The Bloodforged Kin

Tess slapped him lightly on the arm as they funneled into the garage.

"What'd I do?" Zavier said but only got a smile and a shake of her head in return.

"Woah dad, what is this?"

The garage had been transformed. Plywood walls had been put up in front of the large roll-up door, angling inward to a small tunnel. At the end of the tunnel a huge box had been built that went all the way to the ceiling. A wooden skeleton had been built on the outside of the wood, anchoring it firmly against the walls. Tess could see that you'd need to drive a car at full speed to break through these defenses. The box at the end was big enough to hold maybe three of the squirrels, sorry, Scamperers as The System had called them. The box had slits and holes in it just big enough to get an arm through, each lined with strong 2x4s.

"This is called a Kill Box," Zavier said with pride. "We'll open up the garage door and lure them in. Once a couple are in here we'll shut the door and the damned things will be trapped in the kill box. From there we just stab the shit out of them!"

Tess threw him a look.

"We'll stab the crap out of them!" he said with even more enthusiasm. "I don't know how it'll hold up against anything stronger but for now I can see us killing a whole lot of these things."

"What about the bodies?" Tess asked.

"I checked that!" Zavier held up the tablet. "Remember how the other things we killed turned into items?" He tapped on the tablet and pinched it to zoom, then turned it so they could see the folded up fur coat sitting on the ground where the previous Scamperer had died. "Free loot!" he laughed. "Tomorrow we'll be ready for round two!"

They spent a few more minutes admiring the kill box before funneling back inside and into the master bedroom. Zavier and Tess didn't mind, they'd rather the kids sleep in the room with them than be alone in their bedrooms.

"Should we take turns sleeping?" Tess asked.

"Not a bad idea," Zavier said, "but I think the bigger danger is us being tired tomorrow and making a mistake. We're all on such high alert anyway that we'll hear anything that tries to get in. Besides, for now it seems like they only come out in the daytime."

Tess mulled that over then nodded. They cuddled up together, the kids asleep on the floor on beds made of cushions and pillows.

So lost to dreamland were they that none of them heard the light beep of the tablet, or saw the dark, sleek form of a too-large wolf stalking silently out of the woods to circle their house.

The next morning Tess woke with a start and instantly searched for the kids, falling back to the pillow in relief when she saw they were okay.

"Everything okay?" Zavier started awake. Tess snuggled in close to him, letting his arms pull her into his chest.

"It is. We should probably get up though."

Zavier pulled her in closer, laughing when she squeaked. "You're not going anywhere for at least a few more minutes!" They stayed like that, entwined, comfortable, and safe, even after the twins woke up and drifted groggily out of the room.

The sound of kids moving around the house and the nervous excitement for the day didn't let them stay in bed long. Tess slapped Zavier's searching hands away with a wink, sliding out from under his arms and off the bed. "Nice try, Z, but we have too much to do today."

"We could knock the most important thing off the list real quick though!"

She laughed and slapped his foot and she walked past the foot of the bed. "Come on, silly boy, let's get going. The kids are waiting."

Zavier rolled out of bed with a dramatic groan but flashed her a grin. "Love you, babe."

Tess blew him a kiss over get shoulder as she walked out of the room.

Not long after, Zavier had made everyone a breakfast of Potatoes O'Brien with a lot of sausage. He wanted them fully stocked up on meat and carbs because they'd be burning a lot of calories today - safely, if everything went right.

Breakfast finished and cleaned up, Zavier went over the plan again. "I will run outside and make a lot of noise, then run into the house through the front door. You guys will make a lot of noise in the garage until it runs in. I'll shut the garage door behind it and it'll panic and run towards the kill box."

"Won't it try to break through the garage door?" Luna asked.

"It may but I reinforced it with plywood. It may break the guides or hinges but it'd have to destroy the whole thing to get out. Alright, everyone have what they need?"

All of them had the long, metal fence posts that Zavier had ground to sharp points. He'd welded cross bars a foot from the back so that they couldn't be pulled through the openings. The shields were set against one wall so that in the case of an emergency they could run back through the door using the shields as cover. Zavier had also fabricated a wood 'T' that could be wedged on the inside of the door to the house, blocking it from being forced open.

After a final check of everything Zavier scrolled through the tablet screens. They'd turned off the notifications because at this point there was always something out there. He handed it to Tess and she watched him step into the yard.

"Oh no!" she heard him say in a mock, sing-song voice, "I sure hope nothing out here wants to eat me! It'd sure be a shame if something came for me and these huge nu-"

Before he could finish the sentence she heard him banging his way inside and slamming the door shut, the tablet showing two Scamperers sprinting around the corner. They looked confused for a second so she started yelling and banging on the wood paneling. She dropped the tablet on a workbench just as Zavier came rushing into the garage with a big, stupid grin on his face.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"... nuts!" he yelled.

The next ten minutes were a kaleidoscope of claws and teeth on wood, shouts, metal slamming into flesh, and the entire garage vibrating with the impacts of two very angry creatures trapped in a box. After what seemed like hours the notification they were all hoping for came.

"Two Scamperers, Level 1 defeated."

Before they could catch their breath, the tablet beeped again. Another pair burst into the kill box, then another. The work was relentless - thrust, withdraw, thrust again. Zavier's shoulders began to burn after the fourth wave, his improved strength helping but not eliminating the brutal repetition. Luna's fence post developed a slight bend, forcing her to adjust her grip. Cass was switching hands every few minutes to give his arms a break.

By the seventh wave, sweat was pouring down their faces despite the cool morning air. Tess's spear tip had loosened in its mount, wobbling dangerously with each strike. Luna's bent weapon was starting to catch on the wooden slats, slowing her down.

"One more?" Zavier asked hopefully as the latest notification faded.

Tess looked at her damaged weapon, then at the exhausted faces around her. Luna was breathing hard, and even Cass was rolling his shoulders between creatures. "One more and we'll be the ones in the box," she said. "Let's call it."

They all knew she was right.

Blood-drenched spears fell from tired arms. Zavier noted with interest that although the bodies disappeared moments later, they were replaced with folded fur coats.

"How long was that?" Zavier asked breathlessly.

Tess checked the tablet, scrolling back through the feed to see when they arrived. "Damn! Almost an hour and a half!"

Zavier let out a low whistle. "Fourteen kills in ninety minutes. Not bad for a morning's work."

"No way we can keep this pace up much longer," Tess said, shaking her arms to get the blood flowing back into them. "I can barely lift my arms, and this spear's about to fall apart."

"All that yoga and you're running out of gas already?" he teased her.

"Sorry dad, I need to rest," Luna said, examining the bend in her weapon. "This thing's going to snap if I keep using it."

Cass looked okay but he wasn't going to volunteer to do more if Luna couldn't.

"Fair enough," Zavier said. "It was a successful trial run anyway. You guys go inside and rest, I'm going to check out the kill box and make sure it's holding up okay."

They filed inside and Zavier removed one of the panels. The box looked worse on the inside than it had on the outside, blood covering everything. Not even the ceiling had gotten away clean. I'm going to have to cover that light bulb with a grate or something, he thought, remembering how easily it broke the first time. With wood covering the garage it'd be dark as night in here if that light ever got broken.

He walked each inch of the box, looking for any stress points or cracks. He shored up some areas that had buckled more than he'd been comfortable with and fastened down a few screws that had worked themselves out, but overall he was very happy. He picked up the pile of coats and closed everything up before going back inside.

He stepped in to see three bodies already asleep on various furniture. He chuckled to himself at the well-earned naps.

Hours later Zavier was champing at the bit to start again but Tess kept him reigned in. "We don't need to finish this in hours, we can do it in days," she argued. "There's more risk of overextending ourselves than not reaching it quickly enough."

He'd reluctantly agreed and made himself sit, watching random streaming television while letting his mind run. They didn't watch live TV so he had no idea what the news was saying. Instead, he resorted to his Reddit scraper.

The spreadsheet had changed dramatically since yesterday. The newest categories were Death Toll, Creature Types, Regional Breakdowns, and Infrastructure Failures. People had quickly discovered that they could sense their levels, which had put the world in a frenzy of trying to gain levels faster. By gamifying survival The System had ensured that a lot of overconfident people died very quickly, which was reflected in the mounting numbers.

The regional data painted a grim picture. Rural areas across the Midwest were reporting massive livestock die-offs - not from disease, but from coordinated predator attacks. Ranchers in Montana had abandoned entire properties after losing hundreds of cattle to what one survivor described as "wolves the size of horses." In Texas, a ranching family had barricaded themselves in their farmhouse for three days while something circled outside, too large and smart to approach directly.

Cities weren't faring much better. Chicago's subway system had been shut down after reports of "rat swarms" in the tunnels. Videos posted to local subreddits showed glimpses of creatures the size of large dogs moving in coordinated packs through storm drains. Emergency services were overwhelmed, with some precincts going completely dark after their officers stopped reporting in.

The coastal reports were perhaps the most disturbing. A ferry crossing Lake Michigan had simply vanished - radar showed it there one moment, gone the next, with no distress call. Fishermen were posting blurry photos of "shadows under the water" that were far too large to be any known fish. A coast guard cutter had been found drifting empty off the Oregon coast, its deck covered in deep gouges that looked like claw marks.

Reading through the linked subs he saw more stories popping up about stronger creatures, some new ones that hadn't been seen previously, and others being more souped-up versions of what they'd already encountered. But it wasn't just size and strength anymore. Reports were filtering in of environmental anomalies: forests growing overnight into twisted, unnatural shapes. A "glowing storm" in Kansas that had left a perfectly circular area of crystallized earth. A forest fire in Oregon that witnesses claimed was started by "a creature that breathed sparks."

Even more disturbing was what people were doing to each other. "Kill quests" were popping up on local subreddits - people offering cash, supplies, or ammunition for confirmed creature kills, complete with shaky GoPro footage as proof. Some hunters already had fan followings, their highlight reels getting clipped and re-uploaded like sports montages. The gamification was spreading to real life with terrifying speed.

Buried among the memes and panic were darker reports: a small town in Arizona where one survivor claimed their neighbors had been "farmed for XP" by a gang of survivors. A group in Florida that had set up roadblocks, demanding "tribute" from travelers in exchange for safe passage. No concrete proof, but enough similar stories that a pattern was emerging. The monsters outside weren't going to be the only problem.

Infrastructure was beginning to fail in key areas. Power grids were going down as crews abandoned maintenance in dangerous zones. Supply chains were disrupted as truckers refused routes through "creature territory." Several major highways had been officially closed after too many vehicles were found empty and bloody on remote stretches.

Well that's fucking unfair, he thought. The monsters get magic powers and we don't? What kind of fucked up system does that to us?

He had yet to see any credible evidence of anyone gaining level five or achieving any sort of magical abilities. There were plenty of people claiming to be wizards or magic barbarians but all the calls for 'pics or it didn't happen' went unanswered. It really seemed that everyone was making the same steady pace as they were.

Zavier didn't like that. He wanted everyone on the planet to get stronger, but he didn't want his family to fall behind. Hell, he wanted to push ahead and be the strongest people out there. If everyone came up equally that'd put them at the right level to face the monsters, but it never left his mind that they'd soon be facing human monsters. What would happen when they faced someone that had leveled up and was stronger than them?

The world was falling apart faster than he'd expected, and they were still stuck killing squirrels in their garage.