CRAIG ROTHBURN'S POV
I was furious and could barely stop myself from unsheathing my sword and taking this pompous asshole's head off.
Not only did he deny us aid, but he also tried to ask for compensation for using their pylon. All we were trying to do was use the points we earned from hunting the beasts in the forest to buy food.
Three factions had already turned us down but none of them were as rude as this asshole. He took what little power he had gotten and it went straight to his head. I was higher level than him and could kill him easily, but that wouldn't help matters.
I could feel the urge to take my anger out on him rising as more words oozed out of his mouth. If this went on any longer, I might not be able to hold myself back.
All the previous groups were polite and at least let us use their pylons, but this guy wanted to charge us a fee just for using it. One group even repaired all of our gear for us before we went on our way.
That one was particularly heart-wrenching. I thought we had finally found a faction that would take us in after a week of traveling, but in the end, they came to the same conclusion as all the rest. The elder gentleman that I spoke with was civil at least, much better than this guy.
The elderly gentleman I spoke to must have been an old grandpa before the system came. It was odd to see the effects that stats had on old age, I wasn't as young as I used to be but my body felt better than ever and I was only middle aged. Late middle aged, but still middle aged.
He came with a group of the strongest people that I'd seen thus far in the tutorial. Two people in particular stood out and I could still remember the feeling that they gave off, seemingly subconsciously. They were both level 22 and had a presence to them that I couldn't ignore. The reason I think it was a subconscious aura was because they didn't seem to be doing it on purpose.
The blacksmith in particular was very polite and decent to talk to, yet the feeling persisted throughout the conversation. It was like facing down one of the monsters during the waves. No one else in our group felt it but I knew it was there. I wasn't crazy.
We had been traveling for a while by then and I was running on fumes so that could have been it, but I didn't think so. All of the walking, along with making sure nobody fell behind, added to the job of keeping everyone safe. I didn't know how I was still going. Rebecca, my wife, was a bastion to lean on. If she wasn't here I didn't know what I would have done.
After the strong group and older man went back to discuss the request amongst themselves I thought we had a decent chance of getting approval. They seemed like nice people and their camp looked pristine. Their wall in particular stood out and looked way different than the one that was around our camp. It must have been upgraded or something.
They deliberated for a while before they came to break the news. Even though they said no, they still helped as much as they could. It was nice to see that even though the world had ended, there were still decent people.
The hoping was the worst part. Every time we would stumble onto a faction we all couldn't help but hope this was the one, only to be denied. Living in the wilderness was hard and it was only going to get worse. Predators hunted you at all times of the day and traveling at night was a good way to end up dead. Even with experience spending nights in the forest, people still disappeared at night. The monsters were getting stronger too. At first, they were easy enough to kill but their levels increased with each passing day.
Food was becoming an issue. As the monsters got stronger we needed more people to take each one down. What was once 5 hunting groups of 4 people turned into 4 groups of five and lately, 3 groups of 6 with some stragglers. With not as many groups hunting we weren't bringing enough food in to feed all of us. That was why we had to supplement our hunting with buying food from the store.
Which brough me back to the arrogant fool's incessant rambling. He was going on about how he was letting us use his pylon. If this was how he acted I felt sorry for the people who lived here.
We wouldn't survive until the next faction if we didn't restock at this one, so I had to grit my teeth and pay the outrageous fee. I swore to myself that I would get revenge on this asshole when I got the chance and it made me feel better about paying him.
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When we initially lost our camp, and so many of my family died, I wanted to take it out on the group we took in. It was their fault and I wanted them to pay. The only reason I calmed my anger was because Rebecca talked me out of it.
Now that we were all traveling through the forest, we would need as many people as possible. If nothing else then to act as a buffer.
Under the guise of rotating shifts, I had them rotating between leading and bringing up the rear, just in case we got ambushed in the woods. It felt wrong to use them like that, but all I had to do was think of that night and the feeling went away.
I couldn't stop picturing when walls came down and the monsters came through. When they broke through and got through the gate... the screams would haunt me forever. I could still taste the smoke in my throat and feel the heat from the fire. A stray fire bolt had caught our huts on fire and the whole camp went up in flames.
My back was still burned from trying to get as many of the kids out of the cabin as I could. We thought they would be safe in there, away from the fighting. We were wrong.
When the cabin went up in flames, I dropped everything to rush toward it. I left the front lines and sprinted as fast as I could toward the burning structure. I didn't even say anything to my brother, who was fighting the beasts next to me at the time.
I never saw him again.
Alea and Olivia were the only thing on my mind and I wasn't going to let my little girls burn. That was a terrible way to go and a fate I wouldn't wish on anyone.
Luckily, I got to my daughters before the building was too engulfed in the flames. After securing them and making sure they were safe, I went back to get as many as I could. I got fewer than I liked to think about.
Even with these magical stats and skills, suffocation was still deadly. I could hold my breath for a lot longer now, but it still wasn't infinite. All my levels and stats equated to nothing that night.
Rebecca found me face down a foot into the doorway of the fire from another trip into the building. A burning log had fallen on my back and burnt through my clothes to the bone. I still had shooting pains in my back occasionally.
I got it healed, but the burn scar remained. As would other scars.
I think that was another reason that I didn't take my anger out on the Gavin's. By the time I could get up and move around, my anger had faded. Now I was just sad. There was still anger, oh there was anger, but it wasn't the white hot in-the-moment anger, no, it was the simmering rage that lay beneath the surface.
My parents had died long before the system came in a car crash, but my brother left to join them that night. My nephew joined them not long after. I got him out of the cabin, but he didn't pull through, the fire had been too much for his small body to take.
I didn't like to think about it. The burns... it was unpleasant.
We had been struggling for a while before it finally came crashing down on us. My sister-in-law got trampled by a deer early on and it had been downhill from there.
We had never been the most orderly of families and the apocalypse only exacerbated the issue. Everyone wanted to do things their own way and that led to fights.
What we should buy from the store, how many points each person would spend, who did what jobs. Everything led to a fight. No one wanted to skin the beasts for leather, no one wanted to go into the forest for food, no one wanted to get their hands dirty with work.
If we weren't forced to defend ourselves from the monsters, they probably wouldn't want to kill anything either. I never realized how pampered we were before it was all taken away.
The first few days were rough to get through, but after what happened on the third wave, people shaped up. Karlie didn't deserve what happened. Trampled to death by monstrous deer wasn't a pretty way to go.
My brother didn't take the death of his wife very well and nearly killed himself trying to get revenge on the foul beasts before we stopped him.
Even after what happened, everyone hoarded their points for personal gain and it took yelling and screaming to get people to spend any on the wall we needed.
We lost people almost every wave until we had some semblance of safety when we finally bought the wall. This whole thing felt like one long nightmare that I couldn't wake up from. What made matters worse was that no one helped us.
We sent out letters asking for aid, or anything people could spare, and no one answered. When the Gavin's initially showed up after the 10th wave, we thought it was because of our letter, not because they were refugees.
We didn't think anything of it. We thought the more, the merrier. The more people we had, the easier the waves would be. Oh how wrong we were. We just wanted to help them like we had been denied. No one could have guessed that decision would lead to our downfall. None of the refugees we took in were above level 12. At the time, it was below what most of our camp were at.
That was one of the main reasons we took them in. If we were more powerful than them, we wouldn't have to worry as much about deceitfulness. From the way they looked when they arrived, it would be far-fetched to think they were there for malicious reasons, but I had my girls to worry about so extra caution was necessary.
It wasn't until later that I put together why they were so low level. All of their fighters died when they had to flee their camp. What we were left with were the people who weren't powerful enough to do anything.
Every monster of the 11th wave was higher level than them. We had barely made it through the 10th wave and what we thought would help, doomed us to die.
I didn't know how much more of this I could take. The only thing keeping me going was the thought of my family dying. Every time I pictured them being eaten by monsters I found a little more in me to keep going.
If they weren't here I didn't think I could do this.