"Well, this sucks." Erik grumbled as he headed to work. After the initial wave of chaos, things had calmed back down and life had for the most-part, settled back into the normal routine. There was plenty of discussion online and on various shows about what had happened and what it meant, but the monsters had pretty much all retreated into the wilderness. The odd one was found here and there in the cities, but they were treated with about the same care as someone reporting a stray dog. Erik had found several dead coyotes by the pond, with a pack of smug geese floating serenely nearby. None of the coyote corpses had been glowing, so he wasn't sure if there was a loot timer that had expired or if they just hadn't had any loot. The corpses were intact, so it didn't look like anyone had gotten to them first.
Nobody had found any sort of clue as to where to find a System Administrator either. Or at least nobody had said if they had found one. He wouldn't put it past people to keep something like that a secret to secure an advantage. The highest level Erik had heard of was someone in Japan who had slaughtered a large number of mobs shortly after they had appeared, before the rest had all run off. She was currently sitting at level 4 and from what people could tell, she also hadn't noticed any advantages from leveling yet.
Humans were extremely adaptable and adjusted to the new reality quite rapidly. City crews went around picking up dead monsters, and ceremonies were held for the people who had fallen during those first few minutes. There were very few of those overall and life went on for most everyone afterwards. Erik wasn't exactly hoping for the chaos to continue; however he was kind of excited to see how strong he could get after leveling up. It was something he had daydreamed about whenever he was reading about a character from one of those books. But the whole thing looked to be mostly over. Hunting parties had gone out looking for monsters and were finding the odd corpse, but nothing living.
"What was the point of all that then?' he had wondered. A system gets put into place and nobody can actually use it? Had something gone wrong or had the system takeover been prevented from happening? He had so many questions and didn't appear to be about to get any answers, despite constantly perusing the forums and listening to every bit of news he could. The usual theories were making their rounds, governments messing with things they shouldn't, aliens, the end times, stuff like that. The system was still in place, as one could still bring up their character sheet, as futile as that was.
"System Help?" Erik tried, hoping that he could stumble upon some sort of helpdesk that could bring some answers. He had been trying various phrases all day and had been getting what the rest of the world was likely getting. Absolutely nothing. He didn't imagine that he had any chance of guessing something that hadn't already been tried by who knows how many other people, but he still had to try.
"Emsystay elphay?" Yeah ok, so he probably would have refused to have anything further to do with it if the system had responded to Pig Latin, but he was running out of ideas.
Life went on as normal for several weeks and even the online discussions mostly died off. Nobody even bothered reporting seeing the odd monster that popped up here and there anymore. The remaining monsters that appeared were ones that had been hiding in the cities, in places like the sewers or abandoned buildings. There were special city crews that went after these and the mobs generally weren't being killed off anymore. Various capture methods were being used and it was assumed the poor critters were being studied and dissected in some secret government labs. Leah had even told Erik of a news report where an underground fighting ring had been set up, using captured monsters. It had been broken up pretty quickly, but there were probably a lot more that hadn't been discovered yet.
Because Erik worked nights, he normally stayed up all night on his days off as well, in order to keep a regular schedule. Ella stayed with him while he worked through his backlog of games and every now and then she would want to go outside. Previous to "The Event", as people had taken to calling it, he didn't have any issues taking her out for a quick walk. He lived in a safe neighborhood and rarely saw anyone else in the middle of the night. Now however, while he wasn't overly worried anymore, instead of walks, he would take her to the back yard. She had just finished doing her business this night, when he spotted something at the top of the fence at the back of the yard. Two glowing yellow eyes staring at him!
It looked like the head of the creature was fairly small, judging from how close together the eyes were and Erik didn't hear any unusual sounds nearby. He quickly took Ella back to the house, keeping an eye on the intruder the whole time. It didn't move. Erik went and grabbed his monster gear and went back outside. He had upgraded his armor a bit, getting some hockey shin pads and some plastic panels inserted into the interior of his leather jacket. They weren't much but should add a bit more resistance to getting injured in the torso. He also had changed to a baseball bat to go along with the shield, instead of a small knife. The knife was in his jacket pocket in case he needed it, but the added reach of the bat made him feel more confident.
When he stepped back outside, the eyes were still there, but they quickly vanished as he advanced towards them. He still hadn't seen what the creature actually was, as the lights from the street didn't reach back far enough and he had hoped not to startle the creature by turning on the deck lights. He wasn't exactly sure what his plan was, but this was the first monster he had seen in person since the first day and he didn't want to waste his opportunity.
"This is still a bad idea though. I absolutely should be calling up the city to send the pros out. Who knows what else is lurking back there. But still….." He had to know. Erik just couldn't let something like this get taken away by a bunch of city lackeys. The reports of dangerous encounters had been relatively few and he felt like he could handle most of what he had seen with the bat and shield. That being said, he was definitely going to retreat if he felt like he was getting out of his depth. Almost definitely. After a bit, just a quick look and then he'd go.
"Now where have you been hiding?" Erik got to the back fence and then realized he had a bit of a problem. He could easily get over the fence, but not with a bat and a shield in his hands. It was a large wooden fence with no gaps to see through, so he couldn't even tell if the creature was still there, or if it had a group of friends with it.
"Alright, extra bad idea time." He thought and then put the shield down on the ground next to the fence. There was a small gap there, plenty of rabbits and other small wildlife could attest to that. Reaching up, he put both hands on the top and jumped up, immediately dropping back into his yard after pulling himself up high enough to get a quick glimpse of what lay beyond. He wasn't going to present a nice steady target for whatever might be waiting back there with rocks or possibly even a bow. His quick peek had revealed nothing but the empty field out back, but he had only been up there for a second. The moonlight was sufficient that he could see decently well. Feeling a bit more confident about what awaited him, he decided to go for it and vaulted over the fence, landing in a crouch and swinging his bat in a wide arc, just in case. Nothing connected and he couldn't see anything nearby, so he grabbed the shield from under the fence and stood up.
He still didn't see Yellow Eyes anywhere so he decided to walk around to see if he could flush it out. Again, he wasn't entirely sure what he would do if he found it, as he wasn't the type to beat something to death just because it was there, but curiosity drove him forward.
"Leah's going to kill me if she finds out I'm wandering around out in a field at 3am" Somehow that seemed worse than possible monster-imposed consequences, but he was committed at this point. The field wasn't cultivated and was mostly overgrown with knee-high vegetation, giving smaller creatures plenty of depth to hide in. He watched and listened for any movement but noticed nothing nearby. Continuing forward, he headed towards a copse of trees.
"I really shouldn't be doing this, I wouldn't even normally have gone out here before the monsters infested the world, what am I doing?" Erik muttered to himself, and yet, he kept going.
As he got within about 40 feet from the nearest tree, a form suddenly rose from the ground and darted away from him, heading into the trees. It was a goblin, and it didn't appear to be armed, although Erik couldn't be entirely sure about that. Still silently calling himself an idiot, he headed forward. As he arrived at the edge of the trees, he felt a pull again, as if there were loot to be harvested. He experimentally raised his hand, but it didn't feel like he was close enough. He entered the trees and saw the goblin. It was standing near the middle of the copse, staring back at Erik. It growled some incomprehensible words and then raised its hand and disappeared!
"Ok, well that's a thing that just happened. Now, do I do the sensible thing and report this, or do I try to figure out how a goblin just disappeared right in front of me?" Erik could still feel the mysterious pulling sensation and his curiosity was spiking to new levels. That decided him and he went against his better judgement, just as he had been doing ever since he had hopped over the fence. He cautiously walked up to where the goblin had disappeared and could tell that raising his hand would work here. What it would accomplish, he wasn't at all sure of, but there was no stopping him now. Taking a deep breath, he raised his hand and disappeared.