“Can you heal him?” Alistair asked as he propped up Oliver on his back while putting his new free point into Agility. Even with his superhuman strength, holding him up by his collar was annoying. Also, he might appreciate the lack of bruising to his throat when he woke up from his stupor. “I think Jackson used some Skill on him.”

“Are we not going to talk about what you did in there?” Alexandra asked. They had made it outside of the recreation center without getting into a fight, which Alistair considered a win.

“I think you did the right thing,” Donna added. Alistair was happy to see that the woman was growing more talkative. For Alexandra’s part, she probably had no idea how to talk with someone she could not beat up in a socially acceptable manner.

“Thank you,” Alistair said. “At least someone appreciates the work I have to go through to improve my Badges.”

“Oh, so that’s why you did it. You’re much greedier than you let on, you know. But if I were you, I would have killed Jackson too. Standard small town piece of shit who grew a little too big for his britches, if you ask me.”

“Weren’t you in law school? I feel like you should be telling me I shouldn’t take matters into my own hands,” Alistair said.

She shrugged. “That wasn’t very serious. I would have probably gotten a job at my father’s company after graduating, anyway.”

The gears churned in Alistair’s head. It all made sense now. A flippant and almost entitled attitude, an escapade as a fighter, not caring about law school, and the promise of a job at her father’s business?

“You’re filthy rich,” Alistair let out, a little more critically than he intended. His family lived paycheck to paycheck when they were younger, and it wasn’t until his sister started making money for the family that they bought a house. He was almost glad the apocalypse had happened since it wiped out his student loans.

“And? That doesn’t matter anymore. I earned my powers, same as you,” Alexandra said defensively. He wanted to point out that it turned out you could actually transfer wealth into drachma, but he didn’t want actually to antagonize his… cultivation partner? They were friends, but it didn’t seem like the proper word for it. All they did together so far was kill monsters and level up.

“As much as I would love to hear you kids flirt some more,” Donna interjected. “What are we going to do about him?”

“I have a girlfriend, you know,” Alistair quickly mentioned, not wanting to lead on Alexandra if she had gotten the wrong idea.

“You do?”

“I agree with Alistair’s decision, but he could still be dangerous.” Donna interrupted Alexandra and Alistair before their conversation could drone on. “Could you wake him up and try to see what actually happened?”

“I think that’s a great idea.” Alistair crouched down and gently placed Oliver onto the sidewalk of the street they were walking down. Looking at the man, he was almost offended that Jules thought they looked similar. Alistair was lean, but carried a decent amount of muscle on him; this stick figure was practically a skeleton with a mop of black hair, which he thought was the only thing they had in common.

Activating [Eyes of Truth], he looked down at the man he rescued.

Name: Oliver Cambry

Species: Human (Unevolved)

Level: 13

Class: None

Being only two levels away from the vaunted level 15, Alistair now understood part of why Jackson was intent on executing the man. Level 13 was still relatively high, and he might become a threat later.

“He needs to eat more, right mama?” Tamia asked in a whisper that came out louder than a normal person’s speaking voice. Alexandra laughed as Donna told her daughter that it wasn’t acceptable to say that to a person’s face.

“I think so too, Tamia,” Alexandra said, bending down to touch the man’s forehead. “My [Healing Touch] passively gives a small amount of diagnostic information, but I’ll need to get an actual health information Skill if I want to know in-depth things. I hope there’s not a limit to the number of Skills you can get.”

They were still mostly in the dark about Skills, though Alistair had seen an expensive missive in his cursory glance over the System Store. Natural talents seemed to factor in like the manipulation Skill Jackson had most likely gained, or how Alexandra was a law school student that manifested [Contract]. Gaining a Class granted him and Alexandra two skills each, either an entirely new one or an upgrade of an old one. Perhaps they could gain new Class Skills at set level intervals, like 50 or 100.

Sometimes, people could just gain new ones from trying out a new way to use energy, like with his [Dash] or [Hand of Karma], but he hadn’t figured out how to scientifically replicate it, not for lack of trying. He kept trying to use Mana to jump on their walk to the recreation center, to Alexandra’s chagrin and Tamia’s delight. Applying rational principles to magical abilities would be something his sister would love, he thought, growing slightly melancholic.

“Can you heal him?” Alistair inquired.

“Getting on it.” Alexandra scrunched her face in concentration, activating [Healing Touch]. Her hand started to glow green and Alistair could feel it emanating soothing energy. Oliver shuddered, his limbs spasming as he coughed and heaved.

“I used half my Mana to heal him, so I hope it worked. [Healing Touch] takes a variable amount of Mana depending on how bad the injury is, so they must have roughed him up real bad.” She waved her hand in front of the gaunt man’s glossy eyes and snapped her fingers. “Hey, wake up!”

The air was full of apprehension as Oliver remained unresponsive for a few tension-filled seconds. Finally, he croaked out a weak whisper.

“Wh—where am I?”

“You were about to be executed by a man named Jackson Morley,” Alistair said before Alexandra could speak. “Do you remember what happened?”

He was fairly sure that Oliver hadn’t murdered anyone, but he still wanted to know the truth behind the encounter. Interpreting the weird vision and incommunicable feelings while under the effects of [Eyes of Truth] was challenging, but he was that while Jackson was partially telling the truth when he said Oliver killed fifteen people, the woman was also lying without a doubt that they had been murdered. There was a massive difference between killing and murder, and if Alistair was right, the necromancer was the one that was acting in self-defense.

Oliver sat up at lighting speed, inciting a similarly fast Alexandra to put her boot up to block his chest and prevent him from bolting away.

“We’re not your enemies,” she said.

“Oh, you’re not with him,” he said, backing away from Alexandra’s foot. He stood up and dusted his black t-shirt off and then proceeded to walk away.

“Wait! You can’t just leave,” Alistair exclaimed, rushing over to the man. Actually, he thought, more like a kid. Studying him more closely, Alistair wouldn’t have been surprised if Oliver was a junior or senior in high school. He was just some kid, and

“Why not?” Oliver questioned, turning around to meet Alistair’s eyes. He had an air of defiance to him like he wanted them to forget he had just been at their complete mercy a few seconds ago.

“We saved you, asshole. This nice guy decided to risk his life for your neck because he thought you weren’t actually guilty of being a crazy serial killer, and then I just used half of my shitty Mana pool to heal you from whatever the fuck Jackson did to your brain. I don’t really give a damn about what you do, but I’ve got Alistair’s back.” Alexandra walked up to Alistair and put a hand on his shoulder.

Alistair wasn’t sure what to do, not expecting Oliver to just get up and attempt to leave as soon as Alexandra healed him. Now that he thought about it more cogently, he didn’t necessarily have a reason for Oliver to stay, other than trying to confirm his story and gather more information about Jackson. He hadn’t been thinking that far ahead when he went and rescued him. While he was positive the [Eyes of Truth] hadn’t deceived him about Oliver’s supposed crimes, with Donna and Tamia, maybe it was smarter to just let him go.

“Actually—” Alistair began, but Oliver cut him off.

“Okay, sure. What are we doing now? I’m only level 13, I still need to get a Class. I’m hoping for Necromancer, I mean everyone already calls me one just because I have [Raise Dead]. You got more orcs to kill?” Oliver said nonchalantly as if he didn’t just try to flee.

“Wait, what?” Alistair exclaimed in surprise.

“The girl over there made some convincing points. You guys did save my life. And you’re both level 16, so of course I want to hang around you, it’s the safest place in this entire town, and since you saved my life, you don’t want to kill me. Logical, right?” Oliver stated as a matter-of-fact.

Alexandra turned to Alistair, her eyes lighting up like a neon sign declaring, “This is your problem, you deal with it.” With a sigh, he decided he couldn’t turn away the kid like he wanted to originally. If Jackson came after Oliver and killed him, Alistair would have felt extremely guilty.

“Can you tell us what happened to you?” Donna asked. Alistair didn’t blame her for being more cautious due to her young child.

“I was minding my own business, killing a bunch of orcs. Of course, some idiots thought that I was working with the orcs just because of [Raise Dead], and they attacked me. If you ask me, they just saw I was high-leveled and were thinking of the experience. I killed them all in self-defense, but later on, some more goons came, this time with that Jackson guy. He used some Skill on me and I blacked out, and when I woke up, I was with you guys.”

“This Skill Jackson used, what was it like?” Alexandra asked, her curiosity piqued by the details of Jackson’s repertoire.

“I’m not sure, but before it happened he was staring at me for a good while? So maybe some kind of eye thing, I don’t know,” Oliver shrugged.

Doing his best to sound mature, Alistair asked, “How old are you, kid?”

“Seventeen, and don’t call me kid. You’re barely older than me.”

“You’re right, you’re right, I’m only twenty-two,” he said. In the new world, being seventeen or twenty-two hardly mattered, considering they were all just as new to the system that governed their world. “Alexandra and I have been fighting the orcs in this area together for the past day. I’m sure you recognized they’re organized, and the two most important ones in that hierarchy are General Krazz and Prince Kalgur. We killed Krazz and I have a Quest to kill Kalgur, who is the leader of all the orcs in the area.”

“I got the Quest too after killing Krazz,” Alexandra offered.

“If we manage to kill Kalgur in the next--” He checked his Quests page to find the exact time. “Thirteen hours, we’ll prevent the monster wave that’s set to occur in this subregion. I’m not sure if you’re from here or not—”

“I’m from Florida.”

“But imagine thousands upon thousands of orcs swarming this area. And if we complete the Quest, we get all the rewards for the monster wave without having to grind thousands of grunt orcs. It’s going to be extremely dangerous and you might die, but that’s just how we do things. Are you in?”

“Just what we needed, splitting the loot three ways,” Alexandra mumbled under her breath.

“Four ways,” Alistair corrected, looking at Donna, who smiled. Little Tamia, who didn’t really understand their conversation, gazed up at him.

“Five ways,” he amended.

“Great,” Oliver said, stretching his arms. “I need a bit of practice with [Raise Dead] before we start.”

The air quieted around the strange teen as his eyes darkened and glowed at the same time. With a screeching wail, two cracks in reality opened on either side of Oliver, like the ones that came with the very start of Earth’s initiation except in miniature. Out of the cracks stepped two very dead orcs. They looked like zombies, with unhealed wounds and ashen red skin. Black orbs of nothingness took the place of eyes, giving the impression they were eldritch monstrosities.

“It’s just a combination of [Dimensional Storage] and [Raise Dead]. Pretty neat, if you ask me,” he said. Tamia started crying and ran behind her mother, who was similarly unnerved.

Realizing the reception to his Skill wasn’t as rosy as he expected, he had his zombies walk around ten feet ahead of the group. “Sorry about that. I forgot you guys aren’t used to it. Honestly, they’re harmless unless I tell them to attack something.”

Alistair exchanged a glance with Alexandra. She shrugged and started walking after Oliver, who had taken off with his zombies despite not knowing where they were headed to. He had the feeling he was in for a royal headache.

—

After catching up to Oliver, he explained his Regional Map and showed him Kalgur’s position. By this point, Alistair couldn’t even begin to count how many red dots surrounded the large yellow circle. By his estimate, the number had more than doubled, putting the number of orcs at over two hundred and far exceeding the amount Alexandra had valiantly taken on alone.

While he looked a little nervous at the number of orcs, he didn’t waver in his conviction to join them, which Alistair appreciated. As they walked to his house, he learned more about Oliver and what had happened.

Oliver was from Tallahassee and had been transported alone right in the middle of their town during the first five minutes of the initiation. One of the first things that greeted him was the dead body of a man who was unfortunate enough to have been right where a crack spawned. Somehow he had manifested the [Raise Dead] Skill to defend himself, which Oliver attributed to reading way too many LitRPGs and isekai’s with a necromancer protagonist. Alistair got the sense that he was a bit of a loner and was glad for some company.

He felt bad that he would have to stow Donna and her daughter in his house alone again. Even if Oliver didn’t want to come to kill the orc prince, he wouldn’t have let him stay alone with them.

“I’m sorry I have to do this again,” Alistair offered in apology. “It’s safer here than with hundreds of orcs. And there shouldn’t be any left here except the ones near the final boss.”

“It’s alright,” Donna said. “Tamia and I will have fun. We’ve played a lot of Stratego over the past day.”

“If it’s not too personal, what happened to Tamia’s father?” he asked.

“He died. Way before everything that happened,” she added, seeing Alistair’s concern. “It was a long time ago now. Brain cancer. The worst part is that she won’t remember him. She was only two years old when he died. And since I lost my phone running away from the church and our house got destroyed by one of those cracks, she’ll never see any pictures or videos. No one will, I guess. Even me, I’ll slowly forget his face.”

The downcast look on Donna’s face was something he had never seen before. Even with all the trauma she and Tamia had been through, which included seeing her friends and neighbors die by human bloodshed, her house being destroyed, being nearly killed by the gunslinger, and having to kill an orc with a steak knife, she had always put on a happy face and a smile. Now he had seen a chink in her armor.

He handed her six of the level 1-15 leveling pills from the System Store. The set of green circular orbs set him back 1,200 drachma.

“These will bring you up one level each. Don’t even think about using them on Tamia; they’re only for people sixteen or older. The pill contains the instructions, just think about it and it’ll come up. But basically, all you have to know is that you have to take them one at a time to let your body purify the Mana inside of them.”

She gingerly accepted the green orbs. “Thank you so much. For all you’ve done, I can never repay you.”

“I’m just trying to do the right thing,” he said.

As he left his run-down house, he flexed his fingers and cracked his knuckles. His fists were about to see more action than they ever had in their entire lives. It was time to [Mana Strike] some orc skulls.