[A Rolling Golem Gathers No Rust I], Clover mulled over the name, considering what it may entail. A stray thought derailed his line of inquiry, at least temporarily.

Now that he had seen it several times, the link between the image the Golem's core sprouted out of, and the Traits it later would develop became clearer. Going forward, he'd have to be more intentional in leveraging that fact. Perhaps that was the secret to boosting the power of a Trait - the secret to raising [A Rolling Golem Gathers No Rust I] to [A Rolling Golem Gathers No Rust II].

He filed away the theory for later, intent on testing it on his next Golem. For now, he returned his focus to the golemized wheelchair.

Like with most Traits, the System didn’t provide an obvious explanation as to their use. However, this time, he had a strong inkling of what the Trait may do.

If he was correct, [A Rolling Golem Gathers No Rust I] would give the Golem the ability to not deteriorate by means of natural aging factors… It was a useful but not life-changing ability, not the edge he was looking for.

Still, he didn't disregard the Golem. Even if it wasn't perfect, he could still learn loads from it, and almost childishly, he looked forward to controlling it in the same way that a kid looked forward to playing with a toy.

Eager, Clover reached out with his will and made contact with the Golem totem inside his soul space. With his fingers crossed, he ordered it to roll forward. It did so, at least in a vague imitation of the movement he wanted.

Instead of rolling like a normal wheelchair, the Golem rocked forward like a galloping horse, its two frontmost wheels kicking off of the ground to propel it forward. Bouncing around and making a racket of noise, the animated wheelchair wobbled to a stop in front of him.

Clover chuckled, noting that the image inside the Golem's core had the ability to impact and influence its movement patterns. He had known the image he painted was important, but not to that extent.

After commanding the animated chair to gallop across the supply room one too many times to be respectable, he severed its thread, leaving it to rest underneath a sectioned window as rays of light streamed across its surface, illuminating a faint smattering of dust in the air.

For a moment, he wondered if it was okay to leave the Golem. What if someone found it? What would happen then? A paranoid part of him didn't want to leave the Golem, fearing that it could perhaps be used against him in some way, but there was nowhere else he could hide it. Odds were, no one would ever enter the supply room again, and even if they did, they'd have no way of knowing that the wheelchair was special.

Clover nodded to himself.

Even though the Golem had not turned out the way he had wanted it to, he had still learned a lot from the endeavor - it had been a good use of mana.

Clover reawakened the many-handed Golem, taking a few moments to reattach the phantasmal thread. Then, he ordered it to cross the room and retrieve the remaining wheelchair. It would be for the best to have another spare in case his experimentation led him astray once more.

With unsteady steps - if that was even the right word to describe its unique form of locomotion - the golem followed his command, crossing the distance. Once it got close to the chair, it uselessly nudged its weight against it, trying to push it forward in the most ineffective manner possible.

Too stupid to see the error in its ways, it continued, repeating the same rocking motion, bashing the uppermost portion of its body into the chair in an attempt to move it. Clover's lips twitched, amused by the nightmarish Golem's futile efforts.

Clover halted the Golem before it could damage itself. After taking a moment to envision his next command in detail, he micromanaged its limbs, stretching the three arms of altered clay upward to where they latched onto the back of the chair.

He snapped his fingers - the ones on his injured hand - calling forth the monstrosity.

Occasionally stumbling, the many-handed Golem strained, pushing the wheelchair along from its back, successful now that it had a detailed order to follow.

Clover opened the door and slowly proceeded down the hospital's hallways, bottlenecked by the speed at which the smaller Golem could push the wheelchair. Keeping a lookout for monsters, he exited the hospital.

Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to come back anytime soon. He had enough time in the building for one lifetime.

He made his way back to the Safe Zone, similarly unaccosted by monsters as he was on the way there. Though, as he re-entered the Safe Zone, he was accosted by a human. A particular human. One that he knew.

“Hey, Clover,” Ron said with a wave. “Good timing; I was just about to go looking for you. I’ve got all the supplies we need for our team dinner.”

Ron held out a reusable bag, the type that was common in farmer's markets. It was rather plain, unlike the one he had liberated from the museum.

“Nice,” Clover said, leaning forward to peek inside the bag. “Do you know where Claire is?”

“No. How would I know that?” Ron asked.

Clover shrugged, smiling. "You're the one with maps that can find stuff. Can't you just make a map that will lead us to her," he said, half joking.

Ron chuckled, shaking his head. “They only work on objects - it doesn’t work like that. Plus, I can only have one [Treasure Map] active at a time.”

“I’ll do it then,” Clover said as he closed his eyes, preparing to enter [Meditation]. “Give me a second.”

Practiced at the act, Clover fell into a meditative state within a couple seconds. The hidden world of mana blossomed in his awareness, just as vibrant and ever-changing as the last time he had seen it.

Clover focused, searching for the intense fire-like marks of mana her aura made upon the environment just by existing. To his growing dismay, he was unable to.

He fought back a cringe; how embarrassing would it be if he failed?

Not wanting to suffer such a fate, he redoubled his efforts. A blaze of intense mana entered his awareness. Immediately, he recognized it as Claire's - her aura was distinct and powerful compared to the average person.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Tightening his jaw, he tracked the energy signature.

Slowly, it was approaching, though, with his current abilities, it was hard to tell exactly how far away she was.

“What are you two doing? “ Claire asked.

Clover opened his eyes, flinching backward. “We were looking for you,” Clover said in a calm tone, expertly disguising his outburst with a casual stretch of his back.

Congratulations! Meditation has reached Level 17. +1 Skill Point.

She nodded slowly.

“You Leveled-up,” Ron said, thankfully changing the topic.

Clover glanced above her head, noticing for the first time that her title had changed to [Mage - Lvl 5].

"I ran into some," she paused, searching for the right word. "Unexpected company while I was out."

“What Class did you get,” Ron asked excitedly. When it came to Classes, Ron’s passion was only second to Ms. Lin’s.

Clover tilted his head back, trying to spot the blue words that hovered over his head, curious as to what they said. He couldn't spot his System-given title no matter how far he bent.

“[Hedge Witch], its Rarity is Minor. The System said I was magically talented.”

“What does mine say?” Clover asked, still tilting his head back.

“Crafter,” Ron said.

"Cool." What the tag implied slightly mismatched his capabilities. It could be a useful bit of misdirection if he ever got in a fight. However, he hoped to never fight a monster capable of reading or a human.

“It’s a bit early, but how about we start cooking now,” Ron said.

Clover glanced up at the sky, trying to estimate the time based on the sun's position. If he had to guess, he'd say it was around 3 or 4 pm. He didn't give the question much more thought; there wasn't any reason to know the exact time anymore, anyway.

Claire’s stomach grumbled.

"I'm starving; what did you get?" Clover asked.

“Some stuff from the store - the best stuff was already picked clean, so don’t expect anything fancy,” Ron said as they wandered around the parking lot, searching for a suitable spot.

The many-handed Golem pushed the spare wheelchair, following close behind them, in the process, drawing strange looks. Thankfully, no one said anything.

Ron plopped down on the floor and set up a portable stove.

Clover sat comfortably in his wheelchair, enjoying the rare occasion where his disability benefited him, watching as Ron dumped three frozen spaghetti chicken parmesan microwave dinners out of a cardboard box into a skillet.

As the frozen food thawed, steaming slightly, they were silent. Claire stood, staring into the flame, a far-off look in her eyes like she had lost sight of the real world.

Clover swallowed a lump in his throat, not sure what to do in the foreign social situation - he had never been to a barbecue before. Well, he wasn’t sure if this could be counted as a barbeque, but the point stood.

Was he supposed to say something?

A small voice in the back of his head reminded him that if Claire and Ron had a choice, they probably wouldn't be here with him. They, like most, would probably rather endure the apocalypse with their families and real friends, but that possibility had been torn away by the System's restructuring of reality.

Families were torn apart scattered to far-off corners of the earth, and friends were killed, sliced apart by ravenous monsters.

Ron stirred the noodles; though he tried to hide it, it was clear that recent events had taken their toll on him - a sense of sadness and concern underpinned his motions.

Out of the blue, Clover remembered a detail that struck him as odd, pulling him out of his glum train of thought. Ever since he had increased his Intelligence Stat, he found that he had been randomly remembering unrelated facts and memories for no discernible reason more often. At least to his conscious mind, there was no connection between them.

When he had checked his [Status Screen] for the first time, his MP hadn't been full - he had been missing a point. Maybe it was a quirk of his peculiar soul, but still, it struck him as odd.

He hadn't thought back to that night in a long time, but there were other weird things about it: he had woken up on the floor, not his bed, and somehow, he had slept through the first hours of the System's integration.

He was willing to write off the extended sleep as an effect of the magical tree that had attempted to kill him - maybe it had set its sights on him earlier in the night and forced him into a magical slumber while it slowly crept toward him, he could believe that, but it was harder to come up with an explanation as to why he had woken up on the floor.

He strained his memory, trying to remember what had happened in his first moments of consciousness, searching for anything odd or out of place. Even boosted by his increased Intelligence, his memory was hazy - he hadn’t been all the way coherent at the time.

One fact stood out to him. When he had woken up, he had been too far away from the bed for the distance to have been conceivably covered by a sleepwalked fall or roll. That meant that the only logical explanation was that the System had taken the time to teleport him a mere couple of feet, something he had never heard of happening before.

Still, there was no other explanation. It was what he had to accept.

Clover scratched his head. "Back when all this started, did your MP start at 100, or did it fill up from zero," Clover said, breaking the silence.

Ron shook himself from his stupor. Even Claire leaned forward, intrigued by the question.

“I think everyone started at 100. Why?” Ron said as he pulled out a stack of paper plates from his bag.

Claire nodded, then took a seat on the ground opposite the many-handed Golem.

"No reason. I was just wondering where the energy came from," Clover said, doing his best to keep a straight face as he lied. "I mean, in most shows and books, mana is an internal thing, so it doesn't make sense for everyone to start off with the same amount unless the System somehow shoved the energy into us without us noticing."

“Maybe the units aren’t standardized. Maybe the actual amount of mana that 1 MP contains varies from person to person,” Claire said.

With all their worries temporarily forgotten, they passionately debated where mana originated from and what its true nature was, eventually drifting over to different topics of conversation. Time flew by, and before he knew it, the food was ready. By the soreness rising in his throat, he'd wager that he had just about set a personal world record for amount of words spoken in a day.

Ron passed him a fork and a plate filled with food. "Thanks. It looks good," Clover said as he took a bite.

"It tastes good, too," Claire added.

A black cat, thankfully not of the monstrous variety, wandered through the parking lot, drawing closer to them. Stopping in place as it smelled the food, it meowed.

“Can cats eat noodles? It won’t die if I give it some, right?” Clover asked.

“A little bit is alright,” Claire said.

Clover picked up a noodle with his fingers and then held it out to the stray animal, waving it around slightly in a manner that he hoped would be attractive to the cat. It stood still, staring at him. He made a strangled imitation of cat noises, further trying to entice it to come closer.

Ron stifled a laugh.

Surprisingly, the cat responded. Trotting forward, it snatched the noodle from his fingers and then scurried away.

"Clover, the cat whisperer - A man of many talents," Ron said dramatically.

Clover wore a slight smile as he watched the cat leave.

He had wanted it to stay for longer...

Clover snapped his head to the side, his attention drawn by the sound of revving motors. A moment later, three white vans peeled into the Safe Zone's parking lot, screeching to a stop leaving tire marks on the ground.

A group hurriedly loaded out of them.