Silence fell.
The aliens stood, looking at the strange barrier between them and their targets. The humans, still alive and unharmed, slowly hiccuped away the last of their tears. Erica stood, too, panting, her throat raw from her desperate scream. The words still hung in her vision.
[Congratulations on activating the System]
As she watched, the words faded away, replaced by another prompt.
[Open System Panel Y/N?]
Y! Definitely Y! What? Erica's thoughts spun in confusion. She had obviously heard of a System before, being a prolific reader of online content as well as physical media, but this seemed too coincidental to be real.
Maybe it is too coincidental? What if I'm in a coma, or hallucinating? She felt herself beginning to spiral, before catching the thoughts. It didn't matter, she decided. What did matter was that she was alive and so were the people around her.
As she was reassuring herself, the text changed again.
[Name: Erica Julie Maynard]
[Age: 22]
[Class: Undefined]
[Level: 0]
[Attributes:
Health: 7
Strength: 5
Spirit: 14
Mind: 14]
[Abilities: Protective Aura (1)]
[Skills: Reading (12), Writing (15), Music (12), Animal Communication (12), Empathy (14), Drawing (10), Cooking (10)]
Erica shook her head in confusion. Weren't skills in System stories usually blank at the beginning? Looking at them, she realised that these 'skills' were things that she had practised or used a lot in her life. She considered herself fairly good at reading and writing, but average at drawing and cooking. Maybe 10 was an average adult human? If that was the case...
She looked back at her stats. Yep. That seems right. She knew she wasn't very strong. She was pretty happy with the Mind and Spirit stats, though! Next, to check out the Class and Abilities tabs.
[Class: Undefined]
[All Classes are Undefined at the moment of activation. The Activator will develop an individual Class based on their direction of growth and development.]
[Ability: Protective Aura (Lv. 1)]
[An ability created by the Activator's strongest desire at the moment of activation. At level 1, Protective Aura creates a spherical energy shield with a radius of 5 metres from the Activator] All beings inside the shield are protected from external damage until the Activator's Willpower is exhausted.]
[Willpower is determined by Mind and Spirit Attributes.]
Thinking about the Class, Erica liked the idea of not being constrained or forced into one path or one narrow growth corridor, although she hoped that once she developed a Class of her own she would get benefits or boosts from it.
The alien leader's eye flared with rage.
"Again! Kill them all!" It rasped. Erica braced herself as the aliens recovered from their surprise and began to fire into the crowd again.
A barrage of light streams collided with the barrier. Each impact felt like a burning needle stabbing into Erica's brain. She hunched over, clutching the sides of her head, and the barrier wavered. Beams of light shot through, quickly followed by sizzling sounds and screams. Erica staggered, stumbling sideways, before planting her feet and concentrating fiercely on the barrier.
I must hold!
She pressed her determination into the shield and it seemed to solidify, becoming a shimmering, translucent membrane around the people with her. The sensation of white-hot needles assaulted her again, but she stood firm.
At the back of her mind, she could feel the pain and fear of the people surrounding her. It poured into Erica's body like a flood, sending adrenaline spiking and her heart racing. She felt the barrier start to slip away. The membrane thinned. Erica took deep breaths, feeling the rush of superheated air through her lungs, and pushed back. The membrane steadied again as she fell to her knees.
A series of loud cracking sounds rang out. Aliens stumbled, their joints shattering into shards of flying carapace. The leader scuttled backwards, a large dent appearing on its chest armour. More and more aliens began to fall as their legs gave out, severed segments littered over the ground. With a thundering of bootsteps, a military team closed in and formed a human shield just outside the membrane barrier. They faced the alien attackers and continued to shoot.
"Can you move?" A soldier ran up behind the group of civilians and asked.
Erica nodded gingerly, her throat still burning and her head pounding from the pressure of maintaining the barrier.
"Good. We're going to start moving as a group. We'll keep all of you civilians on the inside of the formation, just move with us!"
As soon as the soldier spoke, the team began to move. Without breaking the circle, they retreated away from the aliens. Erica and the other rescued people were kept safely in the middle as they fell back to a series of troop transports.
Climbing in to the transport, Erica's grip on the barrier broke. Thankfully, the aliens were not chasing the escaping humans, busy protecting themselves from the hail of gunfire from the human rescue team.
Erica collapsed onto the bench seat, resting her head on the cool metal of the wall fittings. She barely registered the sounds and movement of other people climbing in and finding space.
Soon, her breathing slowed.
***
Slowly, sound and feeling came back into Erica's world. Quiet murmers filled the space, and a heavy weight rested on her foot. She carefully cracked open an eye and winced. The light, although filtered through the sides of the troop transport, still caused the throbbing to restart in her brain.
[System Notification: Level Up]
[Your continuous use of Protective Aura has given you 10 experience points. You have levelled up! You are now Level 1]
[Level Up Rewards: 3 Attribute Points, 5 Skill experience points, 5 Ability experience points]
[Your use of Protective Aura in a combat situation has increased your experience with this ability. Protective Aura has earned 15 points of experience. This ability is now Level 2]
Erica's headache made it difficult for her to think. She was fairly sure that she'd just gotten experience points twice from the same action, but she couldn't really figure it out right now.
Waking up a bit more, Erica realised that not all of the pain she was feeling was her own. She gently turned her head to look around the transport and noticed that several of the people with her had been burned by the aliens' weapons.
I want to help.