TAKE ON ME [Survival LITRPG Apocalypse]

Chloe felt Bridget's sharp and electric spike of panic drive deep within her own skin. She pushed her consciousness into her [Mental Bastion] the instant Blake's door-slam echoed through the Town Hall. Inside the familiar confines of her mental room, Chloe focused her will to a razor's edge. She would follow one of Amber's philosophies: the best defense was a strong offense.

Some of the fear monsters clinging to Bridget wore Blake's sneering face; others resembled the massive club-wielding creature Richard's spell had revealed. While all 'fear monsters' were scary, these were self-inflicted and weak. They were nothing like the mana-fueled fear monsters she'd torn from Hana earlier; or, more recently, the ones she had cleared off Tess as they sat together in the Town Hall.

Chloe shredded Bridget's fear monsters with almost-routine precision and focus, her mental attack ripping through their insubstantial forms until they dissolved into wisps of nothing.

Once completed, she pulled her consciousness back to her physical body: it snapped back with a jarring sensation. She touched her nose reflexively; her fingers came away clean. No blood. She allowed herself a small smile.

Getting better at this.

"Monsters! Monsters are coming! Quick! Come to the Town Hall!"

Blake's voice carried from outside—high and theatrical—screaming his warning through Foundation's makeshift streets. His voice grew fainter as he ran.

The response only took a moment. People flung open the Town Hall's doors, making the [Crappy] leather-strap hinges groan.

"Jesus Christ. I guess we're doing this right now." Bo pushed himself up from his seat, exhaustion lines set deep in his face.

A wave of voices rolled through: questions, demands, and pleas all mushed together in a knot of human fear. The sound hit Chloe first, but what followed was worse: the emotional tsunami of dozens of terrified minds.

"QUIET, AND QUIT PUSHING!" Bo's voice cracked like a whip. The icon for his [Volume] winked above his head: a ghostly speaker that pulsed with each word. He had to yell out three times before the crowd outside finally subsided to a nervous muttering.

More settlers were arriving every second, drawn by Blake's cries and the gathering crowd. Bo's magically amplified voice carried over their heads. "LISTEN TO ME! THERE IS NO IMMEDIATE MONSTER ATTACK." He lowered his voice and addressed Bridget. "Let's start packing into the Town Hall and discuss the situation. Spread the word that there is no immediate threat, and tell everyone to head to the Town Hall. We have some big choices to make together."

Bridget slipped past the crowd and stepped outside. She caught the attention of several runner children and sent them scattering through the settlement to spread the news. She stepped back inside and directed the flow of traffic into the Town Hall. Under her instructions, the crowd assembled themselves in a somewhat orderly fashion.

"Fill the pews first," she called out. "Standing room after that. Stay out of the time-dilated offices. You won't be able to hear anything in there."

The next half-hour was spent cramming hundreds of stinky and scared people into tight spaces. Bodies packed into every available gap, and chairs and wooden pews groaned under unfamiliar weight. Those who couldn't fit inside pressed against the outer walls and windows. Two [Bards] with [Town Crier] abilities positioned themselves to relay the meeting to those out of earshot.

Chloe sat on the raised platform at the front of the room. Her parents flanked her on one side, the Robinsons on the other. Bridget stood near the podium, still directing late arrivals. Only Richard sat apart, sulking in the front row because there wasn't enough room to sit at the head of the Hall.

Amber—predictably—was already bored. She elbowed Chloe in the ribs, grinning as she pointed to one of the pews near the middle. Four burly [Lumberjacks] had squeezed themselves onto it; it was meant for three normal-sized people, if that. The wood was visibly bowing, and its legs were splayed at alarming angles.

"Ten Copper says it goes before Bo finishes talking," Amber whispered.

Despite everything, Chloe had to suppress a smile.

The noise in the Hall was becoming overwhelming. Freaked-out settlers talked over and around each other, their voices rising in ripples of anxiety. Chloe found herself slipping in and out of her [Mental Bastion] as she tried to help those teetering on the edge of full panic. Each time she dove in, she'd find another person drowning in fear, shred what she could, then surface to check her physical condition and feed mana into her walls.

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So far, no nosebleeds. But there were so many people. So much emotion.

"Okay, everyone." Bo's voice was muffled in her mental room. "Quiet down, quiet down."

Chloe pulled herself back to her body, opening her eyes in time to see Bo checking with the outside [Bards].

"Can you hear me out there?" his [Volume] icon activated once again.

A thumbs-up from outside.

Bo nodded, and shuffled the slate boards he'd scrawled notes on. "Okay, so what you have heard is true. Someone made it to us from outside the subdivision of Raintree. His name is Dusty, and he comes from Fairview."

Questions erupted immediately—who was he, how did he get there, what did he want—but Bo raised both hands and waved them for silence. "Everyone, please! Let me get through all of this information, including our current status, and then I'll cover every question as best I can."

The crowd settled reluctantly.

Bo launched into his speech, holding nothing back. He detailed the fatalities from the previous night, and read the list of those they had lost. He explained the current state of their food, the shortage of proper housing, and the strain on resources and professions.

Then he walked through Dusty's story, the refugees behind him, and the hundreds—if not thousands—of pursuing monsters.

"And then, the last thing we saw through Richard's spell," Bo said, his voice heavy, "was something truly enormous. Humanish, with glowing eyes, carrying a club the size of a tree—".

The crowd exploded.

"Now, listen. I know that out of the gate this sounds impossible, but—"

"We've got to get out of here!"

"To stay is suicide!"

"We're all gonna die!"

The cries built on each other, fear feeding fear in an exponential spiral.

Bo tried to restore order, but panic had its hooks in now.

Chloe agreed the news was scary—terrifying, even—but the reactions seemed overblown. Too immediate. Too synchronized. She let herself fall back into her [Mental Bastion], and that's when she saw it.

Black waves rolled off one particular person in the crowd: inky and viscous like oil. Within the waves, hideously stretched human faces and grasping hands emerged, whispering poison: "You can't fight that many monsters,"; "Your children will die screaming"; "Better ruuun." Then the figures were sucked back into the roiling mass, before a fresh ripple of voices and contorted limbs rose up behind it.

The waves flowed through the crowd. They reached out with their oily hands, seeking purchase on anyone nearby. When one found a hold, others swarmed and piled onto the victim, until the person's natural golden shimmer—the light Chloe had learned to think of as the soul—dimmed and drowned under the weight of the spell.

Chloe growled in her mental space. She launched herself into the void and tried to free the closest person from the spell.

They weren't like the simple, self-inflicted fears: they were crafted with mana and given malevolent purpose.

Chloe singled out one of the figures. Her first attack barely dented it. The creature turned on her with a snarling gurgle. It rushed her walls with the force of a battering ram.

Pain lanced through her skull as her defenses took the hit. In the physical world, her body jerked, hands gripping the edge of her chair. She fought back, tearing at the fear monsters with everything she had, finally freeing the man trapped beneath its weight.

However, when she looked around the void, she saw the spell and its terrorizing effects spreading. Ten more people were already suffocating in manufactured despair.

Chloe traced the waves back to their source: the one figure pumping out darkness like a corrupted fountain. Then she opened her physical eyes.

Blake.

Of course it was Blake.

He stood in the middle of the crowd: head bowed forward, black hood pulled up over his head. Distraught people pushed and shoved around him, too caught up in the moment to question what Blake was doing.

Each person who fell to the nightmare made Blake's waves pulse stronger, faster, hungrier.

"This is their fault!" An older White woman pointed at the platform, tears streaming down her face. "They brought this on us!"

"They can't protect us!"

"They're just using us! We need real leadership!"

Chloe closed her eyes again, and watched from her mental stronghold as Blake's fear spell found purchase on Tess. Her friend's golden light flickered as doubts and self-recriminations took root. Similar tendrils were coalescing around Bo.

"I call for new leadership!" Blake's voice rose above the chaos.

Golden souls out in the void screamed agreement as they were swarmed by Blake's spell. The panic was building to a critical mass. Even with his [Volume] spell, Bo couldn't get a word in edgewise.

Chloe had to stop Blake. Now.

She took several deep breaths in her mental room. The walls around her were battered, cracks spreading like spiderwebs where Blake's creatures had hammered against them. She needed to repair them, but there was no time.

Chloe had never cast a spell on another person before. Monsters were one thing: they were trying to kill her, so fair game. But Blake was human: even if he was a super [Crappy] one.

Still, she wouldn't hurt him. Just give him a taste of his own medicine: enough to break his spell.

She opened the window to her room, and peered out into the dark. Blake's silhouette was impossible to miss now. The waves of fear rolling off him had grown massive, fed by every person he'd infected. He was anchored at the center of his own storm.

Chloe launched her mind out through the window. Her mental tethers snapped out, wrapping around Blake's form. She was careful not to drive them in, not wanting to cause real damage. Just restrain, just stop—

The silhouette gasped and spun to face her.

His roiling waves condensed, and pulled inward like a tsunami gathering strength. Then they shot toward her in a focused beam of pure terror. The fear monsters crashed against her mental walls with fury. Blake's face leered from each one, multiplied into a nightmarish army.

Blood spurted from Chloe's nose in the physical world. The shock of it broke her concentration, and the tethers around Blake dropped as she was slammed back into her mental room. The fear monsters didn't let up. They beat against her walls, screaming obscenities and threats. Each impact sent waves of agony through her skull.

She staggered, nearly driven from her own [Mental Bastion]. If that happened, she would fall into the same panic consuming the others. Maybe worse, given how directly Blake was targeting her.

No.

This guy was just another bully. She'd dealt with bullies her whole life: in school, online, and in her own head.

Everyone else was afraid of her. Maybe it was time Blake was too.

Chloe gritted her teeth and hardened her resolve. She staggered back to her window, and this time she didn't hold back. Her mental tethers shot forward like harpoons.

She drove a mental spike deep into Blake's golden silhouette.

Blake had no bastion, no defenses. Chloe hit him like a truck, and plunged her consciousness into the twisted maze of his psyche.

God, what a mess.

Underneath the expected monster fears, Blake's mind was a circus of insecurity. He was terrified of being ignored: of being unimportant. Scared of Bridget realizing she could do better. Scared to death that people would see through his bluster.

Chloe wove a scenario in which the entire town saw Blake for what he was: a manipulator who'd tried to use their terror for his own gain. She fed the spell his own memories: every whispered lie; every calculated move to spread distrust; every selfish thought about seizing power.

The spell took on a life of its own as it traveled along her tether, diving deep into Blake's unprotected mind. She watched it spread like wildfire through his consciousness, his own worst fear consuming him: everyone realizing exactly what kind of person he really was.

Chloe cut the tether and opened her eyes as Blake began to scream.