They had returned to the fortress quickly after Alexis had managed to reattach Stephen’s leg and healed it to full functionality in short order. The short meeting after hadn’t been productive as John was still collating all the information and vehemently refused to provide an incomplete summary of their situation. The general consensus was, after due consideration of Jaco’s report, that they needed to find out what was happening in town. So here Ryan was, huddling in the dark and observing the outskirts of town. He and Miguel, the most suitable scouts, had had an uneventful bike ride during the late afternoon and then made their final approach through the mountains on foot and in the dark. Easy peasy. For now they were observing the town from the eastern water reservoir, which they had confirmed to be empty.

Ryan could clearly see several fires burning and a lot of desolated silhouettes of burnt out buildings were framed in the flickering light of the still raging fires. From here it was near impossible to see movements down in the valley, but the occasional report of gunshots painted an increasingly clearer picture of the situation in town. Mayhem, the Wild West, were the strong reigned through their fists and steel, through unapologetic use of superior firepower, suppressing and exploiting the weak. As John had surmised, resources in town had become scarce in short order, lack of water, food and sanitation leading to a desperate struggle for survival. The ruthless using force to steal resources from the less fortunate. Civil order breaking down near immediately. This was however still pure supposition on their part and Ryan silently considered the best way to complete their task of confirming the situation in town. In addition, William had asked them to see if they could obtain either ammunition or reloading equipment for the group.

Miguel was carefully scanning the town, his binocular sight, a class mutation, far superior to Ryan’s. He kept up a quiet running commentary on his observations, sharing pertinent details with Ryan. The two of them had quickly decided that they would only enter town during the next night as doing so without a much greater amount of information than what they had currently would be the height of stupidity. Ryan had informed William of the decision near immediately before reviewing the message Johannes had sent him, the three member group was now only a day away from joining them and had had several violent encounters with mutated animals on their way, reaching Levels exceeding most of the existing group.

Ryan wrenched back his thoughts on the topic of their approach, trying to come up with a plan that would result in a safe, fast and successful scout. It was a fruitless endeavour, without more information at hand the only thing he could come up with was that he would scout the city while Miguel would remain in a position of oversight, moving from position to position as required. Something that they would need to figure out during the day. He tapped Miguel on the shoulder “Keep up the commentary, we’ll need to split up when scouting tomorrow night and gather more information in the meantime. I’ll try to do some more cultivating in the meantime, please interrupt me if you spot anything that you consider important.” Miguel just nodded an acknowledgment and continued narrating his observations without interruption.

Ryan had made little progress with his cultivation in the past few days but had figured out that he could only cultivate the energy surrounding him when moving so now he decided to try something that he hadn’t had the time for up until now. Starting a Poomsae that was deeply engrained into his muscle memory after several years of Taekwondo he focused on the flows of energy within his body, trying to catch the elusive feeling he had first discovered while jogging on the road to Windhoek. The sensations snapped into place, the near visual feeling of the energy flowing through his system and feeding his body crystal clear. Intuitively he felt that the flow had more substance than before, focused in areas and diffused in others it felt imbalanced, viscerally wrong. Moving through his forms he tried to smooth out the flow, distributing it evenly throughout his body. The energy fought him, refusing to conform to his will, but slowly he persevered. Eventually it flowed in line with the movements of the poomsae, further smoothing his movements, lending increased power and speed. Without realising it, Ryan started moving faster and faster, every movement crisp and full of latent power. By now he was paying more attention to his core, the energy was cycling through it quicker, his whole system drawing more energy from his surroundings. The biltong he had eaten just a short while ago was digested in moments, the energy released sucked up by his core.

Fleetingly, he glanced a spiralling vortex spinning in his core, sucking down the energy and growing voraciously. In mere moments hours had passed and Ryan collapsed to the ground, startling Miguel, who had been watching him with unwavering focus. “What the hell, what happened, why’d you stop?” Barely conscious Ryan responded only with a groan before collecting himself and answering. “I don’t know, that shouldn’t have happened, guess I ran out of energy.” A quick peek at his status confirmed Ryan’s suspicion, his Energy showed at 6/1624, considering his regeneration he had probably emptied out his entire pool.

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“Aren’t you supposed to be watching the town?” he asked Miguel. “Nothing has been happening for hours. Things got quiet around midnight.” It was only then that Ryan realised he must have spent hours practicing his form and thought to ask Miguel “So, learned something?” Miguel’s answer actually surprised him “Yes, I did. I could nearly feel the energy circulating through you, nearly see it. I think I won’t be able to repeat what you’re doing, cultivating through movement, but I have several ideas I want to try. Anyways, think we can catch a bit of shut-eye? I set up a perimeter, a new Skill, should warn us if anything approaches.” Ryan considered the risks and agreed with Miguel, sleep would probably be a good option as they had a long day and night planned.

With fleeting memories of a pleasant dream Ryan woke to sunlight caressing his cheeks. Miguel was already up and handed him a cup of lukewarm coffee, brewed over a tiny fire of sticks that didn’t emit any smoke. They both observed the movements below. What appeared to be groups of captives, with no delineations around racial differences, supervised by overseers with automatic weapons, were clearing one house after another, carrying out food, bottled water and a variety of sundries. The people that weren’t armed were filthy and unkempt, their demeanour subdued. They followed shouted instructions from the armed overseers with alacrity, scurrying in frantic haste to complete whatever assignments had been given. The overseers, although near as dirty as the captives, looked upbeat. They were well fed and strutting around, often laughingly conversing with another and at times pointing jeeringly at female captives.

Ryan ground his teeth, the inhumanity of the situation appalled him and he could only imagine what happened to the female captives at night. He knew that, for now at least, there was nothing he could do to change the situation, any interference most likely leading to his death. Still, it was frustrating. Miguel didn’t seem as bothered as he was, coolly continuing to observe the situation. Ryan resolved to continue his observations as well, shunting aside any emotions impacting his conscience.

Over the next several hours their observations of the movement of the various people and the goods they carried eventually painted a sketch of the situation in the suburb. Two groups of overlords, for a lack of a better word, had set up operations in the suburb, forcing others do their work for them. The first and closer group was based at the hotel on the northern hill dominating the suburb and the second was occupying a variety of houses in the little valley close to the Hunter’s place, manning observation posts around the ridges surrounding the valley. Both groups scavenged material from the private residences in the suburb, ignoring the shopping mall which probably had been cleared out by now.

From what they could observe, the groups had reached a truce as they didn’t engage in combat when they inadvertently met, but rather withdrew immediately.

Both groups assiduously avoided the monolith that was the compound of the United States embassy on the western side of the valley, keeping well clear of it. Ryan glassed the compound, seeing that its perimeter was manned by troops that were fully armed. From what he could observe, they held a purely defensive position and were not participating in any of the scavenging going on. Which to Ryan meant that they had plenty of resources necessary for ensuring their survival.

Then the first group flushed a few survivors out of one of the houses close by. Ryan could hear a shot fired within the house and a short burst of automatic fire followed it immediately afterwards. Several overseers rushed to the scene and eventually dragged out a group of four people and proceeded to mercilessly beat them up in the street. As harrowing as the situation was, Ryan couldn’t help but scoff at the idiocy of the four. In their place, he would have left the town under cover of the night a long time ago. The sobbing survivors were eventually carried to the hotel by the older captives. They couldn’t directly observe what happened inside the compound, but after a short while two of the four captives walked out, crying, and joined one of the scavenging groups. Of the other two, there remained no sign.

Ryan and Miguel continued their observations throughout the day, not discovering a lot more besides the explanation for the scattered gunshots they had often heard the previous night. Apparently, a variety of animals had survived up until now, often in hiding. When approached or cornered by any of the groups they often violently attacked, sometimes killing the captives before being put down by the armed overseers. Any corpses of the captives were unceremoniously left were they fell, decorating the streets but Ryan was perplexed why they couldn’t spot more corpses lining the streets where the houses had already been cleared.

With evening approaching Miguel and Ryan settled down to plan their nightly excursion and, before they could even begin, found out what most likely happened to the corpses. The captives were herded to their respective compounds and several contingents of overseers left the compound shortly thereafter. These then set up ambush positions in several houses around the corpses in the street, clearly awaiting the approach of scavengers during the night.

Ryan was frustrated, this new wrinkle messed with the plan he had come up with during the day and him and Miguel would quickly need to figure out a new avenue of approach to the targets they had agreed on with William. One, investigate the availability of ammunition and tools, two, find the position of the Ascension Obelisk and three, figure out the situation in town.