New World Day 3

I wasn’t able to sleep for nearly as long as I had hoped to. I shook awake after just a few hours, awoken by the howls, screeches, and roars emanating from outside the house. The sounds seemed to be coming from the direction of the lake, and I suspected that my plan to dispose of the bodies might have worked a bit too well. Nothing seemed to be scratching at either the garage door or the door to the upstairs which hopefully meant that I was safe for the moment. That thought should have made me comfortable, but instead I began to grow more and more depressed. Part of the reason I had worked myself to the point of passing out from exhaustion was so that I wouldn’t stay awake worrying about the future. Now though, now I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to see my family and friends. I wanted to confirm with my own eyes that they were okay. That no crazy beast had devoured them like what almost happened to me. I had told myself these very things on the first day after I fought that first beast, but as I lay awake listening to the sounds of the night, the terrible fates that could potentially befall them kept crossing my mind one after another. Chanting to myself, I kept saying that my family would be alright. That they were strong both mentally and physically. Before all of this happened, I had been just another aimless college graduate looking for a job. I had played some sports and was decently athletic, but I had no ambition, no drive. My sisters and parents though, they had drive to spare. They knew exactly what they wanted and went for it with a gusto that I envied. The thought of them brought a warm smile to my face for a moment before the fear that I wouldn’t be able to see them ever again caused my eyes to well up with unshed tears. They were certainly much stronger than I was, and if I could survive this hell then they must be just fine. They just had to be.

Once those fears began to bit by bit worm themselves into my mind, I couldn’t get them out again. Sighing, I sat up and decided to do something useful. Before I had fallen unconscious, I had forgotten that I had planned to write everything down that I had learned about the New World. So, I pulled out a few notebooks and a pen from the nightstand and decided to correct that oversight now. I intended to keep one notebook with a list of skills and titles, a second notebook with a journal of everything that had happened to me, and a third notebook with entries for all of the beasts that I had encountered. It took me a couple of hours to get everything written down, but I got it done. The only hitch was that I needed a name for the beasts that I had fought. Taking into account its resemblance to the Old World coyotes, I decided to name it a forest coyote. It wasn’t the most inspired of names, but it was at least descriptive. As I wrote everything down, I had unconsciously divided the world into the Old World that had no magic and the New World which was full of it. It was a distinction that I hadn’t meant to make, but once I did I liked it and resolved to keep it in mind whenever I updated my notes.

The creation of my notes hadn’t taken as long as I had hoped, and once finished, I began to hear the sound of the fighting outside again. My worries and fears began to rush back to the forefront of mind. Not wanting to go down to that rabbit hole again, I decided to do some training to keep my mind off of my worries. Turning my vision inwards, I began to practice forcing my mana to contract and relax once more. The concentration required allowed me to slowly banish my fears to a dark distant corner of mind. They weren’t gone by any means but at least they weren’t running out of control. I trained my mana until the headache from earlier returned in full force. At that point, I picked up the axe and began to swing it once again. There wasn’t much room in the bedroom, but there was just enough for my to practice vertical slashes. It wasn’t long before I was covered in sweat again. Drops of it were flicked across the room from my shoulders and arms each time I brought the axe swinging down. Pausing for a moment to wipe the sweat from my eyes, my ears twitched as I noticed something odd. It was quiet! The sounds were gone!

I was hopeful that the lack of noise meant that all of the monsters were gone, but I would need to check to be sure. Pulling my bloody and torn clothes back on, I took the pistol, shotgun, and axe and quietly pulled open the door to the garage. The first thing I noticed was the dim beams of morning sunlight shining through the garage door windows. Morning had arrived! I crept forward as quietly as I could making sure to keep low so that nothing could see me through the windows. Once I was at the door, I craned my neck just enough to peer out the middle window. I didn’t see anything at first glance. Encouraged but still cautious after the mistakes of the last couple of days, I slid over to the other two windows and checked the area through each of them. Satisfied that nothing was out there at the moment, I went into the workshop to grab some food and water and plan out the day.

There were a couple of things that I needed to try and address today. The first thing was supplies. I wanted to get to my family and friends as fast as I could, but the events of the last two days had made it clear that getting to them was going to be easier said than done. It would take time to get strong enough to fight my way through all of the new creatures, and I didn’t know how long the journey would be. It used to be only about 40 miles to Cincinnati, but I didn’t know if that still held true in the New World. If the new tracks of land in the forest and the increased lake size hadn’t alerted me to the greater size of the New World, then the new mountain range in the distance certainly hammered it home. The distance from here to Cincinnati might have doubled or tripled, and all of it would likely be hostile territory. All of that meant, that I might be stuck here not just for weeks but months. Even if I rationed it carefully, the food and water I had gathered from upstairs would run out in a couple of weeks at best. I would need a new source for each pretty quickly. I might be able to eat the meat of the beasts and drink the water from the lake if I could survive the fights necessary to gather it, but there were other dangers that lurked within such a plan though. I didn’t know what types of parasites, diseases, or poisons might lay hidden in the new meat and altered water. I would need to look through the System skill list to see if there was anything that could help me with that issue, and I knew exactly where to start.

Silently, I thought, “Status! Title Skills! Resistance Skills!”

Basic Axe Mastery (B) * leveled up!

Strength increased by 1!

Endurance increased by 1!

Name: Jason Silver

Job Name: N/A

LVL: 1 55%

Job LVL: N/A 0%

Job Points:

N/A

N/A

Titles:

Survivor (B) LVL 1 25%

Fool (B) LVL 1 10%

Pack Killer (B) LVL 1 0%

Beast Killer (B) LVL 1 0%

Title Points:

*

*

*

*

0

Stats:

HP:

MP:

Mana Regen:

Endurance:

Strength:

Speed:

Bonus Points:

105/105

10/10

2 per min (-1)

7

6

7

3

Status Effects:

Regen

Skills:

Basic Axe Mastery (B) LVL 4 17%

Basic Gun Mastery (B) LVL 3 45%

Basic Regen (Passive) (B) 4 LVL 90%

*

*

*

Available Resistance Skills:

Basic Fire Resistance (Active) (B) * Cost: 1 point

Basic Fire Resistance (Passive) (B) * Cost: 2 points

Basic Water Resistance (Active) (B) * Cost: 1 point

Basic Water Resistance (Passive) (B) * Cost: 2 points

Basic Wind Resistance (Active) (B) * Cost: 1 point

Basic Wind Resistance (Passive) (B) * Cost: 2 points

Basic Earth Resistance (Active) (B) * Cost: 1 point

Basic Earth Resistance (Passive) (B) * Cost: 2 points

Basic Ice Resistance (Active) (B) * Cost: 2 points

Basic Ice Resistance (Passive) (B) * Cost: 4 points

Basic Lightning Resistance (Active) (B) * Cost: 2 points

Basic Lightning Resistance (Passive) (B) * Cost: 4 points

Basic Poison Resistance (Active) (B) * Cost: 1 point

Basic Poison Resistance (Passive) (B) * Cost: 2 points

Basic Acid Resistance (Active) (B) * Cost: 2 points

Basic Acid Resistance (Passive) (B) * Cost: 4 points

Basic Parasite Resistance (Active) (B) * Cost: 1 point

Basic Parasite Resistance (Passive) (B) * Cost: 2 points

Basic Disease Resistance (Active) (B) * Cost: 1 point

Basic Disease Resistance (Passive) (B) * Cost: 2 points

Basic Fear Resistance (Active) (B) * Cost: 1 point

Basic Fear Resistance (Passive) (B) * Cost: 2 points

Basic Pain Resistance (Active) (B) * Cost: 1 point

Basic Pain Resistance (Passive) (B) * Cost: 2 points

The System truly was divine, pun intended. It brought up exactly what I wanted. Before I looked at the list of Resistance skills, I took note that my exertions over the past night had borne fruit. I had been a bit disappointed earlier that my stats hadn’t increased, but it seems that I hadn’t been too far from boosting them after all. Both my strength and endurance had increased by 1, and an unexpected side effect was that my HP had increased by 5. I suspected that it was due to the increase in endurance, but I would need to keep an eye on that in the future to be sure. Besides that, my axe master had increased by another level as well. Turning my attention back to the matter at hand, I glanced through the resistance skills. There were 20 currently available to me, and at the bottom of the list I saw three that I would need to secure as soon as possible. I intended to either purchase or train in all of them but disease, poison, and parasite would come first. That trifecta should allow me to begin to safely experiment with eating the new animals and drinking the lake water. Since I was looking for useful skills already, I thought I should check to see if there were any scouting or detection skills that I could purchase. A skill such as that could be a literal lifesaver. I searched under scouting, detection, perception, appraisal, awareness, and enhanced senses, but unfortunately, no matter what I tried to the System kept giving me the same message.

No currently available Skills in that Category!

The one good thing was that the System specified currently available skills. That must mean that there are such skills, but I either didn’t have the right stats or high enough values in my current stats to learn them. Taking the failure in stride, I finished up my breakfast of lunch meat and water and stood up, ready to begin the day in earnest. Heading into the bedroom, I grabbed one of the two rifles and slung it on my left shoulder opposite the shotgun. I already had a plan in mind for the rest of the day. I would check on the bodies of the goblin and forest coyotes outside, finally get those clothes from upstairs, and then, then I would head out to check on my neighbors. My parents lived out in the middle of nowhere, but they still had a few neighbors. The fact that they hadn’t come to check on me wasn’t the best of signs. However, I held out hope that at least some of them had survived the last couple of days. It could be that they have been just as preoccupied dealing with the changes to the world as I have been, and If they still lived then we could come together to help one another survive. Holding that sort of happy thought firmly in mind, I strode out of the bedroom and into the garage with purpose, ready to confront a new day.