He climbed down from the wall and was the first out the gate to greet the newcomers. “Hello and welcome to Endurance! Terry, welcome back! I'm...very glad you're all right.”

“Hi, Sir Karl! I made some friends!” Terry dismounted, looking a little wobbly for the first time since Karl had met her. “I need to skill that up some more,” she mumbled. She turned and waved an arm at the other lead rider, who nodded.

“Hello, Sir Karl. My name's Jack Swift. Me and my partners are from the Lazy Circle Farm off Route 3. This is Cecily, and that's Dwayne. How are you doing?”

Karl smiled up at him. “About as well as anyone can these days. Are you looking to become residents?”

“No thank you, Sir. We've got our own Safe Zone up at the Farm. If you'd be willing to put us up for the night, we'd like to visit, though.”

“Certainly! We can find bunks for you at least. I'm afraid we don't have a barn yet, though. One moment while I check the guardian settings. We haven't had visitors before and haven't had horses...” Karl fumbled for a minute before nodding. “I think we're good.”

They opened the gate wider so that the horses could come through, then closed it up again once everyone was inside. Karl took their names, classes and levels, and found that he could mark them as 'visitors' with the System, and the horses too. As people started moving stone blocks up against it, Jack cleared his throat. “Begging your pardon, but we'd prefer to have the freedom to leave when we want.”

Karl looked back and forth a couple of times, then called out, “Leave one of the gate doors free! Our visitors might need to leave at any point.” Paul frowned, then nodded.

“We'll have to keep someone with high strength ready to move them, then,” he pointed out. Karl nodded.

“Thank you, Sir Karl. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

“I quite understand. We had an attack from a rare spawn on...Saturday, I guess it was. It almost got in, so we've been taking extra precautions since then.”

Karl gave them the two minute tour. “We're hoping to expand the housing again soon, but we're having trouble keeping up with demand.”

“How many residents do you have?”

“We have 165...no wait, 168 now, I think. Terry, your parents found three solo scout survivors today.”

“Cool. Karl, I got a lot to info dump on George, are you guys okay if I go off and do that now?” Terry was already bouncing with energy again.

“I'll sit in on that,” Paul piped up at once. Karl nodded and they both headed off.

“I'm impressed you found the metal to expand,” Jack commented. His expression softened as Danny, Richie and Davy ran up and excitedly began asking Cecily and Dwayne about the horses.

“It was definitely a challenge. How did you manage the initial thousand units?”

“Snow plows, trucks, any vehicle we could get the horses to pull into range. That gave us enough for the base and one expansion. Terry told us a lot about how you got set up. The girl seems to think you walk on water.”

Karl laughed. “Are we talking about the same Terry?”

Jack grinned back. “Is that Sir thing for real?” he asked next.

“Funny story there, actually.” Karl explained about Terry's PR campaign, and about the Titles.

“Good to know. Sir Karl, I guess I'm sort of being a diplomat here. What are your intentions?”

“Long term?” When Jack nodded, Karl frowned. “I've mostly been focused on survival. The food situation looks worrisome, but we've got a week or two to figure out what's next. We're barely keeping up with housing. We've been trying to rescue as many people as possible. In the longer term...I really want to learn all we can about the aliens because they're such a threat. And get reconnected to the rest of humanity, I guess. Get more news of the wider world.”

Jack digested that for a minute. “How about expansion?”

“Well, it looks like we're going to max out at eighty acres in a couple of weeks, unless we manage to get hold of another monster core. But if it takes three acres to support one person, we already would need over 450 acres and I'm not sure how that's going to happen.”

“My boy Jeremy is twelve. He's the only child with us who survived. He's been taking to that Shop like kids used to with their cellphones and their gaming. He's been digging into farming with the System, and it's not going to be quite as bad as you fear. He figures it's going to be more like one acre per person, maybe less. We've got two fields and a greenhouse along with the barn and the main house—the keep, now, I guess.”

“I'd love to compare notes. Do you think you'd be willing to talk to our Town Council so we can pick your brains? We're happy to share what we've figured out so far.”

“That's one of my main reasons for coming.”

“Great! What were the others?”

“Well, the other main one is settled by your obliviousness.”

Karl stiffened and frowned. “I beg your pardon?”

“That was a compliment. I was worried about you all doing a hostile takeover of my Safe Zone and it's pretty obvious that the thought hadn't even crossed your mind.”

“A hostile—? Oh. Right. I've seen the Notoriety videos.”

“Excuse me?”

Then Karl had to explain about Renown and Notoriety and the Earth feed. When he finished, Jack nodded. “I'd definitely like a few minutes to look through that myself.”

“Certainly. Well, at any rate, I hope it's obvious that we plan to be peaceful neighbors if you are. I definitely want to trade information, maybe other things...maybe have the kids visit each other?”

“Definitely sounds good to me. Would you happen to have any girl children around here?”

“Only one, why?” Karl asked warily.

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“Just thinking about problems down the road. I see three boys and my own, and nobody for them to date or marry when they're older.”

Karl sighed in relief. “And here I thought that I borrowed trouble.” He shook his head. “I'm not even going to think about that until we find out who survives the first winter, and then the arrival of the aliens.”

“Fair enough. I don't have as many people to worry about as you do, so I guess I worry farther out about each.”

“How many do you have, if I may ask?”

“You may. We're down to twenty.”

Karl winced. “Did you lose many to monsters?”

“I suppose you could say that,” Jack said bitterly. “Some of the escapees tried to take over.”

“Wait, what?”

“Your girl Terry is I guess briefing your people now. Solworth Penitentiary.” Karl shook his head; he didn't know exactly where this was going but he could guess.

Jack sighed. “One of the bastards was bragging about it before I put him down. It seems that common spawns didn't stand a chance when they appeared in the prison. All they did was cause some of the inmates to level up. Take a big strong guy, crank his Strength up to thirteen, and guess what happens?”

“A massive jailbreak.” Karl sighed. “How many?”

“I'm guessing the prison held a couple of hundred at most, but that's just me spitballing. Figure half of them got killed in the escape, and then they scatter in all directions. So about twenty five of them should come west towards us. There's ten fewer of them and three fewer of us, as of three days ago.”

“Enemy survivors?”

“At least five.”

“All right. How many miles away are you from here?”

“About ten or twelve.”

Karl clicked his tongue in annoyance. “It's a bit far, and we don't have communications between our Safe Zones, but any interest in a...mutual aid treaty?”

Jack raised his eyebrows. “Definitely! But anything that can take out this,” he waved his arm, “and all of your fighters, I don't see how much help we'd be against it.”

“I mean, if disaster strikes one of us, the other takes in survivors as best they can. I'm planning for the worst case.”

“Absolutely, I'll swear to that much right now.” They shook hands. “Looks like we're off to a good start.”

“Good people often are. You haven't lied to me once since you arrived, and I've returned the favor.”

Jack blinked. “Ah. Right, paladin. You've got some kind of truth sense?” Karl nodded. “Must be handy.”

“I haven't needed it much yet, but it definitely makes some things smoother. I butted heads with the leader of an arriving group, and they were about to leave and look for another place when she said the right things honestly so I had to take them in no matter how bristly she was.” Karl snorted. “I got my revenge, though.”

“Oh?”

“I made her the sheriff.”

Jack burst out laughing. “Sounds like you've got some real characters here.”

“I admit I contributed to the problem, but it's good to be the... temporary-king-until-the-election.” Karl made sure Jack was taking his comment in the right spirit, then cleared his throat. “Now that we've got a peace treaty, so to speak, care to talk trade?”

Jack got a wry smile. “Dwayne!” The young man with the horses looked up from the kids he was talking to, excused himself and came over. “Dwayne's a Trader class. Still a good shot with rifle or bow, though.”

Karl grinned. “Uh-oh, I'd better get Maria then. She's our Financier Class and runs the Treasury. Come on and I'll introduce you.” He started leading them to the community center and Maria's office. “But painting in broad strokes, non-Trader to non-Trader, we've got plenty of stone and wood, our funds are decent, and we've got a fair bit of knowledge. And you have horses at the very least and that's very interesting. If we could buy or borrow some horses for our scouts we could get a much better map of the area going.”

“We can trade maps too then.” As the walked across the cafeteria, lots of people watched curiously and called out greetings and questions.

“And stories would be welcome. After dinner is the usual time for it if you're willing to share.”

“I've never been one for public speaking, but Cecily will eat that right up.”

Dwayne stopped short, and let out a low whistle. They stopped and turned, to find him staring at the leaderboard. “So when Terry said she'd just leveled...”

“She hit seventh a few days ago. I guess she made eighth then? I thought she might.”

“Hey, can I look at your Shop for a second?” Jack asked.

“Of course, be my guest.”

Jack gawked for a moment before getting in the express lane, and shortly was at the pedestal. He emerged mere seconds later holding a piece of paper. “I was wondering if you'd seen this for sale.” He handed it over and Karl read.

Cost: 2 Copper

Item: News sheet, physical paper

Location: Earth, North America, United States, New England, New Hampshire

Date: Day 7 of the System

Contents:

Hello Out There!

If anyone can read this and understand, please reply in kind! If your location is hazardous to reveal, you can shorten it a little like we did.

Here in New Hampshire, the monsters are pretty thick on the ground. It's been two days since rare spawns started and we've fortunately only seen them in the distance, but we're killing an uncommon every day just keeping our area clear. I hope some places have it easier!

Metal is scarce in our neck of the woods, but some Safe Zones exist. We've heard of four now, including ourselves. Eventually I hope we'll all be talking to each other.

We are looking for news of the following people:

A list of about a hundred names followed, some with messages. Karl scanned the list quickly, and his eyes jumped to one in particular:

To Sir Karl Hausman, Endurance Safe Zone, New Hampshire:

Hi Sir Karl! It's Terry. I'm alive, and found some cool people, and I doubt you will see this before I get back but just in case, I gotta brag: I leveled! Woot! I should be back tomorrow evening. Love to my Mom and Dad.

Karl sat down heavily on one of the cafeteria benches. Connection. We have a connection to others. He stared at it for another few moments, then looked up at Jack with a tired smile. “Let's get Dwayne to Maria's office, and then if you're willing you can come with me over there to meet George.”

A half hour later, it was getting close to dinnertime, and George and Jack were still going a mile a minute. Karl stepped out to see how Cecily and the horses were faring. The kids were getting short rides around the five acres of the upper terrace, and Cecily and Christine were deep in conversation. Ryan came outside and rang a big hand bell six times, which apparently was the signal for dinner.

The cafeteria was starting to get a bit crowded with well over a hundred people eating at once. The visitors were overjoyed to get some of the cold cuts, and then fruit after that. When people were savoring their desserts, Karl stood up.

“People of Endurance, honored guests! It is the customary time for new introductions. A warm welcome to our new residents, and to our visitors!”

It turned out that Terry's parents had returned with six more survivors, found in three pairs. The newcomers were second and third level, which made sense. It was getting increasingly unlikely for anyone to survive out there without a class and gaining a level or two. They told fairly familiar stories at this point: generally they had had a relatively secure position with enough supplies to survive a week, and then either took a chance and ventured out to be found, or else answered when people from Endurance came by and announced themselves. Once the new residents had told their tales, Karl stood again.

“People of Endurance! Miss Cecily Tyne has graciously agreed to tell the story of our visitors! Lend her your attention now, lest you annoy your fellow residents with repetitive questions later! Miss Tyne?”