Broken Anomaly

Eric was slowly regaining consciousness, pain still present throughout his body, the worst one being the pulsing pain coming from within his chest. He opened his eye and felt a stinging pain, as if he was seeing the morning sun, but he was only seeing the floor. He shut his eyes tightly in response to the pain. He was face down on the floor, he moved both of his arms, feeling the floor and raised his torso, sitting up. Without standing up, he felt around and moved himself toward the counter and rested his back against it.

After a moment of rest, he opened his eye again, the stinging pain having dulled. He was about to get up but decided to rest some more; he dozed off and fell asleep. By the time he woke up he felt better than before. His head felt clearer this time around, finally shifting his attention to the system messages that demanded his attention.

Congratulations. You have broken out of the System’s guidance. Welcome Breaker.

You have earned the title: Breaker.

Warning! Your core contains too much energy!

He first opened his titles to see what breaker was about.

Breaker (S): You have discovered a way to strengthen yourself without guidance. You can no longer gain experience through the System. You can no longer learn skills through the System. You can no longer gain titles that affect your stats. All other title effects are doubled.

“Fuck! Did I just screw myself over?” he said out loud as he checked his other titles.

Solo delver. First clear. Anomaly. Dungeon runner. Breaker.

Most of his titles were okay, the only title that was affected was Tireless fighter, it was completely removed from his title list. If he remembered correctly, the title gave a boost to both strength and constitution if he fought while tired. He started to think about the effects of his remaining titles, First clear and Dungeon runner have an effect on dungeon rewards but Solo delver has an effect on skill proficiency. Are skills not affected by st—.

Before he could finish his thought, he felt a huge surge of pain from every node all at once. He then felt them settle down, the pain was still there but significantly diminished. The pain in his core remained unchanged. After a moment of rest and having recovered a bit from the shock, he brought up his title list again and selected each of them.

Solo delver (F): You have cleared all the monsters in a dungeon by yourself. Your progress in dungeons receives a small boost. Can be strengthened.

First clear (C): First dungeon clear in your new world. You earn double the rewards when clearing a dungeon.

Anomaly (S): You are immune to external influences. Progress is moderately faster while against higher level foes. Recovery effects are substantially more effective.

Dungeon runner (F): You have cleared the same dungeon multiple times. You have a slight chance of earning the dungeon reward. Can be strengthened.

“Some effects were changed, none of them mention stats anymore,” he said. He clicked his tongue as he realized something. “Didn’t even notice how much vitality I had with Anomaly.” With his stats still in his mind, he brought his stat window. Up until this point he had purposefully avoided looking at his stats for fear of what he might see, but now that the pain had settled down, he realized he felt better than before, way better, he even had his left arm back.

Eric Aguilar

Mana 100/100

Rank F

Level 8

Experience 5677/2025

Stats

Vitality 21

Endurance 33

Strength 25

Dexterity 20

Constitution 22

Agility 20

Perception 22

Charisma 15

Intelligence 20

Wisdom 20

Stat points 7

Skill points 0

Skills +

Concepts -

Titles +

Magic –

“What is this? What happened?” Eric exclaimed; he was beyond confused when looking at his status window. It didn’t make sense, he had gained 10 points in each stat, that was around 10 levels worth of stats if you included the 2 free points. But even more astonishing was the experience, it was more than double what was required to reach the next level. What would happen if he killed something in his current state? Would the experience points continue to overflow, forever barring him from reaching the next level? Could he even gain experience, because according to his new title, he couldn’t.

“That can’t be right. The System even gave me a title for doing what I did, and it even congratulated me. Unless it was mocking me, I don’t think my current condition is as bad as I think,” Eric started to analyze his situation from a positive point of view. “The experience overflow could be because that’s what’s currently in my core, hence the pain, it was containing twice as much as it should. And the pain in my nodes could be because they were forcefully fed energy.”

Eric finally decided to get up and as he did so, he caught a glimpse of his reflection on the glass window and saw that he was covered in red stains, all of which were blood. He grabbed some water bottles, went into the kitchen, got some rags and started cleaning himself with the wet rags. He didn’t know what time it was, but the sun was pretty high up, he had to hurry if he was going to get back to his friends before the timer on the safe zone ran out.

Now cleaner and without the ability to think deeper about his situation without getting interrupted by the pain, he grabbed his weapons and walked upstairs to clear the remaining spiders. As he climbed the stairs, only one thought was present in his mind: Life has never been more interesting.

The first thing Eric noticed as he thrust his makeshift spear, was that it was considerably easier to gather enough strength to pierce and kill a spider. It was a combination of both his new stats and having his left arm available to him again. His left arm allowed him to attack from a more stable stance and from that stable stance, he could generate more power with every single attack he made.

Even before his recent change, he was already at a level that killing 5 spiders was no longer a problem, now it was a breeze to clear the room of spiders. At least the spiders that were within this dungeon, Eric suspected that this was some kind of beginner dungeon and that because of that, it wasn’t that hard to get used to killing the enemies within.

As he was too busy killing the spiders, he had not had enough time to look at his status screen. But now that he was done, he saw that he had leveled up without a problem. He even gained more stats then he should’ve. Is the leveling not part of the System? How did I even level up? he asked himself. The pain in his core was alleviated but the pain in his energy nodes still remained, subdued as it was. Little by little, the things that had occurred when he moved mana into his core, started to make sense. The pain came from too much mana, it was so much that it forcefully sent some to each energy node, even now he could feel how both his nodes and core were strained to some degree.

He had previously felt his core grow and contain more energy with each level up, but what about his energy nodes. Strength was already at 23 before I absorbed the mana and it didn’t cause pain, so why did the stats that reached their 20’s cause pain? He was certain that he was still missing something, he just didn’t have the time or the correct mentality to think about it any further.

“No point in dwelling. Let’s consider it a head start,” he told himself as he reached for a door.

-----------------

Alex made it back to the safe zone, and fell to the ground, he turned to have his back against the ground and started breathing in a more controlled manner, in an attempt to catch his breath. The people that saw him arrive got nervous just by looking at him, it didn’t seem like he went for a jog, it seemed like he ran for his life. They shifted their gaze to the direction he had come from, but the trees were still calm, and nothing could be heard, what could’ve gotten Alex so agitated?

Alex finally got up and asked the closest person where Stella was, and they pointed him towards the second floor. As he walked towards the building, he saw that Tony and his group were randomly installing the spikes at various points within the safe zone, he walked to Tony and pointed toward the parking lot. “That way. They’re in the parking lot.” Having said that, he walked into the building to look for Stella.

Tony was contemplating what Alex had told him. If the monsters really were coming from the direction of the parking lot, maybe he could make some stuff to hinder their advance. No, it’s too late, time is almost up, it would take hours to make anything that was actually useful. He let all ideas of what to do go, he didn’t have time, he would just do what he could and that was to finish installing the spikes. However, he did shift his placement of the spikes and focused more heavily on the defense of the building, instead of them being spread out all around it.

Stella was currently with Hilda, the cooking lady that Eric had rescued, eating some cup noodles and talking about random stuff, indulging in a feeling of normalcy that had evaded her the last couple of days.

“Stella, come on, we need to talk,” Alex said, seemingly coming from nowhere. He didn’t stop walking and only called out to Stella as he walked toward where he knew Marcus was. Stella put down her cup noodles and left, following behind him. Alex and Stella both arrived at the same time to the room Marcus was in. Marcus was still working when they came in and only glanced at both of them before returning to what he was doing.

“What’s going on? You look nervous,” Stella said.

“There’s another one of those monsters out there, like the one that’s at admin,” said Alex, trying to sound as calm as possible.

“What?!”

“And that’s not the worst part. Hundreds of barghest have gathered in the parking lot. I think the big one is in charge of all them.”

“Did it look like they were gathering to attack or were they just together, maybe for some other reason?”

“How am I supposed to know that?”

“Sorry,” Stella said as she calmed herself. “Was it really hundreds of barghest or were they so many that you couldn’t count?”

“I would say that there were at least one hundred of them,” Alex said as he finally got a chance to think about what he had seen.

“That’s still too much considering we only have about 10 fighters total,” Stella said, mentally going over the list of people she knew could fight.

“We don’t have an option. We should go talk to everyone and prepare.”

Alex and Stella both left the room leaving Marcus alone once more. Marcus lifted a device the size of a phone but with phone batteries seemingly glued on to it in a very crude manner. It was very similar to the bombs he had used while clearing the dungeon, only slightly bigger.

“This should be of help,” he said as started working on another one.

--------------------

The anxiety of everyone in the building had only grown over the last two days. The monsters that were within the building and the big one outside, were a contributing factor. When the first System windows appeared, they had been walking around the school, showing potential new students and their parents around the university campus. The shock and confusion that took over them when the shaking began was visible as they all looked around, trying to find safety. Luckily one of the professors that was nearby got everyone to calm down, sadly the calm lasted about two minutes before he was attacked and eaten by monsters. The shaking had not stopped, but everyone wanted to protect themselves from the man-eating monsters that had started to roam the school grounds and went into the nearest building.

Once inside the building, most of the people that were frightened had calmed down, almost in parallel with the shaking that was going on. After some time, one of the parents tried to open and door and leave but stopped when he saw a huge figure standing in front of the door. It was facing away but its very presence stopped them from even thinking of going outside. Whatever calm the people inside the building had mustered, vanished once they too saw the huge monster.

Chaos erupted further when they got a window notifying them of monsters within the building. Some wanted to run, while others stopped them from getting near the door. Everyone was grouped up in the lobby area when they heard the first scream coming from down the hallway, some tried running way, soon hitting the wall, while others turned and looked towards the hallway. Standing in the hallway was a well-dressed older woman, she seemed to have been working in the building when everything began, she was pointing into a small office while she screamed. As some of the others walked towards her, to check what she was seeing, they themselves started to see the same thing, 5 giant rats biting and destroying everything within some of the offices.

Only one person made it all the way to the screaming women and saw what she was pointing at, it was also a group of 5 rats destroying an office. On their way towards the screaming women, they had noticed that only the closed offices had rats within them, while the ones that were open or had people inside, didn’t have giant rats. They walked back and looked inside every office, as if searching for something, eventually showing happiness at finding a utility knife and some scissors in a drawer. They walked back to the group in the lobby, specifically towards a tall highschooler that was there to tour the school.

“You’re Ed, right?” They asked.

Edward was a highschooler that was only touring the school as a formality, both his parents had gone here. It was also the only school that had offered him a sports scholarship while also taking his interest in physics seriously, instead of as a joke, like the others had. Before him stood a woman, a head shorter then him, with brown eyes so dark that they seemed to be black, matching her long black hair. He recognized her as one of the tour guides, though he didn’t know her name because he arrived a bit late.

“You’re Ed. Right!?” she said, more firmly this time.

“Uh, sorry. Yes, why?” he answered, slightly flustered.

“You scared of rats, Ed?”

“No, not really.”

“How ‘bout big ones, like really big ones?”

“I don’t know, how big are they?” said Ed, showing a slight bit of worry.

“Well, we’re about to find out, grab that chair and follow me,” she said while pointing at a chair with someone sitting on it.

“There’s som—” Ed was cut off mid-sentence.

“That your problem Ed. Meet me down the hallway,” she said as she took a few steps before turning around and adding, “with the chair.”

Ed turned around and looked at the older man sitting on the chair that he was told to bring. He didn’t have the slightest idea as to how to get the man to give him the chair. The man seemed completely undisturbed by what was going on around him as he fanned himself with a magazine. As Ed started to walk towards the man, he asked himself why he was doing this. He didn’t know the woman, so why should he do as she asked? He didn’t know her name, though he really wanted to, not because of her looks, it was the attitude she had just shown him. An attitude that said that things would always go her way, not in some “I’m the main character sort of way” but because she would make them go her way, one way or another.

Before Ed could question his motives any further, he stood before the sitting old man and started talking to him. “Excuse me, can I, uh, borrow your chair for a bit?” he asked, with as much politeness in his voice as he could muster.

“What for?” the old man responded, slightly curious.

Ed turned around, trying to find the women and indicate that she had asked for it. But she was gone.

“Are you looking for someone, young man?” the old man asked.

“One of the tour guides asked me to bring the chair to her.”

“Black hair, dark eyes?”

“Yes, how did y—" Before he could finish his question, the old man was already up and handing him the chair.

“We already have enough problems. Go, take it to her and be careful.”

As Ed walked towards the woman standing at the end of the hallway. He insulted himself for not asking the old man for the woman’s name, he clearly knew her. As he reached her, she started speaking.

“You did it Ed. I knew I could trust you. Now look at the rats.” She said while pointing into the office in front of her.

“What the!!” That was all Ed said after looking at the giant rats within the office.

“Here’s the plan Ed. I’ll open the door and you, with the chair, will stop the rats from getting out. Good?”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll kill them,” she answered without a single hint of hesitation or doubt in her voice.