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Alex read Mr. Weston’s message—what amounted to an unofficial will and testament—and he kept the words to himself. The majority had to do with things that didn’t matter, but Alex would still hand off those pages to one of the remaining school officials before he left.
It was a meaningless act, but it wouldn’t cost him anything, and he knew he would think better of himself after performing it.
The man had apparently left several things for Alex in the gymnasium, so he would go there once he was done with the items he was grabbing from his temporary stash.
Natasha’s words rang true as he assessed what he’d gathered—anything that turned out to be unneeded, he could dump with ease in the future.
As such, he kept the boxes of emergency meals, even though he had the Create Rations spell of which he had yet to really explore the depths… or really test out at all. I really need to delve deeper into that…
He couldn’t bring all the bones from the Flesh Golems of the Plague Guard, but he did grab a full skeleton’s worth… a full human skeleton. Because the monsters had been made up of many such, he didn’t come close to taking a full creature’s worth.
He grabbed his few extra sets of clothing. They barely fit due to how much his body was changing with the various level ups and stat gains. Thankfully, these days, it was a more subtle thing, so he thought he was narrowing in on how he would be for the long haul.
He still wore his greatcoat—much worse for wear with many slashes, holes, and blood stains—and shoes which had proven themselves over and over again, somehow avoiding any noticeable damage. They were a bit stained at the moment, but that was fine. The footwear was all black to begin with so the ‘stains’ just looked a bit darker.
Beyond that, there were a few books and the all-too-few bags of candy which most closely resembled his pre-System favorites.
All told, the amount he was taking was… surprisingly little, now that he considered it.
His Inventory still had the shell of expansion cubes encasing it, and he hoped that he would be able to grab more, if Mr. Weston had left those for him.
If the teacher hadn’t, he might go through the school in order to hunt them down, but he thought not.
They were amazing tools, but from everything that he’d learned they weren’t unique in either form or function. As such, even though it would require research and testing, he would likely be able to find other ways to increase his Inventory size in the coming scenario. Natasha was doing well enough with her ash after all.
As he had that thought, he felt his decision crystalize. He would respect the teacher’s choice, whatever it had been.
And even as he had that thought, he realized his whole conundrum was moot regardless.
He couldn’t pull items in from very far away, so if Mr. Weston had left them all stacked, Alex would have no hope of reaching into the twenty foot cube—through all the intervening layers—to get the next sizes he would be able to take.
Interesting defense, that. It’s too big to fit, so it can’t be taken.
He gave one more look at his pile of odds and ends, taking a couple of coils of durable rope and the last few jars of instant coffee.
With his Create Water spell—especially now that he could change the temperature that was created—he could make himself coffee if there weren’t other sources…
He laughed, and grabbed the camping mug, bowl, and utensils that he’d taken from his ‘fake’ apartment but not had too much use for.
He hesitated at that. It’s my ‘fake’ apartment again.
He was disassociating with the scenario, and he found that that was alright with him.
They were moving on.
Even with the conviction that it was better to grab more than less, he couldn’t bring himself to stuff out his Inventory. He wasn’t a hoarder by nature, no matter what the Class offerings implied.
He preferred to only have what was needed and have it organized so it was easily ready to hand. The fact that he could subconsciously search his Inventory with relative ease—organization or not—didn’t really factor into it.
With a nod, he told Laura and Jacob that he was ready.
“Can I grab some of that?” Jacob asked quickly.
Alex frowned, but then shrugged. “Sure?”
Jacob grinned and grabbed a bunch of carved bones. Laura took a few other odds and ends, including some of the emergency meals that Alex hadn’t preferred. When Alex raised a questioning eyebrow, Jacob shrugged in turn. “Might have a chance to sell to the System or something like it, and if monster harvests are worth anything in this new world, those should be worth a pretty penny.”
“Weren’t there twelve full corpses after the boss fight? Do you really have room for more?”
He shook his head, but Laura was the one to answer. “Everything linked directly with the Plague Lord fell apart into useless chunks. Those already slain weren’t affected, but we didn’t kill them with harvests in mind. We were just trying to stay alive and keep them off of you. Nothing survived worth harvesting… at least not with the knowledge we have now.”
Alex grunted at that. “Fair, I suppose.” He looked at the smaller pile, considering and second guessing. With a sigh, he grabbed another few dozen finger bones, then left the room once more. “Shall we? I need to check the gymnasium really quickly. Depending on what we find, we should be able to head back then.”
They both nodded agreement.
As they walked through the high school, Alex glanced their way. “Don’t you have better things to do than watch over me?”
Laura shrugged. “I’m practicing a new skill, Awareness of Guarded. It’s a bit difficult to parse, so this is good training.”
Jacob smiled. “I’m working on a skill too.” He then gave a theatrical wink. “Won’t tell you what, though.”
Alex chuckled. “Fine.”
It didn’t take long to reach the gym, and the teacher’s legacy was obvious.
There sat the twenty foot cube, and Alex sighed, giving a nod. Not for me then.
Still, he didn’t see anything else, even as non-Initiates moved around it.
One of the high school administrators saw them and came over with a smile. “Good, you’re here. Can you help us with this?”
Alex handed over Mr. Weston’s will with a quick explanation, then shook his head in regards to the question asked. “I can’t move anything that large.”
The woman frowned, glancing toward the cube. “Oh! That’s funny. He must have known you’d come from that way.”
She led the three in a circumnavigation of the cube, revealing something else waiting for him.
There, plain to see once he moved away from the locker-room entrance, was a set of cubes near to eight feet tall with a small backpack sitting on the floor in front of it, a paper pinned to the outside reading, ‘For Alex Johnson.’
Alex felt a grin pull at his lips, picking up the pack first.
Inside was a book ‘Basic Inventory Training for the High School Level’. He flipped through it quickly—far too fast for even his Speed Reading skill—and found a note tucked in the back.
Mr. Weston simply told him that the ten larger cubes left for him would strain his Inventory immensely, and Alex should take them at a staggered interval and not do anything else to expand the skill for at least a month.
Alex began that process—pulling the boxes from the inside outward—while investigating the backpack in a bit more detail.
First, there was a couple of boxes of tea-bags, a type that Mr. Weston had preferred, and Alex had seen the man drinking quite often.
Next, there was a bag of candy… Alex’s favorite in this odd world. When did he…?
The old teacher must have seen Alex eating the treats every so often, and he’d found a bag as a further gesture of kindness.
The note taped to the bag filled Alex’s eyes with unshed tears.
‘Whoever she was, she would want you to enjoy the little things. From one broken man to another, seeking purpose in helping others should be but your first step to recovery.’
Alex rocked backward, falling from his squatting position to his backside with a heavy thwump.
He didn’t know if the System had cheated at all, giving Mr. Weston insight he shouldn’t have had or if Alex was just that easy to read, but in either case, the note hit hard.
It hit harder because Mr. Weston had knowingly walked into death to help others. “It wasn’t your first step, old man.”
His words were barely above a whisper, and even Jacob and Laura—who were nearby talking to non-Initiates—didn’t hear.
The backpack had a six-pack of thin, athletic socks, and a thin, handwritten book. The title was simple and bordering on trademark infringement. ‘How Even a Dummy can Improve Inventory’ with an addendum scrawled below ‘Some of what that other book doesn’t say’.
Alex barked a laugh, even as he wiped at his eyes. The title was written on a piece of tape across the front of the notebook, and was clearly added very recently. “You were kind of a jerk, Mr. Weston.” He gave a sad smile. “I’ll miss you, whether you were ever real or not.”
Alex took everything into his Inventory separately, folding the pack as small as he could before storing it last. He had the room, and who knew when a sturdy bag or pack could come in handy.
His Inventory was feeling… stretched. Not quite uncomfortable but somehow noticeable all the same.
It was like he’d been eating, and he was one bite from being over full, but the feeling was spread throughout his whole body.
Beyond the ten that Mr. Weston had set aside for him, there were still two sets of cubes.
The larger set—as already mentioned—was of no use to Alex at all, given he couldn’t even reach the cubes in the center to pull from. So, even if he wanted to ignore the teacher and try adding more layers, such wasn’t an option for him.
The smaller was the cubes that he could use to completely fill his Inventory all the way to the center. He was very slightly tempted but not truly that much.
Even so, he grabbed a few sets of eight in the middle size range, intending to use them to continue expanding his Inventory when that was possible again.
He arranged them within, inside one another, tucked to one side, before he filled the space within the stack so that they really took up very little of the overall space.
He’d have some difficulty bridging sizes, but this would get him a bit further.
Finally, he stood, gathering the two spear wielders' attention. Laura smiled. “Ready?”
Alex nodded. “Yeah, let’s get back. I have something I want to try before this ends, and it would be good to have Brianne about.”
They checked in briefly with Kaylee, but she’d decided to stay in the base until the end, given her profession and the potential to get greater rewards if she were within its boundaries.
And that was that. The three left the high school for the last time, leaving the place that had sheltered them for the last weeks with barely a backward glance.
Alex felt a bit of an ache in his chest, but it wasn’t like he could have stayed regardless. This was all going away, and they all knew it.
They didn’t quite make the deadline of sunset, but as they didn’t meet any opposition, it was a pleasant enough walk, if a bit creepy given that it was through an all but abandoned city.
The college quad was filled with various things, all organized like a massive garage sale, everything with others of its kind.
Alex had a moment of excitement when he saw a large grouping of chairs. I can rearrange a little and maybe fit a good one… It’s worth a try.
Unfortunately, as he moved quickly among them, he found that none were really very comfortable.
They weren’t uncomfortable, but they were all just… chairs. With a sigh, he moved, thinking to look through the other sections, but then, one chair in the back caught his eye.
He scrambled through the area and moved another chair off the top.
There sat an old, worn thing of beauty. With a grin, he sat and had a moment of true comfort… before a loud crack rang out and the thing splintered, falling apart and dumping him on the ground.
He was apparently heavier than he realized, or the chair was older or more damaged than it appeared… or both.
He grimaced, sighed, picked himself up, and moved on. It wasn’t meant to be.
He did pick up a few random tools from that area of things and a few emergency blankets, but that was it. Apparently, ‘useful’ things like magical items and potions and such were either locked behind magics that they had no hope of breaking through or had been in places that were now utterly ransacked and now all but empty.
It was unfortunate, but given the artificial nature of the scenario, no one was really surprised.
They found most of the other Initiates gathered nearby, enjoying a final meal in the scenario. They were joking and ensuring that names were known, given most of them weren’t ‘officially’ on the same team, so they doubted they’d be in the next scenario with one another, at least not near the beginning.
Alex was greeted with great enthusiasm, and Jacob and Laura with only a bit less. They’d all performed amazingly in helping to secure a profitable end to the scenario, and everyone knew it.
The two bid Alex goodbye and filtered away into the crowd, wanting to spend their last hours on their own.
After some good natured chatting and teasing while he moved through the group, Alex was able to find Natasha and Brianne, conveniently near to one another.
They chatted for a bit before Alex brought up his plan. “I have two attributes that I want to accept, but I don’t know what they’re going to do. Some seem to do nothing, but I’ve gotten at least one that did seem to change something about me, physically.”
Brianne frowned. “Attributes?”
“I…” He realized he hadn’t ever told most of the others about what he could do. “I am able to learn from enemies to some extent, altering my Life to gain attributes from them.”
She gave a slow nod. “Like you can alter what shows up when we Analyze you?”
He smiled. “Exactly.”
“Alright, what are these two?”
He gave a hesitant smile. “Something called Basic Dissonance of Tonality and another called Basic Skeletal Structural Remodeling.”
The healer blinked a few times. “Well, if I had to guess, the first will make your voice painful to hear, or at least odd, and the second would give you limited ability to influence your skeleton?”
Alex nodded. “That was my guess, yeah.”
“Well… Have you been able to turn off attributes in the past?”
“Yes, the one that influences Analyze skills. I can alter what it does, and effectively turn it off.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Effectively turning something off isn’t the same thing as actually turning it off.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but then hesitated. She had a good point. Looking inward, he felt out his Basic Resistance - Examination and… “Well, sugar-free peeps… I can’t turn it off.”
Brianne sighed. “That is good to know then, yes?”
“Yeah…” Alex grimaced, considering for a long moment. “I think I’ll take them anyway.”
Natasha rolled her eyes but didn’t comment.
Brianne smiled. “I assumed as much. Come on. We should be elsewhere when we test it.”
Alex glanced at his notifications, verifying the time left.
Note:This Scenario will be ended in 2hrs 47min
“We’re almost out of time, do you have anything left to do?”
The two women shook their heads before returning the question to him.
He shrugged. “Just this.”
Brianne gestured again, smiling.
Alex chuckled and nodded, following the two women into one of the offices, Natasha closing the door behind them.