Waking up I found myself next to Aerith, who is curled up in a ball, snoozing away in her own world some distance from me. Rubbing my eyes, I looked at the door to the room and saw it’s closed. Getting up with a stretch and yawning, I slowly got out of bed so as to not disturb Aerith and exited the bedroom portion of the campervan, then started the oven and poured water from a bottle into a pot.
“Morning sleeping beauty.” Feeling a pair of arms wrap around my waist, I leaned back a bit while interlocking my hand with one of Winter’s.
“Mm, morning. How long has the sun been out for?”
“It’s noon, or at least close to it. You and Ghost were up for most of the night drawing and writing.”
“Mm, we got everything done at least. We can leave tomorrow, Ghost wrote about eighty different messages. He circled and numbered each message so we will know where to place them.”
“Oh? He went that far?” Telling Winter about the level of detail Ghost had put into the messages, she chuckled. “I keep forgetting he was an artist.”
“Still is, to a degree. You know he used to sell ‘art’ online as a side gig?”
“Really? Better not have been any of us.”
“Oh, no. He seemed to be scared of even thinking of doing such a thing, even with our ingame characters.”
“Mm, I trust him enough to know he wouldn’t, but I’d have his balls if he did.” As I chuckle at her words, I finish making my morning coffee and sit on Winter’s lap.
“How is everyone else?”
“You, Ghost, Aerith and Lemon all stayed up till early in the morning working. Sheep and I were responsible and went to bed fairly early. The good news is no sightings of Husks, so we have that going for ourselves. Aerith and Lemon have already measured out three plots of land and while the plan isn’t final they have a basic blueprint done.”
“I wonder if there is a Furniture Maker Job?”
“Wouldn’t that be Woodworker?”
As usual, we chatted like this while I ate my breakfast…well lunch. Hearing the door to the bedroom open, we watched as a sleepy Aerith stumbled out, rubbing her eyes that slowly looked at us.
“M-morning.” With a yawn, she greeted us. “Is it morning already?”
“It’s noon, Aerith.” Winter chuckles as Aerith’s eyes widen.
“N-noon?! I was meant to meet up with Lemon to finish our plans!”
“Slow down, Aerith. Lemon is also still asleep, you were all up late. Don’t rush yourself even if you oversleep, focus on getting food and coffee into you, wake up a bit then get to it.” Winter lectures Aerith while I stay silent and drink my coffee. I too had just woken up, I couldn’t exactly lecture Aerith about slowing down after waking up at noon.
“O-oh, okay. Sorry.”
“You’ve done nothing wrong so you have nothing to apologise for, silly.” Hearing Winter giggle, I smiled as I leaned against her a bit more. In our world she’d rarely speak or joke with others, even our team and had usually kept that behaviour between the two of us. This side of her did show up around Sheep, though not often. For her to be this relaxed and chatty made me feel happy.
Aerith makes herself a cup of coffee, grabs a can of food and sits down opposite us and joins our conversation. As I finish my coffee, Aerith grabs my attention.
“Midnight?”
“Yea?”
“Could I ask you guys to grab something when you head to the town?”
“Depends on what it is, we’re limited by what we can carry in anything but the campervan.”
“Oh, it’s nothing major, we just need hand tools like a saw, hammers and more.”
“I thought Lemon had those? I have them in my toolkit if you need them.”
“They’re not in the best condition, right? Having backups would be really good.”
“Point taken, I’ll be on the lookout. What are you guys doing for wood?”
“We’ll head out to get some, there is a woodland up the road according to the map.”
“We plan to head out tomorrow, will you be gathering wood today?”
“Ah, I forgot to ask you about that. I’d like to go there as six, is that alright?”
“Yes, I wouldn’t let you two go by yourselves, we have no idea what danger awaits, god only knows you’d be ambushed because of Husks hiding among trees.”
“Don’t we still have those power tools?”
“We do, but they ran out of power while we fortified the old place for the Nexus event. We don’t have a way to charge them, so while we did bring them they’re essentially useless until we find a charging port.” Answering Winter’s question, I got up with Aerith and helped Winter up, who jokingly complained about a sleeping leg.
Separating from the two, I head over to the well, planning to get the water pump finished today. We couldn’t operate it yet, we had nothing to store the water into. We needed electricity set up to run it and a water purifier to make sure the water wasn’t contaminated for when we wanted to use it. I wanted to make a bigger and faster purifier too, though I had no idea how to do so, I’m still following the blueprints.
I had already made a few water pumps for Job Points so I am already familiar with building it. Setting the components up and making the various parts, I started building it as the parts were made and within three hours I finished. Checking to make sure everything is done correctly, I nodded with satisfaction before walking back towards the others.
“Mid, all done with the pump?”
“Yes, all it needs now is a source of power and a place to pump the water into for storage.” Replying to Sheep, I joined the encirclement that had formed.
“We can buy water tanks from the shop, though they do cost five hundred points.”
“Let’s wait. It’s not a machine so I can’t learn the blueprint but we might find one that isn’t eroded in town. Is everyone set to head towards the woods?”
After a bit of discussion to set expectations, we piled into the SUV and with Sheep driving we headed up the road, further in. We weren’t looking to cut down trees nor really bring anything back. If there were fallen trees we would grab them, but since we didn’t exactly have the time we were going to explore the woodland.
It took thirty minutes of driving before we arrived on the edge of what seemed to be a forest, though most of the trees looked dead. We all got out of the car as we looked towards the trees.
“Are the trees of this world meant to look so…grim?” Pursing my lips with Ghost’s comment, I shook my head before looking at where we had come from.
“The trees we passed by on the way out here looked how one would expect them to. These look like autumn hit early, except the wood has dried out.” I was no wood expert, so I couldn’t really tell if they were good for building with, so I turned to look at Aerith.
As our eyes met, she shrugged with uncertainty. Turning to Lemon, he repeated the same action as Aerith before speaking.
“I’d need to work with the wood to know if it’s good or not. It shouldn’t be bad, as long as the tree itself isn’t dead then it’s usable. I think.” Not sounding too confident, Lemon turns to look at the trees once more as Winter raises a good question.
“Can we even cut trees like this with just a handsaw?” No one answered her right away for a few minutes before Ghost spoke up.
“It’s possible but we’d wear a handsaw down without proper maintenance fairly quickly, no?”
“It’s the best we have. These trees are fairly big too, I just hope it doesn’t turn out they’re cursed to turn us into Husks or something.” Hearing Sheep speak up with a humorous voice, we walked along the edge to see if any freebies were within reaching distance but failed to find anything within an hour.
“Alright, let’s head back.” At my prompt we once again drive back to our little base. Aerith and Lemon get back to measuring out the foundations for the three buildings they were aiming to build, Ghost went to start digging up sections for his farm while Winter, Sheep and I planned out our trip to the town.
“We can do at most a week. It’ll take two days to reach the town with the stop along the way, so about eight to nine hours on the second day to explore. Assuming we fill up the SUV and minivan and rest in the town before using the next day to drop everything off at the location three hours away, then we’ll have eight to nine hours each day. Plus we need to put up those messages in the locations Ghost has provided for us.” As Sheep works out the timings, I shake my head with a frown.
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“We really need to give this place and the location we’re planning to throw everything a name, it’s getting confusing.”
“Storage place should be called Alpha and this place Beta until we want to name it properly.”
“Let’s go with those names. Using Alpha as a drop off point for everything we salvage is good, the only problem I can think of is if another party stumbles upon it and swipes everything or if a swarm heads towards it. A horde that size will just trample everything in its path.”
“We’d only be using it for the short term, though you do have a valid point, we have no idea if others have vehicles. If a swarm got to it…” Sighing, the biggest danger is a swarm heading to Beta without us being prepared for it. We had plans to dig out a moat to help mitigate such an event, but with the manpower we have right now it would take a very long time.
“Another goal of ours is to get the last few Job Points to reach rank two. Mid, you’re only a handful away, right?”
“Mm, I’m twenty three points away. The new type gives five points and I’ve only ever killed one Heavy. I’ve maxed the kills on the Crawlers.”
“So four Runners and one Heavy. That should be doable while we’re there. I’m forty two points away, what about you, Winter?”
“Thirty one.”
“Which means you both aren’t maxed on some types of Husks. Do you know what ones?”
“Crawler, Runner and Heavy.”
“Same here.”
“Should we add a week to the time we spend there?” As I ask this, Sheep shakes his head.
“In theory it would be time well spent, but I don’t want to have those guys worried for too long.” He turns his head and looks at Lemon and Aerith. Ghost isn’t in sight due to being at the spot he had chosen to start his farm.
“Mm, then we’ll get Midnight her rank 2 so we can see what it does then judge if we return to help the others.”
“We can’t leave it for too long, if the difficulty of the town keeps increasing then we’ll be in trouble.”
“Then we’ll hunt while putting the messages up. Do we need to discuss anything else?”
“Ah, yes. We should fill the campervan with fuel as well. If a swarm heads this way then those three will have a way to quickly escape. We should have enough to get every car back to town as it is.” Agreeing with Sheep’s suggestion, we also thought of the idea of having the three head to Alpha in case anything happens.
As night settles, the three of us finish a few tasks before turning in for the night. No Husks appeared at night, making me question once again why, but leaving it for now as a good thing I closed my eyes and fell asleep in Winter’s embrace before waking up in the early hours.
Stuffing a can of food into me with a coffee, Winter and I stayed quiet while eating, our thoughts drifting to the thought of driving for twelve hours again. I never enjoyed driving much in our world and had always made a point to book hotels or rent houses near where I had to go frequently, so driving for so long so soon after the first time gave me a bit of dread, though I quickly got over it, after all we had to do this.
After a quick recap on what we aimed to do with Sheep, we all got into our designated cars, with me once again taking the SUV and headed off. The other three had already sorted out what they would do for the week, which mainly revolved around keeping watch constantly while slowly doing work. Aerith and Lemon had finished measuring out three plots and were planning to start digging out the ground for the foundations. Ghost was still working on digging out a plot himself, with Lemon helping plan for the watering system they would use.
As we drove, I kept my eyes on the road following behind the minivan that Winter drove. It slowly dawned on me that I hadn’t really had a moment like this, where I’m truly just by myself. I wasn’t used to this silence so it became hard to adjust to. Looking at the weird controls where the radio would usually be, I sighed likely as I thought of how good it would be to have my phone with me playing music.
My mind couldn’t help but drift as time went by. I thought of mum, who I had left behind in our world and how she would be alone now. My dad had died when I was three, so I didn’t exactly have an emotional tether to him nor do I remember him, but mum had loved him so much that even after all of these years she’d yet to remarry or even go on a single date. She had raised me with such care, affection and discipline.
After my grandparents found out I am a lesbian they disowned us, dad’s side saying that he would be disappointed by my ‘decision’ and that until I ended my ‘unnatural’ relationship they would refuse to speak with us. Mum’s side wasn’t any better, saying that I was going against God’s teachings, telling mum she had to fix me and drag me to church to be ‘forgiven’ and ‘turned onto the correct path’.
Mum had told them all to shove it, cut all contact and we moved a few suburbs away, closer to the school Rebecca and I attended. Mum never once spoke a word about them from that day onwards, the only one in the family that supported us being my cousin, Samantha, who had hidden the fact they were bisexual from the family after seeing what had happened to me. I never understood why they kept it secret, though I couldn’t exactly wish they were cut away from the family.
I knew mum would be all alone now. I wanted nothing more to see her one last time, tell her I’m still alive and that I’ll be back. The Dark Reapers would’ve paid her out for my death in the case my body wasn’t just a soulless vessel so I knew she would be okay financially, but I still found myself worried because emotionally she would be devastated. She had lost not only the man she had loved so much but now had to bury her only daughter. She had some amazing friends and deep down I hoped she had received support from them.
Seeing the blinker on from the minivan in front of me, I cleared my head of my depressing thoughts and wiped the tears from my eyes, focusing once more on the job at hand. After taking the turn, we arrived at Alpha with only a bit of sunlight left and after I confirmed our surroundings we arranged for Sheep to keep watch for the night.
Deciding against bottling my thoughts up, I spoke to Rebecca for a few hours, both of us just talking about our parents and how much we missed them both. Rebecca had said that her dad wouldn’t let my mum be alone and would provide support to her in the fullest, they had become extremely good friends after all. We both had made the same promise; if in the future we can go back to see them, regardless of the time limit we would. We both fell asleep afterwards, slightly depressed because of the talk but refreshed.
After a quick breakfast, we continued our drive and after three hours of driving we finally arrived back in the town. Sheep led the convoy and with us carefully navigating the streets, we very quickly arrived at our first stop, our old base. We hadn’t seen any Husks yet, but we were vigilant.
“Mid, I’ll keep watch. You and Winter grab what we need, we’ll set off right afterwards.”
Moving with Winter, we entered the house on the other side of our old base and grabbed the machinery we wanted to bring. Three water purifiers, two generators, a pair of mechanical arms, the flamethrower, a chainsaw and the raintank. The minivan had been filled quickly, with the raintank strapped on top of the SUV.
As I approach Sheep, I ask “Do we head back to Alpha?”
Sheep shakes his head. “We should fill the SUV as well. Tha-”
“Husks!” Hearing Winter’s sharp voice, we took cover behind the cars and drew our guns, but it’s too late. The roars of Husks entered my ears and peeking from cover I saw a group of Husks, a Heavy within them.
“Shit. Sheep, I leave it to you.”
“Winter, run decoy. Mid, get on the roof.” Without hesitation, we both follow Sheep’s command as I sprint to the house, using what I could to quickly climb onto the roof. Turning, I watched as Winter ran from the cover, firing at the group with high precision, slamming three in the head as their attention turned on her. Three quick kills, seven Husks left. She had killed two Crawlers and what looked to be one normal as three Husks revealed themselves to be Runners, sprinting at her.
A small black dot came from the cars we had just ran from, landing in the middle of the group of Husks, exploding. A frag grenade from Sheep and without paying attention to the aftermath I kneel on one knee, raise my glock, aim down the iron sights and steady my breathing. Pulling the trigger, I saw a Runner’s head explode before turning to the next Runner, repeating the same action.
This is a standard tactic we used in Player versus Environment situations, we would have one person gain the aggro of the pack while another would use a spell or weapon to deal damage to them while distracted, letting me finish them off. Watching Winter raise her weapon, she finished the last Runner off as my attention turned to the pack. Hearing two shots as Winter fired at the pack, I saw that the Heavy and two Husks remained.
One of the Husks looked at Winter and opened its mouth. A bad feeling spread in my stomach but before it could take hold Winter had already ducked under the cover of a car. The Husk spat out a green orb that slammed into the car, liquid splashing the entire side of it. As I watched, the places the liquid had covered melted the car and quickly too. The sizzling didn’t escape my ears and quickly realising the threat of this Husk I raised my glock and fired twice.
Both shots hit their marks, straight through the acid Husk’s forehead, but it didn’t die right away. It opened its mouth towards Winter’s hiding spot and with some haste, I changed my target and fired, the bullet slamming into and shredding the Husk’s throat. Green acid spilled from its throat as choking sounds rang out, its body burning from its own acid.
You have killed an Empowered Husk: Acidmancer!
+10 Class Points.
This is your first kill on an enemy of this type!
+15 Class Points.
Turning my attention to the Heavy, I saw it collapse, several holes ripped through its head as the last Husk’s head exploded, a normal Husk it seems. Turning to the one who had finished it, I saw Winter walking out from behind the old base. Smiling, I knew she had steadily moved from the car to behind the old base before the acid had hit. Using my vision, I checked our surroundings and seeing no movement or Husks, jumped down from the top of the house, regrouping with the others.
“One frag grenade used, a clip of bullets from me and…” Sheep turns to the sedan, a heavy frown on his face. “One car, the total cost of that encounter.”
“If it wasn’t for the fact that we saw them and had these weapons, we would’ve been screwed. A car is a very small price to pay.” Patting Sheep’s shoulders, I look at the aftermath of the rather quick fight we had. “To think such Husks are here, before it had just been weak Husks. If we only had our bows and arrows we would’ve had no choice but to retreat, losing far more. I have good news though.” Winter and Sheep turned their attention to me. “I can rank up.”
Sharpshooter: 112/100
Advance?
Y/N
Name: Midnight Class: Sharpshooter Age: 21 Class Points: 112 Clan: Unity Job: Machinist
Clan Position: Leader Job Points: 62