Erin woke up early and sat at the dining room table tapping her fingers.

The window curtains were specifically made to be sun blocking, no doubt due to the bright sun. Currently, they weren’t fully drawn, allowing some sunlight to filter through.

She was waiting for something to appear, but in the meantime, she was figuring out what to do with her stats.

[User: Erin Heley]

[Race: Vampire]

[Level 11]

[110/200 EXP]

[HP 65/65]

[Strength: 20] [+5]

[Agility: 20] [+4]

[Stamina: 20]

[Charm: 10]

Erin had 13 stat points to spend on whatever she wanted, and previously allocated the stat points to make them as even as possible, but when she gained a surplus of stat points that she couldn’t spend, Erin held onto them even after evolving. Up until this point, she was saving her points to see what stat she needed to improve the most.

While charm was her weakest skill in terms of numbers, Erin had a feeling that making it stronger was going to continue to garner unwanted attention. Things like strength and agility seemed more useful, but currently, her beast weapon was boosting those stats. Which led to her thinking about stamina.

’Hmm... Using flashstep more in a fight would be useful, and my rapier does need a lot of speed...’

In the end, Erin decided to improve two stats.

[+5 agility]

[Agility: 25]

[+3 stamina]

[Stamina: 28]

It made sense with how she was currently using a rapier, a weapon that benefited greatly from speed. With the added boost to stamina, she should be able to use flashstep more often.

Quinn left his bedroom, still in his pajamas. He had an old gray t-shirt on with some red plaid patterned soft pajama pants.

He noticed that Erin was visibly concentrating on something, most likely due to the system as he had seen her allocate points to her stats. There was something on his mind, so he pulled out a chair, and sat nearby.

"I wanted to talk about Logan," Quinn began, before his voice grew quiet, "He’s a first year, but despite the two of you never meeting, he’s somehow managed to learn about your ability."

Erin stopped tapping her fingers, "I can figure that out later. This test comes first."

"What? Erin, this is serious," Quinn said, his eyebrows pressing together, "We don’t know what Logan’s motives are. He could even be a..."

{Quinn} ...Vampire.

"I doubt it. There weren’t any vampire abilities that I know of that could’ve altered technology like that," The system said to them both, then added, "Well, aside from one of them, but it doesn’t match what happened."

"Even if he isn’t one, this is important," Quinn tried to reason, "This is a good time to find out who he is. We know he’s here."

"This test is more important," Erin stressed.

"We have to confront him first, before he confronts us."

"I only have one shot at this test. We can search for Logan later."

Quinn was about to say more when there was a sudden knock on their door.

Erin ran over to the door, quickly opening it, to find a cardboard package with armor inside. The box was signed, "Alex and Asahi quality assurance."

"Finally!" Erin said as she took the package inside.

Ripping the box open, there was an armor piece that covered the torso, the arms, and the hands from any form of sunlight. There was also a subtle black fur texture where the main torso area was, except for the arms. They were simply metal, and tinted a dull pink. It wasn’t the most flexible piece of gear, but it was armor.

[Inspect]

[Basic Rattaclaw Chest Piece]

[Strength +1]

[Defense +2]

Getting frustrated with Erin, Quinn sighed, "...We’ll talk about this later."

There wasn’t much Quinn could do without the inspect skill. He couldn’t use it to quickly find out who’s names were what without them knowing. While this was one of the rare opportunities they had to get beast crystals as a first year, Quinn knew that there was a bigger unknown risk with Logan.

’I’ll figure him out some other way.’ Quinn thought to himself.

Erin lifted the armor piece, and right as she was about to put it on, they both heard a familiar voice.

"You should put that in your shadow space," The system advised.

"... What for?" Erin cautiously asked.

"Well... you’ll see."

Erin and Quinn glanced at each other in annoyance.

"Don’t worry, nothing is going to happen to it," the system added, "This should be useful to you."

Sometimes the system was cooperative, and sometimes it would withhold information from Erin. While Erin didn’t want to listen to the voice, it hadn’t told her to do something outright harmful. For the time being, she trusted the system and placed the armor piece in her shadow space.

"Now look at your skills," the system told them.

Erin quickly did, and saw that there was a skill that she had previously not noticed before.

[Weapons and armor detected in dimensional space]

[Shadow Equip can be activated]

Not waiting another second, Erin activated the skill.

Her entire torso became covered in a dark purple mist, and it felt like there was some kind of shell forming on her. Then the shadow dissipated, and on Erin was the very same armor she had put in her shadow storage.

Quinn’s and Erin’s eyes lit up. One of the issues with armor was that it would take a while to put on, but with this skill, Erin could instantly equip any piece of armor she had on hand.

"Now I wish I had your ability," Quinn said, already thinking of ideas on how to utilize this skill to its fullest potential. It would come really handy.

"See? I can be helpful," The system proudly boasted about itself.

{Erin} Helpful, huh? So what about telling me how I can get skill points for my ability?

As she typed that mentally in her head, her face contorted into a frown.

"I was waiting for when you were going to ask that," The system cheerfully replied, "You can gain skill points by leveling up your shadow skills, and to do that, you need to practice with them more."

Quinn’s face matched Erin’s frown.

{Quinn} You could’ve told her sooner!

At first, Erin was almost disappointed with herself for not asking such a simple question sooner, but then she remembered just how tricky, and strangely quiet the system was, despite being made to answer questions about itself.

"Whatever, this just means I need to use it more."

Once the others woke up and ate their breakfast, they soon got ready to head out.

—

On their way to the red area, Erin began thinking about how much she could use the shadow ability. Pretty much everyone on her team knew about it, except for Peter. In her eyes, it wouldn’t matter if Peter knew of Erin’s secret as she could ensure that he stayed silent. However, the rest of the school knew her as the ’Ice Queen’ because of her old ability, which meant that she could only use it if her team was alone.

As they walked, and Erin held her umbrella tightly in the back of the group, Fex and Quinn were in the front keeping watch for any sneaky beasts. They were still in the green zone, about to head to the yellow areas, and most of the beasts in the vicinity were being dealt with by students.

The entire time, Quinn kept thinking about the plan Erin had set out for the day.

—

"Are you sure about this?" Quinn insisted, "There has to be a reason why Peter was so scared of going."

"He’s a level 1, Quinn, of course he’s going to be scared" Erin retorted, "But if you’re so worried Peter has a genuine reason to be scared, then we’ll head to the red area that has a safe zone right outside of it. If, for whatever reason, something does happen, then we retreat there in case of danger. This is the best place we can hunt, and listen to Peter."

"Chances are, there’s two different beasts that clash there, so they stay out of each other’s territories. Either way, it’s marked as safe, and this map hasn’t lied to us yet," Erin then added "Is that enough safety for you?"

Quinn took a deep breath. Even if he didn’t care so much about getting a good grade as much as Erin did, it was still as good of a compromise as he could get with her.

—

The group continued on their way to the red zone, and they could tell with how few students there were. Aside from themselves, there were 4 other groups walking in the same direction as them. However, Fex took notice of something a little strange. He wasn’t sure if this was somehow just normal human behavior, but he saw a group near the back kept looking at theirs a lot.

’Hmm... They better not spell trouble,’ Fex thought.