Noel watched as Ed gently lectured the five other survivors who’d wished to fight and hunt demons.

They had created a clearing to the side of the camp where they could ‘train’, but it was really just Ed teaching them some basic moves. Noel had learned everything she knew when she had first run out onto the streets two years ago. The streets of downtown had not been a nice place, and she’d learned the lessons she’d needed to quickly. She’d only had to pay with bruises instead of lives unlike some of the other street rats.

The fledgling hunters who had never hunted anything in their lives were mostly young, high school or college students who looked to Ed like he was a holy man. Noel thought it made Ed a bit uncomfortable.

She wasn’t sure why Ed was even bothering with them. They weren’t Blessed, and all had straight F’s for their Body, Mind, and Spirit. She didn’t need to finish high school to know what an F meant.

She watched with mild interest as they all took a strange stance that Ed was demonstrating, back straight, legs slightly bent, and moving their arms in circles slowly. Very pretty, but way too slow and soft to be used in a fight.

Ed’s speech had definitely roused the survivors, and though they weren’t happy about being told that goblins may have a bone to sharpen with Ed, they definitely were not looking to go outside and take their chances without him.

Besides, even the ones who didn’t worship the ground Ed walked on were extremely grateful to Ed for having rescued them.

...

It was hard to believe she had met Ed only a week ago. Ed had seemed like a fairly decent guy the first time she’d met him.

He’d surprised her over and over again with how extraordinary he was, and how much he obviously didn’t consider himself extraordinary at all. And maybe he wasn’t. But he was definitely one of the nicest guys Noel had met in her short eighteen years of life.

Ed was quiet most of the time, deep in thought, but he still knew how to take and make a joke. She liked that. People who couldn’t laugh at themselves or the world were fucking nightmares.

Noel looked beyond the clearing and into the distance, where grass was beginning to cover up the rubble like a layer of make-up hiding ugly pimples.

The city was beginning to burst with life, a stark contrast to the previous month. Mice and rats and cockroaches doubled, then tripled in size as they fed on each other. Vines were crawling up the ruins of buildings, covering them up.

If things kept growing at this rate, Noel figured the city would turn into a proper jungle in a year or two.

Most of the survivors had worked blue collar jobs as accountants, social workers, and others, but there were a couple of people who knew at least some woodworking as a hobby.

Ranga was one of them.

Noel could hear the rumbling voice of the gentle giant directing the rest of the survivors as they went about fortifying the fence around the camp and the beginnings of wooden cabins.

Noel enjoyed Ranga’s company, but he was busy most of the time directing the construction efforts or playing with his daughter, Maoria.

The tents left by the goblins were actually extremely well-kept, but there were very few things that they could use. And the former… ‘prisoners’ had wanted as few reminders about the goblins as possible. They hadn’t undergone terrible abuse or torture say, but they had been beaten frequently, fed only enough to keep them barely alive, and had been forced to await an inevitable death to feed the dagger.

Ah, the dagger. Ed had told her about the dagger. And Hekamuth.

Noel looked at her axe which had not dulled nor lost its glistening edge despite all of the blood it had seen. She brought up her stats.

Noel Agnis - Blessed by Enyo Class- Berserker Body: D Spirit: D Mind: D- Skills: Berserker Trance

Berserker Trance

You gain an extra body-grade by using manna to put yourself into a trance-like state during battle.

RIght after she’d jumped into the crowd of goblins, halved in number by the trap that she and Ed had set up, she’d felt something bloom within her soul.

A joy. An unstoppable joy that burned through her stomach and her throat and came out of her mouth a full throated roar of laughter as she cut down the goblins one after another.

The goblins had fallen, faltered, and eventually turned tail and ran.

She hadn’t noticed the wounds covering her body until she had lost sight of the last of them. And the exhaustion. She had been barely able to walk back to the camp, helped up by Wutang in Ed’s form. Wutang doing that still freaked her out. Ed with the mannerisms of a monkey seemed just so different from the calm demeanor he normally carried himself with.

The joy that she found in the viciousness of the battle should have made her a little bit afraid, perhaps. But all she could feel was a deep satisfaction that she was no longer the one on the receiving end of the violence that had colored her life for years.

Noel spit on the ground and snorted. Ed had taught her how to meditate, which seemed to help with absorbing the manna from the Spirit Crystals. He had pointed out how she exposed herself when swinging the axe, and how to minimize her wide movements and be ready for counterattacks.

Let the goblins come. Let them all come. She would be ready for them. She would be stronger by then.

She walked over to Ed and the group, and was surprised to find that they weren’t talking about the basics of stabbing someone with the pointy end of their weapons.

One of the non-fighter survivors had joined them.

“So… You’re saying that you feel like you need to hear more goblins talking to really understand them?” Ed said, looking to a lanky man with dark circles under his eyes for confirmation.

Joe looked nervous.

“Well, yeah. I can understand their meaning if not their exact words.”

Joe had been a professor before he had been taken as a livestock by the Turuks, and had also survived the longest. He had paid very, very careful attention to which goblin seemed to be the angriest that day, or which one had been feeling slightly more generous with the dollop of stew.

Eventually, he’d actually gained a Mind skill called ‘Instinct for Language’. He had tried to explain it to her, but the professor might as well have been speaking in Turuk-tongue himself. Still, it was impressive. Joe was the only non Blessed she'd seen with a skill and a stat over F. His Mind stat was apparantly a D+.

“It’s just…” Joe hesitated, but eventually got the words out.

“It makes me really uneasy is all. I couldn’t understand everything they were saying, but they said one thing over and over again. High Mother of the First Tribe.”

The young ‘hunters’ shuffled their feet, looking unnerved. They respected Joe because if Ranga had been the heart of the survivor group, Joe had been the brains. He’d taught them all the small things that had made their imprisonment a little bit easier, and maybe even saved their lives.

Ed ran his hand through his hair, now clean, free of blood, and jet-black.

“I guess we’ll have to have a little… outing.”

The ‘hunters’ looked even more nervous, but Ed and Noel shared a smile. Until Wutang screeched and hopped on Ed’s head.