When James got home he immediately went to bed. Raiding a dungeon in real life took a lot of energy so he fell asleep instantly. When he woke up it was already noon. He woke up to the sound of screaming. So he rushed downstairs. When he got downstairs he saw his father and his mother trying to fend off a pair of hobgoblins.
"James get out of here!" His father yelled.
"No, I won't lose you two." James said as he rushed the pair of hobgoblins. He already had a knife in his hands so he easily slit the throat of one of the hobgoblins. However, the second one backed off and prepared for battle. This hobgoblin had a club with him so it would be more difficult to fight.
Luckily James still had his hands wrapped up from the night before so he was able to fight without worrying about injury. After James landed a right hook his father picked up a knife and stabbed the goblin.
The goblin then turned around and hit his father.
"No! Dad!" James screamed, he was furious. He hit the goblin with a barrage of attacks and in the end, he killed it when it laid unconscious on the ground.
"That was amazing." His father said
"Yeah well, these monsters are the same as the ones in the game I used to play so I know all their weaknesses. Anyway, we need to barricade the door and I will go and scout for a new place where we can live. I will go together with Brodin." James said.
"No, you can't. You could be killed." His mother said in a desperate attempt to stop him.
"I either die out there trying to find something to make our life better or I die in here from starvation." James said.
"But…" His mom said but before she could continue his father interrupted
"Let him go. He is right, and besides, he said he knew the weak points of the monsters."
"Alright, but be careful." His mom said.
"Of course." James said. After that, he took off to see Brodin.
After he met up with Brodin they walked to the school. They entered the gymnasium to start figuring out what the events of the night before meant. And especially to figure out how their heroes work.
"Last night before I went to bed I kept thinking about what this might be and then I figured it out." Brodin said.
"What?" James said as he was checking for any monsters.
"This hero thing. It is a system. Try giving it the command: open player screen." Brodin said.
"Alright, open player screen." James said.
After James said that the hologram appeared again. This time it showed his stats and all the other information about James. To the left, different tabs could be seen on the side. First, there was a Hero tab, and then there was a skills tab. At the bottom of each tab, an experience bar could be seen. This was to indicate how much more experience they needed to gain another level. When he opened the skills tab he saw 7 paths. Each with only the first skill having a description of what it was. The first six were: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Light, and Darkness. The last one was called materialization however this one was level locked and could be used from level 10. The hero tab was locked until level 50 so it would still be a while before they found out what that was about.
Brodin only had 5 skills which were the same skills he had in the game. And he had an extra tab which said smithing. Here he could spend skill points to improve his smithing skills and widen the range of objects he could make.
They both started with one free skill point. Brodin used this for the empowering skill called: Dwarven shield. It would improve all his physical stats by 10 percent. James used this to start his fire-element tree. He got the fireball skill so he was pretty excited about that. After that, they messed around trying to use their skills. They discovered that you first had to summon your hero to use the skills.
"Alright then. Let's go and search for a safe place where we can make a stronghold or at least be safe until we get help from outside of this town." James said.
"Also let's kill every monster we find while we search for that." Brodin said. "It would be good to grind some levels to upgrade our skills."
"Yeah, you're right. Let's also hit the store to get some supplies." James added.
After that, the boys set out to find a nice and safe place. On their way to the store, they encountered a few moon sickle wolves but they were no problem to take care of. Brodin would first aggro them and then after that James would hit them with a fireball.
After a few battles, James felt exhausted and opened his player screen to investigate. He saw that his mana was really low and that its regenerative ability was fairly slow and it would take a little while before he could attack again using the fireball skill. However, he would still fight with weapons not passing up on any exp. After they recovered some supplies and discovered the entire town for possible locations for a stronghold the two reached level three.
"Gaining levels in real life is much slower than in the game." Brodin said.
"Yeah, man. What are you going to invest in?" James asked.
"One in the second skill: Smashing hammer. And the other one in smithing I'm curious to see what that will unlock for me." Brodin said. "What about you?"
"I will put one in my light element tree giving me the light orb skill, and the other in my wind element tree giving me the tailwind skill, this one will increase my movement speed and the light orb will provide with a small orb of light." James said.
"Alright, let's meet up again tomorrow." Brodin said.
"Yeah, I'll see you tomorrow." James said as he used the tailwind skill and ran home.