Thanks for all the comments, they help. I'm still coping with some things, but I'll try to update as much as I can.

This chapter is mostly for those that want to improvements in status and abilities as well as well as introducing the new camp of survivors.

I hope you enjoy this, and sorry for any problem with the tables because I'm still a bit lost with them after the update.

It was already dark when we finished discussing with Amelia and the Spanish inquisition. Once the quest appeared we were able to talk like real people and concluded we weren’t lying bastards that were secretly planning to practice cannibalism.

The soldiers hadn’t stopped staring nonetheless. John had tried to talk to them with his, I’m not a soldier but I know how to talk to them, and that had help to break the ice. Some of them had even recognized him from the camp.

All in all it had become the weirdest and busiest day of our life.

There was a lesson to be learned from skipping eight days of your life in a magical tower. We couldn’t sleep.

We have moved to the second floor of the mall and it was filled with people. It was clearly where they lived and slept. Stores were used as improvised bedrooms. There were more survivors than what the notes in the map stated, closer to three hundreds than anything else. They were bloodied and scared, and some of them couldn’t sleep either.

It made and strange picture, people that didn’t have anything left, starved, and cold sleeping in expensive furniture. They had furniture to spare after all. The camp certainly didn’t look like a place filled with ‘evil’ people as I was afraid. Kids ran around still not wanting to go to sleep, and looking at us with a hint of curiosity and fear. Fathers and mothers tried to rein them without much luck.

They were survivors, but they weren’t bad people. Movies about the zombie apocalypse had given me the impression that everyone out there was going to be a murderous asshole, but that didn’t seem to be true. This place, this people were good. People that deserved to be helped if we could.

The real problem was the cold. Although some of the lights were on, pointing that they still had some source of electricity, they couldn’t afford to turn on the heaters. The cold was creeping inside the building, and that could end badly.

So, after we were forcefully accepted in the group thanks to the quest prompt (not without certain wariness coming from the soldiers) we took a corner of the second floor to spend the night.

But, we couldn’t sleep.

“Is anybody here thinking this is going a bit too fast?” asked Knight.

“What is going to fast? The quest, the survivors, the bandits, the tower?” I asked smiling. “Please choose four.”

He rolled his eyes and turned shaking from the cold. “You know what I’m talking about. What do you think about this people?”

I exchanged looks with everyone.

“I think they are good. I recognized some soldiers from the last camp, and some other people in this floor too. They had to be traveling together since them. That proves they are capable, and with so many kids I doubt they go abandoning people.” John said.

“Plus with the monsters evolving and getting stronger a bigger group would come in handy. We could do worse than this people,” said Sam pointing at two kids playing around. “And if they turn out to be psychopathic cannibals that eat their people when they are low on food… Well I think you would know with your Jedi powers already.”

“Also, between your powers and our abilities I think we can run if things get bad,” finished John.

I glanced at my brother. He was thinking, but for what I could feel he was already convinced.

I sighed. “You have a point, and we have a quest. I don’t really know what to think of the gods at all, but they haven’t tried to kill us yet, and the exp would be useful regardless. Where do we be begin?”

“We begin with improving ourselves.”

John dropped all the books we got from the tower and Knight followed. I glanced around quickly. There was nobody looking, and from our position it would be hard to spot the books.

I had put this behind for too long, but it was time.

“Okay,” I said pausing and looking at everyone. “Before we go into the books we all have points to spend, right?”

Silent nods came from everyone.

“I… To be honest I still think we should leave some spare points in case we need them in an emergency. If we are trapped and we need more strength, or more speed… Something like that. But with how quickly the monsters are improving I don’t think we can that that into consideration anymore,” I continued. “In any case you should have realized by now that no matter how much stats points we have the monsters are going to own us completely. Things like abilities and weapons are what are going to keep us alive here.”

“Having the power to command plants is more useful than being able to jump over a building. We get it,” growled Knight.

“Not only that,” added Sam waving his book on magic circuits. “No matter how stronger we or the monsters are a shot to the head still kills everyone.”

“Until the zombies start to outrun bullets, yes,” said Knight.

“Exactly, now. We get some abilities when we reach fifty and hundred points in something, so we should try to improve to that point and leave some points to spare just in case.”

“You should consider something else too,” spoke John looking intently at everyone. “When I took my class I got a lot of dexterity and noticed something. It changed my body, made it leaner.”

I stared at him trying to remember. “You were more buff the first days, true. What do you think?”

“I think dexterity makes the muscles more efficient, less heavy. That improves the speed and everything else while strength makes your muscles stronger, but heavier. That may be a problem if you improve too much of one and not enough the other.”

It made sense in some way. If you had a hundred points in strength and none in dexterity you could potentially be too heavy to actually move. That of course opened another can of worms with the rest of stats. I hadn’t necessarily noticed problems with mine, but it was something to think of and experiment with when we had the time and points.

“That’s probably the sensitive thing to do. Not that we have so much points to spare, but we should try to not go completely into one stat.” I said.

It wasn’t a very difficult decision, but it did took some time.

My brother could barely improve one of his stats, and he did with Strength. It wasn’t much but his body visibly changed becoming thicker.

NameKnightClassNoneRaceHumanLevel7Physical AttributesMental AttributesSTR:50INT:33DEX:70WIS:56VIT:60CHA:69Luck0

Sam was still trying to choose what stats would be best for him. It was obviously by how he nursed his book in enchanting that he wanted to keep that up. And he did so improving his intelligence, but also choosing to improve his strength and vitality.

NameSamClassNoneRaceHumanLevel5Physical AttributesMental AttributesSTR:50INT:50DEX:58WIS:77VIT:50CHA:58Luck0

John was a monster, and with his class and points he improved both strength and dexterity to a hundred points. And it was… scary. His body changed a lot more than before, both adding making his muscles bigger and leaner at the same time. The difference was obvious to anyone looking, but at the end he still looked more or less the same.

He could probably punch a wall to the ground but…

NameJohnClassNoneRaceHumanLevel8Physical AttributesMental AttributesSTR:100INT:46DEX:100WIS:59VIT:55CHA:28Luck5

I couldn’t improve in anything worth it.

Then it was time for our abilities. They had received some useful abilities.

Knight.

Coordinated strength. An ability born from the careful usage of strength. All attacks are measure to cause as much damage as possible.

Passive ability.

+10% Damage from any attack. +10% Increase in the effectiveness of STR skills.

Sam

Basic Mana perception. Basic Mana perception. To work with magic without touching it directly. Passive ability. Iron body. Your body is protected from most harm.

Passive ability.

Your body is protected from most harm. -10% damage received from attacks. +0% chance to not receive damage from an attack.

Hands of the engineer. Repairing and building machines has increased your skill to find weak points.

Passive ability.

+5% to cause special damage to the enemy.

John

Natural Steps. Natural Steps. As a ranger the closeness to nature helps you improve your movements, guiding your steps in the rhythm of the natural world.

Passive ability.

+20% accuracy. +20% evasion. +15% to hide in the forest.

Strength of Heroes. Ability acquired after surpassing the normal limits of your race.

Passive ability.

+25% Increased damage from any attack. +20 Increased Inventory space. +5% chance of stuning with an attack.

“Wait, you got more inventory space? I suppose it makes sense that with more strength you can carry more, but…” I said looking at the books.

John coughed.

“Moving on.”

There weren’t that many books all things said. Not that much time to find everything that I wanted. Most of the books were about magic or had some component that required magic to be used. Some were fairly straightforward in that regard, but others…

The seven flame stances of the spear. The seven flame stances of the spear. This book contains the condensed knowledge of the Flame Knights. From the basic usage of the spear to the most complex and exoteric trainings devised by the group. Req. 50STR 50DEX

“Aha! Knight I present to you the best book I could find for you.” I said taking a big golden book from the mountain. I cleared my throat dramatically and stood. “This. Is. The seven spear stands of the golden fiery sacred book of the sacred phoenix of the holy lotus fire of everlasting brilliance of the morning of the burning dragon’s roar of doom.”

I gave the book to him. Knight looked at my directly for a full minute without blinking. I nodded nervously. The book glowed for a second and then stopped.

“Thanks for adding more drama to the moment Adam. We needed it,” said Knight.

I smiled. “You are welcome.”

“You do realize that now I know how to fight with a spear and I can beat you in several hundred ways, right?”

“And you blew the moment. NEXT!” I said going through the rest of the books.

“What did you actually got from the library?” asked John moving closer and inspecting the books.

“Not that much, and we can only use one a day if we don’t want to go crazy,” I answered. “And most you can’t use until you get magic.”

Quickly I organized the few books everyone could use.

Book of Identification. Book of Identification. Although the power of the system ability ‘inspect’ cannot be copied, the mages of many eras worked together to compile all basic information of the world and created and ability to identify it. Information dependent on the user’s knowledge. Book of threat detection. A basic ability for survival. With this ability you can sense the movements of anyone that has ill intentions against you. Book of the four winds. Basic footwork skill that can be learned by everyone. Guided by the whispers of the wind, speed and evasion is highly increased. It is best used in pair with a melee fighting skill. Req: 50DEX Pathfinder. Through the greatest efforts of seers and luck-benders a skill was born to read beyond the chances. This ability gives you to create a map and find quest objectives. Req: 50WIS Survival of the fittest. With great efforts of will it is possible to increase the rate at which your stamina recuperates in exchange for the rate at which your wounds heal or vice versa for a moment of time. Req: 50VIT Soul familiar. Soul familiar. Permanently binds the soul of a mortal and animal or monster. With it, both gain greater understating of each other as well of the use their skills, and status points. WARNING. The death of one will kill both. It can only be used once. Req: 50CHA 50INT

There were more, but for the most part it was things that either required magic or needed more status points that we could get soon.

“This is amazing,” gaped Knight.

“Yes...” said Sam taking Identification directly.

I took it from his hands quickly. “Before we start making decisions, you should remember we are going to be in danger soon, and we should choose what skills to learn with a bit more care.”

Sam scoffed.

“He is right,” nodded John. “We have a mission to complete, and we need a plan.”

“That and we have to make sure the people here doesn’t realize you are completely crazy and kill you,” said Knight.

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not crazy. I have an interesting and different outlook of life.”

Knight just went up and punched me in the arm with almost enough strength to break it.

“What were you thinking going alone inside the mall? They could have killed you!” expressed my brother coldly.

“I…”

But I stopped unable to continue. He was kind of right, I was acting stupid. I had been doing it since the beginning. But I couldn’t just stop. Stop would mean to accept all the crazy shit that was happening.

“That,” started John slowly looking directly at me, “is something we can’t deal with tonight. Now we have to take care of other things.”

“Not if my brother is going to keep pulling crazy stunts like that!“ yelled Knight

WAAAAAAAAAAA.

The cry of a baby resounded in the mall like a wakeup call. We turned around. People started to move in their rooms getting up, moving around. In a moment the entire floor was filled with people talking quietly.

It was a weird scene. It was late, very late, and people were waking up. Behind all the noise I could hear the faint sounds of alarm clocks going on at the same time. It was intended and I exchanged a look with my group.

They didn’t even notice we were there, too busy in their own world preparing for something.

It’s not like we hadn’t developed some strange behaviors since all of this started. Little things to keep ourselves sane, but… This was weird even by my standards.

“Okay, what…?” I said.

Someone noticed we were there and walked closer. I paled, turned around but luckily John had already hid all the books.

“Are you new?” asked a woman.

I turned smiling. “Yes, sure, we just got a… here a few hours ago.”

The woman smiled. “We are preparing for the night. There is still time, but you-”

“MOMMY!”

“What?”

The woman sighed and turned. Two children were fighting over a small toy, trying to take out of the hands of the other. Yells and whines all around and suddenly we were alone again as the mother took the children back inside one of the stores.

I stood there and watched as people kept moving, living, fighting. They wore filthy and ragged clothes. They were skinny and weak, shivering in the dark. They were tired, and sad. They had lost people. I could feel all their emotions like a sea rising around me. Beaten but not broken, and I realized one simple truth. They were right, most of the time I acted like an idiot.

But no more.

“Sorry, Knight.” I said slowly. “I’ll try another way next time. Something… not crazy, but we have something to do here.”

I pointed at all the people around.

“We are four people Adam,” sighed Knight. “Even with all the bullshit powers we are only four, and we don’t even know how many bandits there are.”

I sat again opening the quest again to see all the objectives.

“We have a week according to the quest,” I said looking at them.

“I wouldn’t trust that too much,” said Sam.

John sighed. “Perhaps, but we leaved their leader in the middle of a forest. That has to give us some time.”

“Let’s focus in the important parts first,” I stopped them. “This people have symptoms of starvations already. Food should be our first problem. You think you can help them with that, John?”

John watched the people, mentally calculating.

“If the soldiers help me perhaps,” he said. “With luck we could get enough at least for a while.”

“Good, once the people here are good we can think about the rest,” I said nodding. “I just hope the cold doesn’t get worst.”

Good luck with that.

Great. I sighed while my friends looked at me.

“I think I can help with that, if we can get some copper wire it would be easy to rig something,” said Sam fiddling with his book.

That was probably for the best considering how things were around here. Looking around I doubted they could heat the room any other way.

“Do you think you can make weapons too? Having a few weapons like Knight’s spear could be very useful in a fight.” I asked. “If we can replicate things like that it would be-”

“Hey! I’ve got the book a few hours ago. It’s going to take some time before I’m making magical nukes and take control over the world,” snapped Sam smiling. “But, yes. I think I can get magical weapons with the right materials.”

My mouth twitched.

“Fine, let’s concentrate in keeping people alive for now, but I’m going to make a list of things I want,” I said. “It begins with light sabers, and magical iron man armors.”

Sam was going to answer when the people began to move. Amelia entered the floor from the one below followed by a group of soldiers. The floor filled with people talking and moving. I looked at my friends briefly and got closer.

Amelia saw me but ignored me talking with somebody else.

They were preparing to do something. That much was clear by their movements, but whatever it was it wasn’t good. I could feel their emotions shifting to fear and determination. That wasn’t good.

I squeezed between the mass of people that was between me and Amelia. Someone shifted making me lose between the group an I started the panic. It didn’t matter, suddenly I was in front of Amelia.

I staggered. “Uh…”

“Doctor,” she nodded.

She and his companion looked at me.

“You know after our conversation before I believed the cannibal party was on Mondays,” I said quickly. “Was I wrong or…?”

They looked at each other.

“It’s Monday,” she said.

I blinked. “Huh, look at that. That’s what happens when you time travel too many times. And I believe this is the moment you say that was a joke and tell me what the hell is happening before I run and shot people.”

Someone snickered and she rolled her eyes.

“It’s almost time for the rain,” she said walking past.

I noticed all the people were moving to the stairs going up the building. The soldiers organized them and gave weapons as they walked.

“The rain?” I moved following here.

She stared at me. “The black rain. You know the one that spawns monsters every night?”

“Yes, but why are we…?”

“Just follow the line like the rest, and try not to die,” she said walking past everybody.

I stopped there as the people kept moving. I didn’t really get what was happening but it was probably best to just go and see it. I pointed to my group and we followed up.

The third floor of the mall was dark. No one had bothered to illuminate it, but I could see the outlines of hundreds of shelves and things stashed in the floor. They were keeping the floor filled with all the spare things in the mall.

We kept moving up until we got the ceiling. A flat black surface with the purple sky. The people were joining in groups back to back, armed and ready. I was getting vibes of an old move that ended very badly. Knight touched my arm stopping me and giving me a look.

I shrugged and moved to Amelia.

“Excuse me, but what the hell is happening here?”

She barely blinked. “When the monsters spawn we kill them before they can get dangerous. Get in a group and don’t hurt other people.”

“Monsters?” I asked.

She just pointed at the sky.

The look of my friends was the only thing telling me I wasn’t completely crazy. In all our nights out there, the monsters had never spawn close enough to see them. It didn’t make any sense. They just didn’t…

My eyes widened as the rain started to fall.

“The monsters don’t spawn near us,” I said slowly.

“What?!” asked Amelia behind me.

That was it. I barely remembered the first night at the camp. The rain fell and the monsters spawned closer to people, but not us. Never in all our days of travel had they appeared close enough to hurt us or hurt them for that matter, but in the camp they had appeared around the people.

“That’s how lucks works,” I smiled looking at Knight. “The system can’t just control people, but it can spawn monsters if they have bad luck. Is… Like an infamy system. Be good and you get loot, be bad…”

“And a zombie eats your face…” Sam’s eyes widened turning around to see.

“A legal system that works quickly. That’s new,” said Knight.

The rain fell and no monster spawned over the ceiling. The survivors looked around expecting something to appear at any moment, but nothing came.

“That’s actually going to be bad for us, considering what we have to do,” I sighed.

John snapped his head back. “The bandits, if we killed them we lose luck. Yes, that could make things difficult.”

“That’s okay. I didn’t want to kill anybody anyway. See? Everything has a bright side I guess,” I smiled.

Finally the rain stopped, and the people waited in silence for a moment. Amelia just looked around. Soldiers and people started to move looking at me. They had heard our conversation, and again I started to feel the creepy vibes.

“What the hell just happened?” asked Amelia moving closer.

“Do you want the short or the long explanation?” I asked.

She glared.