We become what we think about. –Earl Nightingale

Immortal, Invincible... godly.

Annie shook me awake, already dressed and packed to move on.

"Uh. Wuh? Uuuurrggghhhhh!"

She had woken me far too early. I knew instinctually. The room was still not overly light and it was chilled over the covers.

After my first vocalization of how little I approved of the early wake-up, I pulled the covers over my head and settled again into the warmth.

The next thing I knew, the covers were off me, and Annie was recoiling in shock again. She didn't know I preferred to sleep naked when not under direct threat of monster attacks, so she got an eyeful. Again.

"Fucks sake! Put some clothes on!"

I laughed as she ran out of the room, throwing Seamus at me over her shoulder.

"No!"

I caught the ball of fluff and bones who licked my face. I looked at him through half closed eyes and saw that his back leg had grown almost to the knee joint.

"Two more days and you're going to be back on all your feet."

I stroked the top of his head and he started to curl up in my arms when his still rigid and slightly sharp stump hit me in the stomach. Grimacing slightly and now completely awake, I dropped him on the ground, noting his ability to land was hardly affected by his lack of a limb.

I still wasn't happy that I was awake before twelve while my life wasn't currently in danger, but there was no way to go back. The bed was already cooled and I was close to shivering.

So I reluctantly got dressed in the garb I was becoming increasingly fond of and packed up my meagre possessions into the new back Annie had helpfully provided.

At the base of the stairs, I was greeted to the smell of bacon and eggs.

Was Annie actually cooking for once? And where is she get bacon and eggs?

My disappointment was positively overflowing when I sauntered into the kitchen to find some tinned bacon substitute and tiny birds eggs in the pan. That a way to overcome your feline tendencies and steal from a birds nest.

"How do you like your eggs?"

Annie asked me cheerfully as I walked in.

"Ummm. From a chicken?"

She gave me a dirty look and I smiled sweetly back.

"Just kidding. They're fine as they are. But overdo the bacon if you can. I like it crunchy."

I didn't quite catch her reply, but I thought I could make out the words "fucking weirdo".

Fair enough you vampiric cat girl.

I sat at the table and picked up Seamus who had followed me down.

"Do you think we should bring food for him, or will he eat whatever he can hunt?"

"I don't know. He's not really been begging for food. He might not need much. But if we hunt anything on the road, he can have it."

"Fair enough."

"Do you want to pick up the canned stuff from the bottom shelf over there?"

I had ample space in my bag aside from the water and blood, so packed cans of soup, meats and fruit away.

"How do you intend to cook all this? Fire spell?"

"I assume you know how to start a fire?"

"Well, I do have a lighter."

"See? Fire."

I grumbled slightly to myself as I sat down again. Her sarcasm rivalled my own and it was beginning to hit the line between funny and annoying. Or maybe it was endearing. I wasn't completely sure.

We shared a silent but comfortable meal of breakfast that was almost as good as the original.

We silently left and Annie handed me the keys after she had locked the door.

"Destroy them."

I almost asked her why, but could kind of understand the idea behind protecting possessions. This would always be a place she could come back to, but maybe somewhere she wouldn't want to be in again. It was her home, but there was a lot of negativity too.

Trying to give her some entertainment while she was down, I took my shotgun from storage and dropped the keys down the loaded barrel.

Annie watched in mild amusement as I aimed the gun down the street and pulled the trigger. The keys were obliterated instantly and a shower of sparks accompanied the usual cloud of dust.

A small smile was all I got in terms of gratitude before we started up the street, heading for the house that belonged to someone called May.

It was a quiet walk. We passed through five of the nameless paths that somehow had deterred space itself. Though there was usually some background noise in the neighbourhood, like some air movement or far off rubble falling, it was completely silent inside the house-walled paths.

Once, me and Annie looked at each other while in one of the paths, challenging the other to declare a theory about them. But I remained silent, as did she. The two of us both uncertain enough to not want to embarrass ourselves.

But because of the damn paths, we had to take several detours. The level of destruction was occasionally too high for us to even attempt to traverse. Though there was a fair chance Annie would have been able to make it with her two agility enhancing races, I would not, so she rather politely didn't mention it.

I didn't even mind that she was taking the lead.

While she was ahead, I could more easily observe her motion in greater detail. The way her tail swung in time with her hips and how her ears twitched at the slightest foreign sound. Then twitch again and swivel slightly.

"Uh."

She had heard something.

I tensed my body and readied my weapons. In the moment, I drew a blank as to how many rounds I had left.

When did I last reload? Back in the nest? I've used up one since, so three I think.

And in those seconds that I hesitated, I was knocked off my feet by the heavy paw of a black chimaera.

-17hp

I was knocked into a pile of rubble and felt the rough bricks tear up the back of my head. My body was protected enough that I only took another point of damage.

I was up in a second to see Annie already facing down with the monster. They circled each other, the effects of some skill sending a chill down my spine. Something intimidating possibly. But they were at a stalemate and were ignoring me for the moment at least.

I took the moment to analyse the combination between what looked like a wolf and a praying mantis.

Chimaera:

Level: 24

Hp: 269/269

Mp: 196/250

Though its level was high, it's health and mana were relatively low. That meant it had some other stat above average. And judging by its build, it was either fast or strong. Neither of which I could effectively counter. But Annie could keep up in terms of agility. If it was fast, she would be the key to taking it down. If it could hit harder than it could hit me with its scythes, then I could surprise it with some high damage shotgun shells.

Speaking of which, I waited until the chimaera showed me it face and fired.

Despite the explosion of dust and incredible shell speed, there was no damage window to be seen.

The chimaera instead stood a meter to the left of its original position. Not only was it unharmed, but it was looking at me, and it was pissed off.

Somehow, it growled like a wolf from a very insectile mouth, and my feet instantly felt like stone. I guessed without some sort of similar skill to counter it, the intimidation ended up being fairly effective. So I activated Social Chameleon, becoming intimidating an threatening. My legs were free, and the chimaera and I circled each other much in the same way Annie had with it. It occurred to me that the feature seemed nothing more than some multi-use area of effect skill but I remembered the emotional repercussions I felt and dismissed the theory. All that mattered now was that the chimaera and I were on equal footing. Equally cautious of each other.

I glanced down at my gun, noting I had a single shot left until I reached the destroyed barrel and had to reload.

But I could bluff aggression. And that didn't say anything to Annie's combat prowess. While I was holding its attention, she was sneaking behind it, climbing up on the rubble the chimaera had burst from.

She must have been using Silent Step, and at a high level because I couldn't hear her moving at all.

But the chimaera could. It turned its mantis head back towards her and I fired my final shell at it.

Again, it dodged the shell moving in a flash, but that drew its attention back at me long enough for Annie to jump at it.

Completely silent, she flew through the air and landed on its wolven back, behind the insectile upper body. She pushed her claws into the soft joint of its shoulder and tore off a section of its armour before tearing at the soft flesh underneath.

-20hp

It howled in pain, a sound completely foreign to the mandible it used.

I used the time to reload, having to take a second to remove a shell from the ruined barrel. But I had four shots available. That was all I needed.

I ran towards it while it's most dangerous limbs were occupied trying to remove the danger from its back. I figured the closer I could get to it, the less likely it was that it would be able to dodge.

But as soon as I got within a meter of it, it began to spin and kicked at me with its hind legs then ran away, continuing to attempt to remove Annie.

-11hp

"Shit."

I chased after it, only stopping once it got a grip on her, then throwing her at me hard enough to knock me down.

I took a further four damage, bringing me down to about 70% of my total. The bigger problem was, of course, that me and Annie had to untangle ourselves before we could pursue our would-be attacker. Unfortunately, it had run far away enough that we couldn't see it by the time we were on our feet.

"SHIT!"

I stomped on a nearby plank of wood in frustration, obliterating it. Our high levelled prey had fled, leaving us with injuries, and injuries alone.

"Don't worry about it. We're not even trying to hunt them."

Annie stood and dusted herself off. I understood her logic, and though I was annoyed I had gained nothing, it was good neither of us had died. But my ribs ached like a bitch, and probably would until my health regenerated.

In the seconds that I had chased the chimaera, I had completely lost my bearing.

"Any idea which way to go now?"

Annie pointed behind her.

"You see the smoke from the college?"

I had noticed the smoke but expected the college to have stopped smoking already. I didn't even expect it to still be burning.

"We're heading to the left of that."

"Fair enough."

I nodded and let her continue to lead me, as I fell back into the habits formed earlier.

"Ok. We're in the rich district now."

I didn't even need Annie to announce it. The quality of the housing had increased dramatically, and the average house size was maybe double what I had been casually observing for the last ten minutes. Drastically personalised mansions in bright white or random chroma all blurred into one as I barely played attention in passing.

"Wait."

An arm held out in front of me halted my progress and I looked first at Annie in confusion, then ahead in alarm.

There was a public park ahead of us, And while I initially saw nothing out of the ordinary, I focused my sight and noticed what had alarmed her.

A series of trees with fairly obvious carvings in them obscured the way, effectively blocking the path. The trees had spread past the limits of the grass and sprouted from the tarmac, reaching and then covering the edges of the houses.

Despite how concerning it may have seemed, it was much worse. Because for some reason, the trees were covered, completely coated in carvings of agonized faces. In excruciating detail, I could see the pain on every face of that tree and it gave me an overall sense of dread.

"So how should we deal with this?"

I could see small gaps between the trees, but I doubted my ability to squeeze through.

"I don't know. I don't want to go near them really."

"So we go around?"

Annie shook her head.

"This is Regents Park. It spans the entirety of the first district."

"You think there are trees all along it?"

"Yeah. So we can go back to the educational district and around, but that would take about two hours."

"So we walk for two hours."

"That's dangerous though. You saw how strong that chimaera was."

I had seen its power. I understood the fear. If another attacked us and had any more determination, there was no guarantee we would live.

"Well if we can't go around it, we can't go through it, and we can't go around it..."

I was leading her to finish my sentence, but Annie only looked at me dubiously.

"What are you getting at?"

I sighed, exasperated.

"THEN WE HAVE TO GO OVER IT! Jesus, you never been on a bear hunt?"

"Bad time to make such an obscure reference dude, but I get what you're saying. I agree."

"Cool. We go over the houses."

Of the houses that were closest to us, one seemed easy to climb. It had been going through renovations of some sort and was covered in scaffolding.

So one fairly entertaining expedition up, Annie and I stood on the roof of a four storey house staring out into the park.

It wasn't a particularly pretty sight.

Whatever was in the park was big. Really big. Big enough that analysing it did nothing. No error screen, no information. Nothing.

Plants of blood-red leaves and stems and bone-white flowers covered the park. They flowed like a living creature and I immediately identified it as a hive mind, or even one individual creature. A carnivorous plant that had evolved into something gruesome. A field of death. And there was only one way I could vocalise my thoughts.

"What in the ever living fuck?"

"What do you think it is?"

"I don't want to know. But some fire would be really nice right about now."

Annie looked at me like I was an idiot. And in all honesty, my suggestion of fire was fairly idiotic.

"You don't think something that big has some way to counter fire?"

"Ok. That's fair. So... we go around?"

Annie sighed, sounding oddly familiar to me.

"I guess. But keep your guard up at all times. I'm still not ok with just us two doing this."

"Oh yeah, what about Seamus?"

At the mention of his name, Seamus pushed his head out of the top of Annie's bag and bared his teeth.

"He's not really combat ready."

"Ok. Let's go then."

It took less than two hours, but it still felt like forever that we were walking. Funnily enough, while in the rich district, I found several monster corpses. High levelled monster corpses. All of them were chimaeras, and every single one seemed to have been partially dissolved in acid.

It wasn't pretty, but I could appreciate how soon it had been since it had happened, and that their souls were still present and relatively whole.

Annie looked on uninterested as I harvested every soul I came across. The chimaeras had surprisingly powerful souls, evident but the duality of their bodies. The souls themselves were nothing special to look at though. They just looked like two individual souls had been roughly pushed together and welded badly. It was a wonder that this mess was the soul of such well-made monsters.

Despite my musings at the souls specifically, I gained a lot of essences, bringing my total back up to a specific 163.7. While it still wasn't enough to buy another skill, it might be enough to bind a greater or even powerful soul and level up Soul Binding. It was at 50% since I had helped Annie, and if I could get at another dying human, I would surely level it up. And while I had no idea what would change as it levelled, it was a powerful skill to improve.

"You said your friends would have probably passed through here?"

Annie looked back at the sudden noise, probably expecting it to have been due to some threat.

"I don't think so. Only one guy in the group had any sort of corrosive ability and it was severely limited. He couldn't have done this."

"So there's another group of people or even another person who's already strong enough to kill them."

"I guess so."

It gave me chills. I thought that I had every advantage to become powerful, but my power was so... overpowered that I couldn't often use it. Someone who had taken all the right steps and no shortcuts would be more of a threat than any monster we might come across.

Why do you always assume the worst?

I sighed, knowing that I was right. There was no reason for me to be scared, or even insecure about any other survivors. I want the protagonist of some anime. I wasn't even an antagonist. I was just... a vaguely underrated background character.

But enough of me hyping myself up. Because of the significantly longer travel time, it was mid-afternoon when Annie announced we were there. Or, close enough that we could let our guard down a little.

I hadn't really noticed up to that point because of how on edge I forced myself to stay, but the housing situation was pretty phenomenal.

Every house on this street and the ones we had passed was essentially a mansion, and each was individual too.

"How loaded do you think these people need to get to do this?"

"Oh, please. We don't even know what Mays parents do for a living. Every time we've asked, she says just that: oh, please. As if it's not a big deal."

"What? It is a big deal. Of course, it is. These places would all be ideal forts in a monster apocalypse."

"You think anyone has?"

"Fortified themselves in? Probably. They've all probably got bunkers with all kinds of food and electricity generators stored away."

I continued with a much more bitter face.

"Rich pricks. They're the ones who are gonna survive this. At first. It's us, the ones who know about all this that might just live."

"You're kind of a pessimist, you know?"

I feigned surprise, bored enough to try and mess with her a bit.

"No, I hadn't noticed. What makes you say that?"

She nudged me hard enough to make me stumble forwards but then grabbed me by the collar just as I was about to step on someone's grass. I was at a steep angle, but she unsurprisingly was able to hold most of my weight with no visible strain. Something I had found when exercising the day before was that past a certain point in strength, my own weight seemed far less than before.

"We're here. Be careful."

I took a proper look at the house she was indicating. It was on a whole other level. I couldn't even see half of the house past the tall gates that lined the property. Only a small strip of grass was properly visible, and even then, it seemed perfect in its own sense.

Annie stepped up to the gate and scrutinised the keypad mounted on the wall.

"You know the password?"

"Yeah. But the pad's broken."

So she just pushed open the gate with no resistance. I guessed with the electricity out across the city, stuff, like breaking and entering around here, would be ridiculously easy. And I was sure people were doing just that.

A thought suddenly crossed my mind. Something I had forgotten about until now resurfaced violently.

"Wait!"

Annie jumped back out from the entrance to the garden and landed next to me, her claws and teeth bared.

"What is it? I can't hear anything."

I aimed an accusatory finger at her.

"You said you would get me a battery for my phone."

Annie kicked me in the shin, hard enough to ground me.

-9hp

"Dick. Don't fuck about like that. And I'll get you one of Mays. She probably has one somewhere."

I gasped through the pain of what I was sure was a fractured shin.

"Appreciate it."

Past the cover of the gate and a bank of low trees, I got a proper view of the garden.

Despite the apparent chaos behind us, the garden seemed immaculate. Sectioned off lawns filled with perfectly trimmed topiary creatures, and a gravel path that led to the front door.

Annie held me back again but before I could say anything, she tilted her head back and sniffed the air.

"Wait a second. I can smell something... gas?"

I scanned the house as best I could. There seemed to be no obvious source. The only notable thing I noticed about the house was that every window was blacked out.

"What-"

An explosion rocked the house, blowing out a large section of the side wall. A cloud of flames accompanied by a spray of shrapnel tore apart the trees close to it.

Annie and I froze in shock, and even as the bushes came alive around us along with some men made of sticks, we failed to react properly.

*Urgent quest alert!*

Quest name: A Bad Time

Time limit: phase 1: 30 minutes, phase 2: 12 hours.

Quest details: There is little time. You must go to the following waypoint and rescue the soul of James Lander. I owe his deity a favour. Do whatever you can to ensure the survival of his body for phase 1 and revert his body to a state the soul can be housed again for phase 2.

Quest rewards: unique soul skill, +1% spectral affinity.

Failure penalty: -1% spectral affinity, -10 favour of the gods.

Setting quest waypoint...

A red beam pierced the clouds and descended until it struck the house, landing directly where the explosion had sourced from.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me."

A dragon of leaves and branches leapt the nearby shrubs and landed in front of me baring teeth made of broken and jagged wood.

"Annie?"

I felt her back up to me and push her shoulder against mine.

"Yeah?"

"Let's make this quick, ok?"

"Ok."