Everyone reacted with disbelief as David told them there was another wave coming. He smiled to himself, watching as people scurried around.

  Carl was trying to sort out their ammunition situation, which was dire. There was plenty of ammo back at the trucks, but they were up above and he had to organize a radio team to head back there and load up on supplies.

  Mark and Katie checked people and distributed water. It turned out that Katie had been carrying something like twenty bottles of water in a backpack she had shed just inside the doors, once split up it meant everyone could have a drink.

  They had already picked over the arrivals area concessions and there wasn’t time for much more as the zombies came into sight.

  All fourteen of them.

  The collective sighs of relief ended when Carl and David started barking instructions.

  “Right, let’s get formed up. We want to be nice and calm, plan out our attacks and be thrifty with the shots you have.”

  “Let’s go one further than that. I want to see if we can take this without me having to use my spell. We need to build up our mana reserves.”

  Carl looked at David then nodded terse agreement.

  Camila pitched in.

  “Melee specialists spread out and reinforce the line.”

  “Either find or make a clear space to fight, we don’t want to trip.”

  The group was set and confident by the time the zombies arrived. Rather than ranged fighters picking them off the center of the line fought defensively again, giving ground while the flanks wrapped around the zombies and picked them off.

  Fighting hand to hand against a zombie was bad one on one, at least it was for the average raider, Camila was just fine in the center with her speed and strength making the zombies easy to handle, even without boost.

  Everyone else just ganged up on them. David took the time to observe and noted that while their melee weapons were easy to carry and in the case of the sharp ones brutally effective the lack of long heavy sticks meant people were getting very close to the zombies.

  Still, he didn’t have to cast which further boosted the confidence of the raid. There were a few more sporadic attacks before those died out as well, the local zombie population apparently finally depleted or trapped.

  “That was badass! I must have killed like ten of those stupid zombies!”

  “Ten, I’m sure I’m closer to twenty. I’m telling you that a good shotgun is the key to making a mess of enemies!”

  “Oh yeah! Well, how much did you advance! XP don’t lie!”

  This and other conversations were repeated across the raid group as David and the others took stock.

  David could only smile at the excited discussions; people were thrilled at having earned thousands of experience with many having maxed out at least one attribute or skill as a result.

  Opening his own sheet he smiled. His gains were an order of magnitude above anyone else, even with him working to boost other people.

  The big decision that he had taken was to push his Necromancer bloodline forward. It was now level four and while he didn’t feel particularly different, he was sure his capacity to hold spirits had grown at the very least.

  Still, given the advantages he had already gained he didn’t regret the choice.

  He would keep working on getting his core attributes rounded out for now and following the Heralds advice to use what he already had.

  As he turned his attention back to the rest of the raid a radio team was distributing ammunition, and what looked awfully like bagged lunches under Carl and Katie’s supervision.

  People sitting around in the arrivals area talking, resupplying and resting.

  Clean water was coming from a work sink, accessed by breaking into a coffee shop. That necessity had been discovered when someone found out the restrooms were far too modern requiring electricity to flush and turn on the taps.

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  That had soured people’s moods quite a bit.

  Inevitably there was some bitching about things they forgot, which David spun as a postive. Now they had a better supply list for next time…

  The biggest concern was weapons, and they agreed they needed to have a proper plan to standardize those after a few guns were rendered useless by a lack of reloads.

  David focused on his friends first, finding out how they had done. He started with Charlie.

  “I kept track, like Legolas in LOTR! I toasted 31 zombies. Dude, that was an epic amount of XP.”

  “Well done Charlie, so did you carry through on your promise?”

  “Yeah, yeah, Stamina and Health are both good to go, took them both up to level five, things are a bit steeper after that so I min maxed a bit. I even anticipated your next unreasonable ask and picked up Vitality and Endurance to make sure the resources have something to work with!

  So yes, that also means I can pack a mean Regenerate at some point.”

  “Good, let me check in with the others…”

  “Dude, no fair, you promised me Meditate and an explanation of what it was used for.”

  “Let me check with the others then I’ll give it to you all, at the same time.”

  “Wait! Did they not have to do stuff to earn it?”

  “Yep, same as you, make smart decisions which will keep them alive long enough to enjoy the skill.”

  “Didn’t they all make those sort of decisions before you even had the skill?”

  “Yep, now stop whining and go help some of the raiders plan their next overflow spend, and remember they need to survive before you push them to get burst damage or whatever!”

  “Whatever! You just wish you had Fire like me!”

  David just waved at that and smiled to himself at how well Charlie seemed to be doing. Then he moved on.

  Camila wasn’t sure how many she had killed, still She was happy with the quick progress she had made.

  “Dios mio David, I focused on Strength until now but Agility, it’s something else let me tell you! Boosting that may have been the best, I need to find a stopwatch and do some laps! It just feels as though I can move faster, like everything dynamic is just that little bit easier, it’s incredible.”

  He smiled, glad she was enjoying the stats.

  “So, Strength is pretty obvious and Agility is what, speed?”

  Katie chimed in “I think I have that figured out. There is some overlap between the physical stats, which leads to synergy. Strength is primarily sheer power, not much pace or precision. Agility is all about pace and Dexterity is all about precision. They all end up boosting you across the board to some extent and they seem to work really well together.”

  Mark jumped in at that point.

  “Look, we all used to run together. So, we all picked stats we thought would help with that. Camila went for strength; that paid off spectacularly just not in running performance.

  Katie and I got agility and told her about it when we started to really move around. Not magic stuff that you are Charlie would talk about but mundane things like me being able to stretch further and exert more force in suboptimal positions. You know, Jock stuff.”

  Everyone gave him level looks and he held his hands up defensively.

  “Ok, ok poor choice of words, I’m just justifying why we didn’t have you and Charlie geeking out on us… It sorta came out, and with you to being well, system nerds, it was how I thought about it, sorry man.”

  David nodded, making his mind up about what his last two stats would be.

  “No offense taken, to be honest I would accept geek and nerd as badges to be proud of today. When I was in undergrad and desperate to impress cute girls, not so much.”

  He paused, remembering his ex and her irritation at those parts of him. Then he shook himself.

  He waved to Carl and Charlie, then Sarah to join them, getting the whole gang together.

  “We have a few minutes, and the area is pretty clear, my spirits are keeping watch. I wanted to run a couple of ideas by you guys and see what you think.”

  The chorus of nods and agreement came quickly.

  “First, I have a skill I can impart to people and I’m pretty sure I can even get it subsidized almost like a quest reward. It grants the meditate skill…”

  Here Charlie couldn’t help himself. “It’s a super cool skill. Usually, the one that lets people recover faster and reduce downtime!” Here he paused, then looked at David expectantly.

  “I think I can access the System help if I touch you but that feels kind of weird if I just do it. So umm do you mind?”

  David just nodded so Charlie tentatively touched him then his eyes unfocused.

  “So, it works dude! Umm, huh, well that’s cryptic.”

  David smiled again and asked “What did it say Charlie?”

  “Oh, just some hippy stuff about how meditation is entering a sleep-like state to relive the past because that is the key to self-discovery and knowing yourself is mastering yourself.”

  David smiled again and then explained.

  “So, I asked the Herald about this, meditation is the solution to one of our biggest problems, and I think I even know how it works…”

  He waited for a moment to build up the tension then he went on.

  “This is a more personal, and more controlled version of what the safe zone does where it addresses trauma. Only rather than suppressing the response while you are there, I think it lets you deal with the trauma response and the aversion you feel consciously.”

  Mark got it immediately.

  “That makes a lot of sense, one of the ways that doctors treat irrational fears, PTSD and the like is with therapy that is meant to break the ingrained response – basically convince you not to instinctively panic when you hear a noise like a gunshot or get on a plane or whatever.”

  David picked up there.

  “Exactly, you can mediate to relive experiences, but you control your response to them with magic rather than instinct.”

  Mark caught the idea “Your own tailored form of exposure therapy without loopy drugs or even the need to recreate situations if you can use your own memories… Damn that is genius and makes me wonder who or what created the system if there is a skill like that.”

  Camila just turned to Sarah and said with a perfectly straight face. “Do you think the two of them have geeked out enough?”

  Sarah smiled and replied “Oh, I think we are about to enter my nerd is bigger than yours territory, do you think we should stop them or sell popcorn?”

  Katie mock scowled and grabbed Mark. “You leave my big hunky… nerd of a boyfriend alone.”

  As Mark turned face showing his betrayal at this Katie smiled gave him a kiss and whispered not so sotto voce.

  “I love you babe, and your little ‘nerd’ is quite big enough for me.”

  Everyone fell about laughing as Mark blushed and David waved in mock disgust at the girls who were giggling uncontrollably.

  It was only when they realized that everyone else in the raid group was watching that they got it under control.

  Carl yelled out “Don’t panic, David was just displaying his knowledge of the system and he and Mark decided to have a little geek off!” After a glance to David who nodded slightly he continued.

  “Why don’t y’all come and join us we were just debriefing on the fight and talking about cool options for the future and one thing led to another so gather round!”

  As the rest of their teams drew closer David shifted into presenter mode and continued.

  “So I have an option to give everyone a new skill, one that helps to handle trauma. I want to try and wait to hand it out until people need it or have covered their bases in terms of being combat ready in other areas.

  Which brings me on to what we need. I don’t know about all of you but I learned a lot from that fight. Everyone needs to have options that give them sustained contribution to a fight, survivability, and eventually utility.

  We ran into the limits of offensive magic, guns and…”

  The discussion shifted to what they had found, different people adding their perspectives and before the team knew it half an hour had passed with people discussing what would make things go better.

  Interestingly people seemed to be gravitating towards distinct roles and some of the eager gamers were starting to call for tanks, DPS and healers.

  David suddenly held his hand up, it took a few moments, but everyone keyed into his alert state.

  “We have a number of being approaching from deeper within the airport, they’re not zombies or I think mutants, but they are hard to sense so they got close before my spirit net detected them…”