The thrill was exhilarating. Levi felt like a god as he moved rapidly among the horde of goblins, only needing a single punch to blast their brains out and send them flying. The Aecylic Energy was humming in his veins, each punch and kick he delivered taking him to a new high. There was something about battle and Aecylic Energy. They seemed made for each other, the deep thrum of his heartbeat pulsing with both the energy and his fists as he constantly lashed out, dealing death at every turn.

The goblins were falling like freshly mown wheat. He actually remembered to check their levels this time, having forgotten he could do that. Most of them were level three or four, although he spotted a particularly big one that was level nine. It fell just like the rest of them though, albeit needing two hits instead of one.

Levi lost himself in the thrill, giving himself in to the bloodlust. As the battle went on, more and more goblins swarmed into the room, seemingly a never-ending tide, threatening to swallow him whole. He rode the wave, dodging the stones thrown by some of the goblins as he danced around their shrieking charges, each of his blows extinguishing a life. He couldn’t say how long it lasted, but eventually he came to a stop, his enemies dead at his feet, the only sound in the room the blood dripping from his hands.

It was absolute carnage. Levi had thought there would only be around a hundred goblins max, but he had underestimated them. There had to be hundreds, their corpses forming the floor he was standing on, his boots full of goblin blood. They had just kept coming, swarming from god knows where, like pigs to the slaughter. He had been the butcher, reaping their lives. And he had smiled while doing it.

He stumbled back into the passageway he came from, his stomach dry heaving, bile rising in his throat. As he let his Aecylic Empowerment fade away he almost collapsed. Suddenly the tiredness hit him, and his vision briefly went blurry. What had he just done? Normal people didn’t kill hundreds of sentient beings. It didn’t matter where he was or what kind of situation he was in, how could he do something like that and just feel nothing? Just enjoy it?

Levi started sprinting back towards the lake. He tripped, falling hard on his face, before getting back up and running again. He needed to get clean. Try and wash out all the blood on his hands.

The trip was a blur. He didn’t remember how he arrived at the lake, only taking off his blood-soaked clothes and diving in, feeling the water wash over him. He stayed under for as long as he could, before surfacing, gasping for breath. He needed to get clean. He couldn’t think through the blood covering him.

It was hours later that Levi finally scraped the last of the blood off his body and clothes. Or all he could scrape off. He was able to get his body mostly clean, but his clothes were mere tatters of their former selves, his boots the only thing still in decent shape, and even then, they would never be the same again after their baptism in blood. He could still feel the blood squishing between his toes as he ran.

He collapsed beside the lake, chest heaving, eyes wide, panic still overwhelming him despite his freshly clean state. What had he become? Even now, even as he felt the horror of what he had done he could still feel it. The Aecylic Energy, pulling him, drawing him in. It’s allure begging him to just let it all go and let loose, giving in to his baser instincts.

He knew he wasn’t in a good place mentally. Who would be? It was like he was in a dream, suddenly appearing in a forest with strange monsters and abilities like some sort of RPG. Susan had helped ground him, giving him something to hold onto. She was gone. Dead. And he had killed her. Maybe the dungeon had started the job, but he had finished it. He could feel the emotions in the back of his mind, locked away so he didn’t have to face them.

And now? He had thought he could handle it, the soft whispers of Aecylic Energy. But it had changed him. Was changing him. He didn’t know what to do. Was he even himself anymore? If this System was changing him, who was he really? Was he still the same Levi, the nerd, trying to live a normal life and do normal things? The person tying to grow to become like his father, the invincible superman?

He missed his dad. Why couldn’t it have been someone else’s father? Someone else crying over that hospital bed. Someone else who suddenly was left alone, groundless in a society that didn’t seem to care. It was a wonder Chelsey had put up with him for as long as she did. Who would want to be with someone as broken as him?

But then he met Susan. Someone who cared. Someone who actually seemed to see him. Him, not the mask he put on for work every day. She sacrificed herself so he could live. Who would do that? And for him? He still couldn’t understand it. They had just met, yet she had left a mark on him stronger than everyone except Chelsey and his dad.

Levi lay there, tears leaking from his eyes. He wasn’t good at dealing with this emotion stuff. He never had been. For as long as he could remember if he had a problem he would go find his dad, and they would sit down and talk about it. His dad always knew what to do, what questions to ask to get him to figure out whatever had been bothering him. But he was gone. Gone like Chelsey, like Susan. Gone like maybe everyone he had ever known.

His sobs trailed off, his body not having the necessary energy to sustain them. It was a shitty place he found himself in. A shitty place in a fucked-up world. Tomorrow he would try and face it. Shove all those feeling away. Put them in a box for later, when he wasn’t fighting for his life. First, he had to survive. He could worry about everything else after that.

 Finally, Levi’s overtaxed mind could take no more, and his breathing finally stabilized as sleep’s sweet embrace rocked him off to oblivion.

He woke up slowly, crawling out from unconsciousness. It almost got him, the memories of the day before. He didn’t let it. He pictured his dad, smiling on his hospital bed, despite the pain. He could do that too. He would do that too.

But he would smile tomorrow. Today, he had to survive. Levi could clearly hear his dad’s words from their conversation about suicide.

“Levi, if there comes a time when it’s all too much, when it just seems too hard, remember that the you of today doesn’t have to be the you of tomorrow. Each person has the ability to grow, to become someone stronger. So maybe the you right now might want to give up, but sometimes you have to trust in the you of tomorrow. I believe you have the power to overcome anything.”

And that’s what Levi did. He trusted in the him of tomorrow. When Chelsey dumped him, he decided. Maybe he couldn’t deal with it then. Maybe he wasn’t strong enough. If that was the case, he just had to get stronger.

But become a functioning adult was different than what he had to face now. But he had done it before, and he could do it again. Right now, he just had to reach tomorrow, and then the next day, and then the day after that. He could deal with it all eventually. Tomorrow.

But right now it was time to seal it all up. He had to get out of here.

Levi slowly got up from where he was lying next to the lake. He put on his blood-soaked boots and covered himself as best he could with his tattered clothing. With a firm will, he slowly pulled on his Aecylic Energy, feeling the power fill him, focusing his thoughts on what he needed to do. Tomorrow would only come if he reached for it.

It was with a deliberate pace that Levi moved back up from the lake, resolving himself for what he knew he’d see. When he came to the goblin’s room, he paused, surveying the piles of corpses. He would have to come back to it eventually. Have to confront what it meant, both to him and to this new world he was in. But that was also for tomorrow.

There was only one other tunnel leading away from the room, and he carefully made his way over, doing his best to keep the squelching of bodies to a minimum, trying to pay his respects to the dead. It was a tunnel much like the rest, and Levi resolutely made his way into it, moving forward. It was the only thing he could do.

After a few minutes of walking Levi finally let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He eagerly inhaled, pulling fresh air through his nose. His stomach had been empty for a few days now, and maybe he should have thought about eating the goblins. He wasn’t sure he could keep them down after the pungent smell of their blood though. It felt like it was choking him, coiling up in his lungs, reminding him of what he did.

But that was past him, both figuratively and literally. He had to move forward.

Finally, it was time for Levi to face the consequences of his battle. It was time to look at his status.

It had been bothering him for a while, an annoying whine in the back of his head that he had things to attend to. When he first tried to look everything over it was a little overwhelming. He was sick and tired of the systems shit though, and after some internal wrangling he figured out a way to streamline the information being presented to him, mostly adding skill levels to his primary status page so he didn’t have to search for them.

Levi first looked at his current status before moving on to his notifications.

[Name: Levi Curchman

Level: 14

Titles: System Inductee, Inheritor

Stats: (Unallocated Stat Points: 7)

Strength: 6 Constitution: 11 Dexterity: 3 Agility: 3

Willpower: 32 Insight: 6 Attunement: 17 Charisma: 2

Concentration: 9 Luck: 3 Aecylic Energy: 8

Skills: Concentrated Will 48, Survival 30, Improved Awareness 24, Aecylic Empowerment 36, Brawling 22]

[Unlocked title: Slaughterer! The title Slaughterer allows for increased physical abilities when killing large groups of enemies. You have received the skill Slaughter.]

[Unlocked skill: Slaughter! You revel in the blood of your enemies as you stand upon their corpses. This skill is associated with: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Agility.]

[Unlocked generic skill slot! Please choose a skill from your available skills list.]

Not wanting to think about the reason for the title he just got Levi skipped right to his available skills list.

[Available skills: Organization, Driving, Musicality, Exploration, Retreat, Meditation, Berserker’s Rage, Combat Sense, Killing Fist, Battledance, Unyielding, Manabody, Aura of Slaughter.]

Levi had expected gains from the battle. But this… This was something else. His level had doubled, he had unlocked a title, which he wasn’t really sure he liked, and his available skills had gone crazy. The skills he already possessed also gained quite a few levels. He thought choosing a new skill would be easy. Just take Meditation and be done with it, but now he had actual choices. It seemed he would have to take some time to think about what skill to choose. He couldn’t get cocky after his sudden power leveling. The dungeon was still dangerous, and he needed every edge he could get.