Defiance of the Fall

Chapter 12: The Warrior-Route

Initially Zac had wanted to hold out on spending his points until he understood the class system better, maybe even waiting to allocate until level 25. He now realized that such thinking was naïve. He needed every advantage he could get the coming months if he wanted to survive. He was supposed to kill 3 more Heralds somehow but had almost died twice to low tier monster at the edge of the island.

Still, he didn’t just want to do anything hasty, so he donned the amulet and sat down in a camping chair. Immediately he felt a warm pulse from the amulet, which entered his chest and spread through his body. Almost his whole torso and large sections of his body were purple from being first strangled and then falling down a tree. It seemed however that the amulet actually slowly alleviated his symptoms. Abby the eye had said that cosmic energy was life, so it made sense though that it would not only help with his cultivation.

When choosing stats one needed to plan for the long term, to make sure it was suitable to his class. The problem was that he had no idea how the class system worked. Could he even decide on a class himself, or whether it would be just assigned to him?

“System…? Are you there” Zac once again tried to get some information out of System, but was met with silence. “Can you tell me about stat points?” He entreated, trying hard to hide the rancor he was feeling against this unfeeling overlord.

With a lack of answers he could only make educated guesses and hope that any bad choices wouldn’t haunt him in the future. If it was a video game he would likely dump all the points in the main stat of a class, such as strength for warrior and dexterity for a ranger. The difference was that in a game he could respawn if dying, whereas here it was game over for real.

If he could choose Zac would have preferred to be a mage. Then he could just stand safely in the distance throwing fireballs on unsuspecting monsters until they were burnt to a cinder. Yet he didn’t dare go this route. He had no idea if he would be able to use magic even if he got a class, or how to progress in such skills.

He also skipped ranger-type classes, simply as he had no such weapon. His eyes swept to the hatchet lying down next to his leg. Even after his recent battles it looked almost as good as new. Luckily they had bought a fancier model, being a solid piece of metal with a plastic grip. If the handle had been made of wood it might have snapped by now.

“I guess it’s the warrior-route…” Zac muttered and sighed. From the experiences since last week he was plenty reluctant to go choose this class type, but he saw no different option as of yet. Maybe the system would prepare other options he hadn’t thought of yet when he reached 25.

Zac brought up and decisively spent his 30 free points. First, he placed 10 points in strength. In both fights so far he had been physically weaker, and he needed a boost in that department. What good was his hatchet if he couldn’t give more than flesh wounds on his targets? He then spent 5 points in dexterity in somewhat of a test to see what improved. 5 Points also went into endurance. He would be moving and fighting a lot across the island, and he needed a sturdy constitution.

Finally he put 10 points in vitality. Vitality wouldn’t help killing monsters directly, but he felt that it would help indirectly. He simply was in no condition to fight right now. With increased vitality and the amulet he should heal plenty faster compared to before. Secondly, he would be running around and fighting a lot the coming months. He couldn’t take a few days off after every fight to nurse his wounds, or he’d likely never be able to clean out all demons before the three-month deadline. He also felt that a high vitality would help him in the future no matter which class he got, while strength and dexterity felt a bit more specialized.

Zac felt that Wisdom and intelligence were likely the staples of the mage route. Getting an increase in either wouldnʼt hurt, but he couldnʼt justify spending points there when there were more tangible improvementsthat the other stats could provide. He felt the same about luck. His high luck had likely helped him survive so far. It was thanks to a lucky roll that he was still standing here today. But Zac did not want to rely on luck to survive. Even if he somehow fell ass-backward intovictory 9 times out of 10, heʼd still die the tenth time due to lack of proper foundations. Luck was intangible and he couldnʼt even fathomwhat benefits he would get from putting points into that stat. It would have to wait until someone explained it to him.

With the points spent he closed down the screen. Suddenly a surge of warmth far stronger compared to what the amulet provided spread through his body. It felt like his every cell was vibrating with life, greedily absorbing the warmth and improving. He was shocked to see his various wounds were healing at a visible rate, and it felt like he could punch a hole through a mountain. This feeling of strength was quite addicting. Soon the warmth faded though, and the feeling of immortalitydissapeared with it. The wounds stopped healing at an accelerated speed. Still, Zac felt a good deal better, with a good deal of the bruising and smaller cuts completely gone.

There still was some time left of the day, so after a quick meal he turned his attention to the snake carcass. After a few tries with a kitchen knives he knew the scaled leather was quite resilient to cuts and would make good protection. He brought a few knives from the camper and his hatchet and dragged the carcass some distance away from the camp, and then started skinning it.

He cut along the softer belly, and after 20 minutes he had cut all along the length of the carcass, ruining a knife on the hard scales while doing so. His forearms were burning with strain after the workout. He had ruined most of the meat along the way unfortunately, and it didn’t seem that there’d be much left over to eat.

After that he dragged the skin off from the carcass, and finally scraped as much of the left-over flesh as possible off from the skin with his hatchet. From here he was not quite sure what to do. He had no idea of methods to cure leather. He was an office worker before the end of the world, and he was a few generations too young for these types of things to be considered common knowledge. Zac knew he had read somewhere that urine could be used somehow, but he was not about to experiment with that.

He put the skin aside and dug a hole which he pushed the now mangled carcass into, and filled it with soil. He didn’t want anything tohead this direction, even though he was some ways away from the camp.

Zac picked up the skin and made his way back to camp. The skin needed to dry out, so he placed it across the hood of the car, leaving both ends hanging down at the sides. He placed two large rocks down on both ends in order to keep it stretched and stop it from shrinking overnight. He had no idea if he was supposed to do something else, and could only leave it like that over the night and hope that it would work out.

It was starting to get darker, so he decided he was done exploring for the day. He was still feeling beat up even with the rapid healing as well. He took 30 minutes to clean up the camp-site and take stock of his things. Normally he wouldn’t go through his friends’ belongings but these were desperate times. Unfortunately there was nothing of value except some extra changes of clothes and some daily necessities.

With the last of the sunlight Zac found a long fallen branch near the campsite with the thickness of about 3 to 5 centimeters which was about 6 meters long. With a few quick swings with his hatchet he cut off roughly 2.5 meters where the branch was the most straight. Then with his improved strength he quickly sharpened one edge into a sharp point, turning it into a makeshift spear. It was likely too malleable to be able to stop anything large like the demonling in its tracks without breaking. However it could hopefully keep some monsters at length if needed. His hatchet was a good weapon, but its length was quite short. It was hard to use while keeping himself out of harm’s way.

Zac finally sat down in the trailer for a meal, quietly staring out the window and seeing the ever-present red pillar. Had it not been for the incursion he might have been able to forget how messed up the world had become for a second.

Life had thrown things at him the last days he couldn’t even have imagined, and it would only get crazier.

Tomorrow he would have to go hunting demons.