“Wait? No one’s coming?” Dolus asked.

“Well this is just my guess but by the looks of things the military probably has their hands full. At the very least they won’t be here for a while.” I replied. I gave some pause before continuing. “I think our best option is to get out of the city, there are too many of those monsters around here and so far all the buildings have done is given them a place to hide.”

“But what makes you think that there won’t be more in the countryside?”

“Well think about it, think back to this morning when the first monster arrived. Everyone got one to fight. I think that they appear in proportion to the amount of people in one place.” I said.

“That does make sense, it would explain why something powerful appeared when there were tons of people in one place, like the subway. But then will more monsters continue to appear and attack us out of nowhere?” he worried.

“That is something to watch out for, I guess when we sleep we have to do it in shifts, that way we don't get too surprised and have some time to gather our wits.”

“All right then, if that’s settled then should we go to the countryside now? The sooner we get out of here the better.”

“I’m sorry but I’d like to stay the night.”

“Why? What if the monsters come for us?”

“Then we’ll have to fight them. But honestly right now I’m just way too tired to manage that. Will you wait for me?” I asked.

“Of course man, no worries. You can get some shut-eye now. I'll take the first shift.” Dolus replied.

 

Despite it only being about four in the afternoon I quickly fell asleep. I had only been awake for about six hours at that point and already felt drained. Between the fighting and the death I had witnessed all around me, sleep was a welcome embrace. I had no dreams, or if I did I couldn't remember them. When I awoke the room was dark. The fact I couldn’t see anything jolted alertness into me. 

“Hey Dolus.” I called out. My voice being scratchy. Man, I could use some water. I swallowed down the discomfort in my throat. “You can sleep now.”

“Ok thanks man, I was starting to get tired myself and was considering waking you.” 

I deftly felt my way to the door. There was a small streak of light that entered. It was pale and I could hardly see Dolus’ face. He did look tired, I patted him on the shoulder as he walked past me and sat down to lean against the wall. In a few moments I could hear his faint snores. 

 

By the time Dolus woke up It was already day. We didn’t have much in the way of protection. I only had my club and Dolus had one of the blades I gave him. Traveling light did seem to have its benefits however, and without me having to constantly watch my back we made decent ground. It was inevitable but we eventually came across a group of goblins. This time I felt a lot more confident about dealing with them. Not only did I have help but I also had a better weapon.

The individual goblins did  not put up much of a fight  and while the Goblin Captain was more challenging it still was no match for the two of us. By the end of the encounter Dolus had got himself a club and now we both had a blade in reserve. 

Windows had popped up every time I had killed one of the goblins, I ignored them during the actual battle but now I wanted to take a look. 

 

Congratulations! You have defeated 4 ‘Goblins’.

-48 EXP has been awarded to you.

-10 Gold has been awarded to you.

- There has been a 20% reward penalty added

due to the amount of members in your party.

 

Congratulations! You have defeated 1 ‘Goblin Captain’.

-24 EXP has been awarded to you.

-5 Gold has been awarded to you.

- There has been a 20% reward penalty added

due to the amount of members in your party.

 

Party? I suppose that’s referring to Dolus. A 20% penalizer isn’t that bad for essentially halving the difficulty. Dolus must’ve gotten the notification for receiving the club seeing as he’s the one that picked it up.

By the time the sun set we had made it to the edge of the city. Before us lay the suburbs and better yet in the distance we could see some fires. Despite the temptation to keep going to the fires we decided to make camp somewhere near here. We still didn’t know what the dark would bring and we couldn’t afford to risk the lower visibility. 

There was a smallish house that we settled on using. After breaking down the door a stench washed over us. It seemed that those who lived here were unable to survive their first encounter with monsters, though the monsters themselves were nowhere to be found. While we couldn’t give them a burial or even a cremation we did place a white sheet over them as we put them outside. 

Once again we slept in shifts with at least one of us keeping guard at all times. We only had one accurate way of telling the time and that was by checking the countdown. Once Dolus got his rest I woke him up, I wasn’t going to let him sleep in.

 

Points

Currency for in-system spending. 

Reward for leveling up. 

You can spend points in the Point Store

The points store is currently unavailable. 

Time until availability:

 19 hours 36 minutes

 

We’d both already agreed that we wanted to be awake when the countdown hit zero. The curiosity kept me constantly questioning what would happen when we could access this ‘point store’ .

We couldn’t just waste time waiting for the timer to count down though so we gathered up our few items and left. It is always surprising how much of a maze suburban landscape is. Earlier we had thought that the camps we had seen were just a few kilometers away and while that may be true from a bird’s eye view, in reality we had to go much further. This was partly because we decided to stick to the main roads, while it may have been possible to cut across a few of the houses we didn’t want to take the risk of getting disoriented.

After what had been the hundredth turn we’d taken we finally found it. In the past there was clearly a park here before, but now it had no true description for it. Trash and debris was littered around, and what seemed like a wall was made out of haphazard items, anything that seemed like it would fit was piled on. As we got closer someone called out to us. 

“Hey! The entrance is round the other side, near the trashcan pyramid!”

Trashcan Pyramid? Well whatever floats their boat I guess.

Dolus and I walked around the wall of junk, eventually a uh… pyramid of trashcans came into view.

Huh. So they meant it literally.

A fence swung open before us and out came three people. Two of which were wearing baseball gear. While it did make them look funny I suppose it did give them a little bit of protection. The third was a lady in a well kept suit. I was never able to figure out how she kept that suit in such great condition. Her hair was tied back in a neat bun. The only thing that conveyed what she had been through were her eyes. Dark circles below them signaling a clear lack of sleep. It was understandable especially considering what had been going on. 

“Who are you?” the lady asked.

“Well I am Ignus and this is Dolus.” I responded. “May I ask who you are?”

“I’m Lauren Jetst, head of the HOA though I don’t even know if things like that exist anymore. Anyway I’m the leader of this err… camp.” Lauren said. She glanced back at the camp. It really looked run down. “It isn’t safe out there, not with all those things running around. Goblins yeah?”

Dolus and I followed Lauren into the camp, the gates swung shut. On closer inspection those gates had likely been taken from a tennis court which meant it was quite likely that these people were privileged. I suppressed a chuckle at that. These people were probably not adjusting well to this event, if that’s what you could call this. On the inside there were plenty of tents and makeshift shelters all around, there were probably at least 75 people here. Some of them stood lookout behind their wall, some were injured, some were taking care of the injured, and others were building shelters. Surprisingly they all seemed to be at least slightly productive. A couple of kids ran past them while being chased by one of their own. It was good to see that at least a few were able to have some fun. 

We were following Lauren to one of the larger shelters when we heard the gate open. A small group of people, all wearing gear similar to that which Lauren’s guards had been wearing stepped through. Each of them carried bags of food except two near the back who were helping a man with half of his leg missing.. People rushed over to help take the bags and some immediately went to work removing the cloth that was wrapping the stump and pouring disinfectant on the wound. I was taken aback, these people were definitely trying their best to survive. Lauren barely spared a glance at those returning.

“That’s the fourth scavenging party that’s come back with injured. But we have to keep sending people out. Food is hard to come by and with so many mouths to feed we’re constantly on the edge.” Lauren explained.

“I’m so sorry to hear that, is there any way we could help?” Dolus asked.

We? I didn’t sign up for anything, why are you volunteering for us to go? Didn’t we try to get here just so we could be safe?

“Well I’m glad you brought that up Dolus. Listen, we don’t know you, we have no incentive to help you in fact we’re quite close to the edge here as is. So here’s the deal, you guys need to prove your worth. If you want a place to sleep and food to eat without having to worry about those monsters 24/7 then you need to join the scavenging parties, understand?”

Is she really trying to coerce us? Why on earth would we want to do something with such a high casualty rate?

“We’ll thi-” 

“We’ll do it.”

Did Dolus seriously just agree to it? I mean we haven’t even had time to properly consider this. What does he think he’s doing?

I tried to glare at him but he wasn’t looking at me but rather out of the shelter and towards all the people outside.

Wait a second! Does this guy have a savior complex?

I was in a daze as we were led toward the gate. Apparently the scavenging party we had just seen return were forced to leave behind a few bags of supplies and it was our first job to retrieve them. I spoke with a few of the people from the scavengers party to get an idea of what to expect. Apparently they had been attacked by a monster we hadn’t seen yet. They described the monster as being very similar to a regular wolf except for the teeth which were like those of a shark.

Luckily they were kind enough to lend us some of the armor they had. It was nothing more than sports gear but it felt comforting to have some form of protection. The gates swung open before us and we set out on our first mission from the camp.