Over the next few days I split my time between the testing room, meeting with the Council of Wildwood -- now including Sarah-- and Alan's on-the-spot laboratory. The first two I had somewhat expected when returning to the town, but the last was an exercise in patience.

Somehow the researcher had gotten Tim and Arnold to collaborate on a wonderful little building just on the edge of the Blessing of Magic. Inside the rock column, wooden walled structure the man had set up all the measuring equipment he had available. To top it off, he also placed a Metier Crystal modified solar panel on top of the lab to provide for his equipment's electrical needs.

Many of the survivors of the Fall still clung to their electronic devices for one reason or another, but Alan quickly made it clear that his system was A.) Not for public use and B.) Incompatible with regular electronics. The shielding and transformers, his words, were specifically designed to not explode in a mana permeated environment. To the chagrin of the pre-Fallen, it seemed the internet was not yet to make a comeback.

Aside from being the acting public liaison for Alan, I spent as much time as I could trying to keep up with his Metier Radiation Theory, which was quickly expanding to include the resonance of the Attunements, the concentrated nodules of Infusions and a number of other factors that I struggled to comprehend dealing with the way mana actually interacted with our physical reality.

What I was able to understand was the foundation of what he called the Attunement Purge Pulse. Its intent was to create a field where an opposing attunement would struggle to affect reality. He explained that each time a Skill was forming, a similar effect was taking place; it was just in the opposite direction. The spell chain facilitated changes to reality, fed by our internal mana. There was something... Meaty about that bit of information, but with everything else going on I couldn't quite focus on it.

Apart from gaining a headache, I worked with Alan on using his miscellaneous Skill. It was a curious process since it was the first time a non-Fallen had tried the Skill as far as I knew, but I watched the process work more or less the same. From the plethora of notes Alan took, however, I was able to see that channeling and manipulating the thread took some of his physical energy as opposed to using his mana pool like with the Fallen. The behavior of that, plus the ability to gain Traits, continued to put the older survivors in a weird place as far as managing the town's needs. At the very least, Alan didn't need my direct help with the circuit-like etching practice he worked with after each of his meetings with Tec.

If Alan was the only person I dealt with, that would have been plenty. However, the Bunker Busters were highly sought after to mediate discussions with the Council of Wildwood. The other council leaders for the different trades wanted an undiluted line to the people who'd essentially turned their mundane fields into magically juiced ones. Samuel spent a lot of time with Irwin and William dealing with food production, even going so far as cataloguing the effects of various Attuned foods. Daniela flipped back and forth with me and Dylan on defensive intelligence while at the same time working with Sarah and Ava.

The two women had taken it upon themselves to turn the training regimen on its head. Ava started from the ground up with the kids and parents not even directly involved with the Guard, getting records built of everyone in the town to better assess its growth. She didn't stop there. The old trainer got Sarah to cut back on her chaotic training sessions by almost an hour out of the day... Just to replace it with some of her own. Ava had taken the time to formulate general, but individualized, training plans for all of the Wild Guard in the town and was working her way through the prospective trainees. I wasn't rightly sure how they were still getting up in the morning and returning to training, but if they stuck with it I was optimistic they would have a much stronger starting point than me and my friends ever had when coming to the surface.

To supplement all of the practical efforts of the training queens of doom, the testing room of the Crafting Hall got a new nickname. The Research and Destruction Department. While each of the different trades worked to improve their understanding of Infusions and how their products could benefit, the R&D department was focused on bringing them all together into as many deadly devices as possible.

My own role in the new department was helping manufacture the weapons at the final step. Rommel was a huge help in getting the chitin plates we had Infused and shaped while I created various sized for the purposes of testing. With my new level, my base cost Skill produced an eight foot behemoth of rock that was not at all practical but totally worth testing. One of the Q4 chitin plates would make its way to that one eventually.

While the cannons were the most time consuming bit of work, the bow projects got a fair bit of love. Marie really seemed to come into her own as she shaped various designs based on what she saw in the woodworking book. Dai used his knowledge of the area's creatures to acquire a few types of sinew for testing. The odd pair worked together, planning to get bows for Eric and Oliver to test. They didn't approach me for the final Infusion, instead wanting to test the process at the mundane level until they could get it right.

Even with the influx of resources from the daily runs of the spider dungeon the trainee squads were running, the town was gobbling up resources almost as fast as they could gather them. Thankfully, I was able to pass on my blueprints without any memory episodes, which let the smiths and tailors of the town cut their teeth on making Infused armor in bulk. Slow bulk, but more than just me would have been able to manage.

As I got swept deeper into the administration of the town, I spent less time crafting. The lack of a weapon and shield upgrades for me, even with a variety of materials at my disposal, burned a metaphorical hole in my pocket. I did, however, insist to be present at all new rounds of testing. Not only did it let me act as my nickname, the vanguard, but it also let me see how each material interacted with Infusions, forces, temperatures, manipulation and a number of other parameters. One overeager demon teen with a caustic cloud similar to Clara's also hoped to replicate gunpowder explosions with his Gift. The first round of tests were promising if extremely dangerous as evidenced by the broken rib I sported that day. Regardless of the injury, it brought a plethora of new options to mind.

What if I replaced the wooden cannonballs with my ? Can a Fire Attuned crank the heat up inside the tube before striking the plates to increase the expulsion force? Are the Life Attuned able to manifest ammunition directly into weapons instead of relying on pre-carved balls? Arrows?

It was during one of those drifting daydreaming contemplation sessions when the original reason for all our weapons testing slapped me straight to the face...

"Cover!" The call went wide through the comm-plants. From my relaxed perch on one of the Infusion crates, I zeroed in on the source. Clara. The LPS was already open as I adjusted my helm and snagged my naginata from the wall where it rested.

"Moving!" That and various other calls responded through the Implants as the Guard mobilized to action with a level of coordination not seen since before the Fall.

Devon and Daniela called out as they zipped towards the north of town where her location blip originated. I'd kept my two friends on my Party at all times, and rotated through whoever I was supposed to be working with the rest of the day in my other Party slots. It helped get me used to having the field of view markers from other people in my minimap and now it was paying dividends. The two of them, especially the elf, cut through the town and made a mad dash towards the bridge across Lake Sumter. Dai, myself and a half dozen other Wild Guard were close on their heels.

"Got regular people with me!" Clara panted through the connection, and I saw Daniela spawn a blip of her own. Her fire wisp cut through the air even faster than the two scouts, reaching Clara and the growing crowd of blips in seconds.

With Daniela engaged, I dismissed the minimap and poured on the speed. Dai easily kept pace with me, having reached Q5 during our last absence from the town, but the rest of the guard struggled to various degrees. The lizardman and I ate up the distance and I cast ahead of us to provide steps to circumvent climbing the rusted car wall to the north of the town.

Flames immediately greeted me as they revealed a smattering of creatures lurking in the trees. Daniela's wisp shot small , keeping the creatures at bay. Lilly and Clara were back to back, slowly making their way towards the bridge. Ophelia was letting her passive magic wash over several injured people lagging behind the group as Devon and Daniela carried them to the wall.

One of the braver creatures, what looked like a fire attuned coyote, shrugged off the flames and tried to pounce on Clara. A shard of ice met its charge halfway, stopping it in its tracks, but the blood of the engagement seemed to call the other creatures to the fore.

"!" I focused on my helm as I let the Amplified Skill take shape. The new wall my increased level let me form easily blunted the charge of the creatures as they found stone instead of the two squishy Wild Guard.

Dai wasn't to be outdone as his obscuring mist materialized, followed by a veritable hail of ice nails for anything that circumvented my wall. Lilly visibly sagged, but Clara held her up. Then we were there.

"What happened!?" I asked, pivoting to the flanks of my wall. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the civilians being helped up the car wall.

"Chased, then more and more came," Clara said. I noticed her eyes were red, thin streaks of blood running down her face.

"I've got a twenty three count, Ron! Most are Q3 predators," Devon said, interrupting through the comm-plant.

"Dai, get them back. Help me hold them back while we wait for the rest of the guard," I shouted, channeling into my hands. The Amplified wall had cost me almost half of my mana, but it was already recuperating. Like a pitching machine I lobbed my crystal grenades over the wall and at anything Dai's ice hail missed.

The lizardman practically had to manhandle the two overtaxed women to get them to retreat. When my mana hit twenty percent, I started my own retreat.

"!" The bolt of lightning zipped from somewhere behind me to cauterize a hole in a death-attuned panther moving to flank me. Passing Devon a silent thanks I finally made it back to the rust wall. A pair of vines plucked me.

"Health?"

"I'm good, quarter tank on mana," I told Sam without turning away from the treeline. Dai's hail was dispersing and Daniela's wisp had long ago stopped laying down cover fire.

"Status?" I asked, eyes roving on the shapes I could see. Most were lupine and a few odd lizard-looking things, but I did spot another one of those death jaguars. Something about their attunement was making them harder still to spot than regular camouflage should have allowed.

"One dead, two out for the fight and various levels of injury. Cavalry is a minute out," Devon spat out, perching on the wall beside me. The elf was floating on his heels and I saw Daniela crouched some distance away holding the creatures in her sight. Knowing her Skills, it was probably the equivalent of looking at them down a gun barrel.

"Anything gets close, dust it. If they rush us I'll make them sink in the ground. Devon, make sure they aren't flanking us," I rattled through the comm-plant. Daniela tensed in anticipation and the elf was gone with the wind.

"I'll work with the injured," Sam said flatly. I watched him call forth his to touch on multiple people at once before channeling . His club was in hand, but he wasn't Amplifying anything yet.

Another beast got brave only to get blasted by Daniela. The seconds ticked by and I felt the rumble of feet before I heard them. The Wild Guard and trainees parkoured over the wall and formed up loosely on the other side. As if sensing the sharp decline in their odds of survival, the creatures started to flee.

"Hunt me down those cats!" Sarah howled through the comm-plant and out loud. "I don't want a single one of those sneaking into town."

She wasn't even done yelling the command when the groups split off into squads. I noticed at least one Q4 person took off with them. One of the death cats tried to fight right away, leading to it getting rolled over by two of the squads, but the rest vanished into the woods.

"One mile radius!" The orc council woman called, getting affirmatives through the comm-plant.

After that initial blitz, the wall was left in eerie silence other than the whimpers and groans of some of the injured. Instead of addressing the obvious questions on everyone's minds, we held steady until the squads returned. The Big Guns had remained at the base of the wall, and I watched the rock twins gathering Pith from the few dead beasts while Sarah stared off into space. Clearly, she was coordinating the mile search with her map.

The two of them moved with brutal efficiency through the battle, finishing off anything our attacks hadn't. They only hesitated and called Tim over when they found two humans amidst the beasts. They were dead and mauled beyond recognition.

The world spun a bit as I tried to wrap my brain around what we'd seen. The whole engagement had hardly been five minutes, ten if you counted the first call for help, yet people were dead. I glanced over my shoulder to see one of the survivors that hadn't made it despite the tending of both Sam and Ophelia. How many more would have died if we had been slower? That thought echoed in my mind, but a much more painful one seared itself into me. How many would have lived if we had been faster?

Unsure of either answer, I watched the clouds of Pith spread through to those present from outside the wall and beyond in the trees. Unlike usual, the warm energy didn't revitalize me but instead felt like another reminder of the brutality of the surface.

The squads made their returns and Sarah set up a doubled rotation for the car wall for the next few days right on the spot. When that was done, Sam fashioned a number of stretchers we used to help move the worst injured and the unconscious Lilly and Clara. The two squads that remained were grave faced as they looked out towards the trees and started their patrol.

Even with the lives we'd secured, the engagement felt like a loss. The effect was clearly muted for the Wildwoodians, but the mess of feelings only seemed to grow. Just like the questions of what happened and where these people came from.