035 – Use the Force

Day 2

Whether due to exhaustion or a side effect of sanctified space, I couldn’t remember the last time I had slept that deeply. Ten hours of sleep had just gone by and when I bounced out of bed I felt a lot better than when I had lain down.

I checked my daily rotation. Along with Crow, Golden Retriever, Pheasant and Nightmare Unicorn I now had:

‘Red-tailed Hawk’ (daily)

‘Spotted Hyena’ (daily)

‘Cassowary’ (daily)

Seeing the hyena on that list made my stomach churn. That image of the spilled guts on the hot asphalt would stick with me for a while. But objectively speaking it was a good shape. At least to my knowledge. Hyenas were one of the species in which the females kicked ass.

And then I had four birds at my disposal now. At least two out of three daily kills would be easy? I’d have to make a fool of myself and ask Ash how dangerous cassowaries were, exactly. I knew they were in the general vicinity of ‘an ostrich, but worse,’ and those weren’t exactly harmless. But then I’d known that buffaloes were basically different cows, too.

Wearing the same clothes as the day before, carrying the stale scent of smoke from the barbeque, I made my way to the common room. Still lacking a wall, it was a bit chilly here, not yet warmed by the summer’s heat.

Only Anthony and Ash were up already, though a couple of dots were moving in their rooms and the bathroom.

“Morning,” I greeted them.

“Hey Eve,” Ash beamed.

“Good morning, Eve,” Anthony said.

I began helping them with what they were doing, cleaning up the moderate chaos left behind by last evening.

“Ash, you have to share your secret,” I said.

He looked surprised at that statement. Did he actually have a secret?

“What secret do you mean?” he asked.

“How is your mood consistently this great in the face of the apocalypse?”

“Oh, that’s hm, how do I say this… You know how the Blessing healed your caffeine addiction?”

“Yes?”

“Well, gender dysphoria is treated like a physical affliction. That the blessing just treated, as part of, well, everything.”

It took me a moment to parse what he’d said, and then to figure out how to clarify my understanding without sounding like an ass.

“You got… adjustments as part of your Blessing? The proper equipment so to speak?”

Ash laughed. “Yeah, that’s how you could call it.”

I wanted to ask why it hadn’t made him taller, but that felt distinctly like going too far.

“Wild,” I said instead. “Congratulations on the gender.”

“Thanks, I like it a lot.”

Anthony didn’t seem surprised at all. He probably already knew. He seemed like the kind who knew most of everyone’s stories already.

Instead he surprised me. He opened a cupboard and pulled out a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which he handed to my dumbfounded self.

He smiled at my expression. “There are a couple more boxes in storage. Found a small store at the mall that stocked them. Along with a bunch of other cereal. If you aren’t picky you are set for months.”

Those people kept blindsiding me with their ruthless kindness.

“Thanks,” I muttered, while Anthony pulled a bowl out of another cupboard and a carton of milk out of the fridge.

“That bribe isn’t entirely selfless, though. I have something to discuss that we need your help with.”

I made myself a bowl. I fundamentally enjoyed being useful. “Go ahead.”

“It’s the whole experience thing. Our group of eight didn’t accomplish all that much yesterday, while you two were already ahead and only pulled away further.”

“What’s Roslyn’s class?” I asked, sitting down at one of the campaign tables with my bowl.

“Roslyn? It’s called defender. Heavily frontline-focused.”

I thought about compositions for a moment. “We’ll take Ash, Liz and Stephen along today and focus on experience. You others should do the same.”

Anthony sat down across from me. “May I ask why specifically them?”

“Roslyn fills the same niche Jamie does, Constance excels as a ranged attacker, you work well with her and seem to know her from before. Annika is the healer you will desperately need while Jamie and I can heal ourselves and Jamie can heal others.”

I ate my first spoonful. It was exactly what I wanted right now. I didn’t even particularly like cinnamon. But it was what I ate and thus I kept eating it. Habits didn’t always need to make perfect sense. Sugar, fake cinnamon and milk. I wondered if it would give me a buff if Stephen was the one who poured the milk.

“If you lay it out like that it seems like the only choice. You’ve thought about this already?”

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“Yeah, the moment I saw your levels yesterday. There is a high risk, possibly high reward option for experience out there.”

I told him about the Gnoll fortress. If my party caused a big ruckus and caught a lot of their attention, theirs could slip in from the side and possibly catch a whole lot of them off guard.

I kept thinking of all that experience I had gotten for blowing up those demon hounds. If any of the others could trigger a sufficiently large explosion in there they’d instantly reach level 10. The Blessing did not seem to care how the killing was done, as long as your foes were left dead.

But maybe a tossed canister of improvised tear gas would count as a contribution.

“Ash, do you have any combat options available today?”

“I do, though I am not sure how strong it is. Mana expulsion. It says it causes a blast of raw mana but it only costs one mana. So I am not entirely sure how efficient that will be.”