"That's not it. These days, a lot of strange things happen, you know? Have you heard about the status window? People say they can see it," Elise said innocently.
"Status window?"
When he blinked, she began to tell him everything she knew. Levels, points, stats. All of it was something he already knew, and he felt a little guilty pretending otherwise, but he had no choice.
"Isn't it just a lie? They probably made it up as a joke."
"No, Mister. Too many people say it's true for it to be a joke. Hundreds of people say they have status windows and superpowers."
"If there were hundreds of them, they'd be on the news. So where are they?"
"Oh, there you go."
As if the announcer on the television had been waiting for him, the news began.
[News] A thief broke into a convenience store in the south of Yorbia last night. The thief committed the crime using an extraordinary method. Let's take a look at the security camera footage.
What the camera had caught was a surprising scene. A bundle of cash disappeared from the register by itself. The customers around Jude who were watching the news all pointed at the television at once.
"What is that? What's happening?"
"Wait, where's the clerk?"
It seemed the thief had done it while the clerk was in the storeroom. It took less than ten seconds for all the cash to disappear from the register, and then the door of the store opened, and a moment later it closed again. When the clerk came back, he was taken aback to find the register empty.
The thief had used invisibility. Jude was certain of that.
He did not know the exact reason, but it seemed that those who had been part of the beta had awakened their status windows and their abilities as well, and some of them were already committing crimes.
"If I remember right, not far from here, someone stole money from a local shop too. No one could stop him," Elise said.
"Why not?"
"He's invisible. Who, then, could stop him?"
There really was nothing to be done if a criminal was invisible. But it was not as if there was no way at all. In the beta, there had been countless monsters that could hide themselves, and the veterans had still defeated them just fine.
He had no time to commit crimes, anyway. Was he the only one who knew that the end was coming?
Elise kept going.
"Mister, people say that if you say a certain word, something comes up in front of your eyes. Levels and stats."
"This is reality, not a dream. How could something like that appear?"
"I'm telling you it's real. The status window, like this."
Her eyes glittered strangely as she said it, as if she were reading something. Could she see a status window too?
After that, Jude simply ignored it and went back to eating, as if he were not interested. So Elise closed her mouth and waited for her order.
Every person needed a house to live in. In Jude's case, the old stone house in Yorbia was his home, but on the hills, he did not have anything, not even a shed. There were twenty-five days left until the outbreak, and within that time, he had to build himself a safe zone, whatever the cost.
A cave would be nice. A cave enclosed on every side, with a single entrance for his own use, was what he wanted. Of course, he did not need the monster that already lived in it, so he would have to kill it first before he could take its den.
With that in mind, he walked deeper into the hills, leaving marks on the trees just as he had on his last visit. On the hills, there were a great many old trees, and they created a large brown and black forest that looked extremely gloomy. They might be useful in the future, though to work them, he would need to bring woodworking tools. It would be even better if he found an ebony tree.
As he walked through the thickets with his bow slung over his shoulder, he reached a cave that was hidden by bushes. It was exactly what he had wanted most.
Even though he was elated, that did not mean he would run straight to it. From experience, a cave like this was bound to have something living inside. There was a long list of monsters that used caves as dens, but among them, imps and gnolls were the most common.
Jude searched the bushes around the entrance for any clue. After several minutes, he found a small hole in the bush near the entrance with a footprint right beside it. Jude looked at it closely, and he could easily tell what the monster was. It was gnolls.
Gnolls lived in small packs of seven or eight. The leader of the pack, the alpha, kept two or three females at his side, while the rest of the pack were little more than his underlings. For him as he was now, taking on that many alone was no different from suicide.
He had a pepper spray in his bag, but he was not sure how well it would work against monsters. Should he set a fire at the entrance and shoot them when they ran out?
Jude raised one hand into the air. A chilly wind blew out from within the dark cave as though it was breathing, so if he lit a fire at the entrance, the smoke would not come his way.
Then he thought of something else. Why take a risk when he could bring a gas mask?
Fire was lethal to monsters, so they naturally shied away from smoke, and even if the smoke caught the eye, he would not have to worry about other monsters coming because of it. Since he would only light a fire at the entrance, it would probably not spread into a wildfire, and even if it did, he could put it out with a fire extinguisher.