"You are finally back! How did it... go?" Michael greeted them when they were let through the wall, his voice hitching when he noticed the two missing men.

"Invisible fucking giant spiders. That's how it went," Ava answered more aggressively than necessary. But Alice could understand, she too was still angry.

"Please, come inside and tell me what happened."

When they went out, their briefing had happened in the first room they found empty. But this time, Michael led them to a different room. It was surprisingly large with two doors. It took Alice a moment to notice the strip of smooth stone that split the room into two where the wall between the rooms had been taken out via magic.

Dim light was coming through the windows to the inner courtyard, putting the room into a somber mood.

"Come, sit down," Michael offered them chairs while he himself sat down behind a large desk.

Once they had all sat down, in turn, they began reporting what had happened.

It didn't take very long. To Alice, it was somehow frustrating that the death of two people didn't even make for more than five sentences in the report. No heroic last stand. No long story. No ‘worthy’ death. That was simply how fast it happened.

"I... was completely useless. There just wasn't anything I could do. I will be honest, I don't think I will go out with such a small group again," Max added his intentions for the future after they were done.

"Why are you saying that?" Michael asked for more detail.

"Ha!" Max let out a frustrated laugh, "Tell me, is there any use to a healer if there is no one to heal? Simon died instantly, and we had to leave uncle James behind. There was nothing I could do."

"But you would go out again with a larger and stronger group?"

"Maybe. I will have to think about it," Max finally concluded.

"I think," Ava made her opinion known, "that we shouldn't use the bicycles anymore."

"I think you are right. They are convenient but simply not made to survive combat," Alice agreed with her friend. If Max had been a little less lucky, he too might have not survived after his fall. "Also, I think we might have noticed that something was wrong earlier if we had gone slower."

"Yeah, that too. But I meant it more as a sort of threshold. Even if there aren’t specific areas with different difficulty levels, the further you get away from the base, the more dangerous it’s going to become just due to the distance. If you want to get somewhere, you should have the Stats and Skills to do so on foot," Ava explained her thoughts.

"I will have to think about that, but I think it's just too slow. We need to find food somewhere. Even if we ration what we have, we have over seventy people to feed. We will run out quickly."

"What about the meat from the monsters? We collected some of that this morning, didn't we?" Alice pointed out.

"Yes, but I already assumed that we would be supplementing the rations with that. The problem is, this place didn't store any food. Doing so for so many people just isn't practical. Instead, the food got delivered every day by a catering service," Michael explained.

"What if we don't supplement but completely replace it? There have been civilizations that survived on nothing but meat. We will have to be careful, but if we supplement the missing vitamins and nutrients sufficiently, we should be able to survive on almost nothing but meat," Max offered a solution.

"Are you sure about that? Do you think you could organize that?"

"Absolutely. Before I started working here as a nurse, I wanted to become a nutritionist, so I know a bit about that kinda stuff."

"While we're on the matter of food," Alice interjected, "I have been wondering what we are going to do about water."

"Don't worry about that. Tomorrow or the day after, our Construction mages are going to start building an underground reservoir that they plan to connect with a small lake that's close by. Those guys' earth magic is too slow for any form of combat, but they get done a lot with very little Mana. It's quite astounding.

Anyway, you have been out there for quite some time. Get yourself something to eat from the kitchen and stay on standby. Take a break and try to relax a bit."

"Actually, let's go out again. But this time, purely for the sake of leveling," Ava suggested to her friend.

"Are you sure? I'm still fine, but you can't regenerate your resources as quickly, can you?"

"Yes, I'm fine. I just need a short break," Ava replied as her anger flared up again for a moment.

Alice wasn’t sure if going out with that kind of mood was a good idea. But at least, she could understand. After what happened, she too needed to fight, and to win. To prove herself that she wasn’t helpless.

"In that case, is there anything specific you need us for? Are there any attacks predicted for today?" Alice asked the Captain.

"No, none we would need you for. We decided to leave those mostly to our utility mages since killing monsters seems like the fastest way to level up, and they won't be in many fights otherwise."

"You can level up in other ways than fighting?"

"Yes, but it's slow, and we still don't know the specifics. We think it happens if you use your Skills a lot, but we don't know more since it only happened once until now.

Now go, get something to eat, and take that break before you go out again."

Almost an hour later, once again, the two girls stood outside the safety of the wall in full armor. They had left their backpacks behind, not intending to collect anything. Alice still had her ax and the shotgun she got from Mikey, now fully reloaded. Ava, on top of her knives and the desert eagle, now also had a crowbar.

While they had no intentions of collecting resources, they did plan to enter the surrounding houses and make notes on which ones were worth looting, for later. There was no need to waste the work they put into clearing the area of monsters.

As they jogged through the short stretch of forest that was between Golden Glades and the main street, for the first time, Alice got to appreciate how full of life the forest was. Her soul perception had expanded tremendously, and now, it reflected how many animals there were still alive.

Now that she thought about it, compared to humans, she had seen barely any dead animals in the city. It was ironic. They always claimed that civilization was power, that humans were the most powerful creatures on the planet, but as soon as the monsters came, it lost all meaning. While humans died in droves, the animals went just back to business like usual, just with a few more predators now.

"Thirty meters in that direction," Alice pointed slightly to the left, "there is one monster there."

"Is it alone?"

"Maybe, let's get a bit closer," Alice answered before running a few more steps.

"Yes. It's alone as far as I can tell."

"On the ground or in the trees?"

"It's... In the trees. Yeah, let's skip this one."

They continued running, skipping two more monsters that they didn't feel confident in defeating. Finally, they came out of the forest. Not much longer, and the street became lined with hedges on both sides, only interrupted by the closed gates behind which they could see one small mansion or another.

They went for a while longer down the street, Alice all the while checking how many monsters there were on each property. They had no intention of confronting too many at the same time.

Finally, Alice found one she considered safe enough, "This one. There are five enemies, and they are all spread out."

"Can you tell what they are?"

"Let me try," Alice closed her eyes, concentrating on the feeling the souls gave her. Carefully, she inspected the souls, inspecting their forms and patterns. How they moved. Their colors, smell, and even taste. Of course, none of those sensations were real, only what she associated with the feeling.

"I'm pretty sure they are all those monkeys."

"More of those shits? They are annoying," Ava complained.

"At least they aren't invisible," Alice replied dryly. "I don't think there are any in the front lawn. You want to go in first?"

"Sure," Ava replied, stepping into the hedge. A moment later, her soul stretched and moved through the wall hidden between the trees, coming out on the other side.

"It's clear, you can come over the front gate," Ava's voice came out of the radio a moment later.

Alice moved a few more meters down the street where the front gate was located. They had avoided it, just in case one of the monsters was watching and would see them. There was no reason to waste the element of surprise if they could get it.

Carefully, Alice stretched her hand through the wrought iron gate, pressing down the handle on the other side. The gate was locked.

The hard way, then.

She put her hands on top of the gate, and her right foot through the metal bars, stepping on the handle on the inside. She jumped up, jumping sideways over the gate. It rattled crashingly.

One of the souls inside the building moved, and Alice quickly took cover behind one of the bushes lining the driveway.

"Upper floor, second window from the left. Think you can snipe it?" Alice asked over the radio.

"No way," the answer came quickly. "Let's wait."

"Aren't you supposed to be a Ranger?"

"Aren't you supposed to be a Necromancer?"

"Yeah, yeah. Point taken. It's gone, let's meet at the front door."

Alice quickly went back to the entrance gate, grabbing the ax she had left outside on the ground. As good of a weapon as it was, without a backpack, she had nowhere to put it if she needed her hands free. She would need to come up with a solution for that.

Paying extra attention to the monsters' relative position to the windows, Alice quickly made her way through the front lawn while avoiding the gravel path. Only seconds later, she joined Ava at the front door, where the girl was already waiting for her.

The house was pretty big and could already be called a small mansion. It was a simple, rectangular building with white walls and equally spaced-out windows. It wasn't anything fancy, but in return, it had a lot of space inside.

Now that she was closer, Alice could tell more precisely where their enemies were. Three were inside the building, and two in the garden behind it.

"Three of five are in the building. One on the first and two on the ground floor. None are close to the door. Let's try to be stealthy for as long as possible."

"Aye, aye, captain."

Again, Ava disappeared into the shadows, and a moment later, Alice could hear the soft sound of the door handle.

"It's locked," Ava's voice came from Alice's radio.

"Shit. Look for the key. Maybe one of them left them in their coat pocket."

"They don't have their jackets here. They probably keep them in their own rooms."

"Who the hell does that?"

"I do," Ava answered.

"You live alone."

"Okay, I did it in the past when I still lived with my parents. Happy now?"

"Yes, indeed. Anyway, the first window on the right, look if you can open it for me," Alice suggested.

"My right or your right?"

"Mine."

Staying close to the wall so she couldn't be seen from the windows, Alice moved to the right, coming to a stop beneath the first window. In her mind, she apologized for ruining the flower bed. Nervously, she waited while watching her friend's soul moving slowly through the inside of the building.

"No dice. Windows are locked too," her friend's voice came from the radio again.

"Are you fucking serious? A different house then?"

"Maybe try the backdoor? The monkeys must have gotten in somewhere."

"But there are two of them in the backyard. If we have to run, we won't have a way to get out safely."

"If we have to run, we can just smash in the windows, can't we?"

Sure, if they had to run, there would be no point in keeping up their stealth. It wasn't like they were in a game where the enemy forgot about them as soon as they left their line of sight.

"Fine, I will go around and take a look. Go back to the front door, for now. That's as far as you can get from both monkeys on the ground floor."

While Ava moved back to the front door, Alice kept close to the wall, moving further to the right until she reached the corner of the building. There was a narrow path leading around the side of the house, and of course, just like the path from the gate to the front door, it was a gravel path. There was no way she was getting through this silently.

She almost resigned herself to trying to sneak on a gravel path when she noticed a small stone ledge hidden underneath the hedge. Alice guessed that it was there to make sure that the gravel stayed where it was supposed to be.

Leaning against the wall to her left, Alice put her feet on the ledge. Being stuck halfway in the hedge while leaning against a wall half a meter to the side wasn't exactly the most comfortable way to cross any distance, but at least she could do so silently.

Soon, she found herself at the next corner. Carefully, she edged closer until her angle allowed her to see the position where she could feel one of the souls. Or rather, where she could have seen it.

The garden was split into three parts. The front, which was close to the house, the middle, which seemed to be a terrace surrounded by a circle of trees, and the back third, which Alice couldn't see. One of the monkeys was on the terrace in the middle, the other was in the back part. It was perfect for Alice, as it made it easier for her to get through the garden unseen.

Still keeping close to the wall, Alice made her way to the backdoor when she suddenly heard a deep thump. It sounded like footsteps. The steps of something very big and heavy.

Alice froze for a moment. The soul on the middle terrace was moving. Too late did she notice the difference. It was very similar, but that one wasn't one of the monkeys.

She turned around and ran back where she came from.

"Ava..." her call got interrupted by a deafening roar.

The roar was followed by a crash, like a meteor impacting the ground. The earth trembled, forcing Alice to slow down, and just in time, or she would have gotten hit by the stone pillar shooting out of the gravel path in front of her, cutting her off.

"Ava, get out of there!" she finished her sentence this time.

Alice turned around, running back down the path again. She had no interest in getting cornered in such a small space.

"What happened!?" Ava was clearly panicked.

"I'm cut off. Leave, I will try to find another way out."

"And leave you behind? No way!"

She could already see the reason for her troubles coming out from behind the trees. It was one of the bigger Gorilla-like creatures they had seen once. They looked like a gorilla but several times bigger and on steroids.

Alice thought quickly. There was no time for discussions.

"Then deal with the ones in the house first! I will tell you when I get away, and then you run!"

Alice didn't have any more time to listen to what Ava was saying. The monster's fist impacted the ground, making the earth shudder. Just in time, Alice jumped to the side, evading the stone spike that was trying to impale her from below.

The garden was big, but with its colossal height of over five meters, the monster was coming at her faster than she would have liked, despite looking like it was walking comfortably.

Her mind was racing. The backdoor to the house wasn't an option anymore. She could feel one of the monkeys inside the building moving towards it. Confronting it with the Gorilla behind her wasn't a risk she wanted to take.

However, the monster was gigantic, and it had to have entered the property from somewhere. Had it come over the gravel path Alice took or climbed over the building, it would have left visible damage, but Alice hadn't noticed anything that looked remotely like such traces.

That meant it must have come over the fence in the back half of the garden. That left her with only one way to go.

Running with all her might, Alice kept to the right edge of the property, but quickly it became clear, she had no chance of outpacing the monster. Its size gave it too much of an advantage, each of its booming steps crossing meters at once.

Alice pulled out her gun. There was no chance that she would risk getting close to the monstrosity. Barely even aiming, Alice fired at the monster, hoping to buy herself the seconds she needed to pass by outside its reach.

Hit right in the chest, the Gorilla stumbled back, roaring as it caught itself. Alice passed by its side, barely out of its reach.

Alice reloaded, training her gun already on the tree the last monkey was hiding behind, thinking she hadn't noticed it.

It jumped at her, and Alice shot, clipping it in the side.

The ground rumbled again, another stone-spike cutting her off, costing her precious seconds. She could hear the footsteps behind her.

She looked back. The Gorilla was getting dangerously close, swinging its arm back to swat at her.

A nerve-wracking screech made Alice halt. She turned to the side, screaming.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU FUCKING MONKEY!"

The giant's palm hit her.