Whatever they were, they were humanoid. However, they were definitely not human. Even the smallest of them was at least 2.5 meters tall and two meters wide. In comparison to their massive frame, the creatures had thick but stubby legs. Their arms were massively muscular, having roughly the same length and thickness as Ava's entire body.

Their skin had a grey and pebbly quality to it, almost like that of an elephant. However, they weren't naked. Every one of the five was wearing a primitive loincloth, and the two biggest specimens were covered in a haphazard collection of pelts and skins.

Those two individuals were also carrying entire tree trunks in their hands. Sure, they were small trees, but they still made for rather gigantic clubs.

"Those are Trolls, right?" Alice looked at Ava for confirmation.

"Depends on their healing. Trolls usually have insane regeneration."

"Does that even matter? We need to start naming things so we know what we are talking about. Let's just call them Trolls for now."

"Fine. What about those monkey things?" Ava asked.

"Monkeys."

"And the dinosaurs?"

"How about Raptors?"

"Not very creative. But good enough, I guess," Ava conceded.

"Anyway, what do we do about the Trolls? I don't think this is the right time to try and talk to them, although they do seem to have intelligence. But I can very much do without a repeat from last time."

It was at that moment that another of the monsters came out from the main entrance, this one chewing on a clearly human leg. Alice gagged when she could hear the crunching of bone the moment the monster bit into it and turned to her friend just so she could look at anything else.

Ava's face had a stony scowl. It wasn't hard to understand what was on her mind.

"Come on, let's stay out of their sight as long as we don't know how strong they are and how many there are. Do you have an idea where your brother might be right now?"

"No. Fuck," Ava's scowl deepened. "And I can't hear anything either."

"Then, let's just take a look around for now. Maybe we will find something. People might be hiding somewhere and come out when they see us."

They carefully hid their bikes in such a way that they could quickly get to them in an emergency and then went on their way.

The high school was an old one, the main building in the front a seemingly ancient brick building that even had some small statues in alcoves high up in the wall. It was the kind of building that just didn't get built anymore nowadays. Between the building and the street was a roughly two-meter wide strip of grass with a path leading up to the main entrance. However, that was where the Trolls were at.

Instead, they approached the building from the left, circling to the back via a small street that went to the back of the building and to a parking lot for the teachers.

There too, they found themselves in the presence of yet another Troll, but thankfully the entirety of the school grounds was surrounded by a several-meter-deep strip of trees, allowing them to slip by unnoticed. Just barely. For a few nerve wracking moments, they thought the monster had noticed them when it turned in their direction, causing them to stand stock-still behind their respective trees.

Only what felt an eternity later did they dare to move again. Ava clearly did a better job of it than Alice herself. She wasn't sure whether it was just natural disposition or had to do with Class-affinity and stats, but she made almost no noise as far as Alice could tell, despite moving through what could be called forest terrain. There was also the fact that whenever Ava entered a shadow, Alice’s eyes seemed to slip off of her friend's form. If she didn’t know where Ava was, but were just looking around, that would make it a lot harder to notice her. But that was almost guaranteed to be her stealth stat at work.

Slowly, they made their way to the back of the building, where they got a look at the schoolyard.

The school's layout consisted of a total of six different parts. Going through them counterclockwise, it started with the main building at the bottom. Then came the parking lot on the left, directly followed by another but smaller building. At the top of the clock was a small football field, the sight on which was mostly blocked by the bleachers. And completing the circle was a building rivaling the main building in size on the right. Finally, there was the schoolyard right in between all of that.

And right there was where they found another group of at least ten Trolls, more of them entering and leaving the surrounding buildings, some of them with snacks of their own. No matter how often she looked at it, the only way to keep her sandwich down was to stop looking.

"I doubt there is anyone left in the buildings," Alice whispered, letting the part about them being unable to get them out, even if there were, unsaid. "Let's go take a look at the football field. We can still check later if he managed to get to your home."

"You are right. Maybe I can reach him if I call our home telephone," Ava said, not sounding very convinced herself.

The small strip of forest stretched all around the entire school premises, allowing the two to continue sneaking around in the cover of the trees until they were completely out of sight behind the building. The building had large windows all along the backside, but luckily, no Trolls were currently inside any of the classrooms, giving the two girls a short breather before they once again dived back into territory where they could get noticed at any moment.

As soon as they got out from behind the building, the duo stood at the small side of the football field, where the absence of bleachers allowed them to see the field that was previously out of sight.

Right in the middle of the field was a large, several-meter-high pile that had been hidden before.

With the same horrified fascination that made it almost impossible to not watch a car crash playing out, the two watched silently as a Troll walked over to the pile and pulled out one of the corpses. Then, it proceeded to grip one of the arms with one hand and the torso with the other. Its muscles tensed, and with a wet sound, the arm ripped out from the shoulder.

With an almost comically panicky look on its face, the Troll suddenly looked around. Neither Ava nor herself had moved a single millimeter or made a single noise. It was almost impossible that either of them had alerted the monster. Physically, that was.

Alice had a good guess as to what it was that alerted the Troll. She could almost physically feel Ava's soul burn with anger. The girl was absolutely furious, and Alice quickly arrested her from behind with one arm while she pressed her remaining free hand over the girl's mouth. A second later, and Ava would have been running at the Troll screaming, but now, Alice managed to restrain her just barely, muffling the screams behind her hand.

"Stop struggling! Are you trying to kill us?" Alice hissed a question into the girl's ear.

She had never realized that the girl was that strong, the only reason she could keep her restrained being their difference in size. After a few more seconds of struggling, Alice managed to drag Ava deeper between the trees. The girl had stopped struggling, but Alice still covered her mouth, muffling the screams that had transitioned into sobs at some point. She could feel her glove getting wet.

Only when her back finally hit a wall did Alice let go of the smaller girl, turning her around and drawing her into a hug. The body armor and helmets made it a little awkward and not soft at all, but it was the only thing she could think of doing. No words of encouragement came to her mind that seemed even remotely sufficient or even appropriate.

It wasn't like Alice was calm after witnessing that barbarity and brutality the Troll had displayed so casually. She was livid. There was no human who wouldn't be if they weren't an absolute psychopath. However, just the knowledge that her family or friends weren't included in that pile was enough to keep her from doing something idiotic.

"Don't worry," Alice finally found the right words, "No matter what you want to do about this, I will help you. But if we do it, we do it properly and thoroughly."

It was important that she said it the way she did. She heavily implied that she was fine with killing every single one of the fuckers without actually saying it, giving Ava a way out if that was what she wanted.

Ava didn't say anything, but Alice could feel her head moving against her chest. A nod. Slowly, Ava calmed down, easy to tell from her soul stopping to radiate a mess of emotions. However, it wasn't completely gone. Now that Alice had become aware of it, she could feel the fury continue simmering right beneath the surface, ready to explode at any moment.

"I didn't think I would ever say this, but I'm pretty sure that Troll felt your killing intent. Let's leave before they decide to check out the situation."

The duo quickly sneaked back to the front street, sacrificing a lot of stealth for speed. Just as they got on their bikes and made to leave, they noticed a group of five Trolls coming around to the front of the building in a hurry.

Ava frowned as the two of them left them behind.

Their next chosen target location was the home for the elderly, Golden Glades. Between evading monsters and getting lost twice, it took them almost an hour before they reached the city's outskirts, where they could finally take a break to recover some of their rapidly depleting stamina.

In this place, mostly rich folks lived. Them being willing to pay more and the comparably lower property prices, at least in terms of size to cost, translated into big houses on even bigger properties. Maybe it was because of the far smaller human presence, but there were barely any monsters here.

After their short, ten-minute break, they got going again, another half an hour passing before their goal came finally into sight.

However, when they took the last corner, what they got to see was something they hadn't expected at all, or at least Alice hadn't.

Working as a housekeeper, her mother's agency sent her regularly all over the city of Trenton, and one of the locations she went to most regularly was the home for the elderly, Golden Glades.

Of course, Alice didn't really know where her mother was all the time, nor did she really care. But Golden Glades was special in so far that her mother once referred her for a small job to the place. It was nothing big, mostly just helping around the place with some odd jobs, and it was only for a week because they suddenly lost several personnel to sickness, causing them to be severely understaffed.

But in that one week, Alice came to understand one important thing. A home for the elderly wasn't a happy place. You wouldn't find the nice grandma from next door here because those were still next door. Instead, those who lived in such places were people who couldn't take care of themself anymore, had severe dementia, or had no family to take care of them instead.

They would sit around the whole day watching television, or if they had the mental capacity to do so, solving crossword puzzles. Sometimes, she would step out of the elevator, and when she drove it back down half an hour later, the exact same three grannies would still be inside, having driven up and down for the entire time.

If anything, she pitied the people who ended up in such places.

As such, she was very surprised when she saw a bunch of seriously old men and women mingling around and talking and laughing. Albeit a bit slower than the younger workers, they worked a lot more efficiently to clean up a bunch of monster corpses. Another group was sitting around a table, sorting through assorted weaponry, cleaning it, and repairing it.

In front of the entrance, a group of three old men was slowly but surely growing a thick stone wall right out of the ground. A bit to the side, four old ladies were gossiping while sitting around a tub, a thin stream of water flowing into it from in front of each of them.

"Who's the lucky bastard that has such a well-developed niece?" one of the old men loudly asked when he saw the two girls.

"Stop harassing the young'uns, ye old toad!" one of the water-ladies shouted back, eliciting complaints from the offended party and laughs from those around him.

"Come here, girls. You look right exhausted. What led you to join this pity party?" the old woman invited them.

Alice looked at Ava, who just shrugged her shoulders. They jumped from their bikes and pushed them over to the four old ladies. Feeling just a little safer with all these people around, who clearly could defend themselves judging from the missing presence of human corpses between those of the monsters, Alice dared to take off her helmet, allowing her head to cool off, literally.

"Ah! Ain't ya Margaret's girl?" one of the old ladies suddenly asked.

"Ah, yes, that's my mother. Ehmmm... I don't want to offend you, but could I ask... how... why..." Alice confusedly pointed all around her. She had no idea how to ask the question. Rather, she didn't even quite know what question she wanted to ask.

Still, the old woman understood. "Eh, we met on the elevator a few times. It's thanks to that priest boy that we all woke up."

"Prophet, he is a Prophet. Get it in your head, you old nut," another lady interjected.

"Eh, I always get confused with those religious types. He went around before all of this began and somehow managed to convince most of us to take specific Classes. We all regained our senses thanks to those Skills or Stats."

"He knew what would happen beforehand? How!?" Ava asked, perplexed and maybe a little offended.

Alice could understand the sentiment. After all, if he had wanted, he could have saved the life of Ava's brother. But Alice knew that thought was pointless. After all, even if they had told Ava, she probably would have thought it to be some weird prank and not taken it seriously. Alice knew that, and Ava did too. Still, the thought of the wasted possibility was grating.

"Eh, no idea. We old folks don't get this magic stuff. We leave that to you young’uns to figure out."

"If you don't mind me asking, but how come you are all fine with this?" Alice couldn't help but ask.

"What do ye mean?"

"Well," Alice scratched the back of her head sheepishly, "I wouldn't imagine this kind of place to be exactly the most... organized place. It just feels strange that all of you can just sit out here and create water out of thin air when you clearly already had a run-in or another with those monsters."

"Ah, you didn't know? Golden Glades specialized in war veterans. People like us can be a bit more trouble than normal geezers, so they put all of us together. Most of the old folk here have seen the hell hole that was Vietnam. Compared to that, this is barely a slightly more dangerous hunting trip."

Alice's chin almost dropped. That was definitely something she hadn't known. And only now that she took a second, closer look did she realize that most of the grandmas and grandpas in this place had some kind of scar hidden in between their wrinkles.

"You should go see your mother. She should be somewhere in the backyard, I think. You have to go through the building. They already walled that one of."

"Thanks. We will go then."

Alice wasn't quite sure why, but the calm and good mood the group of old women had been projecting made her feel safer than any arsenal of weapons could. And it was clear that it had had a similar effect on Ava. The anger that had been boiling just beneath the surface had cooled down enough that Alice couldn't feel it anymore.

Now that she thought about it, her Soul sense Skill seemed to have more applications and depth than she had thought at first. She had thought that it was just a Skill she needed to make use of her other Skill while also doubling as a convenient detection ability.

However, ever since Ava's outburst, Alice had concentrated more on the details of souls, allowing her to feel out more that she had previously missed. Most of it was not of much use for now, but she did get the feeling that she could roughly tell what kind of magic someone used. Also, from the few times that monsters had come close enough for her to feel them, she had realized that souls seemed to have a certain degree of order or chaos to them. As far as Alice could tell, the more orderly the soul, the more intelligent the being. To feel any more than that, she had the feeling that she would have to increase the Skill's level.

When they got out on the other side of the building, Alice realized that, indeed, a large part of the backyard had been walled off. The building had a rough U shape, and the wall had been built to simply close off the open end.

There, tending to a small plot of vegetables of all things, was a woman about half a head smaller than Alice. She had a shock of tightly curled, black hair that Alice was secretly happy she hadn't inherited. She was still wearing her apron, but instead of swinging her broom, she was waving her hands over the plants, which in turn began to visibly grow for a short amount of time.

Anyone and their mothers seem to be a wizard nowadays, Alice thought, grinning at her own joke.

"Mom," she called out.