Gestation, John Gold [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

I log into the game, again finding myself in my room. It looks like that’s my spawn point. Is it my respawn point, too? I’m afraid to find out.

The dogs are sleeping in the kitchen, so I see them as soon as I walk in. I leap into a stance, prepared to fight them off, a reaction father notices.

“We didn’t finish our conversation about who taught you how to fight. You don’t have an ability, but I can teach it to you.”

Mama looks darkly at father. From what I can tell, she doesn’t like his idea of using me to train the dogs.

You can learn a skill: Hand-to-hand combat

I agree without a second thought.

You learned a skill: hand-to-hand combat

Hand-to-hand combat: +1

Barehanded damage done: +1%

∞ ∞ ∞

“Once you eat, we’ll head out into the yard and get started.”

I don’t have the faintest chance of winning. The difference of a hundred and fifty levels, the experience, the skills… Two hours later, I’ve been hit with twenty debuffs, and I’ve only been able to get rid of sixteen of them. From what father says, people are one big mess of pain points and weak spots: the crown of the head, the bridge of the nose, the chin, the jugular depression, arteries, the solar plexus, the crotch. When you land a strike right, you get a critical hit. You can screw up your opponent’s attack by knocking their coordination off, or land pinpoint blows to different joints. One of the worst hits I took was an open-palm strike to the heart. I lost health, I was paralyzed for a couple seconds, and I had internal bleeding. The second-worst was an open-palm strike to the lower part of my stomach. There, I had to deal with internal bleeding again, not to mention being stunned and taking huge damage. Even with the difference in skills, I realized that I know nothing about hand-to-hand fighting.

And father showed me so many different strikes! You can break the bone in the upper arm, you can shatter knees, and you can destroy elbows. Happily, father didn’t demonstrate all of them on me—he just showed me how to stand and what to do. Then, there’s tearing out the Adam’s apple, using your palm to cut an artery with a rib, bringing your elbow down on the crown of the head, the temple, internal organs, driving the bridge of the nose back into the brain.

“Humans are weak and defenseless. Predators know that, which is why they try to go after your weak points. Even armor has a lot of weaknesses. If you know them, you can do critical damage to your opponents. Those who take the path of the fist turn their whole body into a weapon,” father says, showing me that he doesn’t have anything else. “They can cut a man’s head off with their bare hands or break bones without even disturbing the skin. People like that are rare, but they do exist. Friars fit that mold, though they’re far from the most effective. Their mastery of battle and class skills is just one side of the equation.”

“But humans aren’t the only race.”

“Correct, but most living organisms share the same general body structure. Even the undead have weak points.” Father falls silent before continuing. “Today, your job will be to find the dogs’ weak points during battle.”

Fighting the dogs means constantly healing the poison damage. At this point, I use weak healing without even thinking about it—dodge, parry, attack. Move around. Throw a dog off my neck, heal, block. The dogs use skills like flesh laceration, scratching, and death grip. But it turns out that they aren’t that bad, as biting for them means opening up their throat, neck, eyes, and…stomach. Dogs don’t have abs. Almost every blow I aim in that direction comes up critical, and the dogs whine as I do my damage. When the dogs are all hurt, father calls them away and makes me heal them. I stop noticing their poison, and only now see the log message.

∞ ∞ ∞

Resistance to poison: +0.05%

Poison damage ignored: 25/second

Resistance to physical damage: +0.04%

Physical damage ignored: up to 40/second

Life Magic: +2

Life spell effectiveness: +25%

∞ ∞ ∞

Forced disconnection in 3… 2… 1…

∞ ∞ ∞

Vaalsie is standing next to my capsule, and there’s a woman I’ve never seen standing next to him in a white suit. Both of them radiate confidence in their superiority. They’re going to yell at me over nothing, and then I’ll see what they offer.

∞ ∞ ∞

The boy seemed neither fearful nor jumpy. All he did was sit there quietly waiting for the visitors, his eyes fixed on them.

“Anji, Miss Elizabeth would like to talk with you. You can chat in the cafeteria,” Vaalsie said, gesturing toward the door. “Anji will walk you there, miss. You’ll have the room for another hour.”

“Thank you.”

After settling in at a long table and spreading some papers out in front of the boy, Elizabeth started talking, aiming to take the conversation in the direction she needed.

“Hi, Anji. My name is Eliza Donovan. I’m a psychologist, which means that I help kids fit in better at their orphanages. You’re on our list of kids who don’t fit in with the group. You don’t talk with anyone else, and you’re constantly fighting.”

The boy listened indifferently, his manner relaxed. He wasn’t nervous, and he didn’t respond. The psychologist’s trained eye caught all those little details.

“You used to talk, but then you stopped. Why is that?”

Anji sat there quietly just like any other kid who doesn’t want to say anything. His arms were crossed, as were his legs.

“I went to the space port.” The boy’s expression changed to one of interest. “While I was there, I talked with the brigadier, who told me you spent all your free time for the past year there. You worked with an engineer named Galboa, and you had a great time talking with everyone there. It’s only here in the orphanage that you don’t say anything to anyone.”

It looked like Anji tensed up, expecting a blow. He