Luke’s enhanced Memory dredged up a random fact from college biology. Carcinization is the evolutionary process where unrelated organisms independently evolve into the form of a crab. The process had clearly happened here on Kalibutan. But something had gone wrong along the way.

  The puke green monsters skittering towards them were definitely crabs. They had a hard shell, eight legs, and two claws. But each leg was also a claw, and its mouth was a huge pincer. It was like they took a giant crab and turned the pinching up to eleven.

  All of this passed through Luke’s head in an instant and then he focused on the fight. His hand was already moving to grab a sword. Bumblebee had his lightning sword already out and sent tendrils of shocking magic towards the closest monster. The crab stuttered in place for a few moments.

  This gave the other monster the chance to shove it aside so it could attack. Luke stepped up as it skittered forward. They met at the mouth of the cave, his acid sword against its claw. The sword hit its shell and skittered off, bouncing away from the spikes in the exoskeleton.

  Luke had forgotten to activate the sword first. The green crab took the chance to counter attack, shoving its open claw into his chest. He bounced back with the blow, just barely avoiding the claw as it snapped shut. A magical explosion appeared at the tip of its claw and blasted him further back.

  The force was enough to make him trip and fall on his back. As he fell, Luke belatedly remembered that Bumblebee had called these things Blast Crabs. The monster skittered forward, raising an enormous claw above his chest and bringing it down like a hammer.

  Tendrils of lightning lashed out and shocked the crab, holding it in place for a bare moment. Just enough time for Luke to roll out of the way. He growled to himself for his mistakes and focused on the sword in his hand as he stood back up.

  He shoved mana from his core and up through his right arm. As soon as it touched the sword, it lit up green along its length and the edge started dripping. Luke slashed at the Blast Crab from ten feet away. Drips of acid flew from his sword, splattering across the monster’s claw and upper shell.

  The Blast Crab didn’t seem to notice, it ignored him and swung for the closer target. Bumblebee used Evade and slipped out of the way of the claw and the follow up blast. Wisps of smoke came up from the spots the acid had hit and a few of them made it through its exoskeleton.

  A keening roar came out of the crab’s beak as the pain hit. It tried to wipe the acid off its shell but the damage was done. The other Blast Crab was frustrated at not getting its chance to attack so it shoved the crying monster to the side. The injured crab didn’t take the shove lightly and turned to its fellow.

  Luke used the moment of distraction to extend his legs into digitigrade running form. He stepped forward and stabbed the crab from behind. The extra height gave him just the right angle to bring his acid sword down atop its head. The tip paused momentarily as it hit the exoskeleton, then the acid ate through and the sword plunged all the way through the monster’s head just behind its pincher mouth.

  The Blast Crab tried to screech, but only blood and acid came out. Luke pulled the sword towards him, cutting a jagged line across its body. It fired blasts from its claws and feet, a spasmodic response as it died. The staccato blasts were enough to wrench the acid sword from Luke’s grip.

  Bumblebee stepped in and sent a wave of fire from above, scorching the other crab’s carapace in a line. Luke grabbed his own fire sword and wobbled. His running legs weren’t stable on the uneven rocks and sand. He shrunk back down and dashed forward, sending a horizontal wave of fire towards the last crab.

  The monster saw the attack coming and crouched slightly. As the arc of flame neared, the crab jumped and blasted off with each of its legs. It flew into the air, at least fifteen feet, as the fire passed underneath harmlessly. It landed nimbly and skittered forward.

  This time Bumblebee and Luke were ready for it. They both struck from above, flaming swords coming from both sides. The Blast Crab caught the swords on its upraised claws and attempted to push them back.

  The flaming magic within the swords bit into the claws and the power armor’s strength was more than enough to cut through the exoskeleton. The monster lost both claws in a single motion.

  The Blast crab screeched in pain, but Luke didn’t let it suffer long. With a short hop, he lunged forward and thrust into its brain, killing it with a blast of steam and the smell of cooked crab.

  As the second crab fell to the ground, Luke scanned around, looking for more monsters. There were none. He pulled his mana from the sword and the flames shut off. He checked his mana pool. The whole fight had lasted less than thirty seconds, and he had used up ten points of mana. That left him with eight points.

  He belatedly remembered he hadn’t used Repair Craft at the beginning of the fight. He wasn’t sure if that was a good idea or not. If he had thought about it, he definitely would have spent the fifteen points of mana on the first half of the skill. But if he had done that, he would have run out of mana in the middle of the fight and been without an easy way to kill the monsters. It was a tough balance between defense and offense.

  Luke looked over to Bumblebee. “Where are their mana cores? We need to harvest them and go, something is bound to have heard the explosions. My ears are still ringing.”

  “I know, right? If we didn’t have a class, I’d be worried about permanent hearing loss.”

  Luke waited for a beat and then reminded him, “The cores?”

  “Dunno. We never fought crabs before. The ocean has the worst shit, we try to avoid it if we can. I bet we can find it if we pry off the shell we can find it. Our helmets should help us see the mana from the core,” Bumblebee said and shoved his sword into the side of the crab’s torso.

  Luke did the same and together they levered the shell off with a squelch. The monster’s guts were already starting to stink. Thankfully, the location of the core was easy to discover since it was the only thing that still had the shine of mana. It was just behind the remains of the skewered brain.

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  Bumblebee used his sword to flick it out onto the black sand. It was larger than Luke had been expecting, a size 3 or 4. He tucked it away in his waist compartment and they moved onto the next one. That core was a little smaller, but still bigger than the marble sized ones they had harvested from the spiders.

  He had a lot of wealth tucked away in his suit. He didn’t even want to think about exactly how much. Now that he had the cores in hand, he was suddenly doubtful that he could get the prices listed on the internet.

  “Can we eat the crab? It smells pretty good,” Luke asked.

  “I’ve heard you can, but I’ve never tried. Most of the monsters we fight are gross.”

  “Hmm. Maybe next time. Let’s head out for now.”

  They hurried away from the cave, not stopping until they reached the dirt path far from the beach. Luke held up his hand and said, “Let’s stop here for a bit. I want to recharge my mana. We know there aren’t any monsters nearby cus we just came through here.”

  “Good idea, I was almost out too. I hate being low.”

  Luke looked around and found a grassy spot to sit. There were five foot tall grass tufts along the path, each blade had tiny hairs along its edge. That normally would have stopped him from putting his butt on unknown flora, but he was in power armor.

  “Didja level up again?”

  “Yep, level 2 now.”

  “Ah. I miss those days. Every level up is straight bussin. I’ve been stuck at twelve for a while.”

  “Does it take more and more fights to level up as you get higher?”

  “Yes, but no. It depends on your class. If you were a warrior, you would have to fight stronger and stronger monsters to level up. My Driver class used to level up when I killed monsters, but not anymore. Now it wants me to do something impressive with driving. I got my twelfth level by making a forty-five minute commute to the Norfolk Complex in fifteen minutes. I had two separate cops on my ass, but I lost them both. I’ve tried a few different racing things since then, but nothing’s worked.”

  “Dude, don’t do that. I don’t want to lose you to some stupid car accident.”

  “Nah, man. I can’t crash, Evade, remember? Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I have to try something different if I want my class to advance again.”

  Luke nodded but didn’t respond. He wondered about his own class. Would he get stuck at level twelve like Bumblebee? His class had war in the name, did that mean he had to do battle to progress it? The chances of him taking his mech to an actual war were slim.

  That was a problem for future Luke, for today, he had more stat points to assign. Bumblebee had said the stats only came on odd level ups, but Luke had two more stat points available even though he was only level two.

  If he put both of them into dexterity, his base stats would be six. That was the level Bumblebee said made him faster. None of his other stats could make it up to a multiple of six, so that made the decision easy.

  He mentally put both points into dexterity and felt the change wash over him. Luke wouldn’t describe the feeling as ‘bussin’ like Bumblebee, but it was nice. Like a warm shower for his soul or the satisfaction of beating all of his friends at Mario Kart.

  The feeling faded and Luke was back to normal. He wanted to jump up and test out his new speed right away. He couldn’t, for several reasons. Bumblebee would be heartbroken to discover that Luke got a stat point at level two, let alone a pair of them. Luke's class gave him four stat points by level two, something that had taken Bumblebee to level seven. By the time Luke was at level seven, he would have fourteen extra stats.

  It was probably time to plan out a cohesive strategy for his stats, something he would work towards over multiple levels instead of deciding something new every time. If he assumed he would make it to level twelve like Bumblebee had, that would mean he had twenty additional points to work with.

  Luke stared at his stat screen, trying to decide what stats he should bump up, and which ones were fine with ignoring. He really needed advice, but he wasn’t sure who he could trust. Maybe he could trust Cormac, since he already had a secrecy deal with the orc. He nodded to himself. That would be the plan, he’d spell it all out to him the next time he met the Seneschal. He should know enough about the system to give Luke some advice.

  “Hey Skywalker?” Bumblebee said without turning. He was keeping watch to the east.

  “Yeah?” Luke said while facing west.

  “You did good today, straight up ninja on the leeches and your sword form was on point with the crabs. Get it? On point?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I get it. Never figured you for a dad joke kinda guy.”

  “Whatever, funny is funny. Anyway, I was wondering how you got that good. You do some MMA shit before you went into the National Guard? Is that why you joined up, so you could fight more? I was asking ‘cus you don’t seem to like the orders. Every time Cormac or Kruro tells you what to do, you get the ick. Not really the kinda guy I think of as a soldier.”

  Luke chuckled softly. He pulled out lunch while they talked. He shared it with Bumblebee since he hadn’t brought anything.

  “Yeah, everyone keeps telling me that I'm not really soldier material. Even Corporal Conrad, the nicest NCO I’ve ever met, told me the Guard wasn’t for me.”

  “So why’d ya join?”

  Luke took a bite of his salami and havarti sandwich as he considered how much to tell him. It wasn’t really a subject he liked talking about. Then again, he had just fought with Bumblebee and that forms a bond that other friendships can’t touch.

  “It was my mom. I left home at eighteen ‘cus I wanted to get away from her. She was... not nice. I wanted to go to college, get myself a real career in engineering. But I wasn’t smart enough to get a scholarship, which was the only way I could afford it. So I joined the National Guard instead. They’ll pay for college, and when I joined, they hadn’t been deployed in a decade. I thought I wouldn't have to fight.”

  “Oh, you got screwed in that deal. Did you even have time to go to college before you lost your leg?”

  Luke’s throat closed up. Even after all this time and therapy, every time he thought about that day, he started panicking. Maybe it would be good to talk about, the veteran therapist said as much.

  He said, “I finished college last year, did it all online. But you are right, none of us expected aliens to try and invade. Do you want to know all the gory details about the day I lost my leg?”

  Today’s chapter title comes from Megamind (2010)

  Also, how interested are y’all in the story of the invasion? I think it’s a nice bit of backstory, but I wonder if it might be better to just skip it and focus on the present.