“I’m not sure we can do this,” Eliot said, as wind blew hard through the open door of the hover van.

The split city of Rome awaited below, cut in half by the Tiber River that was more accurately a narrow part of the Mediterranean. The whole ruin was festooned with trees and craters of many sizes. Round and oblong lakes were everywhere, and it was easy to see that they had once been craters. Many of the old structures survived the bombings and monster waves of the Reveal, but no one had ever moved back here.

The area directly below the hovervan was some sort of residential district. The ancient city of Rome was actually on the other side of the Tiberranean. The only truly ancient part of this side of the river was the Vatican area, down south from the goblin infection. With any luck, they wouldn’t need to go to the Vatican area, or north, to another slime space. Toxic yellow slimes covered the half-broken buildings of the Vatican, while poison green ones infested the area to the north, both of them spilling out miasmas of various sorts into the air.

Directly below, on rooftops and in trees, were wyvern dogs. They were tan, brown, or red-scaled, and mostly mottled. They barked at each other, and at the hovervan overhead. Their calls grew and grew, and Eliot was looking scared.

Mark looked at Eliot, trying to understand why the man was so scared. Was it really because he had been stripped of all his tech? Mark said, “I once saw you make a phone from trash out of the bin. You can do this, Eliot.”

Eliot’s single drone camera gripped his shoulders with a few spider-like limbs that he could turn into propellers. Eliot said, “That trash was charged with humanity. There’s nothing down there, Mark. Nothing.”

Isoko said, “Correction! Nothing yet.”

Mark said, “We can make stuff.”

Eliot frowned at the land down below.

Inquisitor David watched from the slit of his helmet. He still had all his gear on, but Mark, Eliot, and Isoko, had all been stripped of everything but basic brown clothes. David was going to take away Eliot’s initial drone, too, in 5 hours.

Isoko put a calming hand on Eliot’s shoulder, saying, “Rely on us, Eliot.” She stepped to the hovervan’s opening, hand to the handle, half of her body practically hanging out of the vehicle already. She turned, smiled at Eliot, and her whole body flashed to pure, platinum silver. The hovervan lurched a bit with the added weight of her transformation, which was something she was just getting a hang on herself, but everyone recovered fast enough. With a chuckle, Isoko said, “Everything I kill and the destruction I do is ‘man made’, right?”

Everyone knew the answer to that, but Eliot didn’t want to say it.

Isoko turned dramatic, taking her hand off of the handle by the door, and putting the back of that hand to her forehead. She tilted outward. “I’m feeling faint! Oh noooo~ Come rescue me, Eliot!” And then she finished tilting out of the vehicle.

With another dramatic flourish she kicked off of the hovervan’s floor, getting a bit of distance before she tumbled in the air and righted herself.

Mark rushed to the edge of the hovervan right alongside Eliot. They watched Isoko plummet 15 meters to the surface of what had once been a road made of square bricks. She cracked the stone she landed upon. Two wyvern-dogs stalked at her from the shadows, not willing to commit just yet.

Mark made a move. He dropped over the edge of the hovercar, his heart beating with a Union of resiliency and weakness, his eyes focused hard on Isoko and the enemies around her.

Isoko squared up against a wyvern dog and the dog-sized thing screeching loud as it stalked into the sunlight, its scales glinting red and brown as it spread its wings in a threat display. Isoko screamed back at it, “YAAAAA!!!”

The one behind her, 5 meters away, leapt at her, its wings tucked in close, its mouth and claws reaching, grabbing.

Isoko turned around and kicked the thing's face into the ground, pinning it there and then putting all of her weight onto the thing’s head, crunching it into the ground. She was 650 pounds on a 140 pound body, so she could just do that. Mark smiled, and then he breathed out weakness, focusing on the wyvern with the threat display that was about to pounce on Isoko’s now-turned back.

Mark landed on the ground, his body stressed a bit from the heavy drop, but he was running a Union of resiliency and he landed on two legs, the shock absorbed and shunted away by his Power. He was still breathing out weakness, along with his heart beating out the same, all of it leaving Mark and Isoko and going into the wyvern dog.

The monster collapsed at Isoko’s feet, barely able to make the distance toward her before it fell. Isoko stomped its head in and then continued crushing it just for good measure.

Mark looked up—

Eliot landed in Isoko’s initial crater, the ground softening at his fall, buoying him into an easy landing. He had just dropped 15 meters, too. He winced. It had been a hard-ish fall. Mark’s Union cleared away his problems soon, though, and then he stepped onto solid ground. His drone recorded everything it could.

David was there, standing to the side, in bright silver armor.

Everyone jolted at David’s sudden appearance.

David said, “Good showing. Now what?”

Wyvern dogs barked all around them, some of them howling.

Eliot instantly said, “I can’t scout for shit right now! Let’s get to that crater/plaza up ahead and kill everything and start stacking bricks!”

Mark said, “Isoko on point, Eliot in middle. I got the back.” He pointed down the street, toward an open-ish area ahead. That was their destination to start with, but they couldn’t land there directly because it was a main nest. “Let’s do this. Isoko please mangle that rusted car up ahead for Eliot.”

Isoko walked that way and gleefully, briefly, dimmed from full-platinum to just grey, before she leapt into the air, toward the rusted car. Her skin flashed full-platinum right before she landed, the arc of her leap cut short as she gained a not-literal ton of weight. Mark breathed in durability for both of them while his heart continued to beat a Union of resilience and weakness.

Isoko landed with a tearing, ripping crunch, her feet burying into the rusted steel, her hands coming down and ringing off of the metal frame. She had plunged through the side of the vehicle, but gotten stuck on the metal frame. She winced, but just out of reflex, Mark hoped. She looked at her perfectly fine hand, and then she punched the resistant metal. Mark made sure she stayed protected and healthy and soon she cracked the metal frame.

Eliot whispered, “Oh thank the gods,” as he grabbed hold of the air and the car with his astral body. He pulled out metal from where Isoko crushed and broke the vehicle, creating ingots of pure steel, a basket of plastic and steel, and glass rods. A whole bunch of miscellaneous materials reinforced the basket and its contents, and soon Eliot was looking less freaked out. He grabbed an ingot, “What weapon, Isoko?”

“A blade spear maybe later,” Isoko said, as she punched the engine block, ringing her hand. “Big ball hammer first!”

Eliot handed her a big hammer that he would never have been able to hold himself, if not for his Man-made Manipulation. It had a handle a meter long with a counterweight at the base, and a head that was a solid orb of steel that melded with the handle. “Here!”

He tossed it, more with his Power than with actual physical strength, and Isoko caught it, the steel ringing in her platinum grip. It weighed upon her, briefly disrupting her balance as she gripped the weapon. She smiled wide.

And then she got to smashing.

The car never stood a chance.

All the while, the wyvern dogs prowled down the street, growling, barking. They clambered over the broken walls of the buildings all around. They snapped and yelped at Isoko, and her fuck ton of noise.

Mark saw most of them, but not all of them, for sure. He focused Union, pushing out weakness from himself and his team, while drawing in resilience from the world. Gradually, imperceptibly, he linked to the monsters. He trickled weakness into all of them while drawing out their resilience. Just a little bit. He didn’t want the monsters to realize something was up, and to run.

The monsters barked louder, meaner. They knew something was happening but they were surrounding their prey and they didn’t really sense anything wrong.

Isoko continued to destroy the car, though her eyes were all around her. The car was half gone.

Eliot grabbed all the resources he could, his eyes wide, his breath unsteady. Iron ingots scattered on the ground all around him.

Isoko worriedly asked, “We’re surrounded by 8 of them! We good, Mark!?”

“There’s 9!” Eliot called out. “Maybe 10!”

The wyvern dogs barked loud. They didn’t like the humans talking.

The street was a good 10 meters across. Walls held on both sides. Five wyvern dogs were walking at them from the courtyard, the nearest one 10 meters away. Mark had only seen two on the broken buildings on the left, but he saw two more on the other side, hiding in the rubble, sneaking in from the backside. Those ones were 15 meters away. They had flapped and fluttered over there to attack from the back. One of those ones was big and red. The size of a tiger, rather than a dog. It had been the main wyvern dog at the courtyard up ahead. That one absolutely had to die, but hopefully last, and then they could mop up the pack instead of watching them scatter and make problems later.

Mark said, “We’re twice as strong as them and they’re not aware they’re SLIGHTLY weakened. We’re good. You’re on those five up there, Isoko.” He softly said, “Blade spear, Eliot.”

Eliot ripped a blade spear out of the ingots at the ground. It was two meters long, thick as two fingers, and with a punching dagger for a head. Eliot floated it to Mark, and Mark snatched it out of the air. It was basically a weight bar, for bench presses, but as a weapon.

It was not light.

Mark easily held it, his grip tightening. He might not be a brawny with a basic strength modifier, but he was pretty solid with resilience stolen from the monsters right now, and Mark’s version of resilience at this particular moment was all about strength and resistance.

Mark said, “Eliot. Open with some spears of your own. I’ll drop the back ones when they—”

The fight began with a scrabbling of clawed hands suddenly gripping stone and street underneath, one of the lead monsters on Isoko’s side jumping at her. The monster spread its wings wide, gliding in just a bit, before it dropped its wings to the side for a straight-on tackle/pounce. Two others did the same thing, all of them aimed to take down Isoko at the same time.

Big Red stayed back, maybe 20 meters away. Two of the back liners leapt at Mark and Eliot; one each.

Mark breathed in all of the durability he could from each of the five attacking monsters, granting it to his people instead.

Eliot crafted three spears with a sudden transformation. The only problem with him using his Power like that was that he couldn’t actually throw them with any real strength. He was not a Shaper; his power was just Manipulation. He could, however, toss them in the general direction of one of the beasts, the one attacking him, and hope for the best.

Three spears clattered deep into the flesh of that one wyvern dog, one of them going right through its chest and halfway out the other side. Eliot made a surprised sound and also a tower shield that he stomped into the ground in front of himself. That wyvern dog crashed into that solid shield, dead.

At the same time, Mark brought his blade spear down through the attacking wyvern dog gliding at him. The monster didn’t think Mark’s weapon could hurt it at all, and in a normal scenario that was true. Eliot had been surprised his attack had worked on the one he had killed for very good reasons. Eliot had scouted these things, and they were all between 15 and 25 in Body, and normal steel was Power Level 0.

But Mark had taken all of this monster’s durability that he could, dropping its Body rating low; Mark wasn’t sure how low, actually. It was low enough.

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Mark’s spear cleaved through the creature’s head before getting stuck on its chest. The creature’s wing-claws tried to grab onto Mark, and it succeeded, but Mark was at somewhere like 28 Body right now, and so was everyone else in the party, if they weren’t higher. Eliot was the lowest in Body right now, because David had made him leave his shield behind, but even Eliot was probably at a 20. And Mark was actively protecting everyone, too.

The creature’s claws ripped at Mark’s clothes and skidded off of his skin, leaving little welts that rapidly vanished due to Mark’s healing Union.

Mark breathed in all of the durability he could from 2 of Isoko’s secondary attackers and they kinda faltered in the air, but he left the first one alone for her to absolutely crush, her giant ball mace slamming into the creature’s head and pulping it against the ground.

The fight turned from worrying to cleanup in a scattering second, because the next thing Mark did was breathe out weakness, focusing heavily on Big Red, who was looking worried and ready to bolt, or something. Mark wasn’t sure. Mark’s weakness connected to Big Red and Big Red faltered and fainted. He stayed down. Isoko murdered the other wyvern dogs up front.

Mark moved his breathing of weakness and durability around, hindering the monsters who looked like they were trying to counter attack, while letting go those who were already dazed, or out of position. Those ones he had dazed took a whole lot of seconds to come back around to the fight, so dazing them for a single breath or two was good enough to keep them out of the battle.

Mark had a personal limit of how much he could affect at once, and it was a lot easier moving his focus around, purposefully disrupting the enemy forces, than it was trying to keep them all contained and controlled at the same time. Big Red stayed down, though; Mark made sure of that. Big Red might have had a Knack, or Power of some sort.

Once Isoko was done bashing in skulls, Mark didn’t need to concentrate on his Union of Breath so much. He could just focus on his heartbeat, and on his Union of Blood.

Soon enough, Isoko, covered in blood, that was not her own and smiling a lot, walked over to Big Red, holding her bent warmace over one shoulder, and then she splattered Big Red. Thwam! Crack! Splat! Ever the triumphant warrior she stood tall, clothes shredded some, boots completely gone, and warmace fully bent out of position. The head of her mace was deformed and gouged by the monster scales and a few lucky scratches.

Eliot shook a little bit, saying, “Oh thank the gods.”

Isoko and Mark both paused.

Mark walked to him, asking, “You okay, Eliot?”

Eliot breathed in, then out, and Mark helped him with some Union of Blood, to expel weakness and take in resilience. Eliot breathed easier, and declared, “I hate being unprepared. HATE.” He flicked his hands out, dismissing his concerns, saying, “But we did that okay. Great thwomping, Platinum Princess. Great Union work… Err… I’ll come up with a name for you soon enough— Unionizer! … No.” He said to Isoko. “That mace is unusable now. It touched too much monster stuff. Also, we’re all covered in monster stuff. It makes it impossible to repair clothes.”

“Right!” Mark hopped to, breathing in purity and breathing out impurity for the whole group. Gradually, slowly, blood and gore evaporated and turned to dust to filter into the air and away. The environment loved impurity, so it was easy to filter away all the blood and viscera from all of them with 10-ish breaths, but Eliot and Isoko didn’t want to wait that long, and neither should they.

Eliot gestured to another rusted car down the road that had crashed into a wall and covered in rubble. “Can you please, Isoko? I need more supplies.”

Isoko slapped the mace in her hands, shaking the drying debris off of it, asking, “Should I use this?”

“No. The monsters had a hand in creating that. Use your fists.”

Isoko flicked the mace overhead where it crashed against the wall of a house and clattered down, making a great big racket. Wyvern dogs barked in the distance, but they had been doing that a lot. Isoko happily skipped toward the next broken car, saying, “Your Power is very useful, Eliot!” As she punched into the vehicle’s frame, near the windshield, she asked, “Is that other mace gone for good, now?”

Eliot floated his supplies taken from the other car around him, moving slowly, like he was carrying a big weight. “Mark’s purity/impurity helps to clean out the astral body influence of the monsters—”

Mark gestured to the big basket of supplies, asking, “Need help? Also wheels?”

Eliot blinked, laughed once, then added wheels to his basket, and Mark started pushing it like it was a weird shopping cart. The ground was uneven, but Mark made do. Eliot continued, “I could get that mace back into shape in a few minutes, but it’s much easier and I can do better work with new materials, and Breath of Purity doesn’t actually get rid of the problems of monster contamination. You think it would, but you would be wrong. This isn’t a Natural Power; this is a dictated power based on ancient decisions made by demons and then reinforced by Malaqua in the Reveal. Even if you purify everything a monster has touched, that mace is still a day away from being manipulable again.” Eliot floated debris from the new car demolishing into the basket. “Did you like that mace?”

“I did, actually,” Isoko said, as she crashed further into the vehicle, attacking the engine block under the rubble of the wall. Everything she touched floated away as either resources or it simply melted out of her way, becoming sand at the side, once Eliot could manipulate it after Isoko ‘marked it as man-made again through the act of destruction’. Isoko said, “I managed to reinforce it with a bit of tactile telekinesis, too, so once I actually manage that power in truth maybe the next ones won’t break so easily.”

Mark kept their astral bodies strong, pushing their weakness out into the world and bringing in resilience with every beat of his heart, enabling Eliot to continually work his power and Isoko to keep her body in ‘Full Platinum Mode’ as she beat up the broken car.

Soon enough, the shopping cart was bigger, stronger, and it had some nice rubber wheels that rolled smooth over the ground, over all the bumps and problems in the road. A large pile of ingots —mostly steel— rested in the center, surrounded by glass bricks and bottles of oils and other liquids. Plastic bricks rested in the front, piling high. There were even some wooden planks and leather and cotton.

Mark looked at the piles grow, asking, “All of this was in those two cars?”

“Yeah. These old cars have a lot of weird things. It’s mostly plastic these days.” Eliot looked into the bin. “… I guess that’s enough. Let’s move on.”

Isoko stopped beating up the car, smiling as she stepped out of the remains of the metal frame, saying, “This is really quite fun! I never smashed a car apart before.”

Mark asked, “What’s your strength modifier up to, anyway?”

“1.7 times normal human strength while in Full Platinum,” Isoko said. “Need help pushing?”

“Yes,” Mark said. “I’m baseline strength.”

Isoko pushed the cart with Mark, as Eliot crafted a new mace out of a few remaining parts of the vehicle. The new mace looked just like Isoko’s first one. Isoko gripped it with one hand and pushed with the other, asking, “Got any idea of what’s ahead?”

Eliot was already looking through a pair of glasses of his own make, but it didn’t seem to be working out how he wanted. He frowned, then said, “At least 6, and also hatchlings. This stuff doesn’t work right. I need to work on actual tech to get proper scouting.”

Mark glanced at the camera drone flying around them, then looked out for monsters, asking, “It’s still weird you’re getting any tech at all out here. You said you worked off of radio waves in the air, or something?”

“Yes. That’s the only way I’m able to make anything high-tech at all, actually; piggybacking off of ambient humanity in the air.” Eliot showed off his glasses. They were illuminated with lights on the insides. He put them back on and looked around, “Unfortunately, I cannot hand these ones off. I need to make better pairs for you two— Incoming! Three from the left!” He glanced behind. “None behind that I can see!”

Eliot rushed to the right, getting in front of Mark, and allowing Isoko to rush ahead to the left.

A wyvern dog crested the roof of the building and barked as it leapt right down at Mark.

A second one curved around the building and rushed straight for Isoko.

A third one followed the second one, heading for Isoko.

Mark dropped all three of them to the ground, fainting them instantly. And then he cut through the neck of the one in front of him, killing it. Isoko made quick work of the other two.

Mark breathed deep and exhaled impurity, flowing the blood away from their weapons, cleaning them up a bit to make Eliot’s job easier—

Eliot panicked about the goods in the cart. He looked at it, exclaiming, “FUCK! There’s blood on it. Dammit… It’s fine!” He took one of the metal ingots and turned it into a cover, while sealing up the plastic sides of the cart as much as he could. There were holes in the cart where monster blood had splashed, but Eliot said, “It’s fine.” He said to Mark, “You’re very good at putting down monsters.”

Mark laughed. “I can only do three at a time because we only have three people, so keep that in mind.”

Isoko said, “You should do less, Mark. Save it for when we need it, like with the 10-pile back there.”

“I tend to agree,” David said, speaking up. “Also? You can only do three?”

Mark said, “Well… It’s a matter of balance. They’re our size, so yeah. Three is a good number. And if I stretch it too thick or thin then they might notice… Err… What’s their Scan like, Eliot?”

Eliot rambled off, “Same as it was on the big info from COFR; 20-30 Body. No real Talent, but a knack for flight. That Large Red one back there had some sort of plant-thing going on; Natural Power.”

Mark was glad he had kept Big Red down. He said, “So yeah, I can only do 3—”

“Main pack incoming,” Eliot said, looking ahead.

They had reached the edge of the road. Up ahead, in the large circular area, the road transitioned into a big crater with a shallow lake on the right and a forested area on the left. That ‘forested area’ had looked like a bunch of trees all warped together, but now that he was here, Mark saw it was really one tree that had crawled up some buildings. The tree gnarled into the roads and the stone, and wyvern dogs made homes in those roots and tangled branches.

Mark guessed that the tree was a monster—

Eliot looked through his glasses, saying, “Tree is alive; monster class.” He looked down. “Roots extend below us, but they’re small things. Don’t get closer to the tree. Three dogs from the front—” He whipped around. “Two up there!”

The monsters were already attacking from the front.

Mark crashed the wyvern dogs to the ground, one after the other, taking everything that made them resilient and giving them weaknesses in turn. Isoko cracked heads. The ones behind Mark and Eliot tried to dive bomb them but Mark switched focus and dropped them to the ground next, leaving Isoko alone with two combatants. He called out his shots and Isoko grunted as she took on two weakened monsters on her own. Mark cut off the heads of the monsters who attacked from the back, but his spear broke on the neck of the second one.

Eliot said, “It’s a multi-strength one! It’s dangerous!”

Mark locked the dangerous wyvern dog down and eventually smashed its head in with his broken spear. It did not die until Mark drove his broken spear into its chest.

Isoko had managed to disorient one of her opponents with a lucky head smack, making it back up and shake its head, but the other one was gnawing on her leg and she couldn’t dislodge it. It couldn’t bite into her leg at all, either, but it did rake at her clothes.

Mark sent the biting one fainting to the ground.

Isoko killed it after that, driving a knife-like hand into the creature’s brain. The cleanup went fast from there.

Mark asked, “Where did your mace go?”

Eliot said, “It snapped in half.” He looked embarrassed. “Sorry!”

Isoko shook her head. “I couldn’t hold it under my TT. My fault.” What little wounds she had sealed up, and Mark started breathing purity and exhaling impurity, cleaning all of them up. With ripped clothes dangling from her, and not caring about it at all, Isoko thumbed at the tree, asking, “We doing anything about the monster tree?”

Mark said, “Let’s not, because I can do this.” Mark extended Union into the world, connecting to the fish in the water, the plants growing on the bank, the monster tree, and everything else nearby. He breathed in sustenance for himself and his people, and breathed out deprivation, while his heart drew in resilience and expelled weakness. It felt like he breathed in dinner and expelled a desert with every breath. Mark felt refreshed with every breath, and he knew Eliot and Isoko did, too. Mark asked, “David? You want in on this? Do I need to provide for you?”

David said, “Technically no, but actually yes.”

Mark smiled, and then he included David in the Union. As he did that, Mark asked everyone, “How does that feel? I can do that for a while, and 30 minutes of breathing sustenance/deprivation in a good environment is equivalent to 1 workable meal. So like 750 calories. That tree makes this a good environment, so that’s why I think we need to keep the monster tree. Otherwise we need to go somewhere else with other trees.”

Everyone looked at Eliot.

Eliot was looking at the ground with his glasses. He hummed. “… I think it’s fine. The wyvern dogs nested in the tree and it’s all scratched to hell because of that, so… maybe the tree doesn’t mind?”

David spoke up, “Except for mobile trees, trees are pretty relaxed when you’re not actively hurting them. Since the wyvern dogs were nesting in it, that means that it isn’t one of the actively murderous trees, too. That Large Red one had some sort of Natural power, though, which is a bit concerning, but not overly concerning. The tree will eat the bodies that you all dropped, but that’s pretty normal. Just don’t die around it and you’ll be fine.”

Eliot said, “I’m reinforcing the lower walls we build anyway.” He pointed at one of the ruined buildings to the side. “Let’s get that one cracked and remade. It looks like we can make it secure, and there aren’t any other buildings near it… not much, anyway.” He looked at the water. “Is it too close to the water, though?”

Isoko said, “We don’t need water, so we don’t need to take the risk. Let’s move away from the water.” She pointed out a different building. “That one. It’s standing alone anyway.”

Mark said, “I have no objections to Isoko’s suggestion.”

Eliot nodded… And then he looked to David. “Thoughts?”

David smiled. “It’s a building that fits your plan.”

Eliot nodded. “Right. This is our plan.”

Isoko opened and closed her hands toward Eliot. “Mace, please!”

Eliot made two of them and handed the second one to Mark.

Mark hefted the thing— and it was fucking heavy. He put it down on the cart. “For when Isoko needs it. I’ll stack bricks. That works too, right?”

Eliot said, “Yup!”

While Isoko bashed in a wall on the lower floor of the building and toppled part of the second story down to ground level, sending a plume of dust up into the air, Mark grabbed some stray bricks and just started piling them up into a rough wall shape. Mostly, Mark sustained the party, and also David.

Eliot said, “Please smash the ground too, Isoko.”

Isoko grinned as she started smashing even more.