I chucked another log into the fire, then sat down and checked my interface again while leaning against the brown wall of the tree house. My stats had jumped since my fever fueled trip apparently included a killing spree.

  My level had gone up by two, up to seven now, with totals of 10, 24+3, 17, 24, 10 and 42. Magical endurance was really running away with it due to the hundred-hour head start. Internal reserves clocked in at 31 energy in the tank. The others had asked me to stop calling it mana. It seemed prudent not to argue since Jack, Anne and Raj were the only people to have graced me with their presence in the past week. Fitting in always paid off, while dissenting rarely did. This turned out to be as true in the new world as in the old.

  As evidenced by the last member of the group, Terrence. He was missing and presumed dead on account of being a little suicidal. Dude treated post-apocalyptic life like a video game and yapped on and on about getting stronger and grinding levels, the dumbass. Closing my interface wasn’t followed by getting up. Procrastination, reminiscing and having another smoke appealed more. Conversation would’ve been my first choice but I was alone, again.

  The rag-tag bunch had set off in the morning on one of their daily trips towards the north-east, where the pine greenwood bled over into hilly mountain slope. Supposedly Terrence hadn’t been happy about it. Not the trips, those were fine, it was the fact they were too short which bothered him. After waving words of caution and accusations of idiocy away, he’d gone into the forest by himself and never returned. His demise happened before my arrival, so a long while back – by post-apocalyptic standards at least. The band had reasons for their expeditions. It was human nature, they needed more supplies; things like firewood, food, leather and magic metal.

  Most of this information came from Jack since Anne and Raj stuck to each other like glue. Anne was somewhere in her mid-thirties, just like me. She also had a teenage son, maybe. Uncertain, since his last sighting coincided with the end of the world. Raj on the other hand was fourteen and sorely missed everyone he knew. We could all relate to that, but some were better at hiding it than others. Like Jack, who was about a decade older than Anne and adept at taking things as they were.

  Then again, his stoicism wasn’t particularly out of place. He looked like a competent guy, knew all about the outdoors and sported the full lumberjack plaid and jeans stereotype too. He hunted, he skinned and he butchered, all with proficiency. There was game to be found at the edge of the forest and Jack had made a clever decision, bringing a gun and hunting knife to the post-apocalypse. I should’ve thought of that myself. Although my praise might have been excessive as he’d been hunting when the change happened. We’d gotten along well.

  A deep sigh left me and getting up followed. The gang kept a bunch of plastic cups filled with water around, but chain smoking and thirst went hand in hand so they were due for a refill. I stacked the empty ones and shuffled through the cluttered interior of our residence. Confusion struck me at first, specifically wondering how a group of four-to-three managed to build a bulb shaped tree house with stairs in the short span of a week, but the thing had built itself. Admittedly, it was less ‘house in a tree’ and more ‘house built out of tree’, along with some unusual design decisions.

  Thigh-thick branches served as walls and braces for my slow shuffling towards the outdoors exit. There was another way out as well, or down rather. The wooden parts of our tree house surrounded a bland grey stone cylinder in the middle of it. At the exact center was a familiar circling stairway which led into the underground tunnels. A makeshift hatch of nailed together arm-thick logs blocked it off. In the same vein, a deer hide covered the open top of our crib where the light outward curve of the walls turned sharply inwards and coalesced in the middle.

  The hide tarp helped keep the heat in, not that the cold bothered anyone but me and Raj anymore. Probably because we were mages, as opposed to Jack and Anne, who were both fighters – power and endurance respectively, while Terrence had been an antimage. The information sharing ban wasn’t foolproof, and we circumvented it by referencing the structured order of the classes. It made sense to prioritize such knowledge because of the ever present equally supernatural dangers these days. I should’ve asked more about them as people.

  Everything was weird and unfamiliar these days. At least our place was reasonably roomy, despite the odd features. The stony bits around the central stairwell had a radius of three meters or so while the woody part added another two. Fortunate, since it allowed us to keep a fire going. The art-nouveau look appealed - had to find silver linings somewhere. I followed the outer edge towards a curving slope, ignoring the stairway. An extra-thick branch provided mostly even footing, while straight branch walls encased my path, winding around and around the tree house, gently descending seamlessly into the tundra dirt outside. Goddamnit.

  It was my first relatively coherent time outdoors, over here at least. For once the surroundings actually varied a bit, prompting me to look around properly. A huge river occupied the west, a couple of dozen meters wide. It flowed from north to south and had one hell of a current which dissuaded any tempting dips. The rapids explained the lingering smell everyone carried around with them, better dirty than dead. A tundra wasteland across it quickly transitioned to a pine forest that obscured any further observation aside from a distant mountain ridge.

  Circling our house revealed a stack of trunks and a clean looking spring next to them. I refilled my cups and took the opportunity to wash my face and to slick back my greasy hair with the ice cold water. The terrific trio had a good laugh recounting what a mess I’d been. My innocent blue eyes hadn’t quite made up for my beard and mustache being all bloodied. Early male-pattern baldness announced itself to the world as they stared at the thin spot on the back of my head. In a display of inherent genius, the hood of my blorange winter jacket had gone unused while wandering the wastes. Sounds of it still echoed in my head, the first laughs heard since the end.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  My assessment of the surroundings might have been a bit premature since the east had the same features as the west aside from the raging torrent, although the woods were way further out. They’d been given a name by me, the ‘Forest of Death’. The north sloped gently upward into yet another mountain range while the south inclined downwards into endless tundra, although blurs indicated something else in the distance. Something about them didn’t seem quite right. Maybe the approaching dusk messed with my eyes. Then again, my mind wasn’t at its sharpest.

  Upon my return the four full cups were placed next to the exit, balancing them while navigating this mess seemed too challenging. For having lost everything, we sure had a surprising amount of stuff. Another revelation was that no one had lost a hand grabbing my weapon, adding yet another quality to my summoned weapons. It was now my friendly very sharp magic smart sword. Regardless, the group had put their care packages to effective use.

  The group figured coordinating to be the smart play, aside from Terrence who chose alchemy. They picked woodcutting, mining and smithing. The rebel member of our group insisted on carrying his things with him, pictogram included, but the other three blue sheets remained here. Taking advantage, more statlinks appeared in my interface. Mining was joined to physical power and smithing to physical endurance, covering all the nonmagical bases. Chopping wood didn’t appeal and viable options had run out anyway since none of them allowed linking to magical stats. The additions improved my mood a bit, thankfully.

  Green tinting was the theme of the day. Their choices had spawned a green axe and pickaxe, which the party had taken with them. Meanwhile smithing received a complete starter set of hammer, tongs and a bowl with foldable standards. The forge was an ingenious thing, thinking at it fired it up. A flat handle went straight through the middle of it, doubling as a smacking surface. One end stuck out and ended in a triangular point. Once initiated, the round trough filled with clear liquid while the handle took on a hot glow.

  It only worked together with magic metal, sourced one sliver at a time from the north-east out of respawning mounds. The stuff was surprisingly malleable when warm and changed the otherwise dark green veins reminiscent of aged bronze patina into a shiny emerald sheen. Afterwards it was a matter of heating it, hitting it, dipping it, and then repeating it until the shape satisfied. The whole thing wasn’t supposed to be this easy to pull off but in my opinion the process was a big step down from simply visiting the hardware store.

  The rest of our riches were decidedly less impressive. We had a pile of jerky. Raj accelerated the drying process with magical fire, which was a thing now. Most of the remaining firewood consisted of firewood, along with some random odds and ends. We also possessed a metal ingot and some nails which Anne had forged.

  A debased math textbook littered the ground nearby, written in a language beyond me yet readable. Apparently the System included an auto-translate feature. Like always, it was imperfect and defaulted to English for some reason, causing me to quickly switch away from Dutch to stop sounding like an idiot. For the rest we had a bunch of wrappers and plastic cups, a purple high school backpack, some depowered mobile phones and a supply of energy crystals.

  The last were a big deal, since everyone had the junk food cantrip. Magic was ubiquitous. Never thought I’d see the day. My companions partook in the occasional slaughter, as evidenced by their impressive supply of energy spheres. Each of them carried a fifty for emergency refills. Yet there was another fiddy, a thirty and a fiver back here at the tree house. It was a veritable stockpile compared to my paltry seventeen crystal.

  It was possible to fuse the tiny fingernails until they reached ten energy, at which point the shard turned into a small ball with a shiny white swirly sphere in it. Those fused up to five times, adding another sphere with every iteration. I combined my supply with theirs for a total of 102 and threw a few more logs on the fire after pulling the tarp off, to let the smoke and light out. It was getting pretty dark and distractions were running low as usual.

  The shoddy wooden hatch caught my eye. Our stairs led to a T-split; north, east and south. The fauna du jour consisted of ‘unholy centipedes of bone’, so bonypedes. Jack told me about them. ‘About knee high and a yard long, with foot long sharp-as-fuck legs o’ bone and a skull to bite you with’, he’d said. That was the smallest, although they only grew up to three out of three.

  Going downstairs in a group was apparently a big no-no. My lone wandering had been paired with incredibly luck. In that no one else shared the same underground space with me. Bringing a friend along spurred the little shits into frenzy and they’d start seeking out victims with alarming frequency while refraining from cannibalizing each other.

  The bastards wouldn’t ascend the stairs, but the groups retreat had left the Errant to unionize. Raj cleared them out afterwards by blasting them apart somehow. The monsters stopped fighting each other at stage three, which turned out to be nothing special, just bigger, stronger and faster. Raj seemingly went a little crazy after getting the job done but the wayward companions had refused to elaborate further.

  For fucks sake, being alone again sucks. Hopefully everyone was fine and they’d merely hit a minor snag, delaying them by half a day on what should’ve been an hour-long walk. The days lasted for 30 now, only the System knew why. Eventually I covered the top to hold the heat in and tried to sleep while keeping my shit together and failed at both for a while.

  Upon my awakening, nothing had changed. My mental state contrasted with the physical as my fever had passed. Mana sat at 45. Don’t think I need to mind their wishes anymore. Leaving things like this felt wrong. The nails were wasted on three big crosses with their names on them. Along with a last cigarette shared with Jack, figured he’d appreciate it. It wasn’t really a proper sendoff but it wasn’t an entirely unmarked set of graves either. Somewhere in between and the best I can do.

  All their former belongings now rested in a bug-out bag. Despite my best attempts, there was nothing more to keep me busy, aside from formulating a plan. Not a hard task, south looked like the only viable direction but it wasn’t time to head out quite yet.

  For one, there was still a chance my funeral rites had been premature. Plenty of food and water remained, so there was no harm in naturally topping off my mana either. Summoning two more swords to complement my current one seemed like a smart move. In the meantime, I’d take a note from Terrence and Jack, killing beasties underground while staying the fuck away from the forest. Spare time could be spent improving my stats by practicing my drawing skills. Five days, after that there’s no more reason to stay.