By the time morning rolled over, the sun beginning to rise, James' mind was numb. He had been mindlessly sewing for what seemed for forever and had almost used up all the cloth and thread. But his material loss had brought some impressive stat gains.

For one, he had increased sewing to level 19 but was only 13% through that. At level 15, he gained another point in vitality, but that was it.

He had used Pierce occasionally to push through the thicker materials and had levelled it up to 5, where he gained a point in strength.

He had kept up with his analyse routine, and started analysing some of the food and drinks Annie and Callum had brought. Some of the higher sugar items gave instant stamina or health when eaten, so when he got hungry, he could massively increase the speed at which he analysed more items.

By morning, he was sick of gummy bears, but had otherwise no ill effects from the amount he had eaten, and had used Analyze way more than he ever thought he would need to. When he reached level 5 in Analyze, he gained a stat point in intelligence and wisdom and also started seeing more information in the status screens.

Many items gave him a material value. He assumed this was how much he could gain using various skills. Others gave him a monetary value, like a particularly shiny keyring left on the desk worth ‘17c’, whatever ‘c’ was. But he had gotten increasingly frustrated at regularly having to get up to find new items to Analyse, as analysing the same thing more than once didn't give him anywhere near as much XP.

To work around this, he had started wandering around silently as he sewed, and analysed the nearest item to him. This method left him at level 14 in Analyse come morning. At level 10, he had gained another point in Intelligence and Wisdom, but instead of gaining more information, the cost of the skill was reduced to 8 Stamina.

His hours spent silently creeping gave him a new skill, and he even levelled it a little to try it out.

Silent Step [2] (skill):

The sound produced when moving by foot is reduced while active.

Progress: (19%)

Cost: 4 stamina per second

Unfortunately, the cost was quite steep, so he had trialled it for but a few moments before leaving it.

All the time spent in the dark hadn't given him a skill that allowed him to combat that, which left him more than a little pissed. This unnecessary anger towards nothing, in particular, was fuelled by a headache that he had gained through the night, but he couldn't figure out why. Comforting seemed to be working on everyone but him, but at least he had levelled it decently.

At levels 5 and 10, he had gained a point in Vitality. This left his speed and strength as his weakest stats, exactly the ones he wanted to be his strongest. He needed to talk to Dom, or Callum, or even Annie if they knew how he could train his Speed or Strength higher.

But as the pale light of pre-dawn continued to stream in through the window, James noticed the quality of what he had been sewing. It had been miracle enough that he could continue to thread the needle, but that was where his luck ended apparently. All of his early work was loose, ruffled and had inconsistent holes. Only his last two or three blankets and the coat he was just about to finish were any good.

Sighing, he mentally resolved himself to ask Dom to teach him some proper technique. He obviously knew what he was doing.

Discarding his last blanket, James silently staggered to his feet, and with a brief glance about his surroundings and made sure everyone was sleeping before walking to the window. They were still on the third floor, so he had a decent view of the area.

Now he had time to properly scan the surrounding area, he noticed several things he hadn't seen yesterday.

The lines radiating from the college had a small path flattened out along their entire lengths, but the resulting destruction of houses around these paths had made the lines way more noticeable. Judging from the angle he could see, he had to guess that there were twelve lines radiating from the main college building, but he couldn't see what was at the end of each line, each appearing to stretch for several miles.

Occasionally, he saw someone or something cross the lines where the rubble wasn't too bad, and the creatures he could see in any degree of clarity were fascinating, yet terrifying.

What appeared to be the unholy mashing of several animals together seemed to appear and disappear at random, and creatures that just looked like vaguely humanoid shades drifted through walls, houses and the ground alike.

As creepy as they were, they and other monsters steered clear of the college.

Unsure about whether to take this as a good or bad sign, James decided to cross that particular bridge when he came to it, and get as strong as he could while in the college and find the final boss and kill it and then... James slowed his train of thought at that. As it was, this was a pointless exercise that just made him miss the calm of the classrooms.

But he would get back no matter what. This would have been the time to reflect on what he had seen, and perhaps react to it somehow, but James couldn't bring himself to feel anything for anyone that had suffered. He only cared about a handful of things at this point, and all of them were in the room with him.

He wasn't even worried about his dad. That old bastard was a tough one, so James figured he could more than hold his own against whatever was thrown at him.

But this made James pause. The others likely had their own families. Dana, he knew, wasn't very close to her parents, but they were hardly the fighting type. He decided it would be best to broach the topic with her soon enough.

Deciding he was done with self-reflection, and that 7 am was late enough to wake them without them all being pissed at him, James resolved to wake his sleeping companions.

But how to wake them? The ‘till-now rarely used ‘devious’ part of his mind whirled its cogs into action.

Some of these wooden blocks would be loud as hell if he hit them together, but metal would be louder. Silent stepping to the shelves of metal he gently pulled off a thick sheet of copper and used Shaping on it. The skill helped a little, despite it not being heated, and he easily used his hands to push and stretch the sheet into a very rough pot shape with a thick handle.

He wound some thread around the handle to let it hang, and was about to hit it with a hammer when he felt a hand on his arm.

He whirled around in shock, dropping both the hammer and copper pot. Annie caught the pot but wasn't fast enough to catch the hammer. It thudded on contact with the floor, quieter than James would have liked, but still loud enough to wake the others.

Trying to ignore the heavily disappointed glare coming off Annie, he focused on the small chorus of groans and complaints emerging from the grumpy teenagers.

Before anyone noticed the two of them were already up and attempted to put the pieces together, James grabbed the pot off Annie, hastily folded it into a rough ball of sharp corners, and threw it behind him towards his workbench.

"What was that?" Callum was quicker to unwrap himself from his blankets and had seen James throw the ball of copper.

"Um... I was working on an upgrade to the spears. Making them more like a kind of mace?"

Despite the obviously uncertain words, Callum nodded approvingly. Then promptly dove back under his covers.

"Shit! Why is it still so cold!?" His yelling encouraged the others to get up too, and they offered similar complaints.

In their bleary state, James used the opportunity to take charge. Watching what could only be described as a very slow zombie impression, James gained a new appreciation for parents everywhere.

"You have five minutes to be up, or food will be rationed! If you need to go to the toilet, you will all go together! We will have a meeting in ten minutes and sort out today! Everybody clear?"

All he received for his efforts was a few disbelieving stares and an audible gasp from Annie. But he would not be embarrassed.

Slamming his fist on the table hard enough to cause the joints to creak got the four of them into motion, and one fleeting conversation left only James and Annie in the workshop.

James sighed. That probably wouldn't work again, but they just had to get into a routine.

"Where did that come from?" Annie spoke casually to him as if she hadn’t just caught him trying to peak everyone like a little kid.

"My dad was in the army for 12 years. When he came back, he met my mum and had me. He raised me like a soldier. Tough love, right? I understand it now, but I hated him for years. Enough to run away more than once. But I lived through it, and am better for it."

He hadn't meant to say anything, but before he knew it, he had given half his life story to someone he had known only for a day.

"You worried about them? Your parents?"

"Just my dad I guess. My mum died when I was fourteen. That almost killed my dad. He turned to drinking, and I pretty much raised myself from thin on. He may be drunk, but he's still a soldier, and a tough bastard too."

There was a moment of silence, and James scolded himself again. She wasn't even prying, and he had just told her everything. Then she laughed a little. A bitter laugh that suggested she understood him better than he understood himself.

"Shit man, your life sucks. Anyone ever tell you that?"

James laughed too. That simple, blunt statement didn't come close to summing up his almost stereotypical tragic backstory, but it was a start.

"What about your family?"

Annie's face instantly dulled from a grim smile to something that James couldn't quite place. His continuous use of Comforting was likely screwing with her emotions, so he turned it off and audibly sighed at the relief his mind felt. His headache left him and he realised that continuous use of certain skills would put a strain on his mind.

Before Annie could utter so much as a syllable, their Companions’ re-entered the room again, and the casual laughter between Dom Callum and May broke the tense mood.

Dana still looked half asleep, but James could hardly blame her. She had always taken a long time to wake up, and he had been harsh on them all.

They walked towards the pair, and James shot an apologetic look towards Annie, but she had already returned to her default stoic expression, and he didn't want to push the topic further. She was obviously worried about something, and Dom or May would be better to talk to than him ( and were far less likely to be eviscerated for it).

For now, though, he had to figure out what to do. They would have roughly 12 hours of light, and the air was rapidly heating up. So the temperature varied with the light, good to know that still works.

James cleared his throat. They were all looking at him expectantly. While he had wanted the Leader role, he was sorely inexperienced.

"First things first; I want to hell out of this place as soon as possible, and make sure my Dad is ok. I assume you all want to do the same."

His speech was interrupted by murmurs of agreement and before they started discussing priority, he stepped in again.

"But we will have to deal with that later. For now, we don't know what is waiting for us outside. We know there is a load of lizards in here, and maybe the odd slime. Outside is a mystery, we don't have classes, and only a few of us have occupations. While we know we are safe, we should stay here and get stronger. Train Mana, learn weapon technique and make armour or other stuff. We can do all that today. We have more than enough food to last us a couple days, so as soon as we are confident that we can survive, then we can leave. Does anyone have any objections?"

Though a few of them made some rather odd faces, none of them said anything.

"Good. So… What do you guys want to do?"