Rose tiptoed down this stairs and through the living room, being careful not to wake the 2 sleeping boys on the sofas. Once in the kitchen, she stoked the remains of last nights fire and got it going again ready to begin breakfast. She filled the kettle and put it on the hob to boil before going down to the cold room to get the last of the bacon and sausages for breakfast, thinking they may as well use them before they went bad. As she began cooking she thought over what she was going to say to the others when they woke up. She hoped they would agree to stay and help rebuild.

The smell of the food began travelling around the house calling people to the breakfast table and as Rose moved food from pans to plates, people began waking up and wandering in.

First Jon walked into the kitchen, then Em and Alexia skipped in, sat down and Em filled plates for them both. She had really taken to the other little girl and Rose was glad she had someone to play with. Leah burst into the kitchen asking where Alexia was before seeing her daughter sat munching happily and collapsing into a chair herself pulling a cup and the coffee pot towards her. Finally Liam woke and stumbled into the kitchen bleary eyed, he piled food on his plate and started shoveling it in.

Once all the food was gone, they all helped with the cleaning before sending the 2 young girls back upstairs to play. Refiling their mugs the 3 adults moved into the living room and sat down, Liam following along and finding somewhere for himself to sit.

Once everyone was settled, Rose began explaining what had happened in her her dream, then telling them about the Quests she had found upon waking up.

"After seeing that Quest I knew I couldn't do this on my own, I wouldn't even know where to start." Rose finished.

Leah then spoke up, " If I may speak for my family then I say we will help. Finiding people might tough but I hope more than 10 people survived in Scarborough, it is a fairly big town."

Jon agreed with his daughter, "And I have an idea for a more defenceable, permenant base. We need to have enough room for more people to live in safety, I reckon with a bit of effort my idea could work."

"Where?" Rose asked.

"Scarborough Castle. I think I might be able to raise some basic walls to make it safe, also according to Rose's dream eventually I'l be able to build a proper castle for us to live in."

"it could work" Mused Rose.

"You're right Dad, we would have plenty of room to build out and accomadate any new people we have join us." Added Leah.

"What about somewhere to cook? My quest has that crossed out but if we move there we will have to find someway to move the stove there." Rose asked.

"I was thinking of finding a pump truck for moving the bigger things we will need, so that shouldn't be a problem." Was the reply from Jon.

"I think a trip to a camping store would be a good idea, we could pick up decent backpacks for everyone, also there should be other useful stuff that we can use." Came from Rose.

Leah said, "We need more food too, and a way to store stuff so it doesn't go off, that cold room is alright but it's not going to keep things fresh for long. I'm happy to stay here with the kids and sort what food is here, we could also check the near by houses as we haven't seen nor heard anyone since this started so it should be safe enough. To be even safer we can go through the back gardens so we aren't see."

"That's a good idea Leah, Jon and I will go to Scarborough Castle and see if this plan will work." Rose was then interupted by Liam,

"I want to come with you, I'm the only other one with any knowledge of the type of gaming systems that Gaia said were similar to the interface that we now have access too. I can help and I want to."

"You can't go out there you are too young, I'm still your mother and you will listen to me." Leah protested.

"I'm not a child anymore Mum, I can't be. I have to help, we all need to work together to survive. The girls can help you with the less dangerous stuff and I will go out with Gramps and Rose and bring back things that we need." Came the suprisingly mature response from Liam. Rose had to admit that she agreed with him.

"But" began Leah before stopping and starting again, "You can go, just please Dad, keep him safe."

"I will" Jon confirmed before Rose added "No, we will."

After saying goodbye and reasuring Em that they would be back later, the three of them headed out in the direction of the Castle. The walk there was quiet, just noises of birds and small animals going about their business. Evidence of yesterday's attacks was everywhere, bodies lay in the road and the gutters ran red with blood.

It didn't take long for them to reach the castle and when they did they saw it was untouched by the horrors that had happened. Jon went up to the ruin and tried raising a stone wall but nothing happened. Frustratedly he burst out with "Nothing, this isn't working."

"Might sound a bit silly but try taking deep breaths and meditating on what you want to do, in my dream Gaia said it would help." Rose advised.

Jon calmed his breathing and consentrated. After about 10 minutes he jumped back in shock as the ruin began re-building itself, stone forming from the broken parts and making the stone whole, it only lasted a few seconds but something definatly happened.

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"Another box appeared, apparently I have a new skill called rebuild, seems to use a lot of essence so it may take a while, but I should be able to restore the building fully rather than building a new one."

"Ok, we should go check out the camping store anad grab bags and stuff before going to a supermarket and filling up on any food we can." Rose suggested, " We can come back later if there is time and you can get started properly."

Jon and Liam agreed so they made their way to closest camping store to the castle. At the store Jon opened the door slowly, then crept insideto check it out, leaving Rose and Liam to keep watch outside. Inside Jon carefully checked the whole store including the back room where he found a pump truck that they could use for moving the big stuff. Moving back to the entrance he becked the others inside. The first thing they did was grab bags for everyone, they then half filled the bags with anything they thought would be useful before piling tents, sleeping bags and camp beds onto the pump truck ready to be pulled back to the house.When they were done, they left the store and headed to the nearest supermarket which happened to be on the way back to Rose's house.

As they turned the corner near the store they could see that the doors were smashed in and that there was a huge pool of blood between them, huge footprints leading through the blood into the store made them look at each other and without words decide to give this shop a miss for now. Turning around to head home, they heard roar from within the store and began to run, leaving the pump truck behind them. Before getting far they rounded a corner where Liam went flying over a fallen bin and crashed to the ground. Jon ran back to get his Grandson and Rose stood in front of them as Liam made his way to his feet. Before Liam could stand up properly, the thing that had been chasing them came round the corner behind them. As it saw it's prey it let out an almighty roar and pounded the street with its massive fists.

Rose was stuck staring like a deer in headlights, unable to take her eyes of this monsterous thing. Suddenly a name and level appeared above the things head:

Town Troll Level 3

A prompt then appeared, obscuring her vision:

New skill learned: Identify - Shows target name and level.

Frantically pushing the prompt away, she saw that the troll was lumbering straight towards her, desperatly throwing her hands before her she tried to recreate the heatwave that had saved hers and her daughters lives once before.

For a moment nothing happened and Rose almost began panicing, when she felt slight pull from somewhere deep down and a small heatwave came out of her hands before dissappating into thin air. Seeing the troll get much closer, she began pulling harder on the fading connection, she managed to produce another heatwave, this time it burst out of her hands and hit the troll, pushing it back several paces and burning its skin.

She pulled as hard as she could and forced a much bigger and more powerful heatwave to erupt from her hands and blast into the troll. This time it was knocked off its feet and landed on the floor twitching in pain.

Rose fell to the floor with a massive headache unable to do anything more. Another promt then appeared:

New ability: Heatwave

- Does minor burning damage to target

- 10 essence per successful cast.

followed by another:

New sub-ability : Heatblast - Uses all remaining essence to send one massive heatwave for twice as much total damage

No wonder she was in so much pain, she had used all her essence in that last attack. Rose heard a slam and a squish, looking up she saw a slab of stone with the remains of the troll oozing out from underneath it. She turned to Jon with one eyebrow raised until he said, "It tried to get up, now it can't."

Rolling her eyes and shrugging her shoulders, her attention was taken by yet another prompt:

Congradulations! Level 2 Attribute point earned are now applied.

Seeing that, Rose decided to pull up her character sheet and have a look.

Name: Rose Conehey Level 2 Health Essence Main attributes: Exp 0/300 115 140 Strength 8     Intelligence 14     Wisdom 10     Dexterity 9     Constitution 7     Luck 15     Skills Identify- shows target name and level up to ten levels above your own. 0.5% to next level Abilities

Heatwave- uses 10 E per successful cast, does minor burning damage to target. lvl 1 1% to next level.

- Heat blast: overpowered Heatwave using all remaining E for twice as much power.

Affinities Fire novice level 1: 10% to next level     Blessings Gaia's blessing Your dedication to your daughter has led to Gaia awakening your fire affinity  

She saw her new skill and abilities and that they could be leveled up, so hopefully they would get better in time. Rose thought to herself that if she couldn't identify something they should probably run away, it was likely to be much too powerful for them to take on at this point. She also thought that more strength and constitution was always a good thing and was probably increased due to the amount of walking and running she had done today. She didn't know why her charisma had gone up but decided it must be to do with the others deciding to help her.

Breaking her out of her trance, Jon said " We should begin heading back, I got a new skill from that wall called push back. It creates a stone wall that acts like a battering ram pushing everything away from me before falling on what ever is behind it. between that and your new thing we should be able to get back ok."

Interupting him Rose said, " I can't do the last attack again for a while, it uses all of my essence, it's refilling slowly I think but I wont be able to do it very often. the first successful attack only uses 10 E but it only does minor burning damage so isn't too useful. You are right though, we should grab the pump truck and head home, I don't think anything else will be around here."

With that they began walking home, sticking to the edges of buildings and the shadows so not to be seen by the various monsters that had came out of hiding now the huge troll was gone, thankfully nothing found them and they made it home safe and sound.