Chapter 2

Just as I let the words escape my lips, things took a turn for the worse. With a snap of the coyote's massive jaws, one of the soldiers attacking it split in half. I wanted to run over and help him; I wanted to heal him, but in the back of my head, I already knew what had happened. He was dead. I knew him. He had just gotten out of AIT and was maybe 19 years old. The monster didn't stop there. Every time he turned, he seemed to kill someone else. I noticed a few people around the area lying on the ground and glowing. I guess they must have taken my advice and chosen a class. I hoped that it wasn't too late.

I aimed at the beast and fired off another Stone Shot. Another small chunk fell away from its health bar, and it glowered at me. However, it wasn't enough to break its rampage, and it kept on swiping and snapping with deadly accuracy. My mind was racing, wondering how I could get its attention or how I could start doing more damage to it. I was beginning to panic.

"Stone shot! Stone shot! Stone shot!" I frantically kept shouting my one damage spell, trying to kill the creature as fast as I could. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see some of the other people finally getting up from their transformation. SSG Underwood came at the beast screaming and brandishing a large two-handed sword. She shouted, "Rage Blade!" the blade glowed hot red like it was superheated, and she brought it down on the beast. The coyote howled in pain, and I watched as a large chunk of health fell away from the feral dogs' bar. The monster balanced on its front paws, and donkey kicked SSG Underwood square in the chest, and she went flying.

I recognized Bravo sneak up behind the monster, and SGT Turner pulled an arrow back on a bow that had appeared in her hand. Bravo jumped higher than I thought was possible and plunged a pair of daggers into the coyotes back, bringing the monster's health down to a third. SGT Turner let loose on her arrow, and it soared straight into the creature's eye. The coyote's health bar struck zero, and it finally fell. Realizing that the battle was finally over, I ran to check on the kicked SSG, but she seemed to be mostly OK. I cast my heal spell on her anyway just in case and moved on to look for other survivors that might need healing.

Blood covered the ground in sticky pools. I'd never seen so much of it before that the sand wasn't even absorbing it. Each person I went to lay still on the ground, lifeless and unresponsive. Out of the platoon of about 37 people, only six had survived the coyote's onslaught.

"What the fuck was that?" SGT Turner was the first one to speak. I wanted to respond, but I had no words right now, not with all of these bodies scattering the ground around me. I'd never seen combat; I don't know if anyone who was leftover had. Except for SSG Underwood, she had been deployed a few years back and had a combat action tab on her uniform. Feeling the bile rise in my stomach, I ran a little farther away from the rest of them and relieved my stomach of any contents that it had. When I came back, I had a good look at the others.

It seemed that everyone had been given a weapon in their transformation. Bravo had his daggers. SGT Turner had a bow and a quiver of arrows, SSG Underwood with her large sword. The other two were SPC Roberts and SGT Savant. Roberts was equipped with a sword and shield, and SGT Savant had been given a staff made of what looked like a large bone with a crystal settled on top of it.

"That was quick thinking back there, Hayes." SSG Underwood patted me on the shoulder, surprising me. "We'd most likely all be dead if you hadn't told us what to do." I nodded my head and looked back at the carnage scattered around us.

"Thanks." I managed to squeak out. Noticing a small blinking light in the left-hand corner of my vision, I concentrated on it. When I did, a new screen popped up at the top of the screen it said "Combat Log." I read through it carefully.

"You hit Level 1 coyote with Stone Shot for ten damage."

"Level 1 Coyote hits you for 30 damage."

"You assist in killing Level 1 Coyote receive 50 EXP."

"You heal target (self) for 30 life points." These messages tracked the entire fight, including the damage that I did, the damage done to me, and the healing that I provided.

"Do you guys see your combat log?" I asked the group. An echo of "no's" was spoken around the group. I described the light in the corner and how to access it, and as they each opened their own combat logs, a blank look settles across their faces, and their eyes became unfocused. Grabbing one of the cots that had been knocked over, I sat down and reopened my own log. "What does it mean by EXP?" I wondered to myself. That's when I remembered something that one of my messages from earlier had said—something about being awarded an extra stat and skill point.

I pondered for a moment on how those might work and decided to concentrate on the word "Stats." It seemed to work because the screen changed, and now it said "Stat Screen." I read each line very carefully.

STR:1

DEX:1

INT:2

CHA:1

When I focused on a specific stat, it opened with an explanation about it as well.

"Strength or STR dictates how much damage you can take. The higher the STR, the longer you can stay in the fight. Dexterity or DEX dictates how much physical damage you can deal as well as your movement ability. Raise this stat if you want to win fights or move faster than a snail's pace. Intelligence or INT is the stat for magic. It controls how much universal energy you can channel through you before you aren't able to anymore. Higher tier spells cost more energy. Don't be caught running out in the middle of a fight. Charisma or CHA affects how other universal beings perceive you. If you have low charisma, good luck getting far in an energy-charged world."

As I read through each description, I couldn't help but feel like they were a little snarky. I received another notification and promptly opened it.

"I'm not snarky. You're just stupid." I frowned at the message, annoyed. It had been a really long night already, and I didn't need some system being a prick to me right now. I looked back at my stats and tried to decide where to spend my extra point. I decided on INT because if I needed to heal someone and I couldn't access the energy anymore, they would be up shit creek. "I don't want to lose anyone else." My stats changed as soon as I decided where to allocate the point.

STR:1

DEX:1

INT:3

CHA:1

I was curious what it meant at the end of charismas explanation. I've never been the most attractive person or a smooth talker, but I'd managed to get by on my own so far. "I think I'll be ok without it." I thought to myself. The next thing I did was concentrate on the word "skills." The following display popped up, and I saw my only two skills lit up. Underneath was a list of hundreds of what I assumed were other skills, but they were greyed out, and the words "Prerequisites Not Met" were written in place of the skill names. I concentrated on my skill Stone Shot, and it opened to reveal its own skill tree directly under the skill were two more skills that I could see. Directly under each one of those were another two that were greyed out.

I read the adjoining skills Stun Shot and Power Shot. I was getting the hang of using the system and knew to concentrate on the skill I wanted to learn more about, starting with Stun Shot.

"Stun Shot raises the chance of stunning your opponent. Duh." I rolled my eyes at the sarcastic information and moved onto Power Shot. "Power Shot increases the damage of Stone Shot. Instead of doing ten damage, it can now do 20. That means you might not be as useless next time!" This system was really starting to piss me off, but still, I decided to go with Power Shot it was right. My attacks did next to nothing in that fight I was probably just an annoyance that made it even angrier.

When I thought that a wave of guilt washed over me and I blamed myself for not having chosen something that could have finished the fight quickly. I might have saved a lot more people if I had.