“Lemon, do you think a direct wired connection will work?”
“For now, there is only one outlet on the generator meaning we’ll need to add a power socket onto it. I can craft it as well as a powerboard, but without the male connectors from the water purifier it’ll be a waste.”
Lemon and I stood in one of the offices, the generator in front of us along with the water purifier. I had failed to realise that there wasn’t a way to power it without a male connector, so consulting with Lemon I wondered what the best course of action would be.
“So rewiring both is the best course of action?”
“If you’re not in a hurry. I can make everything but it’ll take a while to rewire both machines.”
The blueprints hadn’t included the power wiring, which meant I’d need to work with Lemon in the future to ensure the correct wiring is done so it’ll connect up with everything else. More gasoline had been found as well and there is now three litres worth, though it’s rather spare. The generator consumed it heavily, we were far from having power twenty four seven.
Leaving it to Lemon to rewire everything, I turned to my talent list. I had made a decision while working on the water purifier today and decided on utility first. Since I had six points, I decided to get Utility followed by Defensive. The reason I wasn’t going into Defensive or Offensive even though this Nexus event would be happening is due to a lack of consistent power, powering machines dedicated to both would drain our supply heavily plus the generators weren’t the best, they were rather low voltage. I’d have to make multiple generators to supply machines like that and even then our gasoline supply isn’t constant.
Clicking on the Utility Node, I accepted it as a new blueprint appeared in front of me. Clicking it again, I grimaced as I saw the cost change. It now costs two points instead of one, and accepting it I saw once again that it increased to three points. Deciding to finish it out, so I could see the node that all three linked to, I accepted.
The next node however didn’t appear. The three nodes, Utility, Defensive and Offensive all linked to the one node, which meant I had to either complete one or both of them and checking Defensive I saw the cost had returned to one point, meaning I needed another six to fully finish it, twelve for both.
Feeling a bit annoyed, I decided to focus on getting the new blueprints used now. Picking up one, I used it and closed my eyes as the information flowed into my brain. Mechanical Gloves, a pair of mechanised gloves that increased strength, force and could also have tools built into it. The parts were inexpensive, meaning I could make a pair for everyone. They were not suitable for combat, but it made lifting heavy objects a lot easier, or if one needed to push heavy items around.
As I looked towards the next blueprint, a thought came across my mind causing me to fall into deep thought. Aren’t we being too reliant on the System when it comes to knowledge? Couldn’t I just make a machine without a blueprint? The problem though is I don’t know how to do that, without the blueprints I wouldn’t be able to build these machines. I’m missing the knowledge on where to start and while I knew what a machine like a chainsaw looked like, I didn’t know how to build it.
Knowing we’d need to rely on the System, at least for now, I picked up the next blueprint and used it. Frowning, I couldn’t help but feel a bit excited, it's a blueprint for a mechanical pump. It could be used to extract liquids or gases from a source, allowing safe withdrawal and if connected correctly would allow us to run taps, showers and more. The only two problems is we would need to purify the water, meaning we’d need a machine to continuously do this on a large scale and we needed an actual source of liquid or gas to pump. If we found a water source, we could possibly start a proper plumbing system.
Picking up the last blueprint and using it, I nodded with happiness with what I found. Rechargeable battery packs! Though we lacked a source of constant power that didn’t need gasoline, having these battery packs would be amazing for when we did get such a source, allowing us to have backup power for whenever we needed them.
I could create everything now and gain twelve points in total for doing so, and that’s not including the additional points for creating them twice after which is an additional six Job points plus four for recreating the low noise generator and water purifier. Remembering I also had the oven, that’s another six, so in total if I were to work through the night I could get a total of twenty eight Job points. Deciding to start now and with the oven, I headed to the nearly full mechanical room that had once been a normal office room and started grabbing everything I needed, using the System to make the components into the parts I would need.
I pleasantly found that we had the materials for everything I could make, and once again wishing I had a pen and paper to keep track of inventory, I decided to go with making the new stuff first. Starting with the oven, I started crafting everything that is needed, and the wait time came down to waiting for the System to finish the items one at a time. We found that we could queue up to five items to craft at once, and some parts required up to a minute to craft just one of them.
While the System handled crafting the components into parts, I organised the mechanical room into sections. Components for each of my blueprint, labelling them by memorising which piles were for what. If I had the paper, I would catalogue everything here and make an inventory, alas I couldn’t so this would be the best next thing. I couldn’t memorise everything here, my memory wasn’t that good.
Setting aside everything that had been crafted, I kept this cycle going, doing the same for anything Sheep’s team brought back and eventually Winter came and told me that it had reached evening. In total, I had made enough to build three sets of mechanical gloves, two pumps, two water purifiers and another generator. I still had to manually build everything, but with it all organised like this it would certainly help.
The atmosphere around us had changed significantly, becoming more tense because of the Nexus event notification. We were more tense in getting work done, trying to secure our strength with our Jobs and the plan was to start looting nearby houses, two a day which will let Winter, Lemon, Sheep and I finish the next task while Ghost would be behind. Due to a lack of plantation to harvest, seemingly needing to be fruits or vegetables as normal plants didn’t count, he had become stuck while the rest of us had finished.
The task of looting a house or storage unit had gone up by one, meaning we had to finish the other four soon. We believed that Class would be unlocked after this quest had been completed, which caused us to really start focusing. This is normal for us though, under high-pressure situations we would make a plan and action it as soon as possible. With the water purifier operational thanks to Lemon, we managed to start getting actual drinkable water from all the bottles we had collected and using it and a campfire we started to enjoy the joys of rice, though it tasted a bit different from our world.
“Midnight?” Looking at Ghost who sat with me for breakfast, the two of us having just finished watching for the night, I looked at him with a smile.
“Wassup?”
Placing the now empty tin of food on the table, Ghost leaned back and stretched before looking at me once again. “Do you think we can overcome this?”
Placing my own empty can on the table and drinking some water, I left Ghost on read for a few minutes before speaking. “I don’t know, Ghost. Honestly it’s draining, this situation really isn’t viable for us at all, we’re low on ammo and we’re basically in the stone ages when it comes to weapons. It’s not promising, even the plans I’m thinking over ends with our deaths the night of this Nexus event. We still have a few weeks up our sleeves, perhaps we’ll find a way or we won't.”
“What about linking with other people who might be in this town?”
“I’ve thought about it and the rewards certainly outweigh the risks, but where do we start? We haven’t seen a single living person since we arrived here, and though we heard that gunshot the other night we’ve yet to see anyone.”
Ghost leaned forward, a sparkle in his eye. “I want to track them down.”
“I assume you mean by yourself?”
“Yes. I’ll need the Deagle in case anything happens, but I believe this is the best way forward. I also know that we can’t waste time wandering around the neighbourhood chasing ghosts, so why not let The Ghost wander and see if he finds anything?”
“That’s cringe bro.” Ghost and I shared a chuckle as we remembered management telling him to use those sorts of lines in interviews. “If you fuck up and get yourself into trouble, we can’t come and rescue you, you know?”
Ghost shrugs with a smile. “Ruby, I’ve escaped plenty of shitty situations in the beta, plus the Husks aren’t a threat at day, I just need to keep my head low.”
“Will you return here to sleep?”
“Unless I find a place to sleep, yes.”
“Then promise me this, Brian. You are to give this up if you run into any dangerous situations. If you find a group you are to come back and report everything. We’ll approach the group as a team. If you find a person scraping by, approach them and bring them here if possible, otherwise arrange a meeting and I’ll come along. Look around for an armoury or military-like building too, we might get weapons from it.”
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Ghost nods. “Absolutely. It’s what I excel at, remember? Don’t worry, if I find anyone I’ll investigate them properly before coming back here. I plan to head in the direction that you heard that gunshot.”
“Then we’ll come find you if you do not return here in three days. We won’t stop progressing the quest either.”
“That’s fine, it’s not like I’ll proceed anytime soon.”
Handing Brian the Deagle, he gives me a nod before leaving the office. Once he’s set his mind on doing something he will just go with the flow. Breaching houses with him in the lead has never been viable, Winter and Lemon are usually our frontliners as both played Gunner or Heavy Gunner in most cases and were experienced. Trusting Ghost with this mission is simply because I knew he could handle himself, he’s right in that mindless Husks posed no threat to his way of scouting and being a stealthy little bastard.
The others soon join me and while they eat I explain the situation with Ghost, with only Lemon looking unsure. After reassuring him that Ghost isn’t an idiot that would get himself killed, Lemon calmed down a bit. Those two got on well and I knew Lemon saw Ghost as a really good friend so I had been rather happy that Lemon worried for his safety.
Planning the two houses to loot, which had been two we had watched for a while nearby that no Husks went into once day hit, we made our preparations and went to the first house that lay right across the road. A single story house, the layout similar to the one I had woken up in, we went through each room and found yet again nothing of note. Once we finished checking and looking through each room, the System updated to show it did indeed progress our task.
We did find various appliances, most rusted and in non-working condition, and after bringing them back and putting them into the machinery room for dismantling later, we went to the next house, repeating the same action and once again found nothing.
“Why do these houses contain next to nothing?” Sheep sounded rather perplexed as we once again took whatever could be dismantled and brought it back to our little base.
“It’s a post-apocalyptic world, the previous residents must’ve used most of their own supplies. There is very little we actually know, including the bodies we have occupied which appear to have committed suicide at some point.” Frustrated at the lack of background we actually had, I sighed as I sat down and massaged my temples. It hadn’t even reached midday, we had expected Husks or other sorts of danger, yet nothing came out of it.
I’m beginning to get frustrated at our situation and Sheep seemed to share the frustrations. As my second in command he’d usually be planning with me, but right now we didn’t have a straight forward path. We can’t theorycraft our Jobs, we lack information about the very town we’re in, we don’t know our enemies except that they don’t go out during the day except for a few and our problems just keep stacking up.
“Say, if this System knows when this Nexus event is happening, is it causing those Husks to go berserk, or is it an event that always happens? If this world is in a loop, wouldn’t it just be best if the System told us of everything that’ll happen?” Lemon had become a bit more confident with speaking and raised a good question, which Winter answered.
“Even if it’s a loop and suppose that we’re new to these loops, then our actions will impact future events. Plus if we knew what is to come it could throw us into despair, perhaps it’s experienced it before?”
“We don’t even know what the System is. I’m just under the assumption it’s to help us get stronger to face whatever it is that’s coming and I’m taking these Husks as the tutorial stage with the survival quest to guide us.” Sheep leaned back as he said this, his face a mess.
Wanting nothing more than answers that I couldn’t get right now, I just shook my head as I stared at the ceiling. We’ve been thrown into the deep end and the frustrations of not knowing what is happening have really been tearing at me recently. While we could grind at the start, not knowing what we were aiming for really made planning anything extremely difficult. Not only that, but we had to figure out a way to keep surviving past the Nexus event.
I felt a bit impatient and wanted to loot two more houses, but held myself back. Slow and steady, Ruby, don’t rush or we’ll stumble. Sighing, I got up and with Sheep moved to the mechanical room. Winter didn’t have much to do as she had reached a bottleneck with her weaponsmithing, having earnt all the points from repeatables that she could and Lemon had started working on building a plumbing system throughout the building, connecting it up to the showers and sinks or repairing the damaged pipes, mainly out of boredom. We couldn’t use it without an actual water supply though.
The day quickly passed, and by evening I had made two ovens and three sets of mechanical gloves. The gloves were fairly straight forward, not the best looking and needed to be charged but it would allow us to lift heavier things, about twice what we originally could. The ovens on the other hand were amazing, and hooking them up to the power supply that Lemon had designed, we cooked some rice easily without the need for a campfire.
This couldn’t happen too often though, as the amount of fuel it guzzled really limited the use of the ovens. Setting up watch once more, the night passed as it usually did, with no unusual sightings. Ghost hadn’t returned, but I wasn’t worried, he’d have kept himself safe and most likely used a house to do so.
Time seemed to be flying when we really didn’t want it to, we were starting to hit bottlenecks all around the place. Winter’s is due to a lack of blueprints, her talents had started to focus on durability and increasing the strength of wooden tools. Mine is stuck with getting the three nodes unlocked while Lemon’s came down to a lack of materials for all three of his crafts. Sheep’s was probably the best one since he didn’t have any problems, but we were dismantling the same things over and over, we needed other stuff as he had expended the Job point rewards from cars and appliances.
Our problems only got worse. After spending the next day looking through two more houses, the next task had been to light a campfire, which had been rather surprising. We had already lit campfires, and the next task made our stomachs drop.
Prime World Survival Basics: II
Form or join a Clan: Done
Create 2 Machines: Done
Loot 5 houses or storage units: Done
Build and light a campfire: Done
Kill 10 Husks: 4/10
“Oh fuck.” Grimacing, I stared at that task. There wasn’t a problem with hunting the Husks, but with the ammo we had left we wouldn’t be able to kill that many. The others had only one kill each, meaning we had to kill thirty three Husks between the four of us.
“We only have three bullets. The houses gave us nothing.” Sheep planted his head on the table as the mood soured in the room.
“Then we’ll simply need to prepare to explore and use the bows and arrows I’ve prepared.” Turning to Winter, I smiled softly at her and knew that while it’ll be difficult, we had prepared what we could.
“Alright, we have most of the day left, so let’s just get started. We’ll take the Colt and Glock as emergency weapons and set out now, unless anyone needs a moment?” Seeing no one needing additional time, we got ourselves sorted. Sheep and Winter held the guns while my loadout consisted of a bow, arrows and a heavy wooden club.
As we set off down the road, placing wooden stakes every now and then to indicate the way back, it didn’t take long for us to run into a group of three Husks. Stringing my bow back with an arrow on it, I breathed in and shot, followed by Winter and Lemon. My arrow hits as I quickly notched another arrow. The Husks didn’t die from the hit though, causing me to wince and fire once more.
Four arrows later, we killed the Husks as reality dawned on us. These bows and arrows were terrible for killing Husks. Thankfully we had positioned ourselves well and thanks to the lack of sound the Husks had been rather lost as to where we were, but had nonetheless charged at random locations. Two of my shots had missed, and while we had brought about twenty arrows each we would soon run out. Not only that, but it seems there is a limit to how many Class Points one can earn from Husks.
You have killed a Husk!
+1 Class Point.
This is the last Class Point you can earn from Husks.
“So that means there are indeed more types of enemies. Five in total from one type of enemy? Or do you get more from harder enemies?” Muttering while we hunted for another, Sheep chuckled.
“We’ll know soon enough. Once this ‘tutorial’ is finished I think we’ll know. I do hope our situation stops being so desperate.”
After we hunted another four packs of Husks, leaving me with one more to kill before hitting the next task, we considered our next move. “These Husks are rather, well, pathetic? As long as you don’t make a sound, they’re clueless as to where you are.” As Sheep spoke, I frowned and looked at the bodies on the ground.
We had at one point just stood there while a Husk walked past us. Once they were further away, we took a step and that’s when it turned and started attacking us. Of course, we dealt with it as we did everything else, a few arrows to its head. We found the best way is to shoot them in the knee, ignore their cries of back in the day, and shoot them in the heads a few times with the bows.
“Let’s hunt one more so Midnight can finish her task and we can see what’s next. Since we’re out of arrows, we’ll use the Colt and only go for one Husk.” Sheep looked at me to confirm his words and gave everyone a nod, Winter passed me the Colt and we found a Husk by itself after nearly an hour of searching. Shooting it, I saw the quest update and the next task had been one that I hadn’t even considered at all.
Prime World Survival Basics: II
Form or join a Clan: Done
Create 2 Machines: Done
Loot 5 houses or storage units: Done
Build and light a campfire: Done
Kill 10 Husks: Done
Use the Shop System to Purchase or Sell Items: Incomplete