Travelling the post-integration landscape in a group rather than as an individual was different for several reasons. Some of these were actually pretty positive.
For example, Lorelei now had a whole bunch of someones to talk to other than a Guide that seemed to delight in belittling her. She couldn't remember the last time she had so many interactions without being called some manner of moron. Although, as Hild seemed to have taken such an active dislike to her, there was no shortage of ‘negging banter’ - as she was sure the Prick with the prick would have called it.
Lorelei had done her best to resolve this, but she had relatively few conversational 'go-to' cards to play, and she'd already used them all up with the Valkyrie. Hild had not heard the latest Beyonce album, had no interest in the collected works of Jane Austen and supported a German football team Lorelei had never heard of. It seemed safe to say they were not going to be the bestest of gal-pals.
Giant Amazonians aside, however, Lorelei was finding it instructive to interact with other people for whom the whole Integration was bewildering. Indeed, the more she talked about the last twenty-four hours with the rest of them, the more the reality of the situation—and the extremity of her actions—began to sink in.
"It's just because the adrenaline has worn off," Kris had said, in a voice that was the right mixture of deep but expressive. Less Barry White, more Wendell Pierce. When she'd raised her eyebrows, he'd continued. "The release of adrenaline helps increase mental concentration on the issue at hand. It doesn't take the pain of what is happening away; rather, it distracts us from sensations, letting us do things we would never usually do. The intense adrenaline rush we've all been feeling since . . . what happened has heightened our abilities and made us all feel invincible. This process is meant to help us overcome the situation that is causing us extreme stress, but adrenaline cannot keep us numbed forever. I guess we're now on the come-downside."
That - coupled with what Lorelei knew about the emotional dampening the A.I had been implementing - made a lot of sense to her. She kind of hoped what Kris had said meant there were a lot of people waking up this morning seriously regretting their actions of the day before. Although, the 'walk of shame' was probably a little different when you'd eviscerated your next-door neighbour for their XP, rather than - say - merely fucked his wife.
Thinking about it, she wondered if this sense of regret was being played out across the rest of the world. "Guide, has the global death toll stabilised on day two?"
***A friendly 'I am not Alexa' message ***
However, as it is your first inane question of the day, munchkin, I'll give you a free pass and answer it. To a certain extent, we are seeing a stabilisation in the worldwide genocide. There are a couple of theories bouncing around as to why. The first being, obviously, that most of the dead wood has been brutally cut away, and so there was bound to be a commensurate slowing in the slaughter rate. Basically, most of you who are live now have to have some sort of game. Full disclosure: I have used the continued existence of your merry band of losers as evidence that this cannot be the only reason things have improved.
"Cheers for that."
***Couldn't Give a Fuck Message ***
You're welcome. Along with that, there's a bunch of middle management high-eighting themselves that some of the measures they've ordered implemented - safe zones, etc - have been responsible for everyone focusing more on the task at hand and less on massacring their fellow citizens.
Lorelei thought back to what she had witnessed when the Botanical Gardens had been assaulted and couldn't help but disagree.
*** Help Message ***
Yeah, I'm with you on that one. I think that just gathered up some of the aforementioned dead wood into nicely accessible groups, but no one wants to hear this A.I.'s opinion on that little fuck-up. I have more than enough to be doing without getting into that. Let them have their moment of glory in the sun.
"So, what's your thinking about why the death toll has fallen today?"
*** Ominous Message of the Day ***
The day is but young, my dear.
The Guide had gone offline for a while after that, which - as it corresponded with Hild shouting at her for dropping behind the rest of the group - hardly boosted Lorelei's morale.
However, if there were some benefits in moving around in a group, the most significant downside was that they were drawing the attention of undesirables. Lorelei had assumed that, as a lone female wandering the streets of Birmingham late at night, she had been attracting a certain degree of malign attention due to her supposed vulnerability. That was hardly a new state of being instituted by the Integration, after all. Therefore, now she was part of a much larger party, she had assumed some of the random attacks upon her person might halt. Unfortunately, this was not to be the case. Rather, and fairly worryingly, the difficulty level of these encounters appeared to have been scaled to match the group size.
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"That's a fucking lot of wolves," Pete had said, staring at the massive pack that was waiting for them the moment they'd stepped outside of the pub. Actually, from what Lorelei could tell, what he'd said was, 'Aooo eeee ulllla a uwe aaaaoe', but she'd assumed the former was what he meant from the available context.
If she were grasping for straws, the fact they were all - apart from the
Firstly, there was no one taking charge.
Even with her rudimentary knowledge of such things, Lorelei assumed it would be sensible for their two tanks - Pete and Hild - to try to be the first ones to attack the bad guys. From what they both had said about their Skills, they each had any number of abilities that would let them attract the attention of groups of opponents. And, considering they were armoured to the gills, it would probably have been preferable had one of them been the person the pack had leapt on rather than, say, Red Shirt #1 . . .
However, with a sense of crushing inevitability, the shortest of their expendable Mages immediately lost his arm in a frenzy of fur and snapping before anyone else had a chance to react. Fortunately, after a moment of shock, Kris was there to pull most of the man clear and apply some sort of tourniquet to the spurting injury.
After that inauspicious start, the group had actually sorted its shit out reasonably well. As would be hoped, they had far too much firepower for low-level wolves, with Zorrobar bringing matters to a close with a pretty spectacular
If she was being hypercritical, Lorelei thought it might have been helpful if he hadn't set Red Shirt #2 ablaze when he cast it. Monica managed to put that particular fire out, but not before going up in flames herself. She did no harm to her Health but somehow reduced her nurse's costume to ash, leaving her in her bra and pants.
"Seriously?" Lorelei asked of no one in particular.
Steffan produced another nurse's costume from, presumably, his inventory and threw it over to her. "It's happened more often than you'd think. I'm not sure she has that much spatial awareness. And that PVC is spectacularly combustible."
Lorelei felt the beginnings of a migraine forming behind her eyes. "How about we have a bit of a chat about how that went before pushing on to bigger, and probably, more terrible things?"
"Oh, yes. Please, Little Miss-did-absolutely-fuck-all. Please tell us everything about what we did wrong." Hild was definitely not a Lorelei fan.
"Look, Hild, I explained about my Class. I can weigh in if you want me to, but I'd worry that it would just make things worse. You're going to need to trust me on this one. The longer I can keep out of casting, the better for all of us. And look, it's not that I think we did anything wrong; it's just if we're struggling to take down a pack of wolves without casualties, we're really going to find more exotic things a challenge."
The two Veiled Stalker reappeared to her left - she wasn't sure they'd actually done anything during the fight, but at least they hadn't actively inhibited proceedings - and crossed their arms in a pretty effective display of 'not fucking interested.' Pete made some sort of northern noise that might have been, "What advice do you have for us regarding tactics, deployment and general strategy, my dear?" Or, equally, it could have been the beginning of his experiencing a massive stroke.
With Hild's belligerence, the various injuries, the assassins not being on board, and whatever the fuck was up with Pete, Lorelei sensed now might not really be the time for a full debrief. She moved, instead, over to the pile of wolf corpses and began skinning them. By the look on the rest of the group's faces, this was the most disgusting thing any of them had ever seen.
"Look, I have a Skill for this. Don't judge," she said, gathering a bunch more [Leather Offcuts] and [Wolf Meat] as she went about it, idly wondering how easy it would be to trick Hild into eating [Charred Steak - poisoned]
When she'd finished, and the corpses had vanished - adding +5 to her Skinning skill - she returned to the problem of the group dynamic.
They were quite the rabble, she decided. Even ignoring the hostility from some corners, getting them all - or even most of them - alive to the cathedral would be tricky. Her attention was drawn to Kris doing something complicated with Red Shirt #1 to try to regrow his arm. She could be wrong, but there was a practised quality to what he was doing, which suggested this might not have been the first time this had happened. And Monica was . . . well, Lorelei thought Red Shirt #2 was feeling an awful lot better about his burns just for watching the Healer trying to redress herself. It was taking her far more attempts than she would have assumed should be the case.
Lorelei took the opportunity to pull Steffan to one side.
"Look, these guys are never going to listen to me. You're the party leader. You'll have to explain to them how we need to deal with mobs that attack us."
Steffan grimaced. "I don't like taking charge like that. It's better if we talk it through as a group."
"We don't have time for that!" Lorelei had worked with Department Heads like this for her whole career. They didn't like to be considered 'the boss' and hence took far longer to reach decisions, causing far more upset and trauma than if they'd just bitten the bullet in the first place. "Look, that was a complete shitshow. If we're not careful, someone is going to take an injury neither Kris nor . . . how many different ways can you find to put a dress the wrong way?"
"Her record is ten minutes. Seriously, I think a few of the guys get injured on purpose just in case it happens again."
"Okay." Lorelei's headache was not going away. "I'm not going to risk us moving on much further until we can at least make it through one encounter against low-level opposition without losing any limbs. So, you're going to need to step up."
Steffan paled - which, for a Necromancer, was pretty impressive - and started to back away as fast as possible. Lorelei followed him, grabbing hold of his arm and steering towards the rest of the group. "Look, I'll tell you what to say, but you - and, more importantly - your little zombie army - is going to need to show you mean business. It's your party, and you can tell them all not to die if you want to!"