Chapter 1689 (1/2)

Elijah Frank woke up in the System and the first thing that he saw a three-headed snake hydra turning to face him through his driver’s side window. Around the monster, the deserted parking lot of the national parking lot only served to add to the sense of shock the sight brought him. The combination wiped away any lingering drowsiness that he felt.

He remembered falling asleep and then suddenly he was here, in an unfamiliar parking lot.

He hadn’t been in one of the Zones or been stuck in a bubble city; his last memory of pre-System was getting into a bellowing-match with his landlord, packing up all his things into his cramped brown sedan, and driving West with the vague idea that he would live out of his vehicle in camping areas until he had everything figured out’.

He knew, even then, that this goal was a bit of a punt. All Elijah’s life he had been ‘figuring out’ what he wanted to do with himself. He had sailed through his thirtieth and the fortieth birthday without giving this constant question much thought. He bounced between careers with such speed that usually interviewers at his next job were more impressed than concerned. He started in sales at a discount electronics store, but over the course of eighteen years after college he became a political aide, a hairstylist, a non-alcoholic bartender for children’s parties, a janitor at a trade school, an associate professor, and a military surveyor.

This was in addition to his caffeine-fueled, late-night deep dives into the stock market, where he would throw however many fistfuls of cash he could squeeze between his fingers into whatever the hottest stock currently was. His certainly repeatedly led him to emptying out his bank account.

It was a total loss on timber futures that prompted Elijah’s fight with his landlord.

“Why can’t you just pretend like you don’t know me?!?!” Elijah had shouted in frustration. “People who don’t know me love me!”

“Because they just don’t know yet how shitty you are! At least not yet” The landlord had shouted right back. His face was red. “You haven’t paid rent in three fucking months! I’m done with your excuses! Get the hell out!”

So Elijah had packed up his things and left his Uncle Terence’s basement. He drove West toward the unknown. He arrived at the campground, tried to set up a tent he had found in the corner of the basement, but it got dark too quickly and his headlights weren’t as helpful as he thought they were going to be.

Grumbling to himself, Elijah had climbed into the back of his car and tried to get comfortable between a giant pack of toilet paper (which he had also liberated from his uncle’s basement) and a pile of dirty clothes that Elijah vaguely assumed he would be able to wash in a river somewhere. He closed his eyes and laid there without falling asleep for several hours.

Silently, the System arrived. And then the System kept Elijah Frank frozen for months and then years, hidden in a relatively abandoned portion of the continental wilderness. Then, as the Wildlands surroundings the main six Zones rushed outward, Elijah finally, finally woke up to see the world in its new form.

The extra sleep had passed without much of a result; Elijah was still in a very sour mood.

So he sat up in his back seat, wrinkling his nose at the smell of stale sweat from his pile of dirty clothes, and looked out his window to see a three-meter-long, three-headed hydra raising its head to regard the car, and Elijah inside of it, curiously. Above the strange creature’s head hovered the words Hydra Hatchling Level 12.

He was immediately awake.

For all that his first response to being kicked out by his uncle was to go to a national park and camp, Elijah didn’t have much appreciation for the natural world and its wonders. So he rubbed his eyes just to be sure he wasn’t hallucinating and then tumbled forward into the front seat of his car. After twisting until his feet were in the right positions, he started the engine and put the car in reverse. His sedan twisted backward so the front of the car was pointing toward the bewildered Hydra Hatchling.

The monster’s Level ticked upward to 13 just as Elijah stretched his short legs as far as he could, pressing the gas pedal into the floor. The wheels screeched and then the car lurched forward, slightly to the right of the monster so Elijah had to swerve his charge back on target. The thing released a horrible screech as he thumped across its body. Elijah was panting.

Congratulations! You have learned the Skill Machinery Proficiency Lvl 1!

Congratulations! You have learned the Skill Vehicle Force (R) Lvl 1!

Congratulations! You have learned the Skill Burst of Acceleration (Un) Lvl 1!

Elijah decided that he quite liked the feeling of running over animals. But he quickly realized that most of the Hydra Hatchlings in the surrounding area were farther along in their growth than the Level 13 variant he had just crushed. Leaving the parking lot earned him a lot of negative press; Elijah had to conclude that the others could smell the first one’s blood on his wheels. Luckily, an exploratory force from Zone 1 discovered him fleeing in his car from a rampaging Level 39 Hydra Adolescent and rescued him.

From there, his skill with interviews quickly landed him a position working in drone production in one of the larger cities in Zone 1. Which, while enjoyable, didn’t leave Elijah quite as fulfilled as the pulse-pounding high-speed chases he had briefly experienced. He would spend long nights tipping back cheap beer and remembering that rush of speed. Without noticing it, he began an adrenaline junky. He started staying in the factory after the assembly line shut down, tinkering with the spare metal pieces and building the prototypes for his skybikes.

His hobby rapidly consumed him. And with the advent of the System, his early high-speed crashes weren’t nearly as fatal as they had been in the past.

However, he soon encountered a problem; a lot of the valuable materials he wanted to use in his bike assembly required citizenship in Zone 1 to purchase. Without signing away several years of his life, his company would refuse to sponsor his bid for citizenship. And without an established sponsor backing him, even as a native to Expira, it took years to have your application even reviewed.