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CH 9: New Perspectives
🕑 Added 2024-11-21 17:35:22 +0000 UTC~- Mark -~
Mark wiped the sweat off his brow and looked down to his side. Twenty thick wooden stakes down, another thirty to go before he'd stop for the day. He looked out from his camping chair and let a proud smile grow. A palisade surrounded the bulk of the campground, each wooden stake was almost eight feet high, even sunk into the ground. And each was one that Mark had made himself. A few locations had been turned into true ramparts, and some young archers lazily manned those positions.
Mark had come to the campground to unplug, spend his days fishing, and drink as much as he could without his liver complaining. It did more and more of that these days, so his time was mostly spent fishing, and sleeping. He'd been out in his boat when the awakening happened. A crazy, dumb thing. At first, he'd thought a heart attack had finally taken him out and he was in some odd afterlife, but the truth had been far stranger.
He'd had a hard time grasping what the system thing was saying, and so urged it to just get on with things so someone else could give him an explanation. When he reappeared, alone and on dry land, he'd done what made sense to him, and followed the instructions telling him to touch the beacon.
It gave him an odd feeling, then let him pick the thing's name. Sanctuary had felt like a good choice. Everyone needed a quiet place of their own. When he finished, it gave him an honorary title of some sort, and a reminder about his skill - Wood Manipulation [Uncommon].
Mark had never been truly skilled at carpentry, but now, he could make wood from any existing pieces, and shape it however he wanted. It was an exerting process, and it made him sweat even more than going to the gym, but making something with your own two hands was the most rewarding feeling in the world.
It was a few minutes later that the first of the other people appeared. Some he recognized - neighboring families that were yearly residents at the campground. A troop of archery students. A younger couple that had come for the last few years, always wistfully looking at the other families' children with a longing Mark understood all too well. Many, many others were new. People in hiking gear, pajamas, suits and ties alike were all popped down in the remote little campground.
He'd preened when he realized his title gave him a special status in the group, and was even prouder when he realized he was the only one with an Uncommon skill. But Mark was not a leader, by any means. He hated dealing with groups of people, hearing them complain or making them work together. So when that hawk of a woman had stepped forward and asked, he'd initiated the 'transfer' to give her the leader title. A hoarse laugh escaped him. She was a hardass, but reminded him of his favorite boss. They didn't take shit, but they damn well made sure everyone did what needed to get done.
She'd been the one to get him working on the wall project, and had actually been listening to his advice on making things as sturdy as they could be. So, he'd listened to her as well when she suggested learning how to make and actually use throwing spears. It was a new kind of motion, but Mark's body listened well, and he was already getting pretty good with the things.
It meant he was able to help, every time the creatures attacked his walls. Larger and larger groups of animals had been coming from the forest, on some sort of timer. It was, like everything else, odd.
But Mark didn't dwell on that much. He just made the defenses better, and kept trying to better understand the wood. After so much effort and concentration, he was even close to reaching level 2.
--
~ Susan ~
Susan shook her head again and frowned.
"Marlene, I get what you're saying - I do. But Sara is a teenager. Even if things were normal, I wouldn't want her going off into the woods with strangers, and things are NOT NORMAL. She could get hurt."
It had been days since the awakening now, and Susan's presence in the "Command Center" was a common one. As one of half a dozen health professionals in the campground, she was part of a highly valued group, especially as beasts kept trying to invade their space. As the only one given a healing skill, she had become the de-facto leader for medical care.
There were no lab coats in the campground, but Sara, in all her eagerness and spare time, had found a thin white jacket and modified it for her. A large red square was sewn into the back, half a cover from a cloth medical kit that had a white plus symbol and the oversized bold letters spelling out "FIRST AID" underneath. The front breast of the jacket had another piece of a different first aid kit sewn on like a badge. It was a green circle, with a white plus sitting inside. She'd worn it at first because Sara had obviously put some time into making it. She'd kept going with it when she realized the other Sanctuary residents were recognizing her in it and and respecting her orders, when she gave them.
Her team now owned a section of the command center building, a small wing that was originally a few bedrooms and one tiny nurse's room. All but one of the bedrooms had been turned into patient areas, and the nurse's room was now the 'operating room'. Not that one was really needed for her skill to work.
The first time Susan had used her 'minor healing', she'd watched bleeding stop and flesh mend - right in the middle of one of the roads by the campground's perimeter. She'd struggled to guide the energy of her skill through the wound, but practice had made her more proficient, faster, and improved her skill itself. She was one of only a handful at Sanctuary that had reached level 2, and her skill point made a noticeable improvement to the speed of healing. She'd distributed her stat points evenly between perception, intelligence, and power, and saw marked changes in her abilities as a result. She had an easier time moving her patients around, and could better pick out small details about what was wrong with them.
Two major issues marred what otherwise felt like a miracle.
First, Marlene had accepted a 'pre-tutorial-quest' in some well-meaning attempt to get everyone more power before the tutorial itself was scheduled to start. It had begun as a single animal from the forest wandering into their area, chewing on a man's leg, and being summarily put down. Susan healed the man, and they started putting in better defenses, and watchers. Then small groups had attacked, and things had gotten tougher. There were more people in the infirmary, recovering, after the recent fights against large groups of the beasts. Now, there was some option to hunt in the woods instead of defending, and Marlene wanted to take it. But she also wanted to take Sara with them.
Susan had grown closer to the woman, and usually respected her decision making, but she just couldn't let Sara be exposed to danger. Not without being there with her daughter. And Susan couldn't leave the campground.
The second major issue was that Reid was still missing. Everyone - every single other person that was teleported to the campground had come with those close to them. None had been separated, and everyone had appeared within two hours of each other. Now, days later, Susan was a wreck with worry. Her mind went to dark places. If Reid wasn't here, something must have gone terribly wrong. Maybe he was teleported to the other side of the world. Maybe he was... gone. She tried her best not to think about it, but it was like pushing back the tide.
Worse still was trying to hide her emotions, while trying to be the medical leader of the group, and also make Sara think everything was okay - all at once.
Her daughter had been given a skill that helped her to know where things were, track animals and understand terrain, and most magical - to have an innate understanding of the path she needed to follow in order to reach her goal. She'd been adamant that Reid was in the general direction of the woods - where the hunt was supposed to take place.
Marlene rubbed her forehead and sighed.
"Susan, we need Sara there because things are not normal. She has the single most useful skill for something like this, and you and I both know that if I don't take her with me, she will sneak out on her own to search for your husband. This is our best option. I want your buy-in, but I'm going into the woods no matter what. We can have Sara as an official part of the group, under my protection, or she's going to follow us in and I won't know where she is."
Gears turned in Susan's mind. She repeated the same arguments, back and forth for a long while. Her position eroded, until she finally caved.
Susan took a deep breath and leveled a cold gaze at the woman that had become her closest friend in the post-awakening world.
"Not a scratch, Marlene. Out and away from danger. She doesn't see blood. Or fighting."
Marlene started to nod.
"And, if you do fuck up, and she's in danger, it's her." Susan's face was cold steel. "Her over everyone else. Even over yourself."
Marlene's eyes went hard and she nodded again. "I promise."
--
~ Marlene ~
Marlene stalked through the woods, out ahead of the rest of her hunting party. Sara had already identified this would be their path forward, and the girl's gift had proved frighteningly accurate. James was back with her. She had told her husband about the promise she'd made to Susan. Marlene wasn't one to promise anything, so James understood the gravity of it. She trusted that he - with his wooden spear and the Mk27 he'd managed to keep hidden - would keep Sara safe.
The Calderwall's tale wasn't especially tragic or noteworthy. Not compared to others Marlene had witnessed, at least.
But Marlene had fucked up. She'd grown attached and invested. And that was noteworthy.
Susan was damn smart and hardworking. She'd outpaced Marlene's plans for an infirmary by leaps and bounds, shown initiative and care for what she was doing. And even under the stress she had, the woman still carried the weight of her responsibilities without so much as a groan. Her daughter was the same, even if Susan didn't want to admit it. The girl was smarter than Susan gave her credit for. She had known something was up with her parents before the awakening, even if she didn't know it was her father's cancer. And she dealt with it by compartmentalizing, and hiding her worry from everyone around her.
The girl reminded Marlene so much of herself. Resourceful, bright, focused, brave, and just a touch naïve. It made her want to steer Sara in the right direction, teach her all the lessons that would be painful to learn on her own, and... protect her. It was part of the reason she'd pushed so hard to have Sara join the hunt - and the entire reason she'd promised to prioritize Sara's safety above everyone else's.
If Marlene was honest with herself, she was going to do that anyway. Everyone she was leading at the campground, from the geriatrics to the starry-eyed kids, were hers to protect. But none of them felt as important as Sara. They all had their purpose, of course. The machine of society didn't run if too many parts were missing, and society only worked if crazed beasts weren't tearing it apart with tooth and claw.
So, Marlene was the clockmaker keeping things running - and the force to keep the beasts at bay. Now more than ever, she needed to be the one to rally people forward. If they sat on their asses doing nothing, they'd die. If Mark didn't do his fucking job and keep building them fences, the whole community was at risk. If the kids wouldn't learn to use their new power properly, they'd hurt themselves, or others.
The great gifts of the awakening had left her with something that she treasured. Identify was a common skill, and useful to her in combat, planning, and governance. But the real boon was the stat upgrades. Marlene had killed enough of the coyotes and other mutated things coming out of the woods to land herself halfway through level 3, and her stats showed that tremendous growth.
It had taken a bit of time to understand and gather data, but a few things were known about stats now. First, each person seemed to start with a single point in each stat, unless one of their skills boosted it. Everyone - or at least everyone that had leveled up - got another three stat points to distribute as they wanted with each new level. Then, level gains also granted skill points, which let the skills grow slightly more powerful. And through the benefits from the beacon's contract, they could easily distribute points, upgrade skills, and see their status anytime they wanted. Marlene briefly brought hers up.
-
STATUS
Name: Marlene Beatrice Silence
Affiliation: "Earth"
Race: Human
Grade: G
Level: 3
Health: 40/40
Experience: 99/200
STATS:
Constitution: 4
Dexterity: 2
Intelligence: 2
Perception: 3
Power: 3
Stat Upgrade Points: 0
SKILLS:
Identify [Common] +3
Skill Upgrade Points: 0
-
It was a good start, but she knew everyone in her group had to gain as many points as possible before the tutorial event. They needed to have the best possible advantage against any new threat. Especially for the way things were already ramping. The challenge of their objectives had increased with every completed mission, but were always realistically difficult. It seemed to be pegged to their assumed increase in levels and ability.
That also meant the special option she'd been given would likely be a serious threat. The last few waves of attacks were over a dozen beasts each, but this objective was to take down a single creature. If that kind of danger was living in Sanctuary's backyard, she would root it out.
With herself, James, a group of six level-two fighters, and Sara's Pathfinding ability all working for them, she was confident. She looked at her objective once again.
Kill One Salamander of Any Level (0/1)
