White shadow traversed the short distance in less than a second.

With a soft ‘tuck’ the arrow burrowed deep into a centipede’s body, to the fletching deep breaking organs and joints on its way. Nevertheless, Alice missed the head as the monster had bent and half-turned. The overgrown bug only twitched and continued an attempt to make a run for its life even with dozens of its legs not functioning.

Screeching, the closer centipede rushed to Alice. Of no matter, the girl gazed over it and discarded as she drew an arrow from her quiver. She nocked it and she launched it!

The second shadow flew straight and almost nailed the escapee to the ground. But no EXP prompt from the system came up despite the girl’s lingering hope. Really, a zombie, she clicked her tongue, thought briefly about the third arrow, but the attacker was too close.

Alice let the bow fall and retrieved her spear, then did something she would have never done normally. She leaped, pushing herself further up with the shaft. As the centipede was angrily clapping and screeching below, the girl felt comfortable and calm. Lacking footing, yet fully in control: she could easily flip once or twice if chose so but didn’t bother. Landing softly, she broke into a dash and crossed the corridor in moments.

The spear drew an arc as Alice menacingly brought it down onto the running centipede, cleaving its head in half with force just before a tunnel’s twist.

[+200 XP +80 BP]

Hearing clacking behind, the girl quickly pulled the spear…

It got stuck. Because of an angle or a crossbar burrowing too deep, but the spear got stuck. In the panic, Alice did what every clueless combatant would have done in her place: she tried to pull it out again but only dragged the carcass around; with disgust plastered all over her face the girl pushed it then with her heel...

When she realized her last enemy was already on her back, it was too late. Alice let the useless now spear go and hurriedly turned, saw forcipules already swinging and dodged… in her mind. The short girl wasn’t fast enough. A sharp spike-like limb flashed and bit into her left thigh.

Pain spread out as an ink drop in a cup of water. Alice choked on her scream, gasped for air. The monster advanced, slashing with its natural weapons left and right and she drew back clumsy, every step bringing new waves of viscous agony.

Weapon, I need a weapon. The girl finally jerked so the dead centipede laid between her and the attacker and gazed over the sticking spear. She thought of using a sword again, but her hands reached out to a quiver and armed themselves with two arrows.

It’s like two little spears, distracted herself Alice with wild speculation. Right, wait for me, she silently taunted the hesitating centipede as the pain were somewhat subsiding. In fact, nice numbness took its place…

It struck her – Oh no! – in the process of her knee failing her, bending over on its own. She felt nothing when it crashed on the stone floor but heard a crunch and how the air left her lungs at once. Her eyes imprinted the monster twisting in the arc. It opened its jaws and claws and then jumped.

Alice lifted the arrows in a strange serenity, watching the world rapidly coloring into white. She bid her time, lingered through unending fractions of a moment and drove the arrows down like two daggers.

The forcipules pierced her shoulders first; only the girl’s lips twitched and a short moan them left for she had no breath to cry.

One arrow dug into a cloudy eye-orb next, another punctured its skull. In the last dying struggle, the claws contracted around the girl’s right wrist, gripped like a press, rip off skin, rent muscles, crumbled bones.

[+200 XP +80 BP]

With tears flowing like water Alice silently howled and squeezed the jacket in her teeth. You can… just do it… faster… With her undamaged, although shaking hand the girl rummaged pockets until two vials showed up. Red and green liquids were splashing inside.

Level up!

Hunter lvl. 1 -> lvl. 2

+ 6 Skill Points

Attributes being adjusted…

Rejuvenation felt so in time Alice even forgot to kindly ask system to shut the fuck up. Invisible energy poured in every cell of her body, sprang throughout her bloodstream, cleared the mind and eased the pain. Or maybe it is the poison kicking in, Alice retorted herself soberly, pulled out the cork from the green vial with her teeth and drank the content in a gulp.

Level up!

??? lvl. 1 -> lvl. 2

Attributes being adjusted…

Antitoxin tasted bitter as those horrible medicines Alice had to ingest in her childhood and fiery heat from her duplicate level up helped very little either. At least I was spared from the pain of giving birth to another shady skill, the girl shredded more tears.

To her greater joy, the poison spreading stopped. Immediately Alice moved so she could unclench the last grasp of the dead monster using only one healthy leg and free but hardly reacting left hand. Especially tricky job if you are trying not to look at your mutilated arm.

Secondary level up feels different, Alice busied her thoughts meanwhile. System-guided one was built on the outside energy flow, and the fiery tide seemed to be a reaction from the inside. Not pleasant like at all, but nonetheless her own. Congenital.

“Auch!” Alice hissed. She freed herself, but the pain was slowly coming back.

Plop.

Blood painted the gray-stoned floor in red. Plop, plop.

Alice stared down, stupefied. That hit her. Initial shock had passed during a fever of battle and later poison numbed sensations, so... The girl was now looking at her dark sloppy sleeve with the strangely angled hand inside and felt surreal.

Mortified, not taking eyes from the cloth-covered wound, the girl blindly found the Lesser Healing potion and drank it down. A liquid fire that scorched her tongue and throat she almost overlooked. The hand aching felt more real. Not at all the scariest part, no, instead it was the suspense. Against will, her imagination was picturing the most hellish agony awaiting her to the point Alice started to feel phantoms of it.

The girl shivered and crawled away from the dead centipedes, sat down at a wall. The ache changed to tingle and then itch. Trembling strongly, Alice shut her eyes, not thinking, not caring to be a target for a wandering monster.

Something in her was changing.

The potion was mending her flesh, moving around and rebuilding broken pieces, melting away irreversible damages. Every moment of it Alice was painfully conscious.

Wrong, this is wrong.

[Lesser Life potion] [Heals light injuries: scratches, small cuts and burns, bruises, cracks in bones etc.]

This was not what was happening at all, and Alice only had one damned clue why, expressed by question marks in her status window, so the girl wasn’t really happy about saving another potion for another unlucky encounter. Speaking of which…

Two ambushes had worked out, and I became so cocky, Alice decisively ridiculed herself and gazed at the dead centipedes with re-found fear. Jumping around like a clown, so sure in these bloody skills… you are nothing! You can die at every moment! Fucking learn!

Smack!

Alice slapped herself and exhaled. The thrill of seeing the death door was strong, but she remembered in what the fucking place she was in, gathered her shivering guts together and stood up since there was no use in waiting for her hand to heal up completely. Even if it was hurting like hell now.

These were definitely guards for something. The girl was thinking hard while pulling out her spear from the slowly burning with invisible flames corpse and bravely surpassing the waking up pain in her limbs. A den? It must be not too close since no monster has come to join the party.

Either thanks to the Observation skill or her own intelligence, but Alice had realized in time that two centipedes hadn’t been positioned in the long corridor just because. She had taken a risk then and targeted the farthest centipede first. The plan had worked out well if you leave certain pieces out of the picture.

“It’s a den…” Alice collected all arrows and muttered slowly, with some hesitation she then called out for system.

3m

No time to do the stupid quest, the girl almost wept from relief and right away insincerely berated herself for it. Still, she had reached level 2, earned some battle points and desperately needed some rest to get in shape... it was time for Alice to tiredly shamble back to her node.

Gangs’ war of 1998, the inflow of opiates of 2009, the city’s administration of 2010-2013 were tthe op three worst periods for Greystone City’s police department. Detective Hernandez was a veteran of the two of them and shared general agreement.

Now his seasoned gut was expecting September 5 of 2018 to reach top position by the evening news.

The things had gone the wrong way starting from a certain 911 morning call. “My son’s disappeared right in from of me!” the hysterical voice screamed right in the ear of the poor green soul on the phone. The address then was recorded, and a patrol car was directed to it. Even a door was knocked out. Police officers found inside a frightened old woman long off her meds, who couldn’t even remember the call.

The rookie got his deserved thrashing; the department instantly came up with jokes for the unfortunate patrol officers, end of story.

Jokes livened up after the similar call at 3 p.m. Then the line got overloaded in seconds and all hell broke loose.

Greystone City suddenly missed a substantial chunk of its population. For the reasons not as ‘chronic’ as, say, terrorism, no. Hundreds of people were spirited away. The first time Hernandez heard this theory he found it less crazy than his partner’s gigantic flash mob version only by a single step.

“You’re certain that the disappeared students and the professor demonstrated supernatural powers?” He repeated this question God knows what time.

“I recorded the whole thing from start to finish,” a young blonde girl answered proudly and flashed her smartphone.

“Admirable.” The detective smiled as if the police didn’t have a ton of these videos already. “After you give me your personal statement.”

“Fine.” She drew a bored sigh with eyes sparkling. “First the disappearies acted weird, like seeing or hearing things. Thought it was some hoax so I turned on my Mikky’s camera to shoot ev-e-ry-thing.”

Named her sp, detective Hernandez wrote down in his notebook, doubting the nature of this particular student’s affiliation with Forline University. The rest of her story though fell well in line with a dozen he had already recorded. Need to run this thoroughly, he reminded himself.

“Thank you for cooperation. We will need this video recording.”

“Of course! Happy to serve the police!”

The girl walked away, laughing. Hernandez scratched his short-haired head with a pen and envied her simple-mindedness for a second.

“Next will be you…”

“Detective!” A young pale-faced trooper interrupted Hernandez. “You need to see something.”

The man refrained from asking questions. He saw this kind of gaze before, a gaze of a person on the edge. The detective simply followed the policewoman out of the students’ dormitory and then past cordons. Whatever there is, it can’t be worse than the press.

Forline University lost one professor, two middle managers, four laboratory assistants, and forty-six students. It made the institution the biggest anomaly in the city, with literally thousands of witnesses on top of that. Press flew on this sweet cake akin starving hornets, and social media had new hits to bump up with likes. That ‘Mikky’ probably had already shared everything it saw with youtube…

Of course, it’s this place. Hernandez stopped before the third lecture hall and raised an eyebrow at the opened by no more than ten inches door.

“Just get your ass here.” British accent and manners of a port worker. Only one person came to mind. The detective shrugged his shoulders and proceed in.

“And here I thought we’ve tied up already… The hell is that.” Years of service hardened his nerves like a blacksmith hardens steel, but Hernandez still touched the grip of his gun on instincts.

“Yeah.” A nervous chuckle from Sergeant Roberts followed. “Exactly. You were saying nothing can surprise you, partner?”

“As a joke, not a jinx!”

“That is enough bickering.”

When soft yet strong tenor intervened, both men fell silent immediately. One of them white, a blue-eyed giant with a very brutal look and aggressively pointed beard, the other average built man with bronze skin, thick eyebrows and kind oval face.

“Sergeant Detective Roberts and Detective Hernandez. Explain the timeline. Specifically, regarding this.”

The middle-aged, tall, slender woman in a suit pointed at…

Vortex. Most definitely with capital V. Ten feet in diameter, it was revolving slowly in the middle of the hall. Woven from countless specks of light and all colors of nature, it seemed to grow, yet didn’t grow; and seemed to shift, yet didn’t shift. From any direction, The Vortex looked the same as if having only one unique, singular perspective.

Charming, majestic. Soothing like waters of a mountain river and peaceful like the flame of a candle.

“Major. Yes.” Roberts forcefully pulled his eyes from the thing and coughed down ‘why are you here’ and ‘how did you do it, again’ questions. “After forensic experts cleared the scene, we put here two greenhorns just in case and moved most personnel for the sake of a primary survey. About… mmm… 18:56 Gonzales noticed this… spawn of motherfucker…

“Yes?” Grey eyes lacked humor entirely.

“Khm. Well, she tried to sound the alarms, but fortunately, connection in the object’s vicinity was – puh! – just lost. Khm. I noticed her running outside, hampered before she went wild, we walked back, enjoyed the sight together, called the captain and busied the girl with finding my partner. That is about it?”

“So press doesn’t know?” The woman certainly knew what was important right now. If she also wouldn’t be closing to the Vortex slowly...

“If captain suppressed the news within the precinct – sure.”

“Ma'am, I thought you were in Washington for a meeting, something important.” Hernandez joined the conversation.

“I too thought it was important. Clearly, I was mistaken.” The woman made another two steps, now fifteen feet away from the damn thing.

“I don’t think you should…” The only reason he had the guts to give advices to state police major was that they had served in one unit, long before she moved up. And maybe the whole glowing sci-fi thing pumped his courage too.

“Something is coming. From the fucking inside!” Roberts was the first to notice and aim his gun at the Vortex. The major also retreated – thank God – to a safe distance. Gonzales painfully expectedly screamed, but still managed not to lose her chill completely before the boss of the boss of her boss.

The Vortex glowed stronger, then exploded with a series of flashes. Through nearly blinding light, a shadow appeared. A formless spot of darkness, it slowly took a shape of a person, a human.

“Don’t shoot without my direct order!” Major’s voice somehow calmed everybody down.

Unhurriedly, the human shadow emerged from the Vortex and started to fill swiftly with colors, with volume, with perspectives. Until finally it looked like… it was on this side.

“Oh, it worked.” The young woman said in a barely surprised voice and opened her strikingly blue eyes. She wore a medieval robe, a pointed hat with straps was covering her curled blonde hair, and in her hand there was a long, carved wooden staff.

“Miss Lauster.” Before words ‘she looks familiar’ crossed anybody’s minds, the major had been already talking. “I am Olivia Branson, Major of Criminal Investigation Command of the State Police. We need to talk.”

“Most certainly.” Professor Lauster nodded. “Regardless of your welcomes I won’t be able to stay here for long. There is a den full of monsters on the other side and it doesn’t plan to set me free so easily.”

System message

You failed to destroy the closest monsters nest. Node #548 was moved higher in elimination queue.

Warning! Node #548 is under attack! To avoid the mana contamination, all functions were suspended for 12-hours!

Neutralize the threat to avoid forceful elimination!

Spoiler: Status! Alice Sung-Hyun Branson Age: 16 Classes Level Race: Human/??? Hunter (common) 2 Exp: 3,100/7,000 ??? (???) 2 Skill Points: 6 ... ... Battle Points: 883 ... ... Attributes Strength: 4.7 -> 5.6

Mind: 7.6 -> 8.3

Endurance: 4.9 -> 5.8

Will: 7.5 -> 8.2

Dexterity: 6.9 -> 8.0

Perception: 6.9 -> 8.2

Agility: 5.6 -> 6,7

Wits: 7.1 -> 8.1 Absolute Body Control Lvl: – Like a magical undead being, you are lacking muscle memories and have to control your body at all times. You can completely avoid unnecessary movements; your Perception reaction bypasses instincts. Hunt Lvl: 1 (2) Hide from sights, track your prey and take it down. This skill provides a specific hunting experience for all your 'Hunter' templates-related skills. Bow Lvl: 1 (2) Nock an arrow, aim, and shoot. One month of training with a bow. Spear Lvl: 2 (3) Choose your stance and pierce your enemy. Three months of training with a spear. Observation (Nature) Lvl: 2 (1) As a child of nature, you can discern signs of life and behavior patterns in a complex landscape. Stealth (Nature) Lvl: 1 (1) Basic ability to conceal oneself in a complex landscape. Butchering (Animals) Lvl: 1 (1) A child of nature is capable of providing herself with provisions.