With the monsters clearing the path before us, the rest of the trip was smooth. The lack of action stressed me more than the fighting had.

“Are the monsters avoiding the Blood-Spawn because it’s bigger?” Steve asked.

“If they were just avoiding higher tier monsters, they should be avoiding me. But they weren’t.” I said.

“Maybe they were.” Clarissa replied. Her eyes flitted to me and then away. “You said the vampire was controlling these ones?”

“I think so.” I said.

We were walking through the center of the street now, only pausing occasionally to walk around the husks of cars that littered the road. With the vampires clearing the road and scouting ahead, we had no need to sneak through alleyways anymore.

“So they only attacked because a stronger vampire was controlling them.” Steve said.

“We’re here.” Clarissa interrupted. We stopped abruptly in the street. We had moved into an almost urban area — stores sat on the corner only a stones throw from houses that were way too expensive for how small they were.

Almost every building was damaged in some way. The city was starting to stink. I didn’t know if it was the sewage system breaking down, or something worse.

Across from us was a half burned down church. Clarissa’s face hardened on seeing it.

The stone face at the front of the church still stood, but the windows were all broken out. Black char stained what was left of the building’s frame.

“Clarissa…” I started to say. I didn’t know what to say. This was the place she was headed? The building was burned down. I wished Russo was here to offer some words of comfort. I was thinking of what to say when Clarissa stepped forward and through the threshold into the building.

The door was gone. She stomped over the broken frame on the ground, glass shards crunching under her boots.

“What an absolute wreck.” She said, scrunching her nose as she stepped through ash and rubble. She pulled the strap that her chainsaw hung from off from around her shoulders and set it on the ground before scraping the layer ash off the floor. “Where was it… help me with this.”

Clarissa didn’t look back to see if we were going to help. I looked to Steve, who shrugged.

“What are we doing…?” I asked. I started scraping away ash with my own boot.

Clarissa jumped from spot to spot, smearing the floor.

“Was it here?” She asked. “Is this where the wall was?”

While I was looking over at her, my foot stuck on something. I stumbled forward, catching myself before I fell.

I stared down at a handle attached to a hatch in the floor.

“Clarissa?” I asked. “Is this it?”

“Ah! You found it.” She said, leaning low to the floor and brushing away dust from it.

It looked like there used to be a keypad, but now it was melted, buttons in a stinking pile of rubber and coated with ash.

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Clarissa grabbed the handle and pulled, trying to open it. When that failed, she fumbled to pull a key off her keyring, then had to rip off melted plastic from the keyhole.

She wasn’t able to unlock it.

“I thought we were going to your dad?” Steve asked.

“We are!” Clarissa said. “He should be in here.”

“In there? Under a church?” I asked.

“Yeah. It’s a bunker.” Clarissa said. Then she grunted as she tried to pull the door open. She stopped, looking over to her chainsaw.

“Let Eli try. He’s got vampire super strength.” Steve said.

“I do not have super strength. Right now.” I said, looking at the vault. But… I thought I could open it. [Move the Earth] called to me. I sensed the concrete walls behind the bunkers vault-like door.

Could I move concrete with the skill?

I stepped closer. The structure seemed to resonate with it. Clarissa backed away. I felt her eyes on me as I closed my own, reaching down with my Willpower. I felt my Willpower suffuse the concrete, spreading through it.

It made me question what Earth was. What did the system define it as? Concrete was mostly sand or gravel and stone, and it seemed to respond to the skill. Was earth stone? Dirt? Anything buried in the ground?

With a push, I widened the entrance, displacing the concrete hatch. Metal screeched and groaned as concrete flowed like mud, leaving behind the rebar supports inside of it. There was a popping noise as the latch holding the entrance shut broke.

I opened my eyes, staring down at the opened hatch, and felt some metaphysical understanding click, a step closer to an understanding of what Earth was. It wasn’t dirt; it wasn’t stone; it was an active process, the movement of tectonics and lava over millions of years. And it felt alive.

[Move the Earth VI has leveled to move the Earth VII!]

I threw my head back as the feeling of the level up washed over me. Even If I lost what was left of the blood, I would retain a single level in the skill. Enough to keep leveling it. I had magic now. A skill I actually wanted, mine forever to keep and grow.

Clarissa grabbed the latch, throwing the door open to reveal the ladder embedded into the wall. The metal ladder was now warped where the concrete had been pushed away.

“Dad!?” Clarissa shouted into the hole. “Dad!”

There was no answer.

“Is it safe down there?” Steve asked, staring down the hole.

“I’ll go first. I can see in the dark.” I volunteered. Clarissa hesitated, looking like she wanted to say something. “What is it?” I asked.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” She replied. “Let me go.”

“What if there’s a transformed vampire down there?” I asked.

“I’ll stay up here and watch the entrance.” Steve said. He was staring at the ladder, though.

Clarissa led the way into the dark. It was night above. With the fire having recently raged through the city and most of the people here lost, there were no animals making noise. Just the dead quiet and the sound of our boots squeaking on the metal ladder as we descended.

At the bottom was a clean hallway. The only debris was the ash and the fragments of cement that had fallen loose when I forced the hatch open.

At the other end of the hall was a metal door. Clarissa pounded on it. I heard thumping from the other side, which quieted after a moment. The door didn’t open.

Clarissa pounded on it again.

I looked around the door. There was a camera above it. In the dark, the red pin point of light from the LED splashed outward, painting the hallway red. The sound of locks unlatching repeated on the other side of the door. Clarissa pounded on it again.

“Hurry up.” She said.

Eventually, the door swung open.

The other side didn’t open into a tight tunnel like the one we were in — it opened into a sprawling room with hardwood floors. Dozens of people stared back at us, an entire congregation’s worth, holding drinking glasses. The rhythmatic thumping was coming from a speaker in the corner. Lights shone brightly in the hall.

“Clarebear?” A bear of a man asked from a couch against the wall. Then he shot to his feet, ran across the room, and picked her up in a spinning hug. He had short cropped hair and giant, blocky features. He set her down and let her take a step back. His eyes shot to me, widened in alarm, and looked back to her. “What the hell is going on out there? We weren’t able to get the hatch open.”

“It melted.” Clarissa said. Her father’s eyes kept flicking between me and her. “There was a fire. Got half the city. Power’s gone. This… is Eli.”

“Hi Eli. I’m Mike.” The old man extended a hand to me. I shook it warily. He didn’t look away from my eyes. His grip slowly strengthened. “Your hand is cold.”

“It’s okay dad. He’s good. He protected me.”

Mike let go of my hand. But he didn’t stop looking at me.

Most of the room was staring at us now. Someone had ran out the back into a hallway.

The walls were all lined with shelves covered in preserved food and bags of grain.

“Was anyone in here bitten? If you were infected, I can cure it.” I said, looking around the room.

“Bit?” Mike asked. “By what? Clare, what’s going on up there?”