The rest of the day passed by very quickly with all of us working throughout it. After Sheep had dismantled the water pump, we worked on bringing out everything that could be dismantled and started to unpack what we had brought. I started to make a water pump while Sheep worked on dismantling everything, planning to use the generator we had brought. I had hoped that there would be enough mechanical parts to make a water purifier and at least a set of solar parts, though I knew it’s likely we would have to return to the town and grab the rest of the machines I had built. We also needed to get everything from the storehouse that we could.
Aerith woke up around midday and after filling her in on our discovery she too became extremely excited. After a bit more consideration and discussion, we decided it would be best for her to go ahead with the selection for Builder now rather than later, so we can find out what we need.
After taking a breath and hearing what to expect from us, Aerith nodded slightly before selecting the Job and closing her eyes. As her eyelids flicker and nose starts to bleed, we watch as she starts to slowly grin before opening her eyes and wiping the blood away.
Before her a bunch of items appeared, causing me to raise an eyebrow. A cement mixer, a large bag of what I can only assume to be cement mix, sand and aggregates, a stack of blueprints, a large box with various objects in it, a hi vis vest and a hard hat. Aerith nodded with satisfaction before looking up at us.
“Builder is more about planning rather than building myself.”
“So you’re like a supervisor?”
“Yes, I can plan out the builds and draw the blueprints out for everyone to follow. I plan out the building, measure the foundation and know what kind of materials we need.” Picking up the stack of blueprints, about four in total, she started to use them, her eyelids flickering with each blueprint. “A basic house, an outpost, wooden wall and a bunker.”
“Bunker?”
“Like in those old war movies, it has the peeping hole to shoot from and requires cement to build.” Aerith calls up the shop and after moving her finger a bit she looks back at me. “I can buy more cement mix, sand and aggregates for five hundred, I’d receive all three for the cost. Others include bundles of nails for fifty, a stack of logs for one hundred, building tools like a chainsaw, hammer and so on for one thousand each. I don’t know if there is a cap for any of this, but with the bags I currently have I can build about three buildings, four if I’m stingy but that may cause problems with foundations later.
“I believe I earn Job Points once a building has been done, though I don’t know if it has to be to a certain standard. With Lemon’s help we can incorporate plumbing and electricity into the builds. Since I can draw everything myself, I can make adjustments unless it’s too unreasonable.”
“What are the houses like?”
“One bedroom, one bathroom, a living room and kitchen. This is only the basics though, I can’t plan anything like furniture but I can plan how the interior looks, though they are rather basic. We’d need one who has a Job aimed at interior design if you’re looking for anything fancy, but for survival these will be fine, they’re very solid and should last for a long time as long as they’re maintained correctly.”
Aerith starts to unpack the box, pulling out a planning table, boxes of string, measuring equipment, pencils and more. As she starts to set up, she looks at me as if seeking permission and giving her a nod she grins as she pulls out a scroll of paper and spreads it onto the planning table.
“I’ll start with a basic house. Lemon, can you help me with the planning? Your knowledge of plumbing and electricity will be a massive help.”
“S-sure.” Looking a bit overwhelmed, likely from Aerith’s excitement, he moves over to help her while I turn to Sheep and stick my thumb at the cement mixer.
“Let’s pull it apart and put it back together. Knowing how to make more will be very helpful.”
“I was already planning to.” With a chuckle, Sheep and I ‘borrow’ the cement mixer while Winter watches and Ghost heads out to find a suitable spot to start making a farm. He can buy soil from the shop, though it does cost five hundred per bag, the size of which is unknown, so if we can’t find a suitable place we’ll simply buy the bag and dig out an area to start growing crops.
“It’s all starting to get exciting, isn’t it? Houses, water and soon food.”
“Mm, it solves a lot of our problems. Next will be supplies, like parts for machinery, weapons and so on. If it wasn’t for the fact that swarms exist, I might’ve thought we could live peacefully out here, but alas we’ll be hard at work for the next few weeks to months.”
“There are numerous more problems as well. With towns becoming more dangerous, we’d need to hit them sooner rather than later to get as much as we can, but we can only grab so much before we need to return and the distance from here to the town means we’d need to stay the night at our last stop before heading to the town. We could use the last location as a place to store and do multiple trips before returning here, but progress here would slow down to a halt.” Winter spoke up, joining in our conversation.
“At most I could maybe make three machines with all the parts here but they won’t be in the best condition.” Even the cement mixer isn’t in great condition. When we make a part through the System, it will use components that we have but it won’t magically repair them, rather it appears to take the average durability of what you have and the final product will have that as durability.
“Manpower is what it comes down to. We need to find people, with more people we can have access to more Jobs. Ideally we need people who can mine ores, smelt them and forge. We also need medicine, any illnesses will quickly kill us if it’s too severe.”
“So finding others is top priority, though I have no idea where to start. We need more information, like maps of this world. It’s a shame that the pharmacies that we found had been plundered of everything and what had been left is medication that we can’t understand.” As I reply to Sheep I recall the pharmacy we had found before, the medication that had been leftover had all been labelled in the language of this world.
“We should send a small team to the town with two cars while the rest remain here. With how things are panning out, the teams are fairly obvious already.” Sheep looks at the pair working on building plans before looking to where Ghost had walked off to.
“So the three of us, a sharpshooter, her spotter and one frontliner. The best way would be a stealth approach and to remain on the outer edge of the town rather than diving deeply into it. If we do head into the town we’d need to find a source of fuel as well.” Speaking while thinking over the plan, I knew that in terms of effectiveness this is the best way forward. It would prevent progress being halted here and allow us to also get more materials.
“How far did you map out the town?”
“Most of the area around the car lot, I can spend the next day or two mapping everything else in the town. I know the symbols for petrol stations and shops now so we’ll be set with those locations. I’d really like to find a hospital there, it should have bandages at the very least.”
“Maybe we should look for a bottle shop? Alcohol could be helpful in cleaning wounds, right?”
“Only specific types of alcohol, no? If the alcohol is different in this world it might not work as well.” Understanding Winter’s intention, I thought about it a bit as I didn’t actually know if any alcohol would work on cleaning wounds. I hadn’t studied anything medicine related after all.
“Opening trade with others is certainly the best way, we have plenty to offer if it’s just machinery or weapons as well.” Agreeing with Sheep, it really did seem the best way forward is to find other people but I had no idea where to start.
“Perhaps there are still people alive in that town? After all, Aerith had survived on her lonesome and if more people dived from Melbourne then it’s likely they would be there.”
“It’s locating them that will be the problem. Between the streets getting more dangerous with more Husks appearing, limited time to move around during night and only three of us searching for others while also gathering supplies is near impossible.”
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After I said this, all three of us went silent as I worked on reassembling the cement mixer. We were extremely limited on what we could do, and the ideas that came to my mind simply wouldn’t work.
“Then how about we leave messages for people, like we did when we stayed at the police station?” Turning my head to Winter, I tilted my head slightly and she continued. “We take three cars, leaving the campervan here. Within the town we find a location to set up as a temporary base close to the storehouse we want to loot and while we’re there we leave messages nailed to easy to see locations, telling them to head to a certain house. In that house that we use as a base, we can either meet up with people or leave another message and the keys to the sedan, giving them instructions on how to reach this base.”
Mulling over the idea, I couldn’t see anything wrong with it and glancing at Sheep he had a thoughtful expression on his face before he met my eyes with a nod.
“That would work, the only downside is we do lose a car for some time, but if it means we get more people here that would put us into a very good position. We should leave enough water and food for a few days as well in case we head back here.” Hearing Sheep’s suggestion, I thought of another problem.
“At some point we might stop going to the town, either because the danger is far too high or because we have no reason to return, meaning our messages would become redundant. I don’t like the idea of then leading others to a location only to have nothing there but instructions for a location far from the town with no means to get there.”
“At that point if a group is still within the town and surviving, they would have the means to find a way here if they so choose to. We can always leave another message directing them to the car lot where we found our current cars.” Hearing Winter’s solution, I nodded slowly before sighing lightly.
We couldn’t ever just stop, we knew that already. We had to keep doing the quests as well, though we had no idea where to find a dragon we still needed to do it at some point. I hadn’t even gotten forty headshots for the Sharpshooter quest as well. If we fell behind we would be in serious trouble, and bringing up the quests to Winter and Sheep, they both agreed one of the aims should be to complete them while in town as well. With the new type, we could also likely hit one hundred class points as well, meaning we could rank up our Class to see what happens.
“Basically we need to keep levelling up. I wonder what strength we’ll reach at this rate, will the System provide it to us each step of the way?”
“My leading theory is that the System wants us to prove ourselves before giving us power, which is why we have the quests and levelling system. There must also be a good reason why it’s in increments if there is indeed another boost to our strength, perhaps too much at once causes damage?” Following up on Sheep’s question, I looked at Winter as she started speaking.
“Or people have lost control, become greedy or turned on each other in the hope of more strength? It’s in our nature to be greedy and seek strength, so it wouldn’t surprise me when people get a taste of strength and chase the high.”
Human nature is a tricky beast to tackle, as a group we’ve already discussed the possibility that those we allow to join may turn on us which is why we believed with our Jobs we may show that our usefulness for the long term would outweigh the short term benefits of betraying and killing us. Even now where we’re in a position to build a very solid foundation and required manpower I felt hesitant because of the possibility of a larger group lusting over what we have to offer.
“Alright, done.” Piecing the last part to the cement mixer, I got the confirmation of the blueprint as the knowledge seeped into my mind, gaining a total of five more Job Points. “I think it’s best to head back to the town in the next two days, what do you two think?”
“Agreed.”
“Sounds good.” Winter and Sheep spoke nearly at the same time and with that we started to plan out what to do in the town before I parted ways with them, leaving the planning and telling the others with Sheep. Sitting in the campervan with the maps laid out to me, I located the exit out of town that we had used and started to slowly go over the entire town using that exit as our entry point.
I didn’t just mark out shops or locations of potential warehouses, I also looked for highly possible places that others may use as a base though this proved difficult. With so many houses and buildings, pinpointing exactly where people may lay low proved too difficult so I placed it to the side for the time being.
After several hours, I saw a cup of coffee placed next to me and looking up I saw Ghost. A bit surprised at his sudden presence, he chuckled and sat opposite me, grabbing a pencil and a stack of blank paper.
“Sheep filled us in. I’ll write out the message, find a place you’re planning to use as a base?”
“Ah, yes. Here, it’s close to a petrol station and on the outer edge of the town, it shouldn’t be too dangerous here, there is a road that only has one turn in case we need to get out of dodge.” Pointing at a spot, Ghost nods and asks if he can borrow it. Nodding, I grab my coffee and pull over another map, planning to write out an efficient route for when we got into town.
The only sounds in the room were of pencils scratching against paper, with the odd sharpening sound every now and then as Ghost and I continued to work away. Looking up after a few hours, I saw night had fallen at some point and stretching I glanced at Ghost and saw he had done over half of the paper stack. Raising an eyebrow, I grabbed one of the ones he had done and looked it over, surprised at the level of detail on it.
“To those trapped in this godforsaken town:
We, Unity, have located a fresh source of water and have succeeded in getting food. We are building a base out of town and if you are a survivor looking for shelter we implore you to join up with us. We are close to having actual hot showers, drinkable water and food that isn’t canned!
We have set up a safe house with more details on how to reach our location. The below is a map showing where this message is, you simply just need to follow it to the safe house. We will provide a car topped with fuel and the keys will be left in the car for you to reach us. If you have not selected a Job please avoid doing so until you reach us, we are happy to find the best Job for you that will contribute the most to everyone to survive this disgusting world.”
Looking at the map, I grabbed a few more before realising he had taken the initiative to select places for us to leave the notes, and by the looks of it there are nearly fifty different spots. It’s only been several hours since he started and he’s done all of this? I recall from my memories that Brian had been attending art school for a few years before dropping it in favour of esports. I had completely forgotten as he had never mentioned it from that day on but looking at the maps he had drawn it’s obvious that he had still been drawing up till recently.
“Does my artistic style leave you speechless, Mid?” With a teasing tone Ghost spoke. Turning to him with a sly smile on my face I chuckled.
“I’m just surprised by a dropout like you who knows how to draw.”
“Ouch, that hurts the soul deep.” Putting on a hurtful face, Ghost laughs as he puts his pencil down. “I kept drawing in my spare time and thankfully I did.”
“What did you draw?”
“Stuff you’d enjoy.”
“Yuri?”
“Bingo.” Chuckling, Ghost stretches as he looks out the window. “It sold amazingly well, so I did it as a side gig. If Mr. Smith knew I was using the artistic skills that he helped polish for yuri of anime characters he would’ve broken my fingers one by one. Can’t deny the amount of money you make from it though, even I had been surprised.”
“I was joking, you really drew yuri in your free time? Impressive.” Giggling as I leaned back, Ghost grinned, a grin I knew from our world and had not seen for a long time.
“Well, when I started to get into drawing…” Ghost started to talk passionately about his past with drawing, his chatterbox side coming out. I had missed how he could discuss topics like this at length without stuttering a single word.
“Before I knew it, I had to choose between going into a career playing games or drawing. If I hadn’t gone to art school for two years before that choice came up I may have very well ended up going the route of an artist. You know they pay artists very little? I had a company approach me during my school days, a multi million dollar company, wanted to commission me to do artwork for them. Their offer for the work? Exposure. When I asked if I could get actual money, they told me they didn’t need me anymore and found another artist. But those thirsty folks on the internet? They pay hundreds for a simple drawing, maybe of their game characters or some anime woman and since I hand drew everything people loved it even more than the digital crap others made. I made more from doing it as a side gig than I would’ve from working for a company. Refused to do anything that wasn’t an adult.”
“You better have not drawn any of Winter or me.”
“Trust me, you two were forbidden. Nevermind you, I was shit scared Winter would have my balls if I even entertained such a request.” Ghost had no humour in his face, his tone made it seem like he really believed his own words. Couldn’t blame him, I’d have done worse than his imagination if I had found out he’d been drawing us in that manner.
“Don’t worry, I know you wouldn’t have done such a thing.” Giggling, I did trust him and knew he wouldn’t have, we’ve been a part of the same group and good friends for years now.
“Say, Mid. You reckon if I drew the same type of drawings we could use them to trade for stuff?” Ghost chuckles, humour in his tone as he picks up his pencil once more to write more messages.
“Actually, not a bad idea.” Ghost drops his pencil and gives me a strange look. “What? This is a world where there is likely no porn, having the talent to draw it would likely make others worship you.”
“Huh. Now you mention it, I haven’t seen anything like that in the stores we’ve plundered.” Ghost’s face dawns with realisation as he looks at me. “Common anime and video characters would probably sell really well, right?”
“Can’t do realistic drawings?”
“Not really, even doing anime-like drawings will be rough with just this type of pencil, I’d need a full set of pencils and colours to do something amazing. What characters should we do?” Ghost has a grin while grabbing a piece of paper, writing ‘The List’ at the top.
Like that, Ghost and I spent the next hour laughing while suggesting a variety of characters, casually chatting before returning to our work, our moods uplifted.