Alistair encountered no more orcs on his way back to his house. From what he gathered, there was a band of orcs for approximately every two-by-two square of blocks, and his band had already been eliminated.

Just as he was about to reach his backyard, a small rock caught his toe and he keeled over, dumping the two orcs overhead. It had been nearly ten minutes since he had knocked them out at that point, and he quickly went over to choke them out again, when he noticed a blue marble the size of a golf ball fall out of one of the orc’s pockets.

After choking them out expediently, he went over to examine the marble.

Level up! You are now level 12. +4 free Attribute points.

New category unlocked under status screen — Achievements: You have unlocked the Achievements page of your status screen through your accomplishments.

Alistair was excited to have leveled up, but he was also confused as to why it happened and what Achievements were, so he opened up his status screen.

Name Alistair Tan Species Human (Unevolved) Class None Level 12 Health 45/94 Mana 12/70 Strength 22 Agility 23 Constitution 17 Endurance 14 Intelligence 25 Wisdom 10 Charisma 13 Badges "Premium Initiate", "Good Samaritan" Talents None Skills [Mana Punch], [Inspect] Quests None

He first placed 3 points into Agility and 1 into Constitution. It never hurt to be tougher, he reasoned. Next, he looked at Achievements. There was no information on the main screen except a …, so he opened up the Achievements page.

Achievements:

Discoverer of Regional Map. Reward: +1 Level.

It was a bare-bones menu and Alistair wasn’t sure what to make of it. Did he receive an Achievement for discovering a Regional Map and not for killing Jamal or tons of orcs? Maybe the Pathfinder wouldn’t let him double dip and get an Achievement and a Badge for the same thing. Either way, he was intrigued by the Regional Map, which he assumed was the blue marble.

He activated [Inspect] on the marble.

Item Name: Regional Map (Common Item)

Area: 5-mile radius

Instead of giving him the level or species of his target, [Inspect] gave him the rarity and the area of the map, which was pretty useful. He picked up the sphere and with a little nudge of willpower, a holographic display was projected.

The name of the item was indicative of its function, and as promised, it projected a map of the local area. The marble created a two-dimensional circular screen with a radius of around a mile, centered around his current location. The bird’s eye view showcased the surrounding neighborhood in low detail, each house merely being an outline. His own person was marked with a glowing blue dot and his home with a yellow triangle, and in the far right distance closer to campus, he spotted a couple of red dots, which he assumed were orcs.

With a thought, Alistair could shift the viewpoint of the map. He directed the viewing window back in the direction he came from, with the bodies littering the street. There weren’t many red dots in that direction, which was to be expected with the number of orc corpses he saw. He tinkered around with the Regional Map for a while, trying to suss out any clues or hints of what was going on.

Around 1.5 miles north of his house to the west of campus, he found an intriguing section. Besides, the blue dot representing himself and the red dots which he presumed were the orcs, the map only contained topographic features. However, at the location Alistair spotted, there was a large red dot with a triangle on top. When he focused on it, an image popped into his head.

In the basement of an average white colonial townhouse, an eight-foot-tall warrior muscled like a god of war presided over a gang of kneeling leader orcs. Unlike his rustic brothers, this orc was golden and radiated power. He wore a crown of silver spikes and was the only orc Alistair had seen wearing fancy clothing, his adornment somewhat like that of a medieval king, complete with a red puffy cape.

Limited Quest Available: [King Orc Hunt]: You have discovered the location of the boss of the monster wave. End the monster wave before it even begins and save your local area immense strife. Task: Kill Kalgur Bykrozz, Prince of the Blood Orcs. Reward: 50-100% participation reward for the upcoming monster wave. Time Limit: 26:58:35. Penalty: None. Accept (Y/N)?

He looked over [King Orc Hunt], trying to evaluate its merits and demerits. There was no penalty for failing it, so he immediately accepted the Quest, but that was another thing altogether to actually attempting it. The eight-foot-tall golden orc looked orders of magnitude stronger than the leader orcs, and it had at least a dozen of them near his person. There was no way that Alistair could beat them all at his current power level. Yet, he was curious about the rewards and the ramifications of his Quest. Would the next Quest after [The First Step] be defeating the monster wave created by Kalgur?

If so, he could be saving a lot of lives by defeating Kalgur early. Alistair imagined a “wave” to be quite a large influx of orcs, and from the looks of it, there were under fifteen with the Orc prince at the moment. If he could finish them off now, it might stop a wave of hundreds or even thousands of orcs before it even started.

Even if he was going to complete the Quest, it wasn’t his main priority now, Alistair reminded himself. He dismissed the map and pocketed the sphere and carefully kicked at the backdoor of his house, hoping that they would hear him. Luckily, after a few moments, Donna came to the door, her younger daughter hiding between her legs.

“Look what I got,” Alistair said, smiling. He was glad that he could fulfill his promise to them. It would hopefully be the first of many happy reunions, and Alistair thought of everyone who he had lost, those who powered him to keep growing stronger and stronger.

The three of them went into the living room and Alistair finally dropped the six-hundred pounds of weight that had been on his back and shoulders for the last fifteen minutes and plopped on the couch. His Strength had reached easily superhuman levels, but that still was a lot of weight to be heaving around.

“So, uh, what do we do?”

Alistair winced as he realized he was going to have to facilitate something a bit gruesome, but if it could save their lives, it was worth it. He stood up and went over to grab a pair of steak knives for the two ladies.

“If you stab them in the throat, it should be good,” he said, handing a knife to Donna. “I would have her do it herself, if you help her out it might not count as a kill.”

She gulped and nodded, gingerly placing the knife in her daughter’s hands. The little girl started to cry. She didn’t know exactly what was going on, but Tamia must have realized how on edge both adults in the room were.

Donna use her free hand to caress her daughter’s head, telling her it was going to be okay.

Alistair knelt down and made eye contact with Tamia.

“You see how strong I am?” he said, flexing his bicep back and forth. As he hoped, Tamia found it hilarious and started giggling. “You can touch, it’s okay.”

She placed a small hand on Alistair’s improved bicep and started giggling even harder when he moved it.

“If you want to get strong like me, you have a very important job, okay sweetie? I want you to take the knife your mom is giving you, and you have to stick it in the red man’s throat?”

She frowned, looking at Alistair suspiciously. “Stabbing people is bad, mister.”

“It is bad,” Alistair replied. “But that red man over there is a very, very bad person. He killed a lot of people and you just need to put him to sleep. Your mom will be upset if you don’t do it, right?”

Donna nodded, seeing the play he was going for. “That’s right Tammy, mama needs you to do this. If you don’t do it, mama won’t see you anymore.”

Tamia looked back and forth between Alistair and Donna a few times and eyed the large knife her mother was giving to her. She lightly grabbed it, with Donna guiding her so she didn’t stab herself. In Tamia’s tiny arms, the steak knife looked like a longsword.

With her mom’s help, she waddled over to one of the unconscious orcs on the dining room floor. It looked like the equivalent of a normal person going up to a sleeping ogre as she lifted the knife in the air and brought it down on the orc’s throat.

A sound of gurgled choking came from the beast, as a small wound opened in its throat, spewing blood. The only problem was that the orc was starting to wake up.

“Shit!” Alistair cried out, running over to the body. He should have anticipated that there was no way Tamia was strong enough to kill it in one blow. “Donna, help me hold it down.”

Alistair and Donna each pressed down on the thrashing orc as her daughter continued to stab at its throat. The death throes of the being were wild and Alistair had to dig in deep with his improved Strength to hold it down. Blood started pooling on the ground as the lacerations in the orc’s throat grew deeper and deeper, and the wild twitching started to die down.

“Mama, look what I got!” Tamia exclaimed. He was glad she didn’t seem too shaken up about the whole ordeal, though her mom looked like she was about to sob. Her five-year-old mind probably rationalized what had just happened as her killing some scary monster out of a movie, which was basically the truth, now that he thought about it.

Tamia opened up her notifications and showed off her new Badge.

Badge Acquired: “Baby Progenitor” (Untiered Legendary Badge): Complete starting Quest before the age of six. All Stats +15%.

Alistair considered the Badge she received. +15% would be a huge boon later on, once their attribute pools grew larger. It also intrigued him that she would get a Badge just for completing the Quest before the age of six. He hadn’t considered it before, but it did seem like an extreme ask for children to complete [The First Step]. He had managed to find a workaround for Tamia, but he was damn lucky to already be level 12. It didn’t make any sense for the Final Frontier Empire to doom the entire world population of adolescents if they were supposed to be “initiated” into their Empire, whatever that meant.

Donna grabbed some paper towels and started cleaning the putrid blood off Tamia and she turned to Alistair.

“Let’s get this finished, shall we?” he said. “Before you complete the Quest, how much time is left, just out of curiosity?”

“2:59:30,” she said, opening up her status screen. “What are you planning to do?”

He cocked his head as he walked over to the other orc, holding it down for Donna as she prepared to stab its exposed throat. “I think I’m going to go out and try to level up as much as possible. I feel like it’s still too dangerous to try to meet a large group of people before [The First Step] is over, but I found some people I think could be allies. I found this map on one of the orc’s bodies so I should be able to find them again.”

Donna was only level 2 but she was still a grown woman and her stab brought the knife hilt deep in the orc’s throat. It let out a single muffled cry before dying.

Badge Upgraded: “Good Samaritan” (Tier 2 Uncommon Badge): Put your life on the line for a complete stranger against all odds. All Stats +7. Upgradeable (0/15).

Alistair liked the union between his own powers being upgraded and helping other people. It wasn’t like he had purposefully tried to do it, but it seemed like the Pathfinder had recognized his efforts to help Donna and Tamia and upgraded his Badge. If being a good person kept on increasing his stats and abilities, Alistair could rest easy with his conscience. His body pulsed with energy as he felt the additional stats subtly change the makeup of his body.

“Thank you,” Donna whispered. “Thank you so much. You didn’t have to help us the first time from that man, or go so far for us.”

“It’s no problem,” Alistair said, waving her off. “I’m just doing the right thing.”

He said it flippantly, but he felt something deep inside him stir at that statement. It only lasted for a moment, but for a second, Alistair felt like the threads of the universe were guiding him forward. He would keep moving forward, without rest or respite, until he completed his goals, or died trying. It was a simple creed, and it resonated with him.

“You can come along with me if you want. I’m not sure exactly how it works but it seems like we can share some of the ‘experience’ for leveling up,” Alistair offered.

“Thank you, but it’s just too unsafe still. If I was alone I wouldn’t mind going, but I couldn’t leave my daughter behind, and there’s no way the streets are safe with all the monsters around,” she responded.

“That’s fair,” Alistair said. “Eventually we are going to need to move, though. I only have so much food in the house and I have a feeling that we’re not going to be able to make it alone.”

As he turned to exit the house, Alistair had a wide grin on his face. He was level 12 with a Regional Map and had improved his Badge. Back before the apocalypse, he had played some MMORPGs, and like most people, his least favorite part was grinding mobs. Perhaps it would wear off with time, but he had a completely different feeling about crushing the orcs that invaded his home. He would savor his time smashing their brains in.