David’s heart was pounding at a mile a minute, his head ringing with the death screams of multiple zombies and the lingering after effects of whatever he had done when he used halt on the horde. His physical hearing was oddly muted and he felt slightly numb and he felt an odd itch or tickle from behind his shoulder blades.

  Even as he drove his thoughts turned the strange new sensation over. It was almost as though he was holding hands with a restless child. There was a sense of shifting and looking around causing his back to itch because the sensation was coming from behind him and his brain didn’t know how to interpret it.

  He wanted to pull up his status and figure out what had changed but that would be monumentally stupid while driving in dangerous conditions. Fleeing a swarm of zombies definitely counted as dangerous conditions…

  Billy was clinging onto Bessie as the moving truck lurched and it took David a moment to realize they were not buckled up. Pushing aside the confusing sensations he was grappling with he spoke.

  “Billy, buckle up and get Bessie situated more securely, I don’t want you guys hurt if I have to turn suddenly.”

  The older man looked relieved that David had spoken and nodded.

  “Give me a minute.” He struggled with the safety belt and was soon secured with Bessie maneuvered to sit half on his lap where he could hold her and she could look out the window.

  David focused on following the others, checking in his wing mirrors to see the Zombies falling behind. The rest of the little convoy was off hospital ground and turning back towards the park.

  It took David a moment but then he recalled the plan. Drop off survivors, assess and hit the next raid. Hazards and pull up for a change of plans. He kept trying to shake the odd feeling and was relieved as it slowly faded as they drove.

  They had travelled a few blocks and the sounds of agitated zombies were dim in his ears when he saw the truck in front of him put its hazards on. Pulling up he slipped into neutral and left the engine running, seeing the others dismounting.

  Camila had called the halt beside a crashed car that had come to a low-speed halt.

  “Madre de Dios, that was close. Is everyone OK? Any injuries?”

  As a round of negatives rolled around it was Carl who got impatient. “Say, Camilla. Why we stopping? Just to check on folks?”

  “No, we need to check on the drivers of these cars. It will only take a few moments per car and we can’t leave them here if we might not be back.”

  Mark chipped in “I thought you would want to get back and move on to the airport quickly. This seems slow…”

  Sarah nodded in agreement “Cammie, we need to stay focused on what we discussed. I know you want to help people and we all agreed this was the way to do it at scale.”

  Camila looked mulish as she responded to the criticism of her change of plans, focusing on Sarah and speaking fondly.

  “Look estupido, this is like the parable of the good Samaritan. We can help, it costs us a little time but if we don’t nobody will be taking our place. It takes a moment and what would you say if it was your mum, or sister or another Boricua in one of those cars and someone passed by without stopping to help?”

  The final part was soft, spoken with real emotion and it wasn’t clear whether she was talking to Sarah or about herself. David wondered but found himself nodding. He would want people to stop if his sister out west was stuck in her car…

  Everyone shared a look, nodding. It was Charlie who spoke up looking resolute.

  “Dude, follow that thought to the end. IF we can we help. IF we have an inactive monster on our hands, we help by killing it.”

  Carl nodded in agreement “Yeah, Y’all keep fighting monsters but hesitating to get your revenge in first. Or more relevant here, put down the rabid dog before it can bite a kid.”

  Katie and Mark shared a troubled look even as Camila agreed.

  “Yes, now lets check this car and move on.”

  The group moved forward finding an older woman slumped over the steering wheel, face pillowed in the deflated airbag. It was clear she hadn’t started to mutate but as they drew closer David heard the rhythmic whisper of the Nath, faint and not yet close to moving.

  David shook his head even as Camilla reached for the door handle.

  “She’s gone. Not too long ago I would guess.”

  Camila stopped, then spoke. “I can’t do it.” She turned away from the door tears in her eyes.

  Mark shared a look with Katie then spoke for both “count us out. We won’t desecrate the dead.”

  Charlie stepped forward and opened the door. He raised his hand to cast and paused. Then swallowed. Raised his hand again and lowered it. Looking slightly sick he spoke.

  “Dude, I can’t. She looks like my Mum.”

  Carl looked sick, but determined. “I can do this, but I’ve only go so many bullets. Sarah, Charlie, y’all prepared to do this or will someone have to smash in her skull.”

  Sarah, despite her full throttle personality and can do vibes looked sick and shook her head.

  Billy spoke then. “Come away, we don’t desecrate our dead. David says she is becoming an abomination but until she rises there is still hope that some grace of God can stop this.”

  David just looked on. A tiny voice spoke in his head. Do it. He remembered the sweet rush of XP when a zombie fell and how good that felt. Then he felt ashamed. Every taboo and tradition told him that the final dignity of the dead was sacred.

  Then he felt ashamed that he hadn’t even thought of the zombies he had killed as people, as victims. The shame burned even more.

  Looking around he saw variants of those same emotions on everyone’s faces.

  Then he felt it, from deep inside him, something alien akin to empathy and satisfaction at what it was hearing. That bit of him that was somehow Nath felt this was right and proper.

  David felt even sicker, then he felt anger. Rage, at this horrible situation. At the Nath with their parasitic ways, violating the dead. At the magic that was both so cool and horribly ending the world.

  Most of all he realized at the system in his head that made it feel so damn good when he killed monsters. That was making him think right now about how that surge of XP would feel if he just killed this baby monster. That thought made him feel cold.

  Looking at the others he spoke.

  “There is no shame in this. We aren’t desperate, and we cannot be ruled by the buzz of experience gains.” Looking round he saw everyone looking slightly ashamed, they had thought it too.

  “Here is how I see it. This crosses three lines. It’s desecrating our own dead. I don’t know if the taboo will survive but I refuse to give it up on day one of a new world. Second, this feels too much like killing enemy children. Finally, we don’t have perfect information. I don’t know if this will be for good or ill but part of me still can’t get past the fact that I spoke to one of these things, maybe they can be negotiated with, maybe violence isn’t the only way.”

  He paused “That said the one I met was an absolute bastard, but I won’t judge a race by one person.”

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  The others looked troubled but nodded. “OK, we keep checking but only pull survivors and deal with active threats.” With more nods the group resumed their slow trek back to the Obelisk.

  They saved four more people in a journey that should have taken fifteen or twenty minutes but instead took nearly an hour.

  They also killed half a dozen zombies, though only one screamed forcing them to move on quickly, and a left the majority of the occupants in their cars either dead or undergoing metamorphosis.

  Things changed for the last few blocks leading to the park.

  There were only a few cars but they added another four survivors and found an elderly couple who had died in their vehicle but were not touched by the Nath.

  It was a troubled group that unloaded more survivors back in the safe zone and by mutual agreement they paused once the survivors were in the vicinity of the Obelisk.

  Before they could get any further they were approached by a man and a woman who addressed Katie.

  “This is insane. I have quests, I have a system in my head. Seriously now, is this a video game hallucination? Am I going to wake up in hospital?” The man led off.

  As Katie, who had apparently spoken with them before when they first woke up tried to get them to calm down with Charlie chipping in with sometimes helpful system tips.

  David, glad he wasn’t shoved into the conversation took the moment to start sorting out his status to figure out what was going on.

  He was a little shocked by how little and how much change he saw.

  He had previously been two hundred points into getting level four of system initiate. Now he was at level nine with 163 points sunk towards level ten.

  He thought back, that was from less than a day with what one major fight and some zombie hit and run.

  He could add six resource pools and/or attributes to his total, which seemed frankly absurd compared to what he had gained until now. A moment later he realized that as significant as this was it meant he needed to get the others focused on this before they headed back out. Which meant a fight with Camila…

  Pulling out of his status he turned to get the others attention. Camila was speaking with the two new survivors, clearly arguing about what to do next.

  “Look, there are monsters out there. We just went to the hospital to try to help and fought off dozens of zombies. I know this sounds loco but you need these system skills to survive. You need weapons. You need health!”

  Charlie butted in “Trust me dude! Touch the Obelisk and find a skill that appeals to you then start practicing. I’m a freaking pyromancer now!”

  “Hi, I’m David. Pleased to meet both of you. Look, we don’t have a lot of time if we are going to help more people…”

  Camila interrupted “I already told them that, Men!”

  “Sorry Camila, I was checking my status and I realized that we need to talk, urgently. I have a massive increase in XP, which I expect you all share. We need to use that before we head out.”

  Then he looked at the two strangers they had rescued the day before. “Look, we need to discuss what we are going to do next. We don’t really have a right to tell you what to do so take the free advice with a grain of salt but if you just sit and listen while we talk through it Charlie or I can answer a few questions for you at the end…”

  Charlie, clearly refocusing his eyes from pulling up system information spoke “David is right. Everyone, check your status.”

  Camila looked angry, then her eyes unfocused and a look of surprise crossed her face.

  Seconds later the group were all focused on David.

  “Right, I went from level three in system initiate to level nine. So I’ve got the ability to assign six things. Which is massive. What about the rest of you.”

  “Ha, you were only level three. I was already level five and I’m at level nine now.” Camila sounded smug about the first part but somehow confused later.

  Everyone else shared variants of that statement with their system initiate titles all being between three and five and now sitting somewhere between eight and ten.

  There were a couple of surprises in there, one expected and one very much not.

  Carl, who had the highest level system initiate title at level ten, added the first bombshell. “Huh, you folks need to hear this one. Lemme pull it up.”

  “Title system initiate is tier capped at level ten. For further information consult a system source or patron. Increase your level to reach tier two. Your overflow experience has been automatically set to level.”

  David noted this with interest. However Charlie was the one with the potentially more significant news.

  “I didn’t have my overflow going to the title. I was working on Magic. It was already level three when we started and it shot up to level nine, pretty much the same as you dudes title.

  I also added my free XP to Arcane so I had that at level two – cost me just the hundred XP.”

  David summarized. “OK, so we are capped, at least for now at ten resources and attributes.”

  After a brief discussion a few ideas rose to get serious group consideration.

  “Everyone should buy stamina and endurance, that combination basically massively extends your capacity in combat and exertion. While I can’t say for sure I think it also means you need less sleep.”

  Camila made the point as she, Katie and Mark apparently all had this combination, and it rocked in their view.

  “Everyone should focus on Stamina” was Carl’s position. His reasoning being that there were more attributes available to leverage the resource, at least that they could access, than any other and they all had pretty obvious applications – who didn’t want strength, speed or endurance after all. The difference between agility and dexterity seemed a bit vague but both seemed good.

  Katie advocated for the combination which saved her. “If you have health and stamina you can get vitality and unlock powerful self-healing. Vitality generally makes you bounce back from stuff super fast.”

  Camila meanwhile advocated for strength.

  David advocated for not spending all ten, though it was only really relevant to Carl right now.

  Charlie came up with perhaps the best experiment to figure out more details.

  By having David check his mana, then ask the obelisk a question that Charlie devised.

  “How do resource pools increase in size, specifically magic.”

  Charlie then had him read his response out loud, which David did, feeling slightly foolish.

  [STANDARD RESOURCE POOLS, WHICH INCLUDE MAGIC, INCREASE BASED ON THE LEVEL OF THE RESOURCE POOL AND THE LEVEL OF LINKED ATTRIBUTES AND CLASS. THIS POOL SIZE CAN BE FURTHER MODIFIED BY EQUIPMENT, TITLES, PATRONAGE EFFECTS AND RACIAL CHARACTERISTICS INCLUDING BLOODLINES.]

  Charlie grinned and confirmed that this was the exact same message he just received. He then asked David to confirm the drop in his magic reserves.

  “That cost me six percent of my total, I should have gone and touched the Obelisk…”

  Charlie shook his head. “Perfect, I asked the same question, sitting next to you, and dropped three percent.”

  David grinned back. “A few more experiments like this as we level our abilities and we can work out exactly how the math goes.”

  Katie shared a glance with Camila and Sarah then poured cold water on their enthusiasm “Or you could just ask the Obelisk to tell you the numbers and how they work.”

  At this point Camila was getting impatient “Boys! You can play with your little toys later. We all need to spend out stuff and get back out there!”

  While Charlie flushed with embarrassment David quickly responded.

  “I don’t know if you noticed, the Obelisk isn’t big on details or quantification. Almost as though the Herald doesn’t want to get bogged down in mathematics. This exercise tells us, very roughly that Charlie has twice the magic reserve that I do.”

  Charlie then continued “Combined with there being a cap to how many attributes and resources we can get we need to think about what we want. The whole thing seems to be set up to make two resources with four attributes each or three resources with two attributes each and a shared attribute look like the best builds.”

  When everyone started debating different ideas and questioning Charlies reasoning Camila was visibly getting more annoyed.

  “Hey, focus. Remember this system thing is a tool to let us DO stuff. Its useless if we don’t actually act. Just get some things already.”

  Then she continued. “It’s not hard. I’m not interested in magic. I’m active and want to be a badass. I also want to be alive. So Health with vitality and toughness. Stamina with vitality, strength, speed, endurance, agility and I’m literally saving one so I don’t regret it later.”

  “Now could you all please just make some choices so we can get a move on with helping people.”

  With that they made their selections.

  David liked the idea of going for three resource pools, his analysis telling him that especially with vitality boosting two pools this would likely give him more to work with than the other options. His skill used magic, and he felt that willpower would be complimented by channeling given the way he was increasingly bending the skill.

  Toughness and vitality were no brainers for health, harder to hurt and easier to heal – perfect.

  He saved on slot on the title so he would have two more choices come level ten. Mostly because he couldn’t figure out what he wanted to compliment endurance as an attribute dedicated to his stamina. He wanted the staying power of endurance as even a day of life and death combat had shown him how breathless it was.

  Part of him felt that having it all would be great, and he could see where those focused on Stamina like Camila would have an edge with a more rounded set of abilities, plus a bigger resource pool.

  This left his status with one big question: How could he figure out more about what was going on with his Necromancer bloodline?

  Acting on the desire to maximize his skill he dumped his free experience into Willpower until it ticked up to two. 100 XP. The same for channel and he was ready to go.

  After that he again acted on impulse, Necromancer had got him more benefit than anything else and while it had been expensive boosting it to level 1 had been a game changer. He set his overflow back to his bloodline. He was tempted by Magic but Charlie had shown that the return while substantial wasn’t transformative.

  He did a final check, satisfied with his progress.