We slept in late, and it seemed like I was having more anxiety about the coming expedition than the others. They were almost treating it like a vacation day from the constant grind. The most excited though, were the four women, three of whom weren’t even coming.

Their enthusiasm and conviction that we would triumph over their former oppressor gave me a bit more resolve: Ghost Hand was scum, and I was doing this world a favor by taking him on. Thinking about it that way made the thought of dispatching Ghost Hand much more pleasant, we were delivering justice.

At Lucas’s suggestion, we all squeezed into the one jeep – not the one from the farm – and fortunately it had enough gas that no detours were needed. I expected to drive, but it seemed Lucas wanted to and he actually insisted, which allowed me to sit in the back and relax as much as possible with Jessica jammed up against my left arm and Thomas on my right with Maria squashed tight beyond him.

It was incredible just how normal the world still looked once we left the destruction of the city. If you could ignore the roaming zombies and goblins you had to avoid on the road then it was like a pre-apocalypse drive through the countryside. The fresh air rushing past my face felt nice, and for the first time in a while I realized just how draining living in the city was.

Waking up every morning to monsters, torched cars, decaying bodies and massive destruction took a toll on you. It was exactly as Lucas had said; this wasn’t a place to live. It was impossible to forget the danger for even a moment. The stress was endless.

As we pulled off the main road and onto a dirt road, I couldn’t help but think the good road had ended too soon. The smooth countryside road compared to the rocky and bumpy gravel we traveled now woke me from my relaxed stupor.

The farmland could be seen in the distance, about a mile off. A slender fence raced from both sides of the road and off to the horizon. The only thing keeping the zombies and goblins out were three strips of barbed wire. The fencing was a bit sturdier at the road, where a large metal-wire gate stood closed, barred and padlocked, with a man standing behind it, leaning on his spear.

“Should I stop here?” asked Lucas.

‘Stick to the plan,’ replied Jessica. ‘Go right up there and see if we can get in.’

The man gestured with his spear when we arrived, showing the jeep where to pull over. “Who are you with?” He asked as Lucas leaned out of the window. The expression on his face was one of puzzlement more than hostility.

“No one, we’re just here to speak with Ghost Hand,” Lucas answered.

“We don’t accept visitors,” the guard said flatly.

“We’ve got women, we want to trade.” This was an improvisation by Lucas and it was perfect. The man looked interested and was peering towards the interior of the jeep, where Jessica was visible but Maria had her head down.

Lucas got out and opened the passenger door beside Jessica. “Get out. Show him you’re a beauty.” Lucas should have been an actor in his former life; he sounded the part of a callous slaver.

Leaving her bow lying at our feet, Jessica fixed her face in a scowl and got out to stand beside Lucas. Should I get out too? I didn’t want to spook the guard yet so I just edged the bow with my feet so the end was poking out and an easy grab for Jessica.

The guard let out a long, low whistle. “She’s hot all right. Ghost Hand will want to see her. But I can’t let you all in. Just you and the women can drive on up.

“Fair enough. Everyone else out,” said Lucas.

Leaving my mask behind, Thomas and I got out behind Jessica, while Alan stepped from the passenger seat beside the driver. Jessica then took hold of the door as if going back inside the jeep. Back behind the wheel, Lucas revved the engine while the guard undid the padlock and the bolt.

Once the gate was open, instead of returning to her seat Jessica pulled out her bow and an arrow from her quiver, drawing it tight and pointing it directly at the man. His face grew dark and he moved his spear so the tip pointed towards us. “What’s going on?”

Jessica loosed the arrow with incredible force and it exploded forward. The air twisted and whistled as it passed within inches from his ear and pierced into a dirt bank beyond him with a loud thunk. “The next one won’t miss.”

The man looked over his shoulder at the hole a single arrow had created in the ground, as big as if an explosive was attached. Pale now, his spear was wavering and looking at the evidence of his own trembling with disgust, he threw the weapon down. “I don’t know what you are up to, but you’re out of your depth. Ghost Hand will screw you up.”

We drove up a long, winding road through ploughed fields to a farm house without anyone stopping us. Once parked in a large yard between two barns and a cowshed, Jessica and I jumped out with magic items on, weapons in hand, started walking on foot towards the only residence, a large two-story building with whitewashed wooden walls and a steep roof of grey slates. In the patio before two closed wooden doors were two men sitting in chairs and talking. As we got closer and they realized we were strangers to them, both stood up. The older man, bearded, rushed inside while the other – clean shaven, twenty-something – faced us, nervous and angry, “Who are you?”

“We’ve just come to speak to Ghost Hand,” said Jessica calmly. “We have a trade to offer him.” A moment later the older man came back out with two rifles. He passed one to the younger one and they stood there at the ready.

“Now, strangers,” said the bearded man with a sneer. “Fuck off.”

“I was just telling your friend,” Jessica replied. “We are here to trade. We found some good gear out there, but we need food.”

The young man leaned close to the older one, never taking his eyes off Jessica, and whispered something. The older man grinned and nodded and the young man went inside, careful to close the door behind him with a click.

Keeping his rifle up and held across his chest the man waited, his eyes drawn again and again to Jessica’s curves.

“You okay?” shouted Lucas from the jeep. Neither Jessica nor I turned. The bearded man, however, scowled and shifted the rifle to his shoulder. “You stay in that vehicle.”

While we waited for whoever the young man had gone to fetch – hopefully Ghost Hand ­– I got ready to drop my squad of undead. Really, there was nothing more I could do to prepare for the outbreak of a battle, so I studied the farm. My eyes scanned the area and I could tell that the farmland would need a lot of work. There was plenty of land, but more than half of it seemed to be uncultivated.

A motion caught my eye, but it was only two women peeking out from behind a barn door.

“You two. Get back inside,” the bearded man growled at them.

Is that where the women lived? Or worked? Either way, it didn’t seem to offer much protection. Barbed wire on a thin fence wouldn’t be enough to keep the goblins and zombies out if they came this way. So, on top of abusing the women, Ghost Hand wasn’t even properly protecting them.

The more I read the signs, the more I disliked Ghost Hand. Farm tools were just lying around the yard, some were rusty. A washing line was hung inefficiently between barns, where they would be in the shade for most of the day. And there were cow pats all over the yard.

We waited over five minutes for any development.

It seemed that the man with the rifle enjoyed making me wait. He wore a smirk as he held my eyes with a long stare until I looked away.

At last, the two entrance doors were thrown wide by the clean-shaven guard and from behind him four men strode onto the porch: three bearing rifles and a bald, stocky man in a checked shirt who was unarmed but whose pose – with hands on hips – said that he was in charge.

As I looked over them carefully, none of them struck me as having powers that triggered my Sixth Sense. Admittedly, there was a risk facing anyone wielding a gun. Yet both Jessica and I were high enough level to absorb several shots. Nothing about this gang was special at all. I was confident looking at them that as soon as I removed my minions from Vast Shadow, Jessica and I could easily deal with them.

“Are you Ghost Hand?” I addressed the fleshy, unarmed man who took a few steps forward.

“What do you want?” he asked.

Middle-aged. Clothes fraying. Tattoos visible through the sleeves of his shirt and collar. And still nothing screaming at me that I was in danger, other than from bullets. “Are you Ghost Hand?” I asked again.

“That’s me. What’s your business here?”

I could tell from the man’s demeanor that he wasn’t worried. Did he have any idea of what levelling meant? Of what humans could achieve if they worked the system? “I’ve come to take control of the farm. You’re being evicted.” There really wasn’t any way to put it besides as blunt as possible.

Everything went still and quiet. I could hear only the faint buzz of a fly. And then the silence was interrupted by laughter. All six men started laughing as if I’d told the funniest joke. Good. They just couldn’t grasp that it was possible for two people without guns to defeat six. That meant they had no real idea of how levelling scaled up our abilities exponentially.

A jeep pulling into the yard from our left interrupted their laughter. It was the two men – still dressed in black leather jacket and jeans – who we had chased away when we had helped Maria and her friends escape them. They got out of the vehicle with a swagger but their faces soured when they saw us and they hurried to Ghost Hand’s side and began whispering in his ear. Glancing over my shoulder I signaled for Lucas and the others to get out. We were on the cusp of battle, I was sure of it.

“It seems you two stole a vehicle from me, and four girls?” Ghost Hand suddenly asked.

“We stole a jeep, yes. The four women were never your property,” Jessica said. His eyes looked past us at the jeep that Lucas was driving.

“I’ll take that as payment for the vehicle but what of the girls?” He asked and looking at Jessica, slowly licked his lips. Beside me, Jessica slotted an arrow to the string of her bow and equally slowly raised it to aim at Ghost Hand’s heart. He frowned and all his men aimed their guns at Jessica, some cocking them with an audible click.

“Did what I say go in one ear and out the other?” I asked.

“You don’t seem to understand the situation.” Ghost Hand sounded confident but he took two steps back to place one of his goons between him and Jessica. “It’s you who have to pay me that jeep and you and your friends can get out of here on foot. How many girls have you got there? Just the two? Is that you Maria? You dumb bitch coming back here.”

“Tell you what… I’ll take your pretty new one for three of those ugly ones I was bored with anyway. And I’ll let you walk out of here alive.”

I felt like we had been talking to a rock, and the downside of Ghost Hand’s lack of comprehension of the power available to us was that he would never consider surrendering. Never.

This was bound to end in a fight and I didn’t see any more reason to let them shoot first. We might be the good guys but this was no Hollywood movie. For the briefest of moments, I looked to Jessica and taking in her fierce expression, saw the faintest of nods. She understood and was ready.

“I don’t know what you are thinking,” Ghost Hand raised his hand, “but you seem to be getting set to make a move. A dumb move. Well, it’s over.” He pushed his upraised hand towards me like a martial arts gesture and I suddenly felt pain on my throat. There was a pressure there, but it was almost completely blocked by Bone Armor. Ghost Hand’s attack was dealing constant damage, and to a normal person would probably kill them in around six or seven seconds.

Bone Armor completely blocked any strangling effect, and at the rate my hit points were dropping, it would take over two-minutes to kill me. I started to smile, “So this is it? The reason they call you Ghost Hand?” I asked.

His face blushed bright red with surprise, as there was no struggle on my side. I wasn’t grasping for air or scrambling to remove his grip from my neck. I stood there calmly watching him straining to exert as much power as he could.

“Did he do something?” Jessica asked and without waiting for an answer released her arrow, which hit Ghost Hand’s outstretched arm so violently, it took off the hand. Blood sprayed his men as their boss reeled around. I immediately felt a release of the pressure on my neck.

“Yeah, he threw the first stone,” I said. My skull mask went on and I unleashed my squad from Vast Shadow. A swarm of undead appeared around me in an instant.

Every single one of our opponent’s faces registered horror.

“Fire! KILL THEM!” Ghost Hand yelled at the sight of my summoned undead. Jessica and I were now covered front and flanks. I specifically kept my shield-wielding skeleton general in front of Jessica to protect her from stray bullets. She wouldn’t die from being shot once or twice, but I wanted to avoid any risk to her at all.

The rest of my squad rushed forward in a frenzy as I reached out and cast Decay on the nearest gun-wielding enemy, the man who had been staring me down as we waited. The bearded flesh of his face started to melt as if acid had been poured over it. He let out a scream and dropped his rifle immediately while swatting at the falling flesh.

Ghost Hand and the two men in black leather were running like hell, eventually jumping into a jeep. Jessica was incredibly quick though and even as the driver turned the key and the engine caught, an arrow smashed through the windscreen directly into the driver’s neck. Lucas and company had started running up as soon as Jessica had released her first arrow, but the battle was as good as over in the few seconds it took them to get to us.

My squad was in the faces of the men, causing extreme chaos and preventing them firing their rifles. Efficiently drawing and releasing her arrows, Jessica had the biggest impact and had killed all but two enemies. One was the wounded Ghost Hand, now holding his arm and staggering away between two barns and the other was the man I had cast Decay on, who was on the ground, moaning with his head in his hands.

Ghost Hand found himself alone, and tried to run on foot. There was no way he was escaping as Jessica was merciless and put an arrow directly into the calf of his leg. He collapsed in a heap and started to drag his foot frantically across the stone.

From various windows and doors around the farm, I saw faces looking out, curious as to what all the gunfire was. Although I checked for rifles or other signs of resistance I didn’t see any. Some men just ran at the sight of my undead and the bodies strewn about. Others, the women, strained to get a better look at what was happening.

Soon we had a small viewing party of a dozen women watching as we walked over to Ghost Hand and stood above him. I didn’t have any words for him and neither, it seemed, did Jessica. The tough look he maintained earlier had vanished completely as he looked at us, pale and shuddering.

“Wait!” It was Maria rushing over, “please don’t kill him yet!” She hurried to our side.

“Then what will we do with him?” I asked curiously. More and more women had come outside, confident now that they had seen Maria that we weren’t monsters even worse than Ghost Hand.

“If you want everyone here to follow you wholeheartedly, give them justice,” Maria said. I suddenly had a bad feeling about what this ‘justice’ would entail, but I looked at Maria and shrugged.

It was clear that Maria herself was struggling with a desire to put an arrow through Ghost Hand. He had wronged more than just her and the other women though. Everyone here was a victim of his abuse.

“I’ll let you deal with him then,” I said. He was guilty of whatever would happen to him, and maybe I was being soft in thinking that he deserved a swift death. I looked at one of the women bystanders, “Can you bring everyone out? I have something I want to say.”

Her eyes looked at me with fear and hesitation, and then she rushed away. Everyone was already aware of the commotion, and to get them to all gather in the yard was only a matter of minutes. A group of about a dozen women stood at the front, men behind them as well, continuously taking glances at Ghost Hand who was moaning on the ground below us, blood beginning to pool around him. He wouldn’t last much longer without treatment, whatever Maria had in mind.

“Let me talk to them,” Jessica leaned in to me and spoke quietly. “We need them to stay and help run the farm. That would be better coming from a woman not a man in a freak-show mask with an army of undead.”

Taking off the mask, I gave her a nod and did my best to smile at the people before us.

“Hello everyone! I am Jessica. This is Marcus. Lucas. Thomas. Alan. And you know Maria. As of this moment, we are going to take control of this farm. What this means is different for each and every one of you, depending on what you chose to do.”

“We will not treat you as Ghost Hand treated you. You will have options, and right now if you wish to leave no one will stop you.” She paused. “It’s dangerous out there though. We are living in a game system and monsters are everywhere and as there seems to be a design behind this game, I anticipate things are only going to get worse.

“If you wish to level, then we will help you level. If you wish to live peacefully and work on the farm in return for our protection that can also be arranged.

“All we ask is that everyone here contributes so we can build something great. If you contribute, you will be protected and provided for. If you do not, then this place will not be for you.

“Everyone will be treated fairly, and in turn you are expected to treat others with the same fairness. Violence is not something that will be tolerated. Anyone harming another member of the community will immediately be expelled.

“The world may be going to hell, but I refuse to give up my humanity, and I expect the same for you all as well,” she finished. Even though we hadn’t discussed this, Jessica had found words that flowed eloquently, and I truly admired her for it. It was a grand speech.

A few of the anxious faces showed relief at what she had said, while others remained skeptical. A woman suddenly stepped forward and addressed Maria, “Maria, is she telling the truth? Are these people decent? What happened to Sarah and the others?”

“Yes! I’m better than ever and the others are fine as well. They’re back in the city, but we’ll be getting them and returning here with them shortly!” Maria said excitedly.

More and more women broke ranks and gathered around Maria, and as their voices rose in expressions of deeply felt relief I had an insight into what life had been like for them. Probably, all of these women had been taken advantage of and abused.

I turned to Lucas, “will you be able to drive to the city alone and bring our friends back? That will help encourage everyone to stay with us.” Unless there had been a major respawn the route was clear and the sooner we brought them over the better. “Also deal with the man at the fence. See what his temperament is like and decide on your own.”

“Got it! I’ll be back before nightfall,” Lucas answered and strode back to our jeep with a spring in his step. It seemed he enjoyed the role of the hero coming to the rescue.