Bart’s eyes rolled at the inept questions of his latest recruit, his hands reaching up to rub his temples in small, soothing circles. For the thousandth time, he would not be giving any information away as to Mike’s whereabouts. Being a noncombatant, the only thing Bart could really offer the party was this knowledge, and he didn’t want to be expelled from the party he had created. It had taken three days since respawning to put the right team together, but as he looked at each of his party members, he was confident in his choices.

While others had been running off into the wild, willy-nilly searching for Mike, Bart had scoured the town for those who had actually progressed their levels in this new world to some degree. This had of course come at the cost of spending less time earning money in his shop. The first few days after integration, Bart had spent almost 24/7 behind the counter, working on improving his Level in relevant shopkeeper skills. The last three days, however, he had only spent the mornings selling goods, while the evenings had been spent exclusively in bars, looking for team members. In order to avoid shutting down the shop, he had hired a few lower leveled adventurers to man the store when he was out. While he had tried to find trustworthy employees, in the back of his mind, he had constantly worried that those working for him were skimming from his profits. Without computers to keep track of all inventory, it was much easier to lose track of funds. If it wasn’t for the reward on Mike’s head, he probably wouldn’t have been ready to hire on additional hands until he could figure out a way to ensure their loyalty.

His first recruit had been Jake, the former motorcycle gang member that had actually been in prison when the System had taken over. True, Mike had already beaten the hulking behemoth easily, but Jake’s main attraction was that he lended some credibility to Bart’s recruiting efforts. On top of that, Bart was pretty sure that Jake’s massive Strength and Toughness attributes would come in handy in a team offensive.

His eyes next fell on Fen. The small asian woman seemed diminutive and kind on the surface, so much so that he had laughed and turned down her request to join his party initially. Her response had been almost magically closing the gap to his side in the blink of an eye, showing off her main attribute. She had poured all of her points into Dexterity up to this point, which fit perfectly with her years of martial arts training wielding nunchucks. The way they blurred at near sonic speeds made him glad he had accepted her into the party, well that and the way he had seen her beat down that would-be drunken suitor in the bar the other night.

Then there was Igor. When earth’s inhabitants had learned that magic was now a reality, everyone had wanted to be the next Gandolf or Merlin. It only took a few days to verify that very few people had the ability to be an actual wizard. Igor was the exception. A math genius before the integration, his incredibly high Intelligence had only continued to grow as he funneled his entire being into becoming like his hero, Harry Potter. In reality, the abrasive sociopath was actually closer being Draco Malfoy, but Bart wasn’t complaining. In his mind, magic was their biggest asset in defeating Mike, as the ex-Navy Seal had plenty of experience fighting the physical, but likely not fighting the magical. Unless of course the U.S. Government had known about magic for centuries and not made the knowledge public… which given Area 51, was actually a distinct possibility.

Finally there was Peter, the necessary, yet very unwanted, youthful party member. Peter had grown up training hunting dogs and had learned a thing or two from them. The man could track a falcon on a cloudy day… but also acted like a rambunctious puppy, losing focus and hopping from one idea to the next faster than anyone could follow. It was his nonstop questions that had Bart contemplating murder most days.

“We are leaving in 2 days,” Bart said, trying to end the meeting as quickly as possible so he could get away from Peter, “Be ready with enough food to last a week. In the meantime, spend as much time as you can training up your levels. Mike may be an old man, but he has proved slippery in the past, and we don’t want to miss our chance at claiming that reward.”

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Mike stared at the pile of iron in front of him, trying to decide which would be more helpful, throwing knives or a new ax. The long process the night before had given him enough ore for one, but not both, and he didn’t think he had enough time to make more ore before cultists found his valley. He had started referring to them as cultists in his mind because it was easier than accepting the fact that he was fighting against the whole human race. His race. It had been easier when it was just an enemy nation, but having an enemy species was a heavy burden to bear.

Forcing his thoughts away from that downward spiral, Mike decided to go for the ax. He could always throw rocks or something, but a new ax would make it so he didn’t have to worry about hurting himself every time he fought.

With the choice made, he wasted no more time in getting to the task. He first made a large disk of clay, and removing the handle, pushed the head of his Daton ax vertically into the disk, so that the eye of the ax and the top edge were flush with the top of the disk. He then put the iron ingots in his shoddy clay jar, lit the fire in his blast furnace, and began pumping.

It took all morning, and he was sweating profusely, but finally the iron had melted. Forking two sticks together, he was able to pick up the clay jar and pour the molten iron into the mold. With nothing left to do but wait, he reattached the handle to his old ax head and resigned himself to an afternoon of pain.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

Mike sank to the ground, his body both bruised and exhausted from his painful daily ritual. A grim smile forced itself on his face. Pain was an old friend, and even as a child, it hadn’t stopped him from doing what he wanted. He remembered a story that his mother had told when she wanted to highlight how stubborn he could be.

When Mike was 6, his brother had come down with a hacking cough that hadn’t cleared up for several weeks. Eventually, his mother had consulted a doctor, who had informed his mom that his brother would need his tonsils taken out, and the doctor further recommended that all children in the family get their tonsils removed as well--the 50’s were a weird time in the world of medicine. The day came, all three children had had their tonsils removed and the doctor had cautioned his mom to feed the children only soft foods for three days. The evening after the surgery, Mike’s mom had made hotdogs for herself and Mike’s dad, but softer foods for the kids. Hotdogs had been Mike’s favorite food at the time, and he had complained all through dinner about not being able to eat them. Irritation mounting, his mother told him that he could eat what he wanted, trusting that the agony from a single bite would be enough to teach Mike to listen to her. Through watering eyes, Mike had eaten three full hotdogs, never once giving voice to the pain that each bite had caused.

Sixty years have passed, but that boy is still inside of me. Mike reflected as he gazed at the purple lumps that covered his body.

The suffering wasn’t without merit. Over the last few hours, Mike noticed he was developing a strange ability. It seemed to him that he was becoming subconsciously aware of the ax rebounds. It wasn’t that he could tell where they would hit him, but rather, he could predict which ax swings would result in a rebound, before the ax even connected with the tree. He had experienced flashes of danger in his mind many times in his life, but this was altogether different.

The new ability also had a setback: a hit had to be involuntary to count towards his next level of Hardened Skin. After a half hour of testing, he realized that if he tried to dodge the ax rebound and failed, it would still count as a hit, but he was actually able to dodge around 20% of the time. With 400 more hits remaining towards the next Level of his skill, that 20% took the total time it would take him from 20 hours to 24 hours..

Deciding he had rested long enough, he pushed himself back to his feet, chest still heaving even after the short break. He had no option but to keep going–no matter how well he could forage for food, he would be incapable of protecting himself from the thousands of adventurers if he didn’t improve his combat ability.

It’s a shame that hunting animals doesn’t count as kills towards my level. He thought to himself as he dodged a rebounding ax. He had tested the theory the night before without any success.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

Three hours later, Mike still needed 350 more hits to level up Hardened Skin, slightly worse than he had been predicting. His eyes tracked the rebounding ax as it approached the meaty portion of his upper thigh, his brain celebrating that a blow to the thigh would be less painful than taking another blow to the head, when he was interrupted by another notification:

[Congratulations! You have learned the skill Smithing.

+1 to Strength]

The lapse in concentration meant his thigh was totally relaxed as the heavy metal collided with his leg, completely numbing it and causing him to collapse to his knees.

Moaning in pain, he slowly rolled himself to his feet and falteringly walked back to his campsite. His leg actually gave out multiple times in the five minute walk, causing him to fall back to the ground. Still, a hit like that would have broken his bones just a week ago and he would have been completely nonfunctional due to the pain. His body truly was undergoing a metamorphosis, although, whether it would be for good or bad was still hard to say.

From a distance, the mold still looked intact, and he eagerly broke it apart to look at his creation.

Dayton Ax (2/2)

Quality: Crude

Durability: Middle

Rarity: Common

Attributes: Rebound-this poorly made ax has a 1% chance to rebound and hit the bearer in the face. Percent chance increased with a decrease in the Luck stat.

It was almost an exact replica of his original ax… even going so far as to be cursed with the Rebound Attribute. The only upgrade was that the durability was slightly higher. Frustrated with his failure, he threw the ax head at the ground, where it promptly rebounded and hit him in the head.

“349” he thought as he slowly lost consciousness.

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He woke sometime around midnight, his head pounding, but his brain churning with an idea he had had as he slept. He faced a few blockers for leveling up Hardened Skin. The first was that each rebounding caused him damage, which he didn’t know how to fix other than maybe increasing his Toughness. The second was that he got worn out, which could also potentially be fixed by increasing his Toughness and maybe Strength; he was still unsure which of the two led to endurance, although he did feel that Toughness made him more sturdy and Strength made him have more power. The final blocker was time–because his axes only rebounded every few hits, which was only exacerbated now that he could dodge a fair amount of the rebounds. It was the final blocker that he thought he had an easy way of correcting: could he fix this by wielding two axes?

Although his head was still throbbing, he wanted to try this idea out immediately. Dumping his 7 stat points into Toughness and Strength brought both of them up to 22, more than double what the average human on earth could output. He hoped that would be enough to allow him to dual wield, go for a longer time period before tiring out, and take more damage before he had to stop and recuperate.

Walking back to his campsite, he picked up the handle he had carved a few days before, sadly, the activity had not earned him the Carving Skill like had hoped. 10 minutes later he had attached handles to both axes and walked back towards his personal torture chamber.

Just holding both axes feels a bit unwieldy. He nervously noted as he approached the tree.

His first swing thumped loudly in the stillness of the night, and he knew it was going to rebound, but not in any way it had before. Because he was so strong, it seemed natural to hold both axes at the end of the handles, leading to the most torque and ultimately the most power from each blow of his ax. The extra power just meant that he was just as powerless to control the rebound as always, and the ax bent his arm at an awkward angle, somehow managing to hit him in the back, nearly breaking his scapula.

He was finding that somehow the rebounds weren’t at all dampened by transferal of angular momentum through his rotating joints, which was what experience had taught him his entire existence up to this point.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

The night slowly crawled by as Mike made adjustments to adapt to his new training regimen, bringing his leveling speed up dramatically. He had first started by decreasing the Dayton ax handles length down to something closer to a tomahawk.

Next he learned a new cadence to swinging his axes. In the past, he wielded a single ax by holding the ax at the top and bottom, and sliding his right hand down the shaft as he swung the ax forward, in the way that was traditionally taught to Boy Scouts to help them chop more efficiently. With two axes, he could no longer do that, and his adapted form was to hold onto the bottom of his tomahawk handles. Whenever one ax connected with the target, he would bring the other ax forward, minimizing the time between strikes. This modified methodology made it much harder to dodge the rebounds, even when he knew one was incoming, ensuring that he could once again get a hit towards Hardened Skin for nearly every rebound.

Finally, he found that dual wielding somehow made it so that his axes rebounded more often, making it so that 60% of hits resulted in a rebound, even when hitting an inanimate object. He didn’t know how this would impact actual combat. Would it rebound every single hit? Did this mean he should only fight with one ax? He leaned towards embracing dual wielding in combat, since that is how he was training, and just hoped that the system would eventually reward him for doing so.

As the sun started peaking into the valley, he was rewarded with a notification:

[Congratulations! You have leveled up the skill Hardened Skin.

+1 to toughness.

It has been your misfortune to take quite a beating from blunt objects.

Damage taken from blunt objects will now be reduced by 30%]

[Congratulations! New skill ability unlocked: Unflinching Meteor

Once every 10 minutes, you may become invulnerable to damage for 10 seconds.

Movement decreased during the skill based on Luck]

Triumph wiped away exhaustion as he immediately tried out his new ability. He swung both of his axes at the tree in tandem and grinned as he felt the premonition of a rebound. Activating Unflinching Meteor right as his axes connected with the tree, he was immediately flying backwards through the air.

It turned out that Mike couldn’t move at all when Unflinching Meteor was active, His luck was too low. Because his arms were locked into place, the momentum of the rebounding axes had instead been transferred to his body and that shot almost a full 5 feet backwards, slamming into another tree and smashing the trunk with a heartstopping thump. Yet, despite the loud noise, he didn’t feel a thing.

Somehow, his unmoving form ended up landing so that only his toes and ax blades were touching the ground, his body locked in a gravity-defying downward dog position. Even though he was counting down the seconds til he was once again free, he was totally unprepared for the feeling of suddenly being mobile again and he slumped to the ground like a bowl of his favorite spaghetti and meatballs–obviously both the noodles and sausage were homemade. This was going to take some practice.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

5 hours later, Mike found himself falling towards the ground from 100 feet in the air. Moments before impact, he positioned himself into a crouching position and activated Unflinching Meteor. A thud followed by a small shockwave billowed out from where he landed, creating a small crater with him at the epicenter. Over the past few hours he had been using his new skill once every 10 minutes, testing the limits of his invulnerability. So far, he hadn’t found anything that hurt him in the slightest, which is why he had raised his previously highest drop all the way from 200 to 300 feet without too much concern. He also hadn’t found a way to use Unflinching Meteor with his ax rebound in any way that would be useful. He had an exquisite picture in his head of bouncing off of a wall and bulldozering his way through a line of enemies as he sailed horizontally a few feet above the ground. In practice, however, he always ended up traveling in an arc. He wasn’t about to give up though. The ax rebounds had showcased their ability to defy physics in several instances already, and he would too.

He was gradually getting better at positioning himself so he wouldn’t end up looking like a fool while the timer ticked down and he waited to move again. Thus far, his current crouching stance had been the most effective.

As the effect wore off, he walked back towards the most recently felled tree he was working on. He had started feeling badly about destroying the forest around him and had decided to start working his way along already felled logs, creating large piles of wood chips, as he trained towards his next target. He was at 500 rebounds already, so just 9500 more to go. He had been up all night, but ever since getting both Strength and Toughness over 20, he wasn’t feeling any different than he normally did at this time of day.

It wasn’t all good news though. Ever since he had gotten a second skill ability when Hardened Skin reached level 3, he had begun to suspect that all of his abilities would award skills at that level and had been trying to figure out how to get them there.

For Smelting, he had to somehow extract a new metal. He had researched how to get iron in the past, but he had no idea how to get anything else.

He still hadn’t found a way to accidentally fall 10 feet, and he had no way of killing 10 enemies with throwing knives. Pottery now required him to create a vessel of either artisan quality or uncommon rarity, and he didn’t think he could do that with his current kiln and knowledge.

That really only left Tinkering, which had the very vague requirements of creating a new piece of technology. He had been awarded the first level when he built the kiln, and the second when he built the blast furnace, so he suspected it had to be something of equivalently large impact to his life for the System to recognize it as progress. He was still toying around with several ideas and wasn’t ready to waste a full day trying to get this one leveled up and then failing.

Sighing in defeat, Mike once again focused on chopping wood in front of him. A particularly large rebound caused him to lose ahold of his ax and he barely moved his head out of the way as it sailed end over end 20 yards behind him. Remembering how his thrown ax had hit him in the head last night, he decided to change pace and see how his very unbalanced Dayton Tomahawks would do when thrown. Images of adventurous summer days at scout camp learning how to throw tomahawks came to mind. This afternoon was going to be a lot of fun.