Leveling Up: Now With 100% More Stabbing!

Alex appeared floating in space. Galaxies spun in the distance. Quasars were born. Stars twinkled in and out of existence, and a nearby nebula faintly lit the scene.

Alex's wounds were fully healed. His clothes were still ripped, torn, and bloody, which didn't look as cool as he would've liked.

Alex wasn't looking from his perspective. He was looking at himself as if he were a character in a video game, which he kind of was. Maybe not a video game, but a game nonetheless.

His body had idle animations. As Alex watched himself, he made a suave, squinty-eyed look to his right, and then he made finger guns to his left. He looked down at his body like he was really impressed with himself, and then he brushed his hand through his dark hair and looked off into the distance in a cool way.

Was he really that much of a douche bag? He guessed he needed to dial down his sense of self-importance because those idle animations were not a good look. That, or Ludos was just making fun of him.

There was a panel to the right of Alex's 'character' labeled:

[Current abilities]

[Skill Creation]

[Always Prepared]

[Dual Targeting: Allows the user to target two different locations, objects, or people with the same skill]

Alex wondered when he got the Dual Targeting ability. Maybe it was something inherent to the Psion class.

A panel to the left said:

[Meh Level-Up Rewards]

There was a 'next' button. Alex clicked it. The screen changed.

[Your stats are now Meh]

Alex clicked the 'next' button again. The screen changed again.

[New class action: Psionic Surge]

[Psionic Surge: Once per short rest, temporarily boost one of your core class skills. This empowers all sub-skills. It also empowers combined skills with the core class skill as one of the base skills, but to a lesser extent]

Alex's 'character' made a new animation where his eyes glowed blue and an aura of blue psionic energy glowed around his body.

Alex clicked the 'next' button again.

[New class feature]

[Psionic Multitasking]

[Psionic Multitasking: allows the user to concentrate on two different psionic skills simultaneously, each for a distinct purpose]

Alex's 'character' made a pose like he was concentrating.

Alex clicked 'next'.

[Choose three new class skills]

There was a grid of different symbols that, when he focused on them, would produce a name and description of the skill. Some he recognized when he chose his first three skills during character creation, and some were new.

The old ones were labeled as noob-level skills, and the new ones were labeled as meh-level skills. The screen informed Alex he could now use noob-level skills at the meh power level.

The noob skills were: [Pyrokinesis, Cryokinesis, Electrokinesis, and Astral Projection]

The meh skills were: [Psychometry, Force Field Generation, Psionic Healing, and Emotion Control]

[Pyrokinesis: Fire and heat generation and control]

[Cryokinesis: Ice and cold generation and control]

[Electrokinesis: Electricity generation and control]

[Astral Projection: Project one's consciousness/astral form outside the body]

[Psychometry: Read object or location history through touch]

[Force Field Generation: Generate and control force fields]

[Psionic Healing: Healing using psychic energy]

[Emotion Control: Generate and control emotions]

Alex wasn't sure what to choose. There were so many good options and he could only choose three. After much deliberation, Alex chose Force Field Generation, Psionic Healing, and Emotion Control.

When he chose these three options, Alex's 'character' went through a series of animations trying to represent each ability, but he chose them so quickly that the animations jerked and glitched so it just looked like he was shaking uncontrollably.

Alex hit 'next'.

[Do you want to swap out any of your skills?]

Hmm. This must mean he could lose access to a current core skill in exchange for gaining access to a different skill. That was useful. It would allow him to replace skills he didn't use often. He didn't need to do that yet, though. All of his previous skills had proven very useful.

A new button sat in place of 'next'. It read 'finish'. Alex clicked it. A message popped up on the screen.

[Are you satisfied with your choices?]

[Yes] [No]

Alex clicked 'yes'. Another message popped up.

[You will be sent back to your original location, but fully healed, standing up, and all enemies will be pushed back to ten feet away from you]

"Ok," Alex said. "Let's do this."

Alex appeared back in the warehouse, standing in a pool of blood. The two guys who had practically stabbed him to death were standing ten feet away, nursing wounds on their arms where he had stabbed them in retaliation.

"Hey! We killed you! I think," one of the men said. "You're supposed to die when we kill you."

"Well, we'll see who kills who this time," Alex said. Alex considered himself sufficiently pushed over the edge at this point. He was ready to defend himself like his life depended on it, because it did. He was ready to kill.

Alex started by pulling up a force field around him. Then he started creating a new skill, while the two men lunged at him. They tried to stab him but their knives went tink, tink, tink, against his force field.

The skill he was working on combined force field generation and telekinesis. First, he shaped a small force field into the shape of a small spike.

[New skill created: Spike]

Then he applied telekinetic force to it to shoot it forward as a projectile.

[New skill created: Telekinetic Spike]

The forcefield spikes themselves could also be combined with the telekinetic conduit.

[New skill created: Homing Spike]

Alex created two spikes in front of him and shot them into the chests of the two men pathetically attacking his forcefield. They each staggered back, holding their chests in agony.

Alex wasn't done though. He burrowed them deeper and deeper until they came out the other side. The men fell to the ground and didn't move much after that.

Alex turned around and walked in the direction he was going before he was so brutally murdered. He took a right and a left and he was on the other side of the maze of crates.

He quickly looked around for an exit door. There was one just twenty feet away. Alex made it to the door no problem. Everyone was stuck in the maze still.

As soon as the door closed behind him, Alex got kicked hard in the side. It sent him sprawling across the sand.

He started to get up to see a knee headed right at his face. Alex instantly activated his forcefield. The knee impacted the forcefield, making the glowing blue surface ripple slightly.

Alex slowly got up and saw Tony. He looked furious. Alex couldn't imagine why. It wasn't like he'd destroyed nuclear codes that Tony was going to use to ransom the city. Oh, wait. He did do that.

Alex got into a fighting stance with his daggers and realized he wouldn't be able to stab through the forcefield. But if he made the forcefield tight to his skin, he could hold the daggers on the outside of his forcefield.

[New skill created: Second Skin]

Holding a dagger in each hand, Alex did his best to tap into the additional dexterity provided to him by the game. He had been using it all this time, but he couldn't tell what it was doing because he was still slower than his enemies.

Alex made the first move. He dashed in and tried to slash at Tony's chest while coming in low with a gut stab with his other hand. Tony grabbed both his wrists.

Alex struggled to break free from Tony's grip but he couldn't. Tony was just too strong.

And then Alex realized what it was. It wasn't that his stats weren't working. It was that the Purple Platypuses were that much stronger and faster.

He didn't know how he was getting out of this. Even with a straight-up forcefield, he could only do so much. He couldn't out run Tony. He'd just be walking around with Tony trying to get through his forcefield the whole time.

If only there was a way to get Tony away from him. Alex realized he hadn't used emotion control yet. He figured he'd try fear. That might do the trick, right?

Alex concentrated on exuding fear. Tony suddenly dropped Alex's wrists and ran away, clearly terrified. He got about fifty feet away before the effect wore off, and Tony wondered why he ran away in the first place.

[New skill created: Wave of Fear]

Then he started walking towards Alex again. He got about twenty feet away from Alex, and then his face adopted a look of terror, and he ran away again.

Then, when he hit fifty feet away, it wore off, and Tony started walking towards Alex again.

Ok, that wasn't going to work. Alex needed a different solution. He'd try the spike method. Now that Alex had gotten Tony far enough away, he might actually be able to hit him.

The next time Tony was fifty feet away, Alex turned off the emotion control and attached two telekinetic conduits to Tony's chest. Then he sent two spikes flying along the conduits, hoping to hit Tony.

Tony noticed the two light blue glowing spikes and dodged out of the way just as they were about to hit him. The spikes missed and went past him, but they turned around and kept following him along the conduits.

Tony ran and dodged until he got back to Alex and punched the force field as hard as he could. The punch was so hard that the forcefield couldn't dissipate all the force, and Alex went flying.

When he got up, Alex noticed cracks in the forcefield, and his daggers were nowhere to be found. They were repairing themselves, but it wasn't fast enough. Tony had already caught up to Alex.

Tony grabbed Alex and used him as a human shield against the spikes. The spikes stabbed into Alex's forcefield and shattered it. The spikes stabbed lightly into Alex's chest and disappeared when Alex deactivated them.

This was going to be much harder than Alex initially thought. Alex struggled but managed to break out of Tony's grip. Alex stumbled forward and turned around.

"You may be tough, kid, but you're not invincible. Smiles and giggles, hugs and knives," Tony said, pointing at Alex. "This Purple Platypus will take your life."

Tony's eyes were glowing purple, and purple smoke was seeping out of nearly invisible seams in his skin. His crown of hair turned purple. He wasn't entirely human, and he looked like he was powering up.