Whack!

Something hitting the glass woke Terry up, he was on his feet before he was even awake. Walking to the window to see what it was, he saw a crude arrow sticking in the glass. It looked like it must have gone straight through his skeleton. Looking out into the darkness he didn’t see anything moving but the arrow was proof that something was out there.

“What’s up?” Izzy asked by his side.

“Not sure, something tried to attack my skeleton” he pointed at the arrow. “Don’t see anything moving though.”

He moved to the counter to see if anyone was awake there. They all were. “You guys get attacked before?”

“No, but we have seen something roaming out there since the start of this. They just have never seen us.”

“They saw those damnable creations of yours!” The old man hissed

“Daddy, it’s not their fault” the girl said trying to calm her father.

“No, we’ve been safe in here for two days and then they come along and those things out there attack.”

“Well you wouldn’t let them in, now would you?” Terry shot back.

Even in the dark he could see the old man seething with anger at his quip. He ordered his skeletons to come to the front of the store, he was going to take care of the problem. Moving to the door and removing the rack in front of it he went to unlock the door.

“What are you doing?” the girl quietly hissed.

“I’m taking care of the problem.”

He opened the door and stepped out into the night, Izzy right behind him. The girl quickly jumped the counter and locked the door and pulled the rack in front of it.

“Don’t die” He jabbed at Izzy as he pulled out a sword and handed it to her.

Izzy took the blade and tried to hide her disgust even though it was dark out, “Ha, same to you. I’ll take the left you take the right?”

“Sounds good to me” He ordered three of his skeletons to backup Izzy while the other two flanked him. Man, this would be a great time for a night vision potion or something, he thought as he squinted his eyes and looked out into the dark. Luckily there wasn’t any light behind to spot light him.

He stepped further away from the building as he slowly scanned the area. He had gotten about twenty yards away from the building when he got knocked on his ass. Looking down he saw an arrow still quivering protruding from his breastplate. Looking at his health he saw he had only taken about ten points from the arrow. Ha, this will be easier than I thought.

He looked up at the night and was perplexed as the stars started to blink out. His eyes widened as the scene from 300 where there were a ton of arrows and they blacked out the sun, flashed into his mind. Quickly rolling to his right, he pushed himself up and onto his feet and ran, trying to get to the side of the flood of arrows.

The clouds moved and the moon was revealed which helped light up the enemies. At least as best they could be at night. He made his way towards them, his skeletons looked like pincushions but were still following him. He ran into some waist high grass and came upon a group of what looked like pigmies. They looked to be about two feet tall with softball sized heads and skinny looking bodies. Each one of them held a small bow or blow gun in their hands. He swung his sword in a wide arc in front of him and damaged the closest ones but they jumped back before he could finish them off.

He wished he had a fire spell or something to light the grass on fire with as he waded into it swinging his sword back and forth. He got knocked back a few times as more arrows dug into his armor but he pushed forward. After about twenty feet of cutting grass he got jumped by the things. Three landed on him and started jamming little knives into his armor and some of them even found the cracks. He could feel his health draining with each attack.

He quickly cast leech life on one of the pigmies and batted his arms around trying to find the others. He grabbed one in his left hand and found the other with his right and smashed them together like they were the three stooges. Except he kept doing it until he felt them go limp in his hand. Quickly stashing them, he grabbed the last one and threw it on the ground and curb stomped it.

He looked around and saw his closest skeletons hacking away at the little things and then things were quiet by him. He went over to them and stashed those bodies as well. He could loot them later. Making his way out of the grass he jogged over to where he thought Izzy was. “Izzy, you good?”

“Yeah. Yeah I’m good” she walked out of another patch of grass and collapsed onto the ground in from of him. “I didn’t know fighting could be so exhausting. How do you do it?”

He chuckled “well now with stats it’s much easier than before, so once you level up a bit it’ll get easier. By the way did you level at all?”

“Yeah, I gained two levels.” she replied after a moment.

“Nice. Did you loot the bodies?”

“Oh, crap, no I didn’t.” she said as she got up. “You know what, we can get them tomorrow” and she headed back to the station.

The girl was at the door watching Terry and Izzy as they walked up and opened the door when they got there. “You guys were amazing.”

“Thanks, and it was the least we could do for you letting us stay in here.” He said as he had his skeletons head back to their posts.

Izzy and he went back to their group but he could still feel the girl’s eyes on his back. As he sat down, he saw the flashing envelop icon and opened it up.

Congratulations, you have reached level 8!

Congratulations, you have reached level 9!

Congratulations, you have reached level 10!

You have 24 unassigned stat points and 9 unassigned ability points.

He closed the level up message from his fight with the tricerawolf. Looked at his stats and threw in eight points to constitution, strength and agility. With his ability points he put three into summon bone weapon, which leveled it up and then two into the other three, leveling summon bone armor and leech life up to level two as well. Then he opened the next message:

Terry

Thanks for the question. There is a basic shop that can be accessed like your inventory and can be used to purchase basic weapons, armor, clothing, food and such. Pretty much any basic necessities. If you want more advanced stuff you will have to buy a shop crystal from the basic shop and plant it in a safe zone, anywhere not around monsters basically. You will also be able to pick it up and move it a day after it was planted. There are rarer shops around but they require certain stats, classes, ranks, titles and such. Which reminds me, I’ve attached a special shop crystal to this message for you. I think it’ll come in handy for you. Take care and good luck.

Death

He opened the attachment and an item dropped into his inventory, checking it out he saw it was a “Necromantic shop crystal”. That will come in handy he thought as he closed it and opened the last message.

Congratulations, you have reached level 11!

Congratulations, you have reached level 12!

You have 16 unassigned stat points and 6 unassigned ability points.

He looked at his stats and put six points into agility and five into intelligence and wisdom. Moving to his abilities he put one point into summon skeleton and summon bone weapon then two into summon bone armor and leech life, bringing all of them up to four points of level two. Closing out of the windows he leaned against a cupboard, closed his eyes and waited for sleep to come.

He woke up to a sun beam shining right in his eyes. Closing them tighter he groaned and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He didn’t want to get up but the sun wasn’t going to allow him to go back to sleep. So, standing up he looked over his group, they really needed to gear up if they wanted to be useful. Thinking of gear, he opened his inventory and checked to see how much currency he had.

Since he had only killed some fluff balls, goblins, pigmies and a giant wolf creature so far, he only had seventy credits. He did remember he had some copper pieces and wondered how much they would sell for. With that thought he opened up the store interface.

As the store interface opened up he saw that Death was right, it was mostly basic necessity stuff. He didn’t bother with the food or water sections as he had plenty in his special inventory. He did see a tab for weapons, armor and spells. Not really needing weapons or armor he switched to the spells tab and grinned. There were only three novice spells but they were spells. The top one was a firebolt spell, then a frost bolt spell and finally a lightning bolt spell. They each cost 35 credits, so he could only buy two of them.

He already knew he wanted the firebolt spell so he bought that right away. Then he had to decide between frost and lightning. The main differences were that the frost did a bit more damage and had a chance to slow the target while the lightning had a chance to paralyze the target. It was a toss-up but he finally decided on getting the lightning bolt, for now.

After he spent what little money he had on the two spells he spent some time looking over the weapons and armor, hoping the group would be able to get some eventually. After about thirty minutes the rest of the group started to rouse so he closed out of the store, stood up and stretched.

It wasn’t even ten minutes after the group started to get up and move around that the old man, who looked even angrier in the day light, came over to them. “I think it’s about time you head out.” He snarked at Terry.

He could see the man looking him up and down as he stood in his bone white armor with some arrowheads still sticking in it. “We were just getting ready to leave.” He said as nicely as he could.

The man huffed and stomped off. The girl from the night before came over to him. She looked a lot prettier in the day light, she was about five-foot four with shoulder length blonde hair, blue eyes and a slender build. “I know he can be stubborn sometimes but he really is a nice person. He’s just concerned about the people” she gestured to the group behind the counter.

He nodded but then lowered his voice “that may be but he’s going to get them all killed just sitting in here.”

The girl’s face fell as she nodded. She knew what would happen if they just sat in the store. “I know but what can I do?”

“Well if you really do want to stay here, I would suggest you pick a class, and try and level up some. At least then you wouldn’t be such sitting ducks.”

She seemed to think about it for a moment “I know you’re right but” she turned and looked at her father “I don’t think he’ll like it.”

“He probably won’t but that doesn’t mean you should just sit here and die. You’ll run out of food and water eventually and then what? Then you’ll have to find another place, and then another and while you’re out there on the road, things will get bad and if you’re not strong enough to protect them, what was even the point of it?”

The girl’s face got serious “you’re right. I will get stronger. For him. No, for me so I can protect them.” She looked at her group. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome and my name’s Terry” he said and stuck his hand out.

She looked at it, smiled and shook his hand. “I’m Terri as well but with an I” she said with a giant grin on her face. Both Terry’s laughed.

Would you like to add Terri Jennifer Watson as a friend? Y/N:

He hadn’t even known that it was possible to add friends but he hit Yes.

You have added Terri Jennifer Watson as a friend. You will be able to see if she is near your location, send private messages and her condition in your friends tab.

“Wow, I didn’t know we could do that” Terri said as she got the same message. “Thanks.”

“No problem and if you need anything, I guess just message me.” With that he gave a nod and turned to his group. “Alright people, lets head out.”

“Wait, before you go, where are you heading?”

“I’m heading North to Grand Village, in Minnesota.”

“Safe journey then and maybe we’ll meet again someday.”

“Same to you and good luck with your own journey.” With that he headed out the door, collected his skeletons and started back on the road East, only stopping to collect the pigmies Izzy had killed beforehand.

It wasn’t even five minutes since they left the station when Sam piped up. “Man, that old man sure was grouchy. Thinking he’d kick us out at night just for showing up.”

Terry rolled his eyes but answered “I can see where he was coming from, he was just trying to protect his own people. And with the world ending people will go crazy along with now having monsters in the world.”

“Whatever.”