New Nashville; it was no longer a city. Not exactly in the conventional way that Colt was used to calling a city. For one, when Nick kept leading them closer and closer to the football stadium, he was quite confused, as were Nate and Sarah.

If he had to choose a place to set up his base of operations, he’d have chosen a building, maybe with some distance around it, for protection so you could see any kind of trouble coming up.

The stadium had that. He had to give; if one walled off enough ways in, you could make enough chokepoints and secure places to consider it one big massive wall. It was a familiar place. Colt had been here four months ago for a concert, and as they slowly headed to it, more and more of that memory resurfaced. It’d been a concert he’d saved ages to see Journey, he and his old friend before the crazy dude took a bus to California and never returned. Now, seeing it with someone out near the fence and with a sword in their hand… Weirdly, it looked a bit bigger than he remembered.

“Why doesn’t he have a gun?” Nate said as they approached. The guard waved.

“Guns? Naw, suppose you folk aint had the chance yet, but they flat out don’t exist anymore. Gone. Finito. I had a couple of folks who found their homes and their gun's safes just empty, as the things vanished away. Whatever happened, it’s taken things away. Phones, too. Electric things have a damned time working too—breaking down. Can’t find a single car that works. Trust me, we tried.”

“Strange.”

“Lots of strange things, don’t you think? Just wait a sec, and you’ll see more,” Nick gave a bit more of a grin and gestured for them to follow, and so they did… Right past the guard, who gave him a small salute and through the network of the stadium’s interior. There were the old metal detectors that security used to use; now, though, it was just another set of guards. Two guys who would’ve looked more at home sitting at a bar than with a bat and with what looked to be a wizard staff at the front entrance.

Colt ran an inspect on everyone he saw—Nick was at the highest level. The guards sat at 25, 20, and 27—none quite as strong as him, and if this were their security force, it must mean that in terms of an average level, he was pretty on track.

He needed to do a little better, but given there were many days inside of the dungeon that he couldn’t find much more than a single kobold, he figured he’d done pretty well.

As they made their way to the stadium, Colt got a notification.

———

Entering Claimed Territory!

Faction: New Nashville

Owner: Denny Rodgers

Defenders in this faction will gain a 5% increase in damage and defensive actions while within claimed territory due to territory upgrades.

———

Colt blinked as he reread the quick system message. So apparently, territories were a thing—they conferred some kind of buff while in them?

“Who’s Denny Rodgers?” Sarah asked.

“Ah. Denny. Used to be Nashville’s Director of Human Resources, y’know, before the collapse. Since he ran the government, does a pretty good job of running our new lil city. S’okay. Keeps things going, I suppose,” Nick gave a small shake of his head.

“And the heck is a claimed territory?”

“Dunno. Not much known about just how. Couple people from his group say this used to be a dungeon. Not one of the ‘tutorial’ ones we popped out of. Denny and his boys came out on day one and found this place. Then, somehow, it spat out this, by the way they tell it.”

Of course, there was more information to filter away. Nate, Sarah, and even Jimmy threw in a question or two more as they moved further into the stadium. They were curious about the city and its people. Nick was evasive about the details of the city itself, saying it was a surprise. But he was happy to share its functioning. They were divided into different groups; not everyone who made it out of the tutorial came out with a high level.

These, he called, ‘regular folk.’ The kid, the elderly, the sort of people who found it hard to adjust to the reality of killing monsters and levels. They just wanted a semblance of peace and quiet. They’d begun to find jobs already to do, started to open shops… Common theme is that they didn’t leave the city, didn’t necessarily have a class that lent toward any combat skills, and that was fine. The charge of those who could handle the new reality was to take care of them and enjoy the services they could provide.

The rest were lumped into ‘scouts, guards, and others,’ people who were adjusting, had higher levels and could handle themselves out there. Orcs were the only kind of monsters they’d found prowling around, and there was an active search of Nashville to find survivors to join the city, as well as places for resources.

He had only enough time to explain this; they reached the inner stadium.

Colt’s jaw dropped.

It wasn’t a football field anymore. The stadium was bigger than the last time he was here; now that he was inside, he was sure. Maybe about one and a half times the size?—and right in the center of the green field was the start of a small town. Full-on buildings were plopped down, constructed differently than the rest of the city outside, but better built than could be reasonably expected in a couple of days.

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The whole city had a kind of junk-yard vibe to it, though, since the materials weren’t refined concrete, well-milled lumbar, or modern building materials.

But it showed what this place was turning into.

With hundreds of houses, tightly packed since nobody had to care about cars, it was developing into an organic network of hovels and houses. Some were better than others, packed tight in places. One of the buildings almost looked like a nice, well-endowed house, with a painted wooden exterior with some decoration. Near the city’s outskirts, he could see people cooking and running stalls with food and clothes. Hundreds of people must live here based on the size alone, but there was still plenty of room for expansion.

Near their tunnel exit was a wooden sign saying, “Welcome to New Nashville!”

“Wow,” Colt said, scratching the back of his head. “How’s this possible?”

“Increased physical attributes. Also, now and then, city officials can spawn building resources through the system. Like a lot of stuff, they’re tight-lipped on how, but hey, we take what we can get.”

Nick stopped them on the outskirts of the football field just before they entered and cleared his throat.

“So folks, we’re here. You’re in about just as safe a place as we could—I don’t got much else for the rest of ya—the big white building you see, s’called the ‘white house,’ y’know, like America. We’re a civilized lot—three big things to cover, real quick. First, if ya’ll wanna stay, I gotta escort you over to the white house and you gotta register as citizens. Not saying you gotta stay, but… I mean. It doesn’t cost you nothing, just some information so the officials can track what’s going on, and you can get a rundown on the laws. Expectations. Second—this one goes to you,” he pointed to Jimmy, “Healers have a mandatory draft if you wanna be a citizen. Lots of work. You got skills the people need, so if you’re gonna stay, you’ve got a lotta responsibility on your shoulders.”

Jimmy gulped. For the most part, the guy seemed overwhelmed with it all, even from the moment they left the tutorial. This news that the only safe place he could stay in Nashville so far had ties with it probably wasn’t welcome.

Still, the kid seemed a natural for tending to people.

Colt nudged him and nodded, “If it bugs you, man, we don’t have to stay.”

Nick smiled at that, “that was my third one. If’n any of those two points bug you, y’all are welcome to turn right around with me, and I’ll escort you out. Ya can think about it, come back anytime you like, and tell a guard you’re here to join us. Pretty simple. We aint trying to take away nobody’s freedom, since we’re still the land of the free. So, what do ya’ll say?”

“I’m in,” Sarah confirmed with a fold of her arms.

Nate waited, thought it over, and then nodded his head, too. Two for four.

Jimmy wrestled with it and looked at Colt before, at last, giving an “okay.”

“That makes all of us then. Mind leading us in?” Colt asked, and Nick did just that.

As they entered the city, they all got the inevitable looks from people on the street that anyone new would get. He felt the sensation of someone firing off an Inspect on him a dozen times.

———

Hide Status (Basic) has gained a level!

———

Not a surprising course of events, given this was the most he’d ever been inspected at once.

He didn’t feel the need to use his back; instead, he focused on the small town and its people. Places had a certain feel to them, and that, more than anything, is what he wanted to learn about New Nashville.

Nashville had a charm, from the music everywhere to the vibe of the culture always surrounding oneself, tied to a sort of artistic and homey feel.

New Nashville, in contrast, was like a stripped-down, bare-bones version of real Nashville. They didn’t have as much as the city’s ruins outside the stadium. But people had already set up food stalls—he heard at least two people strumming a guitar as they walked along the street. Despite the harsh nature of the situation, most people here likely didn’t know what had happened to their family yet. Still, people cooperated. He is a man lifting a heavy bag of flour for a grandma—a kid getting lessons on how to swing a stick on the corner from a woman.

It still had the music and the community, even if they were confined to the walls of this football stadium to keep out the monsters that prowled in the ruins of their old lives.

New Nashville had a spark to it, a spark of reformation and a certain creativity that, in another light, Colt saw as the ability to adapt.

These people might make it with the right set of hands in their numbers.

It wasn’t long before they reached the White House. One could see it from almost anywhere in the city—the tallest building and one of the few with paint on it.

Outside were several people strapped up with weapons. Bats, axes, swords, and one guy even had a bat with nails in it. A weird mix of medieval weaponry and things you’d find on the street. All it took was a quick word from Nick and a couple of nods for them to get through the door; the inside of it was all business. A person at the front desk who Nick told his business to, which was enough to get the lady there all she needed to handle them.

Nick bid his farewells, and then the four of them were made to wait; five minutes later, Jimmy was taken first for ‘paperwork.’ Due to his priority status as a healer.

The rest of them weren’t in any particular order. After Jimmy came out, Nate went in. Then Sarah went in. But it took another fifteen minutes from when Sarah came back before someone came down and let Colt know it was his turn to go. Waiting had made him antsy. In fact, the longer he was in this ‘white house,’ the more he felt the need to head back outside. This kind of stiff administration was far too much like the life he’d left behind.

For some folks, it would be a comfort. But after the dungeon, he had no intent to settle back into a normal life of working his life away.

After calling his name, the lady running the front desk brought him up fours level, and let him into a big room with a fat mahogany desk and a good view of the city outside. Behind the pretty impressive desk was a thin man with a well-taken care of mustache and a cowboy hat.

“Heya Mr. King, I was told a bit about you. So I told’em to bring you right up to my desk. Name’s Denny, and I run this little place. Pleasure to meet ya. Now, I’ll shoot from the hip. I’ve got a special project lining up that, from the sounds of the stories your friends told, you might just be the person for…”