Sally slammed the large town hall doors closed behind her and slumped against them with a sigh. The short jaunt across the small village had picked up a few extra stragglers - and now her horde had grown to nearly three dozen, if you included the zombies already waiting for her arrival in the building. Which she did.

“Quite spacious in here, is it not?” Humphrey hovered idly in the air nearby.

It was spacious. The main portion of this Town Hall building was indeed that - a large hall that could probably seat all the residents of Hillan should it be required. Currently, the mass of tables and chairs had been stacked at the side walls, leaving the main hall space clear. She was thankful for this due to the number of bodies meandering around. Although the under-the-table trick worked once, she doubted it would a second time. Plus, all the zombies would be bumping into everything at this point.

“[Command Dead] didn’t have a target limit, right?” It was mostly a rhetorical question to herself; she could still remember all the information on the useless tooltip.

“What are your plans?”

“Quit asking me that, Humps,” she scowled up at the looming skull, “you are literally the worst Observer.”

“I’m not usually this talkative.” He moved up and down in the approximation of a shrug. “You are just different from all-“

“All the other girls?”

“-all other Monsters.”

“Yeah. Monsters don’t get this star thing either, right?” She held up her wrist to show the silver star that seemed to float a few millimetres from her skin.

“Only Players do,” the Observer nodded and swung down closer to Sally’s face.

“Then… what is a Player?” She scowled at his empty eye sockets, searching for an answer that made sense.

“I’m… sorry, Sally the Unliving. I am unable to answer that.”

“You don’t know, or you are not allowed?” She sighed and slunk to the floor, burying her head into her knees. Either way, she wasn’t getting an answer, and the depth of what she didn’t know sank in, smothering her.

“Nobody really knows much about the world when they come here; you are not alone in that regard.”

“So people come here? Then they get assigned as a Player usually, but not usually a sentient monster?” She raised her eyebrows as the skull tried to back away.

“…”

“Architect is going be so annoyed with you,” she smiled, climbing back to her feet. “Welp, best get our defences sorted, and we’ll see which of us gets vaporised first!”

There were two other doors exiting the wooden hall—a small one to the right and a marginally larger one at the back. The side room seemed like as good a place to start as any.

With a creak, the door swung open to the darkness inside.

“You’d think I’d have better night vision as a zombie.”

“There’s only so much light your ocular… bits can pick up.” Humphrey floated into the room over her head, his purple energy giving just enough dim light to see.

“Too busy yapping during anatomy class? This looks like a storeroom,” Sally stepped further into the cluttered room, squinting at the dark shapes illuminated by the Observer’s glow.

A few stacked wooden chairs, a couple of cabinets and cupboards, and a broken mop and metal bucket. Sally picked up the wood-only part of the snapped mop and waved it in the air.

She wrinkled her nose and turned to the skull. “What, no ‘Makeshift Club’ or inventory stats?”

Humphrey just stared blankly back at her.

“I’m just… I don’t have any useful skills to attack with, right? I feel pretty weak and reliant on my friends out there.” She jabbed the splintered end of the mop towards the hall.

“Players usually start as a Novice and have a [Novice Strike] skill. It’s like a normal attack but has-“

“Ya ya, either gimmie it or let’s move on. If I’m some kind of necromancer, I should have… like a bolt attack or some way of dealing ranged damage.”

“Necromancer isn’t a class that you can-“ Humphrey began before the zombie woman turned and began opening the cupboards.

Nothing. Well, not nothing. But just the random odds and ends used for cleaning or repairing the hall. There was a box of candles, some tools, a couple of spare chair legs, and a handful of things that had degraded away to dust and mulch. She grabbed the tools and chair legs and brought them back out to the hall, putting them in a pile.

“Candles would be nice, but it would draw too much attention. Let’s check the back.”

She pushed through the crowd of swaying corpses, muttering unnecessary apologies until the space at the back was reached. The door here appeared to be locked - on account of the rusty-looking padlock on it. Sally turned and whistled out to her Party, who emerged from the horde over to her.

“Reckon you could break down a door?” She smiled and flexed her skinny arms to further the point.

As one, the Party lumbered over to the door, Chuck arrived first and slammed his meagre body weight against the wooden entryway. The businesszom stood over him and pushed against the door, as the elderly couple assisted by giving their body mass to the effort.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“Is there like some kind of roll that happens? Invisible dice or stats comparison? My skill says it makes things more likely to succeed.”

“If there were, it would not be something you would be privy to.” Humphrey moved closer to the straining zombies.

“But some people can see it? Can you? You can, can’t you? You can.”

“Y-yes. Well, sometimes,” he spun back around to face her, “there are different levels of Observer, which determines how much of the System they can see.”

“Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been able to see if there was anything weird going on with the experience gained at the diner?”

With a loud groan that reverberated around the tall ceiling of the hall, the wooden door eventually relented, the old hinges cracking and splitting from the wood. The Party collapsed inside the room, landing atop each other and squishing Chuck.

“Oh look, a learning opportunity,” Humphrey sightly grinned, “check your Party status screen.”

Sally booped the star button and read the image that burst forth.

[Chuck - Health (92%)]

“Poor Chuck took a little damage, the red part?”

“Correct!”

“Fascinating. How do I make it not red?” She folded her arms as the screen vanished again.

“Beats me.”

“Is that a request?” Sally growled as she stepped through, over her Party trying to untangle themselves.

The space beyond became illuminated by the skull as he came in behind her. It was a long, single room that seemed to serve a dual purpose of both kitchen and office. The closest side had desks and drawers, and a wide window looking out to the gloom of night outside. The far side had a stove and counters for preparing food.

As her eyes adjusted to the shapes coming into focus, she realised there was something in one of the chairs.

A skeleton.

She bounded over to it across the dusty floor and leaned over to look into the empty eye sockets. It sat, head rolled back slightly and slumped in the chair as its arms dangled to the floor.

“Anyone in there?” She cooed before stepping back and frowning. “How do all the bones stay together in this position?”

“It’s probably that-“

“Oh, there’s a note in front of them.” She blew the dust away and picked up a sheet of paper before turning it over and then around. “Why can’t I read?”

“It’s probably that-“

“Nevermind, it’s not words - it’s a drawing! A pretty terrible one, though. I mean, I’ve heard the term ‘starving artist’ before, but this is…” She paused and put her hands on her hips.

“…Everything okay?”

“They should change the skill name to Command Undead if I can’t make the bone-person do things.” Sally shrugged and looked over the scrawled map again.

She turned ninety degrees to the left. Tilted her head to the side. Moved the paper close to her face with a squint.

“They hid a weapon in the stove,” she eventually rolled her eyes. “That does not look like a stove, though, but using deduction and context clues, I was able to- actually, let’s just get it.”

“Be my guest.”

“I’m already Mr Bones’ guest,” she curtsied before the skeleton and placed the paper back where she found it.

Her footsteps echoed against the wood slightly as she approached the kitchen end, where she knelt down in front of the stove. The small metal door popped open with a squeak of hinges in need of a good oil that revealed a dark pit of ash. Or what she hoped was just ash. She dug around with her hands before a smile lit up her face.

Sally turned around and plopped a rectangular box on the table. Despite the bedding it had just come from, it was in almost pristine condition. Iron bracing ran along the sides and filled out the corners - not particularly ornate, but enough to make the box seem well-defined—a respected box among lessers.

Plus, the white question mark painted on the front was interesting. A small pair of weapons crossed were imprinted below it. At a squint, they looked to be an axe and a sword.

Humphrey sidled along beside her. “A Melee Weapon Chance Box, how peculiar.”

“Aw, I wanted a ranged weapon.” Sally pouted but drummed her fingers on the surface. “Tell me how it works then, Guide-skull.”

“You bind to it with your STAR, and then it opens, and you receive a random weapon. White box can have anything from the lower tier of rarities - a medium tier would be the rarest drop from it.”

“Neat,” she hissed. “Let’s save the tier explanations until after I somehow roll something higher than possible, yeah?”

“I’m not sure that- yeah, alright then.” Humphrey resigned, his lack of eyelids narrowing over his lack of eyes.

Sally held her wrist over the box, eyes aglow as the star shone a bright white.

She edged closer as the light spun around the box bracing, the question mark pulsing with a similar white glow.

With a hiss of invisible steam, the lid popped open, and something rose up from within.