Chapter 69: Two Things You Need to Know

Michael found them at the front.

Jakob was there, spear moving fast through a knot of smaller monsters, and next to him Elena Petrova, weaving between two attackers in a way that didn’t look like the beginner spearwork everyone else on the square was still using. Matteo Rossi stood a few meters further out, and Amir past him, both of them fighting with the same fluid confidence — not talents, Michael realized as he watched. Talents were subtle most of the time, buffs and utility, easy to miss unless you knew what to look for. What his old group was doing wasn’t subtle at all. Every strike carried something extra behind it, force or speed that shouldn’t have belonged to people who’d had the system for less than a day. Skills. Real ones.

*They’re already ahead of half the people out here.*

Around them the fight kept spreading rather than closing. A woman with a bandaged arm was dragging someone smaller than her back from the edge of the square, both of them limping. Two men were dragging a third by the shoulders toward what looked like a makeshift line of the wounded near the building’s entrance, his leg bent wrong below the knee. Nobody stopped to help them past that point — there wasn’t time, and the monsters kept coming through gaps in the crowd faster than the line could close them.

„Michael, come on, let’s go!“ Julian was already moving before he finished saying it, spear swinging up, falling in beside a group pushing back against a cluster of Hound-Foxes near the square’s edge.

Michael didn’t follow right away. His phone was already back in his hand, screen lit up against the dark, a message sitting there that had come in sometime during the last stretch of fighting and gone unanswered. It was Johannes.

„Michael, you read the messages but didn’t answer. Is everything okay?“

He typed back with one thumb, eyes flicking up every few seconds to keep track of the fight in front of him. „I’m fine. What’s going on with you guys? Where are you?“

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The reply came fast. „Don’t worry, I’m already level five. I got a powerful talent and a strong class. Low-level monsters can’t touch me anymore. If only I had a better weapon…“

„But where exactly are you?“

„We’re in Mistelbach. Everyone gathered at the main square. Eight hundred of us. I think everyone else is dead.“

Michael read that line twice. Eight hundred, out of however many thousand had lived in that town and the villages around it. He didn’t let himself sit with the number. There wasn’t time, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it from here.

„Good. Two things that’ll help you survive. First — the portals spawn monsters again after a while, and eventually stronger ones start coming through.“ That part he was sure of. He’d seen it himself, here and back at the university — creatures that looked like the ones he’d already fought a dozen times, same shape, same instincts, but with a level attached that hadn’t been there before. Nobody had told him that. He’d worked it out from watching the same pattern repeat.

„So stay away from portals, or kill anything that comes out the second it spawns, before it’s ready to fight. Second — keep this to yourself for now. There are mana crystals inside the monsters‘ skulls. Cut every one open you find. You can spend the crystals in the shop for real weapons. A level five sword costs a hundred of them. If you can collect enough before anyone else figures it out, you’ll be better equipped than almost anyone.“

He stopped typing for a second, thumb still hovering over the screen. *I forgot about that myself, this whole time.* Between the university and everything since, it had slipped his mind completely — something that mattered this much, and he’d let the fighting push it out of his head without noticing.

„Okay. We’d already worked out the thing about the portals, but the crystals change everything. Thank you. After the inventory, that might be the most important thing anyone’s told us since this started.“

Behind Michael, someone screamed and then went quiet, and he turned enough to check it wasn’t anyone he knew before looking back down at the screen.

„Any word from Gabriel?“ He didn’t ask about Andrea. He already knew, or thought he did, and he didn’t want it confirmed right now — not with a fight still going on twenty meters away and his friends in the middle of it.

„Yeah, had a similar talk with him. He’s not coming here. He wants to get the situation under control where he is and make the most of it instead. We both agree — the only way any of us survive is by getting stronger. There’s no point rushing across the country to reach us if it means falling behind on leveling the whole way. He’d get here weak and die a week later anyway. You already figured this out yourself — the monsters keep getting stronger, so we have to keep getting stronger too, nonstop, or we won’t even be able to defend ourselves when it matters.“

„Can’t argue with that. How’s he doing — level, location? Maybe I could reach him.“

„He’s past level five too. Somehow a similiar talent as me, weirdly enough. He’s in the 20th district right now. New monsters just started coming in on his end, I have to go. Stay safe.“

„Okay. You too. And Andrea.“

Michael pushed the phone into his pocket without waiting for anything after that. Across the square, Julian had already opened up a gap between two Hound-Foxes and a knot of people who looked like they’d been backed into a corner a minute earlier. Jakob’s group was still holding their line further out, still moving with that same unnatural precision.

A Hound-Fox cut across his path before he’d covered half the distance, and he didn’t break stride — a short step, the blade coming around, the same motion he’d used a dozen times tonight already. It went down without slowing him. He didn’t look back at it.

He ran the rest of the way to join them.