*Do you know a way to get to the roof without having to go through the living room?* Garath asked his feline roommate.
*Of course I do. What do you think I do when you're gone all day?*
*Honestly? I assumed the same things you do when I'm here. Sleep and lick your...*
*Do you want me to show you or not?* she interrupted.
*Yes. I'm sorry, Tarzan.*
*Then follow me.*
Chapter 4
Preparation
Atop the apartment building's roof, the adorable white kitten skittered along in pursuit of the stronger and more agile Tarzan. The continual sheet of rain pouring down from the ominous, dark clouds above had chased the fluffy, black maine coon across the slick, white rooftop until she came to a stop below an awning leading to the stairwell, then turned to check on Garath.
‘Okay,’ he thought. ‘Time to be a human again.’
He closed his eyes and fixed the image of his body as it was before the transformation in his mind. The pricking tingly sensation from his first transformation returned and spread quickly over his miniscule form, growing in intensity as his body transformed into his true form... TrueFormed? He opened his eyes and examined himself. Everything, including his clothing, was in its proper place.
‘Learned it!’ he thought to himself gleefully.
Before he started slinging spells around on the roof (for science!), it occurred to Garath to look over the stats listed on the Profile partition of his MENU. He willed the MENU open again and selected Profile. The image of Garath's avatar appeared once again on the semi-transparent panel occupying the left third of his vision. Seeing the staff and wide-brimmed wizard hat, the Necrologist remembered to equip his items - even if they weren't anything exciting, any gear was better than none.
'Equip Novice Necrologist Staff. Equip Novice Necrologist Cap.'
The gnarled, black staff appeared instantly in the grip of his right hand and the hat fit so comfortably around his head that he barely noticed it. Garath realised he hadn't checked the details of his hat and pulled it off to will more information from the item, then read the text that appeared in response.
Novice Necrologist Cap
Raiment Slot: Head
Armor: +7
Quality: Poor
Durability: 19/20
Item Score: 6
Type: Cloth Armor
Magic Resistance: 0%
Rarity: Common
+30 Maximum Mana
**A necessity for all novice Necrologists.
Item Requirements:
Level: 1
He re-equipped the silly hat then turned his attention back to the Profile partition of his MENU encompassing the right hand panel. He perused the list of information to the side of the holographic representation of himself.
Garath
Race: Human
Class: Necrologist
Level: 1
Age: 29
Health: 90/90
Stamina: 98/100
Mana: 90/90
Experience to next Level: 0/1000
Attributes
Vitality: 9
Wisdom: 9
Regeneration: 3
Strength: 5
Dexterity: 5
Garath was more than a little disappointed that the Attributes in this system didn't display the hard numbers they represented. In fact, he had been similarly frustrated by the fact that every prompt and MENU option had the same lack of details. It was easy enough to see that each point of Vitality was equal to ten Health points. The same seemed to be true with Wisdom, but what did Regeneration equate to exactly? Or Strength in the real world, would someone with a high Strength Attribute be able to bench press a car, or was it simply a number value denoting the amount of melee damage inflicted? They were questions he simply couldn't answer. Silently cursing the system for not providing more information, he put his frustration aside and moved on to the reason he had followed Tarzan into the stormy night.
He willed the MENU panels away and spent the better part of an hour attempting to use his new Skills. The problem he ran into was that he had never cast a spell with his own body. In games, he had been able to cast any spell he had access to by simply selecting the Skill - standing in his own skin atop the thirteenth floor building, he didn't even know where to start. At first he just tried pointing the staff and shouting, “Death Bolt!”
When that ingenious attempt failed to yield any kind of tangible result, Garath was forced to search his mind for inspiration. He started with what he knew for sure, namely the fact that each spell had a corresponding Mana cost and that he now knew the invisible aura surrounding him was, at the very least, in some way related to his Mana pool. He inferred that he would somehow need to funnel Mana into the spell, presumably for the duration of the listed cast time.
With the image of what he assumed a Death Bolt leaving his hands would look like firmly in his mind, G forced his Mana together - condensing it into a royal blue orb at his center. He felt the Mana move down his arms and into his hands as a dark miasma of Death energy coalesced into a black orb between his outstretched left hand and the staff pointed into the night sky in his right. As the 1.5 second cast time elapsed the now basketball sized orb of Death energy began to vibrate weakly. Garath knew he would need to release the spell somehow. In the brief second before he realised that the spell itself seemed to be trying to break out of his containment, the orb's vibration increased in intensity to the point that it bucked wildly between outstretched arms. To release the Death Bolt, he found that all he had to do was to simply stop trying to contain the magic.
Garath relaxed his hold of the spell and the Death Bolt shot forward. Seemingly unaffected by wind or rain, it just sailed along a predetermined and un-altering course until it faded, then dissolved completely when it reached thirty meters. He cast another, and another - firing black balls of energy into the dark stormy night again and again until his head swam and dizziness overtook him.
The cold pool of water his ass landed in shocked his senses and he realized his Mana bar read 0/90. He watched it with bleary eyes as the bar increased to 3/90. A second later it reached 6/90, and continued to climb at a rate of three Mana per second until it reached 12/90 and Garath felt his mind start to refocus. He imagined the near uselessness induced by the mana depletion occurring during an actual battle and cringed.
‘Noted.’
Sitting in a puddle while his Mana slowly regenerated, the Necrologist willed his MENU panels open again. He looked over the options and paused on the World icon. He focused on it and a flat holographic map of Earth opened on the right side panel, it panned over North America and zoomed to hover over the city of Everett. To the right of the digital map were two additional icons.
Global
Community
Garath focused on Community for more information. A pop-up-window-like panel appeared between his mind’s eye and the World map, displaying what Garath recognized immediately as a basic forum page. Upon the page was a single entry.
Is there anybody... out there?
He willed more to appear and the thread opened a new window above the Community panel.
Is there anybody... out there?
POST BY: Athios - 00/00/00 @21:33 (PST)
Anyone else find this sub-panel yet? I'm hoping there are some other gamers out there that want to group for the morning's events. I'll be up at the high school on Colby Ave at 03:00am. HMU - Athios
Grouping with like-minded people that had experience navigating through new systems sounded like an excellent survival strategy to Garath and he quickly typed in his reply on the mental keyboard that conveniently appeared on the sub-panel when he willed the system to send a reply.
COMMENT BY: Garath - 00/00/00 @21:47 (PST)
Athios, see you there. Bringing some friends too. The high school should be a good place to set up a perimeter and make a stand. - G
A few sconds later, Athios' reply appeared on the thread below his m
essage.
COMMENT BY: Athios 00/00/00 @21:47 (PST)
Exactly what I had in mind. Maybe my thread should have been more appropriately named. Something like, "hey we're going to make a safe zone, come be protected or something."
COMMENT BY: Garath 00/00/00 @21:48 (PST)
You know it's the only thread that shows up under community, right? If anyone finds this sub-panel in time, they'll see it. I'm going to see if I can make it to the school a little earlier and break in. I'll bring my little group over to the basketball courts by that old red building. Big open space surrounded by fences should be easiest to defend right?
FOR EVERYONE THAT READS THIS: Meet up at Everett high school by the outdoor basketball courts sometime between now and 03:00 tomorrow morning. - G
A prompt appeared in his mind's eye a few moments later.
You have received a friend request from: Athios. Will you accept? Yes or No.
‘Yes.’
You are now friends with: Athios.
He wondered what kind of functionality a friend list could have as he closed the thread. When the pop-up thread disappeared Garath saw that a handful of threads had been posted while he was commenting on Athios’ - most of them posted by people looking for one another, one titled THE FORETOLD DOOM IS UPON US, and more appeared even as he scanned over the thread titles.
Garath willed the panel away and made the short walk across the roof to the awning. He opened the door leading to the stairs and was followed by Tarzan as he made his way back to his own apartment. He opened the door and was about to tell the guests still chatting in his living room about the plan to meet at the school when everyone received a prompt in the same elaborate text that shook the world only hours before.
Warning: The next age of Earth approaches and The Culling comes with it. Your first trial will begin at 03:00AM (PST). The difficulty of your foes will increase every 3 hours for the following 24 hours. At the conclusion of The Culling, safe zones will be established and new opportunities will be presented. Survivors will be judged.
Chapter 5
Enter Athios
Anchored and tied to a small marina, Athios looked out from the second floor of her boat. It was an old fishing vessel that her parents had lent her for an interim residence. At twenty years of age, she was ready for a little space from the overbearing duo. Coincidentally, they had left for a summer trip to Fiji and weren't scheduled to return for another few days.
Athios had spent the entire summer working to save for a security deposit and had been planning to move into a downtown Seattle studio the following week. She flicked her cigarette and watched it disappear into the tumultuous dark water below, making dismal correlations about the dying embers of the cigarette and her life plans.
Garath has accepted your friend request. You can now send direct messages and access Garath's location on your map.
Athios shuddered. Posting the message onto the boards had been difficult enough for her. The friend request, even harder. She felt queasy. The lack of electronics she could handle, but whoever had turned her life into an MMORPG had a seriously cruel sense of humor. One of the things she'd liked most about online gaming was that she could make friends without having to actually meet anyone face to face.
She continued staring blankly across the stirring waters of the Pacific and focused to open her MENU. At least the hell that ripped away her dreams of that downtown studio was a familiar one.
MENU
Items
Profile
Friends
World
She noticed the digital clock on the corner of her interface - 01:04AM.
‘About two hours until...’ she thought to herself, unsure of exactly what would happen at 3:00AM. ‘Guess I'd better pick a class. I just wish there weren't so many…’
Athios was about as decisive as a child in the cereal aisle. Even as an adult the cereal aisle was a serious anxiety trigger. She liked to be prepared, and how could a person decide what cereal they would want to eat at any time but the present? Sometimes Fruity Pebbles seemed best, and sometimes Mini-Wheats just seemed like the obvious choice. There was no guarantee she would even want the cereal she finally settled on by the time she made it home to eat it. Almost in response to her indecision, a prompt appeared in her mind's eye.
The Culling approaches, choose your Class.
"You're worse than Siri," Athios muttered to herself, scrolling through her options again. “I'm fine, just have to pick a Class and go from there. Any Class can be good, so long as the player knows how to use it.”
After skimming over the descriptions of some Classes that caught her eye, Athios narrowed it down to a few interesting options but was surprised by how many Classes she saw that didn't seem battle oriented - an Armorer class, an Engineer class that seemed focused on the design and construction of items and structures, she even saw a Psychologist class.
‘Well, actually,’ she thought to herself, ‘a Psychologist probably could be battle oriented...’
Athios knew that well enough. Her mother was a Psychiatrist and, as the saying goes, Psychiatrists always have the craziest kids. Mind games tend to have an adverse effect on children.
A drop of blood oozed from her lip - chewing on it was a nervous, indecision induced habit she had picked up around the age of six. She read the descriptions of her favorite options again and lit another cigarette.
The Assassin is a master of stealth and the art of dealing death. Through mastering the ability to cast shadows of themselves, they distract foes and strike from the darkness. Intelligent and devious, the Assassin specializes in close range, one-on-one combat. Will you become an Assassin? Yes or No.
Stealth is good, Athios did enjoy hiding - but she was a bit put-off by the close-range combat aspect. She chose no and read on.
The Elementalist harnesses the power to create and manipulate the basic elements. Whether a bolt of lightning or an apocalyptic firestorm, an Elementalist furthers their power through study and practice. Will you become an Elementalist? Yes or No.
A mage class was her typical go-to. The Elementalist seemed to be exactly that. Though she wouldn't describe herself as particularly studious, Athios had always done well in school. Study didn't scare her. She chose no, it was the safe option but the next Class description was too intriguing to pass up.
The Dimensionalist has mastered the secrets of space-time. Among other abilities, the manipulation of matter and energy density allows the Dimensionalist to create wormholes to transport their foes into direct attacks or relocate an ally away from a dangerous situation. Will you become a Dimensionalist? Yes or No.
It was endearing, and almost fit her typical playing style. Athios had loved the Portal series and couldn't help imagining herself creating tears in space-time. She could already see the potential and thought about how she would utilize the abilities both for combat and, more importantly, whenever she'd need a moment alone. It was important to always have a quick escape route in case you were outnumbered, or if someone was talking too much. She read over it again. And then a third time in a row.
"Fuck it," she said aloud. "If I hate it, I'll just restart and pick something else."
Her eyes hovered over the 'yes' option and she affirmed her decision with only the slightest, final hesitation.
Once this decision has been made, it cannot be reversed. Are you sure you wish to choose the Dimensionalist?
The Culling of Man: A litrpg adventure (Peril's Prodigy Book 1) Page 3
