The drive back to the center was uneventful as far as attacks were concerned. It appeared as though the time that was spent out scouting was having the added effect of scaring off the monsters in the area. The team managed to kill a good number of monsters on the trip. It might be that the creatures decided to find easier targets. While out scouting, there had been three more groups of people that were found.
A group of survivors had been huddled in a movie theater and when they heard the vehicle going by, they had run out to see if they could get help. Tom assured them that they had cleared the path to the Trammel Crow Center and gave them directions to get there. Second, they found a larger group of people who were holed up in a hotel. The manager on duty had locked the doors, but goblins had managed to break the glass. After several people had died trying to hold them back, the people managed to get some of the furniture in the way of the doors so the goblins couldn't get in again.
Lastly, they came upon a mother holding the hands of two small children, wandering the streets aimlessly. Sobbing loudly, the children were going to attract unwanted attention. When Tom had pulled up next to them the kids hid behind the mother who just continued to walk forward, not blinking at all. Derek had gotten out of the vehicle and stood in front of her. Tear tracks were running down her face as she stared listlessly off into space. Shaking her shoulders had gotten her to look at him. She began to mumble something incoherent, and when asked what she was saying she finally scrunched her face up and began to cry uncontrollably.
"My baby! I left my baby! They took it! We couldn't stop them!" And she sank to her knees and wept.
Her children tried to comfort her, but they appeared to be somewhere in the neighborhood of four years old and just cried while they tried to hug their mother. Derek placed the woman and the children in the back of the Tahoe and Kiera crawled over the seats to comfort her.
There are two sides to apocalypse movies that no one puts much focus on. This is one of them. The trauma of the inevitable loss, and tough decisions that have to be made so that others can survive. The other is the amount of bodies that littered the streets. On just about every sidewalk, street, and intersection there were bodies. Most of them were mutilated or cut to pieces by goblins. Some were half-eaten by wolves or other animals. It wasn't just adults either. Teenagers, kids, and even some turned-over strollers. The sight was heartwrenching and stomach-turning all at the same time.
Flies were beginning to be attracted to the corpses that were starting to smell slightly from sitting out in the sun. They hadn't begun to bloat yet, but that was only a matter of time. No one was going to be out here cleaning up the streets. They were too busy trying to survive. Scavengers were the best hope for that to happen. The party couldn't even loot the bodies because money was worthless in the blink of an eye. Humans didn't carry weapons because we lived in a peaceful society with laws and police to do the dirty work of handling criminals. This was Texas, so there might be a gun on a person here or there, but the risk of getting out on the off chance someone was carrying one was not worth it.
Convenience stores or grocery stores would be worth raiding soon. But that would take a team of people to pull off and multiple vehicles for the number of people they needed to provide for now. The party drove by many more buildings, not sure how many of them might hold other survivors.
Tom also considered the fact that soon there would be an issue of gasoline for vehicles. The power grid would fail eventually and everything would become dark. If they got enough people together they might be able to get some kind of system working for a building or two, but that was going to be a while out. Maybe they could craft something like gasoline? Crafting seemed to be a big deal since there was a whole page dedicated to it in the tutorial. That would be something he would need to look into later. For now, they just needed to get back to the center.
They arrived around 20 minutes later. The security team had been busy putting barriers in place around the center. They had a guard posted at a drive-in point waiting for them.
"Hey guys, welcome back. Seems like you had an eventful time," The guard said looking at the vehicle with its new goblin decor.
"We did pretty well. Did the other survivors make it here? We were expecting about three waves of them." Tom replied.
"They did. They are inside being taken care of. Brian wants to see you too by the way. You can find him in the conference room again," The guard said.
Tom nodded and they pulled into the parking garage and parked the Tahoe near the building entrance. Piling out of the car, Kiera helped the mother into the building while James and Jay both took a kid. James had put one of the children on his back and was galloping around like a horse making neighing noises while this little boy laughed and kicked his legs. Who knew James would be the one good with kids?
Making their way to the conference room after passing off the children and their mother to others in the building, they found Brian sitting and waiting. There had been ten chairs in the conference room, and with the addition of all the new party members the room was becoming quite full.
"Welcome back. I see you've sent more people our way. I am glad to see you are the kind of person who helps others, but we are in a position where we are not going to have enough provisions." Brian said.
"We can't just leave people out there to be killed," Tom replied.
"No, you are right. But we are going to need more supplies. So I'm going to need you to go back out soon and see what you can find. Raid grocery stores first. Food is the number one priority." Brian said. "We need to be able to help these people until we can provide for ourselves. And that is going to be a good while. So try to focus on non-perishable items."
"We can do that. We just need to stop, settle our team on classes, then gear them up for the fights to come." Tom said.
Stolen story; please report.
"Understood. Now, there is another matter we need to discuss." Brian began. "I've talked to some of the others here and we think this is a good time to look at starting a guild so we can see about getting some of the other bonuses. We want your team to lead the guild."
Tom was a little shocked at the news. When he thought about it though, it made sense why they would ask them. He had been the one helping all the others and giving them advice. Though sometimes it felt more like orders.
"I have one condition if we consider that," Tom said.
"And what is that?" Brian asked.
"You have to be the guild administrator," Tom replied.
Brian was quiet for a long moment before answering. "Fine. I've been doing the job anyway, I might as well get some benefit from it by being a member of the only group of people I've met that I think could survive this fucking hellscape."
"OK. If you agree then we will consider it. I can't give you an answer right now because I need to confer with my party first." Tom said.
"That is understandable. I'll leave you all here to use the conference room however you need. Feel free to call for me if you need something. For now, I need to go work on setting up some management systems for this place. We need to organize people into what they are going to be good at." Brian said, and he got up and left the conference room.
"OK guys, I want you to be thinking about that possibility now. But first, we need to get everyone their classes." Tom said, standing up at the head of the table. "Everyone should be able to pick those. You are going to get a portal that opens and gives you a book. When you read the book it's going to fill your mind with information about your class. It's going to hurt. Sorry in advance, but it goes away after a few minutes. Are all three of you still set on the classes you picked before?"
All three of them nodded.
"Alright then, let's get going. We need to also get gear from the vending machine and then go out and get those supplies. I'd also advise that anyone who hasn't already assigned their attribute points, not do that until they read the book. Kevin, I know you threw a bunch at Strength and that was a pretty safe bet, but the rest of you need to read that book. It will give you some advice on where to put them. At least in the beginning." Tom said.
Kiera, Jay, and Kevin all began to look at their screens individually, reading over any notifications that they got while we were out. Tom, James, and Derek decided to do the same while the others were getting their selections made. It appeared that the ogres being so much tougher than the goblins meant that they gave out uncommon monster cores. From what they could remember, the uncommon cores were worth ten of the common ones. Also, they were each given one for every ogre they had dealt damage to. Poor Jay only got one of them, but if he needed more equipment we would be sure to help him get it.
Kevin was the first to make his selection. He seemed dead set on Barbarian. A red portal opened for him, and the leather-bound book was also bright red with orange inlaid lettering. Jay and Kiera opened their portals next. Kiera's was a bright purple color along with the book, and Jay's was a grey color similar to that of a rain cloud. All three of the party members began to read their books and all three got the same headaches everyone else had from making their selections.
However, Kevin underwent a bit of a change after he read his book. His body began to shift and move under the skin like works or snakes were writhing under them. Suddenly his muscles grew to about three times the size they had been before. No longer did he look like a twig with a head, now he looked more like a bodybuilder with muscles bulging from every part of his body. His shirt ripped off of him, and his pants looked like they were about to explode off at any moment.
Toes stuck out of the ends of his shoes and he appeared to be about six inches taller than he was a moment ago. The watch he had been wearing had burst off of his arm and now was embedded in the wall next to him from the sheer force of the undoing.
For his part, Kevin had the decency to look down at himself, hold one hand up, and yell, "I HAVE THE POWER!"
"Holy shit dude!" James said. "What the fuck?"
"It's part of the barbarian package. I get a boost to Strength if I don't take any beginner skills except Rage." Kevin explained. "There were a few I would liked to have had, but the strength boost seems like the best option for the beginning."
"So you're saying that if we all boost our Strength we will begin to look like that?" Kiera asked.
"No," Kevin chuckled. "This is a special feature called Barbarian Build. It's not really a direct representation of my Strength attribute, but it is intimidating."
Kiera sagged in relief. She really didn't want to look like a roided-out Amazonian woman just because she added one too many points to the Strength attribute.
Jay and Kiera didn't look any different. They each chose less invasive classes though and their skills would come into play on the battlefield or in espionage. With each of the classes selected, the crew headed up to the vending machine in the cafeteria and all got new equipment for their class. It was a much better selection for them.
Jay picked out a set of kamas attached to chains along with some leather armor and throwing knives to compliment his daggers and shortsword, which he still kept.
Kiera actually got a lute to play on as well as a rapier to compliment the crossbow. She said she was going to likely pick up a rifle later on, but for the time being that was too expensive. Leather armor was also on the menu for her repertoire followed by a couple of spell scrolls for her to learn.
For his part, Kevin got a better Greataxe and gave the original one to Brian to use for the security team. He also purchased a loin cloth saying that barbarians got a boost to defense when not wearing much. Thankfully the loincloth had an undercarriage compartment similar to underwear that kept everyone from getting a view when a breeze blew.
Derek purchased some much heavier armor that was a combination of leather and plate. It wasn't full plate as that was unwieldy, but it did have metal plates covering the most vital areas over the leather armor making him much more durable than most everyone else.
James also chose leather armor and upgraded his gun from the Glock to two Sig Saur 1911 handguns. He also upgraded his axes to all steel battle axes that were designed for throwing. James had been the only one to damage all three of the ogres so he had a bit of spending power. Using almost all of his cores, he also got new sets of bullets and magazines for the 1911s. He also gave the Glock to Brian for the security team and the remaining bullets and magazines he purchased before.
Tom had taken the most time to choose. There were so many options for him. He currently liked the way his build was going with the greatsword, so he decided to go with chain armor, metal bracers and grieves for defense, and some spell scrolls. He learned the spells Dark Weapon Flame which would give him the ability to light his weapons ablaze with a dark purple fire that dealt both additional fire and darkness damage when striking an opponent, Doppelganger which allowed him to make a copy of himself that couldn't do damage, but would throw off an opponent, and Lighting strike which sent a bolt of lightning out to an enemy and had a chance of recasting to another target one time.
Brian came back to the cafeteria after taking the weapons they gave him to the security team and spoke with them.
"I have more news that you are absolutely going to want to hear. I think we need to go to the conference room first though, you'll want to be sitting down."