The inventory was a 1-foot cubed space to start with that reduced the weight of items in it by ten percent. Each additional cubic foot cost 300 credits up to 10 cubic feet. After that, the price was 600 credits per additional cubic foot. Every ten percent in weight reduction costs 1,000 credits. In order for me to pack all the stuff I wanted to, I was going to have to increase my inventory by a lot, and I could not do that until I sold the house. So, everything I had was going into the garage

  I unlocked quite a few items as I packed. Clothes and medical items, though all of the pills were gone, so no Tylenol or aspirin. Towels, blankets, sheets, and anything I had three of I used to unlock in the shop. Pots and pans and my cast iron cooking set all got stacked in the center of the garage. Plates, bowls, mugs, cups, and knives, spoons, and forks.

  I also unbolted my toilets and unlocked them from the shop as well, gaining access to porcelain toilets. Extra faucets for cold and hot water I had in my garage to replace the ones in my home were unlocked. I even went into the attic and grabbed three handfuls of fiberglass insulation, the loose kind, and unlocked that option in the shop as well.

  I had put on my winter work gear; boots, wool socks, thermal leggings, cotton tee-shirt, wool plaid button-up, my insulated winter work pants, and set my wool pullover hoody to the side along with my arctic coat. The rest all went into suitcases or duffel bags and were placed in the garage.

  Now, my garage is big and is filled with the meticulously organized tools of three generations. From blacksmithing to woodworking, I had hundreds of tools. Most were now useless as electricity did not work. Luckily though, I had all the hand tools I could use, and they were organized. “Thanks, Gramps.”

  I had heavy-duty totes for my blacksmithing tools which I had not had as much time for recently, and a large tote full of bar stock metal for smithing projects. Every tool I had three of I used to unlock from the shop, sometimes that meant I would have to buy it back from the shop as I only had three, but unlocking them from the shop seemed a better idea.

  Next came my gun safe and ammunition stores. My family had a tradition of sorts. When my dad turned 18, my grandfather bought him a 1911 45-caliber handgun, M1A rifle, and a shotgun. When I turned 18, my dad bought me the same guns. The 7.62 by 51mm or Winchester 308 was all the bullet you needed, my grandfather used to say. I had my grandfathers, my dad’s M1A, and three of my own, along with three pump-action shotguns and the 45’s. I unlocked the 1911 45 pistols from the shop, the shotguns, and the corresponding ammo. Watching it all dissolve into blue smoke. The birdshot, buckshot, and slugs I had plenty of, nearly 500 shells of each, but I only had nine of the dragon’s breath shotgun shells. But being able to shoot a 100-foot flame out of the end of your shotgun was one of the most exhilarating things one could do.

  It was hard to part with the guns, but I sold the rifles as well and unlocked the Winchester 308 round. I knew my grandfather would want me to and my dad, for that matter, as being able to rebuy the guns if they got damaged would-be life or death given that the note mentioned beasts and monsters, let alone the dungeons and towers.

  I had four 100 round drum magazines for my M1A battlefield Socom-16, along with the standard 10 round magazines and 30 round magazines. I unlocked all of it, leaving me with a single 100-round drum, three 30 round magazines, and four 10 round magazines. Scopes and slings got unlocked as well, and I stacked all the loose ammo I had in the center of the garage with all the rest of my supplies.

  My recurve bows went in the pile, leaving me with only one as I unlocked the option from the shop. I unlocked heavy hunting arrows with razor-sharp broadheads, bodkin points, and target tips. My hunting spears got unlocked from the shop, but my replica swords, maces, knives, and axes were only singles. I had a lot of them, but only ever two, not three; for dual wielding, of course.

  So, one of my hobbies was, or is, swords. Not how to use them, though I have trained a small amount, no, I just like the swords themselves. Weapons in general really, axes, spears, maces, flails, swords, guns, bows, shields. Not armor, though, and given my current set of circumstances, that might have been a huge oversight in my nerdy weapon collection. I used them as décor, sheaths and all, set on mounting plates throughout my house. I knew if I ever got married, most if not all my décor would be relocated to the garage, but until then, I was going to look at my beauties every day; and swing them around occasionally and kill the imaginary monster. Though now that I thought about it, I might get to really use them, as the monsters won’t be imaginary anymore.

  It had taken me way longer to get everything sorted into the pile in the garage than I had originally estimated. Walking through the house, the last glow of red evening light washing through the windows had me thinking about the cold and the potential for monsters. I would sleep in the garage tonight with an indoor propane heater that still worked, as it had no electronic parts.

  I nailed the front door shut along with the side door. The sliding door and windows, well, they were on their own. Checking the husk of my house, I pulled the thick mottled green fleece blanket from the couch and draped it over my shoulders. There was nothing left to take; photo albums were packed, along with everything else sentimental.

  I thought about my sister, Isolde, and her two kids. Had what happened, happened all over the world or only to me? There was no way for me to tell. My sister lived hundreds of miles away from the family home with her husband Daniel and kids Eimeria and Luna on a small homestead. He was a special operations soldier, probably, and I knew he had been home when whatever had happened to me happened. I just hoped they were okay.

  I nailed the garage door shut and barred the side door, placing the locking pins in place for the large garage door. Settling in for the night, propped up with pillows, on an air mattress, in my 40 degrees below zero sleeping bag, I waited for sleep and spent my first credits on enhancing myself.

  Deciding to experiment as I waited for sleep, I purchased one point in strength. Nothing really happened. It felt like my muscles got hot and itchy for a minute, but that was it. I got another point and the same thing, a little hot and itchy. Constitution made me cough a little bit; that was it. Endurance made me feel good and tuff. Agility loosened my muscles, and dexterity sent tingles all through my body. Intelligence gave me a headache for a few seconds, and wisdom gave me odd emotional feelings that were gone almost as soon as they started. Perception just made my ears feel like they needed to pop, like when you’re driving down a large hill. Charisma made my skin feel like I had just used an almond face scrub and lotion all at the same time.

  It seemed like 20 was the peak of human performance, and everyone fell on a scale between that. Past that, I did not know how much each point after 20 would change me. “Tomorrow, I will pick my skills and head for the low country.”

  Chapter 3

  I woke early, to damn early. I was warm, and my bladder was full. There was no helping it; I would have to crawl out into the cool garage and pee in the bucket I had set in the corner for just such an event. With that done, I dressed in my full get-up. Tactical vest that held my 1911 across the chest and the extra magazines for the M1A, Celtic Saux knife on my right hip, and black tactical gladius on my left. I figured that if I needed a sword, I wasn’t going to need a dueling broad sword, and if the gladius was good enough for a roman legionnaire, then it would be good enough for me.

  I listened at the door to the house for far too long, tapping at the door to get the attention of anything that may have found its way inside during the night. I hadn’t heard anything but safety first. I pulled the nails out and went in. The house was dark, with only the faint hints of dawn coming in through the windows. Checking each room, I found nothing.

  That done, I took care of number two, using the last of the water in the tank to send it on its way.

  I made coffee. Grinding the beans with my hand grinder and heated some oatmeal. I placed my cast iron pot on the stove. Filling it with water and adding in rice, beans, along with salt and pepper, I made my lunch and dinner for the day. Adding just a touch of sugar to my oatmeal, I had my breakfast. Today was going to be a long one, as I had to start making my way down out of the mountains I was in.

  Dreading leaving, but with nothing else to keep me on the procrastination train, I opened the garage door. Cold early morning air assaulted my face, and I pulled my face mask over my nose and snugged my wool beany over my head.

  “One trip, two trips, then twenty million more,” I sang to myself as I used my wheelbarrow to move the last of my gear from the center of the garage to out in front of my truck, where the gravel ended, and the dirt floor of the forest began. It had taken two hours to move everything, trip after trip, and it was now 8am in the morning.

  I wondered through the house one last time, checking everything. Making sure there was nothing left I wanted to take. Finding nothing, I stood by the garage opening and said farewell to my family home.

  Would you like to sell: alien four bedroom, three bath, kitchen, living room, and attached workshop house and all items within to the shop for; 707,000 credits? Yes, or no?

  Yes.

  I checked my credits, I had 715,639. That seemed like a whole lot, and from the prices, in the shop, I was set for a while.

  Next, I chose my skills. Something had bothered me when I read the pamphlet about how skills and spells would interact with the shop. Once I had a feel for the system, I realized that a skill lets you manipulate items or materials in the shop, altering them from their original form before you buy them. Take the spell [cut], for example, if I had a ten-foot wood plank I could buy from the shop. The spell cut would allow me to alter its size by using my personal mana. This had big implications for what the shop could do. Skills were much the same; if you had carpentry at the right level, you could take that same plank of wood and have it polished and sanded when you bought it.

  I picked three skills that were all mana-based, as I could get regular skills by doing, and with my earth skill set and knowledge, I was set for mundane skills. So, I chose the spells [cut, fuse, and heat] . I figured the last might be important with me walking through the woods while it was cold as all hell outside.

  Spells:

  Cut: novice, level 1. Spend ten points of mana per 1-inch of sharp mana blade created. Must be attached to the body of the caster.

  Fuse: novice, level 1. Spend ten points of mana per 1-inch square of objects to attach. Objects must be the same material.

  Heat: novice, level 1. Spend ten points of mana to change the temperature in an area 1-foot cubed by ten degrees per second. The area cannot exceed 1-foot; temperature is doubled every half area of focus down to one-quarter of an inch.

  Next, I got each of my attributes to 20. That cost 6,950 credits. I know, right, a drop in the bucket to what I had, especially to get me into peak performance. The process took almost an hour as I did each stat by itself and slowly. Waiting until the change was done before I moved on to the next point increase. My rock-hard muscles felt powerful and limber. The six-pack was a wonderful addition as I had never been able to quite get to that level of definition back on earth; now, I looked like an Olympian. A lean, mean killing machine.

  The price for each ability increased by a factor of ten. 1-9 cost 10 credits. 10 through 19 costs 100 credits. From 20 to 29, each point cost 1,000 credits, and past that, I guessed it would go up by ten each time. I had no idea what else I was going to need credits for but decided to spend another 90,000 credits to boost all my attributes to 30. Investing in yourself is never a bad idea. To get to forty points in an attribute, it would cost me 100,000 credits per attribute, so no more of that credit sinkhole.

  “Time for storage,” I said from where I sat on my tailgate. I kept the truck for now. It was only worth another 38,000 credits, and I wanted to sit on it before I said goodbye to my old friend for good.

  50,000 credits got me a storage space 20-feet cubed. That was big, like four moving trucks worth of space. The weight reduction was the key, though, “Don’t want to become like my Skyrim character, overburdened and unable to move.” Every ten percent cost 10,000 credits up to ninety percent. Every one percent after that was another 10,000 credits, up to ninety-nine percent. Getting the weight reduction up to 99 percent was expensive at 170,000 credits, but I figured one percent of the weight of my items was okay because after ninety-nine percent, it was 10,000 credits per decimal, and I was not going to spend 90,000 credits to reduce the weight by 0.9 more percent.

  With that done, I checked my truck over once more, finding nothing else to take. I had already packed everything from it. I sold it to the shop getting 38,000 credits back.

  That was it; I was done; the house was gone, and my trusty truck. Nothing but the bare ground remained. It was 9am when I left towards the lake, heading for the river that flowed out from it.

  I felt good. Like, really good. I moved like a fucking ballerina through the woods. Every step sent me jolting ahead. When I ran, I must have been going 20 to 30 miles an hour. I could not run for long because of the trees, but I did sprint in a few spots, eating up the ground like a fat kid eating cake on his birthday. I leaped from tree root to tree root, and I bet I could have Naruto run through the branches of the trees if I had wanted to. I was hungry, though, and I had to stop and eat some of the food I had prepared well before lunch. I slowed my pace after that, and my metabolism returned to a more normal speed. Apparently, moving faster increases one’s caloric needs by quite a lot.

  After a while of running and sprinting, I got a skill notification.

  Skill:

  Running: Novice, level 1. You are now more efficient at running. 1 percent reduction in caloric needs while running.

  By noon I had traveled a few miles down the river, hugging the bank when I could or cutting along a ridge. The sand bar curved with the river where I stopped for lunch, giving me plenty of room to the forest’s edge.

  “Fuck, this is pretty gross, rice and bean mash. I need to try and cook something better, at least cook the rice and beans separate, then mix them.” grumbling between spoonfuls of mush, I kept an eye on the woods. So far, I had only seen small forest creatures, squirrels, strange birds, rabbits, and what I thought was an elk across the small river valley on the opposite ridge. The squirrels were bigger than on earth and were of the gliding variety, with mottled brown and green fur. The birds were stranger; most looked almost ordinary except for the snow-white one that flew by my head, silver mist rolling off its body and trailing behind it. The rabbits were normal enough, except for the horns jutting out from their foreheads, fucking weird. The elk thing was normal enough besides the green tinge of his fur and bone white antlers with gold tips.

  “Yeah, everything is fine. Just a normal walk in the woods.” I said, swallowing down my rice and bean mush. “I hope I find people…people? talking…shit I don’t speak the language, and I don’t think they’ll conveniently speak English or any other earth language.”

  With that realization, I opened the shop and went to the skills and spells section of the personal enhancements. I only had 446,689 credits left, so I had to be selective in my skill choice. Reviewing the list, I sorted out the skills and spells that would best work.

  Skills:

  Language: Novice level 1. You understand sounds and shapes have different meanings and can begin to translate them. 10,000 credits.

  Decipher: Novice level 1. Messages can often have hidden meanings, codes, and secret meanings. You can now begin to uncover their mysteries. 10,000 credits.

  Nonverbal communication: Novice level 1. Gestures, hand signs, and subtle body movements all can convey meaning. You begin to understand the meaning behind these movements. 10,000 credits.

  Spells:

  Translate: Novice level 1. Expend 30 points of mana per written or spoken word to translate it into your preferred language or into an alternate language. 10,000 credits.

  Emotional communication: Novice level 1. Expend 10 points of mana to project your emotions or read the emotional state of a target. Projected or read emotions have no effect on a target. 10,000 credits.

  I selected the language and nonverbal communications skills, figuring I would not have to decipher any hidden messages for a long time. For the spell I selected translate, the mana ratio was garbage, but being able to understand a few words would go a long way. In total, I was down another 30,000 credits. As the novice level 1 skill and spells settled into me, it felt basic but tangible. Like a blanket of understanding more solid about things I already knew, like how sounds are words, and facial expressions can display emotions, stuff like that. I was going to have to level the skills if they were going to be of any real use. As the process finished, though, I received a new message.

  Skill and spell synergy:

  Language, Nonverbal communication, and translate have become:

  Communications expert: Novice level 1. By expending 30 points of mana per second when encountering a new written, spoken, or expressed language, an auto-translated lexicon is formed within the mind. For every 100 words transcribed within the communication lexicon, 1 point of mana cost is subtracted. When communications within the lexicon are encountered again, mana is not expended. Novice level 2 100 credits, mana cost reduced by one percent.

  I spent another 10,000 credits to raise the skill to apprentice level 11. This reduced the mana cost to 27 points a second, and crossing the apprentice threshold reduced the cost by another 2 mana points and added half the mana cost for dialects of a root language.

  There was a new section in my status sheet, a place for synergy combinations. I stored the still half-full pot of rice and beans in my inventory. The pot went in still almost hot and came out the same temperature, leading me to believe that some form of stasis was maintained within the inventory space.

  I got back to my forest walk, leaving the cascading rush of the river for the relative quiet of the forest. I headed down, still following the river as best I could. I hoped it would merge into a larger river that would lead me to a town or city. My walking pace was fast, and it was more of a jog. I could walk normally, controlling my speed to about 3 to 4 miles per hour or, as I was currently doing, a half jog that sent my speed well over 10-miles an hour, if I had to guess.

 

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