Parking lot, Garfield High, East Atlanta, DeKalb County, Georgia. Tuesday, October 29th, 2019. 16:00.

Sara drove into the school's parking lot and parked near the front door. Or to be more precise, in the principal private parking spot, a pet peeve too many students always had. Maybe it was some sort of declaration regarding who was the boss. She surely felt like one.

"How are you guys doing back there?" She asked. Bella whimpered. "Hold on tight. We need to pick up one more stray." Stray human, she meant.

Before she left the car, Sara decided to pool her gains. "Abby, give me a Status Screen."

Name:

Sara

Species:

Human (+2 Skill Slots)

Skill Slots:

10 / 12

Magic Type:

Mage - Enhancer (Exclusive)

Special trait:

See through the Veil (Able to see into the ethereal)

Special trait:

Personal Core (Treat Core Strength as levels in a main Class).

Main Class:

N/A

Secondary Class:

N/A

Development

System Core Strength (SCS)

25

The System Core becomes stronger and better at generating its own energy. Core Strength is maxed out. It requires a connection to the main System Core to evolve.

1 - You can have a maximum of 10 skill points per level of Core Strength.

2 - A maxed-out Core allows for better aid in fine mana manipulation. Active Skills' upkeep can be fractioned.

3 - Increases max MP pool and MP recovery by 50%.

Mana Conductivity (MC)

50%

(75%)

A measure of how clear the body's meridian system is. Mana conductivity impacts environmental energy absorption and channeling directly. Cleansed body systems are MC% stronger, more efficient, and tougher.

Foreign contaminants in your channels lower your conductivity slightly.

Purity of Body

Digestive,

Epithelial,

Skeletal,

Muscular,

Circulatory.

1 - Increase the efficiency of all cleansed body systems efficiency by MC.

2 - Synergy between Skin, Muscle, and Bone: Increase damage resistance by an additional half of MC3 - Synergy between Muscle and Bone: Increase physical strength by an additional half of MC.

4 - Synergy between Digestive and Circulatory systems increase immunity and resistance to external pathogens and toxins by half of MC.

5 - Cleansed body improves MP pool and all recovery rates by half of MC.

Mage - Enhancer (Exclusive)

25%

Your mana channels greatly enhance internal circulation but aren't that good at projecting and controlling ambient mana.

1 - Add a linear 25% to your mana conductivity for internal manipulation purposes.

2 - Multiply the effect of all Physical Skills and internal mana manipulation Skills by [25+Mana Conductivity]%

3 - Divide the effect of all External Mana Manipulation by 10.

4 - Exclusive-type mages cannot cultivate or actively use Qi.

Cold Affinity (major)

50%

You have a great affinity with the Cold element. Increase all Cold-related effects and resistances by 50%.

MP Pool

820

Available Energy for Active Skills. Equals to (10*SCS) + MC%. Recovers 10% per day under normal mana densities.

Skills: Physical (79)

Adroitness

16 40%

The Skill of moving one's body with grace and precision.

Increases speed and coordination and reduces reflex delay by Rank%.

Composure

14 73%

Staying calm under pressure or pain.

When under duress, reduces penalties to mental stability, logical reasoning, and self-control by 2*Rank%.

Prowess

8 21%

Making the most of one physique during stressful situations.

Lower reflex delay, increases combat damage and physical power by Rank%.

Brawn

22 57%

Muscular toughness and endurance.

Reduces stamina consumption and damage taken, increases lifting and carrying capacity by Rank%.

Rapid Healing

11 57%

Accelerates and optimizes body recovery.

Increases healing rate, reduces the odds of permanent damage, including scars, by 2*Rank%.

Thermostasis

8 21

(%/F)

Widened temperature comfort range and resistance to detrimental heat exchange.

Increase comfort temperature range by 1F per rank. Modify body heat conductivity by Rank%.

Skills: Social(25)

Flattery

12

36%

Making graceful compliments and answering them appropriately.

Increases reactions during and after intimate interactions by 2*Rank%.

Presence

12

36%

Motivating people with the power of your personality.

Increases reactions during and after social interactions by 2*Rank%.

Skills: Mystical(25)

Mana Infusion

11

57%

Infuse Mana into tools and melee weapons. Adds 2*Rank% to tool effectiveness, tenacity, hardness, and damage.

Infused objects can interact with incorporeal entities. This is considered an internal manipulation Skill.

Active Skill: Activation time: instantaneous. Cost: 1 MP/6 seconds or 10 MP/attack.

Skill Boost

14

42%

73%

Specialized supplemental Mana flow to a Skill.

Boosts effects of a Skill by 2*Rank%. This is considered in the same category as the affected Skill.

Active Skill: Activation time, 1 minute. Cost, 1 MP/6 seconds

Total Skill Points: 129 / 250

Something was terribly wrong. "Why did my Conductivity go down? And why did I lose almost a hundred MP?"

"How long?"

"How bad will it be?" She was worried about the flush of impurities.

"Meaning, I'll have to take a big dump again. Eww."

Brutus barked feebly in agreement. Sara decided she had to take the dogs out of their carriers and let them catch some sun and have some water or maybe more food. They hadn't thrown up during the short car trip, it was probably safe to feed them a bit more.

She got out of her car and heard a cat call whistle. Homing on the source, she found Kelly right outside the building.

"Nice wheels," Kelly sashayed in Sara's direction and seductively bit her finger. "Care to give a girl a ride?"

"Sure. Help me unload my new family members, and you can keep the car," Sara snorted a laugh as she fiddled with the fob buttons. "I bet they can repurpose the battery on their power supply to use at night. This baby has almost five hundred pounds of battery."

"Wait, you're giving me a Tesla? No, that's not it. What family members?"

"I adopted two puppies," Sara finally found the trunk button and opened it. "Kelly, these are Bella and Brutus."

Kelly squealed. "These are to keep and not to kill, right?"

"Gross. No, they're not corrupted. Not only they are trained hunting dogs but they are also special. They have magical potential."

"Really? What can they do? Breathe fire, spit poison, speak?" Kelly guessed in a crescendo.

"Nothing for now. They need to recover, they went without water since the time bubble popped."

Sara opened the carrier and called them out. They obeyed on unsteady legs and Sara decided to take them on her arms.

"See if you can carry Bella," Sara handed the foxhound to Kelly.

"Bella! Good girl!" Kelly cooed. Bella licked her arm.

Sara took Brutus and one of the bags with dog food. "I gave them only a bit of water and food, but I think they can have some more. I was afraid they would throw up if I overfed them too quickly."

"Sensible," Kelly remarked. "What's in those other bags? More loot?"

Sara ignored the implication in Kelly's question. Yeah, she was looting houses which had no owners. Sara wondered why everyone wasn't doing that.

"Rambo stuff," Sara said with the most innocent tone possible.

"Rambo stuff..." Kelly was a bit slow to grasp what she meant. "What kind of... Wait, are all of these guns?" She seemed surprised.

"Yeah. Ammo too. Enough to wage a small war. Don't tell Hainsworth." She put Brutus on the ground for a moment to close the car. The dog stood up but was clearly uncomfortable. "Good boy, Brutus. They are severely dehydrated and starving. We need to give them water slowly."

"Noted."

As they went inside the school carrying the foxhounds, Sara asked, "Where's Mary?"

"In the infirmary, sleeping. After you left, she dropped her act and was about to sleep standing up."

"She deserves it. Maybe we can put them there too."

"Yes, we should get their beds from the carriers too."

"Good idea."

Sara followed Kelly to the infirmary and made a note to give Brutus a good bath. Along the way, the musician broached another subject.

"I'm proud of you."

"Thanks but what for?"

"Looking after Mary. She arrived two days before the barbecue but the ice cream van guys had to drag her out of her house."

"Guys arrive in an Ice cream van, start to drag teenage girls out of their home, and nobody thinks that's weird or creepy. The world has really gone to shit," Sara quipped.

"There's hordes of zombies roaming the freeways," Kelly remarked. "People survive for days with a hole in their guts."

"Ghouls, not zombies. Don't give people the wrong idea."

"Also, a superhumanly strong crazy girl goes around exorcising the dead."

"Nope. Nuh-uh, don't start that again."

"What?"

"Mary thinks I'm not human."

"That's a reasonable assumption. You talked about Hell and hinted at Heaven during the meeting, are you sure you don't have some supernatural ancestor?"

"Yes, I'm pretty sure I don't. None of the many medical examinations I suffered found anything strange with me. The police found I had twenty-three pairs of chromosomes when they booked me and all that jazz. I'm your basic average girl."

Kelly picked up and started to sing, "and I'm here to save the world, you can't stop me 'cuz I'm..."

"Stop it!" Sara bumped her hip against Kelly's.

They entered the infirmary and found Mary awake. "Sara, what... OHMYGODGETTHEMAWAYFROMME!" The other girl crawled up the bed headboard with her back to the wall.

"They are good dogs, Mary," Sara tried to calm Mary down. "They are not infected by the bad stuff."

Mary didn't say anything coherent. She just opened and closed her mouth as she hyperventilated and trembled. But she didn't leak this time, Sara counted that as a win.

"This is Brutus and Bella over there with Kelly. They are nice doggies. See how they didn't even react to your screeching." Sara put Brutus on the foot of Mary's bed and commanded, "Brutus, down. Stay. Come here and pet him, Mary. Brutus, this is Mary, she's a friend."

Sara noted that Brutus reacted to "friend" by focusing his gaze on Mary.

"Mary, we can't have you develop cynophobia," Sara pressed on. "Those were bad dogs, corrupted dogs. Bella and Brutus aren't like them. Please trust me." Mary didn't respond. "Give me your hand. Here, put yours on mine. Trust me, I won't let you get hurt." Mary grabbed Sara's hand. "Brutus, touch," Sara commanded.

Brutus crawled forward until he touched his nose to Mary's hand. He sniffed the other girl, and then licked the hand. Bella whimpered, apparently eager to meet the new person.

Mary's tension emptied after that. She waved her other hand, "Hi, Brutus. Are you a good guy?"

"Good boy," Sara corrected. Brutus wagged his tail. "I'll hold his muzzle and neck," Sara said and carefully touched the dog, seeing if he would react. Brutus just whined. "Pet him if you want, Mary. He's a good boy."

The other girl reached with a trembling hand and touched Brutus' head. "Good boy, Brutus."

"Let Bella smell the back of your hand," Sara guided. "Bella, it's a friend. They are trained to hunt and guard. Mary, if we meet more corrupt dogs, they can help protect us."

"These are very smart dogs," Kelly remarked. "It's easy to tell they are well-trained too."

"Yeah, Mary can you help? We need to give them water and food slowly, so they can recover. I thought you were the best person to understand them. They were alone in their home when I found them, their daddy is also gone."

Empathizing with the dogs, Mary scratched underneath Brutus' chin. "I think I can do that, yes."

"Good," Sara unslung a bag. "Here's some water bottles, their bowls, and cans of food. Don't give them too much at once."

"I know," Mary nodded and looked away in shame. "I had to do that myself a couple of days ago."

Sara rubbed Mary's back, "You are the best person to understand what they need. Help them get back on their feet, Mary. These puppies here will give the love we invest on them tenfold. I guarantee it."

Mary shuddered and sniffled. She took the bag from Sara as Brutus crawled on the bed to sniff the bag. Kelly watched the exchange with watery eyes.

"I have to go for a while now, I need to talk to Keynes now," Sara started.

"Go, I got this," Mary said with a pep in her voice. "Give me Bella too." Kelly gently dropped Bella on the bed with Mary. The other girl hugged the dogs. "We're going to be good friends, right?" Bella licked Mary's chin.

Sara nudged with her head and Kelly followed her outside the infirmary.

"That was so nice of you," Kelly crooned.

"Was it?" Sara misdirected.

"Right. Mary and you look like sisters." Kelly said and Sara glared. "Fight like siblings too," Kelly added nonchalantly, then decided to shift onto another topic, "So, why give away the Tesla?"

"That bitch of a car is already whining about not having internet. It's the same thing as the iPhones, they are useless without the mothership. Autopilot is already offline, and I believe more and more stuff will lock up as time passes. So, I think the car might be more useful as spare parts if nobody can hack the software."

"Maybe Brett can, but he's got so much on his plate!" Kelly empathetically complained.

"Guy's the real superhero," Sara remarked. "It's easy to be brave when even demonic dogs can't hurt you."

Kelly grabbed her right wrist, "How's your arm?"

"It's fine, the wound will heal in a few days. But I saw a couple more Teslas in Panthersville. Maybe I'll grab those too. The internet of things also means that no internet, no things."

"You'll own nothing and be happy," Kelly quoted some book.

"Agreed, ownership is a rather skittish concept now. Without government, without law, without a working judicial system."

"The POTUS is alive and we're having elections in a month."

"Around thanksgiving?"

"Yeah. The Tuesday after. We'll elect a mayor, judge, sheriff, and a town council."

"Any candidates so far?"

"Not officially, I think. We need to hook up with the people downtown first. And now, with this many survivors, things will get complicated. We hope some of them are lawyers. Or a physician."

They arrived at the meeting room right as Kelly said "physicians."

"Did you find any?" Brett asked, genuinely interested.

Keynes was trying to be nonchalant but Sara saw through it. She knew he was the one who needed to see a doctor the most.

"No, we were talking about how we need to find at least one. Hey, Brett," Sara called. "Wanna try to hack a Tesla?" She waved the fob at him.

"Oh, that's great," Brett reached for the fob but Sara pulled it away. His grin turned into a frown quickly.

"I still need to unload the car. Do you want me to put a bow and ribbon on it?"

"No need," he replied, a bit wary of some shenanigans. "Why are you giving it away? Once we run out of gas, EVs will be the only vehicles working."

"Car is complaining it can't connect to Space Daddy at the Mothership. It has already shut down the autopilot for lack of updates, I think it will shut down more stuff as time goes."

"I don't think that's the case," Keynes intervened. "The autopilot depends on GPS tracking to work. We have no satellites in orbit anymore."

"That kind of makes a lot of sense," Sara agreed. "But no satellites?"

"We had some data on the known satellites orbits in the astronomy and geological science department computers," Brett explained. "We tried to track any with a telescope, found nothing. Not even the ISS. And with the lack of light pollution..."

Sara had to agree. The night sky was the only thing that was gorgeous in this post-apocalyptic world. A sea of stars, the milky way. Especially in the last few days with no moon.

"We believe the meteor shower either damaged or knocked all of them out of orbit," Keynes added. "They probably fell along the rest of the debris."

"Anyway, I won't take the car back. It's yours Brett but you need to do something cool with it."

"I will when I have the time. In a couple of years," Brett bemoaned.

"Sara," Kelly approached. "Why don't you go get your U-Haul and move your things from the Tesla?"

The girl slapped her forehead, "Kelly, you're a genius. Brett, you owe this girl a thrill ride on your new Tesla."

"Deal," Brett gave her a thumbs up.

*

*

Main lobby, Sky Pencil, Panthersville, DeKalb County, Georgia. Tuesday, October 29th, 2019. 17:00.

Sara did as Kelly suggested. She took the U-Haul, loaded the loot from Maloney Smith's house, left the dog carriers in a corner of the school's lobby, and took the truck back to the Sky Pencil. There, she spent a few hours unloading both U-Haul and the refrigerator truck; the latter was almost out of diesel. She took everything to the penthouse and prepared Eric's body for a funeral and drained the hot tub. She was too tired to scrub the gunk but at least it wasn't full of filthy water anymore.

The HVAC did a good job of airing the building but it also meant the smell of dead people was both fainter and spread throughout the whole building but the penthouse, which had its own separate ventilation system. When she checked the main lobby, she found no vermin feasting on the corpses. A small mercy.

"Abby, what's the chance of the bodies rising during Halloween?"

"Why can't we go there and turn it on now, anyway? Wouldn't giving people Classes and Skills would save a lot of lives this Halloween?"

"Do you even have hands?"

"Shoot."

The girl shuddered and felt her stomach churn. "Just for the sake of argument, what does it entail? What do I stand to gain?"

Sara was sickened by the idea. "We reached Core Strength 25 ahead of schedule, right?"

"It's not a dozen or two Skill points that will make the difference. I can go and try to exterminate ghouls at a safe spot near the freeway for the same effect. I'd rather not desecrate people for personal gain if I can."

All she ever wanted was a normal life, with a normal family. Go to school, graduate, get a shitty job at some fast-food because, let's be honest, Sara was not college material. Nor she had the cash or willingness to get a lifelong debt. She was railroaded into this role and was trying her best. But even with a horde of ghouls knocking on her metaphysical door, she had some lines she'd rather not cross.

"I should bury these guys. Or maybe burn them next to the lake." And now she was emotionally invested in the former guests and staff of the Sky Pencil Hotel. She couldn't just do nothing.

Sara shook her head, trying to clear the cobwebs and keep from losing her afternoon snack. An idea passed through her head.

"So, did I pass your test?" She taunted the fairy living inside her.

Weak to praise, the girl mellowed out. Then her brain caught on. "Wait, centuries? What the hell?"

Sara felt dizzy. The idea of human sacrifice, and now extended longevity were a bit too much for her. She had, on more than one occasion, questioned her place in the world.

"What color is life magic?"

"Remarkably similar to some feather I have lying around," Sara remarked.

"Right," Sara fetched her battered work gloves from Eric (now her) bedroom. "I should get to work."

*

*

Lake Stonecrest Promenade, Panthersville, DeKalb County, Georgia. Tuesday, October 29th, 2019. 20:00.

She didn't use Skill Boost but also wasted no time or resources moving the bodies like she did back at Lakeview Apartments. She put on clothes she didn't mind tossing into the pyre when she was done, and set to work.

With all of her body improvements and Skills effects combined, she could carry almost five times the weight as compared to before Armageddon. Using a sturdy impermeable tarp, she started piling the bodies on it heedless of any filth or gunk she could came into contact. She would then pull a cord woven around the eyelets, turn the tarp into a bag, and run with a dozen or more bodies at once. Each corpse weighed way less than a living person; most of the moisture evaporated as Mana cooked them alive, and the rest of the body fluids had already oozed out.

Sara carried the remains and piling them up over a bed of firewood on the cobblestone promenade next to the lake. In two hours, she chopped a few trees that were in the way and collected one hundred, seventy-six bodies from the Sky Pencil, including Eric the Architect and Timmy the Onanist. And several dozen more from neighboring shops and restaurants that were easy to get to.

The pyre was located four blocks south of the Sky Pencil, downwind. She didn't want to blow smoke straight at her building and it gave her reason to check the buildings along these blocks for more bodies. They were piled over a bed of firewood.

She took cans of gasoline salvaged from the cars and doused the pile of half-decomposed and bloated bodies, ten feet tall at its tallest point and as wide as three buses parked in front of one another. Putting some space between herself and the pyre, she set fire to a greased rope and watched as the flames run down the improvised fuse and lit up the whole thing.

No ghosts came to congratulate her this time. She didn't expect one anyway.

The gentle night breeze blew the smoke away from the lake and to the west-southwest, straight toward Forest Park and Clayton State College, though.

"Oh, shit," Sara was screaming inside. She should've thought of that.

The infusion of Mana burned a good portion of the body fluids, and the corpses leaked a lot in these first few days after death, considering they were held in stasis for three weeks. With the gasoline and firewood she added, they burned really well. The smell of burning flesh and the bright light from the fire reflected on the lake surface made Sara flee a couple of blocks north, upwind.

Several minutes later, she felt a massive influx of Mana.

> You gained 4 points of Prowess.

> You gained 4 points of Thermostasis

> You gained 2 points of Fast-Healing.

Ten points?

Dazed by the exhilarating rush of Mana, she sat on the cobblestones, curved over her stomach, desperately clutching at her wits. "Dammit, Abby! At least give me some warning!"

"Dude, we're a team. You know what I'm doing and almost what I'm thinking, but I get no cues to your intentions if you don't talk!" She protested.

"And before I forget, fuck you, Abby," Sara twisted her nose in disgust. "Seriously, stop treating me like a child."