Spirits were high that night, and soared with the discovery that Ghost Hand had enjoyed alcohol. We found dozens of unopened bottles of whisky stashed away that were passed around. Before I knew it there was a party under the moonlight.

I wasn’t much of a drinker, but couldn’t resist when Jessica handed me a glass with the amber liquid in it. The rest of that night went by in a fuzz, but I knew a party was a badly needed break for everyone. No one could imagine what was coming. And it was a chance for us to bond. I did, however, make sure that those taking watches as guards over Ghost Hand were sober while on duty.

The following morning I woke early, despite a slight headache. My first thought was that this was the day when Ghost Hand was going to be executed. Searching out Maria I asked her to make it quick. “Just put a bullet in his head a second or two after the others start shooting.” I said. “And take these; pass one each to the women.”

I handed her 10 rations, which would be enough food for several days. There was no doubt they were hungry, and at the moment the farm wasn’t exactly up and running with everything happening.

The turnout for watching the execution of Ghost Hand was way higher than I expected. These people must have seen serious brutality to want to witness his demise. The former ruler of the farm had his hands behind his back and someone had placed a sack placed over his head, probably with the idea of preventing him using his power. They were sensible precautions, just in case Ghost Hand decided to change his mind last second and try to hurt someone.

In total, there were only six guns available to the community and the women had first dibs. The ones that had been abused the worst couldn’t stop themselves from crying while preparing. Ropes were actually placed under his arms and he was strapped to a tree so that he couldn’t fall after being shot.

I realized then that my precaution with Maria was well needed as these people were going to use his body as a shooting target for as long as he would survive. He deserved it… but we weren’t savages.

Still, I didn’t say anything against to stop the proceedings, and I watched as Maria called out, ‘everybody aim.’

The women lifted their guns, some wavering.

‘Ghost Hand, you deserve to die. Instead of trying to save people from the apocalypse, you took advantage, you and your cronies, to abuse us and you drove three good women to their deaths.

‘I’m not going to give you a final say. No one wants to hear your excuses.’

He did begin to say something, but the hood muffled his voice.

‘Three. Two. One. Fire!’

A ragged volley of shots all hit the man’s body and as several were in the chest, he probably died right then. But the women reloaded and fired again, while Maria took careful aim and put a bullet in his head.

The sack and ropes made it hard to tell Ghost Hand was dead, and crazily enough even more people came forward to ask for a gun and vent their hatred by shooting at the body. It wasn’t a good use of ammo at all, but I didn’t feel like saying so. Best that they release their anger and rid themselves of this overwhelming negativity.

The moment Ghost Hand died a new era began for all of these people. It was time to start moving forward and getting back to the activities that needed to be done. Which honestly was a bit easier said than done.

Once we got some levels on people though, they should be able to watch the cows graze and keep out the zombies and goblins. As soon as our fortified walls were erected life here could perhaps go back to semi-normal, depending what new developments took place in the game.

Five men and two women were interested in leveling seriously, and our first stop was the barn with the captured zombies in it. Here was a chance for them to gain their first bit of EXP. By my count, there were ten zombies inside the pens.

Jessica and I got the volunteers into a party together and passed out spears for them to take turns. One zombie kill per person wasn’t quite enough to level them, so they each killed one – safely protected by the walls and lower gate of the stalls – and then shared the hits on the other three. By the time all ten zombies were dead, the group had all reached level 1.

Since she was much more sociable than me and understood the system perfectly, I said very little, letting my partner take the lead in explaining stats, skills, items and passive skills. There were several questions, which Jessica answered pretty much exactly as I would have.

They all understood there was risk involved in leveling. We would help them get started, but eventually the decisions they made and the encounters they picked would be their own, and they could only depend on themselves.

The plan was to bring them with us to the steel mill, as well as the two workers and several other men. There were enough vehicles on farm to get everyone whom was seriously interested in leveling there. Getting the sheet metal back was another story, and we would figure that out at a later time.

“We leave tomorrow afternoon. The steel mill is just a few minutes by car away. If you’re not here, I’ll assume you’re not very serious about levelling,” I said. “You can drop out now if you like.” Although the newly levelled people looked anxious about going to the steel mill, none of them gave up.

They had the entire remainder of the day as well as night to decide if this was what they wanted. Without touching a skill or really gaining a lot of items, it was hard for anyone to get a taste for the game and to really appreciate the difference in power between each level. From their perspective there was probably not much difference between me and Ghost Hand. Fortunately, we had Jessica and her words and example reassured everyone.

After scheduling the expedition for the next day, Jessica and I met up with Lucas to discuss another matter. If we wanted to start building infrastructure for housing, we needed wood. I tasked him to head into the forest and take a look at what might be there.

There was an enormous supply of wood nearby and we just needed to ensure that it was safe to go into the forest to cut the timber. We needed to know exactly what was waiting for us there besides the natural wild-life. Had the apocalypse introduced monsters into the forest? If so, were they higher level than the mobs in the city?

“While you take Alan and Thomas to scout the forest, Jessica and I will be heading into the city and taking a look.”

“Sangeal or Withersburg?” he asked.

“Withersburg.” I said, “according to what I’ve heard from the few that made runs there, the monster spawn rate is much more rapid. We’ll be able to take a look and see today.” It was only around twenty minutes by car from here. “Are you ready to go?” I asked Jessica.

She nodded her head.

“Should we take Maria along?”

“Let her stay. She’s busy with the others,” Jessica said. “As far as the residents are concerned, we are still outsiders. Maria is someone they trust and she admires us. That will come across to them.”

It was good karma for us that we had treated Maria with kindness and respect. If she had anything negative to say about us I would be surprised. I was sure, too, that the other three women we had rescued looked on us favorably as well.

Fortunately for us, Ghost Hand wasn’t completely lacking foresight and had secured five vehicles: three jeeps, a GMC Sierra, and a Toyota Tacoma. All had good capacity for carrying large loads. He had secured a decent stockpile of gas as well. Still, as soon as we could find a large tank and a trailer, I wanted to ransack my old gas station.

If I could bring a full tanker here, that amount of gas would last us months. For now, we ended up taking one of the Jeeps. Speed might matter. And the air blowing against your face truly was refreshing. Jessica seemed to enjoy it as well, her shoulder-length brunette hair streaming around her as she turned her head from side to side.

On arrival at Withersburg, we had a problem and Jessica pulled a long way short of the tall buildings in the distance. The mobs were densely packed. Behind their lines, the destruction and mayhem could be seen clearly from a distance. Hardly a building seemed to have an intact window and many were stained dark with the aftermath of fires.

In front of us were the typical zombies and goblins we were familiar with, but also new enemies I hadn’t encountered before. Jessica took the time to inspect each one so we weren’t blindsided.

Savage: Level four. Normal. It was another little humanoid like the goblin, except it looked smaller, had a blue-tinge to its skin and was wearing decorations like long silver earrings and armbands. Most of them were holding two axes as weapons and I reckoned they might be a step up from the little lobster-like alien creatures.

A thought passed my mind: perhaps a larger city meant more population which meant more difficult enemies. They mobs were the same level as their counterparts in Sangeal but better armed. These blue savages, for example, dual wielded axes, which might prove to have more DPS than the spears of the green goblins. If I had to guess which was deadlier, I’d say the savage.

Fortunately, after I summoned my squad of undead we could plow right through these low-level enemies. For Jessica too, they were mostly one-shots. So carefully and clearing a wide path, we took down a swathe of mobs and progressed deeper into the city. Before long we were encountering two new types of mobs, presumably the equivalents to ogres and banshees. These turned out to be higher level too, and it seemed hunting here would be promising. Jessica gave us the information we needed.

Levitating Eye: Level Ten. Normal. This monster was simply a floating eye with no appendages, which led us to deduce it attacked via spell. I sent a skeleton in to investigate and a beam of blue light exploded from the pupil with great force and speed.

The flash and impact of the spell was almost immediate, which made it several times more deadly than a banshee’s Frost Bolt, since that could be dodged by hiding behind obstacles.

The other new mob, which I presumed was equivalent to Sangeal’s ogre was called a sickleman.

Sickleman: Level 10. Normal. This was a skeleton that wielded a large scythe. The fact that it was undead meant a lot of my offensive abilities lost their effectiveness against it. Not only that, it had a gigantic distance for its attacks that was even larger than the spears Jessica and I had started with.

If each city had different enemies with varying difficulty based on their population, then the situation here probably was a mild one comparatively speaking, which didn’t bode well for the groups of people who were out there somewhere. Even against easier monsters than these, the vast majority of people in my home city had been slaughtered.

Maybe more people had survived than I thought though, and they were living like rats scrounging and doing whatever they could to hide and stay alive. Humanity’s resilience was surprisingly high.

Despite these enemies being relatively low level compared to us, there were so many of them that Jessica and I were getting good EXP. Letting my two abominations run forward and gather them up was a sight to see.

Constant flashes of bright blue light shooting from eyeballs pelted into my abominations. My huge undead were slapping left and right with their multiple fists, killing every savage, sickleman, goblin and zombie in sight that hadn’t fallen to the noxious bile.

The levitating eyes remained stationary and blasted beam after beam, which didn’t have much effect on my minions. Jessica used them as target practice and sent arrows through each and every one. A thick viscous goop dripped from the fallen eyeballs before they dropped to the ground and despawned.

Although each individual mob seemed to have a low drop chance, the sheer rate at which we were wiping them out meant items continuously dropped and our EXP was climbing rapidly. On the downside, I couldn’t see how our low level people could even begin to farm the mobs here: the vast amount of them meant one bad pull would see you instantly overwhelmed.

Jessica and I didn’t have that issue. Even when dozens of mobs were triggered and swarmed my skeletal squad, they held the aggro and reappeared in due course after killing them. The abominations were gathering up twenty and thirty monsters at a time as we moved forward. We had found eight Rations and three Survivor’s Medallions in a period of ten minutes, which was a record for us.

A wake of destruction was left in our path and we hit level 18 in such a speed that I almost didn’t want to pause to check my character sheet.

Name: Mike Reynolds (27) Class: Necromancer Level: 18 EXP: 1%

HP: 670/725 MP: 260/325

STR: 5 Fear Resistance: 5

AGI: 2

DEX: 5

VIT: 20 +2

WIS: 24 +8

Available: 3

Skills: [A]Summon Skeleton LV. 7 |[A] Decay LV. 2| [A] Reanimate Dead LV. 2 | [A] Bone Armor LV. 2 | [A] Vast Shadows | [P]Sixth Sense | [P] Bravery LV. 2 | [P] Mutated LV. 2| [P] Pain Resistance LV. 2 | [P] Skeletal Mastery LV. 3| [P]Intimidate Living |[P] Inner Calm

I was glad I did though, as I could see that my HP was still going up and down. The infection I received from the zombie was still in my system, and yet I didn’t feel it. Mutated… mutated had hit level 2 and my heart stopped in shock.

The infection was the cause then... definitely. I quickly went further into the passive skill.

Mutated LV. 2: You are being changed in unknown ways.

The passive skill still didn’t give me any information on what it was doing at all, which only increased my desire to know more about it.

It seemed the system enjoyed teasing me. Maybe it was a passive that did nothing until it reached max level, but what level was that? Three? Five? I couldn’t be sure.

Based on what I’d learned about the system so far, we each needed to acquire two new active skills before reaching Level Twenty, but unlike gear, the skill drops were few and far between, and when they did drop, they often weren’t something we wanted to use. Ideally, I wanted another offensive spell or a second type of minion spawn.

I wasn’t sure if there was another minion ability, but there were definitely active spells to cast. Something besides decay that I could use on all mob-types, so I wasn’t sitting around doing mostly nothing on particularly difficult encounters.

Jessica was also looking for an offensive ability that dealt significant damage. All she was able to do right now was shoot arrow after arrow. She needed some augmented ability that would bring her arrows to a new height.

There were still several hours of sunlight remaining in the day, and so we kept moving forward, hoping to catch a glimpse of the enemies we would consider equivalent to our snake-headed demi-human and abominations back at Sangeal.