B2 - Chapter 9: The Walder Family (Patreon)

Six additional levels gave him 30 free attributes. Surely that had to be enough to unlock [Life Fabricator]? Logan’s armour was filthy. Brown, noxious sludge covered every inch of the exoskeleton. Worst of all, his armour acted like a second skin, so not only was he covered, but he felt it too. He suspected that he reeked as if he’d crawled out of a sewer.

He deserved a break. He deserved a bit of good luck for once. Enough was enough!

Disregarding the snakes who were swarming up above, Logan quickly allocated his points into the only attribute that made sense.

[Wisdom: 336]

[Wisdom: 337+]

[Wisdom: 365]

With the thirty percent static boost to wisdom from his class, he’d just upgraded his wisdom attribute from 435 to 475. Once again, the upgrade opened his eyes to the world around him, but by this point, he’d gotten used to it. He needed seconds to recover.

Logan pulled up the description of [Life Fabricator].

[Through intricate and highly precise work, this skill allows you to build, repair and control the life cycle of beings by cutting, bending, and assembling. Level is commensurate with your Karma pool and Karma regeneration rate. KarmaCoin awarded is based on carbon capture impact. Locked. Karma regeneration rate requirement not met!]

What? What!? Oh, come on! Logan kicked the remains of the ship hull, slamming his boot into a metal plate with a sound like thunder. His vision narrowed into nothing but tunnel vision, his heart pounding, muscles quivering. If he could, he’d bring the garden snail back to life just so he could pummel it to death again.

At this point, he was convinced that the System was fucking with him. There was no way that—

Ding!

[You’ve received a Quest: Snake Swarm Fiesta! Kill 500 snakes in 10 minutes.]

[Reward for completing the Quest: An answer to a puzzle.]

[Penalty for not completing the Quest: You will lose one skill chosen at random by the System.]

“What the hell is this?” Logan spat, a vein on his forehead throbbing.

It was one thing after another. The quest itself wasn’t too bad… he’d come to Rattlesnake Island to slaughter the buggers in the first place, but that time limit was ridiculous. Ten minutes to kill five hundred snakes? But that wasn’t the worst of it.

In the past, Logan had ranted and raged at the System for giving him FUBAR quests with sadistic penalties, but in a way, he would have preferred a sliced off toe as a penalty as opposed to losing a random skill. Although a chopped off toe would be painful, that was nothing. [Regenerate] would grow it back. But if he failed this quest, he might end up losing [Regenerate].

And after his class assignment, he’d gone through a frantic minute when he’d run into the ten skill limit. The System had to know that going through the options of discarding skills that he’d earned through blood, sweat, and tears had made his heart race in panic. In fact, it had picked one of the worst penalties possible.

If he didn’t complete the quest on time, he’d not just lose a skill, he’d lose a skill at random.

It was nightmare inducing.

“What’s going on?” asked Ernie, flicking brown sludge off the end of one of his tentacles.

“A quest. The System wants us to kill the snake swarm. Kill all of them. In ten minutes.”

Ernie’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “Okay!”

“…Okay?”

“The mighty all knowing being has chosen to acknowledge our slaughtering quest and to give us a reward if we perform to its satisfaction!”

Logan snorted. Trust Ernie to look on the bright side.

Logan needed to calm down. His anger was justified, but he wasn’t sure why he was this angry. He felt like one of those crazy road rage people he’d used to marvel at as he drove by. Those people were on hair triggers, any little thing setting them off and turning them into unreasonable assholes. Logan didn’t want to be that guy.

Besides, they were running out of time.

[Quest Progress: 500 seconds remaining.]

“Let’s do this. This’ll be fast, this’ll be brutal. I want you to kill as many as the buggers as you can. I know you want minions, but that’s less important than slaughtering right now.”

“I will be a praying mantis lying in wait!”

“All right.” That worked for him. “Let’s fuck these things up.”

***

Interlude: The Walder Family

“Keep looking down at the water, Mark. For all we know, these monsters can leap out of the lake like sharks.”

Mark looked up from peering over the side of the rowboat and rolled his eyes, his narrow nose scrunched up, his cheeks pale and showing off his freckles. “The old lady was trying to scare us, Dad. Zombies in the lake? The alien System in our heads is crazy enough; fish that have turned into zombies means we’re in a horror movie.”

Kate lowered her binoculars and rubbed her eyes. Since her dad had upgraded his strength attribute, he might as well have turned into an Olympic rower, powering the oars so fast he propelled the boat as if his arms were engines.

He could keep this up for over an hour non-stop. An hour! Which was nuts. Before the System came, he was lucky to spend fifteen minutes on the treadmill without keeling over, his face flushed an unhealthy red.

Dad had been trying to get into shape before all this world-ending bull-crap came, and the apocalypse had ramped that into overdrive. With his high cholesterol, Kate had been worried that he’d exert himself too much, but at level 16, he’d transformed into a new man.

According to the ‘experts’ on social media, chronic health problems were a thing of the past as long as you put enough points into your constitution attribute. She’d been suspicious of that to start, but not after seeing people in wheelchairs—wheelchairs!—get up and start walking.

It was a new world.

That meant a speedy rowboat.

But a speedy rowboat meant that the wind rushed by, pushing the smoke into her eyes. The smoke was so bad that even with her huge constitution stat of 15, her eyes stung like nothing else.

More than the monsters, Kate was worried about the smoke. Last year, their house in Hope’s End had barely escaped the summer firestorm, and that was with garden hoses, firetrucks and firemen.

They’d abandoned their home in Hope’s End when the people around them had gotten too crazy, but Kate was worried that Dad’s idea of shelter—his brother’s cabin at the other end of the lake—would be too exposed to incoming wildfires.

And if the cabin caught on fire, they had limited escape routes if there were monsters in the lake.

Oh well, it was the best option out of a whole crap-full of bad ones. If they were lucky, they wouldn’t encounter any XP harvesters on the rest of their journey, so that they could hunker down until the government got its act together.

A big stinky ‘if.’

But that’s what Dad believed, and Kate didn’t have the heart to dissuade him. She suspected that hope was keeping him sane and without that cushion, she’d have to deal with an unravelling father on top of everything else.

Plus, there might be actual hope yet.

Kate was pragmatic, she knew their situation was dire, but after the latest System message, her own prospects for survival had drastically improved. Everyone had received classes. And Kate had received a rare ‘uncommon’ class—a rogue class that let her hide from enemies, giving her a sick skill, [Maneuver], which she hoped would help her get into the one percent.

Forget Dad’s reassurance that the one percent wouldn’t matter in a year. She loved her father, but sometimes, he had a tough time accepting what was right in front of him.

It would be the people who took the System’s message seriously and kicked ass that would survive. If it were up to her dad, they would shelter in place in the cabin for the next year while everyone around them leveled up and left them behind.

“Anything?” Dad asked, his face drenched, his red shirt soaked in sweat. He was grimacing, his arms flushed red as he continued rowing.

It might be time to take a break.

Dad had put Kate in charge of scanning their surroundings and her little brother Mark in charge of looking at the water while Dad focused on moving the rowboat. So far, the trip had been uneventful—thank Christ—but she had less confidence that the old lady’s tales were that—tales. If the System could transform their cat, Tabby the Terror, into a monster the size of a Saint Bernard with green, serrated teeth, then it could turn a fish into a zombie.

Even though on the face of it, Kate agreed with her brother. Fish zombies were ridiculous.

Dad released an oar so he could wipe sweat away from his forehead and run a hand through his brown hair. “We should be coming up on Rattlesnake Island soon. It’s a small, rocky island. Be on the lookout, Kate. This smog is so bad I might approach it without seeing it before it’s too late.”

Kate dutifully picked up the binoculars and scanned their surroundings.

Smog.

Smog.

And more smog.

“I don’t see anything. There’s nothing but…”

“Hold on.” Kate blinked, lowered her binoculars, and then rubbed her eyes. That couldn’t… She had to be seeing things. But when she raised them again and stared through the lens, it was the same picture.

It couldn’t be possible! Kate tensed, her muscles locking and her breathing increasing. A roiling, pit of dread opened in her stomach, and her legs became boneless. Slumping, she collapsed to the seat, and gasped, her mouth open.

Her dad had stopped rowing and stared at her with a worried frown. “What is it?”

Kate pointed with a shaking hand.

Up above Rattlesnake Island, a swarm of monsters flew around in a flock of hell. Giant snakes that looked like anacondas with wings zoomed like locusts, darting by so fast they might as well be eagles. The snakes looked swollen, huge—the size of sewage pipes. In their mouths, fangs double the size of her index finger dripped with green liquid that Kate strongly suspected was venomous.

The sight of them was one thing. Seeing something like that would give her nightmares, but no, that wasn’t the most alarming thing.

The most alarming thing were their levels. What [Identify] was telling her made panic surge through her body, a cold sweat breaking out on the back of her neck.

[Flying Hunting Snake Level 58. A snake that has evolved from a rodent hunter to a freshwater hunting master. Their amphibian wings let them glide over water and snatch prey before diving deep for a further snack.]

[Flying Hunting Snake Level 61.]

[Flying Hunting Snake Level 62.]

[Flying Hunting Snake Level 59.]

[….]

“Dad! They’re over level 50!”

By now, the rowboat had gotten so close that her dad and Mark could see the snakes without squinting. It was hard to miss them; there were so many they were blotting out the sun.

Mark moaned, a panicky moan of pure fright.

Dad swore and franticly reversed the oars as he turned the boat.

The pit of dread inside of Kate’s stomach turned to terror. Why hadn’t Dad listened to her! Why had they left Hope’s End! Dad could row all he wanted. Once these monsters saw them, they’d have no chance. And if there was anything they’d learned in the last week, it was that monsters like that never let someone go. They came after them. Came after them until they were dead.

Until now, they’d never faced anything over level 20. Dad had killed a rabid squirrel that was level 16, but that had just about killed him. It had taken all three of them to corner it; Kate with her kitchen knife, Mark with his golf club, and Dad with his stainless-steel frying pan. And that was against one monster! There were hundreds of these snakes!

“Kate. Mark,” said Dad, his voice tense, his breathing labored. His biceps were bulging, his mouth twisted into a grimace of pain as he put everything he had into making them go faster.

But there was no hope. They were dead.

Dad had paused rowing as he glanced back at the island.

What was he doing?!

“I love you both,” he said. “You mean everything to me. It’s been the privilege of my life to see you both tackle the challenges we’ve faced in the last week.”

Kate didn’t like the sound of that. “What…”

“I want you to jump out of the boat and swim to the shore. We’re close enough that you should manage it in twenty minutes tops. While you do that, I’m going to row the boat over to the island and distract them. It might give you the chance to escape.”

Mark moaned. “No Dad!”

“You know it’s the only way.”

Kate rubbed her eyes, wiping away a tear. “What if we all jump into the lake? Then push the boat towards the island?”

“These monsters aren’t stupid, honey. They’ll see us in the water.”

“But—”

In the sky, there was a tremendous boom. A sound like thunder.

Kate turned around, glancing at the snake swarm. A lightning storm? But other than the smog, there wasn’t a storm…

Wasn’t a…

Wasn’t….

What. The. Crap.

Up in the air, amongst the snake swarm was a man. He flew through the snakes and jumped off their writhing bodies like he was jumping off clouds.

The man was muscular like someone who spent 24-7 in the gym, his upper thighs so big they could crush a horse, his chest sculpted with washboard abs. He wore a light-weight armour suit that fluctuated in color, reflecting the green of the snakes, the grey of the sky, the beam of the occasional sunbeam that broke through the clouds. He was holding a massive sword in one hand that sang, twanging in the air. And in his other hand, ten-inch-long talons glittered like diamonds.

Green blood spraying, he tore through the snake swarm as if he were cutting through butter. His sword took out ten, twenty, fifty snakes, while his talons slashed off heads and tails. Grabbing a snake by the tail, he swung it through the air while he soared past, hitting the attacking snakes so hard they were knocked fifty feet in the air before they slammed into the rocky ground like pulverized mush.

On his back, he wore a strange-looking backpack that fluctuated in color, making it difficult to make out. And from inside of that pack… tentacles. Tentacles jabbed the snakes on his way past, tentacles that grabbed and tore them apart. He was a monster!

He was a flying tentacle man!

Kate used [Identify] on him.

[Logan Hart: Level ??? A human being.]

They were so dead.

Kate hadn’t ever used [Identify] on someone and received that response. A bunch of question marks had to mean the man was so high leveled that her skill couldn’t see it.

And if that wasn’t enough, he was collaborating with another monster. They were in league together! At first, Kate thought it was another snake, but that was no snake. The other monster jumped through the air, crackling with blue lightning, jumping from snake to snake and wrapping its elongated body around each one before cutting them in half.

It looked like a miniature dragon!

But when Kate tried to scan it with [Identify], the result made her puzzled beyond belief.

[A Cursed Length of Rope. C Grade. This rope’s fibres secrete acid that eats organic flesh.]

That was no rope! It was twice the size of the snakes and didn’t seem to have any problems killing snake after snake. How was that possible?

But they might have a chance.

They just might.

Kate shot her dad a frantic look. “Row away, Dad! Row away! He’s killing hundreds of monsters over level 50! He might not care about us; we’re too lower leveled! But we need to get away before he runs out of things to kill!”

<-----Go to chapter 10.