Once they had found all of the items in the final room and everyone had recovered, they made their way out of the final room and back into the city. There was a ladder just like the one they used to enter the underground lab to exit the lab. The one that they had used to enter the lab had shut as soon as they had entered so the fact that there was an exit in the final room made a lot of sense. If someone had authorization they would be able to leave, if not then the golems should be able to take care of anyone trying to access a room they shouldn’t or at the very least slow them down until someone else could stop them.

They left the lab and began searching the city for another lab.

Alex went over what he remembered of his fight. He never really felt like he had the upper hand in that fight. If not for his high durability, he knew that he wouldn’t have outlasted that first punch.

It had hurt. Bad.

Cameron was insanely strong. More so than any of the golems they had fought so far. It was just pure strength though. Alex still felt like that final magma golem or even the electric one had given him more of a run for his money while he tried to counter their abilities. He had to be much more creative with them. Cameron had just tried to punch him into submission. Pretty straightforward approach and it would probably work well for most other opponents but Alex was as close to a perfect counter to Cameron’s approach as one could be.

Alex was only powerful if he was getting hit with something and Cameron was most effective when hitting something. Neither of them knew what each other’s class was. If Cameron had known, likely they would have chosen someone else to match up against him.

Cameron was definitely a better fighter than Alex was. That doesn’t matter as much when you want to get hit, but that the same time Alex’s health had dropped extremely low. So low it had taken days for him to recover. With their recovery rates growing, that was rather alarming. He had come close to death in what was just supposed to be a sparring match. Alex needed to learn how to take a hit without taking as much damage.

Do I need to invest more into durability Or do I need to just get better at blocking attacks? Does that mean that I should invest more in agility? If I invested in intelligence, would I be able to predict attacks better? Or do I just need more experience with fighting? More training?

Alex felt like he had a million questions running through his head. This battle was in his favor. He was in better shape than Cameron was after their battle with the boss golem. His class countered Cameron’s, yet he had barely scraped by. The ruling had been that it was a tie, but Alex felt that he had lost.

One question had been blaring in his mind.

“Why didn’t you use that hammer on me?”

“I didn’t know how strong you were going to be so I didn’t want to hit you with everything I had right off the bat. By the time I realized that you could take a hit, I honestly forgot that I had it. I haven’t had it for that long to be honest and I’m not sure if I fight better with or without it. I lean towards fighting better without it. It just feels strange to me. I am more used to using my fists anyway. It’s strong but I don’t feel like I can use it to its capacity at my current skill level,” Cameron responded.

“Makes sense. I’m just mad because I feel like I was struggling that whole time and you didn’t even use everything in your arsenal against me. I used my armor the entire time.”

“Again, I’m not sure if it would have been beneficial or detrimental for me to use it. You fought well though. You are the strongest thing I have gone up against for sure.”

Alex continued walking through the streets of Morathis, only pouting a little bit.

They had been searching for another lab entrance for two days and found nothing yet.

As they walked they continued, to get to know each other a little better. Each of them sharing a little bit of what happened and how they got here. The two people who didn’t share hardly anything were Ethan and Lila.

Alex realized how little he knew about Lila even though they had been together for nearly a month. At least she talked though. Alex couldn’t imagine going a whole month without hardly saying anything. He had always enjoyed his quiet moments but at the same time he had always had somebody to talk to if he wanted. He had enjoyed his time with Lila and had just assumed that she would talk to him once she felt comfortable or if she had something to say. That hadn’t happened yet but he didn’t want to pry too much.

Sophia on the other had had no problem talking about herself. Alex had to agree that she had lived in an extraordinary way. She’d done most of the things on somebody’s bucket list and she was only in her late twenties.

Alex had wondered if she was so attractive because she was high leveled. The answer to that question was no. Everyone in their newly formed group was around the same level, the lowest one being Sophia at level 3, which surprised Alex.

How did she look before if she isn’t even that high of a level?

Speaking of levels, Alex had gained another one.

Alex Sullivan

Race- Human

Class- Shift

Level- 6

Strength- 28

Agility- 18

Intelligence- 7

Durability- 42

Endurance- 23

Health- 420/420

Stamina- 230/230

P.E.- 0/420

In the end, Alex decided that he would start to invest more in agility, at least until it caught up with some of his other stats. After all, if he could move faster then he should be able to block more attacks. He just felt that he couldn’t really invest into intelligence as it would always be trailing behind his main stats and if the Forge hadn’t deemed it necessary for his class, he wouldn’t fight it.

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Harold and his party had suffered severe casualties in each of their battles so far. It had taken Harold nearly an entire week to find another person which made it an extremely difficult week as he had chosen Mirage. The most he could do was cast an illusion to hopefully lead the panthers away when he saw them. He had started to make them more and more believable even giving the illusions a scent of their own to mask his.

This worked for the most part but the panthers seemed to be getting smarter. They could see through his illusions three times out of ten. Pretty good except he had no other moves. As soon as they saw through his illusions, they quickly figured out where he was.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Luckily on one such an occasion, he had run into a large party. They had two Mights, one Psion, a water and fire Elemental, and even a Chrono. The size of the group dissuaded the panthers from giving chase.

Since that day Harold had run with this group. They roamed the city for nearly two weeks before they found their first lab entrance. After their first golem encounter, they had opted to divide and conquer so that they could find everything in the lab quicker. After all, they didn’t need everyone to beat one of these golems.

David was the de facto leader of their group. He was the highest level and he was a Might, plus he had that sort of natural charisma that leaders had so most didn’t argue too much when he assumed the role. He had decided on the makeup of the groups.

Obviously, there was some complaints when he decided that both Mights would be in the same group. They would be both more safe as well as be able clear more of these rooms. Obviously, it was unfair but none of Harold’s team was going to fight David on it. They had no chance of actually taking him on and none of them wanted to get on his bad side.

Harold’s team consisted of the Scion, the water elemental and the Chrono. Apparently, everyone that David deemed useless in a fight. This obviously wasn’t true but nobody accused David of being the smartest, only the strongest. He didn’t really have a tactical mind. Therefore, the ones with most utility to him, were the ones he understood. He knew that you could kill something if you were really strong and fire could be pretty destructive. So, unsurprisingly that is what he made his team up of.

Harold’s team was full of support. Supports were extremely useful to make a team more effective but he knew from his favorite game that if you had a team only made up of supports, you were going to have a really hard time. It didn’t make it impossible but it did make every decision made that much more important in a battle.

Each battle had been hard, but they were starting to come into themselves more. The Psion in their group had to adapt the most. Originally, they had focused on a more mental attack when they were faced off against the panthers but that kind of attack didn’t work well against the mindless golems. They were driven by magical processes and not by thought. The Psion had then needed to learn how to attack with her mind physically. She had been able to create a sort of mental burst that acted as a sort of shock wave. It was actually rather efficient to use and was a good tool to add to her arsenal.

The water Elemental had to take on a more aggressive approach as he was now the main damage dealer. It was a fairly straightforward transition and water could actually be very useful in a fight. This was more of a mental obstacle the Elemental had to overcome. He was used to taking the back seat in fights and stepping in when he was needed.

The Chrono had actually taken a unique approach to using his powers. He had essentially become a healer for the group. Originally he wasn’t, otherwise David would have taken him in his group. No, the Chrono learned this after their last battle. He sped up time on a localized area that caused it to heal faster. He told the group that he wanted to use this ability sparingly as he was essentially aging their bodies in small areas. This could lead to strange consequences down the road. He said he didn’t really understand the implications and didn’t want to risk it too much. The group accepted this as they didn’t really want to get hurt badly enough to need it anyway.

Each member of the group got significantly stronger and Harold stopped to think if maybe David did this on purpose to get stronger.

Harold’s group struggled to make headway initially but began moving quickly. Even with their increased speed, they only cleared a third of the rooms the other party had. David had said that they wouldn’t share their spoils as they had earned them. If they wanted more quest items, they should have worked harder, quelling any doubts that David had planned for them to get stronger. He just wanted more stuff and hope that some of them would either die or they would be so slow that they didn’t get hardly anything. Suffice it to say, Harold didn’t like David.

Both parties had combined to clear out the final golem. It had been a breeze, barely putting up a fight.

Searching the final room the group realized that they would need to clear another lab to find the rest of their quest items. None of them wanted to do that and David was extremely angry at the prospect of not finishing right then and there.

Harold and his group worried what he might do. Would he try to kill them and take their stuff? Probably not as that still wouldn’t allow them to finish the quest.

They all left the room and began their search for next lab to loot. David huffing the entire time about the inconvenience of it all. That was until their Psion had said that they could sense other minds in the area. Human minds. Five of them to be exact.

David grinned as he came up with a sinister plan. Maybe they wouldn’t need to find another lab after all.

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“Why is it taking so long to find another lab? The first one pretty much presented itself to us,” Sophia groaned.

“Don’t tell me, you were one of those kids that screamed in the car when you drove for more than thirty minutes. ‘Are we there yet?’” Cameron mocked with obvious annoyance in his voice.

“Very funny,” Sophia stuck her tongue out.

“Why do you guys always fight? Poor Ethan having to put up with that for a month. No wonder he’s so quiet, he probably couldn’t ever get a word in with you guys acting like literal children,” Lila said.

“We are not acting like children,” both responded in unison before looking at each other with a huff.

“All I’m saying is that we are in this together so we might as well get along. I feel like it’s not likely that we work together after this unless we want to, though it is a little peculiar that we are all from Hillcrest but it’s big enough that we wouldn’t need to see each other again if we didn’t want to. So just get through this and then you can do whatever you want,” Lila proposed channeling her inner diplomat.

“You make it sound like we hate each other,” Cameron said slightly offended.

“Yeah I don’t hate him. I actually enjoy this team a lot. It’s been a lot of fun and all of you are capable. We just are different and I appreciate that more than anything. Different perspectives bring a lot of value to a group,” Sophia said sagely.

The whole group stopped and looked at her.

“Pretty and smart,” was all Sophia said as she began walking forward again.

They walked for another two hours, checking buildings with no luck. They hadn’t run into any panthers but they attributed that to their larger group rather than a sudden shortage of feline presence in the city.

As they were no longer as scared for their life they could really take in the beauty of the city. There was a certain amount of poetry to the nature taking over ruined city.

As a wise man once said, “Life finds a way.”

They wondered how long it had been since the city fell into ruins. Had it been years? Decades? Centuries? It didn’t really matter much but it left a certain impression on Alex. This city was all but forgotten. Lost in the river of time. Alex didn’t know how long he would live with his awakening. He just wanted to make sure that he left an impact. He wasn’t too worried with living forever but he didn’t want to be forgotten right after his death either.

He remembered his life before that day in the park. He hadn’t really done anything worthwhile. He wasn’t wasting his life away but he didn’t really feel like he had changed anybody’s life or impacted anything. But, then he had. He had saved people. People that would likely be dead if not for what he did. He had, for the first time in his life, felt truly alive. He had been in a stupor for a while after his accident as he had thought he would never be able to experience that feeling again. Now, he could. He wouldn’t waste it.

As they were leaving the latest failure of a building they saw something that was a little strange. A group of people larger than their own standing in a plaza. They made no move to greet them and something about it felt off. They continued forward warily, unsure of what was about to happen. They surveyed their surrounding but couldn’t tell if something was amiss.

Suddenly the large man in the middle waved at them making it clear that they had been spotted.

“It’s so good to see more of us,” he called once they were in earshot.

He beckoned them over while still maintaining a friendly demeanor.

As Alex and his group got closer their uneasy feeling only grew worse.

“That guy’s smile just creeps me out,” Alex said to the rest of them.

“I agree. Keep your guards up. He might just have one of those creepy faces but I don’t think so. My intuition says that something else is at play,” Lila replied.