20. Others (I)

After, he introduced Reina to the rest, and the rest to Reina. Reina had been a warehouse manager, and she had a natural skill for working with people—she was the kind of person people wanted to follow and listen to. Cale was the kind of person people wanted to like.

So he made them both co-leaders of his little settlement, and had them sort out who took what. It was decided Cale would deal with people management stuff. Sorting people into roles that best suited them, running the community. Reina would take most of the logistics of settlement building, including training. Eventually she wanted to lead a militia. She wanted to protect her people, make a safe home for them. For that, it was made very clear to her that she needed power.

It was probably why she joined him in the first place.

Other than a few Reina fanboys, folk seemed happy with him. Maybe a little too happy—a few insisted on calling him 'Sir,' or 'Chief' or 'Boss.' Last night he'd had people of all ages and occupations—bankers to fishermen, teachers to children—coming up, telling him how grateful they were, and so on. Which was rather awkward for him, since he'd never really meant to save them in the first place. He liked clearing dungeons. They just happened to be there.

But they were here now. Oh, well.

The folk that actually spoke to him were a minority, though. A little more than a dozen. A huge chunk stared at him with... reverence, almost? He thought they might come talk to him, but they never did. They seemed scared. He wondered if he came off as unapproachable. If so, he was pleasantly surprised.

They were adapting well, at least. In the past week, reality had sunk in for most of them. There was no contacting anyone from their past life. Their past life was literally wiped away. They still had friends and family they cared about and wanted to see—but to do that, they first had to survive.

When he spoke to the folk—or rather, when they spoke at him—he got a sense of resignation. They seemed a little droopy, a little shattered. But also resolved, now. They knew they were here for the long haul. They had to make the best of it.

It turned out a few of the teens he'd met in Luminous Forest had gotten separated from their parents, who worked in the warehouse. Late last night, he saw several tearful reunions. That did make him smile.

They made him a cabin, end of a row, biggest of the bunch. Still nothing impressive—the inside was sparse, almost empty—but they'd gotten some cloth and feathers out of the Beacon to make a bed. They'd set up a boulder as the chair, and a tree stump as a table. Neat gesture.

Some time late last night, all that talking tired him out. So he took one last trout and ambled off to bed. Essence spilled into his mouth, warmed his chest as he wolfed it down. Maybe half as much as a Moon Fruit. It didn't do much for him now, but it was more pleasant to eat than the raw thing. That night he slept very well.

***

The next morning he made the rounds, checking up on what everyone from his old camp was up to. Liam, the pre-med, had chosen a Priest class. He wanted to be a healer. The techies, Raj and Diana, Annie's mother, went for Mage. Most of the warehouse workers, who were a little higher level, had already chosen Warrior or Ranger; they were set to be militia and builders. The Snaring Thickets people spec'd into Priests and Rogues mostly. They would work as scouts and healers.

He was surprised how much everyone bought in. There was hardly a person lazing about, sitting still. Then again, it was made very clear the apocalypse was no time to sit still. He saw folk bustling about, heating pots, lugging around chunks of stone, planting stakes, drilling Skills in a nearby clearing. They took his words to heart. He was pleased to see it.

As he walked through the camp—he still had to tell people to stop saluting or bowing as he passed—he came across Annie. Yet another surprise: she was Level 6 now, and she'd become a Warrior. Her progress was shockingly fast. She said she'd been binging food and essence all day; she was growing like a weed. Since Zane was a Warrior, she chose it too. She wanted to be strong just like him, she said. "Sure, kid," he chuckled.

Brad and his gang were put in a cell they quickly slapped together. Sophie wanted to join the healers, but Reina made her be a scout. Reina was very reasonable most of the time, but she had a special dislike for Sophie for no reason he could make out.

Before he left, he gathered them all in the square. There must have been nearly fifty of them now. The air was chill, dappled with early morning mist, and the rising sun painted them orange.

"Let's make one thing clear," he said. "I should be your last resort. You'll likely face Monsters again, or other threats. But I won't be around to help—I'll spend most of my time outside, in dungeons. Which means you'll need to govern yourselves. Fend for yourselves. I'll step in if disaster strikes, but you've got to be strong on your own. Got it?"

They nodded. There was a chorus of "yeah"s and "yes, Sir!"s. He wondered too how they had taken to his authority so easily. Maybe in disasters, people needed someone strong to look to. Maybe it was just his Level.

"Good," he said. "I'll be back around sundown. More will probably be joining us soon. Let's get those shelters going."

He turned and left.

***

𝕐𝕠𝕦 𝕙𝕒𝕧𝕖 𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕕: 𝔻𝕦𝕟𝕘𝕖𝕠𝕟: 𝕎𝕙𝕚𝕤𝕡𝕖𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕘 ℂ𝕒𝕧𝕖𝕤 (𝔽).

The Whispering Caves were due east of the Luminous Forest, built into a chunk of mountain range which rose up into the Cascades. The trees grew sparse, and up came cliffs of stone.

Caves there led into a mess of dimly lit, echoey tunnels. Its walls were matted with glowing red fungi. The monsters here looked like something out of a cheap haunted house, these withered spirit-things draped in tattered black; "Dread Wraiths," they were called. They kept rushing at him, but most were under Level 20, and weak besides. He still passed some X's on his mini-map, though. People died here? Maybe they were frightened into tripping and hitting their head.

The boss was a little more interesting.

It was called an Echo Wraith. And its lair was a perfect sphere of a cavern. The boss could bounce sound off it to make you think it was everywhere and nowhere at once, and the air was so smoky it had a great deal of cover. Zane ran after it for maybe half a minute, got bored, and blanketed the place with a flaming Chain Cyclone. That was the end of that.

𝔻𝕦𝕟𝕘𝕖𝕠𝕟 𝕔𝕝𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕖𝕕!

He found five spelunkers cowering in one of the tunnels. He sent them to his people.

***

𝕐𝕠𝕦 𝕙𝕒𝕧𝕖 𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕕: 𝔻𝕦𝕟𝕘𝕖𝕠𝕟: 𝕊𝕦𝕟𝕜𝕖𝕟 𝔾𝕣𝕠𝕧𝕖 (𝔽)

The Sunken Grove was due north of the Luminous Forest. It was underground, interestingly—you'd think you were walking on a carpet of leaves at first, but you'll fall through. That carpet was actually a canopy. Underneath, there was a quaint little forest riddled with underground rivers. Three different bosses were spread across it.

One was called 'Twilight Wolf'—a beast that looked much scarier than it fought. There was this ent-thing, which his fires quickly disposed of. Most interesting was the final boss, the Grove Hydra, which commanded its own miniature swamp.

This one, at least, gave him a few minutes of fighting. When he threw his fire at it, it sent up waves of muddy water, blunting the blow. It had minions under the surface, constantly dragging at him, yanking him off balance. And it spewed poison mists that got in his eyes, screwing with his aim. But in the end he got hold of it, pulled it close, clamped in a tight noose, and poured until essence he melted the thing to slag.

He got a Level out of it. He also found about a dozen more stragglers and sent them to camp.

***

Several weeks passed like this.

He was starting to get bored of these F-ranks. He needed stronger stuff. He was doing this wrong. He didn't need to clear out every dungeon near him. He should be looking at where the higher-tier dungeons were—the E- and even D-ranks, maybe—and charting paths to take to get to them. The nearest D-rank was somewhere in the mountains; there were twelve F-ranks between him and that one. Too far. But the nearest E-rank dungeon was just three F-ranks away.

Every few days it was like he came home to a new village. They'd started straight out of the Stone Age. They skipped a few centuries with each iteration. The village he saw now was nearly medieval.

A few of the folk he'd set back on the third day worked in construction. On day five, he came back to houses with thatched roofs and the beginnings of paved roads. They'd gotten these essence lamp-posts out of the beacon, so they didn't need to burn fires all night.

The town was expanding, adding a new district, and there was talk of building an outpost in former goblin territory too. Things were going well, and quickly. He'd made it clear he wasn't their leader. But for some reason he still felt an odd sense of pride.

Finally, he managed to clear a path to an E-rank dungeon. He planned on going alone, but when Reina heard, she insisted on tagging along. She said she wanted to stretch her legs. Unlike most people he teamed up with in his past life, she got that he preferred silence to small talk, that he liked things direct. And she knew what she was doing, so he didn't mind.

She'd done wonders with the settlement so far—she worked harder than anyone. She was very diligent about it, too—every night, she insisted they eat dinner together alone. She said this was so she could fill him in on the goings-on of the day. She got very annoyed when anyone interrupted them, even to pass a message.

Together, they crossed what must have been near fifty miles of forest dungeon, and arrived at last at—

𝕐𝕠𝕦 𝕙𝕒𝕧𝕖 𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕕 𝔼-𝕣𝕒𝕟𝕜𝕖𝕕 𝔻𝕦𝕟𝕘𝕖𝕠𝕟: ℝ𝕒𝕧𝕖𝕟𝕨𝕠𝕠𝕕 𝕍𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕒𝕘𝕖.

ℂ𝕝𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕒𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕆𝕓𝕛𝕖𝕔𝕥𝕚𝕧𝕖:

𝕊𝕝𝕒𝕪 𝕥𝕙𝕖 ℍ𝕠𝕝𝕝𝕠𝕨𝕖𝕕 ℝ𝕖𝕒𝕡𝕖𝕣

𝕊𝕝𝕒𝕪 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝔽𝕠𝕣𝕘𝕠𝕥𝕥𝕖𝕟 𝔾𝕦𝕒𝕣𝕕𝕚𝕒𝕟

𝕆𝕓𝕛𝕖𝕔𝕥𝕚𝕧𝕖𝕤: 𝟘/𝟚 𝕞𝕖𝕥

It was noon when they came. But it was like the dungeon had its own atmosphere; the moment they stepped through, they looked up and saw skies so thick with dark gray clouds it seemed about to rain.

The forest cleared up, flattened out. They stumbled into a a ghost town. The buildings were all crumbling shambles of stone and wood. The windows were shattered; chilling gales swept through them, scouring their insides clean, screaming all the while. The gravel streets twisted about with no discernible logic. They passed a field of withered, blackened stalks which swayed gently in the gloom. It was as though this place had been abandoned years ago…

Just then—

𝔽𝕠𝕣𝕘𝕠𝕥𝕥𝕖𝕟 𝔾𝕦𝕒𝕣𝕕𝕚𝕒𝕟 𝕙𝕒𝕤 𝕓𝕖𝕖𝕟 𝕤𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕟!

𝕆𝕓𝕛𝕖𝕔𝕥𝕚𝕧𝕖𝕤 𝕞𝕖𝕥: 𝟙/𝟚

Wait… what?