“I have no idea who the fuck that is,” Marcus immediately stood up, his voice at a near shout. At the same time Alistair took the opportunity to use [Eyes of Truth], he received a familiar message from the Pathfinder AI.

Warning! Someone is using an investigation Skill on you.

Name: Marcus Richardson

Species: Superhuman I (Partially Evolved)

Level: 21

Class: Brawler (Uncommon) [Primary Attribute(s): Strength and Endurance]

Looking around, he noticed the woman, who appeared to be the leader of the group, staring daggers at him. To his surprise, when he tried to scan her with [Eyes of Truth], nothing happened.

“Explain,” the woman said, her words carrying the weight of authority.

Donna gulped. Her daughter looked terrified, hiding behind her mother, looking up at her for protection. Alistair could feel his own anger rising.

“At the very start of the initiation, that man killed dozens of innocent people,” she said, pointing a shaky finger at Marcus. “My daughter and I were at a church service to pray together since we thought the world was ending. Marcus was the first person to start killing after getting [The First Step]. If not for him, I don’t even know if there would have been any violence.”

“That’s not true! She’s making that shit up!” Marcus started walking toward them, eyes blazing. Alistair moved forward as well, sensing danger in the air. The well-dressed man was clearly a loose cannon, unable to control his emotions.

“Stop and return to your seat. NOW.”

A current of air washed over the room as Alistair felt like he sensed an impossibly sharp object fly to Marcus’ throat. The man stopped instantly. A small drop of blood flowing down his Adam’s apple was enough for Marcus to turn back, practically running to his seat.

It put Alistair in his own predicament. He had no qualms with ending the life of Marcus then and there, but with the woman whose name he still didn’t know present, it made things more complicated. She was stronger than him individually, and he didn’t know how all the other people would react to him attacking Marcus either, so he reluctantly held back his anger.

“Uh, miss,” Alistair began, not sure what to address her by.

“Sofia Mostafa.”

“I have a Skill called [Eyes of Truth] that lets me detect if someone’s lying. If I question him, I’ll be able to know for certain if he’s guilty or not,” Alistair explained.

Sofia looked at him with cold, unflinching eyes. She looked completely at ease with herself, like nothing had changed in the world over the past few days. Even Alistair, who had adapted to the new reality with surprising alacrity, still felt on edge and slightly jumpy. He wondered what kind of person she had been in the before.

“You’re the guy with the savior Badges, right?” she finally asked.

“What?” Alistair said, taken aback. “You mean ‘Good Samaritan’ and ‘Deliverance of Justice’? How do you know about those?”

“That’s the benefit of having a sponsor,” she said. “It’s true, though?”

“Yes, it is,” Alistair responded. Inwardly, he wondered about the sponsor. Was it possible an organization from the Final Frontier Empire had been impressed by Sofia’s ranking and started feeding her information? Was something like that even allowed? It didn’t seem fair, though nothing about the Pathfinder AI and the Empire of cut-throat cultivators had any sense of equity.

“Alright, then. Who is this prisoner Lily brought back?” she said, gesturing to Jackson, who looked like he was sweating buckets, a ball-gag made of ghostly fire preventing him from crying out.

“He tried to take charge of our subregion and almost killed my friend for no reason. He’s got an extremely dangerous ability to manipulate people with his Class and high Charisma.” Alistair glanced over at his two high-leveled companions; Alexandra seemed nonchalant, but he knew her well enough to realize she was not happy about handing over control to someone else. Oliver just looked like a sheep in headlights.

Sofia simply nodded and craned her neck in Jackson’s direction. Like last time, another current of air whooshed by Alistair, but it did not stop at a slight cut in the skin. With a loud thunk, Jackson Morley’s head fell to the ground, blood spurting out of the stump where his neck used to be.

“Holy shit!” Oliver shouted, leaping back. Donna and Tamia were similarly distressed, and even Alexandra took out her knife reflexively.

“I hope this demonstrates my willingness to punish when it is appropriate. However, I cannot let Marcus die without further deliberation. He has been a considerable asset to us,” she said calmly as if she didn’t just chop off a man’s head from twenty feet away.

Alistair thought he understood some of the mechanics of her Skill now. He guessed she had an invisible blade that she could control at will, though he wasn’t sure if it was something she summoned anew every time, or an actual sword turned invisible.

“And who is us?” Alexandra asked, breaking the heavy silence that followed Jackson’s execution. John made himself busy cleaning up the state senator’s remains.

“Most of the people in this room, but not all, completed the monster wave Quest in the 24 hours before its official start. Which, coincidentally, is going to start almost exactly two hours from now. I got lucky enough to have an excellent start. You’ll find me at #573 on the leaderboards. Using the Soulnet I contacted other people who were willing to gather up and start forming alliances. With everything going on, going solo is a bad idea. The more ordinary people will need our help to survive the upcoming weeks.”

Alistair realized he should have thought about doing that. He had been far too focused on just killing monsters and looking straight at his next task that he didn’t think about trying to contact other powerful people. Of course, he was probably behind the curve of most of these people, at least until they killed Prince Kalgur, but it was still foolish.

He still wasn’t sure what to make of the top 1000 woman. She killed a man just based on his word that he had done wrong. Her cold eyes spoke of someone who would do anything to survive, someone who might have killed innocent people to gain power. However, she also claimed her goals were to help the weak people who would normally have fallen to the monster waves, a goal he shared. He wanted to use [Eyes of Truth] to discern more of her intentions and true personality, but the proposition was too risky to attempt.

“That sounds good to me,” he said cautiously. “What’s this sponsor you mentioned?”

Sofia shook her head. “Even I don’t know fully. I’ve been receiving small hints from someone in my system notifications ever since hitting level 15. Someone who claims to be a sponsor for new initiates and who wants to help me succeed. They haven’t steered me wrong yet.”

Thinking back, did he have a sponsor? Was that what caused the weird error messages and the existence of his “Hidden” Subclass? Alistair wasn’t sure, but it seemed like a path to explore.

“Besides just the Boston area, I’ve talked to possibly the strongest person in America. #4 ranked in the world, from New York. We’ve agreed to a meeting in a week’s time after we consolidate our regions more. I think we can all agree that this chaos and lack of law and order is good for no one. Will you join us in restoring some sanity to the world?” The high-leveled woman looked at him in anticipation.

“I need to talk about this with the others,” he said. He hoped Alexandra wouldn’t take offense at Sofia treating him like he was the head of the party.

“What do you guys think?” Alistair asked, huddling together with the four of them. Oliver and the mother-daughter pair still looked shocked about the execution.

“I don’t trust that lady or anyone in this room further than I can throw them. Well, maybe not that because I could probably throw them pretty damn far,” Alexandra amended.

“I can’t believe Marcus is just sitting there like nothing happened,” Donna said.

“We don’t have much of a choice, do we? We’re not gonna make much progress sitting around in our subregion, anyway. I don’t think we want to make these people our enemies, either,” Oliver pointed out.

Alistair nodded. “I agree with that, Alexandra?”

“I guess so.” She fingered her knife, which was never too far from leaving its sheath at her belt.

He turned back to Sofia, who was patiently waiting for his response. “We’re interested. But only if you do something about Marcus.”

Sofia ended up promising to have a proper investigation into Marcus in a couple of days, but they needed his manpower for now. Alistair wasn’t happy about it, but there was nothing much he could do. In the end, if Sofia decided against justice for Donna’s churchgoers, he could just assassinate Marcus and run away. He was probably faster than her. Probably.

At the moment, everyone was focused on tackling the incoming monster waves. Three out of the eleven subregions represented in the alliance hadn’t dealt with their boss monsters yet, and they also were thinking of tackling monster waves from the other subregions outside of the Metro Boston area.

The tentative name for their conglomerate was the New Boston Alliance, and it was more democratic than Alistair had first imagined it to be. All the members voted with equal standing, something that Sofia insisted upon. She still was clearly the leader, and he wondered what would happen if her decision was in disagreement with the majority. He had an inkling that somehow Sofia would come out on top in the end.

One of the only conditions that she had was for them to purchase a Teleportation Circle. Their network already connected most of the Metro Boston area, and Alistair wouldn’t have to give rides anymore, which he was looking forward to. The cost was a pain but split three ways, they could afford it.

He also learned that each subregion had its own different type of monster wave; of the eleven subregions, none had the same type of monster. Sofia’s turned out to be lizardmen, while John and Lily’s were vampire-like creatures. Besides monsters, over the past few hours, they had noted that the local wildlife was evolving, just like the humans. There were reports of fifteen feet tall bears and rabbits made of living lightning in the forests.

In the end, they chose to help John and Lily deal with the monster wave from one of the subregions in the Boston area that the alliance hadn’t tackled yet. Aayush Mehta wasn’t able to deal with his subregion’s monster wave yet, partially because of his Class, despite being level 21. In his previous life, he was a doctor, and that didn’t change with his Class, which was Surgeon. With Alexandra and Aayush, Alistair wasn’t worried about their safety. It would be an excellent opportunity for Donna to gain natural levels in a safe and controlled manner.

Besides his Class, another reason Aayush hadn’t been able to defeat his monster wave was because of the type of the monster. Instead of the brawny and physical orcs, his subregion had magical goblins. They were three-feet tall and purple creatures with a cunning intellect. Their illusion and poison Skills made them highly dangerous and difficult to deal with, which was why Sofia assigned them to help, given Alistair’s detection abilities.

After stepping on the mirrored disk that was the Teleportation Circle, they were whisked away in a flash of blue light. Aayush’s subregion was centered in Framingham and stretched out to some surrounding towns.

Hundreds of goblins swarmed them the moment they stepped out of the library that contained the Teleportation Circle. Fortunately, they were only the goblin equivalent of a grunt orc, being level 7, but Alistair could see why it was called a monster wave. Even at the height of dealing with the orcs, there were only around two hundred total in one area. Two hundred was a very conservative estimate for the amount that attacked them in just one block of the town.

Alistair’s Regional Map worked wonders, resetting its reach to the new subregion, which was larger than his by a fair amount. They spotted a yellow circle boss a couple of miles north. The only problem was that tens of thousands of goblin soldiers surrounded their leader. There were also four other concentrated areas of red dots, which he assumed were the equivalents of General Krazz.

Over the course of the following hours, they slaughtered thousands of purple goblins. Donna got to level 10 from the horde, with the intention to go for a Mage-like class at level 15. It was amusing to see the down-to-Earth woman firing [Mana Bolts] like a fantasy role player.

Alistair started learning more about Aayush the Surgeon. He was the furthest transported person he had met so far, hailing from India. Aayush was a nonviolent person at heart, he told Alistair, a doctor who wanted to save people, not hurt them. But even he was forced to adapt to the changes in the world, the change that encouraged wanton violence. All he really wanted was to see his family and kids again.

As they squatted inside an abandoned house after finishing three of the five hordes, Alistair had his first opportunity to rest and think for a while. He hadn’t fully come to terms with the fact that his friends and family that were missing. Things were moving so fast that he literally hadn’t had any time to stop and think about his loved ones, which might have been for the best. It stopped him from collapsing into a negative spiral, at least.

The time had finally come for him to see his sister again. A rush of emotions flushed over Alistair. Most of it was excitement and joy, but there was a seeping doubt. What if she had died since she put up the drawing? What if his parents were dead? What about his friends?

Alistair dismissed the thoughts as they came. Deciding he wouldn’t let them spoil his moment of happiness, he closed his eyes as he entered the Soulnet.