Today's Earth date: October 31, 1991

I met my first honest to God elf today. The elf part is tricky to wrap my head around, but his skin is purple or blue depending on the light. That threw me off more than his race.

He talks to me like I'm a regular person. He doesn't suck up or drown me in flattery. We talked and played a boardgame. That's it. He didn't even mention Hero stuff, and holy shit does it feel good to be normal. Even if it was just for a few minutes.

Wilmond had to remind me that today is Halloween on Earth. My little sister has been talking about a Doc Brown costume since last year. I wish I could see it.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

***

"Welcome back!" Sammy said, smiling. "Anybody hungry? I don't mind starting dinner early."

Eanrig, sitting next to Sammy, tugged on the cook's shirt.

"Right. We've heard monsters the last few nights. A lot of them."

Wayne asked from where, and Sammy said the forest in the distance.

"It sounds like ratmen. Heard the same kind of noises in Asplugha."

"Alright, gang," Wayne said. "They'll be drawn to us sooner than later, so let's head toward the forest so we don't drag any of them to the wagon by mistake."

"Ranged formation away from the treeline to draw them into the open?" Armond asked.

"That sounds good."

Blitz-Blitz-Blitz-Blitz-Blitz-Blitz-Brake.

As soon as Wayne reached the treeline, he heard the chittering of ratmen and the TV static noise of claws scraping leaves.

"Guess I'll pull aggro," Wayne said to himself.

He ran into the forest singing Paula Abdul. Thanks to Vanilli, that song would be stuck in his head for the next month. Two dozen yards in, he saw oily brown bodies moving through the trees.

Probe.

Red dots filled his HUD, revealing the extent of the horde. At least a hundred ratmen converged on his position. Either this pack got pushed out of the nest or there were other den mothers in the area. This was a lot of ratmen.

Going up a level wouldn't be so bad, Wayne thought to himself. Immediately after that thought, he noticed he felt strange. What was different about this? What was he feeling?

He wasn't afraid. A small army of monsters approached, and it felt like a trivial random encounter in an RPG. More and more, he could see why the Heroes were tempted to treat this world like a video game, or why a Hero like Horcus did so completely.

Wayne jogged back toward open field.

Thirty yards out, the rest of the party formed up. Armond stood between Fergus and Margo, and Hector set up well ahead of the rest to intercept enemies targeting the party's back row.

"Fire at will!" Wayne called, stopping to stand next to Hector.

The ratmen emerged from the treeline like spilled water–rushing forward, expanding as the mass moved, the pressure of everything left in the glass propelling it farther and wider with every second.

Margo's arrows began to fly. Fergus cast Gra, his squished victims disappearing almost immediately beneath the feet of charging rats. He switched to Flame, launching fireball after fireball at the mass of monsters.

The rats covered too much ground too quickly. In a few seconds, the party would be overwhelmed.

Skycat soared into the battle and strafed across the ratman frontline, rapid-firing Nee to slow the enemy with a wall of shrubbery. Banking and returning for another pass, Skycat buzzed the ratmen with Hrglut. Between the plantlife and the several dozen ratmen who stopped to empty their stomachs, the horde slowed.

As the advance of the rat army halted, archers somewhere in the chaos loosed a volley of arrows at the party. Wayne cast Defense, giving everyone an ethereal shield, and blitzed forward. Hector raised his shield. And Armond cast Deban, a Phantasy Star II spell that surrounded him, Fergus, and Margo with an air barrier. Of the thirty or so arrows shot by the ratmen, none made it through their shields, magical or otherwise.

With Skycat returning to do a run with the Missile spell, Wayne burst through the shrubbery and slashed wildly, his every movement cutting down another ratman. He felt the buff of his Morale skill building, his strikes coming faster and faster, creating a rapidly widening hole in the enemy forces.

He felt Morale top off and pressed to break through the grunts to reach the archers at the back. Behind him, his party benefited from the buff, their attacks coming more quickly and with more power now as well.

The wave of shrieks he heard rising up behind him told Wayne that Skycat's Missile run had killed or injured several of the ratmen. His mana felt low from all of that casting, so he let Skycat crash into the undulating mass of vermin.

His makeshift flank detectors, the two crosshairs on either side of him for his Fire a Broadside skill, flashed red so rapidly that he dismissed them completely and kept cutting.

With his extended Blitz, he beheaded seven archers in one pass and dropped two others with Sword of Water as they ran. Several of the archers escaped into the forest, but Wayne opted not to pursue, choosing instead to keep focus on the group attacking his people.

A burst of pain flared in his ribs, sending him rolling across the battlefield, soaking up and collecting a great deal of dead ratman parts along the way. He assumed Personal Foul activated but was too disoriented to hear anything.

He checked his status.

Holy shit.

That one blow took him from 146 hitpoints to 56.

He quickly scanned the battlefield, looking for what had hit him. Three rats the size of the den mother stomped through the grunts between them and Wayne. They each carried oversized clubs and wore necklaces of human skulls. Their fur glowed red with runes burned into their chests and arms.

No, they didn't carry clubs. Their arms were clubs. Like the odd mutated ratmen they saw in the Asplugha nest, these giants had weapons where an arm should be, as if their clubs were grown from their own bones.

One of the three slowed when a patch of black appeared on its shoulder and began to spread. Fergus' Rot spell.

Wayne reactivated his crosshairs and crouched to line up a shot. Fire a Broadside put a cannonball through one of the two ratmen who continued to charge. The wound looked like a shark had bitten the rat's side and tore off as much meat as it could. That ratman continued to charge, despite the injury.

A refreshing warmth ran up Wayne's body. Armond's Heal spell put his hitpoints back to 86.

Fanbi.

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A beam of light flowed like a river from the injured ratman to Wayne, its pace slowing with each passing second, its mass appearing to shrivel.

Wayne reached 103 hitpoints before the rat died.

He tapped Easy Out to avoid another hit from a club. The large rat frothed at the mouth, and its eyes looked wild, out of its mind with anger. Ratmen berserkers, Wayne guessed.

Even with Easy Out, the berserker kept up with Wayne. Seeing he would drag this beast to his party if he continued moving backward, Wayne stopped.

Hrglut.

The berserker collapsed to vomit. Wayne Blitzed ahead to behead it.

The final berserker went from running to shambling, dragging its rotting body as quickly as it could toward Wayne and his party.

Missile-Missile-Missile.

It went down.

The remaining grunts opted to flee when they saw all three berserkers fall. The party killed as many of the rats as they could before they disappeared into the trees.

And the battle was over.

The once beautiful field of golden grass was flattened by corpses and gore, looking like the aftermath of a brutal battle between two armies.

Except their side wasn't an army. They were a party with system access, and by Wayne's assessment, they were getting pretty good at this.

Before Wayne could finish his celebration, he saw Fergus on his hands and knees.

The old scholar wiped his mouth and looked up, his face a pale green. "I fucking hate that spell," he said.

***

Once Fergus recovered control of his stomach, he mentioned how many mutated ratmen he saw in that fight. In addition to the three berserkers, he counted seven other ratmen with odd growths for appendages. As much as he disliked proposing it, he suggested the party take one of the mutant corpses back to Cuan to study. Hector threw one over his shoulder without argument and followed the rest of the party back to the Water Temple.

Wayne gained a level somewhere in that chaos, as did each of the other party members. That pushed them to level 7 while Wayne moved to level 10. He looked at his system menus on his walk back to the wagon.

Hero: Wayne the Guy

Level: 10

HP: 103/169

STR: 19

AGI: 20

VIT: 15

LCK: 23

From Lightspeed, he unlocked:

Linkage – Linkages join the antiproton storage and sub-universe directly to the gravity shear, enabling the antiprotons to flow into their shear at a much faster rate than the normal quantum leakage permits.

Overcoming quantum leakage was equivalent to 2 agility points, apparently. A stat boost was always welcome even if the description made no sense whatsoever.

From Spellcasting 101 he earned a new spell:

Wufbam – Causes small dogs to explode.

At this point, Wayne expected any unlock from that game to be untraditional, but wow. Wufbam made Nee look like a normal, reasonable spell.

From Afterburner II, he received:

Auto-Target – Your battle computer is capable of auto-targeting.

That sounded like an upgrade for Skycat, but he would need to run some tests to know what it did.

ESWAT gave him:

Super – By acquiring and selecting this function, you gain rapid-fire capability.

At first, Wayne worried that was a waste of an upgrade, seeing as he could already rapid-fire as fast as he could think, but it looked like it gave him another 2 points to agility instead. That stat had now surpassed his strength, and he was happy about that. When he had the choice, Wayne prioritized speed over power no matter the game, from racing gocarts to building a stealth archer.

The faster he could move, the more quickly he could evade attacks and top off Morale to buff himself and his party.

Lastly, he unlocked this skill from Cyberball:

Linebacker – He's the captain of the defensive unit.

Wayne warned the party he had a new skill to try. They gave him space, and he activated Linebacker.

A robot the size of a silver garbage can came up from behind Wayne. It had two long treads, like that of a tank, and its upper body resembled a short but thick human reimagined as a mech. It had shields for arms, and they wrapped around its body to either side. It didn't have eyes, and it vibrated like it had a combustion engine, maintaining a low, steady grumble as it idled next to Wayne.

Summoning a football robot was pretty cool, Wayne thought, but he'd need enemies to really try it out. He dismissed it.

Meanwhile, the party had new unlocks from Phantasy Star II.

Fergus learned Fanbi, the life drain spell Wayne had.

Armond unlocked a new spell:

Ner – Speeds up one comrade.

That seemed self explanatory to everyone, including Armond.

Hector unlocked a new skill:

Mirror Shield – Reflects light and laser beams.

Wayne guessed that was akin to a Reflect spell in an RPG, which would send a spell back at the enemy caster. They'd have to try it to be sure, though.

And Margo unlocked a new passive skill:

Prism – Lets you see things invisible to most people.

That sounded handy for a rogue.

Wayne and the Zeroes were rapidly gaining power, this broken version of the system outpacing the progress of the Chosen Heroes themselves. He found himself itching for the next battle already because another battle meant more experience, and more experience meant more power.

When they reached the wagon, Eanrig paled at the sight of the blood and the gore on the party. Wayne and Hector had the worst of it. Sammy assured Eanrig this was normal for the party and that he'd get used to it. While the campmaster went around the wagon to calm his stomach, Wayne and the party found a path down to the water to rinse off in the ocean.

***

Perris spread the Water Temple maps and rubbings out on the floor of his gallery and stood back to take them in. That was the first time Wayne had seen the elf smile.

"Marvelous, absolutely marvelous," Perris said. "Might I ask for you to sign them? Maps from the Zero Hero would be worth more than accurate maps alone."

Wayne said sure and knelt on the ground to add a signature to each of the six pages.

"This is as close as I'll get to seeing the inside. I am very jealous of you, my friend."

Perris closely inspected the maps again, but Wayne didn't get the feeling he was doing so out of concern for quality or authenticity. The elf's energy reminded Wayne of reading a video game manual on the car ride home from the store. You couldn't experience the game itself yet, but you could get kind of close with the manual.

"I am pleased with our transaction," Perris said, his eyes not leaving the maps. "Should you map the other three, I would be happy to purchase them."

"Did your assistant mention I stopped by a week or so ago? I dropped off an enchanted brick. I heard you were the man to see in Cuan about anything enchanted."

Perris motioned for Wayne to follow him into his office. While the elf rummaged through the piles of stuff in his office, looking for the chest, Wayne asked, "Separate business entirely: Does magic exist to hide someone's identity or make them look like someone else?"

"It does."

"Is there a permanent version of that? Like a necklace or a ring."

The elf stopped searching and looked up. "There is. They are rare and quite valuable."

"Too rare that you wouldn't be able to find one?"

Perris laughed. "No, not that rare. Between the item and my services, it would be costly."

"I'll pay it," Wayne said without hesitation.

"Then I shall begin the search on your behalf," Perris replied. "Ah!"

He pulled the small wooden chest from under his desk and set it between him and Wayne.

"This is high-level barrier magic," Perris said as he opened the box. "Impenetrable by any means we know of, but harmless otherwise."

The elf picked up the brick to show Wayne that though Perris was holding the item, his fingers never got within an inch of the brick itself.

"Between you and me," Wayne said quietly, "I know that a bunch of druids opened it temporarily."

That impressed Perris. "Can't say I know how they would have done that, but it is interesting."

Wayne needed to find a bunch of druids who were there to seal Julian away or he needed enough reference material on druid magic to reverse engineer a solution.

"Sorry I couldn't be more helpful," Perris said, holding out the brick for Wayne to take.

Seeing Perris handle the brick eased his concerns about activating a curse or enchantment, so Wayne accepted. His fingers felt the sandpaper roughness of roughcut stone. Wayne looked down. The barrier that blocked Perris' fingers didn't affect his own.

"Huh," Perris said, eyes fixed on the brick. "That's quite curious."

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