“We’re tourists,” I said as I stepped forward. “We, my friends, we rented a cabin up the road. When the messages came we started walking to town. Along the way we picked up whoever would come with us.”
“What’s on the stretcher?” she asked in a serious tone.
“Her husband,” I gestured at Sheila, who was holding Robert and Betsy’s hands and had started crying softly to herself when she saw we were safe. “He died saving all our lives. We couldn’t just leave him in the woods.”
“What happened?” the man asked. His voice was deep and strong, but in a reassuring way.
“There was a bear,” I said. “We all almost died. Is there a place in town we can rest? None of us have felt safe for two days.”
Both of them scanned the treeline the second I said ‘bear.’ I could almost feel the horses tense as their riders grew vigilant.
“What happened to the bear? How’d you get away from it?” Since we had no visible weapons other than Joe’s bat and Anthony’s staff, I didn’t blame him for wondering.
“We killed it,” I said. “It was close. Bruce…” I gestured to the stretcher again, “He used an ability he had that made us strong enough to fight it, but it got him before we could kill it.”
“You fought a bear?” The man’s deep voice was incredulous. “Did you have any guns? How did you kill a bear? Especially now?”
“We had guns,” I said. “They didn’t help. After the fight we threw them away. We used our Class Skills.” I deliberately didn’t mention the System weapon, safely tucked away in Samantha’s Inventory.
The two riders exchanged a Look.
PARTY CHAT / JAMES: Guys, keep our abilities as quiet as you can. I don’t feel like getting drafted or put in a camp or whatever if they go all Die Mutie Scum on us.
“What ‘Class Skills?’” asked the female rider. She had put her hand on her hip. Or on her gun. She was close enough to talk to in a loud voice, but she had turned away slightly as her horse fidgeted.
I let out an exasperated sigh, purposefully loud enough for them to hear.
“I’m betting you don’t normally barricade your town with cars and send out people on horseback to meet people on the road,” I said in a neutral voice. “So I’m also betting that you all saw the messages and the System is in place here too. Are we really going to pretend nobody knows about Classes and Skills?”
The man opened his mouth but I cut him off.
“We have little kids with us. We’ve all almost been killed multiple times, we’ve lost friends. Are you going to let us in your town or not? Because if not we need to go find a place to hide.”
This made the man’s face redden but the woman suddenly looked ashamed. On a whim I tried to Examine them.
Male Rider: Appraise for more information.
Female Rider: Appraise for more information.
Fuck you, System.
“Of course you can come to town,” she said. “We’ve set up a refugee area by the high school.”
“What about the Trade Center?” I asked. “Is there one?”
“Yes,” said the man. “We’re still working on that. But it’s not far from the high school so if you want to see it that’s as good a place as any to go.”
I didn’t know what ‘we’re still working on that’ meant but it wasn’t actively bad so it would have to do.
“Thank you,” I said. “The two in the wagon are locals. I think their name is Atchley. Know of any family they might have?”
“Take them to the refugee center,” the woman said. “There’s a big bulletin board to post on looking for people.”
“Okay,” I said. “Is it all right if we get moving? It’ll be dark soon.”
The two riders exchanged another Look. I wondered if they might be using Party Chat.
“I’ll go with you,” said the woman. “We’ll probably pull back from the road when it gets too dark to see anyway.”
I nodded and with that, we all started walking again. The man fell behind us, and the woman was a few yards in front. Their horse’s hooves clopped just like in the movies. It was too loud to talk and we were all too tired to ask questions just yet anyway.
Tired or not, when we left the treeline and entered the town, it felt like someone had lifted one of the mountains off my back.
Chapter 20
Called Safe
As we moved deeper into town, we crossed some invisible line. And I got the first System Message I’d ever been actively thrilled to see.
SYSTEM MESSAGE: You have entered the Exclusion Zone of a Trade Center. Hostile creatures will not enter an Exclusion Zone of their own accord and dangerous creatures or plants will not spawn inside it. Sapient beings may commit hostile acts within an Exclusion Zone, but such actions will have negative consequences. As a Trade Center levels, the Exclusion Zone will get larger.
There were a few quiet sounds of relief, but they instantly stilled as the next message hit.
SYSTEM MESSAGE: Hidden Quest completed! Hidden Quest: Bring Survivors To Safety. Each member of an incoming group gets 1500 XP for each survivor of System Start brought to a Trade Center’s Exclusion Zone. Note: This quest is repeatable. Only willing survivors satisfy the conditions of the quest. The quest can only be completed once per survivor. You receive 18,000 XP.
SYSTEM MESSAGE: Level Up x3! You are now Level 8. 3 Free Attribute points awarded. 2 Free Class Skill Slots.
Shaking my head, I realized that I had never picked new Class Skills. I’d dropped the point, and then passed out, forgetting all about my new skill slots.
Good thing you didn’t need them, dumbass, I thought, but my heart wasn’t in it. Three levels!
PARTY CHAT / JOE: I just leveled three times.
PARTY CHAT / JAMES: Did everybody get the Bring Survivors quest credit?
It quickly became apparent that we’d all just gotten a massive amount of experience. For surviving.
PARTY CHAT / ANTHONY: Fifteen hundred each is crazy.
PARTY CHAT / JAMES: That would put a single survivor all the way to Level Five just for making it to a Zone. People in town will be almost as high level as we just were even if they haven’t fought a single battle or gotten a single quest reward.
PARTY CHAT / ANTHONY: Assuming they got it if they were already here, or if they weren’t in a group.
We were down to one escort: the man had stayed at the barricade, which was crewed by a lot of people dressed pretty much the same way. They’d just watched us walk into town without a word. Our “leader” was in front of us, doing the horse equivalent of idling down the road. Her horse’s hooves were still pretty noisy, but we were going so slow that talking was do-able. I moved to where she could see me.
“Have lots of people walked into town?” I asked.
She looked down at me, holding the reins loosely. I assumed the horse would just keep going straight unless she told it different. It took her a second to respond. Maybe she was trying to decide what to say.