CH 30 - Preparations

Once that was taken care of, we proceeded with checking what we got from us reaching level 20 in our class. Level 10 for Brook.

I decided to use my normal upgrade on enhanced agility. Since it was un-tiered skill, it went through a lot more changes than the skill that are already tier 1. It changed to avoidance skill. It granted me 50 agility now with a new bonus which was the 10% chance that enemies in combat will miss me. My second upgrade that actually could be used on my tier 2 skill was used on Sheela. I noticed that since she is scaling just from my magic she is lagging behind a little so I decided to give her a hand.

Upgrade was perfect for my situation, it was called strengthened bond, it allowed me to choose one stat outside of magic and Sheela would receive flat stat bonus to that stat equal to my value of that stat. I choose agility, what made Sheela much faster and since she also used agility for damage with her abilities according to Annie she also received a whole lot of extra damage.

Karla decided to upgrade her brand-new skill vampiric blade. She received interesting bonus to it. Now it was granting her while active bonus damage to each strike equal to her constitution in unholy damage and she was leeching triple the amount of all unholy damage. Sadly, for now the only unholy damage she had was from this skill but it's more damage and more survivability. So, nobody complained.

As for her second upgrade she got lucky and received a new skill berserker's charge. This allowed her to quickly cover the distance between her and her opponent while dealing 10% bonus damage on first follow up attack.

Brook also did her thing and leveled up properly. Once we started to make plan how to proceed from now. We decided to gather supplies for 2-3 days and after that to start heading towards northern LA where Karla's sister should be somewhere. From there to Phoenix where Brook's family lives and after that towards New York where my family resides.

Our priority was to gather all our families together so we will be ready when the time to leave this warzone of a planet comes. We made a list of things that we needed to pick up for the road and decided to take people from this camp with us to gather resources again. So, they have decent supplies when we leave.

Annie warned us that traveling such a long distance will be very hard but if we manage to find some vehicle it should be possible. So, we added checking out the parking house to our list. We hoped for a nice big vehicle. Something like a van so we can transport everybody.

Once we settled on this Annie gave us a communication device with which we will able to reach her and gave us few more warnings. The main was that local wildlife also started their evolution process, they will be absorbing mana from the atmosphere and by hunting other wildlife, monsters and humans until they reach tier 1. This is where they receive significant evolution, some become huge dangerous beasts and some even become humanoid beastkin. While the latter can be reason with since they are rather intelligent the former can be very dangerous. Last warning was that the there is possibility of dungeons appearing, they are more or less small pocket dimension created due to influx of mana that houses challenging monsters and very good rewards. This was maximum she could do for us for now. I was very grateful. After this she left, she had some paperwork to do and stuff to prepare before we arrive and since she already used her pick, she was not meant to spent too much time around the planet. She explained that for second round of picks there is going to be somebody else representing her faction, she was dedicated to us.

Once that was done, we called Jessica into the room and gave her part of the loot. She asked for staff from her red box, so I pulled a nice staff for her. We let her know that we are going to be leaving, she looked very conflicted about it but didn't voice anything.

Next step was to inform teachers to prepare carrying squads for next two days for gathering supplies. I also let them know that I will be leaving after that. They were very curious why am I leaving I explained them that we would like to reunite with our families.

They didn't try to stop us and since they knew how big of risk big groups are, they didn't even try to persuade us to let them join us. They were happy that we helped as much as we did until now.

And so, we started preparing for departure. The scavenging runs went pretty smoothly, there were no noteworthy incidents and we were able to gather enough supplies for now. Karla's ring was filled to the brim with food and other supplies for the road. Last thing we needed to do before departing was the acquire the car. So, we went on our journey across the campus to pick up a vehicle that we would be able to use.

Parking house was a huge building relatively close to the entrance to the campus. It had about 15 floors above ground and about as much bellow it. On the way we met multiple groups of ghouls counting 20-30 in number and one relatively big with about 200 ghouls and zombies with one commander.

As we got through all that, we arrived in front of the parking house. First, we wanted to check the status of cabinet at the entrance that normally house the keys to the cars. And from the looks of it was perfectly in tact so we decided to go look for something that would be able to transport us. It took us about two hours to find our new car.

It was huge bulky military SUV that was parked in zone dedicated for teacher's parking. It had green camouflage paint on the whole car, full gas tank. Massive steel front mask. Two filled gas canisters strapped to the back door. And most importantly enough space for up to eight people to sit.

Once we found our car, we grabbed the keys from the entrance and quickly ran back to pick the car. We were able to start it without issues and with this our preparation for the journey was completed. We headed towards the stadium to say our good byes before we leave for good.

This caused one last issue before our journey. Jessica found the courage to speak up.

"Could you please take me with you? I have family near Phoenix too I would like to see them."