Surviving the Simulation: The Grand Crusade

Ignoring Xander's reply, the guard pushed them through the double doors and into the safe zone. The scent of old dust and burning oil filled the air, the dim glow of lanterns casting long shadows across the familiar linoleum floors. Despite the apocalypse, the school looked almost exactly as he remembered it with its wide hallways lined with dented lockers, faded class photos in glass frames, and the same dated signs pointing toward the cafeteria, nurse's office, and gymnasium.

Xander's eye twitched at the last one.

They converted the gym into a makeshift shelter. Rows of mismatched cots spread across the floor, some separated by curtains or hanging sheets strung between upright broomsticks or PVC piping. A barricade of overturned bleachers split the space roughly in two. On one side were living quarters and what looked like a gear cache or supply dump on the other.

He let out a soft, humorless chuckle.

Coming back here felt like stepping into a bad dream wearing familiar skin. He'd sworn to himself he'd never set foot in this building again unless hell froze over. Maybe it hadn't, but whatever this Simulation was? Close enough.

High school had been a hell of its own kind. Cruel in petty, everyday ways. The kind of place that carved long-term scars beneath the skin. And now, in the ash and aftermath of the world breaking, it was suddenly their sanctuary.

He shook his head and kept walking. The universe really had a twisted sense of humor.

Walking into the administration wing conference room, Xander was getting an understanding of what the issue was. The council appeared to comprise former faculty, some he remembered from his time at the school. They were taking turns discussing the next steps, but they were approaching everything as if the Simulation wasn't real. There were recommendations on how to contact FEMA. Discussions on how to get the power back on.

The conversation rambled on for half an hour before anyone realized that Xander and his companions were present, clad in armor and carrying medieval-style weapons.

"Young man, this is a place for adults to conduct serious business. Come back when you are dressed properly," an elderly woman said, looking over the top of her glasses at Xander.

An older man in a wrinkled button-up shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I don't know… some of the students have mentioned similar things. Maybe we should at least give these folks a chance to speak."

"Enough of that nonsense!" the woman snapped.

"I'm sorry. Do you not understand what's happening out there? Someone showed me the way up here so I could tell you what's happening between here and the Tolono area, but you're all here. Acting like this does not differ from a tornado or blizzard," Xander said.

"There are bipedal rat people called rodentia, mutated flora and fauna, dungeons, magic powered automatons. Hell, we even had a run in with animated skeletons a couple days ago."

"There is no such thing as walking skeletons. The undead are just movie fantasy. This is obviously some kind of a chemical spill that's causing mass hallucination," replied the woman dismissively.

Xander opened his mouth to argue, but caught himself. What was the point? If the world ending wasn't enough to make these people listen, nothing he said would.

"Good luck with FEMA," he muttered, turning on his heel. As the door clicked shut behind him, he pressed his hand to his forehead to hold off the building headache pounding behind his eyes.. Denial was more dangerous than any monster they'd faced.

None of this made any sense. If these were the people in charge, and they were in complete denial, then who had built all the fortifications? And who had ownership of the safe zone? It couldn't be any of these people. The way JT described it, there was a fairly robust interface that appeared when claiming a safe zone. Someone else had control of the safe zone, but these folks had been the ones to take charge.

"Why did that geek with the clipboard bring us up here if those dust balls in there weren't going to listen?" Alex fumed.

"Seems like there are several layers of stuff going on here. We've got a shakedown grift going on, delusional faculty, and I'm willing to bet someone else actually has ownership of the safe zone. Let's hope it's not the person running the grift, because I'm positive it's nobody in that room," Xander said as he jerked his thumb over his should back toward the conference room.

"Part of me wants to table this and continue on to Kickapoo, but we still need some information before we can head out. I'm going to ask around a bit and see if we can find out what's happening east of here. How about you guys see what you can find out about what's really going on here? Meet back up in the cafeteria later?"

"Sounds good. I'll go start with talking to Mr. Clipboard." Zoey said as she walked off.

"I'll see if I can scout out the offices. You guys have seen all the notes in JT's office. Hopefully, whomever owns this safe zone has something similar. If we find an office with a bunch of notes on running a safe zone, we'll find who owns this joint," Alex added.

Xander blinked. One second, Alex was walking beside him. The next, he was gone, turning into just a ripple in the dim hallway light. Even knowing what to look for, Xander struggled to track him. It was like watching a shadow slip between the cracks of reality itself.

He wasn't sure what they'd find, but if anyone could sniff out a hidden truth, it was Alex and Zoey. They'd gotten through the dungeon together. A crumbling school bureaucracy wouldn't stand a chance.

Shaking his head, Xander headed for the cafeteria.

They converted the cafeteria into a kind of informal town square. People pushed folding tables together or arranged them in rows, creating long communal seating areas where people gathered in loose clusters. The smell of canned stew and reheated rations lingered in the air, and a large dry erase board near the serving line listed daily duties and meal rotations.

Xander moved slowly along the edge of the room, listening.

The conversations varied with age. Those clinging to a world that no longer existed spoke in low, anxious tones about what came next. Whether help would arrive. Whether this would all go back to normal. Tornadoes, blizzards and other Midwest disasters they could process. This they couldn't.

The younger voices were different. He caught snippets about monsters, speculation on class unlocks, whispered rumors about magic. Fear twisted some into half-truths, while others stemmed from observations mirroring his own experiences.

It was a divide. Not just in generations, but in worldview. Some were trying to cling to the old world. Others were already adapting to the new one.

Xander made a mental note of a few faces that belonged to those asking the right questions. People who might listen.

A woman Xander had noticed staring at him moments earlier called out to him as he passed by again. "Hey, Mister, what's a Lightbringer Paladin?"

"Class given to me by the Simulation once I reached level five," Xander replied as he approached the group the woman was standing with.

"What did you do to get a… Holy crap! What is up with your eyes?" the woman exclaimed.

"Tell you what, I need some information and it seems like you folks have a lot of questions about the Simulation. I'm certainly no expert, but I'm happy to share everything I know about the Simulation, dungeons, classes… the works."

"First, though, I need some information from you guys. Sound like a deal?"

The woman hesitated, glancing at the growing crowd. Then, with a small nod, she gestured toward the tables. "Alright. But let's sit. This might take a while."

The conversation started small, with just Xander and the four people standing closest. But it didn't stay that way for long…

The woman turned out to be the school's librarian, and the conversation started off as just Xander with the group of four people who had been with the woman. It didn't take long for the group to balloon to encompass two dozen people all asking questions ranging from what Xander had seen between St. Joseph and Sidney, specific questions about dungeons, and even teaching the group, who didn't already know it, how to learn analyze. The conversation was not one sided. Xander tried to ask one of his own questions for every third or fourth that he answered.

Twenty minutes after the conversation and impromptu training session had started, everything came to an abrupt halt. Someone had run to tattle on Xander to the council once he'd started attracting enough attention. Two council members, flanked by two guards Xander recognized from the entrance, approached to disperse the group and sternly warned Xander against promoting hysteria. The council members warned him, but promised to remove him from the safe zone if he persisted in spreading the delusion about the Simulation.

Xander wasn't ready to press his luck with the council just yet. He wanted to wait until they found out who actually owned the safe zone before confronting them directly. A polite apology and a promise to avoid speaking to large groups about the Simulation was enough to extract himself from the situation. He had more information to share with the others and hoped they'd been just as successful.

When Zoey and Alex entered the cafeteria, he was still hunched over a steaming tray of food at a folding table. It wasn't a five-star meal. Just something vaguely stew-adjacent with a side of overcooked rice, but it was hot, and today, that was enough.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

He raised a half-empty can of soda in greeting as they approached.

"Not only is it a hot meal," Xander said, leaning back with a satisfied sigh, "but they had soda. It's been four days since I've had a proper caffeinated drink. I'm bumping soda to the top of my loot list."

Zoey arched an eyebrow, grinning as she and Alex slid into the seats across from him. "Looks like you beat us to the good stuff."

"I figured I'd get in and out before the line got long," Xander replied, gesturing toward the growing queue near the serving area. "You two want to grab food first? I can talk while you eat."

"God, yes. I'm starving," Zoey said, already rising from her seat. "Let me get something to eat before I give you the skinny on what I found."

"I'm not passing up a hot meal either. Be right back," Alex added.

Xander nodded, tipping the last of the soda can back as they walked away. He used the quiet moment to finish scraping the last bit of food from his tray, setting it aside as he leaned back in his chair. His stomach was full, his energy coming back online, and for the first time in what felt like days, he had a second to breathe.

A few minutes later, Zoey and Alex returned, both balancing their trays as they slid back into their seats. Zoey wasted no time digging into her food between sentences.

"All right," she said, around a mouthful of stew, "now let's compare notes."

"Funny thing?" Xander tapped his fingers on the cafeteria table. "No one knows who actually owns this place. The teachers did not claim it. Someone else did. Someone who's been real quiet about it."

"Best guess says that one student owns the safe zone and the teachers basically brushed them off. I think we already all knew it from what we saw in the conference room, but I'll confirm it. There is a lot of 'we're older, we know better' mixed in with a pure state of denial. If this safe zone gets attacked, then they're going to be in serious trouble."

Alex piped in next. "All right, this is where I come in. It took some time, but I found a bunch of sticky notes in a supply closet off the library. No luck on figuring out who's notes they are, just that they're all related to running a safe zone. Whoever it is most certainly knows what's going on with the Simulation, at least more than those dusty old skeletons that are supposedly in charge. I'm basing that on another supply room in the library that has a bunch of short swords and other weapons in it. It's all junk quality, so I'm guessing it was weapons picked up at the start of all this."

"Finally, while up on the roof, I got a look to the east and at the far edge of town, there is a pretty large fire. And I caught sight of a couple of those douches that set us up for the VIP pass heading that way with baseball bats."

Xander sat back for a minute, savoring the last of his soda before he got up to place his tray in the return bin. Zoey and Alex certainly had some of the missing pieces of the puzzle, and Xander had the rest. By the time he got back to the table, he had the basis of a plan on how to nudge the safe zone toward fixing itself without heavy involvement from the trio. He didn't want to leave these people in their current situation. Jo would rather Xander help those in need who were right there in front of him. It was the same thought process he had when they'd dealt with the dungeon. But since they discovered Jo wasn't at the house in Sidney, Xander's anxiety had ramped up exponentially.

He couldn't help thinking about Jo. Every minute they lingered here was another delay, another chance something could happen to her. But walking away from this place felt just as wrong. This was the part Jo would have handled. The part that required a heart bigger than survival.

"Good stuff, guys," Xander said. "I think I have the rest of the story. Same thing: no clue who's running the grift, but it seems to be a few people. I found a man named Victor Stern, but he just seemed to be a local business person who was pretty harmless."

"Changing topics, everything east of here is pretty nasty. No rodentia, but a large number of undead and hyena men. Nobody who saw them had analyze, but if we're applying old-school gaming rules to this, then they're probably gnolls. Kickapoo State Park is close to Danville, and what we thought is true. The larger the population center, the harder hit it was."

He paused, tilting his head toward the cafeteria entrance. "Now, as for who owns the safe zone… I think I know who it is."

Zoey glanced up from her tray. "You serious? What gave it away?"

"I had an impromptu Simulation Q&A with a handful of folks. There was one woman, her questions were… different. Not just 'what's a dungeon' or 'how do I get a class', she was asking about quest mechanics, system feedback, safe zone rules. Stuff only someone with direct access would think to ask."

He shrugged. "And she didn't flinch at any of the answers. Not like the others. She already accepted how real this all is. Honestly, she knew more than she let on."

He nodded slightly as the woman from earlier approached the table.

"And here she comes."

"May I sit down?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder as if checking to see if anyone was watching.

"It's your safe zone," Xander replied, voice low. "No need to ask us."

She paused, her expression tightening. "You figured it out?"

Xander nodded. "You asked the right questions. Too specific. And you didn't blink when I talked about the Simulation."

"Yes, you caught me. That's what I wanted to… What the hell is that thing?" For the second time in their conversations, she abruptly changed topics.

Cabbot had phased through the pocket of Xander's coat, which she had been sleeping in, to appear on the table.

"That little ball of murder fuzz is Cabbot, the spectral cat. We found her in the dungeon I was telling you about earlier. She's my bonded companion and also the reason my eyes look how they do," Xander said as he reached out to move the salt shaker Cabbot was currently pushing toward the edge of the table back to the center. Cabbot huffed at him before disappearing, only to reappear next to Zoey, rubbing on her arm.

"Can you tell us why you're not the one in charge here? You seem to have at least some inkling of what is going on here and these people are going to need all the help they can get. Monsters can still raid safe zones," Xander said, tossing a piece of string toward Cabbot, only to drag it back slowly. Cats are cats, Xander thought as Cabbot once again disappeared, only to reappear on top of the string.

"What do you mean by monsters raiding the safe zone? Doesn't that go against the very name safe zone?" The librarian hissed.

"We saw the safe zone at the Starlight Oasis get attacked by a small number of monsters," Zoey offered, "but the quest completion message the three of us got for helping the owner of that safe zone mentioned safe zones were subject to attacks but no monsters would just appear within the boarders. That part made my skin crawl. The Simulation's design ensured no place was truly one hundred percent safe."

"That still doesn't tell us why you're not the one in charge here. You literally have the power to remove them from the safe zone if you wished," Xander said, puzzled.

"A couple days ago when the reboot happened, myself and several students were in the library while the principal and several senior faculty were meeting elsewhere. I got a quest to secure the building and the older students took care of some rats that walked upright. There weren't very many of them, so the students and I got lucky with injuries. Other people weren't so lucky," the librarian explained, taking a moment to wipe a couple tears from her eyes. Like everyone, it was apparent that she'd lost someone important already.

"As for being in charge, you've talked to the council. They're in complete denial," the librarian explained. "When I told them what happened, they dismissed it as hallucinations and took over, since they were the leaders of the school. Their words not mine. At first, it was a blessing. They could get everything organized, but now they've really leaned into this denial and are preventing people from even speaking about the Simulation or trying to arm themselves. Victor Stern helped me get a couple of groups of men together to walk around the town under the auspices of finding supplies or survivors. But short of banning them from the safe zone and railroading them out of town, I do not know how to deescalate the situation. I've been working behind the scenes with some folks who are more open-minded."

One person running toward the infirmary and then by several people running back toward the entrance broke the conversation up. First, it was a couple of people, then more continued to join them. A bell rang from the direction everyone was running to.

"What is going on?" the librarian asked, stopping someone who was running by.

"Guards at the front gate just sent word dog creatures attacked the patrol. Several men in army fatigues are bringing in the wounded," the person replied before running off.

"I can help with the wounded. Let's go see what we can do," Xander said, leaping to his feet.

The scene at the front gate was one of pure bedlam. Out of the ten people Alex had commented earlier he had seen heading to the east, only four were present. All four people were severely injured. Along with the patrol were six men and women all wearing identical army tactical gear, from helmets to boots. To Xander they looked like the real deal, not weekend warriors, and each of them was level five. Xander did find it a bit peculiar that they were all classed as fighter except for one who was an engineer.

Pushing several people aside, he moved closer to the injured, ignoring the protest of those he had shoved aside.

I'm here to help, he thought, not stand here and gawk.

Swiftly moving to the first injured patrolman, he triggered his heal ability. He didn't have enough to fully heal everyone, and he knew he couldn't replace missing limbs or eyes, but he thought that one or two heals each would get them stabilized. Being out of action for a couple of days, or even a limb, was much better than being dead.

The moment Xander's magic flared, the wounded man gasped, his mangled arm knitting together under the radiant glow. Silence fell. A soldier stared at his now-whole limb like it wasn't real, then looked up at Xander with something close to reverence. "That… that was real, wasn't it?"

Seeing proof of actual magic instantly silenced the council member, who was about to protest as Xander pushed forward. She promptly passed out. She may have been able to still deny the display as a hallucination, but the results were pretty hard to argue with. Xander was concerned that he had just made matters worse for the council member by forcing her to face her denial, but he'd address that once she woke up.

"That's it. That's all the gas I have in the tank. Give me a bit to recover my mana and I can help a little more. Lost limbs are beyond me though, sorry." Xander grimaced. Healing was great, but losing a limb was going to be a long-term issue that needed to be solved. Maybe they'd be able to get better spells or leverage some of the mana driven technology he'd seen in the Blackwhisker Stronghold to create prosthetics.

"Thanks for bringing them in," the librarian offered the leader of the military outfit. "What happened and where are the others?"

Before the leader could answer, several other council members showed up and attempted to take over the discussion. "We'll handle this matter, thank you. Now tell us what happened, and where are the others? Plus, what happened to her? Did she pass out from the sight of blood?"

Xander didn't think he could roll his eyes any harder at the council members as they pointed to their passed out, useless member lying on the floor.

"Major Rex Steelgrave, ma'am. Your colleague here passed out when the paladin used healing magic on these men to save their lives. We came across your patrol in the middle of combat with several gnolls. We fought them off, but we suffered casualties, and some of your people were captured," Rex Steelgrave reported.

"Magic? Gnolls? Are you hallucinating too?" The council member sighed. "We had hoped that emergency services or the military would have been able to prevent you from being infected."

"I'm sorry. Do you think this is all a hallucination? Who here is the owner of this safe zone? I don't have time to deal with this. We have actual issues to deal with!" Rex questioned, clearly confused.

"Major, might I suggest we adjourn to someplace more private?," Xander recommended. "The librarian here is the safe zone owner. Ma'am, you mentioned having a couple of folks who were helping you work behind the scenes. Please gather them and let's meet in the conference room in five minutes. It sounds like we have a lot to discuss." He started for the cafeteria counter for another soda before heading to the meeting. He wasn't willing to put up with the crap storm of a meeting that was coming up without some caffeinated help.

As Xander walked away, the council members shrieked at both the Major and the librarian.

I am not the main character, he repeated in his head over and over. Someone else can take the lead on straightening out leadership of the safe zone.

Everyone had to do their part, and Xander was more than willing to take on even more than his fair share, but he would not shoulder the entire load.