70 – Plans and Reflections

Andy paused at the bottom of the trail and looked up, watching his little party descend. First came Bella, spear held ready. Behind her was Bea Carter, smiling as she leaned on her long, sturdy walking stick. Jace came next, a massive spiked club on his shoulder. He wore a T-shirt that was a size too small, and his muscular red arms looked huge sticking out of the sleeves. Finally, bringing up the rear was Lucy, her bow in hand and a freshly stuffed quiver over one shoulder.

They were a motley group, but Andy felt good leading them. He’d only just learned, as they chatted up by the gate, waiting for Lucy, that Bea was probably the highest-level person in the settlement. She’d reached level twelve as a Water Witch during the battle and its aftermath; apparently, when people healed using her enchanted springwater potions, she gained experience. Frank Dunlap, the War Medic, had also gained more levels than the straight-up fighters, but he’d only managed to tie Andy and Lucy at level nine.

Of course, Andy was level nine in two classes, so he supposed that, overall, he still had the most experience among his people, but he couldn’t deny feeling a little envious of Bea’s singular focus on one specialty. The thought brought him back around to his earlier decision not to spend his new improvement points. Of course, he intended to use them soon, but he wanted to try to follow the System’s instructions and meditate on his two classes. He hoped he might be able to figure out the trick to merging them into something different—hopefully something special, or at least better.

As he started walking down the road, everyone fell into step with him, and he continued to let his mind run through the list of things he had to do. The class merger was probably at the top of his priority list, but there was so much more! He wanted to see if he and Lucy could hunt down more of the monsters he needed to harvest for James’s special spear recipe. He wanted to explore the tunnels under the mesa. He wanted to see about getting the settlement cleaned up, hauling out the wrecked trailers and other junk. He wanted—

“What are you thinking about?” Lucy asked.

“Oh, all the stuff I’ve got to do.”

“We’ve got to do,” Bella interjected.

Andy looked at her and smiled, nodding in response. “Yeah, for sure.”

“I’d like to start some kind of fighting practice—drills,” Jace said. “I talked about it with Omar before the battle.”

“How is he?” Lucy asked, looking at Bea.

The older woman smiled and winked at her. “He’s doing just fine. Something’s a little funny with his eyes, but hopefully he’ll be able to explain them when he wakes up.”

“His eyes?” Andy asked.

Bea nodded. “Well, hon, to be honest, they look a little…wild.”

“He’s not changing into—”

She shook her head, chuckling, as she waved Lucy’s concern away. “He’s definitely not a monster. He woke up for a few minutes and ate some toast and jam I forced on him. He seemed just fine and mumbled something about System messages, but then my potion hit him, and he was out again.”

Lucy nudged Andy’s arm. “What kinds of things are you thinking about doing?”

“Well, I was hoping we could hunt for some monsters.”

“Hah!” She grinned and held up her bow. “I put another point into tracking. It’s at the cap now—well, my cap.” Her announcement reminded Andy of his codex entry, and it drove home to him just how valuable it was. Of course, he wanted to break through one of his ceilings, but he had to consider that he might gain more, in the long run, if someone else used it. It was a lot to think about.

“What does it do for you, Lucy? How high is your cap?” Jace asked, nudged his way past Bella to stand closer to Lucy.

“Oh, the skill is at four now, and I’m not sure exactly how much better it will be. I’ll have to try it out.” She looked up at Andy, her eyes holding all sorts of unspoken thoughts. He wished he could interpret them all. “It’ll be fun to explore and see what we can find.”

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Jace snorted, pointing toward the desert with his free hand. “Don’t really need tracking to find something dangerous out there. Just walk around for a bit and it’ll find you.”

Bella shoved his shoulder. “First of all, hopefully that won’t be true for long, at least around our settlement. We need to keep it safe for the kids.” She looked to the right, squinting into the distance. “Let’s just say I’m glad you folks were out here and not in the city.”

Jace arched an eyebrow, baring his sharp teeth in a grin as he said, “Something bad over there?”

Bella shrugged. “I saw things in the darkness when the Hardheads took us. Big things.”

Andy took the opportunity to interject, “That’s actually a good point. I think we ought to explore the city a little. We need to know what went down there—how worried we should be.”

Bea gestured ahead with her staff. “That’s something we can bring up in the peace talks, Andy. The Hardheads probably have a lot more info about that area than we do.”

“Speaking of peace talks,” Lucy said, “you should be sure to get some lumber and stuff from them.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Jace added, nodding at Lucy. “Those assholes should give us half of everything they own.”

“And that, my young, colorful friend,” Bea said, wagging a finger at Jace, “is why you’ll be standing guard outside the meeting!”

“What?” The cambion scowled, and it was a frightening expression with his dark, heavy brow and sharp teeth. “You think I’m wrong?”

“No,” Andy said, trying to diffuse things before they heated up, “you’re not wrong, but there’s a way to go about these things. We’ll have to see how the process works, and then, yeah, we’ll try to get some concessions out of them.”

Jace didn’t respond, but he didn’t argue, either. He just scowled a little and shifted his gaze toward the desert, scanning the desert off to the east.

“We’ll leave the road soon,” Andy said, gesturing toward a break in the foliage to the right. “It’s mostly downhill and only a couple of miles to Wentworth Road.”

“And the hardware store is on Wentworth?” Bea asked.

“That’s right,” Bella replied.

As they moved through the desert, Andy and Lucy did their best to maneuver around potential threats. It made the walk longer than necessary, but it also removed a lot of risk. Andy figured they’d be doing plenty of fighting and hunting in the weeks to come; there was no need to get into a brawl with every desert animal or monster they came across on their way to the peace talks.

The fact that they were traveling to the talks and not the Hardheads had initially confounded Andy, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized it made sense. They were the victors. The Hardheads would have to make concessions, and that might mean paying tribute or giving up part of their land. Heck, maybe there would be an option to make them a vassal “state.” Depending on how things went with the whole apocalypse, Andy doubted the societal structure would be recognizable in a few years.

He felt like, considering how they’d been thrown into things, he and his settlement had done a damn good job so far. They’d lost quite a few good people, but they’d also gained some. More importantly, the folks who’d survived were stronger now, and they were beginning to understand how things involving the System worked. There were still more questions than answers, but Andy felt like there were answers. They just had to keep doing what they could to find them. They had to keep gaining levels and completing quests. They had to improve their settlement and open new avenues for advancement.

He still worried about his mom, but he’d come to realize that there were other people, much closer to hand, who needed his help. His mom was clever and resourceful, so he just had to hope that she’d found some good people to survive with. Maybe someday, the trip from Arizona to Florida wouldn’t seem impossibly far, and he’d be able to try to reconnect, but as things stood, she might as well have been on Mars.

He nodded to himself as those thoughts ran through his mind. He had a lot to do, and for maybe the first time in his life, he was eager to get to work. He had goals, and people who were depending on him to reach them. If he were being completely honest, he’d admit that he felt good—that he was far better off than before the System had come. That thought came with the added baggage of guilt—so many people had died and suffered because of the System’s arrival. Still, he reasoned, that wasn’t his fault, was it?

Lucy nudged his arm, breaking him out of his silent reverie. When he looked down at her, she squinted in the bright morning light and asked, “What are you thinking about?”

He smiled and shrugged. “Just thinking about how lucky I was to be with you all when the apocalypse happened.”

STATUS:

Name: Andrew “Andy” West

Species: Human

Active Class: Umbral Reaper

Level: 9

Inactive Classes:

Unclassed (2)

Pyroglyph Invoker (9)

Experience toward next level: 35%

Mana: 165/195

Perception: 8

Will: 8

Strength: 9

Vitality: 9

Speed: 8

Improvement Points: 6

Notable Skills or Spells:

(* denotes active bound abilities)

Leadership: 1

Tracking: 1

Spears: 4

Short Blades: 1

Critical Mastery: 4

Sneak Attack: 2

Burnscribe: 1

Smokescribe: 1

Embertouch: 1

Rune of Extension: 1

Fire Tolerance: 1

*Reaper’s Senses – Bound: 3

*Twilight Steps – Bound: 2

*Veil of the Stalker – Bound: 3

*Shadow Cloud – Bound: 1

*Smoke Lance – Bound: 2

Scorchmark Glyph – Bound: 2

Kindled Bonds – Bound: 1

Notable Distinctions:

Mark of the Predator

Reaper’s Instinct

Vanguard Striker