As the six of us, all armed with bows, wooden swords and the grenades we had left over, move through the streets following Aerith’s lead, we soon arrive at a shopping strip, a path that had many shops along the sides. We had encountered numerous Husks that now included sight and have had next to no issues with dealing with them.

Along the way, we ran into a few of the new types that Ghost had warned us about, the Crawlers. Fast Husks, requiring several arrows to kill. Thankfully, excluding Aerith, we were all able to strike true, killing them quickly. Its speed made us realise the truth, that we had gotten ahead of the enemies here since we could keep up with them, but if we slowed down they easily overpower us. Death is around the corner in this world and we have to be ready. If we came across more than one Crawler and were unprepared, we wouldn’t survive.

“A general store, electronics store, a massage parlour…” As we walk down the strip, we note down the stores. Nature had reclaimed a lot of the buildings here, looking inside roots and scrubs emerging from the ground. It’s like this in a lot of places, meaning that it has been at least several decades since this world had been abandoned. The System had said there were no more natives of this world left, which I found to be quite saddening.

“Even though we have no idea what the signs say, at least the shops are laid out similar to our worlds. Why is that, anyway?” Shrugging in response to Ghost’s question, we finally arrive at the end of the strip as we turn to look down it once more.

“What matters now is we find what we need. Let’s start with the general stores then work our way through. The weapons shop is promising but remember the condition of our weapons when we first arrive, we can’t expect the best.”

Walking through the strip, we arrive back at the convenience store and move in to clear it. Carefully moving through the shelves, we found several Husks throughout the store and quickly killed them, thankfully not running into any Crawlers. Reclearing twice over, we started to search the shelves.

A lot of the shelves had been stripped of everything, thankfully for us girls we did find feminine hygiene products, which we quickly stored in our bags. We hadn’t yet had a period in this world, but we knew it would be best to be safer than sorry. We found various items that would help us though, like soap, toothbrushes and paste. The most important two we found however were the stacks of paper and pencils. Eagerly putting them into my bag and resisting the temptation to rush off to write my thoughts down, we continued searching the store and found several maps of the town and its surroundings.

“Thankfully they’re in good condition. We’ll look over them once we return back to the house.” We look over the store once more, but there isn’t any water or food. “Seems like the previous inhabitants took everything they could. Let’s move to the weapons store.”

Once again, we moved as a group and cleared out the weapons store, this time we had a little more luck. No guns, but we did find boxes of bullets of various types in good condition. Most didn’t fit our guns though, half the boxes were shotgun shells, a quarter were for machine guns and the last lot were .9mm, meaning only the glock could be used.

“It’s a good thing our idea worked, we can make a few Glocks with the materials we have.” Sheep comments while looking at Winter. They had tested the idea Sheep had had and Winter had learnt how to create a Colt, Desert Eagle and Glock. She didn’t get the blueprints like we had thought, the System had actually given her the knowledge outright. While we had been excited about this, we as a group also realised we can’t rely on it, we needed to gain our own knowledge to create outside of what the System gives us.

“Alright, let’s head back. Next trip out, we’ll head to the car lot that Aerith mentioned and work to find a usable car or truck, if not we’ll work on disassembling one and putting it back together.” At my words, we grabbed what we had looted and headed back. We wanted to take it slowly, but also knew that we had to be fast. The next step is to use the maps to scout out a possible location for a base, acquire a car and head out there to check the location out.

The house we were now occupying isn’t big enough, we had to store a lot of machinery outside. Working with Ghost and Lemon, we cleared the house next to us and used it to store everything we couldn’t in the first house. We weren’t going to stay here, but my fear is rain ruining what I had built. Afterwards, I went into the dining room, our de facto meeting room, laid down the maps we had gotten, pulled out the stack of paper and pencils and got to work.

Starting with our situation, I wrote everything down as I would a report, how we’ve been seemingly brought to a new world with new bodies, all of which had awoken after seemingly committing suicide. We had all of our memories, in fact our minds were far better than in the past, being able to remember rather vivid details, though most of what we had known isn’t very useful here, only our experiences from our full-dives had come in handy.

Feeling a gentle pair of hands on my shoulders after a few hours, I enjoyed the massage that Winter gave me as I relaxed a bit. Unable to really continue writing, I put my pencil down as I enjoyed it while we sat in silence.

“Making progress?”

“Mm, I’ve gone through all of the maps, wrote down everything that has happened as well as what we need now in excessive detail. There are about twelve places ranging from an hour to six hours from town, based on our map measurements from our world. I have no idea what the symbols actually mean, but I can make a rough guess.” Opening my eyes to look at the pages I had written, I read over the list once again. Some of these places had been marked by a water drop, which I took to mean a water source, while some had been marked with strange symbols.

If they were important enough to be marked it meant they had use to the previous inhabitants of this world, meaning we should explore them to see what they were about. The most promising is a water drop on top of a river, implying a dam of sorts. With the ability to dismantle and reassemble to learn blueprints, I wasn’t worried about not being able to fix machines so if the dam contained any, they would be best.

“Where is everyone else?”

“In the other room, getting ready to eat. I came in here to get you, but seeing how focused you were I thought a massage would help.”

“Mm, thanks.” Leaning back, I closed my eyes as I tried to clear my mind of everything I had just gone over. I didn’t understand our situation any better, but at least now it’s sorted out in my mind a lot more. I had written several pages on just the questions we had about this world that I want answers about. Feeling Winter’s arms wrap around my neck as her head rested on mine, I held both her hands before we got up and went for dinner.

As usual, we had a rotating nightwatch, keeping a constant watch in case any Husks wandered close by. We could deal with them easily and silently thanks to our bows, so we didn’t draw much attention, but nothing really had changed except the Husks now had sight. We didn’t know their actual physical strength, we’ve never really had a chance to test it nor were we keen to find out.

The next morning I’m handed a newly built Glock. The condition sat at 35%. From the explanation that Winter had given it’s due to the materials used though it didn’t matter, it’s much better than nothing. Preferring to use my bow, I kept my gun holstered around my waist belt as a backup.

Winter, Lemon, Sheep and myself left the house once the Husks had wandered off in the morning. One of my many questions had been where they all went, it’s like they disappeared. In all logical sense this town should be flooded by Husks but they wander off to never be seen again. I had many ideas of trying to find out, like trackers but we simply didn’t have the technology to do so yet.

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Our mission today is to locate the car lot that Aerith had found and pointed to on a map, though it hadn’t been exact. She had improved a lot since she first stumbled into us, no longer looking so sickly. She had gained a lot more energy and her mood had soared, becoming steadily more confident in her words when she speaks. While some of her ideas were immature, her perspective had been extremely helpful to us, allowing us to think outside of the usual patterns we had.

As we walked, we chatted amongst ourselves, mainly about topics from our world and how we might be able to replicate it here. One of the ideas revolved around building a surveillance network in this town, operational from a base outside of the town, an idea I really liked. It would allow us to monitor the town for any survivors we don’t know about or large changes to the Husks.

We also killed any Husks we came across. We had various quests aimed at our Classes, for example I had to get 200 fatal headshots, Sheep had to do a similar task but it’s only 100. Winter needed to get fifty kills with a shotgun or submachine gun while Lemon needed to get kills with his hand cannon. For Winter, her blunderbuss counted and the same with Lemon, however they both were extremely low on ammo. We had decided to buy them additional ammo from the shop if required, but we didn’t want to rush it.

It took nearly four hours, but we arrived at the car lot without much trouble. We encountered a few Crawlers, but they had been alone and we easily dealt with them. They were very easily identified by their long, sharp nails, which allowed us to focus them if they were ever in a group of Husks. We slowly moved through the car lot, clearing it and ensuring there were no Husks here. Thankfully we found none and finding two rooms in the office, we set up to stay here the night. Aerith and Ghost would join us soon, they were currently working on making an inventory of all our possessions.

“Right, this looks like a proper new and used car lot doesn’t it? There are even display models.” Sheep looked excitedly towards several cars that looked like they were made with design in mind over functionality. I never really got into cars, I had driven a small sedan that I had been happy with.

“We need functionality over design, Sheep.” Winter shakes her head and as I giggle at her comment, I walk out to the back with Lemon while Sheep and Winter go to the front to check the cars. While out at the back, Lemon kept an eye out while I looked at the cars.

Most of the cars here were very similar in design to our worlds. You had sedans, SUVs, sports cars and minivans. The minivans were what we would prefer, and leading Lemon over, we looked them over carefully.

“Ruby?”

“What’s up, Jeff?” Lightly jumping out of the minivan, I glance at Jeff while walking to a campervan that I had my eye on while brushing the hair out of my eyes.

“W-what do you think of Aerith?”

“What do you mean?”

“W-well, she seems to have adapted t-to this world faster than me…”

Looking at Lemon a bit more carefully, I see him looking a bit down, a lack of confidence apparent in his eyes. I immediately could tell why he’s asking this, after all he hadn’t been quick to adapt at all, instead believing this to be a dream until recently. Sheep had spoken to him in private many times and slowly resolved Lemon’s emotional problems.

“Mm, you’re right. There is no doubt that Aerith is a strong girl, she’s always moving forward. But so are you, Jeff. You’ve calmed yourself down a lot and accepted our new reality and are now staying strong yourself. I wouldn’t blame you or anyone really for breaking down, so don’t compare yourself with others, I’m proud of how you’re still standing tall.”

A bit shocked at my words, Jeff simply nods silently as we check out the campervan. I knew why he had brought up Aerith, it’s not hard to see why either. This seemingly weak and scared girl joins us then after a few days starts to show more determination. Sheep had confided in me that Jeff seemed to have insecurities about himself, so seeing a new individual adapt so quickly must’ve made him question himself.

“Thanks, Ruby.”

“Mm, don’t mention it. Remember Jeff, we’re all in this shitty situation, come and talk to me more if you need, okay? We won’t abandon you at all, I promise.” Giving him a light smile as he blushes slightly, I hold a giggle back as we walk towards the car lot.

I knew he saw me more as a leader than a friend, he had given himself a lot of pressure when he first joined because he wanted to show me he’s capable, even though I had already told him he was. I may only be four years older than him, but he had always seen me as a big figure to impress, mainly thanks to my public image. Holding a sigh back, we entered the office of the car lot and met up with Sheep and Winter.

“A few good looking cars. We saw a few minivans, what about you guys?”

“A campervan and minivans, along with SUVs. The campervan is a good size, but only for two people. If we could find another three they would be perfect.” I sat down in an empty office chair as the others did the same.

“Ghost and Aerith should be here soon. Midnight, if you were to get the blueprint for a car, would it be for the moving parts only or the entire car?”

Tilting my head while thinking over Winter’s question, I had to admit that I had no idea. I wasn’t into cars in the first place, I didn’t know what would be considered the machine part and what wouldn’t. We couldn’t simply just rebuild the engine as anything could be the problem.

“We can always disassemble parts of a car and see what becomes a blueprint and what doesn’t.” Looking at Sheep, I agreed with his train of thought. Instead of building everything just build around it. We had planned to be here for a while, so taking the time to experiment wouldn’t be an issue. We had to keep in mind that we needed to keep on top of the quests the System gave us.

“We should try to start some of them at least, who knows, we could get a working car out of all of these.”

We wait for Ghost and Aerith to arrive before heading out to test the keys we found in one of the offices while those two unpacked our belongings. As the sun started to set, we had tested over half the cars and minivans, finding and matching the keys to them. None of them turned over, even though they had a small amount of fuel in them. We turned in for the night after securing the building and scheduling who would keep watch.

In the morning after more canned food and coffee, we eagerly got back to testing each car and at about noon we found a car that turned over and turned on! None of us had expected it so after being surprised, we kept an eye out and after confirming no Husks rushed towards us we marked the car, a five seater sedan and continued.

We found another three cars that turned over and turned on. Ecstatic, we moved onto the last lot of cars, the minivans. We started with the campervan and to our surprise it started. This campervan had been one I’d been hopeful for, and so we checked it over. Within it, we found an oven, what looked to be a microwave, a table and at the halfway point, two facilities that brought a tear to everyone’s eye.

A shower and a toilet. They didn’t work due to a lack of water, but if we connected it to a water source there would be no issues. At the end of the camper van a large bed sat, with a smaller bed nearby. This seemed to be a campervan for a family of three, but now it has become…

“The girls, obviously. Don’t worry, Ghost, we can find our own but they do need privacy.”

“Argh, I know. A soft bed though! I know, let’s go hunt down a campervan!”

“They’re not wild animals you can tame you goose. Don’t worry, a minivan also turned over, it just needs fuel and we’ll be laughing.”

Shaking my head at Sheep and Ghost’s conversation, I looked at Lemon. “Will you be okay with this?” I had brought up who would use the campervan, with Sheep saying Aerith, Winter and I should have it.

“Yes! Sorry, yes. We’ll get soft beds and showers soon after all.” Lemon scratches the back of his head shyly. Patting him on the back and giving him a light smile, I then called everyone over.

“Grab a key to a working vehicle and turn it on. It’ll complete the quest.” As the others go to do so, I sit down in the office and purse my lips together as I look at the quest. “Though I’m not sure if we can complete this task…”

Survival Basics: Final

Survive Nexus Event, One: Done.

Obtain a form of motorised transport: Done.

Kill a Husk Dragon: Incomplete.

2/10 Tasks Completed.