“Is there any water left?” asked Samantha. “We didn’t get a shower today either.”
“It was still running,” said Mandy. “It was getting really cold, though.”
“Probably a gravity tank up the hill a bit,” said Mike. “Without the pump, there won’t be much pressure, but who knows how much was in it?”
“If you guys are going to wash, I think that settles that we have to stay here tonight,” I said.
Mandy looked up from the bottle of water she’d just opened. “We’re staying? I thought we were going to make it to town today.” She looked around at the mess disapprovingly. “This place is a pigsty.”
“It’s not that bad,” I said. “I think they were renting too. They left a lot of beer cans around, but it’s not dirty.”
“Speaking of them,” said Anthony, looking a little uncomfortable, “Do we want to stay in a house with three dead bodies in the yard?”
“Taken care of,” I replied. “We looted them. Nothing left.”
His eyes widened.
“You looted them? People?” He went from surprised to looking a little sick. “You didn’t get… meat… did you?”
“No,” said Samantha firmly. “A shirt, pants, boots. Nothing disgusting. The clothes were even clean. We could put them in our Inventories, too.”
Joe said, “You could? Do they have any, I don’t know, bonuses or anything?”
“Can’t Appraise them,” I answered. “But it says ‘Hunter’s Shirt,’ so who knows?”
“Fine,” said Mandy, “but I still want to know why we’re not going to town.”
“It’s almost five,” I said. “It’ll start getting dark in an hour and we’re only halfway there. Sam mentioned that a lot of the animals around here hunt at night. Imagine if we’d had to fight that bobcat and barely been able to see.”
Mandy had clearly been ready to argue, but this stopped her with her mouth halfway open. After a second she said, “That’s a good point.”
“We want to get to town too, Mandy,” said Samantha. “Our kids… we want to get to them worse than anything. But if there’s another bobcat around, or God help us a bear that’s been leveling…” She trailed off, her point clear.
“Okay,” said Mandy. Joe and Anthony didn’t add anything so I figured the decision was made.
“Speaking of leveling, though, did you guys? Did you drop your points?” I suddenly thought of something. “Oh, wait, stop! There’s something we have to tell you.”
I explained the ‘Secret of the System’ quest and they were offered it as well. Joe and Anthony were a little miffed that I hadn’t told them about the quest. But after I apologized to them like I had to Samantha and Mike, they let it go. Then we had to explain questing in more detail to the non-gamers. By that time, the light coming through the windows had definitely started to fade.
Before it could get any darker, Mike and Samantha went to take a quick shower. The rest of us moved through the house, looking for anything useful. The fact that everyone was so calm about going through the things of people we’d just fought to the death made me think that my theory about the System mentally reinforcing us was a good one.
We piled the hunters’ clothes and other personal effects in a corner of the living room. They had some hunting knives and a few boxes of ammunition for the shotguns, which we put with those to take with us in the morning. The hunters had obviously packed light for the weekend, except for the beer and booze, and there wasn’t much more of interest. They’d each had a cheap cell phone (dead, of course) and their four-by-four didn’t want to start any more than our cars had.
The living room had a fireplace and there was some wood on a rack outside, so we brought in a bunch to have a fire. Electronics might be dead, but the matches on the mantel still worked fine. We’d found a few candles, too, so we had enough light to sit and chat for a bit.
First I explained about how I thought the System had adjusted us mentally. Mike agreed that we were all way too calm, and that while it didn’t prove anything, it made sense to him. Mandy volunteered that she’d had a lot of training in mental health and trauma, and also thought there was something to it. We carefully didn’t talk about what else it might have done to us.
Then Anthony and Mandy remembered their points and dropped them. Constitution for Anthony, and Strength for Mandy. She’d been in pretty poor condition, honestly, but was starting to look a lot healthier. Much more so than a day’s walking should have done.
Joe, it turned out, hadn’t leveled. In fact, he was still Level One. This didn’t make sense, since even though he hadn’t fought he should have gotten party XP, and I said as much.
“I did get it,” he said. “But remember how I said I got an advanced Class for my perk? My class is literally called an ‘Advanced Class’ and it takes me more XP to level. But I got some extra points to distribute and when I do get Class Skills, they are really good.”
“Whoa,” said Anthony. “I wonder if we can do that.”
“I don’t know,” said Joe. “It wouldn’t tell me a lot, other than to say I could either have an Advanced Class or a Basic Class and some other perk. The Advanced Class seemed like a cheat, so I took it.”
“So is what we have a Basic Class?” asked Samantha.
“I don’t know that either,” said Joe. “Will it tell you if you ask?”
“’Status. Information on Animal Tamer class,’” said Samantha, doing what I had started calling the ‘Screen Stare’ in my head. With her eyes focused on nothing, she said, “Now it says ‘Animal Tamer: Basic Class. May promote to Advanced Class ‘Beast Master’ at Level Fifty.”
Doing my best to look like I was paying attention, I did the same thing, only silently. I got a very different result.
SYSTEM MESSAGE: Mesmerist: Special Class. No promotion information available.
Well, fuck, I thought. I don’t know if that means I can’t promote up or it just hasn’t decided yet.
Everyone else followed her lead, discovering that we all *ahem* had Basic Classes except for Joe. As soon as the last of us checked, we got another message.
SYSTEM MESSAGE: Progress on the “Secret of the System” quest! You’ve learned a little bit about how the System works. All things strive. 100 XP awarded. Continue to learn more about the System to attain further rewards.
“Wow,” said Mike. “That’s… ambiguous.” Then he blinked. “I just leveled.”
“I think it means that you can always get more powerful,” I said slowly. “And grats.”
“’Grats?’” he said, with the tone every gamer knew meant a non-gamer was confused again.
“Short for ‘congratulations,’ I said with a smile. “It’s what you say when somebody levels or they get a good drop or something.”
Laughing, Anthony added, “The way you say you gained a level is ‘Ding!’ It’s just a tradition.”