Rose left Leah and Jon to talk to Lily and her family outside and went inside. As soon as she entered the keep, she got a Prompt telling her she could access the settlement interface. Focusing, it popped up in front of her,

Settlement Interface Level 1 Name: Scarborough Population Buildings

- Basic keep

- Basic waterwell

Defences Inner bailer wall- needs repair Building upgrades Defence upgrades

Not much information that’s for sure, focusing again she selected the building upgrades and a new menu popped up,

Building Upgrades Available upgardes

- Basic Store house

- Basic cabin

- Basic woodwork shop

Rose thought to herself that everything was, well, basic. Checking out the defence menu she saw that it was pretty much the same, only two upgrades available and Jon was already working on one, which was the inner bailey wall and the other was just a spike trap of the outer side of the wall. Switching back to the building upgrade menu, Rose tried selecting the woodwork shop, thinking they needed a door for the keep most of all as they had enough room in the keep for them all and all the stores they needed for now. As she mentally selected the woodwork shop, a new menu popped up asking her to put someone in charge of construction. She chose Jon purely for the fact he was the one who fixed the keep so it made the most sense.

Within seconds of Rose selecting his name, Jon walked into the keep,

“ I got a prompt saying I had a new construction project, somehow I know what needs to be done to complete it but I’d like to know where it came from."

“Turns out this settlement interface should be useful then, I selected you to be in charge of constructing a woodwork shop, it’s not the only thing on the list but it makes the most sense, at least for right now it does.” Rose answered.

“ I should be able to follow the blueprints that that prompt gave me but I will need materials, I think I can use wood or stone so I might have a play with my affinity and see if I can come up with a way to make stone blocks, then all I would need to do is make some mortar, leave it with me, I’ll see what I can do.”

And with that, Jon headed back out of the keep, muttering to himself about what he needed to do.

Rose decided it was about time to head out and get some scavenging done, they needed more food supplies and beds, then they would complete the first quest she had gotten, hopefully something good would come of it. Heading back outside she went to speak to Leah and Lily.

Finding them sat on the grass watching the children play with Casara, Rose sat down next to them and invited Lily to join her, Jon and Liam on a scavenging trip, thinking that it would be a good way for them to get to know each other. Lily agreed but suggested they take James with them too, as he had done some fighting before they joined up with them. Rose agreed and went to get Jon and Liam ready.

Once they had all grabbed a weapon they headed off, it was still fairly early in the morning so they should be able to get a few trips in before lunch. The first few trips to the store went well, so they decided to head to a bed store and get them all a decent bed, they would have to make a separate trip for mattresses but it would be worth it once they had finished. They had cleared the food store each time they had gone in to make sure nothing had moved in while they were transporting stuff back to the keep, so they had gotten more used to each other and were working almost as a team as they slowly made their way into the bed shop. Immediately they could see that a lot of somethings had made the store their home, the show beds were trashed and the bedding was ripped and covered in blood and other bodily fluids that Rose didn’t want to examine any closer. Moving further into the store, a pungent stench began invading their nostril, it smelled of decaying food and excrement, Liam was the first to spot it, a small, green humanoid form trying and failing to hide. Rose focused on it and was rewarded with a level and a name,

Goblin Level 3

Jon then pointed out another one, hidden in a different place before goblins jumped out from everywhere and began attacking. Rose had no time to think about the others as one jumped, screaming at her. Thinking quickly she used her heatwave to give herself some room and readied her machete, she didn’t have enough Essence to only use her fire abilities so she was going to have to get dirty. As she was thinking about her fire abilities, her machete caught fire and she almost dropped it before realising she could control the flames and they did not hurt her, a prompt appeared and she frantically pushed it away and hacked with the machete as the goblin reached her again. Somehow she got a lucky hit and practically cleaved the goblins head in two, turns out goblins have weak skulls, who knew. Feeling confident with her success, she turned round just to find another goblin coming straight for her. After that it was a bit of a blur, goblins appeared in front of Rose, she killed them, that all she could really remember when it was over.

As Rose was having her battle, the others were fighting too, Lily and Jon were both using stone to attack with, Lily throwing stone projectiles that she was forming from the floor and Jon crushing any that got close with his walls. Liam and James were dancing around taking out goblins left, right and centre. Liam Zapped his way around and James just bashed goblins skulls in. Each had their own method for dealing with these pests and it got the job done. Before long, they were standing in a shop that was painted red with blood, bits and limbs of goblins lay around them like a tornado had been through and only tore the goblins apart.

They all stood catching their breath for a minute, before Jon spoke up,

“It’s a good job we want flat packed beds, I don’t think anyone would be happy with these ones.”

They all laughed, more in shock of the destruction they had caused than Jon trying to be funny.

“We still need to get those beds and get home, I for one want to get cleaned up as soon as possible, we are all filthy.” Rose said.

Looking around, it wasn’t too hard to find the stockroom and the beds they wanted, they found single beds for everyone but Lily and Emma, they were nice enough to pick up a double bed for them.

Once all the beds were loaded, they headed back to the keep. Along the way, Rose checked out her character sheet to see what had changed,

Name: Rose Conehey Level 4 Health Essence Main attributes: Exp: 10/500 145 185 Strength 10 Intelligence 17 Wisdom 13 Constitution 9 Luck 15 Skills

Identify- shows target name and level up to ten levels above your own. 0.5% to next level

Essence manipulation- Allows greater control over Essence pathways: Level 2

One-handed blade – Level 2 95% to next Level

Skinning- User can barely skin an animal, but has more chance of success the higher the skill gets. Level 1 32% to next Level

Abilites

Heatwave- uses 10 E per successful cast, does minor burning damage to target. lvl 1 1% to next level.

- Heat blast: overpowered Heatwave using all remaining E for twice as much power.

Night light – creates a small flame in the palm of your hand, useful for starting fires and not much else. Drains E at negligible rate.

Fire Shot- Condensed essence in the form of a flame projectile fires from above the palm 5 meter range Level 1 0.5%

Fire blade- Sets any blade on fire, adds burning damage to attacks. Uses 1 E per 5 seconds active.

Level 1 2%

Affinities Fire Novice Level 2: 30% to next Level Blessings Gaia's Blessing Your dedication to your daughter has led to Gaia awakening your fire affinity.

She had leveled up, which was nice and gotten more attribute points, which was also pretty cool, her health and Essence were beginning to get somewhere, although she still had no idea how the health system worked, in fact, she had no clue on how most of the interface worked, hopefully she would be able to see Gaia again soon and get some answers. In addition to the level up, she had gained a new ability called Fire sword, this would be very useful in future fights.

After dropping the beds off, they cleaned up using the well before heading back to the store and grabbed enough mattresses for all the beds, plus all the bedding they could need. They also stopped in a clothes store and stuffed their back packs full of clothes for everyone. Once this was done, all that was left for the day was to build the beds and hopefully complete that quest that Rose had gotten from Gaia.

Whilst Jon, Liam, James and Emma worked to put the beds up, Rose and Lily went to hunt some rabbits, Leah had requested fresh meat for dinner and all the pre-packaged stuff at the shop had gone mouldy already so rabbits were the next best thing.

They wandered out to the field and found a spot to lie in wait. After about ten minutes of waiting around, Rose giggled quietly, Lily turned to her and whispered,

“ What’s so funny?”

“Be qwiet, be vewy qwiet, we’re hunting Wabbits” Rose whispered back.

Lily just rolled her eyes and went back to watching for rabbits, ignoring Rose’s attempt at humour.

Before long, a rabbit came hoping out in front of them, its little nose twitching as it snuffled the ground looking for a tasty leaf to nibble on. Before Rose could get a shot off, Lily had let fly with an expertly aimed Stone spike, straight through the rabbits eye. Rose looked at Lily questioningly and Lily explained that she had competed in archery competitions and had been very good, she was hoping to find decent bow for her to use as a back up for when she ran out of Essence. It didn’t take long to get a fair few rabbits for the pot, the field was teeming with them, luckily they didn’t set of the hoard of rabbits like Liam did last time.

They took their catch back to Leah, who point blank refused to deal with the corpses until they had been skinned and cleaned up, so Rose and Lily spent some time trying to work out how to skin a rabbit, they didn’t need the skin for anything as they had plenty of clothing so they just butchered it. By the time they had gotten through all the rabbits, Lily had gained the skinning skill, neither of them thought it would be much use for what it was supposed to before but it might help them in butchering the animal better and so getting better cuts of meat out of it. Once the rabbits were all cut up and ready to go, Leah swapped duties with Rose and Lily, Leah went to cook dinner and the other two worked on the last few beds that needed putting together.

Thanks to the size of the keep, there was plenty of room for all the beds and for everyone to essentially have their own room. Obviously Lily and Emma were sharing a room and Emily and Alexia had asked if they could share a room too, saying they felt more comfortable having someone else in the room with them. Everyone else picked a little room for themselves and got their beds set up and ready for the night. After everyone’s beds were set up, they gathered in the main room for dinner.

Over dinner, Leah showed everyone the Health potion she had managed to make out of the Blooming Rosewart flower she had found, it wasn’t very potent and the description only said it would hasten the healing of minor wounds, but it would be invaluable when someone got injured and hopefully Leah could level up her new Alchemy skill she should be able to make more potent potions. Just the fact that she could make potions opened up so any new possibilities Rose couldn’t think of them all at once.

Jon then explained he had solved the issue of needing materials from building, he was able to use his reshape stone skill to essentially pull stone bricks out of the ground or from other buildings, as long as they could transport it back to the keep, he could build anything rose wanted him to build, he even figured out that he could replace the mortar between bricks by joining the stone blocks together once they were where they needed to be, it should result in some very strong buildings. Jon also said that with his new knowledge he should be able to get the inner bailey wall completely fixed and possibly better than it was before within the next few days, as long as he didn’t have to go out scavenging that was.

Rose put the idea out that they stick close to home, get to know each other better for a few days and work on their various skills and abilities. They had managed to get enough dried and canned food to last them a couple of months, that wasn’t even counting the rabbits that they had hunted today or any other meat they might be able to hunt, so there was no worry over food, the only thing left to complete on Rose’s Quest was the wall, and Jon thought that would be done soon so they may as well work together as a group to being making this place a home. They needed to sort out some kind of farming for fresh vegetables and fruit if they could find seeds and herbs too, they didn’t want boring food after all.

In the end they all agreed with Rose and decided to spend the next few days working on the keep, hopefully some more people would see the signs of life at the keep and make their way to them to join up and help.

When it started to get dark Jon used his skill to block the entrance to the keep off and they all headed to their separate rooms. Rose and Leah tucked the girls in and left them to sleep under the watchful eye of Casara. Rose walked into her room and sat on her nice, new bed, thinking back on how much had changed in just a few days.

Four days ago, it was just her and Emily, struggling to get home, surrounded by monsters. Now, they were a group working together to survive, she may not have know these people long but already she felt closer to Leah than any other friend she had made, and Jon already felt like a father figure, Rose’s father had died when she was little so she had never known what it was like to have a Dad, but she imagined it would feel like this, safe and protected. Lily and her family had seemed like good people and Rose thought they would all get along well. Leah seemed to have settled into the role of chef and homemaker, making sure that everyone ate enough and had everything they needed. All in all, Rose thought that they had gathered a good core group around them, setting them up nicely for if and when more people came to join them in building this settlement into something amazing. Rose was exhausted and laid down ready to sleep, she had a busy day of practice ahead of her tomorrow, she wanted to get that fire ball ability working.