System Escape (Natural Laws Apocalypse Book 4) Page 3

  “If they aren't recognizing magic here, are there people in need of healing?” she asked.

  Todd laughed bitterly.

  “Miraculously, the med team seems to be able to heal most problems, even without supplies. Yet professors D and B don't say the least little thing about that.”

  “Translation, you've got healing classes with healing magic?” Jeff asked. “And the professors are willing to overlook that because it benefits them?”

  Todd shot a finger gun at Jeff.

  “Got it in one. This place used to be fucked up before the System showed up, now it's even worse in some ways,” Todd said. “Well, that might just be me, but really the hypocrisy those two professors have shown is staggering at times. They want everyone else to defend against the spawns, but neither one of them has even picked up a weapon to help, ever as far as I can tell.”

  “I guess knowing about the healers is one example of hypocrisy, were there others?” Marc asked.

  “Yeah, there are. You know why they're so dead set against admitting magic exists? Because they couldn't learn it right off. I gave them a pair of scrolls for spells to learn when they said they were interested, but they both failed to learn them so they claimed I was a fraud.”

  “Wait, what are their classes?” Marc asked. “We've discovered that it's harder for people who don't have a casting class to learn spells from scrolls.”

  “That's probably it. I've heard them talk about their classes. One of them has Scholar for a class and the other's class is actually Professor. Honestly, if they hadn't found the copies of that System help book, they both would've still been useless now.”

  “Well, that is what I hoped it would do when I started selling them,” Marc said. “I wanted a way to help people deal with stuff better, it pisses me off that they're skipping parts when they teach though.”

  “Wait,” Todd said, “you said your book before, I thought you were just saying the one that you had a copy of. Are you telling me that you're the one who created that book?”

  Marc nodded.

  “It's got all the basic System help files in it, straight from the System itself. Plus a few addendums regarding different classes we know how to help people get and a few other things that we discovered on our own.”

  Todd grinned.

  “Oh man, how are you at debating?”

  “No clue, never done it if you're talking about debate club and the like,” Marc said.

  “Bummer! It would've been awesome to get you to debate D and B with the topic being that book. They claim they know all of it in and out by now, but I'm pretty sure that's a load of bullshit.”

  “No, I'm not here to debate with those idiots,” Marc said. “Although I'll be happy to drop off a bunch more copies of the book so everyone can have one of their own and they don't need to listen to your professors' cruddy interpretations of things.”

  “How about a more graphic example that they're full of shit?” Jeff asked.

  “What's that?” Todd asked.

  “Marc's got some really flashy spells. I was just thinking our group could go out there during one of the spawn surges from the dungeon and Marc could demonstrate that magic is indeed a thing.”

  “Like what? They'll try to explain away most spells, they already have. They've claimed my Mana Dart spell is just some sort of taser style weapon that doesn't need a connection. When I invited them to search me for it, they refused,” Todd said.

  “How about Lightning?” Jeff asked. “Either a big old bolt that just devastates anything in its way or a different one that's got a flash and roar so bright and loud it leaves people blind and stunned? Or maybe a nice classic Fireball?”

  “Dude, please tell me that you're willing to teach us some of those?” Todd said, turning to Marc.

  “If you can learn them, yeah. I can scribe them out so you can learn them from a scroll if you're capable of learning them, but if you aren't strong enough, I guess high enough level or Intelligence, you'll be left trying to shake a headache for what feels like forever. I've got others also,” Marc said.

  “What else?” Todd asked eagerly.

  “Um, Water Jet produces a jet of water strong enough to drill a hole in rock, so you can imagine what it does to an opponent. My Mana Darts come in a lot of different flavors, too; normal, flame, water, stone, electrical, pretty much any combat element I have a symbol for. Oh, and I've got a Flamethrower spell that's a real mana hog, it's a channeled spell, but well worth it sometimes.”

  “Damn, what level are you?” Todd asked.

  “Isn't that one of those things that you don't ask in polite conversation?” Marc asked, grinning.

  “I'll show you mine if you show me yours. I'm level seven, very nearly eight. The damned spawns around here have stopped giving me very much experience apparently,” Todd said.

  “Currently level twelve and more than halfway to thirteen,” Marc said. “We went out looking for trouble to get the last few levels though. I agree, a lot of the stuff we've dealt with doesn't give us much experience any more.”

  Todd had a stupid, silly grin on his face now.

  “And you're going to clear the dungeons?” he asked. “I don't give a shit what Douche and Bag say, can I go with you? You're just going to walk all over those things.”

  Todd's gaze flicked over to Ella when she cleared her throat.

  “Hey Marc,” Ella said. “I don't mind, but I've got a condition. This idiot has to stop calling the professors his pet names for them. B and D is fine, the other isn't.”

  Todd's face went vividly red as he looked around. Apparently either he hadn't looked closely before or he'd forgotten that there were two women as part of the group also.

  “Um, sorry?” he said, his voice rising to a squeak as he apologized.

  * * *

  Marc winced as he overheard Jeff whispering other options for pet names for the professors.

  “They're a couple of dicks right? Why not call them professors dick and balls?” Jeff had said.

  Marc shook his head, then caught Todd's attention.

  “I had a couple of other questions too. We saw a bunch of kids and two guys in Roman armor with them, do you know them?”

  Todd's face took on a guarded look.

  “Yeah, well sort of. There aren't more than a couple of hundred people here so you sort of know everyone.”

  “What do you know about them?”

  “They were badly wounded trying to get those kids to safety and ended up here. Our med team still had supplies then and took care of them. We weren't sure if they'd pull through until the first of the med team got some healing related class and then they were better in a couple of days. Why?”

  “Felicia, would you toss your armor on for a second?” Marc said.

  She grinned and donned her armor.

  “Look familiar, Todd?”

  Todd nodded.

  “Yeah, a lot like what they got, so?”

  “So, the person who sent them to guard those kids actually wanted them to get the kids to the larger group he had. Evidently they couldn't do that, so they did the next best thing and almost killed themselves doing it.”

  “And...,” Todd said, drawing it out.

  “And that person is my father, who is currently back at our Safe Zones, along with the rest of the people that got the Legionary class. I thought these two might like to know that they aren't alone, that most of the rest of their group survived also.”

  “Oh,” Todd said, his eyes going wide. “Yeah, that's probably something they need to know. Let's see, it's after dinner, they're probably down at the open field. They let the kids play there after dinner.”

  “Can you show us?”

  “Sure, come on.”

  “Let's make one stop first, back at our zeppelin,” Marc replied.

  A few minutes later, after picking up one of the guards they'd left with the zeppelin, they approached an open field. The sound of children laughing and playing struck a chord with
Marc. It was something he'd heard a few times back at Any Port, but this time it sounded like there were a lot more kids making the noise.

  The Legionary was rushing, several steps ahead of the rest of the group once he'd seen the kids, so Marc only heard what was happening.

  “Chris, Brian? You guys are alive? The Centurion was tearing himself up because he thought you guys were dead.”

  “R..R...Roger? Is that you? I'm not hallucinating, am I?”

  “If you are, I am too. Where'd you come from?”

  Roger turned and gestured towards Marc, who was still approaching.

  “Meet the Centurion's son, Marc. He had a Safe Zone waiting for us when we reached the end of the march. I wish we'd known there were going to be some here, we could've skipped a lot of grief.”

  “There weren't. Not for about three days,” Brian replied. “Those three days were hell. We got the kids off the street, but got torn up bad doing it. We lost some kids over the next few days, but when we saw walls growing up mysteriously out of nowhere, we went to check it out. That was here. I thought we were deaders, but at least we'd gotten the kids somewhere mostly safe. They managed to pull us through though, somehow.”

  “We lost a few getting to the other Safe Zone also,” Roger said, “but we're doing well there. You saw the zeppelin coming in, right? That was our ride. Marc here has brought our Safe Zones up to the Industrial tech level so we can build things like zeppelins and railroads.”

  “You mean machines so you don't have to all the work on everything manually any more? Part of their conditions for the kids staying here was that we do a lot of grunt work. We thought we were gonna die, so of course we agreed. We figured if we agreed, then died, they'd keep the kids at least. Little did we know that they had other plans for us. I suppose it beats the alternative though,” Chris said.

  “Preach it, brother,” Brian said.

  Chris and Brian looked at Todd for a moment, and Todd nodded.

  “Oh good, I hate that bullshit lying we've got to do,” Chris said. “So, you know that the profs here are basically figureheads, right?”

  Marc grinned.

  “I was more thinking of them as balloons, you know, full of hot air and not much else.”

  Chris looked up at the zeppelin and shook his head.

  “You'd know, wouldn't you?” he said.

  “They don't believe in magic. They're using a book I'm very familiar with to teach people about living under the System, but they're skipping any and all parts about magic. I know they're full of shit, I just try to be more polite than to say stuff like that.”

  “Oh, good,” Brian said. “You know, I can kind of see the physical resemblance, and the Centurion's the only one I knew who had manners like that, so I see where you learned them.”

  Marc shrugged. He'd never given it any thought. The manners his parents had taught him had never gotten him in any trouble, even if they seemed a bit stilted at times, so he'd kept to them except when he was with just his friends.

  “Anyhow, my dad will be very relieved that you two are alive. He thought he'd sent you to your deaths, said he saw you get cut down.”

  “We did get knocked down, but we took those little fuckers down with us and kept fighting, even on the ground.”

  “Well, you did good,” Rob said. “You kept, what? Like twenty kids alive?”

  “There were thirty-one when we started. We've still got twenty-two alive, and some of them can actually provide a little support in a fight. They got some weird classes like Junior Warrior. The help on it says that they'll retain experience, skills, and levels when they reach their majority, but can switch their class to any available warrior subclass if so desired. Two of them say they wanna be Legionaries, the poor schmucks.”

  “Well, I wanted to come down and tell you that when we leave here, you guys are more than welcome to come with us. I'm sure my dad would love to see you.”

  “It'd get us out of all the shit work they have us doing, but we can't leave the kids.”

  “Hey, Jeff? With the cargo holds emptied out, how many people do you think we can take?” Marc asked.

  “About twenty? Give or take a bit.”

  “Based on weight?”

  Jeff nodded.

  “Think we could get all the people who came, along with two legionaries and all these kids?”

  Jeff looked out over the field with the playing children.

  “We can make it work. We might have to stay lower to the ground than we were on the way here though, and we won't be carrying anything else with all these people. As it is, we might be over on the weight, but I think they allow some leeway.”

  Marc grinned.

  “Well, I hope they do at least,” Jeff muttered, under his breath.

  “That blows, man,” Todd said. “You're going to take our tanks away?”

  Marc had forgotten Todd was with them.

  “Your tanks?”

  “Yeah, since the profs won't acknowledge magic, we Mages had to find a couple of tanks that knew the profs were full of shit. We've been using Chris and Brian.”

  “Easy enough, in principle,” Marc said. “We've just got to force the professors to acknowledge that magic exists.”

  “Heh!” Todd said, “A Sisyphean task if I've ever heard of one.”

  “God, please don't tell me you were a history or mythology major,” Jeff said.

  “Nah, computer programming. I was a gamer too, though, so I know a lot of mythology,” Todd said.

  “Lore gamer?” Jeff asked.

  Todd grinned and nodded to which Jeff only replied with a groan.

  “Well,” Marc said, trying to distract Jeff and Todd from their discussion. “I'd offer you a spot to come back with us, but if you're actually the holder here, or co-holder at least, then that's probably a no go. We'll clear one of the dungeons though, at least one, and if we force the professors to acknowledge magic, or at least demonstrate it for everyone who follows the professors, that might give you the wedge you need to make sure it's acknowledged. Which also gives you a much wider array of people to party with, no?”

  Todd sighed and scratched his head.

  “Yeah, assuming you can do all of that. I've got my doubts.”

  “You said the profs are useless? Haven't fought to defend the place at all? Why don't we just give them a weapon each and toss them out the gates. Maybe then their mindsets would change a bit,” Jeff said.

  Todd groaned and shook his head.

  “No, there are too many people who think those two are the solid pillars keeping this place running.”

  “Just tell them the truth then, that those two are self-important blowhards who don't actually do anything that couldn't be done with independent reading and that they're handicapping this whole Safe Zone with their actions,” Jeff said.

  “Is he always like this?” Todd asked.

  Almost in unison, Felicia, Rob, and Marc answered with a resounding 'yes'. Ella shifted so she was out of Jeff's view and nodded her head firmly in agreement also.

  “Oh, come on,” Jeff said. “You too? I've barely met you.”

  Todd looked Marc straight in the face.

  “Better you than me.”

  Marc snickered as Jeff pouted.

  “We know you're a valuable member of the party, Jeff,” Marc said. “You do kind of ask for it though.”

  “I do not,” Jeff said.

  Chris, Brian, and Roger had wandered off a bit and were talking among themselves. Marc called to them that they were going to head out and Roger should go back and relieve the other guard later on, so he could have a chance to talk with Chris and Brian if he wanted to.

  They followed Todd, who'd requested that they do so. He led them down into the basement of a building. It looked like it had probably been the campus center or something of that sort, but down in the basement there was a bunch of dead machinery and, back in a corner and out of sight from the door, a familiar looking object: a build pedestal.

&
nbsp; “No-one else comes down here and this is where Arnie originally placed the build pedestal, just because of that. Now, let me show you what I know about this thing, then you can show me what you know that I don't, okay?”

  “What are the rest of us supposed to do?” Jeff asked.

  “You never gave him access?” Todd asked.

  “Nah, he's got design access. He designed the keep in our original Safe Zone. If you want him to design something he can do that,” Marc said. “He was an engineering major and was the most familiar with the wireframe concept, then he came through on the design and I was impressed. I never gave him any more access than that though.”

  “Not that I ever asked, or wanted it,” Jeff said. “I've seen what you go through with that crap. I'm not interested.”

  Todd looked at Jeff for a moment, then pulled up the wireframe of the Safe Zone.

  “I know I'm going to regret this, but would you come over here, Jeff? Take a look at how things are set up and give me your opinion? I'd love to be able to take the dungeons, or their entries that face this Safe Zone, under fire. The range is just too long for the missile weapons we have though, and for the spells our Mages have.”

  Now Jeff got an evil looking grin on his face.

  “You want my help to wreak havoc on the spawns? I'm down with that,” he said, stepping over towards the wireframe.

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  It was about thirty minutes later when Jeff stepped back from the build pedestal.

  “That'd do it for your ranged attackers. I don't think it'll help your Mages at all. You can extend the range of a missile weapon with height, not so much with a spell though.”

  Todd looked closely and his eyes went blank for a moment as he checked something.

  “Well, we do have enough materials for those towers, not nearly enough for another expansion though so this will probably be a better use for them.”

  “I was going to ask, where did you get all your materials for expansion?” Marc said.

  “We had foraging parties grabbing whatever they could from in the city and dragging it back here,” Todd replied.

  “Huh, I would've thought you'd get more out of that, although I suppose you did have all the smaller Safe Zones to build, too.”