Equalize
Page 2
Not even attempting to read the message, Rocky chose to reach out in an attempt to touch the floating screen. His hand passed through it as if it was a projection or a figment of his imagination. The only effect was a strange, static feeling where his arm went through the box. Other than causing his hair to stand on end, which he could chalk up to goosebumps, nothing else happened.
Fraggle rock! I am going insane. I could really use Dad right about now.
He removed his forearm from the screen and hesitantly began reading the text displayed.
Gaia welcomes you and congratulates you for making it past your VIIIth orbit of Odin!
You have now been granted access to your personal interface to help you navigate this world of titans. Become strong, and help Gaia fend off her siblings.
To check your personal interface, please use thought and intention commands as developed per the Atlantian Court Member Contracts Section 1.
The page flashed out as soon as he finished reading again, but now there was a yellow light flashing in its place. Rocky squinted his eyes and felt his stomach doing backflips. This felt far too familiar, far too similar to games he had played, books he had read, and just a general feeling of deja vu that he couldn't get over.
It can’t be…
Steeling his resolve, Rocky decided to glance at the lemon-colored, flashing light. A screen popped up, and surprise, surprise, this one was a yellow box.
Code Yellow
You have entered a zone where Ether is far too concentrated for your level. Please consider turning back.
Warning code yellow per Statutes of Atlantis
Code Orange
You have entered a zone where the Ether is unstable and monster evolution and warping is likely to occur. We would advise you to flee.
Warning code orange per Statutes of Atlantis
Code Red
You have entered a zone where the Ether is chaotic. It is likely actively changing the landscape, vegetation, and creatures. Activate your beacon of disaster and begin to flee in whatever direction seems safest to you. Good luck…
Warning code red per Statutes of Atlantis
Each time a message had closed, Rocky had glanced back to the more ominous and insistent flashing corner to open the next. The last message made his heart stop and seemed to literally be telling him that the best course of action was to use himself as a warning for others and to get the truck out of dodge.
Rocky pinched the bridge of his nose and focused on his breathing. Thanks to the warnings, his headache had returned and brought friends: hyperventilation and heart fibrillation.
After a few moments of sitting still, eyes shut against the world, he was forced to make a decision based on the warnings.
Rocky realized it didn’t matter how dire a situation he was in; he didn’t have any other recourse but to leave. He tossed some wood on to the smoldering coals as fire would probably be helpful, especially with dusk fast approaching.
After he watched a small flame lick up the side of the newly added fuel, Rocky stood and looked around the clearing. He would probably need a torch, so he grabbed a nearby, arm-sized branch and placed only one end of it into the fire.
After he had taken care of the fire, he darted from the pit, feeling like he had just turned off the last light in the basement and needed to escape unseen terrors. Then in perfect mimicry of a terrified child, Rocky picked up the nearby axe in a gesture closer to that of a toddler needing a blanky to ward off monsters than that of a man picking up a dangerous weapon. When he put his hands on the axe, the bottom right blinked again—this time a dull gray.
Rocky groaned at the new colored light and clutched the axe a little tighter. Now that he had an axe, he felt his shoulders drop and his heart begin to slow as he breathed out slowly.
A crack from the logs in the fire made him jump and clutch the axe tighter still.
What was that?
When he landed, cheeks flushing bright red, his heart sped up again, and he sheepishly decided to investigate the gray, flashing light.
You have picked up a Wood Axe.
Wood Axe
Quality: Poor (Combination)
You now own a Wood Axe.
Squinting Rocky looked at his nearby hatchet and picked it up.
You have picked up a Hatchet
Hatchet
Quality: Average (Steel)
You now own a Hatchet.
The hatchet was actually an axe Rocky used in axe throwing and had been taken care of much more thoroughly than the weightier felling axe. Yet he was still shocked to see that it was of relatively better quality.
Now wide-eyed, Rocky rushed into the rented cabin to pick up his belongings. The gray indicator pulsed faster with each new item picked up, but he didn’t open the messages right away; instead, he just blindly shoved the items back into his somewhat unpacked backpack.
Once all of his belongings were back in his possession, he decided to check to the alerts and noticed a nifty summarize button.
You now own a Backpack.
You now own Zippo lighter. You now own clothes set (x5). You now own cell phone. You now own naughty magazine. You now own mesh cooler bag. You now own sports bottle (water). You now own water bottle (plastic) (x3). You now own folding chair + storage sleeve. You now own Swiss Army knife. You now own 2017 Ford Fiesta. You now own survival knife.
Rocky noticed that his cell phone was one of the items on the list and immediately pulled it out of the front pocket of his pack in hopes it had service. Algonquin Park is massive, and while parts of it did get minimal service, mostly, it was a cellular dead zone. While being separated from the digital world was one of his favorite parts of this trip, now his fists clenched and shook as he saw ‘No Service’ flashing on the screen.
A moment later, he wiped a frustrated tear from his eye as he realized he needed to trek out of the woods before he could contact his family. Rocky didn’t have much in this world, but his family was by far the most important. Without dad around, he needed to be there to protect them. He felt a resolve begin to form inside of him, and he clenched his teeth as it threatened to force immediate action. Rocky violently shoved the useless cell phone into the front pocket of his bag and turned toward his kayak. It still sat near the water where it had been pulled ashore the previous day, paddle laying beside it. Since it was still there, he looked around what he could see of Algonquin Park.
It became very apparent that the day was quickly dimming towards dusk.
Coconut milk’s pulp… because darkness is going to be the most conducive thing to help my questionable sanity.
With night approaching and him now finished butchering his packing job, it was time to think about makeshift weapons. With that thought, Rocky grabbed a nearby long and relatively straight stick about the same length as he was tall. He jabbed one end of it into the fire, thinking about the fire-hardened spears he had seen made on TV.
He swapped the spear shaft stick with his makeshift “torch” and groaned; all he had accomplished was burning the last hand width of the log off.
Ballerina’s stubbed toe! How did they do it in the movies again? Was it wrapped in cloth?
He pulled out his oldest shirt and a bunch of other items accidentally tumbled from his poorly packed backpack. He tore the shirt into strips. Looking at the pieces, he worried that the strips would just burn off in a burst of heat and leave him without any sort of sustained light.
His eyes tracked quickly over the campsite, and Rocky realized he needed something that would slow the burn. That was when his eyes alighted on the bottle of extremely tempting vodka he was supposed to have started into last night. He dashed over and picked up the bottle and received another notification.
You now own a bottle of distilled spirits.
Sure, have a drink. That will help!
Rocky’s eyes narrowed at the added text, but he chose to ignore it.
Instead, he quickly ground the thick log into the dirt to remove the s
moldering bits of the wood before wrapping the cloth strips around the end. He then liberally doused the fabric with a healthy serving of vodka before leaning his new torch against a nearby stump. He received a new notification that made his lips compress and his eyes relax.
You now own Makeshift Torch
Makeshift Torch
Burn time (<15 minutes)
After his first success, he rushed around, found more suitable components, and made four more just in case.
You now own Makeshift Torch (x5)
Makeshift Torch
Burn time (<15 minutes)
Once he finished, Rocky felt his back straighten and his heart slow. Because he felt an intense desire for speed, he looked desperately over to his kayak. He forcibly pushed down the urge to rush out of the campsite and decided to first check the other blinking corners of his vision.
Please be some good news…
The other three corners were all flashing yellow, and he really hoped that it was the yellow of achievement or happiness.
He started with the bottom left.
Rockland Barkclay
Level 1
Class Selection: Pending
Skill Points: Unassigned (Waiting on Class)
Health Points: 100/100
Ether Pool: 100/100
You have 5 stat points and 1 skill point to distribute.
Stamina
10
Strength
12
Agility
6
Dexterity
9
Intelligence
10
Wisdom
6
Charisma
8
Luck
5
Would you like to assign stat points now?
Yes
No
Chapter Two
Rocky felt the bottom of his world drop out and he sat down suddenly. The flashing ‘Yes’ at the bottom of the notification combined with the overload of information had him skip over class selection and skills. His brain could only take in so much, and currently, his eyes were glued on, “Would you like to assign stat points now?”
No way! With just a mental click I can become stronger, faster, or smarter than I was before?
This experience was surreal, and unfortunately, without someone else to compare his stats to, it was impossible to determine if they were high or low. Considering he had been an athlete his entire life and worked out daily, perhaps some or even all were above average.
Rocky pinched himself and was forced to determine he wasn’t imagining this. Steeling his resolve once more, he decided to assign the free statistic points. Rocky had often spent long nights playing video games and even sometimes considered them a partial cause of his failure in sports. The life of a professional athlete was a perpetual grind every minute of every day, and stealing long hours late at night for an “addiction”, as his coach had called it, wasn’t conducive to waking up early to train. At least not when you’re pushing thirty.
Playing video games had taught him the importance of strategy and theory crafting, but he also had two problems currently. First, he had no idea what raising his stats would do. Second, this wasn’t a game. So, he couldn’t die and respawn. Probably. Also, if on his hike out he needed those stats, he was absolutely sure that he wasn’t going to have time to assign them.
With a shrug, Rocky tried to push the yes button, only to see his finger slide right through the screen.
So… I am going to guess that a ten in Intelligence is a low score. It said thought and intention commands. Dimwit.
He tried to "mentally" click the button. It worked. The numbers changed to the color green and had a plus and minus beside them. The minus was grayed out while the plus was vivid green and inviting.
Rocky experimented by adding and subtracting numbers from categories. The ex-athlete had been above average in Strength his entire life, and thinking he knew what that stat meant, he skipped over it. Due to his Strength score, he assumed anything above ten would be a relatively high stat, so for now, he ignored any that were above or near that benchmark, which left Agility, Charisma, Luck, and Wisdom. Three of which he couldn't even begin to comprehend.
Agility was the only one of the four he thought he might understand, and he hoped it was pure speed or something similar. Considering he was a lumbering ox in sports, it made sense that it would be one of his lowest stats.
He ignored the other three for now and crossed his fingers in hopes he wasn't making a huge mistake. To test his theory, he put one point into Agility and accepted the changes.
A rush of heat suffused Rocky’s body with a tingling breaking out across his skin. Once the moment ended, he began to move his arms around. He definitely felt faster. It might have been his imagination, so he dumped the other four points into Agility and clicked accept.
The feeling was amplified ten times over as his skin burned. His muscles elongated and ripped, and since he was already sitting, he just watched the change with his head tilted quizzically. His muscles were screaming as if they were being stretched a little too far. He could do without the pain but definitely loved the feeling of exhilaration.
Well, this beats the hell out of working out. Probably even better than steroids!
Breaking the relative silence, a loud crack of splintering wood sounded behind Rocky, and the ones that followed made him turn his head. He froze. He found a scene out of a campfire horror story that transfixed his gaze, and his jaw dropped.
The cottage he just vacated began to stand up.
Rocky remained frozen on the ground as he watched the cottage’s wood, metal, and shingles flow over each other, creating a vaguely humanoid shape.
Ethereal smoke began to swirl towards the creature’s chest. As it coalesced and gained shape, it roughly resembled a baseball made of glass. The swirling blue of the smoke continued inside the glass sphere until a black substance oozed over the luminescence, obscuring the core from view. Blinking, Rocky realized that the shingles had begun to melt and the tar was running like molasses over the torso of the living cottage. It looked like it was attempting to protect the monster from neck to waist.
Rocky continued to stare, stuck between a fight and flight response, never having truly needed the ancient reptilian response before today. The man stood, stupidly staring at the new creature as it glacially formed arms.
When the nails and other metal from the cabin began to melt and fuse into dangerous looking weapons, Rocky had seen enough.
His flight response finally kicked in, and he frantically grabbed his backpack. Still staring at the cabin creature, he desperately stuffed the few items back in that had fallen out. As soon as he completed his frantic re-packing, his body began running before his eyes had stopped staring at the bizarre sight of the cabin coming to life.
A few steps into his run, his head whipped around, the need to look out for obstacles finally outweighing the transfixing oddity. His eyes immediately narrowed when he found his wooden kayak, or what used to be his wooden kayak, walking towards him. The only reason he managed to recognize the monster was that it was wielding the double-sided paddle as if it was a quarterstaff. His sprint carried him straight towards the tall, homicidal, Gumby looking creature.
With only a moment left to decide what to do, Rocky turned his burgeoning run into a hockey stop, his shoes sliding over the dewy grass and eating up more ground between him and this new opponent.
Knowing what was behind him and feeling that taking on the smaller kayak would be safer, he made his decision. In an awkward motion that ate up nearly all of his remaining time, he dropped the wood axe and backpack to the ground before pulling the hatchet and survival knife from his belt. He moved to chop down with the hatchet only to have a large paddle narrowly miss him. The sound of the air being displaced as the massive paddle sailed by served as a testament to the blow’s strength. He was forced to jump left as the backside of the paddle careened towards him which caused
his own follow-up strike to come up short of the intended blow.
Rocky’s dodge took him to the left side of the creature. He tried to follow up with a stab using his survival knife, then blinked when the kayak’s wood flexed out of the way of the knife with ease.
At that moment, the creature flipped gears and went all out, and Rocky was glad he had put his points into Agility. The paddle bent as the broad blades rowed through the air. Even with the air slowing the strikes, Rocky was clipped numerous times by the weapon.
As the clips and dodging continued, Rocky quickly realized that he was not going to be able to beat this creature unless he took a chance.
He wasn’t sure how long this fight had been going on, but Rocky could still hear the creaks and cracks from the massive creature behind him. He decided to try to dive in and immobilize the creature with brute force. He pushed off with his back foot, lunging at the kayak. He suddenly felt a massive force collide with his upper chest, sending him flying backward.
As Rocky sailed through the air, he played the scene over in his head. It had happened too quickly for his brain to register the first time. In his mind’s eye, he saw the Gumby golem had let go of the paddle with one hand and punched him in the chest.
Still airborne but starting his descent, the pain caught up with him. He coughed up a warm liquid which tasted like iron. It was blood, and his brain went into overdrive.
This thing is too strong. How the hell am I supposed to fight a flexible wooden kayak from hell?
A massive crack sounded as Rocky landed, and his breath was forced out of him. Through the ringing in his ears, he could just make out the tinkle of a glass bottle rolling away from his shoulder. Turning his head to the sound, he realized he had almost landed in the fire.