Over a week has passed, and our progress has left us exhausted but we’ve made great strides towards securing this building along with progressing everyone. Sitting back while Winter sat on my lap, her head on my shoulder, I felt too drained to talk much and she is in a similar condition. Today is the day we’d be starting our relaxation, four days before the Nexus event.
At the start of the grind, I had claimed the reward for the Survival Basics Two and received a bunch of really helpful equipment. Power tools, a drill, handsaw, grinder and a nail gun. Extremely helpful but limited, they weren’t in the best condition and had batteries, meaning that eventually we’d run out of charge without a battery charger. Along with that, I had received two flashlights and a crate of canned food and water, replenishing our supplies.
Because of the flashlights, our plans changed and we utilised the interrogation room after some testing. We found that as long as we didn’t smash objects onto the ground, the sound from the interrogation is not audible from the outside as long as the door is closed correctly. So Winter and I had locked ourselves in there and did nothing but work, creating machinery and wooden weapons throughout the nights, barely resting.
Sheep, who had become accustomed to how engrossed we could become in the grind, had ensured we got proper rest. Even then it had been three or four hours of sleep and we ate while working, only ever leaving the room to go to the toilet or sleep. Because of this, we had made so much progress that even the others were floored.
First, we had unlocked everyone’s Class, even Ghost who had managed to harvest a fruit plant nearby. He found a garden a street over from here and upon harvesting two plants had finally completed the task. Following that, we learnt that his Shop for Farming surprisingly had livestock, though the price started at ten thousand, and it would be a newborn, meaning that the System expected us to last several years here, or at least that is the implication. We could buy a female and male, so once they were raised and started to breed we could slowly cultivate more livestock, giving us meat.
For Classes, they went as we expected in terms of choices. Winter went Gunner, getting a Blunderbuss and sixty rounds, along with three Stun Grenades. Lemon went Heavy Gunner, receiving a hand cannon of sorts, needing one of the fifty palm sized lead balls to feed into it. Along with that, he received three Shrapnel Grenades. Ghost of course went Assassin, getting a pair of daggers with two vials of poison. He is the only one who didn’t receive a ranged weapon or grenades, though based on the weapons we were receiving which were a mix of old school weaponry it made sense he wouldn’t get silenced pistols.
Lastly, Sheep. He went in a direction that had been similar to his role in our team, Tactician is the name of his Class. Unlike myself and the others who had received the same sort of boosts, with only I getting an improvement in vision, he received an increase to his intelligence. According to him, not much actually changed, his mind just became a lot better at sorting and organising while he thought. He did get the boost to strength and agility as well, in the weapon he had received is a crossbow with a hundred bolts, along with three Incendiary Grenades.
Once we had spent four days getting everyone their Class while also bringing as many materials as possible back with us, to the point where two rooms had been filled, we had started the work. Winter very quickly found a weapon that had been very easy to make and sold for ten Prime Coins per, which is a Durable Wooden Axe. It took her about two hours to make one, meaning she could make ten a day as we went for twenty hours at a time. Within three days she had completed the aim at getting enough to buy a raintank, but didn’t stop there. An item for one hundred and fifty Prime Coins had been 20 candles, and for another fifty Prime Coins we could get a box of matches, so she spent the Prime Coins on those two then continued with building up more coins towards the raintank again, but this time we had a source of light and could save the battery on my flashlight.
For me, I had been building machine after machine. I could barely feel my hands from all of the work, but I had unlocked all three of the blueprint nodes and the big one after. For the Defensive blueprints, I had received Whirling Blades, about the size of a household fan but with enough force to shear through any body part. The next is an Electrical Fencing Unit, basically allowing me to make an electric fence. The last of the Defensive blueprints had been for a Mechanical Door.
It looked like a door but it’s fucking heavy, requiring two Class boosted people to even lift and place. The advantage is that it came with a keypad, and entering the right combination opened the door itself, giving us a heavy form of defence, though we needed power to operate it.
The biggest downside is obtaining power to use everything. The small generators we had could only really power the water purifiers and even then we were short on fuel constantly. We had gone to the safest petrol station and found nearly no fuel, most of it had evaporated and we only got a jerry cans worth.
As for Offensive Blueprints, they incurred the same problems, except this time it’s related to batteries. The first is a Mechanical Arm, similar to the Gloves. It supports your arm and increases your force and strength, but this time is intended for combat. You could also install a knife or a small firepower gun, though its power wouldn’t be too effective from range; it would be like a shotgun.
The second is a heated knife, with the option to have a longer blade. It’s effective at cutting and would leave scorch marks, but used a lot of power to do so. The last Offensive Blueprint had been for a flamethrower, surprising us all. It’s the perfect weapon for Lemon as he uses heavy weapons, but with the sheer amount of fuel it needed, I had made three and put them aside.
The node after them spent all of the points I had earnt, but had unlocked ‘Advanced Blueprints’, with the next two linking nodes giving ‘Advanced Power’ blueprints and ‘Advanced Utility’ blueprints, giving me a sense of excitement. The only issue is they cost ten Job points to unlock, had three levels to each and I didn’t have any Job points currently. The big node only unlocked these two nodes, which while exciting left me a bit frustrated.
Currently Winter and I were walking down the street, our hands interlocked as if we were just strolling down to the store, which is slightly true. Due to our increase in strength, the team had decided on going out in pairs inside of three or the entire group, as Husks no longer threatened us. This wouldn’t be for long, we were very aware that the stronger Husks could appear, but thanks to Ghost’s report we knew they wouldn’t just run up here.
Our destination was the storage unit we had raided, Winter and I were going cloth shopping. Well, more like we wanted to relax and find warmer items to wear, the weather had been getting colder recently. The only times we stopped were to let Husks pass us by, we didn’t want to use our arrows before the Nexus event unless really needed. Arriving at the storage unit, we opened the door slowly and slipped in, closing the door behind us.
After getting ourselves some more warm clothing, we grabbed a bag of rice each and a pack of water bottles before heading back. The amount of food and water here would last us a while, but we still needed renewable sources of each, even if we can get the livestock Ghost mentioned it would be at least a year before that became a possible source of food.
“Hey, Ruby?”
“Yea?”
“Do you think we’ll ever escape this world?” Looking at Rebecca who had a worried expression on her face as we walked, I shrugged my shoulders.
“I don’t know, Rebecca. Perhaps if we do save this world we’ll be allowed to go back, but who knows how long it’ll take.” I didn’t like sugaring the truth, or telling people everything will be okay when in reality we didn’t know.
After a few minutes walking in silence, Rebecca gripped my hand a bit harder. “I want a Bars bar.”
Giggling at her comment, I followed up. “I just want a big, delicious steak. I already miss mum’s cooking.”
“Oh yea, she cooked the best steak I’ve had. She never did tell you the recipe did she?”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“‘One day, Ruby, you shall know our families secret recipe, but first you need to learn how to cook and stop getting delivery!’” Mimicking Mum’s voice as best as I could, I laughed along with Rebecca as we recalled the time Mum had lectured Rebecca and I had tried our hand at cooking. Needless to say, we weren’t very good since we relied mainly on eating whatever had been on hand before returning to our gaming sessions.
“I wonder how she’d react to our stories from this world when we return.” Smiling at the thought of seeing her again, I also felt deeply saddened at the prospect of never seeing her again.
“I’m sure she’ll be amazed at the stories we’ll have. Knowing her, we’ll be fed until we’re bursting as usual.” Giggling at Rebecca’s comment, I recalled how Mum would always make too much food whenever Rebecca came over, always saying we needed a lot of energy for the night.
“Can any of the boys actually cook more than a bowl of rice though?” As I ask this, both of us fell into deep thought. Come to think of it, can any of us cook more than a bowl of rice?
“M-maybe we should find those who took Chef as a Job?” Sharing a laugh with Rebecca, we finally arrive back at our base, which had become a lot more fortified recently. Ghost, who had found time to dig out and make a garden that had a fence around it due to Lemon, waved at us as we headed over.
“Good news, I’ve got sprouts!” Ghost, looking rather proud, pointed behind him and sure enough there were a few sproutlings coming through the dirt. “For only a week of progress, they’re looking good. Perhaps in a few months we’ll have plenty of vegetables.”
“Do you know what you’re growing, Ghost?” Winter sighs as she looks at the sprouts. I understood her sigh, Ghost hadn’t exactly told us what he had planned to grow, even after we asked him last week.
“Well, I want to leave it as a surprise.” He gives us a cheeky grin as he turns his attention to the base. “Lemon also said he has finished and Sheep seems rather bored. Might be best to get him doing anything that needs to be done.”
“Mm, I’ll get him to sort out the backup weapons and arrows.” Bidding Ghost farewell, we went inside the base, which hadn’t changed much on the outside but had now become completely different inside. Originally you’d enter a small lobby, with two paths to go down. Now one is blocked off, a wall of spikes blocking it completely while there is a small gap in the middle, allowing us to shoot into the lobby itself. The other doorway would have this as well, the plan would be to have two teams shooting through the gap.
If the horde makes it through one of the passageways, it would lead into the whirling blades I had set up, powered by three generators. All of our fuel had been allocated to powering these, and after debating with the others we decided against the electrical fencing, mainly due to lack of time.
We would retreat behind a mechanical door, unpowered but it would protect us at least for a few moments of time while we set up our last line of defence, which reenacted the movie 400 to a degree. Several half-walls of spikes would be set up quickly behind the mechanical door once we entered the room and using that, we planned to mow everything down, hoping to block the doorway with bodies of Husks. If that failed, our escape route would lead us into the jail cells in the basement, locked behind the last two mechanical doors, at which point we could only really wait to fight to the death.
Originally we had thought of having the escape route be to the roof, but we had to factor in the high possibility that the Husks would be on the roof, causing us to fall into their grasp when we simply wanted to escape. Not only that, but the possible horde would make it nearly impossible to escape anywhere.
We had moved everything of value to the jail cells. Food, water, coffee and so on now resided down there. We barely had any mechanical parts left, our stock of weapons and arrows would be spread out throughout the building and the only concern is Ghost’s new farm, though we figured the horde would be after us and not plants.
“Sheep?” Entering the usual meeting room, I found Sheep with his legs on the table, looking at the roof seemingly bored.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing really, just checking in. I take it there is nothing left to do?”
“Other than quadruple checking everything, then no there is nothing. Lemon’s all finished and is currently sleeping in the interrogation room. Say, do you think you can make a TV?”
“And watch what exactly?”
“Oh…well, I’ll just make do with trying to remember whatever anime I can.”
“Instead of that, how about we discuss what we were distracted away from.”
“About why we’re here? Sure, want me to drag the other two in?”
“No. Lemon is becoming more emotionally unstable and Ghost is very obviously attempting to distract himself. Having them talk about this topic could make them worse.” Sheep had been updating me about Lemon and Ghost. Lemon had become more and more emotionally charged as the days went by, and I didn’t want him to get more emotional. Ghost on the other hand had started avoiding talking about our situation and started to isolate him. Sheep would handle talking to the two of them slowly over the next two days, I wasn’t very good at consoling others except for Winter.
“Understood. I thought you two had subscribed to the theory of this being a tutorial?”
“Eh, I can’t argue with that, but what I’m concerned about is what happens afterwards. Assuming this Nexus event is the end of the tutorial, then what do we face afterwards?”
“The ‘lore’ said magic, right?” Winter chimes in, causing Sheep and I to frown in thought.
“So our enemies could have magic? Realistically speaking, we have no idea how magic in this world works nor have we ever had experience in dealing with it on a deep dive level.” Leaning forward a bit while I spoke, I continued. “Magic means we’d need to be on edge, if it’s too powerful we won’t stand a chance.”
“There exists the possibility of anti-magic, right?” Looking at Sheep, I gestured for him to continue. “Let’s face it, if this world truly brought over a million others here from our world, then no one knows how magic would work, the chances of one choosing a Magic Class is low. If this is an expected scenario by this “System” then surely there would be anti-magic available for us who wield guns?”
“That possibility can’t be ruled out. Then what about the enemies? Mindless zombies I can deal with killing, but what if the other side is intelligent?”
“Perhaps we could reason with them?” Pursing my lips at Winter’s comment, I felt that wouldn’t work. Sheep explained why, clearing it up for me.
“Then wouldn’t the previous iterations do that same thing? If they could reason with them, then either that’s not the outcome this System wants or the enemy can’t be reasoned with. Or the enemy is mindless, unthinking.”
“If they are intelligent though…” I’ve never killed another, nor has anyone. Well, that’s honestly needless to say, we play games and stay in our rooms, why would we have experience in ending a life? I felt worried that we’d reach a moral point and once we cross that point we might change.
The meeting room went silent as the three of us fell into thought. This is one of the reasons why I wanted to keep it between us three, we could handle this type of talk. I could see Lemon entering a state of mind where he would reject it and for Ghost, I wasn’t sure but with him starting to distract himself from everything that is happening it could cause him to fall further.
“Sheep?” Turning to him, I pursed my lips before speaking again. “Can you get Lemon and Ghost into the right state of mind before the Nexus event?”
Sheep frowns before nodding slowly. “I should be able to. Truth be told I am concerned they might freeze up or be reckless on that night. Leave it to m-” Before he could finish, loud footsteps could be heard running down the hall before Lemon appeared at the doorway. Looking at us three, he pointed towards the outside.
“S-someone appeared.”
At his words, we all got up quickly, grabbed our weapons and rushed out to have a look. Peeking through the doorway, I could indeed see an individual across the street. A young girl, light purple hair with silver streaks and yellow eyes, her complexion is terrible, like she had not eaten in a very long time. Her eyes struggled to stay open, her breathing raggard and overall it looked like she’d pass out any moment now.
“System Call: Information.”
Entity: Aerith
“No Clan or Job? How the hell is she still alive?” Looking at her in shock, I understood that she had either lost her friends or has been alone this entire time. As I watched, I saw Ghost, who had been cautiously glancing at her, wave to her slightly. Looking past the two, I checked any spots that one could hide behind her and failed to see anything that might indicate her to be bait.
Relaying this to Sheep, he nods and says he couldn’t see anything either. Turning my attention to the girl, I could see she looked rather nervous, as if unsure on how to greet Ghost. Sighing, I give a stern nod to the rest and holster my bow. In turn, Sheep drew his crossbow out while Lemon took my spot by the door. Winter came with me as we stepped out of the building, intending to find out who this new girl is.