"I gotta be honest; I have absolutely no idea what to do next." Austin muttered aloud as he finished the replay of events.

"I leveled up 10 times, but I’m not even sure where the experience came from. Maybe it’s like a boon for getting the power from that guy?" Austin continued to muse.

Just as he was contemplating this point, a robotic baritone voice rang out,

“Would you like to review Experience history?”

“Huh!?” Austin jumped up from his bed in surprise. “Who’s there!?” he called, drawing the dagger he'd received from Smith on that fateful day.

“Would you like to activate the ability Predecessor’s Guidance” the voice once again rang.

“Ummm, sure?” Austin responded timidly.

As soon as the words passed his lips a warm tone sounded, like someone was blowing air over an empty soda bottle.

The tone ended after a second or so, and a familiar voice called out.

“Yo, kid. You’re finally up, good!”

“What, who is that!?” Austin spun on the spot searching for the source of the voice.

“Don’t bother looking for me.” the voice continued, “There’s nobody there. It’s me, ‘Savior’ is what I think I introduced myself as when we met.”

“Savior?” Austin responded timidly. “I thought you died.”

“I did die, and now I’m here to offer up some cool sage advice to you, successor.” Savior responded.

“Uhhh” Austin was speechless, one event after the other kept shaking up what was once a relatively quiet life.

“By the way,” the voice continued, “The name’s Daniel. Savior is more of a title or occupation, which is no longer mine, so it wouldn’t be appropriate to have you calling me that.”

“This is just too weird.” Austin muttered. “Alright, I’ll bite. What am I supposed to do as this ‘Savior’.” He emphasized the last word, putting air quotes around it.

“Well,” Daniel’s voice began, “You’ve seen the threat monsters are posing to humanity, and someone has to do something about it. I was that someone, the eleven who came before me were that someone. Now you’re that someone, Austin McKenna.”

Austin began to think, something of his words didn’t make sense.

“Wait a second. How are you the 12th ‘Savior’ if the monsters have only been on earth for about 20 years?” Austin prodded.

“Good observation, and while I’d love to tell you, it’d be better if you find out yourself. Besides I don’t have a ton of time here with you, so we’d better get to it.” Daniel continued, a hint of mischief in his voice.

“But-” Austin began, but was cut off.

“In order to protect, you’re gonna need to be a lot stronger. I gave you a little push forward, so that you’d be able to get started, but any more than that is beyond what I can do.”

Just as Daniel said this, Austin opened his stat window and checked his experience history. There was only one item on the list:

Daniel’s Boon:

Grants the recipient 10 levels worth of experience

Daniel continued, “Just like for a normal fighter, those you call crawlers, the only way to get stronger is to fight against the monsters. It’s a pretty great system, you get stronger by doing your job which in turn makes your job easier!” Daniel seemed to be getting excited. “I’m almost out of time, but just know that you can do this, the Quick Learner passive will be of great help, but there’s a reason you were chosen. In about 5 minutes, a Door will open outside of this building; don’t worry the monsters won’t be able to exit it and cause havoc. I’m going to form this entrance with the last of my powers, and you’ll be fighting things from my memories. You probably won’t die, but stay on your guard.” Daniel finished his explanation while Austin sat dumbfounded.

“Gather what you need to fight, and head outside. Once I open that Door, I won’t be able to talk to you for a while.”

Austin stood, and started to walk back to his door when his footsteps halted.

“Hey, Daniel.” Austin started, a smile forming on his face, “Thank you.”

All of his goals were now in reach, what once seemed an unreachable height was now a hop, skip, and a jump ahead with the help of this power.

He was standing outside the entryway to the small building he called home, when a gust of wind blew around him, and when he looked up, a hole in space floated in front of his face where there once was nothing.

"Better hurry in before someone sees me." Austin thought as he hopped through the Door with only his dagger in hand.

“You have entered Daniel’s Dream” the robotic voice stated.

As his feet touched the sandy ground below the Door, he took stock of his surroundings. He was alone in what looked to be a roman style arena, but the stands were devoid of the toga wearing patrons usually inherent to the setting.

At four points around the circumference of the arena, the spectator seating was broken up by a large iron gate which seemed to lead into whatever murky abyss surrounded this arena.

Austin gripped the dagger, and a nervous shiver wracked his body as the gate closest to him began to noiselessly slide open. As a creature came out of the darkness, Austin couldn’t help the rage he suddenly felt boiling over inside him.

Out of the shadows crawled a single monster ant, identical to the dog sized ones that killed his allies inside the Dungeon a few days ago.

Austin was never the sort to suddenly act on emotion, he prefered to plan his actions out and carefully choose the best course of action, so as the solitary ant scuttled towards him, he decided on a plan.

While he was ten levels higher than when he failed to kill the ant Anderson had handed him, because his base stats were so low, his stats at level eleven weren’t much better, so because of this he decided to abuse the intel he had on his opponent.

"I’ve only got one shot at this, with how weak I am it can probably still take me down in one or two bites…" Austin thought, as he prepared himself to run.

He sprinted forwards, darting to the left of the ant and staying a good distance away from it. He had three major advantages in this fight that he didn’t have in the dungeon, he was faster than the ant, he had much more maneuverability, and the arena was a wide open space, not a corridor filled with enemies.

Austin ran in a wide circle around the monster ant until he was behind it, and jumped onto it’s back. While he was holding onto its back out of reach of its mandibles he began stabbing repeatedly down into the head of the creature.

The first thrust bounced off the hard exoskeleton, the second dented it, and the third drove home. He wouldn’t make the same mistake he had in the tunnel, though, so he kept stabbing even after a message reading

Level Up!

Level Up!

Level Up!

Appeared in front of his face.

After he was satisfied with the condition of the dead ant, Austin stood once again. ‘I thought their deaths didn’t affect me this much, they were complete strangers after all, so why did I get so angry when I saw the ant?’

Still breathing heavily, Austin took a minute to calm down and catch his breath.

He then opened up his stat window to check his progress.

Austin McKenna, Level 14

Title: None

Class: None

HP: 165

The amount of vitality within you, if it drops to 0, you will cease living.

Stamina: 215

The ability to act, most skills require stamina to use or maintain.

Strength: 31

The physical ability of your body. Affects non magical attacks, defense, and physique. Also a determining factor for HP and Stamina

Intelligence: 24

The measure of your mental acuity. For caster class persons, it determines the supply of mana for spells. For non spellcasters, it determines things like perception, reaction time, and memory retention.

Agility: 29

The measure of how quickly and easily you can move. While strength can affect speed to a lesser extent, this determines the speed and accuracy with which you can move.

Abilities:

Quick Learner

Predecessor’s Guidance

Bonus points: 1

"Something’s strange." Austin thought. ‘Those descriptions weren’t there the last time I opened my window. Maybe it’s an effect of that guidance skill Daniel gave me?’

He decided not to worry about it and put that bonus point into strength, as it seemed pretty vital at this time.

"Shame that I didn’t go up four levels, that extra point would have been nice…" Austin thought reluctantly.

Just as the window before his eyes closed, the gate farthest from him, opposite to the one the ant had come out of, began to open.

Out crawled another ant.

"I’m in for a therapeutic experience, aren’t I?" Austin snickered to himself, charging forward with slightly more strength than he possessed a few minutes ago.