As the teams continued to train, the time passed with a mostly normal schedule. There were still the occasional scuffles with Stormcrusher and The Master, but all of the encounters were small and resulted in minimal injuries or deaths. Several weeks passed before the plan for taking down The Master came together with any semblance of a plan that wouldn't result in massive losses on both sides. Tom had become increasingly impatient as time passed and he began to feel as though he was failing those he had promised to save.

His personal growth had been his only source of solace during the time they spent waiting for preparations to be completed. The time they spent running through dungeons for more loot and XP had been a boon for the teams. James refused to re-enter The Mad Scientist dungeon and no one blamed him. Graham had joined them on several of their adventures into this dungeon instead and he was a huge help in teaching the others more fighting styles with their weapons.

Tom also summoned Bron daily to continue to teach them new training techniques. Happy to be making progress, Tom felt he was getting to a good place with most of his stats.

Tom Harris

Race: Human

Class: Warlock

Level: 28

Total XP: 1,116,250

XP To Next Level : 156,750

HP: 570/570

MP: 500/500

SP: 410/410

Attributes:

Unused Attributes Points: 0

Strength: 51

Constitution: 57

Dexterity: 38

Endurance: 41

Intelligence: 50

Wisdom: 50

Charisma: 100

Luck: 30

Non-Combat Skills:

Inspect

Level: 12, Rank: Novice

Combat Skills:

Vehicular Homicide

Level: 24, Rank: Initiate

Swords

Level: 23 Rank: Initiate

Summon Demonic Creature

Level: 32 Rank: Initiate

Fear

Level: 8 Rank: Beginner

Corruption

Level: 7 Rank: Beginner

Spells:

Eldritch Blast

Level: 18, Rank: Novice

Dark Ball

Level: 12, Rank: Novice

Dark Restoration

Level: 17, Rank: Novice

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Final Flash

Level: 12 Rank: Novice

Reaching one hundred in Charisma had given him a boost to the spells he cast that relied on this attribute as well as increased the likelihood that interactions would go well with others. This brought about questions about how Charisma actually affected others. Did this mean the System would alter the way people interacted with him? If so, could the System actually affect the way people think? That was scary to think about.

Tom had also noticed subtle changes in his appearance. The lines of his face became more defined, his body looked like it had been carved from stone now with all the training, and he noticed that more of the people in the guild would stare at him when he entered a room. He first brushed this off as being the guild leader, but he looked at himself in his bathroom mirror and had to admit he was looking quite attractive. Like those influencers he used to see on social media that people would flock to simply because they were beautiful.

Walking downstairs toward the lobby for his routine of training, Tom was stopped by Brian running up behind him, slightly out of breath.

"Wait! Tom!" Brian called out to him.

"What's up, Brian?" Tom said, turning to face him.

"You need to get to the basement. Herbert and Bohdan have something for you." Brian said, putting his hands on his knees.

"And you need to get out to train some more. Not good that you got winded coming here." Tom teased him.

"Fuck you. I'm administrative." Brian shot back at him.

"Doesn't matter. If you need to run from a monster, you can't be caught out of breath." Tom replied and patted him hard on the back as he walked off toward the stairs to the basement.

When he reached the bottom, He waved to Roland and greeted him good morning before continuing to the back of the room. Not only were Herbert and Bohdan there, but Harold was as well. All three had their backs turned, looking at something on a table.

"Hey, guys. Whatcha got for me?" Tom asked as he walked over to the table.

"This," Herbert said as he held up a small device that looked like a metal ball with interlocking pieces. On top of the device that Herbert held out to him, was a button that blinked every so often with a green light.

"You're gonna have to give me more to go off of," Tom replied, unsure what this was.

"We are calling it an anti-magic grenade. You press this button on top, and it blinks red for three seconds, then casts the anti-magic field spell that Bohdan showed us. Here, give it a go." Herbert explained and then placed the sphere into Tom's hand.

Tom looked the device over before turning and pressing the button. The light began to blink red and he threw it like a baseball. Flying threw the air with a whistling noise, the object rocketed across the room with Tom's increased stats. It suddenly froze in midair and with a beeping sound the parts of the sphere that looked interconnected expanded as a golden light shot out around it. A cube of energy now sat where the grenade had frozen encompassing the area in an anti-magic field.

"Mein forge!" Roland cried out.

Tom had thrown it far enough that it had caught Roland and his equipment in the anti-magic zone. Apparently, his forge ran on some kind of magic because the fires winked out as it enclosed him in the grenade's spell.

"Sorry, Roland! How long will it stay like that?" Tom asked looking embarrassed at having not thrown it in another direction.

"It lasts for the same duration of the spell, but you can press the button again to deactivate it," Herbert explained.

"That's amazing! How does it float there like that?" Tom asked.

"That was stupidly hard to get it to do. Before we added that, it would sit on the floor and only be half as tall as it normally was because the spell radius is normally at human height. It uses some of the mana stored in it for a stasis spell as well. But it only targets the grenade. Fortunately, the stasis spell is a targeting type instead of an area of effect." Herbert explained.

"And is it a one-time use item?" Tom asked, continuing his questions.

"No. It can be recharged with a person's mana. They just need to be holding it and channel mana into it. We tried to make it so that anyone could use it and since the base Intelligence for a person is ten, it requires less than one hundred mana to use. Though, barely." Bohdan explained, walking out to grab the sphere. "You will hold it in your hand like this, and allow your mana to flow into it to charge it."

Tom watched as Bohdan brought the sphere back over to the others after pressing the button on top. The light on top was now blinking yellow. When Bohdan had completed adding his mana to it, the light returned to flashing green.

"Awesome! So it's really casting two spells instead of one?" Tom inquired.

"Yes. We found a way to enchant a module with a rune to cast the spell when enough mana is available. So that is stored in the small mana battery we included. Then when the button is pressed the mana is discharged into the runes. The activation opens the sphere so that the power can be released. The three-second delay is actually the casting time of the anti-magic zone spell, but it's handy for being able to throw it." Herbert said as he grabbed the device from Bohdan.

"Excellent work! I know this has taken you so much time to get right. But it was totally worth it. Can we do this with other spells?" Tom asked, thinking of the utility of having a fireball or other damage spell in grenade form.

"We can put pretty much any spell in there as long as we know the rune for it. Bohdan will have to be our resident expert for a lot of that since it was his knowledge of magic that made that possible. Also, Harold was a huge help. His experiments with magic and how it functions were invaluable to the process." Herbert praised both of his colleagues and Tom gained new respect for the man, seeing as he was not hogging any of the glory.

"And how long do they take to produce? We are going to need quite a few." Tom thought about how many people may be involved with a raid on The Master's base and wanted to be sure they were completely prepared.

"Now that we know what we need, the only thing slowing us down is the production time. With Roland already making the parts we need, we should be able to ramp up production to have about fifty of these a day. We are making more parts already to be assembled once Roland gives us the batches he is working on." Herbert said, pondering the process.

"Great! Would any more help cause the production to go faster?" Tom asked, feeling out if the team would want more help.

"Possibly, but the ramp-up time to teach them everything involved would slow us down. If there were other engineers we might be able to get them up to speed faster, but for now it would be better to just be the three of us assembling them." Herbert explained, not wanting to say no to more help, but realizing the specialty of the project's requirements.

"Understood. If that changes, let Brian or I know and we will get you any help you need. This is priority number one right now." Tom replied, making sure they understood the gravity of the situation.

"We promise to ask for more help at any time we can see a place for it," Harold interjected.

Tom thanked each of the three for their time and stopped to see if he could help Roland relight his forge. Once his mistake had been corrected and Roland was pounding away again on his anvil, Tom returned upstairs. Moving to the security room next, Tom asked TJ to call all the members of his party as well as Brian to the security room for a meeting.

About a half hour later, everyone was assembled and waiting for Tom's directions.

"Herbert, Bohdan, and Harold have a working anti-magic field device that we can use. This means that in just a few days, we will need to be ready to assault The Master's base of operations. This is going to be risky, but it has to be done. Those people have suffered long enough while we readied ourselves. All the training we have been doing is going to come into play this time." Tom began, pacing in front of the others as he explained what needed to happen.

"We are going to take a page from our last plan, but we will make the focus solely on The Master. Kiera, I want you on top of a closer building. And do you have silencers you can get for those rifles? I don't want them knowing where their minions are getting sniped from." Tom asked looking directly at Kiera.

"Yeah, sure. We can get those. And I have three more people I want to bring with me. We are going to need as much firepower as we can get." Kiera replied.

"Jay, this time when you go in, your job is going to be removing the barriers and traps that The Master might have in place. Also, I'm sending Bron with you to get the gates open." Tom looked to Jay next.

"Roger, roger. We can handle that." Jay replied with a small salute.

"TJ, I need Chris to get all of our defense teams ready to go. The ones that go out to clear monsters. We need as many fighters as we can spare that aren't integral to the base's defense. Also, we need to get every person able to help defend the base to be on standby. I don't want to get caught with our pants down by Shandra if she decides to take this chance to strike at us." Tom explained as he laid out the plan he had been formulating for weeks.

"You got it," TJ said making a note on a paper on the desk he was sitting at.

"We have to be ready for this to go one of a few ways. Either The Master sends his horde at us and we fight them off, he forms them into the Hulk monster that Jay saw, or a combination of the two. I want heavy firepower ready for the latter, and AOE options for the former. We also have to assume that if things aren't going well for him, that The Master will try to use his slaves as either shields or fighters. That's where the devices come into play." Tom continued as he paced back and forth.

"I will take Michael and James with me. We will be the strike force going directly after The Master." Tom concluded and turned to face the team.

"Don't you think you should have a few more people with you? Just in case?" Jay asked, concern written on his face.

"We will need every person we can to help fight off the hordes. This team being small will help to ensure that we can break away easily." Tom replied, wishing he could take more, but knowing it would be a hard enough battle as it was.

"What about Bohdan? Can you at least take a spell slinger with you?" Kiera asked, also concerned for Tom.

"I can ask. It's not a bad idea to have a backup mage." Tom acquiesced. "Alright, this is the time to poke holes in the plan. I want as few surprises as possible."

"How many fighters do we have now in the teams?" Derek asked.

"Let me see. One hundred and forty-eight now, according to Chris' numbers." TJ said looking at a clipboard he had near the security monitors.

"That's great! More than I had thought." Tom said excited at the prospect of having so many to help.

"Chris has been working overtime to make sure when people join we have enough to contribute to all the efforts, and Graham has been teaching each one to fight before sending them out. Not everyone is as seasoned as you all, but they can fight zombies." TJ affirmed.

This meant that more than ten percent of the people in the guild now were able-body fighters. Tom would love for the number to be more like fifty percent, but he would take what he could get at this point. The military hadn't been fifty percent of the population before the apocalypse so this was perfectly acceptable.

Just then, Chris burst into the security office.

"Oh, good, you're all here. Tom you are going to want to see this." Chris said and turned and ran back out of the room.