Karen and I talk for a few minutes, and I give her an abbreviated version of my night so far. She asks the usual questions as she walks me deeper into their safe zone: have I seen the authorities? Where’s the police? Is anything being done about the literal apocalypse?

As I answer them one by one, I absently notice that the archer girl made herself unseen shortly after I entered. No one else accompanies us, actually, so we’re all alone.

I don’t have any bad intentions, and now that Karen knows who I am, she must know that as well. But still, the fact that she quietly sent everyone back to their posts speaks to her confidence in her own abilities.

She takes me to a random porch as I tell her about my misadventure with the wave boss.

“So that was you?” She asks as I reach the part where I set fire to the houses.

“Yeah.”

“I had some guys out, looking for other people and luring in monsters. Kiting, I think my son called it? He’s a smart kid, he plays that dragons and dungeons game with some friends. So when he said we should do it this way, we tried, and it worked out really well for us.”

She shows me onto the porch and into a chair. I sit, waiting for her to continue.

“Anyways. The guys reached those houses and saw the monsters. They surveyed the area to see if they’d find any survivors. Then one of the houses went up in flames, and burning monsters started running around. So they left and came back to tell me about it.”

“There…wasn’t anyone left,” I say after a long moment. “They fought, but the monsters killed everyone.”

Karen falls silent, and her eyes have that thousand yard stare in them. She glares at the street, but then she shakes her head and puts on a smile again.

“Let me get you some water so you can freshen up a little. And maybe a change of clothes, too. You look about my husband’s size and he won’t mind.”

I want to protest, but then I change my mind. She needs that little bit of normality just as much as I do. I motion for her to go ahead and she disappears into the house, leaving me all alone on the porch.

She’s gone for maybe ten or fifteen minutes, but her absence isn’t uneventful. People come by every so often, asking for her. I point them inside, they go in, and they leave soon after.

They’re reporting everything back to her, I realize. It really does look like Karen has a solid grasp on what she’s doing here.

“Oh, wow,” someone says all of a sudden.

I whip around to find a boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old, leaning out of the doorway. He’s staring at me in awe, with a tinge of disgust thrown in for good measure. When my eyes land on him, he gets startled and tries to pull back. He ends up banging his head against the doorframe and hugging it for support.

“Hey,” I greet, trying to sound as casual as possible.

“Sorry,” he apologizes. “Mom said to leave you alone, but I had to see this for myself.”

“See what?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

The boy timidly leaves the safety of the door, keeping his head low and his hands in front of himself. He takes a couple of steps onto the porch, but doesn’t come any closer.

“Mom said…she said some guy came in, looking like he fought an army of blenders.”

I can’t help it, I burst out laughing.

“Oh, yeah? And who did she say won?”

The boy looks up, but he doesn’t answer. Fair enough, I don’t look like a winner right about now. He fidgets on the spot as if he has something else to say, but doesn’t know how to bring it up.

“Out with it.”

“W-what?” He stutters.

“Ask what you came to ask.”

“Right. Mom said you killed a bunch of monsters, but you’re still only level 1. I helped people pick their classes, and I was wondering…well, I steered them away from master and expert classes after the system warned us against picking them. Do you…have one of those?”

“How’d she know I’m only level 1?” I ask. As far as I can remember, I didn’t share that detail.

“She has this general skill called analyze, and it works on humans too,” the boy answers. “I’m…still trying to figure out how she unlocked it.”

I nod and say, “expert class.” When he gives me a confused look, I explain. “My class. It’s an expert class called Wavebreaker.”

“No way, an expert class?!”

The boy, who I figure is Karen’s son, proceeds to ask me a ton of other questions. A handful of other boys and girls, all around his age, appear out of the house as I do my best to answer. They’re the tabletop group Karen told me about, and they each have a pen and a notebook that they use to jot down my answers. Each one also has other questions, and it doesn’t take me long to notice they’re all about the system.

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

They’re trying to figure it out as if it is a game, puzzling together the rules and details. That’s not a bad idea, so I cooperate with their little interrogation.

I tell them everything I know. Well, almost everything. I don’t talk about the secret quest since it apparently has an in-built kill switch, and I only skirt around my title briefly for similar reasons. But I tell them about everything else. The quests, the events, the harsh experience requirements for my class.

They take it all in, scribbling so fast on their notebooks that the pages might catch fire. One of them pulls out a calculator and takes a few steps away, running some numbers.

“Guys!” Karen calls out as she appears on the porch, carrying a pot of water and some clothes over her shoulder. “Go back inside and leave Jack be.”

The teens do as told, leaving one by one. Karen’s son lingers for a moment, staring at his notes.

“Thank you. For the information, I mean,” he stutters. “If…when you’ll have a moment, later, could we maybe…do this again?”

“Sure thing.”

He nods and turns to leave. Then, as if he suddenly remembers something, he swivels back around.

“I’m James, by the way,” he says, putting a hand out for me to shake.

“Nice meeting you, James. I’ll make sure to come back if I find out anything else, what you guys are doing is very important.”

James preens with the compliment as we shake hands, almost glowing as he leaves.

“Sorry about that,” Karen says, plopping the pot of water on the ground in front of me.

“They’re good kids,” I say with a smile as I watch James vanish into the house.

I strip down to my underwear and spend the next few minutes washing off the blood. Karen has helpfully included a rag and a bar of soap with the pot, and while I’m not squeaky clean by the end, I feel much better. I wait a bit to dry out in the chilly night air, then I pull the clothes she gives me into inventory and equip them from there. It’s nothing fancy, just another pair of jeans and a black shirt, but they fit snuggly and they’re not torn to pieces.

I know they won’t remain intact for long, but oh well.

She also gives me a pair of sneakers, but I turn those down. I prefer my steel toed boots for stomping purposes, blood stained as they might be.

While I do all that, Karen fills me in about her group. She’s their de-facto leader, and she has the highest level among them at level 9. That’s the highest I’ve seen yet, on a human or otherwise. Her class is something called a Matriarchal Protector, and from our conversation, I figure it’s an adept class focused on group cohesion, buffing allies, and debuffing enemies.

That’s a potential explanation for her levels, she’s leeching experience from the others through assists.

Her group is mainly made up of her neighbors and their families, but also random people they rescued from the surrounding area. It’s about eighty members strong right now, and most of them have classes and a few levels under their belts.

“We have James and his friends to thank for that,” Karen explains. “He was hosting their game night here when shit hit the fan, and they convinced the rest of us to act. They’re the ones that came up with all of this, I just got everyone else to go along with it.”

I nod, but I don’t say anything. Karen takes out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and lights one up. She points the pack in my direction, but I turn her down.

“I just wanted to grab the kids and head downtown to the police station,” she continues, billowing smoke into the air. “I figured people would gather there.”

I preempt her next question, and I answer before she asks it. “I haven’t been there yet, but it’s where I’m headed. I’ve been sending groups in that direction all night long, and I wanted to check up on them. I figure Pops will be there as well, with the other cops. I haven’t seen a single one of them around, so they all probably gathered at the station.”

“I sent a small group to check,” Karen says, “but they didn’t come back. My…my husband…”

She doesn’t finish the sentence. A couple of tears escape her eyes, and the cigarette drops from her lips as she starts sobbing. I don’t interrupt. All of these changes were a lot to thrust onto people at once, and she had to be strong for her group from the get go. She couldn’t cry in front of them, they couldn’t see their leader doing that.

“I’m hoping he’s still alive,” she says. “That he just found the people there and didn’t get the chance to return yet.”

“Give me a name and a description, and I’ll ask around,” I offer. “If I find him, I’ll tell him to hurry back.”

“Thank you, let me…”

A man runs up to the porch and interrupts us. Karen excuses herself, rubbing the tears away before she takes the man aside to talk to him. They don’t go far enough away this time, and I manage to make out snippets here and there.

“...low on ammo.”

“How many…”

“About five hundred of…and…”

“Keep searching. Widen the…”

They’re finished in a minute, and the man takes his leave. Karen returns to her chair, dropping into it like a stone. She’s clearly bone tired.

“As I was saying,” she continues, “his name is Kent and he’s 49 years old. About your height, graying hair, stubble, looks like he hasn’t slept in years…”

She gives me a thorough description of her husband, and when she’s finally done, I get a new notification.

Quest added: Find Kent.

I don’t delve into the quest details right away, and I don’t bring it up either. But the fact that I got it in the first place makes me curious about the quests again. What triggers them? Why do I only get them sometimes? How does the system decide what should qualify for a quest and what shouldn’t?

And, perhaps most importantly, should I go around the safe zone to collect a few more? Would they be a better source of experience than killing monsters?

I’m tempted to do just that, but I decide against it. This isn’t the time to be running errands.

“Guess I should get going,” I say, getting up from the chair. “Pops and Kent won’t find themselves.”

“Right.”

Karen gets up with me, and she accompanies me back to the safe zone’s limits. There’s a big commotion by the car barricades where I entered, a bunch of people screaming back and forth over each other. We share worried glances, then we speed up to check it out.

The crowd is split down the middle, and I recognize half of them as the defenders I’d seen on my way in. The other half are newcomers, or at least they’re new to me. It’s a handful of men and women, and they look even worse than I had. They’re completely soaked in gore and wounds, with one guy clutching the stump of what used to be a hand to stop the bleeding.

“—huge horde!” One of the men yells. “They’re coming right for us!”

“Fuck,” Karen growls, and I mirror the sentiment.