Enter system, p.38
Enter System, page 38
part #1 of Natural Laws Apocalypse Series
He pulled out a short knife before replacing it in its sheathe.
“So, I went techno mage, sort of. I tracked down one of the good aerosol cans, you know the ones with flammable contents? That and a lighter. The next time those gremlins attacked I torched a few in the face with the old can and lighter trick. Then, once the fight was over, I got offered a Pyromancer class and the Flamethrower spell. So I passed the can and lighter on to someone else that wanted the Mage class. That's all.”
Marc was chuckling.
“I like it,” he said. “I know intent is a part of what class you get offered, it seems to be so far. Your story fits right in with that.”
“Intent? Damn it, was it that easy?”
Marc shrugged.
“I knew what I wanted, sort of a Mage tank deal. So once I learned a spell by scroll I got offered some classes. Arcane Bulwark was one of them, so I took it. It's a Mage Warrior hybrid. I just get defensive spells from my class, but I can learn other spells from other means too. That's where I got a bunch. I don't know what you'll be able to learn as a Pyromancer, but I bet I can teach you Fireball and the Fire aspected version of Mana Dart.”
“In advance, for all of us Pyromancers in my group, thank you. Having non-channeled spells is going to be so nice. Did you know that if you're channeling a spell and take damage you've got a chance to lose control of it? It can backlash and damage you too, so one and done mana cost spells sound incredible,” Joshua said.
Marc had been ignoring his notifications light ever since the fight. He actually hadn't noticed it right away, it blinked at him so much nowadays that he'd tuned it out. Then he'd found the scroll on the casters when he looted them. That had been enough to distract him for a while longer. Then curiosity about the new people had kept him from checking, but now he was getting tired of the flashing.
He pulled up his notifications.
You have gained a level (6->7)
You have two ability points to distribute.
Your Intelligence has increased (14->15)
Your Constitution has increased (10->11)
You have one new skill point to distribute.
You have learned the spell: Stand Fast (1)
You have learned the skill: Technical Writer (1)
You are currently at your maximum count for skills and spells, increase Aptitude to increase available skill or spell slots.
“Shit!” Marc cursed, loudly.
Heads swiveled to him rapidly and he realized that his exclamation may have been taken wrong.
“No danger, just discovered a cap.”
With a quick calculation he found what he thought was the formula.
“It looks like Aptitude, which controls how many skills and spells you can learn, caps at a base of three skills or spells, plus two more per point of Aptitude.”
He'd added his aside about what it controlled because he wasn't sure if the new people knew that or not.
“So what, you left your Aptitude low and now you're running out?” one of the new tanks asked.
Marc had gotten their names, but hadn't remembered most of them.
“Well, I mean if a nine is low, yeah. I just got another level so I'll drop a point in there though. That'll clear it up.”
Kenny was staring at him, along with most of the other classed people not in Marc's group.
“What level are you?” Kenny asked.
“I just advanced to seven,” Marc said.
“Seven? I've barely made four.”
Marc shrugged.
“Sorry?”
“Don't be, I'm just glad we decided to go with you guys. It's sounding like a better and better plan all the time,” Kenny said.
Marc, who'd been planning on distributing his points to Strength and Charisma, instead put one in Strength and one in Aptitude. He did, on the other hand, get a message that further advancement in Aptitude would result in more skill slots than his prior advances in it had. He'd thought ten was a milestone for stats and now he was pretty sure of it, despite not receiving similar messages when his Constitution and Intelligence had gone over ten.
Although I do remember feeling healthier when Constitution went over ten, and for Intelligence it might've been when I could start seeing everything more clearly. Maybe Aptitude has the message because there's no other sign like those when you get there? he thought.
There were no interruptions on the way home, although they did stop at the ogre lair for a few minutes to let people rest and the new group look around. They had several more stops after that as well, but either nothing was around, or their group was too big for the spawns to want to attack it. Either way, they made it back to the Safe Zone well before dark.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Eight
While Marc slept that night he had dreams, bad ones. In his nightmares he found himself watching what would have happened had his recyclers or some of the lower level groups been the ones to find the ogres. When he woke, it was very early, he was poorly rested, and he had a new determination to get the Safe Zone expanded more.
Because the sooner I can get more areas claimed the less area there is for things to spawn in, he thought.
His first act was to go to the building pedestal and pull up the build screen. He spent most of an hour tweaking the wire-frame drawing for the expansion before he remembered that he'd get additional area to claim with the core from the troll.
It took a couple of minutes for him to figure it out, but he determined how to get the building pedestal to show him just what he could claim with the expanded area from the core. The rare core with excellent quality allowed him to claim one hundred and thirty-three percent of the area he been claiming per expansion with the earlier common, poor quality core.
With that additional expansion the very next one could make it to an area with a significantly higher frequency of buildings that would be automatically added to his total materials for expansion.
After a few more minutes of tweaking the wire-frame, he thought he had as much as could manage claimed for materials while still driving straight for the downtown area. The resultant Safe Zone looked like a blocky hourglass with a wider area near the keep followed by a narrow stretch along the road, then expanding out again as it met the more thickly built area closer to town.
He stared at the build screen, willing it to change.
You have insufficient resources to increase your Safe Zone.
Resources required:
Wood: 2237/2500
Stone: 2500/2500
Metal: 997/1200
Designated power source for Safe Zone:
Monster Core – common – poor (3/3)
Monster Core – Rare – Excellent (0/5) (+4 power slots 0/4))
The current power source will sustain five expansions from the original power source.(0/5)
The stats shown by it included the salvage that would be obtained from the buildings inside the expansion. Even so, it wasn't quite enough to immediately upgrade.
Although if I target the recyclers very carefully today, we might be able to do it by tonight, he thought. There's plenty of extra stone left over, evidently the pond and the most recent field must've been right over bedrock or something, but we'll want even more wood and metal for the buildings that will open up during the expansion. I don't want to miss out on those if I can help it, but I will if it's necessary to do so in order to get more territory claimed.
He closed down the build screen and glanced out the window. It looked late enough that the cafeteria should be close to opening, so he headed over that way for breakfast. Someone had found a white board and mounted it to the wall. On it were scrawled the options for breakfast. He could smell it even without the board, but he couldn't identify what it was exactly. With options on pancakes, breakfast burritos, or oatmeal he was glad to have the board.
No burritos, had those a lot recently. Maybe oatmeal? Unless we've got syrup for the pancakes. Don't know if anyone grabbed any of that or not.
He sat down and waited. It was a few minutes until a waitress came out.
“Sorry, we're still cooking. It's going to be a few more minutes,” she said.
“Quick question to help me decide. Is there syrup for the pancakes?” he asked.
She grinned.
“Yup, if you think to ask for it when you order. We're not going to put that stuff out since there's a very limited quantity of it. Well, kind of limited at least, just what the store had. We got all of it though. One of the groups got together with the cooks yesterday, asking if there was anything they needed. They ended up doing several runs back and forth from the grocery store.”
“I should've thought of that,” Marc said. “I'm glad they did. Which group was it?”
She shrugged.
“One of the newer ones? I think they were supposed to still have yesterday off, but they wanted to help.”
“So one of the groups from the apartments on Cherry Street then. Damned if I can remember all their names.”
The waitress shook her head.
“No-one expects you to remember their names. Just, you know, kind of prompt them for their name if you try to talk to them. Better to admit that you forgot than to get it wrong.”
“When you're right, you're right. So, let me have the pancakes, with syrup, whenever they're ready,” Marc said.
“Sure, sausage or bacon?”
Marc's eyes lit up. He wasn't Jeff, willing to drop a silver on a pound of bacon from the shop, but that didn't mean he didn't enjoy it himself.
“Bacon, please?” he said.
The waitress chuckled.
“It'll be about ten minutes. I'll get it out to you as soon as I can. You can have milk if you want, but fair warning, it's powdered milk.”
“Coffee?” he said.
“That I can get you now,” she said, turning off to go get it for him.
Marc sighed in satisfaction. He was getting his caffeine early and if he waited here, he'd probably find the recyclers and be able to target them more closely to exactly what he needed to expand the Safe Zone again.
And with the bonuses from the better core, hopefully we'll be able to snowball it. Once I have this next section claimed, the one after that has even more salvage in it. Bigger buildings with the heavy metal frames might open up the bottleneck that metal's been causing. Wood? Well, if I have to, I'll send them out back to work on the forest there. As much wood as we might need, although I'd need to have them leave enough trees that we can butt the Wildlife Preserve up to the back wall still. We can take a few out of there without it being a problem though, plus there's lots of dead trees back there too. Thin it out some and focus on wood with one recycler while I send the other team out after more cars or other metal things?
He sipped at his coffee as he thought through things. When his food came he was still thinking through them, but he stopped and allowed himself to enjoy his meal.
Nursing a cup of coffee after he ate, he wrote out instructions and waited for the recycling teams to show up. When they did, they were each accompanied by a group of adventurers.
“Hey guys, got fresh orders for today. If we focus, we can probably get another expansion done today,” Marc said.
“That's fast,” a recycling team lead said.
“Sorry, forgot your name, I'm shit with names,” Marc said, “but we're expanding into areas with more buildings and we can count part of their materials as salvage just by expanding our territory over them.”
“Ah, that's why you have us working the side roads?”
Marc nodded.
“Do you have the newer or older recycling machine?”
“Older one.”
“Then these orders are for you,” Marc said, handing him the orders to focus on metal.
Then he turned to the other team lead and handed him the other set of orders that focused on wood. That recycler would have to be moving off-road so it would be better for the newer one to get that assignment.
“And, on that note, I need to go find my group,” Marc said.
“Don't worry, we'll take care of this,” the team lead said, the lead for the second team nodding in agreement.
* * *
Marc spent the day trying to keep himself busy. His group had decided that they weren't going out again today, after the ogres the day before they wanted a day off. Systemized equipment had been damaged and they wanted to let it restore itself as it did when in the Safe Zone.
So, he took the new Pyromancers, after the new group had their lecture from Al, and started teaching them the Mana Dart Spell. It was good that he'd figured out the symbol for fire, because they just couldn't get it, until he tried teaching them the fire version of it directly.
I should've realized that, Marc said. They're Pyromancers, they can't learn the non-aspected version, only the fire version.
Once he tried to teach them the fire aspected version they picked it up quickly.
He'd been hoping that Ron's group was staying in also, but that wasn't the case. He wasn't willing to steal Reggie away from them again, not knowing the strength of some of the spawns showing up in the city, so he simply kept an eye out for Ron's group coming back. While he did that, he started working on his Scribe skill.
From what he knew of the skill from learning it, he didn't need anything fancy to use it, at least not for lesser powered spells. He hoped that Fireball was one of those, since that was the first thing he tried to Scribe. He attempted it four times over the day, with two successes and one increase in the skill level.
I'll turn one of these over to Joshua, then he can teach the other Pyromancers the spell. I'll give the other one to Reggie once he has the time to teach me the Water Jet spell in return.
He'd been amused to note that on a successful Scribe, the paper he'd been using rolled itself up into a classic scroll. It also darkened somewhat, making it appear more yellowed than the white of the paper he'd been using.
My guess is that the System simply creates the scroll itself and removes the one I actually wrote, Marc thought. Because these two look identical now, like there's a template it uses. I wonder what would happen if I tried to write one of my variations that isn't standard, like the Mana Dart torches?
It was well after lunch when Jeff approached him. He was wearing a mischievous look that put Marc on guard immediately.
“Okay Marc, pull it up and check,” Jeff said.
“What?”
“Pull up your list of residents. See if the Sternns have decided to actually become part of the Safe Zone or if they decided to be dead weight that we need to toss out,” Jeff said.
“Umm...”
“Don't wuss out here, Marc. You made it plenty plain to them what they needed to do. They got forty-eight hours like everybody else and their forty-eight didn't start until a couple of days after they got here. They should've been being productive already a while ago, before you had your little spat with him. So if they still aren't now, they never will be and we need to get rid of them before they sink the Safe Zone like an anchor tied around its neck.”
“How do you figure that?” Marc asked.
“If they get to hang around? If they get room, board, and safety without doing anything for it? Others will notice and will try the same. The ones that don't do the same will start feeling resentment, especially after you laid down the law to the Sternns. Plus, you'll have gone back on your word.”
Marc knew that Jeff had saved that last bit to end with intentionally. Marc tried to never break a promise, so now he pulled up the list and looked. There were still quite a few blank spots on it, but most of them were the people who'd come in the day before. The Sternns, however, were not from the day before, and were still blank.
“No, they haven't done anything to support the Safe Zone,” Marc said, in a defeated tone.
“Well, shall we track them down?” Jeff asked. “Then we can eject them. Unless, of course, you just want to register them as hostile with the gargoyle.”
Marc shuddered at the thought.
“No, we'll track them down. They look like they're in a room currently, probably the one they claimed. It's the room that used to be Mr. Barnett's old chem lab, looks like.”
“Hey, I know where that one is, well where the lab used to be anyhow,” Jeff said. “Shall we? We'll pick up Rob on the way.”
Marc sighed and slumped, feeling defeated, but he started following Jeff.
“Why is it that when you try to help some people they don't think that they need to do anything to help themselves as well?” he asked, rhetorically.
Jeff didn't treat it as rhetorical though.
“Some people are assholes, entitled assholes even. They think that they shouldn't have to lift a finger and that everything should be given to them on a silver platter. They think that they shouldn't have to work if someone's willing to provide everything for them,” he said.
Marc just stayed silent for the moment.
He might be right, Marc said. Just because I never ran into them before doesn't mean that they didn't exist. I mean, an upper middle class upbringing and some college is pretty much my entire frame of reference. Admittedly I met some people like that in college, but these two seem to take it to an extreme. All they had to do was help out somewhere. If the System recognized the little girl as a messenger, it would've registered anything they did also, wouldn't it?
Marc wasn't happy and evidently it showed on his face.
“Don't worry about it, Rob and I will take care of it,” Jeff said. “You just give me the go ahead that you want to back up what you told him and we'll do it.”
Marc closed his eyes and squeezed them shut. He really thought that he should be there for this, but at the same time he wasn't sure that he could follow through on it if he were there.
