The air felt clean. Even beyond the relaxation of getting out of that dark, litterbox of a building, the air felt clean. All of the industrial pollutants, the smog was simply gone. I took a deep breath and felt happy. We’d gone in for a specific objective and achieved it. And then I got shoved out of the doorway and things felt normal again.

“Doofus! Move!” said Janet. “I want out of this stinkhole!” I moved to the side and the two women moved out and stood beside me. We all just stood there for a moment, looking around and enjoying the fact that we were alive.

“Let's move away from the building and then we can talk about what else we need to do today, alright?” I asked.

“Sounds good to me,” said. Tanya just nodded. We moved out into the space left in front of Maxes which used to be filled with gas pumps, truck parking, and car parking. I pulled the rickshaw along with us from its spot in front where we’d left it and we found one of the new trees that had appeared and dropped down into the shade.

“It’s 3:51. It’s probably too late to get on the road. I suggest we stay here again tonight, get started after we do our morning routine. What do you think?” I asked.

Both girls nodded their heads. “I’m exhausted,” said Tanya. “I can’t imagine what war is like. We went in there, fought some rats, explored for about a couple of hours and I am wiped out.”

“I know,” said Janet. “I was going to practice spells, maybe try to learn some more about my class, now all I want to do is take a nap. And not think about that damn building. Or rats.” Just then Roxie shifted in her arms and looked up at her. “No, no! Not you sweetheart. I was talking about mean old disgusting black rats!” The puppy-sized mouse settled back into her arms as she gently stroked its head.

“It’s probably a nervous reaction,” I said. “I had to do a report on Combat Stress Reaction (CSR) for one of my tutors. Actually Derek. He’s my mom’s Head of Security, also my sensei. I told you all that, didn’t I? Anyway, the things that I learned is that it’s normal. Your body’s sympathetic nervous system gets ramped up to fight or flee and then it’s hard to calm it down. That’s another reason that Derek said it was important to talk about a fight afterward. Not only can you learn from your mistakes, but talking about them reduces their impact on you. It helps you normalize, get your baseline back to the center. That said, I want to go over what happened in there.”

“Ah!” said Janet. And she and Tanya started rolling on the ground laughing. Roxie escaped from her arms and then began pawing at her new mother’s hair, trying, I guess to get her to calm down.

“Yeah, yeah!” I said. “That’s it. Laugh at the only male here! Laugh at the guy who kept the rats off you!” I was trying to be playful and I guess it worked because they kept laughing. Every once in a while one of them would go “Ah!” and they’d start up again. Finally, they stopped and Roxie resumed her place in Janet’s arms. They both wiped their eyes and sat up and faced me. We’d formed a triangle, purposefully, each facing the others and a different direction, so hopefully, nothing could creep up on us.

“What could we have done differently? Better?” I asked.

“Well, you could have not turned your back on the rats,” said Tanya.

“Yes, and stayed in my range,” Janet said. “I can’t heal you from a big distance. I need to touch you in order to heal you right now. I can’t do it if you’re across the room,” she said.

“I thought our crossbow attack went pretty well,” said Tanya.

“I did too,” Janet said.

“So did I,” I said. “I was hoping that it would do more damage though. I guess these are light crossbows. It would have been nicer if that momma rat had been taken out, right from the start. I didn’t know what to do when the pack split up.”

“I think you’ll just have to trust that your team can handle it,” Tanya said.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I freaked out and got way out of position. Fortunately, these were not that strong a monster. They didn’t have any special abilities, they were just big rats! So maybe we need to work more on our positioning.”

“And our trust,” said Tanya.

“Janet saved your butt,” I told her. “When that momma rat leaped, she blocked it with her machete. I didn’t see you holding a weapon. Why not?” I asked.

“That was my bad,” she said. “It happened so fast. They dropped to the ground, you pounded on your shield and then, suddenly, they were attacking. I shot the crossbow, and, afterward, I thought spells, and tried to hit them.”

“No,” I said. “I think you did great. You hit the momma with a bolt and a spell. You hit the leader with another spell. You were in the game, I just meant that you need something for when it gets up close! If you’d had your machete, you could have blocked the leap, you could have protected yourself, rather than needing Janet to do it.”

There was a pause in the conversation and then Janet said, “I think we were right to simplify the calls. It was too much information. They were too complicated. TUp, Skinny, Fat were good. The Drift left was good. I’m not sure about the distance part of the calls. I’m also not sure about the 45 or 90. Besides, we never used it. I think that it would just get confusing. Is it a distance? Is it a turn? Plus, combat is hard. I didn’t think it’d be so real, you know? When I stabbed those rats, I felt their bodies moving on the end of my machete. I didn’t like it.”

“I know,” I said. “I felt the same way. I think it would be different with a gun. You just point, pull the trigger and something dies. It doesn’t feel that way when you shove a sword in them. But we lived, and they didn’t. We didn’t ask them to fight, they brought it on themselves. If they’d stayed in their little rat holes, they’d still be living.”

“I hate rats!” Janet said.

“Yeah,” said Tanya. “Me too!”

“Did you level up?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” they both said. “How about you?” they asked.

“I haven’t checked yet,” I said. “But before we do, let’s figure out what we’ve learned. Trust each other, Stay in formation” I said.

“Simple calls,” said Janet.

“And always have a weapon handy,” said Tanya. “Don’t depend only on magic! That is so weird that I just said that. I can’t believe how much the world has changed.”

“Ok,” I said. “Let’s see what we got from the fight.” And with that, we opened our status pages. Mine had changed quite a bit.

Status

Name

Maysoon Alacrity Seebring

“Monsoon”, “Chief”

Level

7

Class(es)

Monk, Mage

Experience: (+25%)

21645

Titles: Eager Beaver; Firstish Mage; Bruce Lee You’re Not!; Unsteady At The Helm; Dadda. President for Life!; Risk Taker!

Attributes

35

Skill Points +

63

Strength +

39

Intelligence +

45

Dexterity +

26

Wisdom +

46

Agility +

34

Perception +

28

Constitution +

33

Charisma +

33

Vitality +

28

Luck

28

Health:

185

Mana:

153

Qi:

152

Stamina:

151

‘Holy crap!” I thought. ‘I’m literally superhuman! None of my stats or attributes, no I’m going to call them stats from now on, was below what according to the system was the previous regular high of twenty. And my intelligence was over double that. Does that mean I’m twice as smart of Einstein? I don’t feel that smart. Am I? I tried doing some math in my head and it was easy. I was able to quickly recite all of the elements in the periodic table, and then I did it again backward. I started reciting Pi, I guess every smart kid that’s taken advanced placement classes goes through a group phase where you compete to memorize pi out to whatever digits and I was still going after a minute and it seemed like I was calculating it, instead of just reciting it. Calculating it fast. This bothered me. I remembered what my imu had told me. Perfectly:

Intelligence is a measure of your problem-solving ability. Intelligence often controls your ability to comprehend languages and other abstract knowledge and your skill in magic. Under certain circumstances, this skill can also negate combat actions between you and your enemies. It heavily impacts both the number of points you get per level in both Qi and Mana and also their regeneration of used points in both. It also makes it easier to both learn and train skills.

I remembered reading a novel where the main character wrestled with his intelligence score. It kept rising and he kept not getting smarter. Someone told him he just had a habit of being stupid. I wondered if that was what was going on with me. Maybe I had a full liter bottle, but was only drinking half of it? Besides, I thought, if Einstein were alive he’d be practicing the heck out of physics. I’m sure his intelligence would have gone through the roof.

Anyway, I wondered what the little crosses where after my stat scores. I didn’t remember seeing them last time I looked at my status. I called on my imu and asked him.

He appeared and said, “Those are how you assign your bonus or free attribute points or skill points.”

I said, “I have bonus or free attribute points?”

To which he responded, “Yes, 35” and then vanished.

'Where’s the love,' I wondered. In all the stories, the little Fairies are helpful and loveable. Is mine defective? I looked again at my status screen and this time I noticed the row that said,

Attributes 35 Skill Points + 63

I guess I could raise my stats by 35 points by clicking on them. Holy crap! My WoW guildmates would kill me if they found out I left that many points on the table. I’m guessing that I didn’t see them last time because I hadn’t assigned my classes yet. And I also bet that I have so many because I have two classes. I must be getting bonus stats and skill points from both classes.

I looked up and said, “Be sure you assign your bonus stats” to the two girls. No need pointing out that I just discovered them.

Janet said, “Yeah, we figured that out when you started talking to yourself about bonus stats.”

‘Curses!’ I thought. ‘Darn this half empty bottle! Note to self: talk to imu using your inner voice.’

After thinking about it, I still couldn’t decide what I wanted to do, min/max or be a generalist.

”Imu,” I said, using my inner voice this time. “Do my classes have primary stats? Are their secondary stats? If so, what are they? What can you tell me about my classes?”

“The mage class has the following characteristics,” said my imu.

Primary Attribute: Intelligence Secondary Attribute(s): Wisdom, Perception Adds +2 to Intelligence and +1 to Wisdom, Perception per level +2 attribute points to be added +3 skill points

The monk class has these characteristics:

Primary Attribute: Agility Secondary Attributes(s): Vitality, Strength Adds +2 to Agility and +1 to Vitality, Strength per level +3 attribute points to distribute +2 skill points

Ah, I thought to myself, there are primary and secondary attributes. It also looks like that status sheet’s breakdown of attributes is not just a random selection. The attributes associated with the body like strength and constitution are in a column on the left, the attributes associated with what might be called mind are in a column on the right. And then, mage’s who have high intelligence and other mind characteristics get more skill points, while fighters and monks who have higher strength and other body characteristics get fewer skill points but more free attributes. Interesting. I guess since I’ve got both of the body and mind classes, I get to split the difference down the middle. It’s cool that the System didn’t average them. After all, I’m paying the full cost in experience, I’ve earned all of those points!

Min/Maxing was a good strategy in games, but I wasn’t in a game. It’s OK to be a glass cannon when you’re not liable to die, and I mean really die, from a single hit, but it’s less OK when you’re not going to re-spawn. And which stats are throwaways, anyhow? Not charisma when you’ve got to talk to people, not dexterity when you need to do your own repairs on equipment, not agility when you’ll definitely need to dodge, not luck when your life’s on the line for some God’s dice roll? I mean which stat do I feel comfortable minning? Finally, I just gave up and decided that I’d get all my stats up to a reasonably high level and let some of my stats - the ones that my class called “Primary” or “Secondary” naturally advance to their higher place. I mean with all the titles I’ve been given, I didn’t really need to worry about it that much, did I? When you think about it, with my titles, I get the equivalent of six levels of advancement in stats every time I advance a level. That’s huge. By the time I’m at level 100 that will be 190 additional stats. Wow! I hope my mom got a title too! I’m glad the girls did too.

So, I clicked the plus sign next to dexterity nine times, agility once, constitution twice, vitality seven times, perception seven times and charisma two times. That gave me a nice 35 across the board as my lowest stat. Then I threw the remaining seven points into Agility. Intelligence and mana were great, but so was not getting hit! Each time I clicked a plus sign, my Attributes number decreased and I got a corresponding bump to my stat.

Still hadn’t messed with skills yet, but I thought I’d better take a break. I looked up and sure enough, both girls were staring at me. “Sorry,” I said. “I had to decide where to put my free stat points.” And I closed my status screen.

“Yes,” they both said. “So did we. It took us half the time. It’s easy when you put them all in Charisma,” said Janet. “Don’t I look beautiful?” she asked Tanya. My face must have shown my reaction because they both started laughing again. ‘Am I that easy to read?’ I thought.