Sponsored Apocalypse ch 11

When we could see the drug store at the corner ahead, Aldina pulled me into an alley.  She put a finger over her lips. When I looked a question at her,  she jerked her head back the way we were going. “Take a look.”

Her unwillingness to talk much despite her stealth field kind of told me as much as her nervous body language.  We peeked out of the alley.  She pointed at something in the distance.

Her eyes must have been fantastic.  Or her other senses.  I still wasn’t sure.

It took me a few seconds to finally spot what had spooked her.  Even though it was a relatively bright night and I could see surprisingly well, it could still be hard to see things at a distance.  Even big things.

A large, grey troll was sitting in the bed of a pickup truck, picking its teeth with a bone.  The creature looked a lot like the thing I’d narrowly avoided before on my way to Tom’s gun shop.  Even this far away, I could feel how dangerous the thing was.  Aldina’s scowl seemed to indicate that I was right about.

She’d shishkabob’d one of the smaller trolls in front of the gun shop, but I could tell she wanted nothing to do with this big one.  If Aldina was scared of something, I definitely didn’t want to mess with it.

I pointed at my watch and she nodded. We were going to wait it out.  I briefly thought about throwing my hammer to make a distraction or otherwise doing something proactive but decided against it.  Now was not a time to take unnecessary risks.

Then, strangely enough, there was nothing to do but wait.  I kept watch down the other side of the alley and back the way we’d come while Aldina kept track of the troll creature.  Waiting around was normally just a boring pain in the ass.  During the end of the world, it made my anxiety keep building on itself.  To settle my nerves I pulled up my character sheet.

Miles Lindstrom

Title(s):  First Ten to Five

Level 6

Class: none

Traits: none

Stats:
Str: 6

Dex: 4

End: 9

Int: 6

Will: 7

Luck: 6

Reflex: 7

Armor (nat): 0

Affiliations: Sponsored by *hidden*

Titles: *hidden*

Prime Skills:

Tsukumogami Embrace

Spirits of the Past

Built Different

First to Five Eyes

Active Skills:

Saliva of Hared Ha

Skills:

Spear Combat

Sword Combat

Scythe

Ambush

Healing Salve Application

Firearms (pistols)

Available Advancement Points: 6

Damn. My Endurance stat was getting monstrous.  That was probably why, even after everything that had happened so far, I was not physically tired at all.  Hell, even after fighting on the way here I felt full of energy.

Other than that, there were a few new skills, some new levels, and a title.  All new.  I didn’t remember getting the notification for the title but I hadn’t been reading them so that figured.

First I checked out my new title.

First Ten to Five:  You are within the first 10% of your world to have reached level five.

I drilled down deeper into my new Prime Skill that seemed to be related to my title.

First Ten to Five Eyes: You can see better in the dark and withstand bright lights better than before.

Well, that helps explain why I seem to be seeing things at night so much better now, even in shadows, I thought.  It didn’t take me long to make some assumptions about the title.  A bunch of people in the world had probably already died.  Whether the 10% was based on the world population before or after the end of the world would be vastly different numbers, 10% was still a lot.  And level five wasn’t very high, but still meant someone had to have killed monsters.

From the perspective of all of this madness being a tutorial, it made sense for the system to reward the people who were using it and more likely to thrive.  At the same time, even though better vision would be helpful, it wouldn’t be a huge advantage over others.

It occurred to me that I as adapting to everything going on pretty quickly.  Then I stole a glance at Aldina.  Not as fast as her.  It oddly made me feel better.

The six advancement points kept drawing my eye.

I thought about just saving them to deal with later, maybe even ask Aldina for her opinion about it.  Nah, never know what might happen in the next five minutes, much less the next few hours.  I’d learned my lesson about procrastinating with this stuff.

Then I frowned.  I dismissed the status windows and kept watch as I thought.  Something in the back of my mind was bothering me.  The Advancement Point issue had triggered it, I could tell.  It wasn’t external, though.  Whatever was eating me was internal.  Since I couldn’t tell what was actually causing the weird feeling, I carefully went over everything that had happened since the beginning of the apocalypse.

Introspection had always been one of my strong suits.  It could be a double edge sword, but in cases like this where something unknown was bothering me, it definitely helped.

After the review, I figured it out.  I was at peace with everything except what had just happened a few minutes ago with the woman Aldina had killed.  The fresh memory made my soul itch.  Maybe I’d been in shock.  Hell, maybe I still was.  There were a few problems that I needed to address, at least internally.

While I didn’t think of Aldina as the leader of our little group, I had to admit I’d been treating her that way.  I needed to stop that.  She was strong and had knowledge, but that didn’t mean I could just turn my brain off and accept authority from someone I barely knew.

Her logic about the woman she’d killed had been solid and I think she’d been right to deliver the mercy kill.  It all still bothered me, though.  More that that, Aldina’s entire attitude about the situation didn’t sit right.  Unless she’d been moonlighting as an organized crime hitwoman before the end of the world, I just couldn’t understand how fast she was adapting to everything.

The second problem was how frazzled I’d been progressively becoming up until now.  I really should have realized what was happening with the crazy asshole and the handcuffed woman before.  There had been plenty of clues.  I normally would have immediately recognized what was happening.  This was unacceptable.  People were dying left and right. I needed to get my shit together.

Maybe I should look into whether I could get a skill or something to deal with it.

In fact, now that I thought about it, if I was in shock or something, why wasn’t [Built Different] protecting me from it?  Were mental issues different from…bleeding?  Like not a status effect?  The more I thought about it, the more that seemed likely.

The last problem I had address was my lack of a plan.  When my house got destroyed, I’d been in survival mode ever since.

A long term plan could probably wait, but I needed to figure out how to start using my Advancement Points.  Talking to Aldina about it, trying to pump her for information later might not be a bad idea but I really shouldn’t wait.  And now was not the time to talk.

I pulled up my windows again and actually skimmed a few help menu options for accessibility.  One of the first entries was how to adjust the opacity of the windows.  There was even a slider.

Handy, I thought.  Now I could browse the menus and still keep watch.  I would likely still close windows while actually fighting, but this was good for now.

It only took me a few minutes this time to drill into the menus.  I was looking for something specific, and I was not even touching the special, expensive menu with the goofy names.

My lips pursed as I read the description of an awesome skill.  

Two Minds: Another fully functional mind.  Ability to think about, train, or learn two things at once.

The ability cost 5 points.

That would be amazing.  I found a function in my menus to bookmark the skill.  Right now it was way out of my reach, though.  There were a number of prerequisite skills.  Just one of them was [Mental Strengthening], costing 3 points.

I wasn’t really seeing anything that I could purchase that would help my mental state that I could actually afford.  Then I also reevaluated what was the most important.

Living.  Staying alive was more important.  Shock or other issues could be fixed later, but if I lost an arm…

It was still very likely I could lose my life tonight.  I didn’t even have any armor.

Luckily, it didn’t take me long to find a great potential purchase.

Bone Strengthening. Prerequisite: Endurance 7.  Armored, toughened skeleton with no added weight.

It would only cost me three points!

This is perfect, I thought.  The fact it was the first ability in a tree that eventually led down some really interesting paths made it even better.  I traced one:  [Bone Strengthening] -> [Elastic Joints] -> [Natural Armor]...  I can make my body bulletproof!

The only way [Bone Strengthening] would have been better was if it led to regenation or self healing, but those types of abilities were on totally different paths beginning at [Enhanced Constitution].  With my Endurance stat already freakishly high, an anti-bleeding ability, and healing spit, using my points towards a costly regeneration ability path didn’t make sense right now.

The moment I’d finished weighing the pros and cons, I committed, purchasing [Bone Strengthening].  I gritted my teeth, bracing myself for pain, prepared not to let even a single sound escape.  Even inside Aldina’s stealth ability, I didn’t want to tempt fate.

Luckily, all my steeled spine wasn’t even necessary.  Other than a slight tingle all over the inside of my body, I didn’t feel any discomfort at all.  Cool.

I closed my screen and turned to see Aldina watching me.  “Are you done upgrading now?”

“It was a good idea to do it now.  I just got done soon.  Timing worked out well, too.  The big, fucking uggo down the street just left.  Chased a dog.”

The unexpected mental picture of an innocent dog getting attacked by monsters actually made me hold my breath as a sudden wave of rage ran through my body.  I’d never even considered the fact that pets were in danger, too.  A new kind of ugly hate for the invading monsters bloomed.  I hadn’t exactly been against the idea of killing them to begin with, but from now on, every kill might feel just a little more personal.

“So we can move now?” I asked.

“Looks like it.  The coast is clear.  When we get back, I’ll give you a few tips about leveling up and upgrading if you want.  Figure you probably already have a decent grasp of it if you just knocked it out now without saying anything, but there are other things I can tell you to make the future easier.”

I nodded, noting again how wierdly informed Aldina was.  If the monsters weren’t trying to kill her too, I’d be half-tempted to wonder if she was some sort of monster spy.  “That would be good.”  I didn’t tell her that I wanted to talk to her about the situation with the woman being used as bait.  After all, this was not a long-time partnership.  Aldina had made it clear from the get-go that after we got back to Tom’s, she and Amanda would be leaving.

We both quickly scurried down the street to the drug store.  We were heading to the front of th store, but I jerked my head toward the back of the store and Aldina nodded after a split second of hesitation.

What was she going to do, break the glass? I wondered.  Stealth field or not, that would probably result in a monster party we didn’t want.

Once we were around the back of the store, we stopped by a plan, sturdy-looking door.  The area around us seemed clear.  Thankfully, there weren’t even any signs of violence.  I looked at the door and then at my glaive, wondering if it had the strength to work as a crowbar.

“What are you doing?” asked Aldina.

“Thinking about how to get  the door open.” I scowled.  “When I lost my house, I also lost a badass lock picking set.”

Aldina gave me a weird look and walked up the door.  She rested her hand on it above the door knob for a few seconds, then pulled it open.  She turned to give me an amused look before entering the store ahead of me.  Then she held the door.

I stared dumbly for a second  before following.  When I had the right angle, I looked at the inside of the door frame.  Ice filled the areas where the latch and deadbolts had been before.  There was ice in the lock, too. Aldina had just pushed the bolts back into the door using the expansion of the ice.  Or maybe she’d actually turned the entire damn lock like…using an ice key.  As I watched, both chunks of ice fell out of the holes by themselves, clearing them.

“Now it’ll close behind us.  We should lock the knob,” she said.  Aldina let go of the door and went inside.

I let the door close behind me and gave myself a second for my eyes to adjust to the dark of the store’s interior.  My upgraded eyes helped.

“Magic,” I muttered and sighed.