Murderous Savages. Chapter Three. Burn motherfucker, burn!

'You have entered the Rift ENAGASMNPNE163. This Rift contains three hundred and eight creatures between levels one and three. You may exit the Rift at any time. Kill ten creatures to receive a reward. Kill one hundred creatures to receive a reward. Kill all creatures to receive a reward.'

Steven had entered the Rift with a molotov cocktail in one hand and his zippo in the other. Glancing around, he grimaced. He was in a cave or maybe a tunnel. Some sort of luminescent moss or fungus was spotted along the walls and floor, providing a dim light that let him see shapes but not colors and certainly not depth. An open field would have been better. He didn't know the specifics for napalm, but he knew that when people died in a fire, it was the smoke inhalation that got them before the fire did.

He only had a moment to consider his situation before a quiet growl drew his attention as a darker shape rushed out of the shadows toward him. Steven drew back his boot and lashed out, completely failing to spark the zippo to life as he spun the striker.

His foot connected solidly with the monster, and it was sent flying back into the darkness. He was momentarily surprised at how light it had been, the growl seeming to come from a much larger creature. He finally sparked the zippo, and as the lighter flared, he could see the reflection of it in dozens of tiny, angry eyes. The light revealed that he was, in fact, in a cave. There was an opening in the far wall that likely led deeper, but he was more concerned with the writhing mass of angry, ratlike creatures that were charging toward him.

With a yelp, he thrust the t-shirt wick into the flame and threw the bottle as hard as he could at the horde as he scrambled back toward the pillar.

The bottle shattered on the hard stone, splashing its contents out and over the rats. The wick, which had been sparking and sputtering, remained stuck in the neck of the bottle, which rolled forward once, then rocked back, the wick settling just above a bit of the spilled napalm.

*WHOOSH*

The sound of the napalm igniting was like a giant taking a breath. Rats screamed and writhed, spreading the burning fluid amongst themselves. The momentum of the charge broke, and Steven was treated to a first-hand example of why being burned alive was considered a terrible way to go.

He'd scrambled back to the pillar, but none of the rats had made it within five feet. He waited cautiously. If the rats shook off the attack and kept coming, he was out. If he started having trouble breathing, he would be out. Hell, he might just be out anyway, as the sights and sounds of the dying rats were fucking awful.

It felt like forever, but it couldn't have been more than two minutes before the rats started to vanish one by one. As they disappeared, the foul stench of burning hair and plastic left as well.

Steven mentally acknowledged the flashing indicator in the corner of his vision.

"You have slain 14 Ravenous Rats. In keeping with your species' insatiable bloodlust, these creatures have been altered to match your own unending hunger for violence and flesh. You have received 14 system credits.   You have slain ten monsters. You have received a skill shard. Collect ten skill shards to form a skill. You may access the store by speaking, or mentally projecting, the word 'store.'"

The skill shard appeared in front of him, floating in the air in complete defiance of the laws of gravity. It was about the same size as a grain of rice. He plucked it out of the air and looked it over. The grain of rice comparison had come to him because it was white and matched the shape and size. He pocketed it carefully, then sat down. When he'd entered the first Rift, he'd been attacked in the same fashion. He'd tossed the woodchuck away as well, but it hadn't returned with a posse. Was it an environmental consideration, he wondered. That first Rift had been a huge open field. Plenty of room for the monsters. This was a cave, which might mean they were stacked up like bricks, waiting to collapse on him.

He shook his head. He'd brought four six-packs worth of Molotov cocktails. He'd expected to use them one at a time and have to retreat to resupply, but this might just turn out to be a turn of good luck. If the monsters were grouped together, he could make much more progress with the weapons he'd already prepared.

"I just have to be careful," he told himself. "I need to be able to get back to the pillar quickly. If the caves get too winding, or I have to climb, I'll turn around and come back with the right gear."

He moved forward carefully, holding his zippo aloft and wishing he had the forethought to buy a headlamp at the store. They'd been stupidly expensive, forty bucks, and he'd figured he had his phone and his zippo. He'd planned on switching over to a day schedule anyway, as he wasn't beholden to the job which had fired him.

The back of the cave did have an opening, albeit an irregular one. It was shaped like a triangle, wider at the bottom than at the top, and at only six feet tall, he had to crouch to move into it, which made him distinctly uncomfortable, as it would present a challenge if, or when, the time came for him to retreat.

The passage was blessedly short, only about ten feet or so, and opened up into another cavern. This one was larger, and as Steven carefully entered, he could hear the sound of something brushing against the stone. He took one step and then waited. Then another. He made it four steps into the cavern before the first rat came hurtling into the circle of light spread by the zippo, its eyes red and mouth open in a feral squeal that, once again, seemed entirely disproportionate to its size.

Steven engaged what he'd mentally dubbed 'operation boot to the head' despite neither aiming nor wishing to hit the rat in the head. Either his aim was off, or he'd misjudged the angle of attack, or the damn thing was just too quick, but he missed his kick, and the rat latched onto his calf, digging its oversize teeth into his leg. At least, it tried to. Steven wasn't sure which layer stopped the bite, he was just grateful that one of them had. Reaching down, he smashed at the rat, forgetting in that moment of panic that he was holding a beer bottle filled with napalm.

His fist connected with the rat, knocking it to the floor, where it scrambled back to its feet, tensing to launch itself back at him. This time, Steven's boot made contact, and the rat sailed, screeching into the darkness.

Raising the zippo high and shaking at the realization that he had just swung a bottle of fucking napalm at his leg, he waited for the rat to return, hopefully with a few friends.

"Oh, fuck me," Steven shouted as the rat returned with more than just a few friends. Fumbling, he ignited the wick on the cocktail and threw it as he backed up toward the passage that led back to the entrance. There were a lot more rats than he'd expected.

Just like before, the bottle crashed onto the stone, breaking apart and spraying the liquid inside over the approaching rats. This time, the wick ignited the fluid immediately, and the screams once again filled the cavern. The difference between the first fight and the second was the numbers. This time around, there were enough rats coming toward him that the napalm didn't coat all of them. Specifically, it didn't coat the two that lept over the fallen comrades to assault him, one landing on his thigh and snapping its teeth toward his groin, the other on his upper arm, snarling as it crawled up towards his exposed face.

Prioritizing his unarmored face over his armored crotch, Steven dropped the zippo as he grabbed at the rat with both hands, tearing it off his jacket and screaming as it managed to sink its teeth, not into his thumb, but all the way through it. Closing his hand around the monster, he bashed it into its ball-seeking companion, once, then twice, knocking it to the floor and fighting back the urge to fold into the fetal position, having just punched himself in the family jewels with a giant rat. He kicked out at the fallen rat, knocking it back into the flaming mass of what he sincerely hoped were its closest and dearest family members, before tearing that rat off his hand, wheezing in pain as it tried to take a solid chunk from the side of his thumb with it, stopped only by the mechanic's gloves.  Hurling the vicious beast into the flames, he began falling back. Steven left bloody smears on the floor of the passage as he moved back through it.

He needed to retreat and reconsider his plan. Or at least get a damn helmet.

-------------

"You have slain 26 Ravenous Rats. In keeping with your species' insatiable bloodlust, these creatures have been altered to match your own unending hunger for violence and flesh. You have received 26 system credits.   You have slain forty monsters. You have received three skill shards. Collect ten skill shards to form a skill. You may access the store by speaking, or mentally projecting, the word 'store.'"

Steven was sitting at the pillar, watching his health slowly tick back up. He'd wrapped his thumb in a strip of cloth, and was just waiting for his health to come back to full before taking it off. He really didn't want to look at it again. Growing up on a farm, he didn't have a problem with blood, but looking at it reminded him of how much it hurt.

He was giving some serious thought to the whole System. He'd picked up four skill shards already, all of them through the use of fire. AoE Annie had mentioned using a baseball bat initially, in addition to her Molotov cocktails. The question he was pondering was if he'd get a different skill if he made sure all his kills were with fire. Which led him to ask himself if there could be additional bonuses for getting all your shards in one go. And if there might be a bonus for clearing the entire Rift in one shot.

So far, everything had followed gaming logic. Magical rifts filled with monsters that dropped coins in the form of system credits,  quests to learn new skills, and get magic weapons...

Why wouldn't there be some sort of tiered System for rewards as well?

While he hadn't read anything about it, Steven knew that if he succeeded, and it turned out there were better rewards, he'd be keeping that information pretty close to his vest. The sad truth was that working overnights sucked. You couldn't have a normal life, or normal friends, because you worked and slept on opposite schedules. If there was one upside to the whole system thing, it was that he'd finally broken the shackles of comfortable familiarity that had kept him stuck at his job.

With the caveat that he would be careful, or as careful as he could be, considering he was chucking homemade napalm in empty beer bottles at hordes of oversized blood-thirsty rats, he mentally committed to clearing the Rift in one shot. The System had stated that there were three hundred and eight monsters in the Rift. He'd already seen to forty of them, using two of his twenty-four Molotov cocktails. If he could maintain that same ratio, he'd have more than enough supplies. All of which hinged on the rats being killed in the flames.

Steven hadn't missed the bit where the System had said the Rift contained level one through three monsters. His homemade napalm was doing a great job on the level one rats, but he had no idea if it would remain effective against level two or three monsters. He didn't even know if those monsters would be rats, they could be something completely different. He just had to hope that the sticky fire would continue to take care of them.

His health ticked back up to one hundred percent, and he pulled the makeshift bandage off his thumb, marveling at the speed with which wounds healed. He couldn't help but wonder what this would mean for the medical field. Shaking his head, he stood up and retrieved another bottle of napalm from his backpack, then made his way back down the passage. He'd retreated after launching his last attack, so he hadn't explored the next cavern fully. For all he knew, he hadn't killed all the rats.

-----------------

Steven coughed violently, wheezing as he struggled to breathe. He wasn't entirely sure how the whole extradimensional rift thing worked, but the one he was in didn't seem to have any magical properties beyond being a pocket dimension, which was, he supposed, magical enough. The issue was that while there was some airflow through the caverns, it wasn't enough to clear the smoke very quickly, and he'd discovered that napalm was *not* a smokeless substance.

He'd had to use two bottles to fight off the flood of Ravenous Rats in a cavern that was rather small, which had left him reeling and staggering backward as he sought to escape the smoke.

Steven had gotten used to the smell of burning fur and flesh hours earlier.

He continued to cough and wheeze as he retreated, finally finding relief two caverns back. He didn't stop there, though, having learned his lesson earlier, and kept moving, able to move more quickly now that he could breathe, although he continued to cough.

Working at the hospital, even in his capacity as IT, had provided him with rather more secondhand experience with trauma than he would have otherwise wanted. He could only hope that the magical healing factor the System provided was handling the damage to his lungs.

Collapsing to the ground with his back against a wall, he pulled a bottle of water out of his backpack by feel, and took a careful sip, then checked his notifications.

"You have slain 22 Ravenous Rats. In keeping with your species' insatiable bloodlust, these creatures have been altered to match your own unending hunger for violence and flesh. You have received 22 system credits.   You have slain one hundred and eight monsters. You have received two skill shards. Collect ten skill shards to form a skill.   You may access the store by speaking, or mentally projecting, the word 'store.'"

"You have slain one hundred monsters in this Rift. For any other species, this would have been a difficult, traumatic even, task undertaken with a heavy spirit. The reward is a weapon, which most species regard as a necessary burden. Would you like to receive your reward now? Yes/No."

Steven shook his head and dug into his pockets, finding eight other tiny skill shards. As soon as the shards made contact with each other, they shifted and fused together, forming a crystal that was half an inch long and a quarter of an inch thick.

"You have formed a skill crystal. Would you like to absorb this crystal? Yes/No."

"I would like to absorb this skill crystal," Steven said carefully.

He had two pending notifications that were yes or no answers, and he didn't want to get the weapon reward before the skill. Also, he didn't trust the System. Beyond the mistrust he would have had in any magical force that assimilated Earth and made the populace battle monsters for survival, he had gotten the distinct impression that whoever ran the System, or at least the people writing the messages, didn't really like humanity.

"Skill obtained: Ravenous Flames.

Skill Description:  Ravenous Flames allows the user to launch a handful of fire at a target. Upon striking the target, the Ravenous Flames cling to it, ignoring all attempts to put them out for a duration equal to the user's Intelligence plus the level of the skill in seconds. Once this duration is ended, the flames can be snuffed out through conventional methods.

Cost : 1 Mana

Duration : 6 seconds"

"I don't think that was on the list," Steven muttered, pulling out his phone and opening the copy of the skill list he'd downloaded from AoE Annie's page. He scrolled through it, but Ravenous Flames definitely wasn't on there.

"I would like to receive my reward," he said carefully.

He'd gotten used to skill shards appearing out of thin air, so he wasn't caught off guard when a glove suddenly fell into his lap. It looked a bit like an armored motorcycle glove, although rather than plastic, it had what looked like obsidian for plating.

He picked them up and received another System notification.

"Amplifying Hand Wrap.

This item increases the duration of skill effects by ten percent.

This item may repair itself at the cost of one point of energy per percentage of mass lost or damaged. "

"I can see how this will be useful in the future," Steven grumbled. At the moment, unless the System rounded up, he wouldn't gain so much as a second on his Ravenous Flames skill.

Shaking his head, he acknowledged the final System notification.

"Congratulations, you have reached level one! You have one attribute point to allocate. "

"That's got to go in Intelligence," Steven said and was surprised when they felt a sort of mental click.

'Status,' Steven thought.

Steven Hornell

Race : Human

Class : None

Level :  1

Experience to Next Level : 8/200

Titles : None

Achievements : None

Attributes:

Strength : 4

Coordination : 5

Endurance : 4

Intelligence : 6

Wisdom : 6

Charisma : 5

Energies:

Health : 40  (4 Health recovered per hour resting)

Stamina : 4 (4 Stamina recovered per minute resting)

Mana : 6 (6 Mana recovered per minute resting)

Skills : Ravenous Flames

"Two hundred more monsters to go," he mused quietly. "I should hit level two just before the end, or at the end."  Shaking his head, he stood and picked up his backpack. He really hoped there was a reward for clearing the Rift in one shot.