The next few days were a whirlwind of things happening. The military was mobilized, cities and towns were attacked, and the internet was in chaos. Through all of it, some brave souls continued to work on the game wiki, quickly adapting it to what had become our new reality. It quickly gathered up steam as more and more people started updating it, having sections for different areas, my small college town getting off relatively lightly.

It seems that the tougher and larger monsters had gravitated towards higher population areas, spawning in the suburbs and making paths of devastation along the way. Many larger cities had been completely devastated, as anything over three stars which could imbue their shells would simply shrug off bullets, needing much larger weapons, things like bazookas or a round from a tank to kill them.

The army was focused on the larger metropolitan areas, but luckily, the highest ranking monsters that had attacked our town were moglins and moki, both of which could be taken out by conventional firearms. The police had taken to patrolling the town, and a ragtag militia had formed out of the few people who owned firearms, along with a few of the gamers who were willing to try their skills in real life.

People soon found out that you would level up from shooting the monsters, though the max level in this area was only around 10 due to the leveling restriction that was imposed by only having lower level mobs.

Now, when you level up, rather than having a point you could spend on any one stat, you could add fractions of a point to any stat, you got 1.000 stat point you could split up any way you wanted to among your stats. LSP was a locked stat however, and you gained .05 in it whenever you leveled up, leading to a craze where people were becoming obsessed with raising their lifespan.

The internet, surprisingly, stayed up, with only some cities losing access, due to monsters destroying cables on accident as they roamed around. The two metropolitan areas that had it the worst were Tokyo, Shanghai, and Delhi, all the largest cities in the world.

In each of the three places, some massive monstrosity appeared, being the length of a small skyscraper, and had utterly devastated the area. After attempting most conventional weapons, The United states stepped in and managed to eliminate the ones in Japan and India, getting live targets for their prototype railguns, showing the world that they had more of the weapons than anyone had expected.

China handled theirs by unveiling a an orbital bombardment satellite, dropping a piece of steel the size of a telephone pole from space, utterly devastating the area, but eliminating the threat. People were up in arms about these decisions, stating that they should have attempted to eliminate the monsters with weapons which would cause less damage to the cities. The areas affected had mostly evacuated before the firing, but people still pointed at the casualties and damage to the cities, completely ignoring that it would have been far worse had the monsters not been eliminated.

As for me? I stayed home and spent the entire time grinding stats. Exercise just felt so much more satisfying when I could see the number slowly climbing, and meditating had become my go to way to calm myself down, something I was needing to do quite a bit.

I contacted my family, and it seemed most of them were fine. The only one confirmed to be dead was one of my uncles, and I had to sit down after finding out. I hadn’t known him particularly well, he lived a few hundred miles away and I hadn’t seen him in over a year, but I remembered all the times he had been kind to me, especially as a kid. I remembered how he’d always ruffle my hair when he saw me, always call me squirt, just being kind.

For a few hours after that, I just sat there, but then went back to meditating, trying to keep my mind off of it. The rest of the week went by quickly, my wisdom growing at a fast pace, sleeping while meditating shot it up very quickly considering how low it had been before I started.

As for my spear, I got a shovel, and borrowed some of my friends power tools to cut it to shape and then ground the edges to sharpness. As I went along, I pulled up my stats to see how I’d improved.

Name

Roland

Level

1

str

1.4738

Grimoire

agi

2.7450

Recipes

wis

7.3209

sns

1.3610

end

2.9384

res

0.1906

vit

1.1739

lsp

1.0500

Endurance and agility had gone up a bit, from running around my gated apartment complex, and strength had gone up a little from my improvised exercise routine, though I really needed to get a target to practice my spear on and some weights to help speed that along.

Wisdom had had a massive increase, due to focusing mostly on it, and it seemed to be going up a bit faster than in game, though that was likely from being able to enter my meditative fugue while sleeping and how low it had been initially.

Senses had gone up a small amount, though I wasn’t sure why, and vitality and resistance had stayed the same, no surprises there. It wasn’t until I reached this point that I managed to work up the courage to join the militia. I figured with my wisdom so high, I could practice my spear, and if I got into any trouble I could spam force bolts,, and could even fire off a few ice spears to take down anything tough.

I soon looked up the meeting spot for those who wanted to join the militia and headed out. It didn’t take long until I arrived at what had become the meeting spot for the militia, and stood around feeling awkward. There were a few others who, like me, had melee weapons, likely also gamers who were going to see if their skills would transfer to the real world.

I was sitting in silence when a girl with short brown hair and amber eyes spoke up to me.

“Hey, you’re new, you looking to get some experience too?”

“Well that, and I do want to help protect the rest of the town. I’m honestly quite nervous though. How long have you been doing this?”

“Well my party and I have been doing this for about a week, the guys with guns gave us odd looks at first, but they got used to it after a couple of days of showing them we could handle it.”

“Well it seems it’ll be my turn to get the odd looks.” I got a bit of a frown on my face after that, I was uncomfortable with people at the best of times, let alone when they were looking at me oddly.

The rest of the people slowly arrived, a ragtag group with an odd assortment of weaponry. I saw everything from a guy with just a kitchen knife and a shield made out of what looked like a table, to people in full on combat gear, with body armor and assault rifles.

A man soon headed up to the front and began an announcement.

“Alright everybody, you know your groups, red, green, and blue gets the eastern part of town. Purple, orange, and yellow gets the west. Gold, silver, diamond, you get the north city. Aqua, maroon, and amber, you get the south. Everybody clear?”

There was a mumbling of agreement, with people nodding their heads, and they began to head out before I nervously spoke out.

“Um, I’m new, I was wondering what team i should join?”

“You’re one of the gamers it seems? You’ll go with team aqua, they’ve been complaining about not having enough people.”

I asked around, and was soon headed to group up with the girl who had talked to me earlier and four other guys. I introduced myself, and soon got a greeting back.

The tallest scrawny guy, who had abnormally pale skin was Justin, who introduced himself as the mage of the group. The next tallest was Robert, who was a bit pudgy and had a slight tinge to his skin, likely from asian heritage judging by his pitch black hair and eyes. He used a sword and shield, acting as one of the two tanks. Jolie, the girl who had talked to me earlier, was the next tallest, looking around five foot ten, and had two kitchen knives which had the spines of the blades sharpened. Her short cut hair gave her a tomboyish look, exacerbated by the mischievous look in her eyes. Then came Josh, who was just a tad shorter than her, with blond hair and blue eyes, introducing himself as the second mage of the group. The last one was the most musclebound asian I had ever seen, maybe five foot seven, and his arms were about as thick as my legs. He introduced himself as Hanuel park, and I couldn’t help but ask.

“What did your strength stat start as Hanuel?

“It started as twenty eight.”

My eyebrows shot up in surprise. If we went by the game rules, that was almost three times as strong as your average human. He held a large shield which seemed to be made of sheet metal and a sledgehammer in one hand, looking completely at ease with all the weight. Deciding I needed to work on my strength stat, I asked what we were going to do.

“We’re going to hop in Hanuel’s minivan and drive around looking for mobs. Whenever we find them we take them out. What’s your specialty by the way?”

“I’m a spellsword, but I need to work on my physical stats, I’ll probably be fighting at the front lines for now.”

“You sure you’re up to it? You seem a bit scrawny.” Commented Hanuel.

“I need to get my physical stats up if I want to keep my fighting style.” I replied. I got a nod in response, and then we hopped in the van, Jolie making a comment on how a Hanuel made a perfect soccer mom.

We were soon cruising around the south part of town. It wasn’t long until we encountered our first group of orbs, wandering around the streets aimlessly, occasionally charging at the doors or planked up windows. I made a mental note to do that to my apartment, I was on the second story, but I was sure that orbs could jump that high. We then got out of the van and began our hunt.

The group was relatively easy to take down, with how used I was to orbs extremely simple attack pattern of jump at you then repeat. I just stepped to the side, then dashed in and stabbed out at them.

I only managed to get the kill on one of the ten or so, but I did manage to get some cuts on a couple others, which would get me some experience at least. The rest of the day passed in much the same fashion, taking out some wargs and a lot of orbs. The only time we had any trouble was when we ran into a decent sized group of moglins, and I had to revert to spellcasting after getting a pretty nasty cut on my chest. Figuring at least I would get some points in vitality, I shrugged it off, somewhat used to the pain due to the in game pain, only to have Robert take some bandages and rubbing alcohol out of his backpack.

He poured some on the wound to clean it, then bandaged it up for me before giving me a warning.

“We heal much faster now we have the vitality stat, but we still need to clean out the wounds, they can still get infected.”

I thanked him, and then we continued our hunt. Overall I got a few more cuts from wargs, the difference in stats between my in game body and my real life one was becoming apparent, I really needed to grind out my stats more.

Along the way, I picked up one level,which I sunk all of into vitality, I could really use a tougher body, especially considering this was real life, there were no respawns.

Eventually, we stopped seeing any mobs, and met up with the other two groups in the area, confirming there seemed to be nothing left. Afterwards, we hopped back in the minivan, and headed back to the meeting point, where we got a “Good job” from the leader, and then I headed back to my car to head back home, utterly exhausted.

When I arrived at home, I was asleep when I hit the bed, too tired to even try to meditate.

The next few days went much the same way, with my physical stats rising at a very noticeable pace. It seems that humans could get much stronger much faster than in the old version of the world.

Recently, the change in the world had become colloquially known as “The Update”, It was originally only used by gamers, but the name had slowly spread though, and nowadays it was the common term used for it.

The days among the militia soon became commonplace, and it didn’t take too long until I hit the soft level cap, more quickly than when I had been solo hunting in game. While grumbling about that, I started to think, I wanted to get more levels, I didn’t know if eternal youth was possible under this system, but if it was I wanted to try and get it. Eternal youth had always been an idle dream of mine, or at least extending my lifespan long enough to enjoy the future, especially all the novels that would come out.

Something I had taken to doing, was having Hanuel, the one with the lowest wisdom, a measly point one seven as he hadn’t added any point to it and didn’t meditate, pelt me with force bolts. It raised my resistance stat quite quickly, and barely stung with my current vitality. Figuring that vitality and resistance would stack upon each other, I eventually got it over four points.

I noticed as I gained more points in vitality that it became harder and harder for enemies to wound me, with orbs teeth barely piercing my skin. Figuring it had to do with the new way vitality worked, I started intentionally taking hits. They stung like hell, but every time I looked at my stats I felt it was worth it.

It wasn’t until that point that I realized that I was a bit too obsessed with gaining stat points. I mean, it had always been something I had thought about, but I didn’t think I was willing to take hits just to raise my vitality. Wondering if wisdom increased mental fortitude or something, I decided to look on the wiki and see where I could hunt some slightly stronger mobs nearby.

I soon found that the nearby forest had quite the collection of mobs, but hesitated, supposedly there were four star monsters there, and I wasn’t sure how strong they were, then realized I was an idiot. I had been neglecting my best source of information, the game.

I quickly logged on and headed over to the training grounds to ask one of the instructors about it. What I learned left me flabbergasted, they recommended level forty, preferably fifty before you go on to hunt four star mobs.

Asking why that is, I soon found out that they could naturally imbue their armor, skin, and weapons, and only with massive amounts of strength or being able to hold multiple sigils could you break through it. I shook my head, I was definitely going to pass on the four star mobs.

“So why have I seen so few of you summoned lately, it seems almost all of you have disappeared.” the trainer eventually asked me.

“Our world was invaded by the monsters. Everything is in chaos, maybe after we get more used to the chaos we’ll come back”

On the way back, I decided that I was going to stop by the inscription store. I wanted a way to imbue my weapons, and I wasn’t going to find someone in real life that knew how to do so anytime soon.

I soon arrived, and was greeted by the old man manning the counter, and quickly got to business.

“I was hoping I could get a book on inscriptions please.”

“Well I can sell it to you, but it’s not going to be cheap. One hundred gold for it.”

My mouth fell open, flabbergasted, that was going to drain my reserves very quickly. I still had enough however, and unhappily passed over the money.

“You’ll also need the inscription ink, one gold per bottle”

I glared at the old man, who only showed me a smile in response, then handed over twenty gold, I was going to need to practice, and I’d need plenty of bottles to do so. I then headed off to hunt some moglins, their crappy weapons would be perfect to practice on.

While I walked towards the area the moglins inhabited, I looked over my alchemy book and cursed. I could get the ingredients on my own. All it required was thinly sliced moki claws, along with a certain amount of mana herbs and a herb called aruuki. The mixture would slowly dissolve the moki claw, making the inscription ink.

Along the way, I collected some more mana herbs and easily found aruuki growing in well lit areas. I soon found moglins however, and the slaughter began. Twenty or so moglins later, I had enough metal “swords” and “spears” that I was willing to try my hand at inscription.

My first attempt was a failure, completely missing one of the runes I needed to inscribe, the inscription flashed, and then disappeared, leaving a burnt plastic smell floating around. I was only doing the most simple of inscriptions, only a twenty percent increase in the output of spells, and I was still failing.

Grumbling, I attempted again, this time getting most of the way down the sword, the art class I’d taken in high school coming in handy, then accidentally curved a line which wasn’t supposed to be curved. The inscription failed yet again, but I stubbornly continued, I was going to keep trying.

It wasn’t until the fifteenth try that I succeeded, but three more of the five left had also succeeded. It was only the simplest inscription, but it could help. Deciding to look through the book more, I soon found sharpness and toughness runes, which made me start a bit. I was wondering how some weapons seemed to cut through mobs like butter without the sigils, and it seems I had my answer.

Deciding that I was going to need to try and find those herbs in real life. If monsters had invaded why not herbs? I logged off, It seems I was going to need to log in more often for information.

Advertisement A note from sushiaddict

I feel a bit lackluster with my exposition in general, I need more practice with writing stuff like this. I feel I jumped around a bit too much. I may come back and edit it in the future.

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