“Good job”, Jacob spoke to her in their corner of the room away from prying ears.

Avelina’s eyes shot upwards as she glanced at the man, trying to look for a hint about just how much he knew. He shouldn’t have been able to know that she had willingly let Craig bleed out unless he had just misjudged the wound and assumed that Avelina would have been able to treat it with the limited tools that she had.

“I didn’t lie. I wouldn’t have been able to patch him up with the wound he suffered. From the looks of it, his spleen got cut into it and while a professional could cut it out and then tie the blood vessels to each other-”

She painfully flexed her wounded hand. After the fight she had put five points in her Endurance, almost doubling the stat. It hadn’t helped with fixing the wound, but it allowed her to somewhat ignore it. It was rather interesting, “I don’t have the experience or training to do that.”

For a moment Jacob narrowed his eyes as if he was trying to guess how accurate what Avelina was saying was. That was his weakness, Avelina realized. Jacob was cunning, but he lacked quite a lot of knowledge. It was reassuring to see some blind spots on what he could and couldn’t do.

“Either way, good job. I talked to Barkley and he agreed to help us clear out the nest of the rats in a few hours.”, he explained.

“That is relieving”, Avelina admitted. It was terrifying to know that those creatures were evolving at such a rapid pace, “Hopefully we culled their numbers enough to be able to succeed-”

“Can you fight”, Jacob bluntly interrupted her, causing Avelina to frown?

“I think so. The wounds do still hurt, but they aren’t too hindering if against rats.”, It was mostly true, the only thing that she omitted is that she’d also be able to hold her own rather decently against a person.

Jacob looked somewhat off-balance and it wasn’t just him. Klaus was as pale as could be and even Jennifer and Max were more silent than usual. Jay had made himself small enough that she couldn’t even see hi-

Her face paled as she realized it.

Jay was nowhere to be seen. Nervously her eyes started to glance around, looking to see if he was hanging around somewhere else in the room. Alas, she couldn’t spot one of the somewhat less problematic members of the group anywhere, causing her to finally turn to Jacob who had noticed her frenzied little search as she had been anything but subtle.

“They got Jay. Rat to the throat when he just killed another one.”, Jacob admitted.

The situation sounded familiar to Avelina, given that she had been in roughly the same one. For a moment the implications behind that were enough to drown out the fact that someone she had known had died. Either she had killed the rat that had gotten Jay, which would be the best-case scenario, or-

“What happened to the one that got him?”, She asked, fearful for the answer.

“Got the bastard right between his eyes. Should have heard him squeal.”, Jennifer cut in, sounding even more aggressive than usual.

-They were starting to develop their own tactics and share them amongst the members of her kind. Sure it could simply be chalked up to instinct, but she didn't want to make such a careless assumption. Better safe than sorry and plan for the worst-case scenario. That was worrying. Very worrying. For a moment she zoned out as the myriad of implications rushed through her mind. Their invasion of the nest could easily turn into a slaughter if they did it without thinking. She could see it now already. Traps, bait and ambushes in the dark.

It was horrifying

“Avelina”, Jacob snapped his fingers in front of her face, using her full name for once, “Attention to Avelina.”

“Yes?”, She snapped out of her daze as she shook her head, “Sorry, I hadn’t expected that Jay had...well...died. It caught me rather off-guard.”

“It is fine”, Jacob didn’t even seem to be asking why she had asked the question about the rat that had killed Jay. Naturally, most people wouldn’t be too suspicious, but this was Jacob. That guy was about as paranoid as she was. If he couldn’t see through something this basic it meant that Jay’s death most likely had shaken him up more than he’d like to admit.

“How long do I have to rest up before we go?”, Avelina asked, deciding to quickly change the subject. She didn’t feel like sharing her information with anyone at the moment. Barkley seemed like a good man, but she only had a single conversation with him.

“We’ll be leaving in eight hours so that everyone can properly rest up.”, came the reply from Jacob as Avelina nodded and pushed herself up.

“I’ll go patch some of the fighters up”, As she finished her comment she could see Jacob already opening his mouth, “Don’t worry, I’ll keep enough supplies at hand to treat any injury we suffer during the raid. Getting some goodwill won’t hurt us-”

That and well, she most wanted the experience. With a bit of luck, she could use it to push herself to level six.

---

Avelina glanced at her stats as she sat around, somewhat exhausted. She had been going around the last four hours striking up conversations and patching up wounds here and there. While expending energy like this before an important fight wasn’t the smartest idea, it had been well worth it.

Medic Level 6

A soft sigh escaped her lips as she glanced at the level of her status. The five extra stat points that she got from the level up were rather nice, but the real kicker was the fact that she’d gotten yet another skill.

[Stitch - Reinforces any stitches you make, allowing them to open up less frequently.]

It was a bit of a bittersweet ability. Yes, it was extremely useful, but at the same time, it wouldn’t really help her a lot during the fight that was to come. At most the stitches that she had in her right arm wouldn’t come loose during the battle, but frankly, with her ability to slow down blood loss on her own wounds, it didn’t feel that useful for now. Naturally, she had redone her stitches after getting the skill, just to be safe.

With that done, she went onto the next most important thing. She had levelled up quite a bit and she needed to properly allocate those stats. In the end, she debated about a myriad of combinations but settled on increasing her perception and dexterity. Perception so that she could better see any threat that came at her in the dark and dexterity because she realized that her skills were far too lacking for her to properly fight without relying on stats.

Name: Avelina Louisa Croy Race: Human Titles: N/A Class: Medic Level: 6 Parameters Strength: 9 Dexterity: 15 Perception: 15 Endurance 13 Stamina: 4 Mental Capacity: 8 Magical Power: 0 Magical Control: 0 Unallocated: 0 Skills: Clean Cuts, Cloth, Stitch

As she finished allocating her stats, she let out a soft and happy sigh.

There was something pleasing about seeing numbers go up. She knew that it most likely was a bit messed up to be happy that she was levelling up by killing other things, but she just couldn't help it. The simpler and more primate parts of her brain simply saw a number get bigger and released dopamine.

With that taken care of, she settled down in the corner of the room and decided that she might as well take a nap. No one was going to do anything to her before this raid and she was more afraid of what would happen once the common enemy was gone than she was of the common enemy itself. It was part of the reason why she had gone to fix everyone's wounds, in the hopes of increasing her standing with the bigger group if things went wrong.

With those final worries floating through her mind, she drifted to sleep-

-Only to be woken up not much later by Jennifer.

She had been more exhausted than she'd expected as she didn't even properly remember falling asleep. With a few pained movements, she pushed herself up, checked her stitches, had a drink and followed the other woman to the rest of the group. It seemed that Jennifer wasn't in the mood to speak a lot after what happened to Jay and Avelina wouldn't complain.

Honestly, a small, spiteful and rational part of her mind couldn't help but mock them.

It was terrible and she knew that, but she had somehow expected more. Jacob and Jennifer had always seemed so confident and willing to do what it took to get ahead, but since Jay died it felt like both of them were out of it, as if they only now were starting to realize that they themselves could actually die and that it wasn't just the strangers around them who were being killed off like some kind of fodder in a movie or game.

Realizing that the two people she had been most wary of were, in the end, just people somehow hurt.

What also hurt was the fact that she even had such ideas in the first place. It honestly said enough about the person that she was slowly being forced to become as she refused to admit that she had always been this calloused and willing to make sacrifices before Jacob had forced her hand.

She wanted Jacob dead because he was unstable and a threat to everyone around him. If she admitted to being just as bad at her core then what was the point even.

As she thought about all those stray and rather overly dramatic thoughts she arrived at the impromptu 'war room', which was just a few chairs placed around a wooden table in the corner of the main room. Jacob, Barkley and a few other people she had either seen while patching up wounds or helped with their wounds were already standing around it, seemingly arguing.

"You can't just do as you want Jacob-", She heard Barkley's firm voice, "We have to agree on having one commander. If your group just does what they want it will negatively affect everyone."

"I'm not going to hand command over my people over to you-", Jacob shot back, "If you are that concerned about having a single commander, then how about giving me command?"

"You?", A third voice wheezed. She had disinfected and bandaged a minor wound on his thigh, "After all the shit you pulled? Fuck off, Jacob."

"Oh. Look who is willing to act all big now-", With a surprising immature response of her team leader the conversation fully got derailed, " I remember you cowering when I even glanced at you not too long ago-"

That was it.

Avelina realized that even if they won this fight against the rats they'd most likely tear each other apart. Jacob had bet on everyone in this group remaining meek lambs and hadn't expected that these Ratmen would force them to become fighters. Now that the main group had gotten a taste for blood, some amongst them would most likely get it in their heads to pay Jacob back for what he had done, which by extension would mean that she was in danger.

As the arguing continued in the background, she fully detached herself from that conversation and simply focused on how she could get out of his situation alive. The best way would be for Jacob to simply bend the knee to the bigger and stronger faction now that he had lost his level advantage, but she knew for a fact that he would never do it. Logical as he was, when his pride was on the line he was just like a child, that much she had realized from being around him for the last few days.

So, if Jacob wasn't going to join the bigger group that left her with two options. First, she could turn-coat, but that was dangerous. In the off-chance that Jacob didn't die or that there wasn't going to be a conflict, she knew that that spiteful prick would do his best to ruin her for 'betraying' him. That left her with the second option. One of the two groups had to lose all their leader, allowing the other to take them over easier.

She was going to have to make sure either Barkley or Jacob didn't make it out of this raid alive.

And she had already picked days ago.