10 – Thresholds

“Bro,” Jace said, shaking his head. “Way to be a downer.”

Bella snorted a short laugh, looking from Jace to Andy, like she was debating whose view to support. Lucy, on the other hand, was quick to say, “It’s good that we’re aware now, at least.”

“I guess so.” Andy thought about it for a second, then added, “Honestly, these uh, limit breaker, items might be really rare. But—”

Lucy cut him off, or maybe she thought she was having the same thought. “But when you hit a cap—like I did on bow—it lists more than one way to get past it.”

“What does it say?” Bella asked.

Jace surprised Andy by replying, “When I maxed out my strength, it said something like, ‘expand your potential with uh spirituality, um, endure trials, and…” He trailed off, squinting as he searched his memory.

“Or find natural treasures,” Andy said. “I don’t think the Codex ritual I just used fits any of those categories, so we can only trust the System messages so far.”

“You don’t think the Codex is a natural treasure?” Lucy asked.

Andy huffed a bemused laugh, shaking his head. “No damn idea what the Codex is.”

“Anyway,” Jace said, clapping Andy on the shoulder, “let’s try to enjoy our victory and the things we’re learning before you start getting everyone all worked up about super-fast monsters.”

Andy looked at him, slowly nodding, but inside, he was already thinking about how everyone needed to at least be warned. “We just need to keep our heads out of the sand. That’s all I was saying. We need to remember that everything we figure out, some camp of monsters out there might figure out, too. Or, you know, the human-kind of monsters, too.”

Bella folded her arms, looking Andy in the eye as she nodded. “Damn right.”

“Anyway, what were you guys up to?” Andy asked, looking from Bella to Jace.

“We wanted to let you know we’ll head out toward the dungeon tomorrow,” the big fighter replied. “But—”

Bella spoke over him, “But we were wondering if you were gonna go into the tunnels tonight. People are gathering around the opening. Tucker and some others are building a hatch.”

“Are you feeling up to something like that, Andy?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah.” Andy shrugged. “Honestly, I feel pretty good. I’ve got a few more things to figure out, but how about we meet over there in like…” He glanced at the dark sky and shrugged again. “Half hour or so?”

“Perfect.” Jace thumped his shoulder and then jerked his chin toward the center of the trailer park. “Let’s go find something to eat, Bella.”

“I’ll come with,” Lucy said, before hesitantly looking at Andy, and adding, “Unless you want some company?”

“I’ll be staring at numbers—poor company. Meet you all at the tunnel opening soon.” Andy started to walk away, then paused and turned to look at the three of them. “Thanks for the help. I mean, when I was freaking out about my eyes.”

Lucy smiled, Jace gave him a thumbs up, and Bella said, “Least we could do.”

Andy was distracted, but as he walked away, he took a minute to try to appreciate, once again, how lucky he was to have been stuck in the apocalypse with some people he could get along with. He’d been a little surprised by Jace’s friendliness. If he were honest, he thought the guy would be irritated, if not worse, by the way he’d inadvertently insulted him earlier, what with his talk about mutants. So, it was with some relief that he contemplated his new friends on the way back to his trailer.

He heard a hammer pounding on metal in the direction of James’s trailer and, from the same direction, some laughter and exclamations. He wondered if Lydia had gone over to talk to the Tinker, and almost walked that way before he caught himself. He still had ten improvement points to consider—enough on his plate. “You don’t have to be involved in everything,” he muttered, hoping that saying the words aloud would have more of an impact.

When he reached his trailer, he frowned at the dark, once again missing his Reaper’s Senses. He didn’t have a camp lantern, but when he pulled the shades fully open and sat down on his couch, his eyes slowly got used to the filtered moonlight.

Andy opened his status sheet and took a look at his attributes. Did he want to try to put more points into Speed? He was of two minds on the matter. Part of him wanted to leave it alone; he was fast enough for now, wasn’t he? Another part wanted to see if he’d hit a new ceiling or not. If not, he was curious where it was. What if there weren’t one? What would it be like to have twenty Speed? A hundred?

He held his hands out in front of him, palms down, trying to see if he still had a residual shake. They were steady. He moved them right and left, wondering how fast he could do it. It felt totally normal to him, but he supposed that was why he’d been having that reaction in his eyes and…brain. Fast movements didn’t look fast to him—at least not as fast as he could move. “There have to be more tiers, though, right?”

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Impulsively, Andy stared at his Speed attribute and applied another improvement point. The rush was immediate—hot tingles up and down his arms and legs. His muscles twitched, and a few seconds later, his vision got a little blurry, and he felt some heat behind his eyes. The visual artifacts made him feel a little dizzy—a little uncomfortable—but nothing like before. He sat there, staring straight ahead at the dimly lit coffee table, and, after a few minutes, it came into focus.

“All right, that wasn’t so bad.” Andy turned back to his status sheet and put another point into his Speed.

***You have reached a deeper limit of Speed. Your body has been carried far beyond its original potential, yet further acceleration is now bound by its present form. To move past this barrier, you must tread unknown paths, seek what lies hidden, and endure transformations not yet revealed.***

Andy exhaled a shaky breath he’d been holding in anticipation. He felt a mixture of disappointment and relief, but he wasn’t sure he was ready to admit that, even to himself. “Thirteen, huh?” he said, looking at his status sheet. That meant his ceiling had expanded by five points. Would that be standard? Would someone who’d had a higher base ceiling be able to go to fourteen or fifteen?

Andy looked back at his status screen, measuring the nine improvement points he still had against the abilities on his list. In his—admittedly limited—understanding, improvement points were a big deal, and he hesitated when considering spending them on a skill like Butcher’s Insight or Tracking. It wasn’t that he didn’t think they were valuable; he just hadn’t had the need for those skills to be higher than they were—not yet. Lucy was already good at tracking, and he could always put more points into butchering abilities if he found the need.

His Spears skill was already capped at four. His Critical Mastery was also four, but he didn’t know if that was its cap. Nodding, he decided it was worth a point to find out. Andy applied one to the skill, and his eyes widened when it worked, and he felt the heat of the System writing new information into his mind—his instincts. Blinking, he realized there was a new System message in his view:

***Your Critical Mastery has advanced beyond the ordinary threshold. Fueled by your heightened Speed and the predatory instincts of the Brimstone Stalker, your perception of weakness now operates at a new depth. Strikes against exposed or compromised targets inflict markedly greater damage.***

“Huh!” As far as Andy could recall, that benefit hadn’t been mentioned when he got his new class—yet another indicator that the System seemed to treat the people operating under it on a “need to know” basis. Wanting to see how far the benefit would carry him, he tried to put another point into the ability. The System was quick to rebuke his efforts:

***You have reached the current threshold of Critical Mastery. While you may continue to wield the skill at its present strength, further mana-driven advancement is restricted. To move beyond this boundary, you must uncover new ways of perceiving and applying precision beyond your present understanding. The path ahead remains hidden until you reveal it.***

“Okay, fair enough.” Andy focused on Sneak Attack and applied a point. For a change, he received the warm sensation he’d gotten used to, but this time the System didn’t send him any messages. The skill was now up to three, and he had seven points left to spend. He glanced over his list, organizing the abilities he might want to improve into a separate column:

Short Blades: 1

Sneak Attack: 3

Smokescribe: 1

*Smoke Lance – Bound: 2

*Unseen Stalker – Bound: 1

With a second thought, he removed Short Blades from the list. He could always improve that ability later, but he wasn’t sure he wanted “short blades” to be his next weapon focus. What about swords or bows or…polearms or something? The point was, there were a lot of weapon types, and he didn’t want to invest in anything beyond spears until he was sure of the choice.

Smokescribe was interesting, of course, but he had no reason to think he needed any more skill in it. He’d wait until he learned otherwise. After staring at the remaining three skills for several minutes, he focused on the line above them: Improvement Points: 7.

Seven points—half of what he’d had earlier that night. It was still a lot, but what if he gained a couple of levels and earned two or three new abilities that he really wanted to improve? He could burn through seven points pretty quickly. With a decisive nod, Andy closed his status sheet and stood up.

He’d revisit the list and his improvement points after a level or two. It went against what he’d decided early on—unspent points were wasted potential—but if he’d learned anything by his experience that night, there were just too many things they didn’t know about the System. He felt some caution with spending points was warranted.

He walked over to the counter, where he collected his belt, waterskin, and dagger. His eyes were drawn to the cloak he’d gotten, and he picked it up, smiling. His Unseen Stalker ability made it kind of redundant, but he had another idea for it. He slung it over his shoulder, grabbed his spear, and left his trailer.

On a whim, he broke into a jog, then a run, and, for the first time, he felt how much faster he was. His vision tunneled right away, and he felt and heard the wind in his ears. Despite his reckless-seeming pace, he navigated the turns with ease, and when he blew past a pair of women ambling in the other direction, they both glanced his way, but neither called anything out. He wondered if they’d seen him clearly or if he was more like a flitting shadow.

In seconds, he was approaching the trailer that Tucker and the others had pulled away from the tunnel opening. He slowed, his feet slapping the pavement with the effort, and Violet turned from watching the project to wave in his direction. “Hey, Andy! Running around in the dark?”

Andy laughed, shrugging. “It’s not so dark when your eyes adjust.” He moved to stand beside her, leaning on his spear, and took a good look at the work Tucker and a few others were doing. They’d built a low wooden deck around the opening, complete with a railing. At the center, over the hole leading down into the tunnels, they were currently screwing down the hinges of a very heavy-looking, four-foot-square trapdoor.

“They put a ladder on the side of the opening, too,” Violet said. She glanced at Andy. “Are you going in there tonight?”

Andy thought about it, glancing up at the sky, then around the dark trailer park. There were other things he could do, but Bea’s warning about the storm and the cryptic hints from the System about possible danger down in those tunnels made up his mind. “Yeah. Me and a few others. Do you know where Bea is?”