Cassandra was currently swinging away with her pickaxe at a stubborn vein of ore in the wall in front of her. Her frustrated sounds eliciting chuckles from the rest of her party. She finally gave up and sat down to eat with the rest of them by the fire. They were currently 100 meters or so inside one of the cave's that was found by another group the previous day. She looked around with a pouting face at the people sitting around her.

To her right was Julia. She had long brown hair compared to Cassandras shorter red. She was dark skinned with brown eyes and slightly taller then her at 5’7. She had chosen the Druid class when she reached level 10. It was a support class that gave out buffs and heals to others in the party as well as detrimental effects to enemies eventually.

Right now her only buff was a lvl 1 skill called Natures blessing which increased both Vitality and agility by +2 for the whole party. She mainly fought with a bow and had a short sword as backup. Being the same age she and Cassandra became fast friends and they were now sharing a room in the Mansion. Cassandra stopped staying with her parents two days ago opting out for the more comfortable accommodations and to be closer to the Guardians.

To her left was Tom, the youngest of their party, only just turning 14 two days ago. He was just as tall as Cassandra at 5’6 and had medium length dark brown almost black hair that constantly covered up his green eyes. He was rather quiet but nice enough. He was the only one among them to get the option for a Rare class called ‘Shadow’. He told them it was a better version of the rogue class with some focus on shadow magic.

The class focused on dealing damage while remaining unseen. He fought with knives like the original rouge class but also used a bow for range. The skill he gained at first level was called ‘Shroud’ and obscured him from view when he stood in shadows. The skill got better the darker it was. It worked best at night as one would imagine, rendering him practically invisible.

Across from her was Dean the only ‘adult’ in their group at 18. He was short, even shorter then she was at 5,5. Which made it funny since his choice of weapon was a Great-sword, which was taller then him and weighed nearly half as much.

He had blue eyes and short sandy blonde hair with a small scar across his left eye. He was the most talkative among their group and was always smiling, even when they were fighting. The class he chose was Swordsman and gained the skill ‘Mana Blade Slash’ which coats your weapon in Mana doing double damage for a single attack.

Cassandra herself chose the Swashbuckler class. She was hoping for something like knight but that wasn’t one of her options. After watching Aiden fight She wanted a class that focused on swords, but her only two choices were swordsman and swashbuckler. The class she chose was a better fit for her she thought.

It was an agility based class focused on speed and evasion, getting in hits between dodging. She currently had two shorter curved swords (think cavalry saber’s) strapped to her sides since she was ambidextrous and wanted to try dual wielding like one of the other guardians Bret, who uses two axes to fight. The skill she gained from her class was ‘Flash Step’ and was a movement skill that currently at lvl 1 doubled her speed for 1 second at the cost of 20 stamina and could be used repeatedly.

It had almost been a week Since Aiden and Victoria had gone out to try and find more survivors and in the mean time some changes had already happened in Eden. The day after their leader left a new group of survivors had joined them, consisting of three Mana awakened and 8 others they brought with them.

They were all one family that ran a small farm not far from here and managed to survive the awakening. They had been eating dinner one day and said a message appeared informing them they were now In the Barony of Fengaria under the rule of Baron Winters.

They didn’t know what to make of it at first but one of them had the brilliant idea to climb one of the trees to get a better vantage point of the surrounding area. When they climbed down they excitedly relaid to the others that there was a walled off town in the distance.

The group made the trek here the next day. Unfortunately the Mana awakened among them were unable to join the Guardians (which they eagerly wanted to do) since Aiden wasn’t here to accept them. They could however become citizens of Eden and now had access to the Supplementary classes. They were all given rooms in the residences for now.

The days following, more scattered groups of survivors started arriving, and they were still coming. Just last night another group of 17 arrived having traveled almost 20 miles to get here. Unfortunately from what Cassandra heard, when they left their group numbered 23, so they had lost a few people on the way. This was a common story at this point with many newcomers losing people on the journey here.

Currently there were twenty three new potential recruits to the Guardians waiting on Aiden once he got back as well as another 67 non Mana awakened. ‘If they keep coming like this, Aiden will need to build more housing’. Cassandra thought while chewing on a piece of roast deer she took off the fire.

The farm was also doing well with a few plants already starting to grow. It seemed Mana affected growth rates for crops which had everyone excited. There were now also a few animals grazing the fields next to the farm that were captured and brought in from the forest. So far the only animals found and brought back were a few pigs, two cows, some chickens and turkeys and three horses. The cows and the horses came with the first group that arrived a few days ago.

Her parents were both now helping out by taking care of the animals, although they complained that Aiden didn’t purchase a building to keep them in during the night. Thinking of Aiden Cassandra wondered how he was doing. He said he would be back within the week and its already been six days. She started to get a little worried but then quashed the feeling. ‘He’s so strong and he has Victoria with him, he’ll be alright I’m sure of it.'

Cassandra and her party had come here this morning when Bret’s group that scouted this area yesterday told them about the cave’s that could be mined at the base of the mountain chain.

She was quite happy about that and was now finally leveling her Miner class. She chose Miner since it honestly sounded like fun to her and no one else had chosen it yet at the time. Julia nudged her out of her musings with a question. “Sorry what?”

“I said are you done hitting rocks for now. We want to head out and kill some monsters, all of us are almost to the next level.” Julia said and Cassandra just shrugged and said “Sure, lets go” She wanted to test out how effective the bonus stat points to strength were that she gained from leveling her Mining class the whole morning.

The group put out the fire and left the cave towards the nearby forest to find some monster to kill. They found a pack of wolves not to far away and dispatched them with a precision that was lacking only a few days back.

Cassandra was quite impressed with the extra strength from her mining class as she nearly cut a wolf in half with one of her normal swings which would usually only go a few inches deep and stop at the bone. She was really liking the Swashbuckler class, it mostly kept her from taking damage with its high mobility and was pretty good at dishing it out too as she could attack with both swords increasing the rate of attack over a regular swordsman a bit.

Their party was really starting to synergize and work well together with Dean and her fighting up front getting the enemies attention and Tom attacking from behind whenever he saw a chance while Julia would be raining arrows from behind.

Others were originally against the four of them teaming up and heading out alone especially her parents stating that they were too young and should be split into party’s with more adults in them. Cassandra went off on them in a tirade she was slightly embarrassed about now, but they backed off and now they were the second strongest team in Eden only lagging slightly behind Bret’s team which consisted of him Maggie, Alicia, and Benjamin.

There were only 3 teams from the original group right now. Other then hers and Bret’s there was the team Lily lead which had Tess and the two brothers Chris and Andrew in it. The couple they saved from the closest town Laura and Sebastian used to come along with any of the three teams as support but now they found two others from the arriving people to team up with. They were also a married couple apparently so they had something in common.

Their team stayed in the forest killing monsters for another two hours before everyone finally hit the next level. They decided to head back to Eden for the day since there wasn’t too much daylight left and they didn’t want to sleep in one of the cave’s at the base of the mountain for the night. While they were heading back Cassandra spent her free points and checked how everyone else’s stats were looking.

Cassandra Sokolova: Age 15

Race Human: Rank(f)

Swashbuckler: Level 4 - Mana essence: 2152/5000

Miner lvl 5

Health: 220/220

Stamina: 220/220

Mana: 90/90

Defence: 21(58)

Mana Defence: 9

Vitality - 22

Endurance - 21

Strength - 21

Agility - 23

Dexterity - 17

Skill - 17(20)

Intelligence - 9

Wisdom - 9

+3 free points / +1 str / +1 agi / +1 dex / +1 skill per level

+1 Str per level from Miner

Laura Preston: Age 15

Race Human: Rank(f)

Druid: Level 4 - Mana essence: 352/5000

Enchanter lvl 3

Health: 230/230

Stamina: 180/180

Mana: 170/170

Defence: 18(53)

Mana Defence: 17

Vitality - 23

Endurance - 18

Strength - 13

Agility - 19

Dexterity - 17

Skill - 14

Intelligence - 11

Wisdom - 17

+3 free points / +1 Vit / +1 Agi / +1 Dex / +1 Wis per level

+1 Wis per level from Enchanting

Tom Redmont: Age 14

Race Human: Rank(f)

Shadow: Level 4 - Mana essence: 1450/5000

Leaherworker - lvl 4

Health: 180/180

Stamina: 160/160

Mana: 80/80

Defence: 16(50)

Mana Defence: 8

Vitality - 18

Endurance - 16

Strength - 19

Agility - 25

Dexterity - 22

Skill - 19

Intelligence - 9

Wisdom - 8

+3 free points / +1 str / +1 agi / +1 dex / +1 skill per level

+1 dex per level from Leatherworking

Dean Hillston: Age 18

Race Human: Rank(f)

Swordsman: Level 4 - Mana essence: 2120/5000

Blacksmith - lvl 3

Health: 230/230

Stamina: 220/220

Mana: 80/80

Defence: 22(62)

Mana Defence: 8

Vitality - 23

Endurance - 22

Strength - 28

Agility - 12

Dexterity - 10

Skill - 13

Intelligence - 9

Wisdom - 8

+3 free points / +1 Vit / +1 End / +1 Str / +1 skill per level

+1 str per level from Blacksmithing