Richard was a very lucky man.

  He got lucky that he was on the second floor of his house when the wave of beasts tore through everyone living.

  He got lucky that he had his gun close.

  He got lucky that Jenny came to visit him today, and that she figured out quickly that he didn’t have time to stop firing.

  Lucky that the ladder to the second floor was narrow and acted as a funnel. Lucky that his granddaughter figured out how to use those ‘stats’, giving him a way to be faster, to have better eyesight, better aim, better everything. Lucky that the beasts weren’t really thorough in their slaughter, the majority of them going further past his home without caring much about it. Lucky to be able to clean up the stragglers, and to have a good view on the area from where they were coming from, and to have a literal crate of bullets gifted to him as a joke on his birthday jubilee.

  Naturally, he wanted to share that luck with other people. Helping others in a time of need was a duty that he was glad to perform again.

  Him constantly killing the monsters as they appeared served two purposes, both equally important. The obvious one was to kill the monsters.

  The other? Attract attention. People heard the gunshots and thought ‘safety’. Those that managed to survive, to get to him, he would protect.

  A lot of people came at first, but with time the amount of approaching survivors thinned. What were groups at the beginning reduced to one or two desperate souls every few minutes. Then every five, then every ten.

  He was considering leaving already when the boy appeared, reminding him that there were still people there. He would wait a bit more.

  He just hoped that his luck wouldn’t run out yet and the gun wouldn’t jam. The barrel was way too hot, and he was honestly sick from the smell of the gunpowder.

  Dennis was one of the weird ones. Punks? No, but definitely some sort of subculture. He was too calm, and spewing nonsense that made Richard’s head hurt. What the hell was ‘farming’ anyways?

  Letting the kid fight was not a decision he wanted to make, but he didn't have much choice. He could tell from a glance that the boy couldn’t be reasoned with, and Richard didn’t have it in his heart to threaten him into compliance. He was too soft.

  That kid was a monster.

  That was the only explanation that made sense in Richard’s mind. Some kind of a shapeshifter? Humans just didn’t move like that.

  “This is bullshit,” his granddaughter muttered nearby. He nodded.

  He thought it was a fluke at first. The boy had confidence in his ability, sure, or it would be more correct to say that he severely underestimated the creatures? In any way, everything indicated that that confidence came from the place of ignorance. He was scrawny and looked like he really needed to spend some time outside of his house and see the sunlight a bit more often. He wore a red shirt with some kind of a comic book hero plastered on it, and got his hands on a goddamn japanese katana somewhere.

  He would dismiss him as just a kid ten times out of ten. The boy belonged to a geek festival, not a battlefield.

  Three things allowed him to even consider the idea of letting the boy try to ‘level up’, weird discrepancies picked up by his elevated Mind.

  First, he wasn’t confident in his ability to convince an excited teenager to not do something completely moronic. He knew that arguing with the young was a futile effort. If he forbade the boy from fighting then there was a chance that he would leave and try finding goblins to fight alone elsewhere. Richard’s conscience couldn’t allow that. At least here he could supervise, and help.

  Second, the stains of blood on his clothes, and the bloodied sword. The boy did fight a goblin at least once before and came out alive. Or he was a shapeshifter that killed people. Richard wasn’t sure now. Any kind of fight should have destroyed the boy’s confidence unless he was completely delusional, yet it didn’t. Something was going on there.

  Third, the boy did in fact feel more ‘dense’ than anyone besides Jenny and himself. It was possible that he actually did kill a ‘bazillion’ goblins somehow, and Richard wanted to know the trick.

  So his plan was simple. Let the kid fight in as safe of an environment as possible. He would either get a helpful reality check that would hopefully let him live another day, or reveal the trick if he had any, and that one would be useful to know.

  His pistol was aimed at the goblin’s head the whole time. He almost missed the moment when the kid stabbed it in the neck, like one would stab a fork in the meal. Unbothered and absent-minded.

  A fluke, he thought.

  Three dead goblins later he had to admit that it was a pattern. Dennis somehow managed to make fighting look like chopping trees. There was nothing gracious or deadly in his movements, it was the opposite really. And yet he avoided every attack and his blade somehow always hit something vital.

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  “Stop disarming them, man!” Dennis shouted. “I think you’re stealing the exp!”

  Again the boy was spewing nonsense, but Richard held his next shot. Armed opponent was dangerous, and listening to the kid was honestly stupid on his part, but he couldn’t contain his curiosity against his better judgement.

  Nothing changed.

  That is to say, the boy slew the armed goblin with the same casual ease. Just ducked under the strike lazily, making it barely miss, and stabbed the bloody thing in the artery.

  “Katana is a slashing weapon,” Richard said, trying to comprehend what he was seeing as the boy slaughtered the next goblin. “Why are you thrusting so much? And you’re holding it wrong.”

  “It’s easier that way!” Dennis replied with a grin, going after the next goblin, almost stumbling over the bodies. “And faster!”

  Richard almost forgot to deal with the creatures on the perimeter as he continued observing the ‘fight’, using everything his supernatural mind offered to figure out the trick.

  He saw every movement, every flick of the eyes and tension in the muscles.

  It seemed that there was no trick. Just pure bullshit.

  “He is not fast,” he said quietly, mostly to himself. “Maybe a bit quick. There is no technique or any kind of training. He might as well be fighting with a stick.”

  “Maybe he got a skill at level one?” Jenny said, her eyes transfixed on the honestly ridiculous scene. “I didn’t get a skill at level one, but maybe it’s different for different people? Something like a future vision?”

  “No one we met got a skill at level one. And he doesn’t have a supernatural perception,” Richard disagreed. “It looks like it with the way he steps perfectly between the bodies, but I’ve seen him look at every spot he uses. His eyes flicker a lot everywhere. I think it could be done with a really high Mind stat.”

  “But he’s level one? Could you do that?”

  Level: 4

  Mana: 84 / 107

  Strength: 10

  Dexterity: 16

  Constitution: 12

  Mind: 24

  Soul: 11

  Skills: Lucky Shot

  Free points: 0

  “No,” he said. “There’s no way I could do that. Too many variables. I’m barely keeping up with what he does. You’ve seen how that goblin tripped up on the other’s arm? He prepared that two seconds before it happened while dodging. Nudged the arm a little with his leg.”

  “That’s totally a future vision,” she said. “Some sort of short term precognition? He would need to be able to see multiple futures and pick one to pull that off.”

  “It’s not. He uses only the information that I saw him perceive, or what could be reasonably guessed. If he could see the ground in the future and remember it now, he wouldn’t be looking where he steps.”

  They greeted two more survivors who got attracted by the noise as they watched Dennis slaughter the creatures, and invited them inside to help with the preparations. Thankfully, these people were normal. Scared and desperate, which was something he could deal with.

  He heard a cry of triumph as Dennis finished off yet another goblin. The boy pumped his fist in victory and bolted to the next goblin way faster than he moved before, but tripped just a few steps later and fell face first into the guts on the ground.

  Richard shot that goblin as Dennis cursed.

  “Fuck, this shit is trippy.” he whined as he cleaned his face. “Ew! Fuck. It got in my mouth!”

  “Did he level up?” Jenny asked.

  He nodded.

  “He put at least four points in dexterity,” Richard said, his mind making rapid calculations. “No, at least five points.”

  “Might as well be all of them.”

  “Could be,” he agreed. The boy moved awkwardly, almost deliberately slowly as he waved his sword in the air. “His Mind stat can’t keep up. It doesn’t make sense. He is struggling with body coordination, and his dexterity is somewhere near twenty. But that must mean that his Mind is way lower than that. Then how does he fight like that?”

  “Super intuition? Reflexes?”

  “You can’t intuit or reflex your way into setting up a trap four moves ahead,” he said before correcting himself. “At least I don’t think you can. He was throwing terms around, like ‘farming’ and ‘exp’, could that be–”

  “Those are common knowledge. He is just a nerd.”

  Dennis seemed a bit more comfortable with his body as he approached the next goblin carefully. Richard shot the spear out of its hand.

  “Hey! Stop stealing my exp!”

  “Get used to your movements before risking your life!” he barked. “What’s an exp?” he asked Jenny quietly.

  “I think he means that ‘realness juice’ that we get after kills.”

  Realness juice. The metaphysical density of a person in reality that everyone suddenly got with the monster attacks. It got distributed after kills based on the contribution, a fact that allowed his granddaughter to reach level two by virtue of just handing him the magazines. He could see how disarming a goblin would be considered ‘stealing exp’.

  Still, that was rude. He was literally keeping the kid alive, and not trying to steal anything. And anyways, those goblins felt like drops in a bucket now, not really contributing much to his strength. A little bit of gratitude wouldn’t be unwelcome.

  The kid dealt with the goblin easily enough, but he looked unsure and didn’t move much faster than he was before. He was suppressing his speed. What was even the point of raising dexterity if he couldn’t keep up with his own body?

  “Again,” Richard said. “Practice until you are comfortable with your speed, and then we will move.”

  “Nah, I’ll stay here till level– ah shit, I think I need to help you guys. Can we wait until I get to the third level? How long does it take? I want to see what skills look like.”

  So this fighting ability wasn’t a skill, Richard’s mind noted.

  “We don’t have time. Every shot I make is another chance of my gun breaking from overuse.”

  The boy complained a lot, but Richard could deal with complaining.