Mark had been running along the sidewalk, getting as close to the entrance to the alleyway as he could.
So when he heard the shout, he looked back in time to see a guy causally hopping out a double-story window.
Just as he hit the ground he tucked and rolled, dispersing the force of the fall and bolting upright.
Breaking straight into a sprint he caught up to Mark in no time flat. When he got there he dropped his pace to match Mark's sprint.
“Sup dude, what you doing up at this time? I thought we were supposed to be lowkey right now?”
Mark was stumped by the abruptness with which he appeared. Suddenly jumping in and starting a conversation in the middle of fleeing. Was he all right in the head?
“Run now, talk later,” Mark said.
“Lit, runnings one of the things I'm great at. The names Andy by the way,” he said.
They turned the corner and dove into the alleyway.
“Oh quick question what's the pupper's name, when I saw you guys explode out into the street he looked real majestic,” Andy asked.
“Andy, chase remember?” Mark said in exasperation.
The smallest horde he’d been hunted by tonight, rounded the corner.
As if just now realizing it he responded.
“Right. Right. Well, the best way to travel around here is on the roofs. They're all one-to-two stories so even a Generalist can make the jumps with a good enough run-up”
There was that term again, Mark's eyes darted up. He was right the whole area was flat-roofed apartments.
It was a good idea.
“Right but-” Mark started.
“Fire escape coming up on the right, see ya up there,” Andy said as he suddenly ran straight at the wall.
With a feat of superhuman strength and skill he ran straight up the wall and when his momentum was about to run out pushed himself off the wall and onto the other wall of the alleyway repeating the process until he grabbed the edge and pulled himself up.
The sudden entrance and exit of Andy had Mark wondering if he was hallucinating. Regardless it was worth a try.
Rounding the next bend, Mark saw the escape he meant. A single metal ladder ran up the side of the building.
“Boe! Come!” Mark said holding open his arms.
As if understanding what he needed Boe jumped straight into Mark's arms.
With the level up to his spell, Mark had thought up a couple of new ways to use what he had to his advantage.
It would be too slow to climb a single ladder with just one arm so Mark lowered the ward around his body and cast [Shape Mana]. Right away energy warped out of him in a wave and the Corrupted behind him became feral.
He quickly wrapped it around Boe in a small bubble leaving an opening for his head to poke out. Mark then moved Boe around to rest on his back fastening him there like a backpack.
Hitting the ladder Mark scrambled up it, taking two rungs at a time. In no time flat he was on the roof looking down he saw the Corrupted attempting to scale the wall using the ladder but were failing.
Given enough of a chance they may be able to climb to the roof by scaling each other but that would take time or maybe an Ordinator.
Ethier way he didn't plan on waiting around.
“Yo, so what's his name?” Andy asked as he appeared next to Mark.
Mark released Boe to the ground. Trying to quickly build the ward up again, it wasn’t perfect but it would do for now.
Finally, he looked up.
“That’s Boe and I’m Mark, and I gotta say it wasn't the smartest of ideas to join a chase like that for no reason.”
“What do you mean no reason? I was bored, and you had a dog, so you couldn't be a bad guy” Andy stated matter of factly.
Now that Mark had a chance to look at Andy he saw he couldn't be older than eighteen. He was wearing casual clothes and carrying two identical short swords on his waist that screamed system bought.
“How you doing there Boe, comhere” he said dropping low and making little gestures with his hands.
Boe looked up at Mark, his tail had started wagging. Was that his way of saying Andy was good? Choosing not to read any more into the fact he may be going insane by taking a dog's opinion, he said.
“Well either way we should get inside, we still gotta watch out for Ghasts at this time of night”
“Oh, shit dude you’re right!” Andy said as if this was the first time it had occurred to him.
“No worries I know a safe spot nearby, me and my friends used to hang out there a ton”
He started moving to one of the edges with one of the closer buildings. Then with a single hop, he cleared it to the other side.
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Mark inspected the gap, from the looks of it, even before the system came into place this was not a difficult jump. He could protect himself if he fell.
It was not even in the top ten most dangerous things he’d done tonight. But standing at that edge of the building made that primal fear read its head, his stomach gurgled and the bottoms of his feet began to itch.
Shrugging his shoulder he took a couple of steps back and shoved it down. Something like this wasn't worth complaining about.
He ran forward and vaulted the ledge, for a moment the alleyway below was visible, with swarming Corrupted teeming in the dark. He landed on the other side, easily clearing the gap with room to spare.
As he checked himself he could feel the assistance of his attributes. Mainly resistance, it hadn't made his jump any stronger, but his dexterity and coordination had been greatly boosted. In fact, he could even feel the stability of his landing was affected. With this alone, he knew he was already stronger than he used to be.
Boe landed gracefully next to Mark.
Looking up he saw Andy looking at him. Mark nodded for him to continue. Andy took off and Mark followed. With each jump, he grew more and more confident. Pushing his body, he began to test his limits. Fine-tuning what he was capable of. Their speed increased and Mark put another burst of energy into it, excitement singing in his veins. He couldn't use any external spells without dropping the ward but [Invigorate] still seemed to work fine without disrupting anything on the outside.
Prana circulated and new energy flushed his system allowing him to constantly push his max speed, his adrenalin flowed and for the first time tonight he pulled his mind away from the mark, the danger of the apocalypse, and just let himself be.
Dashing from rooftop to rooftop, vaulting up and down ledges at speeds that would have put athletes to shame.
All too soon they arrived at their destination with Mark breathing heavily. Boe was panting happily, recovering quickly.
Mark could feel the aches of Corruption making themselves known, but he was riding too high to care right now.
Andy had stopped them on an abandoned apartment block with a courtyard in the center below and a glass roof on the second story. Creating a sort of double-story greenhouse in the middle.
They had moved a little northwards so Mark had no complaints.
Andy dropped down to one of the balconies and entered through a set of old double doors. Mark followed but kept his guard up just in case.
Entering the empty room he could see no one had probably lived there for a while. There was no electricity, but someone had made the effort to put up a series of battery-operated string lights which Andy turned on as they got in.
The first thing he noticed was that there were four beds made of old blankets, pillows, and materials in the room.
“Whew should be safe here for now no one came here even before the end of the world,” Andy said as he kick off his shoes and collapsed onto one of the beds.
Mark looked around and asked.
“So are there others that’ll be joining us?” Mark asked indicating to the other beds.
“Ah… Those…” Andy said. For the first time since their meeting, he lost his relaxed demeanor, and a sad looked crossed his face.
“Right, sorry bout that,” Mark said realizing what it meant.
“They’re not dead… but they may as well be” He looked shocked at first and then slightly angry, as he spat out the last words. Falling into a funk.
Mark didn't know what he meant but he wasn't going to pry. If he wanted to talk, he would.
Walking further in he closed the doors behind Boe. Who went straight over to Andy and plopped down in his lap. Andy stroked Boe absentmindedly, he looked like he was thinking about something really hard.
Looking around he noticed a sink and a small gas-powered stove in the corner of the room.
Andy was still silent so he decided to look around. When he got to the corner with the stove he noticed a pot hanging on a hook.
Taking it off he popped it on the stove top. The sound of a spark clicking filled the room as Mark turned the stove on.
Taking two bottles of water out of his inventory, Mark filled the pot to begin boiling it.
“What ya doing over there?”Andy asked looking up at him.
“Making noodles, want some?” he asked.
“Ah, right, Yeah sure,” he said, his sunny demeanor creeping back in.
The water was now boiling. Mark took out six bags of noodles and began opening them and popping the bricks in one by one. Emptying one of the bags of spices into the water.
“So question, what's a generalist? I've heard the term twice tonight, but haven't had a chance to look online yet” Mark asked
“Oh…” He paused as if he expected something else.
“Right well, it's sorta a way to call out the people that didn't pick,” Andy said.
Mark cocked his head in confusion.
“Pick what?”
“You know, in the beginning, there was that timer? If you didn't pick one of the paths then, then the system starts you as a generalist” Andy said.
“Which means what?” Mark said as he began carefully pouring about 80% of the water from the noodles down the drain.
“Well, they're saying they don't get +2 to their stats every level because they didn't pick a path. Instead, every second level they get one in each stat. On top of that, for each level up, they only get 2 free points. The other 3 get auto-assigned. One in each of the main stats except Resistance” he said getting up and moving to a pile of semi-clean dishes near the sink. He grabbed two bowls and some cutlery, coming over just as Mark was mixing the other five bags of spice into the ramen.
“Do they have any theories as to why the system would do that?” Mark said as he dished himself a large bowl.
As far as he could tell the system had always been fair, he wasn't sure what it was doing but the generalists seemed like they had a disadvantage when it came to specializing, otherwise, they were still getting the same number of points.
Andy shrugged.
“Not really, but three minutes is not a lot of time for folks to make a choice, so they're saying a bunch of people just didn't choose, like more than half,” he said through a mouthful of noodle.
They continue eating and chatting, Mark telling Andy a bit about himself, his dreams of being a doctor, and the disaster of a vacation this had been.
Eventually, Andy opened up, revealing that he and his friends had all been runaways and this was their usual spot when they all weren't out practicing their parkour. It was a hard life but they always managed to grab what they needed. They looked after each other even when the world ended.
It made sense, Andy had shown a level of skill that went above a simple stat increase. Now layer the system on top of that and he could probably do some pretty amazing things.
Andy was sitting down again and after a pause in the conversation, he said.
“I’ve always been the fastest, but the other day we ran into this group of absolute assholes. Called themselves the church of the breaking dawn” Andy’s shoulders hunched slightly.
“We weren't expecting them to come at us with such anger. They took us by surprise and managed to capture us. They took us to their nearby temple. Turns out they are some kind of damned end of days cult, and they wanted to sacrifice us to the rising sun tomorrow morning.” Andy's voice wavered slightly.
“My bro Noah managed to create an opening for me to escape. I promised I would go and find help, but you are the only person I’ve seen since then. The zombiods in the area have been acting sus all night. Chasing shadows, gathering near drains”
Mark could see anger, guilt, loss, and determination on his face.
“You’re going tomorrow aren't you.” He asked.
Andy nodded right away.
“I’ve got to, they're my family, and seeing as you are the only person I found, I gotta ask, will you help us?”
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An: Building floor plan
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/iau3lzu57toacb4/Chapter%2032%20-%20Hideout.png?dl=1]