Clover entered a focused haze as he worked. The outside world fell away; all that mattered was the clay in his hands. Up and down, he molded the material, shaping it to his desires. There was still a gap between his theoretical knowledge and his ability to act on it, but it did not matter to him right now. Rather than pursuing some grand goal, he simply worked to grind Skill Levels.

Strangely, the stabbing pain in his hands that lanced through his nerves as he worked relaxed him. Constant and needy as a stimulus, his brain had no space to think of anything else. The constant ticking of the clock that had followed him faded away, mixing into the sea of background chatter and activity.

Time passed in a blur as he worked. Till, almost disappointed, he finished the sculpture - a small clay dog.

Congratulations! Sculpting has reached Level 7. +1 Skill Point.

Congratulations! Sculpting has reached Level 8. +1 Skill Point.

He set it down in his lap, then clumsily poked it with his left hand, not used to using it for tasks. Now that he had finished, the clay was hard - harder than it should have been. The small dog sculpture rested with an unnatural stability.

Clover thought back to what he could have done to induce such a change but found that his memory was a blur. Before he could further investigate the mystery, he coughed, derailing his train of thought.

Once, then twice more, his lungs burned as they contracted. It felt as if he had taken a step back - like he had lost some of his progress. He frowned, suspecting it was a side effect of hitting 0 HP. If he had his way, he wouldn't ever let his HP drop that low again.

As he was preparing to grind out another sculpture, a man with a blue name tag that differed from all the others he had seen before walked by.

Warrior - Lvl 6

He considered asking the man directly, but before he could work up the courage to do so, he had disappeared to the other side of the Safe Zone. He figured it would be weird to chase after him. So, instead, he wheeled back over to the medical area of the factory and found Ms. Lin. She sat in a fold-up chair, slumped against its back as she ate a sandwich with her eyes closed.

His stomach growled. He hadn't eaten anything yesterday or drank anything, for that matter.

“Hello,” he announced himself. Slightly nervous, he fidgeted with his small clay sculpture.

Her eyes blinked open. “That one isn’t half as bad as your last sculpture. How can I help you?” she said, motioning for him to come closer.

"Thanks." He wheeled closer so he didn't have to speak loudly. He was reasonably certain no one was listening in on their conversation. Though he wasn't sure why that would matter. Without delaying further, he asked her about what he had just seen.

She retrieved a plain black notebook and opened it to its fourth page. Her list of notes had expanded greatly since yesterday. “Good question. At Level 5, the System lets you select between three different Classes to upgrade yourself with - each with varying degrees of Rarity and power,” she said with obvious enthusiasm.

Clover was Level 4 - one off of the threshold.

“What happens if you don’t pick one?”

He didn't have any desire to not pick a class. However, he was morbidly curious about what would happen if he kept collecting Skills without gaining a Class. Maybe he'd develop a compulsion to go barefoot and to change his name to something ridiculous. It was possible.

"I don't know." She flipped the page. "No one really knows how or why the System offers the Classes it does, but I have a theory. From what I've seen, I think at least one of the Class choices is based on what you did in life before the System came around. Similarly, I think what you did immediately after the System's arrival also impacts what sort of Class you could get."

What she was saying made sense to Clover. It lined up well with his intuition and what he had seen in video games. He wondered what type of Classes he would be offered.

She rubbed her temples. “I'm sure I am missing something. Some of the Classes I’ve heard about don't follow that pattern.”

“Maybe part of it is random chance.”

"Maybe. It's hard to get good information. The System doesn't display the specific name of their Class, just its broader category, so it's hard to get good information. For all I know, the people I talked to could have made everything up." She made a few marks in her notebook and then folded it shut. "Any more questions?"

Clover’s stomach rumbled again. “Where did you get the sandwich?”

She chuckled and pointed out a small gathering on the other side of the Safe Zone. “They don’t have much left. You should go before they run out.”

Clover nodded. He hesitated before he asked his next question. “The person who brought me back - could you point them out to me.”

Ms. Lin did so. Leaning against a wall, a sandy blond teen around his age stared into space, possibly reading a System notification. To his surprise, he recognized her; he had gone to high school with her.

They talked a bit more, and then he departed. On the way to get some food, he couldn't help but glance above the heads of everyone he passed. A rare few were above Level 5. Most were still Level 0.

It was shocking to think that he was already at a higher Level than the average person. Though, he figured leveling speed wasn't so much an indication of talent or ability but rather risk tolerance this early into the apocalypse.

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He paused as he passed a large bulletin board covered in loose papers. A small crowd had gathered around it. Curious, he wheeled nearer. On closer inspection, the papers were covered in lists of names - those who had found refuge in the Safe Zone. He searched the list for his aunt. Her name was notably absent.

He frowned. It was best not to think about it. There wasn't anything he could do. The thought stayed at the back of his mind, joining the hundreds of others that constantly nagged at him. Like usual, he pointedly ignored them.

He continued onward till he reached the food line. He waited in it, eavesdropping on the quiet conversation of the group behind him. A general sense of gloom wrapped their words. From what he overheard, the prevailing sentiment was that the military wasn't coming to save them - despite what the radio may have announced. That, for that matter, no one was coming to save them.

Some discussed plans to travel to the local military base. It was less than a hundred miles away, and in a week - six days, when the Safe Zones fell, it would probably be safer than the factory. He couldn’t fault their reasoning.

Though in these conditions, one hundred miles was an almost impossible distance. He paused, wondering what had happened to Rodger. He had left the building before the Bone Rats had ambushed, so he should still be alive, but he couldn't be sure.

He blinked as he reached the front of the line. A man who looked dreadfully bored handed him a bottle of water and a plastic-wrapped tuna sandwich. Clover almost chuckled. No matter where he went, he could never avoid hospital food.

He devoured his food in silence. He was so hungry that, for once, he didn't mind the taste of the tuna sandwich.

With his meal finished, he slowly retraced his path, pausing as he crossed paths with the girl who had brought him back to the hospital. "Hello," he said, careful to enunciate the word as normally as possible. Even still, he felt awkward and out of place.

She looked up, removing her face from the palms of her hands, and met his eyes with a slight smile. He recognized it as not entirely forced but slightly fake. He had made the same expression many times.

"Clover." She nodded. "Are you alright? I was worried you'd never wake up," she said, looking over his bandaged arms and forehead. It was hard to not feel self-conscious - he looked like a mummy.

He shot a double thumbs up. "I'm fine," he said, fighting to keep his facial expression even. Internally, he felt like smashing his face into a brick wall; what type of response was that?

"So, uhh…" He tapped his finger rapidly against his wheelchair, unsure how to start, only to wince in pain at the sudden movement. "Thanks for saving me, Claire," he said after a brief pause.

“Don’t worry about it. It was what any good person would have done.” She slumped down against a crate. “It’s not like I had much of a choice. Some crazy guy with a beard ran up to me and demanded that I take you to the Safe Zone.”

“Oh, sorry about that.” Well, at least that confirmed that Rodger was still alive. That was one less thing he had to worry about. “What are you doing here?”

"What." She tilted her head. "Where else would I be? Even though I like the floorplan, I wouldn't be here if there was anywhere else left to go."

He held up his hands. "No, I meant… I thought you were in New York." Clover wasn't a stalker or anything like that; it was just that her attending a prestigious university in the city had been big news in their high school. Practically everyone knew.

"I was, but my little brother's birthday was coming up, so I wanted to make a surprise visit." Claire bitterly laughed. "We went to the ice skating rink for his birthday, just the two of us. There was supposed to be some midnight disco special event - he always liked that sort of thing. I stepped away for a minute to the food court, and then the System came. I haven't seen him since," the words spilled out of her, running out of steam as she reached the end.

“I’m sorry,” Clover replied, out of his depth - unable to formulate a better response.

“It’s my fault,” Claire said with a quiet finality.

There was a story behind her words, but Clover knew he would not be hearing it today. She had reached her limit. He swallowed a lump in his throat; this had not gone how he imagined it would. "You can't blame yourself."

Claire didn't respond. With her eyes glazed over, stuck in the past, replaying the previous night’s events, he doubted she had even heard him.

So, instead of forcing the issue, he decided to wait. Clover pulled out another chunk of clay and began to sculpt again. He molded the clay into the shape of a cat, diverging from his usual subject matter. It was a fun change of pace, though it wasn't enough to distract him from the burning pain in his hand whenever he moved it. The pain had decreased somewhat in severity, but it was still unpleasant, to say the least.

More so than before, his hands faintly hummed with a sporadic energy that interacted strangely with the clay. It ebbed and flowed like waves upon a beach. At its peak, he attempted to channel it using the principles he had learned from [Unstable Mana Bolt].

Most of his attempts failed; however, as he neared the end of the sculpture, his ability to do so improved. Even when he succeeded in infusing the sculpture, he was unsure what the energy accomplished. He felt that he should be able to do so much more with [Sculpting]. According to the System text at the end of its Path, it should have been theoretically possible for him to imbue minor magical effects into his sculptures.

With a final flourish, he finished the sculpture.

Congratulations! Sculpting has reached Level 9. +1 Skill Point.

Congratulations! Sculpting has reached Level 10. +1 Skill Point.

He narrowed his eyes at the palm-sized figurine; it definitely didn't look bad, but for all the effort that had gone into it, it was missing a certain something. Additionally, even though he was leveling exceptionally quickly, he had still not yet completed the Path's Quest to create a puppet of [Minor] Quality.

He wasn’t sure what exactly he had to do to make the jump from [Inferior] to [Minor].

"Come on, Mr. Cat, tell me what I have to do; how do I make you better?" he mumbled, speaking to his sculpture like a crazy person. Almost imperceptibly, the sculpture slowly rocked side to side on its four feet as if it were a leaf swaying in a light breeze. Clover jerked back, highly concerned that his sculpture had gained sentience or had been possessed by a demon. The motion stopped.

Congratulations! Sculpting has reached Level 11. +1 Skill Point.

Clover blinked incredulously; what the hell had just happened? He opened the Skill Paths screen and immediately noticed [Stone Puppetry]'s Quest had completed itself. Naming the sculpture had bumped its quality up from [Inferior] to [Minor]. That didn't even slightly make sense. Additionally, he had unlocked a new Path.

Named Sculpture 0/10

Names have power.

Prerequisites(2): Magical Talent I, Sculpting I, ?, True Name, ?, ?,

Quest: Name 1/3 Sculptures.

He attempted to replicate the phenomenon by naming his other sculpture; nothing happened when he did so. The Quest counter didn't tick upward either.

He scratched his head.

While it was an exciting Path, he had enough Points to finish [Stone Puppetry], so he ignored it for now. It was a mystery he could delve into later.

He pressed his finger against the screen ten times, and a new type of blue screen appeared…