Char stood over the headless corpse of the Bonepicker, breathing hard. The wound in her hip felt frozen and wrong, and she shivered despite the warmth of the sun beating down on her. She limped over to Lulu, who was shaking her head and pawing at her muzzle, whining in pain.
Lulu’s gums were turning black with frostbite. Char dropped to her knees with a wince. She could feel the numbness spreading in her hip, and didn’t doubt that it would be turning black as well. She pushed as much Vitality into Lulu as she could spare, watching as the blackness that stained her mouth receded and the flesh turned pink and healthy once again.
Her own mouth became an agony of burning cold and spreading numbness, but she’d known it was coming and was braced for it. The pain she took from Lulu faded quickly, but the burning numbness in her hip continued to spread.
She stood. The pain made her unsteady, but she had to check the building before she could pause to tend the wound. Trying not to be too obvious with her limp, she patted Lulu on the side, then walked into the store, sword held ready.
The air in the store was cool. The Bonepicker may have been a horror, but it had also been an ambulatory air-conditioner. With the huge windows at the front of the store, there was no way to avoid silhouetting herself, but she had to pause anyway to let her eyes adjust to the gloom. She listened, but the room was quiet. The only sound came from Lulu’s claws on the tile floor.
Once her eyes had adjusted, Char made her way slowly toward the back of the room. The shelves were mostly empty, and it didn’t take her long to realize the pattern in what had been moved and what remained on the shelves. The Bonepicker had taken everything edible and piled it in a hoard at the back of the store.
Empty wrappers and packages littered the periphery of the pile, but there was plenty there that hadn’t been opened yet. It had been stacked with care as far from the door as possible. Char could only assume the Bonepicker had done this to make its windfall easier to defend. That made her wonder how intelligent the creature had been. She shook her head. She wasn’t going to feel sorry for a monster that tried to kill her.
There was a short hallway between the drink coolers and the cashier’s counter. A heavy silver door opened into the coolers, and two regular doors revealed a bathroom and a small office. A fire door at the back of the hall opened to the outside. Char stepped outside and checked it once it closed behind her to make sure it was locked. She could open it from the inside with the fire-bar, but nothing was going to sneak up on her from the back entrance.
She limped back around the building. Her health bar wasn’t rising, and the cold in her hip wasn’t going away. She’d gotten in the habit of ignoring her notifications, especially when she was in a fight. Now, she needed to check them to see what was going on with her wounds. But first, she wanted to get inside and make sure they were safe. She had the feeling she was going to need her new spell, and she wanted to make sure she could relax enough to focus on getting it right.
When she reached the front of the mercado, she looted the corpse of the Bonepicker. It gave her a handful of silver credits and a [Weak Mana Tonic].
Lulu was still sniffing around inside the store, and she hadn’t gone on alert, so Char decided that the place was safe enough for now. Char pulled the front door closed. The latch was broken, but she had zip-ties in her tool bag. A couple of those would keep the wind from blowing it open, at least. Thankfully, the shelves weren’t bolted to the floor, so it was easy enough to slide a set to block the doorway. They wouldn’t stop a determined invader, but the thin metal would make a racket if anything, or anyone, tried to get in.
It felt strange to be in a space as familiar as any cookie-cutter convenience store, only to see it stripped bare and lifeless, like a body on a morgue slab. Every footstep echoed, and she kept expecting a cashier to tell her she shouldn’t be there.
Her hip ached, and the cold was settling into her bones like it never intended to leave. Her entire leg was starting to prickle with pins and needles. She limped around behind the counter and pulled a blanket from her inventory. She could have gone into the office and put another door between the two of them and the world, but she wanted the light from the windows. She didn’t want to sit in a dark room with no way to see what might be out there.
Her health bar wasn’t dropping, but it wasn’t climbing, either. She’d healed Lulu, and now she had about 40% of her health remaining. She needed to know why her health wasn’t returning, but to get to that notification, she had to wade through all of the others.
The notifications from the boss fight were all still waiting for her. The fight that had nearly killed her.
She’d hated using social media, hated picking up her phone and seeing red dots on her apps to let her know that people were waiting for her to see every inane thing they posted. It felt like an imposition. She knew it wasn’t rational; she was under no obligation to look at and like every post, but it was a tiny annoyance that had festered until she’d figured out how to turn them all off.
Notifications from the System were starting to feel the same. They were a constant nagging irritation, like sand in her shoes. But, she couldn’t blow them off like she could blow off someone’s Instagram posts of their lunch or the latest not-so-funny meme.
She was procrastinating, and she knew it, but she still wasn’t sure why. Was it just resentment, or an unwillingness to revisit a traumatic event, or was there more to it? She wasn’t sure. She did know that just sitting here dithering about wasn’t getting anything accomplished.
With a sigh, she flicked open the stack and started reading. The first two were just Assess Foe and Identify Plants advancing to Novice rank, and she flicked them closed with barely a glance. The next were new skills, and titles to go with them, so she slowed down to read them:
New Skill Learned
Artificer
Beginner
You’ve learned to put bits and pieces
together in a useful way.
—————————————————————
New Title Earned.
Improv (Silver)
You created a novel tool with what you had
on hand, and it worked.
+3 Dexterity
+3 Intelligence
—————————————————————
New Skill Learned
Dodge
Beginner
The best way to not get hit is to not be there.
——————————————————————
New Title Earned.
Hail Mary (Silver)
You had almost no chance of success, but you
tried anyway, and you lived.
+3 Recovery
+3 Resilience
—————————————————————
You have killed
Vasculex-Kudzu Hybrid Mother-Root
Level 26
Elite
Experience gained
Title gained
———————————————————
New Title Earned.
David vs Goliath (Bronze)
You killed an Elite creature.
+3 Strength
————————————————————
You have completed a Quest:
Something Toxic II
Valves closed: 3 of 3
Source Destroyed: 1 of 1
Rewards: Experience, Armor, Domain Affinity Core
Experience gained
[Leather Greaves of the Root] recieved
Choose a Domain Affinity Core
from the list:
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
Earth
Poison
Lightning
Mind
That was a surprise. She hadn’t expected to be able to choose the Domain she wanted. All of them except Poison were on her list of Resonant Affinities, so she ruled out Poison right away. It didn’t appeal to her anyway. She preferred to be more direct than that.
She didn’t really like Mind, either. The idea of messing with someone’s mind turned her stomach. It would probably help her defend against mental attacks, but if that was all she was using it for, she’d be better off getting gear or building up her resistances. And, now that she knew it was a thing, she’d certainly be looking for ways to defend against it.
Earth had a lot of possibilities. It would probably offer a lot of defense, construction, and offense, but it just didn’t sing to her the way her last option did.
There was something about the idea of wielding lightning that appealed to her on a visceral level. She remembered the Thunderbird in her vision, and the feeling of the lightning coursing through her with cleansing power. It was no contest.
She picked Lightning. The Domain Core appeared in her inventory next to the new greaves, which, she had just learned, were basically shin-guards. These had an enchantment to reduce knock-back and give her steadier footing on rough terrain. Handy.
She itched to absorb the Lightning Core, but she made herself finish going through her notifications. Her hip ached, her leg was starting to feel wooden and distant, and her health still wasn’t improving. The new Domain Affinity could wait until that was dealt with.
Congratulations! You have gained a level.
You are level 21.
You have gained 5 free stat points.
+1 Speed, +1 Dexterity, +3 Endurance.
——————————————————————
Congratulations!
You have completed your first dungeon.
You gain:
[Weak Healing Tonic]
[Weak Mana Tonic]
[Weak Stamina Tonic]
———————————————————————
New Title Earned.
Delver I (Bronze)
Upgradeable.
Explore more dungeons to upgrade.
+3 Endurance
———————————————————————
New Title Earned.
Dungeon Trailblazer (Silver)
You were the first to complete a virgin dungeon.
+3 Perception
+3 Willpower
—————————————————————————
New Title Earned.
Second Dungeoneer (Unique)
You are the second person on your world
to complete a dungeon.
+5 Resilience
+5 Endurance
+5 Perception
+3% to Resilience, Endurance, and Perception
“Huh, only the second, huh?” She would have expected being second to stir her competitive instincts, but instead, it made her feel better. It was good to know that she wasn’t the only person out on the bleeding edge of things. Others were fighting and getting stronger. She wasn’t alone. She wondered who had snagged the First Dungeoneer title, and if she would ever know.
You have killed
Juvenile Razortusk — level 12
Experience gained
———————————————————————
New Skill learned:
Field Dressing
Beginner
If you’re going to kill it, you may as well
use it.
—————————————————————
You have been cursed.
Winter’s Touch
Wounds infected with this curse
will not heal without magical aid.
-5 speed
————————————————————
You have killed
Bonepicker — level 25
Experience earned.
So. A curse. That was new. Char slumped back against the wall with a sigh. She wanted to sleep for a week. She leaned her head back, rubbed at her eyes, and tried to suppress a groan of frustration.
She had two healing tonics, and she considered using one of them. But, as much as she wanted to, as easy as it would be, she knew that was the wrong call. She had a healing spell, if she could just figure out how to use it. Using up a finite resource like the tonics when she had another option would be foolish. Especially when she didn’t know if it would work. Did the tonics count as magical healing? They sure seemed magical to her, but it was the system's opinion that counted.
She was tired, and she was hurting, and her emotions were bubbling close to the surface again. Everything felt like an imposition. Every tiny annoyance made her want to explode. “Adulting is hard, Char. Suck it up,” she whispered. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then she got to work.
The mana was slippery. It wanted to go its own way. She had to think in ways she wasn’t accustomed to, splitting her focus between the pattern, holding the mana in place, and keeping her intention in mind as she worked. She failed. Again and again, she failed. But she kept trying. Even after the mana looped back on itself and caused a backlash that poured through her like broken glass in sour milk, she didn’t give up.
Sunset poured warm, ruddy light through the windows, washing the store in red light and long shadows. Her hip ached with frozen pain. Her mind felt like it had been used as a dishrag, wrung out, and hung to dry. But she did it.
Finally, it all came together. The last twist of mana snapped into place. For a single, glorious instant, the complex pattern of mana hung in her hand, complete and beautiful. Then, the spell flowed down into her hip, sinking into her flesh and knitting it back together. The warmth of the spell drove out the chill of the curse. She could feel the spell pulling more mana from her Core as it worked, and she watched on her HUD as her mana bar dropped and her health bar climbed.
She sighed with relief as the pain and cold and the wrongness of her wound were washed away. Lulu had curled up next to her at some point while she’d been lost in learning the spell, and the dog lifted her head to look at Char as muscles held tense with pain relaxed, her head tilted to the side as if asking a question and, her ears flopped over. Char smiled and scratched her head, hitting the spot behind her ears that made her hind leg twitch. Char leaned in and whispered to Lulu, as if telling her a juicy secret, “I can do magic!”
Lulu chuffed. Char grinned so wide she thought her face might split open.
Char took a few moments to bask in her accomplishment and enjoy the absence of pain. Then, she dove into her menus to search for something. It took a little poking around in her settings menu, but she eventually found it. There was an option to consolidate similar notifications, and she toggled it on. She adjusted a few other settings to remove the flashing colors in her peripheral vision when she had unread stuff, leaving only a few of the most important and time-sensitive notifications able to pop up if she was in combat. She would still see a small, unobtrusive scroll icon in the bottom right corner of her vision when she had things to read, but the rave effect wouldn’t be there to wear on her nerves and distract her.
Still smiling, she pulled out the [Lightning Domain Affinity Core]. It was a crystal orb, the same size as the Flesh Core had been. This one was a translucent blue-white, and it occasionally flashed with tiny bolts of lightning within its depths. She focused her intention on it, and the message popped up:
Domain Core detected.
Do you wish to awaken an Affinity?
(Caution! This is a permanent action. Be certain.)
Y/N
She chose ‘Yes.’ Just as with the Flesh Core, the Lightning Core sublimated into light, only, this time, it was an actinic white, like the after-image of a lightning flash. The hair on her arms stood on end, and the hair on her head started to float, lifted by a static charge. The light zipped into her Core, and her Core changed. The power settled into a spot of its own within her Core, near to, but separate from the place where her Flesh Domain Affinity sat. She felt a buzzing, invigorating charge rush through her, settling into her nerves and muscles and making her want to move.
Lightning Domain Affinity awakened.
Your Lightning Domain Affinity is Rank 1
You may now learn spells from the Lightning Domain.
Your Speed Attribute is 20% more effective.
Your Intelligence Attribute is 10% more effective.
You gain +3 to Speed, Intelligence, and Spirit.
For each level you gain, you will receive:
+2 Speed
+1 Intelligence
+2 Spirit
Increase the rank of your affinity to improve these bonuses.
———————————————————————
Your Thunderbird bloodline has advanced:
+3%
————————————————————————
For achieving a new Affinity rank, you have been
granted a new spell pattern:
Please choose 1:
Taser Touch
Mastery of this pattern will allow the user
to spend mana to stun and damage an opponent with a
Melee attack.
Possible Advancement Paths:
Shocking Aura, Lightning Shield
Arc
Mastery of this pattern will allow the user
to spend mana on a ranged lightning attack.
Possible Advancement Paths:
Chain Lightning, Heaven’s Wrath
Reflex Pulse
Mastery of this pattern will allow the user
to channel mana to increase their reaction speed.
Possible Advancement Paths:
Lightning Reflexes, Combat Storm
Char read over her options and considered them. Once again, she wanted them all. But, in the end, she decided to cover one of her weaknesses. She was good at up-close combat, and her Foresight already gave her an edge on reaction speed. Doubling up on reactions would be powerful, and she seriously considered that choice, but decided against it for now. If she got a second chance at it, though, she’d snap up Reflex Pulse.
Right now, she didn’t have any way to attack at range, and Arc would give her that option. The fight with the Mother-Root and the curse from the Bonepicker had driven home that melee wasn’t always the best tactic. Besides, shooting out lightning bolts would just be plain awesome. And with an advancement path called Heaven’s Wrath? Yeah. She had to see what that was going to be.
The pattern appeared and burned itself into her mind. Where the Mend Flesh pattern was smooth and organic, this pattern was all jagged lines and abrupt edges, but now that she had some idea of what she was doing, she was pretty sure she could master it quickly.
She was too tired to try just then, even though she wanted to. It was getting hard to keep her eyes open. She glanced over to the pile of food in the back corner of the store. There were still things that needed doing, but, hit with a jaw-cracking yawn, she decided that they could wait for morning. She pulled her pillow out of her inventory and curled up next to Lulu. She was asleep almost before her head hit the pillow.
