Karl learned one of the harder lessons of leadership then: waiting. Waiting as the minutes passed, trying to have faith in a fourteen year old girl to survive this insanity. Restraining the desire to charge after her, alone or with the group.

He needed her. They all did. But the rest of them needed him to lead. They were down to five adults and one young boy. He could see the fear and despair on their faces. They needed a win. Any win. And standing around out here was accomplishing nothing.

He cleared his throat. “All right.” They all looked at him. “Terry will catch up with us. I believe in her. But we can't wait any longer. We're going to approach that house, slowly, all together.”

“We can't carry Danny into—”

“We can't split up any farther! If we split into two and four we're much more likely to die. If we stick together we've got a chance. Hopefully the monsters will be small ones, but they might be 'uncommon', whatever that means. Everybody get ready for a fight. We're walking up the driveway. I'll watch the left, Michael gets the right. Doug is rear guard. Let's move.” Not giving them a chance to argue about it, he started up the driveway. It took a few seconds, but eventually the rest of them followed. Give them something to do, he told himself.

They were halfway up the long driveway when Daniel abruptly asked, “Is Terry gonna die?”

Karl cursed mentally. For a moment no one answered, but then Jake spoke up, in a cheerful voice. “Well, Danny, do you know what kind of animal makes that sound we heard?”

“Wolves?”

“That's right. You're smart! Now, do you know something that wolves are really, really bad at?” There was a pause. Karl imagined Daniel shaking his head before Jake continued. “Climbing trees.”

Karl choked up for a moment as he felt a surge of hope. God bless you, Jake.

“And who do we know who's really, really good at climbing trees?”

“Terry!” Daniel cried happily.

“That's right,” Chenelle agreed. “She sure is. She's amazing.”

“Yeah!” Jake continued. “And—”

“ALL RIGHT, THAT'S FAR ENOUGH!”

Everyone stopped. Karl tried to see who had spoken, but couldn't make anyone out. “Hello the house!” he shouted back.

“What do you think you're doing!?” the voice demanded.

“Looking for temporary refuge!” Karl shouted back. “Possibly alliance!” he added on a whim.

“We don't have food for you!”

“That's okay! But we have a child with us! We need a place to shelter him while we go fight!” Karl took a deep breath. “May I come closer?! I'm an old man and it's hard to keep shouting like this!” Karl lifted his hands to indicate peaceful intent, then spread them to the sides. “Please!?”

“Just you!”

“Thank you!” Karl cleared his throat. In a low voice he said, “wait here, stay alert.” He started walking forward slowly, hands still out. He crossed more than half the remaining distance to the house before the man called out again at lower volume.

“There's good enough.” Karl still couldn't see who he was talking to.

“Thank you. My name is Karl Hausman. I live on Sycamore Street. I've been trying to gather survivors along Walnut Street. We're looking to build a Safe Zone—a temporary one for now.”

“You've got the ten silver?”

Karl grew more wary. “Yes.”

“Show me.”

“No, I don't think I will.”

“So you're a liar.”

“I'm not, but neither am I an idiot. Why should I trust you? You can see all of us. I can't see you, I don't even know if you're alone in there. You need to show trust to get trust.”

“Put the ten silver on the ground and we'll let you leave.”

“That's not happening.”

“You'll do it or I'll blow a hole in you and take it up with the next guy over there.”

Don't show weakness. “I seriously doubt you can.” Karl was totally bluffing but he knew that this was definitely a time to bluff. He was just amazed at himself for getting this far through the conversation. “Look, I don't have time for this. Do you have a cleared room for the kid or don't you?”

“You're going to just give me your kid?”

“Oh sure, because you just reek of trustworthiness. No. We might have, if you'd dealt straight with us. But since you can't be trusted we'd have to leave some of us with him to keep him safe.”

“Oh, that's not happening.”

“I can see that. Good luck surviving the uncommon spawns alone.” Karl turned around and took a step back towards the others.

“Freeze or I'll shoot!”

Karl stopped instinctively, then cursed himself for doing so. He looked back over his shoulder, even though he couldn't see who he was talking to. “With what, a camera?”

“How 'bout a Remington 870, jackass.” Somewhere close, Karl could hear a gun noise. He didn't know a damned thing about guns, but it didn't sound good.

He made himself laugh derisively. “You think that's actually going to work? Have you test fired it since the System showed up?” When there wasn't an immediate reply, he pressed his advantage. “I assume you've noticed that cars don't work any more? Electricity's out? Gas stoves burn green? What makes you think a pistol's going to hold up?”

“It's a rifle, jackass.”

“My point stands. What level are you?”

“Eighth!”

Karl snorted. “Pull the other one.”

“Okay, fifth!”

“Right, you're second level,” Karl stated confidently. “You probably aren't in the house. It's probably not even your house, and you're only out here because you're too scared to go in. Do you even have a class?”

“'Course I do!”

“Uh-huh. Thanks for wasting our time. Good luck, buddy. You're gonna need it.” Karl started walking, wondering if he was about to get shot.

“...Wait!”

Gotcha. Karl stopped again. “Why?”

“I'm coming with you!”

How do I want to play this? He's kind of a snake, but humanity can't afford to be bickering amongst ourselves at a time like this. Maybe we can make him our snake.

“Oh fine, whatever. You're the eighth person I've rescued, I was due for a jackass,” Karl said as casually as he could manage, throwing the man's insult back at him. “Well, come on.” Please let this work. He beckoned his invisible follower and walked back to the others, willing his voice to keep sounding casual.

“Hey, everybody! We got a new member for the group.” He beckoned again. “Come on, better introduce yourself or everybody's gonna start calling you Casper.” He could tell when the guy dropped stealth from the reactions of the others. He turned then to get a look himself.

A young man with black hair and scraggly mustache, probably around twenty years old, stood there in black leather jacket, white T shirt, blue jeans and boots. He held the rifle across his chest. There were furrows carved in one sleeve of the jacket, as if from the swipe of a big claw. He fidgeted for a few seconds, then said, “Jim.”

Karl realized that Chenelle was eyeing him, maybe looking for guidance, then she seemed to have an insight and nodded. “Hello Jim, I'm Chenelle, this is my husband Doug and my boy Daniel. That's Michael and his son Jake, and you've already met Karl, the leader of our group.”

Karl felt as if he was about to faint from relief when Chenelle took the social pressure off him, but it ramped right back up at that last. I'm the leader? I mean, I've made some decisions because they needed to happen...I guess I was the first to form this group...and I thought Michael was going to lead but he's in no shape to right now...but me as leader is the stupidest idea since...

“Karl?” Chenelle prompted him. “What's next?” He forced his brain back in gear and his personality back into his performance of a confident, competent leader.

“Well, that depends on what Jim has to tell us. What are we dealing with inside? Did you scout it?”

“There are these flying things that identify as 'minor imps', and some snake things called 'varshath' or something like that.”

“How many and where?”

“About...six flying in the downstairs area, and maybe...a dozen snakes. That's an estimate.”

“How big are the doors?”

“Uh, usual size? One front and one back.”

Karl looked around. “Okay, the imps aren't too bad, a bit weaker than the crabs. I haven't fought the snakes before, anybody got experience with them?”

Everybody was quiet, then Jim muttered, “I killed one of them.”

“How'd it go?”

“Stabbed it behind the head and that took it down. They've got some kind of bite but I didn't give it a chance to show me what it did. Also they'll wrap around you in a second if you let 'em.”

“How much experience did you get when you killed it?” Jake asked.

“Um...eighty, I think?”

That was a smart question. Estimate the difficulty by the experience points awarded. So, tougher than imps, not as tough as hobgoblins? We can do this.

“Okay. Thanks Jim.” Karl threw some ideas together mentally, then shuffled them around as he spoke. “All right everybody, here's the plan: the Hoopers take one door. Doug goes in and Chenelle and Danny stay outside but keep line of sight so she can heal him. I'll go in the other door, with Michael shooting the imps overhead. Jake, got anything for imps?”

Jake blinked, then thought for a moment. “Maybe. Give me a few minutes.”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Then you go with the Hoopers. Jim, you got a sneak attack thing going on?” He nodded. “Then put yourself wherever you think you'll be useful. Help with the imps first if you can. Oh, and there are nastier things out there than this, so save the rifle. It's probably only good for one or two shots if that.”

“I don't have another weapon.”

“Here.” Karl glanced through his inventory and grabbed a knife he'd looted from a hobgoblin. “It's not much but it's System so it probably won't break if you use it more than once.” Jim accepted it and vanished the rifle at once.

“You're a healer?” Jim asked Chenelle. She nodded. Jim furrowed his brow. “But what if...uh...Karl gets hurt?”

“I've got some healing.”

“He's a paladin,” Michael told the newcomer.

“This way we've got some anti air support and healing on both sides. Danny? Danny?” Karl could tell that the boy had been listening, but was slow to realize he was being called upon.

“Uh huh?” His eyes were wide.

“Did you hear all that?”

“Uh huh.”

“Does that sound like a good plan to you? Did I miss anything?” Danny paused, then nodded, then shook his head. “Thank you.” The boy beamed.

Everyone was giving Karl funny looks. “What? Have none of you read the Evil Overlord List?” Jake snorted laughter and Doug nodded in recognition, but the rest gave him blank looks. “Philistines. I've got some entertainment for you for tonight then. Now everybody get ready. We've got a house to disinfect.”

**

Clearing the living room went surprisingly smoothly. The imps went down immediately, but the varshath were harder. Karl again wished he had some sort of armor on his legs. He ended up getting bitten four times and squeezed once. What would have killed him at first or second level was merely challenging at fourth level. Doug struggled a bit more but Chenelle had a spell that the System called Fight Poison. Karl ended up needing a dose of that himself, because Purge Poison only worked on things you drink or eat, but otherwise kept himself healed. Jim threw the knife, retrieved it, and threw it again, taking out two of the imps, and suddenly appeared and killed one of the varshath that was giving Karl trouble.

Once they had all gathered inside and looted, they explored the house room by room. Everything on the first floor was either imps or varshath. A lone hobgoblin occupied the basement, prowling around looking for a way out until they found and killed it. Doug looted a sword from it—the first in the group to get one. He offered it to Karl, who reluctantly declined, arguing that Doug would sometimes need to bash things and other times stab and cut them. He hoped to find a sword of his own later.

All that was left was the second floor. Jim used stealth and scouted up the stairs. In seconds he was back. “Oh hell no. Let's find a different house and try again.”

Karl sighed. “We've cleared almost the whole house. What's up there, Jim?”

“There's a lot of webs up there. Take a guess.”

“Spiders, huh?” Doug nodded. “I've done spiders. I wouldn't mind some payback too.” He held his hands apart to indicate how big they were: scary for a spider, but not for a monster spawn.

“I won't be much good for this fight,” Michael pointed out. “I can't really shoot in close quarters so I'd just be using a club. I'll come if you need me to, but I'd rather sit this one out.”

Karl looked at Jake, who shook his head. “Don't look at me, I'm a Tinker.”

“Let's just try another house,” Jim pleaded.

Karl looked at Chenelle. “I'll back you two up, but I'm staying in the back,” she told them firmly.

People really have a thing against spiders. “Okay, Michael, Jake, Jim, you've got guard duty down here. Makes sense anyway, we don't want something else sneaking up on us from behind.”

Jake looked thoughtful, then said, “Hold on.” He went to the kitchen and rummaged around for a minute, then came back with a bag of flour. “This will be messy but it should make it harder for webs to stick to you.” He proceeded to liberally coat Karl with it, but Doug declined with a smile, sure he wouldn't need it. Karl looked at their grins and felt a little stupid, snatching the bag of flour from Jake and stuffing it into inventory.

“Well, time to be a white knight,” Chenelle teased.

Then Jake offered something that looked like a can of spray paint with some unidentifiable things wrapped in duct tape against it. “Press there on the nozzle, then immediately throw it at something you really hate and stay at least ten feet away.”

“Will it burn the house down?”

Jake shook his head, hesitated, then shook his head again. Karl just stared at him for several seconds, then looked at the others still grinning while taking the thing. “All of you are clearly having far too much fun with this. Let's take this seriously so nobody gets hurt.”

Chenelle sobered and kissed her husband. “Be careful.”

“I killed two of these by myself when I was first level, Chen. Even if there are a dozen of them up there we'll be fine.”

Karl vanished Jake's maybe-murder device into inventory and checked that he had rocks and an assortment of implements of violence in there too, as well as the biggest pot lid from the kitchen as a makeshift buckler. “All right, let's get this done so we can create the Safe Zone.” He turned on his headlamp, led the way up the stairs, opened the door and stepped onto the second floor.

The door slammed shut behind him.

Shit! With no time to think, Karl immediately ducked and ran away on the side where he could see he had at least a couple of feet of open space ahead. Whatever had slammed the door was behind him and he wanted to get some space before it attacked. He got a fleeting impression of webbing everywhere before having to refocus his attention on the spider in front of him.

This is not a little spider, Doug! Karl wasn't sure whether he thought it or yelled it.

He wasn't even sure how it could ever get in or out of the room. Did it spawn in here? Was it forever trapped from the moment of its creation? He didn't have time to think about logistics, though, as it was moving to attack. Serrated legs flashed and he parried; but he ran out of limbs before the spider did, and a couple of barbs dug into his trenchcoat. This pulled him closer in and the spider's mouth came down at him.

Karl punched it in the face with a summoned rock, chipping one of its fangs as he twisted to avoid the other. Then the chopper came out and he fed the end to the spider's maw and twisted. It hissed and spat at him. Karl closed his eyes but not his mouth in time, and the venom burned on his tongue.

Oh God! Purge Poison! He cast the spell and immediately and involuntarily retched back in the spider's face. The spider flung him away with two limbs and he slammed into the far wall. Apparently the spider was not enjoying the up close encounter any more than Karl was, and wanted to slice him apart with its legs before trying to bite him again. He glanced in the direction of the exit.

There was another giant spider blocking the door to the stairs.

Karl could just barely see some of it sticking out into the room. He could hear banging and yelling on the other side of the wall. Repeated crashing sounds started. Doug was trying either to hammer the door open or smash a new doorway through the wall; Karl couldn't tell which.

Karl had to take all that in in a brief instant; the spider in the room with him was attacking.

Giant Spider—Uncommon

Karl snarled, ya think? at the System and shoved the notification aside. Meanwhile he got stabbed; the spider's leg was tipped in a sharp spike that managed to pierce his Systemized trenchcoat. How could it walk on spikes, that doesn't even make any sense damn it! His brain was racing in overdrive as he desperately tried to think of something unorthodox, because orthodoxy said that he was dead meat in a few seconds. It was probably right.

Too many legs. Just to be contrary, Karl grabbed the next leg that came at him and pulled hard. If one leg is killing me the others can't get at me right? A moment later he was stabbed again, putting paid to a beautiful wild assed guess. Doubling down on his stupidity because at least the spider might not expect it, Karl hugged the foreleg he'd grabbed, feeling fresh stabs in his arms and chest, but not as bad as being impaled felt.

His scrabbling feet actually found purchase on the barbs of the leg, and he started climbing the leg like a ladder with frantic haste. He ripped his bleeding arms loose and grabbed the leg higher up, getting new stabs, then cast healing hands on himself. Step grab heal, step grab heal, step grab heal, he charged upward, and his health points were plummeting but not quite as fast as getting impaled repeatedly had been doing. It took a lot of willpower to do something this painfully stupid over and over, but at least that stat of his was decent.

After the third repetition he was high enough up on the spider's leg that the spider couldn't actually get at him with spikes nor with fangs. He was safe. Karl almost laughed hysterically at the thought. Everything's relative. At least the spider wasn't having a good time; it was hissing and spitting and shaking its leg over and over.

Karl could almost imagine it thinking, Oi! Geroff! No fair!

The spider reared up and managed to slam him against the ceiling, but fortunately not very hard and not hard enough to dislodge him. Desperate for revenge, Karl summoned a knife and stabbed at the spider's body, but couldn't penetrate the exoskeleton with his five in strength. He vanished the knife, raised his fist, and slammed it downward as fast as he could, summoning a rock at the last moment. There was a satisfying cracking sound. Karl vanished the rock, raised his hand again and repeated the process. He paused once to cast healing hands on himself, then continued.

“I—HATE—THINGS—WITH—EXO—SKELETONS!” Karl roared, punctuating each breath with a blow from a rock at a speed he could never have managed without cheating with the inventory function.

Part of the exoskeleton caved in and Karl actually lost his rock inside the spider. Rather than try to fish it out, he re-summoned his chopper and shoved it into the opening as hard as he could.

Critical Strike. Damage X2

He pulled it out and shoved it in again.

Critical Strike. Damage X4

And again.

Critical Strike. Damage X3

Karl wondered if he was simply doing a pitiful amount of damage normally and it was getting multiplied up to an ordinary level, but he didn't really care. He just kept digging into the side of the spider as its movements gradually became more erratic. It fell on its side to cover up the opening in its exoskeleton, but Karl made sure that doing so slammed his chopper all the way inside.

Critical Strike. Damage X5

Karl got to his feet behind the back of the spider just in case it had any fight left. He took a moment to inspect his inventory, looking for options. Now or never, he thought, and pulled out Jake's gadget. He took a deep breath and yelled as loud as he could.

“FIRE IN THE HOLE!”

Karl pressed the button, then flung the thing so that it bounced off the wall into the second spider. He ducked down, wondering what was going to happen. His ears were filled with the sound of hissing and spitting. Only some of it was coming from the gadget. After several seconds, Karl decided to chance it and circled the spider after casting one more healing hands on himself.

The spider at the door was looking very unhappy. It was crammed into a space just barely big enough to squeeze through, and was stuck there holding the door shut against the rest of the humans' efforts to shove it open, and Jake's gadget had struck it square on and apparently was fighting fire with fire, as acid hissed and fizzed on its belly. Karl backed up to get runway space, then charged at the spider as fast as he could, summoning his biggest rock at the biggest speed he could manage.

Critical Strike. Damage X2.

Karl was proud of that one. Those other critical strikes all felt like cheating, because he basically couldn't miss, but he felt as if he had really earned that last one with careful aim. Now he had another use for that long steel pipe, as he poked at the spider repeatedly while staying mostly out of range of retaliation. He suspected he was doing pathetically little damage, because it took quite a while, and Doug had finished carving a door through the wall and burst in by the time he was done.

Karl was getting some notifications, but told the interface to do the usual thing and shrink them until he was ready to read them.

“Karl! Karl!” he could hear shouting. “Over here!” He turned to where Doug was standing next to the first spider, and walked wearily over to him. Abruptly he glowed golden and felt significantly better. Chenelle could see him through the hole in the wall and cast on him again and again while he stood there; Karl lost count but it was more than twice. He walked up to each spider corpse and looted it just to make sure it was dead.

Huh. Five silver for one monster. I think I earned it. The other spider only yielded two silver, but Doug got nothing for the first and two silver from the second, since his efforts at the door had been instrumental in keeping the second spider pinned.

Jim shouted up the stairs. “Are they dead?”

Karl started laughing.

**

When they looked around at the upstairs and the spider corpses were flaking away, they found four cocooned human bodies trapped in webbing in the room. Chenelle tried to cast healing on them one at a time in a forlorn hope. Everyone was shocked went her spell actually went off for the last one. There was a survivor after all.

It took Jake a long while to cut the young woman free carefully; then they laid her on the couch downstairs while Karl and Chenelle did their best for her. Once that was done, it was finally time. Everyone gathered around.

“Create Safe Zone,” Karl said.

Insufficient resources to create a Safe Zone in this area. Resources required:

Wood: 700/1000

Stone: 300/1000

Metal: 108/1000

A temporary Safe Zone may created in this area for a monetary fee of: 10 silver coins. Your temporary Safe Zone will last 24 hours and includes this room. You may add additional rooms and their functions for an additional 1 silver coin per room.

“Create Temporary Safe Zone.”

The command called up a large notification window which Karl struggled to work with for a while before giving up and asking Jake to do it. Everyone gave money to the Tinker; even Jim put in some copper.

“Create Temporary Safe Zone,” Jake called. His eyes flickered back and forth and his lips moved slightly, then mere moments later said, “If we shut those doors off the hall, we can get this entire downstairs area for the main room, and the bathroom in working order for another silver. Looks like we still need to barricade, though. The safety only extends to things spawning inside; monsters can still attack from outside.”

“Add the upstairs then,” Chenelle advised. “It's only two rooms and it will be too hard to barricade the stairway against respawns with the big hole we punched in the wall.” Everyone was in strong agreement with that plan.

For the price of thirteen silver, twenty seven hours into the apocalypse the group finally had a Safe Zone.