Chương 2: Exploring the shopping center

There are blood splatters everywhere I turn, but I don't see any bodies. I consider that to be a small mercy. I don't know if the bodies just disappear after they're killed or if the enemies have been somehow eating everything without leaving behind an errant bone or foot or something like that. The only thing left behind seems to be the blood. I wonder if the other lynxith that I killed are still there, or if their bodies have disappeared as well.

The doors of the market are shattered, the floors covered in broken glass and blood. I walk carefully over the glass, trying not to make too much noise in case there is something inside that isn't going to ignore me. I can't smell anything but blood, and my leg is absolutely soaked in it, to the point where I wonder if someone got a lucky hit on me and I just somehow didn't notice it. I do see something deep in the store moving between aisles, and I hear a noise that's new. Chittering.

Like an insect of some kind, only giant. Giant Mantis, common advanced monster. Level 4. HP: 60/60 Yeah, something like that. Its head turns like its on a swivel, and it holds two huge arms with wicked looking barbs on them up in front of it, waiting to lash out. Attacking it from the front is, therefore, a bad idea. I need to attack it from behind. That's the only way I can hope to do any real damage, anyway. Sneak attack seems to be my bread and butter.

I sneak around the aisle that the mantis is standing in, knowing that there is only shelving between me and the monster, glad that it isn't quite tall enough to see over the aisle. Then I find myself with about forty feet between me and the mantis, with nothing between us. It's facing away from me, but it could turn around at any second and sprint towards me on its four legs. If I get in close, maybe I can take out a leg and stop it from moving. But first I have to get up to it. First I have to close range.

I take one step at a time, testing each one before putting any weight on it, watching the giant mantis to see if it will turn, expecting every step that it will. I hold my sword in my hand, flexing my grip and getting ready to brace myself for a charge. Thirty feet away. I can feel the sweat on my back, making my shirt cling inwards. Twenty feet away. It chitters again, turning its head back and forth, its segmented eyes watching the area in front of it.

But it doesn't turn to look back at me, doesn't spin around on its legs and charge at me. Not yet. Ten feet away, and I'm sure I can hear my heartbeat. It's pounding in my chest as I move close to this monster. I never expected that I'd be moving close to a monster any time soon. I'm not the adventuring type. I'm just your typical ADHD gamer. I know a lot about how games are designed and how to think like a game designer – I've been doing that for about ten years now.

But I'm not someone who ever expected to actually be fighting a monster at his local supermarket. I'm not someone who goes to the gym regularly and trains with weights as if they were weapons. I don't participate in the SCA or the LARPing. I just collect swords. When I was a kid, I used to love this stuff. I would pretend that I was a great warrior, that a sword was an extension of my hand.

I looked up to the greatest swordsmen as if they were somehow sainted warriors, imagining that I would somehow join their ranks and save the kingdom from monsters. But I stopped all that a long time ago. I put away childish things, as they say. I never expected that I'd be back here, waiting to slaughter another monster. I never expected that I'd be fighting a giant mantis, or that it wouldn't even be my first monster.

I swing with both hands, more like a baseball bat than like a sword, aiming at the joint where one of the back legs meets the torso. The thorax? I don't remember my etymology. Wait, no that's wrong. Etymology is for words. Entomology is for insects. I swing my sword, and I get the sneak attack hit, dealing 30 points of damage for my trouble. That means that the strength adds for every point above ten, not every other. That's good.

It also suggests that below ten things might have a penalty, which makes me all the more pleased that I spent my first ten points making sure I don't have anything below ten. The mantis lets out an unearthly screech and tries to turn towards me and cut me to pieces with its claws. I say tries because as it turns, I run around it, keeping myself behind the creature. I don't expect a second hit is also going to be a sneak attack, but I know that letting it turn those claws on me is going to go very badly for me.

So I chop again, dealing 9 damage to one of its good legs. I then duck as a huge clawed arm soars right where my head had been, probably with enough force to separate it from my neck. Would I be aware of such a thing? It would be one way to find out if death is permanent. I chop at the arm on its swing back, dealing another 7 damage and breaking apart the carapace a little bit.

I jump back and avoid a bite attack, then lunge forward and stab with all my might, jabbing my sword in under the mandibles of the giant mantis, the curving sword sliding easily into the thing's jaw and then slicing its head in half. It collapses to the ground in a heap, and I find out that it's worth fifteen experience. I still don't know how experience is calculated. Once I figure that out, I think I'll have a better idea of what I can and what I can't attack.

It seems like the one mantis is the only monster in the building, though I don't even start to look at what's on the shelves until I confirm that fact. Once I know that I'm good and alone, I start looking for anything that might be helpful to me. This is a survival situation. That means I need food, water, and shelter. This building is way too big for me to fortify as safe shelter, but otherwise it's perfect.

There's enough water on the shelves that I don't have to worry about running out any time soon, and there's enough food that I can feed myself for at least a few days before things start going bad, and probably weeks afterwards for all the food that is less perishable. There's no electricity in the store, but it's not exactly hot out. Things might last a little while. But at the end of the day, I can't just stay here.

I can get a few bags and fill them with granola bars, breakfast bars, trail mix, and bottles of water. I can drink my fill of water under the theory that it is always easier and better to carry your water inside you, but it'll be better to bring some with me. I figure the two bags I'm going to carry with me have enough food and water to last me the rest of the tutorial period, which according to the counter in my vision is two days and sixteen hours still to go.

The bags I can carry with me, but I can also drop them when I have to face one monster or another. I'm not really sure where I should head from here. There hasn't been any kind of information about the situation or the world in general, other than that this is the tutorial period. Aside from that, I've been left to figure things out completely on my own. Not really all that tutorial. I don't even know if there is a way to come back from death.

All I know is that I'm level five, I'm harder to kill than I was before, and I have way more magic that I don't know how to use. I guess the only thing I can really do is grind out more levels. Find more monsters to kill and find a way to kill them. Get a better weapon somewhere. Oh, that's a good idea. Where can I get a better weapon? Ideally, I need a gun. I don't know how to use guns, but they're way more destructive at a much nicer range than my sword can ever be.

I'll keep fighting with the sword if I have to, but if I can shoot from a distance, I'd much rather do that. I've managed to avoid being hit so far, so I don't know how painful the various attacks might be, but it's not like I've never hurt myself before. I've stubbed toes, I've cut myself while slicing a bagel in half, the normal stuff that you do. And if I was level one my entire life, which stands to reason, then those all represent probably a single point of damage.

If I take twenty points of damage at once, that'll be more than enough to have killed me just yesterday, but be barely a third of my total hit points. Presumably, that will hurt. So if there's a way I can avoid that sort of thing, if there's a way I can mitigate the amount of damage that I take, I want to do that. So I need to find a gun. And maybe better armor. Where can I find better armor? Not at a supermarket, but maybe next door at a shopping center.

Maybe I can find something else in this strip mall that will help me survive, help me avoid getting hit, and help me do more damage. That seems like a worthwhile way to spend my time. I continue to sneak my way through the buildings, always expecting to find another mantis or more lynxith or something else entirely around every corner. I've only found monsters inside buildings so far, but that doesn't mean anything. There might be more out and about, I just haven't seen them yet. Don't make assumptions, Caleb.

Go with what you know to be the case, and let that be your guide. Don't trust what you see, and only half of what you hear. No, wait, it's the other way around, isn't it? Damn it, I wish I'd listened more to whoever said that to me. I look out across the parking lot and see already one assumption that wasn't true. There are both lynxith and giant mantises (giant manti?) wandering around the parking lot, occasionally pushing against a car. Several have been knocked over, but that doesn't seem to bother them.

If they can knock a car over just by bumping into it a few times, that means that they're really strong. Antoehr reason not to want to get hit by any of them. I don't think I can take a mantis in an open area, and I'm not sure about lynxith either. I still smell like them, so I don't think I have to worry about them attacking me, but I don't want to go out among the cars and fight them either. I need to keep looking places where I have some kind of tactical advantage.

I'm not much of a fighter, so I need the fight to always be on my terms. Into another of the shops, then. This one is a hardware store. There have to be weapons in here. I identify a few. There are some rotary saw blades that I can throw for 1-6 damage each. That's not a bad idea. Throwing weapons also gives me range, even if it doesn't give a ton of damage. There's also a sledgehammer axe combination that deals 1-12 base damage. That's more damage than my sword, though probably not as fast.

Still, it might be useful, particularly against a mantis. There's a lynxith in here, giving me a chance to either kill it or leave it be. My initial reaction is to leave it be, to sneak past it and gain the five experience and call it a day. But there's a little voice that tells me not to leave it. That same voice that tells me to wander around an open world game to get some experience. The more experience you get, the harder you are to kill.

In a game, that just means you spend less time having to repeat the same part of the game over and over again, and means you can get to other areas more easily. But this is, as far as I can tell, real life. And in this case, the harder I am to kill is good just in and of itself. So I hold one of the saw blades in one hand and the axe in the other, and I sneak up on the lynxith. I then throw the blade like a frisbee, charging ahead before I see where it lands to chop down with my new axe.

I chop like I'm chopping wood, one hand at the base of the handle and the other starting at the head of the axe and moving down as I chop, adding power. The saw blade does 12 damage, and the axe chop does another 29, killing the lynxith. Apparently, sneak attack has a bit of a window, and I can chain more than one hit into a sneak attack if I do it right. I get a better pair of pliers from the store I'm in and wrench out more teeth and claws from the lynxith.

My bag, which I also replace for a canvas number meant to hold nails and such, is getting pretty full of the trophies from these creatures. I really hope there's something I can use them for. In the back of the store, I find something that I can use them for. It's a work bench, and my identification skill tells me that it's meant to improve weapons and armor, provided I have materials to do so. I put my sword there first. It's only level one, and I want to see if I can get it to do more.

Finding materials is easy in this store; they're literally sitting on shelves right next to the work bench. I pick up a hammer and the materials and try banging them against the sword. This shouldn't work. Like, this isn't at all how you make things work. But every time I bang the hammer, more of the materials seem to sink into the sword, and it gets stronger. I feel like baby's first weapon smith, but I do manage, somehow, to get the sword to level up.

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. Skull Blade. Common weapon level 5/5. Damage 5-15. It's not the greatest improvement, but it's definitely an improvement. Means that my sneak attacks will do forty damage between the sword and my strength score. That should be enough to kill a lynxith with a single strike, and put a pretty serious hurt on a mantis while I'm at it. I wonder if I can make something new while I'm at it. I've got all these really sharp claws.

What could I make out of those? Not a weapon; that seems kind of beyond me; the best I could come up with is a club with claws coming out of it like nails. And while that might be useful, I think my sword will probably be more useful. It's at least designed for combat. But something with essentially spikes sticking out of it is not a bad idea. And maybe I should go with armor instead of weapons. I could really use a shield.

Or if not a shield, then at least a buckler, something on my arm that will help me deflect blows. Maybe something on my arm that will hurt the creature that attacks me. I find something to wrap around my arm, and I start pushing the claws through it, so that the bottom of the claw will be against my arm and the sharp tip will be facing out. Maybe I can catch a weapon against it or use it to slash at an opponent or something like that. I don't know what, but I feel a little better having it on my arm.

I fiddle with it for a while, making sure that the claws are all facing the same way, that they're firmly in place, and that I can wear the thing comfortably. When I finish, I'm happy to report that it identifies itself to me. Bracer of claws. Uncommon armor 4/10. +4 armor. Deals 1-4 damage against unarmed strikes. Okay. The next store down the line is a beauty salon. Not much there that can help me, I don't think, unless I want to pick up some scissors or a razor blade or something.

Actually, that sounds useful, so I go inside and find a straight razor to take with me. It's not a good weapon, dealing only 1-2 damage, but it's sharp and I can probably use it for other purposes. Maybe I can cut through the fur of the lynxith and skin it. Do I know how to tan a hide? No, I have no idea. But maybe the system will help me with that. It's one of the things that makes me hesitate to believe that all of this is actually real.

The systemization of certain activities, like the banging of materials to improve my weapon, makes it feel less than real. Not quite like a dream, because it still follows normal logic, but not quite real either. This world is following game logic. Which makes sense for me to figure out in a tutorial level, but also makes me wonder if that's all this is. Am I just figuring out what is real and what is systematic, or is there something else I'm supposed to be able to learn during this tutorial period?

Or maybe it's just a chance for me to gain as many levels as possible before the three days are up. I go to the next store down the line. This one is a clothing store, so I hope I can find more armor here. Maybe another pair of thick pants or a jacket or something. It would have to be better than my leather jacket, but that may not be hard. My defense skill is currently at 16. I don't know if I'll ever feel comfortable with the number, but I know I'd like it to be higher than 16.

In the back of the store are two lynxith chilling out among the shoes. They don't look like they're guarding it, but I see on a display rack a pair of boots that look perfect. They're black and they look like they'll come up about halfway to my knees, but they're also steel toed and build for construction. They might provide some armor. I just have to get past two lynxith to get them. I can do this.

I take one of my saw blades and throw it at one of the lynxiths while I swing my newly improved sword at the other one. Now I just have to fight one wounded lynxith, but for the first time I've fighting it head on. And it's snarling right at me, its muzzle bloody from where the saw blade cut into it. I throw another saw blade, this one dealing only 4 damage, and I brace myself with the sword. The lynxith pounces forward, slashing at me with its claws.

I hold up my new bracer to try to block it, and I see that my bracer does another 3 damage to it, but it's hard to pay attention to that as the claw also cuts into my arm. It doesn't hurt as much as I feared it would. I take 4 damage and can feel the hot blood running down my arm. You are bleeding. You bleed for 2 damage. You are bleeding. You bleed for 1 damage. You are no longer bleeding. Oh, that's just terrific. So I actually took seven damage, not just four. Okay.

I can't grip all that well with my wounded hand, but I can still use it to brace the sword when I swing with it, dealing another 17 damage to the lynxith, thankfully killing it. I open and close the fingers on my wounded hand to try to get the feeling back as I wipe my sword on the lynxith fur and move past it to get my prize. Boots, steel toed. Common armor 5/5. Armor: +5. Fully upgraded too. Excellent.

I harvest the claws and fangs from the two lynxith, and then I do try to skin one of them, but I think I need more than just a razor blade to get that done. All I end up doing is getting myself even more covered in their blood. I do improve my animal harvesting skill to three, which is nice. That tells me something very important. I don't have to be successful at a skill to gain ranks at it. I just have to try. Maybe I should work on getting more skills. That might be a good use of this grind time as well.

Right now, I have animal harvesting at 3, scrounge at level 1, sneak at 4, sword at 3, and throwing at 1. And I have a secondary skill called smithing that's at rank one. Probably from when I made the bracer. What else can I do to get skills? They seem like things that you get outside of combat. Or in combat, in the case of the sword skill ranks. What does that translate to? Will I hit more often with a higher sword skill, or will I do more damage when I do hit?

I don't seem to be missing all that much, though a fair number of my swings do either fail to connect or only barely clip the monster I'm fighting. I need more skills. But skills don't come with experience. It seems like the only thing that does that is killing. And secret quests. I wonder if there are non secret quests. I go through my HUD to see if there's maybe a quest page.

I find an inventory page, a friends list – currently empty – a combat log that allows me to see how much damage was dealt with each attack, a status screen for my current character sheet, and then finally a quest page. Quest: Skillful. Learn 15 skills. Progress: 12/15. Reward: 250 experience Quest: Kitty Killer. Kill 25 lynxiths. Progress: 15/25. Reward: 250 experience Quest: Squash. Kill 25 giant mantis. Progress: 2/25. Reward: 500 experience Quest: Friendly. Make 5 friends. Progress: 0/5.

Reward: 250 experience Class: Hunter. Qualify for the hunter class. Progress: Animal harvesting 3/3, Scrounge 1/3, Sneak 4/3, Tracking 0/3. Class: Rogue. Qualify for the rogue class. Progress: Pick Lock 0/3, Sneak 4/5, Throwing 1/3. Class: Mage. Qualify for the mage class. Progress: Alertness 0/3, Meditation 0/3, Spellcraft 0/3. Class: Fighter. Qualify for the fighter class. Progress: Dodge 0/3, Sword 3/5, Throwing 1/3. Those are a lot of quests. Well, four quests and three potential classes.

Four if you count mage, which I have absolutely no progress in. I'm not good at meditating, either. I suppose I could sit down in one of these buildings and try to do it, maybe gain a few levels of it that way. It would be a way to get the skillful quest done. The shoe counter is pretty secluded, and the dead lynxiths don't smell any worse than I do, so I try sitting down and meditating. The first thing to do is to focus on the smell, I think. Focus on the smell and try to dismiss it.

So focus on it in order to not focus on it. That sounds kind of zen. Don't think about the blood. Don't think about all the other blood you've seen around either. Just focus on not smelling. Focus on not thinking about the other blood. Focus on not thinking about other people. Focus on not thinking. It takes me an hour before I really get the hang of it. It feels like a lot longer than one hour, but I've got the countdown in the corner of my HUD that tells me that it was only sixty minutes.

But I complete the skillful quest, which is immediately replaced with a quest of the same name that wants me to learn 30 skills, but offers double the experience. The next building in the strip mall, the last building, is a surplus store. Here I might find what I'm looking for. They might have flak jackets behind the counters, they might have actual weapons, and they might have a better bag for me to carry my groceries in than the two sacks that I just drop every time I'm approaching a monster.

They don't have any guns. It's not that kind of surplus store. There's a lot of wires, a fair amount of loose leather, some electronics equipment, and an army jacket that unfortunately isn't of the flak variety or the armored variety. It's not as good as my leather jacket, but I might be able to get some use out of it, so I take it along. I also grab a few big markers, so I can mark my way if I ever need to back track through a maze or something. Finally, I'm thinking like a gamer.

What else might be of use in here? Take a spool of wire, plus those wire cutters. That might be able to help me put together some armor. Speaking of, take a bunch of that leather too. It can patch up my coat or be used to reinforce it, maybe with the help of that wire. Take that leather punch while you're at it, and that leather crafting kit. Put all of it into this satchel you've found with the leather bottom.

You can wear that on your shoulder without any real difficulty and without the weight slowing you down all that much. You can probably still fight with it over your shoulder too, so long as it's over the left shoulder and you're fighting right handed. I'm about to leave when I spot something else behind the counter. Something vitally important. Lock picks. There's a whole case of them.

I dump the case into my satchel and head out to the parking lot, glad to see that I'll have a chance to learn by doing, and maybe get those levels of lock picking and qualify for the rogue class. I wonder how many classes I can take at one time. Can I put levels into multiple classes, or is it a one class at a time thing? Can I multiclass? I guess we'll see. The sun is high in the sky as I get to the parking lot.

There are still maybe half a dozen lynxith out here, and half again as many giant mantises wandering around. There are also a lot of cars. Which is odd, because I didn't see any bodies during my ransacking of the various stores. There was blood around, but that's it. Once again, the bodies disappear. Another gamification. Okay. I know that I can kill a lynxith with one hit now, if I get the sneak attack.

But there's no way I'll get six sneak attacks without anyone picking up on the fact that I'm slowly taking them out. I might be able to take out two of them, maybe even three, but there isn't that much room to hide in a parking lot. The lynxith and the mantises are both too big to fit between cars, which is good. But they're also big enough that they can go over cars, which is bad. I can use the environment to help out a little bit, but sooner or later, I'm going to end up being surrounded by these monsters.

And as happy as I am that I now have a 21 defense, I don't think that it's high enough to keep me safe against these overwhelming numbers. Maybe it's a bad idea to try to kill these monsters. I might be better off just sneaking past them, getting out of the parking lot, and head into town. That's where I'm most likely to find other people who are still alive, which will help with the friendly quest. I might be focusing on the wrong quest when I look out here at the parking lot.

I've been focusing on the idea of finishing the killer quests. Maybe I should be focusing on the friendly quest, and use those friends to help take out a bunch of giant mantises. I don't know if I can fight them myself, and maybe the best way to handle this problem is not to fight them by myself in the first place. I sneak my way around the strip mall and start heading around my apartment building, heading deeper into town and away from the fifteen monsters waiting for someone to go into the parking lot.

I get 30 experience for sneaking past the lynxith, and 90 more for sneaking past the giant mantises. I wonder if I can keep getting the experience if I keep sneaking past or around the same monster. Maybe I'll experiment with that when I find a monster that's by itself, and not surrounded by a bunch of other monsters that might swarm me.