Dan was safe, for now. He was crouched down in the driver's seat of his van, in the back parking lot of the solid, brick building where he worked. That building and its immediate surroundings, Dan included, had been cut out of the world and dropped into an alternate reality where he had super powers, the physical world dissolved into impenetrable haze exactly fifty feet from the building in every direction but up, electricity and plumbing worked but telephones and internet did not, an RPG System spoke inside of his brain, and a troop of twenty-nine extra-terrestrial goblins had quite recently invaded with the single minded purpose to murder him. But he'd managed to eliminate twenty-two of them, leaving seven, and the remainder couldn't figure out how to get through the fortress that was his van, so for now, Dan was safe.

How should he deal with the remaining seven monsters? It could easily be fatal to get cocky and take them lightly. Without his system granted powers, any one of them would have been more than his match even if he was cured of his disability. What were his available weapons? The van. The Firestone Amulet. His sling, eight sling bullets. His utility knife, though it may be better to try kicking or punching than that. Wasp spray. There were various goblin weapons strewn across the office building battlefield if he could safely get to them, but he had no experience in their use. It was almost certainly safer to keep his distance if he could. Dan had no claws or needle teeth. There was his old plan, drive around to the front, get them to follow him to the fire escape stairwell, pick them off with sling bullets as they tried to climb the slippery stairs in the dark. That could work. But he had time now. Options. It was a wonderfully luxurious feeling that he couldn't quite trust.

Start with what would be reasonably safe and looked clearly useful: Unlock "Sense Life". As usual, the System responded to his focused will, and Dan felt the increasingly familiar rush of an entirely new sensation coursing through his mind. He could detect every bug in his van. There were more than he would have guessed, but fewer than he would have accepted as the upper bound of plausible. One of them, a small beetle, was weak, dying. Bugs, he supposed, did not live long lives. He had already known the precise position of each of the seven goblins. He could see them from the sensory locus on the roof, hear, smell, and echo-locate them, sense the heat of their bodies. Now Dan could also feel the life within them, as well as the life within himself. Interestingly, he could also now sense faint strains of aether trickling through the monsters.

Cool.

The goblins seemed to have settled on a waiting approach for the time being. They were a safe distance away, watching, vigilant. It made sense. If they couldn't get to him while he was in the metal thing, then they had to wait and hope he eventually left it. Nothing came to mind as a way they could strengthen themselves or weaken him as both sides paused, so Dan was content to let the stand-off continue. Was his position secure enough to risk unlocking "Perceive Power"? He had gotten fairly accustomed to integrating new senses in a short time. Always was a fast learner. After a bit more thought, he decided to go for it. His opponents knew that the van was dangerous; they'd have reason to be careful, and would have no way of knowing he might be distracted.

Dan unlocked "Perceive Power" and was filled with an immediate certainty that he himself was powerful. It was as clear and unambiguous as the sound of the engine thrumming a body's length from him, or the glow of the moon in the sky as seen from his rooftop sensory locus. It would be difficult to describe the sensation in terms of ordinary human senses, were he asked to do so. He could, quite simply, perceive power within himself. It didn't reveal the nature of his power, or how he might apply it, how it could help him, but nonetheless it was undeniably there.

Good to know.

Also interesting: Apparently, nothing else in his range of perception was powerful, or at least it didn't meet whatever criteria his new sense used to adjudge such. The goblins were not. The Firestone Amulet was not. The van was not, though to Dan's way of thinking a 275 horsepower engine was more powerful than most things. According to the system, he was more powerful than goblins or a full size van or an amulet that could magically launch massive fireballs that, now that he thought about it, did not follow his admittedly rudimentary understanding of the laws of nature. Though, given present circumstances, that was an odd thing to get hung up about right now. It was probably best to let that go, even if it would be useful to figure out exactly how these fireballs behaved later, even if only for tactical purposes. Wait, later? What exactly did he expect to happen later? What was he preparing for that might happen in this indeterminate "later"? Focus. This type of thinking was a trap. There were dangerous aliens with sharp teeth and sharp spears who were right now trying to murder him, and it was a safe bet they were focused on how to do so, not on what they're going to eat for lunch tomorrow or other such navel gazing.

A few more minutes passed as both sides waited, until Dan's aether pool was full, his hard won Firestone Amulet was ready to go, and he had a plan. It wasn't a particularly great plan, but it should be safe enough. If it didn't work, he could regroup and try something else. First, he crept into the back of the van and grabbed his tire iron. Second, he put his free attribute point into agility. Not getting hit still seemed like an excellent idea. Then, he drove a deceptively obvious path toward the building's front door. The goblins were afraid of the van - they'd kept their distance this whole time. So when it began to move, Dan figured that they would give chase, but stay far enough away that they felt safe in their ability to dart away if the metal thing attacked again. Right now he, inside the van, and the goblins were all in the back parking lot. If he drove to the front, hugged the building's brick wall on the passenger side, then if his pursuers wanted to give chase, they would have to follow from behind. Even if they were somehow faster than he thought, they could not encircle him. They seemed to like that tactic. But they couldn't risk getting between the van and the building. All of which meant he should be able to make it to the front door without getting dog piled by a pack of monsters wielding spears, daggers, clubs, claws, and teeth. That was what he had to avoid at all cost - as long as he could keep his distance, he was pretty confident he could continue to whittle them down little by little.

Dan drove down and the goblins followed. Due to the position of his rooftop sensory locus, he did not have a line of sight to steer by. He had to poke his head up to see. This slightly offended him. With all his super powers of extra-sensory perception, he felt that it shouldn't be necessary. But it was, so he did. Then he remembered the Aether Ability "Penetrating Sight". He was understandably distracted when it was mentioned in a flood of System messages as he was running from a pack of goblins. Still, he should have remembered it earlier, tried it out when there were a few minutes of peace.

The monsters chased at a healthy distance, still bloodthirsty but clearly capable to some degree of risk assessment. They all carried spears, even those who had been torch bearers prior. Perhaps they had decided that torches were unreliable against a water wizard, perhaps with their numbers so reduced they didn't think they could afford the luxury. Or maybe they were angry, leaderless, and all grabbed spears because they wanted to stab something.

The van stopped in front of the shattered remnants of the front door. Dan put it in park, grabbed his tire iron, activated "Unerring Aim [self]", flowed over to the passenger side and out, then shut the door behind him and locked it with his key fob. It was remarkable how much increased attributes helped with random things like quickly getting from the driver's seat out of the passenger's side door of a van. It's an awkward mechanical task that one doesn't practice. The movements are weird, the space not designed to accommodate them. But Dan had slightly super human agility and vastly super human senses now. Echo-location gave him a 360 degree map of his surroundings in the van cabin. Tactical precognition guided micro adjustments of his motions; his dramatically improved sense of balance and of the position of his body in space granted him a ballet dancer's grace and fluidity. And the most magical thing of all was that it was effortless. He did it without thinking. He wanted to get out of the van through that door, and just did.

One of the monsters threw a spear as Dan ran into the building. He'd seen the attack coming before it left the goblin's clawed hand, altered his path just slightly and it whizzed past. Maybe his new dodge perk had helped; it was simple enough to avoid that he couldn't quite tell. Actually, that probably meant it had helped. A sprint took Dan from the entrance down the broad hall as a slowly spreading pool of water from the bathroom sinks splashed under his feet. He watched himself run toward the sensory locus he'd placed there, a slightly surreal experience, and realized that the situation was now an echo of not so many minutes prior. Goblins had rushed through that door and down this hallway to kill him. Now, he ran through it and down the hall and planned to kill the last of them.

Just as Dan hoped, three angry green goblins raced through the door after him, and he invoked the power within his Firestone Amulet. He watched closely this time, straining his perception to its maximum to track the bolt of flame as it sped toward its target, expanding slowly, then burst into a sphere of fire on impact. As before, there was a roar of sound, but no concussive wave of force as in an explosion, no wash of intense heat.

Monster Defeated, Goblin Warrior (lvl 3). Aether Gained.

Monster Defeated, Common Goblin (lvl 2). Aether Gained.

Monster Defeated, Common Goblin (lvl 1). Aether Gained.

A fourth monster had narrowly avoided the radius of the fireball, and seemed unharmed as it continued its reckless charge. The fireball seemed to have a precisely delineated spherical area of effect, within which it dealt a uniform and fairly high amount of damage. Even inches outside of that range, it did nothing. How this worked, as with so many other things, he had no clue. As part of his mind took note of these fireball related phenomena, Dan dropped a sling bullet into its pouch, whirled it twice, and launched it into the raging monster's head. It seemed small as it dropped to the ground a few feet short of where the dead goblin shaman lay still.

Monster Defeated, Common Goblin (lvl 2). Aether Gained.

There were only three goblins left, all level one, all still outside. Perhaps now with the courage of greater numbers fading fast and all their stronger brethren fallen, fear was beginning to win out over blood-lust. But they hadn't been merciful when they'd come to murder him in a group of nearly thirty and he was level one, hiding alone in a utility closet.

Daniel Martin hunted them down.