Chapter 8.

After Eli finished bathing and dressing, he made the effort of calling a few of his friends, but all of their phones went to voicemail. He figured as much; if his mother’s experience was anything like normal they’d be out until after noon. He wouldn’t have any idea bout what his group composition would look like for a few hours yet, but he still had things to do.

For example, he managed to figure out how to display the system as a semi-holographic interface rather than just one in his head. It was just a verbal command, one that he coaxed out of Gabri, who was even grumpier in the morning than he was. But he texted the verbal commands and pictures of the holographs to the Webmaster, suggesting that he use those to get the interface on the website to match what the interface actually looks like.

It would do miracles for its credibility.

Of course he included a message about trusting the webmaster to obscure his identity and the source of the initial images and such.

He wasn’t too worried, between the two of them the webmaster was far more concerned with government intervention than Eli was.

Once he had finished projecting, Eli went back to his enchantment work, which he kept up with until he started getting texts and calls from his friends that afternoon. He managed to complete all of the basic enchantments that he’d set out and was working on the more advanced ones, but he found that he couldn’t activate them all at the same time.

He was frustrated, but still working out how Scholar enchantments worked. Because they did not work like enchantments in video games at all. For some reason, every time he felt an enchantment click into place, his maximum mana decreased.

Fortunately, his friends began to distract him before he could wallow in disappointment too much.

“So, how does it feel to have words in your brain?” he asked one of his closer friends.

The boy on the other end of the line was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry, Eli. I talked to my parents after I got home, since you said they’d probably wake up with the system too. They’re saying no. They want us all to go to the hospital.”

Eli felt a pit in his stomach, but he forced himself to smile. “Well, alright then. Just out of curiosity though, what class did you unlock?”

“Sentinel,” the boy answered. “Good luck, Eli. Maybe I can talk some sense into them, but I think they’re pretty determined to pretend nothing is happening. Even though I can literally lift the front of the car now. I tried.”

“Yeah, okay,” Eli said. “Good luck with that. If you managed to convince them to come around, let me know, our group could use a good sentinel.”

They hung up, and that was the last time they ever spoke. His friend did eventually talk his parents around, but Eli was too busy with other matters to talk to his friend who had fallen so far behind thanks to bad decisions made in the early days of the system.

~~~~~~~

Eli had the same conversation with half of the members of the Astronomy Club, which cut into his plans considerably. However, the remainder had managed to convince their parents not only that this was really happening, but that they needed to take a more proactive role in matters than standing on the back foot and watching as their children dived into dungeons without them.

So while only three of his friends joined, he had five adults, plus his teacher and his own mother. By mutual agreement, everyone met at Eli’s house. One by one they arrived, and Eli extended to each of them a party invite as they arrived.

Eleven people arrived; his friends, their parents, Mister Estabon, one of his friend’s younger sibling and another friend’s older one.

Sandwiches were ready for the guests, along with age appropriate drinks for everyone who wanted one. Some of the adults asked for something a bit stiffer than the lemonade that the kids were having.

Eli had extended to each of them a party invite as they’d arrived, and he’d received confirmation as they’d accepted it. There was no denying it, they all had the system.

So as they stood around in his back yard, looking at the magic circle that he’d dug to summon Gabri, they talked about things like what it meant to have the system, what was going on, and whether or not this was mass hysteria.

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Eventually, Eli cleared his throat, and he once more launched into the explanation he’d received, weaving information that he’d coaxed from Gabri and Erandius and the system itself. When he finished, there was a general debate about whether a teenager should be in charge. The teens supported him, as did his mother and, surprisingly, three of the other parents of his friends.

Eventually Eli got fed up and resolved the situation by kicking the adults arguing that he wasn’t qualified from the system party and his mother inviting them to go somewhere else if they didn’t want to follow her son’s leadership.

Eli was a bit surprised by the backup from his mother, but he sent her a grateful expression.

The detractors had been a small minority, and they seemed contrite when they accepted the re-invites moments later. But Eli made a note to keep an eye on them.

They were the parents of one of his friends. The mother was a nurse, the father a baker at a local grocery store. He had other roles as well, but his main job was to produce their fresh baked goods. He’d received a class which could only be a non-combat support class: Cook. Eli didn’t fancy that anyone would be relying upon his combat prowess, but his wife had received a coveted “Medico” class, which she was still struggling to figure out.

Fortunately, the cook, who’s name was Jose Santos, was the only class which didn’t sound useful in combat. Well, his wife, Alaina, was more useful after combat than during it hopefully, to make certain that everyone was topped off. Ideally she wouldn’t be healing any critical injuries in the middle of combat.

Their daughter was a knight. Which was a little surprising to everyone, but like Eli’s own mother she had put on a significant amount of muscle and looked pretty good in the simple T-shirt and jeans she was wearing. Her name was Maia.

Sophie Waters was another friend who had shown up from the Astronomy club. Sophie’s mother was a cop, and she was armed with her pistol despite being out of uniform. Eli had noticed that she seemed to be alert beyond what he’d normally expected, and when he commented on it -- “Are you expecting someone else?” -- the woman had apologized.

“I think it’s the system,” she said, shaking her head. “My class is sharpshooter, and ever since I woke up I can’t seem to focus. Every motion in the distance pulls my attention to it, even if it’s just the wind teasing the leaves of a tree. On the plus side, I have telescopic vision now. Like, I can see better with my naked eyes than I can with a scope.”

“That sounds useful,” he said.

The cop’s name was Elaine. She was actually a very nice person, but her gaze had always made Eli remember his most recent bit of misbehavior whenever he saw her in uniform. He was glad that she’d shown up without it.

Sophie herself was a scout. She proudly displayed for everyone her ability to … not turn invisible. But rather she seemed to make everyone forget that she was there. It took repeated effort for her to actually show what was happening, but eventually Eli understood.

She had a vanish ability, like a rogue in a video game, which seemed to effect the memories of those who it was used upon. It wasn’t until she told him that she’d popped out of nowhere on him three times that he understood what she was trying to communicate.

She was a scout, and if her abilities worked like that, then even being ambushed meant that she could still report on the enemy’s location.

“I have a feeling that it won’t work against high-leveled enemies though,” she confessed. “I mean, it actually feels like there’s a big warning sign on it that says ‘don’t rely on this if you run into the big bad evil guy,’ because it only works on small fry. You know?”

“Yeah. We’re all still level one. You shouldn’t count on it working against high levels or elites,” he agreed.

Sophie’s younger brother joined them, a thirteen year old who had unlocked the generic warrior class and was super excited about it. He had already been athletic, and the jump from being an athletic thirteen year old boy to a system enhanced warrior child meant about twenty pounds of muscle had been added to his frame. The boy’s name was Peter.

Eli’s other friend, Luke Campos, was far nerdier than Eli himself, and was super excited by the ongoing experience, especially after unlocking the Mage class for himself. Like Eli, Luke had a spellbook in his head, and kept bugging his friend to compare notes on the differences between their abilities. Eli had to put it off until later, promising that once he’d gotten everyone to agree on the plan for getting ready for the dungeon they would nerd out together.

Luke’s older brother, John Junior Campos, AKA Just Junior, was a class that Eli wasn’t entirely certain what to make of. The system listed it to him as ‘Tinkerer.’ The nineteen year old college student confessed that he didn’t have much of an idea of how it worked himself, except that he saw details about how things worked in his head now.

Like, looking at the lawnmower which was sitting by the shed out back, he could see a schematic forming on his head based on his appearance combined with his knowledge of how lawnmowers worked and a bit of supposition. He wasn’t a little uncertain whether his own abilities were combat oriented or not, but he said that he’d tried to do push ups that morning and found that he could do over one hundred before he’d had to stop.

As opposed to “before this morning I hadn’t done push ups since I was allowed to drop gym in high school.”

John Senior Campos, AKA John, shared his son’s class and had shed forty pounds. His wife, Susan, confessed nervously that her class was Bard, which she had barely known was a thing before, but the system assured her in her dreams was a good fit for her.

That left Mister Estabon, who was insisting that everyone simply call him Erik since it seems that school was scheduled to be canceled for a while. But the young teacher revealed that his class was, unexpectedly, “Trickster.” He performed several slight of hands to display his new dexterity.

Taking a bit of paper aside, he began to jot down notes about how he expected his party dynamic would work. After a bit of Q and A with his friends and their parents and siblings about how they ‘felt’ their class would work, they came up with a plan of what to do while waiting for the dungeons to open.

They had two days left to prepare.

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