The System Gave Everyone Superpowers

Three massive shapes crashed through the snowy brush, kicking up a cloud of white powder.

They were sabertooth tigers. These were high-tier System constructs, built to challenge Level 100 heroes. They were incredibly fast.

"I've got the middle one!" Mai yelled. "Painter, take the left! Seasons, stay back!"

Before the middle tiger could reach her, Mai waved her hand. A circular portal snapped open in the air right in front of the charging beast. The tiger leaped straight into it and vanished. A second later, another portal opened thirty feet in the air, pointing downward. The tiger shot out of it headfirst, crashing into a frozen boulder and shattering into pixels.

On the left, the second tiger lunged at Koda.

Koda's pencil flew across his board. In seconds, he sketched an iron-scaled hound.

The drawing glowed with a bright white light, popped off the page, and materialized into the real world. The snarling hound leaped forward, locking its jaws around the sabertooth's neck. The two beasts crashed into the snow, tearing at each other.

But the third tiger had circled around the flank. It ignored Mai and Koda, its eyes locked onto me.

It charged.

"Seasons, dodge!" Mai shouted from across the clearing. She reached her hand out, trying to open a portal in front of it, but she was too far away. The construct was moving too fast.

I looked closely at the tiger as it sprinted toward me. Its legs were connected by ice joints. The ice was what kept its limbs moving.

Burn.

Cost: 5 BP.

I focused the 500-degree heat onto a highly concentrated spot: the ice joints of the tiger's front legs.

The effect was instant.

The ice joints melted into water. The tiger, running at full speed, suddenly had no front legs. Its chest slammed into the ground. Its momentum carried it forward, plowing a deep trench in the snow before sliding to a halt right at my feet.

The frontless construct thrashed, its tail whipping back and forth, but it couldn't stand up.

I slowly pulled my right hand out of my pocket. I brought my foot down hard on the tiger's head.

[Construct Defeated. +200 XP]

A few yards away, Koda’s hound finished off the second tiger. The hound dissolved back into a cloud of smoke, flowing back into Koda’s sketchbook.

Mai walked over to me.

"You melted its joints," she said. "Most Emitters would have blasted it."

"Blast it?" I said. "That sounds like a lot of energy. Melting it was much easier."

Koda walked over to us, his pencil scratching against his paper again. He looked at me, then turned his sketchbook around.

The drawing of my melted head had been erased. In its place was a sketch of me standing in the snow, with a dead tiger at my feet.

"See?" I smiled at him. "I told you you were a real artist."

"Don't get cocky," Mai muttered, turning back toward the forest. "That was just the first wave. We still have seventy-one hours left."

The wind howled louder, turning the forest into a blinding sheet of white.

"We need to keep moving," Mai said. "The constructs will spawn faster in the deep valley. If we want to secure the top score, we need to hunt them."

"You can hunt them if you want," I said. "I’m not freezing my ass off for some extra XP."

"We're here to win, Seasons!" Mai yelled. "This is a Brand evaluation. If we just sit around, we’ll look like cowards on the final report."

"We win by surviving the longest," I pointed out. "We don't survive by getting hypothermia. Besides, there are no camera drones here, remember? Nobody is watching us."

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Mai bit her lip, looking frustrated. She raised her hand, her fingers glowing with light as she tried to open a portal. But the swirling snow was too thick. She couldn't see more than five feet in front of her.

"Damn it," she muttered, lowering her hand. "My portals require a visual target. In this blizzard, I can't see where I'm opening them. We’re blind."

"I'm not," I said.

I pushed a wave of air pressure out into the storm. It was like a radar. I felt the air pressure push against the trunks of the trees, then against the stone of the mountain cliffs nearby. Fifty yards to our left, the pressure suddenly dropped.

A hollow space.

Cost: 2 BP. My pool went down to 288/295.

"There's a cave," I said, opening my eyes and pointing into the white-out. "Fifty yards that way, hidden behind the ledge."

Mai looked at me. "How can you possibly know that?"

"Air pressure," I shrugged. "Science. Now let's get out of the wind."

I led the way, keeping my warm bubble of air active around my suit. Mai and Koda followed close behind, using my footsteps to navigate the deep snow.

Sure enough, we rounded a stone ledge and found the entrance to a cave. We scrambled inside, escaping the worst of the wind.

The cave was warmer, but it was damp. Mai slumped against a rock, her teeth chattering. Even with her stats, the fifty percent pain feedback made the damp cold feel miserable. Koda sat on a nearby boulder, immediately opening his sketchbook and sharpening his pencil.

I walked to the mouth of the cave. I raised my hand and slightly increased the pressure across the entrance, creating an invisible wall of air to block the wind from blowing inside.

Cost: 3 BP.

Then, I focused on the air inside the cave. I manually raised the temperature.

Cost: 2 BP. My pool was at 283/295.

Within seconds, the damp chill vanished. Mai stopped shivering. She looked around the cave, then stared at me.

"You're holding a pressure barrier and heating a three-hundred-square-foot cave?" she asked. "How much BP are you burning to maintain this?"

"Five points," I said, leaning my back against the wall.

"Five?" she repeated, her eyes wide. "For both? That's impossible."

"I'm efficient," I said. "I don't use big flashy spells. I just manipulate the exact pockets of air I need. It saves energy."

Mai sat back against the rock, sighing as she finally warmed up.

In the corner, Koda was watching us. He began to draw.

In less than ten seconds, he turned the page toward us. On the paper was a drawing of a rustic stone fireplace crackling with warm embers.

The drawing glowed with light. It popped off the page and materialized in the center of the cave. A stone hearth appeared, radiating a cozy heat without producing any smoke.

I chuckled. "Nice. Now I don't even have to hold the heat. Thanks, painter."

I canceled my temperature trick, saving myself two BP. The invisible wind door was still active, but with Koda's stone hearth keeping us warm, we had the perfect shelter.

"We survive like this for three days," I said, closing my eyes to take a nap. "Easiest million dollars we’ll ever make."

A few hours passed. Outside, the blizzard raged on, throwing thick sheets of snow against the mountain.

I was lying on my side on a rock, resting my head on my arm, close to falling asleep.

Mai, however, couldn't sit still. She was pacing back and forth near the warmth of the hearth. Every few seconds, she would glance out at the cave entrance, then stare at me.

"You're actually going to sleep," she said.

"That's the plan," I muttered. "Sleeping passes the time. The faster the time passes, the faster we get our million dollars."

"I don't get you, Fawn," Mai said, stopping her pacing. "Your dad is Lavaman. Your mom is Nitrogenic. Your sister is Level 99 and just signed a contract with Forbe. You have one of the most powerful Blessings in the country. Why are you acting like a lazy parasite?"

I opened one eye. "A parasite? That's a bit harsh."

"It's the truth," she snapped, stepping closer. "You got a contract with Brand just because you made some pretty lights on camera during the evaluation. Do you have any idea what I had to do to hit Level 105?"

She pulled back the sleeve of her suit. Her wrist was covered in faint scars.

"I didn't have rich parents to buy me Private Zone passes," Mai said. "I spent six years in the outer districts. I fought sludge monsters in the sewers and constructs in abandoned factories. I almost died twice. I bled for every single level. And you just walk in, wear a shiny gold suit, and get everything handed to you."

I sat up slowly and leaned against the wall.

"I didn't ask for the gold suit," I said. "My parents cut me off financially. They wanted me to be their legacy, but I failed out of the Metropolitan Academy. I only took the HRC exam because my landlord was going to throw my stuff on the street."

Mai frowned. "So you're just doing this for the money?"

"I'm doing this for security, comfort, and to be left the fuck alone," I said. "The System is corrupt. The HRC is corrupt. Brand is corrupt. I'm just playing their game so I can sleep in a warm bed and never have to sweep a gas station floor again."

Koda looked up from his drawing board. He tapped his pencil against the wood, catching our attention and turned the page toward us.

On the paper, Koda had drawn a simple balance scale. On one side of the scale was a gold coin. On the other side was a single drop of blood. The scale was perfectly even.

"Exactly," I said, pointing at the sketch. "The System doesn't care about hard work or fairness, Mai. It just cares about contracts and numbers. You fought for your levels. I smiled for mine. In the end, Brand paid us both."

The air at the entrance shimmered.

Mai dropped into a combat stance. "What is that?"

I stood up and looked at my Status Screen. The health of my pressure barrier was dropping.

"Seeker constructs," I said, sighing. "The System doesn't like campers. If we stay in one spot for too long during an evaluation, it spawns trackers to flush us out."

Through the snow outside the cave, several pairs of red eyes appeared in the dark.

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