It must have been afternoon when I woke up. Alan, Thomas, and Lucas would have left to level several hours ago. They each needed to get a new skill after hitting level 10, and for that we still needed one more Class Changing Stone.

The situation last night had been so intense that I just hadn’t wanted to deal with anything else other than sleeping and recovering. If the others returned today without having gained a stone, I would give them the one I still had in my inventory.

“How are you feeling?” Jessica asked from the other side of the room.

“Better, surprisingly.” My HP had recovered to full while I was sleeping, and the aching in my hands had disappeared. My lack of MP was starting to be a problem, though, as even after being asleep the entire night, I had only regenerated to around 150.

It had always been clear that I was going to reach a point where my MP could not keep up with my casting expenditure; it had just come earlier than I expected. This poor MP regeneration told me it was best to put the remaining 4 stat points I had available into WIS, in an attempt to increase my overall MP regeneration. That brought my WIS up to a natural 24, with plus 8 from magic item bonuses. My mana pool had a potential maximum now of 320, but currently I was on 179.

“How are the women holding up?” I asked. “Yesterday’s events must have come as a shock to them.”

“They are doing better than expected, actually,” Jessica laughed. “In fact, what shocked them most was that you survived that shotgun blast. It seems to have given them some inspiration. One of them even asked if we would consider getting revenge on Ghost Hand.”

“So they have faith in me now?” I gave a smile and no doubt Jessica could see it was a wry one.

“I guess.”

“Have any of them expressed interest in leveling up?”

“Only one of them, Maria—the youngest. The older ones are more interested in finding a place of safety with a secure food supply. They’d like to live on the farm, if only it was free of Ghost Hand.”

“Interesting. That would work to build a successful community, don’t you think? A farm where some people work the land and others like us fight off enemies and level up.”

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she was serious now.

“I’m thinking that farm has as good a setup as we could want for a base. And that the people there might stick around and build the community if we free them from Ghost Hand.”

Now Jessica smiled again, her perfect white teeth making her whole face seem enlivened. “That’s what I reckoned. We’ll need to scout it out and figure out their strength but if you and I are several levels higher than Ghost Hand, we should take it off him for the food possibilities and the defenses around there.”

“Right. Even though enough rations seem to drop to keep you and I going, other people aren’t going to survive this apocalypse without a steady supply of food.” I wondered about what level Ghost Hand was and that motivated me to get moving. “We should probably head out soon; it’s already gotten quite late.” I crawled from the bed, fully dressed from having fallen onto the mattress exhausted both mentally and physically.

Jessica walked towards the door to the women’s room. “Alright, I’ll see if Maria is willing to come with us and start levelling up and if the others are okay to remain here on their own. We have food for everyone for several days, so there’s no need for them to risk going out until our return.”

I nodded and then started to stretch. All the walking and moving really put a strain on my muscles and frame. Bones cracked as I twisted and bent. After I finished using the bathroom I returned to find Jessica was waiting in the living room with the youngest of the four women. She had dark hair and deep tanned skin. If I had to guess, she was most likely Hispanic. “You are Maria?”

“That’s right. And you are Mike?” she answered.

I nodded. “We’re going to return to where you met us yesterday. Jessica tells me you’re interested in leveling, is that true?”

“I do want to learn. The other women are much older than me and they don’t feel they have a chance with a game-based system. But I played enough to understand what we need to do.”

“Right,” I said. “How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Okay, if you’re serious then take that spear right there and follow us,” I said. Her eyes followed mine before landing on the nearly blood drenched spear. There was a moment of hesitation followed by resolve. She grasped it and then put on the most forced angry face I’d ever seen.

I could only let out a light chuckle and then start making our way downstairs. “It’s quite late so we’ll take the jeep back.” We took to the streets that had already been partially cleared by Lucas and the other two men.

Having parked the jeep, we walked for nearly thirty minutes before encountering any reasonable enemies for Maria. Her tough façade had dropped and I could see in her posture that she was nervous. I casted Vast Shadows to summon my army of undead and then gave a brief description of what was going to happen.

Maria understood that all she needed to do was stab the enemies that my squad would restrain for her, but it was clear that no matter how much Jessica and I reassured her, Maria was anxious. We weren’t in any rush, and so just to make things easier for her first battles, Jessica and I decided to restrict our pulls to Zombies.

Zombies were just a one hit kill if stabbed in the head, and I had hoped that a few good critical strikes would boost her confidence. When the first one lumbered into the trap of my skeletons, I was pleased to see that Maria wasn’t afraid to use the spear, she ran in after Jessica shouted “go!” and began jabbing. The problem was just that her technique wasn’t great. Her first zombie took three stabs, mainly because she repeatedly missed the lethal blow on the head.

“No problem.” Jessica said when she apologized. “You’ll get better in time.”

Looking pleased with herself, Maria wiped the sweat from her brow. Her first kill put her at Level 1, and as we continued to walk in search of the next Zombie, Jessica explained to her the ideas behind class changing and stats.

It was up to her to decide what type of role she would feel comfortable in. “I would like to use a bow, like you.” Having been silent while Jessica was speaking, it was a surprise when she suddenly blurted out her choice. It seemed she was in awe of Jessica, and it was easy to see why.

A strong female figure that would have no problem soloing all the mobs around us was someone to look up to. Even without me, Jessica would be able to get by in this world. It wouldn’t be easy for her to level up off the harder monsters, but I was sure she could find a way, probably some kind of kiting strategy.

Jessica looked at Maria with a serious expression. “If that’s the case, you should distribute your first few levels between DEX and STR. It will make this go faster as well.” Maria nodded happily and must have taken the advice. After that, she didn’t miss her strikes anymore.

Jessica and Maria seemed to get along well, and their conversation sometimes led to a pull that brought along a second mob. It wasn’t a problem though, as my Exceptional Abomination ran over every additional enemy we encountered.

With him as a minion, I didn’t need any assistance in taking down any enemy in this area. But because we wanted to power level Maria, it took us another forty-five minutes of walking before we returned to yesterday’s destination, and by then Maria had reached Level Five.

The early levels that Jessica and I had struggled with went so quickly when all you needed to do was poke the enemy in the neck. Oddly enough, there was no jealousy on my end about this. I didn’t feel any resentment towards our newer members who received a silver spoon in their mouth. I was just glad to see some people around me gaining strength.

I thought of Robert’s words and how foolish he had been. He didn’t realize just how difficult and dangerous it was getting on top of this system; when any serious encounter could result in your death; and when your resources were almost non-existent.

When we arrived at the ruined offices on the western highway where we had encountered the women and their pursuers, I could see that the men’s Jeep was still there. Looking to where Jessica’s arrow had dug the keys into the ground, I could see them too. No one from the farm had found the vehicle, and none of the respawned mobs had damaged it. Good. That would make our trip back much faster.

As was routine now, I got to clearing abandoned vehicles with my minions, working on making a wide path westwards. The mobs that were triggered due to the sound were Ankle Snared by Jessica, and it seemed even without my squad holding them in place my teammates could deal with the pulls.

Ankle Snare worked on these monsters every time, allowing Maria to stab them from out of range of their attempts to swipe at her. While the snarls and roars and groans of the mobs were intimidating, Maria wasn’t daunted and her confidence grew with each kill. Even better, we got lucky and another Crude Short Bow dropped, which Jessica handed to Maria immediately.

As I watched the two women systematically clear the mobs around us, I felt like I was watching Jessica level up all over again, but this time Maria had the knowledge we acquired previously, and it seemed Jessica had every intention of taking Maria under her wing.

After a non-stop afternoon of clearing and fighting I made sure to cast Vast Shadows as night rolled around and we took the abandoned jeep around the safer, outer edge of the city and left it parked about a ten-minute walk from the building we were using as our camp. Because we had wanted to make the most of the daylight, our timing was slightly off. The sun set and there was no light at all due to a cloudy sky covering the moon. Fortunately, Jessica didn’t need to see to know where we were, and we made it back safely.

Everyone, even Robert’s friends, greeted us warmly. Their day had been productive but not in regard to a Class Changing Stone, and so I gave the one I currently had to Thomas.

Having explained to us his options, Thomas chose a class called Bishop that had some interesting abilities. His passive gave him a natural resistance to undead and demon enemies, as well as a 25% resistance to status ailments. I wasn’t sure exactly what that entailed, but Fear was most likely one of them.

Besides that, he received an AoE heal called Healing Rain and then a single target shield called Holy Shield that absorbed a flat amount of damage.

Alan and Lucas had both used their Class Changing Stone during the day. Alan had ended up taking a generic class known as knight and was confident in his defensive powers, he had focused his choices on improving his defensive ability.

Alan’s active abilities were Charge—which allowed him to close the distance between him and an enemy with a quick burst of speed. It stunned the enemy and reduced their attack power by ten percent—and Battle Cry, a ferocious shout that increased the attack power of his party members by fifteen percent and increased their resistance to Fear by fifty percent. His passive ability was called Never Give Up, which caused him to lose stamina fifty percent more slowly than before, and also reduced incoming damage taken by thirty percent when he was below half HP.

Lucas had felt his best class option was one called Shogun. His skills were very interesting. The only active skill was called Dual Strike, which, as it indicated, let him strike out with both weapons at the same time. One of his two passives were Dual Wield—which was needed so that he could wield two swords at once and bring Dual Strike into play. It was very promising that Lucas could combine Dual Wield with Wind Slash, and this would launch two wind projectiles instead of one.

Perhaps even more interesting than both of those skills was his second passive, Ruler. Ruler gave Lucas plus 10% increased stats per nearby enemy. Which right now was nothing at all of course, but if he had five enemies nearby that would bump him up to around 30 STR or AGI. As he explained it to me, I was encouraged. That was a skill which would scale well and could make all the difference in a crisis.

While we were comparing skills, I took the Meat Cleaver from my inventory and offered it to both Alan and Lucas, neither of them wanted it though. The weapon was much too big and clunky for effective attacking, and I so used it to gear up another skeleton.