Aiden took out his backpack from the inventory and heard a sharp inhale from Victoria. He looked up and saw that she was looking at him with wide eyes. He let out a wry chuckle and went to grab two chairs setting them up next to a desk and motioned Victoria over to sit.

Sitting down himself he pulled out a notebook and pen from his bag and handed them to her. “I’m about to explain some things I’ve learned since all of this started, if you have any questions or things to add, write it down and i’ll answer what I can.” He then proceeded to explain all he knew and his theories. When he asked if she did the System tutorial she wrote that she only woke up an hour ago ten minutes before the monster started spawning and hadn’t finished much of it.

He filled her in on the most important bits including the Inventory and shop functions. “Also that light in the corner there is the reward for killing that beast if you touch it you will receive loot from them kill it will automatically go into your inventory.”

“You should probably do that now, who knows how long it will remain there.” She nodded, stood up and cautiously approached the light and gently touched it, the light dissapearing instantly. Aiden who still had about 10 minutes left on his Night vision potion could still see fairly well. Victoria however was having trouble so he turned on the flashlight that was on the table pointing it down, he handed it to her when she came over.

“Alright I’m going to head back out there” He hesitated for a moment then said “You should probably come as well. We need to get stronger if we want to survive this hell. Not to mention I’m feeling hungry, and food will probably be scarce. I saw some food on the system shop but it was expensive. A full cooked meal costs 400 credits, that’s almost half of what I paid for this sword. And I would need to kill around 15 of those things to earn that much. That means you would need to kill 45 of them per person if you want to eat three meals a day.”

“I’m not really sure why its so expensive but it is, I think its there only for emergencies.” She blanched but seemed to pull herself together a moment later and nodded shakily. They both stood and walked towards the door. “Hold on let me see if we can use the party function.” Aiden concentrated and thought of sending a party invite to Victoria, He could see her focusing on something in front of her and a second later a message popped up in front of him.

“Victoria Leblanc lvl 0 has joined your party”

Aiden looked at her with humor in his eyes. “Your last name is Leblanc yet you have black hair?” She rolled her eyes and I could see the stiffness in her shoulders recede a little. He chuckling to himself for his crappy joke that probably only he found funny and opened the party menu where he could see Victoria’s stats.

Victoria Leblanc: Age 21

Race Human: Rank(f)

Level 0

Mana essence: 20/100

Class 1: None

Class 2: None

Health: 50/50

Stamina: 50/50

Mana: 70/70

Defense: 5(7)

Mana Defense: 7

Vitality - 5

Endurance - 5

Strength - 5

Agility - 6

Dexterity - 6

Skill - 6

Intelligence - 7

Wisdom - 7

unspent points - 0

System credits - 0

Mana stones - 5 (low grade)

Equipment:

Leather boots - (Common) / Quality (Average) / +2 Defense

Makeshift spear - (Common /Quality (Poor) / Damage Physical: 12-16

Aiden read her stats while thinking. He looked over at Victoria who seemed to be reading over his stats as well, if the look of incredulity on her face was anything to go by. He coughed slightly to get her attention and when she looked over he said “When you hit level 1 you should put two points into Vitality and one into Strength.”

“By looking at your stats I can tell that your more geared towards a mage or healer class but that’s still along ways off, any of the spell scrolls I saw in the shop were far too expensive. For now it would be best to focus on survivability. At level 2 you should go for Endurance and Agility, and alternate that way for now. That’s just my opinion however, so feel free to do as you wish.” She nodded that she understood.

Before they left Aiden handed her a Night vision potion expaining what it was and took one out for himself, he was now down to three. He also gave her one of his health potions. “When we get out there stay behind me and watch my back, make sure nothing sneaks up on me. Also if you see a chance to do some damage without putting yourself in danger don’t hesitate. If you see something I need to know about, tap your spear three times on the floor loud enough for me to hear as a signal.” She nodded and they both drank a night vision potion and left.

The hallway they were in amounted to half of this floor and it contained six classrooms, the doors leading to the stairwell, and another door that separated the two sides of the building. They started off with the two doors on this side of the hallway. One of them keeping watch while the other searched through the room for anything useful, like food, water or even outifts that had defense.

They did the same with the three rooms on the other side. They didn’t find much unfortunately, just 2 bags of chips 1 bottle of water and a can of coke. When they got up to the door leading to the other hallway, they knew things were about to get hectic from here on out. There was blood pooled underneath the door and flowing into the hallway they were in.

Aiden swallowed heavily and slowly opened the door. The smell that hit him instantly almost made him retch. On the ground in front of him there were 3 mangled and half eaten bodies, he looked away from the grizzly sight and down the hallway, there were four... no five or more of the beasts there. (One had just walked out of an open door) two were off all the way at the end near the staircase door eating someone.

The other two and the third that was heading their way slowly, were closer and they were also feeding on someone but this one was much smaller. ‘A kid, probably no older then 13’. Swallowing back his anger and bile he leaned back out and quietly closed the door. He looked at Victoria who was looking at him questioningly and motioned her to follow. They headed back towards the room they met in.

Once inside he started pacing for a good minute. Victoria finally couldn’t take it and tapped him on the shoulder, and made questioning sounds using a bit of sign language and pointing in the general direction of the door. Aiden blinked coming out of his stupor. And proceeded to tell her what he found. When he told her about the kid he could see her tearing up. He paced for a bit more, thinking of how to handle this.

“Right... look there’s not really any choice, were going to need to secure this whole campus if we want to make it a safe place, so we need to go in there and clear them out. Here’s what were going to do. I want you to stand by that door and open it. I will then shout and make some noise to draw the closest three in. Once they come through I want you to close the door behind them so no more can get in. Once you do that attack them from behind while i keep them occupied.” She nodded shakily and they headed out to do just that.

Aiden got ready and then counted down from three on his fingers signaling Victoria that she should open the door, when she did Aiden shouted and banged his sword and knife together. All of the beast immediately turned and ran towards him. He also noticed one more coming out of that opened door. Once the first three were through Aiden shouted “Now! close it!” and prepared to receive the beasts.

They were coming at him in a row one at a time. When the first one lunged at him he quickly sidestepped and slashed at it with his sword hitting for 34 damage then following up with an upwards stab of his knife in to the underside of the beasts head killing it. He wasn’t quick enough however and the second beast bit into his leg and started to drag and shake him.

Aiden let out a pained cry and dropped his knife trying to keep his balance. He mannaged to keep his feet and stabbed the thing twice with his sword ending it as well. He took a quick look at Victoria and saw that she had already killed the third one and was heading towards him looking worried.

The beast holding him dissolved into Mana and Aiden relaxed slightly. He took a look at his leg. It wasn’t too bad, he was only down about 23 hp and the pain was bearable other then the slight pain he was fine. With a 13 in Vitality his health recovery was 1.3 per minute and he would be back at full health in around 20 minutes so no point wasting a health potion. He could bear with the pain. By this point Victoria reached him and tore off a sleeve from her sweater, took out a bottle of water and motioned for him to sit down.

He smiled at her and went on to explain. “I’m fine. Look its already healing” It was in fact already healing and he could see the skin start to stitch itself back together very slowly. She looked at it in fascination touching the wound lightly. Aiden chuckled covering up a wince from her prodding, causing her to look at him then the sleeve she was holding, she blushed slightly and give a little huff. They went on to pick up loot and check the system messages.

“Congratulations! Your Party has slain Lvl 2 Mana Beast Spawn: Rank(g) 25 essence gained”

“Congratulations! Your Party has slain Lvl 2 Mana Beast Spawn: Rank(g) 25 essence gained”

“Congratulations! Your Party has slain Lvl 3 Mana Beast Spawn: Rank(g) 30 essence gained”

“You have received 7 low grade Mana stones”

“You have received 9 low grade Mana stones”

“Party member Victoria Leblanc has received 6 low grade Mana stones”

‘So the equal distribution works like its supposed to. Good, that means Victoria can level up faster, and it seems loot goes to whoever picks it up.’

They waited out the twenty minutes for Aidens leg to heal then each drank another Night vision potion and once again used the tactic from before taking out three more beasts. Thankfully the other beasts had wandered back to continue eating the corpses so they could repeat what they had done before. Victoria stood watch as Aiden dragged all the half eaten bodies into one of the rooms. They then searched the rest of the rooms for any survivors food or gear.

They found two more bodies in one of the rooms with one more Mana beast, which Aiden quickly killed. They found two more bottles of water, a sandwich, and a box of crackers but that was it for food and water on this floor. They made one last round and picked up any clothes they could find on racks or backs of chairs for bedding, when they were finished they went back to their original room.

“Sandwich or crackers?” Aiden asked holding up both, Victoria gave him a little smile and pointed at the sandwich. Nodding Aiden tossed it to her along with a bottle of water. Aiden talked a bit while they ate outlining his short term plans. “We should stop for today, this floor is already cleared out and the beasts and monsters stopped spawning over an hour ago. We should be fine for now and there’s no point continuing today, its dark and we would just be wasting night vision potions. Tomorrow we can continue to clear the next floor and look for more supplies and survivors.”

They laid out all the clothes they could find making two makeshift cots, there were sleeping bags in the shop but each one cost 500 credits. Together they had 680 credits total and a luxury like a sleeping bag was not something that mattered right now.

Before they went to sleep, an embarrassed Veronica came over with a notebook with a single word written on it “bathroom” Aiden coughed and nodded his head. There weren’t any bathrooms on this floor so they set up a garbage can in an adjacent room.

Aiden stood guard by the door while Veronica did her business, then he went in for his own. When he was done he tossed the can out of a window. Pelting an unsuspecting Mana beast on the head with it. With an amuzed smirk Aiden headed back towards their room.

They talked for a bit before going to sleep. Aiden found out Victoria was premed explaining why she reacted the way she did when Aiden was hurt earlier. She wanted to be a Doctor ever since she was young since she would have died if a Doctor hadn’t got to her in time. Something that happened to give her that scar on her neck and made her unable to speak. She didn’t mention anything about it however and Aiden didn’t pry. He let her know that he was planning on being a park ranger when he finished school and a writer on the side.

He asked her if she had any family, that made the mood darken a bit. Apparently she still had her mother and older brother but they both lived in California. Since she didn’t have fond memories of the place she chose to come here to go to college to get away. Now however with the new continents arranged the way they were, it would probably take years to ever see them again, if they were or would still be alive at that time.

He talked a bit about his family as well trying to break the darkened mood. His mother had died when he was six in a car accident. So it was just him and his father for most of his life. They only had each other left and each depended on the other resulting in a strong bond between them.

Sleep was hard for both of them. It was uncomfortable and chilly and their clothes were covered in and smelled of dried beast blood. Once in a while you could hear a gunshot or a scream coming from outside making it even more difficult to sleep. Aiden managed to get in a few hours, waking up a few times from nightmares.

The next morning they each ate a bag of chips for breakfast then continued on clearing the next floor. All told they killed 15 Mana beast before noon, ranging from levels one to five earning them 440 Mana essence and 120 Mana stones, Victoria leveled up to lvl 2 from the kills. One of the two level five beasts even dropped a piece of gear, which seemed extremely lucky since all these things ever seemd to dropped were mana stones. He wasen't counting the elite as that could be classed as a mini boss.

Leather Jerkin - (Common) / Quality (Good) / +5 defense

It was sleeveless and dark forest green colored and thick enough to help somewhat against a beasts claws. Aiden handed it to Victoria to wear, his own leather jacket was enough for now. There were more dead bodies here as well. Aiden dragged them all into one of the rooms, then they foraged the entire floor for supplies.

This floor was more productive since there was a teachers lounge with a small fridge in it and some snacks in the cabinets. They came away with 12 bottles of water, a 2 liter bottle of Pepsi, a carton of orange juice, 4 bottles of iced coffee, 6 bags of chips, 2 boxes of trail mix, 5 boxes of salted crackers, a bag of peanuts, 8 granola bars, 3 cups of ramen, and 3 more sandwiches. They stopped there for now and ate the sandwiches.

Aiden laughed lightly at the incredulous and excited expression on Victoria’s face when she increased her stats and was testing out her new strength by seeing if she could lift a desk any easier. It was a nice moment of levity in the midst of the hell they found themselves in. While they ate Victoria used 500 of her 570 System credits to buy herself a real spear since the makeshift one she was using had broken off in one of the last beasts they fought.

Short spear - (Common) / Quality (Average) / Damage Physical: 20-25

Aiden gave her a few tips on her form, her footwork, and how to hold the spear, then they continued on to the next floor. They managed to clear out the next floor in three hours earning 410 essence and 105 Mana stones. After securing the area and grabbing anything usable (more clothes, 2 more bags of chips, a bar of chocolate, and a bag of sunflower seeds) they took a small break to eat and clean up a bit in the bathroom.

The pipes there still had some water in them so they closed the sinks and filled them up with what water remained, which wasn’t much but it was enough to clean off some of the blood from their bodies.

Aiden especially was covered in the stuff and it took him a good half hour to get most of it off. He still smelled like shit though. He would have to get some new clothes at some point. For now he changed his shirt with one he found in one of the classrooms. It had a design on the front depicting a wolf howling at the moon. There were options on the shop if he wanted to get new pant's but things like that weren’t important right now.

Aiden sat on a chair deep in thought while chewing on sunflower seeds, occasionally spitting out a shell. He was worried about heading down to the ground floor. He knew that it would be the most difficult and probably the most populated by beasts.

Not to mention the fact that there was a very good chance more would come through the front doors (if they were open) or crash in through the windows if they made too much noise. He conferred with Victoria and they decided to go with the same tactic they used yesterday. They would lure a few beasts at a time onto the second floor and lock the doors behind them.

And that’s what they did. It was slow going and they only managed to clear out about half the floor before it was dark, earning another 380 essence and 90 Mana crystals. Not wanting to continue in the dark, they called it a day. They took everything they gathered and brought it to the second floor teachers lounge.

The second floor was better as a place to stay the night then the third since it had bathrooms and the teachers lounge had a couch one of them could sleep on. Aiden bough himself a sleeping bag for 500 of his 2310 credits since he could afford one now and his back still ached from sleeping on the ground last night. Victoria took the couch. They both slept a little better that night but both still had nightmares and woke up occasionally.