After we packed the semi and met back up with Sheep, we organised the crowds of people into the buses that had been refuelled. Nearly five hundred people, the most I've seen in this world, was a lot more than I expected. Thankfully they had their own transport but according to Sheep the amount of fuel hadn't been small, refuelling each vehicle to have enough to travel to Lux had used over half of what they had gotten from the town's last unburned gas station.

Sheep, Aerith, Jupiter and I all decided to take the SUV back together, with everyone else in another vehicle. As we hit the road, Sheep started to fill us in on what he learnt from Trinity regarding their situation.

As it turns out, Trinity had come from a rather large gathering of people, an encampment known as Haven. Seven Clans ruled the place, and obtaining anything had become near impossible. The benefit had been protection as the Seven had a rule stating they were the only ones allowed to hunt Husks and gain Lvls.

Trinity led her own Clan, a minor one compared to Haven but the conditions had kept getting worse for everyone. Food had become a luxury and water was near non-existent. They lived on scraps and the messages that came from the System about the World Shift and Nexus Event forced their hand, giving them the chance to escape Haven out of desperation.

Thus they arrived at the military base, eager to gain their own strength and build their own base, except that after half a day of arriving a swarm came across them, leading to the situation where they became trapped.

According to Trinity, while within Haven Lvl 2s were reserved only for leadership, but even then gaining enough to even complete the first Survival Basics quest had become nearly impossible. The first reason is the sheer amount of people they had and the second is the rules of Haven where only the Seven were allowed to kill Husks.

"So it seems like we've both gained more manpower but also big problems. We certainly don't have enough food, though with Ghost's farm nearing harvest that'll soon change…" Sighing, Jupiter shakes his head. “Even then it’s not like he can just keep harvesting constantly, it’s a finite amount.”

Sheep looks back from the front seat to add onto what Jupiter is saying. “We have a ton of rice. Not only that, but as long as we carefully get them done with their survival basics quests we will also have sources of food thanks to the canned food they’ll get.”

“Getting so many people to Lvl 1 or even Lvl 2 is going to be extremely difficult. The town no longer has Husks roaming it constantly, we’d have to rely on swarms. While all of us could, with correct preparation, handle a swarm easily and as shown can kite a swarm without preparation, it’ll still take a lot to get them through their quests.” Aerith spoke up this time while I thought it over while driving.

“If anything, we can make a few small hunting groups with one or two of us leading them. Remember, you don’t need many kills, at most ten to fifteen per person. What we need right now however is Jobs for the base, to fortify ourselves before the World Shift and Nexus Events happen.” We start to discuss ideas between us. Gaining nearly five hundred people is a huge prospect, but there were so many problems that came with it.

With the drive back being uneventful, we soon turned into our base and as we approached, I saw a sight on the horizon and using Hawkeye I saw five cars parked up along the base along with a familiar pair who were looking our way. Seeing Geralt and Cass, I immediately understood the reason for them being at our base; they too were likely seeking to group up for the Nexus event.

As we pull up, along with the seven buses and our other cars. Getting out, I got Sheep to coordinate with Trinity while I spoke with Geralt and Cass. Greeting the two, I leaned against one of their cars while looking at the scene of the near five hundred malnourished people coming out of the buses.

“So it seems like you guys had a recruitment fair.” Hearing Cass’s laugh, I chuckled and shook my head.

“We found them randomly at one of the locations you shared with us. From what they have told us they escaped Haven and got hit by a swarm, getting trapped there. We kited the swarm back and found an old hideaway from the previous inhabitants of this world and got some goodies. I take it you guys are here due to the upcoming shitstorm?”

“Hmph, basically. Knowing the situation we decided the best decision would be to join forces with you guys once again and start fortifying this place. We collected what we could on our way here though it isn’t much. With this many I’d imagine we’re going to start having issues with food, even with what you brought back from our world.” Geralt looked around before shaking his head. “Do you have experience leading this many people?”

“No, not at all.” I sigh as I look over the hundreds that were pouring into the base. We had discussed lodgings and decided the best course of action is to try and build dormitories and Aerith had agreed to doing so. We would also have to expand the power grid, which isn’t a problem since we had an abundance, but we would be extremely busy over the next few weeks.

“As I thought. Well, we’ll join you guys formally and help you out if that’s the case.” Hearing Geralt’s comment, I turned and looked at him in surprise just as Cass stomped on his foot lightly.

“Idiot, don’t pretend to be all heroic. You’ve been raving nonstop and wanting to merge our clans since we left, you don’t need to put a show on it.” As I chuckled at the two arguing amongst each other, I agreed to having them merge with us.

“Geralt, even if you were to join us, you can still head out and find those you are looking for, I won’t demand for you to stay here.”

“Ah, we never expected you to force us to stay here. Alright, let’s do this now.”

With that, Geralt officially merged with our Clan. Organising the rankings once more, we placed Geralt down as a Vice-Leader while Cass would be under him, similar to now. The title for Geralt is ‘Exploration Operations Leader’.

“If you need to move my men around to other divisions, feel free to do so.”

Nodding to Geralt’s comment, I looked around before replying. “For what I want your team to do, it’ll be the same as you have been, except now bringing people back that you find to be worthy.”

“That’ll be easy enough, from the sounds of it this Haven is either a paradise or a living trap.” Cass scoffs. “It’ll be best to avoid it for now, unless of course we have a team of Lvl 3s.”

“Yea, working on it. Alright, time to organise all of these people, get some proper food in them. Let’s just hope we can start getting them to Lvl 1 quickly…argh, really really don’t want canned shit again.”

Walking along with the two, we helped with showing the new group what was off limits, such as the waterhouse and the houses themselves and getting them settled, we looked at providing what we could at the moment with cover. Dawn headed off with Melody and Ghost to prepare some light meals, planning to make small meals to extend the amount of food we had while I grabbed the Vice Leaders, Trinity and Geode and brought them over to our campfire.

“As you can see, Trinity and Geode, we’re not exactly well equipped for such a large intake all of a sudden. The good news is we have water and renewable food coming along, but it’s going to be rough for the next few months.”

Trinity tapped her knee before looking at us. “It’s fine, it’s a place. I take it you wish to merge the clans?” I nod to her question. “Okay, I have no problem with that. I have one request. Don’t make me a leader.”

Raising a brow, I hadn’t expected that response. But seeing that piercing, determined look, I decided against asking her why and simply agreed. “Sure, though I do have a request about that. I want to have you as a Vice Leader for a short while, just so we can slowly assign everyone to another leader. I fear if we were to absorb you and not have you as a leader for a time it’ll cause some problems.”

“Okay, I’m fine with that. Geode, what about you?”

Geode simply shakes his head. “No, I’m not fit to be a leader, it doesn’t suit me.” I understood that comment. Leadership wasn’t something everyone could do and seeing Geode admit to it impressed me.

“We’ll have your guys rest for a day or two, but we really do need to put the pedal to the metal.”

Trinity nods and we soon confirm the merger. Her Clan’s name had been ‘Praise the Sun’ and after enquiring it seems they had formed before the incident, a group of randoms that had met online. At first it had been one hundred people, but after finding out that they had been isekai’ed, they worked on gathering people and bringing them into their clan, quickly ballooning to their current size.

“Aerith, can you work with Geralt’s team to start work on dormitories? We want to future proof the base as well, while I would love to have houses for all of them we simply can’t be stretched thin.”

Aerith frowns while thinking before nodding slowly. “We can, but building so many buildings is going to take a lot of resources. We should focus on building up defences around the base instead.”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“I agree, shelter is good, but with the coming danger we really should focus on ensuring our survival.” Geralt spoke in agreement, which then sparked a lengthy discussion. Thankfully no arguments happened, everyone here preferred discussion over yelling after all. Even Trinity and Geode joined the discussion.

From our discussion, we decided to focus on building a wall around the base first but would have a small team build a mix of dormitories and barracks, an idea given by Geralt. While Aerith didn’t know any blueprints for barracks, Geralt reassured her that they could draw it up. The wall that they planned to build is a blueprint Aerith had learnt a while ago, though it would be vastly more improved.

We then discussed getting the Survival Basics quests done for Trinity’s group. We decided to run three teams led by Sheep and his Managers. They would take five per group, working on finishing the quests quickly. We still had the town which had a few Husks still stumbling about, but since it seemed like no Husks came out at night in the town, likely due to destroying the totem.

They would then turn to hunting places of interest, at which time they would increase the size. Winter would be able to provide weapons and with the idea of organising various Jobs and Classes based on what we need, we decided to plan it slowly over the course of the next month.

With everything being said and done, we completed the merger with Trinity’s clan and using some Prime Coins we purchased what we could to help the new groups, like tents. While we could only purchase ten before they disappeared from the list, we figured it would help, even though only about five people could fit into one.

In terms of gathering wood, metal and other types of resources, we decided to create groups under Jupiter for mining and Geralt for woodcutting. We would use that chance to get stockpiles going along with building the dormitories and barracks. After the meeting, Trinity went to gather her clan and tell them of what the plan is while the rest of us updated our team.

Cass gives me a grin. “If you get the opportunity, we should really add a Research and Development division. It’ll be incredibly helpful since there is a lot to research.”

Nodding thoughtfully, I crossed my arms while stirring the idea in my mind. “I love the idea. We can have a few of the new guys take Jobs or Classes that involve mana and magic.”

“You’d want three types of research and development. Magic and Mana should be one, while Weapons and Armoury should be another. The last one should focus on the monsters of this world.” Hearing Geralt’s idea, I nodded along with his words while thinking over our current members. Those under me weren’t exactly exceptional at development but we did very well with research, but it mainly revolved around existing data and knowledge.

“We’ll explore it once we start to stabilise. We’ll see how others handle the new Jobs and go from there. We need to focus on building the base up and getting defences going. I’m a little worried about the World Shift and what that involves.”

Bidding farewell to the two, I headed towards Sheep and told him of my intent to finish the operating system, and he gave me a nod. I knew I could trust him to take over while I focused on my own project, one that would be of great benefit, at least potentially. Returning to my basement, I started on finishing the operating system. With a proper computer network, we could share anything important instantly and go from paper to digital.

After three days of continuous debugging and rewriting blocks of code, I leaned back in my chair, exhausted. Winter sat down next to me at that time, with a cup of coffee, not saying a word while I cleared my mind. All I could see or think was code and taking another breath, I deployed my code once more as we both watched the second laptop.

The code executes, the sound of the hard drive of the second laptop could be heard spinning and soon the code disappears, the installation done as the interface loads. I’ve reached this point several times and had made little progress in the operating system itself actually loading. I wasn’t holding my breath and grabbing a sheet of paper I prepared to write where it stops booting, but the expected error never came up.

Night Rose Operating System v0.1 Pre-Release.

Welcome, Midnight.

“Oh? You named it after us?”

Not responding to Winter, due to being speechless, I watched as the interface fully loaded, three programs available on the desktop. Nothing happened as the interface was completely loaded and using a mouse, I moved it to click on the first program which viewed the stats of the computer, showing how much space the harddrive had. It loaded smoothly with no issues. Exiting it, I tried the second program, a file that would connect to a network and seeing that it came up with no issues, I wanted to cheer.

Loading the last program, I saw it load, nothing but a blank box which I wanted since it’s a programming interface, meaning I could code directly on this operating system. Testing the keyboard and seeing it type out, I sighed with relief and leaned back.

“You did it!” Winter hugged my side as I patted her back.

“Nearly. There is a lot of functionality I need to add, but knowing it now loads and reads the hardware correctly is a huge step.” Moving the mouse, I switched the profiles from ‘User’ to ‘Super User’, a type of user for leaders, and saw it switch with no problems. Testing the third profile, which is ‘Developer’, it switched just fine. Nothing separated the three from each other, but functionality would be added so Users only had basic access while Super User had master access to the network. Developer would only be used by me or anyone who can code in the future.

“So what now? Back to coding?”

“Mm, in my downtime. I only wanted to make sure it deployed and loaded. Now I need to start adding more functionality, make a server version and then start making more laptops and connecting them all up. We don’t have wifi right now, but at least ethernet will do for us. For now…” Leaning against Winter, I closed my eyes. “A bit of rest is okay, right?”

Feeling her hold me while brushing my hair with her hand, I kept my eyes closed while falling asleep in her arms.

***

A field filled with the rubble of hundreds of buildings, bodies littered the ground of various beings with barely any exposed ground. Humans, monsters, Husks all of various sizes from small to ten times the size of the dragon. A red haired woman stumbled through this field, covered in blood from head to toe, wearing broken mechanical armour, tightly gripping what remained of her weapon, only a barrel.

A massive tear in the sky opened up as she looked at it, horror on her face, her body trembling. Tears fell from her eyes as she fell to her knees, her eyes unmoving from the tear as a massive jet black leg stepped out. Regret, sorrow and pain expressed on face at the sight of this, but she stood, gritting her teeth, determination, resolve and regret mixed on her face as she stared down the leg, as if she were facing the final boss.

***

You have glimpsed into one of millions of possible futures or realities.

My head pounded as I opened my eyes, vision blurry. I felt myself being held, a muffled voice calling out to me. I felt a wetness dripping down my chin and onto my chest as the System showed a message, crystal clear compared to the blurry surroundings.

Talent Progress: 20%

You have made progress towards an unknown talent. You will be given more details upon fully unlocking this talent.

Another future dream? My HUD, also clear as day, showed my mana as -200/50, twice as worse as before. My body is weak, I felt myself being picked up and entrusting myself to whoever picked me up, I let them carry me wherever they wanted to carry me.

I saw a blurry face with blue on top of it, I knew this was Winter. I don’t know how long it’s been, every step making my head pound with pain, but another face with green on top appeared in my blurry vision. My mana had been ticking ever so slowly, only recovering thirty mana but surely it’s been longer than thirty seconds.

I felt something cold on my lips as a sweet tasting liquid poured into my throat, bringing relief to the dryness I had unknowingly had. My mana suddenly shot up, now sitting at 20/50 as the pounding in my head slowly stopped and my vision started to clear. Blinking a few times as the blur disappeared from the faces looking over me, I saw the green one had been Melody.

Strength quickly returned to my body as I slowly sat up, holding my head as Winter used a cloth to wipe off the blood. Looking at my chest, I saw my nose had bled far more than it did before, a stain covering the top half of my shirt sat there, still damp.

"Ruby?" Rebecca's soft voice brought clarity to my mind as I looked at her more carefully. She looked very pale herself, but her eyes only reflected my bloody face. "Ruby, are you okay?"

"Y-yes, I'm feeling better. Thank you both." As the remains of the headache faded and my vision cleared, I laid back down, still feeling a bit dizzy from everything. "Bek, are you okay?"

Seeing her smile and sit beside me while Melody handed her a bottle of blue liquid, she held my hand. "I'm okay as long as you are. You just took all of my mana is all." Holding up the hand with the red ring on it, I realised what had happened as I smiled in return.

"Sorry, I had another…" Glancing at Melody, I decided I could trust her with this. "I had another future dream." Describing it in full to the two of them, they both looked a bit stunned at the level of detail.

"It's going to be a problem if this happens often. I can't make mana potions so frequently, they require a lot of time. I'll try and make sure you both have a few in case it happens again." Melody sighs while looking at the table behind her. "That's fine though. You've made a scene outside when Winter carried you here."

Looking at Rebecca, she shrugged. "They were all concerned about you but don't worry, Sheep and Jupiter will ease their concerns. I think it's vital for you to reach Lvl 3, Ruby."

I knew why she said so. Lvl 3 might give me more mana, meaning if this were to happen again it could make things better afterwards. After resting for another two hours, I got up, thanked Melody again and headed outside, where I could see some people looking at me with concern.

"Mid, you good?" Seeing Sheep nearby, I gave him a nod.

"Just accidentally used all of my mana, nothing to worry about. We know what happens if one exhausts their magic now at least."

"Okay, go clean yourself up. I'll manage things while you rest." Leaving everything to Deven, I headed to our house with Winter, grabbed some clean clothes and went to the showers, intending to only rest for a day.