Enter system, p.34
Enter System, page 34
part #1 of Natural Laws Apocalypse Series
He glanced around and realized that Jeff wasn't paying any attention to him. He was staring at the road that led between the keep and the gate. Marc's eyes followed his and he saw Ella walking down the road, her eyes on Jeff.
“She said she'd run it by Jeff, but would love to join our group,” he said, still speaking softly.
“You can be cruel, you know that?” Felicia said.
“Why?”
“You don't know that he wants anything to do with her on a regular basis,” Felicia pointed out.
“Well, he did bring her back to his apartment the first night she was here,” Marc said. “So I don't think he'd be that adverse to it.”
She shook her head.
“You know, Marc? You're a nice guy. It's one of the reasons I was interested and waited so long. I'm sure you'd be true to anyone you were with, but Jeff?”
“I think you underestimate him,” Rob said. “In all the time I've known him he's had the opportunity to join lots of other cliques or circles of friends. He's stuck with us pretty much straight through. I mean, yeah, he went off to get excitement elsewhere, but he always came back.”
Felicia just stared at Rob.
“I'm just saying that he has that potential,” Rob said.
“I don't disagree, looking at it that way. I'm just surprised that you were the one to point it out.”
Rob beamed.
“I may never have had the quickest wit, but I've always been good at judging people. At least I think I was. Now that I'm a little smarter, I'm even better at that.”
Marc's attention was torn away from Rob as Jeff broke into a trot. He'd agreed with Felicia and had been worried that Jeff would run away from Ella, but he was trotting straight to her and when he reached her, he threw his arms around her and swung her around in a circle before setting her down.
Marc just stared, dumbfounded, as Ella laughed at Jeff's antics, the sound ringing out loud and clear.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jeff led Ella up to the rest of the group a couple of minutes later.
“Hey guys? Ella would like to be our DPS, what do you guys think?” he asked.
Ella was standing slightly behind Jeff and Marc could clearly see her smirk.
Oh my god, he thought, they're a perfect pair, they deserve each other. Did she just manage to manipulate him into asking in under two minutes? Should I say something? No, having a DPS is more important, I think, as long as she doesn't keep that up in any way that's detrimental.
Felicia glanced at Marc, who just shrugged and tried to direct her gaze to Ella's smirk. Felicia glanced where he was looking and got a soft smile on her own face.
“Yeah, that sounds great to me, weren't we discussing needing a DPS member?” she said.
“Yeah, I was talking about it recently even,” Marc said, looking directly at Ella.
She at least had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. She shrugged and looked at Jeff as though saying “What can you do?”
Rob looked at her, then Jeff.
“Sure, we'll need to get her some levels though, both in her class and in the Mana Dart spell if that's what Marc taught her. Those extra Darts Marc gets at his current level in the skill make a real difference.”
This time it was Jeff's turn to stare at Rob as though not believing that their large tank would realize something that insightful. Rob still looked the same, just bigger, so it was easy to forget that he'd been adding points to his mind stats.
“So, it's decided then? I can give it a shot?” Ella asked, looking gratefully towards Marc for not revealing their earlier conversation. “I'm so glad you thought of that, Jeff. I wasn't sure what I expected when I asked what I could do to be useful now that I had a class that could do ranged damage.”
Aha! I wonder if they really only hooked up a couple of times or if it was more than that, Marc thought. Since she already knows that the best way to get Jeff to do something is to make him think it was his own idea, it makes me wonder how well she knows him.
“That's okay with me,” Marc said. “Feel free to back out if it's too much for you though. I know some of the people we have here can't handle the combat end of things very well.”
Ella shook her head.
“I'll be fine. I've already been in a few fights with the orcs when they tried to come up the stairs. So I know what combat is like, at least a little. I almost froze the first time, but came around and managed to brain that bugger with a cast-iron frying pan before he could get his sword around all the furniture blocking the stairs. Didn't kill him, but it did stun him briefly, just long enough for one of the guys with spears to take care of him.”
Jeff beamed at her as she spoke and Marc blinked a few times, not quite believing what he was seeing. Jeff's actions suggested that there was definitely more than just a couple of hook ups in the past, starting with going to check out that particular apartment building and running right through to the way he was looking at her now.
“It's a good thing you had so many gamers in your building,” Marc said. “We're guessing it's because they recognized what was happening and adapted more quickly than most that you had so many survivors there.”
“Really, you think that's why?” Ella asked. “In that case...”
She paused for a moment.
“About two and a half miles farther out Cherry Street. You know those buildings that look almost like slums? The ones that are only technically in town because they're so far out.”
“The big concrete ones?” Jeff said.
She nodded.
“I know there was a group of gamers there. I used to work in an electronics shop, and one of the guys was in over and over. He was buying cables and parts to set up a large LAN so he and a bunch of his gamer friends could have LAN parties at home. He invited me to join them when he found out I played a few of the same games, but was okay with it when I turned him down. He just told me where they were and that if I changed my mind I was welcome any time.”
Jeff was looking irked.
“That was a few months back, so he's probably still there. He was a good guy, as soon as I told him I had a boyfriend he backed off,” Ella finished.
Marc's eyes flashed to Jeff, who was looking kind of sheepish as he found the eyes of Rob and Felicia on him as well. Jeff just shrugged and looked embarrassed.
Yup, more going on there than he was willing to admit, Marc thought, but that's fine. It isn't, or wasn't, really our business. And now we know.
“Well then, I wanted to find more survivors and that sounds like a good lead. Anyone have objections to heading out there tomorrow?” Marc asked.
“Sounds good to me,” Jeff said.
Rob and Felicia were nodding their heads in agreement with him and Ella just looked proud that she might've provided a lead that could help find more survivors.
* * *
Marc and the group headed back towards the keep. Once they got there, Marc told them that he was going to go check out something he'd been informed he could build at a discount. The rest of the group went with him, but when he got to the gym and headed for the building pedestal he saw an older man trying to mess with his MP3 player. It was password protected with a PIN though, and the man wasn't having any luck.
“Excuse me, what do you think you're doing?” Marc said.
“Trying to change this junk music to something a little more acceptable, why?” the man answered.
“How about because it's my MP3 player and my speaker.”
“Then put something decent on, not this new-fangled trash,” the man spat.
“No,” Marc said, “and I don't know where this attitude is coming from. You're getting free room and board, the only condition was that you had to pull your own weight. I don't think that's too much to expect.”
“As though it matters what you think,” the man said. “You young snots, always acting so superior.”
Marc was normally pretty level headed, but he'd caught the man trying to mess with his belongings and now the man was insulting him and trying to act all haughty. Even his level headedness was being pushed to the limit.
“So, how exactly are you pulling your weight?” Marc asked, his voice cold, but loud.
“As though I'd do anything like that.”
“So, you're saying I should mark you hostile so the gargoyle guardian comes after you? Or should I just throw you out of the Safe Zone?”
“You and what army?” the man said.
Marc had had enough.
“Listen, buddy. You had as much of a chance to build a Safe Zone as I did, and you didn't. Your continued stay in this Safe Zone is dependent on pulling your own weight.”
Marc desperately wanted to know the man's name so he could keep track of him and make sure he started doing something. A small light in the lower corner of his vision, slightly different from the notifications one, started flashing and he pulled it up. It contained the list of residents he'd made of the Safe Zone and one of the names was highlighted. As he stared at it and made a mental note of the name, a familiar shrill voice startled him, pulling him out of his perusal of the list.
“How dare you speak to my husband that way.”
“Karen? I should've known,” Marc said. “So, Mr. Michael Sternn and Mrs. Karen Sternn. The two of you still aren't listed as having any duties or doing anything productive in the Safe Zone.”
He'd noticed when he'd accidentally pulled up the list in his anger, that quite a few of the names in it had a notation of what functions they were performing, these two had still been blank in that slot.
“So, you've got forty-eight hours. If you still haven't taken on any duties in that time, you will have the choice of having them assigned and enforced, or being escorted out the front gate of the Safe Zone. I have repeated myself, over and over, that you're welcome to be here, but if you are you need to pull your own weight. So far, the two of you are just dead weight, and this Safe Zone can't afford that.”
Marc's voice hadn't risen, but he had been speaking loudly. What he hadn't realized was that all the other conversations in the gym had ceased. He'd been speaking loud enough to be heard over the music and as a result everyone in the gym had heard him. The first time he was aware of that was when someone in the crowd of people in the gym started clapping. Not a slow golf clap either, but actual applause. The first person was quickly joined by several others and Marc flushed when he looked up and saw everyone staring at him.
He was also surprised that every person in his own group was looking at him approvingly. Even Ella had a satisfied smirk on her face and was nodding her head.
Marc beat a hasty, but dignified, retreat from the gym. He'd considered turning the music up and restricting it to the directory holding the genre the man had been complaining about, but resisted the impulse. When he made it to the cafeteria he collapsed into a chair, leaning forward on the table.
“Way to go, man,” Jeff said. “Those are exactly the people I was worried about showing up here. Not necessarily those two, but their type. You told them though. I'll help you escort them out the gate when it's needed.”
“You mean if it's needed, don't you?” Marc asked.
“What, you think being lectured by some wet-behind-the-ears, by his standards, young whippersnapper is going to change what that guy or the Karen are going to do? Dream on, man. I'll help you kick them out though, no problem there.”
“I'll help too,” Rob said. “You've been very clear that everyone needs to pull their weight. How do you know that they haven't been though?”
“Evidently the same list that I use to authorize people as residents of the Safe Zone keeps track of what duties they perform while in it. One second.”
He pulled up the list again and skimmed it.
“Even the little girl I hired to run down to the wall and warn the guard before expanding has a listing as 'messenger', but those two show nothing at all in the duties section,” Marc said.
“Oh, what's it show for us, just out of curiosity?” Jeff said.
Marc pulled it back up.
“Adventurer,” he said, before starting to laugh.
It took a minute or two for the hysterical laughter to subside.
“Hell, here I am, classified as an adventurer by the System, trying to run a Safe Zone, and I had to leave so I didn't perform an act of petty revenge on that asshole.”
Jeff quirked an eyebrow at him.
“I was sorely tempted to turn the music up and restrict it to the directory of songs in the same genre of the one he complained about,” Marc said.
Jeff snorted.
“I would've done it, then piped the music into whatever apartment he's in too,” Jeff said. “Or wherever else he tried to go.”
Marc felt hands on his shoulders, hands which started digging into the knots in his muscles that had been building for days. He sighed, practically a gasp, and slumped under Felicia's ministrations.
“So, are we still on for tomorrow's search and rescue?” Ella asked.
“Definitely, sometimes I think I can relax more out in town under threat of the spawns than I can here,” Marc said. “There are a bunch more people like that on the list, showing no duties or contributions to the Safe Zone, but I can't do anything about that since we just brought in a bunch more people recently and they need the time to settle in. Those blank listings might be them. Soon though, I'll need to start keeping an eye on that list and maybe kicking more people out. I don't like that idea, I hate it, but we can't carry people who aren't willing to help out, we just can't.”
“Like I said, that's the type of people I was worried about,” Jeff said. “Fortunately we got a lot of the other kind too. I'll help boot people as needed, you don't even need to help. I can do it all on my own if necessary.”
Marc waited until well after dinner to return to the gymnasium, retrieve his MP3 player and speaker, then pull up the build screen. As he'd expected an entry for a Wildlife Preserve now existed. He pulled it up and read the information it contained.
A Wildlife Preserve is a way of maintaining a stock of the natural creatures in the area. Spawns are disallowed from attacking the game in a Wildlife Preserve, although hunters and the Game Warden are fair game for them. The Game Warden may authorize kills or other harvesting of the natural creatures in his Wildlife Preserve.
Requirements: Individual with Game Warden class to unlock Wildlife Preserve. Forested area as minimum of 50% of intended Preserve. Living trees in Preserve do not count towards required materials.
Minimum size of 10 acres, up to 10,000 acres. Requires 1 unit of wood per acre at build time.
Upgradeable
Well, that's pretty straightforward, he thought. There's a whole bunch of woods back behind the high school, some little streams and ponds as well, so that would be a good place to put it. Not yet though, I don't want to use the wood right now, we'll expand the Safe Zone a couple more times first, I think.
Felicia had joined him in coming to retrieve his items, now she took his arm.
“Come on, let's go back to your place. I just got your shoulders earlier and you're much more relaxed. How about I give you a full body massage?”
Marc picked up his pace, the memory of her hands working the knots from his shoulders hastening his steps in anticipation of more of the same.
* * *
Felicia's ministrations helped a great deal and Marc ended up having a better night's sleep than he had since the System had arrived, even with her sleeping beside him, an arm thrown over his chest.
Now he was up though and he didn't want to wake her. He was sure she'd been just as tense as he'd been before she massaged him, although their activities after the massage may well have relieved some of her stress as well. He slipped out from under her arm carefully before heading over to the shower.
Evidently he wasn't quiet enough, because while he was in the shower he felt the shower door open and another body slip in with him. Despite it being a tight fit just for him, the two of them managed to burn off a bit more stress before he was finally ready to head down for breakfast.
When he got down to the cafeteria he noticed that there were fewer people visible than normal, then quickly attributed it to the fact that he was about an hour later than his normal time of coming down for breakfast.
His group was there, waiting, and he and Felicia quickly got their own food and ate.
“So, we still doing this?” Jeff asked.
Marc nodded.
“Do we want to bring some of the other groups along as well?” he asked.
“Don't think we can,” Jeff replied. “I think they all headed out already. They also rearranged a lot, what with the new Mages available. So those new people have four groups now, four groups of five. They already had eighteen combat classes. Adding in two more Mages made it easy to split up evenly. The point being, they're already out and about, scavenging and hunting spawns.”
“Alright then, should we head out?” Marc asked as soon as he'd finished his food.
Everyone else stood as he did and they walked out of the keep. Now Marc knew where the other people were that were normally in the cafeteria. There were a number of people with Allan at the fields. He was showing them how to treat the new field and a sack of seeds was lying at the edge of the road, just waiting for the newest field to be prepped.
Allan spared him a wave as he was walking down the road, then hurried over to catch a word with him.
“What happened?” Allan asked. “I'd had one person interested in learning the Farming skill, this morning though six more showed up.”
“Um,” Marc said, embarrassed. “I kind of made the point that anyone in the Safe Zone needed to help somehow, and told a particular couple that if they didn't start helping, we'd escort them out and set them to hostile with the gargoyle.”
Allan chuckled.
“Damned layabouts, they used to be everywhere. Looks like this System did us one favor at least, there's a lot fewer of them than there used to be. Sounds like fewer still soon, one way or the other.”
