John trudged up to his room.

The wolf from his dream still haunted his thoughts. ’He felt familiar, but I just can’t figure out why.’ He mentally catalogued the wolves he remembered from the woods, and it wasn’t one of them. ’I’ve never seen him before. Hell, I don’t even know if it was a him.’ He shut his door, but left it unlocked for now. Taking this time alone, John opened his inventory to remove his school supplies, dumping them onto his desk. Noticing he had a notification, he opened the window curiously as he dropped onto his bed.

Quest Completed: Don’t get beat up at school
You successfully ended your day without getting beaten up or otherwise injured!
Rewarded: 31xp, $10.00, variable surprise mechanic added to inventory.

He closed the tab with a frustrated sigh. ’It’s almost like she was expecting me to lose control today.’ The haphazard piles now cluttering his desk reminded him of his need for a new backpack and he pulled out his phone. ’Technically, she only said I couldn’t be on my computer…’ He glanced at the door before pulling up Amazon. “And,” he mumbled aloud to himself, “being sick means I’ve got time for delivery.” It didn’t take him long to pull up a few options for a new, sturdier backpack. Only one matched his style, and he found the pewter wolf keychain that came with it a bit more than ironic. $30 later and he was a backpack richer.

’While I’m at it, I should probably throw those points into something,’ he thought to himself, noticing the skillpoints still sitting there, ’but what do I put them into?’

With how low his health was, he decided to put three of his points into Endurance, raising his base HP to 60 and his regen to 11/hour. ’I really need to raise that eventually, but first.’ He threw his other two points into Strength. ’Hopefully that will help me survive a little easier in a fight without some kind of weapon.’ Also, getting his base stats above ten felt like the right thing to do, even though his Inner Balance was a little off. He saw his health tick up a point from his old max and knew survival was too important to ignore.

A quick glance at the wallet on his character sheet brought a smile to the gamer’s face. ’Good thing I got paid so much by those achievements. Asking Mom for money would only make her ask more questions.’ He tossed another glance towards the door. ’The last thing I want is to have her asking questions I can’t answer.’ He looked from his notebooks back to his phone. ’I can at least get myself some answers…’ John leapt to his feet, stepping carefully once he remembered his mom was downstairs, and locked the door.

An incognito tab was up on his phone mere moments later as he used it to pull up the site he’d found earlier. ’Nightwatch Occult Exotics.’ The gamer snorted to himself. ’Sounds like a bunch of goths with too much time on their hands. Unfortunately, my options are limited.’ Giving up on his pride, he clicked on the page about werewolves and started reading.

Surprisingly, there weren’t any of the typical movie cliches listed. No **** shift at the full moon, silver wasn’t a deadly poison, and a full human couldn’t become a werewolf. That last bit had John impressed. ’I really want to think that’s a lucky guess. Normal people can’t honestly think Lycans are real. I mean, I know they’re real, but c’mon.’

A noise in the hallway pulled his attention from the screen, and he frantically closed the pages, forgetting his door was locked. He scrambled under the covers and unequipped his clothes, pretending to be asleep. The hall was quiet for a moment before he heard the telltale sound of Brenda tip-toeing back to her room to not disturb him. ’Good,’ he relaxed again, ’I hope that means she’s going to take a nap before dinner.’

John waited for the soft click of her door before he picked his phone back up off the pillow and re-opened his tabs. Intrigued by the notes on silver, John opened that tab. ’Why the heck does every single page need a cookies pop-up?’ Annoyed, he thumbed the accept button and started scanning the page. It was written like a scientific article he’d read for a paper; his eyes crossed as it droned on and on, but a few words jumped out at him. ’Control, feral, restrain… What am I looking at here?’ It was difficult to make heads or tails of, and John was about to give up and turn off his phone when he spotted a line that gave him some hope.

Silver jewelery is common in packs that attempt to blend in with humanity, though wolves hate it. It can sometimes be used to keep a younger lycan from shifting; however, it is not fool-proof and the wolf may reject their host for using it.

“Hmm…” He sat up in excitement. “Silver, that’s easy to get ahold of!” Catching himself, John clapped a hand over his mouth and strained his ears, listening down the hallway. Nothing. His mother’s steady breathing barely paused, and he relaxed. ’Alright, Mom will notice if anything of hers goes missing. I still have some money, maybe they have a shop?’ Curious, John scrolled back to the top and clicked the menu. There was a ‘supplies’ option that was probably his best bet and he opened the tab. Excited about the possibilities, he absentmindedly hit the ‘use current location’ button when the search asked for a zipcode, sick of the site’s pop-ups. A moment later, and his heart skipped a beat, the site was directing him to a local ‘occult’ store they were affiliated with.

He checked the GPS map showing the location and was surprised it was only a couple of doors down from the herbal shop he was already planning on visiting. He took a screenshot before scrolling through the kinds of things the store had. ’Holy water and blessed crucifixes, yeah, not helping the idea that they’re just goths with too much time on their hands.’ He continued his search, actually enjoying himself a bit, chuckling at some of the more obnoxious items in the store. ’A silver knife is both impractical and I don’t exactly want to cut myself just to control my powers.’ That’s when he spotted the perfect item. A simple silver ring that he could wear probably without even Brenda noticing.

’And we could use it as a promise ring to Tala.’