Imperious 005 - Heiroglyphs

Anna reviewed her character sheet. Of all the things she’d seen, this was the one part that garnered her interest the most. Finally some hard numbers, she thought. Something she could work with. It had her full name which was a little awkward, she hadn’t gone by Anastasia even at home. It was too ‘princessy’ a name and she kind of hated it. The sheet listed her race as ‘Human-Terran’ which implied that Terrans were a subset of human, which implied that there were other versions of humans.

That’s going to make a lot of religious people really angry, she thought and rubbed her chin as she hit the next line. Her class said ‘none’ and there was a number next to it. Doing a bit of quick math she found that it was her current essence count. So I only need twenty-five more essence to level up. I got a crapton from that level five hound. I don’t have a level yet, maybe that’s why. Next there was a line for a profession. Crafting I guess? Neat. 

Her tier said ‘Mortal’. Most of the skills, items, and abilities she’d encountered were of the ‘mortal’ tier. Which implied there was something above mortal. Another thing for religious people to get uncomfortable about. How do I increase my tier? Is it possible for a Terran? She scratched her head and found the next line. “The fuck is a Heritage? What, like a Bloodline?”

Another angry tone from the system told her that was a question the tutorial could have answered for her. She grit her teeth and rubbed her temples, trying to think. Fucking busted ass- She blinked and hopped to her feet, digging her hands into her pockets and pulling out the letter she’d gotten before all hell broke loose. The simple note with four words on it.

“Anna, do well, Dad,” she read aloud, running her thumbs over the oddly textured paper. She sat back down and ran her fingers through her hair. My dad has never been in the picture and now he bothers to contact me? Did he know this was going to happen? Born in the Gray. What the fuck does that mean? Something to do with him? She turned it over before frowning and folding it back up, stuffing it into her pocket. No clues. Damn it.

She turned her attention back to her character sheet. HP, health I’m guessing, SP, stamina? No idea what MT is. It’s got a larger pool than the others. Mana… something? Mana taint? Wait… does Mana mean magic? Could I do magic?

A thrill ran up her spine. Real frigging magic. That would be so cool.

She eagerly devoured the rest. There were nine attributes spread across what looked like three groups. She wasn’t surprised by most of it and it looked like her attributes were based on her existing condition. She was a little taken aback by her willpower being nearly three times her strength but the real oddity was her presence. I figured it would be my lowest stat. Weird.

After that was a section for her Titles which was locked until she got her base class so she ignored it, she wasn’t sure what good titles did for her anyway. Proficiencies, Skills, Abilities… huh? Identify?

A window appeared.

Identify (Mortal-Common-Base)
The most basic skill in the multiverse, you are able to identify an item or creature within your immediate line of sight. Range of this skill is based on Awareness. Effectiveness of this skill is based on Insight. This skill is Fixed and cannot be improved.

Finally! She thought irritably and read through it quickly. Oh, I get it, everybody gets this, that’s how I was able to see the level of the hounds and what they were as well as identifying the items I was holding. Then the tutorial windows that are restricted are for more general information. Which is the most important kind, by the way. She let out a heavy sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose. She was really starting to lose her patience.

She forced herself to move on to the last two sections. Yes! There’s a section for spells. Hell yeah! I can learn magic! But… how? She frowned and shrugged, I’ll figure it out. Looks like this is also where all those ‘iron coins’ went. I have no idea how much five hundred fifty iron coins is worth, though, so I guess it’s meaningless right now.

Anna closed the window and stared at the floor before flicking her eyes up towards the door. She tapped her foot, rubbed her neck, felt the nerves rise up her back until she finally hopped to her feet. “Just fucking go! Damn it!” she shouted at herself, snatching up her backpack and her crowbar. “It’s just outside! It’s not like-” she froze, her heart pounding. “-not like there are monsters out there and you’re all alone.”

I’m so fucking scared.

She reached up and scratched her head, her whole body trembling. What would mom do? She thought before glancing at her crowbar. Is this all I have to defend myself with? She glanced at the door leading back into the precinct. Isn’t there an armory? She licked her lips and darted back into the building, walking around the messy work area. Restrooms, Break Room, Offices, Interview Room, Door to the basement, there! She snapped her hand out and grabbed the handle of the door that read ‘Supplies and Armory’. She could see a hallway through the narrow window set in the middle of the door. 

Locked.

She kicked the door. Fuckin’ figures! She thought irritably and marched back out into the Lobby. Maybe there’s a key somewhere but I’m wasting time, I either go out there or I don’t. Quit being a little bitch Anna! You killed one of those hound things, you can do it again.

Anna rallied herself, grit her teeth, and stormed out into the blazing sunlight. She took a quick look around and saw no sign of the hound from the previous night. Must have scared it off pretty good, she thought with a small amount of satisfaction. Gotta figure out how I did that. She stepped out into the tall grass and turned her attention towards the looming rock in the distance. Wonder if I could climb that and get a better view of everything. She reached for her canteen and checked it. She’d gone through half of it already. Shit.

A quick trip back inside took her to one of the toppled water dispensers. It only took a few seconds to pop the jug off the top and tilt the fresh water into her canteen. With that, she was back outside and making her way through the savanna towards the distant massive mound of rust-colored stone.

Despite the heat of the sun, it was pretty nice outside. The air was fresh and there was a decent breeze that kept her cool while she trudged along. Occasionally she would glance towards the murky black cloud far to the east based on where the sun currently was. It looked a tiny bit bigger than the previous day but not by much. It’s spreading. Though I get the feeling that if I go over there now and check it out, I’m dead.

It took over an hour to trudge through the tall grass. The flat terrain was not as easily passable as she had initially expected. Roots and hidden rocks made things difficult and more than once she stumbled over a small hole in the dirt. She could already feel the faint prickling of sunburn on the back of her neck when she was within shouting distance of the massive rock formation, the ground starting to slope upwards towards it. It filled her vision, a single lump of stone so large it may as well be a mountain in her eyes.

Around its base were smatterings of bushes, boulders, and overgrowth around an otherwise barren space, free of the tall grass that surrounded it. More importantly, she spotted movement. A pair of large green shapes lounging atop one of the larger boulders. There was a weird faint white mist radiating off of them, barely perceptible in the sunlight. Those lizards are huge! What the fuck? Is that mist their presence? I can barely see it.

She crouched down into the tall grass and peered at them but no windows appeared. Am I not close enough?

She inched forward, careful not to step on anything that would make too much noise. Her eyes fixed on the reptiles that were so still she almost figured they were dead until one of them raised its head and turned its body a little, repositioning and settling back down on the rock. 

Anna ran out of tall grass.

Fuck, she looked around and spotted a bush a little further ahead and darted towards it, sliding to a stop behind it and peering around. Don’t look at me, don’t look at me. She met a pair of beady black eyes. It’s looking right at me.

HISS!

The massive reptiles jaw opened in a terrible hiss as it rose to its hind legs and a flap of skin around its neck spread open, the frills rippling as it snarled and brandished its forelimbs that were decorated with long, wicked claws.

Large Frilled Lizard - Level 1

She set her jaw, It’s weaker than the hounds at least, right? She thought as it leaped off the side of the rock and darted towards her. The second lizard rising as well to look at what it’s companion was doing. She hopped to her feet and brandished her crowbar. The reptile zipped towards her, faster than the hound had moved. Its teeth gleamed in the sunlight and its scales shone brightly. It raised its claws and lunged, hopping at her as if bounding off a trampoline. She threw herself to the right and swung down at it only to hit air.

The creature landed and turned, snarling at her and trying again. She hopped a step back as it cast a sudden shadow over her and she raised an arm to block. Fangs clattered against the chain armor she was wearing and caught. Claws snagging on the metal loops. She wrenched herself to the right and tried to throw it to the ground. “Get off of me!” she barked as it fell onto its back and immediately rolled over only to get the flat end of her crowbar to its face. Blood went everywhere as its head collapsed beneath the blow.

She panted, looking at her weapon in surprise just as another terrible hiss came at her. Claws abruptly digging into her armor as fangs penetrated her neck. Her eyes went wide with panic. What if these things were as poisonous as the claws of the hounds? She elbowed the thing without thinking, throwing her shoulder up and into it’s jaw before throwing it off with a scream. She kicked it once, pushing it further back before catching herself and lunging. Adrenaline pumping in her veins as she landed blow after blow.

She only stopped when blood splattered across her face and she pulled off of the reptile, looking away from the mess she’d made. It was long dead.

“Oh fuck, oh shit,” she panted, sitting down on the ground and wiping the smear of red off of her face. That only spread it around. “Fuck it stinks.”

She retched once before rallying herself and getting shakily to her feet and rubbing her throbbing neck. At least it didn’t feel like anything was burning like when she fought the skeletal hound. Still hurts though. She thought and pulled up her resources to see how she’d fared.

Resources:
HP: 28/30 | SP: 25/30 | MT: 0/51

Took two damage from that bite. Burned through a chunk of my stamina too. She thought and dismissed the window, looking back at the bodies. She tapped the one she’d obliterated with her crowbar with her foot.

Would you like to loot Large Frilled Lizard and convert it into essence? Yes/No

“Yes.”

As before, the creature began to smoke and dissolve. This time though the scent was far more pungent. The meat and blood burning away into nothing. That also included the blood on her face. A nostril full of the acrid smoke sent her doubling over and this time she couldn’t hold on to what was in her guts. She coughed and spat, her body aching as she sat down and tried to recover.

You have received: 1 Iron Coin and 10 Essence Points

“That thing was worth one coin?” she demanded, “Ten essence?” she groaned and got to her feet, looting the other and getting the same result. She sighed. She still had five more essence to gather before she could level up. She ran her fingers through her sweat slick hair and fell onto her back, staring up at the blue sky. “God damn it,” she grumbled before dragging herself to her feet and taking another look around. “Guess I gotta find one more,” she said and started working her way closer to the looming stone monolith.

About fifty feet away from the base of the rock formation she spotted something odd on the surface of it. It looked like a perfect square of stone embedded right at ground level but she couldn’t tell from this distance. She glanced around again to make sure there wasn’t anything nearby that would come running at her and jogged over to it. “Huh! What the heck is this? Hieroglyphs?” she said, squinting up at what seemed to be a flat square of stone about ten feet tall and ten feet wide. There were words engraved around the outside of the stone that she couldn’t make heads or tails of and covering the majority of it was a carved mural of a world with a hand on top of it and a pair of eyes behind it. The eyes made her skin crawl. She felt like she’d seen them before.

THUD THUDTHUD THUD THUDTHUD

Hooves?

Her eyes went wide and she spun, looking for the source of the sound. Something was coming towards her from the east. She didn’t stop to squint at it though, a thrill spiderwalking up her spine as she whipped her head around to find somewhere to hide. A pair of bushes in a shadowy nook nearby the stone square looked promising. She darted into them, wincing as one of the barbs on the bush caught her cheek and pressed her back against the stone behind them, keeping her head down. She tried to make herself invisible again, breathing slow to quiet herself as the approaching figure came into view.

It was the skeleton of a man atop a skeletal horse, the pelvic bone was identifying enough. He was wearing heavy plates of armor on his hands, chest, and feet. The mist coming off of him was far more pronounced and visible, it was also a sickly green compared to the lizards. His eyes glowed brightly as he swept his gaze over the area, the bony sneer of his skinless face opening once and letting out a raspy hiss that could have been mistaken for words. He hopped off the horse and walked towards the same stone block she’d been examining a moment ago. More hissing. Is he muttering to himself? 

The skeleton held out his hand and touched the stone before pulling it away and snarling something. He flexed his fingers experimentally before a sword appeared in it. Dark metal with a black wooden handle. She shifted a little bit to get a better look on him and got what she was hoping for. The information did not fill her with a great deal of hope.

Skeletal Champion - Level 25 (Capped)

Her heart thundered in her chest. In other words, this guy could turn me into a smear and not even think about it. She thought, pressing herself harder against the wall even as her blood started to feel hot in her veins, a strange giddiness accompanying it. That giddiness vanished when the Skeletal Champion struck the stone wall with so much force the sound almost shot her hearing. She pulled back and covered her ears, hiding in the brush as it struck it again, and again. After what felt like an eternity it stopped and snarled something again.

Is it giving up? She wondered and peered out to see the big guy hop back onto his horse and pull on the reins. The horse let out an angry, terrible sound and turned away before darting back towards the east.

Anna sat there for a little while, recovering from the mess of feelings in her chest. When she finally found the wherewithal to pull herself out of the brush she staggered over to the stone wall and looked up at it, curious to see how much damage had been done.

Her eyes went wide.

“...woah.”