18.

Most everyone was already gathered downstairs in the common room. The numbers had swelled to well over forty people, most of whom Santi couldn’t recognize. He hadn’t been the most social person, just really hanging out with his dormmates. They all looked at him as he came downstairs, eyes tracking him as he marched up to Tank.

The hours of sleep and shower had been a godsend, Santi finally feeling human again. The boost to his willpower was also nice, his rampant emotions finally tamped down to a manageable level. No more outbursts or falling into sobbing fits at the drop of a hat.

“Tank, you guys ready to go?” Santi asked.

“Yeah. Where’d you get the sword from?”

“Loot box.”

“Please tell me this isn’t going to be pay to win, cause I’m broke.” Tank let a smile crack his face, the joke helping break some of the tension. Santi chuckled himself, glad to see someone trying to help him out and integrate with the others.

“It’s for clearing the rift. I got some other things too, but we can talk about that later. Let’s get out of here.”

“We should check the other buildings!” Chloe yelled from the corner of the room. After a second, a wave of heads nodded their agreement with her.

“Shit,” Santi muttered under his breath. He thought quickly and came up with an easy enough plan.

“Thirty minutes, pair up. Nobody, and I do mean nobody, goes alone. We will all meet in the parking lot and head out from there. I won’t be waiting for people.” Santi warned them, but nobody was listening. Chloe and the girls shot out of the building with the weapons he had acquired for them, heading toward their own dorm building. Daniel and Paulie partnered up and followed them, while Tank stood right next to Santi. Santi had no plans on walking through those charnel houses.

“What class did you get?” Santi asked.

“Medic, and my first skill is called First-Aid. Says it helps stabilize people and aid in wound healing. So many people got hurt last night. Spent every spare moment I had bandaging people up. Shit was bad, Santi.”

“That’s good, Tank. Healing is super important.”

“Yeah, I know. Played enough games to know the healer is the most important person on the team,” Tank said with the same faint smile. Santi smiled back as the two of them trudged outside. Santi grabbed his pack right before leaving, wincing as he felt the sticky residue of the sap that had soaked into the straps. There would be no way to clean it, likely would have to burn the damn thing.

Santi moved to the middle of the parking lot, ignoring the dead kobold bodies and blood smears. He really had to work to ignore the fact that a lot of the bodies he had seen last night were gone. The kobold weren’t the only monsters out there after all.

He spilled the remnants of his pack out on a car trunk, the heavy daggers thumping loudly. A few others trickled over, those too smart, or scared, to go investigate the three other dorm towers.

“You get that all from the rift?”

“Yeah. Kobold’s are pretty dumb, basically animals. Some of them are smarter though, and know how to use magic or weapons. Got this from them.” Santi waved down at the scattered remnants he had spread out. He tucked one of the daggers into his belt, careful to not cut himself. Tank took another and Santi put the remaining four off to the side for his friends.

The baggies of ritualist materials were stuffed into his own backpack without looking to see what they really were. A lot of ritual magic required gross components and he didn’t want to freak anyone out right away. The rift stone was left wrapped up and he put it away without looking at it. His medical supplies were almost gone, aside from the bottle of pain pills. The glowstick supply was absolutely decimated and he only had a single road flare left. He hadn’t realized how close he was cutting it.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

With his pack reorganized and his most important rewards stowed, they stood and waited in silence. It wasn’t the comfortable silence between friends that had been lost with the secrets they knew he had, but rather an awkward silence. Santi felt it was like that time him and Cameron had gotten into a fight when they were younger. It had been about something trivial, but it kept spiraling until it had become a full blown screaming match. Their parents had made them apologize to each other, but the moment afterwards, when they stood there side by side trying to see if their friendship was still salvageable. That’s what this silence felt like.

“How long has it been?” Tank muttered.

“Seventeen minutes.”

“Exactly?”

“Yup. Almost eighteen now.”

“Ok, Rainman.” Tank laughed, helping break another level of tension between them. Santi was busy trying to figure out how exactly he knew it had been eighteen minutes and four seconds since the groups had left to search the other dorm towers.

The time affinity. It popped into his head after only a moment of thought. It had to be that. With a thought he knew the time, ten twenty-three. A perfect sense of time.

“I think it’s my secondary affinity. It’s time.”

“Oh, I only got a single affinity. Flesh. Is it me, or is flesh a creepy affinity?”

“Naw. Great affinity for a healer.”

“I thought so too. It’s one of the reasons I took it. My dad’s a nurse you know. He always was helping us out at all our sporting events. When we were kids I mean. He had a big red bag full of tape and gauze, bandaids, ice packs, disinfectant, stuff like that.”

“That’s why you took Medic? For your dad?”

“Hell naw. I took it because it’s the most important role on the team,” Tank boomed out louder than he probably should have and Santi choked back a laugh. Even while talking and laughing with him, his eyes had been sweeping the empty parking lot.

The four towers of the dorms were on a semi isolated stretch of land, a large field and parking lot separating each of the towers. There were figures, lumps really, in the long grass of the field. The parked cars were a mess, broken glass and gouged metal everywhere he looked. The kobolds, and whatever else was roaming around, had ransacked the area.

A lot of the items would normally be taken back to the rift, to be used to try to enrich the tribes there. With the collapse of the rift, Santi had to wonder where all the stolen items and corpses were going. If there was another rift because of the planetary upgrade, one he didn’t know the inner workings of, it could be a disaster. The other three rifts would already require an immense amount of manpower to close now that they had time to gather supplies.

It would mean better loot when they did raid it. The monsters having consumed fresh potential and loot, making items or possibly nurturing natural treasures inside of the rift. Not to mention the rift stone strengthening, but Santi was already planning on expunging the three remaining ones ASAP.

“We are going to have to focus on leveling, Tank. As many people as we can make, they need to go out and fight and kill monsters.”

“I figured as much.” The big man sighed, seeming to shrink down a bit as he thought of what their future held.

“I don’t think they’ll listen to me, but, Tank, they respect you. They will listen to you.”

“You want me to be your voice, Santi? A puppet figure for you to lead around?” There was an edge to his voice as he looked out of the corner of his eye to look at Santi. He lounged against the car, head bowed, but Santi had a sudden feeling Tank was ready for action at a moment's notice.

“No, I think you should just straight up be in charge of the group. If the other’s agree.”

“You went to all of that trouble of setting up a camp, saving all of us, and then just hand it over to me?”

“I’m going to need to be fighting. Like, and I mean this literally, all the fucking time. I don’t have the time to run a camp, to budget out who gets food or water. Who runs patrols, who is in charge of cooking, or scavenger groups, or how to repair shit. I will be our heavy hitter. I’ll point out what needs to be hit and how soon, how to navigate everything else, but I can’t run a camp.”

“Fuck you, Santi. You’re dumping all the bullshit on me.”

“Yeah. It’s going to suck. Are you down to do it though?

“It needs to be done. So, yeah, I guess I will. If the others are agreeable. Hold a vote or something? Once we’re all settled down I mean.”

“God no. Just tell people what to do, they’re already listening to you. Clear and concise chain of command. You are in charge of the overall camp. I’m in charge of clearing the rifts and keeping us safe from the big nasties. Pick a few other people we trust to run some other crews. Don’t ask them to be in charge, just do it.”

“Little fascist there buddy.”

“It’s the apocalypse. We need to survive right now. Once we survive, we can have the luxury of having political morals.”

“Looks like people are starting to trickle back in. Let’s get everyone ready and moving to this camp you made and we will see about me becoming the dictator.”

“Not a dictator Tank. More like, an uhhmmm, warrior king.”

“I can see why you want me to be in charge. You’re ass at this inspirational thing.”

“We’re ending the pick on Santi time. Let’s get everyone here and move out. It’s going to be a long walk.”