Three days of peace passed with blissful ignorance. Everyone was ecstatic at the idea of a warm shower and the convenience of electricity. If anyone had the idea that there would be some price to pay for this luxury, they didn’t say it aloud.
I couldn’t stomach stripping that initial happiness from my friends, and so I waited until we’d all enjoyed a period of rest before explaining the system messages and a bit of my own discoveries to everyone. It came as a shock initially, but Lucas did a great job of rationalizing it: nothing came free in this new world we found ourselves in.
The idea of fleeing never came up. It was clear we were meant to occupy and level up one of these new bastions to survive. Which meant the waves of demons that had been indicated by the system message were mandatory, and not optional. Not unless we had some other magical way to stop the steady decay inflicted by the bloody sky on those who remained outdoors. Anyway, no one wanted to give up this little bit of luxury we had tasted after so long being on the move.
That night before the timer on the demon wave message ran down to zero was tense. We all had an idea of what a demon would be like, but those were just mythical existences from fairy tales and high-fantasy. Elusive, intelligent, mystical, strong—the list of words that could be used to describe a demon were endless, but how well did human culture and knowledge of demons match the reality?
Fortunately, the first wave consisted of just one demon arriving in front of the house. A brutish creature with brownish-red skin that towered easily over eight feet stood in front of us. It resembled something like a gargoyle statue but moved on two feet. The wings on its back looked too small to fly with. It had appeared out of nowhere in the distance, and walked with purpose towards us.
The grace, the intelligence, the manipulative personality and slick tongue that I was expecting was nowhere to be seen. Instead, it was something akin to an ogre. A killing machine made of pure muscle. Alan matched up against it sword to fist, and despite my expectations that difficult struggles lay ahead… I was underwhelmed.
In fact, Alan managed to fell the demon alone. The fight wasn’t a quick one, as the strength it possessed would have torn him limb from limb easily. The defense of its skin was something similar to a metal shell. Still, Alan’s passive Rend proved incredibly useful to fell the walking tank, slowly bleeding it until exhaustion.
Congratulations, Humble Abode has reached LV. 2
A welcome message appeared after the demon was slain. Even better was the five-percent EXP I had received for the kill. That was as good or better than most elite monsters for me now. The creeping hunger I had been feeling was fully satiated, as if I’d just defeated a dungeon boss.
“Are they weak or are we strong?” wondered Lucas. It was a good question. There was no doubt we were ahead of the curve, but none of us could know by how much.
“I think… we are strong,” I offered. We hadn’t had much interaction with other groups, but the events we’d coped with must have put us well ahead of your average survivor. With that in mind, a singular demon was probably a fair challenge for a typical party, but we were not that party.
I opened my messages to be sure and confirmed that the demon wave arrival time had updated, and it now had a number that worked out to be a week away. We had more time to prepare, and judging by my updated skill page, things would be growing more difficult.
According to my own skill page for Humble Abode, our current living quarters could accommodate twenty people comfortably at level 1. With eight, we weren’t even half capacity. That was fine in and of itself, but the difficulty obviously scaled with every wave.
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Defeating waves of demons provided EXP, which allowed for further expansion and power. Could we fail to defeat the demons and survive? Did failure equal death? Did we simply lose progress on our new base? Would adding more capacity drastically increase the demon wave size? There were a lot of questions to be answered.
While a singular demon was not an issue, and maybe even five of them would be manageable for us now, a literal army of them would not be something we could contend with. We needed people to fight with, and as of now our understanding of what the remaining life on earth looked like was slim.
We had defeated only one demon, and I gained one level towards the skill. It was hard to say if defeating the wave gave EXP, or if each individual demon defeated did. Even with all the available upgrades and skills, it was hard to imagine defeating wave sixty or wave one-hundred.
While plenty of abode skills were unlock-able, it seemed many were gated behind levels. At level two, my options were limited. I could increase the player capacity to thirty players, increase the defensive capabilities of our new home, or provide a recuperative buff to anyone residing inside.
There was no description of what the defense entailed, but as of right now the level was zero. Increasing capacity was out of the question as we didn’t even have a full house now. I suspected we could deal with the second wave even with our current group, after that I wasn’t sure.
If that was the case, the recuperative buff would probably be the most beneficial. I studied it.
Well-Rested: HP and MP recovery increased by twenty percent while resting.
Thiswasn’t a small increase. In between waves, or even while fighting waves, it could very well be the difference between just enough and not enough. While this fight ended quite quickly, it was likely that each future wave would be far more demanding.
“Defense or Recovery?” I asked everyone before giving a brief description of each.
“I think I might finally be useful,” Glenn laughed. He didn’t wait for any retorts and used his ability. The entire building glowed as a murky blue substance crystallized over the white surface. Eventually this settled until the entire building had a sheen that reflected in the light, as if covered by glass.
With all man-made structures coming crumbling down, Glenn’s class of Apocalypse Architect had seemed less and less useful. He could currently only augment, and not make structures. Also, we still hadn’t seen any of the rare materials he required to create some truly fantastical creations. Here, though, we could benefit from his ability to strengthen a building. It was a nice boon to know we could get some value out of it now.
“I guess that means it’ll be recovery,” I said. This was the consensus anyway as the waves didn’t seem to be any threat to our new home currently. I allocated the skill and didn’t see any tangible difference to the replacement of the MP I’d used preparing for battle, the buff seemed to only work while I was inside the building.
A promising bonus was that the green marking on the map that originally brought us here had expanded slightly in size and pulsed an even brighter green color. As if it was a beacon of hope for humanity.
We were the only green zone in hundreds of miles, which probably meant that eventually other survivors would be coming knocking. We hadn’t yet discussed how we would deal with that issue, or if it was an issue at all. Playing it by ear seemed to be the correct course of action.
Cooperation was clearly the trend, and yet I was skeptical. People were greedy, selfish. I’d seen it first hand, how they would bite off more than they could chew, or take an inch and then expect a mile. Remembering the words of the system calmed my nerves slightly. This structure… I owned it. At least newcomers could not take it for themselves.
Even worse than accepting strangers to our abode might be the difficulty of turning them away: knowing that anyone we refused admission to would be left to die. Turning someone away would be a death sentence, and hopefully that wouldn’t be needed. But the world wasn’t so kind anymore. I would do what needed to be done, regardless. It wasn’t that long ago that I stopped being human, and my passive Mutated proved that.
“We have seven days until the next wave,” I told everyone. “Any ideas for what to do with that time?” Besides sitting tight there really wasn’t much to do. The wandering ghouls and zombies no longer posed any threat to us. Even worse, they gave almost no experience.
There were very few places to get EXP for our party now, and while a week was plenty of time to take a journey and return with spoils, I felt uneasy about doing so. The bastion was new, and anyone nearby looking at their map would see it immediately and be drawn to it. I didn’t want to be gone when other people began showing up.
As much safety as I found in my own group of friends, we would need other people to survive. My thoughts drifted back to the True Believers who had once hunted us. The amount of strange and unknown powers and skills was daunting, and I feared someone with too much power would come along and cause problems.
A lot could happen in seven days, but all we could do was wait. Once I knew the basics of the Humble Abode, and we knew more about the demon wave mechanics… only then could we start making a more encompassing plan for the future.