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

<Watcher, Apology Tutorial #486 Control and Observation Room>

The Watcher had finally, finally finished resetting and rejiggering the complicated net of quests, side-quests, hidden quests, event triggers, scenario surge timers, and rewards for extraordinary accomplishments.

After all, if accomplishing something under normal circumstances deserved a reward, System send, it certainly deserved a greater one when completed under greater duress.

She took a long drink from her cup of coffee, marveling at the flavor. It was a rather interesting beverage, native to the home planet of some of the current Initiates. There were drinks like it that she'd tried before, but as with all integrations, the exact sources of sustenance and luxury each world had cultivated were fascinating.

Regardless, the drink seemed perfect for a celebratory draft. The hint of bitterness really harkened to how well done work always begot more work.

But that was all beside the point: The rewards and missions.

The System was often difficult to understand, but it always made sense in the end. More to the point, it occasionally acted in a way that seemed almost sapient, rather than merely sentient.

Take Alex's latest advancement as an example. Her supervisor had flipped a lid when he learned that the Initiate had received a sphere of raw Life Energy as a reward for a quest, but the System had stamped it in their records as coming directly from itself.

The Watcher had put in the suggestion, both for the quest and for the reward for Alex, but the System had chosen not to note that in the final, permanent records, going so far as to expand the quest and offer rewards to the other participants as well.

She took another pull from the rich coffee.

Now that Alex had somehow absorbed the energy with no ritual, no infusion apparatus, and no outside assistance whatsoever?

Yeah, the supervisor was beginning to panic. The Watcher's various senses could detect him frantically working ten floors away, his aura entirely uncontrolled.

She thought it was all a bit silly. The actual costs of an Epic—or even rarer—existence coming out of an Apology Tutorial weren't trivial, but they were hardly budget breaking.

By the System, the costs of refactoring the scenarios were nearly the same, but the Supervisor was apparently pushing hard up against some metric or other. Who knew? Maybe he was competing with others for a promotion, and he feared that this would be the deciding factor weighed against him.

Regardless, it was a joy to tweak his nose just a bit, and an even greater joy to not receive any of the blowback.

The Watcher honestly felt more invested in the success of this crop of Initiates than she had since her very first integration.

I hope that Aron can get his arm unstuck from under that boulder. It's already been days. She had her fellow Watchers keeping her up to date on that one as well as a few others of note.

She took another sip. That reminded her that she needed to update a few people on Alex's latest development, as well as the goings on with several other Initiates of note.

I wonder if Terra and Alex will ever cross paths? It'll have to be in the next scenario or back on their planet, of course. Stephen is a joy to watch, and the confusion he creates is endlessly entertaining. Regardless of anything else, I hope that Pascal can withstand the building pressure.

<Alex, Real - Lost Sheep Have Gone Astray, High School>

Alex groaned as, basically as soon as his pronouncement about the teens had left his mouth, a System notice appeared before him.

Quest Uncovered
Lost Sheep Have Gone Astray

Some of your most vulnerable citizens have snuck away in the night. Their departure will cause dissension in those who remain, and cause them to question your group's ability to lead and keep them all safe.

Either lock down your base and squash the descent with power and overt competence
OR find the missing citizens and present them before the others alive
OR others solutions may exist.

Reward:
Based upon results achieved
Base Stability and greater assistance from non-Initiates
Experience

Kaylee's eyes had unfocused momentarily as she seemingly got the quest as well.

Alex sighed, rubbing his eyes. "I wonder what triggered it, now?"

"Who knows? You are the last of the Initiates here to be informed, maybe that did it?"

He grunted, standing and moving to the hall with Kaylee as they continued to talk. "Could be. So, I'll go, who else?"

"John and Natasha."

"Not Pilar or Grant?"

Kaylee shook her head. "No, they're needed here, and you three can go faster without them."

That was true enough. Pilar and Grant were both heavy hitters, with Pilar being basically like an emplacement on her own, while Grant was almost the quintessential heavy brawler.

"Okay, are we going out at street level or through the tunnels?"

"Street level. You're going straight to the location they were asking we go to. The others are at the main entrance. It's open for ease."

"Thank you." Alex quickly stretched one way, then the other, eliciting a series of cracks from his back with each motion. "Food? Coffee?"

Kaylee smiled and held out her hands, a travel mug and steaming roll appearing. Alex quickly drew them into his own Inventory.

"Thank you."

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"Of course. Be in contact. If things change here, we may need to call it early and have you get back ASAP. James says that he's been seeing more undead down cross streets."

They were moving as they talked, now. "More? As in any? The streets were all but abandoned two days ago."

"Well, something has changed. Our draw of nearby death energy has increased."

Alex frowned. "Is it 'death' or 'undeath'?"

Her eyes unfocused. "It looks like a combination, oddly."

He grunted. "Alright. So, we'll be fighting… How did the teens get through?"

"It seems like it's still just scattered undead, not the throngs we saw before the shift… not yet"

"Understood. So, we'll be executing a running clash, trying to not draw too much attention."

"Exactly, with John as backup."

"Because nothing draws attention quite like gun shots."

"Indeed, but nothing is quite as effective and enduring in our current arsenal."

"Right."

They made it to the front doors of the school, now under Kaylee's control through the base system and wide open for the time being.

John and Natasha were there, each seemingly pounding down the last of their late-night repast.

Alex pulled out his roll and took a bite before putting the rest back. He'd chew as he ran.

Yes, choking is the best way to help the missing kids. Still, he felt the need to eat, and a swig from the surprisingly well designed travel mug, cleared his mouth with relative ease. "We ready?"

The other two nodded, Natasha speaking up. "I know the way."

"Then let's go. John in the middle, I'll take up the rear."

The other two nodded again, and all three took off at a run. They weren't going as fast as they could given their stats, but they were going at a fast pace that they could keep up for a long time.

Alex could have gone faster, his higher stats simply making it so he had greater physical capacity across the board, but it was better to go as a group. The tutorial had already shown him that he could be overwhelmed, and only the presence of his group-mates had kept him alive through everything this place had thrown at them thus far.

Kaylee called after them. "Good luck! I'll mind the fort."

Alex waved without looking back.

A moment later, he was pulsing his Detect spells in sequence as they approached the edge of their base, a simple barrier that Kaylee said she could update through the Base System when they needed actual defenses.

He had thoughts about the delay of such, but he'd been outvoted when they'd discussed it as a group, and it was hardly the time to rehash such things, even if just internally.

Especially not internally. Arguing with myself would do absolutely nothing but distract me.

Less than a dozen yards from the edge of their base, Natasha skewered an undead that had been lurking behind an abandoned car, her quick movement allowing her to land the strike before the creature had a chance to attack or make any sort of noise.

Alex quickly dusted it, and Natasha gathered the dust into her Inventory, still seemingly sure that it would be valuable… somehow.

That set the tone for the trip.

They encountered low rarity—but somewhat high leveled—undead with sporadic regularity as they ran toward the 'meeting point' that the teens had insisted their family and loved ones would be at.

Natasha handled every one of the isolated opponents with a single strike apiece, and when there was more than one, Alex was able to sweep in and assist in eliminating the others. He always finalized their deaths, and she took the resulting material.

John occasionally showed obvious frustration at not being allowed to shoot, but he also obviously understood why, and he never voiced any objection to the facts of the situation.

Still, they killed more than two hundred undead with relative quiet by the time they'd covered the fifty blocks east, south-east required to reach the location. The concentration did seem to diminish quite sharply as they proceeded, though they weren't sure if that was due to the direction they were going or simply because they were getting farther from the large concentration of the living that was at their base.

Regardless of the reason for the altering quantity of undead, each kill made Alex more nervous about the fate of the teens.

Still, he pulsed his Detect skills at regular intervals both to allow him to give Natasha forewarning where appropriate, but also to ensure that they didn't pass by the teens as they hid from the undead along the route.

If they'd taken anything but the direct route, it would be possible for them to be missed, but given that the group had seemingly left before the undead were even this numerous, they all hoped that they'd not deviated from this simplest of paths.

The three arrived at the location—a bank—and found a higher concentration of undead than anywhere around, including quite a few that were clearly turned undead rather than spawned.

They observed the location through the plateglass of an abandoned store, which they'd entered from the rear, hoping to be far enough away to not attract the attention of the undead, at least not quite yet.

"That's… huh. We haven't seen too many of the turned lately."

"Yeah…" Natasha was frowning.

John checked his guns. "Still, the way they're milling about… it's like there are living nearby, but not exposed."

Alex nodded, pulsing Detect Life again, this time with ten MP to detect any trace of life out to a thousand feet for ten seconds.

He groaned at the influx of information, fighting to parse through the data as it streamed through his head. He was able to focus again after about a minute, and found that he'd sat down without realizing it. "There are two groups of living, neither seems to be moving."

"In the bank?" John seemed surprised.

"One is in the bank. They are possibly the survivors the teens were hoping to meet up with."

Natasha's frown deepened. "And the other?"

"A bit more than two blocks that way." Alex pointed north west. "It might be the teens, holed up, or it could be another group of survivors."

John sighed and nodded. "Alright. Clear the bank, get the survivors then go for the other group?"

Alex held up a hand. "Something is… odd about the life in the bank. While the group over there was shifting around a bit, the one in the bank didn't move even a little during the entire duration of my spell. Even if they were asleep, there should have been some shifting. I'm not sure if they're people at all."

"Not people? What else could they be?"

He grimaced. "On the horrible side, they could be people infected with undeath or some other creature as incubation hosts… or something. They are too far for my Detect Unlife to reach at the moment without insane levels of inefficiency. They could be life cores… I can't say I've ever sensed one outside of a creature before, so they might look like that. The way they're arranged could indicate that they are in the vault or something like that."

John gave him a funny look. "You can't tell the difference between a full grown person and a small orb?"

Alex gave him a flat look. "I don't get some sort of picture of the life I detect. It's more like hearing a sound. I can pinpoint where it's coming from, but I can't tell you how big the source is, physically." He shrugged. "I can tell you that every one of the sources does seem to be stronger than most people we've encountered."

That grabbed their attention. Natasha took her eyes off the window for a moment. "Other Initiates?"

"I… I don't think so?" Alex shrugged. "Again, they are too still… I don't know why they'd be so unmoving."

John shook himself. "If there's a chance that there are real people in there? We need to help them."

"I agree, but again, I don't see how it could be… unless they were petrified or being held in the gaze of a Brood Guard?" Alex pulsed his spell again—with less mana this time—and swayed on his feet at the torrent of information. "They still aren't moving. None of them vanished, so they aren't actively dying…or being destroyed…" Still, he knew that John was right. "Fine. We'll clear the bank, acquire whatever these things are, and go for the other group." He locked eyes with John. "Hold off making noise until we're on our way out, then you can make a racket, hopefully drawing undead here as we move on."

John grinned and nodded. "Make a bang on the way out, then go silent again. Got it."

Alex shook his head and gave a small smile as he made eye contact with Natasha. "Ready?"

She nodded, her grip tightening on her spear. "Ready."

John checked his weapons once more before nodding again. "Let's do this."