After Sandra had stormed out and her mom had chased after her, Tanner’s dad had sat down on the edge of his bed and the whole sordid tale had come out. Tanner had spilled it all, getting his system, Sandra bringing Janel to him, being drafted, the base, the walls, Marcela and Grace, and the final blow up. 

 

When he finished his dad was smiling faintly. “Son, your life is a mess.” He said with one of his deep laughs. “I wish you hadn’t been drafted though; you should have at least gotten to finish highschool before your time on the wall.”

 

Tanner shrugged. “It’s been… Interesting, but I’ve helped people and I’ve held the line.” His dad patted his shoulder and gripped it in a strong hand. 

 

“I’m glad you took my words to heart. I just wish you had waited a while on your system. A sex system? What would your mother have said?” 

 

“Probably about the same thing Sandra just did.” Tanner said bitterly.

 

 His dad snorted. “I wouldn’t worry about her. It’s good you stopped mooning after her all the time. That’s no way to win a woman”

 

“So I shouldn't go apologize?” Tanner asked.

 

“You should, just not now, or tomorrow. Give it a while and let her stew a bit. Sounds to me like she had it coming. She’s going to have to figure out her own feelings before you can start anything together and that’s not gonna be easy if you're already sticking it to other women.” 

 

“If it's meant to work out it will. If it’s not, trying harder is going to make everything worse instead of better. It sounds like you’ve already got two birds in the hand. Why are you chasing one in the bush anyway?” He asked.

 

Tanner thought about that. The short answer was... because she was Sandra. He’d always had a thing for her and deep down he’d always hoped they’d work out somehow but looking back he realized that has always been wishful thinking on his part more than reality. 

 

Sandra had always been a friend but she’d made the boundaries clear. It had been Tanner who’d been bothered by the situation but that didn’t explain why the hell she was acting like a spurned lover now. 

 

Well, it was what it was. His dad was right about that. Either they’d work it out or they wouldn't. He did regret some of the things he’d said and how he’d said them but damnit she’d ignored him for years. What right did she have to throw a fit now and that comment about Grace had been just to piss him off.

 

He shook away the thoughts.

 

“You never did tell me what you were doing here.” He asked his dad finally.

 

“I’m not part of the army. I’m a volunteer. I have to follow the orders of any officers on the ground, but we have a lot more freedom and the regulations are pretty lax. They want people who’ve already done their time to come out and help fight so they use a pretty light hand with us. One part of the wall is as good as another and we can basically pick where we want to fight. I was about 150 miles from here. When I got your text I started asking around and finally found out where you were just as Sandra got drafted and was assigned to the same place so Rashelle and I headed over here.” 

 

“Rashelle huh? Are you two…?” Tanner started. Tanner didn’t think he’d ever called Ms. Aster by her first name, but his dad cut him off.

 

“None of your damn business.” His father snapped and Tanner grinned.

 

“I’ll take that as a yes.” He smiled. Looking back, it should have been more obvious. There’s no way any man, widower or not, liked doing household chores for the neighbor lady that much. Tanner was happy for them. He had only one or two memories of his mother, as he was only five when she died. She’d been a tall, thin, woman with hair more orange than red and she’d   matched his father in ferocity if not size. Tanner still had memories of her smiling down at him as she sang him lullaby’s.

 

“Well, I’m gonna go track down Rashelle and I’m sure you’ve got training bright and early tomorrow.” Tanner’s dad said as he stood up to his feet. “Goodnight son.”

 

***********************

 

The following days for Tanner fell into a rhythm. He’d go for his morning lap of the base around 7:00. Grab breakfast at the mess, and spend the next two hours relaxing. It was hard to do with his buff buzzing around his head, but relaxation was important and he’d had to firmly remind himself of that before his brain drove him into more training.

 

Then it was weapon’s training, lunch and the classroom, and afternoon sparring before he’d once more try his hand at mana-empowerment.

 

It wasn’t that he disregarded Sandra’s warning about it. The internal damage the healers had fixed had proven that.  It was just way too useful to abandon. In battle the potential it had was too great, and even if he hurt himself doing it a trump-card like that could save his life. So he’d continued but only for two hours a day, and he tried his best to use even less mana.

 

Making the bursts of mana he was using even smaller was difficult but that just made Tanner happy. It gave him an obvious way to improve. In a burst of inspiration that Tanner was embarrassed he hadn’t realized sooner, he understood that a single burst of mana wasn’t going to accomplish much. Even something as simple as slicing with his sword took entire groups of muscles from his back to his fingers acting in perfect timing and concert. 

 

That was when he grasped the true difficulty of his task. Still, his super-focus didn’t let him be discouraged and he continued, working with two, then three, then four bursts at once. That training led to some truly comical screw ups but also let him see a bit of daylight at the end of the tunnel.

 

There was another horde attack on Monday in the wee hours of the morning, but nothing terrible happened even though he spent seven shifts on the wall and didn’t make it back to base until sunrise on Wednesday morning. It was the longest battle he’d ever been in and he now knew why his training sergeant had pounded into their minds over and over to conserve their physical energy and mana whenever possible.

 

In the end it hadn’t been a swarm of demons or a powerful enemy that had earned Tanner his first wound. It had been a single cutter and simple exhaustion. Twelve hours earlier and he would have easily dodged the blow, even caught off guard as he had been, but even 12 vitality only went so far against two entire days of fighting. A healer in the bunker cut a plug of meat a good three inches across out of his calf before healing it back closed and regenerating the muscle.

 

There was a pall over the base when the exhausted troops finally made it back. The soldiers were near the breaking point. There had been at least one horde a week, every week for most of three months now and the last two-day long battle seemed to have been one too many. 

 

Tanner’s Sergeant gave his squad the rest of the week off and told them to meet for training on Saturday morning. Tanner went to track down Grace. They’d been separated most of the time on the wall and he hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to her except a few times during training last Sunday. 

 

Tanner broke out his best teenage game and invited her over to Netflix and chill. This was somewhat undermined by the fact this room didn’t have TV, and the base didn’t have WIFI. She’d laughed at him when asked, which had been worth the embarrassment. They had both needed a laugh.

 

She’d eventually agreed and they’d gone back to his room. Neither of them had been much in the mood for shenanigans and Grace had surprised him by bringing up a bootleg copy of the old BBC radio broadcasts for Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy on her phone and they both listened to it until they fell asleep.

 

They woke well after dark and Tanner’s libido had returned full force. He woke Grace by kissing her all over. She woke with a gasp just as he set his mouth to her core. They made love until hunger finally drove them out of bed. 

 

The base's mess was open 24/7 to account for late-night shifts and it was surprisingly full even at 22:30. Apparently, He and Grace hadn’t been the only ones to sleep all day after the battle and come crawling in for some grub once they’d woken up.

 

The mood among the soldiers was still ugly but Tanner found his own thoughts had improved drastically. He looked around the mess, at the hunched postures and stiff faces, they sat alone or huddled in small groups and the only voices raised were angry ones. Then he looked over at Grace, who was smiling faintly with a relaxed air. 

 

He thought back to his feelings after the battle. He’d felt terrible and the gloom of those around him had only added to that gloom. Thinking back though, what had really been to be so upset about? Yes, they fought a long battle but they'd won and the casualties had seemed fairly light. 

 

He looked back out at the soldiers eating. It was like someone had used an aura of depression on the whole base. Tanner had never heard of any demon that could do that but the thought terrified him. The sheer amount of power it would take to affect thousands of people all at once boggled the mind.

 

“Wanna take a lap of the base?” Tanner asked as they finished eating. The food had brought him back to life and now with his newly refreshed sex buff, his mind was urging him to go so something useful instead of going back to his room.

 

“Cardio is for sissies.” Grace said with a smile. Tanner had found that Grace’s strong silent personality had been driven at least partially by shyness. She still wasn’t exactly chatty, but she had loosened up a bit after spending more time with him.

 

Tanner found himself in one of the base's weight rooms ten minutes later. Unlike the mess, the pair had the whole place to themselves. Weights for system users required ultra dense materials or increased gravity, or both in Grace’s case as Tanner watched her bench 600lbs in 3x gravity. Tanner had never been one for heavy weight-lifting but spotted Grace dutifully as she casually benched 11 or 12 times her own weight. When his own turn came, tanner could only do 150. 

 

They grunted and sweated for nearly an hour before Tanner had enough and begged off. He went back to his room, and forced himself to go back to sleep for at least a few hours.

 

He woke to a knock on the door and found his dad, Ms. Aster, and Sandra waiting outside. “Get dressed, we're going to breakfast.” Tanner had looked past his dad and he and Sandra glared at each other. “Knock that crap off. You don’t have to talk, or even look at each other but we’re eating breakfast together and you’re going to deal with it. This is the front both of you could die anyday.” 

 

Tanner quickly threw on a fresh uniform and headed back to the mess following his dad and Ms. Aster sullenly. Even as frustrated as he was his eyes couldn’t help but skim over Ms. Aster’s rear end with appreciation. Thick, would be the best descriptor for her. Her skin was a few shades darker than her daughter's and where Sandra had more muscle than was usually attractive on a woman, Ms. Aster’s weight had gone in the opposite direction. She had a big meaty ass, thick thighs, and a truly immense bust with a cup-size somewhere in the middle of the alphabet. He shook his head at his own thoughts. He was having more sex than he’d ever imagined and here he was still oogling a woman thirty years older than him.  Still, his dad had good taste.

 

The foursome found a small table and ate in strained silence. At least until Nurse Aster opened her mouth. “So…. I met that Specialist your fucking.”

 

Tanner had been drinking orange juice and it nearly came out his nose. He did spray part of the table and had frantically reached for napkins as he tried to cough up the liquid that had gone down the wrong pipe. Tanner shot her a mock glare but he should have known better. He’d known her for years and she’s always been blunt, foul-mouthed, and completely incapable of putting up with any bullshit. Instead she just waded into any awkward conversations with all the subtlety of a rampaging hippo.

 

 “She’s a sweet girl. Shame about her arm though. Never seen someone live with that much corruption before. Surprised they didn’t just take off the whole arm. Will prolly have too eventually. I saw her phyc chart...You did good.” She said, with a proud smile. That warmed Tanner. He’d never seen Ms. Aster as a mother figure but she’d been in his life since kindergarten. She was like a foul-mouthed aunt to him and her sincere compliment meant a lot. 

 

Sandra snorted but her mother shot her a glare. She turned even more sullen but Tanner did his best to enjoy the meal. Eventually he asked a question he’d been wondering about for a while.

 

“What do you guys actually do here? I mean… I’m sure Ms. Aster is a nurse in one of the bunkers but I’ve never seen anyone on the wall above tier one. I know there are quite a few around base, but I’ve got no idea what they do.”

 

His dad laughed. “It depends. Usually when a new recruit comes on for their two-years they go to basic. Usually for six weeks to two months. Then they’d fly them out to a base like this to get some combat experience. Once you’ve been on the wall for ten battles you’re considered a real army type and then can strike for a division. 

 

If you wanna fly, you can go train for that, or head to logistics, or medical, or heavy-weapons, or what have you. You’ve got lots of options, although it usually depends on your system and who needs people. If you’ve got a battle-system or wanna keep fighting you stay on the wall until you hit tier 2. At that point you become a Specialist. They are the scouts and breech-stoppers depending on their fighting style. They either go outside the wall to find and kill higher-level demons or break-up masses of dangerous foes like spitters, or they act as a final option in case something bad gets to the wall.”

 

“You’ve only been on the wall so you’ve only seen a tiny part of the fight. The wall is the last line of defense not the first one. Why do you think you hardly see anything besides crawlers and cutters? It’s because all the base's higher level fighters were out weeding out the higher level demons.”

 

“I’m a strong-man. Lots of offense and decent defense. They normally use me to kill any siege-demons the artillery or bombers miss. That’s things like Dire-Bulks, Stone Throwers, Rammers, and even a Wall Breaker once. Wall breakers have cores and that was one hell of scrap. Almost died there but your mom saved my life.” his dad explained.

 

Tanner hadn’t heard of any of those demons, but any demon with a core was dangerous indeed. They were usually the equal of a system user at the highest levels or tier 2, or more usually tier 3.

 

“So it’s just gonna be the same crap for at least another 2 months.” Tanner said with a sigh.

 

“Welcome to army life, alternating boredom and terror.” His dad replied cheerfully. Tanner grunted and got up from the table. He had nothing to do for two more days and he wanted to get some more practice with mana empowerment in.

 

As he headed to his favorite spot on the training ground he checked his system. The long battle on the wall had earned him 730 SP, which was only slightly more than he’d earned from the much shorter but far more dangerous battle before. Then there had been the two encounters with Marcela, and the one with Grace, neither had earned him many points, but quantity had it’s place. He was now only about 200 points for being able to upgrade again. He pondered his ability options but decided to hold off. There would be time and things on the wall seemed to be getting worse. Those extra points in speed and vitality were needed now.