Sponsored Apocalypse, Ch. 5

I rose slowly, getting a better look at the goblins.  They were turned to face away from me about forty feet away where they'd stopped earlier.  This was probably lucky for me since I didn’t need to move far to engage them.  More importantly, they still hadn’t spotted me.

My night vision had always been pretty decent.  I never thought I’d be in a situation where that fact might save my life.

All three monsters were talking, the noise helped cover my approach.  As slow and stealthy as I was trying to be, to my ears, I still sounded like a hippo rolling around in the forest.  With my heart hammering in my chest I finally made it behind a tree only about ten feet away from the group.

Now or never, I thought.  With reality crashing down on me, I started to get the shakes.  I’d killed animals before–hunting.  But this was the first time anything I was hunting could hunt me back.  And they were talking.  Monsters.

For a few seconds, I seriously started to wonder if I was losing my mind.  The distant screams and gunshots I could hear helped me recenter.  I guess seeing floating screens and hidden quests is an order of magnitude easier to accept than about to jump out to ambush a group of monsters.  I almost chuckled at the thought, but stopped myself before I gave myself away.

Then I jumped out and ambushed the real life monsters.

My glaive’s long grip gave me a lot of leverage, plus I was stronger than I had been even a couple hours ago.  Probably stronger than I had any right to be.  The goblin I aimed for actually turned in time to see his death coming, but my blade hit his head like a freight train, cutting almost all the way through with a sound like smashing a watermelon.

Hyped up on adrenaline, I jerked my weapon out of the dying goblin’s skull and lunged at the second.  This monster managed to raise his bone club in time for a block, but it was useless.  My glaive smashed through like the light club wasn’t there, cleaving into the monster’s body a foot past the collar bone.

Even though I wasn’t super familiar with the weapon I was using, my training over the last year proved itself.  I kicked my enemy’s body off of my blade in time to block a strike at my head from the last remaining monster.  The sound rang through the dark forest.  I tried to follow up with a stab, but the goblin jumped back.  He ground his teeth at me and spit something in his guttural, halting language that sounded less than friendly.

It felt like my blood was pumping about a thousand beats per second.  In the moment, I seemed to absorb and process every detail.  I realized that this last goblin was a little bit bigger than the others and was holding a large, steel crowbar.  The tool had English marketing on it.  Maybe it had belonged to whoever these things had killed and were eating before.

Running away wasn’t an option and I didn’t wait for the little bastard to come at me.  I moved forward slowly but deliberately.   The goblin circled and stared me down, or at least tried to, but he lost his nerve before I could attack.  With two quick steps, the creature ran and jumped at me, swinging the crowbar at my head.

Even though the goblin was smaller than me, his crowbar had a lot of mass.  I didn’t try to meet it head on.  Instead, I parried the heavy blow to one side and riposted cleanly, right into the monster’s side.  The creature’s momentum carried him past me, off of my blade and into a dying roll.  He tried to get up, murder in his eyes, but laid down with a gurgle.

And just like that, my little section of the woods was quiet again.

I was sweating bullets.  Gasping, I sat down. I almost forgot where my weapon’s blade was and sliced open my fingers in the process.  Monster blood covered the business end.

“What the fuck.  What the fuck,” I whispered.  And as I tried to get my heartrate back under control in the middle of an existential crisis, I saw a message pop up.

[Level up! Congratulations!]

[You have learned skill: Intermediate spear combat]

[You have learned skill: Intermediate sword combat]

[You have learned skill: Intermediate scythe]

[You have learned skill: Beginner Ambush]

“Huh?”

I opened my menu.

Miles Lindstrom

Level 2

Class: none

Traits: none

Stats:
Str: 6

Dex: 4

End: 8

Int: 6

Will: 7

Luck: 6

Reflex: 7

Armor (nat): 0

Affiliations: Sponsored by *hidden*

Titles: *hidden*

Prime Skills:

Tsukumogami Embrace

Built Different

Skills:

Spear Combat

Sword Combat

Scythe

Ambush

Available Advancement Points: 2

“Oh that’s right. It’s an eight. My endurance is superhuman.”  I stopped panting and felt stupid.  It’d all been mental.

My eyes dropped down from my screen but then went right back up so I could avoid staring at all the guts on the forest floor.  I wasn’t actually squeamish, I’d actually already taken classes to get over that.  The fact I’d just made all of the offal around me was something…I needed to get used to.  Deep down I guess I hadn’t believed I’d actually need to fight just to live, even after knowing the end of the world was coming.  My plan had been to stay at my house, eat my rice and canned goods, just keep my head down.

Supplies, guns, now I didn’t have anything to my name. That probably didn’t make me very special, all things considered, but most people hadn’t known the apocalypse was coming.  The points I’d gotten hadn’t been super useful so far, but all the training I’d done might have just saved my life.

When I reached down for my weapon, I started when I realized I’d almost just put my hands in some entrails.

“Holy fuck,” I muttered.  I studied the character sheet some more, then remembered the status messages I’d gotten about the new skills I’d earned, apparently by demonstrating I knew them.  Most seemed pretty straightforward.  I had no idea what “Scythe,” was for.  But I also remembered they’d had different levels or something.

After a few moments, I found what I was looking for and switched to a different view.

Prime Skills:

Tsukumogami Embrace - Beginner

Built Different - Beginner

Skills:

Spear Combat - Intermediate

Sword Combat - Intermediate

Scythe - Intermediate

Ambush - Beginner

I shook my head.  “Twenty points for a beginner skill?  What the hell?”  Now that I’d seen this screen, I also knew what the skill level progression was.

Beginner

Low

Intermediate

Expert

Master

On this expanded skill menu, I could see places to drill down deeper.  That’s where the upgrade costs would be for sure.  I didn’t even bother going that far for now.  There wasn’t likely to be much I could do with two advancement points.

Reality truly  settled for me.

There was a murderous giant or cyclops or something out there that had destroyed my house and probably eaten some of my neighbors, and if I saw it again, I wanted to hurt it.  Although the house had been a rental and I didn't really care about my neighbors all that much, I'd liked some of my furniture, dammit. It hadn't been fancy, but it'd been mine.

I was gonna survive.  Instead of being scared or even determined, I could feel myself growing pissed.

All I'd ever wanted was to just be left alone and now the whole goddamn world was crawling with monsters.  I kicked one of the dead goblins in the head. "Assholes," I muttered.

I wanted to also be mad about the weird quest I'd been living with before the apocalypse…but I couldn't. No matter how much of a mind fuck my situation was, I had to acknowledge my advantage over others.  I thought about all the other innocent people in the world who deserved this shit even less than I did.  Most people in the world were okay, at least in small doses.  They weren't all drunken, shifty music-blasters like my most recent neighbors.

Survival came first, but I'd need to kill some monsters anyway to get a random stronger and that would also help other people.  It'd help the world.  If I was ever going to be able to play video games again after a long day, all the psycho giants would need to die first.  We, humans, would need to figure out why this was happening to us.

"Damn," I sighed.  Something had just changed in me, I could feel it.  I drew my hammer from my belt and studied it.

If I was going to get strong, I needed more weapons.  For that, I might know  where to go.

I started walking.  The goblins had to have come from somewhere close, and I needed to get my bearings.

Now I had a destination.