1.

  “Damn, Santi! What did you do?” Cam asked as they looked over the monster den and the goblins that were laying on the ground. They were breathing shallowly but all of them were unconscious. Twenty hobgoblin warriors in burnished scale armor with swords and spears laying around them where they had fallen. Not a single one of them had managed to raise their weapons to protect themselves.

  “New spell. Very powerful spell,” Santi teased his friend as they walked into the heart of the den. They were in the new courthouse building in Vallejo, the goblins having infected the place. The once pristine building was a mess of graffiti, bone artwork, and other sundry goblin marks.

  “Really? I would have never guessed,” Cameron said sarcastically, holding a hand up to his mouth as he gasped in shock. Bianca snorted behind him while Chloe guffawed. Tank had the decency to just roll his eyes while Grimvr looked around at them all with exhaustion in his dark eyes.

  “Look at poor Grimvr. This is very unbecoming of you, Cameron. You're embarrassing us in front of the dwarf.” Santi played off of his best friend while the rest of the group bent down and exterminated the hobgoblins. Santi didn’t worry about the experience, more concerned with clearing the den.

  “Don’t drag me into your play,” Grimvr said, grunting as he ran the edge of his axe along a throat.

  [Air Pressure] is the spell's name. I have hope that you can figure out what it does,” Santi said with a smile and jab at his friend.

  “We’ve been clearing these dens for, god knows how long, and you just now used it?” Cam asked.

  “Just now earned it. Needed that fifth spell slot to hold the uncommon grade spell.”

  “Uncommon grade huh? What made you take that instead of a bunch of other spells?” Chloe asked. His girlfriend was constantly curious about how he thought and worked out through the intricacies of the System. She saw his growth, his power, and she wanted to match it. Santi was more than willing to help her try to keep up too.

  “Spells rarity changes based on both power and how versatile it is. Something like [Air Manipulation] is very versatile, but the base spell isn’t very strong. I can scale it to something quite powerful, but that requires more mana than is efficient. I could use [Air Manipulation] to affect air pressure, but the effects will never be as good as if I use a spell that’s directly designed to affect that effect.”

  “Naomi was saying something like that in her group class. But about skills, not spells,” Bianca said. Santi paused at that and chewed on his lip. The last few weeks with the Apostate had shown a side to her that he hadn’t expected. A teacher.

  “That would be her area of expertise more than mine. I do spells, she does skills.”

  Santi watched as the last of the goblins bled out and then started to focus as he drew in mana around him and began feeding it into [Air Manipulation]. The group left the courtroom that the hobs had fortified and into the gore smeared hallways. Glass was laying in shattered splinters up and down the hall, the small garden in the middle of the courthouse hacked down and apart.

  Tendrils of power snaked through the building as Santi pushed his power further and further until his senses were straining to process all the information coming in from his unopposed extension of his power. They opened the doors and walked out of the building and into the parking lot that ran along the side of the street.

  Santi turned around and looked back at the courthouse. The large, squat building was in a rough part of town. Cracked asphalt, dingy run down buildings, shuttered windows, all tattoo parlors and smoke shops. The apocalypse hadn’t done much to improve the area.

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  With a thought and a flex of his willpower he pulled the air in the building toward where the courtroom was located. The strain was mild but the effect was worth it. What few windows remained exploded inward as the sound of cracking, then shattering walls echoed out. The entire interior of the courthouse broke inward as all the air in the entire squat building was directed towards the heart of the den.

  The ceiling caved in as the interior walls cracked, bowed, and fell. With a second flex of his will he used [Air Manipulation] to control the dust flowing out of the building as the entire courthouse imploded, breaking apart the den and adding to Santi’s teams total.

  “So what I did just used a ton of mana. My reserves are massive and I have a great synergy with my affinity which makes casting nearly costless and even with those advantages it took effort. Now if I had a skill called [Blow Buildings Up] it's very limited but powerful. Still probably a common skill grade. But a skill called [Blow Stuff Up] would be an uncommon grade. Both powerful and broad,” Santi said as he checked the local rankings. Alan was still ahead of him.

  They had finished clearing the monster dens around the edge of the valley and had started to move into the once much more densely populated Bay Area. No matter how fast Santi and his team moved they just couldn’t seem to match Alan’s pace. The man was a true monster. Naomi had started rotating support teams to him as the man continued to blaze deeper and deeper into the Bay Area.

  Santi’s team was solidly in second place with Santi holding second place directly behind Cameron’s dad. Naomi was still running dens but had slowed as she seemed to find teaching others to be more fulfilling. Santi kept a close eye on her and an even more keen ear to what she taught. The wind did have a habit of bringing him conversations that should have been protected.

  She kept her words directly related to what she had learned about the System. Her ability to dance around the geas was much better than his own and her skill as an educator and leader were also superior. It was enough to make Santi feel twinges of inferiority. She had become a Champion under her own might, strength, and willpower once before and it showed.

  “Why’s the [Air Pressure] skill uncommon then?” Bianca asked. The rest of the group were busy staring at the destroyed courtroom in silent awe.

  “Air pressure is how much weight air places on objects. Close enough for layperson terms anyway. So it’s a very, very broad spell. Then with the ability to increase or decrease in area to such a high degree it has plenty of power. Thus it becomes uncommon.”

  “Stop using words like thus. You can’t pull it off,” Bianca said.

  “Yeah man. You’ve been spying on Naomi too much, her dialect is wearing off on you.” Cam continued the pile on.

  “Hey, he can pull it off just fine,” Chloe defended him. Santi shot her a fast smile which she returned warmly.

  “We going to do another one or are we going back home?” Tank asked. He had become quiet lately. The dungeon run that was followed by how the cursed battle took place had scarred the man. He was still kind and smiled, but there was now a sadness in him that Santi hated to see.

  “Two in a day is plenty, I think. You guys want to stay at the basecamp or all the way back to Homebase?” Santi asked.

  “We’re going to finish off Vallejo soon. Are we going to keep following the 80 corridor?” Cam asked. Alan was talking about going to Oakland soon and beginning to cleanse the ruins of the city. They only had a few days left before the monster den hunt ended and after that they would all be heading down South to Naomi’s camp.

  “I think so. We could maybe get to San Francisco before it’s all said and done. Survivors are starting to trickle in now that we’ve broken through the blockade in the hills. I think making it to San Francisco would be good. For the long term and short term.”

  “Agreed.”

  “I’m with you.”

  “Yeah.”

  The rest of the team all voiced their support and Santi led them out of Vallejo and toward the border of the hills region where the hills gave way to the valley. Zeke and his people had left a week ago and established their own small space away from Homebase in the hills with only a bit of help. Santi had planted one of the pillars there and left Zeke with some basic administrator privileges while they worked to establish their own community.

  They had chosen Zeke’s community to use as their base while they probed deeper into the Bay. Santi was glad to see the younger survivors building something for themselves out here. Gardens, some basic animal husbandry, and a few people who had taken up basic crafting skills like leatherwork. The survivors from the Bay had chosen nearly universally to set up with Zeke’s people, tired and scared as they were from surviving weeks in the chaos of the initiation.

  Santi and his team had taken over a small house, stuffing it full of the spoils they pulled out of the Bay. Natural treasures, good scavenged goods, a few weapons, and in a gun safe that was heavy enough that was hard to move even with their abilities, a few curse anchors they had contained.

  They had just settled down when the front door rattled as someone pounded on it. Santi was sitting on the couch, feet on the coffee table as Tank, who was closest to the door, opened it and let Alan and Naomi in.