mana disappear, which is why it works for cutting but not fusion. I reached out for another mana that was entirely clear. I could still sense it, somehow, but it was completely invisible. As soon as I touched it to the blue mana, it started to move away from the clear mana. I let go of the latter, as it obviously didn¡¯t help with creating a ball of blue mana. Suddenly, I spotted an ethereal type of mana that was tightly wound around a bright green strand. I nudged the green out of the way and grabbed the ethereal, taking it and touching it to my ball of blue. It fused immediately with the ball, so I wrapped it around my creation. As I wrapped it and pulled it tight, the ball of blue began to shrink. It all seemed to be there, it was just getting denser and denser. I wrapped and fused faster and faster, and, suddenly, something clicked. The extra ethereal mana went back to where it was, mana manipulation turned off, and I looked down to realize that I had made myself a ball of water half the size of my fist. Chapter 3 I looked up from my first spell to multiple notifications and the staring faces of everyone in the room. I ignored the faces to start with and looked at my notifications. Congratulations! You have learned the spell Water Ball! It has been added to your spellbook. Congratulations! Due to handling a higher tier type of mana, Basic Mana Manipulation is ready to evolve to Lesser Mana Manipulation! Visit the shop to purchase it for 10 Chits. Huh. So, no EXP for skill-ups. Irritating, but still manageable. I almost dismissed the notifications, but then I thought about what the first one said. Spells are separate from skills? That makes a major difference. That means I can perform magic, even though my stupid class set all of my skills for me. I smile inside because, if I¡¯m honest, magic was something I was actually looking forward to in this apocalypse. I looked up and immediately my inner smile shrank back and disappeared. Every single kid in the orphanage dorm was staring at the ball of water in my hand, so I do the only reasonable thing. I throw it at them. They dart away, shrieking, and the ball of water bursts on them and soaks their clothes. That should dissuade them from bothering me too much. As soon as I thought that, a small six or seven-year-old kid appeared next to me and tugged on my shirt. ¡°How¡¯d you do that?¡± he asked. Before I answered, or even had a chance to, he tugged again and asked the same question. I sighed and answered. ¡°I used mana manipulation.¡± Of course, this sparks an onslaught of questions from the kid. ¡°What¡¯s mana manipulation?¡± Okay, so maybe not an onslaught, but it was still irritating, all right? ¡°Mana manipulation is manipulating the mana around us to make magic happen. For example, I gathered water mana, which conjured water vapor, only to condense it with some type of mana I¡¯m unfamiliar with.¡± I prepared myself for the next question, but it wasn¡¯t what I¡¯d expected. ¡°Can you teach me?¡± ¡°Uhh¡­ I don¡¯t think so. Humans can''t normally sense mana, so you''d have to buy it from the Shop before you''d be able to." "What''s the Shop?" By this point, I noticed that every single kid in the room is staring intently at me, desperately yearning to know my answer. "It''s a part of the System that allows us to purchase skills and items." The kid opens his mouth to ask another question, but before he can, I answer it. "The System is the thing that sends out the notifications about the monsters and stuff. If you say ''Status'' and wish to learn about yourself, the System will show you information that you can''t find anywhere else." The kid says "Status" and his eyes unfocus as he looks over his stats. I silently use Master Identify to see what he is seeing. Mack Rodan Class: None Level: 1 HP: 200 Stamina: 90 Mana: 80 Strength: 9 Endurance: 11 Intelligence: 8 Willpower: 6 Control: 6 Perception: 7 His physical stats are pretty high. I actually think they might be higher thanmy original statswere. I guess the System scaled his stats up to equal fully grown adults to prevent him from having a disadvantage? I wonder if he actually has higher endurance than average people. Most of his stats aren''t so good though, so if no one protects him... Oh. Crap. Goddamnit! I wanted to break off on my own! I didn''t want to protect a fucking orphanage from monsters! I couldn''t just leave them, though. My sense of right and wrong wouldn''t allow it. I wondered if the systemsold cheap lobotomies. I quickly identified a couple of others, but they all had similar stats to Mack. None of them have really terrible physical stats, but everything else is terrible. It didn''t seem like Ihad any other choice though. Fuck! Mack finished looking through his status and turned back to me, ready to ask another question, but Mrs. Olfson called us for dinner. It was quite early to be eating for someone my age, but, since we were such a small orphanage and such a small town, everyone lived in the same dorm and ate the same food at the same time. We sat down at the long table and began to pass the food around. Coincidentally (not really), I sat next to Mrs. Olfson. I had a few questions for her.This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. "Did you see the floating text describing the initialization of the System, Mrs. Olfson?" She smiled kindly at me. "Of course I did, dear," she said. "What are you going to do about them?" I asked. "Monsters are going to be spawning everywhere, and you have an orphanage full of children less than ten years old. How are you going to protect them?" Her smile disappeared in the blink of an eye, and she started looking at me more coldly."What do you mean, monsters? The Lord would not send monsters to our world, especially not during the rapture." Wow. Quite a bit to unpack there. She seemed to think that the apocalypse was God rapturing us. I guess she thought ''monsters'' was meant metaphorically instead of actually meaning monsters. This simply reinforced my need to stay and help the rest of the orphanage. They have no skills and classes, and no Chits to buy either from the System. Iwas beginning to regret having wasted so much money on my daggers when I could have used kitchen knives with just as much ease. Damn. Anyway, back to my conversation, I couldn''t deal with her level of crazy. So I immediately replied, "Oh, yes. My bad." Then I went back to my dinner. After a suspicious glance, she went back to eating her food. While I ate, I thought about my plans. I wasn''t going to back to school. I had other things to do, such as preparing to defend twenty people. That meant that I needed to level up faster and possibly bring people to level up with me. No, I couldn''t do that. They wouldn''t have any weapons and, even if they did, I doubt they could stomach being near a zombie or a skeleton, let alone killing one. I also needed to develop more spells. The more I have, the better prepared for anything I am. I needed single-target, powerful attack spells as well as area-of-effect (AOE) spells that affected a large number of targets with lower damage than normal. I stuck one hand under the table and summoned the cube of the Training Facility to my hand. I squeezed it to activate it while eating. Would you like to enter the Training Facility or modify the programming? Modify, I thought. The menu appeared in front of me and I began to surreptitiously change the waves until they looked like so. First Wave: 1 zombie Second Wave: 5 zombies Third Wave: 25 zombies Fourth Wave: 1 skeleton That was all I was confident in facing without breaks in between. The reason I was okay with most of the massive numbers of zombies is that they''re really slow. I don''t need to worry about being bogged down with 20 zombies at a time. Besides, apparently one of my skills teleports me. That reminded me that, despite how much I hated my class, I still needed to master the Blink skill to maximize my chances of survival.All right, I said to myself,after dinner, you know what to do. We finished dinner and cleaned everything up. Luckily, I wasn''t on dish duty, so I could start my practice right after dinner. I swear though, the whole time, Mrs. Olfson was eyeing me like she was wondering whether or not to kill me. She looked terrifying, and I personally hoped she had decided on not murdering me. Before Mack could approach me once more, I ran outside to practice my new skill. I might have decided to protect them, but that didn''t mean that I needed to constantly answer all of their questions. I went for a little run before anyone could stop me and marveled at the effects of my new strength and endurance. A single step would drive me inches higher into the air than I could jump, and by the time I arrived at my destination, I wasn''t tired at all. My destination was a park. It was basically empty because most people were either panicking and preparing for the coming apocalypse, or pretending nothing was happening. The important part was that they were doing it at home. I looked at a destination across from me, just to the left of a large tree. I decided that, instead of thinking this skill, I would activate it by saying it out loud, so I didn''t accidentally teleport myself somewhere. I glared at the spot as if it represented all of my problems in this new world. In a way, it did. This was where I would use the hated skill that had the same name as my hated class. I was perfectly fine with my life going the way it was! Well, not perfectly fine, but fine enough. Enough thinking. I glared at the spot and thought about going there, but not through moving, but by simply ceasing to exist here and existing there. "Blink!" I called, and I appeared at my destination. I spun around and fell to the floor. Who knew? It turned out that when the skill said disorientation, it meant that I was going to puke and want to die. I threw up and saw the wonderful dinner I had just eaten for the second time. After about ten minutes, I was able to stand up again. It still took another five minutes for me to rid myself of the rest of the effects. In other words, I felt like I had just been spun around a million times at breakneck speed. Not fun. I still stood up, though, because I knew that I was going to have to use all the skills and spells in my arsenal to survive the monsters as well as keeping the orphanage safe. I focused on another spot much farther away from the pile of upchuck next to me. I closed my eyes this time, in anticipation of my impending dizziness, and shouted, "Blink!" This time, when I blinked, I was barely disoriented. I had still teleported, and I was still a bit dizzy, but I could tell the tree on my left apart from the tree on my right, unlike last time. Is it that simple? The disorientation of going from one place to another must have been too much for my brain. Simply closing my eyes, or, rather, blinking, when teleporting allays most of the discomfort! Congratulations! Your skill Basic Blink is ready to be upgraded to Lesser Blink! Visit the shop to upgrade it for 10 Chits. Well, that was easy. Chapter 4 As I walked back to the orphanage, I practiced my Blink. I would stop, teleport, and then keep walking while the cooldown elapsed and I got less dizzy. Eventually, I moved on to running while Blinking. I learned that I would appear in the same position as I was in when I teleported, but my momentum was completely gone. It took some getting used to, but by the time I arrived back at the orphanage, I had Blinked while running multiple times without failing. That would be good in combat, where it''s impossible to stop moving for a few seconds. After making it back to the orphanage, I made my excuses about where I had gone. I managed to ingratiate myself enough with Mrs. Olfson that she didn''t attack me. All I got was a suspicious glare. I walked into the dor and sat down on my bed. I pulled out my knives and sheathes and strapped them to my belt. I summoned the Training Facility cube from my inventory and squeezed it. "Enter," I said without even looking at the notification. Immediately, I disappeared and the cube bounced onto my bed as the supporting force disappeared, leaving it stranded in the air. I appeared in the Training Facility, once again facing the zombie I had gotten to know so well before. I killed it immediately and dismissed the requisite notification. A new notification popped up after I had acknowledged the zombie''s death. Would you like to advance to the second round? "Yes," I said, right before the arena flashed. When I blinked the light out of my eyes, I found myself facing five zombies. Immediately, I settled into the now-familiar dagger combat stance. I darted forward toward the zombie farthest to the left. I stabbed him in the eye before he could notice that I was anywhere near him. I was able to take out one more zombie immediately by slicing across its neck and nearly decapitating the poor thing. The other zombies were not turned toward my location, so I blinked behind the rightmost one. Before they could recover, I spun around and drove my dagger right into the brainstem of the zombie. It collapsed to the ground, and I darted toward the zombie directly in front of me. It was able to spin quickly enough to spot me, however, so I dodged around it, kicked it in the shin to immobilize it, and Blinked to behind the only untouched zombie. It also went down to a sneak attack at the brainstem. I turned around and faced the troublesome zombie that almost managed to touch me and clicked my tongue at it. I bent down, as it was still on the ground, struggling to get up with a broken knee, and sent my dagger through my new favorite spot on the back of the neck. I chose to advance to the third round immediately and looked around. The arena was bigger this time, and, instead of lining all of the zombie s up in front of me, they placed groups of five around me like a pentagon. I dived into the fray with reckless abandon, stabbing and kicking like a maniac, though I do use Blink judiciously to make sure I am not ever actually hurt. I stabbed the first zombie in the eye, pull the knife out, impale a second zombie through the neck, do another eye pierce on the third, and shoot over to the other side of the room in a Blink to begin the slaughter once more. By the time I''ve killed fifteen zombies, the others are all grouped together in one clump, which makes it much easier to pick off the ones on the outside. I whittled them down and slaughtered every last one of them in a display that is awesome, terrifying, and cathartic all at once. Before I can hesitate on my course, I yell, "Start the fourth round!" The arena flashes and I come face to face with my first skeleton. Unlike the name, it is not a true skeleton. Instead, it seems like a zombie that was beaten and bruised until most of its flesh was removed. It is made of bone, glistening with blood and fat and clumps of grayish, disgusting flesh. I throw up a little bit in my mouth. I can''t wait to kill this thing. I shoot forward and it shambles toward me with much more alacrity than its body would suggest is possible. I dodge out of the way of its first clawing attack and duck under a second one before shooting a knife strike out to remove an arm. To my surprise, instead of dying immediately, the bone holds with a large scratch along its length. I Blink back and hold a hand up to my mouth. "Jesus, what is this thing made of? Master Identify!" Skeleton Level: 5 HP: 134/160 Strength: 10 Endurance: 6 Intelligence: 3 Willpower: 1 Control: 4 Perception: 2 Holy shit! It has more than my starting strength! This thing is fucking strong. I danced back to the edge of the arena. Okay, how do I deal with this? On a whim, I activated mana manipulation to observe the skeleton''s inner mechanics. I saw that it had a brain made mostly of dark, sickly-looking, black mana that reeked of death and destruction. I assumed it was death mana. Thankfully, and quite gratifyingly, it had a brainstem made of mana connecting the brain to the limbs and their mana. I knew without thinking that I was going to attack that connection. I looked around for a strand or two of life mana, which I assumed would counter death mana perfectly. Before I could find some, I had to dodge away from the irate skeleton charging at me. I wanted to avoid using Blink as it was hard to quickly reorient myself and continue searching after using it. Instead, I did the classic dodge-and-roll, diving to the side and bounding up in a roll that shot me to my feet. I assumed it was a bonus effect of my high Control, but I didn''t have too much time to speculate when I spotted life mana across the room. As the skeleton charged me again, I shot across the room and grabbed the life mana. I didn''t have any chance to make it into a fancy beam or bomb, so I simply wrapped it around my knife''s blade. When I accidentally touched the mana to the dot that was half of the umlaut, however, the life mana entered into the inside of the knife, ready to be distributed into its target.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. The skeleton had found only disappointment as it arrived at where I just was, so it turned toward me once again. Little did it know it would have to deal with something a lot more painful than disappointment. The skeleton charged at me and I held mu life-infused knife in my right hand after sheathing the other. I decided it wasn''t worth it to hold the other when I would do almost negligible damage. I might have been exaggerating, but the damage I could do with my new spell was immense. Just as the skeleton raised its hand to claw my eyes out, I shot to the side and sliced my knife across the armpit of the skeleton. I knew I could have ended it all with a quick shot to the brainstem, but I needed to test how much damage it would and what the mana the knife would inject would do. After the knife made contact, the skeleton shrieked in pain, which was surprising enough in itself because skeletons don''t have vocal cords. What was more surprising was that, after I used Master Identify, the skeleton had gone from 134 health to 52 health! That was a major dip, meaning the attack cost the skeleton 82 health in one strike alone. As I watched the skeleton''s status screen, the health dropped bu another few points. That must have been the injection of Life mana destroying it from the inside. If the skeleton were any other creature, I might have felt bad for the dying thing, but I couldn''t feel too bad for a pile of rotting flesh. Since I had determined the injection was essentially a poison, I ended the skeleton with a quick slice to the -- you guessed it -- mana brainstem. As soon as the skeleton died, I received a notification: 8 (40 x 20% Training Reduction) EXP rewarded for killing a level 5 skeleton. 0 (25 x 0% Training Reduction) Shop Chits awarded for killing a level 5 skeleton. From my experience so far, I knew that eight experience was a lot from one enemy. In fact, it brought my total experience earned up to 70 EXP. I just needed to do it a couple more times. That skeleton was hard enough, so I decided I wouldn''t add any more rounds with that bugger to my list. I left the Training Facility and reappeared on my bed to the gaping stares of the kids who were awake and the loud snores of those who had passed out. I checked my watch and noticed that the whole run had taken me a half-hour. I decided that, since it was only eight-thirty, I would run it four more times to get to around ten-thirty, and I would do some more work tomorrow. I did just that and, though I skipped assigning my points, my status screen looked very different from the beginning of today. Hector ¡°Blink!¡± MacAvoy Class: Blink Level: 3 EXP Req: 150 HP: 240 Health/min: 2.6 Stamina: 70/120 Stamina/min: 1.2 Mana: 130 Mana/min: 1.3 Strength: 12 Endurance: 12 Intelligence: 13 Willpower: 13 Control: 10 Perception: 12 Free: 20 So continued my journey in the new world of our apocalypse. Just like I said, I didn''t go to school the next day or the day after that, instead staying home to grind levels and spells. The only skill that didn''t get any use so far was Blacksmithing, and that was mostly because I didn''t have the proper equipment. I made good progress during those days. I leveled up to 8 and got Lesser Dagger Mastery up to 65%. I think that only fighting undead wasn''t helping my need for an evolution. I managed to create a few new spells and finalize some old ones. Purely inserting life energy into my daggers turned out to not qualify for a spell. I figured out how to wind it around the knife and coat the entire outside before touching it to the dot on the hilt to put it inside. This worked and created the spell Life Infusion, which can apparently be used on anything. I even cut myself -- not a large cut, mind you -- and manage to heal myself with it. It turned out to be a very helpful spell. The second spell I learned was Quick Lava Dart. I took three strands of earth mana and wound them together in a braid before doing the same with three strands of fire mana and three strands of the same ethereal mana of which I still don''t know the identity. I braided those all together and molded them into a dartlike shape. When I launch the spell, it costs over 100 mana, so it is a solid chunk of my mana. Still, it is an incredibly destructive spell. It forms a lava dart bigger than my fists together and launches it toward the target while blinking in and out of existence to confuse the target and make it harder to dodge. It also automatically tracks the target and rips through anything in its way. The other important thing I learned was about milestones. When I raised my Perception to 50, I received a notification. Congratulations! You have reached the first milestone of Perception! You now sense everything going on in a half-circle arc in front of your face. You will know what it occurring without needing to look. Keep growing! It turns out that my perception aura, as I''m now calling it, extends as many centimeters as my perception stat. Right now, even if I had my eyes closed, I would know everything going on in the half meter in front of me, and it is not a short distance. I think I am prepared for the monster spawns. I can''t wait for the fun to begin! Status of Hector ¡°Blink!¡± MacAvoy Class: Blink Level: 8 EXP Req: 770 HP: 740 Health/min: 4.8 Stamina: 287/370 Stamina/min: 3.7 Mana: 300 Mana/min: 1.8 Strength: 37 Endurance: 37 Intelligence: 30 Willpower: 18 Control: 20 Perception: 50 Free: 0 Chapter 5 I exited the orphanage a couple of minutes before the monsters spawned. The street was dead silent; everyone was either hiding or making preparations, both of which occur insidetheir homes. I had asked the System, and it had informed me that the first spawning of monsters would occur at 4:30 p.m. Here I was, at 4:25, ready to fight off the newly created monsters. A couple of minutes later, just as I was hyping myself up for the monster fight, Mrs. Olfson came running out into the yard. She fell to her knees, clasped her hands together, and, shouted toward the sky. "O, Lord! I call upon you to take me with you when you pull those pure from this world! I know that I have sinned, but I would repent! Please!" I could see people in other houses peeking out at us, and I could tell from their faces that they were thinking something along the lines of, "What in the world is she doing?" I could see some children coming out of the orphanage to peek at Mrs. Olfson and the idiocy she was participating in, but I was quick to shoo them back inside. I had already told them to lie underneath their beds when the time came, and that was doubly important now that I couldn''t let them see Mrs. Olfson be slaughtered and, quite possibly, eaten. I had tried to inform her that the rapture was not what was occurring, but she wouldn''t hear it. She assured me that she was aware of the fact thatI was a heretic, and she wouldn''t hold it against me. When the clock struck 4:30, the monsters spawned. It was immediate, not unlike when I teleport. One minute they were not there, and the next minute they were. Unfortunately, most of the monsters were decently tall, so I almost immediately lost sight of the dearly departed Mrs. Olfson, but I could hear her. One might have said that a sixteen-year-old kid should not have to be subjected to such things, but one might also have said monsters and floating messages didn''t exist, so we don''t listen to "one" anymore. The monsters had little diversity. Of course, there were some never-seen-before abominations, and there were some classic monsters like goblins and massive spiders, but what was really prevalent were the rabbits. They weren''t normal rabbits either, unfortunately. they were about three feet long and two tall. They had ears that stretched three feet into the air when straight, but they also couldn''t stand up straight, and, as such, they folded down about halfway through the ear. The really messy parts of those abominations were the fangs. Most people, including the earlier-me, would have pictured rabbits with fangs as normal bunnies with long teeth. No. The fangs were massive, at least the size of the ears, and threaded with nasty-looking black veins, The worst part was that they did not go outside of the rabbit''s jaw. No. they went through the bottom of its mouth. The first thing you heard when these monsters appeared was them screaming in pain as their teeth pierced the bottom of their mouths, and then there was more screaming as they scraped their teeth across the new stigmata in their mouths. As the rabbits screamed, I thankedGod I had remembered to tell the kids to hide in the orphanage and Master Identified one of the rabbits. Deathfang Rabbit Level: 2 HP: Strength: 3 Endurance: 7 Intelligence: 1 Willpower: 3 Control: 1 Perception: 1 I suppose enduring the immense pain their fangs must be causing them was justified in their high endurance and willpower. At least they barely had any control over their bodies. I quickly darted over to one, and it lunged up into the air. I blinked behind it and was able to stab it in the -- you guessed it -- brainstem. The fact that it was able to jump three feet into the air should have been troubling, but I was more excited. The undead had been fairly monotonous and hadn''t earned me any shop chits, so this was already an investment. You have earned 17 EXP and 15 Chits. That was a great amount, especially now that it didn''t have a Training Facility deduction. Immediately, I purchased Lesser Blink, which got rid of the disorientation of teleporting and reduced the cooldown to thirty seconds instead of a minute. It wasn''t much, but it would allow me to teleport twice as fast as I could before. I stated at the sea of rabbits. The sea of rabbits stared at me. Then, we both let out a battle cry and charged each other. I jabbed the first rabbit in the stomach, not ending it immediately but fatally wounding it and disrupting its jump. The second rabbit got decapitated as I dodged to left, avoiding the third leaping at my stomach. I smashed it to the ground with the back of my hand, my high strength flattening it against the concrete. I sensed something coming at me from the left and swung, using my high perception bonus to avoid attacks while focusing in other places. The perception upgrade proved it''s worth thousands of times during that battle. I was forced to fight my way into the middle of the swarm, and they surrounded me and began to attack from all sides. Without the perception bonus, having to focus on my back would have left my front completely unprotected. When your front is unprotected, a Deathfang gets to eat your throat. That isn''t to say that I was never injured during these confrontations, because I was injured. I would just always activate Life Infusion immediately after being injured. This managed to stop any effects the poison may have had on me and also healed the cut.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. Lava Dart came into the battle too, although it wasn''t used as much as I would have liked. I only had so much mana, and I always saved some for a life Infusion. Nonetheless, whenever I was bogged down with massive rabbits, I would launch a lava dart and follow its path. The lava dart would go through every rabbit it encountered and emitted only smoke in return. Upon entering, the rabbits were entirely annihilated. Of course, the entire rabbit was not always entirely in the flame. It often left massive chunks taken out of the rabbits, and many rabbits were whimpering in pain from missing their hind legs but still being alive because the wound was cauterized. Of course, I immediately put them out of their misery. After nearly an hour of slaughtering rabbits of various levels, although usually from two to six, the System gave me a notification of all of the EXP and Chits I gained, including the first rabbit. You have earned 26741 EXP and 23595 Chits. Those were ridiculous gains, enough to level me up multiple times and possibly get me to another stat bonus. I assumed the other stat bonuses would be at fifty because Perception''s bonus was. I didn''t have a major test group, but it seemed like that made sense. Unfortunately, my guide to the System didn''t include much information on these, instead focusing only on the most basic effects of stats. It really shined when talking about skills and classes. Just after I leveled up and was about to check my status, a roar sounded across the now corpse-filled battlefield. Drawing on my gaming knowledge as I headed there, I gathered that it must have been a boss. After I killed it, I would gain more EXP and Chits, which could only be helpful. I met the boss, and I was shocked. It wasn''t a rabbit at all. I was expecting a massive Deathfang Rabbit, maybe with longer or more dangerous fangs, but nothing too bad, Instead, it was a fox. A massive, size of a car fox, but a fox nonetheless. It had fur in the same black as some of the rabbits, but other than that it looked nothing like the other monsters. It had fangs, but they were normal, on the outside of the mouth, pure white, and only a few inches long. The really interesting part was its ears and paws. They were both a fiery red color instead of the usual black of the body. They were actually the exact color of the fire mana I manipulated... Oh, no. If this fox can use abilities, it will make my job much, much harder. I huddled near the scorched remains of a house I now realized were probably caused by the fox and Master Identified it. Fire-touched Fox Level: 50 HP: Strength: 20 Endurance: 30 Intelligence: 50 Willpower: 23 Control: 32 Perception: 18 Okay. It didn''t seem insurmountable, and it definitely had some weaknesses. Unfortunately, it had a massive store of mana and was most likely able to sense and avoid my Lava Dart, which was partly fire mana. I would have to face this thing with my daggers and my Blinks, and I am sure the massive horde of bunnies would have helped improve those, as well as my stats. Before opening my status, though, I asked the system to upgrade all of my evolvable skills. I received the following notifications: Congratulations! Lesser Blink has evolved into Blink! Basic Mana Manipulation has evolved into Lesser Mana Manipulation! Lesser Dagger Mastery has evolved into Dagger Mastery! With that done, I opened my status to distribute my new gains. Status of Hector ¡°Blink!¡± MacAvoy Class: Blink Level: 24 EXP Req: 429 HP: 740 Health/min: 4.8 Stamina: 287/370 Stamina/min: 3.7 Mana: 300 Mana/min: 1.8 Strength: 37 Endurance: 37 Intelligence: 30 Willpower: 18 Control: 20 Perception: 50 Free: 320 Holy shit! 320 free stats! I can do so much with this. This means I have an effective level of 96, which should be more than enough to deal with this fox. To start off with, I brought all of my stats up to fifty and received the following bonuses. Strength - Muscle was added to my body, causing me to grow 2 inches. Endurance - My muscle density increased, making them harder to injure as well as stronger. Intelligence - Every memory I would make from that point forward would be immortalized in my mind and would be easily accessible. Wisdom - I now had some measure of foresight in an area with a radius of my wisdom stat multiplied by a tenth of a millimeter. It wasn''t useful now but could help later with a higher wisdom stat. Control - Every effect was now completely affectable as long as I stayed within the requirements. In my opinion, they were all useful, but the control stat was the best. It would allow me to switch my perception to 180 degrees behind me, which would help a lot with sneak attacks. I did just that and also changed the wisdom bonus so it would doubly affect my front because I already knew what was going on behind me. Nonetheless, those improvements left me with a qualitative increase as well. The massive change made me simply feel smarter, as well as stronger and in more control of myself. I felt like I could dance ballet better than the best ever could before the System, though with the fire fox near I wasn''t tempted to try it out. I was left with 212 stat points, so I dumped them into strength, intelligence, control, and perception. Strength for more attack, which should help with a massive fox; intelligence for enough mana to make using lava dart feasible; control because it would help me make sharper movements during combat, and because I really liked the dancing idea; and perception because I wanted a biggerknowledgeaura. Status of Hector ¡°Blink!¡± MacAvoy Class: Blink Level: 24 EXP Req: 429 HP: 1370 Health/min: 13.7 Stamina: 568/870 Stamina/min: 5.0 Mana: 87 Mana/min: 5.0 Strength: 87 Endurance: 50 Intelligence: 87 Willpower: 50 Control: 88 Perception: 150 Free: 0 I stood up and almost shot myself into the air. I marveled at the new feeling of strength running through my body, and then I turned toward the fox. It was time to kill a boss. Chapter 6 I approached the fox with caution, or at least I tried to. My massively increased strength shot me forward and I crumbled to the ground and blinked up to the top of its head. The fox leaned over me as it watched me with curiosity. I stared back up tat the fox, frozen in anticipation and fear. Suddenly, the fox opened its mouth and began to build up fire mana int its throat. Its mouth began to glow red and I expected dragon''s breath to exit right onto me. I couldn''t let that happen, though. I Blinked up to the fox''s head and slammed my fist down onto its head, or at least I tried to. It appeared this fox had much more combat experience than I did because after I landed on its head, it bucked me off and rolled to the side, all the while charging the dragon''s breath. I shot to my feet and charged just in time to run into a wall of fire. I quickly jumped into the air to avoid getting burned, but I was still singed. Nearly my entire left arm and my left leg up to the angle were charred. I cast life infusion on both and decided that I didn''t really have a choice but to cast lava dart. I Blinked to the air above its head, launched my dart, and fell to the ground. The lava dart moved faster than I fell, so it drilled quickly into the pavement where the fox''s head had been. I immediately Blinked as far away as possible, and just in time, as I felt immense heat entering the area around my body when I teleported. I ended up on an unsteady roof of someone''s house. I knew that it was still someone''s house and that the roof was unsteady because when I fell through the roof, I landed on top of somebody. He appeared to be looking out the window in preparation of any attacks, but he believed that his roof would be enough to prevent or at least deter any monsters entering, but it wasn''t as sturdy as he though. The man cried out in pain, and I really did feel guilty, so I cast life infusion on him and rolled off. My arm and ankle were healed enough to use by now, but the skin was still charred and destroyed, so I activated life infusion a couple more times. Life infusion really only cost a few mana, and with over a thousand mana in my pool, it was quite easy to deal with. "Sorry, sorry!" I said as I helped the man up. He was eyeing me suspiciously, which I understood. He probably thought I had fallen from the sky and crashed into him. He was close, but just a little off. "Who the hell are you?" the man grunted, his rifle pointing toward the floor but still immediately available to be used. "I''m Hector," I said, and I slid my knives into their sheathes and held up my hands to make sure he wouldn''t see me as a threat. It was hard to be sure, but he looked a little more relaxed with my hands in the air. "Whom do I have the honor of speaking with?" "John," the man said once more, edging toward the door. I wasn''t sure what he wanted, but just as he started to nudge the door closed, two women, or maybe one woman and one girl, burst into the room. One had a long kitchen knife in her hand and the other had some sort of antique sword. After bursting into the room and seeing that there were no monsters around, just a kid and some fallen shingles, they relaxed. the woman with the knife tucked it into her belt, and the girl with the sword sheathed it. "John," demanded the woman, "what the fuck is going on? I come in here expecting monsters and find a kid and a hole in the roof." While the angry woman was eyeing John, who was probably her husband, the girl-who-was-probably-their-daughter was eyeing me. I smiled at her, and she flinched away, her hand going to her sword a second later. I interrupted the bickering of the married couple by moving over to the window. "I''m sorry about the mess, but I really must be going. Maybe we can talk to each other later? That would be fun!" I gave my best smile and turned toward where the fox is. As John and the woman -- whose name was apparently Barbara -- grabbed my arms to stop me from leaving, I turned my head, winked at their daughter, who blinked back at me, and faced the world outside. I focused on the entrance to a doorway right outside of a building near the massive fox and Blinked away. Just for cinematic effect, I turned back to the house and gave a cheeky wave. I then turned back toward the actual threat: the massive fucking fox rampaging around the neighborhood. Before I could deal with the fox, I had to deal with the burning buildings around the fox. I could see the fox grabbing some of the fire in his mouth and dragging it to another building, so I need to put out the fire to prevent my environment from being used against me. Then, I needed to create a water attack spell. Hopefully, I could do both in one shot.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. I activated mana manipulation and gave myself the time limit of working until the fox comes over and attacks me. I immediately grabbed the blue strands that signified water mana and started winding them together into a strong rope. They wanted to come apart, but I forced them into place. Per usual, I used fire mana to separate the rope of water mana that I was using from the other strands of mana, but as soon as I grabbed the fire mana I knew that I had made a mistake. The fox had looked up and spotted me. I assumed that using fire mana had alerted the fox to my location, due to it being so in tune with fire mana. It started strutting over to me. it was moving slowly, but confidently, as though it knew it would be able to catch me. I was nothing more than another weak, level 3 rabbit to the fox. I needed to prove it wrong, so I rapidly turned back to my forming spell. Currently, the mana was wound around my arm, as though it was reinforcing my arm. That isn''t what I needed. I didn''t want to have to deal with something like the dragon''s breath ever again without being able to counter it, so a water mana spell would help. I decided, since lava dart was an earth, fire, and unidentified mana spell, I would make this spell a water, air, and other unidentified mana spell. Whenever I see the ethereal mana I have been using so often, before I touch it, it is always wrapped around a green mana. This time, I grabbed the green mana and some other air mana to wind into the water. This would have to primarily be a water spell, so I mostly used that. I took the winding mana rope of water and flattened it out into a sheet the thickness of paper. I added very little air mana at the front of the sheet but dumped enough to launch an airplane into the air on the back. This was to create a low-pressure area in the front of the sheet and a high-pressure air on the back of the sheet that would suck in air and shoot it out the back, hopefully adding to the speed of the projectile. The plan was a blast of water that had the air inside of it, adding to the speed, with the unknown green mana wrapped around, hopefully doing something useful. I realized that it might not be the best idea to experiment with unknown mana in such a dangerous situation, but if I needed to escape, I could always Blink to the house I fell through before. They might not welcome me, but they didn''t seem that strong, and if they were less than level 90, which they almost definitely were, they would pose almost no threat to me. I quickly rolled up the water mana into a tube with the air inside. I grabbed a thin strand of the green mana and wound it around the whole tube, not sure what it would do, but sure that it would be magnificent. I finalized the spell by launching it in the direction of the fox walking toward me, and I hopped out of mana manipulation to see what it looked like from the outside. Unfortunately, the water bolt was going very slowly, so the air pressure obviously was not doing its job. Unless I made a mistake, of course, in which case-- Yes! The air pressure worked! The back of the tube of water was inflating, slowly but surely. That would explain the slow speed. I decided to launch another one, so I did, and, to my shock, it appeared next to the first bolt. How did that happen? What is this spell called? Congratulations! You have created the spell Timed Water Bolt! I messed with... time? As I thought about what that meant, the two water bolts burst and shot toward the fox at the same time, scaring the hell out of it. It yipped and looked ready to run, but the other two blasts were already slamming into it and bowled it over, slamming the fox into hopefully abandoned buildings. It yelped in pain and stood up just in time for me to Blink behind it to stab it in the best part of the head, the brainstem. The fox collapsed and I received the notification of its death a moment later. You have earned 174 EXP and 250 Chits. After killing the fox, I started firing water bolts in all directions to put out the fire on the buildings. As one, they burst and slammed into their buildings. I tried to will them to be less concentrated and more spread out so they would splash instead of penetrate, and it seemed like it worked. I shot off a second round to extinguish the fires that were still burning, and that finished them all off. As I walked back to the orphanage -- I didn''t feel like Blinking -- I had a major realization. If the green mana was time, I suppose the ethereal mana always with it was space? I wondered what I could do with that, especially since it seemed to be the mana that made my Blink skill work. Chapter 7 After defeating the boss, I Blinked back to the orphanage and walked into the building. I told the children to come out of their rooms and opened up the kitchen. I wasn''t as good as Mrs. Olfson, but I began to try cooking scrambled eggs. Before I made that mess, though, I remembered that I could buy skills from the Shop. I opened my Shop and was flabbergasted at the number of Chits I had. Welcome to the Shop, Hector. You have 23,845 Chits. Buy the Cook skill, please. Error! Skill Cap reached! Blink Class prevents trading or merging skills! Skill unavailable for purchase. Fine, then. If it was gonna be like that... I raised my voice and talked to the orphans. "Who can cook?" A seven-year-old boy who''s name was Jonas Rodenstein and an eleven-year-old girl whose name was Molly Tergh stepped forward and raised their hands. I accessed the Shop and thought to it, Shop, what is the best way to teach them to cook? The Cook Skill is available for purchase for 100 Chits. The Cook Class is available for purchase for 1000 Chits. Great, I said, purchase the cooking class for Jonas Rodenstein and Molly Tergh. The usual beam of light descended from the ceiling, and, unlike when I received my stuff, the kids freaked out. The two designated for kitchen duty started running around screaming, which sent the rest of the kids into a panic, which lasted until I yelled, "Shut up!" Everyone stopped running around and they all calmed down. Molly and Jonas somewhat reluctantly accepted their beams of light, and they both gasped when the notifications appeared in their vision. I ignored that and steered them over to the kitchen before telling them what to do. I might have come across as a little mean, but I had had a long day. A very long day. Nonetheless, those two both excitedly started pulling out pots and cutting boards and such to make pasta. They were still new to cooking, but pasta was good enough. After they were done cooking, I pulled them over and asked what skills they had. They both replied that the Cook class had given them the Basic Cook skill, and they were around 40% of the way through it. That was definitely good progress for ten minutes'' work. I sent them back over to wait for the pasta to rest before calling up the Shop to give me recommendations on how to protect the orphanage. You can buy defenses in the Shop. You can upgrade the Orphanage to a Basic Base. You can get stronger. You can make other people stronger. Those last two really weren''t that helpful, but I wasn''t about to tell the Shop that. The Shop heard it anyway. Forgot about the mind-reading. Okay, what would making the Orphanage a Basic Base entail? Basic Base Grade: Grade F Rarity: Uncommon Identifies a building or area as a Basic Base, allowing for discounts on Base-related purchases in the Shop Price: 20,000 Chits 20,000 Chits for a Grade F item? Jeez. I decided to buy it anyway, though. If it was called a Basic Base, it probably was upgradeable into a Lesser Base, Base, etc. After I purchased it, some unexpected things happened. First, everything started to spin. It spun round and round and round and round over and over again until I couldn''t separate one blur from another blur. Then, the spinning spot. Everyone else seemed to have been untouched, as the spinning rotated around me, but I stumbled into a wall and collapsed. The ground spun again and I was reminded of what it felt like to use Blink with my eyes open. I held in my puke and stood up to the gazes of some very confused-looking kids. I stood up but immediately sat back down, winded. The kids came over to me, confused. The second change occurred then. A notification popped up in my vision, saying: Would you like to offer citizenship to all people within the boundaries of your Basic Base? Yes, I thought, and the kids all gasped once more as what I assumed was a notification asking if they wanted to be citizens in my Base. I muttered, "Accept it. It''ll help." The kids all gulped and agreed, all reaching up to poke an invisible screen in front of their faces. Of course, the screens weren''t tactile, but the System read that their intent was to accept it. Unsurprisingly, I received a notification after that:Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. 16 people have become your citizens. The third change I noticed later, but it happened at the same time. The orphanage changed. It went from being a semi-rickety, old wooden building to being twice the size and made of stone. It had a watchtower that came down a ladder into the side of the dorm. The dorm had also changed. The bunk beds hadchanged from old wooden pieces of furniture to clean-looking, stable, and made of metal. The ladder to the watchtower was on the right side of the room, far enough from the beds that it was unlikely anyone would hurt themselves on it while still basically asleep. Some rooms had been added, too. An armory now took up a solid chunk of the building but was completely empty. We would have to purchase swords and bows and guns for anyone who wanted to fight which probably just meant me. The other building was a map room. It would map as far as could be seen from the watchtower by the person who was in it. This meant that if the person who was in the watchtower has a low perception, we would not be able to see as far as with someone who had a high perception. I turned back to the kids, now my citizens, from that notification. "Okay, make a line. Except for you two," I pointed at the two new cooks, "you already have your roles." Coincidentally, the first person in the line was Mack. "I want to fight!" he declared confidently. No. Absolutely not. I did not just save sixteen kids from a horde of mutilated rabbits to lose one fighting the same foe. He wouldn''t take no for an answer, though. I could see it in his eyes.System, what type of ranged classes are there? The only Tier 1 (purchasable) ranged class is Marksman. "Fine. Shop, buy the marksman class for Mack. Is there any starting equipment for his class?" Mack cheered up when I finished talking, and I could see that he would take this seriously. "When you level up, focus your attributes mainly on control, perception, and strength, but don''t neglect the others." Mack nodded and saluted to me -- not sure where he learned that -- before the light descended from the sky. Unlike his compatriots before, he took the impact with dignity, not flinching when the light hit his head. His countenance, however, did change when the notifications popped up and he saw his Class had been assigned and his equipment had been placed in his inventory. He danced off, but not before I told him to take a shift in the Watchtower. The total for that charge was 1500 Chits, but I think it was worth it. I welcomed the next person, a boy named Jake. He didn''t know what he wanted to be, so I had to tease it out of him. He wanted to be a crafter of some sort. Thankfully, there was a crafting class. Unfortunately, when I tried to buy the Class, I got this message: Tier 1 Classes cost 1000 Chits. You have 345 Chits. Because simply trying again wouldn''t work, I bought a sheaf of paper for 10 Chits and a box of pencils (pre-sharpened, somehow) for 5. I wrote down Jake''s name and his preferred Class. I told him I would make sure to give it to him when I got enough money, he still looked rather depressed about it. I promised I would buy his own equipment when I got the chance as well, and that cheered him up much more. I went through the remaining twelve kids and ended up with seven Crafters, 2 Marksmen, and, believe it or not, 3 people who liked to clean and organize took the Cleaner Class. That solved a problem I hadn''t even started worrying about yet. After finishing up there and storing the list in my inventory, I wentto the watchtower to see what Mackknew about our surroundings. The watchtower looked like the bell tower of a church: it rose about ten feet off the roof and had a main platform with four pillars on each corner to hold up a roof. It was quaint, honestly, and quite pretty too. The view was kind of crappy though. What was once a decently nice neighborhood had become a destroyed wreck of a town, with charred wood and blackened stone in pieces all over the place. The three houses that still stood and were in decent condition were mainly to the right of the orphanage. I even recognized one; it was the one where I fell through the roof and landed on that family. I ignored their house for now because they weren''t all that nice to me. "Shop," I said out loud, as I made my way to the ladder, "is there a purchase for the watchtower that would alert me when someone or something attacked?" The only thing you can afford is the "Help" Button. It installs itself in the watchtower and, when pressed, alerts the Lord and the Lord''s citizens that someone is attacking. It costs 300 Chits. "Okay, buy it." As I climbed up the watchtower, I heard a high-pitched scream and inwardly flinched. I had forgotten Mack was up there and chose to Blink to the top to make sure he didn''t fall off or break the button. When my eyes opened, I saw Mack with his bow out and an arrow questionably nocked on the bow. I darted over and grabbed the arrow before he could launch it, and he lowered his bow. "What is that, Hector? It appeared from nowhere!" Mack ran and hid behind me, and I inwardly sighed again. I forgot that he was so young. I hoped he could handle this. Crap. "Mack, calm down. It''s a ''help'' button. When you see someone attack, you push it and it alerts everyone, okay? I need you to watch for any danger and push it if you see anybody or anything coming, okay?" Mack nodded and I sighed in relief. "Where will you be?" he asked, as he flopped down next to the button. "Well, I need more Chits to buy more Classes." I smirked. "I''m going hunting."