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."

 

[Kenrio]

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.