“I promise I won't hurt you. But we need to get out of here. It’s not safe with all these monsters around,” Alistair said, putting both hands up to show he meant no harm.

The woman wrapped her arms around her child and said nothing, staring at him with suspicion. Alistair sighed internally, but he understood her position. She had probably witnessed a lot of death in the past few hours.

“If I wanted to kill you to try to level up, I already would have,” he said. It might not have been the best tactic to imply he could have killed them if he wanted to, but he felt this might be the best approach. “My name’s Alistair. I go — or I guess I went to Boston College. What are your names?”

There was a moment of silence but the woman finally spoke.

“Donna,” she said at last. There was some hesitation before she said her daughter’s name. “And my girl is Tamia.”

“Nice to meet you both,” Alistair said. “I was thinking about what to do and I think we should stay hidden until the timer runs out. Normally, I would say we should try to find others on campus, but with [The First Step] quest, I think that would be dangerous.”

Alistair looked around. A couple of blocks down he saw some people engaging the orcs in battle. He could make out their movements as being swift and powerful, clearly coming from a level similar to Jamal. Wait, he could make out details from thousands of feet away? His eyesight hadn’t been atrocious before, but it certainly wasn’t 20/20. Leveling up must have improved his vision.

“Let’s get back to my place.” He beckoned them to come with him as they practically ran across the road, jumping over some of the larger cracks. Alistair did not want to be anywhere near them if more orcs started breaching them. He really wanted to figure out what the hell was going on, with the Quests and monsters coming out of the ground, but such higher-level concerns were suppressed. All that mattered was short-term survival.

They followed him across the street and through the back door of his house. Once they were safely inside and he was certain no one had followed them, he opened his status screen, eager to see the changes.

Name Alistair Tan Species Human (Unevolved) Class None Level 7 Health 72/72 Mana 34/44 Strength 11 Agility 11 Constitution 10 Endurance 12 Intelligence 13 Wisdom 8 Charisma 11 Badges "Premium Initiate", "Good Samaritan" Talents None Skills [Mana Punch], [Inspect] Quests None

He was now level 7, with increased Health and Mana. His calculation about the maximum Health and Mana proved accurate, and it looked like he had lost 10 mana from using [Mana Punch]. He wondered for a second how you recovered Mana, before realizing it was already trickling into his body at a slow pace.

After using [Mana Punch], Alistair realized he could feel the flow of Mana within his body. It was a mysterious force that permeated through his every cell, and Alistair could feel it in the air around him. It naturally flowed into his body, and Alistair could feel that at a certain point, he would be “full”. At its current rate of replenishing, he estimated it would take around two hours to fill up completely, suggesting a rate of around 0.084 mana per minute.

Based on having leveled up 6 times, it looked like each level gave him 4 free stats, which he could place into any attribute. He was very interested to see his stats. They had all increased by 3, except for Wisdom, thanks to his “Good Samaritan” Badge. He speculated the “Premium Initiate” Badge calculated the 10% bonus after every other increase, and so now that his Wisdom was over 5, it rounded up to an extra 1 Wisdom.

He was too distracted by the exhaustion of using [Mana Punch] and the relief of killing Jamal to notice before, but his body had changed, very slightly. He felt more coordinated, stronger, faster, and more durable. It was like something had improved every aspect of his body, and maybe even his mind, by a slight amount.

Alistair couldn’t stop himself from experimenting. Somehow, he inherently knew if he concentrated on allocating his free attribute points into a specific stat, it would increase it. Considering it told him he had 24 free attribute points, he decided on trying to put 2 points into each stat and trying to register what kind of change it did. He worried just 1 wouldn’t be enough, and having high all-around stats couldn’t be strictly bad, but he did eventually want to have a build. He imagined being a powerful sorcerer just like he always played during D&D. Specialization was almost always better than being a Jack-of-All-Trades.

At that point, he realized he wasn’t being very hospitable, so he caught up to Donna and Tamia, who were huddling together on the couch in their living room.

“If it comes down to it, you have to promise me you’ll save her, at any cost,” she said.

“What do you mean?” Alistair replied, though he had an inkling of what she was about to say.

Donna stood up and put her mouth to his ear, whispering lightly. “If we don’t manage to kill any of those monsters by the time is up, you’re gonna have her kill me.”

Her voice was tight and her words choked. A mother’s love for her daughter was a beautiful thing, Alistair thought, but he dearly hoped it wouldn’t come down to that. No, he was confident once he allocated his new stats, he would be able to capture some weakened orcs for them both to kill.

“Don’t worry, it won’t come to that,” he said, radiating confidence. “If I might ask, what are your levels? And do you have any Badges, Talents, or Skills?”

Donna shared her screen with Alistair. She was only level 2, her only Skill being [Inspect], just like him, and her only Badge was “Premium Initiate”.

“How did you get to level 2?” he asked.

“It happened just before when you killed that man.”

Alistair wondered if just being in the vicinity of a kill was good enough, or did the Pathfinder AI consider her to have aided him in killing Jamal, giving her experience? He wasn’t sure, but he would have to test that out later.

“Alright, just settle in here for now. I have to go test something.”

He wanted to get more information out of them, but that could wait. First, he had to see what each stat did. The names gave good information, but he wanted to know precisely the effect of each one.

Alistair was grateful for the first time that Tommy had decided to bring a bench press and weights to the house, putting them on the enclosed front porch. He lifted up a 45 lb plate with one arm. It definitely felt lighter than before. Next, he allocated 2 points to Strength, bringing it up to 13.

It felt like he could literally feel the muscle fibers in his body reinforcing themselves. It was like he had just done a year’s work at the gym at once, and he could move the 45 lb plate like it was nothing.

His physique even looked better. It looked like he had toned up and gained 5 lbs of muscle, but it wasn’t even close to being on par with his strength gains. Alistair picked up a 60 lb dumbbell and easily started curling it, with almost zero rocking. He probably wasn’t at the peak of humanly possible strength yet, but he was certainly close.

Next, he added 2 points to Agility, also bringing it to 13. The feeling it brought on wasn’t as powerful as the Strength upgrade, but there was still a tingling sensation in his muscles, and interestingly enough, his brain and eyes as well. It was as if he could process the sensory information of the world better, and he instantly knew his reaction speed was faster.

As he walked around, he noticed his steps were lighter and his gait more graceful. He was sure that if he sprinted, he would have been way faster than before the apocalypse arrived, with an extra 6 Agility over baseline.

Constitution was next, and that came with the biggest change to his body. His bones and skin and organs churned inside him, filling Alistair with a deep sense of unease. It was similar to nausea, but it also felt like pressure at the same time. After a few seconds, the rumbling stopped, and Alistair felt more solid than before.

It was like his bones and skin had reformed to become denser and tougher. Alistair was certain that he weighed more than before, and he guessed that the orc leader Jamal fought was high in Constitution.

Upgrading Endurance felt like a warm ripple through his body, but after there was no noticeable difference like with the other three physical stats. Based on the domain of the other three, Alistair guessed that Endurance had to do with physical recovery and stamina.

For Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, Alistair couldn’t decipher any changes. He didn’t feel any smarter, or wiser, or more charismatic, though he supposed it would be difficult to detect that. It made a lot of sense to Alistair that mental stats couldn’t be improved the same way physical stats could be. Beings like the alien that terrorized the planet would have IQs in the thousands, if not millions. Still, he wondered if there was a more minor effect that he was missing. Why would anyone choose to improve their Intelligence and Wisdom if all it did was increase their Mana and Mana regeneration? Let alone Charisma. He would have to investigate that later, but he had more important priorities first.

He still had 10 more points to allocate. His first choice was to put 4 points into Intelligence. It was quite a lot, and made his Intelligence by far the highest stat, with 20 points. The 4 points added a total of 5 Intelligence as Alistair presumed that the "Premium Initiate" bonus was kicking in. His decision to allocate points to Intelligence was based on the fact it bumped his Mana to 60, allowing him, if he had full Mana, to perform 6 [Mana Punches] in a row. Alistair didn’t think he would have been able to defeat Jamal if not for his Skill, even with how injured he was. [Mana Punch] clearly allowed him to deliver a strike far beyond the potency of his normal body, so he felt it was best to capitalize on his ability. It had been a fluke act of desperation that allowed him to discover the [Mana Punch] Skill, and he doubted others would be able to replicate it, at least not in that situation in particular. Therefore, he wanted to leverage his competitive advantage as much as possible.

He split the remaining 6 points equally between Agility and Constitution. It was simply a matter of survival; be too fast to get hit, and if he did get hit, make his body tough enough to handle it.

With his new stats allocated, it was time to go out and hunt some monsters, both to level up in preparation for future trials, and for Donna and Tamia. With the existence of Quests and the five-hour time limit coming up, Alistair was expecting more challenges to come and wanted to level up as quickly as possible. But first, he had some questions for Donna. Alistair and his friends had boarded their house up and hidden for the past seven hours, but she had clearly seen more of what happened post-Pathfinder.

It looked like they were making themselves at home. Tamia was helping herself to some fruit snacks from their kitchen cabinet.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Donna said, as she saw him walk into the room.

“Of course not,” Alistair said. “How much time is left for [The First Step]?”

“3:57:12,” she said, staring at her status screen, which was invisible to Alistair.

“Alright, here’s what we’re going to do. You and Tamia are going to hide in the basement, while I go out hunting those creatures. I’ll try to injure them to the point of death, and then you can, uh… finish them off.”

He tried saying it in a way that didn’t seem completely gruesome. “By the way, what was going on near you right after the initiation started?”

“We were at church. With the alien and everything going on, we were praying. I mean, what else were we gonna do? Pastor John was in the middle of his sermon when the voice started speaking." She shuddered as she recalled the memory.

“At first, people thought it was the work of the Devil. Everyone was panicking, seeing the vision of the alien chained up. Pastor John got everyone to calm down, but that was when someone noticed the Quest.”

“There was a kid, he was the type to always be getting in trouble, not acting right; he started the killing. Once that started, there wasn't any stopping that kind of thing. I took my daughter and ran as fast as I could.”

“So there are more people like Jamal, then? Those who already have high levels from killing other people?”

“Yes,” she said, with a sad look in her eyes. “That kid, Marcus, he was level 11 already, and that was almost an hour ago. Others were high-leveled too. That’s why my [Inspect] skill is Tier 2 now. I think the more you use it, the better it gets, but I’m not sure what’s better about my Tier 2 [Inspect].”

Alistair contemplated what she said. While he had realized the possibility of people completely flying against the old world’s laws and morality, it was disappointing it had happened so soon. Anyone could be a killer, and as a level 7, he wasn’t at the top of the food chain. Still, they couldn’t stay holed up forever. Even without Donna and Tamia, he would still have to venture out to get stronger eventually. And with them, he had a job to get them past [The First Step].

“I’m going to head out now,” he said. “Don’t worry, I got this.”