Callum sighed, but he drew his sword in an instant and activated Blade Dance. Only fifteen feet had separated him and the Vipers, but it felt like an eternity as they rushed him. He didn’t want to kill them but was prepared to if push came to shove.
The first reached him and Callum smacked his hand with the dull edge of his sword. Bones crunched and the bat dropped out of his hand. He followed with a sweep to the legs and his assailant fell to the concrete.
The next two attacked as a pair, but Callum slipped between their twin strikes. A strike to the back of the knee crumpled the first. Callum ducked a swing from the one still standing and smacked his rapier into the second’s wrist, forcing him to drop the bat.
With one left Callum deactivated Blade Dance and approached, but kept his eye on the disabled combatants.
“I just wanted into my apartment. You didn’t have to attack me,” Callum said to the one that looked like their leader.
“Fuck you,” he spat but made no move to attack. “You’ve made an enemy of the Vipers.”
“Clearly I can handle the Vipers if this is what they’re going to send after me,” Callum bluffed. Internally he was panicking, but hoped he could buy himself a few days if they chose to attack.
The man didn’t say anything else but helped up the men Callum had taken out and ran for it.
What have I gotten myself into? I should have just killed them, that would have bought me more time. Could I have killed them? I had no problem killing the goblins, but killing a person is . . . different. But I need to be ready to do so
There was nothing to be done about it after the fact. Callum forced himself to move on and head into his apartment building.
The building had taken on an eerie cast, with the only light coming in through a few open windows. The climb up the stairway was more annoying than difficult as no windows let in any light, and made him wish he had grabbed a torch from the dungeon.
He expected to find more Vipers lurking around any corner, but surprisingly he found no one. It was still as quiet as it had been the day before.
He made it to his apartment without encountering anyone. As he looked around, he realized there was almost no reason for him to come back. He had a few clothes and there was the food, but no items of any personal worth were there. The mattress would have been nice to sleep on, but to him, it was asking for trouble to sleep where he’d fought the Vipers.
Throwing everything he could fit into his backpack, Callum prepared to leave. Any rugged clothes he had went in the backpack, and nearly all the food he had stockpiled came with him as well.
As he worked, he thought about the people in the building. He had not seen any sign of them, but surely there had to be some people that still lived here or would return here. He thought about leaving a note on where they could find somewhere to live if they wanted to relocate, but that could lead the Vipers to what he was starting to think of as his new home.
What he could do was set a meeting point. He scrounged through his apartment for some paper and a pen. It made sense to him to pick somewhere that was equidistant from the apartment complex and his new land.
He settled on a location and included instructions to meet him just after dawn. He would have to make sure to check there or at least send someone to check. He would have to be there for the first few days to make sure the Vipers didn’t show up, but at some point, he could see it becoming a regular thing. Maybe Eliza would be able to do it, and if she saw Vipers, she could come get him.
He posted the note on his way out of the building, hopefully in a place where the tenants would be likely to see it and the vipers wouldn’t. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it would have to do. There would most likely be more citizen requirements for the pillar to be upgraded even more, so anyone who joined would be welcome.
With his tasks at his apartment complete, he set off back to his territory. The night was closing in, but Callum estimated that he had enough time that he wouldn’t have to run. As he walked, Eliza appeared beside him.
“They didn’t get very far,” she said by way of greeting.
“Who didn’t get very far?”
“The Vipers. They’re dead now.”
Callum stopped in his tracks. “Did you kill them?”
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“Yes.” She hunched her shoulders and hung her head.
Callum sighed and continued walking. “I hate to say it, but it was the right thing to do. I should have killed them myself.”
Eliza ran a few steps to catch up but seemed to be holding her head a bit higher.
“Does that mean you were following me the whole time?”
“Yes.” Her voice had gotten quiet again.
“I can’t fault you for that. Your decisions are your own, but I feel compelled to ask, have you killed someone before?”
“Yes, but before it was out of pure survival. This time, it was proactive. I think things would have been worse had they lived.”
Callum simply nodded and kept moving. There was no way he could hold himself to the morals of what society used to be. The Vipers had already shown that. They were ready to paint the concrete with his brains and he had held back.
He moved on from the terrible thoughts of what might come and focused back on what was right in front of him. There was still a lot to get done around this burgeoning village.
As he made his way back into the camp, Ryan came running up to him.
“I’ve cracked it,” he said, nearly breathless.
“Cracked what?” Callum asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Magic,” he breathed, his eyes full of wonder.
Callum’s eyes widened. “Show me.”
“Well, it’s a bit underwhelming, and there’s not much to show, but it’s still really cool. I might even be able to teach you. Okay, here it goes.”
Ryan held out his hand, and Callum could feel something condensing there. It itched at his perception just like the buckler had before he learned Identify. Over a few seconds, it kept building, and Callum felt drawn in.
Ryan flicked his arm forward, at Callum, and something struck Callum's chest. It didn’t hurt, but he was forced back a pace.
“What was that?” Callum asked.
“I’m not completely sure yet. But I know it’s magic of some kind because my mana bar goes down and my Basic Magic proficiency goes up.”
“That’s amazing.” Callum said. “Do you think you can teach me sometime?”
“Yeah, I mean probably. I think I could teach you. I really don’t understand how a lot of this works. And it might not work since you don’t have the skill.”
“Don’t worry about that. I figured out you can learn skills. There is a sectioned-off room in the town hall. We can meet there in an hour if that works for you?”’
“Yeah I can do that,” he said as he wandered off, still completely engrossed by the discovery.
Callum wanted to try and learn it as soon as he could, but there were a few things he needed to check on.
First on his list was returning to the obelisk to see what the town upgrade had unlocked. He perused through the menus and found that several buildings had been unlocked. The one he had expected to find, houses, had several variants with some costing as much as three hundred wood, and small hovels that cost only fifty.
He checked the supply of wood and found that a few people had continued to harvest the available trees. That was a good sign because he had no plans to do all of the work for them. He would help to get them all situated into a home, but beyond that, they were on their own.
Moving on, he saw that training grounds had been unlocked. He inspected them and was happily surprised that there were descriptions for these. It told him that these level-one training grounds provided slight bonuses to skill proficiency gain. There seemed to be a training ground for each of the starting classes. Out of curiosity, he wanted to buy one right then, but when he checked the resources needed, he was stumped.
They listed a cost in the wood of only two hundred, less than some houses, but each one required something called a Power Shard. His lack of knowledge on this reminded him that there was still a lot to learn about what had changed the world. When he tried to interact with the text to learn more, he couldn’t get anything to happen.
Callum frowned but would have to figure out what it was later. He contemplated buying the first house now, as he had the resources, but decided against it as he had no way of determining who would get the first house. Better to build them all at once.
Finally, he pulled up the requirements for the next upgrade. His heart sank when he saw what it needed. Three more territories, upgrade the town hall, two hundred citizens, and a training grounds. This was going to take some time.
With his time at the obelisk done, he strolled into the town hall. He had missed it earlier, but there were torches on the walls and pillars that provided light. They weren’t very big and hadn’t been on during the day which explained why he hadn’t noticed them. It was nice, but he had no clue how to turn them off when they all went to sleep.
As he walked through the hall, he stopped and talked to a few people. He wasn’t sure about his relationship between himself and the people whose homes had been there. It was something that had been ruminating in the back of his mind.
With the impending collapse of society, what would civilization come to look like? There had been a council and mayor of the city he lived in, but had they maintained control?
The Vipers were seeking to establish their territory and that could lead to conflict with whatever remnant of the police in the city. Those warriors he fought had been level two, and he shuddered to think what they could have done had they not taken on a dungeon.
His relationship with these people could be different. Maybe he could become some beacon of human decency should humanity fall back to tribalism and rule of the strong. To do so he would need to become strong himself, but that’s what the meeting with Ryan was about.
Realizing he had ignored a few people in his thoughts about what would come, he focused back on the task at hand.
From what he could gather, a few were still quite upset with him, but most were coming around. Their homes being invaded by goblins seemed to instill a sense of doom, and Callum was becoming a symbol of safe haven.
His brief conversations left him with a feeling of unease. Most of the people understood that he was trying to replace what he had inadvertently destroyed, but there wasn’t any sort of respect for it. They had no clue what had happened in the dungeon.
With the talks done, he made his way to a room in the back. It was small and unadorned, save for a single torch that provided flickering light. Ryan had laid out two mats and was sitting with legs crossed on one.