Abby, in Lakeside Landing…

  I stared at the water, taking a moment to gather my thoughts before the next town meeting. Originally, I’d started these to help those from the colony settle in and learn more about how we did things. Bring people up to speed, and hopefully get everyone to at least level fifty.

  Now, they’d turned into bitching sessions, with everyone wanting to give input and do things their way.

  It didn’t help that underneath it all, Xander pushed the narrative that the old council should be in charge. The fact that Alex owned the territory didn’t even register for him. Or that I was in charge, because of Alex.

  Xander was still the only one who hadn’t become a citizen, and in turn couldn’t attend the meetings, but that didn’t matter. There was one other massive change.

  Commander Valeria. She was a different story. She understood that things had changed with the crash and the system. But, she wanted to meet Alex, and Alex wasn’t here.

  Until then, she held back on her own personal opinion, which only amplified the chaos.

  A pebble rolled down the slope as Hellion marched my way with a smile and two mugs of something warm. He sat next to me on the log.

  “You know, we can just cancel the meeting…” He said, handing me one of the drinks.

  I let out a happy sigh as my hands wrapped around it. The fruity scent gave a little energy boost, and everyone in Lakeside loved it when I made it. I took a small sip.

  “I want to be fair, but people need to understand this is not a democracy. They do not get a vote. Not anymore.”

  Hellion’s eyes widened, but he let me continue uninterrupted.

  “This is Alex’s territory. She put me in charge. Benny deals with the food situation, John works on the tech stuff, and you deal with the security, plus pushing the growth of all of us.” I took another sip of the hot tea and let out a deep breath as it warmed me. “If they don’t like something about that, they can leave.”

  Hellion chuckled. “I wondered how long it’d take you to get to this point.”

  “Randy made a comment about all the ‘beasts’ I let join the settlement.” My hands tightened on the mug. “I almost lost my cool with him. They have as much of a right to be here as he does.”

  “The three that Nessie dropped off are fitting in well. That herbivore follows Benny around like she wants to marry him.” Hellion smirked, then shook his head. His beard had gotten longer.

  “She’s still trying to figure out a name for us to call her, but she is a dear.” It helped that with her spiked tail she could dig deep holes with ease. Benny loved it for the trees he kept planting.

  “But all we need is for one of them to say something to Womper.” I shook my head. We all wanted her to stick around as long as possible. Right now, none of us were strong enough to go outside during the storms, except for her.

  If she planned to leave after her year was up, we were screwed without some more massive growth.

  #

  Alex, on the road…

  My attention stayed on the edges of my radar as I slowly walked around the clearing.

  “How long do you think it will take to recharge?” Lenna asked Asceto with a frown. She kept glancing up at the sky, then back down like it changed anything.

  “No idea. Someone else was in charge of driving when they brought me out here.” He scratched the back of his head before stretching up. “I only know how to drive it because I hoped to steal one and escape to the south. The portal down there was my only hope.”

  “Then I destroyed it,” I added with a chuckle.

  “I swore to find a way, and look at me now?” He kept away from the trees, and stuck near Lenna. “Free to choose my own path.”

  As I moved closer to the creature, the presence blazed on my radar, but still didn’t move. Dengu prowled the dark bushes, while Kabi just paced around the area.

  When the creature didn’t do anything, I walked back to the cart to see if I could recharge it with my battery. The screen that started it flashed twice with the low battery sign. Though, it still had some charge left.

  I switched to my other sight and studied it. The battery rested under the bottom of hover cart, which wasn’t great. Thinking back to the trap at the fair grounds, I crawled under it on my hands and knees.

  Energy pulsed faintly inside the center, and the mana twisted in a tight spiral. It naturally pulled at the mana around, and increased very slowly. I pulled my battery out and focused on pushing the energy from my battery into the cart.

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  The connection formed almost instantly, and the cart’s battery practically sucked the energy out of the crystal. It drained it dry before I could think too much about it.

  I crawled out with a frown, wondering how long that would last.

  Asceto stood near the front and smiled. “Well, whatever you did filled it right up, even more than it was when we started.”

  I pulled out some of my recently acquired Harvester meat when Dengu practically flew out of the bushes in my direction. I tossed him a large piece, which he yanked out of the air.

  That presence still hadn’t moved. As much as I wanted to check it out, making more progress mattered more.

  Lenna lay on the grass, her eyes closed. The stars shone above.

  All of us waited patiently for her.

  I kept eating until my stomach filled up, while Kabi pulled out his swords and did some practice moves. Dengu gnawed on his snack.

  “Well, it’s gonna take us at least a week to get to the southern outpost,” Lenna finally said as she sat up. “It depends on how often we need to recharge the cart.”

  Joy. I’d need to figure that out.

  She climbed to her feet, eyes still a bright silver. “There is something about mana gathering we can do, but I don’t…”

  The silver faded.

  “I don’t understand what that is.”

  “I do.” I ran my hand over my face, wondering about the best way to recharge my battery besides the dang crystal killer. “I’ll figure it out. It has to do with my class.”

  Everyone piled back onto the cart and we continued down the road as the stars twinkled overhead.

  Even the stars wanted me to figure out how mana worked. Which brought up a really good question, what exactly was mana? I knew it was energy. The batteries used it, the runes used it, and the crystals absorbed it, growing bigger and recharging. But I didn’t really know what it was.

  Time passed slowly as I switched to my aura vision, and studied the battery crystal to watch it literally recharging. The healing crystal also recharged, but differently. Each slowly absorbed mana from the surrounding area, as far as I couldn’t see, but it happened very, very slowly.

  “Incoming,” warned Lenna as she motioned far above us. Something dark flew through the air.

  Kabi shivered, and shrunk closer to the cart floor.

  [Baterloma, Level 115, Predator, Unknown.]

  It blended into the night sky, but Lenna aimed with her bow and a smile. Her arrows blazed with mana as I watched, not all that concerned.

  Three suddenly sliced through the air, before hitting the creature as it roared, diving closer to us.

  I pulled my knife into its longer form, but still waited, using my aura sight. Each arrow pulled mana from somewhere. My assumption was Lenna, since it was a skill. When they impacted with the creature, that mana dissipated but damaged the creature.

  Kabi suddenly leaped up as the Baterloma flew close enough, his four swords slashing at it, carving a hunk of wing off and causing it to crash into the ground.

  The cart skidded to a stop as Dengu joined the fight.

  Still, I held back and watched, as much as it pained me.

  “Go hack at it, Alex. You might get wings, right?” asked Lenna, holding an arrow ready to go.

  I hadn’t thought about wings in so long her suggestion almost shocked me, but I leaped off the cart at the urging. Keeping my vision up made it much harder, but still I watched as I stabbed at the Beast.

  It flapped one of its wings at Dengu, stirring up a harsh gust of wind, but it didn’t notice me as my spear hit it hard.

  Seconds later, it was down, and things got interesting.

  Mana streamed out of the creature and to each of us. Small trails, though a larger amount went to Lenna, then me, then Kabi, and finally Dengu.

  I almost shut off my vision then, but kept it up as I approached to cut the flyer open. Dengu backed off as Kabi helped me flip it over. Its actual body was smaller than I thought; the wings were just massive, as were the six legs.

  The heart pulsed with mana as I finally reached it, before tossing it into my mouth. A citrus flavor took over, almost like a candy as it melted.

  [You have gained bonus experience from combat for surviving against a level 115 Baterloma.]

  [You have devoured a level 115 Baterloma and gained additional experience.]

  Dang, still no wings.

  I hoped that once I got the skill, my stalker form would as well. How cool would that be?

  There wasn’t anything else I wanted to grab from the creature, and I stood, ready to keep going. I dropped the aura sight and let things go back to normal.

  “I’ll take the wings if you don’t want them,” said Kabi. “We can use them to build coverings.”

  “Sure, have at it,” I said, heading closer to Lenna. “No luck on wings for me.”

  “It will happen if you really want it.”

  I shrugged and climbed back onto the cart. It didn’t take long for Kabi and Dengu to join us.

  I went back to studying the battery crystal and the healing crystal. The battery crystal had recharged more after killing the creature.

  Which made sense, with the mana being released from the creature.

  So far, I knew mana had to be all around us. We gathered it naturally, but also when we fought things, and when things died they released more mana into the surrounding areas. Those that killed something gathered more.

  I gained more than Kabi because I had a skill granting me more experience when something was higher level then me

  Crystals recharged faster when something died nearby.

  Now, I needed to figure out a way to gather mana faster from our surroundings.

  A rune felt like the best way to give it a shot. Something that pulled mana closer, then a crystal to store it.

  Once more, I yanked out a bit of the Stable Mana Crystal, since I didn’t want any preconceived notions interfering, and I got to work pushing my intentions into it to absorb mana at a faster rate.

  I needed a rune to pull mana, and flipped through the pages in my notes, trying to find something that was at least in the right direction. Most of the runes I’d sketched out didn’t have any instructions for them. After studying them for a bit, I was able to recognize some as basic runes, or variations of basic runes, and that let me write notes. A few clearly had basic runes as parts, but held more complex layers of patterns that I couldn’t even guess at.

  Overall, the confusion meant slow going as I worked through what I’d traced in the Runic Challenge. The trap runes kept drawing my attention, though, since they had a trigger.

  My eyelids slowly drooped lower and lower.

  I blinked twice and glanced up, shaking my head to clear the sleepy thoughts. A flash of something on the road in front of us drew my attention.

  “Watch out!” I yelled.