It was mid-spring when everything changed. Erik had been driving home from his overnight shift when the sky seemed to flicker, and he almost ran head-on into a spider the size of a small dog that appeared out of nowhere. He was an alert driver and definitely would have noticed if something had been there a moment ago, despite just finishing a twelve-hour shift. He wasn't driving overly fast, this was a residential area after all, and it was just starting to ramp up into the chaos of the "regular people" morning rush hour. The roads were somewhat icy though, this being Winnipeg and mid-spring. The snow and ice still hadn't quite melted away after the last storm and he had to make some deft maneuvers to keep from going off the side into the ditch.
"What the hell?" he shouted as he frantically tried to confirm what he thought he had just seen. Looking in the rear-view mirror, he was shocked to see several other spiders rushing after the first one, as it had dashed into the ditch after its close encounter. Cars were skidding to a halt and veering around various materializing obstacles. Erik saw a man get out of his car and then dive to the side as a large lizard leapt at him. "Get back in your car idiot!" he thought and gunned the engine. He was only a few blocks from the new development they had just moved to a few years ago and wanted to get home before trying to figure out what was going on.
There wasn't too much traffic in the last bit of his drive home, however he did have to swerve around a group of small goblins. They were all holding rudimentary weapons and honestly looked about as confused as Erik felt. They scattered in all directions as he passed them, some scrambling underneath parked cars and the rest crawling up and over fences into his neighbor's backyards.
"That's going to be a problem!" Erik muttered before laughing somewhat hysterically and realizing that everything had become a problem over the past few minutes. It was close to 8am and he knew that his mother-in-law, who lived with them, was going to be walking the dog shortly. He knew it was pointless to call and warn her, because she always left her phone on silent and barely knew where it was half the time.
Roaring to a halt in his driveway, he looked in all directions before opening the car door. He didn't see anything too close; however, he could see a literal battle forming near the pond in the park across the street, between the Canada Geese and what looked to be coyotes with small horns sticking out of their foreheads. "My money is on the geese."
Repressing the insane urge to watch, Erik instead ran to the front door and unlocked it, having prepared the key ahead of time. He wasn't going to be one of those dumbasses that frantically tried to find the right key while doom was approaching! Slamming the door shut behind him, he breathed a sigh of relief. His startled mother-in-law Josie looked up from where she was putting the harness on Ella, their 15-year-old dog and asked what was wrong.
"Uh..." He just couldn't think of a good way to break the news of the insanity lying beyond the door. She likely wasn't going to believe him anyway. Who would? But the proof was out there. This house was one of the types with the attached garage at the front, so there weren't any easy windows to look out of, and the back of the house looked out into a field, as they were on the edge of the city. He wasn't sure if there were any, for the lack of a better term, monsters out there to look at.
"Follow me, I have to show you something. Where are Leah and Tim?" Tim was the younger brother of his wife Leah and had Down's Syndrome.
"Leah's still getting ready for work and Tim is sleeping" she said. "Is something wrong? You look a bit… " She trailed off as she realized she really couldn't tell exactly. He didn't reply and instead headed up to the second floor. Pulling the thick daylight-blocking curtains open slightly, he peeked outside. Erik could see people running and some of them had small creatures running after them.
One of the men turned around suddenly and hauled off with his foot, punting the small beast back several feet. It didn't get up and Erik was startled to see a quick flash of light glow off the man. He looked just as startled and swiped at the air in front of him. Seeing another small creature coming towards him, he shook his head as if to dismiss whatever was affecting him and ran off to a nearby house. There was a dark glow around the motionless creature that pulsed every few seconds.
Soon the street was clear, and Josie, who had been peering through the curtains at the other side of the window let it drop out of her hand. Her face was white, and she was simply staring into the fabric when Leah walked out of the master bedroom bathroom. Seeing them standing there unexpectedly, she let out a small shriek, followed by an accompanying shriek from Josie. Erik couldn't help but laugh at the chain-reaction, despite being in a bit of shock.
"Hi Leah, um, you're not going to believe how the day is going!"
Erik figured that Ella wasn't going to last much longer, as an older dog doesn't usually have much of a bladder and debated whether to just let her have an "accident" on the floor. The house had mostly vinyl plank flooring and cleanup wouldn't be too bad after all. They did however have a large solid fence surrounding the back yard and a side door that led directly out, so he decided to take a bit of a recon mission outside.
Arming himself with a large knife and a replica Captain America shield, he also put on a leather jacket for at least a little bit of armor and cracked the door open. Nothing jumped at him, and he hadn't seen anything in the back yard through the window, so he quickly stepped through and closed the door behind him, expecting the worst. Nothing happened, although he could hear various "wildlife" noise from all around. Nothing he had seen looked especially dangerous, with maybe the spiders as an exception. He wasn't arachnophobic, although dog-sized spiders might be pushing that a bit, and he'd never been afraid of most animals.
So far, if it came to a confrontation, he thought he could at least get to safety if he couldn't scare off the beast. Upon exploring the back yard, it was all clear, for now at least. He went back inside and finished putting Ella into her harness. The others were listening to the news through the kitchen Alexa, where it sounded like multiple people were talking over each other in their haste to describe what was going on.
Taking Ella outside, she, of course, took her time to find the exact right spot, while Erik mentally urged her to hurry up so they could get back into what he hoped was safety. He strained his senses in every direction, waiting for the sounds of something scrabbling up the wall. He could hear sirens from seemingly everywhere and even some screaming, but most of the screaming just sounded like terrified people, rather than someone in pain. Ella finally finished up and they both headed back in. Leah came over and said that the news was reporting the same thing pretty much everywhere. Animals and giant insects appearing from thin air, mostly near the towns and cities, and reports of larger unknown creatures that had been spotted in more remote areas. Fortunately, there were no reports yet of any sort of flying variant.
Erik had never been one to back down from a challenge, even if it went against good judgement. He wanted to see what was going on with that glowing mob (a term meaning Mobile Object, generally a monster) lying in the street and to be honest, he also wanted to know who was winning the battle by the pond. Armed and armored as before, and to the great consternation of the rest of the family, he headed out the front door.
They were well aware of his general stubbornness and his insatiable curiosity. There wasn't anything dangerous that he could see right near the house, so he cautiously walked towards the mob. He heard a chittering sound to his left and looked over to see a small goblin head peering at him from under a neighbor's truck. It didn't look like it was about to come charging at him any time soon, so he kept it in mind as a threat to be wary of and kept going. From the sounds of things, the geese and the coyotes were having a stand-off, with the coyotes mimicking the sirens sounding all around and the geese hissing and flapping their wings.
As he got closer, he recognized the dead animal as a beaver, except that there were odd little differences. The tail was sharp around the edges and the teeth were pointier, like fangs that had been moved to the center instead of at the edges of a predator's mouth. Not that he knew of any predatory beavers! The man's kick had snapped its neck back enough to break it, and it appeared that he had been very close to getting a lacerated foot in exchange.
As Erik got right up to it, he could feel a pull and felt like the right thing to do was to reach out towards the beaver. As he did, a pelt appeared in his hand, covering the knife, which briefly made him panic. Several chunks of innards fell to the ground below the pelt at the same time. Once Erik had extracted the knife, he put the pelt down next to the pile of guts and looked at the remains. It looked like someone had expertly dressed the carcass, leaving it ready for transport. Erik looked around to see if anyone else was seeing this, but the street was bare. He noticed several people watching him from the upper floors however and waved up.
"Ok, everything is really batshit crazy right now and something's probably trying to figure out whether I'm edible, but I'm pretty sure I can handle this. Unless things get worse?" Erik closed his eyes in self-recrimination. "No, you do not say stuff like that, you know what happens immediately after saying something that dumb. Also, please stop standing in the street with your eyes closed." He opened his eyes and looked around for the guaranteed summoned whatever that was about to make him pay for tempting fate. Nothing surprisingly. Yet.
Erik didn't feel like he had earned the loot, so he grabbed the pelt and the carcass and brought them over to the house that the man had entered.
"Hello? I'm just leaving this here for you! You'll probably want to get that meat inside before it goes bad or attracts something worse." He briefly wondered if he was doing them a disservice by bringing a big hunk of meat to their doorstep where sharp-teethed creatures would probably try to get it but then figured that it had been close enough to their house that any predators would have been right nearby regardless.
Looking around, he felt like the area was mostly clear of invaders and headed over to check on the geese. The goblin was gone, and he hadn't noticed it leave, which meant that he probably wouldn't have noticed it creeping up on him while he was preoccupied with the other ridiculous stuff that was happening, like self-dressing beaver monsters. Swearing that he would try to be at least a little bit more aware of possible assailants, he headed over to the pond.
The geese had realized that standing there doing threatening poses wasn't working and had started advancing on the coyotes. The coyotes were backing up, uncertain of why this prey wasn't fleeing. It occurred to Erik at that moment that if the timid coyotes fled, they might flee as a pack straight at him, which would be less than ideal. As he turned to leave, he heard a tiny war-cry and saw a goblin jumping down from a fence.
So much for keeping alert! The goblin was toddler-sized and had a small knife that it led with. Erik reflexively whipped his Captain America shield around and smacked the goblin out of the air. It thumped into the ground and started wheezing, the wind knocked out of it. "Ok, that had to have looked cool right? I bet if people saw that, they would have totally thought I did that on purpose and not due to lucking out with a reflexive swing? Right?"
Erik looked over at the goblin. He kind of felt bad, even though it had just tried to leap-stab him. He really wasn't prepared to go over and stick his own knife into it at this point. Feeling like a bit of an idiot, he decided to leave it be, however the goblin took the choice out of his hands. It had gotten its breath back and jumped up to run at Erik. He was at least prepared for that this time and hauled off with a sidekick to the head. It was easier to retaliate, rather than to just walk up to stab a pint-sized humanoid. The size difference did the trick, and the goblin went smacking into the ground again. This time it didn't get up.
Erik was suddenly surrounded by a flash of light and was both shocked and gleeful at the words that popped up in front of him:
LEVEL UP!
"You've got to be kidding me, game elements along with monsters in the real world?" He looked around, trying to clear his head. This was absolutely ridiculous but everything felt and looked real. No dreams, no hallucinations, this was actually happening.
He wondered what kind of system was in place, how to exploit it, where to find a magical bottomless bag or an inventory system and where he could lie down for a while to process all of this. Looking over at the goblin corpse, he saw that it was glowing like the beaver had.
"There's got to be a better way of looting, and there better not be goblin guts plopping on my hand when I do this." He stuck his knife into his belt after checking all around. The pond war was back to a stalemate, and it didn't look like any of them were brave enough to attack first, so he wasn't too worried about them. Sticking his hand out towards the glowing goblin, he prepared himself. Instead of guts however, he was absolutely amazed to see several coins drop into his hand, along with a very shoddy knife.
"I don't think this thing would have done much damage even if it had landed that attack. Maybe a bad bruise or something." The knife was incredibly dull and probably worthless. He stuck it into his belt regardless. Erik opened his hand to take a look at the coins. He guessed that a goblin would drop copper coins at best. No platinum or gold coins for starter area mobs! His eyes widened as he saw the very distinctive head and antlers of a caribou. The goblin had dropped 75 cents of real, Canadian currency!
"Well this doesn't bode well for the goblin population…" He said, while wondering what goblins in other countries were dropping. "Do they drop equivalent exchange? 75 cents Canadian here and a goblin in Australia drops a 50-cent and a 20-cent coin? Hmm, what's all this new currency going to do to inflation?"
Deciding that he had more pressing things to worry about, he figured he had better get back to the house to let the family know he was still alive. He still didn't see anyone else brave or foolhardy enough to come outside yet and the crowd of mobs that he had had to swerve around earlier seemed to have dissipated somewhere. Closing the door behind him, Leah gave him a hug and then punched him on the arm for being an idiot.
"They're saying that there have been a few reported deaths in the city, but mostly the monsters have run away to hide." Leah said shakily. Erik could see that they had covered up all the windows so that they didn't have to see anything going on outside, or more importantly that nothing outside could see in. Tim was sitting with his mother, eating breakfast without a care in the world. Ella seemed to sense that something was going on, but it didn't appear to involve treats, so she wasn't much interested. Josie had grown up on a farm and was hard to phase, so she looked like she had recovered from her earlier shock.
"So what do we do now?" Leah asked. "I'm definitely not going to work today!"
They ended up listening to the news reports, which started including information regarding people experiencing level-ups. It appeared that as expected, the amount of xp required to level increased every level. It reminded Erik that he hadn't noticed any other information other than the words "LEVEL UP!" and thought "That can't be it?" He spoke aloud:
"Status?"
Everyone looked at him, confused. He ignored them for now.
"Um, Character Sheet?"
"Profile!"
Nope, nothing. Hmm…..
"System?"
That did the trick, a menu opened up in front of his eyes:
Erik
Class – None
Level – 2
See a System Administrator to unlock your class and stat sheet
"That's it?" he wondered aloud. "What's it?" Leah asked him warily. "Why are you staring into space? Did you actually unlock a character sheet?" Leah was also a gamer, often playing co-op games with Erik. Even Josie had her own PlayStation and played slower paced games at times. She was used to at least a bit of gamer lingo. Tim played Lego Indiana Jones or Lego Star Wars almost every single day and could almost do them blindfolded at this point.
"Yeah, the word System worked. I'm not sure if you have to say it out loud though." Upon saying this he thought "System" really hard and was quite happy to see his sheet pop back up. It had faded when he had diverted his attention away from it. Leah concentrated for a moment and then gasped. Surprisingly, Josie did the same.
Leah narrowed her eyes and said "So, what level are you right now?" A little bit of competition leaking through.
"Just two! I didn't do much out there yet!"
"Actually, I'm not sure I want to do what we'd need to in order to level up" Leah eased off on Erik.
"If a system is in place, we might have to. I wonder if anyone has figured out why or how this is happening. And I absolutely want to know where I can find a System Admin!" He didn't feel any different from when he had been level 1, so he guessed that any level up points would have to be unlocked after getting a class.
He also wondered at the class system, as a Fighter or a Ranger with a bow might not be as useful in this world as a random person with a gun. Although he supposed he had seen some pretty damned good archers on YouTube. Maybe a class would help make a bow more viable for the average person? It would be stealthier at the very least! And then there's magic. Or is there? It seemed like magic when the looting had happened, so it was at least possible? Thoughts of Erik, the Dread Necromancer of Manitoba crossed his mind briefly and he grinned only somewhat maniacally! There were crazy times ahead and Erik couldn't wait to see what happened next!