Choose Your Apocalypse (A LitRPG Apocalypse, Progression, System Fantasy) [CYA]

<Alex, Real - Endure, Understreet Tunnel>

Alex and John had quickly realized that they were both being a bit silly.

If Alex was going to be practicing moving and dodging as well as his defensive skill, limiting John to one shot every five seconds or so made no sense.

Sure, they could make Alex move slower, but that was approaching it the wrong way around.

Thus, after Alex had easily tapped the man's shoulder three times with no real gains or growth from either of them, they shifted to allow John to shoot every second or so.

That was terrifying, even though Alex knew that the other man could easily shoot even faster than that at need.

Alex found out quite a few things over the remainder of their two hours together.

First, his new jacket could, indeed, take a low powered hit from John's gun without letting the slug through.

Second, it still hurt like running into the corner of a table at full speed… cranked up to eleven.

If it landed wrong—or right from John's perspective Alex supposed—it could still break bone, and it always bruised. Thankfully, both healed relatively quickly for Alex, and training with injuries was something that he saw value in. So it wasn't the worst thing.

The issue that allowed the damage even through the coat lay in something that Alex hadn't considered, but John was able to pinpoint instantly.

The greatcoat was soft and flexible. Ballistic-jackets and other bullet proof armoring generally had plates, rigid material, or other means of distributing the impact while resisting penetration.

Alex's greatcoat didn't have anything like that.

Still, the result was that he didn't lose any flexibility or maneuverability. Moreover, he found that the temperature control was a true gift from above as it also worked against Alex's usual 'workout heat'.

He tended to run quite hot most of the time, and exercise made that worse. It really hadn't been much of an issue in the tutorial as most of his exertion had been in short bursts, but down in an underground tunnel, essentially sprinting—or near enough—in bursts, for close to two hours?

Yeah, he'd have been miserable.

Greatcoat for the win!

Besides testing out his new equipment, Alex was able to push his defensive skill.

When he blocked with his forearm or leg, he found that the effect that protected his hand extended to his clothing but not to anything else that he held, even if it was essentially a shield.

He had to block with his body, regardless of whether it was clothed or uncovered.

Thankfully, if the greatcoat was any indication, armor counted. So, if he ever chose to wear gauntlets or the like, his skill shouldn't become useless.

More importantly, however, he had been able to really focus on the flow of energies within his body, and he suspected that his new internally focused skill had helped him accomplish that.

Effectively, what the skill was doing was to take the energy and health within his body and very briefly shunt a good portion of it to the area of impact, reinforcing the physical location as well as making his 'health' harder to damage. Doing this used up some health and stamina, hence the cost.

It didn't seem to make him weaker elsewhere but that was likely due to some System oddity.

Obviously, this was not the only thing that that skill did, as it also somehow stopped the second butter knife mid air when he'd been defending against James, but it seemed like what he'd noticed was the core of what was happening.

It also explained the cooldown… at least in part.

Once all the health and stamina was gathered and used to defend him, it flowed back away from his hand—or whatever he used to block—evenly spreading back out before he could call on it again.

At first, he tried to fight it, keeping it from returning and instead making it stay to block again.

That failed utterly as even with his Basic Internal Life Manipulation, he couldn't stop the natural flow of the energies.

After uncounted shots and uses of the skill, Alex realized why, and he almost smacked himself in the forehead when he did.

The returning energies were effectively carrying the damage back outward, distributing it evenly throughout his whole body. If he'd figured out a way to stop it, he'd just have concentrated the damage to his hand, thus negating the wound immunity of the skill.

It might be worth doing so if he could block constantly, but he'd effectively be turning his own body parts into an ablative meatshield, and that didn't seem like a good way to go in 'improving' the skill's functionality.

Therefore, he began trying to speed up the re-evening out of the energies. It didn't work great, but it did seem like he was moving in the right direction.

The end result for him didn't manifest in a change to his skill descriptions, but he did improve his reliance on his kinesthetic skill even further, and he felt like he was beginning to grasp what was happening with his defensive ability.

But that was all the time they had.

John was quite happy, apparently having earned a few quite nice updates to his own skills, including a rarity upgrade to something called Basic Target Tracking.

It did exactly what it said on the tin, allowing the marksman to more easily track and predict the movements of anything that he was trying to shoot.

John had set a timer on his phone, and when it went off, he and Alex headed back through the underground tunnels to the school.

Alex looked in on the distilling process as they passed, and it seemed to almost be done. He was quite excited for what he might be able to gain once it was complete, and he could be patient.

It looks like it might only be a few hours until all is done. That was invigorating in a way, even if he still needed to figure out exactly how to use it.

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The process didn't seem like it would be too complicated. After all, absorbing the life core hadn't been. Still, this part might take more. He'd just have to wait and see.

Lunch was another baked bun—sourdough filled with seasoned quinoa this time—and water. Apparently, the powers-that-be didn't think that the citizens of their base were drinking enough, and so water was being explicitly given as part of the food plan.

Alex was a good citizen and ate his food, drank his water, and expressed gratitude to those who had provided both.

Still, others were faster, and thus it was Natasha who found him as he was finishing up. They were partnered for the next training block, and they were both excited to see what they could learn.

As neither of them were squeezing off shots from a firearm of any kind, Alex and Natasha didn't really have to go very far off for their training.

They settled on a patch of grass in the shade of the gymnasium, sitting down some four feet from each other.

Every five seconds or so, Natasha would thrust her arm forward to stab at him with her spear from a seated position, and he would use his defensive skill. This time around, it was more for her benefit than his, as doing this should allow her to test the edges of her attack skills in a more controlled, low-stress manner while still actually attacking someone.

As for how he was going to gain? Well, Natasha cast a Force Shield in the air right beside him, and held it in place for him to examine and try to affect.

She could hold her Force Shields for up to ten minutes, but they grew steadily weaker over that time, though it wasn't a linear degradation. It was about half as strong at minute nine as at the moment of casting, and the last half of the durability melted away in the final minute.

Effectively, that meant that if it were resisting something, it wouldn't hold out for the full ten.

Her doing this also allowed her to work on her Force Shield in myriad ways.

Alex didn't mind her 'double dipping' during their training together. If his fellow teammates became stronger, they all improved their chances to survive.

So, they settled into the pattern, and Alex focused on the magic in the air beside him.

Basic Mana Manipulation said that it allowed him to affect magic around him, and it was unarguable that the Force Shield was around him… well in the area around him. It was actually beside him, but the skill should still apply.

He reached out with his Basic Mana Sense, and felt the edges of the static spell.

Alex had to shift his hand to catch the incoming spearthrust, activating his defensive skill, but he didn't let that bother him overmuch.

The mana in the Force Shield was solid to his sense. It was like looking at a rock and trying to see within it.

Block.

As he examined it closer, he was able to see that the power was looping through a pattern in endless, intertwined repetitions. More than that, he could feel that it was still connected to Natasha.

Block.

There wasn't any power flowing down the connection, not really. Instead, it felt more like the cord on an old, wired remote control.

The off switch?

Block.

He tried to affect that connection—whether cutting it off, triggering the 'off' command, or even just shifting it slightly—but it utterly refused his attempts. It wasn't a question of strength—or if it was, the strength required was monumentally beyond him—instead, it felt like it simply wasn't something that could be affected.

That in mind, he began feeling along the shield with a combination of sense and manipulation.

Block.

He continued until the shield began to fade, blocking every five seconds or so.

He'd been observing the slow weakening of the spell throughout the process, but, finally, at almost exactly the nine minute mark, a small part of the spell shape gave out rather than simply weakening.

That breaking cascaded through the whole weave, following a weaving, spiraling, zig-zagging course through the entirety until it returned to the point of connection, and the shield was gone.

Fascinating.

Block.

"Again, please."

Natasha nodded and recast Force Shield, and they set to work yet again.

Study and block.

Theorize and block.

Examine and block.

The two hours passed, seemingly in a blink, and while Alex hadn't advanced any skill, he had made several discoveries.

Each time Natasha cast the shield, it had degraded from the same point. If she changed the shape, that point moved, but it always looked the same.

Once he asked her to change the shape—after the third casting—he started to work on finding that point of first failure within the nine minutes before it was revealed.

At first, he only found it by luck, but by the tenth and final attempt, he was able to find it around minute seven. Not great, but it was certainly progress.

He still didn't have anything that he could do once he'd found it, but he felt like it was the key… somehow.

Natasha was quite happy with her own progress as she'd been able to test out quite a few things against his defense skill.

The benefit there wasn't in truly trying to bypass it. Instead, it was in the fact that she could watch the spell or skill impact a target properly and be enacted without opposition. Because, as odd as it sounded, Alex's defense didn't actually stop any attack. Instead, it reinforced him, then distributed the damage that was taken despite that improvement.

The meal bell sounded, and as the two made their way toward the cafeteria, Alex noticed a group of very disgruntled teenagers coming out of one of the administrative offices, several of which he recognized from the group that had been chastised earlier for seeming drunkenness.

I wonder what that's about. Then, he saw Kaylee come out after them, clear displeasure on her face. She saw Alex and Natasha, waving before coming over and falling in beside them, as they all headed toward 'afternoon snack'. Alex gave her a smile. "Is everything alright?"

"No, it broken-furnace-mid-winter isn't."

Natasha put a hand on the other woman's shoulder. "What seems to be the trouble?"

"Those kids… they're right to be worried about those they know out there." She waved vaguely to indicate away from their base. "But there's nothing we can do about it. Either those out there are already safe—so us going out there would be both useless and potentially expose them to danger—or they're dead—so going out would expose us to danger for no gain."

"So, they were once again asking us to go out?" Alex inquired.

"Yes."

"And you told them no?"

"Yes." She sighed. "In the past, I've tried to soften it, explaining that we could check when we could, but this time, I basically just told them no."

Natasha grunted, and Alex winced. "How did they take that?"

"Not well. They tried to negotiate, explaining that their loved ones had been trying to gather, that there was only one place that we needed to check, but it's not near anything else of use, and as I already said, it's a no-win situation for us."

Alex wanted to go after the kids, to talk with them, plead, reason, anything to help them understand, to come to grips with the situation, but he set that aside.

This wasn't real, he had to separate himself and treat it at least a bit like a game, and he had way more to do than he could ever do. They needed to improve in order to survive and hopefully save as many of these people as possible.

Finally, Kaylee shook her head and looked up. "Well, that should be that. I'm sure they'll be unhappy for a while, but we should be able to move past it now."

Alex had the very uncomfortable idea that, no, they likely weren't done with this thread. The tutorial was too video game-like for that. And while that gave him comfort that real people weren't in distress, it also assured him that too much had been put into this for it to disappear now…

Still, he'd said that in the past, and Kaylee didn't seem like she would appreciate him harping at the moment. He could mention it after dinner.

She smiled his way, then straightened slightly. "Oh! After this meal, you should go to the basement. The distilling is done, and if you want to put it to use, now's a good time."

Alex grinned, putting the teenagers from his mind. "Thank you, Kaylee. I'll do that."