I sat there with my eyes closed. I looked at it several times.

  Level: 2*   39% to next level 3

  *-Pending completion of leveling

  Alert! Level gained through experience. Congratulations, you have gained your first level after system integration and class assignment. All your benefits take effect upon completing the leveling process. As a human during integration, you gain 1000 skill points to level up your skills for all levels through 5th level. This can be spent to learn a single skill that you do not possess or to improve any skill you already have.

  Please select the skill you want to improve.

  First off, 1000 skill points sounds like a lot. I selected learn new skill from the list of options and typed in Mana Recovery.

  You will learn this skill after you complete the level up process. As this is the only decision you need to make with this level up would you like to complete the level up process?

  Again, I selected yes.

  As a reminder:

  your health will increase by 6 (class + ? of your Constitution)

  Your Mana will increase by 1 (Due to intelligence increase)

  Your Intelligence will increase by 1.

  Your Spell level effects will also increase by 1 level.

  You have gained the skill Mana-Recovery at Tier 1.

  Wow, we do get a little something at every level. My thoughts then went away as pain rocked my body. My bones felt different, almost heavier. My muscles felt electrical impulses coursing through them; my nervous system felt on fire. This went on for the better part of a minute. Fuck that hurt. I decided to just rest where I was, on the ground of Stack Shack’s back hallway.

  It was several minutes before I got the energy to move myself into a sitting position. The first thing I noticed was I recovered some health and mana. I had gone up by exactly 6 health and 1 mana. I think the cookie already got rid of the bleeding issue. I didn’t pay attention to that, only that my shoulder was still hurting, sore, but not bleeding. I somehow fired a rifle with the butt of the gun smacking into my injured shoulder. How did I not remember that at the time? At least I was sitting at 9 health instead of 3. I still think that is not nearly enough. An arrow ate up 11 health in one hit. We know that weapons can quickly and easily kill people. The bullet proof vest dispersed most of the damage from the bullet. I only lost a handful of health from that. We need armor that will completely stop arrows, axes, chomping teeth, and spells.

  I glanced at my menu to see what else I might have missed. My persuasion went up to Tier 4 from all that impressive persuading I had been doing. I hope that it won’t take too long to level up to level 3. We have had a rough 5 hours since we were integrated. I have to imagine we weren’t going to maintain that pace. I looked around to see who was still with me in the hallway. Frank was sitting down slumped against the gut creature. His breathing was slow and measured. Nora stood over him, her five foot and change tall frame not really looking that big against Frank’s and monster’s forms. Jackson was no longer in the hallway. I have no idea where he went.

  “Nora, Frank did the two of you level up?” Frank merely nodded. He looked like he didn’t have the energy for verbal responses. The blood may have stopped flowing, but there was still the hole in his leg where an arrow had gone through. It may not be bleeding, but the damage was still there.

  Nore on the other hand smiled, “yeah, also got over halfway to level 3. Dumped my stats into constitution. Without any real consistent healing or access to raising the dead, I would say having more health is always better than not having it. Besides it jumps my mana up by 2. Picked up mana recovery. Brittney mentioned it was helping her get mana back faster.”

  “Where did Sgt. Jackson go?” I was curious if she knew.

  “Oh, he went to make sure everything is secure. Neal, I hope you realize that we aren’t making it to your grandfather. Your shoulder looks torn up. I twisted my ankle moving around during the fight, and Frank has a gaping hole in his leg that I need to try and close up. It is all bad. None of us is in decent enough shape to keep pushing. 3 solid shootouts, and you got shot by a civilian. Let your grandfather know that you won’t be making it there.”

  She was right. I knew she was right. I fished my phone out of my pocket and immediately was struck with the time. 11:10am. This little fight took up over 20 minutes of the day. I immediately played those minutes back over in my mind to try and see why it took so long. Without looking up I had to ask Nora, “Nora, how long did our level ups take?”

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  There was no verbal response for a moment, just a shuffling from her direction. “Oh crap, that level up took… several minutes. I think I might have lost consciousness for a few minutes after that took effect. Maybe we never do a level up in combat.” She always was full of solid logic.

  “Agreed. We need to put that down somewhere with classes for no one to level up in the middle of a fight.” Something struck me mentally, “Did anyone do anything about that magic symbol?” Frank and Nora both groaned one after the other. “Well, Fuck.”

  I put the hand from my good arm against the wall and used it to steady myself as I hoisted myself from the ground. Both my legs were good, yet I stumbled a little as I traversed the dozen steps to the end of the hallway. My feet felt heavier, as if something had changed in them. I shook off the feeling and turned the corner to pass Nora and Frank. Neither had moved much from their spots. Nora had a needle with thread, and was trying to sew Frank’s injury shut. “You should know that Joe, and the twins are the reason we survived the fight out front. 4 more wolf men came out from various hiding spots after I drew that big orc out of the building. Joe is a mean shot with that rifle. Brittney and Joe were hitting wolf men like it was target practice. Never seen so many bullseyes in my life. Brett took down one of them as well.” Frank finished his bit. He sounded like he needed to get that off his chest.

  “Are you telling me that you guys fought 8 of the wolfmen and one of the big orc guys?” That would explain the overwhelming amount of gunfire. Did you guys have any casualties?”

  “Lost both the police officers and one of the highway patrol guys. Officer Mills made it out, but he has a wicked scar across his face. Oh, and I had to kill the little flying demon. I trapped it against the outside wall with my shield, shoved my pistol in its mouth, and emptied a clip on it. I don’t think damage reduction works inside its throat.” That last part brought a brief smile to my lips.

  “So, you got ambushed, and we set off some sort of magical summoning booby trap. We are so far out of our depth.” I really hated this situation. It felt like no win in every which way. I made it over to the magic symbol. It was a pentacle. The star and the connected outer circle were both etched into some sort of animal skin. The burnt symbol left small bits of charcoal inside the symbol itself, as well as on the ground around it. Almost the entire orc, and the legs of the smaller wolf man were just burnt offerings. There were human body parts in a few piles around the pentacle. The whole scene reeked of ritual sacrifice and grisly serial murders. I pulled out my main hunting knife and proceeded to slice up the magical animal skin with trepidation. My knife stabbed into the leathered skin easily enough. No magical sparks, nor weird feelings from the contact. The leather, as tough as it was, split perfectly fine until I hit the circular barrier at the edge of the pentacle. Then sparks began. The knife quickly went from cool to warm and finally red hot. It got soft and a thin line of metal dribbled away from the metal tip, rolling for just a few seconds before catching fire. I continued to rip my ever dwindling blade through the skin, breaking through part of pentagram portion of pentacle. The blade was melting down to the crossbar with no signs of slowing down. As soon as I completely broke one entire section of the pentagram the rest of the symbol caught fire, consuming the knife. I dropped that knife as fast as I could, getting my gripping hand away with a blackened burns. I then watched as the flames slowly consumed the leathery animal skin and the symbol laid into it.

  “Damn! That’s freaky,” Frank intoned from where Nora still tended to his wounds. We both watched from our respective spots. The fire never spread beyond the leathery flesh, but it certainly consumed it. Within a few minutes the whole thing burned to ashes, the flesh consumed along with the hunting knife.

  Sgt. Jackson walked in interrupting me before I could get stuck in my own thoughts. He had Brett and Dennis in tow. The smell of burnt flesh still hung by thin tendrils of smoke throughout the space. Brett still had a sense of wonder about him, probably only possible due to his younger age. “What did you burn in here? Are those body parts? Sick!” Perhaps, Brett’s curiosity was just morbid.

  “I burned the magic circle they were using to teleport or summon creatures in to fight us. Yes those piles are humans, or rather what’s left of them.” I frowned. Brett’s enthusiasm made me want to frown in the worst possible way. “Dennis did you perhaps level up?” Please let him say yes.

  “Yes Sirree. I did. I am getting closer to level 3. I hope that if’n we can make it through the rest of the day and fight off a few more of them there wolfmen, then I could get there.” He said all that like it wasn’t always how he talked. He was clearly laying it on a bit thick.

  “Well, we’ll see about extra experience. In the meantime, I need you to use the last uses of your ability to get me something out that wolfman over there and the little winged demon creature that Sgt. Jackson will bring up here from the back hallway.” I looked at Sgt. Jackson, a bit hopeful in my eyes that he would help out by dragging the dead creature back into the room. He nodded back at me, the tiniest of smirks playing at the corner of his lips. He knew I really didn’t want to manhandle the dead body.

  Dennis intoned his “steal a bitch” on the dead wolfman spell caster. Thirty seconds later he looked up at me with two new ability tokens in hand. “I reckon these are what you have been waiting for. Both have arcane, though only one of ‘em has knowledge. The other has somethin’ called force.”

  “Thanks, I’ll take the knowledge one. I guess we don’t have anything for Billy. Which genuinely sucks. Perhaps we’ll get lucky and find something for him soon.” I waited as Dennis repeated his process on the small, winged demon. I was still certain after all this time that the man didn’t need to intone the phrase ‘steal a bitch.’ Apparently he likes his theatrics.

  “Well I’ll be. We got one that’s got money on it. And another one that has arcane, but it feels real different like.” I knew better than to probe him. He could sense something was different, and that’s enough for me right now.

  Before I could take any of the tokens, Nora reached over and grabbed all four of them. “Hey, why you do that?”

  She pulled her notebooks out as if that was the answer. A second later it was the answer. She needed to document the symbols. Well, at least she remembered. Though I wonder how many notebooks she has now. One by one she picked up the token and examined it. She would place it down flat and sketch the symbols on it. She did this with clinical precision. Lastly, She would hold each one and close her eyes. Afterwords she would jot down the English translation of the symbol, as well as write down the ability description in a second notebook. Four tokens took her a total of almost 20 minutes. After she put her notebooks away she looked up at everyone in view with a dangerous smile on her face.