“Oh wow, I’ve never been inside the front of a semi before, you’ve got a lot of cool stuff in here.”

I hop in after Charlie through the passenger door of my truck. She heads towards the back of the cab, the place I have called home for a large portion of my past three years.

“Hey don’t just barge in and start looking around, this place is basically my home. Everything personal may have gotten removed when I was transported here, but it’s still my private area.”

“Oh wow you even have a mini fridge here, this’ll be good for storing some of my beer. Two bunk beds and a tv as well! Wow, I’ve got to give modern technology props, what year was it on Earth when you got whisked away here anyway?”

“It was the year 202X. Wait stop trying to distract me, get out from back there or I won’t make you any whiskey.”

That catches her attention, as she immediately comes out and jumps into the passenger seat.

“Alright, get a move on, driver. Let’s go find a building for us to level up in together. I don’t trust these skyscrapers-- I have a feeling we’ll need to level up some more before we fight up one of those. Along the way, I’ll tell you more about my fighting style and what I can currently do. Then, we’ll brainstorm about ways for you to actually be useful in a fight.”

“You don’t have to point it out so harshly like that. After we level up a bit, I’d also like to take my truck on a test drive through the night time. I feel like we’d be able to level up quite a bit.”

“Sure, sure, whatever you’d like. Come on, let’s get going. I want you to get some more mana to make me my damn drink already.”

She really is impatient, I hope her help is worth it. I move over to sit in the driver’s seat and buckle up. I fire up the engine and then look over at Charlie.

“What is it, boy? Get a move on already.”

“You need to put on your seat belt first.”

“Are you serious right now? Look at where we are!”

“I’m very serious, unless we’re under attack or you urgently need to do something else, you’re going to be buckled up while I drive”

I know how bad my luck is; driving like that is a disaster waiting to happen. As I watch her fasten her seat belt, she mutters something under her breath that I couldn’t quite catch. With that, I start driving once again.

Along the way, Charlie explains to me her main fighting style is using her small body to dart around her enemy with the two knives she has to slowly wear down the enemy. She also tells me about her transformation headband, and how she can currently use it to fly around in her pigeon form. So that explains how she transformed from a pigeon back to normal, and why she’s wearing such a weird thing. I also took a closer look at her headband. It has little cat ears on top that are covered in black fur, except for little tufts of white that represent the inside. There’s nothing to indicate that there’s anything special about it, at least nothing I can see.

We also discussed the best way for me to fight. Charlie agreed that it’d probably be best to just use guns as that’s much easier to learn rather than a brand new close combat weapon. She did suggest that I at least pick up something to defend myself in case I run out of mana. We’re planning on making our way through one of the buildings until we find something for me to use. Charlie would like us both to get to level 5 before we see what the night brings us. There’s only 3 hours left before it becomes night, so we’ll have to go at quite a quick pace if we want to make it in time.

We finally locate a neighborhood suitable for our purposes. It’s a stereotypical suburban cul de sac that seems a little out of place being surrounded by the large cityscape. We pick out a building and start heading towards it. The house we selected is a little smaller compared to the others, so we figured it’d be a good first choice. It’s still quite large compared to my old family home though. It’s a three story house that looks a lot like the one that the McCallister’s lived in in Home Alone.

Charlie didn’t want me to summon a weapon saying that I’d need it to get her drinks later, but I convinced her otherwise. I explained that if I leveled up, I’d have enough mana to satisfy her. So now I’m carrying a three foot long metal spear. I have no idea how to use it but it seems simple enough. It cost 10 mana to summon-- much less than the shotgun-- and its drain on my mana is about the same as what my current regen is, so I’ll be able to hold onto it as long as I need.

“Alright, I’ll enter first and scout out the area ahead. If there are no real threats, I’ll let you get some kills while I keep an eye out for anything more dangerous. I will be around to help you if you desperately need it, but this is for both of us to level up so I can’t do all the work for you. We do one room at a time, only enter when I give you the go ahead.”

I nod in acknowledgement. I feel like she’s taking me too lightly, how bad could this be?”

I severely overestimated myself.

The first floor went relatively smoothly. Charlie would enter a room, and give me the go ahead after he cleared out a couple of the monsters. They were large spiders about the size of a Beagle. Although they looked terrifying, they were very predictable and would just run straight at me which allowed me to get an easy clean kill with my spear. Charlie would keep an eye out and make sure that only one would come at me at a time. It was really impressive to see her darting all over the place and taking the spiders out in one hit every time.

There was only one dangerous moment when a spider I didn’t immediately notice made it quite close to me and was even able to spray some webbing at my feet, trapping me in place. I couldn’t get a good angle with my spear to hit it cleanly and instead just hit one of its legs. Before it could get close enough to take a bite out of me, Charlie rushed over and finished it off.

With this, we methodically make our way through every room on the first floor before climbing up to the second. Along the way, I hit level two and decided to distribute the rest of my stat points.

David "Golden Beaver" Wilson Team: White Level 2 Health 150/150 Stamina 100/100 Mana 145/350 Vitality 15 Endurance 10 Wisdom 35 Strength 15 Agility 10 Intelligence 10 Free Stat Points 0 Free Ability Points 0

I took Charlie’s advice and put some points in vitality so I wouldn’t be killed in one hit so easily. I agreed that dying probably isn’t a good thing. Strength was my idea. After getting caught in the web, I felt it was needed to have a better way to escape

On the second floor, I felt confident enough after hitting level two, to split off from Charlie and enter into a room on my own. So as she went left at the top of the landing, I went right and opened a door on my own. Oh boy, was that a mistake.

I’m currently staring down about twelve of the dog spiders from the floor below plus a bigger creature closer to the size of a labrador retriever, but much wider. It has eight eyes and eight legs underneath a body that is sporting four large arms with claws on the end. It also has a large tail ending in a point curving up from its back like a scorpion.

“You bloody idiot! This is why I need to check out the rooms first while you stay back!”

I hear Charlie screaming behind me as I quickly back away as all the dog spiders start rushing towards me. While backing up, I stab at the first spider and it dies instantly but all the other ones are starting to get too close for comfort. I see Charlie blur past me and instantly take out two more with precise strikes to each of their heads. She kicks one more away as she shouts at me.

“I’ll deal with the large fucker, you should be able to kill the rest of these. Just keep your distance and take them out one by one.”

With that, she disappears and a small pigeon is floating in her place, she flies up and past the rest of the spiders and lands behind the scorpion-like creature as it exits the room. She turns back into her human form and slices at two of its legs but I fail to see them pierce through its carapace.

I quickly turn back to my own problem as plenty of the little spider monsters are still coming towards me. I walk backwards towards the stairs thinking that that’d be a better bottleneck to take them out one by one. I manage to finish off one more before I make it there. At this point, I take a stand confidently on the landing behind the doorway. I quickly stab the first one that makes it through and kick the next one away but I don’t think I’ll be fast enough to react to the two that are approaching.

One bites and latches onto my right leg while the other one starts cocooning my other leg. Using my new strength, I get my left leg out and punt the spider down the stairs. Holding onto the spear I stab it down towards the one on my right leg, hitting myself slightly in the process, but killing the spider regardless. I push it off as I face the last three that come through the door. One is on the wall and makes a leap towards my face, I barely get my arm up in time to block but it just latches onto that instead. I take my arm and smash the spider into the wall, it takes a couple of times, but eventually, its head caves in and falls off me.

The last two weren’t sitting around waiting while I was dealing with that. One jumped up and bit near but not onto my most sensitive area while the other went for the leg that was already hurt. I fall over onto my butt as I feel my right leg start to go numb and quickly stab the one on my leg again. After I finish that one, I drop my spear and rip the one off my waist and throw it down the stairs as well.

As I regain my breath, I quickly open up my status and see something new.

Paralysis: Medium

I also leveled up so I throw all ten of my new stat points into vitality and see my health climb back up to 148/250. That was way too close. Ah crap, I hope Charlie is doing okay. I need to go help! I use my arms to drag myself around the doorway to take a peek into the hallway. There, I see Charlie collapsed, breathing heavily next to the large scorpion creature. She has small knicks all over her body.

“Charlie, are you okay!”

“Yeah, no thanks to you! This is exactly why I told you to follow after me. This may be all brand new for you and seem amazing that you can level up and gain magic powers. But we need to be careful-- there is always a chance of death. People will die. After all, this whole thing is a fucking deathmatch, isn’t it? You need to take this seriously, otherwise I will leave you behind. Now drag your sorry ass over here, I saw a pretty elaborate looking chest in that room. Hopefully that makes this whole ordeal worth it.”

As I slowly crawl my way down the hall, I take some time to reflect on what she just said. I have been taking this kind of nonchalantly so far. I need to take this more seriously, or it won’t just be the end of me, but others relying on me as well.