“Jack’s team returned from scouting the Pangolin nest. The egg still has a month and two days before it will hatch, I recommend we go immediately or else another beast might interfere.” Andrew Turkin stated. Andrew was a middle-aged man who was completely bald but had a big bushy beard. He often joked that when his son was young the little boy had grabbed his then small beard and pulled so hard all the hair went from the top of his head into his beard. Before the Tutorial he had been a jovial bank cashier, known and loved by everyone, but now he was a grim Scoutmaster, his smile only ever returning in the presence of his son, his pride and joy.

“I disagree. Even if the Pangolin egg has only a month left before it hatches, we still don’t have anyone with a high enough skill level to properly incubate it. If we don’t wait at least two weeks before trying to steal it bend, you over my knee and spank you right in the middle of town.” Maria Pérez was the resident Beastmaster, a fiery Mexican woman with a heart of gold that enjoyed making freshly baked cookies but wouldn’t hesitate to beat people black and blue if they caused trouble. Her loving yet no-nonsense demeanor made her an amazing Beastmaster, letting her raise Magical beasts and Monsters alike as if they were her own children. Her kindness and emotional strength had often been the glue that held the council together. The fact that she could still smile at all was proof of her unending strength as she herself had lost her three boys and her husband in the weeks after the Tutorial. Despite the loss the little woman had pulled herself out of the depths of despair and dragged many others with her.

“As much as I would dearly love to see that, I agree with Maria. The danger presented by other Monsters is merely a possibility at this point but without someone with a high enough skill the danger of losing the egg though improper incubation is very real. Unless anyone else objects we’ll move in two-” Maria coughed pointedly “-I mean, three weeks. Andrew, keep an eye on it in the meantime. If something happens you have full discretion to do as you deem necessary but remember, if you mess up then I’m not gonna stop Maria, whatever happens will be on your head.” The one who spoke sat at the head of the table. Haven was run by a council of thirteen individuals, twelve of whom were chosen as heads of their respective fields. Beastmaster, Scoutmaster, Head Tailor, Head Blacksmith, Top Chef, Arch Mage, Head Trainer, Lead Researcher, Head Enchanter, Head Builder, Captain of the Guard. A bunch of titles (little t) that meant little in the eyes of the System but meant everything to those residing in Havens walls. Each carried weight, some more so than others, but none carried as much weight as the thirteenth.

Dominic Bakersfield had been an up and coming MMA fighter when the System arrived. No one knew what happened during the Tutorial, but everyone agreed that the man that came out was wholly different from the one that came out. When monsters started tearing their way through the shellshocked humans he led the charge, bulldozing his way through them like a modern day god of war. He used no weapon, wore little in the way of armor, yet he was by far the most fearsome fighter any of them had seen. His fists hit like missiles, demolishing enemies the rest of them couldn’t even touch. Thanks to Dominic they obtained a Town Token within the first month. When time came to choose a leader, the vote was unanimous, the Indomitable Dominic would be their Mayor. The fact that he was 6 foot 5 and movie star handsome didn’t hurt.

“Right, unless our esteemed Scoutmaster has anything else to bring up” Andrew gave a small shake of his head “Then I believe Fuchsia was next. What can our wonderful Arch Mage bring to this humble meeting?” The woman in question was once an airhead heiress with more money than sense but changed during the Tutorial, gaining an obsession with all things magical. She was still stuck up, nothing short of a lobotomy could change that, but the tiny blonde woman had become much easier to talk to, as long as the topic revolved around Magic.

“Well, thanks to my unending brilliance we’ve managed to successfully recreate the first auto-targeting spell. Thanks to that we can now alter our already recreated spells to include targeting, bring the number of home grown spells to 43. Plus, I’ve almost got a handle on Nature Spells. As far as I can tell you have to alter the frequency of the Mana to resonate with the plants used in the spell. The difficulty comes in A, finding the frequency of the plants you need and B, keeping that frequency while also shaping the spell into the shape required. Other types of spells mainly use a singular frequency, the shaping being the part that determines which spell it is, but each Nature spell uses its own frequency coupled with a specific shaping.”

…

…

“Uh, okay.” Dominic said. It was always a surprise to everyone when Fuchsia started talking about Magic. The sullen princess would suddenly come alive, her eyes sparkling as she practically gushed over her favorite topic. “So, when can we be expecting skill books?”

“Uuugh.” The sullen princess was back. “I have no idea. I figured it out, but the rest of those idiots are so _____ stupid. They can’t even figure out the most basic of targeting spells, so it might take weeks for those idiots to start making skill books and I wouldn’t even bother waiting for them to teach anyone, they’d probably screw it up even more.”

“Couldn’t you teach peop-” Fuchsia gave him a withering glare. Dominic could stare down hordes of Monsters with a grin, but the tiny blonde woman still somehow terrified him. “Okay no, no you can’t. Still, good job on the spells, keep it up. I believe Sarah was next, how are the building projects going?”

If Dominic was the number one choice for Mayor Sarah Volker was the second. The woman had a drive that was damn near supernatural, organizing the mobs of grieving and shellshocked survivors through sheer determination. When the Town was founded, Sarah demanded to be in charge of any building projects the town needed. She didn’t really need to though, no one else wanted the job so they gave it to her with no objections. What no one expected was how effective Sarah would be. Using Dominics influence to the fullest she marshaled the people, separating people into various groups and taking those she assigned to the building group she led the charge in the war against homelessness. Nothing seemed to phase the woman as she organized teams of workers with the efficiency of a computer, leading people to see her as either a robot or someone who came from the future to lead them to a brighter tomorrow. She was neither, but that didn’t stop several betting pools from forming.

“We’ve almost completed the conversion of wood-based homes to stone based, only 126 left out of the original 10,042. The barracks, hospital and the third bathhouse will be finished within the week and construction on the second wall has reached halfway. Thanks to cooperation with the enchanters, we’ve figured out Macro enchantments that can strengthen buildings, but I’m sure Terry can tell you more about it. One of Andrews scouts found a river that fits the specifications, but we need a few teams of guards to keep the builders safe while we divert it.”

“I can spare two teams, but it would be best if we had a team of scouts to provide early warnings and maybe a couple of high-level mages for back up.” Jevaun Clarke was a Jamaican man who happened to be touring America when the apocalypse interrupted his vacation. With Monsters roaming the land and planes literally wiped from existence he felt that travelling was probably not the smartest idea. Stuck in a foreign land with no hope of returning home the large black man felt lost and, seeking direction, joined the recently formed guards. Showing a surprising proficiency for combat and quickly rose through the ranks, thanks to both his skill with a sword and the fact that the life expectancy for the average guard during the first six months was measured in days rather than years. By the time he became the Captain of the Guard he was already the twenty third to hold the position, a shocking number considering he gained the position only three months after the Tutorial. Still, thanks to his skill and a lot of advice from Sarah, he managed to keep both himself and his people alive, for the most part, and gaining levels.

After sorting out which teams and mages would assist the builders Terry Richards took the floor. Terry was a small, bookish looking man that looked like he’d be more comfortable in a library than in a Monster filled apocalypse, and to be fair he would, but the man was a surprisingly powerful Mage. He was the first to figure out how to recreate spells and would likely hold the position of Arch Mage or Head Researcher if his interests hadn’t been piqued by Enchanting. As a former software engineer, he found the idea of a Magical coding language, as he put it, fascinating. Taking his coding skills and the two basic enchantments supplied with the skill the bespectacled man extrapolated parts of the basic runic language that made up the enchantments. With each new Enchantment Diagram supplied by the various teams hunting monsters his runic dictionary grew. Simple extrapolation was apparently not enough for the man however, as he went to not only create new enchantments but even improve on several aspects of the current enchantments.

“Right, um, yes, as Miss Volker said I, or that is we, have figured out at least part of the, uh, the formula for Macro Enchantments.” The man was a genius, relatively speaking, when it came to enchantments but utterly out of his depth when it came to social situations. “It would seem, um, that the entire enchantment needs to, um, be placed during, uh, the creation of the building and, uh, be sized in proportion to the, uh, the building at a one 100th scale.”

“Great, thank you for that report, great work as always.” Dominic may have been voted in thanks to his fighting skills, but he was an excellent leader largely thanks to two pieces of wisdom that Sarah had laid on to him right at the beginning. One, get people you trust and have them manage the various things that need doing and two, always make sure they feel appreciated. The advice had worked wonders so far and Dominic wasn’t one to mess with a good thing. “Work with Sarah and figure out a plan for enchanted buildings going forward. Try to prioritize functional buildings but other than that I’ll trust in your judgement. Anything else?”

Terry didn’t have anything else, so the meeting moved on. The rest had little in the way of news and plenty in the way of requests. The Blacksmiths wanted more and better materials, same with the Tailors and the Chefs. The Researchers hadn’t made any large discoveries that hadn’t already been mentioned. The Trainers were hard at work training recruits for each of the groups. Each group could train their own recruits but compared to the efficiency of a Professional Trainer it was largely a waste of time. The one thing that everyone needed was more people, but a decision had been made early on that unless they didn’t have the requisite skill levels for the job, they couldn’t do it. It made progression slow at first but in the long run ensured quality work.

The meeting eventually came to a close with another scheduled for a week later. Each council member had inordinate amounts and rushed off immediately, with Dominic being the sole exception. In the beginning it had felt like he was simply rushing from one fire to another, desperately trying to keep a sinking ship afloat. At the time he had begged for peace, if only to finally get a good night's sleep, but as time went on Dominic found himself growing restless. With the town running smoothly thanks to the rest of the council he was finding fewer and fewer fires.

Sighing, Dominic decided to take a walk. Leaving the Town Hall, he was greeted with the sight of bustling streets and the sounds of life. As he walked through the streets he was once again amazed by the ton and its people. Not that long ago these people were terrified, clinging to life as they ran from one monster after another. Yet now he could hear laughter, he could smell freshly baked bread and see kids rushing through the streets playing … he actually didn’t know what game they were playing, it had something to do with Monsters and hoops, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Still, the simple fact that they were here, playing a game without any worries or fear, was amazing. As terrible as the apocalypse had been on the adults, it had been worse on the kids. Almost every kid had lost a parent, roughly one in four losing both. In the chaos after the Tutorial many of these parentless kids became food for the Monsters.

The memories of those days often kept Dominic up at night, thoughts of what if and why plaguing his mind. The worst was when it wasn’t him that asked the questions, it was the little boy he had failed to save asking him with dead eyes. It was why he treasured his walks through the town. They were a reprieve from the demons that stalked in the shadows of his mind, a reminder that all wasn’t lost. If the kids could still laugh after all they had been through, then there was still hope in the world.

His walk ended where it always did, on the wall. The wall stood at thirty feet in height, a bastion made of dirt shod in stone with metal beams running throughout. The original wall had been a small thing, ten feet in height and made of stone, but necessity demanded its upgrade. They had spent one of their precious Town Tokens on the upgrade but not a single person had ever argued against the use, a small miracle as the council members seemed almost gleeful when it came to arguing on what the tokens should be used for.

Standing on top of the wall Dominic stared out at the deceptively peaceful vistas. The lakes stretched out behind and to the left of the town, forming a natural barrier against the larger, more dangerous monsters. To the right the second wall was slowly forming, the builders were hard at work. In front, dominating the landscape with a quiet authority, stood the forest. Trees stretched as far as the eye could see, which wasn’t far since the trees gradually increased in height until they seemed to touch the sky. Someone had named it the Silent Forest some time near the beginning and the name had stuck. It wasn’t technically true, Dominic could hear the occasional roar from where he stood, but the name had a different meaning. Everyone who had ever ventured into the forest had never been heard from again, hence the name Silent Forest.

Even that interpretation wasn’t technically true, Dominic himself had travelled into its depths at one point, but they had lost enough people to those trees that the name stuck. It was why Dominic always ended his walks here, to remind himself that no matter how peaceful things may look, death was always there, waiting to strike out and swallow them whole.

Dominic would have stood there for at least another hour, brooding and dark like the caped crusader, if she hadn’t interrupted. “You keep scowling like that and I’m going to slap you.”

Dominic smiled and turned to the intruder. “Don’t tempt me, being slapped by a beautiful woman is number two on my bucket list.”

Sarah smiled. Dominic was always so serious, walking around as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders, that it was nice to see him joking. Being driven was good but a person still needed breaks every now and then, moments where they could let go of the responsibilities and just relax.

“The meeting went well; you’re really starting to get the hang of managing people.”

Dominic snorted. “I thought you didn’t want me to scowl? You know I hate all that, the endless meetings and stroking egos just so people will do the jobs they wanted to do. That may be want you want, but I’d rather be out there, taking the fight to the Monsters.”

Sarah sighed. “Believe it or not but I know how you feel. There are things that I want to but can’t, same as you. Still, if we just do what we want rather than what we should, people could die. I don’t want that on my conscience, and I know you don’t.”

Now it was Dominics turn to sigh. “Yeah, I know.” After a few seconds Dominic broke the silence with a question. “So, what is it?”

Sarah looked at him, an eyebrow raised. “What is what?”

“The thing you want to do but can’t.”

A trace of sadness entered Sarah’s eyes as she turned back to look at the forest. “Looking for my brother.”

Dominic was surprised. “You have a brother? You’ve never mentioned him.”

Sarah sighed. “Yeah, Michael. When all this started, he was taking a camping trip over in Oregon, over two thousand miles away. As far as I know he survived the Tutorial, but other than that I have no idea. Odds are that he’s dead, and even if he isn’t he would be thousands of monster filled miles away. Searching for him is quite possibly the dumbest thing I could do, and yet it’s the thing I want to do the most.”

Dominic didn’t know what to say. To him Sarah had always been a paragon of strength. Nothing ever phased her or slowed her down, not even an apocalypse. Seeing her like this shook him, yet at the same time he felt better. It was nice to know that she was still human, that even the inestimable Master Builder had her foibles. The two stood there for a while, staring out at the forest, the silence between them heavy with things left unspoken.