Waking up that Tuesday morning, Gary had expected his body to be sore from yesterday’s fight against the Altered Hunter, but thanks to his now supernatural body he felt good as new. However, he noticed something strange. For some reason he seemed overly hungry and this didn’t seem to be his normal type of hunger that a simple breakfast would solve.

What’s more, he should be overly full from yesterday. Before heading back home, he had stopped by the convenience store to replenish all the Energy he had used up in his fight. After that, he also had a nice dinner with his mother and sister. If anything, he should still be full, not hungry.

Wondering what’s wrong with him, he decided to check his system and the first thing he noticed were a few notifications he had missed, since he had gone to bed before midnight.

[As the date of the full moon approaches, the power of the moon strengthens you further.]

[Current bonus: All Stats +2]

[Your bloodlust grows]

[7 days until the next full moon]

‘Whoa, another boost! How many more will I get? Since it’s a bonus my guess would be that after the full moon passes the bonus stats will go away. However, what happens after that? After each full moon, there will be a new moon.’

‘If the moon is like the thing that grants a werewolf his powers, doesn’t that mean I’ll have to worry about getting weaker and suffer penalties?’ Gary thought to himself. He chose to ignore the countdown notification as it seemed impossible to turn it off. Instead, he looked over his base stats, all three of which displayed a (+2) next to them.

[Strength 7 (+2)]

[Dexterity 3 (+2)]

[Endurance 9 (+2)]

It was scary to think how strong he might possibly be in a week, and when he actually transformed. Looking over his Energy and Health, he saw that they still didn’t benefit from any bonuses, but that’s when he noticed something strange.

[81/110 Energy]

‘What the hell? Why is it lower than before I went to bed? Was I sleepwalking and using Charging Heart or something?’

Thankfully, the Werewolf System decided to enlighten him this time and offered the following explanation.

[The more your bloodlust grows in tandem to the state of the moon, the more Energy is required to empower you. It would be advisable to increase your Energy.]

‘Goddamnit, why do you tell this to me now when I no longer have any stat points?! Sh*t, I still haven’t found a method on how to increase that stat naturally! Why doesn’t this stupid thing have a tutorial or some help function? Who the hell designed this junk system?!’

Gary’s cursing unfortunately didn’t result in anything. He didn’t know whether the system felt insulted and had decided against cooperating or if it was just the way it worked, however he had no way of finding that out. Instead, the high schooler chose to do something about the problems he could fix, albeit temporarily.

‘I should have known that the system doesn’t give me anything for free. Alright, I should be able to fix this by purchasing more food to replenish the Energy that way. I will also have to avoid getting into any fights and probably refrain from using Charging Heart during practice.’

Quickly getting dressed to keep up the ruse of going to school, Gary headed to the fridge. It seemed like he had only recently filled it up completely, but as he thought about it, that way one week ago. He wasn’t the only one who had access to it, so right now it was rather empty. It had an opened milk carton, some juice, eggs, butter and jam, but he craved something else right now.

“Damn, I already used up the rest of my money yesterday to buy meat, so what the hell am I supposed to do now?’ Gary wondered. He knew that he still had his emergency fund of five hundred, but he was adamant in wanting to use it to help pay off some of their family’s bills. Alas, if he didn’t come up with a solution soon, he might have no other choice but to use it.

Gary would have to come up with one on the way though. It was already time for him to leave for school. He was thankful that his sister hadn’t told his mother and because of this he was free to do what he wished, which happened to be finding solutions to the ever increasing amount of problems.

Picking up his feet walking around, after a couple of hours Gary had entered the high street and noticed that his Energy had gone down by a bit.

[78/100 Energy]

‘I still have a week to go, just how bad will it get in the future? If I get into more fights, or get called by Kai to fight, then this could end very badly. I don’t want to create any more Billys.’ Gary kicked a pebble in his way out of frustration.

Following its flight path the high schooler noticed a poster in one of the window shops. He had actually been hoping to see if there might be any odd jobs he could do, but this one caught his eye because it had certain words that stuck out to Gary.

{AFC Academy. Train to become the next big fighter!}

‘An Altered Academy that trains Altered? How great would it be if I could attend something like that? It’s not like I can fake it, Altered are able to transform at will. Too bad, with how much money Kirk makes, I bet I could get rid of nearly all of my problems at once.’ Gary began to daydream.

Trying to think of something positive was a nice little escape from reality, but eventually he left the high street and started to head to the parks where there was a nice woodland area nearby. He had chosen this area for a specific reason.

After entering the woods, he looked around him to see if he could spot anyone, but it didn’t look like there was anyone nearby. Despite all his setbacks yesterday, his system had surprised him with one good reward at the end of the day.

[Showing skills that are available to be unlocked at current level]

[Claw Drain]

[Hardened Will]

‘Don’t you usually get presented with a choice of three? Whatever, I can’t really complain about getting a free skill. However, this system could have at least given me a slight description. I have only the name to go off of to guess what they do.’ Gary had thought to himself.

From the notification, he could infer that his skill choice was limited by his current level, so there was a chance that whatever he didn’t choose might become available later. Claw Drain sounded like an offensive skill, whereas Hardened Will sounded like a defensive one.

Seeing as Endurance was still his highest base stat, even without having put any stat points into it, he wasn’t very keen on the latter. Besides, what would be the point of him being able to take a beating for a longer time? It wouldn’t have changed anything in his fight yesterday. No, what he needed was some fire power.

[Are you sure you would like to select the skill ‘Claw Drain?’]

[Yes / No]

After selecting [Yes] on the menu that had popped up in front of him, a certain set of information had entered his head. He knew he would just need to think of the skill name and it would allow him to use it, but he needed to know how it worked first.

[Claw Drain (Level 1)] 𝑏𝘦𝘥𝑛𝘰𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝑐𝘰𝑚

[Once activated, half of the damage inflicted by the user will be used to recover Health.

The skill will take 15 points of Energy to use.]

The skill will last 2 seconds.]

‘This is awesome! Up until now I could only heal passively by converting Energy into Health. It would have been even greater if it had some function to boost my strength like Charging Heart, but that might have been a bit much to ask. Still, now I can actually trade blows with my opponents without having to fear hitting 0 Health.’

‘The only downside seems to be the rather short duration… and the Energy cost. If I use Charging Heart and Claw Drain together that’s 25 points of Energy, which is nearly a quarter of my overall. Looks like skills, although helpful, really have quite the burden.’

Gary wanted to test out his new skill, which was why he had come to the woods in the first place. The only problem was that he was now worried about his Energy bar. He was already losing it passively, so was it really wise to experiment with it? On the other hand, not experiencing the skill seemed dumb as well.

As he was debating whether he should or shouldn’t test it out, he felt a vibration from his phone. Grabbing it from his pocket, he saw a notification about breaking news.

‘Sh*t, so this time a university student has been killed, and it says their body was mauled.’

Gary had a bad premonition that it was Billy. Putting his phone away, he was going to try and attempt to solve his Energy problem, but in that moment his secret phone vibrated. There was only one number saved on it, and it was someone he didn’t want to make wait, especially after he had helped him recently.

[Gary we need to meet up ASAP and discuss something. It’s about Billy!]