I hovered over the carnage, my wings spread to the sides, full of air summoned with aerokinesis. Looking around me I expected to feel revulsion or disgust, but all I felt was satisfaction. There was no compassion for those that I helped to end; they were dead, and I was not, and that was all. It was strange to think that not thirty minutes ago, they had all been living their lives as normal, not expecting anything to change or happen. They might have been cruel, and they might have done bad things, but did they really deserve to die?

For the first time, I felt truly backed into a corner by the changing world. The movie industry really had it pegged for sure; it was not the changing world brought by the apocalypse that caused the most distress and disaster, but the changing people. These people became greedy when no one was watching anymore they decided that their lives were worth more than those around them. I suppose that I just decided the same. The difference between us was that when I saw someone who needed help, I would lend aid, while they would take advantage of the situation for all it was worth. That compassion had to be the difference, or what was the point of all of this? I just hoped that it was enough.

Skill Alert! Level Up! New Skill Unlocked!

Magic Skills:

Aerokinesis – lvl 31 -> 32

Archetype Skills:

Lone Wanderer – lvl 37 -> 40 – archetype subskill unlocked

Survivor – lvl 1/1 – when you reach 0 health from an attack, you instead fall to 1 health. Usable once per day.

The skill alert brought me out of my introspection. Survivor sounded immensely helpful. It meant that I couldn’t be one-shot by a difficult boss, and would give me even just a little bit more time to run away. That was definitely useful, especially considering lone wanderer wanting me to explore places, well, all alone. The fact that my archetype granted more skills was also important to note. I would need to consult Cindy to see if she had received a subskill as well, to make sure that it wasn’t just a weird thing about my archetype in particular.

I didn’t get any levels and I barely received skill increases, but that only made sense. The plan was to allow the other members of the party to level up themselves, trying to make sure they could all get classes and could all, at the very least, reach their first max stat increases. I identified the members of the party to see their gains. This time, I tried to use identify while keeping in mind the party window, to see if I could gain more information. I was surprised when it worked. It seems that the menu systems are fairly intuitive.

Party:

Donny:

Race – Young Gold Dragon

Job – Cosplayer

Class – Dragonflame Blacksmith

Rank – 1

Level – 15

Steph:

Race – Superhuman

Job – Federal Agent

Class – none

Rank – 1

Level – 11

Taylor:

Race – Dryad Sapling

Job – Musician

Class – none

Rank – 1

Level – 17

Vic:

Race – Storm Paraelemental Warrior

Job – Fighter

Class – Way of the Storm Martial Artist

Rank – 2

Level – 0

Cindy:

Race – Lesser Red Fey

Job – Clerk

Class – none

Rank – 2

Level – 17

Kait:

Race – Thundering Cheetahkin

Job – Investigator

Class – Ninja

Rank – 1

Level – 19

Experience Sharing: Experience is divided by slain enemies' rank

I was shocked looking over the menu. Everyone had broken past level 10 so they could all get classes. Cindy had apparently broken through into rank 2, though I didn’t know what that meant for her, as her race hadn’t changed at all yet. I assumed it would affect the types of magic that she could cast, though I was still rather unsure of the whole principle of ranks for the other races. I wanted to meet with everyone and make a plan for the next location but doing that while standing out in the carnage was not a good idea.

We had decided on meeting up after the fight in the building from which Cindy and Taylor cast their magic, so I turned to gather Steph, Kaitlyn, and Donny. They were all still walking around the motel looking around and placing some rather innocuous supplies into their personal backpacks. I flew to each one, in turn, tapping them on the shoulders, gesturing that it was time to leave. One by one they each filed out in silence.

Once we left the motel, we quietly walked down the sidewalk shoulder to shoulder. Kaitlyn and Steph were stoic, and I could not see any changes on their face after the encounter. Donny, however, had a strange look in his eyes. It didn’t really help that I didn’t know how to read the expressions of a dragon, but I could tell that the whole experience had left him shaken. I’m sure I wasn’t fairing much better.

The three-story building from which Cindy and Taylor cast their spells was an office building housing some kind of architecture firm. It was abandoned, like all other buildings in the area, and had already been picked clean. Probably by the bandits we just wiped out. There were broken windows on the third floor, which is why we chose this building over the others. The stipulation behind both spells was they required both line of sight, and nothing stronger than water between the caster and where the AOE set off from. Pretty useless in a building like this, but on an open field, these spells were terrifying. Though to be fair, they did have a casting time of 15 seconds, so it wasn’t as if these powerful spells could just be set off with wild abandon. You had to be extremely careful, as those 15 seconds were more than enough time to get killed.

We met Cindy and Taylor in the lobby of the building. They had come down to the ground floor and were waiting on us to arrive. They seemed pretty freaked out by the whole situation, and honestly, that made perfect sense. I had been around both girls for a long enough time to tell when they were actually okay, or when they were dealing with some stuff, and they didn’t look too good.

Steph looked around at everyone and softly spoke, “Let’s all find a new place to rest and recover for a bit. We can talk there and make more plans. I remember a Chinese food restaurant about three blocks down that looked empty and fairly secluded.”

I just nodded my head, moving over to pick up Taylor. She was the only one of us that didn’t have the ability to fly or move extremely quickly. We walked outside, and I wrapped my arms around her. She wasn’t crying, but when I felt her, she was shaking ever so slightly. I gently took off into the air, my wings granting me a massive amount of control, and we flew the short distance to the restaurant.

The door was locked, but some of the glass on the front had been shattered with a rock so we could just walk in. Finding a booth deeper into the abandoned building, I sat down between Taylor and Cindy, wrapping my wings around them both. They each leaned on my shoulders, closing their eyes, as we waited for everyone else to settle in.

The restaurant itself was fairly typical. Red fake leather booths were on every wall save the one going to the kitchen. The decorations around the restaurant were Chinese lanterns with red and gold Chinese characters everywhere. They even had one of those perpetually waving cats up on the counter, but it looked like it had run out of batteries as it was still.

We sat in silence for a bit, just trying to decompress and relax. I had no desire to plan for more at this point in time, though I acknowledged that it was almost certainly a necessity at this point. We did everything we could to make sure there were no survivors, but that was still no guarantee, and word could have certainly gotten out. We were on a timetable whether I liked it or not, and at this point, we were really past the point of no return. The only option we had remaining was to finish the job that we had started. There was no other way to get James out.

Steph wore a kind face but was not smiling. It was a mature face, and it once again reminded me she was much older and experienced than she seemed at first glance.

She spoke again, in a calm, soothing voice, “Everyone, I know how hard that was for you. You may not believe me, but I have seen my fair share of bloodshed. It is really nothing particularly new to me, but the things that we have to do in this line of work never really change. It gets easier with time, but the weight of what you have done stays with you. I am sorry that you all had to experience such a terrible thing at such a young age, but it is a necessity of this world that we find ourselves in.

You all did a good job. Everyone did their parts professionally, and proudly. I, personally, am proud of each and every one of you.”

It was a strange speech. The words were truthful and seemed almost cliched, but they did seem to help. It was, however, strange to hear someone who appeared to be 18 say they were proud of me. There was a specific tone associated with it, and it just came out kind of weird. I did like the sentiment though, and through the feathers on my wings, I could feel Cindy and Taylor relax just a little bit.

After a short pause, she continued, “Now, however, we must continue. Our job is not done until James is safe, and these people are no longer major players in this part of the city. While we are taking lives, the number of lives saved cannot possibly be known.”

Seeing the members of the party shrink away from her comment, Steph looked very thoughtful. She paused for a bit and seemed to gaze past the walls of the restaurant to somewhere else. She eventually spoke, but this time it was in a strong, painful voice.

“As I’m sure you realize from my status recognized job, I am currently working as a federal agent. What you don’t know is that for a time in my younger days, I worked for a paramilitary company. I was a mercenary and assassin, and I was quite good at what I did.

I remember working a particularly difficult job in southern Bosnia, right after I started. Now, this was only a few years after the genocide officially ended, I think 1994, and things in the country were still tense beyond all belief. Their situation was not unlike ours; there was no official government in most places to control the people, and many towns and villages were taken over by warlords and bandits, who controlled their pieces of land with an iron fist. Anyone who had something that the warlord wanted was killed. Nowhere in the land around their fortresses were safe. It was a time where you could get shot just by looking at someone you were not supposed to.

We were hired by a wealthier man from one of the larger cities. His son had gone missing, and word around the area was that he had been seen in one of the villages to the south that was run by the local warlord. We were paid to rescue the boy and eliminate his captors. Now, we had no idea at that time who actually captured the boy, but we knew it was likely he was killed by the warlord or taken as a slave.

As we moved south, I’ll never forget what I saw. There were entire villages razed to the ground. I saw bones peeking out of some of the ashes; bones of cattle and people. The genocide had already passed, but the warlord had seen his opportunity for power and seized it while he could. We did eventually find the boy, who was still alive by some miracle, and I ended up killing the warlord with my own hands shortly after. The job was done, the day was saved, and justice would prevail. At least, that was what I thought. I got my paycheck and went home.

It was only a year later that I returned, this time for another job altogether. And do you know what I found? There was a brand-new warlord. He was a member of the previous warlord’s group, and as soon as I had killed the old warlord, the new one stepped in and kept the chaos going. It was an unending cycle. The warlords would bring members into their gang, and when the leader died, a new member would step up. This cycle kept up for years and years until one day someone had enough.

There was a village that had been oppressed by the bandits for too long apparently, and a member of that village strapped a bomb to his chest and waltzed into the bandit compound, killing everyone inside. Only then was there peace, and the military from the cities was able to move south and make sure that something like that never happened again.

People like the gems… this is where they start. It only gets worse from here. They will continue to accrue power, members, and influence. Pretty soon, they will either destroy or merge with the bandit gangs around them, and at that point, it's out of our hands. Right now, we have the chance to stop them. To stop them for good. There is no one else that can do it now.”

She paused again, letting us digest the story. Was she really a mercenary? That was a pretty hardcore job, and it didn’t really mesh well with the image I had of Steph currently. It would, however, certainly explain her willingness for violence, and her desire to destroy the bandits here before they became a bigger problem.

It really made me think. She was probably right. From what Kaitlyn said, the leadership of the gang do not care even a little bit for the lives of their members, sending them to die without any concern. If we were to kill the leaders of the gems, someone else would just step up to fill their shoes. Would they be as powerful to start with? Probably not. But could we risk it? More people would die from our lack of action, that much was certain. Inaction leading to someone’s death was a little better than killing them yourself.

I looked around at everyone’s faces once again. This time, I didn’t see any anger at injustices done. The faces of my friends around me were those of people who understood what needed to be done, consequences be damned. Would we be jailed because of this? Maybe. But if we could save a few lives between now and the time that our punishment happened, it was all worth it.

We planned the next attack. We would be finishing this before the sun rose.

The warehouse was shaped like a rectangle, with a parking lot out back, and a cargo entrance in the middle. There were a few people milling around, but they didn’t seem to notice us as we hovered above. Each and every door was chained shut, with five armed guards with fully automatic weapons stationed outside each one. This is probably where the armory from the police went.

Taylor was in my arms once again, and Cindy was hovering next to us. There was a skylight that had been left open on the roof of the building. They obviously didn’t have any friends who were magic race beta testers, or they would have been more careful about attacks from the sky. Lucky for us, Kaitlyn let us know that no slaves were allowed in the warehouse. This would be their downfall.

The Gems had been accruing weapons and ammunition from around the city, stockpiling it in this large isolated warehouse I could count four different gas tankers within the warehouse as well. It was clear that the gems were trying to be prepared. It really is a shame that they didn’t think about someone casting a fire spell from the sky.

Taylor started by muttering her spell and moving her arms in very specific patterns before her. She was tracing runes of light in the air, and as she did, they would fly into a circle pattern that would hover in the air before her. The atmosphere around me was humming with power as the spell was starting to be cast.

Cindy was next to us, staggering her spell cast by five seconds. While Taylor’s runes appeared to be fluid and natural, Cindy’s were clean and strait. Both girls were forming a circle in the air, but it appeared that Cindy was casting almost twice as fast as Taylor. That must be part of the benefit of the rank increase. It really was impressive that both girls had essentially learned a whole new language in the span of 11 days.

As Taylor's runes finished a full circumference they began to glow with a green light, before fading out of existence altogether. I waited on bated breath, but I could already hear the cracking of the concrete foundation of the warehouse, and the screams of the bandits as they became entangled in the thorny vines.

Cindy’s spell was taking shape as well, though hers was an experimental version of the one she cast at the motel. This spell was the two-circle variant and should have 1.5 as many ‘flame sprites’ as she called the glowing fire-bug looking things when I asked her before. Her spell was ready, and the runes in the air glowed a vibrant pink to match her hair, before fading out of existence.

From where we were, we could not see the flame sprites, but we could certainly see what they did. Obviously, the gems didn’t consider keeping their explosives, gasoline, and ammunition in different places, because the entire warehouse was obliterated with a mighty BABABOOOM. There was no way anyone was walking away from that.

I was thrown spinning through the air, and I could tell that Cindy was having a bad time as well. As we fell, I was able to rapidly reposition myself with my wings and tail, and I grabbed each girl with an arm. I didn’t think we even needed to bother trying to take out any stragglers from this place.

We returned to the rendezvous location and waited for everyone else to arrive. There was only one more bandit camp left, and then this fight was over.