Surprisingly, everything in Kevin’s stats had increased by two points over the week he had been trying to get out of the cluster, even his recovery, and soul even increased one a pretty rare event comparatively. What was even more surprising was the improvement to both his Basic Shield and Basic Axe Mastery. Kevin hadn’t checked his stats since the first ping Soul Tracker returned for Katie, so it could have been the fight with the horde outside the city.
Kevin was happy with the progress, but he couldn’t enjoy it. With his mother and his daughter in this world and him not knowing them safe, everything was but ash in his mouth.
The next day Kevin started a new or really a modified routine.
5am Wake up.
2 hour workout with vambrace, training with Light Heavy.
7am Recovery Potion and low-tier healing pill
Use Soul Tracker to check on mom and Katie
730 Training the recruits
930 Take Seekers out for Exit Searching and Morankai Hunting
4:30 Return
5:00 Solo Seeking or Guard Duty
9pm Meditation focusing on Cultivation then sleep.
The next several weeks saw Kevin clearing skyscraper after skyscraper after skyscraper with his Seeker. Everyone wanted to find the exit and look for their loved ones, but not everyone was willing to go to ground level to look for clues.
Kevin had requirements for his Seekers. They had to train hard enough to unlock one of the several weapon masteries, which with a competent teacher in himself, Lee, Nessar and Tammy and several others, they could select from 5 different masteries and open the ability up in a day or two of diligent training. They had to kill a morankai and bring Kevin its head. They had to swear to add Ki Cultivator once they collected enough points.
Cameron had introduced Kevin to the group the next day as a Seeker, they had outlined the expectations to join Kevin, including opening up a mastery and killing a morankai. One person on the first day met the requirements, the impressive example of dedication was a younger teen boy, maybe 14.
Less than three hours after listing the requirements, the teenager, a boy from Namibia named Trevor, had come back with two morankai heads, and spear mastery already opened. The boy hadn’t had a lot of points, but mortal tier Ki Cultivator wasn’t very expensive, so the boy had selected it out of point necessity, which ended up being to his great fortune as he was already stronger than many of the adult men in the second wave.
In the first week, only 12 people had managed to meet his requirements,
Kevin took them out each day where he helped them clear the skyscrapers beginning with the south eastern side of the cluster. One team of six would clear the floor of morankai then clear the rooms individually, bringing anything that looked odd to Kevin. While the first team cleared the rooms, the second team would clear the floor below. While the second team was searching rooms, the first team would clear the floor below that.
Kevin would move between the floors alternating between helping the teams clear the floors and searching for any information on those floors. At first they only managed to clear two buildings a day, three if they were small enough.
After a week straight of Seeking, Kevin insisted on a rest day - though he did not rest himself clearing several skyscrapers alone. The following week they managed to clear three, sometimes four buildings, but also added several people to their ranks.
The third week they had enough people to modify routine. Ten Seekers went through and cleared the building, while the remaining ten Seekers searched the floors starting with the top. Once the Seekers at the bottom cleared the ground floor, a feat usually, but not always including Kevin, they would start searching from the top. They would meet the top group in the middle somewhere, transition to a new skyscraper and switch jobs. In this way they managed to clear six or eight a day.
Kevin was unsatisfied. They had cleared not even 100 skyscrapers yet. The progress was too slow. Today was the rest day between the third Seeking week and the fourth. Katie had been in the first layer for nearly a month.
Kevin was planning to clear at least ten skyscrapers today, Cameron having relieved him of his guard duty. “That man really is taking to being the Godfather.” Kevin thought as he ran from the central region to the south. He had decided to clear the skyscrapers one layer at a time, so to speak. That meant that, even though his team hadn’t cleared a huge number of skyscrapers, they were covering a reasonable area.
Kevin was at the first skyscraper almost as soon as the training session had finished at the Trio, Kevin not holding himself back at all as he sprinted to the perimeter. He found the skyscraper his team had cleared the day before, and went to the next in the line. Doing as his team did, Kevin entered the top of the skyscraper. This one had only two exterior sheds that lead to stairs inside.
The first three floors from the top were empty of morankai and anything worth note. Interestingly, the offices weren’t always empty. Sometimes they had paper stacks full of random pieces of information that looked like nothing so much as a paper printing in with the wrong print driver or in some weird combination of hieroglyph and ancient calligraphy.
Other times, the papers held actual information. Most notably among them were ships, like watercraft. Blueprints, or labeled cross sections or even just pictures or vessels. They were weird. Kevin had been collecting a lot of it and bringing it back to the trio where Cameron had several people organizing it.
This skyscraper was so far very empty. He went down a dozen floors, killing the occasional morankai and finishing the floors. The rest of the first skyscraper cleared quickly as several of the floors were full of quickly searched lobbies.
Kevin went to the next skyscraper and began the search. This tower already had more morankai, which would have annoyed Kevin, but a single or even pair of morankai barely lasted longer than it took for him to notice them. He cleared the floors one after another until he got to the ground floor. This one had a huge lobby area surrounded by a mezzanine that the stairs opened up onto. On the ground floor, several morankai, including if his guess was right, several abnormal morankai loped about.
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Kevin considered not bothering with clearing the floor, but saw an “Information Desk” that was full of papers. Those had been handy in the past so Kevin decided to get their attention.
He jumped off the mezzanine and used his Cloud Step shoes to run above one of the largest abnormal. He tapped his armor ring, the armor appearing on his body as he fell. He tapped his storage ring and pulled out his fire axe. Kevin did something he didn’t usually do, increased his own weight as he fell, and that of his axe. He brought the axe down in both hands with the combined weight of himself and the axe. His basic axe energy crashed through the morankai, killing it before it even knew Kevin was there.
The axe crashed to the ground clanking loudly on the indestructible floor. Every head in the lobby turned towards Kevin, he tapped his ring, pulled out his shield and went to work.
Kevin was half way through the horde of morankai when he felt something new for the first time in the first layer. An earthquake.
The whole tower felt like it was shaking as a rumbling sound drowned out the sound of the fighting in the lobby. Kevin hesitated, but the morankai didn’t.
The abnormal he was currently fighting had a huge reach, its arms especially long compared to its body. Kevin had managed to take a hand but the creature didn’t even flinch. Its body was covered in a yellow glow that turned red after it lost its hand. Yellow made it faster than normal. Red made it stronger.
The distraction allowed the creature to throw Kevins shield out of the way and land an extremely powerful backhand to Kevin’s chest plate. He just managed to reinforce it with shield energy before he was struck. The shield energy absorbed some of the impact but Kevin still dropped his shield and was thrown back almost fifteen feet to crash into one of the pillars of the lobby.
He tapped his ring and threw a hatchet at the nearest morankai, then switched out his flame axe for a long handled viking dane with a smaller bit. He cut down morankai like he might cut down a tree, each swing from his axe taking a limb or a head or even chopping all the way through. The last morankai alive was the abnormal who had managed a strike.
Kevin tapped his ring and pulled out a small, one handed battle axe that more closely resembled a butchers knife than an a wood axe.
The creature struck at Kevin. He dodged, caught the offending limb, and with one swing from his small axe, took the arm off at the elbow. The creature swung its other stump at Kevin, who ducked and put the edge of the blade up under the creature's armpit, taking the limb off at the shoulder. The creature, somehow still undeterred, lunged at Kevin trying to bite. Yet again he sidestepped, taking the creature's lead leg at the knee, then its head from behind.
— Points Obtained: Points 237 —
Panting a little, Kevin collected his shield and went to the Information Desk. He’d have to investigate what the hell that earthquake was, but he wasn’t going to forget about why he had that fight in the first place.
The papers were more of the same. Pamphlets on different boats, vessels, ships, tankers, cruise liners, yachts. It was honestly so weird. Kevin shrugged, stored the pamphlets and decided to investigate the Earthquake. Rather than go all the way to the roof before checking, Kevin poked his head outside and looked around. There weren’t very many morankai on the street, many of the nearby ones having been attracted to the fight in the lobby, so if he was quiet he could probably look around a little.
Kevin snuck to the nearest intersection and almost fell over. Just a few blocks down from where he was he could see a ship, a huge oil tanger maybe? Cargo ship of some variety, Kevin wasn’t nautically informed of different ship varieties, despite the pamphlets in his storage space.
A rusty red hulled ship with a dark blue stripe at the top of the hull, it just sat on the ground, the bulbous nose of the hull almost touching the city perimeter roads while the bow of the ship reached out and touched a large balcony of a short skyscraper.
Kevin just stared at it in shock and wonder. He almost forgot he was on the street.
Kevin didn’t bother going back inside, he just started running at an angle with the Cloud Step shoes. He got to the roof of the skyscraper in short order and stared out at the vista that met him. The grasslands stretched out endlessly as they always had. But now, running right down the middle of Kevin’s view were hundreds, probably thousands of totally randomly assorted sea ships. The tanker, probably almost a thousand feet, maybe even more, was followed by some variety of military vessel, then what looked like a crab hauler, more ships followed that in a line stretching as endlessly as the grasslands.
Kevin whispered. “It's here.”
Cameron answered. “Yes. It is.”
Kevin would have jumped out of his skin, he was so surprised. He wasn’t on his game obviously.
“At least we know what all those damned pamphlets were about now.” Cameron said with a humorous grunt. “You are going to go then?” Cameron said with a questioning tone, though they both knew the answer.
“Yes, I’m only still standing here out of utter shock,” Kevin answered.
“Will you take your Seekers?” Cameron asked, again, already knowing the answer.
“No. They are too slow, even that Trevor kid wouldn’t be able to keep up. I will wait long enough to talk to you, but I will not wait on them.” Kevin answered.
“Good. They will travel with us.” Cameron said.
“With Us?” Kevin asked.
“Of course Kevin. The whole cluster wants to leave this place. Well not the whole cluster, practically the whole cluster though. Tammy and Lee are going to stay, and some others too. The rest of us were waiting for you to find the bridge.” Cameron said.
“I didn’t find this Cameron. It just appeared.” Kevin said, still dumb struck at the scene in front of him.
“Well, that is interesting. I guess those papers make a little more sense now, clues at what to look out for you think?” Cameron said.
“I guess.” Said Kevin. “What will you do?”
“The same as you, I suspect. Some of us want to try and find loved ones, some of us want to see what else this place has to offer. Some of us, like Nessar, want to find the exit to the second layer and leave.” Cameron said.
“And what about you Cameron, what do you want?”
“I don’t really have anyone.” Cameron said. “But I know that many people are separated from their loved ones. I want to see if I can’t help put families back together. In the meantime, I know that children are starting to be chosen. I think it is likely we will have another wave of people at the anniversary of our coming here, that wave might have even younger children. I intend to help. The rest of the people here either want to join up with me to find their loved ones, join up to protect the children, or just to have some sense of purpose in this strange new world. Its our Mission I guess.” Cameron said, a mantle of authority seeming to drape over the older man. “The Godfather’s mission as you might say. I say, The Godfather Organization’s mission.” Cameron said.
“I’ll do what I can to help the family.” Kevin said in a poor imitation to the Godfather movie. “Once I find Katie.” He said, with no humor. “I have to go, Boss Cameron.”
Kevin turned away from the line of sea ships and faced Cameron for the first time on the roof of the skyscraper. “Thank you man, for keeping us all civil and helping to keep us alive. I hope I get to see you again.”
“Ah Kevin. It has truly been a wonder.” Cameron said. “Can you do me one favor while you travel this path?” Cameron asked.
“If I can.” Kevin said. “What?”
“If you find any powerful abnormals, can you deal with them? We will have hundreds of souls with us and I worry about some of the children.” Cameron said.
“I’ll see what I can do to clear the path Cameron, but I can’t be too delayed. I don't know how long this ship bridge will be here.” Kevin replied. “You should hurry too actually.”
“Do whatever you can. Thank you.” Cameron gripped Kevin’s hand tight and Kevin pulled the older man in for a hug. “Be safe my boy.”
“You too, Godfather.”
With that, Kevin took off his ever present Strength Vambrace, not wanting the extra burden even if it might improve his stats faster. He stored it in his ring, activated Light Heavy to make himself, his backpack and his kite shield as light as a chihuahua. He turned and jumped off the roof running with cloud platforms down the bridge.