Hell Difficulty Tutorial - When Hell Freezes

My arms are trembling and my knuckles are white from gripping onto the bat. Holy shit, that was way too intense. Even though it was already wounded it took so much to kill it. My bat is dented where I was hitting the wolf. 

I flinch when I hear something approaching with quick and steady steps, my head whipping up, but it's just a middle-aged woman from the bus that got shot at. She's walking quickly while swiveling her head, looking all around as she approaches. She walks up to me and looks down at the wolf before she starts scanning the area again, always keeping a hand near her hip.

"That was stupid." 

No shit. I didn't see anyone else doing anything to help though, even if I'm pretty sure you have a gun.

"I know."

She glances at me and shakes her head before reaching her arm out, putting a hand on my shoulder, "Are you hurt?" 

I don't know how I'm going to sleep at night remembering what that wolf, and I, did today. And apparently I scratched my leg at some point, probably when the wolf snapped at me.

"Not really."

"Follow me then."

Who is this person? How can she just ask me to go and risk my life like that? Is this what the military is like? Whatever, she seems trustworthy enough.

"Ok."

We quickly make our way over to where High-Vis was last, but I don't see him anywhere. Instead there's a wolf laying dead outside of the bus, along with a man wearing a bloody blue long sleeve shirt, the same guy from my group before. He's face down right outside the bus, shirt torn and right shoulder mangled. There's a few people crowded around a man sitting against the wheel of the bus by the door, a bloody shirt wrapped around his arm.

I stare blankly at the dead man. The mom with the green coat is sobbing over his corpse. That could've just as easily been me if I had gone for the bus, or if I had been any slower when killing the wolf. 

Two quick shots suddenly ring out in the forest in the direction opposite from where the wolves came from. The people around me flinch and I hear a few screams on the bus as I turn around to look in that direction. A third shot goes off 10-ish seconds later.

"There's the runner," the woman says under her breath.

The runner? I guess High-Vis must've run off after all. Can't say I really blame the guy, but couldn't he have at least shot at the other wolf before running? He might've saved a life if he had. And what's he shooting at now? Six more rapid shots ring out, and I'm starting to wonder if he ran into the rest of the pack. 

"We need to get the wounded on the bus! Where's the bus driver? Ask him if there's a first aid kit. Is anybody here a doctor? Who shot this wolf?" The woman who is definitely either a cop or military is already walking over and barking out orders, trying to take control of the situation.

I take the moment to watch the treeline where the shots came from and focus my thoughts. Did [Suppress Presence] help me avoid being heard by the wolf? Probably. It also seemed like it didn't notice me standing there for half a second. I didn't even try to use the skill, but maybe it's passive and I don't need to actually do anything to use it? That doesn't seem right, but I don't have anything else to go on for now. I'll need to test it out. 

Another shot goes off a few minutes later in the same direction as before, not sounding any closer or farther. A man runs out of the treeline right around then but it's not the High-Vis man, it's some other guy wearing a yellow shirt I hadn't seen before. I guess there was more than one runner. I don't see how running into an unknown forest is safer than a car but… Actually nevermind, a guy did die going for a car. 

The bossy woman comes back over and follows my gaze to the man, who is now walking past the other bus. He seems to spot us then and starts jogging over. She asks him questions while he's catching his breath, about what happened in the forest, and more. A man wearing a black hoodie and glasses walks up from the bus while she does. 

Yellow shirt guy tells us he ran away right after the first wolf got shot earlier and hid up a tree. When he heard the other gunshots around him in the forest, and they didn't stop, he got scared and decided to run back to the clearing.

We introduce ourselves and I find that the man in the yellow shirt is called Alex, he's a little bit shorter than me and his medium length brown hair and beard are neatly trimmed. He works at the national park that's—that used to be nearby. The cop/military woman is Sheila, who funnily enough I actually know. She was apparently friends with my mom when I was a kid, and I can vaguely remember her being really nice to me. What a coincidence we ended up here together! The guy with the black hoodie is Mason, and he's the one who shot the other wolves. I wonder how many bullets he has left? If any.

A moment later, Mateo pops his head around the bus with a scared look before realizing we aren't wolves. He glances at the corpse on the hood across the median and the blood on my bat, walking over to us, pale. He somehow gets even more pale when he sees the bodies on the other side of the bus.

I have neither the energy or ability to make him feel better, so I just say, "Hi, Mateo."

"Sorry… I'm sorry." Mateo mutters, his eyes darting between me and the bodies, "I—I was hiding. I can't deal with dogs and stuff ever since I got attacked by one when I was a kid."

He gestures at the wolf ahead of him, "I'm so fucking glad that I did."

Since Mateo doesn't know, and the other's don't seem to know how to bring it up, I'll say it, "I think we're in some kind of game, Mateo."

"W-what do you mean, a game?" Mateo says looking at me, eyes filled with confusion and a bit of anger, "People just fucking died, Ben!"

"The wolves had levels, and a name above their heads, just like a game. Killing one made a notification pop up in my vision." I say, "I apparently leveled a skill up, too. Mason, what about you? You killed one right, did you see anything?"

Sheila and Alex look curious and relieved that somebody brought it up first. Mason only nods and Mateo just looks even more confused and scared, saying, "So what are we supposed to do then? Even if this is a game, how are we supposed to survive giant fucking wolves with nothing? Do we even know how to see our skills or anything?" 

I shake my head. Sharing what I've tried, all five of us start trying different things, saying words in our minds, picturing a menu, digging into our pockets, looking at our hands and wrists for anything different, and just saying things out loud. We brought a lot of attention to ourselves from the people in and around the bus, forming a small group of people willing to be outside. 

 "I did it!" Somebody yells excitedly, and people crowd around them asking what they found. Quest Window was apparently a command word that opens up, well, a quest window, that only you can see. But everybody has the same quests so far.

[Floor Quest]

Stay alive for 30 days

Rewards:

Entrance to the second floor

Access to Community

1 skill point

5 stat points

[Side Quest]

Stay alive 24 hours

Rewards:

Gear of your choice

This raises more questions than it answers. First off, second floor? So there's layers to this shit. Looking at the floor quest, my brother should still be on floor one, assuming time doesn't work differently here. Can we upgrade our skills with a skill point, or maybe even get a new one? How do we see our skills, since 'Skill Window' didn't work? Stat points imply the existence of stats that we can apparently raise, but alas, 'Stat Window' also doesn't work.

"—us," I'm standing near Mason when I hear him mutter something and then freeze, his eyes flicking back and forth. I watch him as he scans the invisible window, eventually refocusing his eyes after a minute or two. He looks around and spots me watching him, and blinks. He clears his throat and loudly says, "Say Status".

[Name: Benjamin Rowe]

Difficulty: Hard

Floor: 1

Time left until forced return: 4y 364d 23h 44m 11s

Lvl 0

Strength: 4

Dexterity: 7

Constitution: 3

Mana: 1

[Primary Class: Unavailable]

[Sub-class: Unavailable]

Skills:

Water Manipulation - lvl 1

Suppress Presence - lvl 3

[Skill Points: 0]

[Stat Points: 0]

Alright, who the hell came up with 'Status' as the go to word that needs to be known for survival? I certainly wouldn't have thought of that in a tense situation. I mean hell, only old school RPGs use 'Status' as far as I know, and what's a normal person who doesn't play games supposed to do? 

I also don't like that my name is somehow known to whoever put us here. It makes me feel like I'm being watched. And five years until forced return? That seems like a lot of time, but seeing 'forced' hopefully means that there's another way to get out before then. 

Hard difficulty is usually the most difficult way to play a game so it's a bit concerning to see myself placed here. Maybe there's a way to go down to an easier difficulty, but would I even want to do that? In a lot of games the harder challenge usually means better rewards, like xp multipliers and better item drops. Hopefully it's one of those and not one where they just turn enemies into tanks. 

And, shit… what if my brother isn't in Hard difficulty? Would I still be able to find him? Is there even anyone else here except for us? Later… I'll find out later, it's out of my control for now.

I find it odd that I, and presumably everyone else, start at level 0. That and my [Suppress Presence] skill seems to have started out at level 2? Usually the games I play would start you at level 1 in everything. They also usually have tutorials though, or a help page, or a wiki. 

We seem to level up our skills by using them, so I would imagine we get experience from killing things. What if we kill each other then? Even though we're only level 0 would we still give experience? I… should stop thinking about this, but if I've had these thoughts, others might have as well, so I need to be careful around people I don't trust.

That aside, just what is possible now with skills and stats? How do the stats actually correlate to our bodies? From what I know about video games, strength is usually just how strong you are and a higher stat means you can output more power at once. But if this is real, and man does everything feel way too real, then would that mean a higher strength stat increases muscle mass or something? Density? 

Dexterity then would probably increase your reaction time, coordination, flexibility, and speed, or something similar. Maybe it improves your nervous system and fast-twitch muscle fibers, among other things? 

The Constitution stat is something I've always just written off as health in games. So maybe it improves our ability to heal and take more damage? I don't know enough about the body to know what that could affect, maybe thicker skin? An improved immune system?

Mana is something that exists only in games, and in those, leveling it up usually just increases the amount of mana you have for magic and spells. It being a stat is really cool and I'll have to experiment with how it works with my skills later.

And I know I keep thinking it's like a game, but I should stop doing that for the most part. As far as I know, this is real life, and the game elements, system menus, and monstrous wolves are just part of that now. I need to forget about everyone from Earth, my parents, siblings, everything. I need to survive if I want to see them again. 

Speaking of, if we do survive this, will we be able to go back to Earth and keep our skills and stats? How would the government handle that? They can't even handle guns very well, so if somebody got a skill that lets them make fireballs or something…things could go pretty badly. Depending on… a lot really, I don't know much yet, we could probably get pretty damn powerful in five years.

I close my Status window. It's still dangerous out here. The High-Vis man hasn't come back from the woods yet, and I'm pretty sure he's dead or out of bullets, which pretty much means the same thing right now.

If I'm going to survive out here for five years, I'm gonna need to get a lot stronger.