Andrew sat on a smooth stone, just big enough to barely be comfortable. He groggily looked at the approximately 50 people around him. Everyone was sitting either on the grass on the ground or standing around. Everyone tried, with varying success, to hide their naked bodies.

Andrew was very happy that he only needed to hide one part of his body. He desperately tried not to stare at the women crouching down on one side of the group. They were trying to hide as much as possible from the men, who were awkwardly looking into the sky.

No one said anything. They woke up more or less at the same time and wordlessly stood near each other. And as far away as possible from the people, who lay on the ground with wide open mouths and eyes.

After Andrew saw them first, he thought they were dead. But while looking at them in shock, he noticed that they were breathing. They looked like they had experienced something so horrifying that their minds just stopped working.

"Is someone a doctor here?" Someone asked, while awkwardly pointing at the unmoving people a few meters away.

For some time, nobody moved. Eventually, a young woman stood up and seemed very nervous while holding her arms in front of her body.

"I am." She just said. She took a deep breath, and walked towards the unmoving people. Some of the men took quick glances at the backside of the woman, which caused many of the other women to stare angrily at these men.

After this short moment, silence again fell over the group. It was only disturbed by the wildlife in the woods around them.

Everybody knew what was going on. The system told them. The world is different now. And they somehow needed to survive. Andrew thought it was a small miracle that nobody was freaking out at the moment. Well, the people here were probably freaking out, but they could keep control over their turbulent minds.

After some time, the doctor came back and sat down with the group of women.

"I have no idea what they have. Their bodies seem fine, they have no injuries, no signs of trauma, or anything else. But they seem close to being brain dead. Nothing reacts. Only the basic body functions seem to still work." She spoke with a hoarse and shaky voice, trying to stay calm and professional. But not everyone was able to do that.

One man suddenly jumped up from the ground and started to run into the woods while screaming.

"Wait, stop!" shouted Andrew. He tried to follow him, but a sudden dizzy spell hit him, and he fell right on his face.

The other people stood rooted to the ground and looked at the man, getting further and further away.

While standing up, Andrew felt tension in the air. It wouldn’t take long, and the whole group would start to freak out. He tried to ignore the fact that he would also start to freak out.

He suppressed the overflowing panic inside his mind and thought about what to say next. And how to calm the people around him down.

This prompt nearly pushed him over the edge, and he swallowed the scream that wanted to come up his throat. This prompt came right after he tried to come up with a solution for calming himself and everyone else down. Did the system give him a solution? He could only guess and mentally affirm the acquisition.

He blankly stared at the second sentence and barely understood its meaning when a weird sensation washed over him. It felt like everything had calmed down. Nothing mattered anymore, and he was fine just sitting on this little rock. Deeper and deeper he drifted into this calmness, when a small part of his brain told him that this was dangerous.

Like a drowning man, his consciousness came back from the calmness. And he started sweating and breathing heavily.

Still breathing heavily, he mentally summoned his status and saw one new active and passive skill each:

Active Skills:

Emotion manipulation: With moderate magic power consumption, you are able to influence another person’s emotions to a certain degree.

Passive Skills:

Equilibrium: You are unable to feel extreme emotions and are always in a state of equilibrium. In a certain area around you, people will be slightly influenced by this skill.

‘This is exactly what we need right now.’ He thought to himself calmly and stood up from his crouching position. He walked forward and stood tall before the nervous crowd.

"I know how you all feel. I also feel it. But we need to keep it together right now. We need to hold together. If we start panicking like the last guy who ran off, we will only be digging our graves." He calmly gazed into the crowd of people, who seemed oddly convinced of his words. But maybe they just desperately wanted someone to show them a way out of this fucked-up situation.

"The strongest of us will carry the unconscious people over there. We will always walk in a group. And for now, we will look for fresh water and a place that will give us a little bit of shelter. Has anyone some more suggestions?" He continued his speech.

"I have one." Said a scrawny young man, barely out of his teens. "I want to wear some fucking clothes."

A few people laughed a bit and threw each other glances, aware again that everyone was naked.

Andrew also smiled a bit. "Yeah, that would be nice. But sustenance comes first. Does anyone have experience walking through the wilderness?"

A gruff-looking man held up his hand and stepped forward. "I have experience." He said it curtly in a deep and raspy voice, holding his other hand between his legs.

"Perfect." Andrew said this and nodded to the man. "Let’s go then."

After some time, the oddly calm group started walking like a herd of sheep behind Andrew and the gruff-looking man. They started looking a little bit less hopeless.