When Aiden used inspect on the Elite monster on the fourth floor he wasn’t that impressed. On the first day it would have been a serious threat but now after fighting that spider queen.. not so much. It was a creepy and ugly ass thing though he’d give it that.

It was shrouded in a dark cloak and floated a bit off the ground, its skin was a sickly green color and what he could see of its face was disturbing, with a large round hole with tiny sharp teeth for a mouth and black misty orbs for eyes.

Ghoul (Elite): Rank (f)

lvl 20

Health 550

Stamina 200

Mana 70

Vitality - 55

Endurance - 20

Strength - 24

Agility - 26

Dexterity - 22

Skill - 15

Intelligence - 5

Wisdom - 7

The fight didn’t last too long. Aiden and Victoria lured it down to the third floor and pelted it with arrows as it floated after them down the hall. Aiden using his ring of frost one time when it nearly caught up to them to slow it down enough to shoot two more arrows into it each. When it was on its last breath It let out a ear piercing scream of a magical origin that had disoriented them and caused a 2 second debuff lowering their stats a little but a last swipe of his sword shut it up.

They each gained 5000 essence and 10 medium grade Mana stones for the kill and with no one in their party they got the full benefit pushing them both to the next level, with Aiden just 2 essence short of reaching lvl 6 as well.

They met up with Alicia and Benjamin who were extremely relieved and excited to finally leave. With them were 12 other people with one other college student being a chosen. That now made 8 other chosen besides themselves with the other 71 people being regular old humans. It wasn’t a lot but it was better then nothing. A lot would be riding on the 10 of them to protect the rest. Which is why Aiden had brough them together for a discusion.

Inside their room at headquarters was a gathering of all the chosen. Alicia (20), Benjamin (21), Cassandra (15), Margaret (29), Bret (32), Dean (18), Lily (20) who was one of the rescued students being held prisoner and Tess (19) who was trapped on the floor they just cleared.

They were all there because Aiden called them over to discuss what to do next. “Alright I know everyone has had a tough time of it for the past few days and that’s putting it lightly, but the 10 of us here are the only ones that can and will be able to protect each other and the rest of the survivors in the future.” Aiden cleared his throat and looked around at all the faces in the room feeling quite nervous.

“We all need to kill monsters from now on to get stronger and we need everyone here to do this, there are only 10 of us and god knows what outside those gates. We all need to be stronger for whatever will happen in the future.” He looked around and saw a few fearful and nervous faces and winced internally. An army of warriors this was not, but it's all they had at the moment.

“Look I know some of you are scared and basically feel like you’ve been thrown in the deep end but I’m telling you now we can do this. Victoria and I started at level zero on the first day just like the rest of you, and in the last 7 days we managed to basically clear out the entire campus. We both already have our classes and are many times stronger, faster and more durable than we were before this whole thing started.” Some people nodded at that having experienced it already.

“Once you gain a class you will also get a decent boost to all your stats and immediately gain knowledge on how the class works including some basics on how to fight with any weapons compatible to your class, raising you from amateurs flailing sticks around to beginners that at least know the basics.”

The comment earned him a few chuckles and the group seemed to be less tense already so Aiden thought he was at least getting though to them. They would all need to gain some confidence in actual fights but this was still a good start.

“That’s just from 7 days of killing these things. Think what we will be like in a month or two. The way you all are now is just the beginning. With every level you gain you will be that much safer, and that much tougher. You will be able to help me keep the others here safe as well.”

Aiden sighed and looked around once more. “Look I’m not one for speeches, or leading people for that matter. Before all this happened I was just a loner college student doing my best to live day to day. So please people I need your help here. There’s no way Victoria and I can do everything by ourselves.”

The silence stretched for a bit and Aiden was getting nervous. “We were both already in you know, there was no need for the speech,” Alicia said with a chuckle with Benjamin nodding along. “Ay count me in as well,” Came from Bret with Dean nodding along with a determined countenance. “There’s no way I won't be helping Aiden,” Said Margaret. Lily and Tess both were still apprehensive but agreed to help as well. Cassandra just smirked and said “Lead the way boss” hefting her bow.

Aiden breathed a sigh of relief and smiled at everyone. “Alright then, tomorrow we will split into three groups. The first group will be me, Lily and Tess, the second will be Margaret and Cassandra with Victoria leading you, and the last group will be the rest of you. Bret and Dean with Alison and Benjamin to protect you for now since they are the highest level among anyone else here.” Everyone nodded at that agreeing.

“As for tonight we still have some daylight left so everyone look through the system shop for some of the cheaper weapons and I'll provide the credits for everyone who can't afford it, to be equipped with at least a basic melee and ranged weapon. Once everyone has chosen something and got their gear, set up some practice targets and we will help you out with the archery.”

Everyone went to do just that with people selecting and buying their gear. All the women chose spears except for Cassandra who was sticking with the sword. Benjamin replaced his makeshift spear with a sword and shield, although his shield was a lot bigger then Aiden’s. Dean chose a long sword for now but he said he wanted to switch to a great sword later when he could put some points into strength.

It was amusing for Aiden since Dean was one of the smallest and skinniest people there at barely 5’5 and probably less then 150 pounds. As for Bret he chose to dual wield two axes and had a bandoleer of throwing knives as backup. Everyone also got one of the better Bows and 50 arrows each. All in all this set Aiden back 14,800 credits with everyone who he helped out with promising to pay him back tomorrow.

It was now almost 10 pm and they were all once again sitting inside discussing the system and everything else that has happened recently. Questions and theories were thrown up about what exactly the system was and if they all believed that the Planet was now alive and sentient.

Ultimately they had no real answers only theories but finally decided after thinking about it that the system was most likely a thinking being of some kind and was actually trying to help them, the Mana chosen at least.

If what the system said about the planet core collapsing was true then all life on Earth, or Terra they supposed, would have died out in a few years time. Without the systems intervention many more people would have died when Terra awoke and the environment changed as well. Without the protective dome around the campus they would all probably be dead right now if the building collapsed from the world shifting. It’s just too bad more people couldn’t be saved.

Aiden figured that only around 5 billion people were left alive right now, if not less then that going by the casualty rates they all saw here. He wouldn’t be surprised if there were less then a billion left when phase 2 finished.

Aiden figured it must be some sort of limitation of the system, perhaps it would cost it too many resources to protect more people, so its focus would have been on areas with the highest density of people or perhaps Mana chosen.

Aiden also didn’t miss the fact that the loot drops he and Victoria got were a little too good or convenient at times making him think the system was watching and helping them survive. They didn’t know how long this benevolence would last or even if this was true but it was helpful for the moment.

Aiden believed that The system was an entity that lived off Mana and because of some of the information he skimmed from tutorial he knew that Terra, now that it was awakened, could now produce Mana as well. All the Mana awakened were the same to a lesser degree and perhaps this was the reason the system was helping.

He shared this theory with everyone and most were troubled by the thought. It was a little disconcerting to think of themselves as sources of food or sustenance for the system. It was a thoughtful and slightly unnerved group that headed to bed for the night.

The next day the three groups split up. Two of the groups went out of the side gate that led to the parking lot, down a small hill with some steps. The parking lot was also fenced off so they should be fine there with 7 people. Aiden mused.

He still scouted the area out for them and it was mostly low level Mana beast spawns there from level 6-11. Aiden counted around 100-150 of them spread out through the parking lot. There were quite a few, but they were spread out and the lot was quite large, almost as large as the campus itself so they should be fine picking them off in small groups.

Aiden’s group went to finish clearing the main building which still had the fifth floor and whatever was on the roof. There weren’t any undead up there nor any hidden survivors just low level spawn. It seemed no one managed to make it to the fifth floor and all those heading away from that ghoul were stuck on the fourth.

The roof had a few spawn as well but that was it. With the main building done they went back in to the building with the gymnasium and pool since they never checked the basement or the roof there. The basement was just a large open space with machinery and old junk with a few spawn to kill and the roof was empty.

Aiden hit lvl 6 in his war ranger class and put 2 free points into intelligence and 1 in wisdom. From the excursion, Lily and Tess both reached level 6 with Aiden tutoring them in stat allocation. The other groups were also done by then with everyone now at least lvl 5. Alicia and Benjamin were both level 9 now sitting really close to their class unlock.

Everyone was gathered and talking in the courtyard by the fountain in the middle of the campus the others all told Aiden to check his quest log and that they all got some bonus mana stones for completing a bonus objective. He was surprised that he missed a quest update and checked it out.

Bonus Objective: Clear your starting location (College campus and its 3 facilities and parking lot) of Mana beasts to unlock a “Safe Zone”. Safe zones offer protection against incursions from weak Mana Beasts and Monsters (Under lvl 50)

Note 1: Safe Zones must be claimed by a single individual to be used.

Note 2: If your contribution to clearing this location is high enough you will receive a special reward. (Only one person per land mass can claim this reward.) Rewards: Variable (Dependent on % Clear contribution)

Rewards: Variable (Dependent on % Clear contribution)

Bonus Quest Complete! 42% Clear Contribution!

Reward: 42 Large Mana Stones

Special Reward: Safe Haven Token x1

“Holy shit!” Aiden exclaimed and everyone look to him to explain his outburst. He shared with everyone his reward to many whistles of appreciation about the amount of Mana stones he gained and questions about the Safe Haven Token. After a bit of an in depth investigation into what exactly a Safe Haven Token does with some cheking of the help menu, everyone agreed that he should use it, like right now.

The way they understood it a Safe Zone can be claimed by an Individual and that individual then becomes the owner or ruler of the Zone and can use the system to rapidly construct any buildings and defenses. The difference between a Zone and Haven was the size of the land you could build on with the systems help, and the options of what was possible to build. A safe zone had a range of a half of a square mile where a Haven doubles that to a square mile.

The protection that would work as a deterrent for lvl 50 monsters is also raised to monsters up to lvl 75. Aiden was secretly hoping that dragon was lower then lvl 75 though he doubted it. The protection itself also wasn’t what he was hoping for. It was a simple deterrent and monsters could still come. The only thing it did was instill in them a sense of danger that would make most monsters avoid the one mile radius of the protection. Any monster determined or smart enough might ignore it.

Unfortunatly establishing a safe zone came with a slight down side. It seemed that establishing a safe zone left the area bare, stripping it of any pre-existing structures. The campus would cease to be, with the buildings, cars, and anything else not found in nature, recycled into mana. The area would be turned into a clean slate.

Aiden could technically move to another location to establish a safe zone, but it was too dangerous at the time to go wandering out into the wilderness to search for a suitable location and everyone seemed insistant that they get those protections up as soon as possible. The loss of the school buildings wouldn't be too much of an issue either, based on the myriad things they learned could be built once a safe zone was established.

The only real loss would be any items in the buildings left unclaimed. Because of this everyone took some time scouring all the buildings for provisions and anything else usfull. All of the chosen packed their inventories full of bags or backpacks filled with any food, water, and any other items they wanted to keep like clothes, or books from the library. Specifically books instructional in nature, that contained information about farming for example.

The non chosen did the same and loaded anything they could into sacks or boxes that they carried. It was a rather comical sight seeing everyone loaded up with items so much that you could barely see their faces.

Once that was done and everyone was outside and in an out of the way area where nothing would be built Aiden used the token. The buildings and arround them rippled and then started to disintegrated into little blue motes that were slowly absorbed into the earth. A little dumbstruck by the sight, he hesitated a second to watch the process along with the others who were equally amazed. He was so engrossed with the phenomena that he nearly missed a system message.

“Congratulations! Continent first bonus! You are the first on this continent to set up a Safe Haven. +1 permanent bonus to all stats +250,000 complementary system credits.

‘Wow, that’s a lot of credits!’ Aiden though with shock. The credits were a welcome surprise tho, as building new structures cost a lot. What he read about the Token said you would get 5 free buildings of your choice with a cost limit of up to 10 million credits total once you used it, but this way he could build more.

He also noticed the ‘first bonus’ this time was for the continent and not the world meaning someone else beat him to it. Which was both good and bad. It was good because it seemed people in other areas around the world must still be alive and doing fine. It was bad because he figured if he had gotten the world bonus, the rewards would have been better.

He checked the next message which was actually an addition to his menu screen with a new tab labeled Management. He fiddled with the options there for a bit and browsed all the things available. Checking on the World map and zooming in he could tell that they were about 3/4 of a mile away from the Ocean east ward towards the back of the Campus and there was now a river coming down from a mountain range in the north running south and was only around 800 meters westward from the front of the Campus.

The menu was currently showing him a birds eye view of the region and the land he now controlled apparently. It also showed him icons for all living things within the controlled area. He noticed that the only living things around were all the people here indicated by green dots and a few what he assumed were animals or monsters in the forest indicated by orange.

Aiden then looked through a detailed discription of all the available buildings. The help menu they had read before only mentioned specific types of things that could be built and their general pricing, but what he was now browsing was far more detailed. There were a lot of options, and Aiden sat down and went over everything for over an hour to make sure he made the best choices ocassionally asking for input from the others.

Finally satisfied withe general layout and choice of buildings he got to work. First he evened out the ground and elevated a quarter mile square area around himself slightly above the rest of the terrain, a little less then 50 meters in height, with gentle slopes where he was planning to place two gates one towards the river and one toward the direction of the ocean. The rest was elevated as a shear cliff that would be very difficult to climb. That little bit of land manipulation cost him 40,000 system credits.

Next he build a stone wall all the way around the campus and parking lot area, enclosing the whole section adding the heavy iron gates where he wanted them for what would have been a total of 1,850,000 system credits but he used one of the free building tokens for it instead. He had an option for wooden walls but this would keep them safer and it was free so yeah. The walls were 12 meters or 40 feet tall and 4 meters thick. There were 12 guard towers with entrances and stairs leading up onto the walls.

He used up another one of the five free building tokens to build a Mansion/castle. It was a three story tall and rather wide building with two towers on either side that extended another three story’s up above the rest of the mansion/castle. The building was placed on the north east corner, and it had an extra smaller wall surrounding it with a gated entrance.

It was somewhat of an impulse buy on his part, not having discussed it with the others, but he thought the place would come in handy in the future as an administrative building or a place to hold private meetings. He also felt it could serve as a sort of headquarters for the Mana chosen to use.

The mansion had an entrance hall, 15 bedrooms, a large kitchen, dining room, two living room’s on the second and third floors, three bathrooms in the main building, two large ones and a grand one connected to the master suit on the third floor, a study, small library, a huge cellar for storage and what originally was a ballroom which he chose to change to a war/meeting room equipped for said purpose with seating for 50-100 people around a huge table as well as racks for weapons and armor and a slightly raised platform with plenty of standing space for future meetings.

There were also two terrace’s on the 3rd floor facing inward towards the center of town, and a small garden outside surrounding the property. Almost every room also had a Mana powered fireplace. In fact almost all buildings that he could see in the menu so far were Mana powered which included lighting and all the functions of the bathroom’s and kitchen’s.

The mansion also came with a security system consisting of 4 stone Golem Knights, each at lvl 50 that would obey simple orders and could be used to patrol, guard, or to fight any intruders in the town.

They looked pretty cool. Standing at 6’4 feet tall with large swords and shields. They wore what Aiden would call medieval plate mail and if you didn’t know it you would think they were normal people wearing armor. The only feature that let you know they weren’t actual humans was the blue glowing light coming from the eye area under the helmet showing they were powered by Mana.

Unfortunately they could not go any further than 1000 meters from the mansion which had a control crystal of sorts within. If a golem went too far from it, it would shut down. Also once one was destroyed you would have to buy a new one for 40,000 credits each which was pretty expensive.

‘So its a bit much sue me! I worked hard for this shit! Besides, it was a great use of a token! That place would have cost 2,750,000 system credits otherwise! and this one was one of the damn smaller available mansions!’ he thought and hoped the others wouldn’t be too jealous that he would be staying here from now on.

The two towers on each side of it were designed to house the lords guards and or servants. The towers were round and six stories tall and each floor had four rooms. Three bedrooms each with a small study with the fourth room being a small kitchen, dining, and leisure area. The bottom floor was a storage area.

On the North west side he used up another free token to build a magically powered bathhouse which would have cost 750,000 credits. It would use Mana to continually purify the water. It also came with a connected building used for laundering clothes which came with Mana powered washers/dryers which looked like round containers with a lid. You would throw in your dirty laundry activate a rune and it would be clean in moments then you’d activate another rune and the clothes would be quickly dried.

In the center of what he was now calling the town he placed a Mana powered well that would refill itself once depleted to a certain extent, and behind that a small park/garden where the younger kids could play with a Mana powered fountain in the middle. That cost him 23,500 credits.

In what used to be the parking lot area he changed the land to a farming location for the city with rows of tilled dirt ready for planting with some small trees and shrubbery surrounding it on one side and a fenced off grazing area for animals on the other. The area was large enough that once they had crops growing and enough animals grazing they could feed up to 300 people easily. He also built another well close to the farming area for a total of 25,500 credits.

Next he moved on to the housing units. He put them along the west wall, one on each side of the gate. Each row of housing units contained 5 two story homes all connected side by side. They were about half the height of the walls they were built against and had room to comfortably fit around 24 people per unit and 120 people per row.

Each row of housing units cost 45,000 system credits. All the residences were identical and sparsely furnished with two floors. Once you entered a building you would be in a long hallway that had three doors on each side and a stairwell leading up. Each door lead to a small apartment containing a bathroom, two small bedrooms, and a kitchen/ding area. It wasn’t grand by any means but with what everyone has been through recently it would be a luxury.

With 179,000 credits now spent he would soon be dipping in to his reserves. Aiden had a plan to save at least one of the free tokens for later to build a port at the ocean for fishing but since he still had 2 left he decided to use one more.

He spent the token on a Supplementary class trainer which had a whopping cost of 1,000,000 credits for what wasn’t technically even a building but a small stand with a rounded crystal affixed on the top with runes covering it.

What this little device did was pretty cool. It would enable all residents of the town to unlock a 3rd supplementary class for a craft such as blacksmithing, leathercrafting, woodworking, mining, enchanting etc. All you had to do is touch the round crystal and select your class and that was that.

These new classes would even give new stats per level! Only one class specific stat would be gained per level but it would still be a great advantage that not many would have in the world at this time as this building was only available to build in a Haven not a Zone and the quest mentioned only one of these rewards would be granted per continent.

Since Aiden already claimed the reward for this continent anyone else would have to upgrade their safe zone to a Haven which cost 5,000,000 system credits to do which Aiden assumed would take most people a long time to earn.

With the soon to be new classes Aiden figured people would need a place to work so thinking of that he spent 100,000 credits on a small crafting hall leaving him with just over 10,000 credits left. The Crafting Hall was placed along the east wall close to the mansion with the Supplementary Class Crystal right out front.

Even though it was labeled as small it was almost a third the size of the mansion. It came with 5 different rooms for crafting with a few sets of all the basic tools to be included. When he had more money he would upgrade it to a medium or large hall with more space but for now there were only 10 people who could use the place so it was fine.

Now that he was pretty much finished, (and broke) he checked over the building blueprints one last time before hitting accept. There were loud exclamations of surprise from everyone when a town started to build itself around them from literally nothing.

Everyone watched as first the ground flattened out and then rose with all of them on it to a higher elevation. A wall started to form next followed by the buildings. People looked everywhich way as a town slowly started to take shape around them. The process took almost an hour and when it was done another screen popped up in front of Aiden leaving him with another headache to deal with.