I ran through the underbrush as fast as my feet could carry me, retrieving my pistol as I fled. I wrapped one arm around the face of the girl in my arms to keep branches from hitting her but couldn’t stop everything. I kept running until I was completely out of stamina, and stopped to catch my breath and look behind me for pursuers. As I watched, I quickly whipped out my pocketknife, using it to cut her free of her bonds.

  After making sure we weren’t in danger, at least immediately, I sat down on the ground and upended my water bottle over my head. Immediately, Stormborn regeneration kicked in as the water soaked my clothes. It quickly ran off of my hydrophobic skin, but I think that any amount of stamina I can regain as quickly as possible is worth it.

  Hesitatingly standing up and rubbing her wrists, the cheetahkin girl stretched her hands into the air. Taking a closer look at her, I now noticed that instead of regular feet, hers ended in a paw. They were digitigrade and probably allowed her to run incredibly fast. I didn’t risk getting distracted by alerts until I was completely sure that I was safe, but it looked like I could now risk a glance.

  It seems like I got quite a few skill upgrades, including both a charisma and a luck increase. That must be why Cindy told me to try and roleplay. The benefits were pretty good if they managed to increase luck. After bringing up my status I decided to try and inspect the title ‘Combat Skills’ to see if I could gain more information that way.

  That was certainly good to know. I had performed some punches and mock attacks while training up my strength and agility, but I proved incapable of changing my unarmed combat level. Similarly, I was also unable to change my storm fists level. I wonder if it was also considered a combat skill.

  That answered that. There were combination skills between the categories, and Storm Fists was both a race skill and a combat skill. I guess race skill superseded combat skills in the hierarchy. It made me wonder about my Storm Aspect magic skill. Why was that not considered a race skill?

  Calling up my status, I decided to go over my current values.

  Obviously, I increased my level a few times from killing those bandits, but there was a lot more to unpack than that.

  It's now official. You can gain experience from killing other people. That means that gaining strength through murder is not only possible but also very accessible. Even before the changes, people killed each other for gains. But now, those gains were substantial and immediate. I could imagine a surge of murders across the world as people begin to seek new power through blood and destruction.

  What’s more, the pistol barely did any damage per shot. A normal person would have been put into the ground after only two shots, but that badger guy shrugged off 11. With magic being more effective than firearms, the race to level and increase in strength is going to be wild.

  Lost in thought, I barely even noticed the girl stand and approach me.

  Standing on her feet, she was probably just over 6 ft, but that was most likely due to her long legs. Her clothes were in tatters, and I could see that she was bleeding in many places. She had tan skin like she spent a lot of time outside. Her eyes were bright green, and she had small rounded ears on the top of her head, as well as a long and thick tail. Her hair matched her ears and tail colors, with the typical cheetah spots.

  Tears began to form in her eyes, as she quietly stuttered out, “Th... Thank you. If it wasn’t for you, I would definitely be dead…”

  She began to sob, and I rose to wrap her in a hug.

  “It’s going to be okay. I’m here to help. My name is Victoria, but anyone who knows me calls me Vic. What’s your name?”

  “My name is Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn Dunn.”

  “Kaitlyn, I need to ask… are you alone? Is there anyone back there that needs help?”

  More tears fell, and she was wracked with silent shakes. I guess if there was anyone else, they didn’t make it out. I gave her a few moments and then continued.

  “Kaitlyn, those guys are still out there. They are probably pretty pissed off at me for killing their friends, and we either need to kill the rest of them or find someone who can back in the city. It’s probably a good idea to get you somewhere safe though. I’ve refilled my stamina at this point, and I can keep moving for a long time. Can you run?”

  “Y... yes, I think I can. I don’t know the way to the city anymore, though.”

  “That’s okay, I can fly up and check if we need it. You can stay at my place for now. I have some friends that will help to take care of you.”

  With that being said, I activated flight and rose above the treetops. I looked out at the distance and found that the direction we had been running in was also vaguely the direction of the city. If Kaitlyn can run as fast as I’m guessing she can, we could probably make it by nightfall, though obviously because I can fly, I would beat her.

  As I decided to sink back down to the ground, I felt a sudden heat across my back.

  With a mighty BOOM I was blasted through the sky. -20

  Once I regained my bearings, I realized I was knocked about 40 feet away from where I was due to my weight. A good thing too, as a second fireball flew through the space where I was floating a second ago. There hovering in front of me was the bandit that I had seen walking into the fire of the burning house.

  He wore no shirt and extending from his back were two wings made of flame. I quickly inspected him as I cast charged up two sparks.

  With an angry snarl, he shouted across the distance, “Bitch, you’re going to pay for what you did to Rich and Mac.”

  I guess the two I already killed were called Rich and Mac. My heart thudded in my chest, urging me to flee, but I stood my ground.

  “I killed them both, and if you don’t back off right now, I’m killing you too.”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  His response was to fire two flame blasts at me, and soar to meet me in the air. The first missed, but the second managed to graze me. I could tell the damage was reduced because of the wind wall. -5

  My sparks ripped through the air, one slamming into his chest, and the other ripping apart his right wing.

  -15

  The chest shot did damage, and after the wing was obliterated, he began to fall.

  He shouted, “HELLIONS’ FLIGHT” and his wings regenerated. It must be a spell.

  Drawing my pistol once again, I aimed and fired three times. The shot threw me backward through the air, but I was decently skilled and hit him middle mass twice.

  -10, -10

  He fired another two fire blasts my way, this time managing to hit me with both. This guy was definitely a caster. I needed to take this fight to the ground. -10, -10

  Charging up one final spark, I shred his wing once more.

  This time, he fell and didn’t rise back into the air. I hovered above where he disappeared and quickly flew towards him on the ground. I raised my arm in front of me and activated storm fist. I saw where he fell and rushed at him. Just before impact, I deactivated elemental flight. My momentum carried my lightning charged fist straight into, and then through his chest. I took damage and felt my arm break. -30

  COMBO CRITICAL; FATAL STRIKE 3.5x: -84

  Well that was nasty. Fuck me this arm hurts. Trying to wipe the blood on my arm onto my clothes, and tearing up from the pain and adrenaline, I looked around me. There was no way this bastard's friends didn’t notice that, and I haven’t gotten an experience message, so combat must still be taking place.

  Suddenly, I felt the motion of muscles behind me and quickly activated flight to throw myself into the air. A claw whooshed through the space where my head was moments earlier.

  Turning around, I saw that I was being penned in by the two remaining bandits. One looked like some kind of dog or coyote, and the other was another ratkin.

  Mousekin then. I’m not racist, just ignorant. I was surrounded again though, and if they were pissed before, they were super pissed now. Or maybe ultra pissed? The pain was making it hard to think straight.

  The pistol was in my left hand, and the right hand was broken. I came down to the ground with the pistol already raised and deactivated flight. I peppered the mousekin with the remaining 8 shots. I missed once, but it was enough. Should have invested more in strength.

  -10, -10, -10, -10, -10, -20, -20

  I guess I must have gotten a lucky hit because he was down. I dropped the pistol, but the Coyote was already moving when I landed. He got under my fragile guard and dropped a nasty kidney shot into my side. -15

  I managed to activate storm fist and attempted to strike at him, but I was falling backward and was unable to gather any strength for an attack. I activated flight to keep from falling completely over, but things weren’t looking good. This guy knew his way around a fistfight, and I had taken a couple of classes at the gym. He had me, and he knew it.

  Suddenly, I noticed a blur on the edge of my vision. With a crack, Kaitlyn appeared off of his shoulder. I had never taken back my pocketknife, and it was probably a good thing because Kaitlyn used it to tear through the Coyote’s throat. He reached up to try and staunch the blood, but he collapsed before he could manage it. After a few gurgling noises, he fell silent.

  I guess you get no experience for partial kills.

  I looked over at Kaitlyn as the adrenaline of battle faded. Her eyes were filled with a righteous fury and with the memory and sensation of vengeance done.

  Collapsing backward, I sighed, wincing at my injured arm. “Thanks for that. He almost had me.”

  She didn’t respond. I could see her tearing up again, but she didn’t say a word.

  “Now that that’s done, do you want to go back to your house? Try and salvage anything?”

  She only shook her head. I understood that there was probably nothing much left. We needed to get somewhere safe to rest and heal, and unfortunately still the safest place for us was in the city. I could fly, so my arm wouldn’t jostle around too much, and Kaitlyn was crazy fast. We could make it with time to spare.

  I immediately inspected Shooting(pistols), Enhanced Physicality, and Physical Resistance.

  After the alert, I felt the pain in my arm immediately fade, and I watched as the wounds on my body closed. I am lucky that reaching a milestone regens all of your primary stats.

  Also important to note, it seems like maxing out a skill simply creates a better version of that skill on top of it. That was good to know. I quickly looked up at Kaitlyn. She seemed to be looking through her status as well, because I could see her eyes scrolling from left to right, without her looking at anything in particular. I checked my status to go over all of the changes.

  Yikes that was a lot to take in. Though reaching that milestone was nice, I was still feeling exhausted. I decided to go ahead and go back to the city to catch some sleep. It wasn’t worth making a trip out to the ranch today, and I didn’t want to take Kaitlyn there anyway. She needed some rest too, that’s for sure.

  I pulled Kaitlyn out of her trance by placing a hand on her shoulder.

  “Hey Kaitlyn. I’d like to try and make it back to my apartment today. How fast can you run, and for how long?”

  She sniffled, as she was still crying a bit, before replying, “My speed says it's 90 miles/hour, and I consume 1 stamina for every 10 minutes of running.”

  Holy crap, for real? That’s insane.

  “Can you dodge trees at that speed? I saw part of a road not too far from here, but I don’t know how far it actually goes.”

  “Yes, I should be able to. I was practicing before... everything happened. I have really high agility, and enhanced reflexes, so I can like jump off them and stuff. I have a magic skill too, called inertial control. It helps me move around really quick as well.”

  That was a handy suite of skills. It's easy to tell that her race was made for going at ridiculous speeds over land. I wonder how she was ever caught.

  “Alright. I’ll fly right above the trees. Can you follow me from here? I try and avoid places with too dense foliage.”

  “I'm ready.”

  With that out of the way, we headed off through the woods. Kaitlyn managed to stay with me the whole way. I stayed just at around 80 miles/hour, and she had no problems running at that speed through the forest. As I watched her, I realized that she was kicking off from tree to tree, running through the forest like a ninja. Freaking awesome.

  We made it into the city proper after only 45 minutes, and the majority of the time was spent getting her to navigate through the streets to my apartment building. We got there around 5. It was wild to think that the whole encounter with the bandits only took about an hour if you didn’t include travel time.

  I landed on the third-floor fire escape and gestured for her to come up. Jumping towards me with what must have been a 20-foot vertical, she landed on the railing of the escape and hopped the rest of the way up in a single bound. I opened the window and ushered her inside.

  Cindy was in the kitchen, starting what appeared to be a pot of beans on a camp stove. When I came in, she took one look at my clothes and rushed towards me. Looking down at myself, I could see that my clothes around my wounds was covered with a faintly glowing white liquid. It took me a second to realize that it was my blood.

  “What happened?!? You were gone for three hours, and you come back in tatters! Is that blood Victoria?!? What happened?”

  Stepping out from behind me, Kaitlyn coughed and prepared to introduce herself, but before she could a message dinged in my mind.

  Dammit.