The situational awareness of these people was atrocious. There was no other way to describe it, Silva and I had calmly walked down the driveway, stopping maybe ten metres from the fence around the property they were living on and two people had walked past the gate without noticing me. Both were likely supposed to be guards, given that one was carrying a long, straight stick that could serve as a quarterstaff in a pinch, the other a wood-cutting hatchet and both had torches to give them a bit of light. And yet, they hadn’t realised I was standing here, watching and waiting to be noticed.

Finally, hatchet-man walked past again and I decided to make myself known.

“Good Morning,” I called out, loud enough to make myself heard but not loud enough to wake up everyone in the area. Waking people up needlessly was a good way to make yourself disliked.

“Who the f…? Who are you?!” he screamed, jumping at the sudden noise and dropping his weapon. A true warrior, that guy.

“A Traveller, is that not obvious? I was asked to look for a group of five who supposedly came out here two days ago. With whom would I have to talk about that?” I asked, unable to keep the disdain I was feeling for this bad excuse of a guard out of my voice. Guards like that were the reason tragedies happened, unable or simply unwilling to do their job. Lazy or incompetent, I wasn’t sure which was worse.

“Wha?” his eyes flickered from me to Silva, who decided it was the perfect moment to yawn, showing off just how large her maw was and how big her teeth were. I managed to keep myself from laughing, as the guy’s eyes widened and his face went pale enough to notice the change, despite the distance between us.

By now, his scream had brought more people, one in just a pair of sweatpants with a shoddily crafted spear in hand, another the stick guy I had seen before and finally, a tired-looking guy I recognised from the gym. I had no idea about his name, but I had seen him before, he had been at my initial magic lecture. Had looked both intrigued and confused, if I recalled correctly, but that was true for most people there.

“Miss Jacobs?” the guy I recognised asked, looking at me with a mix of interest and a small bit of trepidation.

“Aye, Mrs Wu asked me to go look for you and your team. Is Cheng Hu around, I was told he’s the leader of your team,” I asked, mostly ignoring the other guys who looked from Silva, to me, to the guy I recognised and the original guard, obviously confused about the situation, looking for the emergency that necessitated screaming like a banshee.

Deciding that I didn’t care to talk loudly enough to make myself heard ten metres away, I slowly walked up, Silva padding alongside me. I noticed that hatchet-guy didn’t look too good, his eyes trained on Silva as if she was about to pounce on him and devour him, but the other two looked pretty calm and reasonable. Well, the stick guy looked calm, sweatpant-man mostly looked cold. Foolish of him to run out here, without even putting on shoes.

“Boss is asleep, we’ve been sharing some of the things we learned about the situation and the system, trying to help these people out. There’s something weird going on at the old slaughterhouse…” he paused and I almost heard the click of things falling into place in my head.

“The slaughterhouse, it’s in that direction, right?” I asked, pointing in the direction the wind had blown from earlier. The direction I still could faintly smell the scent of Death-magic from. Either the change had given somebody an affinity with Death Magic, or something similar, maybe a connection to some Death-God they used to literally raise hell with, or the change was affecting the deceased, regardless of species, as if it had been some sort of Wild Magic. I didn’t even want to imagine what the right, or wrong, kind of Wild Magic would do to a graveyard without some sort of magical protection or consecration, I remembered there had been videos during the Beta of people venturing out to restore such consecrations and the sheer number of undead they had been forced to fight was staggering. The implications were incredibly troublesome, but there was little I could do about the grand picture at the moment, only focus on the present situation.

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“Yes?” he nodded, looking a little confused, though his confusion was completely eclipsed by that of the other three guys, they were apparently completely lost on how to deal with the situation.

“Shit,” I muttered, before finally focusing on the three locals, “Well, you’ve got problems, not sure anyone can help you with those,” I shook my head, before continuing.

“Anyway, I’m Samantha Jacobs, you’ve got a problem if I stay for the day? I might be able to help with some of your troubles, I’ve noticed some things on the way here,” I offered, finally focusing on sweatpants-guy, mostly because he looked very much as if he wanted to get back inside.

“Yeah, sure, come on,” he offered, clearly not fully caught up with the situation, “Name’s Mark, by the way,” he introduced himself, turning around and walking back towards the house with me and the guy from the gym following behind.

“Apologies, I don’t recall your name,” I told the guy I recognised, though I doubted I had ever been introduced to him in the first place.

“Clarence Sugimoto,” he introduced himself in the western style, his given name making me think he had grown up here.

“Anything you can tell me about their situation? Goes for you, too, Mark. I’m probably the most powerful being in a fairly wide area, so I’m the most likely to be able to help,” I added, happy that none of them had tried to Observe me yet. While I could partially block the skill, I wasn’t yet powerful enough to be confident in that block and I really, really hated the sensation of having my intimate information stripped bare.

For a moment, Mark didn’t reply, obviously considering. Then, with a sigh, he began to explain their situation. They suffered from two rather major problems, though each was of a different sort. One of their problems, of which I unknowingly had encountered part of on the way here, was the livestock, or rather what used to be livestock. Not only had the horses gained power in the system, gaining levels at the same speed or faster than the humans, cattle, hogs, chickens and even the few geese in the area had done the same. Especially the geese, these had apparently been a menace before the system and now they were… worse.

The locals had been fighting back but at the end of the day, it seemed that the animals had weathered the change better than the humans, something I had observed as well. There were far fewer Shattered animals around, compared to Shattered humans and that was not only by absolute numbers but also by percentage.

Their other problem was a little more mysterious. Strange noises, odd movements and a general aura of dread around the old slaughterhouse made it so that nobody dared to investigate. They knew something was wrong, but in their situation, they collectively had decided messing with things they didn’t understand would be bad. A wise choice, in my eyes, especially if things out here were truly as dangerous as they described.

After listening, I gave them my perspective, by now we had entered the house and a few more of the locals, as well as the five members of the party I had been sent here for, were in attendance. They listened closely when I described the strange sensation I had encountered and what I thought it meant. That led me into a small tangent, during which I briefly explained why I knew more than them, even given a demonstration of my magic, conjuring a basin of water for them, but at the end of it, they accepted my observations, even if they couldn’t confirm them.

If they wanted to fight against the livestock, they needed more people, if they wanted to explore the old Slaughterhouse, they needed more people. Good thing that the people at Mrs Wu’s gym needed to leave the city soon, or disease would sweep through their ranks, thanks to the massive amount of bodies rotting in the streets.

Given that I wasn’t a well-polished social operator, I didn’t bother to start negotiations, merely mentioning that it might be something they’d want to explore, before asking for a quiet space to rest during the day.

One of the women, the wife of the farm’s owner, guided me into one of their guest rooms, offering me premium space, given that most of the people on the farm were sleeping in one of their barns from what I had observed.

I was just about to unpack some food to share with Silva when the woman, who was named Kira, spoke up.

“You mentioned magic,” she began, clearly uncertain about something but soldiering on anyways, “You showed us magic. Can you use that magic to heal?” she paused again, her voice breaking.

“My daughter…” another pause, as a sob escaped her, “Can you save my daughter?”