Chapter 24: Killing is Great Exercise

Kain POV

Kain opened his phone to see a text had come in from an unknown number. Normally, he would have swiped it away, but he thought he recognized something in that little preview he got when the message notification popped up. Tapping on the speech icon, his messaging app opened, and just as he had suspected, he knew exactly who this text was from.

Scarlet.

She’d sent him coordinates. Staring at the string of numbers, he was almost embarrassed to be so familiar with them that he knew exactly which location they referenced. Kain couldn’t help but wonder what had made Scarlet break her no-contact rule.

The world was messed up. Things were strange and only getting stranger, and he knew that for someone like her – someone like Scarlet – the only thing that would stop her from making the most out of the situation was if she decided to take herself out of the equation entirely. A truly unlikely prospect.

No, if the world turned against her, Scarlet was the type of person who would find a way to live on and thrive simply out of cold, quiet spite. She’d plot in silence, struggle alone, suffer in silence, and when she was ready, she’d make her move. Alone.

Of course she hadn’t always been like that, but after what his parents had done… Well, Kain had seen Scarlet’s plans play out before, more than once, and always with devastating success. Which begged the question: why was she reaching out to him at all. Why now, of all times?

He knew it wasn’t to check in on him. The contents of the messages made that clear. He wouldn’t have believed her if she had sent some heartfelt inquiry. Scarlet would be Scarlet, even with everything going on. Of that, he was sure.

From his third-floor window, Kain watched as the ocean crashed against the shores of his private stretch of beach, the water beyond hiding the monsters that lay within. The sun was out, but the people were not, barely anyone braved the beach any longer.

The day before, only a few hours after full Integration, something had dragged itself out of the ocean. A sand dolphin, if this new Status thing was to be believed. The devastation it had caused would not be forgotten any time soon.

That day, ‘Integration Day’ as the people on StarNet were calling it, he had begun his usual jog down to the pier, apparently, he was one of the earlier people to regain consciousness. Things still weren’t too bad, and the places where catastrophe had struck had been far away and out of mind.

Only a minute or so into his run he’d come across a stretch of beach well known for its tidepools and the creatures that made the pockets of water their home. He was always careful over this stretch as it abutted a sea wall that cut off visibility, and the terrain could be quite difficult to navigate. The area wasn’t exactly a hotspot for traffic, so he’d been surprised to find a large cluster of people there.

He’d been a lot more surprised to find them in some sort of protracted battle against crustaceans and other small marine life.

“What the,” he’d slowed to a walk, and called to the nearest person. The kid, who couldn’t have been older than thirteen, was holding a cast-iron frying pan covered in bits of gore and viscera, and grinning in a way Kain found quite concerning.

“Hey, man,” Kain began, the kid grinned wider at the address. “Mind telling me what’s going on?” He asked. The kid nodded and gleefully explained that they were clearing out some of the mutated marine life to ‘level up’. It might have been difficult to hear him over the sounds of battle going on just a few meters away, but the kid was basically shouting in his excitement to share.

“Easy experience once you get into it. I’m already level two,” the boy said. His grin faltered for a moment, and Kain was forced to dodge to the side as a clam the size of a cat burst out of a nearby eddy and directly towards the two of them.

The kid turned with remarkable dexterity, and just as the clam landed, he brought his pan down and smashed the creature into shattered shards of shell and gore. That wasn’t what caught Kain’s attention, though. Just before the pan had made contact Kain was sure he’d seen something. It was like a haze of light or a distortion around the frying pan just before he’d made contact with the murderous shellfish.

“Nice,” the kid pumped his fist, staring into open air and seemingly zoning out.

“What, um. What was that?” Kain had asked, pointing to the pan as the kid tuned back in.

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“Huh? Oh, yeah, dude. Sorry about that,” the kid pointed to the legs of Kain’s joggers where bits of clam gore had splattered against him. That’s not what Kain was focusing on, though.

“No, that’s fine. I meant that thing you did. With your pan.”

“You mean Skillit, ‘cause it helps me get Skills?” The kid laughed.

“Sure. Skills?”

“Yeah, bro. So, I got this super epic skill, System reward, you know?” Kain didn’t know. but he let the kid go on anyway. “Basically, like, reinforces whatever weapon I’m holding and then gives it extra, I don’t know, oomph? Power? But only when I smash things with it. Great for farming these mobs.” He patted the cast-iron skillet.

“So, you just, what? ‘Farm’ the creatures here?”

“Level!” a young woman in the group behind them had exclaimed, and everyone – Skillit kid included – gave her a cheer, even as they continued their assault on their respective opponents.