Chapter 4

The sun still wasn't very high in the sky, so at least we didn't have the brunt of the desert heat on us just yet. The only sounds heard were that of our boots crunching on sand and rock, as well as our breathing. We were only about fifteen minutes into the ruck when SGT Savant and I had to stop for a rest. A message appeared on my display when this happened.

"You are out of stamina; stamina is controlled by dexterity. In order to move faster and for a longer duration, raise your dexterity. Rest to recover stamina." I took a look at my stats.

STR:1

DEX:1

INT:3

CHA:1

"So this is what the system meant about not getting tired in the same way as I used to." I thought to myself briefly. The other non-casters seemed to be doing fine, and it made me wonder how high their dexterity was. So I asked the others. SSG Underwood and SPC Roberts had both chosen the warrior classes. Their stats were identical to each other.

STR:2

DEX:2

INT:1

CHA:0

SGT Turner and Bravo were both rogues, and their base stats were also matching to each other.

STR:1

DEX:2

INT:1

CHA:1

I assumed that SGT Savant had the same stats as me, besides the extra point I received in intelligence. We finished resting and headed back out onto the sandy road. As I walked, I kept my screen open and continued to investigate. The display was semitranslucent, so I could see where I was going while I studied. The first question I needed answered was how to check if I would get tired all of a sudden. As if reading my mind, the display popped up with a message.

"Would you like to display status bars?" I silently responded yes, and my display changed. There was no screen in front of me this time, but instead, I could see three bars at the top left-hand corner of my vision and a large bar at the bottom. The red one I assumed was my health bar, the coyote the night prior had something similar that let me see when he was about to die. The next one was blue. I had to concentrate on it, and a message appeared to explain what it was.

"This is your energy or mana bar. It allows you to see how much universal energy you can channel before not being able to cast spells anymore." The last bar, which was yellow, had a similar notification about how much stamina I could expend before becoming tired and unable to move. Each of those bars had numbers on them as well.

HEALTH: 100/100

MANA:300/300

STAMINA:100/100

Seeing how much health I had, I remembered the amount of damage that the monstrous coyote had inflicted on me the night prior. I had been so much closer to dying than I'd imagined. It was a sobering thought. It did make me realize how important tracking these numbers in and out of combat would be, though. I'd have to make sure to tell my squad members, but I still had one more bar to look at. This bar was easy enough to understand. It spanned the bottom of my vision and was half full of the color green.

EXP: 50/100

Having played some video games in the past, I knew that this was where I would receive experience for killing monsters and when the bar filled, I would get stronger. I secretly hoped that the system would automatically increase my stats when I leveled up. It didn't seem likely with the addition of stat points, though; the system seemed to want to make you build your own strengths and weaknesses. I played around with the bars for a little longer, finding that I could get the top three ones to move around if I concentrated hard enough. The EXP bar couldn't be moved no matter how hard I tried.

I watched my stamina bar ticking away. We'd only been walking now for another ten minutes, and my stamina bar was already under halfway. I asked if we could stop to rest, and SSG Underwood looked at me, annoyed.

"If we keep stopping like this, it will take us days to get back to base. We can't afford it. Charlie Mike." I understood what she was saying, and if this were even just a day ago before the coyote, and the universal energy, and the system, I'd have just kept pushing myself. But it was impossible now, I explained what I had been looking into for the past few minutes, and I could see everyone getting those blank stares that they had whenever trying to look at something having to do with their systems.

"Are you sure that we can't push past these limits?" SGT Savant asked me, and I shook my head dejectedly.

"Don't think so. If last night's fight was any indication depending on if you run out of the wrong number, you could die. I have a feeling if we completely ran out of stamina, we wouldn't be able to move at all, and then what would happen if we got attacked?" A look of understanding washed across my squad members' faces as they remembered the giant monster from the night before. SSG Underwood sighed, conceding that I may have a point. The sun was getting higher in the sky, and I could feel the temperature rising. The California sun hit my face and reflected off of the sand. There was no shade directly nearby, so I reached into my rucksack and found my Boonie hat.

The water in my canteen called to me as the wind picked up, unfortunately, the wind out here served no purpose except to drain your energy further. At least that's what I thought, but as I drank my water, my stamina kept ticking back up, showing no signs of stopping. Rescrewing my canteen lid back into place, I gave a contented sigh. I knew the heat would be rough today. It was every day. But it didn't feel as bad as I thought it would. The normal prickle I would feel from the sun beating down on my pale skin didn't come as strongly, and the more stamina I had, the less I felt the sweat falling down my face and back.

A few minutes later and it was time to get moving again. I hoisted my ruck onto my back, and we moved forward yet again. Hours passed by like this. We would push for 10 or 15 minutes, then rest long enough for our stamina bars to refill. After all of this time, we had managed to walk about four miles. We had no way of knowing for sure because our watches and phones had stopped working last night.

Not far into one of our 15-minute pushes, SGT Turner, who was leading the march, held up a hand and closed it into a fist. It was a motion that was used to stop us from moving without making a sound. A little way in front of us, probably about 200 meters out, we could see the beginning of a convoy headed towards town. The trucks must've been heading back from a mission last night when the vehicles stopped working. This part didn't worry us so much as the sight of a pack of massive scorpions crawling all over the trucks.

Not only that but starting in front of us as far as we could see were giant Joshua trees that I'd ever seen. They spanned an entire forest area, and it appeared that there was no way to get around them.

"What's the decision?" SGT Turner whispered to SSG Underwood. She was quiet for a few moments before responding.

"We push through. Kill whatever monster gets in our way. We have to make it back to town. We can't survive out here for long." It made sense, but that didn't mean that any of us were eager to step foot into a forest with humongous creatures in it that had just sprung up overnight.

We were placed into a type of wedge formation, SSG Underwood and SPC Roberts were put in front side by side. After discussing our stats earlier, they thought it made more sense because they had the most health out of us. SGT Turner and Bravo stood a little further back and to the side of each of them so that they could flank and attack the enemies in front of us. Then SGT Savant and I were placed in the back to heal and cast damage spells from farther away.

We tried to be as quiet as we could be as we approached the trucks, staying low to the ground but still on our feet so that we could fight when it came to it. The first scorpion was on the back of a trailer, looking like it was eating something. It had its back turned towards us. SSG Underwood gave Bravo the signal, who silently broke formation as we kept moving forward to plunge his daggers into the monster's back.

I couldn't hear Bravos footfall as he crawled up onto the trailer and suck up behind the beast. He raised his two daggers to their highest point and was about to bring them down on what he hoped would be a sensitive spot when the hairs on the scorpion's back stood up. Its tail flashed backward as it turned to meet its attacker, and Bravo was smacked several feet off the trailer.