Shadow had brought with her all the info she could gather of the safezone and a detailed map of the layout of the gang's lair, the only place she couldn't get in was King's private chambers, which he never left, and had some kind of double airlock kind of door.

It took him and the leaders the whole day to come up with a feasible plan to take out King, the problem was that nobody knew King from before the pulse and they had no idea about his skills, level, or class.

After talking to Shadow, it turned out that she had lost her OCD when she was ambushed by over ten dog-sized spiders when she investigated the basement tunnels under the gang's apartment block, only the fact that she had Seline with her in one of the trap-balls ensured that they could escape through a hole into the basement of a nearby collapsed building.

Shadow also gave him the three chests that he had asked her to pick the locks of in Mountain Holm.

She left him in the hall as the leaders arrived, going out to rent a room in the tavern and catch up on some missing sleep.

They all took a seat around the table and started discussing the matter of how the leadership tasks will be divided.

It was decided that Leon will be the head of the council in Paarl and would run STC, Celia would run the caravan, and be in charge of the sales while the caravan was deployed in a town or outpost, which should set out for Starter Town and Worcester within the week while Counsellor would use his administration skills and be in charge of the merchants in Paarl.

The Crafters would all fall under Gerard, except the builders who will be led by Kirt, and together with his crew, they will be back to raising the mini forts tomorrow.

Jak de Beer would be in charge of food production from the farms and also the greenhouse once it is built and up and running together with Carla and her Ranger skills, which will be useful in helping to find monsters like the Husse to domesticate.

Mike Dekker would work with Arnold, where Armold would be more in charge of the safety and security of Paarl, the militia will all be integrated into the town guards, Mike would be in charge of the fighters that go out to fight the monsters, more like the Adventurers Guilds in the stories.

Louie was sceptical about Samuel, the previous mayor, but Arnold assured him that he would keep him in line and help with the organization of the guards since he had gained two levels during the beast waves, Louie was willing to give him a chance.

After all the leaders left he took out the chests, placed them on the table, and started going through them.

The first chest was filled with personal effects, and right in the middle was a small ring box and the missing quest ring,

Ring box

LUCCE Wooden Ring Box is perfect for proposals or personal use.

A small Engagement Ring Box made from Wood.

Golden Mirror Effect with the Tree of Life Pattern as a Rustic Wedding Decorations for Ceremony, Jewellery Box - Wooden Storage Box with Ring Bearer and Perfect for Proposal, Wedding, Ceremony, and engagements.

'Hmm, tree of life. I guess this is it.'

Inside was a plain silver ring that did not analyse but the moment he picked it up he received the ring quest again.

He looked up the quest but as he remembered there was nothing there to tell him where he must look for the missing owner.

Return lost ring: Quest

These guards were entrusted with the transport and safekeeping of numerous valuables.

Above all is a ring that has sentimental value to its owner. Return the ring to the rightful owner and gather a reward

Reward: ?????

Failure: N/A

Y/N

He placed the ring box with the ring back into the chest and back in his inventory and moved on to the next two.

The other two were dimensional chests of which one was filled with different strange Gold coins and the other with ingots of precious metals.

The ingots were all gold, platinum, and even mithril but the strange thing was the chest of mixed coins, the strange thing about the coins was that they all seemed to be not of earthly origins.

He shrugged and just thought of it as more system fuckery to be solved later.

He placed those chests back in his inventory and was about to leave the hall when he noticed the rippling effect of somebody that was in stealth, somebody that wasn't as good as Shadow.

Louie pretended to exit the meeting hall when he sensed the slight distortion moving closer to him.

He activated and noticed the two people in stealth close to him.

"I think you should leave. The leaders have all left, come back during the day." Louie said.

He sensed the surprise before the rogue nervously chuckled behind him. "I'm not here to talk to the leaders."

Louie heard the nervousness in the Rogues' voices and guessed that they did not expect to be noticed while in stealth.

"Fuck, how did he notice us?" the other Rogue whispered, addressing an empty corner.

'So there are at least three of them.'

"It does not matter, there are more of us and only one of him, we can take him, and fulfil the contract."

The leader, who cancelled stealth, looked nervously between the other two wannabee assassins, who were now clearly visible to Louie.

"Fuck this," Louie said as the rogues' dagger came streaking towards his neck.

He appeared behind the rogue that had stepped out of the corner to throw his dagger and grabbed him around his neck while unsheathing his bowie.

He stabbed it into his back and out the front, perforating his kidneys. The rogue shrieked as the blade cut right through him, it seemed the man had not invested a lot of his stats into constitution, definitely not as he collapsed on the ground.

He drove his knife into the side of the rogue's head killing him before he again fell backwards through his shadow to avoid the thrown shurikens and crossbow bolt and appeared in front of the other rogue who was frantically trying to reload the crossbow mounted on his wrist.

Whatever kind of assassins they were, they didn't anticipate the quick action or savagery that they suddenly encountered.

His fist smashed into the rogue's face sending him hurtling into the wall behind him where he slowly slid down to lay against the wall, the last rogue suddenly dashed for the door and disappeared into the night.

Louie used his senses and heard the footsteps fade in the direction of the south gate he concentrated and saw the distortion in the air as the rogue used his stealth skills to blend into the darkness.

Louie used twice to reach the gate and ordered it closed, he saw the distortion stop against a wall near the gate.

"You can give up now, you are going nowhere."

"Shit!" The stealthed rogue disappeared into an alley and Louie's shadow Stepped onto a shop roof and followed him.

The much calmer rogue, from the way that Louie could hear her breath, jip her, from the small traces of perfume in the air, except if it's a guy that's into ladies perfume, and has started to use her class skills to try and get away.

Though her smell was still in the air, with a bit of concentration Louie could easily follow her just by the way that she smells and from her muted footsteps.

She is good, but she still has a lot to learn and should really invest in a sound dampening skill.

Two later and he stood in front of a building and saw the rogue inside where she was trying to get out through a side door of the still open store.

Unfortunately, there were occupants in the store, as well as the rogue, who was currently holding a crying kid in front of her with a knife pressed to her throat, trying to kick open the door, while the kid's parents begged for her to release the child.

"Really? A child as a hostage?" Louie asked as he stepped into the store

“I’ll kill her...let me go and I will let her go. We failed, you didn't get hurt, just let me go," the rogue spoke in a slightly panicked voice though her eyes stayed focused on Louie.

'Definitely, a woman sounds young though.'

Louie vanished into his shadow and grabbed the knife hand of the assassin and kneed the woman in the side with an empowered kick, breaking at least a couple of her ribs.

He caught the screaming kid when the assassin dropped her as she flew through the air and out through the exploding side door of the shop.

The rogue smashed through the door and hit the wall of the next building hard before she disappeared. Louie heard a muffled scream of terror coming from the next street.

'Damn, she has some kind of teleport ability.'

Louie handed the still crying little girl to her mother.

The mother hugged the girl and tried to soothe her while the father walked up to Louie and asked.

“Are you going after her?"

Louie just nodded as he walked towards the broken door.

"She threatened to kill my girl," the woman said as she snuggled her now softly crying daughter.

"They came to kill me. She won't get away.” Louie said while reassuring them as he walked out the smashed door and upwards and onto the roof and down onto the next road where the rogue was trussed up in a spilk cocoon. She tried to wriggle away from Jon.

She totally ignore Louie as she looked up with terror-filled eyes at the huge golem tarantula that loomed over her.

"Good job Jon, thanks I will take it from here."

He squatted down next to the woman.

"I did give you guys a chance to leave, you know,” he said as he grabbed the wrapped woman, smashing her head against the road and threw her unconscious body over his shoulder.

Louie walked up to the hall with the still wrapped rogue and dropped her near the door and walked up to the leader and grabbed him by the black leather chest piece.

He lifted him from the floor and sculpted a chair under him.

The now filled room, mostly with guards and his party members that were just across the street in the tavern, was notified by Ansi who noticed the commotion in the hall and looked on as he prepared to interrogate the assassins.

He ripped the balaclava and mask from the assassin's head and staggered back in shock as he saw the bloody tear-stained face of a boy in his late teens.

"You are just kids?"

Louie buried his shock and grabbed the boy's chin, evoking a muffled scream due to his broken jaw, forcing him to look away from the dead body and back at him.

"Who hired you to kill me?"

The boy mumbled something unintelligent, and Louie stepped back as Sher cast on the kid.

"You will get nothing from us. We have a code of honour. We are the Order of Hashashin, we work in the dark to serve the light. We are Assassins. Nothing is true, everything is permitted."

Leon sighed as he shook his head.

"Whatsit Leon?"

"This idiot is quoting assassins creed, a video game."

Louie let his rage spike as he turned back to look at the bleeding teen in front of him.

"You. Think. This. Is. A. Game? Do you think that because you have a stat sheet and there is magic, that this is a game?"

Louie activated his and and fed it all his anger, the atmosphere in the room turned cold as his aura exploded from him and suddenly the stench of loosened bowels permeated the space

"You think that since you call yourself an assassin and think this is a game, that this gives you the right to go around and kill people?"

Sher laid her hand on his shoulder, "Louie, they are nothing more than children."

He spun around at Sher but suppressed his emotions.

"They are children that think this is a game while they kill other people."

"Louie, ask them how many people they have killed?"

He turned back to the sobbing boy.

"How many?"

The boy sobbed harder.

"HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE YOU KILLED?"

"N...none, this… this was our first contract, the other contracts were all retrieval jobs, this was our first contract as an assassin," he blubbered through the snot and tears.

Louie was relieved, maybe they could still be turned, but from the look the boy gave him he doubted that the boy would think favourably of him any time soon.

"Who sent you? I know who sent you, but I want you to tell us who sent you."

The teen looked around, looking for sympathy, but all he saw were cold stares on the people's faces around him.

"King sent us. He said he would endorse our guild if we completed this contract."

Louie turned towards the other rogue that answered his question. He walked over and bent down towards the wrapped bundle and removed the mask and balaclava, golden curls cascaded around the face of the girl.

She stared in shock at the body of the other rogue that was still laying where he had fallen after Louie had killed him.

"You killed him! You just killed him?"

He stared into the eyes of the girl. "What did you expect to happen when you go around calling yourself assassins and try to kill people. This is no game, there are no save points, no do-overs. If you live by the knife then there is a good chance that you will die by the knife."

She lifted her tear-filled face to stare at him as if he was talking gobbly gook.

Louie shook his head.

"Kids, bloody kids thinking life is a game. Shit!"

He turned around and walked back to the boy. He wanted to ask the boy but changed his mind as the girl seemed more inclined to divulge information.

She squealed as he raised a chair under her still bound body.

He gave her a cold look and channelled a small amount of fear at her, he saw his friends too a step away from him as darkness started to radiate from his eyes.

"Tell us about King."

It turned out that they also knew nothing of King, only his personal guards and lieutenants had seen him and got to meet with him.

They were approached by Bester and offered the contract in exchange for the king approving the startup for their guild that they wanted to build.

It seemed that they were away from the save zone the last couple of days, looking for a way to spend their system coins, since they were gamers, they were sure that there would be a way to spend it somewhere, they had only returned this morning when they were waylaid by Bester.

Louie had to gag the boy as he kept on shouting and threatening the girl with ex-communication, as if they were some kind of religious order or something, as she told them what they wanted.

Louie shook his head as he left the hall.

'Let Leon deal with them, if I stay one more minute then I will kill the idiot myself.'

He walked off to the guard tower overlooking the safezone of King.

Reaching the top of the tower he looked out over the save zone.

'Using kids to try and kill me, fuck this.'

He turned around and went back to the hall.

*****

It took them the whole of the next day to try and find out more about King before Louie just said "Fuck it." And they came up with a simple plan.

The plan was simple, Louie would create a hole in the wall by removing a car or two and his team would sneak in, inside Shadow would peel off to go gather her contacts and ready the people to be led out once the thugs were taken care off.

The spiders would create a diversion by attacking the wall and incapacitating the thugs if they were discovered.

Louie leaned in and touched his dungeon ring to the nearest car that was part of the wall of the safezone, there was a couple of screams as half of the wall and a couple of guards that were on it disappeared into the ring.

'Shit, well that's for plan A and B, I only meant for a couple of cars to go into the ring, guess they found a way to bond the cars together, and there goes the element of surprise, well go with plan C.'

The spiders, which were situated around the safezone, rushed from the darkness to attack and hopefully bind those guards on what was left of the wall. These were not the flimsy spiders that roamed the dungeon, these were bonded pets that grew with their masters, feeding on golem cores for rewards of jobs well done. Like BOB they had changed, grown bigger, sturdier, more powerful.

Arrows and spears from level five thugs and enforcers were no match for these spiders, as they were quickly overwhelmed and wrapped up in spilk cocoons.

One or two guards who were overlooked and witnessed the start of the attack were quick to start ringing a metal triangle the cooks use on farms to call people to chow.

Louie, Sher, and some of the guards that were all dressed in patched together armour all joined the thugs that rushed towards the door of the hideout.

'Well so much for their duty as guards, abandoning their posts to run and hide in their command centre at the first sign of trouble.'

As soon as the wall was breached Shadow disappeared into the shacks to gather and led the people out of there and into the marketplace where the soup kitchen was running full steam and Nickey and Jo were waiting to feed them.

They rushed into the foyer of the building with the other thugs,

He used to make sure that most of the thugs were actually thugs and not refugees that were caught up with the fleeing scum.

Louie felt activate as he looked at those running around in the dark chaos that was the foyer of the building, nobody knew what was going on, they just knew that the camp was being attacked. Not one to let such an opportunity slip by, he cast on the lanterns and equipped Drake while casting , then he started to dance in the direction of the stairs.

Well, dance was stretching the truth a bit, it was more of tripping over severed limbs and stumbling into struggling couples in the overfilled dark lobby.

Louie inventoried Drake and equipped two daggers that he had created with

Uncommon Ice Fangs

A set of uncommon ice daggers made by a beginner armourer, these daggers will be destroyed twelve hours after they are first used...

Level: 8

1 handed dagger x2

speed: fast

Damage: 10 + (strength + agility + Constitution)

Inflicts

Set bonus: 50% chance to inflict damage.

He made the daggers using two of the fangs from the juvenile Rockcrusker wyrm and had Christian use his ice spells on them as he used The daggers had one big flaw, but it should last him long enough to finish this fight with King.

Louie lamented his lack of skill but promised himself that it will be one of the first things he will fix after this.

He could distantly hear doors slam as the inhabitants started to barricade themselves inside their apartments as the terror-filled screams floated up the stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs, he met an old acquaintance, Devon Karelse with his fencing armour and epee.

"Aah, just the person I was looking for, I got this property and am looking for a fencer to put up a sturdy fence around the property."

He growled at Louie's smirk and lunged at him.

He immediately activated some targeting skills and Louie knew that the point of the epee will ignore his armour and penetrate his heart except Louie wasn't some Level 5-6 thug he was a level 12 Seeker with 13 points in agility.

Name: Devon Karelse

Race: (Human: Level 5)

Class: Fencer

Sub-classes: Enforcer

Louie dodged to the left and the epee penetrated his armour like a hot knife through butter, he grunted as the point of the weapon cut through his right pectoral and jammed into the front of his right shoulder blade. The shock of the stab wound caused him to drop Drake who discharged as it made contact with the ground and Devon screamed as a piece of elemental ice shot nearly severed his left foot

Suddenly he was bowled over by a mass of fighting people, it looked like they had no idea who they were fighting, in the darkness the fight had turned into a massive terror-filled free for all brawl

Louie threw the bodies from him with an angry roar, he looked around but couldn't spot Drake, but he did see the fencer hobble up the stairs still whimpering, as he was leaving a trail of blood a blind man could follow.

Looking through his inventory he grabbed the first spear he could find.

Louie hurled the spear at the fleeing fencer, but with the place so packed with fighting, he missed when a couple of thugs stumbled down the stairs, and luckily for Devon, pushed him out of the way only for the spear to impale two of them in the process.

he dismissed the stupid notification without even thinking about it and followed the hobbling officer, leaving those in the lobby and first floor to the other guards that made it into the building with him.

The thugs had turned the apartment block into a kind of deathtrap, they had blocked off the stairwell at every floor so that if somebody invade the building then that person has to traverse the whole of the floor to the next stairwell that will only give you access to the next floor as you have to traverse that floor to get to the next stairs and so on, turning the building into a kind of labyrinth.

This was a brilliant strategy if you got lots of troops to man the apartments and turn them into ambush spots as the enemy moved past, that's to say, an ambush only works if the enemy doesn't know it's an ambush.

Louie filled the open doorways with an before throwing a couple of his newest spells through the opening into the disoriented ambushers as he moved past holding his long-unused ninja turtle shell shield between him and the doorway.

Dark Blade:

The caster releases a wave of darkness/shadow to cut opponents. Higher levels will release multiple waves dealing more damage.

Damage: 50HP + darkness damage.

Mana Cost: 20 MP

Duration: instant

Cooldown: 5 seconds

Affinities: Shadow, Darkness

Ninja Turtle Shell shield

This shield is made from the shell of a Dungeon turtle Golem, the Lightstone mounted in its centre is inscribed with a light strobe rune.

+2 to Strength, Constitution, Willpower.

1 handed Door Shield.

Damage mitigation: 79HP/impact to shield.

80% chance to disorient those in front of the shield.

5% chance to discharge an every 5 min of continual use.

He might be cockey but he isn't stupid, don't matter how high your HP was, an arrow to the brain will kill you just as fast as before the apocalypse.

Arrows slammed into the shield as the ambushers cursed and shouted as the strobe light messed with their balance and aim, the effects are ten times worse when mixed with the that were cast inside the room, before they were cut apart by his Dark blades.

Louie cast Dark Puppet and ordered it to loot the bodies and any weapons and valuables left in the rooms as he had no time to stop for looting.

He had thought to enter one of the apartments and exit it through the window and try to scale the outside of the building to get to the top but he hate to leave an enemy at his back and King is still an unknown, the last thing that he needs is a rooftop filled with unseen traps or he would have tried to enter the penthouse from the tree branches.

Luckily not every door was an ambush as most of the resident thugs barricaded their doors to hope for somebody else to resolve the problem.

He found the door to the penthouse unguarded and Louie picked up the pace, slamming through the double doors of the penthouse. He followed the bloody footprints through the opulent lounge, he cast a quick glance at the decor before smashing through the half-open doors and into the bedroom.

As he went through the door, he thought he heard music as a wall of fire roared toward him.

He cast on himself and poured as much mana into the spell as he could, stretching it all over his body as he dived into the flames and rolled to his feet, cancelling the spell.

"Well if it isn't the vermin-loving fucker that thinks he can take what belongs to me," King said as he held a struggling girl with cat-like features in front of him.

The room was lit up like daylight and Louie saw that the light was coming off multiple lanterns that were hanging from the walls.

He saw movement to his right and saw a woman that was gagged and tied up laying on some pedestal or altar.

Against one wall was the body of the fencer with a spear through his back.

Behind King, the wall rippled with a blue shimmer.

He saw Louie looking from the fencer to the shimmer behind his shoulder.

"Ahh, I see you like my little treasures? Follow me if you dare." He stepped back and disappeared into the shimmer, like somebody stepping through a pane of glass.

"Fuck!"

The bound woman's struggle intensifies as she tries to scream something through her gag.

He moved over to the bound woman and removed her gag.

"Please save my daughter, he will kill her." She cried as he cut her bonds.

As he turned around she grabbed his arm.

"Be careful he can throw fire."

"What's through the shimmer?"

"His throne room." Through her sobs, she described what she remembered of the room.

Paarl Leaders

Leon Koen: (STC 2IC) pet (Seera: Black Widow) Gerard van Schalkwyk: Class: Scavenger/Tinker Mike Dekker: Class: Warrior Carla Coetzee: Class: Ranger Kirt Dempers: Class: Builder Jak de Beer: Class: Farmer/Animal husbandry Samuel De Jager: Class: None (Mayor) Arnold Brand: Class: Centurion/Armourer King ????????

Status:

Name:

Lewis (Louie) Poren

Race:

Human (Male) Lvl 12 " 468,870/819,200" = Lvl 13

Class:

Seeker (5) (27%)

Sub-classes:

(exterminator) (3%)

Titles:

Jack Black Brodifacoum, Trailblazer, Liberator. OFS (One Finger Salute) Dungeon pioneer David Selfish ?????

Affinity:

Darkness 0.005%

Affiliation:

Gaea

Statistics:

Health points (HP):

540

strength + constitution times level

Mana Points (MP):

528

Intelligence + willpower times level

Stamina (SP):

660

agility + constitution + willpower times level

Critical Hit Chance:

4%

Attributes:

Strength:

23

Agility:

18

Constitution:

22

Perception:

21

Intelligence:

29

Willpower:

15

Charisma:

7

Luck:

5

Free attribute points:

0

Skills:

Skill

Level

Progression

Wu shu:

Passive

8

55/100

Dark Puppet:

Active

0

10/100

Improvised weaponry:

Passive

T1: 2

95/100

Glacial Rage:

P/A

6

85/100

Meditation:

Active

6

75/100

Regeneration:

Passive

T1: 2

65/100

Mana Manipulation:

Active

9

95/100

Survival:

Passive

9

85/100

Cooking:

Passive

0

25/100

Restoration:

Passive

T1: 1

95/100

Social Sharing

Passive

1

75/100

Harvesting:

Passive

9

75/100

Herb Lore:

Passive

2

55/100

Whittling:

Passive

0

00/100

Pain resistance:

Passive

T1: 0

00/100

Poison resistance:

Passive

3

42/100

Cat`s eye:

Active

T1: 2

95/100

Senses:

Passive

7

65/100

Armourer:

Passive

5

95/100

System Minimap:

Active

7

10/100

Cartography:

Active

4

25/100

Public speaking:

Active

5

95/100

Spell Transformation: *

Active

2

10/100

Conglomerate:

Active

0

00/100

Backstab:

Active

0

00/100

Skewer:

Active

1

00/100

Scholer:

Passive

0

20/100

Learning:

Passive

#

#

Quick study:

Passive

#

#

Know-how:

Passive

#

#

This star * indicates a hidden skill

Class Skill Proficiencies:

Skill

Level

Progression

Personality Shift:

Passive

0

00/100

Investigation:

Active

6

65/100

Tracking:

Active

5

25/100

Intuition:

Passive

T1: 2

95/100

Analyse:

Active

T2: 0

05/100

Lore:

Passive

2

85/100

Monster Expert:

Passive

4

85/100

?????

0

00/100

Spells:

Spell

Level

Progression

Activation

Improvise:

T1: 1

35/100

Touch

Mana Construction:

T3: 7

85/100

Cast

Mana Blueprint:

2

15/100

Touch

Liquefaction:

T1: 7

65/100

Cast

Earth Sense:

T1: 6

05/100

Touch

Item Schematics:

T1: 2

80/100

Touch

Vampiric:

0

10/100

Cast

Darkorb:

3

50/100

Cast

Transfusion:

0

10/100

Touch

Electrocute:

1

60/100

Cast

Suffocate:

0

15/100

Cast

Waterboard:

1

95/100

Cast

Cauterise:

6

65/100

Touch

Dark Blade:

4

05/100

Cast

Shadow Step:

0

35/100

Cast

Fear:

3

60/100

Cast

Concussion Blast:

2

95/100

Cast

Down the Rabbit Hole:

0

20/100

Cast

????

0

00/100