The stone hand gripped Lev’s hand like a vice. He couldn’t get it off of me

“What the-” Lev tried to say when another stone fist went right into his face.” The statue that Lev had just been about to touch was moving and attacking like a human being. Jameson ran towards Lev and the statue.

“Get the fuck off of him,” Jameson said as he sent a kick to the statue. His foot slammed into the stone however the statue didn’t budge except to swivel its head and stare directly at Jameson. Lev’s mind hurt like hell, this thing packed quite the punch. He felt the bat that he had gotten from before almost slipping from his hands. He caught it before it did and brought it around to slam right against the statue's hand.

The statue let out a crack, Lev brought the bat down on the arm of the statue again, and again, and again. And finally, it shattered split off. The statue's mouth just stood there not doing its arm fell to the floor with the sound of shattering stone. Lev brought his bat to the head of the statue, it raised it’s arms to block but it’s stone arms weren’t fast enough. The head of the statue caved in, it’s skull looking like a deformed basketball.

“A motherfucking statue. Now that’s why I hate the apocalypse, the monster’s don’t even make sense.”

100 XP Gained from the slaying of [Reanimated Statue]

Gained 0.1 Strength. Gained 1 Level in Blunt Weapons

“And now I get closer to a level up” Lev said using air quotes.

“We need to get stronger or else shit like this will kill us. I don’t want to die before getting at least another bath.” Lev grunted in agreement.

“What skill did you get from the stupid car? I got this like I mean, I get to become a car.” Lev said, Jameson laughed out loud, he always had a stupid barking laugh and it sounded stupider.

“You get to become a fucking car. Holy shit they do get skills from anywhere guess what I got. Don’t laugh. I swear to God if you laugh Lev I am going to beat your ass.” Lev put on his serious face. He wouldn’t make fun of whatever Jameson was given.

“I got a skill to make my ass into an exhaust pipe” Lev looked at Jameson. Jameson looked at Lev.

“Fine, you can laugh.” Lev let out the biggest belly laugh he had. The stress left his shoulders and he finally started to smile.

“Okay so while I train whatever this skill I got is you can train your… Special skill.” At the mention of special skill, Lev let out a little chuckle. Lev frowned after, his special skill was so complicated, it involved summoning some sort of energy out of his bones to try and form an internal engine. This engine would somehow more efficiently power his body. To form the energy it said to do some weird movements and somehow it would form.

Lev moved his arms forward, his legs back and from his lungs he gave a long groan, vibrating over and over again, like the engine of a car. In the depths and corners of his lungs came energy. A familiar energy but somehow different. It felt like the diesel out of one of the gas-guzzling cars the old men in his town would drive.

And he felt good. Lev felt incredible. His body felt powerful strong, enough to destroy the trees with a single punch and then and then and then horribly it disappeared from his lungs. Enraptured by the beauty and greatness of the energy Lev had forgotten to use it to create the lung engine.

It would be another hour before he could generate the energy again at least that’s what the knowledge inside his head said. Lev looked at Jameson, not a single piece of clothing was on his body and he sat on the ground eating one of his bars. Lev looked away as fast as he looked there.

Not a sound escaped the clearing, only a slight trickle and some groans from Jamesons unfortunate training technique. Lev frowned where was the trickle coming from. Lev looked around, not a stream in sight, except, Lev looked down. The statue sat on the ground, it’s caved in head looking almost human in the evening light, and the strange red liquid coming from the tip of the head added even more to the look. Lev looked at the red liquid, and he knew what it was.

“Jameson, I think, fuck, I think we may have,” Lev muttered. That red liquid, that red liquid, Lev didn’t like it, Lev did not like it.

“Kinda busy here Lev.”

“I know you’re shitting Jameson, it’s pretty obvious” Jameson grunted and pulled his pants back up to his waist.

“Toilet paper, I knew I was forgetting something,” Jameson muttered. Jameson walked over to Lev. Lev pointed at it. Jameson saw.

“Well fuck. I guess we’re killers now.”

An odd feeling permeated the air. Like the sweet scent of first meeting someone and like the scent when you see them last. Lev stared at the corpse for a while, for it was a corpse he could see it now. The way that it’s body curved, it’s mouth in constant curdling pain. What awful system monster had done this to a person. She, they, it, had died long before Lev or Jameson killed it. Jameson looked away.

“We should probably go, I’m getting the heebie-jeebies here, and it may or may not have to do with the literal corpse.” Lev didn’t laugh at Jameson’s joke. Neither did Jameson.

They walked out of the clearing, neither of them looking back. After the hours walked away and Lev and Jameson were long gone from the forest. Something came through the trees. It’s legs like the walls of a building, and it arms the size of twelve men, and its eye stared at you through the trees. It made its way through the forest, each step of it’s not making a sound.

Each step it took got it closer to the clearing where the statue sat. And finally, it arrived. It’s long arms poking through the rocks and grasses in the clearing. Until it saw the statue, its eyes focused, each muscle of it’s tensed and in the air came the red dark energy of its body. It picked up the statue of the women and brought it to its lips. And gave the statue a gentle kiss that turned into slobber, huge drops of saliva covered the entirety of the statue.

Finally, the creature decided to finish it’s slobbering and let the poor statue down. And from its mouth came a blood curdling, man-killing, love destroying, scream. As Lev walked over a root, and Jameson sat on the ground, they heard the scream and froze. For it when they heard the scream, something in them felt a little different. Felt off and felt horrible. Lev turned to the direction of the scream. Uncountable things went through his mind, and the gears turned within his head.

“I don’t think that was a jungle creature, or like a tiger, or like a lion, or like literally anything that could’ve possibly been in this jungle originally,” Lev said. Jameson nodded in agreement.

“It’s fine, all of this is God damn fine Lev, I mean like come on a horrible roar how could that even kill us,”Jameson said his hands massaging his temples. Lev chuckled as he climbed over a huge root system. Lev didn’t care, honestly, he could die if he wanted to, this journey this world seemed fun. The boring streets of New York couldn’t compare to killing an evil statue creature or the literal magical encounter with a car.

“I think I might like this world. Something about it is so I guess beautiful. Like look at this me and you are walking through a jungle forest well listening to the death curdling screams of something that probably, no definitely, wants to kill us.” Lev said getting more and more excited as he spoke. His voice getting louder and louder until he almost started to scream. Jameson looked at Lev like the way a scared gazelle looks at the lion about to pounce on it.

“Man you’re crazy. It’s been like what five days and you want to stay in this shitty reality. Now we have a dwindling food supply, we are in the middle of a jungle, and there’s a god damn thing following us. Are you sane.” Lev stopped on the top of an overturned tree.

“I guess, but I mean it’s like I don’t know. I just didn’t ever like Columbia or even like school, I just didn’t like this whole world. Everything in it, everyone in it. And it’s not just because I’ve never had a girlfriend.” Lev said. The trees seemed to darker. Night was approaching and with the night came danger.

They settled in, in a nook nestled between the leaves of a great tree. All they had between the two for some light was a tiny lamp that Jameson had brought.

Lev started to activate the skill given by the car. The energy sparked from his lungs and traveled through the rest of his body. Lev scrunched up his eyebrows and calmed his minds, he focused. He willed, wished the energy to move and to his heart first. There he willed it to form a sort of engine. First, he formed the pistons then the chamber and finally the tubes connecting the two. His breath grew louder and started to vibrate. His body came alive like an engine. However, the engine in his heart needed just one more additional piece, one more additional spark.

The book said that to start this metaphorical engine he would have to imagine it on his own. Lev focused, each muscle in his body tensed but his mind went further. His mind went into his body, looking at his lungs, blackened by years of smoking, it passed through his stomach which throbbed with the familiar feeling of hunger and finally to the heart. There he urged to go further, to go deeper into his heart. All he saw was a singular speck of blood, one individual piece of hemoglobin, and inside that piece, he saw the energy. This energy was the power of blood made real, he created this energy and it belonged to him.

Lev imagined this blood as the fuel to his body, what made his body go. What made it tick. The blood changed, an inky black color invaded its outer regions like the gradual assimilation of some terrible biological virus. The blood became a drop of oil in the sea of his body, but to fully activate the oil what did Lev need to do. He needed a spark. First Lev thought maybe he needed to move it hard enough, but it was already difficult to move it so he needed something else. He tried willing it to light but that didn’t work either.

What could light oil? What made oil burst into great big piles of flame. Lev’s mind turned and turned over the idea but he couldn’t think. Everything distracted him, the trees, Jamesons breaths as he looked out the window, everything. Did Lev have any great memory of a fire? Of a burning so intense and beautiful that it could even

When Lev was only a kid. In the town, he was born in. Lev as a kid had decided to buy a book from the local bookseller. It was a dusty old shop, built in the traditional style of the town with white adobe bricks. And he left the bookstore carrying a nice shiny copy of The Chronicles of Narnia. The book had the most beautiful pictures, of noble lions, and children just like Lev wielding swords. Lev studied them as he walked home in the golden gray evening sun and he studied them as he opened the door to the tiny apartment he and his mom shared. However, he stopped looking at them as he saw who lay on the floor. Six needles in her arm, and a wicked smile on her face. And he couldn’t look at the book anymore after that. So at night after all the police left, and the doctors pronounced that she would make it, Lev took a box of matches and burnt the book. The fire jumped and reached for the clouds as it enveloped the book, and Lev stared, he looked at the beauty of the fire. The fire was great, the fire was good and the fire was everything he wanted.

And while the memories inside Lev’s head churned, and he remembered. The oil inside of his blood caught on fire, and his heart beat faster and faster, like the thrumb of an engine. And he came alive. His blood was the fuel that his soul needed. His heart grew bigger by an inch, his lungs shrugged off the debris that they accumulated over their long and tumultuous life.

His body groaned with the sounds of these changes, he felt good, really god damn good. Across his face, the familiar glow of the blue screens appeared:

Skill gained: [Internal Motors]

Level 1-2

Your body has started to gain car-like qualities.

+1 Strength

+1 Agility

+Gain the ability to make more of the food you eat

[Internal Motors] is a registered trademark of Mikael Corp.

Energy gained: [Blood]

The energy of the blood. Makes use of genetics, evolution, the strength of body, and sometimes strength of mind.

With the unlocking of [Blood], you gain a message from the original creator of the energy

“Hiya guy of another race. It’s the year 1070 Galactic Standard Year and me, Naolue Meinko, crown prince of the Empire of the Sun have probably changed the galaxies with this discovery, anyway, not much more to say, blah blah blah, the world is shit and I’m living in it with you, so just live.”