**[CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE DEFEATED MULTIPLE ENEMIES]**

  The notification sat in front of David's eyes as he sat, dazed. His head throbbed and nausea started to claw at his stomach as he struggled with an odd hollow feeling.

  "David, talk to me. Dammit, don't be a little perra now!" Camila's voice sounded simultaneously distant and painfully stabbing worsening his throbbing headache.

  "Hey, Mark! Get over here! Now!"

  That seemed a bit much, he was just resting waiting for the throbbing in his head to calm down, it made sense that he was resting his eyes and leaning against the nice cool concrete…

  Someone was patting his face, pulling his eyelids back, then a flash of pain as they pinched his cheek. David's eyes snapped open.

  Mark's face swam into focus, concern etched across his features. Those surprisingly large hands hovered near David's face, one still raised.

  "Stay with us," Mark said, his deep voice cutting through the fog. "Don't close your eyes again."

  David tried to respond but his tongue felt thick and clumsy. The concrete behind his head was nice and cold. He was sitting, slumping more against one of the concrete pillars holding the platform roof up.

  When had he slumped down? He didn't remember doing that.

  Wetness on his face. He raised a hand, his movements sluggish and uncoordinated, to touch his cheek. His fingers came away red.

  Blood. That wasn’t good…

  "His nose is bleeding too," Katie's voice, tight with worry. "And look at his ears."

  More hands on him now, Mark's glowing faintly as the healer's magic flowed. The warmth helped, pushing back some of the fog, but the hollow feeling remained, got worse even. Like something inside him had been scooped out and left empty.

  David blinked, trying to force his thoughts into order. The fight. The mutant. He'd thrown everything at it, hadn't he? His magic. His will. And the Nath.

  The memory clicked into place. He'd used the six Nath he'd bound like weapons, flinging them at the creature to slow it down. He'd felt something break inside when he did it. A snap. A tear.

  "What happened?" Sarah's voice, tight with pain. She was being tended to by Katie a few feet away, her face and shoulder being bandaged.

  "David happened," Carl said from nearby. The older man's voice carried an odd mix of respect and concern. "Whatever he did, it stopped that thing long enough for us to kill it."

  "His vitals are stabilizing," Mark said, hands still glowing against David's temples. "But something's wrong."

  David tried to speak, focused then checked his status. Checked again to make sure he was correct. This time his voice worked, though it came out as a rasp. "Magic, Stamina, Health. Used too much. Don’t try to heal me right now, I don’t have the health to take more than you already did…"

  That was an understatement, his resource pools were ALL bottomed out. His head continued to swim worse.

  "We need to move him," Camila said, her command voice firmly in place despite the worry underneath. "Get him back to the safe zone."

  "I can walk," David protested weakly.

  “We won, lets rescue some people!” his attempted levity fell flat after they all ignored him.

  "No." Mark's tone brooked no argument. "You're going on a stretcher. Don't argue with me about this."

  The stretcher arrived quickly. Someone, Charlie maybe, must have run back for it. The indignity of being loaded onto it like cargo burned through David's exhaustion. He was supposed to be hero, saving people, not being carted around like...

  Like the unconscious survivors they'd been rescuing all morning.

  The irony wasn't lost on him.

  The journey back felt longer than it should have. David drifted in and out, aware of motion, of voices around him, of the stretcher bearers changing positions. Carl's southern drawl discussing the best route. Katie's worried murmurs. Charlie's nervous chatter about needing better healing spells, maybe some ‘level appropriate grear’...

  They reached the trucks faster than David expected. Or maybe he'd lost more time than he realized.

  "Set him down here," Mark directed, pointing to a clear space near one of the trucks. "Charlie, you stay with him. I’m going to get Sarah sorted out and the others are all faster than you at rescues. You need to protect the survivors and David."

  "Me?" Charlie's voice cracked slightly. "Dude, I'm like the least physically capable person here."

  "Exactly," Camila said, her tone brooking no argument. "Which means you're not hauling stretchers. Stay with David. Make sure he doesn't do anything stupid and fucking burn any puta that threatens him or the survivors to ash magic man."

  Charlie straightened at that, his eyes focusing. For a moment he has just been a scared kid, seeing his friend hurt badly. The reminder of what he could do and the responsibility did him good.

  The team dispersed after lifting David into the bed of the pickup like an invalid and Charlie perched awkwardly on the truck's bumper nearby. They needed the stretcher…

  For several long moments, neither spoke. David focused on breathing, on trying to understand how Mark's healing magic was interacting with his bottomed out health pool and his recovery and not throwing up from the related hollow gnawing feeling.

  Charlie fidgeted with something in his hands, some piece of debris probably, his nervous energy radiating.

  "So," Charlie finally said, "that was pretty metal back there."

  Despite everything, David found himself smiling slightly. "Metal?"

  "Yeah, man. Like, you straight up screamed halt, which is usual for you now I guess. Only your voice was funny and your eyes too. It was almost like there was this vibration or echo or stacked voices sort of like a sick remix. It was weird, cool but weird.”

  David's eyes snapped fully open. He'd not realized it was that obvious. Now he thought about it this was the first external manifestation of his bloodline he could think of. Everything until now was purely what he thought of as spiritual, if spiritual was defined by where the Nath lived.

  "So did you get some sweet new skill or are you upgrading halt?" Charlie grinned, though there was nervousness behind it.

  David's aching mind kicked in despite his exhaustion. Charlie was implying something pretty significant. Suddenly he was curious despite the pain.

  “Sounds like you have a frame of reference for that. What have you figured out?”

  "Dude, everything about this apocalypse is complicated." Charlie leaned forward. "But here's the thing. I figured out I had to test some stuff. You know I’ve been going for a focused build. Well there is some pretty significant stuff going on and I think we might have been doing this all wrong…”

  That got David's attention. He pushed himself up slightly on the stretcher, ignoring the way his head swam. "Explain."

  Charlie's enthusiasm ramped up immediately, his California surfer drawl becoming more pronounced. "Okay, so like, remember how we each basically picked up one skill when we first started? You have that whole Resource, attribute, skill thing going on. Then on top of that you use XP on literally everything to level it. So I’ve been focusing on leveling Those three. My resource, attribute and Skill. In that order, because that’s how the system gave them to us.”

  David nodded, it made sense, he had focused on Necromancer but he could see starting there if you didn’t have a clearly custom option to dig into.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Charlie continued “I went with Firebolt because, come on, throwing fire is awesome. But I've been thinking about it like the start of a build, like a WOW mage or something to optimize, right? Only, builds are combinations of stats, skills and gear. All plural. So I was wondering about picking up another grind it out skill at some point…”

  David nodded, waiting for Charlie to get to the point.

  “Well, after this fight, which gave an absolute ton of XP BTW I got arcane to ten. So, I started on Firebolt. Now my interface says I have new skill options available at the Obelisk. Like, a notification that says due to my level of proficiency. I'm pretty sure those apparently stingy starter skills are the start of whole skill trees!"

  That was both useful and concerning. Concerning because they should probably have been focused on skills from the get-go.

  Oblivious to David’s thoughts Charlie continued, warming to his favorite topic, system mechanics.

  "I've been messing around with the controls. You can customize a bunch of stuff, but you have to be around the Obelisk to do it. Costs a load of magic to get it done but you can sort out your interface to be the way you want it. I’m still tinkering…”

  “That makes sense, can you get resource bars that hang out in your vision like in a game?” David cut straight to a quality of life improvement he desperately wanted.

  Charlie nodded eagerly. “Sure Bro, I have that and its super convenient.”

  With that David fell to questioning the younger man about tinkering with the interface, eager to try things out once they got back. After a few minutes of Charlie acting as the wise teacher he asked a question that he had clearly been itching to get to for a while.

  “So, Bro. I’ve spilled on all the cool stuff I’ve figured out. I want to hear more about what you figured out. Stuff like access to Halt! You’re the other guy who gets the system so we should collaborate, figure this out together!”

  It was an obvious, and sincere, attempt to fish for information. David took a deep breath. This was a secret, or at least he had let it become one…

  "It's complicated," David said finally.

  Charlie had the sense not to interrupt but to nod seriously and wait.

  David's mind raced despite the fog. Finally, he decided that he trusted Charlie and could use another head working on this. Nodding he pulled up his status.

  Quite a big change. For one, his Bloodline leveled. For another he apparently had mana strain and all his resources were shot. Finally, his eyebrows shot up. Nine hundred and eighty-four. That was the single largest number he had ever seen on his status. That wasn’t even enough to get his Necromancer to level four.

  “So, I told you guys that I had to fight before I even woke up. Told you I got a title out of it. I kind of glossed over a couple of details, mostly because they weren’t relevant and…” he paused “…I’ll be honest I didn’t know you guys and I didn’t even know what to think of them.”

  The retelling of the events of the last few days with some key, previously hidden details shared, as well as mana strain and other details added, went surprisingly smoothly. They paused whenever Carl and Camila arrived with survivors, Charlie realizing that David wasn’t ready to share all of this with them yet.

  Charlie summarized in a low voice “In conclusion, your system is broken, giving you a bloodline that seems to give power over the Nath, the monsters trying to end humanity... You’re worried about seeming dodgy because the system labelled you a Necromancer and your bloodline leveled, giving you new powers."

  David nodded, watching the younger man to see his reaction. Suddenly he felt nervous as Charlie looked at him seriously.

  Then he burst out laughing “You should see your face! Dude, this is priceless. You look like you’re worried I’m going to judge you and all I want to say is…” He tried to build tension but finally burst out “that is sooo cool!”

  David felt sheepish, then relieved, then he half wanted to punch Charlie for what had clearly been an attempt to freak him out. Deciding the best response was not to rise to the bait he started the speculate instead.

  “So, I’m pretty sure I have my own Nath, hanging around from the trick I use to pull them out of bodies. It’s almost like I eat them or something. The last trick was me forcing energy into them and getting them to help with Halt.”

  “No fun, Dude, you have to give a friend props when they pull a good joke off. If you don’t they might not like you!”

  David grunted. “I’d give you a ‘friendly’ punch on the arm if I didn’t feel like crap.” Then he paused and spoke again seriously. “What do you think the others will make of this stuff?”

  Charlie's expression grew serious. "TBH I’m not sure, sure. I don’t think anyone will freak, especially as they know you now. You will get some shit for leveling it, especially when you have been advising others to spend on more generic stuff.” He paused. "Dude, is that why you look like you got hit by a truck? Did leveling it do something to you?"

  "Not the leveling." David closed his status, the effort of maintaining it too much. "Using it. I pushed the Nath at that mutant. Used them to effect something not Nath. It cost me something and without nice resource bars I don’t even know exactly what cost how much. Though I suspect that the stuff on my status tells the story and we can look the terms up. Well other than Infused, which is obviously being under the influence of Mark’s healing effect. Only I guess it will take a while to run given my health is shot…"

  "The Nath are the ghosts, right? The ones animating the zombies?"

  "Yeah." David hesitated, then decided Charlie deserved to know at least some of his speculation. The kid was smart, and they were going to need that intelligence to survive. "The bloodline seems to be more flexible, and just different rules to the system skills. I can do all this stuff and I can strain it and change it if I try. I’m not sure but I think the same applies to Halt. It seems more, I don’t know, malleable than your skills…”

  Charlie nodded slowly, processing. "High risk, given you screwed yourself up. High reward given you saved my ass. Thanks for that, I realize the thing was going to go for me next, so thanks." He paused, awkward. Then changed the subject. "Does anyone else know?"

  "Camila knows a bit, I might have mentioned something in passing the others have figured out. I’ve never laid it all out though."

  "You should tell them, man. I get wanting to keep some cards close, but if we're fighting together, we need to know what each other can do." Charlie's voice held surprising maturity. "Like, what if you'd passed out mid-fight? We wouldn't have known what happened or how to help."

  He wasn't wrong. David filed that away for later consideration.

  The whole team appeared moments later, their arrival punctuated by rattle of the casters on the stretchers. Katie and Sarah were both up and for people who had been cut open recently looked frankly amazing.

  "How are you David?" Katie asked, genuine concern in her voice.

  "Stubborn," Charlie replied. "But talking, so probably okay."

  "Not dead yet," David added, drawing a surprised laugh from Katie.

  The others having checked in quickly went to fetch more people.

  While they waited Charlie kept up a running commentary, discussing build theories, sharing his observations about how different skills scaled, theorizing about class selections (because yes they had both noticed class: None), attribute synergies. Some of it was pure speculation, gaming knowledge applied to supernatural mechanics. But some of it rang truer, matching David's own observations.

  "The thing about Arcane as an attribute," Charlie said, gesturing enthusiastically, "is that it doesn't just give you more juice, you know? Like, yeah, bigger mana pool, bigger boom. But it also seems to make the magic itself more, I don't know, responsive? Like the difference between swimming in water versus swimming in syrup."

  "Channeling does that too," David supplied. "I took it as an attribute. It's about control and efficiency, especially of moving magic around."

  "Exactly! See, this is what I'm talking about. We need to share this information. Build guides, optimal paths, that kind of thing. Because I guarantee you, not everyone's going to have to figure this out, fast." Charlie's enthusiasm dimmed slightly. "Especially if they're late to start because you know; stuck unconscious."

  The grim reality behind his words hung between them.

  More survivors. The pile of unconscious people in the back of the trucks was significant, they were starting to pack them in, more like sardines than people. Mark fussed, using his Infuse skill to stabilize those who showed signs of deterioration only he could really see.

  "We need to get them back and into the safe zone," Mark said during one brief rest. His voice carried the weight of medical authority. "It’s the only way to help them now."

  "We're almost done," Camila replied, breathing hard. "One more sweep of the platform, then we'll hit the train."

  David watched them go, frustrated by his helplessness. His resources were recovering, slowly. Once his health started to rise he bugged Mark for healing when he stopped by. His headache had faded but he was seriously thinking about making further investments in vitality just to speed things up.

  "You thinking about helping?" Charlie asked, they had been ‘on watch’ for over an hour and it seemed that the repeated rounds of fighting had cleared out the Nath, at least the ones who could get here...

  "I'm thinking I'm useless sitting here."

  "Bro, you're recovering. That's not useless, that's smart resource management." Charlie's tone was gentle but firm. "You go back in at fifty percent, you might not have enough left to get out, especially if we fight. Plus the others are loading all the stretchers so how much help will you actually be? Even Camilla stopped actually carrying people after the first few. I bet she checked her stamina use and realized it wasn’t worth it."

  The logic was sound. David hated it, but it was sound.

  The final wave came nearly an hour later, clearing the train was a lot slower because they couldn’t effectively get the stretchers inside. The team looked exhausted, their movements mechanical, their faces set with determination and fatigue.

  "We found bodies," Sarah added quietly, her bandaged face tight. "A lot of bodies. There was this weird divide. In the train all the dead were mutilated, head wounds. Outside all the chrysalises were smashed. There are still a load of both just not mixed up.”

  Her voice sounded numb, so much death. The others who had been working shared her drained look, the fatigue emotional as much as physical. Apparently, stamina couldn’t help you ride though the most depressing scene imaginable.

  "We'll organize another run once we've rested," Camila said, though exhaustion threaded her voice. "After we get these survivors secured."

  They pulled weary bodies up into the now heavily laden trucks. Far more people than they had feared. Well over a hundred saved. Both amazing and inadequate.

  Yes, it was a win. Somehow the losses were more real than the victory. Another cluster of injuries. So many dead they couldn’t save.

  The cars they had planned to check on the way back were like silent accusations as they succumbed to the brutal reality of triage, stop here for one or two or fit another big run in today and save maybe hundreds more…