Lyrhea stopped and caught her breath and looked around. Her new biology seemed to at least give her some advantages that normal humans lacked, such as a near limitless reserve of stamina as well as a healing factor that, while not overpowered, did let her easily overcome minor scrapes and bruises in an hour at most.

She was faster, more agile, and more maneuverable than a human, and while she was able to heal faster as well, she had determined from her observations that she was also lighter and less durable. Her healing factor would amount to nothing if she managed to take a decent hit, meaning that while she was no glass cannon she still could not afford to tank too many physical blows.

Looking around again, Lyrhea sequestered herself away within a large tree, having used her nails as miniature grappling hooks to let her scale the multi-story piece of foliage and use that as a method of keeping distance from her pursuers. Another ringing headache assaulted her, and the screen that had dismissed itself when she had come under attack popped back up, almost as if it gave her the headache because it was annoyed that she had failed to answer it properly and in the timeframe that it desired.

Main Quest: Tutorial Part 2

As you are no longer human, you will need to learn how you are supposed to live. You can already tell that you have venom in your bites, but you’ll need more than a simple bite to deal with the threats that you’ll be facing. While Hunters are on your tail, go out and kill some more and explore the limits of your current form. Slay any 10 Entities and learn about how you are supposed to fight. Remember, the world wants you dead, so go and show it that you and your race are not so easily erased.

Reward(s):

Starter Kit: Lyrhean

Menu

Item Box

Lyrhea scowled at the screen until it went away of its own volition and started looking for anything nearby that she could kill and thereby satisfy the game-like system. However, while the forest was noisy, the noises were all in various directions and Lyrhea didn’t know jack shit about any of them.

How the hell was she supposed to find things that she could kill, anyway? It's not like she had some kind of ability to track animals and the like, right? Right?

“Well, let’s hope that these ‘Racial Features’ are more than just venom and an ability to swallow that would make a porn star jealous…” Lyrhea muttered to herself as she tried to focus with her eyes. Surely it could not be that easy.

And, for a half of a second, she was able to see what looked like trails leading all around the place. Of course, that ended quickly and resulted in her nearly screaming as pain assaulted not just her eyes but all of her senses. Obviously, that wasn’t going to work until she either used it enough times to learn to ignore the pain or until she was physically more powerful.

After some heavy, ragged breathing, Lyrhea managed to regain her composure. Her eyes, nose, and ears still stung, as did her tongue for that matter, but at the very least they were not flinging enough pain to mimic being on fire now.

She looked around and tried to find any trails, but she had been a city girl before she became whatever she was now, and the only tips and tricks of tracking she’d heard of had long since fled from her mind. After all, there was not much need to learn those things and use them in a modern world, though ‘modern’ was now something entirely different than what it once was.

For now, she would need to keep on the move and, if she was lucky, she’d run into more things to kill. Hopefully, none of them would be too dangerous, as she had no desire to be the food of something else.

…

“Fuck!” yelled Morgana Fitzpatrick as she stopped running. “Where the hell did the target go?!”

“Ah, shut up.” Pan Liqin grumbled as he caught up with the Ranger. “At least you know where the monster went. Look at me! Do you think it is easy to chase after you while lugging this damn drum around?”

“You’d have been faster if you chose a smaller instrument, you dumb foreigner Bard.” Morgana spat back.

“Look, we’re all having our issues here, so can’t we just get along? At least until the Quest is over, okay?” Martin Bienvenida, the group’s Priest begged, trying to keep the already heavily rattled party from splitting up while they were deep inside a monster-infested area.

“Shut it.” spat Pan. “I don’t need fucking Capitalists telling me what to do.”

“You damn moron!” Morgana yelled back. “CHINA IS GONE! MEXICO IS GONE! EVERYTHING IS GONE! IT’S BEEN FIVE YEARS! There is no goddamn way that any economic or political entity of Earth still exists in any meaningful capacity at this point!”

“China is ETERNAL!” Pan shouted back. “The CCP will never die so long as a single man holds to it!”

“Fuck this noise!” Morgana roared. “You lot can have this damned moron of a Bard. I’ll hunt the target on my own terms. I’m getting everything for myself, and you lot can deal with that as you see fit!”

“Typical American Capitalist!” Pan yelled as Morgana sped off through the foliage.

“This is not going to go well…” Martin grumbled as the third member of the former temporary 5-man Party left. Enzo Dupuis, the rapier-wielding Fighter, had already left after their second, or perhaps third failed attempt to kill their target, believing that staying would only hurt his chances at glory.

Now he and Pan were alone, and they were two people with minimal combat ability deep inside a place filled with nasty lifeforms. This was not going to end well.

“Come, little enemy of the People,” Pan said both jovially and mockingly, “we need to prove that the champions of the Workers are more powerful than any mere corporate dog!”

“You would make far more allies with words of honey than with words filled with venom.” Martin said, trying to hopefully convince his companion to lessen the same rhetoric that had seen him either leave or be kicked out of seventeen separate groups before, not counting this one that had just now dissolved.

“And if that is how you think, then you can go be a slave to the bourgeois! I’ll find the monster on my own, and I’ll show everyone just how a true hero of the people claims victory!” Pan half-yelled in anger as he walked away, all while lugging a drum that easily weighed about 1/4th his own total weight, clothes and all. “I feel a song coming on!”

Martin was left standing alone, and he felt utterly helpless. Well, he could not afford to fail another Quest and end up losing his powers, and so he was left with no other real options aside from looking for the target monster by himself.

As he wandered into the dense undergrowth, he must have thought about how this was now an utterly impossible task.

And he would be right if he did, because this is not his story, after all.