Enter System, page 16
part #1 of Natural Laws Apocalypse Series
“How many?”
“About twenty or so that we saw.”
“Did Jack get his bow?”
The potential Ranger shimmered into view, holding a large recurve bow. He wore a pair of quivers also, one on either side of his waist.
“Good, then maybe we should get rid of the kobolds. We can start from a distance with spells and arrows, then take them on head to head. They weren't that tough the other day, it was mainly the numbers. We're closer to even on that now if all eight of us can fight instead of just me and Rob,” Marc said. “You guys up for it?”
He looked at Jayden and got a short, sharp nod.
“It's what we're signing up for. The only way to level is experience, the only way to level our classes is to fight, right? So, let's do this.”
“Okay, here's the plan. Jack, you take us to the point where you think you've got a good chance to hit with your bow. Doug and I will be on either side of you, ready to cast Mana Darts as soon as they're in range. Healers, watch the rear and heal as needed. Jayden, Rob, be ready to form a line in front of us if the kobolds charge. Jeff, do what I know you're going to do no matter what I say, Stealth and stab. Volunteers, you're welcome to fight if they get in close. If you don't want to, stay back with the healers. Everyone got it?”
He got a series of nods and they stepped back out of the store into the bright sunlight.
* * *
Jack took the lead, spotting the kobolds and trotting down the road towards them a bit. He'd put himself in the center of the road, but it was too late for Marc to tell him to space himself so they could anchor their line on a building.
I just assumed he would, can't keep making that mistake, Marc thought.
Jack dropped to one knee and, bow at a diagonal from side to side, nocked an arrow on the string and drew it back. The bow creaked slightly and Marc realized another issue with his plan. Jack's bow hadn't been Systemized yet. Marc hoped it would last the fight so the man could do that later when he got a class, it ought to be a low enough tech level to survive the deterioration it had experienced.
Unless it's one of those high tech polymer bows, a little voice in the back of Marc's head interjected.
He shook his head. There was nothing to do about it now and the creak had sounded like wood creaking, so he was hopeful. Meanwhile Jack had fired his first arrow while everyone else got into position.
“Yeah, I'll take the class later, dismiss screen,” Jack said, nocking and drawing another arrow.
The kobolds were only now reacting as a second arrow raced down the road. A couple of them went into hiding behind a wrecked car, while others were forming up into a mass. It looked like the count was close, Marc was guessing twenty-five instead of twenty, which shouldn't be a problem unless they had the leader or the caster with them.
At a yell from somewhere deep in their mass, the kobolds started trotting down the road towards them. Jack kept firing and it wasn't long until Doug and Marc had range on the little reptilian humanoids.
Marc still didn't know how to get the elemental version of his Mana Darts, so he just started casting them normally. Doug followed along, his casts a moment or two behind Marc. In the two instances where Marc's Mana Darts didn't drop the kobold they struck, Doug's hit the same target and finished it. Otherwise Doug was targeting those wounded by Jack's arrows, removing them from the rushing mass.
“Tanks!” Marc called.
Rob and Jayden stepped into the spots between the two casters and Jack, trying not to block their line of sight.
“Remember what I said about the Shield Bash,” Rob called to Jayden. “If you get that down I bet they offer you the Warrior class.”
Jayden was equipped vaguely similar to Rob, just with lighter armor, a smaller shield, and a spear from the hobgoblins that had been trimmed to where it could be wielded one-handed. So when the kobolds got in range, the first thing Jayden did was step forward, lashing out with his shield to strike a kobold. Jayden outweighed it by a factor of two or three so when he struck the small creature, it went flying back into the thinned out kobolds, knocking another pair of them off their feet.
“Yup, sure did!” Jayden said, grinning. “Accept class Warrior.”
From that moment, his movements became smoother and more powerful. Marc was so amused at watching the change that he almost forgot to cast another Mana Dart spell, but the moment passed quickly.
Jack was backing up, as was Doug. Jack was too close to fire easily.
“Out of mana,” Doug called.
Marc still had plenty, so he cast his Arcane Armor on himself, then stepped up between the two tanks.
“I'm here in the middle,” he called, so they were aware and didn't hit him accidentally.
Thrusting his pilum, Marc added to the slowly growing pile of kobold bodies in front of the tanks. Where he didn't have any kobolds in range of his pilum, he'd put it in his shield hand and target kobolds with his Mana Darts.
It wasn't long before there were no kobolds still standing in front of the tanks. Jack had pulled off to the side and continued to fire on the kobolds' flanks. Between the pressure from the front line and Jack, the kobolds had broken and run when there were only five of them left. Unfortunately for them, Jeff had already cleared out the kobolds that had hidden before and was waiting when these started to flee.
In the end two of them got away and raced eastward, Jeff having dropped the other three that tried to flee.
“Yeah, I got it!” Jack called. “Not Ranger, but Woodsman at least. Help files makes it look close to what I was after, so I'll take it. Plus, I hit level two also.”
Jayden was grinning.
“Straight warrior here, level two myself as well.”
In the end all of the secondary party had made it to level two. They'd had some experience from before the fight and what they'd just received had been enough to push them over the top.
As they led the volunteers back towards the Safe Zone, Marc dropped back next to Jeff.
“So, any gold?” he asked, softly.
Jeff grinned.
“You betcha. Lots of jewelry and quite a few bullion coins. He had it all in an electronic safe in the back, but the thing looked like it'd been run over by a steamroller, all rusty and the door hanging off. So I grabbed it all. We'll look at it more closely after we're back, okay?”
“You got it Jeff. If there's enough there, I've got a plan that's going to get us expanding quickly enough that we can make use of almost all the materials in the town before they decay.”
* * *
Chapter Twelve
“Alright, what did you find?” Marc asked.
Jeff started pulling stuff out of his inventory.
“Well, there were a bunch of one ounce silver bullion coins, some gold ones, but a lot less than the silver, and a stack of gold jewelry. I'm keeping the jewelry and a couple of the gold bullion coins, they'll make a nice start for a nest egg, otherwise, here you go.”
When Jeff had finished emptying the bullion from his inventory, Marc counted up a total of ten of the one troy ounce gold bullion coins and thirty-eight of the silver ones.
“Hey, I've got a thought,” Marc said. He pulled out a System copper and a System silver coin. They looked to be almost identical to one another aside from being made from different materials.
“Okay, I can do a simple scale with whatever items I can find around me,” he continued, voicing his thoughts.
Rummaging through his inventory he pulled out a few of the items he'd tucked away as they cleared the school. With a pencil and a ruler, he made a basic scale, shifting it so that the ruler was balanced across the pencil, he looked at a silver bullion coin.
Pulling it out of its protective sleeve, he hefted it, then pulled out a few more System silver coins.
“Looks like the ones we found are a little heavier than four of the System ones. Let me check.”
Laying the bullion coin on one end of the ruler, he held the pencil in place as he put four System silver coins on the other side. The bullion coin stayed firmly against the table. Then he started edging the ruler over until he got it close to balancing, took note of the distance moved, and started doing the math in his head.
“So, one troy ounce is a little more than four System coins. It looks like the System coins are a little under point two four troy ounces. So each of the gold bullion should be worth a little more than four System gold, assuming the System gold coins are the same weight as the System silver and copper. Let's go hit the shop, I want to check something.”
He slid the bullion into his inventory and the two headed down to the shop. A quick search showed that collectible coins seemed to be a thing in the System, a relatively popular one too from the list of underway and completed listings.
“I think it's time to try the auction function,” Marc said. “Not on the help pads, those are staying cheap, but on the gold bullion coins. Start with two at the same time, do you think? The number of bids we get on each should let us know how much interest there is in them too.”
Jeff nodded.
“Yeah, maybe even just one so we can milk them some more?”
“I think two, because if we get the System gold coins, then we can start expanding a lot more quickly and if I'm wrong, one coin might not pull in enough for what I want to buy, if they only bid based on its weight as opposed to it being a collectible,” Marc replied.
“Oh, okay. If they do well then maybe we only put one up at a time after?”
“Yeah, we can do that. I don't mind milking our sales for all we can get with this, just not with the system help pads. That's more of a small profit for a public service type of thing. Others may start listing gold coins from Earth too though, so we'll have to keep an eye out and maybe list more.”
Jeff nodded again.
“Yeah, the help pads being cheap made more sense to me after I thought about it. More money is great, but we've got some and the more people we can help keep alive, the better, right? Gives us more trade partners and more potential genetic diversity for the human race to survive. I hadn't thought about other listing gold coins from Earth though. Are all these others from different planets?”
Marc stopped dead and looked at Jeff. He was used to Jeff's damn-it-all personality and this was a far cry from that. First he was being empathic and then insightful. Jeff caught his look.
“Yeah, we weren't the first people to be be doing the sporting goods store or the Cash for Gold place, just the first ones to survive. I had to take out a couple of goblins in the sporting goods store and they'd armed themselves with stuff from there. We also found a few corpses in the Cash for Gold place too, but it looked like nothing had gotten into the back room where the safe was, I had to pick the lock to get there.”
“How'd you pick the lock?”
“What did you think I raced back to my room to get during the claiming period? I had a set of makeshift lock picks that qualified for the miscellaneous claim and a copy of the MIT guide to lockpicking. I got lock picking as a skill before I even rejoined you then.”
“So that's what took you so long?”
Jeff nodded.
“That and trying to pick up my Stealth skill by hiding from people on the way back.”
“I'd wondered, I just figured you couldn't find what you were looking for,” Marc said.
“Nope, all about getting a head start there. Little did I realize that you guys would be getting into combat before I made it back.”
“Yeah, well, I think you managed to do pretty well for yourself even missing that one. But, let's get these listed, then I need to create more help pads and list those also. The rate of sales on them seems to be accelerating.”
“That makes sense, not everyone would get a Safe Zone up as quickly as we did. They need the shop to get the pad, so they can't do it until they get access to a Safe Zone,” Jeff said.
“Well, let me make sure there are some available for them when their Safe Zones get built.”
* * *
Marc had set the gold bullion for a twenty-four hour auction, wanting to get expanding as quickly as possible and needing the proceeds from those sales to do so. He'd also made another twenty pads and listed them, then split up the leftover funds according to the percentages they'd agreed on previously.
Heck we could've managed the five gold in a few days just from the help pads, but this way the others will have some money to spend. So do I for that matter, so let's look through the shop some more.
In his search he found something that he thought would be useful. The shop pedestal sometimes had a line at it, as he'd found out recently, but for ten silver he could pick up another pad that would allow shop access. It allowed him to place bids or make purchases, but he'd still need to come down to the pedestal to pick up his physical purchases or to list items. It had other functions as well, like allowing for downloading and reading books purchased through the shop, so he thought it might be worth it.
The shop is like the System version of the Zon, apparently. Plus it wants to corner the market on everything you do like the Zon does also. So, yeah, but still worth it probably.
He picked up the pad, finding it to be a slightly larger version of the ones he set up for the System help. Other than the size it looked fairly similar and the interface matched up as well. He took it over to the cafeteria and started browsing through the shop for mathematical texts.
Because if it will translate them into English like it says it does, then it might be worth it to pick up a few. Hell, I'm even familiar with some of these titles. It looks like the shop just took anything it could find and steal then made it available. I was hoping for texts from some of the other places the System's taken over though. Mathematics from other worlds might have lots of fun stuff I'm unfamiliar with, he thought.
Purchasing an Earth mathematics text that looked like it might teach him something new, he quickly became absorbed in it, until a tap on his shoulder caught his attention.
“You wanted to do some more runs on the grocery store today, didn't you?” Rob asked.
“Shit, I totally forgot after getting more listings up on the shop. Oh, here's your percentage from the sales so far too,” Marc said, handing over a stack of silver coins.
“Thanks, Jeff and Felicia are waiting outside with the volunteers, so we ought to get going.”
“No problem. I just bought something and was getting sucked into it. Sorry.”
“It's not a problem, but if we want to get two more trips today like you said, then we really need to get moving,” Rob replied.
Marc stood and tucked his new pad into his inventory. He pulled out his shield and pilum, then checked to make sure his mana and health were full. He'd taken some light wounds in the kobold fight this morning, but Felicia had topped him off on his health before they even made it back to the Safe Zone, likewise for Rob and Jayden. Although in Jayden's case, Olivia had been the one healing him.
“Alright, let's go. Maybe I'll treat for pizza for both parties and the volunteers tonight if I've still got the coin for it,” Marc said, heading towards the doors leading outside.
“Oh, hey, I'd be willing to chip in for that if I got to pick some toppings.”
“We'll talk about it later. Heck, we could even get you your own pizza. You were always a pretty big guy, not fat or anything, just big. Now you're putting your former size to shame though, must be all those Strength and Constitution upgrades. I could easily see you putting away an entire pizza.”
“I do feel more solid,” Rob said. “And yeah, I've been more hungry recently, too.”
“See, you can pick the toppings and we'll get you your own. Now, let's see what we can find down at the store.”
The last two trips to the store went much more smoothly than the first. They took lights this time. Quite a few people had selected a flashlight as their miscellaneous System conversion item so they were easily available,. People offered them up on loan when word spread that they were needed to get more food.
With the lights it was easier to split up a bit more, and Marc remembered that there were other meats available, long-term storage meats. He cleaned out the entire stock of summer sausages, vacuum packed salami, and the like for the Safe Zone kitchen.
On their way back to the Safe Zone, they ran into a group of people who looked at them fearfully at first.
“Are you headed for this Safe Zone thing?” one of them asked, brandishing one of the signs they'd left out for people to find.
“Not only that, but we're the ones who set it up. Come on, we'll escort you back there, get you something to eat, and a safe place to sleep,” Marc replied.
They didn't look very sure of him, but then Rob stepped up next to him.
“Rob, is this for real?” one person of the new group asked.
A bunch of heads turned at his name and recognition dawned on their faces.
“Yes, Janey, this is Marc. I told you about him before all this stuff happened. He and a bunch of us set up the Safe Zone so people would have a safe place to stay,” Rob said.
“If Rob says it's okay, then it is,” Janey replied. “I'm going with them at least.”
They escorted the twelve new people back to the Safe Zone and got them settled into apartments, then showed them around.
Rob got his entire pizza that evening and demolished the whole thing, even with the mocking he received for choosing a pizza with pineapple on it. There wasn't a crumb left of his Hawaiian pizza once he was done eating.
* * *
Marc spent more time reading his new book and puzzling out the math behind the limited magic he had access to so far that evening. There were spell scrolls for sale in the store, but the least expensive started at ten gold, not something he could afford at the moment, so his magic was going to remain limited for the time being.
For that matter, if we want to keep expanding rapidly, he thought, I may not be able to afford it for a while. I got a scroll off a hobgoblin caster though, I wonder if the kobold caster might have one? Or if there's more than one kobold caster? We need to take care of them soon anyhow so they don't spread, so maybe that'll be tomorrow afternoon? After I get the recycling machine and get it in use?
