A scarlet night (2)

[You have slain Lvl3 {Horned Rabbit}]

Being interrupted from my short respite, I was perplexed by the message and wondered if it related to the earlier one, although dismissed that train of thought realising the dire situation I was in.

"Snap out of it, now is not the time".

Looking around me I saw pure devastation with people being eviscerated and slaughtered by creatures that seemed to flood endlessly from an unknown source, accompanied by the sound of explosions and smoke on the horizon, it truly looked like the end of the world.

The parade balloons were no longer attached to the ropes that once held them instead calmly gaining altitude soon to be swallowed by the scarlet sky.

Seeing the horde of monsters approaching I knew I had to act quick.

The little girl seemed to have also somewhat realised the situation she was in, as she was staring in a daze continuously looking at her father and the approaching horde while tears were still streaming out of her eyes.

Not wasting any time I picked up the girl, holding her in my left arm as my right held the gun and began running, following the crowd.

Picking her up she began to struggle as she screamed, "Nooo PAPA! don't leave my Papa behind!".

Feeling sorry for the girl, and for what I was about to do, as I could not take the risk of her voice attracting any creatures.

I looked her dead in the eye's and with all seriousness said, "Kid, your father is Dead".

Hearing those words, her eyes grew wide and her body became still.

It appeared the realisation had finally dawned on her as she became quiet.

Struck with guilt and a pang of pain in my heart I removed my gaze from the girl and looked forward, it seemed people were trying to run into any building they could find, which would have been a smart idea if not for the influx of people all trying to enter each building.

"Shit".

Seeing crowds of people trying to enter a skyscraper through one door as they were trampling over each other, it looked more like a death trap then a safe haven, especially when monsters were going to attack the ones stuck in the back pretty soon, creating even more panic and desperation among them.

Seeing no option and one of the cat creatures approaching I quickly ran into one of the alley way's and hid behind a dumpster and began to think.

"Where can I go?, if I don't hide quick I will definitely die, I can hide in the dumpster.... no that's stupid, they always get found in movies, Think Aeron THINK".

There were windows around me, I could have used those to enter inside but unfortunately they were all protected by iron bars.

Just as I was beginning to lose hope I noticed something about 5 meters next to me, A Manhole!

Thinking I had found my answer I quickly ran towards it, needing two hands I looked at the kid and asked with a much more considerate tone than before "Can you stand?".

The girl nodded her head without speaking and I gently put her down.

About to Open the Manhole, I was interrupted.

*GROWL*

Hearing the voice of the cursed cat again, I froze and looked behind me, not twenty meters away the cat was sniffing the ground seemingly following my scent.

Having now spotted me it raised its head as it immediately started charging.

With time being of the essence I opened the manhole and told the girl to quickly go down, but apparently still traumatised by what happened to her father she was frozen stiff in fear as she looked at the approaching monstrosity.

Not getting though to her I hastily thought "I can't abandon her, she is also clearly to traumatised to listen to anything I say, and if I have to carry her I can't close the manhole, ahh whatever Fuck it".

I held the gun in my mouth as I swiftly picked up the girl and used the stairs to descend into the sewage system with one arm.

Reaching the bottom of the dark sewer, I could already see the red feline in my vision peering down about to leap after me.

Having a free hand I held the gun that was between my teeth and as the cat jumped I quickly fired above, causing the sewer to be illuminated every time I shot.

I seemed to have hit the beast a couple of times as the feline made an ugly landing although still alive, but before it could stand up again I walked up close to it, pointed the weapon at its face, seeing it's ferocious Grey eyes filled with madness and hatred peering at me, I fired.

As blood sprayed my and the girls face, the cats eyes grew dull.

Feeling apologetic to the girl as I did not expect the blood to splatter as such I gently placed her down.

Although from the looks of it the blood did not even register to her as she continued to stare motionlessly at the red feline.

Seeing this somber scene, I decided to let her be for a minute as the manhole still needed to be closed.

But reaching the first step of the ladder I heard the strange message again.

[You have slain Lvl5 {Feral Cat}]

[You Leveled Up]

After the message I felt a sudden sense of invigoration wash over me, while both the physical and mental fatigue left my body.

This sensation lasted only for a second before disappearing, although now I felt slightly different, as if I had been enhanced or something.

Confused and a bit afraid by what just happened, I decided to first close the manhole, better to be safe before pondering about whether I am going crazy or not.

Luckily their were no more monsters waiting for me above and I quickly closed it.

Going down I found the girl still staring at the cat, not knowing what to do, and needing to sort myself out, I sat next to her as I began to think about the sudden invigorating feeling and weird messages I kept hearing.

"So first of all I have supposedly awakened a system, and every time I kill a monster it gives me a message saying I killed one, I even gained a level!

So either I am going bat shit crazy while the world is falling into an apocalypse, or I am imagining that too and have probably abducted a child, or the world has actually changed into some Fucked up RPG game".

"So what should I choose, the crazy option or that all of this is actually real, well the crazy option would make sense especially with my mental state over the past few years... but even I don't think I have such a creative mind to be able to imagine all this, also the feeling of when I leveled up felt very real so… lets say I'm not going crazy".

"And what was it again that the system said I awakened, wasn't it called the..the.. Status, Yes! that was it".

Just as I thought about it a screen magically appeared in front of my vision.

______________

Name: Aeron

Level: 1 (F)

Class. None

Skills: None

Health: 222

Mana: 29

Strength: 5 , Agility 5 ,Vitality 3

Endurance: 4 ,Intelligence: 11 ,Sense: 2

USP: 4

______________ 

"Well Fuck me"

Although I still did not know if I was going crazy or not, I thought this was probably pretty good prove that I wasn't…. or not, I was still a bit undecided on that front.

It seemed all my abilities were quantified into 6 numbers or stats, there was a class and skills, while I was level 1, although unsure of what "F" stood for, most of it made sense if the world had turned into an RPG.

Although looking through my status a few things confused me, first of how could could there be such a huge discrepancy between the intelligence and all the rest of my stats, although I knew I was smart I wasn't abnormally so, and I was not weak either compared to other men, so was this just the basic stats for humans?

I didn't know and would have to confirm with someone else, I could ask the little girl, but seeing the state she was in that should be done…later.

The other thing that I was confused about was Mana and the Sense stat, although I knew Mana was normally referred to as magic, I did not know for sure and I had also not seen anything magical yet, although the sky did turn red and monsters suddenly popped up, so maybe there was Magic.

The sense stat also confused me, what was it referring too? the 5 sense's? the sixth sense? or maybe the sense of insight? I just did not know.

The last thing that I was just not familiar with was what USP meant, it also had a value of 4 so it must do something, focusing on that stat again I suddenly saw the word USP shift to "Unallocated Status Points".

Seeing the word change in front of me I somehow felt a bit uncomfortable, although pleased to know what it stood for, how did the system know I wanted an explanation for it?

Seeing if I could get a explanation for the other stats as well I began to focus on them but this time nothing happened.

Going back to the USP I was pretty sure that those were points I could ad to my stats, testing if my judgment was correct I thought of putting an extra stat into strength and just as I wished Strength changed from 5 to 6.

Feeling the state of invigoration again although on a smaller scale I confirmed to myself that it worked, wanting to test a theory I had I tried allocating a point into Health and Mana but it seemed to be impossible.

Realising something I allocated the rest of my points placing one in Vitality, Intelligence, and Sense.

Having added them I found out that to increase health you had to put a point into vitality, increasing my HP by 122, from 222 to 342.

While increasing Mana I thought would either happen through Intelligence or sense, with intelligence doing the trick, having increased it by 19.

Sense on the other hand except for going from 2 to 3, I was still clueless about.

Just as I was about to dwell longer on the mater, I noticed that the girl was no longer looking at the beast but had turned around and was staring at me.

It seemed she had something to say.