The masses gathered at the intersection and Blair wasn’t watching the events unfold from above this time. That meant she stood in the stuffy circle that they’d formed and had she been shorter, she wouldn’t be able to see the center of the building. As it stood, half of her head stuck out like a sore thumb among them.

Anna stood on the platform where the traffic policeman did. If she saw correctly, the cop was somewhere in the masses yesterday.

“Okay, anyone with an Ice Shield, please move to the left and everyone else to the right. We’ll have to see what we’re working with,” shouted Anna, and the people grumpily repositioned. Blair was already to the left so she remained, but there was no shortage of people that bumped into her.

He felt an awful lot like the hyper-energetic camp instructors Blair had become familiar with after three consecutive summers of being forced to attend them. The scowl that he had when walking next to the new Mayor was gone, replaced by a bright smile.

There couldn’t have been a thousand people around here. There was nowhere near the amount there was when she was looking out the window. It was closer to three hundred, meaning two full lecture halls’ worth of people. While impressive, it wasn’t that many.

Overall, the number of people who chose Ice Shield was roughly one-third while the rest had chosen one of the offensive variations.

“Alright, we’ll divide into groups of fifty. Follow the Guards and they’ll take over from there!” yelled Anna and gestured to the side, where several Guards stood. They were outside the circle, waiting there. That meant it was planned.

Blair had no idea how long she’d slept so it could either be afternoon, giving them ample time to prepare or they were resourceful enough to think of something like that in a few hours. Given their professions, the latter scenario was just as likely as the former.

Out the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Joshua. His shirt wasn’t bloody but it was covered in dust in several spots. He’d been amidst the crowd on the other side and was walking over to one of the Guards. It was the most logical choice to be in the same group as someone you knew so she walked up to him.

“So, hey,” she said as she stood next to him, in a messy circle around one of the Guards.

“What?” he answered absent-mindedly.

“Just wanted to say hi,” said Blair and quietly stood next to him. Her eyes wandered around and counted ten Guards. Only eight of them had people around them, proving that there were around four hundred people at the intersection but it was nowhere close to almost a thousand from before.

Being tall was a great boon, letting her see past crowds by standing on her tippy toes.

Amidst the crowd, she spotted Paula, dragging a man from the wrist. He was distinctly East Asian, complete with slightly narrow eyes and fair skin. His hair was long enough to drape over his shoulder but was tied up into a ponytail save for a small bit that hung to the front of his face, bound by a trio of rubber bands.

“There they are,” said Paula and dragged him up to Blair and Joshua. He was half a head taller than Paula but slightly shorter than Blair. If his hair wasn’t straighter than Blair’s and a side-swept one, they’d look to be roughly the same height. Paula pushed the man closer to the duo and with a wide grin, spoke, “Suzaku, that’s Blair. Blair, this is Suzaku. And he’s, Jacob… no, I think it’s Joshua. Right?”

“I’m Suzaku,” he said and offered his hand for a handshake.

He could be in a K-Pop band with looks like that. It wasn’t his looks that she had a problem with, though. It was his skin. That kind of skin was something she’d sell her soul for. Even with the utmost care, her skin couldn’t look that smooth thanks to her faulty genetics. Apparently, he was one of the few that managed to look bored without looking angry.

The clothes he wore made it easy to tell he was a nurse, or at least someone who worked in a hospital —blue scrubs. They weren’t sanitary anymore, though. He had a black backpack that didn’t match his clothes that would be more at home on a student’s back and wore a poker face.

“He’s the brother I told you about —a nurse,” said Paula and placed an elbow on his shoulder. Considering their sizes, it looked comical. After all, her elbow was making an almost 60-degree angle with the shoulder.

Being stuck in here with someone she knew intimately seemed like a nightmare to Blair, especially if it was one of her parents or relatives. That stifling, heavy-handed demeanor of theirs would make it difficult to stay her hand. Her spear was oh-so-close and no one would determine who murdered who if it was done quietly.

She’d had enough of their hypocritical nonsense.

She was snapped out of her thoughts by a gruff voice.

“Alright, that’s about all we need,” said the Guard and clapped his hands. It was an older man with gray stubbles and hair of the same color. There was no shortage of wrinkles on his face but he didn’t look as old as his hair suggested. The black shirt that he wore showcased his impressive biceps and an anchor tattoo on it. After a few seconds of regarding them, he pointed at a nearby building and shouted, “We’ll be holding the drill in there. Chop chop, let’s go.”

It was an office building like most in the area. It made up for what it lacked in height in length. The Guard jogged into the building, deceptively light on his feet for his age. Maybe his lifestyle helped him retain the physique he had in youth or he looked older than he was.

It was in the particular part of the Zone that no one spent the night in, or maybe there were reclusive loners like Blair that had but weren’t lucky enough to survive. The mere possibility that there could be a corpse lurking around a corner made her stomach turn.

For the next few days, until the flesh rotted and the smell became apparent, she had to stay with everyone else. On the way down from where she’d spent the night, she hadn’t spotted any so going to fetch her sweater before nightfall was a necessity.

“Alright, five people in each room. I’ll go in one by one and explain it once you’re in,” said the Guard while at the gate, repeating the instructions to each group. He gave off the vibe of a military man. His buzz cut played a part in her impression of the man.

Beyond the entrance, there was a circular and open area but past that point, it was all one large corridor that had several rooms. As they were separated into groups of around fifty, they’d easily fit into them.

Before all this, she’d never thought of how many people these buildings could host inside them. The smallest building at her university had thirty classrooms, each of which could house at least thirty students. That and three lecture halls meant that it could fit roughly nine hundred people.

While school buildings didn’t account for actually spending the night there, to think that so many could be in the same building made her realize that the buildings she took for granted were far larger than she’d assumed. Even the tiny apartment building she lived in could comfortably house a hundred people and if they were crammed into it, more than five hundred.

“Well, this is awkward. So we’re supposed to wait here for a long ass time,” said Paula after they were assigned to a fancy office room that had a single desk and chair. The office chair was broken but the table was sturdy enough. Without a second thought, she hopped on top of it to sit.

There were two strangers in the room. Blair let her guard down around Paula, and Joshua was quiet enough to become unnoticeable, but that didn’t apply to the others. She glanced at her reflection in a shard of broken glass and noticed her disheveled hair and as if her body remembered it could still smell, she picked up the thick scent of iron and sweat.

She reeked.

It was understandable in their situation but it still made her inwardly cringe. Looking less than stellar made her uncomfortable, even more so than the slight ache in her heart after seeing the graves.

The other one was a black woman with dreadlocks and a bun behind her head, which extended to form more dreads. While otherwise unremarkable, she had visibly light hazel eyes. She had seen more people with blue eyes than that particular shade of hazel. It was closer to the gray eyes that old people seldom had.

“Why does it feel like y’all know each other?” she asked, her words prompt.

“Well, that’s because we do. Duh,” said Paula and shrugged her shoulder. How she managed to find a job as a receptionist, Blair would never know… unless she asked, but she wouldn’t. Her manners were all wrong.

“Joshua,” said the interviewer and extended a hand.

“You’re a lot moodier than I’ve seen you before,” said Paula from the side before the new girl even accepted the handshake.

“I haven’t drunk my afternoon coffee for the last two days, can’t get into contact with my mom and sister, and more importantly, I haven’t taken any pills. They aren’t necessary but I’d rather have them than not,” said Joshua and raised his voice. He gritted his teeth and glared at Paula, “For God’s sake, please have an… I don’t know, conscience! The goddamn apocalypse has happened and you’re still that bubbly?”

“I’m not bubbly. I’m a realistic pessimist,” said Paula, lips pursed and an exaggerated frown placed on her face. That made it apparent that her makeup was effectively gone, only slight bits of it remaining on her face.

“I- Okay, okay. I’m just pissed off right now, so just… leave me alone, okay?” he asked, deeply sighed, and stepped back with crossed arms. He closed his eyes and leaned on a wall.

Pills.

What kind of pills were they, even?

More importantly, that reminded Blair of everyone that needed insulin. Her glasses were a slight concern but anyone that had severe diabetes was effectively sentenced to death. They didn’t have access to the medication necessary unless they kept a few on themselves, and once they ran out of that, they’d end up dying.

It seemed like Blair’s eyesight would be fixed if she gained more Perception, roughly 10 as that was the bonus Eagle Vision provided, with which she could see clearly. Perhaps better than she would without glasses had her eyesight been normal. Such a time wasn’t in Blair’s memory as she started wearing glasses back in kindergarten, and knew that her current glasses weren’t good enough for her sight.

She might be effectively seeing at 20/30 rather than the ideal 20/20 or worse.

“That’s… something. Anyways, I’m Diana. Just call me Diana. I’m not even sure if it gets shorter than that,” she said and smacked her lips. She pointed a thumb behind her back and gestured with her head, “I worked down at the store, and I’m guessing you all worked at the clinic.”

“Nah, Joshua and I worked at the same office. The nurse is my brother. The walking tower over there was being interviewed,” said Paula and gestured at Blair toward the end of her sentence. Blair opened her mouth to retort, realized that they were technically strangers, and closed her mouth. After realizing she forgot her name, she added, “I’m Paula, by the way.”

“Suzaku. Worked at a clinic nearby,” said Paula’s brother bluntly, proving Blair’s initial theory of her having Asian heritage. She hadn’t even noticed his introduction before, far too dazed for that.

“Blair. Technically unemployed,” she said, following everyone’s example. For some reason, it sounded cooler than it should have. Maybe because it was as close to the James Bond introduction as it got.

There was an awkward silence as everyone stood around for who knows how long. It was made more difficult by the fact that no one had anything to talk about. Everyone was content lounging in their own corner and Blair’s corner was the window.

She looked out the window and could hear the sound of eagles. They were circling the area and the wolves started to howl. That made her bite her lips —it reminded her of yesterday. All those deaths and her first kill. Her heart ached for those that died but…

But it felt nice.

It felt like all her worries and stress and responsibilities were replaced with a primal struggle for survival. It was like she put herself on autopilot. Blair could almost feel herself look forward to midnight. She already missed the exhilarating sensation of adrenaline mixing with pain. The sound of her beating heart replaced all other sounds. The ache in her lungs as she physically exerted herself.

It resembled the soreness she felt the day after a workout —that painful yet satisfying feeling. The fact that she knew that she did everything she could to get to that point, and the fact that she was gaining something.

The [Monster Wave] will start in 300 seconds. Please prepare for battle.

The notification almost made Blair jump. It had an uncanny resemblance to jump scares in horror movies, popping out of nowhere.

“Did I just jinx that?” she mumbled, barely audible.

“Oh, come on,” hissed Paula and lied down on the table she was sitting on. Lazily, she rubbed her temples with one of her hands.

“We should take shelter,” Diana said frantically and peeked her head out of the doorframe.

“No, we shouldn’t,” said Paula with a low voice.

“The hell?” shouted Diana.

“You’re an able-bodied and uninjured young woman, right? The rules state that we have to fight them or we’ll be kicked out of the town,” said Paula and hopped up to her feet. She lazily stretched her hand in front of her and summoned her rapier, the command completely inaudible.

“Hell no,” she said and shook her head vigorously.

“What’s your Magic Skill?” asked Blair, halting the conversation in its tracks.

“Huh?” asked Diana, eyes narrowed and brows furrowed.

“Your Magic Skill. Is it offensive?” elaborated Blair.

“Well, yeah, it is. It’s Fire Ball,” said Diana.

“Then we’ll trade. You get Ice Shield and I get Fire Ball. It’s fine if you’re just gonna hide, right?” asked Blair, her eyebrows slightly raised.

“I… guess,” said Diana with a shrug and hesitantly summoned her Skill Deck. She pulled out her Blue Card from the masses and held it in her hand, “So now what?”

“We’ll probably have to swap it physically,” said Blair and walked up to Diana. She summoned her Skill Deck on her way there and pulled out her own Blue Card.

Blair placed her card on Diana’s hand and hers automatically placed it among the cards floating in a semi-circle around Blair.

You have traded [Ice Shield (C)] with [Fire Ball (C)]. It has been placed in your Skill Deck.

It was as simple as it got.

With a proper offensive Skill, she could fight without necessarily using her injured arm. She tried to roll her wrist but the intense pain made her stop. It was relatively intense compared to the rest of her body, which wasn’t injured. Her wrist was slightly swollen and was noticeably red.

“That’s a tendon injury. You feeling tired?” said Suzaku from the side after he spotted Blair’s hand.

“What does that have anything to do with being tired?” she asked, what little knowledge of biology she had telling her that tendons had nothing to do with being tired.

“That injury looks like it got healed by the System, which means Vigor of Ancients. It ought to be draining your Stamina to heal the injury. I saw a few people with that Skill earlier today,” said Suzaku and pulled out a canteen from his backpack. He placed it on the injury and added, “You should’ve placed ice on it, but there isn’t any ice now so that’s excusable. Typically speaking, a wrist injury of that caliber would take a few weeks to properly heal if you don’t use it much but Skills make it too messy to make an assumption.”

“I was wondering. Are you the older one or-?” she asked, looking to the side to keep her eyes on the eagles circling the area. She felt like her wrist was aching more every time they shrieked.

“Younger,” he said before her sentence ended.

“It’s bullshit,” grumbled Joshua and summoned his sword as the timer reached the last two minutes.

“You wanna fight?” asked Suzaku after turning to Diana suddenly.

“No way,” she said.

“Break your arm or leg. Then you’ll be considered injured,” said Suzaku and summoned his own weapon —a longsword like Joshua’s.

“The hell kind of logic is that?” she asked.

“It’s common sense. Unless you can conveniently grow older, younger, or want to pull out your eyes or something,” he said.

“Yeah, the Forced Expulsion might be automatic,” Paula helpfully chimed in.

“Fuck this shit,” she grumbled and got closer to the window. She extended her hand, ready to fire off a projectile, seemingly, “I’ll cover the window with an Ice Shield if any one of them comes, okay? That enough?”

“Ask the big man,” said Paula and shrugged.

All this human contact —it was tiring. If there was no Monster Wave tonight, Blair would rather sleep in the abandoned building by herself. If she had to listen to this sort of banter for hours until the evening, she’d start losing hair.

“I’ll take the door. If anything comes in, I’ll just stab it, I guess,” said Joshua and yelled, “Hey, Mayor Brat McBratinson, you hear me?! I’m fucking stabbing anything that comes through the door. I’m fighting!”

He was fighting alright, but Blair wasn’t sure if it was a verbal battle with a wall or a death match with a Monster.

“How many of them were there yesterday?” asked Blair.

“Around ten, I guess?” said Paula after humming for a few seconds.

“Alright, so statistically speaking, there’s a high likelihood that all the different groups will fight 2 monsters each. Seems alright. We mightn’t even need to fight,” said Blair, more to herself than others. It was to help keep herself calm.

The [Monster Wave] has started. Please survive for 600 seconds. Note that Monsters are able to see through all obstructions and will have [Enhanced Senses] to detect your location easier unless you have killed a Monster during that [Monster Wave].

Their number has been increased.

The amount of the increase wasn’t stated. Beyond the walls, she could see that there were at least ten wolves and it was only on one side. It was possible that the first one had fewer monsters because it was a taste of the real deal. She could hear several eagle calls that joined together, making it apparent that there were several of them.

“Logically speaking, we might be fucked because we’re closer to the wall,” corrected Paula and took cover behind the wall between the two windows, leaning on it.

The wolves looked like they were the perfect size to fit through the wide window of the office. If the window had been smaller, there’d be only one entrance in the entirety of the building and that would provide them a large advantage.

Despite her injury, Blair summoned her spear just in case. It seemed to be the most useful weapon they had in defending a room. If everyone had spears, they could easily fend the Monsters off but the System offered too many cooler weapons.

It almost felt like it was encouraging them to fight those things head-on.

“There’s only one window,” said Blair and held her spear before it. In an ideal world, the wolf would jump through the window and it would land on the sharp edge. In an even more ideal world, she’d shoot a Fire Ball into its mouth and take it down in one blow. In a perfect world, though, they’d magically not come up to them in the first place.

It was neither of those situations.

The wolves were the length of cars but their width was smaller. One of them jumped at the window and Blair activated a Fire Ball the moment she saw it lift off the ground. However, it was too fast. The Fire Ball didn’t finish forming until it entered the room, and as her focus had shifted, her spear was knocked aside, gliding off its thick fur.

One of its giant claws reached Blair and left a massive gash across her chest, but that was when the Fire Ball finished forming. Its heat singed the wolf’s fur and sent it tumbling out the window. It didn’t kill it, though. Begrudgingly, it turned its sight back at them, one side of its face charred black.

“Fire Ball, activate!” shouted Blair, wasting no time in doing so. However, the wolf didn’t come. It stood outside until her spell took off, easily dodged it, and continued its advances.

Just before it reached the window, a gentle breeze passed by Blair, left behind by a Wind Blade. It struck the wolf in its face and left a large gash in its head. Its massive weight pushed down on Blair and one of the temples of her glasses snapped under the tension.

Fortunately, before she could be smashed to death, the corpse scattered into light and a duo of cards rose from the ground. That didn’t stop Blair from falling down to uncomfortably land on her hand, most likely damaging her wrist more.

One of them shot up to Joshua and the other landed on Blair’s hand. Without a second thought, she grabbed it and turned to the window, only to spot none of them left. There were screams from the other rooms, which spurred Joshua into snapping the door shut.

Congratulations! You’ve used a [Red Card]. Choose one of the following Skills you are able to attain from a [Dire Wolf].

“Quick, come over here,” shouted Suzaku and pulled out a coiled bandage from his backpack after throwing away his sword. Hastily, he poured a quarter of a bottle of alcohol over the cloth, “Apply this to the wound and sit to the side. You have to stop the bleeding.”

“It’s fine. I have the Skill,” said Blair, huffing. She winced when she moved and her wrist wasn’t in great shape.

“Yeah, but if you keep losing blood, you’ll lose consciousness because it tried to heal you. You need to be awake until you run out of Mana, at least. We mightn’t survive otherwise,” said Suzaku and let her rest on the same wall as Paula. He applied pressure with the cloth to the two scratches through her tattered tank-top, which wasn’t much of a clothing anymore, “They aren’t that deep. It’ll be fine in a day or two.”

“Well, they don’t hurt as much as my wrist,” said Blair and gestured to it with her head.

A wolf smashed the door open and that sent Joshua, who’d been leaning on the door to keep it shut, flying to the wall. He hit his head on the wall and slumped to the ground. Dizzily, he tried to get up but the wolf placed one heavy paw on his chest, smashing it in the process.

Blair couldn’t move and could only stare with wide-open eyes.

That’s when Paula jumped to the rescue and drove her rapier through its temple, scattering it into light within a moment. She grabbed the card that the wolf turned into and glanced at the corpse.

“You should close your eyes,” she said and Blair peeled her eyes away from the corpse.

Not a moment sooner, a sickening squelch sounded out. Fearing for the worst, Blair snapped her head toward Paula but her eyes landed on Joshua’s corpse.

Joshua’s heart had popped out of his body and was being compressed into a tiny, purple pearl before her eyes. It formed the rough shape of a deck box and floated in the air, lazily spinning in place.

“Told ya,” said Paula and took cover behind the wall next to the door right next to Diana. She gestured with her head and Suzaku nodded in response. He dragged Blair to the same wall and returned to his spot, facing the door, his longsword in hand. That left Blair pressing the cloth to her chest despite the stinging with her one good arm.

Diana stood an inch from the door, hyperventilating.

They could hear footsteps again.

There were ten groups of five in the room and ten wolves. In the worst-case scenario, a wolf coming to their room meant that five others were killed. That’s when they could hear footsteps again. It crept closer with excessive speed, and that’s when Diana risked it all. She jumped to the doorway and cast an Ice Shield.

Another wolf jumped through the doorway and before it could fully enter, the Ice Shield extended. It kept the wolf pinned between the top of the doorframe and the shield. It slammed its paw into the shield and cracks started to appear.

Suzaku jumped up and lodged his spear into the wolf’s eyehole. It wasn’t difficult, as its head was oversized —almost the size of a bull’s.

The wolf scattered into light and two cards appeared, just like it did for Joshua and Blair. One of them landed in Suzaku’s hand and the other landed on Diana’s.

“Quick, hide,” whispered Paula and pulled Diana out of her stupor, sending her sprawling to the ground, “They can’t see us now.”

They’d killed the wolves together so the System recognized that and gave both of them the reward for killing it. It meant that they wouldn’t be visible to the x-ray vision that the wolves had. If Paula believed they’d be safe, it was likely that their Enhanced Senses didn’t apply either.

They were essentially impossible to find unless they were directly seen.

That allowed Blair to take a deep breath and think. She could feel bile rising from the pit of her stomach but swallowed it before it left her throat —now wasn’t the time. They could hear her vomiting and could come in if any more of them were still there.

It was quieter now, so much so that Blair felt like she could hear a pin drop.

The only way to keep her attention away from the corpse on the other side of the room was to focus on something else.

The pop-up.

Focusing on the pop-up was better.

Congratulations! You’ve used a [Red Card]. Choose one of the following Skills you are able to attain from a [Dire Wolf].

Canine Tracking (C): Allows you to temporarily increase your Perception for the purpose of Smell.

Claw Retraction (C): Allows you to temporarily turn your nails into claws.

Canine Bite (C): Allows you to temporarily increase your Strength when biting an object.

It followed a template of sorts. The Canine Tracking granted Perception-based bonuses and the second one granted claws, which the Dire Eagle also did. The last one increased Strength based on what the animal was good at, and in this case, it seemed to be biting strength.

Blair didn’t need to smell well. Her choice was obvious. Without a second thought, she chose Claw Retraction. If she was injured, as she was right now, scratching would be far more intuitive than using a spear that could only be practically used with two hands unless she became strong enough to competently wield it with a single hand.

She took a deep breath and whispered the name of the Skill underneath her breath.

The card morphed to show a trio of claw marks on the front and the description appeared on the back.

Name: Claw Retraction

Level: 1

Rarity: Common

Description: Allows you to temporarily grow claws for combat purposes.

Cost: 1 Stamina per Minute

It didn’t have a Bonus like Eagle Vision but it was as good as it got. She took another deep breath and let it scatter into light. To think she actually looked forward to something like that... it sickened her. There were still eight minutes to go until this nightmare ended.

Eight minutes until she could vomit out her lunch.