[CYA] Chapter 93: All the Initiates

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<Alex, Real - Endure, High School Cafeteria>

Alex barely arrived before Natasha as she came running down the hallway, carrying the clear box which contained the short spear.

He felt a bit miffed at her obvious excitement—given the fact that he’d literally put some of his Life into her other spear, Life he still hadn’t fully recovered—but he supposed that she might be willing to give it to him, and let him experiment with pulling that Life back out, among other things.

Regardless, he held the door for her, letting her proceed him into the mild hubbub of the Initiate filled cafeteria.

When he entered, there was a wave of recognition and waves and exclamations of greeting. A little taken aback, he waved sheepishly.

Huh… Kaylee wasn’t exaggerating.

Off to the side, the three unturned Initiates were resting, Henry along with his companions, even if the young man wasn’t nearly so badly off. Alex almost said something, but he felt a few pings of people Analyzing him—or using a similar skill—and that reminded him to shift his resistance to such. Even so, he wasn’t quick enough to stop the first few from getting the odd results, causing a couple of confused exclamations that faded when reuses of the skill gave a more standard result. Mainly, he’d changed his name back to ‘Alex’ rather than leaving it as ‘NotAlex’.

Hmmm… Maybe I should ask all of these fine folks to Analyze me as much as they can. It could help the trait grow?

Regardless, Kaylee was at the front of the room, and as soon as she saw him, she smiled and gestured his way. “Now that Alex has joined us, we can get started. I’ll go over some basics, then I imagine that he’ll want to tell us about what he’s discovered?”

Alex shrugged. “Yeah…”

“Great! There’s coffee over there.” She pointed. “Find a seat. I’m not standing on ceremony.”

At the mention of coffee, Alex’s gaze snapped in the direction she indicated, and he was halfway across the room before she finished speaking, sparking a few chuckles. Then, throwing caution to the wind, he added. “If you are willing, please continue to Analyze me as often as you can without distraction. I have an… ability that can benefit from it, and I’d be grateful for the help.”

Kaylee smiled and nodded. “As he said. But without further adue…”

She updated them on their food stores, a bit bolstered by the arrival of the new Initiates and what they’d been willing to contribute, but more uplifted by Natasha finding a few ‘stashes’ of food that had been missed before. This—combined with quite a few other things—cemented in Kaylee’s mind that the System wasn’t trying to test their food acquisition, survival skills in this first scenario.

No one really disagreed.

When she went further to emphasize that such meant there was no reason to give up the help of non-Initiates given food wouldn’t be an issue, she did get some grumbles, but everyone acknowledged the wisdom in her words, even if they didn’t like the food situation emotionally.

No one liked the potential of starvation.

Throughout, Alex had a steady buzz of Analyze being used on him from dozens of people who kept glancing his way. Well, that’s a bit of a downside…

Still, he occasionally altered how he would present, starting with changing his name to ‘Alex (Grateful)’. That caused a mild distraction, but everyone settled down quickly when Kaylee forged ahead, coming to the next topic of the new Initiates. She officially extended an invitation to have them join the base, the alternative being a set amount of supplies and a safe but speedy departure.

One man—one of the spear men—stood then, raising his voice in a question. “What would that mean? Is this just a place we can stay, or are we agreeing to more if we do?”

There were ripples of agreement with the question, causing a few side conversations, and Kaylee nodded in acknowledgement. “That’s a great question, thank you for asking.”

Alex shifted his name to ‘Great Question’ causing another ripple of chuckles from those still analyzing him.

The man sat, and Alex thought he saw a quick glance exchanged with Natasha. Either way, the Russian woman gave a half smile.

Huh… Still, Alex shrugged, taking a large pull of the percolated coffee.

Kaylee looked around the room as people settled back down. Seeing she had their full attention once more, she smiled and answered the question. “If you stay, you are joining us. That means I am in charge of the Base, and Alex is in charge of basically everything else.”

“Huh?” Alex jerked slightly at her words, almost dropping his cup even as he sloshed some over his hand. He grimaced, freezing in place and bearing through the heat that was… actually not as bad as he’d expected. Huh, Physical Fortitude for the win I guess. I wonder if I can get resistance to heat…

He frowned for a moment, considering. Then, the near constant feeling of Analyze being used on him made him look up, and he found everyone looking at him with a mix of expressions.

“Gah!” He almost jerked again. “What?”

Kaylee let out a quiet sigh. Pilar put her head in her hands, and John, James, and Natasha each hid smiles. Grant—bless him—had a look of solemn solidarity across his features.

Alex cleared his throat, then sighed.“I do want an answer, actually. Why am I in charge?”

Kaylee sighed again. “Because you’re the reason for all this.” She gestured expansively with one hand. “We followed your lead, and it’s working very well.” She next gestured to the other Initiates. “They’re only here because of you. You didn’t ask permission—you didn’t try to convince anyone—you simply said you were going and made it happen.”

Alex grimaced. “Yeah, but… I don’t want to manage all this.”

She barked a laugh, causing the crowd to largely turn back toward her. “Oh. No, Alex. No one wants you to be the manager. That’s my job, at least in regard to the base. You pick our direction, you channel whatever mad genius you’ve been channeling, and we’ll follow your lead.”

He opened his mouth to object, but then paused. He really didn’t want to be a manager. He didn’t want to be in charge of minutia, sending people this way and that. But the leader? The one who is in—or near—the front? Yeah, he could do that. Finally, he shrugged. “Sounds fair. I wouldn’t be asking permission regardless.”

That got a ripple of laughs. Kaylee smiled. “And with that sorted, Alex is our leader, but as you just heard for yourselves, he is not a micromanager. Our goal isn’t to control those who stay. We will ask for your help here and there, but no part of this is mandatory. If you are helping? That’s fine. When we’re attacked, we’ll expect even more of your help, whatever that looks like, and you will be required to act like civilized people toward everyone in the base.”

That got a few mutters, though Alex couldn’t tell if they were positive or negative.

The group was given until the following morning to decide if they would stay or not. After that, they could, of course, just leave, but they wouldn’t be given the same resources. In Kaylee’s words, something was coming, and they needed to know who would be there to stand with them.

That seemed fair to everyone, and so the discussion moved on.

Surrounding the school were four wider, two-street connections—one at each corner—and eight single street intersections as the school was three blocks to a side. Undead were close on all sides now, and their number was increasing steadily.

That didn’t matter from a defensive standpoint at the moment, but it might add to their attackers when the System promised assault came ‘within the next nine days.’ As such, it was agreed that Initiates would go out to harvest the undead for experience as well as to gain experience in combat and fighting together.

Everyone, of course, wanted Alex near to hand for their rotation, which allowed Kaylee to emphasize just how valuable he was, making the man himself rather uncomfortable.

He even briefly changed his name to ‘Alex the Useful’ as an attempt at deflecting a bit with humor, but he changed it back to just ‘Alex’ after a moment’s consideration, determining to stop changing it so often.

Despite his uncomfortability, he was left holding the bag in regards to a plan, when Kaylee asked him what the plan would be.

He sighed, downing the dregs of his third cup of coffee. “I’m not going to just sit on the walls and wait for you all to need healing.”

A few voices started to raise at that, but Alex raised his hand, half surprised when silence instantly returned.

“I am happy to be near to hand when I can be, but fighting undead is dangerous. If you get in the habit of fighting, thinking I’m right there to save you? You’ll take more risks. I’d rather all of you train with a mindset of one bite, one scratch, one kill. Hopefully, I will be able to help in the event of a screw up—and make no mistake it would be a screw up—but it won’t be guaranteed.”

The almost skeletal, happy Death Mage stood up. “I can offer a bit of a buffer.”

Alex nodded, motioning to the man. “Yes, Stephen? What do you mean?”

“I have a relatively low-level death spell that will slow any turning plague… at least it has worked on all the variants of that which I have encountered. That won’t be a crutch, but it might give a bit more time and increase the potential for that second chance?” The man put it forward as a question, clearly trying to at least be seen as deferring to Alex in this.

Alex accepted the olive branch for what it was, considering for a moment, before nodding. “That sounds fair to me, yeah.”

Stephen sat back down, a few people around him smiling or patting his shoulders or back appreciatively.

“Again, I will do my best to be near but don’t treat that as a given. Stephen will make it easier for me to help if I am nearby, but that is still a big if.” He shook his head. “But we’re getting into the weeds. I imagine I will need to fight as well to keep improving. I just got a passel of stats from leveling and I’m not used to them yet, after all. Even so, Kaylee will work out that schedule.” He hesitated, then amended. “Though, I’ll probably go fight for a bit right after this.”

Kaylee smiled, smoothly taking up the speaker role as he passed her back the attention of the crowd. She took the opportunity to go over the rules of the base in somewhat of a rehash, given the new Initiates had been around for almost a day, but it was good to get it all out and said all together. That way, there was no way anyone could reasonably claim that they hadn’t heard some rule or other.

With that sorted, Alex was called up to the front. He started by briefly re-explaining mana circulation techniques in a broad sense. From the nods and general expressions, it was clear that most of them had heard it already. Still, there were a few exclamations, including ‘I knew it!’ and ‘Are you kidding me?’

He made sure to emphasize that even a ‘trash’ technique had promised to double his mana regeneration, and he encouraged everyone to try what felt right to them. “Just move your mana about in a way that is repeating?” He shrugged. “That’s all I have on that.”

Small side discussions had started given the rehash for most of the listeners, but then he waved to Natasha and she tossed the boxed spear to him.

Every eye returned to him, along with the full focus of the group. “Now, have any of you folks found reward boxes like this?”

There were a few ripples of both negative and positive answers. That caused surprise both ways. This group had seemingly been together for a while but not since the very beginning, and some—it seemed—had completed missions rather quickly near the beginning, getting some rewards.

“Okay, have any of you gotten them open?”

No one had.

“Well, it’s effectively a mana manipulation puzzle.” He went on to describe what he’d learned. He had everyone’s rapt attention again as even those who didn’t have clear boxes ready to break open hoped to get some in the coming days.

When he finished, one burly man raised a hand. “I don’t know if I want to mess with all that magic stuff… Do you want to buy my box, or could I pay you to open it for me?”

Yet again, there were ripples of agreement, and clear interest in his answer.

Alex was about to say he’d be happy just to open them, even if he thought they were missing the opportunity it presented to stretch their skills and to grow, but Kaylee stepped in, speaking on his behalf. “He’ll open them for one in ten of the prizes within. One of his choice.”

That got confused mutterings.

She held up her hand and clarified. “If he only opens one box, he gets the item inside, but if you bring ten to him—on your own or as a group—he only keeps one, his choice. Asking him to open the box means you might lose the contents. Eleven means he keeps two, etc. I recommend you make groups of boxes divisible by ten for him to open. If you want us to handle that arranging? You risk worse odds.”

Alex gave her a frown, and she returned a stalwart smile, making him shrug. “What she said. We don’t really have anything of value to exchange otherwise, though if you have an item that isn’t of use to you, I am happy to discuss taking that instead.”

The burly man seemed quite happy. “I’ll come forward afterward. I’ve got four. Anyone who wants to join is welcome to.”

That seemed to garner more interest. The man was willing to take four chances? That helped blunt the initial emotional reaction to potential loss.

As a final statement on that, Alex added. “I won’t know which boxes belong to whom, so it will be purely based on the item that is of most use to me. I will then use that to help all of us as best as I can.”

That mollified a few more who were clearly concerned about bias factoring in… somehow.

As if I’d take a worse item just in the hope of hurting someone else. Ridiculous. What kind of idiot would do that? Even if he were an -ist in some regard, he’d have to be a special kind of stupid to let that make him take an inferior item to his own detriment.

That topic finished, Alex dropped the last bombshell. “Now, it seems that System granted rewards can be combined.” There was an instant of silence followed by an explosion of noise that only quieted when Alex raised a hand, gaining space to continue. “It seems to only be identical items by my testing, and it took a group of three identical items before the prompt appeared. My theory is that the System intends these to be rewards, so if we get three identical ones, they aren’t of use as such, so it offers a combination.”

That garnered thoughtful expressions.

“You are welcome to test as you can, but I wanted you to be aware that I’d come across the possibility.” He then met his companion’s gazes and added. “I have not tested the process yet, as the items I found this out with were not mine to use.”

Some tension left John’s shoulders, but if Natasha’s expression was any indication, she hadn’t been concerned.

Alex had nothing more to say, so he took a seat and absently began working on the clear box around the spear.

There were a few other things to discuss from using the workshops on campus to the use of crafting materials, but that was handled by Kaylee quickly. If questions came up that would take more than a quick moment, another, smaller meeting was scheduled.

The final thing to occur was for Stephen to stand up, garnering everyone’s attention. “I will be staying in this base, in case that sways anyone’s thinking. These people have been kind to us, and I look forward to working with them going forward.”

On that note, the meeting ended, and practically as soon as Kaylee officially dismissed everyone, Alex got the box opened.

With a small flash, the spear fell into his hands.

Natasha moved forward, and some of the others paused, but most continued on their way, seemingly not having noticed, many already seeming to be trying to put together groups either for fighting or to bring boxes to Alex to open.

“So? Is it good?”

Alex gave her a funny look. “You haven’t Analyzed it yet?”

“No…” She grimaced slightly. “I’ve built it up in my head a bit, and I don’t know that it will live up to the hype.”

To the side, the other five spear users were coming up, clearly just as curious.

Alex chuckled. “Well, alright then. Let’s see what it is.”

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