"A..ro..Aaro..Aaron!!"
Aaron slowly opened his sleepy eyes, feeling annoyed at being woken up.
"What?" He asked in am irritated tone.
"We'll be moving out soon, Cecilia said to wake you up." Dave said, standing two meters ahead of him.
Aaron sighed and rubbed his face.
"How long was I out?" He asked.
"10 hours." Dave replied.
'Seems I was more tired than I realized.' Aaron thought.
"Where can I find water? I'm a bit thirsty." He asked while standing up and stretching his body.
"Ceceilia made sure to save your food, she probably has it with he'd right now." Dave replied, walking towards her.
"You've been really quiet lately, very unlike you. What's up?" Aaron said and followed Dave to Cecilia's location.
"Yeah, it's the class I'm trying to pursue. It requires me to be as hard to notice as possible." Dave replied.
"You want to be an assassin?" Asked Aaron with a raised brow.
"Bingo. I just followed the most optimal choice my first skill gave me, I also traded some food for another skill that would improve my abilities even more earlier." Dave replied.
"You can do that? How do you share shills that are on your status screen." Aaron asked. He'd killed plenty of monsters yesterday and got a few skills and items from them.
"You didn't know? Well that's a win for me then, I figured it out before you did." Dave chuckled.
"You just have to imagine a skill book or skill scroll showing up infront of you and a page with the skill description should appear. You can give it to someone else if you don't want it.
Items should work the same way." Dave explained.
"I see. I'll try that later." He said as they reached Cecilia's location.
She seemed to still be organizing the new arrivals according to their abilities.
"Hey, boss lady. I hear you have something that belongs to me." Dave said when he reached her side, shocking everyone.
Cecilia had built herself a reputation of being a strict leader, her cold treatment of everyone that does not follow the rules she set has made her quite the feared and respected leader.
Among those that came in last night, there were those who were not satisfied that a female was leading this group and tried to take over. The sound of their bones breaking still sent chills down everyone's spines.
No one even calls her by her name alone now. So to have someone refer to her in such a casual manner was surprising to say the least.
"Jordan has them, we leave in an hour by the way, so I'd suggest just having a snack."
But to their surprise, Cecilia just pointed him to her brother's direction and went back to what she was doing.
"I hear skill can be shared, we need to talk about that. You're currently too weak, you need to kill higher leveled monsters or you won't keep your position for long." Aaron said and went to where Jordan was seated.
Cecilia turned to stare at his back for a while and went back to her writing.
Aaron reached Jordan's location not long after, and Jordan seemed to be having a great time talking to a male student.
"Hey bud, you got something for me?" Aaron asked
Jordan nodded and pointed to the area behind him that was filled with boxes.
"The food is in those boxes and the drinks are in those." He said, pointing out different boxes.
Aaron opened a few boxes and took out a bag of chips and a bottle of water. He surprisingly wasn't that hungry, despite not having eaten for over twenty hours.
Aaron went back to his spot, Dave following close behind him.
"I haven't seen Alex and Rachael yet, where are they?" He asked.
"They went scouting for places with food so that we know where we're headed when we set out. They'll be back any minutenow." Dave replied.
"OH? That's brave of them. Although, Rachael probably just wanted an excuse to be alone with Alex." Aaron said, rembering the way the blonde girl always looked at the pretty boy.
"Maybe." Dave chuckled.
"You said you got a new ability, what does it do?" Aaron asked.
The sound of Dave's foot steps suddenly went quiet. Aaron turned back to find Dave still walking behind him.
"OH, that's a nice skill. Kinda creepy though." Aaron said.
"It mutes the sound my movements create. It pairs really well with my illusions." Dave proudly said.
"I killeda few monsters last night, I might have something that will be useful to you." Aaron said, finally reaching his resting spot and sitting down
"OH? Look who's feelig generous today." Dave said while sitting down besides him.
'System.'
__
NAME: Aaron Shaw
AGE: 18
LEVEL: 4
EXPERIENCE: 495/700
TITLE: Child of fire
STRENGTH: 51
STAMINA: 40
HEALTH: 120
SPEED: 41
MANA: 115
ATRIBUTE POINTS: 12
ABILITIES: Spark, Chained Heart, Ignition, Body Shield.???
__
'A whole night of hunting and I only got to fight kill 7 level threes, 4 level fours and a few level twos. This place will become a feeding ground for beasts soon.
Having no high level monsters means we can't gain stats fast enough, while those o the outside are hunting and being hunted constantly. Being safe prevents our growth.' Aaron had a serious face a he thought about this.
'I'll put this aside for now.' He thought
"Just imagine right?" He asked Dave who just nodded.
Aaron did just as Dave said and...
Swish
A bunch of grey pages and orbs appeared before him, dropping to the ground and creating noise that drew all eyes in his direction.
"Who's that?"
"That's lot of skills."
"Is he selling them?"
"What are those orbs?"
Hushed voices began to reverberate throughout the building. Everyone eying the items with different intentions, well everyone except those who were with his yesterday.
"Now to figure out what these things do." Aaron said and looked at Dave.
"Help me out. Lets categorize them into attack, defense and support." He requested.
"Sure." Dave replied.
A few seconds later, all the skills had been organized.
"Now for the orbs, how do they work?" Aaron asked, but Dave shrugged his shoulders.
Aaron just picked a red orb up and increased his grip strenth, causing cracks to appear on its surface.
CRACK
The orb shattered into specs of light that reformed themselves into the shape of a sword.
The sword shaped light fell into Aaron's hand and the light faded, revealing a basic long sword.
__
ITEM: Sharp Sword
LEVEL: (Classless) level 3
DURABILITY: 10/10
[An incredibly sharp sword that can cut through anything at level 3 and below]
REQUIREMENTS: None
__
Information on the sword immediately appeared on his status screen.
'Classless? What does that mean?' Aaron wondered.
"It's just a basic sword that's really sharp. But it can cut anything that's level 3 and below." He said to Dave.
"WHAT?!"
"That thing can kill level 3 monsters?!"
"How much do you want for it? I can give you 3000 credits for the sword!"
"I can give you 5000!"
"7000!"
AN/ credits are this world's currency
Aaron was immediately swarmed by people wanting to buy tho sword from him, pushing each other aside and suddenly starting an auction for it right then and there. Leaving Aaron dumbfounded.:
"ENOUGH!!" Cecilia's voice thundered over all others.
"All of you, return to what you were doing."
Cecilia, followed by a few people with offensive and defensive abilities made their way towards Aaron and Dave's location.
"What just happened?" She asked Aaron who threw the sword towards her.
Catching the sword, Cecilia was immediately shocked by why she saw.
"Where did you get this?" She said with excitement in her eyes.
"Got it from killing a level 3 mantis." Aaron replied.
His words immediately dowsed the flames of excitement that were building up in everyone's heart.
"You can get items from monsters?" Cecilia asked.
"Seems so." Aaron just shrugged.
"But you'd need to kill a level 2 monster or higher, level 1 monsters just give experience points. The higher the level, the more likely it is to drop something. " He said.
"You killed a level 3 to get this?" One of the people following Cecilia asked.
"Pretty much" Aaron replied.
"Fom killing 7 level 3, 4 level 4 and a few level 2 monsters, I only got 3 ability scrolls and 4 orbs. So I'm not selling them, only tradibg them for something of equal value." He said.
"I see. It seems we need to hunt more high level monsters in order to increase our overall strength, even those without combat oriented abilities can fight.
We'd have safer resource hunts with these things. Alright, we need to form a party that goes hunting for monsters to bring back ability scrolls and item orbs." Cecilia said.
"Good luck finding any." Aaron scoffed.
"Wha do you mean?" Ceceilia asked.
"Didn't you hear what I said? Over 10 hours of searching and I only encountered a little over 12 monsters. And they were harder to find as time went on. The only monsters that you'll find without much effort are those at level 1 and 2. Level 3 and higher are few and far in between." He replied.
Cecilia fell into thought.
"Unless we go outside of campus." A voice suddenly suggested.
Everyone turned towards the direction it came from, only to find Alex there, Rachael just behind him.
"You're back." Cecilia said in surprise.
Alex nodded.
"We came in during the commotion earlier. Anyway, as I said, we need to go off campus. There isn't much food left here. Most of the places with supplied were either burned down or were raided already. We only found enough food supplies to last about one more day." He explained.
"Raided? So there may be other groups like us on campus." Aaron said and Alex nodded.
"I see. We will need to retrieve all we can by the end of today, before anyone makes it there before we do. At the same time, we need to search the dorms and other places for lone survivors.
We don't have enough man power." Cecilia said, gritting teeth.
She looked at Aaron and an idea popped up in her head.
"What?" He asked with a tone of dread.
"Could you head to the dorms to look for survivors and bring them back here? You're the only one fast enough to do it by yourself." She said.
Aaron froze for a few seconds, his brain working overtime trying to process her words. But even then, all that came out of his mouth was..
"Huh?"