The System Revolution [a LitRPG Story]

[Imperator Pax]

The System Revolution

Part 1: Its the end of the world as we know it.

Prologue: The end of hunting season​

He didn't see anything, squinting against the declining light certainly no ooze monsters looking to eat him.

He was finally comfortable enough to take a breather... ish. Enough to stop jerking around looking for danger, and make his way back into the clearing where he'd parked his truck. His neck in particular hurt, but then so did his back, and his feet, and his hands were shaking. It had been a long while since he had had that problem... just like it had been a long time since he had even pulled a gun in anger. He limped through the muddy and uneven snow his feet heavy... and wet and cold.

The asolo hiking boots were comfortable and gortex and weather resistant but resistance had its limits. That the fatigue straining his limbs were a reminder that he was getting older, didn't help as he put one foot in front of other and limped back to the ugly old Toyota truck.

This morning, both before first light when he had gotten up, and during the first part of the hunt as he had hiked into the woods past short leaf pine and much older oak trees had promised to be a good end of the hunting season. There had been no indication of the chaos which had caught him by surprise half way through the day.

He had lost his gloves somewhere over the course of the run around, as the horde of ugly toothed slime monsters chased him away from the deer's corpse. There had only been one at first, but the slims had divided themselves in half... not really seeming to get smaller, but it had meant more chasing him through the woods.

They hadn't been that fast, but persistent. He had actually made it to the truck early before it had started to get dark, and before he had managed to ... at least he was sure... kill the last of the things... actually he might have been able to get away that time but he had slammed over one of the things as he had thrown the car into reverse and it had stalled out. Then there had been more, so he had bailed from the vehicle at least having had the good sense to grab his keys and throw the Toyota back in park before hoofing it.

There were no signs of any followers this time, and the slime monsters hadn't demonstrated any intelligence, and after a minute he reached up to the door handle and opened up the battered truck, and crawled into the cab in spite of the aching protests bending his knees elicited. A part of him wanted to sag, but he was all too aware of the cloud of steam his breath elicited as he exhaled and shut the door against the outside.

He reached back over the seat and finagled the bag into the front seat. He had lost his rifle earlier, and there was no way he was going to search for it. His phone also had rolled down and even in spite of the case had ruptured on impact on a set of exposed stones... which was why he hadn't tried to call for help when there had still been daylight. The slimes had slammed into the car warping the body so he could feel the cold wind seeping from the outside, so he forced his shaking hands to rifle through the bag.

There was a good chance given the fate of his rifle and his phone he'd have dropped the bag somewhere in the woods in the run. The white box of Sig V-crown weren't his first choice for ammo... but they were what he had. It was box of fifty hollow points, and he had used the ammo in his mags including the spare ones that had been in the truck he had somehow thought to snag at some point.

He took a breath, watching the cloud, and the shaking was probably fatigue, and cold as well as the post adrenaline dump. His hands hurt, but nothing was broken. It was just they were stiff and cold.

The Toyota was battered but he was alive.

Pushing the follower down didn't help as it reminded him of the the scrapes from rolling down the hill earlier. The things... the lumpy man sized slime monsters with jagged teeth around a worm like mouth had been predictable, and slow. It was obvious when they were attacking, or about to attack... they telegraphed that, even if that acid ball attack had surprised him when he'd realized they could do it... and caused him to scramble out of the way.

His ears were numb, but the ringing had stopped.

No way he was going to find the rifle tonight even if he was up for back tracking through this; which he most certainly wasn't. He certainly didn't care about the eight point buck at this point... because seriously fuck the end of hunting season. He pushed the standard eight rounder into the 45 caliber H&K, and dropped the slide , and rested it in his lap long enough to pull the zipper down on the hunting jacket.

The eberlestock had kept plenty warm without sweating up until the exertion of running.

It had stayed below freezing all day. Colder than average but not that unusual... he had thought when he had got up, that it was a good day to finish out the season. That had been when he'd left this morning, but now he was tired and cold and hungry.

... and confused and hurt on top of that. He grabbed another eight rounder to load. He had one more of those after this, and then the two tens, and for good measure the two twelve rounders that were marketed for the 'full size' version of the gun that only came out for the range bag.

It was auto pilot... he wasn't thinking until after he had loaded the last six rounds into the first of the largest of the magazines that the box only held fifty rounds, and he'd put them into the 3 Eight Rounders that were standard for the 'compact' and the two ten round extended floor plate magazines.

"Fuck." He resisted punching the steering wheel or the dash, but he might have done that if he'd still been in his twenties.

Then after fumbling with the keys, and getting the battered Toyota to crank took more effort than he would have liked to admit... and even more effort to drive out of the clearing and onto the back country road and start trying to find his way back onto a paved state highway.

Every rut on the way back to blacktop hurt. He paid no mind by the time he got back on the interstate that there were no other cars on the road, and didn't give a shit about the forty five pistol resting between his legs. The old toyota's heater wasn't the best, but the seat warmer at least did work, which was a small comfort to his sore back.

The hour long drive though, in the dark, probably made things worse over all, and by the time he made it back to his house he was cognizant he was limping from the stiffness of his leg, and pain in his lower knee. He left the hunting bag in the truck. He was lucky he hadn't seen any reason to take it out into the field or it would have probably gotten lost some where in the woods … or been left in the hunting blind. It had been such a nice morning in spite of the cold. His booted feet crunched on the five inches of snow on the ground, as he unlatched the gate, and made his way around to the steps leading up to the back door and let himself into the farm house.

The house was warm, so at least the power hadn't gone out. He flipped a light switch on and holstered the forty five shutting the door. Then he limped up the stairs and started stripping off the camo and the base layer underneath as he piled into the shower. His fingers needed bandaging. There were bruises across his legs and back, scratches from dirt, rocks... most of all that from rolling down the hill trying to run away from the slime monsters.

If he hadn't been lucky he would have twisted or broken something with all the running around. The thing that didn't occur to him as the hot water soaked, and scalded his bruised body red was to turn the television on. Or to try and figure how to call anyone since his cell phone had been another casualty of the run around .. and even if it had survived falling the battery would have probably died by this point, either from just sitting there , or helped along by the cold... and he was too tired and sore to call anybody.

Once the water stopped being hot, he dried off threw a set of boxers back on and lumbered with his hunting pants and collapsed onto the bed... expecting the blissful comfort of an oblivion laced sleep... instead what he got was the system prompt congratulating him for levelling up, and surviving a lopsided high level encounter... and something about the mana fluctuations that he wouldn't remember when he woke up in the morning.

The world had changed that Sunday. The mana fluctuations meaning monsters, and landscape changes, and magic were factors on an otherwise mundane and modern technology driven world... and when you introduced new factors to an eco system things changed, when you gave people a new energy source, a new resource it changed how the society around them worked in chaotic ways... and of course the first days of a change were the most unpredictable.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Chapter 1
Monday: The Day After​

Entry 01: Toothed Slime
A hideous viscous mass of varying shades of browns, and dark blues this woodland predator stands an average height of three to four feet tall, trembling and wiggling as it searches for prey. The toothed slime is a persistent and effective hunter relative to most slimes, relying on its ability to divide into two new slimes to tire out its prey. While larger than average by slime standards they aren't particularly intelligent and can be distracted by new or sudden changes in their environments.

Race: Slime [Rare Slime]
Danger: High
High Attack, High HP, Low Speed
Abilities: Divide, Acid Spit, Poison

Divide Ability: Slimes can divide their bodies in half in order to form two new slimes, splitting their HP between the two new bodies.
--
He remembered little of the drive back, or even really of coming home, but as he stood there in his bathroom with the hunting clothes from the previous day where he had discarded them the night before... he was sure he had remembered bruises. That nothing was broken so far as he could tell wasn't a surprise per se.

At just over six foot the scratches on his hands and face were gone. He had washed out all the twigs, and brambles, leaves and dirt in the shower the night before. John strained and tried to catch a better look at his back, but there was nothing there. There were no bruises on his forearms, and no scratches anywhere he could fine. The forty five caliber semi automatic was on the counter top, the magazine was out, with the Sig brand ammo visible... so he hadn't dreamed that.

He blew out a breath and reached over to turn the water on, and rub down his face. It was the first time in a long time outside of a range trip that he'd fired that many rounds through a pistol... and it had been in field conditions. With another resigned sigh he trudged over to the heavy walnut dressed that was a hand built relic from the forties and rifled through for the compact weapons cleaning kit sitting in the top drawer... there was another in the bag but he was going out to the car with snow on the ground.

John racked the HK's slide, clearing the weapon, and began to clean the weapon as the snow flurries drifted down. It was an unusually cold winter this year... and hopefully the cold would break soon... but that would probably just mean rain instead.

That it was Monday morning, and he had already broken his morning routine didn't occur to him. He was too out of it, too freaked out from the night before to process what he really needed to be doing... and the house was empty. There was no one else here to tell him to do something, or check for injuries... and no one with a smartphone to call for help.

Finally after what seemed like forever he finished the monotonous task, and put the HK away in favor of a Glock 19. The nine mill was his more typical day to day carry, the forty five having been allocated to his preferred woods gun several years earlier... on the off chance of running into a black bear with an attitude, or some other four legged and ornery denizen.

The slimes hadn't had legs, but the fight, the fight? His head hurt, suddenly and surprised by the display, the character sheet springing up. It was a sudden influx of information. Level, character class, health, mana, the stat block.

The spells.

The skills.

The tabs all detailed information, and it was all too much to deal with. It was too much information as a result of a facet of the way the system worked. Experience was awarded on a basis of the individual defeated enemy and the area it occurred in. Higher area spawns... areas with more magic, that were filled with greater mana had an effect on experience awards. Stronger monsters appeared in areas with higher magic.

The Toothed Slime was a fairly rare monster in its natural environment. Every time it divided it split its HP between the divided halves... but each half awarded the full XP value of the slime even if they continued to divide. That was really their only benefit to adventurers as each slime awarded only a paltry amount of monster stones / the system currency and their item drop was largely worthless and the latter was even a sure thing.

However, the Earth had only just had its mana lines, its ley lines reconnected. It's populace didn't have any experience hunting monsters or magically conveyed classes or abilities. The result was that all of those dead toothed slimes had poured massive quantities of XP into a level zero human, and one night of sleep wasn't enough to fully acclimate the body of a non magical human to that without run over... but John didn't know that.

He knew what the sheet, the floating display of lights, told him and recognized the different functions of the system display. But understood no more of it than anyone else across the planet waking up to the same experience of having crested the level 0 divide from mundanity to adventurer.

In this case elevating to [Level 7] in his [Hybrid] class. The system allocated experience into a pool off of a table for level 0s. Thus in theory someone like John who had earned enough for multiple levels received the level first, before picking his class... the choice occurring in his subconscious as his mind connected to the system and was offered choices and thus that first batch of levels for his unique 'multiclass' class didn't take the XP penalty and did award full skill points that he could spend while still subconsciously linked to the system.

Jumping from 0 to 7 skipped 5 which was where the standard system derived crafting option opened up for normal adventurers. The system was set up to award boons, and feats for impressive, for legendary actions of will, that was often in addition to any bonus XP awarded... but usually those awarded for taking no damage at all in the fight, or surviving a certain damage threshold... and of course a level up award instantly restored the body to peak, to full health, to full mana, and cleared status abnormalities.

That was good, because it was the detail to insure that would help some people on earth survive what was now irreversible. The world had changed, but John couldn't know that, didn't know that yet was and was too busy exerting the mental energy to control his sudden bought of hyperawareness that threatened to overwhelm him.

The world had changed., and after washing his face, throwing a pair of pants, a clean pair of pants on, clipping the glock to his belt, and tossing on a clean pair of wool socks, and a sweater he moved down the stairs, and out the side door of the farmhouse mud room that joined the house to the garage via an enclosed section.

It had been done part of the remodeling ten years earlier. The barn had been refurnished in the nineties, and then remodeled again when the connection had been done transforming from horse barn to cottage to barn condo with loft before he'd inherited the place. The dog, and the cats were all eager for food and that was his usual first chore of the day... so it was to the containers, and the water vessels, and then measuring out the kibble.

Once that was done he opened the pet doors and headed back the way he came to go make himself foot and to start the coffee maker. That would be the normal 'real start' of his day... if this were any normal day, but as he was going to find out the last easy, the last normal day ended up having been Saturday.

Outside the wind picked up, rattling the original century old shutters of the three story house, and he put the coffee mug down, and stretched, before turning around and heading back up the stairs to dressed. When this house had been built they'd made it narrow and steep, which had made it a pain in the ass to get furniture in and out... and while the doors were standard size the rooms were small in comparison to most modern houses, but at least the house had been built with electricity in mind.

The mud room animal door opened as the two year old Anatolian shepherd pressed into the main house scrambling over the hard wood floors and into one of the rugs with the fat brindle gray cat following after.

 

[James Archer]

Interesting. let's see where this goes. I look forward to seeing your world.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Chapter 1: The Day After (B)​

Jesse James cracked the window of his car, and pulled his bulk out of the vehicle. His eyes squinting against the wintery mix and sunlight as he hand rested on the glock. He ran his tongue over his bottom lip, even though it wasn't busted like it had been the night before.

The gate to the property was open, which he didn't take as a good sign, but the fact the truck was here, even if it was beat to hell in all the ways that didn't suggest their buddy had hit a deer, was probably a good sign. He was a tall man, pushing to just under six and a half with thinning blonde hair up top and a full beard. A descendant of the legendary outlaw Jesse at least had the luck to not be named for any more notable confederates.

The door on the other side of the vehicle opened letting the third man out. Randy was a much more slight man, almost willowy build not quite as tall as his friend and a few years older. Randy had missed the army stings Jesse, and John had taken up ... he had ended up going straight to the family farm after a bit of college then after inheriting it had to give it up in favor of a job in the city that actually paid the bills and allowed him something of a life without putting him further in the hole.

Jesse had gotten out of the army, come home and gone into the county sheriff's office, and while Randy was comfortable enough around a gun he was just as happy after the previous night to let Jesse take the lead on things. Jesse appreciated the lack of push back. The blonde was currently squatting and looking at the body damage to the side of the toyota his face scrunched up in thought trying to think about what could have done that.

"Doesn't look like a car." [did this] Randy said walking around, snow crunching under his leather boots, "cause its on this side and down here." His own F 150 wasn't in great condition but all that had been already done he just hadn't had the time to take it to a body shop to fix the damage to the front and rear of his Ford.

Jesse stood back up, threw a look at the house, "Nah," He agreed, before mumbling as he scrutinized the indentions on the body, "No car accident. Airbag probably should have gone off for a car," It didn't ... the impacts were too big to be a baseball bat, or something like that. "Got anything on stats?" He asked.

Randy blew out a breath and activated his level one sensory ability check, and bit down a curse almost falling backwards on his ass and he was too far for Jesse to grab. Randy steadied, and straightened "You know what the mana level is for here?" He asked whirling around to look over the fields for any kind of threat... he'd only had the ability a couple hours now but the system had explained what low versus high mana had meant and... he didn't like that.

"Well come on fuck it, if Joe is here great if not," He didn't want that to be, but they'd need to drive into town and try and find out something, find people they knew. He crunched around through the snow and pulled the gate not catching the luminescent eyes watching from the door as he moved towards the door of the big house.

The neo georgian colonial revival home sprawled out its porch wrapping around the exterior its face looking south out along a stretch of the state highway built long after the farmhouse. Where Randy had left the family farm more than a decade earlier the dairy farm here had been broken up in the seventies into lots as partitioned inheritance before John had been born. Some of those lots about had been developed into a subdivision that had formed in the early nineties with plots big enough for light agriculture or horses.

The snow crunched under Randy's boots as he followed him up the short brick stairs, and on to the porch waiting at the top of the stoop presumably for Jesse to knock. Jesse shot him a look and took a step further to the door, and then Randy spoke up. "Why's he not answering his phone?"

Jesse stopped halfway to knocking on the door and turned around, "I don't know." He replied... it hadn't escaped him... but it wasn't that early in the morning. The yard looked fine, but the car had been messed up. Whatever had smashed up the body had been hitting just the bottom half, but he wheels and front end had looked fine... but the back end ... "You think he got a level out of it?" the deputy asked as he thought about their own surprise the night before. Randy made a grumbling half inaudible statement Jesse assumed had been that the two of them, Jesse and John had both deployed multiple times, while Randy had never signed up for all that. Jesse shrugged, and turned back to the door, and rapped on the wood. "Broskii, dude I'm freezing my balls off out here." He called... trying to be loud but not loud enough the neighbors would necessarily hear him, and he wasn't sure why he cared in the situation.

He gave it a minute before going to knock again, but pulled back as his points augmented perception heard the dog scrambling across the hardwood, and presumably footfalls on the landing of the stairs. The kangal slid to a halt its massive box like head looking out the window giving a solitary bark as it saw them. Jesse eased back.
--
John stepped back from the fireplace and put the poker in the rack. "So what the fuck happened to you guys?" He asked having scoped out that obviously something must have happened. Randy was shook, and Jesse seemed jittery as if he'd come out something... well the come down from after having shots taken at him... but given his line of work that wasn't that outlandish.

He was also asking so they didn't ask the same question of him.

"So like..." Jesse threw a glance at Randy and started to recount what he might have otherwise considered an outlandish story... if not for the fact that he was looking at their Level 1 'holographic' display of health and mana and for the fact that he'd gotten attacked by ugly ooze monsters in the woods... at the same time though he couldn't help but get antsy enough to interrupt as the story was told...

"Wait, so you got jumped by the starter villians from Dies the Fire?" He asked referencing a now twenty plus year old work of fiction.

"The guns work." Randy pointed out.

Jesse nodded either to his question or to Randy pointing out the obvious, "Yeah, maybe they got the wrong impression from my ink." He cracked the tattooed covered knuckles for emphasis. "Course got to wonder what the fuck they were thinking ... but started babbling some bullshit about zombies and how it was the end of the world."

He didn't know about zombies but, "Anything else?"

"I mean you said you were going hunting yesterday so when you didn't pick up about going to dinner I didn't think anything of it."

Jesse let the statement hang, so John went and answered to reciprocate if nothing else, "busted my phone in the woods getting run around by a bunch of slime monsters. Then came home and crashed."

"Woke up to the video game lights, yeah?" Jesse replied. "Yeah I was sweating the conversation I was gonna have with the department, but we went back to Randy's place." Not like there was a better option.

"So you left O and Portia there?"

Randy grunted in acknowledgment leaning back on the couch across from the fireplace, "Oh fuck yeah, its back enough in the woods if things have flipped upside down." Jesse replied as John walked into the kitchen to check on the coffee he had set the machine to brewing.

The comment about Dies the Fire had been a bit on the nose. Jesse had gotten sloshed one time and been pretty upfront that if shit hit the fan he wanted to be a big shot... and that on the fiction side of things Arminger had had the right idea... or at least not completely wrong. He had just been pretty trashed alcohol wise that he had ambitions to being a big shot if the old system went to hell. That didn't make him okay with a stupid evil plan of lets enslave black folks. Jesse wasn't a racist it was just his drunk self had self admitted he liked the idea being in charge and making a neo feudal order cause that made more sense to him. The Dies the Fire reference was a little on the nose because Norman Arminger seemed to in Jesse's opinion have something along the lines of the right idea... "There is also magic... did you see the patron deity section?" The big guy asked after a minute.

He was in a sense changing the subject... "Yeah," He replied unsteadily, "I wasn't … I wasn't really sure what to do there." and not because … well germanic neo paganism had helped him, probably more than Jesse, get through the war on terror, and they had both agreed that the faith did have its problematic members. "Active magic makes things different."

That was a fucking understatement.

Randy took the offered mug of coffee, and looked up at him "So what do we do from here?" That was the question wasn't?


"Did you bring a rifle?"

"It doesn't have a scope on it," Randy replied knowing it was inevitably going to come up, while Jesse shook his head... which made sense if they'd gone out to eat on Sunday and only been back to Randy's place.

 

[The Stormbringer]

I haven't set aside the time to fully read this yet, but the first bits are intriguing enough for me to watch!

 

[Imperator Pax]

Chapter 1: The Day After (C)​

Randy hadn't bothered doing much with the AR before this. It had been a lark purchase. Cheap, buy one now, have it whatever. He'd been given a Chinese knock off acog ... that might well have been intended for airsoft, or 22LR or something that he had kept meaning to get around to putting on, but the truth was he hadn't even had iron sights on it. He also hadn't been sitting on a lot of ammo either.

That was what made him chuckle when John had said he didn't like the situation 'on account of not having enough ammo.' It was funny... or it would have been funny outside of the situation. The metal ammo cans sat down on the long dining room table sure looked like they should be plenty.

"Thought you didn't like green tips?" Jesse remarked holding up one of the plastic mags for the ar and making a point of looking at the magazine as if it were somehow strange to him. "Don't you usually shoot 77 grains?"

John lifted a suppressed rifle out of his safe stepping back, it sounded like he was grumbling under his breath, but Randy couldn't make out the words, "Its- personal preference." He said more audibly. "Are we taking this zombie claim seriously?"

"Fuck yeah I am," Jesse declared, "Hell you were the one talking about getting chased by big ivory teethed slime monsters, I think I'd rather take a good old zombie apocalypse over that man."

Randy shivered a little at the thought. Last night had been bad enough the flip from zero to eleven had caught him off guard... and then waking up to the level, and all the new information was sensory overload.

Jesse was laid back, maybe too laid back about everything. As of the biggest guys in their circle of friends Jesse could be boisterous and loud, and didn't seem to see anything wrong with their situation. He supposed that made him the odd one out, as the sound of metal parts moving echoed through the dining room.

Though he had heard it before it before this time the sound alien in its surreal-ness. Coupled with the realization he had never really spent time in the dining room here at all. Dining room was a misnomer. John's Great Room on the opposite side of the house was where they had been before they had trucked in here the three of them. The paintings, and sketches on the wall were largely of horses a cursive script J. Grim in most of the right hand corners. The exception was a singular sketch of a dusky skinned woman with copper hair in a jean jacket, there was no signature on it... and it was at least twenty years old, long before Randy had met John.

Jesse was loud and boisterous and was all too happy to talk about his stint in Afghanistan, which was frequently in his own words a waste of time with one thumb up our asses and one hand tied behind our back. He'd hated 'babysitting the french', and he hated the ANP, and the list went on it was all the things he didn't like about how things had been.

John just didn't talk about it. John had gone into the army the most recent in a long line of men who'd done it going back through the revolutionary war. He looked down at the boots, his perpetual ren faire garb in the form of his hand made leather boots, "Hey you think for sure shits going to hit the fan? Like in that book I mean?" Even though they'd been the ones coming to tell him about the idiots trying to bring back chattel slavery and the boog or whatever the fuck.... and so he had to ask the question. John looked up at him with one hand on the rifle receiver, his expression stark and unyielding.


"When the oil stops everything stops. If there is civiil unrest people are going to turn to looting and we're overcrowded for that to be anything but a cluster fuck."

"Gbut," He grunted the word spilling out in a jumble, "yeah but those guys were out of it," Almost half of the town was black it was insane to... "They were gonna try."

"Yeah, so I smoked them." Jesse grunted putting the magazine, or one like it, into a flat dark earth belt pouch. "I'll smoke their buddies to... but we need to find out why they're willing to think its that bad that that shit is gonna fly."
--
They piled into the car, with Randy cramming into the back seat. It wasn't comfortable, but it seemed a stupid thing to bitch about given the situation. The car worked, and they eased down the state highway... cognizant of how eerily empty shit was even before they could make out the smoke drifting dark on their south west.

Fire obviously.

Randy triggered the extrasensory ability he'd gotten this morning. The ability he'd been reflexively activating seemingly at every turn this whole trip even though he'd ridden this road into town his whole life. That there should have been people on it the middle of Monday morning was... wasn't a good sign.

The mana levels as reported by his magic sight dipped as they moved away from John's farm. Normalizing back down to what he processed as a cooler 'background color', but as he tracked towards the smoke cresting a rise in the road... it was obvious the nearest, that he could detect, heaviest concentration of mana was wherever that fire was.

A fire that obviously had gotten out of hand. It was too big to be a vehicle fire, and too inky on the morning skyline to be from burning trees. A building... probably, maybe more than one. He blinked retriggering the ability as they eased down the hill. Still just low mana returns... and no other cars on the road. Jesse abruptly braked, and Randy snapped forward against his seat belt trying to look around, "What?" As soon as he'd reflexively said the word he understood what they had seen, and why he was driving slower. The smoke from the fire now that they were north of east of it was a massive line along the road or at least it had been. Randy triggered his magical sight again urging the ability to tell him more and watched the new display to ping up.

It didn't tell him more per se. There were a bunch of question marks, but the fire itself was magical or was radiating fire mana. They trundled forward taking a right where the highways met ten minutes later. A mile of sunken burned buildings played out along one side of the road, burned cars in the parking lots... and at least so far as he could see no bodies.

They moved down about another mile, Randy feeling like he was burning the images into his mind when Jesse braked hard again, "So much for going to Wally World." Walmart, he muttered, "Fucker wasn't lying."

He was at the top of the rise, and they'd finally seen a body.

Randy triggered his ability. A banner unfurled over the shambling figure.

Zombie Level 1.

Then another one, and another. They were largely milling about aimlessly. One or two would occasionally get to the edge of the highway and then turn and shuffle back... as if they were afraid to cross the road. It was like a macabre child's joke. It just wasn't funny.

 

[Imperator Pax]

The Day After (D)​

On initial guess he would have blamed the fire that had gutted the mall on just urban blight, and age of the buildings even though it hadn't been helped by the lack of a Fire Department response. There had been multiple fires probably at some point, but they all... as if by magic... had pulled themselves into one continuous groaning low level mass. For whatever reason ... again probably magic they weren't jumping the highway. It was just a stretch of scar across the landscape of the town.

The fire must have gotten out of hand quickly, but it didn't explain the lack of a city or county response... or the why or how of it happening or a lot of other questions. Whose answers might all be magic, John supposed. Randy had just said something about fire mana hadn't he? He didn't know what that meant but maybe it was a factor in whatever this was.

Whatever had happened here ... in the day and a half since he had last been out this way. He had to have figured that the fire must have gotten into the insulation of the building... the mall hadn't dealt with the great recession well and big spaces had stayed empty after old brand name outlets had closed... and even before that the cold war era consumerism of brick and mortar had been getting dinged by stuff like Amazon and what not.

The fire had probably compromised the structural integrity and the cold, and the snow had probably caved in the mall's roof. Just composite factors... it didn't explain where the fuck the zombies had come from.

Jesse's muttering was right.

The Walmart as they rolled past was worse. More zombies, they kept rolling and then Jesse swung a right turning down a sloped parking lot to bring them adjacent to the parking lot. He had to adjust his seating from the sector he had been covering to realize what he was looking at. The boxes and what not had been dropped, the windows were broken, there were flipped buggies and broken cars... somebody had gotten started looting quickly before the zombies had gotten to them.

From behind the steering wheel Jesse half questioned half stated the same conclusion, "Looting?"

"No one here now." He replied turning back to looking forward and keep an eye on the passenger side... which raised questions why no one was trying to loot or why there wasn't a 'security forces' presence, where had the County Sheriff's department ended up, "Heads up." John declared.

The shambling handful of corpses were moving towards the vehicle. Curious, or investigative but moving relative to the walmart building's burned and busted up façade. The cars in the parking lot broke up his line of sight and forced the ungainly walking dead to maneuver around.

If Walmart had been safe and open it would have been the place to stock up on supplies. It had been Randy's shopping center of choice they could have gotten a little bit of everything to see if they could pad out if things really were going to hell.

He adjusted the sling on the rifle as Jesse positioned the car and parked it to swing out one hand already moving to the glock in his lap as he got out. The glock which wasn't suppressed, and then the blonde was shooting... in a near confined space where Randy wasn't wearing anything to muffle the sudden shot, and then shots.

"Ow fuck." Randy clamped his hands over his ears in the back seat as he almost went prone on the back seat as the nine mill brass went over the top of the corolla. The noise cancelling ear buds John wore flattened the sound, and that of his Daniel as he brought the reticle of XPS 3-0 onto the zombie to his immediate right and pressed the trigger.

The ghoulish figure slumped. Another emaciated putrid looking corpse stumbled over it the thing had probably been a person at one point from the way its skin and clothes had been torn apart and the burns along one side... now the falling monster was just a target.

He stitched it with a couple of rounds to be sure and moved the point of aim for the next one and then after adjusted, looking in between the cars as Jesse's glock went dry. The big blonde man was moving to reload, and then stopped. "Fuck what are we even doing?" He asked. John ejected the half empty magazine and pushed a fresh one into his own gun. Jesse sounded disgusted with himself, "Lets get the fuck out of here." He shouted just to be sure he was heard over the surprise of the gun fire.

They swung back into the car, slamming the doors and coming out of park as it went into reverse and swung back pointing towards the way they had come into the parking lot. Jesse pointedly wasn't flooring it or gunning the little rice burner's engine as he made his left turn to go up the incline and then nosing out and turning right onto the state road and speeding up once he was on it.

Once they were on the state highway he grumbled about watching enough zombie movies that he should have known better than that. That hadn't been John's first thought, but only because they started getting the XP awards for shooting the zombies.

It was the first indication of how society was going to survive... at least around here. The prevalence of zombie media, the abundance of small arms, the critical damage modifier on attacks to the head for zombies all of that meant that any human could quickly get that first level in the system if they could only manage to kill a zombie, and then get away from it long enough for the system to process.

Randy was quick to note that he had also identified the other mana type, what had previously been just three question marks... Death Mana. Death and Fire Mana. Randy drove on back into the county leaving the still smoldering urban scar behind... the zombies didn't follow.
--
They had gotten back to the house, his house, without further issue. The comment about experience cued him into looking, actually giving a hard look at his stats page. He knelt down at the fire place and triggered the cantrip to light the kindling. The experience award was small but there... and there was a separate tracking for fire magic as well... which he hadn't noticed before.

Not, not that that was that big of a surprise. He'd woken up groggy as shit and wondering why he wasn't banged up from the slime monsters. Once the guys had gotten here they had been winging it and neither Jesse or Randy knew exactly what they were doing either. "Bro we're gonna go back to Randy's, get his truck and Lando and Portia man."

He nodded and waved Jesse's comment off as he watched the fire crackle and the kindling spread to the logs. Alright he had magic then... there were zombies... there were still human assholes out there... so what?

The Anatolian Shepherd came into the great room of the house bumped him with his head once as one of the cats followed. The rat was ... pretty big... not wharf rat big but obviously it must have been eating good this winter. The fat gray cat had dropped it on the stones of the fire place and then retired onto the couch that had been vacated by the guys.

John groaned looking at the dead rodent, and went to dispose of it, but didn't think much more of it as he wandered back to the kitchen. Not what the rat might have eaten to have normally gotten so large, or the consideration that if things really were going to hell that vermin were going to be a bigger concern as trucks stopped running and food production became much more localized.

Randy had already warned him though in a manner of speaking. The disproportionately large rat wasn't a monster yet... it had just gorged itself on the abundant mana pervading the area. Randy knew about it because the System had told him when he unlocked his class's extra sensory ability... Randy understood from that that academically High Mana went hand in hand with more more dangerous creatures even though at the time he'd learned that he and Jesse hadn't even seen a zombie in person yet. Mana though, the ability to harness Mana was a source of energy you could do other things with it to bypass other inputs into work, and that would prove revolutionary as society, as people adapted to it.

 

[Joeyatknson]

Interesting system story. I like the fact that you have a group of friends helping each other. It would be hard but if they could clear their way into the store. Food ammo whatever they need would be good to stock up on. I look forward to seeing where you take this story. Thank you for your time.

 

[Imperator Pax]

The Day After (E)​

He was watching the flurries of snow come down but he wasn't really watching. His thoughts, and his focus were elsewhere. He was well past the mental math of transit times as he stretched his arms against the hard wood of the desk overlooking the snow covered fallow one time farmland.

A zombie apocalypse?

Not quite a conventional one. They'd need to sight in Randy's Palmetto AR... obviously. Randy was the kind of guy who bristled if he had something but then you tried to hand him a better , 'better', version of it... and the gun was a gun. It was a tool, and he was grateful that they worked. The prevalence of small arms was going to be an important facet of survival in the south east. It meant people would get experience and just surviving and getting to safety would unlock the system.

The problem... was, he blinked as the Anatolian charged through the snow after probably another rodent looking like a polar bear. He chalked it up to having raised the puppy among the cats. No, the problem with their situation was going to be what happened when the oil ran out.

Gas that Jesse's car was burning, that his car would burn, that Randy's ride would as well. Without gas everything was going to grind to a halt, and paper money was going to be useless without the international trade apparatus that made it a medium of exchange. Without gas trucks carrying bread, and milk wouldn't run... and hungry people, scared people would quickly outgrow any civilized notion of urbane living and turn violent in search of goods. It was easy for fat content westerners to talk about utopian ideals and how the state would take care of them.

"Should have planted those apple trees last year," He muttered to himself inside the empty house standing up and running his hands through shaggy dark hair. Too much snow on the ground even if he did have the saplings... he'd been saying he was going to plant some more this year, but it was too early in the year right now... never mind all of this. Magic, or zombies on top of magic, he corrected himself under his breath. He was already moving subconsciously. His wool clad feet moving along the hardwood floors.

His thoughts were dominated by the difference between the two encounters... and what they had learned in between and after. The lost hunting rifle was irrelevant; he had already written that off. Fire arms worked. Semi automatic fire arms like the AR were obviously best from a practical aiming standpoint, but Jesse's glock had worked well enough. The problem went back to supplies, and not just ammo... they had gone to the Walmart because it had been a convenience choice... on the highway like Walmart liked to build their stores and it would have had a little bit of everything, but besides the zombies the fire had done a number of the building.

Randy had said he got experience for using his magical search and scan skill and that he could identify different mana types, and monster information. That information had to be relevant to what situation they found themselves in... someone, something had given them magic powers, but hadn't explicitly told them how the system worked. Was that by design or an oversight? He didn't know, but when he'd lit the kindling using the fire cantrip it had awarded experience too.

... and that didn't really tell him much, other than use conveyed experience... but combat gave more, killing a zombie provided more. That seemed obvious, a no duh situation... but he and Jesse, and Randy all had different powers and abilities.

He as down stairs staring at the safe, "gonna need to figure that shit out as well," He muttered punching in the code and turning the wheel reopening the big steel box and peering within.
--
They had had no reason not to come back... turn around and come back after hitting Randy's place... his cell signal was still shit. Jesse wondered if that would be true if drove back to his house, or if it was localized on the area, but that thought had only come to mind as they walked back through the door.

The internet, he assumed, must have still worked.

John had turned his WiFi home speaker on... unfortunate timing or intentional the song was a country folk mix that he played from time to time on the friday night get togethers... but whether it was intentional or just happenstance it was kind of on the nose. "Ok, see if this works." Jesse said feeling stupid as he poked the air trying to use an interface that he was pretty sure was ... no one else could see and was probably the system trying to 'help'.

A second later, as John and Randy clicked accept he was notified as the party was successfully formed. Apparently you needed a minimum of three level one adventurers to form a party, he supposed that made sense. All XP gained would be shared equally according to the information... that was good.

... well the level one requirement wasn't ideal he supposed since it meant he could add Portia and Orlando ... but well they could use guns to shoot zombies and that should get them the XP to level... he was pretty sure that would work. It made sense in his head at least... and understood why he had missed the prompt this morning... the system was intuitive if you were thinking about doing stuff in a certain way but otherwise tried to be unobtrusive.

If he wanted to know if he hit a zombie, he got a notification, but otherwise it didn't tell him. It waited until a certain amount of time out of combat to tell him about XP gains. Those gains weren't enough, he had double checked with Randy on the ride back to his place but shooting a few zombies didn't make a dint towards getting them to level two.

"Gonna need to get gas." Randy said abruptly.

Jesse felt himself nodding as his brain considered the forty five minute drive back to his own house... even accounting for the better gas mileage his Japanese hatchback got. "Got jerry cans?" He asked John, "We could grab those find somewhere with a card read that works and pump them full," He continued. That of course assumed that the card readers were working and that no one else had already thought about it, that the gas station attendants or owners hadn't shut them off themselves... or that the gas stations even had gas. The BP on the highway was usually the cheapest but they also ran out of gas first in town.

He wouldn't have been surprised if they were already out of gas... what about the other franchise chain brands would they still have gas?

"Walmart isn't an option," Randy remarked... and that was right, it totally slipped his mind that the Walmart had pumps up at the top of the hill. He didn't think the fire had reached there, which was good... but there had been the zombies.

Orlando shoved his head in the room, "Hey I got the news working on the tv." He informed them. "Its the BBC but its news, and they've got zombies too..." The heavy-set, short & stockily built, man announced and they piled back into the great room to watch the shambling through the streets of Manchester ... the British newscaster wasn't exactly convincing as she called for calm about the situation... but it at least told them that this was going on in other places.

 

[Imperator Pax]

First Steps (A)​

He checked the party display that had unlocked when he had accepted Jesse's invite. John wasn't sure what they were going to do about gas just yet... but the news ... the news situation wasn't good... he hadn't considered turning the television on. Too much, too much shit going on when he didn't regularly use the television anymore anyway.

The truth was the three of them had all cut cable a while ago. He'd given up Netflix as well in the face of rising prices as well. The surreal thought struck him even as they had crowded around the big screen... if he hadn't lost his phone the BBC app probably would have been sending him notifications about the zombie apocalypse. He might have laughed if not for they were in the middle of it.

The zombies were stopping fire and EMS. The Brits were already having reports filter in from other cities and it didn't seem like they were having much luck. Other places were a more mixed bag. Korea... Korea had done... well it was Tuesday in Seoul. They had invoked a state of emergency tried to call up the reserves, tried to formulate a response.

The problem there, John could read between the lines. The ROKA was trying, yeah, but it was clear the BBC newscaster really wanted to call a spade a spade. The Army had instituted martial law, and were calling up their reservists. It sure looked like a coup, even if it might not be but for the European broadcasters that was what they wanted to call it but whoever was in charge of the BBC was telling them to shut up. The BBC was a government apparatus, the British government could order their press to shut up... and right now Downing Street was probably too shocked by everything to risk antagonizing anyone important.

A jagged part of him mused too long on that situation. He wanted more information, beyond just what the BBC could tell him. Magic was obviously real, and that maybe explained why they were dealing with zombies on three separate landmasses at least.

"Think they'll do it?" Orlando asked nudging him as Jesse changed to another news clip... the truth was John didn't know, but he did know the new clip was of Atlanta burning... it looked probably worse than it was. A lot of black smoke, but it was all on the roads the highway that Atlanta's sprawling metro had overgrown ... the fires had collapsed part of the highway... but on the other hand they weren't high rise buildings burning. All they could do was watch the events play out on the big screen television. The internet worked, and in a way there was something perverse and disturbing watching things come apart at the seams. "Can they do it?" Orlando was a big guy, and watched enough zombie movies... not limited to Train to Busan, but his question was cautiously optimistic about the situation a world away.

The government emergency broadcast was asking all emergency service personnel, active duty, reserve, and guard to report in. It was a message though that had come across only through the internet. They still didn't know why the phone signal was so shitty as to not work. He took a breath and contemplated O's question, "I don't know man." He replied after a minute with the honest answer.

There was just so much filtering in from the news. It wasn't just Zombies in England and Korea... the change in scenery showed the Louvre burning as what could only be orcs moving through the boulevards under the lead of a shaman raining lightning from a crooked staff. Fuck, as if things weren't bad enough. They weren't ready for the zombies, never mind that.

"Wait, go back, scroll back up." He ordered cutting off a grumbling that he didn't entirely disagree with about how maybe if the Europeans had properly funded their military and spent more on law enforcement they wouldn't be getting in the ass that Jesse was doing.

"Fuck is that-" The screen had been a shifting stream of images as Jesse worked the remote. "That's an armadillo... isn't it?" The big blonde man declared stupefied as he watched the overgrown scaly rodent nom contentedly on the Hollywood sign overlooking Los Angeles. It wasn't doing anything to hurt anybody, it wasn't as obviously frightening as the hordes of undead or orcs calling down lightning... it was just something else that was new.

The armadillo was big, and something was going on with it beside that but it didn't seem hostile it just wanted to dig up the sign and gnaw on it though. The news crews obviously thought they were safe enough to ... well get much closer than John would have with everything else going on. They spent maybe all told an hour combing through the newsfeeds, internet posts and what not before stopping, overwhelmed.

The internet showed i vivid and in the variety of ways that the world was transforming. It wasn't just the zombies, that they'd seen this morning, those were all over. It was giant animals and the zombies, and also apparently other things than the slime monsters he'd run into in the woods yesterday.

The highlight of that was the live interrupt and the screaming and shouting as a live broadcast from London showed there was no FCC monitoring right now as a cockatrice devoured one of the BBC reporters on live television without anyone cutting off the broadcast.

"Did that just happen?"

"Yeah."

"Fuck."

--
The work around for the phones not working, for cell phones not working was email. Or really more correctly it was wifi getting as many different internet connected message services that didn't depend on the cell network and trying to find out who still had an internet connection who had access to an internet connection.

What caused the phones to stop working? Well whatever it was seemed purely localized to their area, they'd seen on the news especially clips coming in from Asia, and in big cities of people with working cell phones so whatever it was was in their backyard.

Still the internet gave them a way to reach out if not instantly to other people. To send messages to people in the local gaming group and start trying to get messages out and ascertain statuses. Maybe if they had been more patient, they would have waited before going back to the Walmart.

"So okay, agro is a thing," Randy muttered triggering his magical sight... or disengaging it.

John wasn't sure as he adjusted his grip on the scoped rifle. They were several vehicles worth of people now. Some of whom he knew well enough, others just as acquaintances but the idea was pretty simple. The zombies themselves didn't seem that much of a problem. "And?"

"The ghouls have more hit points." The man in ren faire garb declared... "And I think it looks like the zombies got to the apartments back behind the Walmart, but they keep coming back to the store."

Yeah, it was about three in the afternoon and after a couple hours of sitting... and maybe wastefully driving around if not particularly fast they had taken note of some things. There weren't a lot of people in this end of the town. There should have been more people.

There weren't ... there just weren't a lot of people. The street lights were an automated system so they still worked... they had had to run a red light more than once, but no sign of municipal police, the county sheriffs or state police.

The likely answer was the municipal and county government offices were overrun.

The zombies though would only get so far for whatever reason from the Walmart shopping center before they lost interest in pursuit and started to walk back that way unless they were being actively engaged. "We got to clear them out." Jesse said, and that was the only warning they got. The big blonde man adjusted the rifle he had insisted that they should be using guns even in the face of a couple of the SCA guys recommending maybe getting armored up and using melee weapons because it would make less noise. The rifle cracked as the blonde pushed forward and away from his vehicle. He wasn't bothering to use cover, which would have been useful if he'd been concerned about return fire... but zombies didn't 'see' and they didn't use guns.

Adam, one of the aforementioned SCA guys, shouted at him to come back. Adam slipped backward in the bed of the pickup falling on his ass as Randy put the car into drive from park causing the truck to lurch ungainly as went into motion. John watched the action and tightened down the sling of his rifle.

Randy was shouting something to Jesse as well, apparently his magical sight having picked up something that it was only after it was in plain view that John realized was a warning. The thing was big... still human sized and height but it had probably at one point been a big guy... big enough that the charred ash caked black skeleton was taller than Jesse.

"Shit that thing is level five." Randy shouted from the driver's seat of his truck.

It back handed Jesse as the big deputy shot it up with his pistol; having transitioned. He went off the ground sliding a good fifteen feet into a parked car with an audible thump dropping the glock in the process. There was a screech of tires as Randy the already busted up front end of his truck into the skelly boy and sent it careening down the slight incline of the parking lot.

It was starting to get up as John extended his hand instinctually channeling the swirling golden threads that were becoming a spell. There was a flash of rippling light as it coalesced into a burst of magic.

 

[Imperator Pax]

First Steps (B)​

The drive back had been quiet enough, tedious enough that he had realized, become cognizant of the fact he really had expected to be hearing more gunshots. With no sound there was little background noise to muffle gunshots, or operating motor vehicles, or anything it was quiet beyond their vehicles. It wasn't the only 'data point' to process on the way back.

In terms of XP awards the Charred Skeleton wasn't that amazing... but since they'd been in a party Jesse had been awarded the XP the same as John, and Randy. It was enough to push Jesse and Randy to level two, and then some. That meant it healed Jesse back up to fighting form, even if it had been a shocker in terms of getting his ass handed to him.

They'd really been there to try and make sure everyone else got to take some pot shots at zombies, and hopefully get the XP needed to level... and the sudden escalation was as good of a reason as any to beat feet back to the cars and drive away from town for the time being.

They had left the television off.

The great room had been built in such away, in a scope of ... for families and entertaining much larger than contemporary families. It was the only reason he didn't feel crowded inside the great room. With the fire stoked and so many bodies it was warm though... but that was the thing too given it was snowing again as twilight approached, and most people had conked out as soon as they had trudged back in and fell onto the couches.

Jesse though seemed no worse for where. It was everybody who didn't have levels who all had pretty much crashed out on the couches as soon as they were available... even the ones who hadn't done much other than take potshots at Zombies from the the back of Randy's pickup. He supposed he shouldn't judge. John blew on his coffee, and then rubbed his face fighting the headache that was coming on with the caffeine and the Motrin.

"So?" He looked up at the blonde, who at the look repeated himself, "We're not levelling fast enough, that thing punted my ass fifteen feet, and my pistol didn't even phase it."

That probably wasn't entirely true. Randy was pretty sure that Jesse had been doing damage shooting it... just not enough for it to matter in close range. The bigger problem was Jesse reckless running forward with no body there to back him up, and getting blindsided by the new thing. "The Jump," As they had coined it, "Is a little worrying... mini boss maybe?"

"I don't think so, fuck its not a game." Jesse replied, "It just showed up... like it was protecting it. We know they take bonus damage from holy attacks..." But that didn't really do them that much good. John was casting spells that he had gotten because he'd jumped from one to seven because of the fucking slimes in the woods yesterday... and while he was ahead of everyone else even with the skill points he had allocated his xp bar was filling up painfully slowly, "But we need more XP... and we got to get rid of those zombies."



That was the simplest thing to come to a conclusion about. They couldn't keep burning gas dicking around, and they needed the zombies rid of because they were a hazard in the area. It was simple, but also hard because they were consuming ammo as well.

Jesse was indisputably right, about needing to get rid of them.

Adam, on e of the guys conked out on the couch abruptly sat up coughing and flailing. His status screen showed he'd leveled up. Level 1... but at least so far as things not being a game, there hadn't been anything obvious that he had seen, and Randy had ducked back into the hallway making for the kitchen before Adam had woken up.
They needed to consolidate, and they hadn't been able to get the local gaming group all together at once... so there were still people out there. "Did Justin or Charlie say what happened?"

"Justin is in Abbeville, said something about mutant spiders." But that was about it, and those apparently were only a danger in large numbers... "I mean he thinks," Jesse continued, "That this is turning into real life DND."

"He's not wrong," Adam managed from the couch half trying to sit up, and half sliding down the incline of the plush leather. "What about you you okay?"

Jesse shrugged, "I told you i'm fine, he just caught me by surprise, it won't happen again." The big blonde deputy declared. John pegged that Jesse wasn't in any hurry to involve any of the other LEOs in the group... probably not because of them personally, but jurisdictional friction if John had to guess. The neighboring counties didn't seem to be responding either... probably because there just weren't enough cops and what not to manage a coherent response. "Anyway, you got your first level thats good, we really need to get back out there, and deal with those zombies." The big blonde stood there tall and confident, as if he were a recruiter but Adam was older than either of them and was still trying to figure out his footing.

"I don't know man," he looked around to the others, "What about the rest of the group? There is Asheville too," Adam occasionally went up to an SCA group in Asheville, which with cars was not that bad of a trip, but John was still cognizant of that they were on a time when it came to how long stocks of fuel would last... he just didn't have a solution...

"Broskii I'm gonna grab a beer," Jesse ducked around Randy and came back with two Guinness offering one to Adam and sat down on the edge of the couch, "Look, yeah Magics real, we can go talk to the wiccans and stuff, that's an idea but we need to secure a base of operations here. Those zombies they got to go man, and I don't know what's up with the Walmart but that shit ain't normal."

What was even supposed to be normal in this case, John wondered, but Jesse wasn't wrong, he blew out a breath, "I'm not super worried about the Walmart but I want to go up to the feed store that's up that way." He glanced to the people conked out, "can we figure out who all got what if they're getting levels and decide what we're going to do?" He was going to let the others figure out what all was going on with everyone else.

What had happened yesterday, while he had been out in the woods. Why some people had gotten levels yesterday why others hadn't. They needed more information, and that was hard to do without working cell phones. John walked back into his kitchen... Jesse wasn't being intentionally loud enough to wake the others, but he wouldn't have been surprised if he was hoping they'd hurry up and get up.


For the first time in a while he felt the claustrophobia like sensation sit in, and he closed his eyes and took a breath. John ran his tongue over his front teeth, and looked out the kitchen window across the snow, before calling up his stat sheet. Jesse had slightly more experience than Randy, and he was pretty sure the blonde was angling to hit three as soon as possible... to the point of taking risks, but maybe they needed to take risks.

 

[Imperator Pax]

First Steps (C)
The plan was simple. Go in kill as many zombies as possible in a set amount of time and then see what the reaction was, before bugging out. Simple plan. Easy Plan. A hard to fuck up plan. Jesse was in a good enough mood to joke about having got his ass beat by 'Papa Bones' but most of the group didn't have that kind of energy as they made another trip into town to try for round two? Three? Who was counting?

"So what happened?"

The bigger, bigger than jesse more heavy set dark haired man shrugged, "I don't really know man, like," Justin was a big guy and younger than Jesse or himself... never mind Randy. He, Justin, was only in his late twenties, "I remember yesterday how they were talking about record snow fall, and then," Justin shrugged, "Well I tried to get ahold of my Sunday DND group to make sure we were playing," John grunted ... that was the group he had dropped out of, the DM was kind of a prima donna, "Cause we weren't sure we were going to be playing."

Randy coughed to smother a laugh, "Sorry."

"its not funny," Justin complained, "But anyway, I couldn't get an answer, so I just assumed that we weren't going to campaign cause he forgot or whatever... but like he could be hurt, any of them could be hurt."Which was going to bug Justin until they figured it out, cause the Abbeville resident hadn't realized anything was wrong wrong until shit had hit the fan. "I mean I'm glad you guys are okay, but what if they're not?"

John glanced out the window, "SO did you hear anything?"

"Some goblins attacked a church on Sunday," He muttered, "Thats what I heard anyway, and that was bad, I watched some videos on youtube from other places, and it seems bad while I was waiting for, about whether or not I was going to come over."

They went over a rough patch in the road, where the state hadn't gotten around to fixing the highway...probably would never get around to fixing it now. Something else to think about, he mused watching the tree line. The internet worked. Emails worked. Web hosting allowed video uploading. The news services seemed to be working, but that was the thing, "So more monster attacks."

"Mmhmm, yeah that's right." He thought about the lost hunting rifle. Not really a problem. He had plenty of potential replacements... but, his eyes kept scanning the road side, "I," Justin paused, glancing to his side of the vehicle from the backseat of the Chevy, "I mean I've been getting XP for that and Jesse is right that it makes sense that we should form a party and deal with the zombies doesn't it."

Forming a party did. The experienceneeds also made sense. The operational repercussions of leaving the situation for the zombies to worsen... it was all perfectly logical. When you got right down to it, he could see why neutralizing the threat made sense, "Did you see anything like this though?"

"Like this? Not in Abbeville." Justin replied shaking his head. As Justin didn't live in the borders of the county proper he had to drive into work in a personal vehicle rather than have a patrol car to take home, and keep fueled... andthe truth was with the cell phone situation being what it was , that was to say inoperable John really would have liked to have had access to a cruiser's radio. They hadn't seen shit for police presence though.

The chevy gave a rough ker chunk as it met a divot in the road that the county would probably never get around to fixing, "Ok, so what have you been doing?"

"Uh, sitting around really," Justin replied, "I mean I got a little bit of experience but up until the discord started working I wasn't sure what I should do."

It made sense.

The chevy made a hard left and down the incline back where they had been this morning as Randy shushed them so he could do whatever with his magical sensory powers or whatever.

"Any more papa bones?" Jesse asked leaning forward and left from the seat immediately behind John.

"I don't see any." Randy replied as Adam pulled in behind them. The second of the three vehicles.

There were a handful of zombies milling about. No sign of the slightly more dangerous ghouls. It was basically the same number of them as last time... which suggested... well fuck John didn't know what exactly it suggested. They were just more zombies wandering around aimless like.

The System kept a log of combat allocated. It was how he had known about the slimes, and how much HP they had versus the ghouls, and zombies, and the skeletons they had encountered. The system would let him pull up the details like some rpg. "Remember the plan, we want to stay at range." Zombies especially were so easy to kill with modern firearms it was almost a joke... almost as if this was some basic starter area... or maybe it was supposed to be more difficult and guns were the factor that was the unusual thing. It didn't matter as long as anyone of the nerds could shoot accurately then there you went, and collected the meager XP. "If a bunch of them show up we want to leave,"

"Thin out some of their numbers," Jesse agreed to his right addressing the smaller group of nerds than this morning.

They'd ended up staying longer, probably wasting more gas than they should have. John was cognizant of the limited daylight of January that they were burning. They came back, piling out into the yard with the trio of vehicles they had taken still cataloging the XP.

"Think its safe to say the zombies got into the local apartment." It wasn't a good sign, "Or maybe they all just went to loot the walmart like dumbasses." Jesse opined as they stood there. The subaru at the neighbors house was visible pulling out of that drive way, and turning left before making another left into the driveway. "Who dat?" He asked hand trailing towards the slung rifle under his shoulder.

John waved it off, "Its fine." It probably wasn't fine, but Sarai was a woman in mid thirties, tall dirty blonde hair in a puffy jacket, with her german shepherd in tow. Jokes aside that she was a nineties kid, they had grown up watching the Dic sailor moon dub, and she'd kept up playing magic the gathering long after he'd given up. She was supposed to be house sitting for her aunt and uncle... who were in Columbia for something medical related that the family hadn't elaborated on, but probably wasn't good. He spared a look at the bumper, and then the dog.

The GSD was breed standard and was nosing around the Kangal but it had only been a couple of days since the two mutts had seen one another. The anatolian shepherd cocked it shead towards the field of winter wheat and John didn't think to clock either dog for stats. He only pegged Sarai's block by pure happenstance, "Zombies?"

"Uh, Yeah," She replied, "I meant to come by but y'all were already leaving, before, and the fucking cell phones don't work. So is it really the end of the world?"

"I mean the planet is going to keep tourning, do your aunt and uncle still have cable?"

"Yeah," She replied, "Oh shit," Her grumbling was fast and more to herself as she glanced, "I didn't even think to check the news down there, I just knew the internet worked and," Randy, Jesse and John all had cut cable... leave it to the old folks to keep throwing money towards something out of sheer habit... and in this case... well it wasn't such a bad thing.

 

[Imperator Pax]

First Steps (D)​

John had never given any serious consideration to farming. His family had been out of real farming for years. Homesteading as an exemption, as they had done it had involved growing corn, which was popular given the climate. He'd inherited the property but not tax exemption, he hadn't met the age requirement. That, and truth was by the time he'd left for the army never mind coming back John had been sick to death of eating corn... never mind everything that went into growing it.


There was a lot to that. Lot of hard work.


He pushed back, rolling the chair in the office back, and then moved the mouse to logout of his bank account with a sigh.


The sound of the other two men on the landing of the stairs as they came up were audible. John glanced at the youtube tabs, and the spreadsheets, and the others, and decided to wait. Jesse's footfalls were heavier than his own, but Randy's had taken an odd muffled quality to them...probably some passive stealth thing from his rogue class if he had to guess. The office door was open anyway, he wasn't expecting privacy, or to not be disturbed.


"Anything good there?" Jesse asked nodding to the screen, and the milieu of many open tabs.


It was easy to forget that a generator was a motor, when you got down to it all you needed to be simple was a fan or a washing machine. If it came down to that, "I'm trying to download some stuff, for however long the internet keeps working," But how long would the power last here, "The snow won't last forever." He remarked as they pulled spare chairs from along the wall.


Randy of the three of them had the most experience with semi active farming... in that he still had chickens, and had been kicking around getting cows...John wasn't really sure how much thought he had put into that. It seemed like a case where Randy talked about it, but hadn't started moving in that direction, or was procrastinating, but he got that. He understood it was easy to put things off especially since a cow or cows, more than one, would need fences which Randy didn't have setup. It wasn't the same kind of preparation as the usual, hey what about hurricane season type concerns...


Jesse nodded as the Feed Store was brought up, "I think we should really clear out the walmart, even if there is nothing usable there, its a hazard." He replied. "Maybe we do that, go down to tractor supply tactically acquire what we can from their manifests, and see where their warehouses are... and then... I think I'll go back to my house," Drive the hour north, "And see what from there."


That brought them back to the homesteading concept. For the government it was about taxes. The requirements here was largely age or disability they didn't care what you were doing it was just a look at revenue exemptions. For homesteading as people in the hobby, or the local farmers market that was a different story.


"Ok." He replied.


Randy had no objections either... and no one was in a rush to down the stairs andtalk it out with anyone else. Jesse didn't want to leave it at that, "I mean somebody had to start the fire there, and I figure they started looting already." John wasn't exactly sure whether that had been what had happened. They weren't exactly in a big metro area... but no one was around to say what had by the time they had gotten on the scene. "Things are going to hell." The big man continued a hair louder, and leading into his spiel. "If we don't establish whose in charge," Who of course being them, "then there is going to be chaos, just everything and everyone fighting for every scrap they can."



--

Jesse had decided to stay down on the ground floor, nursing a beer when John had retired. At about two in the morning, or a little after, the dog had gone ballistic barking up a storm as the snow had been coming down...before all this, probably just an indication of coyotes coming into the yard... and Jesse had opened the front door to pop off a couple shots with his glock before anyone else could really start to respond to the dogs.


It had been the pistol reports that had gotten John out of his bed as the floodlights on the porch had turned on. Not coyotes as it happened. Only Justin had seen the giant rats before, and he had heard about goblins, and maybe the goblins had been on the news, but it didn't matter since nobody here had seen them in person. Not coyotes, not zombies, but still level one and level two monsters... still squishy enough that small arms were effective.


Jesse was too busy on the front porch to send a team invite, that fell to Randy, and Justin, as both of them moved too and fro. John knew his yard had no concealment on the approach to the house. He'd long ago cleared away the decorative crepe myrtles of the previous generation and other such distracting foliage inside the post fence line. There was no machine gun, but he pushed the XPS's reticle to the small hairy chimp like creature with the cudgel directing the rest of his kind.


The suppressed AR tossed hot brass against the wall as Justin backpedalled away from the retort of the firearm. Suppressed was not silent, but John didn't really care about the noise. They weren't human, the giant rats either, but it wouldn't have mattered in this situation to John as he pressed the trigger.


The goblins, there were a lot of them, coming across the dip in the road, moving from a tree line hundreds of meters distant under the cover of night. Thirty maybe fifty. MacKenzie who had come over not long after Sarai had ...probably messaged through some social media or another cast something that illuminated a wide swathe of the road above. Eliminating the notion that he needed night vision at least for now.


Down below the front porch Adam had waded out with a decidedly not SCA stage combat legal sword to brandish at the nearest remaining goblins. The small furry bastards, the band of goblins advanced over the road heedless of their losses to the firearms as they moved up towards the front of the house.


Twenty minutes later their bodies faded away dissolving into mana and leaving crystals behind to go into inventory space as the system allocated loot. Theyleft behind crude weapons, ill fitting, for humans anyway, armor of hide and treated leather, in comparison the giant rats had left nothing and paid out little in terms of the system's currency.


No one was going tos leep the rest of the night. At the time no one put two and two together that the higher mana level was what had brought them nearer to the house... Randy had known already from his extra sensory skill that higher mana had more monsters. Jesse had moved fast, rushing out to engage the goblins and had drawn them in, killing enough of them to garner the highly coveted third level he'd been after.


John for his part immediately moved to put coffee on, which meant running more than one keurig since among the kitchen gadgets he had thrown away over the years were the old style large coffee makers... and in this situation was something with so many people in the house was a pain in the ass.


"Put it on the list." One of the nerds declared loud enough that he was probably still hard of hearing from the gunshots.


Sarai shook her head as a number of the gaming group crowded into the kitchen, "I think I've got one, or my uncle does." It didn't matter if she did. It was still dark outside, and there was snow on the ground no one was going out there right now.


They had the exterior lights on, and things looked alright, but they were gonna wait until there was actual daylight just to be sure. The problem was the goblins attacking at all. They were all clustered up here, and not at home. Randy had brought up a good point that he out of their group had chickens, MacKenzie hadn't had time to start setting up her new house for homesteading beyond a handful of small plants. She didn't have egg laying hens, Randy did.

 

[Imperator Pax]

First Steps (E)​

It was wet and cold outside, but not wet enough that the ground was sodden... and it wasn't deep enough snow that the cars would get stuck, which was a small mercy. That was the problem with having an old farm house that had never had a paved driveway. He didn't figure that he'd ever get one now... every couple of years he had more gravel brought in, but that was always a temporary solution, but it was also how things had always been done. John had been loath to break the habit given the difference in cost.

It was crowded around the the house as the cars moved off, "Still want to shoot for the Walmart?" He asked Jesse James.

The big blonde made a face, contorting his square features as he sucked in and bit down on his lip, "Can't, got to get home bro... I, I'll be back for it."

John nodded. That was fine. Randy's beat up pick up slowed as it finished turning around in the old back pasture. His palmetto AR probably wouldn't hold zero with the optic for too many rounds but it was on paper at fifty and for now that was better than nothing. Randy was taking Orlando and Portia back to his place and they were going to check around there, hopefully none of the chickens had gotten got, but they wouldn't know until they checked.

The wind picked up as John leaned against the fence post, the contrast to the image he was aware of was unlike his grandfather he was wearing saloman boots, and the Daniel was slung underneath his shoulder opposite his pistol. The farthest thing from smiling, and overalls.

Randy waved a gesture he mirrored and that Portia and O reciprocated as the truck pulled away. The Kangal had slipped up next to him licked his hand as it dropped down. "Come on boy, lets go in, we have stuff to do." There were three freezers in the garage. Two large box freezers, one older upright freezer... and there was still a mini fridge... not that the latter was all that important. All it had was soda, and chilled bourbon. That wasn't what he was here for.

The box fridges would had processed deer meat added to them from hunting season. It had been a few years since he had butchered his own game, but he still remembered how...but he doubted it would come to that. Not if they could keep the power going... since a little before christmas as he had for a couple years now had gone to the local Publix and bought up the rib roasts that they had on sale. This year it had been 6.99 / lb. That could be expensive all upfront, but compared to 15.49 well he generally bought up what he could get vacuum wrapped it, and froze it, took it out thawed it and let Randy cook it for DnD and other gatherings. From that perspective it saved a lot of money over the course of a year.

The freezers had other things. The upright one, the nearest to the door, had more regular victuals...including ice cream, and frozen dinners, bags of voilas or birds eyes just to have easy stuff on hand the nights he didn't have company or didn't feel like cooking, or making more. Those wouldn't last even if the power held. He was already thinking about once the the thaw hit, there were some things that if he had the seeds he could plant as early as next month have them in doors to germinate... but most would have to wait for march.

There was going to be a lot to do....and they'd need to make the best with what they had.
--
The System designated his class as Hybrid... which was weird. "So there is a multi class option as well?" The response that it was complicated didn't help, "Ok so, how does your work?"

"MY gestalt class is just two classes," Sarai responded fingers on one hand dancing through the air, "They're together but I still get my specific ... or something subclass," She shook her head, "Uhm, I can cast a lot of magic," And by a lot what Sarai actually meant a lot, her spell list was much larger than his own... and from what little everyone had pieced together her Heraldic Arts class feature meant she could learn whatever she wanted.

That went into the skill system.

The multi classing system was interesting in theory. "Its really game like."

"Yeah... I don't know if I like that," Sarai agreed before trailing off. "How did your level up work?"

He paused leaned back into the office chair in front of the roll top desk at the end of the home's great room which was currently playing host to his laptop, "I, don't know."

"What?"

"So the toothed slimes I fought, when I got home, I crashed." The Adrenaline dumped out of the system, "I showered off, made sure I wasn't bleeding and nothing was broken, I went to bed." All the XP gains he'd gotten from there on out had been a pittance compared to what he'd gotten from the dividing slimes. "I haven't really done anything with the skill points I've gotten since I haven't managed to get a level." There was a surprise look... but they had already figured out that the jump from0 to 1 was miniscule, and while 1 to 2 wasn't horrible it was 2 to3that seemed to be a hurdle... or maybe it was just what they'd run into so far.

... that was the thing... this had started hypothetically one Sunday, and the changes they were already seeing a few days later were extreme enough. They stopped for a minute as the microwave dinged and he got up to walk to the kitchen.

"What is that?"

"Pad thai meal." He replied to the peppery and steamed noodle smell as he dumped the food into a bowl.

"You're eating an MRE?" What she actually meant were the freeze dried mountain house meals in the crate... which he did eat regularly.

"No its a PF Chang's meal they were on sale last week," And they were half way decent, if not nearly spicy enough for his taste, "Won't be getting many more, so I thought I'd bring it in from the garage. But, no I haven't levelled up since I woke up on Monday, my skill point awards from that were already distributed."

"That's how it was when I woke uptoo, but I've levelled up and spent SP on different things. The crafting system looks really interesting and it synergizes with my gestalt class." Which brought them back around to the topic of how the system handled multi classing. "But that's the thing, there is a skill that increases XP gain, and also one that decreases costs."

"Right," He replied after slurping down a piece of nuked chicken and mild noodles, "I have those,"

Sarai nodded, "But that's what, well Multi-classing seems to cost more XP outside of your base class or I think its evolutions..." They hadn't gotten that far, but some people had started being able to see evolutions for their classes as they levelled up in the system menu. "Do you have another one of those?"

"Yeah sure, give me a minute."

 

[Kentouse]

Remove the litrpg tag. Can't express how much disappointment I feel forbeing interests to we what kind of system this is only to not have any kinf of numbers or skills

 

[Imperator Pax]

Grinding (A)​

The pad thai conversation lingered a bit in the back of his mind. A reminder what would run short before too long, and that took priority than trying to make sense of how his glowy menu's data differed from someone else's.

The talks helped order things into context, but it didn't address the underlying problem. If they, if he could have safely gotten up to the local big box stores and hit up more mountain house meal boxes like from say Reis or academy that would have been one thing... but that would have meant driving to Greenville. He just wasn't prepared for that step.

This was not a local disruption. Or not exclusively a local disruption. Or even regional for that matter, they were well past that and it was only a matter of time before the television networks simply stopped functioning even the ones coopted by government authorities and kept running. Those authorities simply didn't appear to have the manpower to maintain things, not so many disasters at once. The system was built that local governments could call up on higher authorities to get resources and major capitals had largely ceased to function as centers of clear day to day policy making and power.

Trucks weren't running anymore, bread was going to stop coming, gas was going to get shy even if the pumps worked., which wasn't a guarantee given everything going on. The news broadcast Monday had asked for the assembly of guardsmen, which if this had been a conventional natural disaster would have been the first step to distribute gas and food and water to disaster struck areas say after a hurricane.

This was not a hurricane; and he already dreaded hurricane season coming in a few months. It was not a case where settling down with a couple weeks of food and clean water and waiting for things to blow over would help. What was worse was that the Walmart as the nearest big all-purpose box and grocery store had gotten ... whatever had happened to it... but if it hadn't they probably would have ended up fighting other people for whatever was there.


He had to suspect that was what had happened, and then just that zombies had gotten the rest, leaving things the way they had found them when they had driven into town. Every time they had driven back there was no indication of any more people, which didn't make sense... and if the weather man was right while the snow wasn't heavy or blizzard conditions John expected that they were going to start having road obstructions moving into town... but thankfully his target was directly along the highway, he wasn't having to slow crawl along any beat up state roads than necessary. The other problem with the weather was that the snow was starting to weigh down the trees, and eventually they were going to start ending up with roads blocked due to tree fall... and with no government services managing those obstructions... but the upside that he had noted was there were no deluge of blocked cars on the road.

The old toyota came to a halt just down from the hill. Just because he wasn't seeing other vehicles didn't necessarily meant they were out there. He had made the conscious decision to go check out the overrun shopping center, while also minimize his appearance from the road. The suppressed Daniel was part of that... the charred skeleton had required magic to put down, but magic offensive magic tended towards flashy. He had decided to avoid it for the time being... if he needed it he'd use it, but the zombies were just a matter of thinning out their ranks.

The shuffling undead responded to noise so they would probably respond to the shots eventually but thinning the zombies still made sense even if he was out here by himself.

--

"No big guys came out this?"

He shook his head as he moved through the boxes and loose books on growing, farming, and so on that had been made available between the two homes. They could probably expect yet more from Randy's house, and probably Mac's as well... and if it came to it more from other houses in the subdivision. "No," But he also hadn't pushed too far in, harassing lingering zombies on the outside and grinding the xp from the kills. Not a lot of XP per individual zombie but it would probably accumulate if he could keep doing it this way. "So what are we looking at?"

"Well some of the stuff is its just too early to grow, we'd need seeds anyway, if we had those, and if the power holds we can germinate them indoors and then plant them." Sarai commented, "You said you wanted to build raised beds... and if we had a working tractor, and tiller that would be great for larger fields."


That was going to have the problem of needing diesel, "I have a tractor, and Randy had a tiller."


Had being the operative word as she was quick to point out, "Yeah, but you also said that it had blown gaskets or whatever," She remarked and while John wasn't sure Randy couldn't fix it, he hadn't managed to do it before the apocalypse kicking off so he didn't really see it happening outside in the snow... and he planned to walk the property after lunch... "But anyway, the other issue is monoculture crop growth requires nitrogen rich fertilizer because it depletes the soil."


"Sarai none of us can really be said to farm, Randy's the closest and that was when his daddy was still alive," And Randy had hated the son of a bitch...


"You're not listening to me, ok the crafting system gives you experience points, casting spells gives you experience. We don't really need to be going out and shooting zombies," and she wasn't wrong, calling up the status menu laid out the sprawling table that on first glance had boggled the mind. "If you use stuff it levels up."


And more importantly, or ancillary to that the skill system had a separate XP set to keep track, skill points accrued that were put into skill themselves. There was no shooting skill, he had been a little surprised by that;

The real factor were what he had presumably dumped all his skill points in when the system unlocked.

Determination 10:'Lowers SP needed for each skill'.

Effort 10: 'Lowers EXP needed to level up.'​

There were no requirements, at least to either of those skills. They had been maxed out when he had woken up Monday morning with access to the system. It hadn't changed since then.


"See I'm not anywhere near there," Sarai remarked showing her his stats screen, "Maybe its because you started at a higher level, but also I guess its because I put points in other stuff." She added, "And see even with my mana buff," From one of those other skills she had put points in, "You've got more mana...however," She swiped over through the air the motes of light shifting to show what she had been talking about earlier with regards to experience gains, "See I can cast magic and get experience for it, its slow but I'm basically a discount earth bender." She changed screens again, "But see here this is magic proficiency, moving earth builds up proficiency which I'm pretty sure unlocks other spells along the way. See we don't have to go out and kill zombies by ourselves when there is so much we can do with just the magic... and well depending on how malleable spell manipulation is we might be able to get away with not need a tractor next year if we clear the fields this year."

--

Notes: Anyway, TheLITRPG system is still in development, names are not finalized I wantto explore the concept but I also don't want to have to retcon shitlater if I decide something has to change, its why I haven't goneinto a deep dive of Class X, Skill list, Magic spells and so forth atthis stage, if this were in true LN format then yeah I'd probablyhave all of that ready to go

 

[Imperator Pax]

Grinding (B)

The snow crunched under boots, but his real focus was on the screen like floating lights in front of him. Sarai had been right about the cantrip turning her into a discount earth bender, it took a couple seconds to visualize what he wanted to do. Sometimes it was simple, just 'dig hole', or push earth that way', and some times he needed it to move more complicated things, which had more utility but it granted notifications every so often of 'proficiency increased', and of course it wasn't just the shaping of earth. He didn't really process what that meant, just that he was getting the notifications for.


The 'green mana' accumulation was an interesting notification but out of context detail though it was obviously for something. The System told him a lot without actually explaining what the notification was for, and he was getting used to being given notifications without the context of what it meant.


The snow crunched to his left further up the hill, "Do you think we could build a water wheel?" Sarai questioned. "I mean couldn't, I don't know do something with copper wire or take a part a washing machine and have the water generate electricity."


He was pretty sure, though not entirely certain they'd need a battery bank and a handler... but on the other hand yeah maybe they could get that to work, "I guess," he replied triggering the cantrip that he was pretty sure was coming up on the hundredth time he had cast it.


He hadn't received a notification since 'you have cast this fifty times' proficiency with the spell has improved notice. Sarai had been doing he assumed about the same when she hadn't been looking for solutions elsewhere, spit balling ideas like well a water wheel, or the organic farming stuff, what do we do when we don't have pesticides or don't have fuel.


A part of him was glad someone was asking those questions... but also a part of him really felt he should have been back in town shooting zombies, trying to clear that out... wouldn't that also have helped? That was his thinking, but yeah he was also getting experience from casting the spells. That realization was why he was still here, that and the understanding that even if it took time, it took less time and effort than trying to do this by hand. He was pouring magic into the ground rather than sweating or realistically using an earth moving magic to reshape the land around him.


He looked around dismissing the floating screen, "Even so this is going to take awhile," Several acres wasn't hard to walk even on uneven ground, but, "We're going to need lumber for some stuff anyway," He didn't know exactly how well her idea of growing corn in grow beds was going to work, but the broader homesteading idea of well we can grow them in and around other crops was sound... he didn't dispute that but it was too cold right now to plant.


"You said the Lowes was fine," At least it had been on a exterior visual confirmation, it didn't look nearly as much of a shithole as the "and I doubt anyone would be thinking about that."


But they'd need somewhere to store it, and keep it dry. Some people might have said he was overthinking things... but at least for now they still had the internet, "Did you find anything more on the web?"


"I'm torrenting the shit out of a bunch of stuff, but I'll have to go through it later." That wasn't really the answer he was looking for... but he shrugged, "A lot of people are going to die," That went without saying. He had to guess that things like transoceanic shipping had stopped loading. The boats that were at sea were probably still making for their destination, or at least he had to assume as much but even if they changed course they wouldn't probably be making to offload, they'd be trying to get the crews if not home then the crews getting ashore.


What was going on would throw everything into disarray for probably months. Were trucking lines still running? That was more of a maybe, but only probably because at least for now payment processing still seemed to be working. Everything was coming apart, so if the trucks didn't run well like the song said, the bread wouldn't come. It was only a matter of time before gas starting running short. He blew out a breath watching the two knucklehead dogs search around. There was nothing to scrounge for around the frozen over pond.

--

He had ended up spending an entire day out there just walking the line of the property, shaping molding earth, encouraging trees to grow into specific ways.... which might be a problem later. The magic did one thing but if a storm came in he wondered how well the plant growth spell would have them hold up. Houses of using the same spells over and over had become monotonous before noon... but it had yielded obvious results both from looking at his stat screen and the proficiencies, the dent in the xp bar, and also outside from the back window to the change in the landscape.


The walking around had taken time, and with the snow meant that his feet had gotten cold and wet so his boots were currently off, and his wool socks and drying as the fire crackled in the great room of the house. The nature magic had let him shape and bend saplings into a bocage style of wall... would it stop the goblins... he really didn't know for sure but ...


Well the screen hehadn't had access to this morning was sitting there inter placed in-between him and the fireplace he was seated in front of. The screen in question showed yet another series of progress bars and numbers for affinity information.


Settlement Progress :Level 0

The bar under it still suggested that it wouldn't be zero for long, but it was the breakdown under that which he was focusing on. There was a progress in 'mana cultivation', and a 'mana affinity' progress bar as well, but the major contributor to Settlement progress was not 'development' but rather population.

He might not have known what a core was, or why he would need one, or where to get one but the residents tab was self explanatory. He'd seen the cats and the dog mulch low level goblins, and the large rats... he was figuring just from ballpark estimates of xp figures that they must have been killing a lot of rats and maybe goblins too in order to have made their levels. The five cats, and the dog were all listed as residents of the 'settlement', but with their levels and with the relative contribution each of their levels and his own made.


And he had to figure that they were forming a party as well since they had ground out between and five levels which gave him enough progress to put him really close to half of level one. The 'Mana cultivation', and 'development' bars were helping at just under three quarters of the way there... and John had to guess that if he kept doing what he'd been doing today he'd hit level one, in addition to whatever xp gains and skill gains he was getting from grinding out using the spells to shape the landscape around the house. When he hit Settlement Level 1 there was a grayed out upgrades tab that would unlock... and he'd figure what that would entail.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Grinding (C)

The warning that higher mana areas started to make sense. Randy had mentioned it when they had first shown up, but he was starting to get get what the other man had meant. He had to guess that the goblins were, and probably the mutant or freakishly large rats too, were attracted for whatever reason to the higher concentration of mana.


That put them directly into the path of coming onto the property and then getting slaughtered by the animals... more so than John himself...occasionally he'd made it out in time to throw an eldritch blast or two or fire a gun in the direction of a goblin but things were too often already over and done with for him to grind via monsters wandering onto the property. Especially not with him spending another morning casting magic pouring mp into spells to change, flatten alter the landscape of the property. He had only stopped to manage for lunch, which had allowed his neighbor to come over and ask questions. The garage had about nine feet of wall space taken up by a series of two by fours that jutted out from the wall by about four feet. It was hardly his best work, but it was a storage cabinet. It hadn't intended to be pretty, and the strut channels had been given to him... so they'd been free at the time.... but they were still the sort of thing that were probably carried by the local lowes.


"Could you do another one of these?"

"Pantry shelves would be easier," It would for all intents and purposes do the same thing, "I could make another one," Or something similar to store whatever Sarai wanted. "But I'm shit at welding," and more to the point was out of practice... there were other people in the gaming group who knew how to weld, but they could bypass that entirely, "so pantry shelves to come out would be easier."


"That would probably be okay."


They would just need clearance to pull the shelves out, and since Sarai's well aunt and uncle's garage wasn't much different than this one it wouldn't be that hard. They'd just need to find the parts... which wouldn't be hard. Lumber, lag screws washers, the shelves. Casters would probably be more trouble than anything. It was better in his opinion to just like a safe bolt it into the concrete floor.


He ignored the[Recipe created] notification from the system, even though the minor xp award was nice.


"What was that?"


"System notification writing down what I need for the cabinet."


"Yeah the crafting system is nice like that." She replied with a nod. Recipe creation didn't always award xp but it interfaced with the inventory system to tell you what you were short on.


The supply list wasn't that complicated ... it would just be a trip to lows and putting the stuff on a trailer... and if the world hadn't been upside down that would have been an easy afternoon, or Saturday morning even with the snow if the shelves were already pre made or packaged. "But yeah this is something you could use for canned goods, mason jars, lock and locks." Or really anything else, but really the thinking was needing to stock canned goods from store shelves deep which was something the garage shelving system would be good for.


Sarai planned to go drive out to Randy's after lunch, the older guy might not have been any better of a welder, but he had no shortage of wood working tools so this would be the kind of thing to mention to him as well. He'd been talking about needing to get around to making shelves for his own canned goods recently as well... or making more shelves.


He planned to go back and walk the rest of the property line. He wasn't yet comfortable pushing out down the road to the neighbor's house. He was glad Sarai and her mutt had been next door, but the lack of other people... filled him with a trepidation that was alien to him, if anything the what to do about the presumably empty houses down the road bothered him more than anything to do with the magic.


They were going to need to consolidate. He felt that that should have been obvious, but the sparse electronic messages were infrequent, and they were going to waste gas they couldn't replenish if they started trying to commute as if things were normal.


About half an hour later, ten minutes or so after Sarai had pulled out of the gravel drive way a blitz of snow had picked up as he walked the rear fence back behind the barn. There had been greenhouses back here when he'd been young... it wouldn't be a bad idea to set new ones up... that had been what he'd been thinking as he had started to walk down the divot towards the creek. The creek was frozen over for the most part. It wasn't flowing fast enough to not ice over but it was deep enough that it wasn't that it could still be broken.

It was the first thing he checked as he knelt down in the peddle strewn bed. He hadn't been back here much, a far cry to the times he had played down this way growing up. The dog barked a warning. A look across the snow cover beyond the property line showed movement.


He didn't wait the Kangal had already started charging forward to challenge the interlopers. Even if the small figures hadn't from this distance hadn't been furry he knew that they weren't couldn't be the neighbors. The spell formed in his hand twisting strands of gold light that erupted forward unlike the hours he had spent this morning turn dirt and clay into rammed earth walls, or making thick brambles and wood grow up into eight foot tall sections there was no notification as the trio of magical bolts sped across the intervening space.


The Anatolian shepherd roared, a pulse of energy cracking the air around the first real, obvious magical attack he could think that he could remember the dog using. The goblins nearest went slack jawed and woozy, others backed away, the farthest began to flee in the opposite direction .John had known that the cats had been following as he'd walked around the property, in more normal times they had a tendency to do that but in the here and now sprung into action.


The goblins, level one or not should have been too large to juggle in the air like field mice, but that was what happened. A twenty plus pound house cat was large, but it shouldn't have been able to send an eighty pound chimpanzee analog never mind one in chain mail fifteen feet into the air. Then again he was also the one shooting magical energy blasts from a hundred something feet across a snow covered field.


It was just another day in the new world, and he barely paid attention to the XP awards or the spell progression as he looked around for any more goblin scavengers.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Grinding (D)

He sagged down into the couch as the fire in front of him crackled. Chopping firewood was actually a relief, cathartic even, from the walking around pushing earth and water, and growing plants of spell work. It gave him something to hit at least, and that was a break up from what he had been doing. The work was monotonous. There were few breaks in it. He would spend hours casting and casting and only intermittently receiving notifications from the system. Those had become infrequent though as a few days passed.


He was sure that the mana whatever stuff was drawing goblins in, big rats in, but he'd just continue to shape earth and water to change the flow of the landscape. Pouring mana into the ground that seemed to gradually fill the settlement bar as tried to make things safer around here. Hours and hours of work around the house doing things that would have taken earth moving equipment to do otherwise, and he kept at it... if mostly...


In part because if the mana was what was attracting the goblins and whatever else in, he wanted, needed to have a physical barrier between them and the house. It might not have been particularly engaging work after doing it repetitively, but it served a need. He understood he needed to do it so he determined to keep his nose to the grind... in part because it was a building block. They weren't going to be able to go to the supermarket anymore so they were all probably going to go back to being farmers, and the magic for land clearance would make that easier. It was too cold to plant anything, and unless they were sure the power was going to really keep working... which wasn't a given...it was too early to starting germinating stuff in doors on top of that.


That was the problem of working through it. The monotony just built up leaving him to stew on the couch now that the 'yard work' was done... at least for now. He planned to sit here change socks, then come back down stairs eat lunch. He was already aware he was going to have to make himself, but it needed to be done... and hope that the weather outside held.

--

Sarai had said something about greenhouses, and planning for planting season... and something about incubators for chicks and chickens in general that required going to pick Randy's brain. John expected that was why her aunt and uncle's house hadn't developed the settlement type yet...maybe, he wasn't sure if Randy's little plot of land had either, but it was one thing at a time. He put the truck in park and opened the battered door...

A part of him knew he should have told Sarai he was going to do this, hell post something in general in the discord channel. They could still make new discord servers, at least for now, and they hadn't come up with a better alternative communication system and it was working still so he could have put the word out even though the cell phone network in town was still uncooperative... not that he had a cell phone to use after Sunday.

The daniel was slung to give him access to the pistol on his belt, but the truth was he didn't expect to use them as much this outing. Yes, they were faster but that was years of use and time. The thing about the magic was it was levelling up... and at the house he just wasn't using his combat spells as frequently.

His 'Hybrid' class had a lot of spells, but unlike some of his friends it lacked a system lore file.

The walmart's dilapidated exterior loomed down the way. Its façade warped by fire damage, and structural integrity further weakened by the snow fall...and that was one of the more obvious details... the snow wasn't sticking here. Unlike his home... not really much further north in the countryside... there was no snow on the ground. It refused to stick and melted creating an unseasonably humid fetid air even as the water drained off into the sewer... and there was a lot of standing pools of water that was refusing to freeze over.

It was something he wondered if Randy's class provided enhanced senses might provide some insight into what the fuck was going on. Something was up, he just didn't have any help from the system to explain the transformation of the landscape. He intuited that something around here was warping the landscape... in a way that was less natural, or seemed less natural than the change that was effecting his own home, and its surroundings.


... or maybe that only seemed to be the case because he had a direct hand in shaping the environment... he couldn't really be sure. It was just more of a feeling that this wasn't ... maybe not natural, it probably wasn't, but 'good'. From what he understood about the system talking to other people was that there were class specializations, and also just generic class features... and then classes could also evolve into higher versions or something. Apparently people with normal classes got more information from the System, and he was out here trying to figure things out with the tutorial options and whatever turned off.


He watched the zombies skirt around. He blinked once his gloved fingers twisted and splayed as the spell prepped. Fireball worked pretty much like it should have; or how he thought it should have. Big flashy fire damage across an area of effect. By itself it was nice... his hybrid class feature allowed him to retype his spell damage. It still counted uses for proficiency of the spell itself, using fireball as fire damage or retyping it to Ice, or in this case Radiant Holy damage counted as throwing 'Fireball', but it applied the proficiency XP to the retyped element instead of his 'Fire type experience'.


Had the system told him that? Fuck no, he'd had to poke around in his menu for the settings, and do some experimenting... and this would be the first real world test of it all. The use of the class feature was two fold though, driven by first the Charred Bones were resistant to Fire Damage, and the second that all the undead they'd encountered were vulnerable to to Radiant's holy damage.


What he was banking on was the ability to use his eldritch blast as the casting point for the spell. It would cost a lot of mana. Fire ball by itself cost a chunk of mana to cast, but chaining it to detonated where he fired the eldritch blast imposed an additional cost. That was fine so long as he had done his mental math right it was more a case of finding a big enough group of zombies... who just really didn't have the health to tank fireball to rely on justifying the mana expended.


With no intelligence the zombies only responded to stimuli. They didn't plan. That was a relief, but they had made this trip multiple times and it was the noise that attracted the zombies, and they wouldn't give chase all that far loosing interest sometimes after a hundred yards without excessive noise to follow.


The first group was milling around what had been the grocery entrance, he couldn't see past them into the ruins of the store, but there were enough to loose the spell at one of the zombies, and enough time to shield his eyes as the Eldritch Blast detonated forming the epicenter of the fireball. Instead of a massive conflagration, a traditional fireball spell idea or something akin to the Hollywood big fire special effects the glowing bolt was a bead light that then flashed out, more akin to a nuke going off in outer space. A few seconds of artificial sun and then it was going leaving greasy painted smugs across already dirty filth strewn concrete and rubble.


The XP awards populated his display a second later as the area of effect meant the double damage had wiped out the entire area's worth of zombie leaving him free to move forward.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Grinding (E)

The fighting wasn't even really worth calling fighting now. He'd been killing the undead for the past couple of days now, and he really had it down pat... enough that the system even agreed with him. [Undead Slayer 1] coming with an XPaward... and it was probably something that a lot of people received from the system.


Zombies tended to range from level 1 to level 3. Those were easy easy kills. He'd fried a couple of level 5s that had been in amongst the throngs but he'd only seen those two after moving into the interior of the store... and really they weren't that much more dangerous than the normal zombies. It was the Charred Bones who had the health that were more dangerous still... but their undead nature made them vulnerable to type exploitation and that was something he was fully prepared to exploit. The undead had no intelligence to speak of though.


There were other things here as well. His entry book of different monsters was filling out. Nothing seriously threatening compared to the numbers of zombies, but the mess attracted bugs, and rats, and truthfully very very few of the shelves were upright any more, which seemed weird... he wouldn't have thought that it would be so easy to over turn them, but the whole place was a mess even beyond what it had looked like from the outside.

He'd had to blow another chunk of mana on a cluster of charred bones as he had worked his way right. They'd been over near what had at one point been the pharmacy. He'd actually been hoping that there might be something worth salvaging in all the mess, but it had been gutted by fire... afire which had likewise reached the clothing and shoes section leaving little to nothing of obvious value in the debris.


That was probably why the roof had warped in the way it had. It didn't explain how the fire had started. All he had been able to find were just zombies milling around in the destroyed interior of the supermarket. There was trash everywhere, mold and fungus were growing up in large patches that John wasn't sure was normal... maybe it was the unnatural heat of the place, snow leaked in only to turn to sluice and steam even as it dropped down from the ceiling.


What he had noticed was that as long as he stayed at range... there was nothing here, none of the zombies posed a threat. He'd been a little conflicted on entry, but with the ability to sling holy damage on all his spells and cantrips being free, eldritch blast being effectively free he could just sling double damage spells down range and the zombies didn't have the health to take it. Nothing here had the health to really take the spells he was throwing out. He wasn't tremendously over levelled for the area but the type advantage was something that he recognized really made a difference with his expedition.

The zombies seemed to approaching from outside... but the last corner was where he found the patch of ghouls congregating last time. He hadn't pushed in because they'd been too busy just standing around so he had doubled back to engage the zombies as they made their approach through he figured the loading bays...

--
He blew out a breath. Going back for the ghouls finally had taken longer than he'd expected. The Zombies were still seemingly shuffling but he'd been initially worried that they had been moving up in response to something he had done... but no their lack of intelligence just seemed to be a case of approaching and milling about... as if they were just filling up a que until they reached a certain number. So he'd doubled back again to nuke the ghouls with a very satisfying fireball, and then he'd gotten the inventory notification, the pick up notification.

Then there was also the experience bonus award for 'solo in a dungeon'. Whatever the fuck that meant. He hadn't noticed it initially... maybe it hadn't showed up until he had actually entered the decaying structure, but it was something else.

The dungeon notice wasn't something anyone had mentioned seeing. Was that why everything around here was messed up or was that an unrelated development. He didn't know, he didn't have enough information, and the system wasn't providing him information about his surroundings.


The glowing menu faded as he stared up at the sky, and as more snow flurries drifted down. The augmented reality faded, leaving him cold as he watched the mana currents in the atmosphere. Crows sounded in the distance, he blew out a frosty breath... he glanced down to the small stone in his hand. Maybe stone was wrong, it seemed to occasionally be a mass of smog and fire... of red and black.

Core Level 1

Mana Type: Death.

Mana Type: Fire.

???​

He blew out a breath and looked through his other notifications... apparently if he were in a party his kills of specific monsters, or their 'type' counted for his party members. Well maybe he'd keep that in mind for the next time he found a zombie nest that needed clearing out. He looked back down at the little bauble in his hand before it disappeared into his inventory.


There was another creak, then a loud crash in the distance of the darkened building. The walmart that had become a dungeon slowly gave way. The building sank and collapsed in on itself, the last of structural integrity failing... presumably without magic to support the fire weakened struts, against the snow still holding on the roof.


In a few minutes that noise had stopped again as he watched from the parking lot. The shopping center which had stretched maybe fifteen hundred feet of storefront settled until it was nothing but mess on the ground. It was hard to describe how bleak it was, because it no longer even resembled the burned out husk that the dungeon had looked like after it had formed.

The wind picked up, he cocked his head towards the darkening sky as clouds occluded the winter sun.

The snow started again. Flurries falling, and then more. Maybe the fire mana here had been keeping it at bay, but the cold was setting back in... and he decided he'd been out here long enough... and it was time to leave. By the time had driven back to his home he was aware of what his fuel gauge was sitting at... it wasn't low per se... but it had been awhile since he'd been in a situation where a fuel shortage was a real concern. He looked up at the old house, and the snow coming down. He was going to be cutting firewood tomorrow .

There was a swirling mass of lights. Different this time. Instead of red and black as had been at the dungeon there was a mix of blue and green. The bigger difference was here he could see how things had changed the landscape around him. His stats, and skills page came up showing what he imagined explained it. Walking around the property line, casting spells, pouring mana into the area had reshaped the environment... and maybe something the system did when it established a settlement...the pattern though of mana swirled around the boundaries of the property, and then shifted as it touched a much weaker magical system that was ... he supposed in their absence Sarai's home.


It wasn't as pronounced but as the first time seeing it, it was still a sign of how far things had changed in just a few days. He blinked away the altered view of reality. That was the first time he'd seen anythinglike that... maybe something to do with the messages he had blinked through after the dungeon notification. There must have been some kind of difference between a dungeon and a settlement... maybe he couldn't see the mana flows in the dungeon for some reason.

He knew there were points he could allocate to skills, he had seen that early on. When he'd woken up Monday morning he had had determination and effort maxed out already. Slowly he shook out of the reverie and trudged inside to the still slowly crackling fire he had left behind.

--


Notes: We return in the new year, I had considered making some revisions, but I think that would just lead into an endless cycle of such things.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Chapter 5: System of Gains
John sat the bright orange ax to one side as he shifted his weight, boots crunching in the three inch deep snow. He was getting used to this. Not just the chopping wood, but also the searching through the insanely complex and seemingly at times redundant or ridiculous skills list that the system delineated.

Wood Cutter. It was buried way down in the skill list, and even before the power had failed he'd been chopping wood to stoke the fireplace. He supposed everyone would be levelling it up now that the power had failed. Cut wood to stoke fires would have been something in this situation, the cold and without power, they'd be trying to do even without the System rewarding it.

What the system didn't make easier was hauling wood... well no that wasn't quite accurate. John wasn't sure what the criteria of the items he could put into the Inventory but wood logs were not one of them so he was shucking them up to the house, up the stairs of the deck and into the rack. If he had had the option he would have dried them first... but it was part of winging it.

… and as wood cutter leveled up he was going to have enough of a surplus to put the chopped up logs somewhere sheltered from the elements, but for now it was time to take a break.

His eyes tracked the dipping sun in the horizon. He hadn't realized it until he had gotten up this morning. He hadn't known about certainly hadn't planned to destroy the dungeon he no longer had good place in town or nearby to grind monster kills.

Of course he also really didn't have the gas to waste either. He wasn't sure how much longer he could have afforded to drive the car... and maybe that gas would have been better saved... or even put towards the generator he was going to have crank. There was stuff to do around here, thus he had returned to casting spells to alter the landscape around the old farmhouse... and so he spent the days repeatedly casting the same spells.

The wind picked up, and he turned his face away from it flexing his hands against the cold.


The other change from yesterday was now though he was watching the effects, of the mana, keeping an eye on the Settlement tab, and watching the affinity tracker inside of the System Menu.

Apparently, while he'd been splattering zombies with Holy Fire he'd been accruing 'White Mana' proficiency. It was far far less than his Red affinity, never mind Blue and Green.


When he discussed this with his neighbor who was doing something similar, as she put it playing discount earth bender, Sarai had nodded that she was playing it all by ear. There was too much about the system they didn't know. He expected that the norm... maybe somebody had lucked out and found the tutorial instructions but they were probably fumbling about with the system.

It had slipped his mind to mention the core, something he would later justify as its level one status being probably nothing to write home about in this fucked up new world given what he was sitting at from day one never mind now.

After a few minutes of stacking the logs from the downed oaks somewhat out of the environment in the old horse barn's back shed he hung up the axe near the space where there had once been a parked tractor. This was what he figured his days were going to be like. More like the last few days where he pumped mana into the earth the difference was he could see it happening now. He could if he focused see the traces of energy, like seeing wind currents on a radar projection


Now though he had a purpose ... something to plan for. This had been farm land once upon a time and the field he was working to reshape would need to grow crops that would need to be planted in March or April. There was also the prospect of harvesting the winter wheat which was currently dormant, but would probably grow four or five feet in the spring if past history was anything to go by. That seemed forever away, and he also needed to pour mana into the walls.

Shaping earth, packing it down , as well as growing plants into hedge rows. That all took time. He'd been doing it since he had figured out he could and tomorrow would be a week since all of this started.

He blew out a frosty breath, and looked up to the rising horizon of walls on the property edge that hadn't been there a week ago. Then turned his gaze left towards the house, and the wood smoke piping out of the chimney.

A week of this, he shook his head. He put one foot in front of the other and started to walk back towards the house. A part of him considered going to look for his phone and his rifle... but the logical part of his brain told him that was fucking stupid. Even if the phone wasn't ruined by the snow, which was a big if, no one had had any luck with the local cellphone network... which didn't make sense given that the internetworked that people on the news seemed to have no such issues.

He didn't know what to make of the conspicuous failure of such a daily part of life...

He hadn't done that after lunch because he had went out and chopped wood for the fire and he hadn't don it before because he had gone out this morning and burned mana into reshaping the landscape. It was a cold Saturday afternoon he had been on his feet for eight hours, and expected to do this tomorrow, and the day after for who knew how long. John ran a hand up through his hair as the dog trotted beside him. He looked back at the hazy gray sky as he opened the latch to the gate to the farmhouse.

He kicked off his shoes as he came into the warm house, sparing a glance to the fireplace. Electrical stuff had never been his forte but he was shocked the power had held this long with as much snow and ice had come in. That meant he had lighting... he'd gone to bed every day this week expecting to wake up to a cold house. He'd even considered moving down here to sleep.

The System notified him of the settlement progress.


It might not have given him inventory space, a bag of holding for firewood, but it did tell him how much firewood, and what quality, he had harvested. Menial labor gave a pittance of actual XP, and a seemingly equally miserly amount of skill points earned... but he supposed it was something. John stripped off the dark green merino wool socks as he read through the glowing digital font. He stood up, made fists with his toes before walking into the kitchen.

Electrical power...he was going to have to do something about that... and the only way he saw doing that was to use the system to do it, which meant he was going to have to dive further into it.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Chapter 5 Part 2

Today marked a week since this had started. He had gotten up this morning mixed oatmeal, yogurt and peanut butter together into a bowl to start his day like it was any normal day... but one look outside at the yard told him it was anything but... except that it was the new normal.

Sunday morning camewith no breaks in his newly established routine no differences from Saturday. He had eaten, chopped wood, cast a dozen or so spells to grow a living hedgerow wall, or mold the earth into a rammed earth partition along his easternly flank of what fifty years ago had been pastureland for herds of black angus but that had been before he'd been born. He'd occasionally hear the report of rifle fire in the distance, or the bark of Sarai's german shepherd but there had been nothing surprising about saturday, or this morning. Goblins, and giant rats tended to show up at the property line usually in the morning but none when he had gotten up to eat his breakfast. Or that cats had already dealt with them.

He didn't even care where the goblins were coming from. It was just something that happened now, just him getting up and casting mold earth or any of the other earth spells, or water spells, or nature spells to cause plant growth, or using fire magic to start a fire. It was he was doing every day and today promised to be no different.

John looked up over the rolling snow capped landscape as the noon sun reflected from his front windows as the fire crackled. The county road, its black top was covered in more than a foot of snow. He wouldn't be driving anywhere today, he doubted anyone was doingmuch driving.... it was for here a lot of snow.

Most of the landscape was pristine white and green, but not the road... it formed an incongruous existence. It was a straight line cutting through the landscape, and was marred dirty brown, and black. Goblins and monstrous vermin tried to cross over the road and quickly found themselves fodder for what his neighborhood had become. The surrounding landscape had changed as well hundreds of repetitions of shaping spells had grown thorny brambles, and low stone walls along the edge of the property line. Those had begun to extend around Sarai's access to the county road... and he supposed that they could keep going, but it was already long... and that was another detail as the mana concentrations grew they spilled over into teh surrounding area, which explained why it was taking so long to build up the Settlement's mana density meter... or rather why it seemed to grow so slowly.

As he warmed by the fire, his thoughts turned to the core, and the dungeon he had unceremoniously snuffed out. He wasn't oblivious to the credit value the System Store put on the core... and he also wasn't going to stick the core into the slot in the settlement menu either... not with the way the ghouls inside of the dungeon had been crawling around it.

There was a shriek half chimp like in the noise it made that trailed off as the pained cry died into a gurgling murmur. The goblin's furry form lay a few feet from where it had first popped its head out of the snow field on the other side of the road. There were hooting cries of outrage as a handful of other chimp like figures hurled rocks blindly towards the other side of the road before one of the goblins proceeded to explode into a cloud of gore. He was up from his seat and moving towards the sounds of the fighting, out the door and crunching through the snow at the bottom of the front steps. Not even noticing the cold of the snow around his bare feet as he sighted in on the enemy.


A short bark sounded and snow in front of his driveway boiled away. The kangal made his presence known to the interlopers even as a third goblin went airborne but this time John caught the motion. The smallest, relatively speaking, of the cats was a feline blur of motion and was treating an eighty or ninety pound vaguely hominid shape like an overgrown rat.


If he hadn't suddenly developed the ability to see mana he would just guessed the mutant animals and murderous furry bastards were looking for food...now he wasn't so sure. The sharp bark turned into a growl and was followed by a series of barks... and a party invitation.


John became aware as he accepted as more goblins scurried forward. Sarai gave voice to what he thought. That was a lot of the bastards... and yet. This wasn't that different than with the zombies, because numbers alone meant little given recent experience... which was further beaten home as the cat with rogue levels... or some variation of it dashed across levels ones and twos.


If he hadn't talked about it he might have assumed that Sarai's character class was just some stripe of cleric, certainly that was the icon implied to him. Her German Shepherd's icon appeared as a fighter esque shield. Maybe bard was the wrong term for the gray cat but Paladin seemed on point for the Anatolian shepherd, the tuxedo cat as well had selected Paladin... from DND or its equivalents the mother of the litter seemed to have picked ranger.


It was surreal.


In the january winter haze of cold and wind, bits of ice... the world had turned into something unrecognizable. He didn't have the time to regret not having his rifle handy as he called the magic into a cone of razor sharp shards of ice. The system display highlighted dozens of goblins and several times that in terms of rats... it filled his view with highlighted sparks of mana that were overshadowed. It was another new development, his altered vision swam in a sea of sparks.


Unlike his first experience as part of a 'party' teaming up with Jesse and Randy he had a much expanded view of the battlespace. It was more than HP and monster name and level, class information. The amount of mana the tide of vermin had was paltry. A culling tide sweeping through as the five cats, the Kangal and German shepherd all made themselves know corralling a space between the property line and the muddy churned up snow of the road. He could only think that maybe he'd been mistaken, it might been brown for the dried blood.

Notifications for XP trickled in skill points awarded to be spent from the pool, damage inflicted.

A goblin reading as level 4 was shredded as the Tuxedo Cat bowled through the chimp like monsters chest ignoring its leather jerkin in a blur of movement. Rooting effects held still more goblins into place as Sarai did some kind of Earth thing from well in the back line of the party... the road was a killing field.


The displays overlaid the disparity in glowing hues of mana. The goblins trying to move into the high density mana environment were tiny sparks compared to the small bonfires of the resident animals. The Kangal jumped supernaturally high into the air, coming down into the midst of the earth grasp effect holding helpless the would be scavenger vermin before bellowing out a flaming howl the burned out the area of monsters he had descended upon.

He and Sarai counted as full casters, he was fairly certain the gray cat might have as well have counted for that. Four front line fighters in the form of the two dogs two of the cats with support in the form of the other two cats. Five cats two dogs, two humans... a party of nine churning its ways through a large goblin war party and the rats travelling with them.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Chapter 5 Part 3

The polydactyl calico male stalked amidst the rats having pushed his way through the ranks from the east side of the road closing the envelopment providing an all too tangible flanking bonus to melee that dominated the county road. The goblins were out matched.


That was an understatement. They weren't disgusting per se... the zombies had been disgusting, but those were shambling corpses partially decaying, oozing monsters some with bits and parts hanging on by strands. The goblins were ugly, scar covered tool using hairy things. Maybe that was it. John had never really cared for chimps, and these were chimps on steroids with more complex tool using and thus more scars more signs of endemic warfare.


The kangal brought a forepaw down on the goblin pinning it down before exhaling a breath of flame onto it... which did nothing for the odor. Burned hair has a particularly vile smell, but in the moment he could deal with it.


"We're winning." Sarai observed... and she was right the numbers had been thinned significantly.


Someone had stated once that house cats had a reaction measures in dozens of milliseconds. He wondered if given the stats screen that the system used to keep track of figures and abilities and all of that what that equated to... or if by having levels that was why this was so god damned lop sided... why this was such a one sided massacre.


The calico male had leapt forward shoulder checking through leaving a wreath of bloody carnage in his wake... and that was when John saw it. The fighter was pushing the rats out of position, and baiting them into a fight they couldn't win, and the calico cat with rogue levels was then jumping on them from his shadow.


This was not like how things had gone a week ago. Where he'd been running around out numbered, and not dying by the barest of seconds. The goblins weren't the toothed slimes, the rats weren't... and as he brought another wave of razor sharp icicles into their ranks John recognized that it didn't matter. If this was how things were going to be then that was how things were going to be.


The icicles slammed into the goblin warrior's face, dropping the hairy thing back into a snow drift in a mass of aerolized blood. The system put the information up for him to ignore. He stamped his bare foot on instinct and shoved the magic forward as the ice moved forming a wall to cut off their retreat.


He wasn't going to spend all day out here fighting the vermin. This was already over. The last of the rats died. The combat ended, the ground lay there dirty, and the bodies dissolved. XP was allocated for the fight, Skill points. Information filtered in about damage, but no one was hurt... it was a clean sweep of the matter...but what caught his eye in milieu was a familiar one.


Except the one he had received for himself was for killing zombies a couple days ago. He'd gotten credit for reaching 25 goblin kills, which seemed about right for the night everyone had stayed over plus the last couple days along with this... but instead of a zombie notification the tuxedo cat had apparently killed his hundredth goblin at some point during the fight.


The Kangal, and the mother of the litter both moved to the roadside surveying the distant expanse as they looked towards the small lake that was at least its surface frozen over. Then concluding that there were no further threats turned and withdrew back over the property line behind the protective enclosure of the walls that ended at the driveway.


Together all of them piled back towards his house, and only as he remounted the front stairs did he realize his feet were dirty and bare. He quietly cursed his haste and the mess The cold didn't so much bother him, but he wiped them off on the rug by the front door and then hastily moved back inside.


"A couple more goblins and I'll be at twenty five as well. I need the credits for the store." Sarai remarked, reminding him about the System Store... which as he knew from briefly glancing around was expensive. He wasn't sure if he had just missed it originally, or if Sarai had unlocked it sooner but she had been looking through the system settings and having more luck than he felt he had.


Whether that was really true or not it was the vibe he got from talking with his neighbor.


"Yeah?" He replied.


"Mhmm," She replied, "before the snow really set in," He didn't mention that it coincided with him destroying the dungeon, "I had planned to talk to you about trying to go up to the lowes or the saw mill or somewhere with lumber. Then the blizzard rolled in and well I've been spending mana like a mad woman but there are some things where that's just not going to cut it." She ran her hands through her dirty blonde hair, "And magic items are even worse. My quest menu doesn't have any major quests in it so I figure if I really am going to get the credits I'd have to go find something like that."


John grimaced and stopped rubbing his foot from where he'd sat down by the fireplace. Instead of asking he opened the system interace and looked, and sure enough there was a quest menu option...and a big fat nothing in active quests. Recent awards had the 25 Gobbo kills and other things but those were only minor quests.


The dungeon clearing though counted as a major quest.


The problem with the menu was it was all of it was opaque. There were too many options too easy to get lost or have to back track to find something but at least it wasn't deliberately trying to make funny or obscures references or slapstick humor... or any of that... it didn't feel like the system was just jerking him around it just felt labyrinthine in its complexity.


Sarai was still talking, something about watching the news and how there were other monsters running around. He remembered the BBC broadcaster getting eaten... and the armadillo eating the hollywood sign... but it had gotten worse than that. "Plenty of places are having problems with zombies but we're not the only ones with goblins. High mana zones," Like here, "Attract or spawn in monsters, from wherever they were originally and it also causes animals to change as well. Like those rats, they're absorbing mana and awakening even if they don't have class levels." Like for example Sarai's german shepherd, his Kangal, or the cats did. "Anyway since it hasn't snowed any more I was thinking about trying to go check on people, but I figured I'd start by trying to use water magic to clear off the roads if both do it then it would take a whole lot less time."


She had a point there, excepting that once they hit the highway there were probably going to be stalled or abandoned vehicles and that it was still hovering around freezing outside. Plenty of people had prepared for zombies it was all over popular culture. "I wasn't seeing a bunch of people in town, but there were a lot of zombies." He observed, "You want soup, i'm going to go ahead and put it on the stove top to heat up." He didn't need her reminding him food was another issue. "You've seen outside," He replied, "We can't grow anything in this..." He moved the pot of vegetable soup onto the stove top without voicing the expletive and the silent moaning of how he wasn't even sure he wanted to be a farmer... because it wasn't a question of want it was a question of survival. "You remember that aquaponics thing we did in high school?"


"Sure, my mom has the pictures still."


"How hard would it be to scale that up?"


"I have no idea John."


He cranked the stove top onto high, "It was just a thought, I don't even know where to start."

 

[Imperator Pax]

Chapter 5 Part 4
He'd heated up the vegetable soup and dished out two bowls and they'd put the television on. He hadn't thought to really do much with the computer, and assumed that the radio worked... but without cell phones the television really was their only window out into the world at large, "Its bad out there."


"Yeah." He agreed putting the spoon down. The television was muted but they didn't need the play by play. As they had observed some people had been prepared for zombies which helped against goblins as well it seemed. This wasn't an alien invasion in the classical sense... but it was bad out there. Bad was an understatement even for the people who had prepared for the apocalypse.


There was a change in footage on playback turning into the mess being made of Hollywood. Stupid fucking giant armadillo looking like a cartoon munching on a metal light up sign without a care in the world as the city started to burn down as the world was coming apart at the seams... but at least the armadillo wasn't eating people. It wasn't just the monster attacks now, the news was covering. It was also people who were detached from society... not just those on the margins of society though they contributed but those who weren't invested in the rule of law.


Riots, violence, particularly communal violence hadn't taken long at all to break out. The first reports recorded on the internet were the usual looting spates erupting broken glass, burning dumpsters theft of small cheap goods, as well as larger commodities like new flat screens, video games but those initial urban disturbances brought out other increasingly malign actors. Then there were the people who were already less confident about society who saw that other people were getting away, and it all came down like dominos. Maybe the only silver line to that was it was unlikely to bring in opportunists from other venues. That was the general pattern of escalation in such things in a nutshell. Here though there was the added dimension of multiple new novel threats to deaily life. Zombies, and goblins, and wild animals all on top of that... like apparently dinosaurs in Texas. "This is aunt Gertrude's recipe right?"


"Mhmm," He replied through a mouthful of soup... "I mean she supposedly got it from Mama Jones but Gertrude" His father's god mother, "was always a better cook." He dismissed the observation that he had, that they'd been in elementary when the distant maternal great grandmother had passed away. He almost started listing off the things he hadn't liked as a child, but stopped shaking his head... maybe it was the stress creeping up on him ... "So about clearing the snow?"


"It shouldn't be that hard," She replied, "Its not like we're doing it with shovels." Part of their moving around casting cantrips on the respective lots had involved having to move snow out of the way, but the snow on the road had just been left to lie there for the last couple days piling up. That was actually probably their bad. They shouldn't have let it get like that in the first, but some of that was just the amount of snow that had comedown since Friday... and even before that, "We were way over the average... this is a once in a century storm." Sarai trailed off, then looking at the tv, "It can't be natural, not all of it. "


John silently agreed. He'd wondered about the effect mana density had on the surroundings if it was causing animals to 'awaken', but he accepted also there seemed to be little they could do about the weather either. "Is your uncle's propane generator set up?" Set up was probably the wrong word because she didn't immediately give an answer.


"Yep, ish." She trailed off, "This is going to sound silly, but when I got my character levels I picked up a cleric sub class," Another pause, "I want to call it a tree honestly," Like an MMO, "called sanctuary. What I was really hoping to do was that I could sanctify the whole property, but I really need to increase my red mana proficiency for what I want to do." He wasn't following so Sarai hurried on, "So yes the generator is set up I don't know how far a hundred pound tank of propane is going to go but its full. If stuff in the system store weren't so expensive I'd have gone ahead and upgraded it."


"I haven't really looked through the store that much." He admitted.


"I really want a bag of holding, lugging firewood is such a pain in the ass." John nodded in sympathy for the situation. "That's another thing we need a drying rack for the wood we're cutting, maybe next week... err in the next couple of days we could knock something together." She was right with two hands it was really the sort of thing that could be knocked together in an afternoon normally just build something up against the side of the house.


The screen was back to showing Houston flooding out... some SYFY movie reject monster munching on a car. "Is that a spinosaurus?" It kind of looked like one he was willing to admit as the camera panned wide to show the distinctive sail but the creature's hide was an almost maroon purple color and besides glossy it was obviously magical. "At least we're not dealing with that."


He agreed, no dinosaurs so far, and no flooding. He looked down at his feet, and made fists with his toes again, "I'm going to put my boots back on, if you want to see about starting to clear the roadway." About half an hour later they were crunching along the side of the county road, one look at the stretch down the road and through the trees shading the gentle slope towards eventually the highway told him this was going to be boring as shit... but that was okay.


It did prove to be boring as shit but it was something to do, and to get a look at the world beyond his house without driving into town.


The dog bounded along side him, the shepherds' head on a swivel searching for any more vermin to chase, but the neighborhood had fallen quiet as the afternoon had worn on. "So you asked about the science fair project," She remarked Sarai had thrown on a pink puffy jacket that had probably come from the Academy in Greenville if he was recognizing the brand right, "That's an idea I think if we can round up more survivors its something we're going to have to do." Her hands flicked and a sheet of ice that was a good hundred pounds sloughed off the left side of the embankment. The party that they were all still apart of indicated whatever she had done had cost a little bit of mana to do but nothing really serious. "How cold do you think its been getting?"


"Low teens I figure," He replied channeling the basic water manipulation cantrip which was maybe half the volume ineffective terms to whatever she had cast. A quick check of the XP logs also showed that whatever she was casting awarded her more skill points and proficency, "You said you needed to level up fire proficiency?"


"I mean I do but I also don't want to burn the mana to cast fireball on the road either." He supposed that was a fair point. He turned looking at the white streaked winter sky. It was perhaps a little after three in the afternoon now, and a was probably about thirty right now. Cold, but at least it wasn't snowing... and it didn't look like it was going to at least for a few more hours. "I'm surprised more of the trees aren't down."


She stopped from where she was casting another spell shoveling packed snow aside, and there was a sparkle of light, and she paused," The mana level here is so high its diffusing into the trees," She gestured, "I think those," She indicated some half buried cypress trees, "were compromised and came down last week, but these other ones, anything that's wood, they must be soaking up green mana like crazy... its changing the landscape."


He activated his own magical sight and looked back up the hill from the way they came... and the dawning realization that the landscape was changing... all of this snow was going to melt back into water eventually and what would that do... supposing Sarai was right and the green mana soaking the landscape was making the trees stronger was that effecting the power poles which were wood, or was that just a coincidence. He waved his hand and pushed more snow into the ditches on the side of the road... and then looking ahead he considered that they were pushing what could actually be done in terms of available daylight... and if this freakish cold weather continued then they might have to do it all over again tomorrow.


Sarai either not considering this or wondering elsewhere in her own thoughts asked, "Do you think global warming had anything to do with the cold front?" as more mana was depleted from her status bar as she cast the spell again.


"Well, given the news," He remarked with a sigh pushing more ice and snow away from him with magic, "Our carbon footprint as a species is going to be a lot lower." The comment was a grim one given that that reduction in pollution would cost millions of lives, the end of the world as they knew it.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Chapter 5 Conclusion
The walk back was easier with the road cleared. It was still almost a mile uphill though in thirty something degree weather, but it certainly would have been worse if they had been using physical shovels to push the mess clogging up the road out of the way. They weren't as sweaty as they would have been, but making the walk in good time was tiring, simply for all the other fatigue and weight of the week.


John wanted to just crawl into bed, but there were things to do still. "We don't have the daylight to put a shed," Shed was an overblown term, "We could throw a tarp over the wood thats cut, its what I've been doing." Sarai noted shoving her hands into her jacket as she kept walking.


"Garage is a good option, especially if we're not going to be doing much driving," He paused, "Are you sure about walking?"


She snorted, "Its only a couple miles, I do it all the time." She replied. "Admittedly before monsters but I'll be okay..."She trailed off, and then he realized the noise, or lack thereof. "The power," had failed in the couple hours we'd spent pushing ice and snow out of the way. It had been bound to happen. They had both been busy and had marveled that more trees weren't down, that lines weren't down...


"Something must have happened to the station," John certainly could recall having heard anything like a transformer exploding but he didn't discount the possibility. A safety shut off seemed also possible, though he didn't personally pretend to know the nuances of how a hydro electric plant might stop generating power from a procedural standpoint. Those arcane secrets of infrastructure he did not know. "It... we lucked out that it lasted this long." He said with a heavy sigh as he looked at the farmhouse. It wasn't dark per se, he hadn't been running a whole lot of lights anyway, and smoke still drifted from the chimney.


"Yeah, probably so." She replied, "But I mean if the station was working this long-, what was the manga with the zombies where the ultranationalists wanted to take control of the dam," She paused, "It was High School of the Dead right, the dam would be a really good place to hold onto." Sarai stated enthusiastically chipper about the prospect ... and she was probably right that being able to hold a renewable source of electricity and keeping it working would be theoretically amazing. Her frown shifting told him she had considered something, "We've been able to kill goblins and zombies pretty easy... we've done alright but It would be easy to get complacent and let them build up numbers get overwhelmed with the numbers."


He thought about the thousands of thousands swarms in popular media... and yeah there had been a lot in town but not Hollywood level disaster either... because, a nasty little voice in the back of his mind told him, all those zombies had been people at some point. Walmart shoppers or people living in the nearby apartments or people stuck on the road... and there had been a lot of people but not enough for movie level hordes. "Yeah," He agreed, "But the zombies have to come from somewhere." John stated before glancing around the largely dark house beside his, "And right now we need to deal with this first." She had a point in that they'd trashed plenty of zombies, and goblins over the past week... and even with just guns he'd have been pretty comfortable for a while just shooting the zombies... but he would run out of ammunition eventually... he knew that, but he also wasn't going to just start speculating about what happened somewhere else, just wild ass guessing about the situation.


They decided to push on, walking past his driveway to the modernist high sloped roof next door, and walking through the gate to the backyard. Given her uncle's health problems the propane generator had for among other things been set up to be easy to swap over. The generator itself was outside in a weather proof shelter, and the electrics run into the mudroom at the rear of the house. Really, there wasn't anything to it other than turning a switch and pressing the starter and then flipping a breaker on ... the generator gave a hum, and the house's lights came back on... and the big stainless fridge in the kitchen angrily beeped at them for the interrupted supply of power.


Given the temperature outside, and the fact that the house was a few degrees noticeably cooler he resisted the urge to flip the refrigerator off for beeping at them... everything in the fridge would be fine. Nothing in there was going to spoil, but on the other hand he also knew that they were all so used to having refrigerators that losing power was a big big problem. He exhaled a frost breath against the cold January afternoon, and looked outside to the distant unfeeling gray sky... at least for now it looked like more snow was holding off, and wasn't going to undo what they had spent the afternoon doing... but that was a small comfort without electricity to return home to...


Still on the other hand clearing the road had been doing something in a world gone mad... and it wasn't like watching things, watching videos from across the world was telling them much. Sarai bustled around, "Hey I'm going to see if the internet box connects with power. No telling how long that will hold but I figure we should at least try." John shrugged. There was certainly no harm to the attempt, and given the situation yes it probably did work. The power had lasted as long as it had after all so maybe the local ISP still was running, "We should check yours too."

The houses had different service providers, which meant it was possible one of them might have internet access "Yeah, before we do that," He nudged the investigating Kangal out of the way, "I want to dig out the food processor, and one of the frozen turkeys." Cooking a whole ass turkey would take a couple of hours, but he was willing to bet that like his own deep freezer there were a couple here, and not only could they eat them but it made a supplement to normal dry dog and cat food. If the temperatures held they'd be alright for preserving food but if not, "I'll need to set up my generator after we get done over here, and maybe fire up my smoker as well."

 

[Imperator Pax]

Interlude 1​

Cold and wet, and dirty defined everything... far beyond the normal pre System urban blight, and rust, and decay. All traces of gentrification had been wiped way when the water mains had exploded as the water had frozen bursting the pipes flooding the streets and pouring sewage and muck out into a disgusting half frozen all fetid smelling swamp. He was torn between what exactly his priority should be as a result. Go home, or push further south and try and link up with even more of the friend group...No body here was prepared for the fucking blizzard and with the power out and with people needing fuel to burn stuff to keep warm... fights were starting between survivors.


He checked his quest menu one last time as the wind blew the stench of raw sewage in his face. Jesse had wanted to get back but between the freaking snow and then everyone losing their shit it hadn't been an option. There was an exaggerated theatrical cackle from his party member and a rain of icy spikes as the vampire larper made himself known among the gangsters who responded with ineffective fire from pistols as they scattered away from 'Lord Petrine'.


Peter was tall, but Jesse out massed him. Not even a contest there... and even though it had no bearing on them the way the other guy could fly just seemed to fit his build. Jesse heard the loud chittering of the oversized cockroaches that had gorged themselves on the abundant mana that pervaded the formerly large and crowded city. One of Peter's guys was way way back using his scrying power to 'paint' the gangbangers that they were to deal with and the party menu flagged the bugs as for the moment non hostile. He decided to ignore them, letting them go skittering away before the ground started shaking. The ruined debris of an old industrial building, what had once been a mill, gave way part of a broken wall sliding away. Jesse wasn't shocked per se as the truck sized form of a massive cockroach. He wrinkled his nose in disgust at the gigantic vermin as it shook its back end and wiggled through the debris... and there were more of them, but they were scurrying to get away from the fighting.


They would be something to run down later, he thought, but first dealing with the two legged vermin. The massive bugs skittered through busted streets where the cold from the blizzard had ruptured water pipes leaving filthy sluice of mud and ice to impede normal traffic. Not that it really mattered, half the reason he was still in the city was because his big diesel truck had run out of fuel and he had teamed up with Peter because the latter promised to help him with finding fuel. One thing at a time though, he sucked in a breath and watched his mana bar start to drain as he charged the attack.


He'd started leveling into a class that would actually let him do something with the mana, and after a few seconds expelled a breath full of focused steam that caught the man who'd popped out from behind a ruined four door. There was a pained expletive fueled scream as the man's glock popped and the round winged Jesse to negligible effect. Jesse still had his own glock, his first class having even given him an inventory space to dump ammunition into... but as the big blonde man was about to reiterate...


He reared back and punched the half boiled gang banger in the face, the blow sending the tall lanky man flying sixty feet rearward till he impacted a broken wall with a wet thud. "That's why you put points in Constitution." He snorted turning to another gangbanger with a small cheap nine mill pop gun, the loser didn't get the memo so Jesse pulled the warhammer off of his belt and threw it at his chest. The temporarily magical weapon smashed in his torso crunching the wannabe bad ass into another derelict vehicle.


It wasn't just the points in con though. It was the level difference. These guys had probably all gotten their first levels from hood rat shit... maybe even killing other people... and if they had kept it in among the criminal element Jesse couldn't have found two fucks to give, but well shit was hitting the fan. He was here killing these fucks because they were throwing their weight around trying to seize resources.


Jesse watched his mana bar trickle down as he released another boiling cloud into the frigid sub zero air to the expected resultant screams. It wasn't the best attack spell... Peter more than proved that as he flew through the air raining razor sharp icicles with abandon... but the vampire larper also had way more Mana than Jesse. There was another burst of small arms fire from somewhere to his rear that just tickled him as they tried to move around and pop shots off... which showed at least that they had some tactical acumen to keep moving around the enemy... but enough to realize how fucking screwed they were.


They obviously had character levels because they were hitting him, but against his bolstered vitality the nines just weren't enough to overcome his damage resistance. "Gold star for trying," He sneered, "Here's your participation trophy," The blonde called slinging his hammer across the intervening space into one guy's head which exploded before the hammer returned to him. They should have taken the hint from the cockroaches and booked it the highest level Peter had known to be among their number was a shot caller who had broken level five...


Neither he nor peter had broken double digits yet, but he wasn't worried about fighting a bunch of level threes. Truthfully Jesse did understand where they were coming from, for gang bangers raw firepower was even if you weren't hitting the other guy how you showed toughness with all the shit going down thinking that guns were the way to go was almost hardwired into thinking... because they hadn't figured out how to use the System yet. The problem were the slightly smarter guys who'd figured out they got more bang for their buck using wall hangers to kill monsters... and then there were people like him and Peter who had real properly balanced weapons.


Peter Farcross climbed into the air clapped his hands and slammed a thunderbolt into a ruined car and then surveying the charred skeletons left in the wake of his attack descended. "I should say," He remarked sibilantly, "That that is the important ones at least." The self declared Lord Petrine was in garb meant more for an evening dinner than a real fight... but it looked none the worse for the wear, and Peter didn't seem at all bothered by his open collar or thin silk shirt.


Jesse caught the distinction, "There are more of them."It wasn't really a question and he shoved his hands in his jacket pocket despite the warhammer hanging from the lanyard.


"Yes, but mostly the poor and desperate," Peter replied, before suggesting, "We should return to the manor," The big ass house Peter had appropriated once it was clear he had the levels and the muscle to back up that claim. It was nice old building, and even though Peter didn't have the resources he claimed he needed for everything from the system it did have a feeling of security that Jesse could respect... "Yes, we all read Dies the Fire. The gangs are going to fight it out..." The difference was guns still worked... and not everyone with character levels was bulletproof Jesse had noticed. Peter sat down by the fire place that had been stoked by another vampire larper, and he took a seat opposite," Most of law enforcement didn't show up to work monday morning, and the ones that did were overworked."


"Everyone has families," He replied not taking offense at the statement and not trying to sound offended either.


Peter took the hint, "Yes, yes the fuel I went ahead and sent Mosley to make himself useful while we took out the trash." He assured him, and not that Jesse didn't believe he was good for it, but he was further reassured when the System showed him a quest reward of full diesel cans for his big truck... more than enough to get home, more than enough to get back as well. "That being said its not just the criminal vermin, its the white collar scum as well... and there are other powers now, men with real power."

He'd seen the zoo, and the area around the zoo. It had taken him longer to unlock a mana sensory power than it had Randy, but Jesse had seen the verdant green mana from a distance, and while most the city was freezing the green was spreading, and was steamy and humid looking from a distance. Whoever had set up show there wasn't playing around, like Peter with this place they had established a settlement recognized by the system... but they had a core already and whoever was in there at least according to Peter was uplifting animals left right and center rather than relying on predominantly human party members.

It wasn't like Peter hadn't shown him how effective that could be with his swarm of summoned birds... but also whoever was in the Zoo seemed to have settled on what they had, which meant the real annoying thing was the gang war, "The third class idiots you mean," He grumbled popping the top off of a proffered beer, "The assholes who don't have," Or mostly didn't have, "levels but were something before things hit the fan and still think they should be in charge."


"Precisely." Peter replied sipping the red wine with dramatic flair, "In the book, it was these sorts of people who started trying to send foraging parties out into the countryside to steal from farmers... like bolshevik rabble requisitioning grain."


"Yeah, fuck that." Jesse agreed. It might have been different, in his opinion if the people who had help offices, or been appointed to positions were trading on something real or material...but they weren't. So far as he could tell they didn't have resources available to do stuff other than 'do what I tell you because I was in the government'. Was being the operative word. Jesse James sat back into the plush, richly apportioned chair and sipped his beer... the truth was even if there had been a Federal Government left he wouldn't have been okay with FEMA rolling around trying to requisition stuff... but the difference was FEMA was unlikely to try since usually in order to get anything done they had to go get bodies from the National Guard to just hand out bottles of water...this was a much more local issue, "Is there anything left of the state government?"


"For us, I do not believe so."


"North Carolina?" He asked.


"Also no." Petey replied to his question, "and even if there were neither they nor Atlanta have the fuel to project influence this far..." That was probably true... Peter hadn't tried to say he was governor, hadn't tried to say he should be in charge of the whole... well yet Jesse still half suspected that Peter might as the expansion of declaring himself 'Lord Petrine' might try the Norman Arminger sort of thing... but he had already run into the problem of gang bangers which Portland's warlord in the book had never had to deal with... on top of all the rampant magic and monsters and literal shit spewing out into the streets from the sewage system.


--
Notes: In the next couple of weeks we will go back to updating Viltrumite , Stargate will transition towards getting its own thread... and ideally in march I will go back to updating Aurigan renaissance but that last one isn't a sure thing. No Thunderdome will probably taper off.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Chapter 6 Part 1

John had accepted it was coming. A part of him wondered if he didn't need a different oil given the temperatures as he cranked the generator up... but the inverter's electric starter sputtered and then the generator was up and running. He let it run for a couple of minutes as he dragged the heavy extension cables towards the outlet facing.


He blew out a breath and looked at the shaking machine, then looked out over his snow covered yard... well he had power for a little while, for the essentials of food preservation... but if the generator did break he was up shit creek in terms of fixing it. He doubted it would. He'd been diligent with maintenance, it was in good condition... no he'd almost certainly burn through the fuel he had on hand ... unless some goblin bashed it into pieces... which he doubted was going to happen.


He was just going to use up the fuel, but the generator would have no problem running his freezers and letting him cook food. In order to maintain fuel efficiency the generator needed to be at a certain load it was why he wasn't worried about running the refrigerators. Once everything was plugged up and the main fridges' alerts were cleared he went about that.

In order to conserve fuel he would shut everything down at night before he went to bed, maybe even as night set in... that would additionally reduce the noise signature. The thought sparked a reaction from the System opening the settlement menu and showing in glowing bands the mana density of the surrounding area.


Green, and Blue mana soaked the landscape to the point it was overflowing into the neighboring areas. It reached its lowest point in his view through the System display when it came to reach the highway that eventually cut through town. On the opposite dies the levels declined, but less precipitously and remained predominantly water and earth aligned. It was less condensed it seemed to be more natural than his plot of land. He wasn't entirely clear if that was actually true or if was trying to rationalize the difference in the display, but tight strands of blue and green were knitted together throughout his home and became more patchy, splotchy in the distance. He shook his head clearing the augments to his vision and looked at the big fridge. There was so much in his freezers it wasn't funny, and while he could keep that stuff from spoiling in the short term that was probably something to measure in weeks realistically... unless he could find some way to make a magical ice box.


He thought about it... it was the sort of thing to definitely put a rush on for the moment the internet was working but now that the power had failed he wasn't going to have that for much longer either... but they didn't really have the daylight for it... he threw a look out the window towards the gray stretch of late afternoon sky... the generator worked it was handling the load fine... so it was fine... but he could have probably waited until the morning to find that out. He listened to the suppressed hum of the inverter generator and blew outa breath. He'd get up in the morning set things up, and then go cut fire wood, and then figure out from there what else needed to be done around the property.

John blew out a breath... this house had been built when electric lighting had been new. Admittedly it had been subject to substantive renovations indeed the most recent had been his own. New floors, doors and windows had been put in... but most of the house retained a layout that was dated that showed in the way the cabinets had been built and the rooms... and that would mean the he could continue to live here. To his own hearing his footfalls were loud, as he moved up the stairs. The layout of bedrooms had been done in a time before televisions even though the house had been wired for cable as part of the cable television boom, but that had only added to the house's wiring situation that hadn't been wholly corrected by the rewiring of the house. Part of that dated wiring was that main power was routed not directly the power pole coming into the property but from that pole to an old barn and then run to the house... but nothing generations had seen fit to take the time to fix... the end result was it was going to make the interior stair case dark even during daylight so it was time to fish out batteries and lights. He might have the time to do much outside but whatever could be done inside needed to get done because it would be dark in the morning.


He scratched the back of his head, recalling folk wisdom from his grandparents about planting with good Friday but there a variety of crops... but all too early to plant anything with this kind of snow. It would no longer be about minimizing the grocery bill by growing peppers, or asparagus or squash surviving off locally grown food was how things were going to be. It was too cold now to even consider starting seeds, and without electricity for heat and light starting seedlings indoors was likewise out. The earliest would be march, two months before anything could be done. That was forever. His ears listened to the hum of the generator as he weighed the prospect. The gas wouldn't last that long for the generator even stretching it out. Something would have to be done, the façade of the house face south towards town... towards the most likely place he could quickly source batteries and possibly solar panels... but he'd need batteries and electrical equipment for any sort of power system... need maybe ten thousand watts of capacity to run the house... perhaps less several hundred for refrigeration, but cooking would require more... and the well if he were unlikely and pipes burst then no more running water.


The tips of his fingers dug into the back of his scalp as he scratched. He moved on auto pilot into the upper floor study and settled into a wood chair of nineteen forties vintage instead of his rolling chair. John's eyes swept the shelves of reference books, of books on central Asia, of china, of Japan, of industry, and agriculture. Cambridge, Stanford, Dover, Kansas still other publishers of academic books. Some of them weren't even on the shelves instead being in canvas or even cardboard boxes


He opened the lock on the rolling top desk and surveyed what was kept there. His computer had been shut down anyway so he would probably transition to his laptop for however long the internet lasted.. His display of glowing holographic lights populated immediately. He had woken upon Monday morning level seven... all those damned toothed slimes have been worth a great deal of experience. Then there had been that level five charred bone skeleton and the mounting numbers of dead zombies and goblins. The flood of notifications that he simply minimized had included the one congratulating him for making level ten buried still further was the one from Monday congratulating him on being one of the first to reach level 5.


The notices from the System didn't tell him a lot, but it told him enough. The slimes of Sunday had given him seven levels, and while the charred skeleton hadnot done him much good on its own it had contributed. Randy, andJesse James had gotten their seconds from the bones and then he had had ground out the rest without them.


There was a vocal cry and a solid sound as the gray cat leapt up onto the adjoining bookshelf. Yusha's stat screen appeared. Level 7 it read. Impressive but with a week past he expected that the cat was perhaps one of hundred, maybe even thousands... but the system did not tell him. What did tell him was that he was entitled awards for being one of the first few , rewards he would have to redeem... in short the system pushed early leveling. The Zombies had been easy to kill, if you had guns, so he had to wonder how well less rural places were faring. Then again, he looked at the plump gray cat again... "No, I think we're all the abnormal ones." The cat chirped.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Chapter 6 Part 2

The house was cool but not truly cold when he stirred in the morning. A glance outside showed only light snow flurries falling, which was a relief. He didn't want all of yesterday's walking and road clearing to have been a waste.

It would not have been so much the actual work, so much as the mental blow. He stared into the flurried and the hazy gray sky of winter... with hunting season... the legal hunting season over the days would be getting longer roughly ten hours of daylight. His thoughts though were about the lack of plentiful electric power. The lack of light that was going to be in the house, as he used up batteries, and eventually candles...

Pulling the clean pair of dark green merino wool socks on before putting his boots on John exited the back of the house. This time there was no switch to filter of the System showing him mana overlay over the property or its surroundings. Though he had only just left the house the settlement logs had accrued that the cats had been busy as the sun had begun to peak into sky with the first hours of the morning. It was a much more crisp outdoor, bracing even, but not terribly unpleasant... today would have been a good day to go hunting.

Looking at the luminescent blue logs and text a thought struck him to wonder if since animals could gorge themselves on mana could people do the same, but then he dismissed the idea. It was too early in the morning for such thoughts, he doubted 'monday' meant much anymore or would for the foreseeable future. Today was he suspected looking over the snow covered ground, and the winter wheat in the field about three feet tall just going to be another day. Another day of... what he wasn't sure, in the time since the last day of hunting season things had become very unusual indeed. Turning he made his way down the deck ramp and crossed behind the wheat through an old cattle gate that connected the adjoining lot. A remnant of a long time gone. The fence was in no condition to serve its original purpose despite the gate being intact. The southern extent of the ranch fencing terminated a couple of spans the lengths that had once reached to the road had been torn down after having fallen into disrepair and disuse.

The house on the other side had been built after the division of land. It was much newer than his inherited farmhouse... but that did not make it new. Its whole house propane generator hummed audibly even before he crossed the property threshold. Generators were going to be something that filled the vacuum, the noiseless absence of cities... of HVAC systems, or cars at least for a time but then they would also likely fade away. They were still on Earth but this was an alien situation, as if they were on a new world.


Breakfast was oatmeal, nothing fancy, but the coffee was a potent aroma. Sarai had a physical map out on the table but was more focused on the tablet computer connected to a still extant internet. Putting her own coffee aside after a long pull she shook her head, "I'm gonna try and drive..." Apparently the spider problem in the next town over was worse than when it had been initially reported... not being an expert on insects or insect adjacent creepy crawlies never mind magical ones John had not idea how exactly the cold was effecting that issue but the next town over, the seat of the neighboring county, was relatively close only a few miles, the problem was the winding of the roads, switchbacks until they reached the state highway. As far as a walk went at sixteen it would have been nothing to walk a couple hours out that way, never mind with a bike... but back then there hadn't been goblins, and spider monsters, and whatever else was out there. "Yeah, here look at this..."She rotated the tablet around.


The imagery in commercially available satellite footage the sort of thing that was easy to source was subject to demand factors. He knew that. Wyoming, with more sheep than People was unlikely to have its rural plains updated but every few years. Zoomed in to the scale showing only several thousand feet was a wash with white... no surprise given the snow storm but he hadn't even considered what all that precipitation would mean for parts further south, where while cold was more sleeting, icy rain coming down in sheets. Footage from Texas had come in, but he hadn't considered what the rain would do to the rivers in the south... or anywhere for that matter.

Neither of them were geologists... but it didn't take a genius to guess what the implications of all that water was. Flooding, road wash outs... it would make it harder to cross larger distances... and it raised the question of uncertainty.

NASA satellite telemetry was limited in depth, it updated relatively frequently but it was not google maps... John figured that Sarai would have zoomed in more but there was no point if the resolution was too poor. It was already basically just streaks of color with distinction from the terrain changes.. "I wasn't really expecting help anyway." He replied. The Guard had been a no show, even with internet access, and thus news access there had been little indication of an effective government response by anyone's government... there was too much going on, too much input coming in to formulate a response and reply from a top down system. Everything was going to be local from here on out.

He was uncomfortable with the discussion about relative level, which roughly coincided with mana density of an area According to Justin there had been monster attacks when things had started, goblins attacking churches where people had congregated for sunday services as well as shopping centers which had made easy targets but goblins were limited in town. They sure didn't seem limited out this way, and John didn't know what to make of that, and the System wasn't forthcoming for answers at least not for him.

Sarai shrugged threw a look towards the woods, and mentioned the long meandering creek somewhere back there that had once helped water cows, "I'm curious about what the effective mana level of wherever it was you were hunting on... but I don't want to check it out myself." But she was comfortable going with her dog on a drive, which was the thing she wasn't going alone. "I would feel better if the cellphones worked around here, but the internet means Justin is expecting me so if I don't show up he should be able to let you know."

He didn't like that idea, because it would require him, not having a cell phone anymore to stay in proximity to his house and to the wifi router connected to the inverter. There was however little that he had to do so he agreed and after finishing the oatmeal watched the dog jump into the passenger seat and the car pull away.

Then he turned back and walked back through the old cattle gate. They would have to investigate why the cell phones weren't working locally... that would certainly be something to do this week but it wouldn't be today he thought as his boots crunched through the snow. He moved back up towards the house and considered what had been accomplished since the world had decided to flip upside down... a part of him wanted to pessimistically consider not a lot had been accomplished. He had killed those slimes on that first day and then come home

He took in an armful of firewood before heading up the ramp, and even though he hadn't encountered them Randy and Jesse had said they had encountered some real geniuses and their comment about the zombie apocalypse having kicked off had had some validity. On the other hand it wasn't so bad that the whole town had been overrun either. The zombies even the level five ones were only part of the problem.

He deposited the firewood into a stack near the fireplace and sat down... then he immediately stood back up, and headed for the stairs and for his laptop computer through which he would connect to the internet and to a messenger service to receive word of yes Sarai had arrived or no she hadn't.. Justin was a deputy of the neighboring county and Jesse of another one... it would have been nice to have access to radios he thought, as he mounted the top of the stairs and turned towards the office... but that was one more thing that in the confusion had passed them by as occurring to them. John criticized himself silently for this oversight as he sat by the laptop and cleaned his Daniel defense by the window looking into the backyard. He watched the birds flitter about as his hands moved mechanically as if on autopilot for the actions long ingrained... when cleaned lubed up and reassembled he snapped the weapon back together and only then considered how useful it really might be to him.

Sarai had taken a rifle of her own with her, in addition to her usual CCW, but as he stood up and walked into the closet space he eyed the binoculars sitting in the case. They were older, not his usual pair, the old Bell and Howell m19 had been succeeded by the Steiner M22, and by subsequent later field binoculars, which had been a bit crappy for a number of points but glass was glass and he wouldn't have been concerned about target indicator from light reflection.

He left them in the case and rifled around further... all too aware of the empty spot where his preferred hunting rifle should have rested near the worn green body of the binoculars. He rifled around still longer keeping an ear out for a notification or for the bark of the dog and pulled out a ruck sack adjacent to the gun cabinet in the closet space. It was a hundred plus liters, but he knew in this weather it would be water that was both the heavy item and that would be the limit to how far one could go.

He pulled the larger ruck back into the office one handing from the top mounted drag strap and set it down beside the rolling chair. If it had only been zombies John would have probably done things differently this past week...but it wasn't just zombies, while the guys had been here the goblins and their giant rats had attacked or tried to attack. He turned to look back at the dim laptop screen moved the mouse, and looked at the time, no notifications one way or another so no reason to get worried just yet.


--

Notes: So in V3 of this if we ever get to that point I hope to one have the LitRPG format fully fleshed out to include stat and skill descriptions but also that Chapter 6 will be the end of 'Volume 1' probably being about 60 to 80k words. Then starting 'volume 2' with the following chapter. But that will be whenever in the future we will continue working through the present iteration of Chapter 6 and proceed on from there, but Chapter 6 does in some ways serve as a recap of the past events and then move into the new week.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Chapter 6 Part 3

He spared another glance into the backyard as the wind picked up wispy clouds in the sky but still nothing more than flurries of snow out there. The power failure meant he was dependent on natural lighting, and it also meant no running water... he'd have to do something about that... snow would work for putting in pots and bringing inside and letting it melt naturally to put in the reservoir of the commode that would work for the time being... as long as he was careful not scoop up dirt along with the snow. Given the age of the house in general, and the plumbing in the particular case he wasn't especially confident at the moment of taking too many chances. If there was a hard freeze then pipes might burst but that might have happened regardless of power the difference now was whether he could get the well back running.

The small inverter generator didn't output the right phase power for the well even if he had had an easy way to put the two together. An oversight, and now a particular headache of one since the well ordinarily would provide water. It made his head hurt though for it should have been something he had considered a long time ago really... something that he could have had an electrician at least look at before all of this.

He hadn't though, and perhaps he should have. A normal enough ice storm could put the power out easily enough and those could come as late as March even this far south... and the truth was the hurricanes could throw down hundred year old oak trees during the summer and that too would putout power for weeks. John shook head and ran his finger over the touchpad to wake the dim screen again. Still nothing.

He placed the suppressed rifle on top of the flat top end of the rolling desk to sit so as to not leave it propped up against where it might be knocked over if he began to pace, which was what he was inclined to do in this sort of situation. Sheltering in place was his only option, and there was no reason to make a run for it, John recognized that, as he continued to turn over the events of the past week in his head. He thought of the burned out mess made of the local walmart, but not so much the destruction but the decrepit feeling of it and the way the zombies and other undead congregated around it and had been loath to leave its environs.

It was not natural, which was absurd in this situation but the 'dungeon' had to exert some kind of pull on the mindless undead it was the only explanation.


Finally there was a chime from the computer and he moved towards it. Instead of a text message it was a picture of Justin, Sarai, and a couple of others waving at the camera. Then a text pop up of 'all good heading to the school. Formed party.'


He assumed that that meant Sarai's work.

That was followed by still another ding informing him after that they were planning to get with some of the survivors and go collect batteries from the local auto parts store. Then as quickly there was a 'and cables'.

He gave a minute, fired off a confirmation message, and then after they confirmed his confirmation asked how they were managing. Instead of an explanation Justin posted a picture of what looked like a server bank in the back of a car. John squinted at the cell picture, and recognized it as some kind of mesh network or node that must have been communicating text and images back to a wifi network. It wasn't a cell phone network but at least it worked. He knew he would have to trust them to try and investigate on their end why what should have been a fairly robust cell phone network, with good coverage, had failed.

There was a thump, as the smallest of the five cats launched herself to the top of the roll top desk landed and he moved back to snag the riffle by its sling. He quickly looped it over his head to avoid a situation where it might be knocked over. Then his thoughts turned back to how after the first few days of the previous week the friend group had dispersed back out looking around at their surroundings trying to gather up supplies. Without a cell phone, and even if he'd had one the network was shitty there hadn't been a way for him to keep track of progress. His general assumption regardless of who went into town, or drove to a neighboring town or up to the nearest big city was more or less the same process... shoot zombies or some other monster there seemed to be no shortage of 'trash mobs' but he also recognized it had spread the local gaming group out with little way to get in contact with one another quickly. Still he assumed that given the situation most people had probably taken advantage of having guns and went zombie hunting.

There were no further chimes from the computer, and the screen dimmed. He wondered if he should stick around as he glanced outside again but this time had his vision filled with the System's 'Settlement Menu' which included reminding him about the Core Slot. The consequences of destroying the dungeon of clearing it had meant he had lost an easy place to hunt zombies since they had congregated there... and the fact the core he had had come from said dungeon made him leery about putting in in the slot.


The power had failed yesterday... it had lasted a week though of this shit, and as his thoughts shifted towards water the system menu responded asking if he wanted to expend mana to create an item for the settlement.

Barely thinking about it he clicked yes, and felt the rush of MP stagger him as his bar drained. John went down falling backwards unsteadily into the rolling office chair with a clatter as the suppressor dragged on the floor. It was the first significant expenditure of his mana and he had no idea what to expect, and was unsure if he actually passed out there for a moment. Taking an unsteady breath and gripping the arms of the chair he straightened. The Settlement Menu had changed as a new building had taken shape it forming and replacing part of his interior yard, including the fire pit area with a swirling flowing mass of water looking almost like the strands of DNA in a book.

Whatever it was according to the System Settlement Menu it was a 'water building'. His settlement's first elemental aligned building. The water wasn't freezing... but there was no way to put it into the house either, it was flowing around forming a ...not quite a pond maybe a reservoir in his backyard but... it did provide a source of clean water of at least equal quantity to what his well would have put out... and pushed the experience bar of the settlement much closer to Level 1. The fatigue didn't fully abate as John made his way down the stairs of the house with the cat-rogue in tow and and out to investigate his new source of readily available water... in his magical sight it was an intense blue and even in normal sight the water was a deep blue color unlikely many of the nearby lakes which had a more dirty coloring from vegetation and good old southern clay.

He looked up at the tower like strand structure of descending magic, careful not to tread into the pool and get wet, and thought back to the idea of water turning a wheel... which would turn a motor and could then provide power... but then he'd need a way to provide storage for that power, and also route it into a system to be used... which he recognized was not something to be done any time quickly, or with what he had on hand.... what surprised him more than anything else was the lack of reaction or at least suspicion towards the sudden new structure from either the dog or any of the cats who had all congregated out following after him.

John turned away from the strands as they glinted in the growing monday morning daylight, the sun not yet having reached sixty degrees, but mid day would be here in about another hour. Still, only light flurries to speak of and only limited winds that he could count. He moved back inside, the lack of MP and its ponderously slow refill having made quite clear the choice that it was best to stay inside the house right now. Throwing a glance over his shoulder to the latest change to the property he hoped that it was going to be worth it even as he glanced at the system notification congratulating him for creating his first magical item, and the attendant xp notifications.

 

[Imperator Pax]

Chapter 6 Part 4

The downside to his level, now into double digits, he intuited from the rate his mana bar was refilling. Too slowly... and with it so low he was tired so he made the choice to settle in downstairs by the fire place, adding a log on top of the fire. Sitting on the couch lasted about a half hour before he realized that fatigue or no, he needed to be in the vicinity of his laptop and returned back up the stairs. Sat down at the home office desk and shuddered from the fatigue. It was the first time he could actually say he had felt cold in days... and it was not a welcome sensation.

He had enjoyed being comfortable against the elements, and from the tiredness and now all of a sudden he felt far far more mortal than he had in a week. From that first Monday waking up with levels he'd been enjoying things...and the fatigue had sapped that... but a look out the rear window told him that he had done something impressive to warrant the fatigue.

The system had awarded him XP for contributing to the settlement. It was something he instinctively felt he should be aiming towards, big XP awards. He needed lots of XP... the fatigue though... well he could remember the pain and the cold after the fight with the slimes but that had felt forever ago despite that it had only been a week... all of the things had changed so fast.


The lethargy caused him to yawn, stretch and lean back. He was too tired to try and watch the news that was available... and he fell asleep to the subdued hum of the inverter, and dozed for a couple of hours. It helped, but he was still groggy when he woke up and his mana was still depleted...but it was now sufficient that as I looked out into the gray of slow falling flurries that he had enough to throw a fireball if it came to it. He shifted in the chair, prompting a disapproving mrrp from the cat on his lap. He groaned in reply. The chair wasn't the most comfortable thing, but he wasn't cold either.

Some gentle nudging eventually convinced the fifteen pound cat to jump down onto the floor and then after stretching he started to move towards the stairs with the cat following. The generator was still humming, though he regretted not checking the time before leaving the upstairs, he opened the door the noise becoming marginally louder and walked towards the generator to check the running time and the fuel level. The thought crossed his mind if shouldn't have been trying to use the economy feature... but he'd never used it in the years he had the generator, it had always been superfluous to his use... and that lack of experience convinced him against trying. The generator under its current load was still at over half a tank there was no reason to stop running it, and a glance again at the snow flurries suggested it might be time to pull out the induction stove top and heat up the soup in the fridge.

He made his way back in and silently regretted not having a duel fuel generator when the gas ran out he'd go to propane to cook ... and then probably after that to wood fire. He wasn't sure how well all of that would work, but a glance towards the back yard and to the hazy fluctuations of the air from the helix shaped magical structure reassured him that he might still be moving in the right direction.

Water was taken care of for the time being. He blew out a breath and watched the cloud of steam he exhaled float into the air... he guessed it was going to be cold tonight... turning back towards the generator he wondered if he should fence in the deck... but that would have required having cattle panels or some other material. Stuff he didn't have and however he might want to do that it would need to be some way that there was airflow from the generator's exhaust away from the house...definitely something to leave alone for the time being.


He heard the motorcycle approach before it came into view. The shaggy figure aboard it was incongruous. The old camouflage he wore had the cloth insignias of a specialist sewn on. 173rd​ on the sleeve. It was green... what had been normal before the towers had fallen, before the invasion of Iraq.

The bike was handling the still mostly clear road well and the shaggy man pulled up to a single bark from the kangal. He waved from the entry to the drive and eased into the driveway proper not gunning the engine so as to not kick gravel everywhere. Nate was not wearing a helmet, which John didn't necessarily think was the best idea, but the airborne medic looked not worse for wear.

They exchanged greetings, and John grabbed the older man a mountain dew. John could do nothing for Nate's smoking habit, which he shook his head about but chugged the cold beverage down. "I've got more if you've got space in your bag."

"Thanks." Nate lived on the opposite side of the county... and John realized he was eager to hear about how things were on that end. "Trees are down everywhere," Nate replied putting the soda on the railing after making sure the lid was on tight. "and the river, this magic shit." He suddenly gestured around, "But you see this fucking shit." John looked at the hedgerows coming into shape around his property, and nodded. "Everything is getting overgrown, and town is bad." He'd heard summaries before of how things had broken out on the Sunday the apocalypse had broken out, zombies and goblins and what now... and that had caught people by surprise naturally. The loss of civil management, emergency services and daily work had begun to lead to other problems. Nathan was relatively sure that he'd heard propane explosions but those could echo significantly ... and at least where he was had not proven a significant fire hazard. It wasn't necessarily the same in town where the density of buildings had lead to dangerous choke points where any number of things had blocked roadways. "I didn't know if we could get through with the Chevy." Nathan had a Silverado, but his wife also had a Suburban... John supposed it didn't matter which American 'truck' he meant, and Nate continued with his plan to reconnoiter a route with the bike first before heading back... "I went to work with the chainsaw, and my tomahawk and warhammer."

John spared glance at the Sog tomahawk in the black belt hanging from the green load bearing equipment. "Yeah?"

"Pruning back trees trying to conserve bar and chain oil, and gas." Nathan admitted. John agreed ... it was one thing to expect to have some trees down but not... they hadn't been ready for the world end. They hadn't planned for massive numbers of trees down, roads blocked by snow of this degree, "Yeah, not what I was expecting... at least the politicians got fucked up right?" It was the only high point he could think to name, then, "Yeah, and you should see Lee, she got levels in monk. Its some jet li shit." And of course since an AR 15 was an intermediary, 22 caliber, rifle it had been easy for their two kids to spike zombies with head shots so John could understand that Nate was comfortable heading to this end of the county. He finished the mountain dew, "Can I get another one of these."

John smirked, figuring that having not expected the world to end Nate had probably burned through the soda he had had in the house, "Sure, so you're using guns, how's that working?"

For zombies it was great, for other things, well, "if you could spare the ammo brother, that'd be great." Nathan remarked. "What are you using?"

John thought about his class's ability to change out damage types for his spells, "Holy damage."

The taller man gave a wry chuckle and ran his hand through his too long hair, "I guess that makes sense. I would have tried to be back out here before but I needed to get to level three before I was comfortable with it. That soup smells good, that your mother's recipe?"

"Great grandmother." Originally he thought, but Nate was quick to point out that they would be back to eating real food like they made in the 'old country' soon. All John could think about was the waste that all the chaos was going to cause, all the food that would spoil if they didn't find some way to use it all... and when it was used up or unusable then food was going to be short, times were going to be lean... just like the 'good old days'... but it had already been a week, and deep snow or not he guessed lots food had probably spoiled in stores. "So lots zombies down there?"

"Not as many as I would have thought to be honest, but enough to be a pain," With no way to grow hedgerows Nate had taken to relying on brute force to build wooden supported fighting positions around his house, and neighborhood and that helped at least with the zombies but less so than "With those little fury monkey fucks." The airborn medic growled, "But gun works on them too."