Warned by the noise back at the first “corpse”, the group was more carefully thorough with the second; Barbara Williams vented her frustration by messily working on removing the head with dozens of chops of a sword, screaming herself hoarse, while others stood back from the spray of black blood and occasionally contributed a fiery arrow to slow regeneration as she slashed again and again. She hadn't quite finished when George called out, “Incoming!”

A moment later everyone else could hear it too; loud crashing through the trees. Barbara abandoned her task to others, whirling and charging towards the noise. A moment later Terry appeared, tumbling out of a tree, bounding to her feet, taking a quick look and asking, “Too soon?” in a loud hoarse voice.

Karl still had only a bare handful of health points to his name and not enough mana to cast even a single healing hands spell. But he slowly got to his feet, hobbled over and looted the corpse of the troll in front of him, just to make completely sure that it was dead. Then he started limping towards the treeline where he expected the third troll. When did I get a leg injury? He wondered absently.

Terry jogged diagonally away from her mother, chest heaving, as Barbara tore across the property towards her. The cheerleader turned back to the trees and shouted, “Helloooooooo? Over here, Fugly!” while waving with one hand. She kept jogging back towards the group.

“Hey...guys...a little...help?” she gasped as she got closer.

Karl saw that Doug and Christine were staying on decapitation duty while a lot of the other classers were heading towards the treeline. They hadn't gotten far when the third troll smashed a small tree aside and emerged.

“Heeeeere I am, Fugly!” Terry shouted. The troll's eyes lit with rage as it saw its fallen brethren; they settled on Terry and the creature roared near to shattering eardrums, then charged.

Terry's mother raced to intercept it, screaming, “YOU STAY AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER!”

Everyone appeared to be tired, but Michael resumed shooting an assortment of arrows. Jo was running over to join Barbara in attacking its legs. Karl noticed some of the people in robes sitting down to rest and recover mana before getting back into the fight. He groaned and gave his right arm a few experimental swings, wincing at the pain and wondering whether he could use full force without re-injuring himself.

He looked around to see what else needed doing. The volunteers were on the road, with their escort of six warriors, a healer, and Sheriff McPhee. He trusted her to see them to safety. The casters were defended, because there was only one troll left and it was busy with several attackers. Karl checked his position and realized that he could be a last-ditch defense for the casters from his location. So not completely useless, while he waited to recover. Conscience assuaged, he concentrated on taking deep even breaths, and trying to sense the healing going on in his body.

Doug and Christine finished killing the second troll, so the rate of arrow fire on the third soon increased again. Doug moved closer to the troll fight to wait his turn. Jake was pacing back and forth, holding something in one hand, looking for the right sort of opening. Chenelle walked over towards the other casters, but changed course to approach Karl instead.

“Thank you for coming to our rescue so quickly, Sir Karl.”

Karl nodded. “You're welcome. All three groups hit delays, it seems. The first two did poorly on gathering food. How did your team do?”

“One second.” Chenelle gestured, and Jo glowed golden. She never took her eyes off the fight. “I need to focus on those currently getting hurt, or I'd gladly heal you. Tapped yourself out, I take it?”

“Almost entirely. It was that or watch Jim die, so...” Karl couldn't shrug without pain, so he just tilted his head.

“I like that you've got some better armor. Actually, a lot of people have better armor. And we have some new people.”

“I came into some gold from an auction. Easy come, easy go.”

“You saved people's lives. Again.” Chenelle squinted, then gestured.

“Eh, there's no point in keeping score on that. We all save each others' lives every day lately. We needed the trick arrows to have even a chance against these things. Tabitha learned fireball, which helped. I suspect Jake helped with the shopping. Barbara and Jo are doing a good job of 'tanking', which means I can catch my breath, and Terry as usual succeeded brilliantly in her mission with nigh perfect timing. I also noticed that you saved my bacon back there too. Thank you.”

“You're welcome. It's the job,” she said with a smile.

“So when you have a moment, how did you do with food foraging?”

Chenelle shrugged. “Everyone's inventories are full of groceries, so pretty good I guess. We didn't have the carrying capacity to take it all.”

Karl grunted. “Good. By any chance, was the market full of metal shelving?”

Chenelle was quiet for a long moment. “That's inspired. You could stack a lot of metal in one inventory slot that way, couldn't you? I'm sorry, it didn't occur to me to check whether the shelves were metal or plastic, but the mission was food.”

“And I'm glad you focused on the mission, because we struck out. Our group got a pile of wolf and bear meat, at least. The other got some nuts and things. We managed to get 32 metal from shelving in a pharmacy, less than I'd hoped, and we had to spend nearly all of it immediately.”

“Karl, do you have any mana yet?”

“I could manage one healing hands.”

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

“Good, because I'm down to my last two heals.”

“I'll head over there then. It's...um...I'm glad you're all right,” Karl finished awkwardly, and shuffled forward, feeling his shoulder. Damn it, I miss the easy companionship from before. I suppose... Karl shoved the thoughts aside for the moment. Focus.

One of Jake's creations was smoldering on the troll's stomach, and the troll was starting to look like a pincushion. Abruptly it flinched and arched its back. Karl knew what that probably meant, and smiled. Terry must have gotten her second wind.

With everyone's full concentration on it, the third troll did not last quite as long as the others. Once it fell, Tabitha immediately set to burning the body while Jo and Barbara alternated strikes on the neck. Finally the head was severed. Jake immediately rummaged around and took out some vials, that he proceeded to scoop up troll's blood into. He'd gotten the Alchemy skill at some point and was hoping to find uses for such things.

Everyone went around and looted all three bodies. Someone suggested taking the heads back and putting them on pikes outside the walls to scare off monsters, but several people pointed out that as soon as they were left alone, the heads were going to crumble into dust. There was some whistling as people examined their loot. Each person got one System token, and three gold pieces. Apparently the System referred to them as Hill Trolls.

Karl quickly counted how many people had participated in the fight...Thirteen times three is not enough for an expansion. And it wouldn't be fair to ask them all to donate it all anyway. It's good that people are earning their own money. It just would be really nice to have enough beds for everyone, for starters.

They headed back quickly, not wanting to face another fight before getting home, although they did announce themselves, and the scouts—Terry, George, Jim, and Christine—quickly checked for signs of survivors at each house along the way. A couple of times Terry asked who had spare inventory space, so there was presumably some looting going on as well. So long as they weren't stealing from the living, Karl was happy to have more resources.

He wracked his brain trying to think of what objects would have lots of metal and would stack in inventory. Aside from shelves, and metal folding chairs, he was coming up empty. It wasn't as if they could push cars around in this hilly area, although motorcycles might be a bit more feasible. He made a mental note to see if anyone knew of a motorcycle dealership nearby. What I wouldn't give for a map showing all the businesses in a ten mile radius...

Along the way, they found a couple of kids who had been surviving alone in their parents' house for over four days. Richie and Davy Bronson jumped at the chance to come along. Now that people understood better what their new home was like, they were able to advise the kids each to pack a suitcase of clothes, any food they could stack in inventory with more in a bag, and anything particularly valuable that they might try to sell to the aliens. When Jim escorted them to join the group, his eyes were red, but he angrily refused to say anything about it.

We're tenacious, Karl mused. People you'd never expect to survive find a way. Myself a case in point. Stubbornness and luck.

They didn't find any other survivors on the walk home. When they approached the walled Safe Zone, the boys made lots of exclamations. Once they turned onto Post Road, Christine watched the east and Michael the west as they approached. They were almost to the gate when the cheering started.

Karl looked up, and the wall was lined with at least a dozen residents, applauding their return. Karl was startled, but when he glanced Terry's way, she was watching him expectantly. He made himself smile and wave as they walked up. Karl registered the two boys as residents, and the group walked into the community center to more applause. Chenelle, Doug, Christine, Alain, and Chad went to the kitchen to unload all the foodstuffs they had looted before getting pinned down.

We lost two on the mission, two on the wall earlier, but no one died on the rescue mission. I guess that counts as a win by today's standards. Overwhelming firepower turned out to be just barely enough. Karl thought about how close they'd come to losing Jim and shuddered for a moment. That was the closest shave since Terry's father. The healing hands spell had almost failed to take. The System had been that close to declaring Jim dead.

The cafeteria was filled with excited conversation. Everyone wanted to hear how the original mission had gone, and then all the details of the rescue mission. They were thrilled to hear that they had brought lots of food back, and that there was still more for the taking.

Richie and Davy got to meet the other kids. They were all happy to share stories. None of them were the same age, but Richie and Cindy were only a year apart, so Cindy finally had company in the 'Junior' category of children aged 7-14. The two disliked each other at first sight, but soon were talking survival methods with cold practicality.

There was much discussion of the new armor, a lot of it envious. There were over a hundred people in Endurance now, and most of them didn't have equipment anywhere near as good. Karl was trying to figure out how to deal with the issue when Paul surprised him by stepping up and clapping for attention.

“Congratulations on a successful mission! Those using the new sets of armor who don't have immediate duties, please drop them off upstairs in the second meeting room where the pile of spare weapons is. That office will be the armory until we have more buildings set up.”

There was bit of a lull as people silently reacted to this statement in various ways. Karl wasn't sure what to say; he'd simply thought of the money and gear as lost to him, donated to the individuals who fought to help on the rescue mission. Paul was way ahead of him, and ahead of the problem.

“Now that Endurance has all this new armor, it will be made freely available to anyone who needs it on behalf of the Safe Zone. Fortunately System gear is 'one fit sizes all' so anyone with an appropriate class can wear it, and people without classes have no restrictions on their armor yet. We will all be much safer going forward. And it's all thanks to Sir Karl's generosity with basically his entire windfall, so let's give him a round of applause for saving our butts again!”

The applause started slowly but built quickly. Karl was very impressed with Paul's adroit handling of the situation. He didn't miss the way Paul had succinctly told everyone that Karl had had a windfall (and thus hadn't been secretly hoarding wealth), and had spent nearly all of it on behalf of Endurance, very neatly defusing resentment over Karl's sudden wealth and heading off a flood of demands for money from others, and greatly reducing the envy over armor, since anyone who wanted to could use it.

Karl could tell that there was still some unhappiness on the part of people who had thought that they were being given their own personal set of armor, for free, and now were being told to give it back. But given the general happiness of the residents with the situation, the lack of any definitive statement that the armor was a gift, the fact that they could still use the armor whenever they wanted and just had to share it with others, and that refusing to do so might cause other people to die, such feelings were for the most part damped down quickly.

Paul waited for the applause to die down. “Scout classes, I believe there are enough sets of armor to go around for you. Since you are all basically our firemen, and may be asked to go out and scout on a moment's notice, hang onto the armor you've been issued for now so you have it ready for use. Thanks for all your work clearing the way!” And Paul started clapping hard again, so people joined in.

Karl leaned over so he could mumble to Paul, “that was very well done.”

“I practiced the wording on that while you were gone,” he quietly admitted. “The social problems were going to give me nightmares.”

“It paid off. Thank you.”

“Thank you, Sir Karl.”