Chapter 7

"Hey Marc…" A semi-elderly man called back to Marcie who was sitting in the back seat of an old beater car while he drove. 

"What?" The young lady responded whilst fiddling with her phone. 

"Listen, I know you're not happy about going to this family gathering, but you need to show up at least once in a while. It'll be fine." Marcie grimaced at the thought. She couldn't even use the fact that she couldn't afford a car as an excuse not to go since her father offered to carpool. Well at least she got to spend some time with her folks in it all. 

She laughed as her mother in the front passenger seat shushed her father and chirped at him to concentrate on driving. The highway was oddly busy for that time of day, but then again, the summer months usually meant that more people were vacationing or off from school. 

Krrrckt~ 

A loud crackling sound, similar to lightning erupted from the highway ahead followed by a loud bang and flash of light. When Marcie opened her eyes again, she saw her dad clinging to the car door for dear life as he was being sucked into something strange like a black hole. 

Her mother was unresponsive and as she reached for her father, she realized that she was stuck in her seat. The vehicle had been crumpled in by the impact of multiple other ones. Marcie called out to her dad as he lost his grip and fell into the strange tear of space. 

That was the last thing she remembered before losing consciousness.

~

Memories can be a frightful thing, and at the same time, unreliable. Why now of all times did her consciousness have to stir up THAT one in particular? Marcie felt an odd sense of irony from it all and wondered if her father had gone through a similar experience before he met his end.

Now wasn't the time to reminisce though. Her life was still very much in grave danger. Her hiding spot was compromised so she needed to figure out her next plan and fast. She wondered if getting up into the canopy would be safer, the way birds build their nests in trees to keep their young safe.

These trees were huge like the redwoods in her world, not that she'd ever seen one in person. Marcie rolled herself forward and dragged her body out of the roots to where the defeated beast once laid.

For a moment, she was spooked that it wasn't there, but laughed at herself upon remembering that she can passively collect resources into an inventory. 

Marcie began assessing her surroundings and picked up anything on the ground that she thought might be useful. A chunk of root, branches, stones, tree lichen, and some vines of different sizes and thickness were mostly what she could manage. Well it was certainly better than nothing. She took all that she could into her inventory including her bag and its contents. 

While Marcie was figuring out how to get herself off the forest floor, she picked up the sounds of rustling in the bushes followed by low growls. Marcie immediately recognized the sound of the creatures. The rest of the Vorpal pack was back and they were already honed in on her position.

"Shit… shit shit shit…" She muttered whilst trying to think of how to survive this. Wait, she got new powers right? One of them was lightning, to replace her taser. 'It might work…" 

Marcie put both her hands on the ground and tried to focus her thoughts into conjuring lightning. She wasn't really sure how it worked or if it worked, but she didn't really know any other way. Eventually, Marcie felt a tingle in her hands and eventually the crackles of electric energy similar to those electrode ball toys started springing from her hands. 

'This is it!' She thought and got a grasp of the feeling of power. In a similar feeling of trying to force out a constipated poop, Marcie pushed her hands into the ground more and an electric charge sprawled out from her in a wide radius, turning the ground around her into a high voltage area. 

Thinking back to safety classes she had to take in school, she recalled a unit in emergency disaster management and the scenario for that day was all about earthquakes, but more specifically, what you do when you find yourself trapped in an area where the ground is electrically charged from fallen power lines. 

Marcie remembered how the whole class would burst into laughter when the teacher had them all stand like stiff poles and inch their way out of the radius of a drawn circle without letting their feet separate from each other. 

At the time Marcie thought that the class was dumb, who would have thought that something that seemed so silly had stuck with her and is helping her now. 

Marcie put more force into ground to expand the radius as well as increase the concentration of the voltage in the ground. One Vorpal beast took the initiative to approach, but when it came into contact with the charged ground, it spasmed with a loud yelp and fell into a lifeless mound.. 

It worked! Marcie was counting on the beasts being primitive in their reasoning and not understanding what was happening. Marcie recalled her teacher explaining that by keeping their limbs tight to their body, the electricity couldn't make a complete circuit in their bodies. The moment they separated their limbs, the circuit could be complete and would kill them. But these Vorpal are not only non-sentient, but they are quadrupeds. 

Now they shouldn't be able to get close to Marcie without electrocuting themselves to death. Another Vorpal beast lunged towards her in an attempt at her life, only to screech and tumble past her as a corpse. 

Some of the Vorpals were starting to wizen up to it, though, and started behaving more cautiously. Marcie could see that there were about five more of the beasts that remained.

~Ding!

*You have leveled up to Level 3. You have earned 3 skill points, would you like to use them now or wait?*

This system doesn't really seem to care at all about the situation the person is in, does it. Marcie waved a hand at the screen to dismiss it. Such distractions will only get herself killed. Marcie prayed that the creatures would realize that she is too difficult of a target and would give up on trying to get her, but she had no idea how stubborn they were.