Karl woke on Thursday morning after about six hours of sleep feeling completely refreshed and desperately hungry. It was just before dawn. He hadn't had much of an appetite for the past few years, even less of one in the past several months. But today he felt he could eat a horse. He found himself wondering whether the boars they had killed could have been cooked and eaten safely. He wasn't sure if that would work, though, nor how one would stop them from decaying away.

At any rate, as one of the first up, he decided to deal with any spawns that might have appeared in the bedroom or kitchen. He found three varshath, and one of them got past him and into the Safe Zone before he could close the barricade behind himself. Hastily he shoved it aside again, to find Jim standing over the little monster with an orcish knife speared through its head.

Karl breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you,” he said quietly. Jim picked it up and tossed it into the kitchen, then raised a finger to his lips and winked. Together they inspected the food piles.

“Not a lot here for twelve people,” Jim commented in a low voice.

“I know. We need more supplies. There should be a lot in nearby houses for the moment.”

“Too bad we can't hit a big supermarket.”

Karl nodded. The closest to his house was an eight minute drive away. Without cars, everything was too far apart. “Smaller grocery stores are around. We should find one and clear it out. Yet another thing for the list.”

Karl meant to just have a little snack and wait for the others, but he ended up eating what should have been a full meal and still wanted more. He was looking at the bread hungrily when Maria stepped carefully into the kitchen. “Hey! Stop that! We need that for sandwiches!”

“Sorry. I'm just really hungry. We'll get more supplies today.”

“You'd better.” Maria frowned at the shelves. “I'm worried about the babies. Aside from some more applesauce, we don't have a lot that's good for them.”

Karl nodded. “Is everyone up?”

“Everyone except Terry and Daniel. Jake and Annie want to talk to you about something.”

Karl glanced around. “We seem to be clear for the moment. Ask them to come in, please.”

“Uh, excuse me,” Maria countered frostily. “This is my house, and I'm giving out my food, so you are going to get out of my kitchen while I cook breakfast for everyone.”

Karl blinked, then bowed his head. “My deepest apologies, Maria. I keep trying to get into the mindset of a commander, which I'm not very good at yet, and I messed up. That was totally inappropriate. Also, thank you. Thank you for letting us use your home, and thank you for making food for us.”

“Apology accepted. Out.”

Somewhat sheepishly Karl went back into the living room where Annie and Jake were standing by the safe zone's Shop pedestal and frowning at each other. “Hello you two. What's up?”

“A few things,” Jake started.

“I want to be a mage,” Annie cut in.

Karl wondered what the problem was. “That sounds great. Everybody says things would be easier with someone on our side throwing the fireballs and so forth. Do we know how to set you up with that?”

“I asked Jake, and he used his help pad, and you usually do it with magic scrolls and we have a couple of those but Jake doesn't want to give them to me.”

Karl turned to the young man. “Jake?”

“Karl, those scrolls can be sold for a couple of gold.”

He raised an eyebrow. “How much is a gold?”

“One hundred silver.”

Ten days' rent! Or twenty! Karl understood the problem now. “Well, can we give her one of the scrolls and sell the other one?”

“We can...” Jake started.

“He says I won't be any good at it!”

“Your intelligence is five,” Jake pointed out. “That's barely enough to try.”

“I'll raise it! You said I could get up to three points per level!”

“That's why I wanted to ask Karl about it.”

“Why do you get to decide that?” Annie demanded.

“Because I'm the quartermaster at the moment and you haven't earned any of our stuff yet, let alone the most valuable things we have by far!”

“Okay, okay, hold on,” Karl intervened. “What are the two scrolls for? What do they do?”

“I don't have the Appraise skill yet. I can't tell.”

“Annie, I'm happy to have a mage, but why is that your choice?”

Annie looked a bit shifty for a second. Hm.

“I want to have an important job! To go out with the adventurers!”

Karl tried to tease out what was going on. “There are other classes for that too. You could be our second healer, for example. Or another warrior or archer or scout. Plus there are other classes not directly for combat, like Jake's Tinker class. I'm not saying no, Annie, I'm just trying to understand where you're coming from and what you really want. From what I gather, taking a class is a big deal and you can't take it back.”

Annie looked uncertain, but pressed, “I need a job with the adventurers!”

Something was nagging at Karl. “Jake?”

“What?”

“Could you give us space for a minute?”

“Uh...sure.” Jake didn't look too happy about it, but walked off with his tablet under his arm.

Karl bent his head closer to Annie's and lowered his voice. “Annie, I want to help, but I need to know what's really going on here.”

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

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you look like you're afraid of something and you're trying to be a mage to...oh.” Suddenly Karl got it. “Annie, are you doing this because you don't want to be stuck in the Safe Zone...with the children?” Annie blanched and fidgeted, then leaned even closer and lowered her voice to a whisper too.

“I can't be a mother!” she hissed. The poor girl looked desperate. “I signed up to watch the kids for a few hours, not eighteen years! I know I protected them for a day but I don't...I can't...I'd rather do anything else! I feel bad about it, I don't want to abandon them, but they aren't mine! I can't...I just can't!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. Now I understand. Nobody's going to make you do that.”

“But I'm almost the only one without a level and who hasn't killed monsters and of course you're going to leave me behind with them if I don't do something to be important somewhere else!”

“Okay. I get it. I won't let that happen. You will have some other job, I promise. But,” Karl stressed, “right now we are all being stretched and having to do things we don't want to. Somebody has to care for the kids today. Maybe it will be Maria, maybe Chenelle, maybe Jake or Doug or Michael. What we need to do is talk to people and ask them who is willing to do it. I can think of a few different ways it can go. So we will talk about it after breakfast and come up with a plan. Can you work with me on this?”

Annie gave a frantic nod.

“Okay. I also want to point out that if you really do want to be a mage after you think it over, I'd be thrilled to have you. But let's try not to fall into one long term trap while running away from a different one, okay? I've seen that happen too many times to good people. So, sit down and think about what you want to be.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, one more thing. Are you in Terry's year?” Karl asked.

“Yeah, we're both freshmen.”

“Are you over fourteen?”

“I'm fifteen. Terry skipped a year. Why?”

“I just wanted to double check that you were old enough to have a class in the first place.” Annie's eyes widened.

“OH! Yeah, Terry told me about that last night. Scared the crap out of her that she might have been classified as a kid and not been able to do things.”

Karl nodded. “Good point, that's something to watch out for if we rescue kids who are twelve and thirteen. Thanks, Annie.”

“No problem, Mr. Hausman.” She walked off. Another action item for the list, Karl thought, as Jake came back.

“Okay, the mage thing is on hold for the moment, but we probably will need to use one of those scrolls to get a mage started at some point. You said you had other things to talk to me about?”

“Oh, yes. Okay, first, I managed to sell some of the monster body parts we've collected since nobody has alchemy and I couldn't think of a use for them. That got us four silver.”

“That's great! Wait, alchemy is a thing now?”

“It's basically System chemistry, lots of things abstracted over so it looks medieval. I plan to learn it soon, but not yet. Second, I put up some auctions on twelve hour timers, since I have the most practice with auctioning things online. Not a lot of it sold, but we got an extra three silver and change from it once the rest sold to the shop. I still have a couple of auctions up, including one for Maria; her parents had a nice painting and she wanted to see if she could get anything for it before it decays.”

“Now Jake, are these other humans bidding on these things? Or just the shop?”

“I actually think a lot of aliens are bidding, believe it or not. I'm wondering if we can try to auction some of our spices, jewelry, coins, stamps or other art. Alien collectors might go for the novelty factor.”

“I find it disturbing that that is one of the more natural seeming things I've learned in the past couple of days.”

“Tell me about it. I feel as if my head is filled to bursting with things I am learning from this book.”

“Yes, what is that? It looks kind of like a tablet.”

“It really is an alien tablet, basically. This one is jam packed with the help files and index, but they're only a couple of silver and you can basically buy movies, books, you name it.”

“What else is for sale? Anything we can afford?”

“Almost. For example, for you there's a basic shield you can get for twenty-five silver. Decent swords seem to go for half a gold and up. Tons of books I would gladly spend the rest of my life reading about galactic civilization, but survival has to come way before that. These things are out of our range but might not be by the end of the day, the way we are ramping up.”

“Be sure to check for replacements for little tools. Timepieces. Binoculars. Compasses. Maps. Walkie talkies. Those could make a huge difference.”

“Will do.”

“What about food? Is that for sale?”

“You can basically get any Earth food you want, one meal for a silver.”

“What about groceries? Can we buy basics in bulk like a supermarket? Food is going to be an issue sooner or later.”

“I've got some notes. I don't know if we'll be able to buy enough to feed ourselves, though.”

“Good to know. We already have a grocery run as one of our priorities for the day. Anything else pressing?”

“Not that I can really think of at the moment.”

“What have you learned about the System, overall?”

“Well if you want general statistics I don't have them for you. The book explains how to get at information but there are lots of restrictions. Basically, there are so many files in the System help that most of it is restricted access until such time as you actually need the information to do something. You can sometimes coax facts out of it but it's kind of an acquired skill, and doesn't always work; I'm still working on it.

“Basically just about everything on Earth is in the process of decaying to a sort of default 'nature' state; so roads will crumble, buildings will collapse, fancy equipment fails first but simpler things eventually will as well. If there's something you really love you can spend a System token to 'Systemize' it and then it becomes basically an improved version of itself that self-repairs when it sits in a Safe Zone for a while.”

“Anything about the nature of spawns?”

“Not a lot. Apparently in addition to common and uncommon, there are rare spawns, legendary spawns, and maybe one or two other kinds, that will be added in stages in the near future.”

“That's what I was afraid of.” Karl hesitated. “This is a weird idea, but...see if you can find any information on coexisting with monsters, or negotiating peace with the humanoid ones. Learning their languages. I don't expect anything but we'd be fools not to check.”

“Um...” Jake paused. His jaw worked for a moment. “Okay. But a word of advice, don't mention that in front of my Dad. I'll do it, under protest, because I know it makes logical sense, but I won't pretend I like the idea.”

“I don't either, honestly, but I dislike getting everyone killed even more. But thanks for being forthright with me about it.”

“Yeah well, people who have the spare brainpower to lie don't have as much to think about as I do.”

“I know the feeling,” Karl said. “Good work.” He turned to go.

“Oh, wait!” Karl sighed and Jake grimaced. “Sorry, thought I was done. I have found out a little bit about how individual classes work. I'm telling people things as I find them out. I've had more success with the Tinker class because the System is less grudging with information when it is directly relevant to the asker's current intentions. But you were talking about people being forthright and that reminded me of a paladin thing.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Apparently you get some of what are called 'passive abilities' with your class, as well as a few active ones that cost you stamina instead of mana. They're like specialized powerups to your charisma. I'm not 100% sure but I think you might get a sort of lie detector ability at some stage, plus the reverse.”

“The reverse?”

“Convincing people of your sincerity when you're actually sincere.”

Karl pondered. “Like passing a lie detector test someone else gave me.”

“I think? You'll have better luck coaxing the information out of the System if you try things and then ask about it.”

“Thank you, Jake. I think combat skills are more urgent for me to practice at the moment, but I'm clearly going to need those as well.”

“Food!” Maria called, and meals started getting passed around to everyone. Terry was reluctantly dragged from bed by an excited Daniel and led downstairs from her chosen sleep spot to join them. Karl realized that a lot of people were looking at him expectantly.

I'd better come up with a plan soon.