The second my eyes settled on what I assumed to be blood, it was like I couldnât hear anything else.
I took off running in a sprint towards the wall.
Well technically I took off running towards the small creek that separated us from the wall. We werenât at the front of the compound, instead we ran all the way to the southwest corner of the property where it bordered a small creek.
Leaping over it with my new stats was no problem at all and after landing on the other side, I scaled the 8 foot wall like Iâve been training all my life to do just that.
I could hear Grandpa calling my name but I didnât care.
Landing on the other side of the wall I found myself in a forest as expected and quickly scanned the area for bodies.
There were none.
Good.
From where I was, the next closest building would be Aunt Rishaâs house.
I darted off towards it and then out of nowhere I heard barking.
A lot of barking.
I smiled.
Grandpa had five dogs on the property and not a single one of them were small. The loud barking continued to ring out from in front of me until I finally cleared the trees and could see four rottweilers standing close to Aunt Rishaâs house and barking in my direction.
One is missingâ¦
Anyway, the second they spotted me they came running but I didnât stop running and quickly found myself standing at the front door of Aunt Rishaâs house and banging on the door with the dogs swarming around me, clearly happy to see me.
âAUNT RISHA!!!â
I banged for a few moments longer before moving to the side of the house where I expected to see some ATVs.
They were gone.
Alrightâ¦thatâs a good sign.
And I donât see any bodies around here nor have I spotted anymore blood.
The rapid beating heart in my chest slowly calmed for a moment as I took a deep breath.
Smack!
âDonât you hear me calling you boy!â
Ah I forgot about Grandpa.
I rubbed the back of my now aching head and looked apologetically at Grandpa.
âMy bad Grandpa.â
âIâm definitely telling your mother youâve being cursing up a storm since yesterday. Letâs see you ignore me then. And quiet!â
I winced at the thought of my mom hearing that I was cursing and then looked at how quickly the dogs snapped quiet at my Grandpaâs order.
They quite literally only listened to him.
âLetâs get to the main house. Thatâs where everyone would be.â
Thatâs right.
Aunt Rishaâs house might look fineâ¦but we have no idea who actually made it to the house and what the situation was.
Plus the fact that one of the dogs were missing bothered me slightly.
They never ran around without each other.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Never.
We took off in a trot along the road that led to the main building which served as Grandpaâs house and the gathering point for everyone during any event or holiday.
On the way there we passed two more houses on the property, but we didnât see any sings that people were in them. And the ATVs were missing at both of them as well.
The dogs followed us without barking at all and very quickly the main building came into the view.
A decent number of ATVs were parked outside, and every door and window was closed, and all the hurricane shutters were down, something that wasnât the case yesterday morning when we left for our fishing trip.
Hopefully all of this meant that a lot of family members were home.
And judging by the fact that I could hear the front doors being unlocked. Both Grandpa and I had been spotted on the cameras.
âFREDDDDYYYY!!!â
Thatâs mom for you.
Itâs good to see her.
...
âWhatâs the situation?â
Currently all the adults of the family plus myself and my cousin were all sitting in the movie theater while Grandpa stood at the front.
We were the last ones to make it home and everyone was expectedly worried sick with mom being number 1 in that group.
Of course, I couldnât blame her all that much since I was just as worried.
It definitely made my heart warm to see both my parents and all the members of the family here and mostly unarmed.
A few had their fair share of cuts and bruises but nothing significant had happened to anyone.
I asked about the blood on the wall and dad said it came from him. His hands were bloody from something he had to do.
That was all he said about it and I left it alone.
I knew when not to push dad further.
The only sad news is that the reason why I only saw 4 dogs is because Bruno died. He apparently chased one of the red people and got a spear in his gut as a reward.
The red person who threw the spear is no longer among us courtesy of Lenny. Aunt Rishaâs husband.
Both of which were now seated together in the theater. Now between Aunt Risha, my dad, three more uncles and one more aunt. My grandparents had a total of six kids. Four boys and two girls.
Five of them were married. My dad to my mom, Aunt Risha and her husband Lenny, Uncle Robert and his wife Abigail, Uncle Mack and his wife Kimberly, and finally Aunt Renee and her husband Terrance.
The only one that wasnât married was Uncle Grant, he was divorced I think. Well I think they were legally divorced, but his ex-wife still came to family events for time to time so who knows.
So in total there were 12 people seated plus Grandpa standing and we made up this family meeting of sorts.
I had a few other cousins but they were deemed too young to join in, and my older cousin Rakeon were the only two from the younger generation.
Which included two girls from Uncle Mack and Aunt Kimberly, a boy and a girl for Aunt Risha and Uncle Lenny, and finally my youngest cousin was a boy from Uncle Robert and Aunt Abigail.
It was a decently large family.
Anywayâ¦
âWell dad, the situation is that one of your books finally came to life. I canât really tell which one yet, but yep this is definitely your fault.â
Uncle Mackâs wife slapped him on the arm as Grandpa ignored him.
âWhat? Itâs true, we all have statuses to prove it.â
âAnyone else?â
âWe got enough food to last a couple weeks if we ration, a relatively secure shelter, but not enough ammunition to fight an army of those things.
âI saw the police go up against them, and I swear bullets didnât do much to one or two of them. If thatâs the case then guns might not mean much at all.â
Dad spoke up next.
And Grandpaâs brows quickly entered their furrowed state. A few other comments were made here and there about the situation and Grandpa took it all in for a couple of minutes then began talking.
âWell. Mack over there had a point.â
âHa!â
ââ¦As I was saying. He had a point. What weâre experiencing is a lot like the things that I wrote about in my books and what so many other authors wrote about in general across the LitRPG genre.
âFreddy and I even found and completed a dungeon.â
Rakeon shot me a thumbs up at that while dad looked over at me quizzically. I wonât even bother looking at mom. I knew right away she was giving me a death stare. I mightâve severely downplayed the journey me and Grandpa took to get here when I explained it to them before this meeting.
Way to go Grandpa.
âWe leveled up, received classes, got skills, and even got rewards. This is exactly like those types of books.
âThen before we get into any other discussion, there is one thing we gotta remember about all of those books.
âGetting stronger matters. Your own strength matters. And if anyone of you has already leveled up then you know we can already grow stronger as things stand.
âOther people will eventually figure it out, animals will probably do the same too, but most of all, those red bastards will too. I donât doubt for a second that they definitely have forces stronger than what theyâve sent to us initially.
âAnd once they learn that we have enough guns and bullets as a planet to cause them a lot of damage, then Iâm gonna bet theyâll send more of those people Daryl said he saw not be affected by bullets.
âIf that happens then weâd be shit out of luck.
âSo goal number 1 is to ensure we are safe here, then goal number 2 is to scout the area around us, and once that is complete, goal number 3 is to start fighting back before it reaches a point when we canât anymore.â
From there a much bigger discussion kicked off with everyone participating. We talked about the phases and we thought they meant, we talked about classes, traits, skills, food, and anything else that came up.
The discussion finished with talks centered around Grandpaâs approach to what we should do next.
Some disagreed with what he wanted to do and tried to petition against it, but I knewâ¦they knewâ¦we all knew Grandpa was probably right and weâll likely do as he said.
But it was fun to argue about it anyway I guess.