“Uh… do you mind?” asked Sam.

I mumbled something. I was exhausted, and just being there lying down on the table let me realize how tired I really was. My body was fine. It was not a physical exhaustion like when you work out too much. It was more like those moments when you spend the last night before the exam studying for hours and when you finish your mind isn’t working anymore. You are just barely aware of your surroundings and you don’t care.

Of course that meant that I entered the Zombinator and collapsed on top of the first thing I found. The table where Sam was working.

“You are on top of a lot of arrows. Do you feel okay?”

I mumbled something else.

“John and I are trying to work here,” said Sam.

Again I mumbled something that my mind managed to interpret as ‘John’s not here’ and then I found my head being turned around to the opposite way of the table.

“Hi John,” I greeted looking at him.

He smirked working with something in his hands. Suddenly I was being lifted from the table. A hand was pulling my shirt, and in a moment I was thrown into a bed.

“The idiot has finished our perimeter,” said my brother.

“Hey!” I said.

“At least you can still recognize you are the idiot,” smirked Knight. “It seems solid but you should check it out.”

John nodded and walked outside. I groaned stretching in the bed. Sam was working with a crossbow, slowly checking it from different angles and making annotations in a piece of paper. It took only a moment for John to enter back inside.

“Not what I was expecting, but it will do for tonight.” He said nodding and walking back to the table.

“Good,” said my brother sitting along with the rest. “So what have you been doing here?”

Sam manipulated the crossbow easily pushing it against the table and using the pressure to take it apart. He did it with the mastery of somebody that had done it a thousand times over (which he probably had) and organized the pieces over the table.

“Can you give me your spear?” asked Sam.

“Again? What fascination do you have my spear?”

“Heh. Dick joke,” I snorted and they looked at me. “Ignore me, my mind doesn’t work right now.”

Sam placed the spear on the table and waved a flashlight over the tip.

“Do you see those lines that run over the spear?” he asked moving the light along it. “At first I thought it was just damage or the way the items spawn in the world. Then I realized that these lines are completely connected from one part to another, you can follow them and they never broke.”

He moved the spear around showing it better. The lines were almost invisible unless you were very close and they just seemed like scars. Sam moved the light to point at a particular part of the spear and showed it to Knight. It was filled with little circular patterns and sharp lines.

“I think this is the way the spear makes flames. It seems some sort of-” he began to say.

“Enchantment?” asked my brother looking intently at the spear.

“Enchantment!” I yelled being completely ignored.

Sam smiled. “I was thinking more along the lines of a circuit, but yes. A magic circuit. I think these lines move the-” he looked briefly at me, “mana from the ambient and uses it to create the flames your spear uses.”

Knight stood there inspecting the lines in the spear. It made sense, there was an obvious pattern when you saw all the lines but still…

“And you think you can enchant stuff now?” asked my brother.

“I tried and failed miserably,” sighed Sam. “I copied the pattern in these pages trying to decipher it, but no luck. Then I tried copying the pattern directly into a crossbow and didn’t do anything. It doesn’t seem to work.”

Sam sat again fiddling with the pieces of the crossbow. It was not a pretty thing, black and made out of plastic and steel. It was functional that was for sure and for the prize I had paid it better was, but it was not very impressive. With the light close to it you could see the faint lines carved in the surface imitating the lines on the spear. I inspected it quietly.

Crossbow

Weapon.A normal crossbow, there is nothing impressive about it. Is definitely not going to start launching flames. Deal with it.

“What the hell?” I muttered but nobody noticed.

What the fuck? Until now the messages had been kind of normal… Or as normal as magic messages appearing in midair could be, but that was different. They had been talking about upgrading the crossbow and now the system referenced that directly? Okay, don’t worry. That is surely how the system works, it reacts to what is happening and gets snarky with me.

Nothing to worry about. Either that or someone or something was laughing at me. I glanced around quickly. Still not a white rabbit around. Shit. Somehow in some level I realized briefly that this moment meant something important, something transcendental just happened. Something that could shake the foundations of the world and change the meaning of life.

It may or may not be prove of the existence of a being controlling everything in this new world. It may or may not be prove that the system was alive and funny. It may or may not prove that I was important to the world and instrumental in uncovering the hidden truths of our new reality.

Of course it was at that moment of absolute thought when I was sure I was the chosen one that a part of my mind, a part that curiously had the voice of Batman, told me to shut up and listen to the fucking conversation that my brother and Sam were having. And I listened to that part of me because it was Batman.

I would love to tell you that I only hear voices in my head when I’m exhausted and in the brink of passing out but…

“Maybe the enchantment only works with something like a spear and not a crossbow. Have you tried-?” started to ask Knight.

Sam moved out of the table and scrambled a few cabinets looking for something. For a moment he seemed lost until he took a large and straight branch out of one and walked back. The branch had a sharpened point like a makeshift spear and the carved pattern was clearly seen.

“Yeah. I tried.” He said.

“Oh.” Said my brother staring at the big carved branch. “Well, do you have more ideas?”

Sam laughed. “A lot of them, too much of them actually, and too little ways of proving any of it. Maybe you need magic in the first place to do this. Maybe only the system can do it. Maybe I need a special material that conducts magic to make the circuits, like copper to conduct electricity. I hope is that last one because that I can make something about it but…”

He sighed worried but I smiled. That was the Sam I remembered.

“Didn’t you already make the arrow? Because I think that proves it can be done,” said Knight.

He put the makeshift weapon back in the cabinet and snorted.

“No, that was nothing like this. There was a book, one of those Adam saved, that showed how to coat arrows with poison. It took me a few tries but I found a way to make something similar with the horn. It’s nothing that difficult as this circuit,” said Sam. “The horn is not that strong for something that is supposedly made of bone. It was easy to break it or cut it into-”

That was the dramatic pause that the genius of the movie has the moment he figures out how everything works. It’s one of those things you don’t expect to see happening in reality but was frequent with Sam. I was expecting the system to shine a light bulb above his head at any moment but fortunately nothing like that happened.

Instead Sam got to work taking an arrow and giving it to John.

“Can you take the arrowhead without breaking the arrow?” he asked.

John nodded, confusion creeping from him. He deftly removed it without a problem leaving the shaft of the arrow completely fine. Sam for his part took a horn and broke it into pieces. His hands working quickly with a knife carving a piece out of it.

“Wait, what are you doing?” asked my brother.

Sam didn’t answer he just kept working. If somebody had tried to shake him and make him react he wouldn’t have noticed, completely lost in the puzzle he was trying to work out. It took a moment before the shape of an arrowhead was apparent to everyone and a moment more before it was separated from the rest of the horn. It was a crude work and Sam took a few more minutes under the interested eye of the group slowly sharpening it with the knife. It wasn’t perfect, but by the end it had a normal shape.

To finish it Sam took the shaft of the arrow, took something, a tool I don’t know the name of and I probably bought with the rest of it not knowing it was going to have an unexpected use, and carved a little hole on the arrowhead the size of the shaft. After that the pieces were joined together with some difficulty. The arrowhead didn’t fit perfectly but Sam smashed a tiny nail that didn’t manage to pass through all the arrow fixing the pieces in place.

Black arrow

Normal quality.Crafted by a novice this arrow is a crude work made from a brittle material. Nonetheless the deep connection with the void makes this arrow useful in its own way.+5% damage to magical creatures.

+30% possibility to incapacitate the enemy.

“I don’t know how good this is,” started saying Sam showing the arrow. “It’s not as strong as steel and I can cut it so It’s not going to last as long. I don’t think I can sharpen it much more without making it worse and… Well, honestly I think it should have a bigger effect than the other arrows I modified, but I don’t know how it the magic works so…”

“It does,” I interrupted, everyone looking at me. “It has more chance of incapacitate and makes more damage to magical creatures.”

Sam nodded and smiled leaving the arrow over the table. He sighed loudly.

“Well, that is something that works at least.” He said. “Now I can help you with your problem John.”

He moved over the other part of the table and sat close to John.

“You are also trying to experiment with magic shit?” asked Knight getting closer. “Wait, is that-?”

John lifted the heavy black fur of a chaos wolf. It was strange looking at it. Even at day with plenty of light around the fur seemed to… eat light. It was slightly darker around it, just a little, but it seemed like if it was trying to hide. That was another reason not to go out at night. You couldn’t see the wolves at night.

“John told me he had experience working with leather tanning and things like that in his last job as a postman,” said Sam smiling at me. “Apparently he delivered the mail in a country where people didn’t have dogs as pets but instead had lions so it come in handy from time to time.”

John chuckled. “In all seriousness, yes I’ve been trying to make something out of this. This fur is very good to work with. It’s a bit heavy but if we could make a suit or a cloak out of it… It would be almost impossible to pick someone at night with it. A perfect camouflage. The only problem is that we don’t have many tools to work with.”

“Wait!” I yelled coming back to life. “You are trying to make an invisibility cloak?!”

John looked at me and nodded slowly.

“Marry me. I call dibs on the first one!” I said and then my brain shut off again.

They stared at me for a second and went back to work.

“Don’t you have to treat the hide or something before working with it?” asked my brother.

“Normally yes, but we worked out a way of doing that without too much work,” answered John and then pointed at Sam. “Actually Sam did and it was brilliant. You see, after taking the skin apart of everything else it needs to dry. In normal circumstances without the proper material the skin will grow bacteria and rot. We don’t have those materials but we have a way of taking the bacteria from the skin directly.”

Both Sam and John smiled, obvious pride flowing from them. Knight and I were confused.

“I don’t get it,” said my brother.

“The inventory!” yelled Sam. “It only lets the skin enter while leaving the bacteria behind so we let it dry outside for a moment and we put it back inside before the bacteria causes any damages until the process is over.”

“That… is… so cool,” said Knight dumbfounded.

John smiled. “Yes now the only problem is-”

I shut off their voices and smiled. They were… No. We were adapting. We were not just working with what we had before the change, we were adding the things that these new world was giving us. Looking for new applications and ways of working. That was good. Unfortunately it was going to be necessary too if we wanted to survive.

The last weeks had been ‘easy’ to say something. We had some fights with monsters but nothing as big as those first days. We were not relaxed by any stretch of the imagination but we had some breathing space. Something told me that was going to change sooner or later. Every night more monsters were spawning and slowly the world was filling up with those things. The days were going to turn bad soon if nothing changed.

I watched them work for the next hours. All of them talking and trying to come with ways to make better equipment, about abilities, about the future… And I wondered what would happen in the future. We had been surviving by sheer luck, my bullshit abilities acting at the perfect moment and nothing more. If it wasn’t for my little time travel experience I had no doubt only John would be alive now.

John was the only one that had an inkling of survival experience. Despite the mystery of his ‘job’ I knew if not for him someone would be dead by now. He had proved himself despite being ‘new’ with us. John had knowledge we didn’t and had been using it to help us all the time, like with the shooting practice or knowing how to use a radio for more than changing from a music channel to another. John had been very useful.

John-

I got up with a jump suddenly alerting everyone.

I talked stammering with the words “John, I… I’m sorry. I forgot to ask. I didn’t… It’s just that Sam and we… We don’t have any family left and…” I said watching as John got very tense. “I forgot to ask. I assumed you didn’t have anyone because we don’t and… I’m sorry.”

The room went silent. Sam and Knight looked at John cold and nervous. They had forgotten too. Nobody moved or said anything for a minute waiting for John to speak.

“I have a niece,” he said finally going back to the wolf fur and not looking at anyone. “But unless we can find a boat to cross the ocean I doubt I can do anything for her.”

I got up and walked to him. Mixed emotions were flowing from him, fear and rage with everything else in between. I didn’t really understood what he was feeling.

“I understand and I know I can’t promise anything but… I want you to know that during these weeks you saved our lives several times and if there is a possibility to…” I tried to say. “I will help you.”

He smiled. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I know and we are not in a position to do anything about people in another continent, but I want you to know that I’ll help.” I said smiling.

The flow of emotions diminished letting the just a sensation of gratefulness grow.

“I… believe you.”

I opened my voice to say something else when the howl of a wolf broke the silence. Followed by a lot more howls. I jumped to the door walking outside and everyone went after me. They forgot their projects lying on the table and walked with me. The howls repeated faster and angrier.

“They sound close by, a lot of them. Probably a pack and a big one,” said John looking at the sky. “Is still soon. We should check and try to thin them down before the night. No offense, but I don’t want to test your wall against a whole pack of wolves.”

I nodded casting the usual spells over them with both hands. It took a few minutes but we walked outside. The wall opened for me just enough to let us pass one by one and we got out following the howls. There was a battle out there. Who the wolves were fighting I didn’t know but it was clear by the constant howls they were fighting. I didn’t hear shooting but my mind imagined it was humans. I wanted to think there was someone else out there alive and unconsciously I began to walk faster.

It didn’t matter at the end. When we got there the howls had stopped and there were no humans only wolves, dead wolves. Corpses and pieces of wolves smeared along the grass, they had fought between themselves. A group of corpses were lying in a circle around the bodies of the two biggest wolves I had seen. It was awful to see, there bodies literally torn to pieces.

And just in the middle of everything, surrounded by the bodies of the two big wolves there was a last wolf alive. A little red wolf.

Flame wolf Lv. 1The spawn of chaos wolves can be very diverse but the flame wolves are with difference the most rare and powerful of all. Since when they grow they can easily dominate every other type of wolf they are usually killed before they have the opportunity.

It was still moving, a tiny thing that looked so pitiful. It just stood there moaning weakly and nudging with his head the body of the big wolf. Trying to make it react, trying to make it come back.

Sam reacted to the movement aiming his crossbow but John stopped him and looked at me. I ignored them walking slowly towards the wolf. It saw me and tried to howl at me, to make me go away but I didn’t. It was hurt and bleeding and dying.

I charged the seed and touched the wolf slightly letting the spell heal it. He buffed for the contact but noticed quickly what was happening. His wounds healed. He looked at me just for a second as in confusion or pain or sorrow and then ran into the wild.

I walked back forgetting about that and everything else. We went back to the Zombinator in silence and that night I couldn’t eat anything. Advertisement Previous

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