Chapter 49

Revelations

“So, what the hell is up with your hair,” Alex asked.

I scowled. Having to explain the fact that I had no clear idea what had happened was going to be a handful.

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After resolving the situation with Liam, word spread rapidly. Sure enough, by the time midday rolled around, most had already heard about the event and questions abounded.

However, any definite explanation for everyone would have to wait, as our group was ready to depart along with Rick’s men to investigate the Leyline.

Just outside the makeshift gates for the Community, an engine roared to life, signaling the convoy’s readiness. Rick had decided to join us himself, accompanied by a single nine-man squad. Our contribution to the expeditionary group consisted of myself, Kevin, Alex, Priscilla, and surprisingly enough, Noah as well wanted to tag along. The mature teenager had proved himself yesterday, and frankly, I doubted any of us could rationalize excluding him any longer. In every sense of the word, the young man had shown himself in combat.

Granted, from some of the rumors I’ve heard, his girlfriend Emma hasn’t taken to the idea as eagerly. In a way, it reminded me of Rachel and myself. During the opening throes of the apocalypse, Rachel had been distraught every time I had endangered myself. Eventually, she realized that danger was just a part of our new everyday reality. I knew she was still silently coping with the truth of it all, but she had already improved enormously. She was a strong woman, and she had adapted.

As I stood there, ruminating in my thoughts, Rick approached me. The mere look on his face indicated he had a question. As it turned out, I was right.

“I heard you got rid of a member of your community?” Rick brought up, as he settled next to me, removing a camouflaged cap to wipe away some sweat from his brow. Looked like the heat was starting to come back full force.

I sighed, “we had no other choice.”

Rick looked at me, then reassuringly said, “You know, true leaders are the ones that have the courage to make the hard choices for the benefit of their people. Even if it may ultimately lead to some hardships for others.”

I looked at him. Frankly, the words felt slightly hollow to me. I didn’t exactly feel like a “true leader”. I was just doing what I had to survive.

Rick caught onto my thoughts though. So, contemplatively, Rick continued, “years ago, back before I had left active duty, I was on tour back in Afghanistan. Our unit came under heavy fire in one hell of an urban area. We were surrounded for nearly half an hour and frankly were almost overrun. Luckily, reinforcements got there and got us out of that shithole. But, as it turned out though, one of our privates had let their nerves get the best of them. We found him afterward, shaking and cowering between two Humvees. He hadn’t even fired a shot,” rick paused reminiscently, a slight scowl forming on his face.

He sighed, and his frown deepened, “It became my responsibility to handle his discharge. It wasn’t exactly terrible, mind you, he only received a general discharge under honorable conditions.”

“The fact is, he just couldn’t adapt to the military environment. Had we kept him in the unit, who knows what could have happened? It was one of the hardest, and also one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever had to make. So don’t hold things too hard against yourself.”

I stared at the man. In a way, the situation was different, but also similar. He had likely saved the life of the private, and potentially some of his own men with the decision. My verdict had consigned a man to his death.

As it turned out, Rick knew that too. “Granted…” Rick continued once again, “The man likely won’t be able to survive out there alone. Not from the things I’ve heard about him; but don’t let it weigh you down. You’ll never know it, but you probably saved some lives,” Rick finished as he patted me on my shoulder and walked back to the Humvee.

Rick’s monologue had helped. Immensely. I’m sure had I made the decision to let Liam stay, that everyone likely would have begrudgingly gone along with me. In the end, Liam’s fate was delivered into my hands, and I sentenced him accordingly.

I put my thoughts regarding Liam aside and decided to distract myself with a quick peruse of my status. I hadn’t had the time to thoroughly check it since my class advancement after all.

In fact, I had managed to accumulate forty-four free attribute points, so, I invested all of them to where they’d likely be most useful. Considering how much I was now focusing on magic, that was going to be my priority. That was the specialty of my class after all.

 

I selected Yes.

 

 

Now, I didn’t think it would be sensible to completely ignore my physical attributes, but, from every experience up until now, I had never really run low on either health or stamina. No, the one stat I had consistently run low on was mana.

In fact, I was consistently using mana at higher and higher rates. It was the one stat I just never had enough of.

With that in mind, I pumped a third of my free attribute points into Wisdom. and the rest into Intelligence.

Immediately a pounding headache erupted in my forehead, as though a jigsaw had just been taken to my brain. I grasped my head for several moments, waiting for the pain to subside.

A group of particularly observant soldiers glanced my way with slight concern, but the pain subsided only a few moments later. As I dropped my hand away turned back to their own preparations.

Coinciding with my investment into several of my attributes, I opened my status window.

 

 

I was currently wearing the [Lesser Crown of the King], which, combined with my Amulet, provided a significant buff to my attributes.

Even though Rick and his men had originally looked at me funny, I explained to them that it was an enchanted item. They left it at that. Though, I continued to get some weird glances every now and again. Even if they were a bit skeptical about the System, they understood we weren’t. I could tell they were loosening up about the idea. Two weeks following the start of the apocalypse, it was about time that they learned to embrace the benefits of the System.

I understood their concern though. It appeared exactly at the same time as the demons did. It was hard not to correlate the two events.

I took a mental note that I needed to try a bit harder to convince Rick to embrace the System. After all, it was meant as a tool to help us, not the demons.

As I continued to peer through my stats, it was clear my investment into my magically oriented attributes hadn’t been small by any means. In fact, I had just gained nearly five hundred extra mana points from the distribution in addition to the benefits of my items.

It was going to take a while before my mana regeneration would be able to refill my mana pool to its new maximum. The mere thought of unleashing consecutive spells much like yesterday’s was captivating my mind.

I pushed the thoughts aside though as I turned to focus on the assembling groups. It looked as though Rick was ready, and so were we.

With just myself, Kevin, Alex, Priscilla, and Noah, we figured that the five of us should be ample enough force.

With my new skills and class advancement, I was going to officially take the position of party leader. Kevin and Alex would act as our frontline, while Priscilla and Noah operated in a supportive role.

If things went well, we won’t have to be doing much fighting in the first place. Or if we did, ideally it would only be against any remnants of the Lich’s undead army.

We weren’t planning for ideal scenarios though. It’s why we had an armored Humvee accompanying us. Plus, Rick’s soldiers had substantially more firepower than any of us could provide at a moment's notice.

Eventually, that would no longer be the case, unless we found a way to improve guns that is.

Kevin had mentioned there might be a way to incorporate magic into a modern arsenal to amplify its effects.

We hadn’t had any of the resources to do that though, but as I glanced towards Rick, a smirk emerged on my face. Perhaps we might find some progress there now?

I sighed internally. Maybe it was just a pipe dream.

Regardless, with the Lich dead, all of the undead under its control should have either been defeated during the battle for the Community or have dissipated after its death.

With a groan, the singular Humvee lurched forward. I hurried to catch up to my small group. Rick was currently walking next to them, having finished providing final orders to his men. As I joined in stride, I nodded to everybody.

As we made our way forward, I began to look around. It was my first time seeing the battlefield since the fight had ended, and the military had done quite the job clearing things up, despite us not having even asked them to.

On either side of the main road, there were piles of undead, heaped to the side. The scent of scorched remains assailed me, and my face scrunched up. I couldn’t help but gag slightly as I lifted my arm to cover my nose.

It was a somber experience, thinking about how many of those undead had once been living, breathing humans. At least now they could rest in peace.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Alex and my father had known some of them. I glanced at Alex briefly, but, once again, he showed no emotion. What was up with him?

As we passed the last of the piles, I was surprised as I noticed a pile of mana stones gathered on the ground.

I pointed it out to Rick.

“While we haven’t delved too much into the ‘System’, we have still been looking into everything that revolves around it. That includes those glowing stones. Those stones must have a strong connection with the invasion. After all, every single monster we’ve killed since this all started has had one.”

I contemplated that for a moment. “You’ve been killing more than just demons then?” I asked.

Rick nodded, “The first few days there were only the demons to struggle with. Then, the larger ones retreated to their portal. While the smaller ones continued their rampage. The fight became a lot easier after that, but the worse of the damage had already been done.”

They retreated? I was shocked, “what do you mean the larger demons went back to their portal, Rick?” I leaned closer, listening attentively.

Rick looked at me, slightly bewildered at my sudden interest. “Well, first they became sluggish, then they retreated near the portal. They haven’t left the area since. Of course, we can’t get close at all either. Made that mistake once. We flew one of the few fighter jets we still have operational over the area. The pilot made it out, but the plane wasn’t so lucky.”

I paused, my attention turning back to our small convoy heading towards the cemetery. My eyes drifted until they fell on Kevin just a few paces in front of me.

I called out to him, and he sauntered over.

“What’s up Thomas?” Kevin asked.

I nodded my head towards Rick, “Rick, repeat that last part of what you just said, regarding the larger demons.”

Rick looked at me, a little perturbed that he had to repeat himself. His curiosity won over though, as he repeated to Kevin what he had just told me.

Kevin looked as though he was on to something.

“Why aren’t they leaving the portals?” Kevin quietly mumbled to himself.

Then, looking at Rick, he asked, “what did Camp Edward come up with?”

Rick shrugged, “I’m not exactly privy to the details of the entire situation. Everything I know is either from gossip or on a need-to-know basis.”

Kevin frowned, but I think he already had an idea as to why the Demon Champions and Lord’s had retreated.

Kevin turned towards me. “Thomas, you mentioned you had gotten the [Mana Sight] skill, right?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Have you used it to look outside yet?” he pried further.

I looked at him, “No. I just barely got the skill last night,” I said, slightly exasperated.

“Activate it,” he said enthusiastically.

I looked at him, slightly annoyed that he couldn’t just tell me what he had come up with. I did what he asked anyway.

I wasn’t sure what [Mana Sight] could possibly show me that my Mana Manipulation skill hadn’t. But it was a higher-tiered skill, so perhaps there was something I was missing.

I activated the skill.

An explosion of color assaulted my eyes It was as though an entirely new spectrum of light had just become visible. In a way, it was like I had been blind most of my life, and suddenly, I wasn’t.

On top of that, I was able to identify quite a number of the colors as well. The ambient mana that currently beset my eyes predominately consisted of a darkish blue hue, as well as a lighter blue variation. The lighter mana was frost mana, while the darker one was apparently death mana. From what I could tell, there wasn’t nearly as much as there had been before.

Even though I couldn’t see the mana before I had received my [Mana Sight] skill, I had still been able to sense it. Previously the sky had been practically saturated with both types of mana, a result of the Lich’s presence, and perhaps also because of something a bit more ominous. After all, just in the Worcester area, alone hundreds of thousands had recently died.

Now, other types of mana were beginning to flood into the Mana Zone, replacing the sudden lack of it.

Then there was the mana zone. Suddenly visible, there was now a discernible boundary, looking as though a strange bluish, transparent ripple had formed a dome over the entire area of Shrewsbury.

Beyond the mana zone, I could see the flowing tides of other mana types. There were some vestiges of fire mana, whether from the heat or ashened remains of the greater Worcester area, I did not know.

In the midst of even that, that were other basic mana types—mostly air, water, and some other types that I still couldn’t seem to identify. But I figured that once my [Mana Sight] skill leveled, I might find a bit more success in that venture.

Only one of the many types I hadn’t immediately been able to identify stuck out to me.

It was a blackish-red, with an ashy sight to it. It didn’t take proficiency in the skill to discern what it was though—Demonic mana.

It was flowing from the direction of Boston, slowly moving through the sky as it attempted to disperse throughout the surrounding areas.

I noticed that it wasn’t just the demonic mana flowing from that direction either, in fact, whole hosts of different mana types were flowing from that area.

“Why is all the mana flowing away from Boston?” I pondered out loud, much to Kevin’s approval.