Chapter 3 - Hand Swinging and Cursing

I was going to make full use of the time stop phenomenon. I am going to completely understand the system and leave only when I can comfortably use it. However, I think for the past 20 or so minutes, I was getting nowhere. None of the standard cliche commands worked. “System, show status” or “Status menu” or “Open options” or “Open Status”. Nothing. Nothing worked in any of the 5 languages that I tried. I know, 5 languages seem a lot, but it is not. On average I meet people who can speak spanish, english, mandarin or more commonly called chinese, hindi or the indian people and my favorite from watching animes, japanese. Did you know mandarin has like a lot of different dialects and it’s very hard to master all of them? Also, did you know India has over 24 officially recognized languages. Boy oh boy, 5 doesn’t look like a lot now huh. But that has not stopped me from trying to learn additional languages. I tried learning french to impress the girls. Especially charlotte. She was my first crush. She borrowed my eraser when we were 13 and she has yet to return it back. I guess she just treasured it forever. Sweet charlotte. Now that the shit really hit the fan, I guess I can save the day and swoop her in my imaginary knight armor. I guess you can actually get knight armor, now that this has really become a game. Fuck, no derailing myself.

I brainstorm with myself to come up with solutions. I think this is not called system. From all the information I have, the status window features may not even exist in the first place. It stands to reason even if it did exist it might not even work like in those novels. It would be foolish to simply wave hands trying to grab the air. I should probably plan for something concrete. Let’s start with the obvious. First to survive we need a shelter that can be defended from whatever that is pouring into our world. Trevor said dimension. It could be something bigger than just our world, but let’s focus on the shelter for now. Library is a good shelter. It has solid brick walls and can easily spot attacks from the outside. Has two exits. Second, we will need food supply. Grocery store is a perfect spot for that. Has an excellent stock of food to last for a while, can easily be barricaded and defended. Good. Grocery store it is. “Foods Organic” here we come. Finally, we will be needing personnel, ammo & weapons. Guns are good I suppose. If books could kill these suckers, guns will shred them. Problem- the sheriff station is about a mile away from the grocery store and we may not even reach there without a fight. Hell, even the Grocery store option is going to be hard to achieve with just one minute left on the clock. Alvin and I can easily run to the grocery store. Camille might have a hard time catching up to us. Once we reach there first priority is to get the emergency pistol. It should be enough to ward off initial attacks. If we are lucky to find others with guns, we might go to sheriff station and gather whatever is available from there. If we can gather more people in the store, we might have enough firepower to stay safe for as long as we can before coming up with a solution together. Staying as a community is way better than taking these things by myself. Sounds good.

Originally I planned on reading some of the books hoping to get useful tips on survival. It doesn’t look quite good now. I am getting tired and hungry, which means I could starve and die here. That would be anti-climatic. Better to be safe than sorry. I have to convince Alvin that this is real and it’s happening. He might just think I am making this shit up. I will just take some of the useful books out. It might slow me a little, but would be worth it if it can increase our survival chance even a little.

I walked around the library to find anything that may be useful. I found a small medical kit, some candy bars, two backpacks, a duct tape and a couple of usb drives and a pocket knife from lost and found. Who even has a lost and found in a deserted library? And what am I gonna do with usb drives now? I also grabbed the fire extinguisher. Now is definitely an emergency. A broken table leg might serve as a weapon.I quickly abandoned the idea since there were plenty of other options in the gardening section of the grocery store.

I got this really crazy idea of making an armor out of the books. Not the entire books, but just the thick cover sheet. If I could just make something that looked like an armor or shield, it could considerably dampen any blow from these small sized monsters. If monsters that exceeded human limits were to hit me, I would be pulverised with or without the armor anyway. So I gathered most of the really ‘useless’ books, like english literature and tore their covers apart.

I got two wooden planks, more like broken wooden shelving units from the bookshelves and stuck them together using the duct tape. I then proceeded to stick the hard covers using the same duct tape, which might help with additional shield integrity. Is this even going to work? I am not a master smith, okay. I just make up stuff from what I know. I broke a small piece of wood from the broken bookshelves and attacked it similar to a handle. It is not the most comfortable shield, but it should keep us safe till we reach the grocery store. This is better than nothing I guess. Alvin might even enjoy this for a cosplay of Captain America, who knows.

I stuck two hard covers together in the hopes that two is better than one. I had made enough of those and combined into a makeshift armor by tying those pieces together with some curtains and tried my best to keep them functional. Not so fashionable. It is little hard to move around with, but it gives a sense of protection. I tried piercing the ‘hardcover armor’ with the pocket knife and it wouldn’t penetrate them. This could at least offer protection against one or two strikes. I might just give this to Camille. She needs this more than I. I am in over my head here.

I glanced around and found the dead ‘Seruya’ scout and took a closer look. He looked like what would be a goblin. Guess they are the weakest of all. He had a small dagger in his hand that seemed really old and rusty. I don’t think you can even pierce someone with this. At best, they might die of tetanus. To make a solid argument with alvin, I might need additional stuff to convince him. Hopefully an ear or two would be enough to show this is real. The rusty knife was totally useless against my hard cover armor. Mwahahaha ..

I immediately got to work in dismembering the corpse. I made an incision, yes incision, I read medical books too, at the abdomen to study the internal organs. Surprisingly nothing looked different from a human anatomy, or at least as much as I can tell. Upon closer look, the goblin corpse looked bulky but short and it had a small horn attached to his waist. I pulled the horn out hoping it could be used as a signal for something. Apart from a couple of teeth necklaces it wore, the goblin had nothing of value or importance. I took the necklaces just in case, to further prove my case to Alvin. Readying myself to dash through the library door, I adjusted my shoe laces and put the rusty dagger in my waist belt. Everything was riding on whether I can convince Alvin in the next one minute or so.