Mason slept fitfully, fearing heâd fall off his uncomfortable branch. Heâd seemed to wake at every growl and crack in the woods, never finding anything worth the concern. But at least he woke alive.
[Congratulations, you have survived your first night in New Earth! Experience earned. Congratulations, you have reached level four!]
New Earth, huh? Mason grinned, eager now for any advantage to complete his task and earn the reward. He accessed his profile. Again not much had changed except his powers.
[Level available. Please select your power and choose your power enhancement, or they will be selected by default in one hour.]
âYeah, yeah, stop rushing me.â
He looked at the options and frowned. The new power wasnât an âoptionâ at all. There was only one choiceâa power called âNature Affinityâ, which just said âbrings many associated benefitsâ. Great. How wonderfully descriptive. Also, what the hell was a power enhancement?
[Tutorial inquiryâenhancing a power typically not only gives it a boost in power, but also adds a specific function, such as adding a mana component to a physical strike.]
Interesting, Mason thought. Well, he was tempted to choose Predatorâs Strike for the same reasons heâd taken the power in the first place. But as he started cleaning up his traps and make-shift bed, he decided it was time to think a little more long term.
You couldnât always kill an opponent, but disabling him was often just as good, or better. And you likely didnât need a good bow or arrows to do that. Plus Crippling Strike could be used in melee. Trusting his instincts, he enhanced Crippling Strike. As soon as he did, it popped up with new text listing options: A) Enhance both the severity and duration of the cripple. B) Overcome nearly any form of resistance to the effect. C) add a disorienting pain effect to the cripple.
Hmm. They all sounded like good choices. But what he really wanted from his cripple was to really knock something out of the fight, or slow it as much as possible. So an overall bump seemed the best choice to him. With a slight cringe of early regret, he selected A) and watched the windows close.
He checked his weapons. He checked the arrows in his quiverâonly five left, then the riser and limbs of his bow. So far so good. No cracks or warping, at least, and the same was true of his goblin dagger. His wounds were totally healed, but he was hungry, and heâd have killed for a glass of water. He gave in and risked the creek heâd found on the East side of the clearing, drinking just enough to be able to stop thinking about his thirst.
Then he crept back to the clearing, hoping to make a little progress clearing out the gnolls. But it looked the same. Damn near exactly the same. Goblins skittered around their tunnels, hurling ranged attacks and hissing curses. The gnolls wandered around looking for ambushes, occasionally leaping onto some doomed goblin and tearing him apart.
After a few minutes, a person
materialized
right where Mason had come up from his bunker. The young man looked around with wide eyes, lifting a sword as he clearly tried to decide where the hell to go. Mason very nearly leapt out and told him to run over, but he knew a distraction wouldnât much help what was about to probablyâŠ
A goblin ambusher leapt out from behind a rock, and jammed his knife straight through the young manâs chest.
So yeah. It was exactly the same.
Mason sighed and left the clearing to hunt for more lone gnolls. For all he knew, he may have been making no impact on the âtribal fightâ, but at least he was doing one thing: he was getting stronger. Practice alone was improving his aim and strength with the bow. His levels and therefore his powers were improving by leaps and bounds. And he was getting more and more familiar with the gnolls themselves, and how they thought, reacted, and fought.
He killed three more without getting touched, finishing all three with a final Predatorâs Strike, which increased the strength and speed of his attack. Using the power seemed to surge his body, particularly his knife-arm, with a burst of almost foreign power. It was like some magnetic force took his weapon and flung it faster than he could move. Though the result was disorienting, it was also undoubtedly effective, as it often drove his arm fist-deep into the gnolls. Mostly he worried heâd snap his knife. But so far so good.
His new ânature affinityâ didnât seem to do a damn thing, but other than that, all his powers were amazing. The new and improved Crippling Strike brought the gnolls to a staggering slink, and heâd sometimes gotten bored waiting for the thing to return to any semblance of its normal speed as he tested.
It was time for a harder challenge.
First he set a couple snare traps made of vines, just in case things got out of hand and he needed somewhere to run. Then he looked for two gnolls perfectly spaced without more of their kind in the area. Then with a deep breath, and another, he loosed a Power Shot at the first gnoll, losing another arrow. It struck dead center in the beastâs side, nearly bowling it over as it staggered and roared in rage before it turned straight for him. He Crippling Strikeâd the secondâs hamstring, then put away his bow.
Then he cracked his neck, and started counting. Five seconds, he told himself, five seconds to kill the first.
It came in fast and without concern for its own protection, swiping with a vicious claw straight at Masonâs face. He ducked and sidestepped, slashing at the creatureâs side, then leaping at its back with his dagger before it could turn. He plunged the knife into its shoulder and hung on as it spun like a dog chasing its tail. It would have thrown him, so he let go, slashing a Predatorâs Strike in the tiny window before his enemy struck. His arm swung in a blur, his knife ramming like a cleaver into the gnollâs chest, half snapping, half severing its collarbone and knocking it back. Its claws raked an inch from Masonâs face, then it collapsed.
Sharp pain lit Masonâs side, and he leapt away. The other gnoll had arrived.
It limped after him, and again he withdrew, judging the creatureâs reach with a few practice swipes. Then he attacked. With just enough space to strike and step away, he led the gnoll on a deadly chase before Predatorâs Strike at last re-charged, and he moved in for the kill.
[Experience awarded! You have killed two gnoll scouts (medium threat). Congratulations, you have reached level five!]
[Title earned: Early lead. You are the first player in the world to reach level five. +2 to an appropriate statistic.]
Mason trembled with the joy and adrenaline of victory, and allowed himself a moment to enjoy it. The first player to reach level five? That was somewhat hard to believe, but he saw no reason for the system to lie. Then as usual he moved away from the bloody kills until he felt safe and alone enough to check his profile.
Mason Nimitz
Class: Hunter
Strength:6
Dexterity:9
Vitality:7
Intellect:4
Will:6
Presence:2
Luck: 4
Titles: Killer, Early Lead
Powers: Power Shot, Crippling Strike, Regeneration
[New Specialty Class Available. Please select your class, or one will be selected by default in one hour.]
Finally some stat changes. And specialty class? Well, that sounded awesome. And though this damn system overlord made everything a chore with its time limits, Mason was still excited and wouldnât have his moment ruined. He pulled up the list, which again turned out to be fairly short.
[Druid. Nature affinity. Mana caster. Sages and keepers of the natural world. They are both friend and master of the wild. Applicability: low.]
[Ranger. Nature affinity. Hybrid melee/ranged. Both warden and predator. They cull the weak, and teach the strong to fear. Applicability: high.]
[Skirmisher. Martial affinity. Hybrid melee/ranged. A duelist and murderer of monsters and men. They strike fast and dance away. Applicability: medium.]
Mason blinked, a bit overwhelmed by all the information. What exactly did applicability mean?
[Tutorial inquiry: the applicability of a class is assessed based on an individual playerâs innate talents, as well as their behavior in the great game. It is a suggestion, and can be ignored.]
Mason felt his fingers curl with an excited, nervous energy as he looked at the choices. They all appealed in different ways. Obviously Druid was a complete departure, but it made him a damn wizard and he saw no reason he couldnât continue to develop hunter-like skills. Skirmisher, too, sounded both effective and straight forward, which was usually what you wanted from a weapon. And Ranger? What, like a park ranger? But maybe he was being harsh. The robot god rated it as âhighly applicableâ, which Mason had to admit made him innately likely to avoid it. But something about it caught his attention, and told him not to ruin himself with stubborn pride. The description gave an intuitive ping of rightness he couldnât seem to end, and as usual, Mason wasnât much for hesitation. He closed his eyes, and chose.
[Ranger specialty class selected. Merging with Hunter Powers. Please select an initial focus: melee, or ranged.]
Again Mason didnât hesitate. He chose melee for the same reason heâd chosen Predatorâs Strike. You could decide to play it safe all you liked and do damage from afar, but your enemy would make other plans, and you had to be ready.
Heat flowed down his body, and he felt an almost unstoppable urge to draw a weapon he didnât have. He gave up resisting, and instead pulled the goblin blade, gripping it with white knuckles as heat focused and plunged into his arm, and into his fingers. The blade glowed with light, then blurred, thickened, and stretched, pulsing finally with green light before it hardened, and reformed.
[Item gained. Rangerâs Claw: Sharp. Deadly. Innate.]
Mason inspected the now longer blade, swinging it back and forth to find a beautiful, somehow slightly end-heavy balance.
âRangerâs Claw,â he repeated and grinned, though he wasnât sure what the description meant by âinnateâ.
[Tutorial query: an innate item cannot be lost or stolen. A player can summon or unsummon the weapon at will from any distance.]
âWoah.â Mason stared at the vaguely green steel of his sword with a shit eating grin. âOK, but how do I unsummoâŠâ the sword vanished from his hand into thin air. âAlright. Thatâs just cool.â He focused on the weapon and it reappeared in his grip as easily as it had vanished. âYeah,â he muttered. âI donât see that ever getting old.â
Once Mason stopped being quite so pleased with himself, he moved off to rest away from the corpses of the two dead gnolls until regeneration had closed his wounds. Then he crept deeper into the gnoll-infested territory of the woods.
He was getting stronger, better armed, and more confident. But he needed to change his tactics. Killing random gnolls didnât seem to do much of anything, and he couldnât know how much time Blake had left. He needed to escalate and learn more about what was going on hereâto find the gnoll âleadershipâ, or at least their lair, and put an end to this thing, one way or another. But first he was going to kill a goblin, and get himself another damn knife.