Currently we are taking refuge in a house across the street from our base, which is no longer habitable. Technically we could live out of the jail cells in the basement, but the rest of the building had been filled with the corpses of Husks, the Shrapnel Grenades had done more damage to the base than we had thought they would and the smell had become horrendous.
We had moved everything we had, but there wasn't enough space in the house to store it all, so most of it had been left outside. Most of it is the heavy machinery like generators, the raintank and ovens. We’re sitting around a table, drinking coffee and eating canned food with rice. The mood is solemn, not excited or happy. We had overcome the Nexus event, because we all knew that this was only the beginning.
“You may be wondering why I’ve gathered you all here today…”
“Don’t tell me, you and Winter are expecting?!”
Throwing a piece of meat at Sheep, who laughed and dodged, I smiled slightly. I knew he was trying to uplift the mood and we appreciated it as I saw others smile as well.
“Well, it’s time we just stop and talk, especially now that the Nexus event is over and we need to consolidate everything. Firstly, let’s discuss Jobs. I think we made a few mistakes in selecting the Jobs, and now we’re at a loss on progressing them.
“Ghost, Farming is completely useless to us at the moment. I take responsibility for this as I had been focusing on the long term benefits rather than what we needed on a consistent basis. At this time, though you’ve made a bit of progress, we’re going to have to drop any focus on Farming. While it’ll bloom later, right now we’re not in a position to build a farm.”
Ghost nodded once. “Understood. I take it that means we won’t be staying here?”
“Not in the long term. We need a place that is more fortified, bigger than the base across the road and won’t be swarmed at night.”
“We also need to be moving around. We need to find people, constantly explore for more supplies and prepare for stronger enemies.” Winter raises her coffee, her head resting on my shoulder.
“So we need a fortified base, mobility of sorts and a source of supplies. If only we could build cars…” Ghost shook his head, his expression slightly grim.
“We don’t need to build a car. We could try repairing one of the many around here.”
“A car isn’t going to suffice, we need a semi. We have a lot of equipment and if we are to set up a base, we’d need a bigger vehicle to head out for supplies.” Sheep replies to Lemon. “There is one at the shopping mall, should we raid the mall as well for more supplies?”
“We’re low on ammo, it’s too dangerous.” I shake my head and see Aerith raise her hand with uncertainty, I smile lightly. “Aerith, you don’t need to raise your hand, this isn’t a classroom.”
“Ah, r-right. Aren’t you g-guys thinking too big?” Aerith seemed to be afraid of what she said, glancing around as if to check our reaction. No one reacted and I gestured for her to continue, which she did. “You’re talking about raiding the mall, but why not go for the smaller specialty shops? I’ve seen shops that sell plumbing stuff, or mechanical stuff. Even car lots with what seems to be new or used cars, we don’t need to look at repairing them if they’re new, right? Plus they would have keys.”
We all fell into thought before Sheep spoke first. “You’re right, we were thinking rather big. There are shops like that in a town, we just need to find them. Can you lead us to where you saw that car lot?”
“Y-yes!” Aerith nods with determination. “I also know roughly where a bunch of shops are, it’s all lined up like you’d expect when in that part of town.” Knowing what she meant, I tapped a finger on the desk.
“Alright, let’s deal with the planning for that later. For now, we need to discuss Aerith’s Job. I had originally planned to go with Chemist, Pharmacist or Enchanter, but I realise now this line of thinking might be short sighted. Between all of us, I want us to think of three Jobs that we need now, will flourish for us in the far future and are able to be put to use right away.”
“Armorsmithing, Weaver and Medic. Armorsmithing because we do need forms of protection, but I see the problem being that they may need materials like leather and string, which we don’t have. I can’t exactly just dismantle a couch and get proper leather from it. Weaver because we do need clothing, and from the description it might allow one to make clothing with magical properties, though I have no idea what that means. Medic for obvious reasons, a scratch could kill us, we need someone with the knowledge to treat our wounds.”
“Similar to Sheep, I think Armorsmithing as well, but for the other two I would say Chemist or Builder. Chemist because we don’t exactly have the knowledge or know how to make chemicals, and considering we’d need all sorts of chemicals for an assortment of problems I think it’ll be great to have on hand. Builder because while Lemon is a Tradesmith with Carpenter, he’s not exactly got the knowledge on how to build a house or base. If we want to have a fortified base, we’ll likely need to build it ourselves.” Ghost speaks after Sheep, both bringing up a lot to think about. I turned to Lemon as he spoke.
“I agree with Builder, it would work with all of my Tradesmithing, though I only know the basics of each. For the other two, I think it’s vital we explore the unknown, magic. Mana Disrupter is a Job I saw that focused on making items to disrupt magic and with us not knowing anything about magic it’s vital we get knowledge in case enemies come along knowing magic. The other Job I saw that would help us is Mana Scholar, the description said that it’s a Job that studies all types of magic.”
“As a counter to that, we may find others who have had a person select a magic based Job and Class, meaning we could trade for knowledge on it. Though I agree that having one that has magic does have its advantages, especially in raw potential. We don’t know if our Classes might get magic later either, it’s possible but at the same time we can’t afford to work with that assumption.” Sheep mutters in response, deep in thought.
“I believe the best choice would be along the lines of base building as that is what we require, especially if we leave this town. If we find a suitable place out of the town, we could slowly build the base incorporating all of our Jobs, including Ghost’s. We do need to keep in mind Aerith is a fourteen year old girl, let’s not forget that. While she is certainly capable in terms of thinking, if Builder means she has to do all of the building it may hinder us, but if it means she can plan and guide us to construct it would be a huge boon.
“If anything else, the two choices I’d recommend would be either Medic, like Sheep had suggested or Gatherer. Gatherer, from the description, allows one to find and gather any type of material, metals, liquids or gas. It may be very helpful in searching for water sources, metals and so on. The only downside is we won’t have anyone to process or smelt the metals and gases.” Winter drinks the last of her coffee as she gives her suggestion. I turn to Aerith who looked a bit confused before realising why I am looking at her.
“I think Build is the best way to go if we are looking to set up outside of the town. Given the circumstances, it’ll be best to build a base that we can continuously expand upon, especially for Miss Midnight’s machinery and Miss Winter’s Weaponsmithing as those both will require a lot of room, especially for storage. If we have to go through another Nexus event, we can build our defences as we want. The description here says that I’ll learn how to make buildings of various types, so I am under the assumption it’ll give me blueprints like Miss Midnight and Miss Winter’s Jobs.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“For the other two choices, I firmly believe the best choices are Medic or Armorsmithing. The only problem is that Medic gives knowledge and a few supplies but it may not give knowledge on how to make those supplies, it may only give knowledge on how to treat injuries. I believe Mr Sheep said it best with Armorsmithing, it may require materials we simply can not obtain yet, but in the long run it will be the best as we do need a form of defence around ourselves.”
A bit thrilled about the amount of thought Aerith had put into the Jobs, I fell into thought as well as I considered our current situation. The Nexus event had gone rather smoothly, giving us an idea of what to expect. We certainly couldn’t remain in the town, but we would need to return to gather supplies all the same. We had thought the police station we had used before would be enough, but reality slapped us in the face, we couldn’t just stay put in the same place, we needed a base to work with while travelling.
Builder would meet our needs if we could find a suitable location to make a base, but that is the problem as well. If we leave town and find that the surrounding areas are bad, we may not be able to build anywhere and will be forced to find a military base, if there is any, or another town to set up a base, rendering the Job redundant, similar to Ghost’s Farmer Job at the moment.
“There are so many variables, it’s difficult to make a decision.” Sheep taps the table with a finger, deep in thought.
“The best course of action is to find a map of the town or country that we’re in, allowing us to potentially find locations like a water dam, farmland and so on. While we do not know when the next Nexus event is, rushing everything will only bring us down. I don’t care about progressing my quest, as long as we can ensure I have the right Job.” Looking at Aerith, I couldn’t help but admire her maturity and ability to bring ideas up.
Our group had been together for a long time, excluding Lemon, so we thought along the same lines. With Aerith’s way of thinking, we had a fresh perspective in the group, which allowed us to think outside of the box we usually had ourselves in. Aerith’s right, we have been looking at the big picture and trying to rush everything, we needed to take a step back and plan from the start again.
“Alright. Let’s stick with Builder as the primary Job to select, but we won’t select it until we’re aware of our situation. Let’s discuss our next steps now, starting from scratch. Aerith is right, our best bet right now is to obtain a map, find a vehicle of some sort and loot speciality stores. If we can find pens, pencils and paper that’ll be a huge help, it’ll allow us to finally write everything down, making it easier for us.
“Once we have done all three of those, we will then select a location based off the map and explore it. If we find the place suitable, we will then decide if we want to build a base there. We have to keep in mind that right now, Husks are still roaming the streets and it’s possible that stronger enemies may appear. Any questions?”
“What about fuel?”
“We’ll have to find any that we can. While I would love to build an electrical car, right now it’s not possible. Nor do we exactly know how to, so our only solution is to find any and all fuel that we can and store it. We know a few cars around here have a little bit, so we’ll search them and find petrol stations along the way. I don’t know how long fuel takes to evaporate, but I can’t imagine there wouldn’t be a lot at petrol stations.” Answering Winter’s question, I look around as Aerith puts up a hand, before retracting it quickly.
“About food and water?”
“We have enough canned food for another two or three weeks, with plenty of rice in the storagehouse that we found before. I don’t think we’d be completely out of options either, there should be more storage houses or shops with non-perishable goods. I know powdered milk and rice isn’t exactly the nicest combination, but it’ll keep us alive. About water, we’ll keep the generator going and set up the raintank temporarily to ensure we have a supply. We’ll sort further details once we have a place to set up a base.”
Aerith tilts her head before nodding slowly. She is aware that completing the quest would give her canned food and bottled water, and that completing the second quest would give power tools, which we had all received, though they weren’t exactly the best, mostly rusted with a few hours of battery life.
“Mid, I think it’ll be best to also work on the new quests.” Looking at the two quests we had received at Sheep’s prompt, I look at them. Aerith had been the only one not to receive these quests, nor had she been labelled as ‘Worthy’. We had no idea what this label meant, we could only assume that we were heading in the right direction.
“Motorised transport is so vague. Does it mean a car? Or a bus?”
“Perhaps it’s worded like that because past iterations had no idea what a car or bus is?” Looking at Lemon, I nodded as his words made the most sense.
“Knowing the quests, it won’t be good enough to just sit in one, we’d need to have a working vehicle. As for the Class Quests, focusing on them would slow us down. Let’s not worry about the quests for now, I don’t want to be overly reliant on the System, it’ll be limited to what it can offer us in the far future, so it’ll be best to only focus on what we can when we can.”
The others nodded in agreement. We had decided to hold off buying any additional items from the Shop until we knew the direction we wanted to go. We knew that we could buy ammo now, but the conditions of our guns were truly poor. At that moment though…
“Say, what if I dismantled one of our guns and Winter reassembled it by doing what I did in reverse? Would she learn the blueprint?”
“Even if that happens, I’d need the materials to replicate, it’s not like the weapon will be magically repaired if I reassembled it.”
“Still worth a shot, no? It’ll mean if I dismantle a machine and Mid puts it back together…”
My brow shot up at the suggestion as realisation hit me. Looking out the window, I muttered “Is a car a machine?”
“I mean, technically they are. They’re an assortment of complex parts to make a moving machine, we just make it safe to use.” The room goes silent at Winter’s comment, as we realise that we could possibly make cars.
“And it’s not like we lack the parts either…” I started to get excited, there isn’t any reason why we couldn’t. It would take a lot of work to disassemble and reassemble a car, but it would be well worth it. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Aerith though and quickly collected myself.
“Winter, try it with Sheep later and let us know of the results. We won’t focus on it for now, we’ll keep with the plan of finding a map, a car lot and speciality shops. We’ll consider reassembling a car if the idea works, but for now we need to take it slow. The System let us know of the Nexus event twenty days ahead of time, since we haven’t received any warning for it yet that means we have time. Our end goal right now is to survive this shitty world and survive. I want to return home, regardless of how many years it takes.”
Everyone around the table nodded at those words, we all wanted to leave this place but we had no way of doing so. We knew surviving would be extremely difficult. If it’s true this world has had over 450,000 iterations, we might not be able to do it, but I’m determined to do so, and so is everyone else.
As everyone went on their way, I continued to sit at the table alone, mulling over our discussion. While the idea to disassemble and reassemble to get blueprints is brilliant, I couldn’t rely on it, I had to learn how to build machinery without the assistance of the System. It would allow me to build machines that we might need at the moment rather than relying only on what we’ve been given.
Looking back out at the street, I had to wonder what is next for this world. Though we haven’t spoken about it in detail, I could theorise that this world is of high importance, and that we were currently being trained by the System to handle stronger enemies that would come for it. What made this world so special that it would bring over a million overs to protect it? What can a million spread across an entire world do? How big is this world, can we truly link up with others to work with them? So many questions, no answers. It would be nice if the System could at least say anything about this world, at least it would give us an idea of what is to come.
Sighing, I get up after thirty minutes and make my way out of the room and outside. Noticing that there is a slight wind, I sat down while looking into the sky. The others were off getting ready to head out since it’s only morning, meaning we could explore the town. Resting my chin on my palm, I let my thoughts drift, remembering memories of our world, the good times where we as a team overcame the odds and won against our organisation's main team, angering our management which no one thought we could do, causing me to smile fondly.