The clearing was bustling with movement despite the late hour. The incomplete fence circling the area was lined with burning torches, and I could see people moving around with flashlights, keeping guard. Soaring over the guards heads, I landed with a wince of pain, then marched into the crowd to see what was happening.

  Catching the shoulder of a passing beastkin man carrying a bundle of wood, I asked, “What’s going on? What happened?”

  His expression hardened.

  “There was an attack. Some kind of monster got one of the kids.”

  I sucked in a breath, my mouth gaping as I lost my words. After a few moments of pause I was able to collect myself.

  “Do we know what it was?”

  “Some kind of cat.”

  Immediately graphic images of lions attacking prey rose in my mind’s eye. Was it a mana beast made from something like a mountain lion?

  “Is it still-“

  “Stop”, he stated, cutting me off, “I need to deliver this wood to the team building the perimiter fence. If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

  Without another word the beastkin marched away, leaving me gaping at his back.

  I felt aimless and lost. I saw no sign of Cindy, Taylor, or Donny, anyone who could have given me a better idea of where I needed to go or what I could do to help. Instead, I decided that I needed to focus on my immediate problem, my recklessly sore body. Once that was done I could help secure the camp.

  I quickly moved to the bathing area by floating just a foot off the ground. Once there, I was pleasantly surprised to find some improvements to the set up; someone had managed to gather some large feeding troughs that were big enough to submerge a body in. Using a nearby hose connected to the water truck, I filled one to the brim before pulling my clothes off, and pluging in.

  The instant the water touched my skin, I felt relief. I idled in the water until the burning pain had shifted to an ache. Finally, when all I felt was a slight twinge, I exited the bath, brushed a few droplets of water off my hydrophobic skin, then pulled my clothes back on. Altogether, I had spent probably fourty minutes healing.

  Though I wasn’t back to full strength, I had already experienced major gains from my effort.

  My training time was apparently time well spent. My physical stats had increased across the board, and even now my body wasn’t fully healed. Best of all, my intelligence had increased, giving me a much-needed bump in stored mana, and my wisdom had risen to meet it.

  Pulling up my full status page, I took a look at my progress.

  I had a ways to go, but I was seadily getting there. Last thing I wanted to do was pick the upgrade to my Novice Swordsmansip. Focusing on the skill, I pushed the idea of upgrading towards the menu. It had the expected result.

  Choosing yes, I was brought into a new menu that reminded me of the class selection page.

  The choices were as basic as I expected.

  Immediately, I disregarded taking the Machete skill. While I was sure it would give me better fighting styles directly based on my current weapon, I wasn’t interested in keeping a machete as my primary armament. It was still a tool more than anything else, I wanted to try and get a real weapon made before long.

  For a while, though, I was torn between Apprentice Swordsmanship and Apprentice Slashing Swordsmanship. In the end, I decided that going with the direct upgrade to my skill was probably the best choice. I didn’t want to pidgeonhole myself into a certain group of weapons, potentially missing out on something in the future.

  As soon as I made my choice, though, a second menu appreared.

  This… was a more difficult choice. I had wondered where the different combat styles would start appearing. I guess the very basics were close enough between the fighting styles that there didn’t need to be differentiation, but now that I was stepping into the more complex stuff I needed to made a decision.

  To narrow down the list, I first disregarded the fighting styles that I knew absolutely nothing about, namely Arabic and Indian. I was sure they were fine, I just didn’t know enough about them to make a good decision. Once that was done, I also decided to disregard General (none), as I simply felt like the other options were more interesting.

  With only five choices remaining, European, Japanese, Chinese, Storm, and Monster, I mentally broke the list into two groups; those based on history, and those based on the system. Though I was tempted to take European, Japanese, or Chinese and learn the secrets of historical combat, it was easy for me to decide against it.

  I was sure they would be useful. At the end of the day, though, they were combat arts and techniques designed around fighting other people. The system based techniques were something entirely new, catered to the new world that I was forced to live in.

  Despite my run-ins with the cultists and the oncoming conflicts, I spent a lot of time fighting monsters. If the increasing number of the things was any indication, I had many more fights with monsters coming in the future. The attack on the child made my choice even easier, leaving me two options to work from.

  I was either going to choose Storm, or Monster. Giving a quick second-glance to my status sheet, my eyes passed over my affinities, and my choice was made. If my affinity was with Storm, it was probably wise to play to my strengths.

  Finalizing my decision on the menu, I pulled up my skill sheet to see the all of the progress I had made throughout the day.

  Satisfied, I left the bathing area, and returned to the group. There was still work to be done.