I Level Up by Being Kind to Monsters

How it begins

Owen Hale earned his first kindness point by removing a trap he had set himself. This struck him as an accounting error.

The snare lay beside a game trail beneath the ash trees. He had retired six months earlier, but old habits remained in the landscape longer than he liked. A young marsh beast had caught one foot. It hissed when he approached and bit his glove while he loosened the wire.

He did not blame it.

The beast fled. A green notification appeared above the empty trap. EXPERIENCE GAINED: 4.

Owen sat back on his heels. The system awarded experience for kills, captures and completed contracts. It did not, in his sixty-one years of observation, reward undoing your own poor decisions.

Leila Senn came down the path carrying a veterinary case.

'Did you see a marsh beast?'

'It went that way. It is understandably cross.'

She examined the snare. 'Yours?'

'Used to be.'

'It still was when it caught something.'

Owen accepted this. Retirement had not erased the maker's mark stamped on the wire. He showed her the green notice.

Leila read it, then looked at him. 'What did you do next?'

'Nothing.'

'Good.'

He had expected congratulations, perhaps an explanation. Instead she checked the path for more traps. He followed. By the third, he understood why four points might be both too few and more than he deserved.

At the edge of the wood, another player offered water to a caged creature. A bright experience counter flickered above his head. When the creature drank, he took the bowl away and prepared to offer it again.

Behind the cage, empty bowls waited beside a stack of fresh snares. Owen looked at Leila.

'Somebody else found the skill.'

'Somebody found a number,' she said. 'We haven't yet established that it's the same thing.'