Mike was aware of the fact…. neither he nor Chris could measure up to Nebel. In nearly everything Nebel was better, in class he always knew what the professor was talking about before the rest of the class, in games he swiftly analyzed his opponent, the situation, his options and pulled victory out of a hat, he even figured out the likes and dislikes of the girls in their classes since grade school and told them to the guys that liked them. In shop he made intricate models and furniture, selling things came to him naturally and no one every truly beat him in an argument. Virtual reality only highlighted what reality had already shown him since childhood, really the only thing they were better than him were physical abilities and that was only in endurance for the most part, he learned at an incredible pace. Luckily for Chris’ and Mike’s egos they were better than Nebel in swimming and climbing. Not that Nebel was bad at those they were just better.

Mike had been thinking about how he had influenced them, Chris became competitive in swimming only because of Nebel nearly beating him at it once and Mike well there was a lot Mike had been helped with by Nebel. But there is a limit that one person can do to make you a better person, sometimes you just have to stand on your own feet. So Mike had decided.

“Hey Nebel.”

Nebel turns towards him away from the store clerk he had been haggling with. “What’s up Mike?”

“I was think that, If we what to become stronger we need to pair off.”

Nebel finished haggling with the clerk while seeming to be deep in thought. “Sounds, about right. We can gather more information that way. But let’s find out what can be done with these.”

Nebel points at a new backpack they had been able to buy with some of money they got from the sale of the gold nugget. Inside the Backpack was the leather, knives and the quartz pieces they had found on the goblins.

“Ok, sounds good.”

Nebel thanked the shop keeper for his time and they both left the shop, Chris had been Window shopping weapons and was currently looking through some glass at a two hander with a lightning bolt like shape.

“Man this one looks so cool and its attack is so high!” Chris mutters.

Mike opens the identification screen of the sword.

Bolt BladeNo history availableAttack 100DificulltyImmense????

“Hmm, Useless.” Mike thinks.

Nebel ignores the sword “Hey, Chris let’s go.”

Chris notices them and hurries over. “What are we doing now?”

Nebel points towards a dollar store “I thought we’d get a few tools for our future production skills.”

“I call Metalworking.” Mike says as if to call dibs.

“I’m going to do Wood and Stone working.” Chris says always trying to one up him.

Mike sees Nebel shake his head.

“Guys your thinking too small and pretty randomly. Look we have leather, knives and quartz. We have an infinite fire source and little cash.”

Nebel holds out a card like a credit card, on which was all of their cash. “Stick to what we can do and what we should do but plan for the future.”

“OK, leather working for now, metalworking later.”

“Umm, I’m not sure…” Chris says scratching his head.

Nebel shakes his head at Chris. “We are all going to learn to work leather, at least the basics, later we should see about metal working, wood working and stone working all together so we can build.”

Nebel looks at both of them. “You’ve forgotten what a futuristic world means. Replace-able parts, automated fabrication and most importantly computer sciences.”

That last one gave Mike a bit of a head ache. “So we’re going to use a computer inside of a computer?”

“If it gives us a boost, of course we’ll do it.” Nebel replies.

Nebel pulls out more cards, sticks all three into a small box he had been given and says “Equal.” He pulls out the cards and says show all three cards show a display on one of their sides.

BalanceHD250??????

The nugget wasn’t very big, in fact it was barely an ounce but that’s gold for you, pretty rare, fairly useful, and super expensive. Apparently any electronic currency could be saved in their cards and that’s what the three other spots were for. They had already bought themselves three cheap backpacks and some cooking tools and they still had 250 HD (Human dollars).

“Here you go guys, let’s split up for now.” Nebel hand two of the cards to Chris and Mike.

“Hey wait, why?” Chris blurts out.

“Oh, it was Mike’s idea for us to join others and gain strength first.” Nebel tells him.

Chris smiles and pats his sword “Ok, then I’ll show you what I can do later.”

Without another word Chris runs off… “Damn it Chris…” Nebel says towards the dimwit, who had already disappeared from sight. “You didn’t let me set up the meeting place…”

Nebel turns to Mike “Well I was going to say we should meet up in front of the adventurer’s office in a week’s time.” Nebel holds the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes. “If you see Chris, tell him, ok?”

“Will do.”

Nebel turns towards the dollar store and disappears inside. And Mike decides to follow him for now.

Inside the dollar shop Nebel buys up a pair of heavy shears, some thick needles and a hole maker for leather he also buys a bunch of small bottles, a sharpening stone, a flint and a small piece of steel. Mike copies him and then they both leave the shop.

Nebel starts walking towards a library, while Mike heads in the opposite direction to the adventurer’s office. The adventurer’s office had apparently been set up when the first group of alien had been called to this land, it was the government office in charge of organizing, cataloging and giving jobs to anyone that wished for to go out exploring, fighting or even just travelling.

Inside the government building Mike walks straight up to a teller like desk and says “Hi are there any hunting jobs?”

The office worker, a middle aged woman with a tired look flicks floating list towards him and says “We currently have two clean up jobs, a request for ten wolf hides and of course the general bounty on monstrous demi- humans, goblins, orc, trolls, shagins etcetera.”

“Bounty on monstrous demi-humans?” he asks her

“Ya, don’t you know? The lab geeks were supposed to tell you. Our land has been reduced to just two cities. About ten years ago, some idiot was messing with genetics. He was a priest for the now disbanded ILATH religion, his faith was completely against all forms of study into multiple subjects including genetics so to prove to everyone else how wrong we were he made a whole bunch of monster with high intelligence and let them loose. The first thing they did was kill him and then proceeded to destroy of towns and cities one by one. The only good thing that priest managed to do was making everyone realize how crazy and stupid, his religion was, within a month every priest had been hunted down and every fervent believer too. So anyway if you can prove you killed a monstrous demi-human we give HD for every kill.”

Mike pulls out the goblin clothing leather from his backpack “Will this do as proof?”

The woman counts the leather pieces “Well, just this once, next time please bring in their right ear.”

“Ok will do.” Mike leaves the office thirty HD richer and heads back out of the city with a mission. He needed to find a demi-human nest and “Clean it up”…

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Mean while Nebel is surrounded by books, that is he was inside a library. He had gotten a library membership card and had picked out the limit of three books to take with him, An Almanac of plants, an almanac of minerals and an almanac of known monsters. He had also picked up: The last two cities, our situation. It was a government issued fairly large pamphlet regarding the current situation of this world, the reason for the alien’s being called and what adventurer’s were being offered for their help.

Apparently in this world over the years humanity had “Evolved” but this wasn’t random selection or divine miracle.

Scientist had finished their study of a few different subjects and as usual everyone had used it for profit and stupidity.

A bunch of girls got themselves molded into cat women and some guys got themselves turned into elves from there it went crazy until humanity had hundreds of types and homo sapiens sapiens was now the minority.

From there humanity naturally separated itself by type and class instead of race, sex or pure class. Before the appearance of the monstrous demi-humans who started destroying the world. Many kingdoms of elves, dwarves, cat people etcetera had formed and were living in relative peace.

After the appearance of the monstrous demi-humans the remaining homo sapien sapiens lost contact with the rest mostly due to the loss of the main communication stations that were destroyed by the first wave of attacks.

Nebel continued reading as he walked out of the library and towards the adventurer’s office.

Well merry Christmas! comments are welcome any input would be great i'm writing this mostly for practice. ratings would be nice but aren't so necesary and to those who are following "Thanks."

p.s. answers will be answered either directly or by following chapters but please make them, they might give me ideas.