Not even half an hour later, a group of six people was gathered in a small room that had been reserved for mission planning and preparation. Of course, those included Alica and Ava, as well as Michael who, however, wouldn't take part in the mission.

The easiest to recognize of the remaining three was the man Michael had called uncle James. Their resident Scooter Rider. Even now, the man was leaning back in the leather seat of his E-Scooter, its distinctly non-aerodynamic form being in conflict with the white Rally strips spray painted on its dark red exterior. It made the already small room a little cramped, but no one had the heart to tell the one-legged man to leave the thing outside.

"S-Simon McBell, pleased to meet you." A mousy man in his mid-forties introduced himself, constantly readjusting his glasses in a nervous tick.

"I w-won't be of much use in a fight, but I think I can be of help with scouting. Though I will have to ask you to protect me while I do so."

The man was a nervous wreck, but Alice wasn't sure if he was always like that or because they were about to go into a monster-infested city. Probably a bit of both, Alice judged. Looking at him right now, she didn't think that the man was a good fit for the job.

However, Michael had told them that participation was voluntary and only for those at or above level three. He didn’t seem like the type to overestimate himself after having fought off monsters from behind the safety of the wall. And in that case, just that he was here told a very different story.

"Simons Class is called Omniscientist," Michael explained as if that told them anything. "He can scout for you by using out-of-body experiences. He is invisible, can fly and move through walls in that state. And most importantly, it doesn't cost him Mana, Stamina, or any other resource. But his body will be unconscious during that time, so you will have to protect him."

"Y-yes. But I'm also not very fast and have to return to my body before I can end the Skill, so I can't just stay here. Getting to the shopping center and back could take days. A-And I don't know how that would affect my body. Oh, and I can't touch anything if I am like that."

"Can you show me that Skill, please? Just move around the room for a bit." Alice asked the man.

"Sure, but you won't see anything," Simon answered before sitting down in a chair. A moment later, his head fell forward as if he had fallen asleep, though the fact that his eyes were still open made it look a bit creepy.

To test something, she held up three fingers behind her back and asked into the room, "How many fingers am I holding up?"

Alice watched him as the man literally moved around the outside of the room once before returning inside and into his body. He really was quite slow, she realized, as it took him almost two minutes. He grabbed at his neck as he sat back up straight and answered Alice's earlier question, "Three fingers. Although, they were pointing down and not up."

"Okay, first of all, what you are doing is moving around with just your soul. And incidentally, I am capable of seeing souls and probably going to get a Skill to hurt them sooner or later as well. So be careful and don't assume that you can't be seen or hurt.

Also, when you leave your body, can you still see and hear what your body sees and hears?"

"T-thats good to know. And, no, I can't. Well, I have a Skill for that, but it costs a lot of Mana and is only temporary. My last Skill allows me to feel where my body is at all times, so I can at least check what is happening if my body gets moved."

"I can only suggest that you take more Skills until you have some way to defend yourself, or return instantly or something like that. Well, it is your decision in the end."

"Yes, I will think about it," the man thanked Alice.

"You know, can't he just dive into the ground if he realizes something noticed him? As long as it isn't some magical, soul-eating mole, whatever it is should have a hard time getting to him that way," the youngest-looking man in the room commented. "I'm Max, by the way. I will be the combat medic, well, Fighting Nurse, I guess. My healing isn't quite as good as Jenny and Lucy's, but it should be sufficient to get you back to one of them in time."

"Ah!" Alice suddenly recognized the man. He was fairly handsome with curly, black hair. However, he was still about half a head smaller than Alice. "We met yesterday already. I'm Alice, by the way, since we are doing introductions apparently."

"Oh! You were the one that got stabbed in the heart, right? Freaking hell, I never thought I would say that to someone... I hope you are fine now?"

"Yeah, doesn't even hurt anymore."

"Then I will go next! I'm Ava, a Shadow Assassin. Since I can Teleport through walls, I think we will be able to work together very well, mister McBell!"

"Please, just Simon. I don't think that age... matters in the current situation."

"If age mattered at all, you would have to call me your majesty," the old man sitting on his scooter joked. "Call me uncle, or uncle James."

"I thought age didn't matter?" Ava asked teasingly.

"Pah, the least you young folk can do for an old man is to make him feel younger than he is."

"Then why not just James?"

"Because I would have to be Other-James. We already have James and Grandpa James. And don't even try to call me by my last name. I heard that in the military until I got sick of it. I wouldn't be surprised if some poor sob forgot the name his parents gave him because he stayed in that club for too long," uncle James went on a rant. "Doesn't matter. We have a job to do that won't finish itself. Also, I want to get back in time to join the game night."

"You think we should join?" Ava asked in Alice's direction, "As long as it isn't Bingo at least?"

"Ha! Yer a cheeky one. Aren't ya? Let's get this show on the road. What do we have? What do we need? And what are we supposed to do in the first place?"

"You have a total of three different goals today," Michael began to explain. "First, and most importantly, you will go to Lawrence shopping center and scout out the location. We need to know more about monster activity inside it and the surrounding two blocks.

However, even if it is completely empty, don't start raiding the place just yet. We have enough food for now and we want to send in a bigger group tomorrow, if possible, when we are better organized and prepared.

For that purpose, I want you to get stuff from two more locations that Alice and Ava have already been at. One is a small hardware store where you will get more radios and some other stuff. The other is the local bicycle shop.

Alice already has the... shopping list since she is probably the only one who knows what half of the stuff is, at least in regards to the bicycles."

"We should still all get a copy of the list, just in case the girl loses hers," the one-legged man said.

"Sorry, but we will have to be frugal. We don't have an endless amount of paper."

Alice still pulled the folded paper out of her left glove where she had put it since her body armor didn't have any pockets, and passed it to the Scooter Rider.

Uncle James looked at it for a while before passing it onto the next person.

"In terms of resources, Alice and Ava had gathered some stuff yesterday already before they came here, and they are ready to give each of you some of it," Michael explained as he gave the other three one folding knife each as well as a radio with a headset to Max and uncle James.

"We don't have a fifth radio, but I don't think you will need it since you are going to stay with one of them at all times," he apologized to Simon.

"And then, there are these," Michael said as he put three guns on the table. "They have all been enchanted by our local Gun Mage. This is probably the most powerful one," he held up a double-barreled shotgun and ten shells in a belt. "The red ones are loaded with birdshot, and the ones with the blue ring are slugs. The gun has been enchanted so that the next ten shots explode shortly after impact. Although the strength of the explosion depends on the size of the projectile. It hasn't been tested, but it should be pretty powerful."

He put the shotgun and belt back down and held up, of all things, a desert eagle with a suppressor. "This one has been silenced,"

No shit.

"with an enchantment on top of the suppressor. Shooting it should not create any sound at all, and even the target that got hit can't create any kind of sound for a few seconds. This one has fifteen shots with the enchantment. It's chambered in .50 AE, and each magazine has seven rounds," he put the gun next to the two magazines on the table.

Lastly, he held up an Ak-47 like the one Alice had held just this morning, "This one is a little more ordinary as far as magical guns go. It has thirty rounds in the magazine but automatically reloads five times. Which means it has a total of one-hundred-and-eighty shots.

Now, you should decide between yourself who gets which weapon."

"I think Ava should get the silenced gun. She is the one who will do all the sneaking," Alice immediately said. It simply made the most sense.

"Yes, I agree. Personally, I don't need one," Simon agreed with her and took himself out of the equation in the next sentence.

"Since I don't think I can survive getting stabbed in the heart, I'm going to keep myself out of fights. It would be stupid if the guy who is supposed to heal you were the first to die. If that's fine with you, I will try to stay back until my healing is needed."

"True that. The healer shouldn't run into a melee," Ava commented.

With that, there were three people and three guns. Or rather, since Ava had taken hers already, two people and two guns.

"If you don't mind, I would take the AK. It's what I'm most familiar with."

"Sure, I'm fine with that," Alice agreed with the old soldier, passing him the weapon while she herself took the shotgun and put on the belt with the shells.

It wasn't much later that the group of five found itself on the road. Alice and Ava with their fancy, new Mountain Bikes, Simon and Max on much older City Bikes. And, of course, Uncle James with his Scooter.

They were making pretty good time, despite the fact that the monsters seemed to have multiplied over night. Where the monsters, at least according to Alice's very lacking experience, would have attacked them on sight a day earlier, now, they mostly left them alone as they drove through the streets.

And even the few that did run at them were quickly driven off with a bullet or two coming from Uncle James' AK.

Every now and then, Alice could still hear a loud scream or gunshot in the distance, but compared to the previous day, the city of Trenton had calmed down a lot. Rather, it was eerily silent most of the time, now that the constant background noise of a city was missing.

Alice could only guess that after the previous day of constant fighting, even the monsters were tired and needed a break. They had made their territories and would protect them for now while licking their wounds.

Luckily, the city terrain had made it so that the open stretches of street made for perfect natural borders between said territories, as the open areas made it easy to notice approaching threats. For the group of human scouts, however, it meant they could easily move through the city without agitating any group overly much.

In the end, it took them only about an hour to reach their chosen first target, the bike store. When they were alone, Alice and Ava had taken a lot longer to cover that distance. However, thanks to not getting lost they managed to find their way back in far less time.

When they were only about one street away, they found a place where they could hide for a moment and guard his body while Simon went off to scout around the building. For all they knew, the dragon could still be sleeping in the front, or it could have relocated to the back or even broken through the front window to the inside. It could even be long gone already, and a different type of monster had moved in.

It took almost fifteen minutes before the man opened his eyes once again, telling them that the dragon was patrolling the street in front of the building, allowing them to slip in through the back.

From there, it was surprisingly easy to find a way inside. All they had to do was cut the hole in the fence a little bigger, allowing uncle James's scooter to pass. Then Ava teleported inside and opened the door. Thankfully, there was no step in front of the door, and the scooter was built slim enough, allowing even uncle James to enter without a problem.

After a quick check through the rooms and finding all of them empty, they left uncle James behind in the break room while the rest went and got better bikes for their healer and scout.

From that point, it was a break for most of them, while Alice began to work in the workshop. There were some modifications Michael had asked her to make, one of which was to attach axle pegs to the hind wheels. A process that was a lot harder than Alice originally expected, since their bikes weren’t made for it. .

It took long enough, in fact, that Alice accepted help from Max. It wasn't that no one offered before, but aside from him, no one in the group knew their way around a workshop, making them more hindrance than a help.

"So, I know Michael asked you to do this, but what exactly are these things?" Ava asked when they finally left the bike shop, looking at the black metal rods extending out of the hind wheel on both sides.

"Axle pegs. They normally only put them on a BMX, to do tricks and stuff, since it's not exactly good for most bikes. But this way, someone can ride in the back, and when we come here again, we can come with more people and bring back even more bikes."

"Huh," was all Ava had to say to that.

Since she had to work on the bikes, she didn't have the chance to take a break and recover her Stamina. However, her Soul absorption Skill dealt with that problem easily, causing a relaxing warmth to flood Alice's body, washing away every bit of exhaustion that had accumulated. Regenerating Stamina felt just as concerningly addictive as healing did. Alice really would have to be careful, just in case. She didn't want to turn into some murder hobo just to get her next fix of Soul absorption-based healing.

Their next stop was Mikey's place. Once again, they waited about a street away where they judged it to be relatively safe while Simon checked out the place. It took him a while to return, but he did so with good news. Not only were there no monsters, but there was a lot of stuff to be found in the backroom Alice and Ava hadn't been able to enter.

However, when she said so, uncle James was the one to point out that she had been carrying an ax around all this time. A fire ax, to be precise. An implement whose original purpose was the violent opening of doors.

Alice felt like an idiot. No matter how much Ava and she herself claimed she had adapted quickly, it was clear proof that she could and would make mistakes. She was far from perfect, used to the situation, or even remotely prepared for it, no matter how much she acted like it.

Like the first time, Alice was the first to enter to make sure the place was as empty as Simon had told them and got immediately greeted by the stench of a rotting corpse. She almost emptied her stomach then and there, but continued, now only breathing through her mouth.

Until now, the smell hadn't been a problem, as they only came across corpses outdoors, and a light wind was going. But now, in a more or less enclosed room, at mid-summer temperatures, the stink had accumulated.

It made Alice work extra hard on swinging her ax into the door until the place where there had been a lock before became nothing but a hole.

The rest of the looting was left to the others while Alice and Uncle James stood guard outside. Soon, all of them had backpacks, or scooter baskets, full of electronics, folding knives, and guns with filed away serial numbers.

Alice had wondered for a long time how the man managed to stay in business selling the stuff he did. After all, the only thing the shop had going for itself were the cheap, used computer parts. Everything else could be bought elsewhere for cheaper, in better quality, or simply with a larger variety of choices.

What Alice had not expected was that the man had been dealing illegal guns. She wasn't sure what to think about that. Not that it mattered anymore.

With everything packed up, they were finally on their way to their last objective.

The shopping center.