Gravel crunched under Char’s feet as she hopped out of the cab of her truck for what would probably be the last time. She’d spent a sweaty, restless night in her bunk, tossing and turning so much that Lulu had abandoned the bed to curl up between the seats, instead. The truck may have been relatively safe, but without climate control, it was like sleeping in an oven. So, she’d packed up her pillows and blankets this morning. She tried to take the mattress, but received an error message stating that it was too large and that she would need to upgrade her storage.

  Lulu was growling at the buzzards on top of Steve’s truck. There were five of them now. There had only been three when they’d come back the evening before. The buzzards didn’t seem interested in them, and they weren’t attacking, so Char was leaving them to their business. She’d identified one of them and gotten:

  Scythe-Wing Buzzard

  Level 6

  They were too low-level to be any danger to her and Lulu, and she wasn’t just going to slaughter every creature she came across. She’d found a measure of catharsis in the fights that she’d had. The danger forced her to live in the moment, to push away all of the worries over the changes to her world, her long-term survival, her incandescent rage at the arrogant aliens who thought they had a right to her planet. It would be too easy to just mindlessly pursue level-ups, to chase after that next moment when she could stand victorious and feel powerful with a defeated foe before her.

  She couldn’t let herself go down that path. It made her feel powerful, but it was just a real-life version of the endorphin rush she got from completing a difficult boss fight in one of her games. As one clueless gaming company rep had phrased it, it gave her “a sense of pride and accomplishment.” But if it wasn’t in aid of furthering her long-term goals, it would be nothing more than empty thrill-seeking.

  She would finish her quest because she needed the weapon it promised, and she would try the dungeon because she needed to grow stronger and learn more about the new rules of the world, but then she would move on. She needed to find other people and get news, and she needed to try to get home, to see if any of her family still lived. After that… well, she wasn’t sure what the next steps would be, but she’d get it figured out.

  She pulled the Hunter’s Jerkin that she’d looted from the Moss Stag out of her inventory and examined it:

  [Hunter’s Jerkin]

  Leather (Light Armor, torso)

  Minimal armor: reduces damage by a small amount

  without hampering movement.

  Conditions: Humanoid. Body rank F.

  You meet the conditions to use this item.

  It was a sleeveless vest of soft leather, like buckskin in a mottled green and brown color. She pulled it on over her t-shirt and adjusted the laces until it was comfortable. It wasn’t much protection, but maybe it would keep her shirt from being shredded again. She’d had to throw away the clothes she’d been wearing yesterday because they weren’t much more than rags.

  Her quest stood at 20 of 30 corrupted creatures killed. They needed 10 more kills, and she hoped they could get that done and enter the dungeon today. This was the second morning since the world had gone crazy that she’d woken up in the same place. There were places she needed to be, and it felt like she was standing still.

  A quick whistle to get Lulu’s attention, and they were heading for the gate.

  ***

  Three hours later, Char leaned against a tree, panting to catch her breath. They’d found another cluster of six Dire Opossums, but this time they’d been able to bait them away and kill them a few at a time. They didn’t move all that fast, so kiting them had been easy. They were level 10 to 12 creatures, and Char was frustrated that she hadn’t gotten another level yet. After the Moss Stag, she had to have been close to one. Even the loot had been pitiful. She’d only gotten a few copper credits from them. Her blunt weapons skill had advanced from beginner to novice, at least.

  “You know what, Lu? I’m starting to think the Aldevari don’t want us just grinding out easy mobs.” Lulu cocked her head to the side at the mention of her name, but she didn’t have an opinion on the matter. Level 20 seemed so close, and yet so far away at the same time. She wanted to hurry up and get there to unlock the magic that it teased. If she was going to be stuck in a gamified world with awful toothy monsters, she wanted magic, damnit.

  They had followed the creek back towards the dungeon, and they’d only encountered that one group of creatures so far. They were going to have to go farther afield to find the last four creatures needed to finish the quest. She’d stuck near the creek since it was the source of the corruption, and made navigation easier, but it was time to venture away from it.

  Across the creek was a much more dense patch of forest. Char had avoided it before because it was on a slope, and the underbrush was thicker. There were places where they had to push through brush, and the branches snagged at them. The trees here were older and larger, some of them spreading out wide, and others soaring skyward.

  Char rounded a clump of trees and brush to find two cars sitting on a patch of asphalt, as if a section of a city street had been ripped from its place and plonked down here, complete with a short stretch of sidewalk and two parking meters. “Holy shit. When they said the world was being randomized, they weren’t joking around. This is nuts.” As she got closer, she noticed a dark stain on the asphalt that seemed to have spread from the rearmost car. At first, she thought the car must have been leaking, but as she rounded the car, she found the source of the liquid. It wasn’t oil.

  The body of a woman lay sprawled next to the car, keys still grasped in one pale hand. Her purse lay next to her, its contents scattered where it had fallen. Her clouded eyes stared off into the woods, unseeing. Two days dead, the body was starting to decay, and the sickly-sweet smell hit Char like a sledgehammer as the breeze shifted. Something had torn out her throat and her abdomen. Whatever had killed her had also eaten its fill.

  Char dropped to a knee and vomited. As she emptied her stomach, Lulu let out a deep growl, then started to bark. A flash of pale fur darted away from under the car where it had been hidden by the woman’s body. It vanished into a bush before Char could get a good look at it. A little smaller than Lulu, it had pale fur, a long tail, and ran with a clumsy gait, but that was all she’d been able to see.

  Lulu took off in pursuit of the animal, vanishing through the bush in turn. Char followed the sound, rounding the bush and cursing under her breath. She found Lulu growling and barking up a tree, standing on her hind legs with her front paws braced against the trunk. Something up in the branches of the tree hissed and chittered back. Looking up through the branches, Char could only catch the occasional flash of light fur marred with the tell-tale sores and lumps of corruption.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  She didn’t have any ranged options, so if she wanted to kill whatever it was, she’d have to go up after it. Her Identify Plants skill told her that the tree was a sycamore, so she was relatively sure it wouldn’t try to eat her if she climbed it. Sighing, she pulled out the first piece of gear the System had given her—the Tree Climber Gloves. She didn’t like the idea of going up after it, but whatever it was had eaten that woman, and Char couldn’t let that go.

  “Keep an eye out, Lulu. Don’t let anything sneak up on me while I’m up there.” She stowed the crowbar in one of her Quick Access slots and backed up several steps for a running start. She sprinted towards the tree and launched herself to grab one of the lower branches. She still wasn’t used to her improved strength and jumped higher than she anticipated, hitting the branch with her stomach and nearly folding around it, rather than barely catching it as she’d expected. “Oof!” The impact knocked the breath out of her, and she was glad there’d been no one other than Lulu around to see it.

  She pulled herself onto the branch and crouched there for a moment, getting her breath back. Then, edging to within a few feet of the trunk where the limbs were thicker, she looked upward to find the monster. It was several branches farther up, making the limb it was on bounce as its weight shifted. She could just see its tail through the boughs. The tail was white and bushy with darker yellow rings around it.

  Climbing a tree didn’t exactly lend itself to stealth. Char reached up to grab the next higher branch and pulled herself up. The branch bounced and shook as it took her weight. The creature above her moved, and its head appeared from between the leaves, peering down at her. Its fur was a pale yellow color with white patches where the black mask would have been on one of its normal cousins. Its eyes glowed a baleful red. It might have been cute if it wasn’t for the red stains around its muzzle, its bared rows of sharp teeth, and the lumps and oozes of corruption that patched its fur. She used Assess Foe:

  Corrupted Shadecoon

  Level 20

  She expected it to climb down to her, or leap on her, and she pulled her crowbar from its Quick Access slot to her left hand, but before she could switch it to her right hand, the Shadecoon vanished from its spot on the higher branch. It reappeared on her branch, in the space between her and the tree trunk, without physically crossing the space between.

  Then it leapt at her face.

  She swung at it awkwardly, but missed, not used to wielding a weapon in her left hand. She did get her right hand up to protect her face as the weight of the altered raccoon slammed into her. Its claws dug into her shoulders and chest, and its jaws clamped down on her hand. The weight of its impact sent her staggering backward on the branch, teetering off balance.

  She put a foot back, but instead of trying to catch herself, she used the foot to launch herself, Shadecoon first, into the trunk, crushing her attacker between her body and the tree. The crowbar tumbled from her hand, crashing to the ground twenty feet below. She used the hand in the monster’s mouth to slam its head back into the rough bark of the trunk, stunning it. The pain was incredible, but her resistance earned its keep, letting her shove the pain into the background as she fought.

  The Shadecoon’s claws ripped the skin of her arms as it scrabbled against her, sending rivulets of blood coursing down, but her new jerkin did its job. She summoned her pocket knife from the Quick Access into her left hand and cursed at herself for not storing it with the blade already open. Lulu barked and danced below, jumping and clawing at the bark of the tree, desperate to help her friend, but unable to climb despite her best efforts.

  Char slammed the creature’s head back again, doing more damage to her hand in the process. Her left hand fumbled for the thumb catch of the blade, trying to get it open. The Shadecoon’s eyes blazed, glowing brighter. These weren’t the pale red of an albino creature as she’d first thought. The red glow was an eldritch thing, magical, and she just knew it was about to launch some awful attack against her.

  There. Her thumb found the knob.

  Snick. The blade locked open.

  She snatched her head to the right as a wave of red energy pulsed out from the monster’s eyes. She avoided the center of the wave, but she was too close to avoid it altogether. As the edge of the wave passed over her, it was an icepick driven into her brain. A tsunami of fear and grief washed over her as a new debuff icon appeared on her HUD.

  If the Shadecoon hadn’t been latched onto her, she might have given in to the fear and run. Every bone in her body wanted to either flee or drop to the ground in a heap and weep for all that she’d lost, but the pain kept her anger hot, and her anger won. She lashed out, instead. The three-inch blade of the pocketknife plunged into the belly of the beast, again and again and again, until it fell limp, but the emotional anguish was still there. Even after the kill notification, she kept stabbing until the corpse puffed away into dust.

  She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, sobbing and screaming, before the psychic trauma debuff faded. Lulu was howling from the forest floor below her. As she came back to herself, she leaned her forehead against the bark of the trunk and just took a moment to breathe. When she felt like she was in control of herself again, she climbed down.

  As soon as her feet touched the ground, her knees turned to jelly and she dropped. Lulu was there, snuffling and whining, licking at her face, her tail wagging in joy and concern. Char hugged her, holding her tight as the last shockwaves of the psychic attack faded.

  She was covered in blood. Her arms were shredded, and her right hand was a gory mess. Her health was down to 30%. When she and Lulu had both calmed a bit, Char sat back against the tree and folded her legs into a meditation pose. She needed the calm of her beach as much as she needed the accelerated healing. “Keep watch, Lu,” she said as she closed her eyes.

  It took her a while to get into the right mindset, but she eventually found her sanctuary. She stood there on the sand, staring out at the crashing waves and roiling clouds, letting the storm winds blow away the lingering emotional crud of the Shadecoon’s psychic attack. She stayed as long as she could, letting the charged peace at the storm’s edge heal her soul as the new magic of the world repaired her body.

  ###

  When Char came out of her meditation trance, she checked her notifications.

  You have killed

  Corrupted Shadecoon — Level 20

  Experience gained.

  ————————

  Congratulations! You have gained a level.

  You are level 18.

  You have gained 5 free stat points.

  She didn’t have to think about where to put the points. After that mental attack, she wanted more willpower to hold off the next one, so she put all five points there. Losing control like that had shaken her, and she promised herself that she would find some way to protect herself from similar attacks in the future. She also realized that this was the first magical attack she’d seen from all the creatures she’d fought so far, and, aside from the Opossum Matron, it was the first creature over level 20. That couldn’t be a coincidence.

  Her arms were sticky with dried blood, so she took a few minutes to wipe herself down with the wet rag from her inventory. When she pulled it out, she was surprised to find that it was still wet, exactly as it had been when she’d stored it. If that meant what she thought it did, then she wouldn’t have to worry about her food going bad, at least. She’d have to test it when she had a chance, but it was one more thing on her list of stuff to get around to later.

  Upon examining her right glove, she found that it had holes punched through it from the Shadecoon’s teeth, but it was still in decent shape. It was probably the reason she still had a hand at all. She decided to leave the gloves on, even if she didn’t need them for tree climbing. A little bit of armor was better than none at all.

  Getting to her feet, she decided to head back to the cars and check them out. She didn’t have high hopes for finding anything useful, but it was worth a look, at least.