“Dodge!” I yell.

The man, a fighter using a bowie knife, is in the process of goring an opossum monster. He stabs and slashes wildly, not noticing a fox sneaking up on him. The new adversary jumps on his shoulders and bites into his neck, sending a fountain of blood spraying from his arteries.

I run up to him and pry the monster off, then I slam it into the ground and stomp its head. As soon as it stops struggling, I turn to the man. He collapses, and I’m on top of him in seconds, putting pressure on the wound.

“Two guys on me! Keep watch! The others fan out! Lydia, that guy will live! Come over here, this is more urgent!”

Everyone jumps into action, following my orders. The fighters form a wide circle around us, and Lydia, our healer, leaves a guy with a broken leg and rushes over. She drops to her knees next to me and gets to work, bandaging the wound to stop the bleeding before using skills to accelerate the man's natural healing abilities.

Her hands tremble and her breathing is ragged, so I put a hand on her shoulder.

“You've got this.”

“I really wish I didn't have to have it,” she shoots back.

She's young, about Mike's age. Fresh out of med school, and green as grass when it comes to this kind of work. Like all of us, she's utterly unprepared for the apocalypse.

But she's holding together, and that's the best any of us can ask for right now.

As she keeps working on the downed man, I get up and pull out the crowbar. It's half past eleven in the morning, and considering we started at dawn, this is the fifth group I'm taking out for the day.

We're on a road through the countryside, with open fields to our left and dense forest to our right. Before the surprise attack, we were heading south to check out a few houses and businesses for survivors.

“Take a break as soon as he stabilizes,” I tell Lydia. “You need to recharge your mana, the others will manage.”

She nods, so I join the fight.

“Emily! Five arrows! Thin out that side!”

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“There are too many of them!”

“We'll die!”

“Retreat!”

I sigh. The group of monsters before us is barely fifty strong, far from a challenge for our numbers. It's about two in the afternoon, and this is the seventh group's outing.

Unlike the others, who all had some of William's men mixed in, this one is mostly civilians.

“No retreat!” I yell. “If we do that, they die! Do what I taught you, bring up some walls and hold position!”

We're up against an abandoned gas station, right under the canopy covering the pumps. A few other buildings dot the area, mainly auto repair shops and a scrapyard for car parts. A bunch of survivors raided the gas station for supplies and decided to hole up inside, and when we came along, one of them started screaming to get our attention.

That attracted a bunch of monsters from the surrounding area, forcing us to fight.

Two of our mages, one controlling stone and the other ice, quickly erect two walls. They're about as tall as the casters and fifty feet long, forming a funnel around the monsters and channeling them towards us.

“Only melee fighters for this one!” I yell. “Don't use anything that might blow up the gas station! I want two rows at the mouth of the funnel, and remember to call out your skills!”

They form up like I instructed, but one of them notices me moving away.

“Where are you going?!”

“Up top! I'll jump in the middle of them!”

“Are you crazy?!”

I ignore the man. With explosive skills out of the question since we can't risk blowing ourselves sky high, about half of our forces are sidelined. Even the remaining melee fighters have their arsenal of skills reduced, so we need every edge we can get.

I jump up on an abandoned truck’s hood, surprised at the swiftness of the motion. From there, I climb the canopy. Emily is already up on it, shooting arrows three at a time into the small horde. All of them hit their targets, but the monsters don't die. They’ve all grown in both size and levels as the siege progresses, making them stronger.

“Pace yourself,” I say as I pass her, patting her shoulder. “I'll jump down there, so I need you to have my back.”

She nods, so I pull out the sledgehammer and channel a ground pound into it. I call out the skill, take a running start, and I leap into the horde. The heavy sledgehammer comes down as I land and a shockwave rushes out around me, staggering the monsters.

Since they're so tightly packed at the mouth of the funnel, I hit all of them. My frenzy surges past 50% in an instant. The monster I hit is still alive, surprisingly, but its back is broken and its hind legs go limp.

I pull out the crowbar and stab the chisel end into its skull.

“Charge!”

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The other fighters advance into the horde, killing monsters from that side as I work my way out. I swing the sledgehammer left and right, shattering bones and sending monsters flying.

My frenzy rises with each blow, and I have a harder and harder time maintaining control. I stop to take a breath and center myself, having carved out a generous area around me. Two dozen monsters squirm on the ground, their bodies broken, so I think I’m safe even if only for a few precious moments.

Except I’m not. One of them gets a sudden surge of power and leaps to its feet. It’s some kind of lemming or muskrat, with two nasty deer-like horns ending in a bunch of sharp points. One of them is broken from an earlier strike with the sledgehammer, but the other one is in perfect shape to end my life.

With surprising speed, the monster lunges at me. I go to dodge, but the points of the antlers bite into my arm. I spin, bringing up the sledgehammer, but I know I’ll be too late. It lands behind me and lunges again, ready to gore me before I can retaliate.

Thwonk.

The shaft of an arrow appears in its neck mid flight, killing the nimble monster instantly. Its lifeless body slams into me, the antler poking a few holes in my side, but I’ll live.

From up on her vantage point, Emily gives me a thumbs up. I return the gesture, pluck the arrow out of the corpse, and go back on the offensive.

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“God damn it, call out your skills!” I yell, narrowly dodging a nest of stone spikes that erupts closeby. “I thought you’d have learned that by now!”

“Sorry!” The man says.

He’s the same cocky earth mage I saved during the breach, and although he’s gotten better about it, he still forgets to call out his skills half the time. But at the very least, he doesn’t rush ahead like an idiot anymore. All it took was a near death experience to teach him some restraint.

These guys are the second to last group, and although they aren’t a complete disaster by any means, I’m not satisfied with them either. I know it’s just the tiredness in me speaking, it’s been a long day filled with near constant fights and deaths.

None die from our groups, thankfully, but we find plenty of corpses as we searched the town. More than living people, and that’s starting to get us all down.

We finish the fight quickly, but I’m getting tired. And being tired makes me sloppy, which means I miss one of the monsters. The fucker actually plays dead after I hit it once, only to jump at my neck as we go around to double tap them.

Emily saves me again, shooting the creature at the last second. A set of jaws — now lifeless — snap around my neck, but the teeth barely break skin. I push the monster away and retrieve the arrow.

“Thanks,” I say as I wave it around.

We move on after that, still having half an hour to go.

Everyone’s complaining, but there are some silver linings as well. Pretty much all of us have Search and Rescue quests, and we actually find some of the people we’re looking for. It’s a nice boost of experience for some, pushing them to level up a few times. If more than one person in the group has the quest, the experience is divided equally between all of them here.

The system also rewards the quest even if the people are dead and their corpses are unrecognizable. I find that out myself on our way back to the safe zone, after we check out a house that was obviously the grounds of a desperate last stand. A few bones on the living room floor trigger the Find Kent quest.

“God, how will I tell Karen and James?”

Emily stops next to me and lowers her bow. She gives the bones a long, hard look, then she lets out a pent up breath.

We don’t bother trying to return the remains. While everyone else raids the house for anything of use, I gather what’s left of the dead and bury them outside. The others join, and after a half-hearted prayer by a priest we found minutes prior in a hilltop church, we move on.

A hundred feet down the road, we get ambushed by yet another group of monsters. With a tired grunt, I take out the sledgehammer and get ready to fight.

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“How are you holding up?” I ask Emily as we walk.

She gives me a thumbs up as she chews on a strip of meat, but she’s clearly wiped out. It’s a little past four in the afternoon, and this is the last outing for the day. System enhancements or not, it’s been a lot of work for one day.

I take out a piece of meat to have a quick snack as well. Out of the over ten pounds I had in the morning, I have maybe half a pound left. I ate nearly all of it throughout the day to keep up with the frankly ludicrous caloric requirements of the system’s healing. If we don’t find a feast when we return to the safe zone, I’ll be so fucking pissed.

I finish the first piece and go to fish a second one out of my inventory, but a scream stops me dead in my tracks. We’re on a road surrounded by forest on both sides, and the scream comes from deep within the trees.

I look at Emily and nod once. She nods back and pulls out her bow, so I give out a few orders to the others. They all formed up in a tight circle as soon as they heard the scream, trembling in their boots.

“I want two walls on this side of the road! Angle them towards the forest and form a funnel! I’ll go check it out and I might bring back company, so be ready!”

They nod, and as the mages spring into action, I take off into the woods. Emily is some fifty feet behind me, bow ready to shoot at anything out of place.

“Hello?” I call out. “I’m coming to help, where are you?!”

“Here!”

It sounds like a young girl, so I pick up the pace. She appears from behind the trees, running towards me for dear life. We meet half-way and she all but jumps into my arms, then I turn on my heels and bolt.

“Monsters?” I ask, hearing footfalls behind us but not seeing anything.

She goes to say something, but she doesn’t get the words out in time.

“They’re up in the—”

Four little monsters jump down from the canopy. I wrap my arms tighter around her and grit my teeth, ready to eat some damage. Four thwacks come in quick succession, and I look over my shoulder to see the squirrel monsters pinned to tree trunks as they bleed out.

There don’t seem to be any others, so I stop running and put the girl down. She’s frazzled and dirty, but she thanks me profusely. Emily rushes over, sweeping the area with her bow.

“It’s all good,” I say, going around to collect her arrows.

After I return, we talk to the little girl for a bit. She can’t be older than twelve. We get her story out of her, and she tells us of how her family survived so far in their home that’s a little deeper in the woods. Her father and older brother both got classes and killed the few monsters that came nearby, but they’re out of food and the two are bedridden with wounds that won’t heal anymore.

“We’ll get you back to our group, then Emily and I will go get the rest of your family. Okay?”

The little girl nods feebly. Emily takes her hand, and we walk back to the others.

“Thanks,” I say to Emily on the way. She looks puzzled for a moment, so I quickly add, “you know, for saving my life the — I don’t know — tenth time today?”

“Whoa,” the young girl says, looking back and forth between us. Then she leans in and, with no subtlety whatsoever, she whispers, “you should get her something nice to make up for it.”

I smile and, before I give her arrows back, I scratch a mark into one of them with my nail. Emily takes them, and she looks at the marked arrow with some confusion.

“Just keeping track so I can pay you back properly,” I explain.

She takes them, turning beet red as she returns the arrows to her inventory.