Chương 13: Of Course Murphy’s Law Survived

At the last moment she hesitated, deciding to check the time before she left the bunker. [19: 22] She grimaced. On her shoulder Maus was all soft fur, and supportive black eyes.

"You know what? Let's wait eight minutes," she said, her voice low and even, "what do you think?" She asked, tapping into their bond and feeling nothing much going on at all. Her gaze drifted back to the timekeeper on her interface. [19: 23] Eight minutes, seven minutes now, would make it 19: 30.

"No," she said.

"That would be ridiculous. Waiting seven minutes just so the numbers are neat?" She scoffed, but she wasn't even fooling herself. She rose, adjusted the off-the-rack jacket, reached for the door. The sense of unease hadn't faded, but the CCTV had been clear. The woods were quiet. Nothing had approached the bodies, and she was more heavily armed than she had been that time she'd done a stakeout at a laundering front on the Eastside. She was doing nothing but delaying the inevitable.

So Scarlet opened the door and stepped outside. She wished she'd waited. It wouldn't have changed anything, but at least she would have had a few more minutes of life in which she'd never experienced this feeling. Like the door was a dam, her senses were overwhelmed the moment she'd opened the door. There was that pervasive sense of wrongness she couldn't quite pinpoint. But there was also just a sense that the world was more, in some inexplicable way. It was subtle, but impossible for someone like Scarlet to miss.

Now it felt like that intangible sensitivity she had for the world around her had been somewhat muffled underground. If before it had been a whisper, now it felt amplified; the feelings coming through loud and clear. Unfortunately, loud didn't mean directed. That wrongness was coming mostly from one direction, but not entirely. It was like something was dispersing the energy. Instead of a directed stream of water, it was a vaporous diffusion.

If she could just focus enough, she'd be able to find- The shift was so abrupt, that it barely qualified as a transition at all. One moment everything was foggy and restrained, the next was a spike of aggression so swift and clear she nearly missed that it was getting closer. Fast. Scarlet gasped, one hand flying instinctively to shield Maus as she stumbled backward.

She slammed the bunker door shut only a heartbeat before something hit it from the other side with enough force to make the entire frame warble in protest. The reinforced alloy was struck by something, so hard it turned the metal into a gong. She jerked her hand back, feeling the vibration through the door, and nearly fell down the stairs.

Only her reasonably high reflexes – DEX – and the slightly longer than average top landing kept her from an accident she knew would have her out of commission for long enough that her early advantage would become irrelevant. She stood there for a second, breathing too fast, heart hammering so hard she could feel it in her throat. One hand braced against the wall and the other still curled protectively around her bond.

"We should have waited the seven minutes," she said, breathless. The vindication would've been a lot more satisfying if something outside hadn't just tried to kill her. She straightened slowly, then leaned back against the opposite wall, and pressed her lips together as in her mind she replayed what had just happened. She had nearly been mauled the moment she stepped outside. This was the second time she had opened that door and been met with immediate hostility.

She rubbed at her temples with the pads of her fingers. Twice was a coincidence, and she very much hoped this did not become a pattern. Another thump struck the door, lighter this time, and she looked at the door with open disapproval. Somehow, she could feel the, whatever it was through the door. It was like the stress of the situation combined with her actively trying to sort through the earlier haze had expanded something within her. Her eyes narrowed; intuition telling her to open her Status.

Perception: 12 -> 13 Level: 3 ->4 She laughed out loud. The sound sharp and disbelieving. Nope, nope this was too much right now, she thought, closing the interface.

"You know what, nobody said we had to get the loot first," she said, pushing herself away from the wall. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. She made her way downstairs on shaky legs, the slight limp certainly not helping as now that the adrenalin was fading away, everything hurt again. Crossing to the desk she set Maus down on his pillow. What had just happened? She needed to know.

Not just whatever was going on with her PER, but what was that? Bracing herself, Scarlet called up her Interface. The familiar presence unfolded in her vision, and she directed her attention toward the Guide.

"How do I access a battle log?" she asked aloud. Not having the mental energy to 'think-talk' right now. [System Log may be accessed through the interface with focused intent.] So, it was called a System Log. She did as the guide suggested, and a moment later the entries began to arrange themselves into something structured and readable. Yep, just as promised here was a log of… well 'events' didn't feel right, but 'things-the-System-things-are-important-enough-to-catalogue' seemed a little wordy to her.

She skimmed the first few entries quickly; glad she could pull up old logs. There were confirmations of kills, level notifications, and several entries that looked and felt more like System Notifications than anything else. [You have been attacked by Unknown] [You have killed Unknown – Level 2] [Entity designation updated: Roidcoon] [Designation recognized… Accepted] Scarlet stared at that for a beat.

"All right," she said quietly. So, the system was calling them roidcoons now too. Or perhaps it was only calling them that for her? Maybe it changed with languages like other words, and in a different language, like Tagalog or Zulu it was a different word altogether. Or maybe the System standardized everything? There was a non-zero chance someone else was out there fighting what they had chosen to think of as shout-bandits, or masked-singers, or raccdooms or something.

She needed more data, and that wasn't what was important right now. She could come back to that later. Right then, she moved on to the other entries in her Log. [You have killed Roidcoon – Level 1] [Level Increased] [You have killed Roidcoon – Level 2] [You have killed Roidcoon – Level 2] [You have killed Roidcoon – Level 1] [You have killed Roidcoon – Level 3] [Level Increased] She sat back slightly, her eyes flicking over the sequence again.

The timing of the gains, the clustering of the entries, the distinction between the level one and two kills and the final one…

"Level three," she said quietly.

"That was the one with that useless shout skill," she said. A wave of indignance passed through the bond, and she turned to face Maus.

"My apologies, it was a very powerful sonic attack, you're right." She wasn't just placating Maus either. Her being a good matchup against whatever that was did not mean that she should underestimate any enemy. That seemed an effective way to get complacent, and from the little she'd experienced in this new world, complacency was just an indirect way to forfeit one's life.

Scarlet looked at the entries as her mind fit the pieces together, trying to create a coherent picture from the earlier entries, the level one vs. two vs. three kills, the order of notifications, and the timing of her own level advancement. She exhaled softly, leaning back in the comfortable, Aeron chair, her fingers tapping her thigh as her thoughts chased each other. That first level-up had come after she'd killed the second roidcoon. The first had been level 2, and the second level 1.

Then once she was level 2, not even killing two level 2's had yielded her another level. Only after she'd killed the level 3 had she seen her own Level increase. This pattern suggested diminishing returns when killing things at or below one's own level. That, or increased returns when killing something above it. Or it could be both. Likely some combination of the two that she didn't have calculations for. Yet.

For now, she would proceed under the theory, that facing tougher opponents, and more difficult challenges yielded more recognition – EXP – from the System. The question then became, where did that new level come from and what in the invisible-nightmare-fuel just tried to attack her? She continued with the Log [You have been attacked by Shadow Bat] Shadow Bat? Was that a creature someone on Earth had already named, or did the System have it in the database already? She queried the Guide.

[The Guide contains records of all System recognized entities] Well now. That had been suspiciously helpful information. She squinted her eyes, remembered the words didn't require working eyesight to be perceived, and eased up with a sigh. Moving forward with the sequence of events, she'd then retreated, her PER had increased, and then. Yup. There it was. [Level-Increased] Looked like the System rewarded more than just killing.

Though slaughter was currently the most expeditious way to gain EXP that she'd personally experienced. On the topic of slaughter, it would appear that a 'shadow bat' had been responsible for the attack. What did she know about bats? Apparently less than she did about fishing spears and Australian snakes. Rolling her chair to one of the shelves that lined the walls she pulled out the Field Guide to North American Mammals. Her INT really came in handy because she flew through the information like an attacking bat.

If only the information wasn't so frustrating. Her fist rose to her forehead, pressing lightly as she squeezed her eyes shut before blinking them open and letting out a slow breath.

"Shadow bat," she said.

"Shadow bat." She turned her head toward the door again and checked her interface for the time. [19: 30] She felt her eyebrow twitch. Then she locked in on the big picture.

"Sunset, Maus," she said as the realization clicked into place. Bats were primarily nocturnal. Shadow bats sounded like they were probably, more nocturnal than other species, and Scarlet had left the bunker right as dusk fell.

"The universe must be laughing at me," she muttered under her breath. The fist that had been on her forehead moved to rub against the bridge of her nose with her knuckles.

"No wonder I didn't see it on the CCTV," she said, her voice settling into a measured, analytical cadence.

"If it has some sort of shadow or stealth-based ability, then of course it wouldn't show properly. Or at all." All this was assuming it was even present when she checked the footage.

"Just my luck," she sighed.

"It would appear that while the laws of physics have changed, the laws of Murphy remain well intact." In fact, it was possible she was just in the wrong place at the worst possible time, and that her presence simply accelerated its waking. So far, she couldn't conclude that the bat had planned to scavenge the bodies at all. Her gaze flicked briefly toward the door, and the yard she still had to clean, and bodies she had yet to loot. It was honestly a complete guess if the bat was even interested in them.

Some species of bat were carrion eaters, and which subspecies 'shadow' fell into. Scarlet rolled her eyes. She turned her head slightly, glancing toward Maus.

"What are we supposed to do with that?" She asked him. The question was mostly rhetorical, and she hadn't been expecting a response. Only, she must have been projecting something because she watched as Maus paused his grooming to look at her and send her a feeling close to resolve. She watched the little fellow go back to his grooming and smiled.

"You're absolutely right. We will not be terrorized off our land, or out of our spoils." She'd already determined that she would be going all in with this new world. That meant she'd need to get used to combat sooner than later, and there was no better time than now.