The Orkin roared as he fell into the waiting arms of the remaining basic undead, and they immediately began tearing into him. Even as Ray wrestled with the bat the other undead on the stairs turned towards the easier meal, giving the Goblins a bit of respite from their constant attacks. The rest of their party turned to engage the new threat, which appeared in the form of a half dozen massive bats that had dropped into the stairwell from somewhere further up.
Ray struggled against the heavy-winged creature as it snapped a fang-filled maw at him. He wasn’t strong enough to fight the damn thing like this, he needed distance and leverage from his weapons. Then the pressure was gone as the bat was ripped off of him. He had enough time to analyze it as Rivea simply tore it in half with her bare hands.
{VAMPIRE BAT}
UNCOMMON
“Rivea! Grab some Goblins and follow me!” he ordered. “The horde is almost spent here, but we need to close off the roof before something worse gets inside!”
The Drake nodded and tossed the two halves of the bat over the railing. She grabbed several Goblins as Ray began his ascent of the stairs to the roof. He caught Nyx trailing along at the back, agreeing with the canine’s choice to come along. She would be far more useful in the wider areas on the roof than the confines of the emergency stairwell.
It only took the group a few minutes to get to the roof. They were slowed down considerably by encountering more than a dozen Vampire Bats along the way. Each one taking Rivea’s considerable strength to take care of. After the second one, Ray put her in front where she proceeded to plow through each one they encountered clambering down the stairs.
The group got to the top, where Ray saw that the door to the roof was not only wide open but ripped right off of its hinges.
“Fuck,” he grunted. “Rivea, cover the door. Nyx, head back down for Derrick. We need to fortify this roof and do it right the fuck now!” he yelled.
The dog nodded and peeled off, the small huffing and puffing Goblins moving aside to let the dog back into the opening where the door used to be. Taking up positions around the entrance, they became overly aware of their surroundings, prepping for any more enemy intrusions. So far, though, nothing had come over the top of the building or tried to get inside.
“Hmm, hopefully, that was the last of them,” Ray muttered, keeping his eyes on the sky. It was quiet for a few more minutes, then a screech and a clang had him whirling around to stare at the Goblins standing guard. Too late, he saw the two remaining green men waving their spears in the air as the nearly invisible Vampire Bat took to the air with the third hapless, and motionless, victim.
“Shit! Get back inside and guard the stairwell,” he ordered quickly, realizing his mistake. The quartet ran back inside the shattered remains of the door and into the emergency stairwell. They quickly positioned themselves to overwhelm anything that followed… except nothing did.
Rivea turned to him, “You just had to say something didn’t you human? Never tempt the System. Or Fate. Doing so only results in loss, pain, or death. Most often all three, and in very short order.”
He nodded in response. He couldn’t fault the woman for her reprimand. He had to remember, more than ever before, that words held actual and literal power now. The System governed all things, and even a casual oath or promise could be enforced with devastating consequences for failing to adhere to one's word.
“Right. If I ever start to do something like that again please pu-,” he paused, then frowned. “Just remind me quickly that it isn’t a good idea,” he amended, remembering the Drake’s causal action of ripping the giant bat in half with her bear hands. He probably wouldn’t survive a punch from her.
Nyx returned a few moments later while they sat in focused silence, staring at the gaping opening into the darkness beyond them. Derrick arrived shortly after the canine, huffing and puffing his way up the stairs.
“These… damn thing… I can’t breathe,” he gasped, falling to his knees at the top of the landing. “Fuck. I am building an elevator up here at some point.”
He caught his breath and then stood up. He examined the door, running his hands around the edges and focused on the hinges. There was no door to work with however, and after a few minutes, he turned back to Ray.
“Alrighty. I can fix this, reinforce it, and make it damn near impossible for anything short of a bomb to get into it,” he said. “But I have two problems. The first is material. I have wood, metal scraps, and some other basics to work with. That won’t cut it for a secure door here. Those big fucking bats would rip right through it.”
“The second issue,” he said ticking off a finger, “Is that you have ownership of the building. I can’t build anything here without you giving me permission, which you can probably do in whatever building menu… room thing you use. Probably the same ability as when you used {CLAIM} last time.”
Ray nodded, “Alright. Let me check that out. Stick around here, I shouldn’t be long.”
He activated his ability and was whisked away to the room with screens. As with his first visit, all the screens were out or staticky except for the very far one. He stepped over and took a look at the updated menu options for the building.
{BUILDINGS}
{SERVICES}
{ALTERATIONS}
“Hmm. I think maybe alterations?” he said hesitatingly. Then he chose the option. A humming noise behind him caused him to spin. There, just above a round table-sized pedestal, was the building in a blue 3D holographic model. Ray walked over to it and touched the roof.
The entire model zoomed in, showing in extremely detail every aspect of the roof, including where they were standing and what was damaged. He panned over and chose the doorway, a secondary menu showing up in the air next to it. The menu gave him the option to remove the door entirely, repair it, replace it with something new, or seal it off. Looking over the options and their costs he growled to himself.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“I wish there was something that showed our materials and NEX,” he grunted out, annoyed. A resources tab with those exact counts appeared on the other side of the holographic display, somewhat surprising him. He was quickly learning that the System responded to him on a level that not a lot of others could comprehend, much less achieve. He eyeballed the amounts;
{ACTIVE MATERIALS}
BASIC MATERIALS – 412 UNITS
COMMON RESOURCES – 2 UNITS
{PASSIVE RESOURCES}
BASIC RESOURCES – 140 UNITS
COMMON RESOURCES – 5,704 UNITS
“What the fuck?” he said, surprised at the sheer number of Common Passive resources that were stockpiled. “What could those possibly be? Seriously? And what’s the difference between active and passive? Ugh.”
Shaking his head he refocused, “One thing at a time,” he said to himself, choosing the sealing option. He bricked up the door with cement filling for a paltry five units of Basic Resources, dropping his overall count to just above four hundred.
“Right, that’s done. Now, permissions,” he said turning away from the hologram projector and leafing through the options on the display screen. He found it quickly enough under a general Options tab and assigned Derrick open alteration permissions. Thinking about it, he extended the same to Rivea. She could probably help a lot there. Nodding, he exited the room and reappeared back in the middle of the group.
“Done,” he said simply, realizing the others were staring at him. “What?”
Derrick shook his head, “You just vanished, then the doorway filled up with concrete. It was… disconcerting,” he said while gesturing at the newly formed concrete wall.
“Yeah, I go into this kind of control room. It lets me do stuff… I don’t really know how else to describe it,” Ray said apologetically. “I actually had no idea I really vanished. But hey, at least the jobs done right?”
“Jobs done!” chorused the Goblins before dissolving into peals of high-pitched laughter. Ray just shook his head.
“Seems as if the horde down below is taken care of as well, let's go check out the damage and work on reinforcing those doors,” he said, becoming serious. “We have to have way better defenses in place. It was getting a little brighter out just a few minutes ago… well that may be optimistic. It wasn’t entirely pitch dark, which means daylight isn’t far off. We need to get going on claiming the area around us.”
The group headed down rapidly and, true to Ray’s observations, it was rapidly getting lighter outside. Dawn was just around the corner, and so was all the work they needed to get done. Claiming the buildings was going to be complicated, at least if this first one was anything to go by. Having to defend it through the night was equally bothersome. They didn’t have the people to spread between them to defend everything adequately.
Ray brought this up to Derrick, but the engineer was one step ahead of him. “That’s easy. We make a few sky bridges between the buildings then turn the first floor into nothing but solid concrete. Bam, a single point of entry that is easily defendable. Although you really should see about moving that shop somewhere else,” he explained, ending with a good ribbing on Ray’s poor construction planning abilities.
“Whatever,” Ray grunted in response. “Let's get started, we have a lot to do… but there’s something we need to do first.”
Derrick blinked. “What? Did we miss something? I mean, you’re gonna be bust once we have to seal up those first floors, but there isn’t anything to do here but fortify the lobby, move the shop, and get started on some basic tools and stuff.”
“You remember that basement I mentioned? There is something down there. Something that qualifies under the System as Common Resources. Thousands of them,” Ray explained.
Derrick's eyes widened in understanding, “Woah. Okay. Yeah. That’s… that’s really fucking important. That would put us ahead by… by a lot. Yeah. Let's go now!”
Ray patted the excitable engineer on the shoulder. “We need to get everyone moving on their tasks, then we can go. But that needs to be the first thing we do. Whatever is down there is going to give us more options in what we are able to do here.”
The duo gathered everyone together into one group and began explaining the tasks. Nyx got two Goblins and was told to scout the area. Rivea received half a dozen Goblins and was tasked with clearing the buildings on this block. The remaining Orkin took the Goblins that hadn’t been assigned to a job and were told to guard the front door.
Everyone knew their jobs for the day and split up, most of them heading out into the world beyond the building. Ray and Derrick, however, headed deeper into the depths of the office building. Their goal was to find a way down into the basement level and claim these passive resources. They started by searching the stairwell, but having no luck there they bean checking each of the group level storerooms.
“What even makes a resource passive anyway?” wondered Ray as they searched. “I mean, does that mean you can’t use it by itself or something? Is wood passive? A nail? It’s driving me crazy!” He drew his hands through his hair in frustration.
Derrick shrugged, shifting a box to one side to check for some kind of trap door in the storeroom they were in. “No idea. Maybe it’s something that is obvious, and we will understand once we see it? Maybe it’s just something we haven’t claimed directly, so we can’t use it yet? I have no idea.”
He grunted as he shifted another box, then froze. “Fucking jackpot,” the engineer said happily. There, in front of him, lay a huge twin-doored hatch that was set into the ground. “I bet this is one of those service elevators used for moving stuff up and down into the basement.”
Derrick grabbed one side of the doors and gestured to the other, “There isn’t any electricity. Grab a side and start pulling,” he ordered. The two coordinated their attempts at opening the doors, and with several powerful tugs, they gave way and opened up into a black pit in front of them.
“Well that’s not ominous or anything,” Ray muttered.
Derrick just rolled his eyes. “That can't be more than a few feet deep. They built these buildings for access, not for defense. It isn’t like it’s a trapped defensive pit or anything.”
“Yeah? Just like the world wasn’t supposed to be four times larger than it is now? Or covered in ruins of our civilization? Or the undead are walking around on top of the dirt?” Ray pointed out sarcastically. “Right. Jump right in then. After you.”
The engineer was just silent for a while. “Right. You make a few good points. For once. Should we grab a Goblin?”
“No, we shouldn’t grab a Goblin! Damn!” Ray snarled back. He pulled out his pistol and, channeling a single point into the chamber, imagined a long burning but low-heat flame. Then he pulled the trigger.
What came out of the barrel was a white flame that flew into the pit, illuminating a ten-foot drop to the concrete floor below. The flame stuck to the floor and remained burning while not giving off any smoke at all.
“There. No sacrificial Goblin needed,” he grunted.
The pair jumped into the pit, landing heavily on the floor next to the flame. Ray got up and began looking around, seeing that they were in what amounted to a generator pit.
“There isn’t a whole lot here except for these emergency generators,” he growled. “There’s barely enough space to walk between them, but less store anything. You think the Common Resources could be each point of the generators added up?”
Derrick shook his head. He looked around and found an emergency ladder. Deploying it for an easy way back up, he turned and replied, “No. I think it’s the fuel inside the generators that the System is counting. See this label? This says that this is a three thousand gallon tank for diesel, and there are two of them here.”
“There was just shy of six thousand units of the resource,” Ray reasoned. “I bet you are spot on and it’s the gas inside of these things. We don’t have vehicles though, so I wonder what we could use it for?”
Derrick grinned, the white light from the burning flame giving him a nearly demonic look of glee. “Oh Ray, ye of little imagination. I can make so much shit from this that it would terrify you. But I am going to promise you one thing instead,” he said with a grin.
“Yeah? What’s that?” Ray wondered.
“As terrifying as it is going to be for you, any enemies we run into are going to be way more scared. Bring burn cream.”