The shakes started with Jill’s hands, but they didn’t stay there. Before she knew it she was trembling in a way she hadn’t since she was a little girl seeing her first horror film. Fear came from those green eyes. Fear that held her close in its arms and told her that the end would be painful and slow.

A small fluffy doe stepped into Bertha’s headlights.

Fear Deer, Level 4

HP: ??/??

MP: ??/??

Status: Deer Fear (Active)

“Y-y-you’ve got to be shitting me,” Jill stammered out, fighting her own body for control. It was a normal looking deer, not a gigantic fire breathing monstrosity: she shouldn’t be this afraid. But those eyes, those terrible eyes.

It took a single step closer, then another. Slowly, carefully placing its hooves as if walking on unstable rocks instead of solid earth, the monster stalked closer to the petrified Jill. She mustered her willpower, waiting for the right moment. It needed to be close, but not in biting range. Thirty feet. Twenty. Ten feet! Jill pushed through her fear and did what she had trained her whole life to do: scream obscenities.

“SHITASSMOTHERFU-” was as far as she got before the deer jumped, misplacing a hoof, and the illusion of fear shattered. Jill staggered away from it, the sudden shock of being back in control hitting her like a punch to the gut, and scrambled to pick up her gun. Just as she grabbed it the deer’s hooves slammed her in the back, sending her face first into the pavement. The monster screamed in triumph, a multi chorded shriek of victory, but Jill had managed to keep the shotgun in her hands.

“Celebrated too early, Asshat McGee!” She yelled, twisting over to line up the shot while still on the ground. The deer was lunging to bite her, lips bared to reveal a mouth of serrated fangs that had no business being in an herbivore, when the shotgun roared into the night. Unlike with the wolf, it only took a single point blank shot to the neck to kill the Fear Deer, it's scream cut short in an instant as its head popped clean off. Its heart must have kept beating for a few seconds because a shower of blood spurted out of the falling body to coat Jill from head to thigh.

Fear Deer defeated. Bonus experience awarded for: monster kill above your level (+0.4); monster kill above your Tier (x2).

1120 Experience Gained!

Class upgrade required to proceed.

Jill lay panting on the ground, hot blood steaming on her in the cold night air, heart pounding against her ribs, staring at the monster corpse. The box said it was dead, and its head was lying three feet from its body. That was good enough. She was safe. She let her head fall back against the pavement and willed her breathing to slow.

“Ugg this is so fucking gross,” she mumbled, the sound of her own voice something to focus on besides the panic inside of her and the blood seaping through her shirt. “Fight wasn’t too bad. Just some mental voodoo shit to make me piss myself. I wasn’t in any real danger. Yeah. I’m fine.” She was lying, but didn’t care. Instinctively she knew that her hit points had dropped by six to 64 when the deer had struck her, some of the Mana inside of her being spent to shield her from the worst of the damage, but it had already increased back to 65. Apparently it regenerated quickly, at least when she was resting.

Her heartbeat slowed bit by bit, frantic pounding settling to a steady rhythm. Jill started shivering, not from fear but from cold. No matter how pretty the stars above her were and how much she needed to process what had happened to her, lying wet on the ground on a cold night wasn’t the time or place to do it.

She stood, using her shotgun as a prop in a way that would make her dad lecture her about proper firearms care if he found out. The thought of him made her worry for his safety, what with there being actual monsters appearing, but she dismissed it into a locked corner of her mind. He had enough guns to outfit an infantry battalion and the basement of his upstate New York house was practically a survival bunker. She should be more worried about herself than him.

Speaking of her own safety, it was time to get back in Bertha and get the hell out of here. Where there was one deer there were often others and she had no intention of getting eaten. She eyed the corpse warily, then shrugged. If it had worked for the wolf, it should work with this, right?

“Hey System, loot this assclown.”

Golden light pulsed over the deer, whose skin peeled off completely bloodlessly, revealing muscles, tendons, and organs underneath. The skin hovered a few feet in the air, stretching and morphing until it was an even rectangle three by six feet in size. It rolled itself into a neat cylinder and fell to the ground.

“Wild…” Jill muttered, picking up the bundle of what felt like supple, fully cured leather. She almost unrolled it to inspect it further, but stopped herself. No more distractions! She turned back to her truck.

Bertha was still idling away, but the throaty rumble of the big diesel engine wasn’t as smooth as it should have been. Jill scowled as she looked at the damage done to the front bumper and grille and hoped that the radiator wasn’t damaged. Worse yet, two of the tires on the right side of the trailer were starting to go flat, but they were on different axles. With a little luck she’d be fine, she wasn’t running that heavy a load, but she’d need to get somewhere safe soon to change them.

In a futile effort to stop from smearing blood everywhere she wiped her hands on her jeans before opening the cab door and climbing in. She gave a long sigh, resigning herself to a hefty detailing bill later, and sat in the seat with a viscous squelch. Her eyes tracked over the various gauges with practiced ease as she made sure that Bertha was ready to go, then eased the truck into gear. A glance in the mirror showed dozens of glowing green eyes.

All thoughts of going easy on Bertha to save the remaining tires went out of Jill’s mind and she hit the gas hard. The deer charged and for a few gut clenching seconds they gained on her, bounding leaps accelerating them faster than what a loaded semi could manage. But it wasn’t long until Bertha’s roaring engine won out and the monsters grew smaller in the mirrors.

With a sigh of relief Jill eased up on the gas. Moments turned to minutes, and no new monsters appeared. The familiar sounds of engine and tire noise, the sight of a dark road lit by headlights with stars overhead, was so commonplace to her that if it weren’t for all the gore, for the hot gem sitting in her pocket and the rolled up hide on the passenger seat, Jill would have been able to pretend that nothing had happened. She flicked on the CB radio to see if anyone nearby was talking.

“ - out there?!? We need help, please! Can anyone hear us?!? Oh god they just keep coming!”