Sanchez sighed internally as he listened to yet another update from the political and economic section head that amounted to “we don’t know anything about what’s going on, we don’t have communication with Washington, and any surviving members of the government we can find don’t want to have anything to do with us.”

  David Brinker, the ranking diplomat in the room, pounded the desk with his fist in a rare show of anger.

  “We have got to figure out a way to make contact with State Department leadership! Is anyone here close to reaching level 10 yet?”

  “I’m level 6,” the acting public affairs chief said, raising her hand. “I’ve been going out at night and hitting rats with a club I found.”

  David frowned.

  “Well, as long as you don’t leave the compound, I guess that’s all right. But be careful…we are already short staffed as it is.”

  Raul choked down the urge to ask why it mattered if they were short staffed if there was nothing to do. Instead, he opened his status and read the description of his new class.

  The only thing that Raul was disappointed about when it came to his new class was that he didn’t get any additional points of Special from his class, but otherwise he felt that the class suited him perfectly. He had received a class skill that went along with his class and synergized perfectly with his Special Ability, Not Exactly Street Legal.

  The Crafting skill, as far as the young diplomat could tell, was a catch all skill for making items from weapons to alchemical substances. The effect on the weapons and armor that he was constantly working on had been easy to understand, but the other uses of the crafting skill were much harder to quantify. However, he did have at least one data point. He had been helping Sam, one of the other diplomats his age, with a brewing a batch of wine. After receiving and leveling up the skill, he noticed that he was able to suggest small improvements to the process that he had no way of knowing based on his actual experience: it was the skill feeding him competence. Regardless, Sam was pleasantly surprised and had promised him a larger share of the wine, once it was ready.

  No one, it turned out, was any higher than level 6 throughout the Embassy staff. Well, Raul was pretty sure some of the local staff, who had been told they no longer needed to come to work, had probably gotten their classes, since they didn’t have the luxury of hiding in what was still a fairly secure building and eating emergency rations. For a moment, Raul wondered if he should suggest that all remaining staff be allowed Weather and Safety Leave, but the idea felt so absurd he went back to thinking about his class.

  As the meeting broke up, Raul filed out of the conference room and made his way down the hall, exiting the controlled access area of the Embassy. Once again, he bit back a biting remark about one of David’s policies, instead retrieving the weapons he had been forced to abandon in order to access the staff meeting. He was already wearing his armor, which he had recently upgraded to a plate carrier with steel inserts modified to provide some additional protection to his limbs, and a level III ballistic helmet, which he randomly found tucked away in a supply closet. Grabbing his newly-sharpened machetes, his spear, and his long knife, he started to stash them in various places on his body, ready to be grabbed at a moment’s notice. The shield that he used to carry around had been abandoned in favor of a two-weapon fighting style, as Chip had said that extra offense was a defense all of its own. The lion wasn’t exactly wrong, but if Raul had been able to keep up with the great cat while carrying the shield, he wouldn’t have ditched it so willingly.

  “What do you think you’re doing,” a voice from behind Raul boomed. The young man turned around to find David standing behind him, wearing a rumpled suit that frankly made the man look ridiculous.

  “I was about to go out hunting,” Raul said, tired of hiding and certain that no one in the Embassy could stop him. More than that, he was reasonably optimistic that most of the officers would support him, especially since he started making weapons and armor for anyone who wanted them.

  “That is against the security directive issued by our regional security officer and approved by none other than myself as chargé d'affaires. Do you want to be sent back to Washington when this is all over?” David puffed, getting red in the face as he raised his voice.

  “I would very much like to be sent back. Can you arrange it?” Raul responded, his heart pumping in response to the confrontation but his mind somehow still sharp despite the adrenaline rushing though him.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “You…you just wait. You’re on my list!” the other man thundered, turning around and heading back toward the Ambassador’s office. Raul finished stowing his weapons with steady hands, looking calm on the outside but still replaying the short conversation inside his head. Although no one else spoke to him, he could see approval in the eyes of several officers who had witnessed him stand up to David.

  Despite what he had just said, Raul actually went to his workshop first, wanting to try out an idea that had come to him during the meeting. On the way there, he stopped and grabbed a metal lattice from the warehouse that had caught his eye previously. Pulling out one of his machetes, the young man painstakingly clipped apart the metal with a heavy-duty bolt-cutter. He then took a few hasty measurements of the weapon’s handle and marked the metal with a permanent marker before moving to the next step. Shaping the pieces of the lattice with painstaking care, he wrapped it around the handle of the machete to form a rudimentary basket hilt, giving him some sorely-needed hand protection. Grimacing as he worked, he remembered the enormous feral squirrel that almost took off his finger with a single bite while he was hacking at it.

  As he put the finishing touches on the basket hilt, wishing that he had access to electricity so that he could properly weld the metal together, Raul felt both the machete and his ability to handle it improve. The upgrade had worked! The young man waited to see if his class skill would improve due to his success, but the skill seemed like it would be difficult to level up, even with constant work.

  Satisfied the changes he had made to the machete, Raul made his way outside. This time, he didn’t bother sneaking out as he normally did, instead pushing the heavy external door open and squinting against the bright sunlight. After checking for any immediate threats, Raul set out at a good pace for Chip’s den, which was basically an enormous pile of cardboard boxes that the lion had dragged down into the basement of a liquor store, where the proprietor had taken advantage of the cooler air below ground to save on air conditioning costs. Checking the sun’s position, the former diplomat picked up the pace: he had promised Chip that he would meet up with the lion once the meeting was over and he was already running a bit behind.

  “Good,” was what Chip had to say when Raul told him about the aftermath of the meeting.

  “I have been wondering when you would realize that your current band of humans was holding you back. You really should be closer to level 20 than level 10 by this point, which is the entire reason I had to come to assist you. But, what can I say? I’m the best at what I do,” the great cat added.

  “I certainly have leveled quite rapidly since you started helping me hunt,” Raul admitted. “But I also get experience from crafting weapons and armor that are to be used in combat. Why haven’t you let me make you some sort of claw extenders, or at least a helmet or something?”

  The lion shook his head, which made him look somewhat ridiculous as the motion extended all the way from his mane to his tail.

  “Your skill is not yet sufficient to craft something that would be worthy of me. I can tell you just made some changes to the pokey thing that you call a ‘machete’. Although I like that you are less likely to get your entire hand bitten off by something as mundane as a giant squirrel, the entire thing is hideous. I would rather die than use something that ugly, if I’m being honest.”

  Raul grimaced.

  “Well, if I actually had real tools to work with, I wouldn’t be reduced to wrapping pieces of an ivy trellis around a weapon just to make a hand guard!” Raul complained. “What type of god is Brett, anyways, if he’s going to let humans build up civilization for five thousand years before plunging us back to the dark ages?”

  “You seem to be awfully comfortable with bad-mouthing your own deity,” the great cat said with a yawn, rising from his bed, which was made out of a mess of pillows and blankets thrown into the largest cardboard box that Raul had ever seen.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Chip added as he stalked out of his den and up the stairs. Raul followed the great cat, and their conversation went on hiatus as the pair hunted in silence while it was still light outside.

  Raul gained two levels that day, mostly due to running into an eagle that had decided that the human was small enough to carry off. As the giant bird made to escape with him in its enormous claws, the human had the presence of mind to stow one of his machetes and switch to his spear, catching the bird through the heart and killing it with one blow. Even Chip had appeared somewhat impressed by the human’s reflexes, which Raul realized was due to his class skill making him better at everything involving the weapon. Still, he accepted the mild praise without comment.

  As the sun started to set, Raul and Chip headed back to their respective shelters. The young man let the lion lead the way, following on autopilot as he checked his latest achievement.

  The bonus to his attributes was nice, but nothing game-changing. Still, Raul pondered on ways to find a list of common achievements. The ones that he had received had already struck him as very random, but the young diplomat thought that surely there must be some sort of logic behind them.

  As the pair neared the lion’s den, Chip suddenly froze up. Raul was instantly on the alert, pulling out his twin machetes and looking around for trouble. As far as he could tell, there was nothing in the area.

  “What’s wrong?” he hissed, trusting in the great cat’s excellent hearing.

  “We have to hurry,” Chip said, not explaining himself further as he began moving again, this time picking up the pace.

  “Wait,” Raul demanded, taking off at a speed greater than a jog but less than a full-blown sprint. “What’s going on?”

  “You’ll know in a second,” was the cryptic response.

  Before Raul could chastise the lion for not providing important context, a notification from the system appeared before his eyes.