I dreamed.

Sam had me in his office like always, and this time I was directly in front of his clock. I’d thought that the clock was a standard grandfather clock the first time I saw it. I also had thought as much when I heard it. However, my view of what normal was and what I was seeing were two different things. First, my views always started with the base of electricity. While on Earth, that made sense here in this forsaken study, it wasn’t the right mindset to have. I should’ve adjusted my perspective already, but so many things here led me back to my original view. Like the desk lamp, it was a green glass desk lamp like I’d expect from the early 1900s. However, this clock wasn’t powered by electricity, nor did it appear to have much in the way of the mechanical components that a wind-up clock would have. No, this one beleaguered the brain with what I watched. Now, I supposed that what I saw might have led to the wrong conclusions as I was once again unable to move at all. From what I saw, this clock wasn’t powered as much as it was manned by little people. Not dwarfs, but small creatures that were human-like in appearance but no more than four inches tall. They cranked endlessly a handle that would turn and produce the clicking sound that were the seconds by a little flap hitting a post. Then after enough clicks for a minute went by, one of them reached up and adjusted a level which caused the minute hand to move. As I watched the process, I was both horrified and impressed with the perfect rhythm that they were able to keep. They never slowed down, never stopped, but every fifteen minutes, the one on the inside of the crank would step out, and everyone would shift in, and a new little person would step in and grab the handle. The one that stepped out went someplace out of my vision, and I didn’t see them for the rest of the hour. So each person had fifteen minutes on the crank and forty-five off. The guy with the minute hand would leave at the end of the hour, and I never saw them again. They did all of this without signing or talking in perfect harmony. Moving from their tasks at a perfect pace. The whole time the click went on and on. Never changing and never-ending.

Once four hours had passed, Sam spoke to me. It never ceased to amaze me how much hate he could put into saying something. It was like Sam had it in for me from the start, and I wasn’t sure why. Yet, once he started up with his slow venom-laced speech, I was all ears. “Arn, raising your stats is an easy feat. It is something that even small children do without understanding. First, you must simply level your class, and then you’ll be able to assign your stats where you want to.”

With that, the clock in front of me chimed for the fifteen-minute mark just past Five.

I woke up thankfully, this time without pain or a sudden movement. Blink was sleeping on my chest as she had come to do, and I saw outside the light was just now starting to show up. I had so many questions for Sam. I needed to know now how to level my class. I’d thought that I’d be able to do something like the physical training I’d been doing to raise my strength. However, it appeared that raising stats was different from just doing the things that made sense.

Once I was able to shift the sleeping Blink off of me, I got up and started to make breakfast for us. It was kind of funny. She would eat anything and everything that she could catch, and yet I still had to make her some of my food as well. I think she knew that I could hunt as I hadn’t gotten any presents from her. Though that is a cat thing, she is very much a lizard, even if she acts like a cat in most cases.

Our morning went as planned, and then I was back to working on traps in the afternoon. I went back to the same spot I was in the day before when I saw it. Pressed into the sand was a footprint that didn’t belong. Not a paw or a hoof but a tiny little foot. It was what I knew I’d see one day just wasn’t sure when that would be and was hoping that it wouldn’t be till much later.

Blink was riding on my shoulder, so I started tracking down this monster. It was only about three inches across, so I knew that it was one of the little goblins I’d seen before in both my dream and the bodies I found. Just big enough to be nasty. I was happy to only see one set of tracks. It wasn’t long before I was on the path going up the valley wall to where I’d found Blink. It was on that path up that the one set of prints turned into five and then into ten. There was a whole pack of those little monsters that I was chasing.

As I was moving up, I felt myself getting angry. It was odd that there was a spot in my chest that felt tight and filled with hate. A desire to end these monsters and make the world a little better. I even found myself thinking of my dreams of walking with Lorrie. It was like I was angry and bitter over what happened to her. I caught myself and pulled back just before I lost control. I was feeling the same loss that I felt in my dream, and that wasn’t something that I wanted to deal with while hunting down something that was potentially an enemy scouting party.

Once I got my emotions in check, I kept moving forward, and it was a good thing that I did. I found that the ten had picked up more tracks than my low-level tracking skill could point out to me. Which meant my fears of the horde finding me might not have been a baseless fear.

Once I reached the top of the ridge, I followed the muddy path downriver. I knew that I was tracking a large number of enemies, but I wasn’t sure what I would do when I found them. I wanted to know where they were and what they were doing so that I could figure out my next steps, but I honestly wasn’t sure what I could do.

I knew that I’d be overwhelmed fighting this number, so it might be best if I could pick them off a few at a time or perhaps just hide till I got strong enough to fight them all. I knew that once I learned how to level my class, things would improve, so I’d then be able to fight with more power than I had now.

After following the path downriver for about 6 miles, I came to a clearing. It wasn’t large, perhaps only forty feet across; however, it was what I saw in the middle that gave me pause. The little guys that I was tracking were fighting with each other. I couldn’t tell if there were sides to this battle or if it was a free-for-all. What I could tell, was that it was a mess. There were bodies everywhere, and those who weren’t fighting someone seemed to make sure those who were down were dead.

It seemed like they had a general disregard for each other. The fight was all claws and wooden sticks, but it was vicious. They were gouging each other’s eyes and biting at each other. Those with weapons were using them in a clearly untrained manner. There was no skill in what they were doing, only blood lust.

After watching for another fifteen minutes, the battle slowed down, and a group of about ten was left standing. They bounded around the field of battle on their hands and feet, checking those who were down. When they came across a live one, they would help them up and move on. It was like the fight was over, and that was that. They then got their spears and moved on.

I’d seen enough at this point to know that if I got into a fight, then it would go poorly for me. I wanted to get more information on them, but I also wanted to make sure that I was ready to deal with a mass of enemies all at once. Whatever caused the fight reduced their number from fifty down to about twenty, but I wasn’t sure that I could even take twenty of them at once, even if they were all injured.

I went home as carefully as I could. Making sure that where I went, I stayed on hard ground. I didn’t want the monsters to find my prints and swarm me. What I did need to do, however, was get ready. The only way I could see forward was to train and prepare. These monsters posed a considerable threat to my life.

Before the sun went down, I reached out to Sam. I needed to know how to level my class. Once again, I made sure that I was in a clear soft place before starting up my spell.

“Oh great and mighty greeter Sam, I the lowly Arn beseech you to answer my question. How can I raise my class level?”

The black took me as I overdrew my mana, and I was passed out in the sand again. When I came to, the first thing I saw was a massive lizard about to bite me. I yelled and scrambled back only to realize that it was Blink right in my face and not a huge lizard, only a small one playing a prank on me.

I laughed a bit at what she had done and then got up and dusted myself off before getting food ready for us. I’d ended up building a screen near my lean-to and fire so that from downstream, you couldn’t see it, and with the screen on top, I was hoping to keep the smoke from going too far.

I was more nervous going to sleep that night, seeing how I knew there was a large group of monsters within a day’s hike from me that had no problems killing even each other. They had already lost so many against the other monster I couldn’t figure out why they would kill each other off.