Chapter 15

“I hope you guys can hurry we can’t be standing still in one place too long. Sensei and Rina are resting close by getting ready for us to move again,” Yumi said finally approaching our group in the hidden overlook. It had taken her a few minutes to figure out where we’d disappeared to.

I’m thankful she’s helping me look out for Sensei and Rina.

“This hideaway spot is cool though, and it looks like you can see over the river well without being spotted under the heavy cover,” she added as she looked over it and all the foliage that had enclosed tightly around it. After looking at it, she was right. It was the perfect hidey hole type spot.

“Yeah, it’s a cool spot as long as people stay quiet while looking from it,” Akimoto looked pleased since he’d found it of course. He was inspecting it around and looking over it, looking proud of himself.

But then he saw all the blue screens all going up, “Eh! So many!”

“So does this mean everyone’s evolving? Or what’s the appropriate term anyway?” I asked.

“Could be. The more we evolve the better?” Yumi guessed.

“I would have said this is just like a game except more than two thirds of our schoolmates just died,” some random girl said near us.

Someone signaled Raya to come over and she and Yuta began reading off the screens. They started with Akimoto, “Due to scouting an enemy achievement, forestry skill navigation, and hidden observation you have unlocked the Ranger job, with its accompanying skill tree and minor nature affinity limited element.”

“Eh? Ranger job, is that good?” Akimoto wondered, with his face screwed up. He was worried if he’d got something bad, or below average it seemed.

“Wow ranger jobs? I’m surprised, but it makes sense. We’d need a survival in the wilderness job about now,” I said.

“Doesn’t sound that special to me, I wanted fire mage after all,” some kid said, but nobody listened to him. After all fire mage was so impractical. Would you sneeze fire and burn your house down?

Raya shrugged, “I think it’s good. It says…” her finger followed the hieroglyphics, “access to tracking, nature, survival, woods lore, wild plant and animal identification, hiding and camouflage, scouting, range combat techniques, and forager technique unlocked as potential skills. Higher tier and advanced skills will be unlocked as progression justifies knowledge of their existence beyond the basic skill tree.”

“Eh? Basic skill tree? Does that mean there’s more than one skill tree? If there was only one skill tree it wouldn’t need to say basic right? What do you think? Maybe there’s basic and advanced?” I guessed, wondering if anyone could confirm.

“It could be. I’m not entirely sure yet,” Raya said.

“Eh? So it’s like that,” Akimoto said, suddenly his brain was turning and cranking the gears inside.

“Wow. That’s really awesome!” Yuta exclaimed. “This is the first good news so far!”

“We need foragers and skills like that right now! I’m so excited! We’re not going to starve now!” Yumi exclaimed excitedly jumping up and down while crying real tears. “In fact the only thing as important as that would be a bath and clean clothes!”

Akimoto was staring at Yumi jumping up and down, so I stepped between them, while Yumi was calming down and to help him not stare at her cleavage. After all, lots of the girls had their clothes at least partially tore up though in her case only her lower ribs were showing and not anything important.

“Eh? Are you really excited to forage and like hike around playing in the dirt,” I wondered, looking at Yumi, without staring at certain places. I liked her a lot, but I wanted to be a gentleman after all. But it surprised me that this might fascinate her.

She blushed, “well it’s better than starving and being poor. It’s really a good start for being our first day in this world. It’s also that this can be a point we can build from. Once we know how to build and where to go from here we can change our lives for the better too.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Yuta agreed.

“I like that. We’ll build our way out,” Akimoto said.

“Well considering it’s our first day…barely…I guess having a few new skills and jobs discover is OK,” I said.

“Ah, I want clean clothes and a bath too,” several other people said. I think they were well off kids that had been given a lot by their parents. They didn’t see yet that people weren’t going to take care of them as they looked around at the crowd of kids around us that had gathered together.

“Well, find a hotel then. I’m sure they can help,” someone said sarcastically to the demanding kids, which still hadn’t faced reality.

“Don’t change the subject!” Yuta said excitedly pointing at what he thought were degenerates. “We’re at the good part now! We have to maintain this momentum now that something good is happening. We should identify as many jobs as possible!”

He was getting people excited positively now. That was good considering how many people had just died but at the same time I wondered if they’d forgotten the sacrifice the others had paved for us to live.

“But aren’t you scared to take a bath with the orcs and those other people around hunting for us?” I wondered.

“Yeah, but we’re really that dirty,” Yumi said in total despair.

“I don’t know if it’s safe yet,” I said in reply.

“But what about that Egyptian guy? Wasn’t he a mage?” Raya suggested.

“Ahhh! I forgot about him! How is being a ranger awesome, when that Egyptian guy has something more powerful, that can throw a lightning bolt around?” Akimoto stiffened in fear. He didn’t look so sure about it. “It looks like he’s got us matched.”

“Yeah but that’s like real stuff we need badly! This is real skills that can protect and help people live. It’s really a good step in the right direction,” I said with big eyes.

“But is it really going to work on the first try? And how do we know if it will be a permanent fail or just a temporary training fail? ‘You have failed at chopping wood’ kind of stuff before you get better at chopping wood isn’t the same as ‘you will fail at chopping wood forever’. Maybe they will fail a few times while working it up. That’s how it is in a game,” some kid said.

“Arrgh! I hate that you guys keep referencing games! That’s such a waste of life!” Yumi said angrily, ready to explode. She looked like she was going to clobber the kid.

I kept up a mask but I was surprised Yumi didn’t like games. Actually…come to think of it a lot of girls didn’t like games. Why is that? Maybe this wouldn’t help any, since it’s like we were trapped in a real life torture scenario that resembled one. Maybe girls didn’t understand that guys didn’t have people coaching them through life and had a lot given to them, but guys had to figure stuff out through simulations.

“Let’s just dwell on what’s going on now that’s important Yumi. We have to think how to keep people alive. If they use something in real life that has resemblance here it might help us learn faster about our situation,” I responded, trying to keep her focused on the now.

“Oh, right sorry,” she nodded.

“Foragery? Woodslore, and survival?! With all these people in the wilderness going around we need to you to start practicing that skill and teach it as fast as you possibly can!” Yuta exclaimed.

“Oh, I didn’t think about it that way. I keep forgetting that there are so many people,” Akimoto finally realized. He looked beaming now that he was satisfied ranger wasn’t a fail job with no magic. He immediately began getting others nearby. They were trying to figure out how to go about teaching and working up their skills.

“But isn’t it better for him if he keeps his skill to himself?” someone said. It just so happens that kid had been identified as ranger number three, out of the six total that had been identified in about five or ten minutes of sorting them all out.

“Well, if you haven’t forgotten, we have a bunch of orcs that will catch up with us, and two slaver groups on either side of us in front. The more of your allies that fall the quicker you will die or become a slave. Does that answer your question?” Raya stared back at him ruthlessly. She crossed her arms over her chest and was giving him a standoff smirk.

“Hurry, don’t worry about the ignorant. Just keep reading the other screens. We have to finish those as soon as we can to press an advantage,” Yuta gestured tiredly to Raya. He kept waving her forward.

“Got another ranger here, though she didn’t get the enemy scouting skill for some reason? Maybe it’s a bonus skill?” Raya wondered. She glanced back and forth between Akimoto’s screen and the other person’s comparing them, while the other two were hoping she could tell them more.

Little by little they were moving around to the kids with blue screens.

“Eh? There are bonus skills too?” one of the ranger kids was really excited. Some of them were starting to brighten up.

“That’s a possibility, but it’s not confirmed yet,” I said.

“Eh? No matter what we’re still getting the low end,” someone complained.

“Not fair.”

“But it’s a ranger skill! Aren’t rangers like so cool?” Raya countered.

“This kind of job is probably going to be the first to meet other creatures and start on survival food. So that’s a plus,” I reasoned.

“We will need food soon huh? We can’t eat people like the orcs can,” Yumi mused.

“Eh? Is that true about it being key to meeting others?” Raya wondered.

“I hadn’t thought about it that way. It’s kind of an advantage isn’t it?” Akimoto was brightening up even more now.

“It’s as good a guess as any. I can see why they would have higher probability from finding stuff because of scouting. The scouting skill would be really useful for that,” Yuta said aloud.

“But even if they have the skills, people have to be willing to go out and use it. They have to be brave enough to go explore and do stuff with it and not just hide at whatever camp we’re at,” I said.

“That’s true,” Yumi said.

“Oh, now that you think of it, Akimoto did discover the enemies. So enemy scouting has to be earned,” Yuta said thoughtfully. “It would make sense that you have to earn the skills and can’t just get them easily and for free.”

“But how do I use my magic or whatever? Or do I even get any? Or is like the blue collar version of magic?” Akimoto said. He looked puzzled and a bit desperate too.

“Blue collar version of magic? I think that you are over thinking things too much,” I snickered. What’s wrong with being blue collar anyway…blue collar people often get to work for themselves more. I think Akimoto hadn’t realized rangers would have a lot more freedom than other jobs. If he were to realize it, he’d value it more. In real life the hardest thing to have was to be free for yourself.

“Blue collar are usually more independent actually. If you work for others they own you,” Yumi cautioned.

Huh…in a way she was right.

“Well it’s whatever rangers use magic for? Probably having to do with hunting, hiding, or finding stuff. But it didn’t say or explain that part,” Yuta said sympathetically. “Sorry.” She shrugged.

Several kids groaned.

“I guess we still have to figure some stuff out,” Akimoto suggested.

“Well, I think it’s a bit different than that. Your skill is like a life skill maybe and probably uses stamina and endurance instead?” Raya suggested, but seemed to be guessing herself. She was also going over in her mind who the students that had become rangers and what they were like.

“So should we go try to scout some enemies? So we can all get the skill?” a boy suggested with a crooked smile on his face, who Yuta had just identified as Ranger number six. He seemed to want the hidden skill badly. It seems the ranger job was starting to be fairly common now. We now had an idea how the other skills worked too.

“Actually now that I think of it there might be several hidden skills not just one. And does having one of them mean you can’t get the other skills?” I said aloud.

“No! Do not go try to find them! The last thing we want is you running back here to camp being followed by stuff we can’t fight off!” Yumi exclaimed slapping him in the arm.

Because of what that kid and Yumi had said, they missed what I’d said.

“Ouch! You hit me!” he replied.

“Duh! Use some common sense! You have to remember these are living breathing people. They will have many years more experience tramping in the wilderness than we do and will surely find you just as easily. They also know this terrain more than we do including places to trap people! It’s also a small army capable or murder! Then they’d find the rest of us!” she argued.

“Eh?”

“Ah, so it’s like that,” someone said softly in disappointment, with their head down.

“So…complicated…” another said.

“I forgot in RPGs the enemies don’t ever go after you proactively, they just react to what you do. In this case it’s totally the opposite of that. They are hunting us all the time! That makes it really complicated you know,” Yuta sighed. “Reality is much harder than I believed it to be.”

“I’ve always thought that was a flaw about RPGs too actually. People and monsters aren’t going to stay in the same spot all day,” I said.

“Yeah, we could be attacked, things can go wrong huh?” Yumi screwed up her face and had her hands on her hips. She looks stressed out like the rest of us are.

“In RPGs the monsters only sack towns in the intro to build the hero’s background too. After that you pretty much get all the god items and it’s inevitable that if you are even half a brain you can win. It won’t be like that now that we’re not playing against AI,” Akimoto said.

“We could also get attacked at night too. Should we post guards?” I said.

“That’s a good idea,” Yuta agreed.

“Eh? Akimoto and Yuta both play RPGs too huh?” Yumi looked at them dourly, like they’d become criminals. She stared at them maliciously.

Akimoto was giving Yuta a ‘shut up now’ look, while trying to gesture behind Yumi’s back that he was killing his chance with women. Since Yumi was good looking they didn’t want to lose face with her too.

He shrugged, “Eh? I was sick from school a lot last year and there wasn’t any way of helping it,” he pleaded for mercy.

“Yeah reality is much more dangerous. The enemies aren’t just going to sit as targets. We have to be proactive. Because they aren’t made from computer AI they are ALWAYS moving around and doing real life stuff in unpredictable and surprising ways. In fact we better watch for spies and scouts too,” I reaffirmed.

“Are you sure about that?” a kid asked.

“Those things that attacked us were intelligent,” Raya admitted.

People didn’t like to admit that, and their facial expressions were complicated and now horrified trying to understand how bad things were.

“Well it’s common sense. Think about how many times a villager has to leave a village just to gather something simple like water and firewood for themselves and their families. Someone has to dump latrines too, and they won’t do that next to where they sleep. I’m sure they have sentries too, since they know defending is harder than attacking,” I said.

“So if we chop wood and haul water will our job become ‘villager’?” someone wondered.

“Ah, so it’s like that,” Akimoto said, seeing what I meant.

“Ah damn.”

“We could be found huh?”

“That bites.”

“We need more weapons!” some people exclaimed at nearly the same time.

“So maybe we’re the same as NPCs in the end,” Yuta sighed. He poked a stick in the ground to try to satisfy his depression. He kept stabbing it into the grass.

“We’re not NPCs its just harder than we thought,” Yumi replied.

“What if the difference between an NPC and a real person is just being proactive and engaged about their situation?” Yumi said.

“That’s possible too,” someone said.

“Well let’s just not be NPCs then,” another girl said.

“Well how come we didn’t get a skill tree when Kenji’s job was discovered but we got a skill tree right away with Akimoto and the other rangers?” Raya wondered.

“Hmm, well it does seem that Kenji was a fail necromancer. Something must be wrong with his stats, or not enough prerequisite intelligence. So that might be why we didn’t discover there were skill trees at that time,” Yumi said, but only after making sure Kenji wasn’t near us to overhear. After all Kenji and his zombie minion, and his ‘apprentice’ were acting as the rear guard near the end of the long line of students that were traveling.

But with over 97 students here, plus however many of the wounded that survived I’m guessing that there probably wouldn’t be a terribly high number of rangers. Some of them might unlock other things, or even just life skills jobs, I wondered? But I could be wrong in that too.

Yumi and the others shortly heard and had the others explained to them what had just happened with the other two groups of people we’d found when they wondered why we weren’t moving ahead anymore. Still, in the end it was probably going to save some of the wounded people who might not have survived a forced march.

This caused a lot of confusion in the group too because some people didn’t understand the danger explained to them, even after a few tries. People were naive and thought someone would have to rescue them. Others thought that there must be some normal humans that would fight the orcs for them. In a big group too, people never wanted the same things and it’s harder to cooperate too.

Being confused and disoriented in a new place made a lot of people unable to coordinate and unify effectively because they didn’t know how to properly react to this situation.

A lot of time was lost by Yuta and Raya and others in trying to help them see how dangerous the other soldiers were and people somehow had a disconnect with reality in recognizing that just because those people were using ancient or medieval lost technologies didn’t mean that they weren’t still dangerous and capable of killing.

In fact, some of them had probably spent their whole life killing things…

We lost time explaining that, and some people were now trying to use the newly discovered ranger skills to make temporary shelters made from salvaged forest materials, find lumber for building and for fires, and find areas to make pit traps.

This brought out new problems because people wanted to borrow my fireman’s axe. I knew that I’d also never get it back if I did give it out, since it was the only thing available to cut lumber, and the only real metal weapon.

After a few minutes we’d sorted out that we now had six rangers, and an herbalist. It seems that one boy, who just happened to have an overly healthy interest in herbs before he was sucked into this world had accidentally discovered the herbalist job by trying to make a homemade cigarette, using various plants that resembled one of his favorites back home.

After that we found him behind a bush with red blood shot eyes that were kind of droopy looking while he was trying to take a hit. It was the smoke and his blue screen popping up right over a bush suspiciously that had ratted him out in the end.

It was decided that after a rest that people would vote on what to do the next morning. The options were try to join either the Yayoi or the Egyptians, or stay in the orc lands.

Technically there was a fourth choice of trying to go off on our own somewhere else but I don’t think that they could handle that. These were people…kids, that had mostly never even been camping before. The thought of not living in a city must be terrifying to them.

“But will we even last till morning?” I questioned to Asakura Sensei and Yumi while Rina was passed out, laid out over the small shelter we’d erected together.

“Hmm, you think the orcs will find us?” Yumi wondered. She was also thinking about this a lot.

“Well I’m not a ranger but over a hundred kids tramping around through the woods and plains are going to leave a trail that even some elementary school kids can follow,” I said.

“That is worrying,” Sensei nodded. “But you think they’ll come soon?”

“I think they will come after they reorganize themselves. But we’d have to figure out what that entails before we’d be able to know for sure,” I said.

“Well why haven’t they come after us already?” Yumi wondered.

“Probably a power vacuum,” Asakura said suddenly looking up and picturing something in her mind that we couldn’t see. “I was wondering about that too, but didn’t want to cause a panic. But I thought, well if that boss pig orc was the leader, and they’d already lost a few officers in battle, then the rest of the orcs will be fighting over the females they’ve already captured. Plus they’d also naturally fight over the leadership even without what they see as a gold mine’s worth of plunder. With both those two things open they are likely having a big power struggle in their dens and fortress to try and get the most from each other. It would probably resemble a small civil war. Whoever emerges as the leader after that is surely going to be someone really crafty and dangerous.”

“Well, how are you sure of that?” Yumi wondered.

“Well if you study how corruption spreads in society, and how drug cartels gain territory it’s a similar concept. So to understand it, just compare it to whatever the closest equivalent of pig orcs in our society is,” Asakura replies.

“Eh? So there are beings similar to pig orcs bosses among people too. I knew that but somehow I didn’t realize it, if that makes any sense,” Yumi sighed.

“Yeah, like in the old world we came from there was a job called, “Tax Collector,” Sensei said, shivering. Apparently teacher had a bad experience with one it seemed.

I was a bit surprised that teacher would know that despite being a pure person and having a kind personality. But we did know she was very smart…

“How come you know about stuff like this Sensei?” I asked curiously.

She coughed and looked down obviously embarrassed, “well, uh…before I became a teacher I wanted to become a police officer…but I’m not that physically coordinated enough to do very well and that was discovered early on. So I became a teacher instead,” she ran her hands through her hair while blushing.

“It’s not something I like to tell people though,” she said.

“Not that coordinated?” Yumi wondered.

Sensei blushed again, “I fall down a lot and bump into things…but I was pretty good at the mental aspect of it and the part about strategy, just not the balance and coordination things.”

“Well the orcs wouldn’t be democratic in government. Their government would be something like the strongest rule, and the weak are culled. But the problem with that type of expendable system is they all are subconsciously taught from early on that the only way to get gain and profit is to murder and pillage from each other as much as others in a cannibalistic structure that is held together by brutality. So for them to have a lost leader they are probably slaughtering each other like the pigs they are. After all, I doubt they have the ability to share,” I reasoned.

“that’s scary, that’s almost worse than them coming back right away because it means no matter how many females they capture they’ll never think they have enough,” Yumi said horrified.

“Yeah, that’s why we have to figure out how to deal with this,” Sensei said.

“Yeah, exactly, so we had better be ready, if we want to live,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s true,” Sensei admitted.

“Actually I have a really big question for teacher,” I started to say. I don’t think the others had thought about this yet, but someone would eventually…

“Did you notice how the first things we wanted and desperately needed right away were the ability to escape the orcs, navigate the wilderness, and survive? Plus forage for food? So…right after the ranger job popped up,” I said.

“So, what’s are you getting at?” Yumi wondered, looking at me funny.

“Well, what if the extremes of our desires triggered the Ranger job to appear? If we had been thinking of other things then maybe something else might have popped up?” I suggested.

The others suddenly dropped what they were doing.

“Eh?”

“EH?!”

“So if that’s the case…then…” they were both wide eyed.

“So are you saying that, if we harness our desires properly we might be able to pick our job?” Sensei said in open shock.

“Hmm, so Kenji did that after all didn’t he? All that time the answer was right under our noses and we almost missed it because he was a weirdo,” Yumi shook her head.

Hmm that sounds interesting. Should I try it? What if they are right?