“You need what?,” Loch asked.

“Mason jars,” Drew replied. “That new woman, the one in charge of the food storage, Rebecca, she says they’re running out of jars and need more. I figured we can head down to the Grandfords and see if there’s any left. And grab any glass that we can get a hold of.”

“We’ve been avoiding grabbing glassware,” Stuart, one of the scavengers, said. “Pretty much impossible to transport back without getting most of it broken. And if there’s stuff inside, that can make a damn mess,” he continued, wincing as he noticed Piper. “Excuse me.. I meant dang mess… uhm.. Anyways… Now that there’s a Spatial Bag, we figure we can throw the glass stuff in there and not worry about it breaking.”

Loch looked over the group. It was Drew’s team plus two scavengers.

“You might trigger the Resource Event,” Loch cautioned.

“Yeah, we’re prepared,” Drew replied. “Would be good to know if the event is still active even with the Hob Mound cleared.”

“Brian and his team should be out of the Challenge Dungeon by the time you get there,” Loch said. “They will probably have another Spatial Bag.”

Drew nodded.

With a last wave, he led the group west down the road. Loch and the girls, with Cerie following, walked the last few steps to the new office attached to the Painted Caves Dungeon entrance. They had met Drew’s group just down the hill by the entrance to the Dungeon. Loch knocked and opened the door when he heard a quiet voice.

“Lord Lochlan,” Alison Crawford said, rising from her desk.

Loch motioned for her to sit back down as he walked into the small office, the girls didn’t follow. They headed up to the school to drop off their gear and get quick showers. The Dungeon had been easy but messy.

This was the first time Loch had been in Alison’s office. She was the Councilor in charge of the Adventurers and the Dungeons. At first, they had thought to keep her in the school, but when the entrance building had been rebuilt after the Gaunt’s attack, and extra space left over, it made sense to give her an office close to the Dungeon.

The space was small. She had a duplicate map of the one hanging in the school’s office, with the Dungeon locations marked off. Next to it was a white board that had been found with a grid schedule laid out. She had various labels covering the board and team names. Alison had been given a desk, an old and large thing that took up most of the space. She barely had enough room to walk around the monstrous and heavy looking thing. Two folding chairs were in front of it, a somewhat comfortable looking chair behind it for her use.

“Found a new Dungeon,” Loch said, taking a seat on one of the folding chairs. He had to shift to get comfortable with his armor on.

Alison grimaced, looking him over. Bits of mud dripped from the armor, moss and seaweed clinging to other parts.

“On the island?”

“Yeah, it’s called the Blighted Grotto,” Loch said as Alison dug through the drawers of the desk, pulling out a notebook and pencil.

“Hopefully we figure out a way to make paper and pencils,” she said, flipping to a blank page. “Going to be hard to come by soon.” She looked at Loch, waiting for him to continue.

“Cerie says it’s Rank Two, so good for around Level Ten. It’s not a flexible one like the Painted Caves but fixed like the Lynxia Dungeon. The Grotto is small but filled with monsters called Sahuagin. They’re fishmen about five feet high,” Loch said, continuing to tell Alison about the new Dungeon.

She wrote down everything he said, asking questions to clarify points. Alison had run the Painted Caves Dungeon once and was scheduled to hit the Lynxia Dungeon soon as she gained a couple more Levels. When not on duty in the office, Alison was running the nearby Spawn Field to work on those Levels. Loch hadn’t asked, but had been told she had an Uncommon Class called Dungeoneer. She’d just hit Level Five and gained not that long ago, after being appointed to the Dungeon Scheduler position.

More proof that actions influenced the Class, which made Loch feel even worse for the Laborers that weren’t going to get much choice.

“How tough are the monsters?,” she asked.

“Hard to tell. We made pretty short work of them, including the bosses, as we were pretty overpowered for it,” Loch replied. He smiled. “It was actually kind of fun,” he admitted. “The monsters weren’t a real threat to us. Without the danger, we just coasted through.”

“What were the rewards from the bosses?”

“We didn’t get anything,” Loch shrugged. “Negative of being so overpowered for the Dungeon.”

Alison leaned back, tapping her pencil on the table.

“So if the cycle is normal, we can send a more appropriate Level team through in three days,” she flipped through the notebook, glancing up at the chart on the wall. “I think Stephanie’s group managed to get a healer. Only Level Six, but maybe they can get her closer to Level Ten in those three days…,” she mused.

Loch stood up, moving the chair closer to the desk.

“Sounds like a plan,” he said, moving for the door.

Alison glanced down at muddy footprints and mess he had left. Loch smiled sheepishly, opening the door and stepping out quickly.

“Looks like you have it under control,” he said, shutting the door before Alison could say anything.

***

“We’ve managed to adapt the canning process for larger glass jars,” Zachary Cross said, leading Loch through the kitchen to the storeroom.

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He was dressed in what he called his civilian clothes. One of the few remaining pairs of jeans and a basic black t-shirt. His armor, not yet fully cleaned, was back in the room he shared with the girls. He’d managed to get a shower and change of clean clothes, before he’d gone looking for the Clan’s new Quartermaster. Zachary was an older man, hair mostly silver with a few black strands left. His black eyes were still sharp, noticing everything. Prior to the Connection, he’d been the manager of one of the large distribution warehouses. Kristin had been thrilled to find him, along with the two that had come with him. Steve Haley was a SiegeGuard, a Class that gave him Construction and defensive Abilities. He was currently overseeing the construction of the barracks and associated buildings at the old town dump for the ranchers that would deal with the chickens there. After that, he would be building the watchtower on top of Saddleback Mountain. His girlfriend, Amelia Elmore, was a Gardener and working with Thomas and the other farmers to grow herbs and other beneficial flowers.

“Having elemental Abilities has been a godsend,” he continued, opening the door and leading Loch into the room. “But we’re limited by the amount of glassware we have.”

The room beyond the kitchen was good sized. It had been where the school had stored their food and was being used for that purpose again. Racks and shelving had been brought in to replace what had been taken by the Worldcore. There was a lot of food stored. Jerky, juice boxes, water bottles, bags of chips and boxes of granola. Cans were stacked as high as they could go, filling every space. One shelf was full of glass jars holding canned vegetables. There weren’t many of them.

Looking around the room, Loch was surprised at the amount of food.

“The fresh vegetables and what little fruit we’ve managed to get are stored in the refrigerator,” Zachary said, motioning to the side and the wall.

Remembering the layout of the kitchen, Loch knew the large walk-in refrigerator would be there and next to it the walk-in freezer. Patrick Verner had been working on ways to get both up and running again, along with the school’s central heating system, and he had finally managed it with the help of Kim Hudson’s elemental abilities. He managed to rework the system using his Artificer Abilities so it ran off heated and frozen stones that Kim, and now another caster with similar elemental powers, could recharge.

It wasn’t the best as the food didn’t last as long as it had in pre-Connection fridges and freezers, but it was better than what they’d been working with. Patrick hadn’t managed to get the school’s heating system running yet, but felt he was close.

“I know it looks like a lot but…,” Zachary started.

“It’s still not enough,” Loch finished.

“Not even close,” Zachary said, leading Loch out of the storage room. “A school this size probably got weekly shipments of supplies which would fill up that room, the fridge and the freezer. It would only last the week. I didn’t know the schools numbers but we probably match or exceed that and we need that food to last longer and…”

“It won’t last through the winter.”

“No, not without something changing,” Zachary replied as they made their way through the kitchen. The small staff was already busy preparing the lunch meal. “We can’t resupply fast enough. Even when the scavengers bring in a bunch of stuff, it’s not enough to last more than a day or two. As fast as we restock the supply it gets used. The crops are growing pretty fast. We’re getting more harvests but still lack efficient means of turning the wheat into bread and not enough jars to can all the vegetables. Not that there’s much because we eat most of it right away but I’m trying to set aside half of each crop to can.”

“You’re doing a great job,” Loch said and from what Kristin had told him, Zachary was doing an amazing job of keeping track of everything.

There was a lot for one man to cover. Food, material for crafting, building supplies. With Ed and Kristin’s approval, Zachary had recruited a small team to help him catalog and keep track of it all. They’d been given one of the small classrooms on the first floor to use as their offices.

“Thanks,” Zachary said, standing a little straighter, pride in his voice.

Loch sighed. It was like that whenever he gave a compliment. People seemed to think it high praise. Not like receiving praise from a boss but receiving praise from a King. He hated it. It still bothered him whenever someone acted like that. He hoped it always bothered him.

“And we’re getting more mouths to feed and the food input isn’t increasing,” Zachary continued.

“Did anyone ask Stephanie or her people about the stores in Pittsfield?,” Loch asked.

“Yes and from what she said, they were picked clean.”

There was a small grocery store in Pittsfield along with a Rite Aid and Family Dollar. A lot of food and medicine. It was disappointing to hear they were picked clean, but after all this time someone would have stripped them bare, or monsters would have.

After all this time.

Loch almost laughed. It had only been a couple of months since the Connection. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t that long a time at all. But with all the changes, it felt like years.

“We’ll figure something out,” Loch said. “Maybe some prepper has a hidden bunker filled with dried rations and MREs.”

Zachary laughed, saying goodbye and heading to his office.

Loch had meant it as a joke, but he really wondered if it was true. There were no more stores in Northwood. With Drew heading back to Grandfords to get whatever slim pickings remained, Davis and his team had headed back to the hardware store to grab everything left behind. Aside from those two places, there was nothing else in Northwood. The gas stations, the whole two in town, had been claimed by the Worldcore. All the food and other things inside had been taken. Most of the houses were now cleaned out, with Scavengers making second and third trips.

The teams were expanding their radius, going further out, but that also meant longer trips back and not being able to bring as much back. But a single house, even one that had a family of four, wouldn’t have enough food left behind to feed the entire Clan more than a day.

Even with rationing, people were hungry.

And winter was coming.

They had the turkeys now, that was helping. The chickens wouldn’t be producing for a while, probably not until after the winter.

He thought about the Silver Bark. They had raided other worlds before. They knew the food situation. They had to be prepared for it. What supplies did they have? Special seeds that grew faster and more plentiful? Rations that didn’t take up a lot of space in storage? They knew that food would be hard to come by on the new world which meant they’d bring their own. Or at least a lot of food and then supplement it with what they could find on the newly Connected World.

What could they gain if they raided the raiders?

Loch did laugh at that thought. It would be suicidal.

But as he walked outside the school, moving to the next person he wanted to check in on, the idea would not leave his mind.