Sponsored Apocalypes, ch 34 (end of book 1)

The next morning when I woke up, I felt like something had kicked me in the head and between the shoulder blades, my whole body hurt. I also felt strange tingly pains in my fingertips.

I checked my status screen just to make sure that nothing had changed. Nothing had.  I hadn't gotten any new system notifications either. I'd set my internal alarm clock for only a few hours and it looked like it was just past dawn.  There was light in my borrowed attic.  I laid on my back for a while, staring up at the 2x4’s nailed together above me.  A lot had been happening in my life lately, changes coming at me too fast to process.  I’d been changing.

The night before, I’d killed without ever being attacked first.  That might seem natural on the surface since I’d been killing monsters, but there were also extra layers to that.  My whole life I’d just wanted to be left alone, but now, after only about a week’s time, I was running around, gassing women and children.  Sure, they weren’t human, but they were thinking beings.  Even though monsters and other crazy things were invading this world once the system established itself, I hadn’t seen anything to suggest they weren’t…real.

Thinking about all of this wasn’t going to change how I was living life and trying to get more XP, but I was aware of it.  I never wanted to lost track of the cost of my own improvement.  How I changed, whether for better or worse should be something I stayed aware of.

After all, selfishness was one of the major traits in other people I’d learned to despise.  I wouldn’t let myself become what I’ve always hated, at least not without being aware of it and hopefully being able to justify it.

This new world sort of forced selfishness or victimhood on people.  I didn’t want to end up like the corpses of the people elsewhere in the house.  To do more than to survive in this world meant I had to kill.

Good talk, self, I thought sarcastically.  Now you feel bad for no good reason and can’t fix it.

I sat up and could immediately smell myself.  Since I wasn’t on any kind of set schedule, I decided to give myself some time.  I took the opportunity to take a shower.  The amount of dirt and grime that came off of my body was truly impressive.

My clothes were super nasty too.  I cleaned everything I was wearing in the shower and in the sink.  Yay for running water, I thought.  It was a little odd that I was using the house’s facilities while the original owners were dead down the hall in the next room, but I tried not to think about it.

I took a second shower after my clothes were washed.  While I was in the shower, I used [Better Days Auto Whisk] to dry them faster with a stream of air. They were still a little bit damp when I got out and put them on, so I went outside in the sun.

It felt amazing. I truly felt alive for the first time in days. Maybe a week, I wasn't entirely sure how long it'd been since the apocalypse arrived and the countdown for my quest had ended.

As I stood in the sunshine, face towards the sky, I let warmth and light radiate from my head to my toes.  The conversation I’d had with myself earlier was still haunting me a little bit. My entire life, I really hadn’t seen eye to eye with most others, but I’d never wanted to hurt anyone.  Even though I’d been preparing for the end of the world and stocked up on weapons before, I hadn’t wanted to use them.   In fact, in my heart of hearts, I hadn’t believed I’d have to.  That was one reason I never tried to get a better rental.

Looters and bad people would go try to fuck over rich people, right?  They’d leave me alone.

With the clarity of hindsight, I knew it’d been naive and delusional.  Good people and bad people existed everywhere, in every social class, every race, creed, and background.  One reason I used to hate humanity sometimes was because life was often just a bunch of really fancy decorations on top of an underlying competition for resources…

…and I’d always been at the bottom of the heap.  Never a “have,” always a “have not.”

The world ending had kind of shoved my face in how much worse it could be.  The fake layer of civility I’d always disdained, well…it turned out it was pretty important.  And just like I’d always known about myself, even though I didn’t like other people, I still cared.  I’d much rather have an entire neighborhood of people who looked down on me and were free to live their lives versus empty houses torn apart by goblins.

And as I thought about it, really just letting my mind wander under the light of the sun, I realized something.  I had an “a ha” moment.  What I was going through was nothing new, not really.  People’s lives had been torn apart and humans had suffered atrocities throughout all of human history.  The only thing different about it now was the scope.  All of the world was experiencing the same thing all at once.  And everyone was on the same playing field from the start, at least mostly.

This was war.

“I’m in a war,” I said out loud.  Bizzarely, realizing this made me feel better about everything.  Kill or be killed was still awful, but it made much more sense to me now that I thought about my new role as basically being a soldier of sorts.

And just like real wars, the ones calling the shots were not the ones fighting on the ground.  My resolve to get stronger and puch someone, anyone in the face for all of this hardened.

Then I reflected on everything I've done up to this point. I thought about all the times I had almost died. All the close calls I'd had all the questionable decisions I'd made.

And in that moment, I made a decision not to beat myself up about it anymore.  Even if I had to go back in time and redo everything, I wasn't sure that I would have made any different choices.  From a logical perspective, even a single deviation, even correcting my “mistakes” might have resulted in my death at some point.

Besides, I was actually fairly happy about where I was.  If I had to be a soldier in a fucked up war of survival, it was good to have a backer, a sponsor.  The whole…working for a death god and having a class with “dark” in it was maybe a little concerning, but it sure beat being dead.

When my shirt was finally completely dry, and I'd soaked in as much sunlight as I felt I was going to handle, I set off at an easy job towards the road where I'd met the quartet of would-be fighters hours ago–Nate, Steve, Pete, and Jackson.

The walk was fairly uneventful. On the way I was tempted to explore houses that looked like they were abandoned, more out of curiosity than anything else. I decided not. Material things had already stopped mattering to me. Money was worthless now. Regular weapons probably wouldn't work on many monsters soon, the way things were going.  And most of the power I had right now was based on my abilities.

Of course I could maybe find more antiques or older items so that I could bond with spirits, but poking around small houses next to the road I was traveling and hoping to find something precious like that felt like a waste of time.

But I was sort of bored just walking.

So I decided to test out my new stats. I was definitely superhuman now and when I broke into a sprint and held it for 10 minutes without getting winded, I could definitely feel viscerally how different I was now compared to before.

I made it to the street out of town, the stretch of asphalt that had carried me out of town, and where I’d met living defenders other than Aldina for the first time.

There were fewer patrols now, during the day.  A few trucks were definitely cruising up and down the road, though.  I could see them in the distance.  Weary men holding guns kept a watchful eye.  A few bodies of monsters littered the sides of the roads and I felt a sense of grim satisfaction at that.

A truck got closer and I flagged it down.  The vehicle pulled up next to me and a big man with a mustache rolled down the window.  His passenger was a smaller guy with the window down who didn’t say anything or even look over.  He kept staring out his own window, barrel of his rifle sticking up.

The man with the mustache didn’t say anything, just raised one eyebrow in a silent question. I said, “My name is Miles.  Last night I met Nate’s team, including Steve, Pete, and Jackson.  They’d been talking to Mister Gray.  I’m here to see if there has been any news for me, like if Mister Gray found out anything about what I’d asked before.”

I got done talking and tried to look unthreatening and trustworthy.  The man looked at me with a skeptical expression, his eyes dipped down to some of the odd things hanging off of my belt.  He stayed silent and rolled up the window.  Then he got his radio off of the dash and said something into it.

If I’d really focused or figured out how to use one of my abilities, I might have been able to listen in.  I decided not to.  It seemed…trashy.

The man with the mustache continued to talk softly inside the truck, the engine making just enough noise I couldn’t hear anything even though the other window was open.

I suppressed a frown and thought, Geeze, real friendly type huh?  Then I walked a couple steps away from the truck, folded my arms and observed what was going on around me. Another patrolling truck had approached and stopped at a distance, apparently to watch.  Probably curious.

A couple minutes later, Mustache Man gestured at me.  The window rolled down again, and in a surprisingly peasant voice, the man said, “I just got word back from Mister Gray.  Nate’s team is right down the street, heading the opposite direction to get some rest.  They'd rather talk to you in person.”

I said,  “Thank you, sir.”

The man nodded. His demeanor was different than it had been before. He was still gruff, but whatever somebody had said to him on the radio must have had an effect on his attitude.

I didn't I didn't sweat it. Everybody had been through a lot lately. I thought again about what Nate’s team had said about crazy people. Murderers. If I'd still been with Aldina, I wondered if these folks would have been a little bit more tense around me. I shook my head.  Probably not, because Aldina was a beautiful woman, not some homeless looking dude like me.

Of course, beautiful women could be deadly too, but even a lot of people who should known better sometimes made mistakes.

I headed down the street at a decent jog until I saw the familiar group of four. They smiled when they saw me and approached to shake my hand.

“Wow, you look a lot better now. Mr. Miles,” said Steve.

Jackson said, “Yeah, you don’t look like you’ve just been rolling around in a blood ditch anymore.”

Pete nodded seriously, one hand on the sling of his shotgun to keep it secure.  “True.  Now it looks like it’s been a few days since he did that.”

All of laughed, and Steve said, “Seriously, this is definitely better.  If you’d looked better like this the last time we met, I might not have been so…”

“Dickish?” I finished for him.

He chuckled and nodded.  “Yeah.  Sorry about that.”

Nate stepped closer and I noticed a big, nasty scratch on his football shoulder pads.  I’d been skeptical that it’d work as effective armor, but apparently he wore it for a reason.  “Miles, we have some news from the folks in charge of the area right now.  They’d love to meet you and hear what you’ve been up to.  I guess they’re making a map with updated information about where the monsters are at and where we’ve beaten them.”

I made a noncommittal noise.  “Oh really?  Where are they at?”

“Here.”  He pulled an honest to goodness paper map of the county out of his pocket, with a big star and an arrow marked for a location a few miles away.  “This is where a lot of the folks in charge are staying.  The four of us aren’t heading there.  It’s too far away from this area and this is where we can be the most help right now.”

“I see.”

“Tell him about the giant,” said Steve.

“I’m getting to that.”  Nate shook his head and met my eyes.  “Town is getting worse.  The monsters are actually fighting each other.  There are probably still people trapped in there but they can’t get out.  Apparently, the cyclops has been digging somewhere in town and has some sort of nest or shelter or something.  The other monsters stay the hell out of the way and we don’t dare attack it.  Some people did a day ago and it ended really bad for them.”

So the cyclops is in town, I thought.  Part of me had been expecting that.

Steve gave a crooked smile.  “We’ve heard about other stuff too.  You’re not the only badass in town, Miles.”

“I got this, Steve,” said Nate.

Pete frowned.  “Chill out, Steve.  Jesus. If I wasn’t so tired I’d drop kick your ass.”

“Yeah right.  You could beat me at Mario Cart, at least as long as we still have electricity and if anyone will give us any for gaming–which they won’t.  But if you try to kick me I can just run away.  A few too much fuel in your chocolate love machine, eh?”

“You wouldn’t be talking so tough if you weren’t covered in armor, dork.”

Steve scoffed loudly.  “Who are you calling dork, weeb?  The worst part of this end-of-the-world shit for you is you’ll never finish that one manga you’ve been reading–”

“Shut your whore mouth!  I’ll learn to draw and finish it myself if I have to!”

Nate slashed his hand down with a scowl.  “Oh my god.  Holy shit you two argue like brothers. This is so dumb.  Shut up.”  He turned his attention back to me, and as he did, I noticed the monster blood on his pants and his baseball bat.  These four had definitely been fighting.  He coughed and said, “Thing is, we’ve also gotten reports of a mysterious woman throwing ice around right outside of town.  She’s helped a few people escape, and people say–”

“They say she’s really hot!” said Steve.  “A hot wizard chick!”

“Okay, that’s it,”  said Pete.  He mimed giving a haymaker to Steve’s head, and the armored man dramatically pretended to be hit.  Behind them, Jackson rolled his eyes.

I held in a smile.  These guys were obviously just happy to be alive, and happy none of their friends had died.  That was one advantage of fighting on my own for the time being.  I didn’t need to care about anyone else.

“Alright, thanks for the info,” I said.

The five of us made small talk for a few more minutes, but they looked like they were about to keel over from exhaustion and I still needed to get going.  We all said our goodbyes and parted ways.

I turned to walk away, feeling pretty good about recent developments, when suddenly, I saw something I thought I would never see again.

A new screen had popped up in my vision, one that had the same styling as the one that gave me my quest years ago.  It was completely distinct from every other system notification or screen I’d seen since.

[<New Quest>

Champion’s Gauntlet

Task:
Kill the giant monster that destroyed your house in the first few minutes of your world being integrated.

Countdown:

48:00:00]

As I watched, the countdown dropped to 47:59:59

Then 47:59:58

I had two days.

My eyes fell to the bottom of the new screen.

[Completion rewards:

??? <hidden>

Failure penalties:

??? <hidden>]

I stared at the “penalties” line for a full three seconds.  Then I sighed.  “This again?”

With a shake of the head and a shrug I put one foot in front of the other, heading towards town.  The implications of the penalty line was something I would think about later.  For now,  I was just glad I could get a reward for something I was planning to do anyway.

“Time to find a new place to go antique shopping again,” I said under my breath.


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