Apocalypse: Generic System Macronomicon (miss read books TXT) 📖

and better at fighting would be a huge benefit to our party.”

“You think you could do that, Amanda?” Jeb asked.

“I’m against violence,” She said, wincing.

“Real world’s a bit different from a video game,” Jeb said, glancing at Ron.

“But if it helps save my husband’s life,” She said, glancing at Brett. “I’ll kill whatever I have to.”

“Boom.” Ron pantomimed a mic-drop.

“Casey needs leveling too,” Jeb said, glancing at the sleeping teen with the mussed up hair. “I’m fairly sure she couldn’t have got past level twenty that hugely pregnant.”

“Stands to reason. If she’s at least strong enough to run away, that’ll be a huge benefit,” Brett said.

“And you,” Jeb said, singling Brett out. “You have any Myst?”

Brett shook his head.

“We’re gonna get you some. We can’t have you being blind and deaf to half the stuff going on around you. And Myst abilities are powerful. Your Soldier ability is absolutely no good in a fight, so we’re gonna want to supplement that.”

“That isn’t so much ‘cheese the healer’ as it is…powerlevel everyone.” Ron said with a shrug.

“They need it.”

“True, but do we have the time to –“

Jeb showed him his scarab lens. “Food.” he pulled out the water lens he’d traded for. “Water. All we need is shelter. That’s what we’re looking for on the mountain.” He glanced over to the mountain in the distance, smoke gently rising off of it.

“Once we have those three things we can take as long as we have to. We’ll start with Amanda, then once she’s in her late twenties, we’ll switch gears and focus on getting Casey up to snuff. If Casey winds up as baggage, nobody wins.”

He glanced at Ron. “Sound good?”

Ron nodded.

Amanda nodded.

“Sounds good,” Jessica said.

“Yeah. I’m not exactly comfortable putting Amanda in danger, but making her damn near impossible to kill sounds like a good decision.” Brett said, adding his agreement to theirs.

They kept working on the particulars as they fled the gradually expanding swarm of monsters.

***Later***

Nearly eight tense hours later, the forest began to thin out, and Jess frowned.

“You guys see that?” she asked, pointing at the fiery mountain.

“See what?” Jeb said, peeling one eye open. He’d been catching some sleep since the monotonous rocking of the palanquin had started making him nod off.

“There’s something different on the mountain.” Jess said, staring.

Jeb sat up and peered at the mountain, but neither he nor any of the others on the team could make out what she described to them, until about fifteen minutes had gone by, bringing them closer to the bald mountain.

There was a large opening in the side of the mountain, with a flat top and sides.

A gate? Jeb thought, frowning as it slowly grew larger. It disappeared behind individual hills, but every time they crested one, it got bigger. It went from a pinprick, to a thumbnail, to a fist.

Finally they stood in front of it.

An enormous gate seemingly carved into the stone, leading deep into the mountain itself. It had gouts of flame rising off the sides, seemingly manifesting from nothing.

“That’s definitely new,” Jeb said, staring up at it.

He glanced back over to the forest below them.

The swarm of flying monsters had completely taken over the forest, only moving when the World tortoise took another earth-flattening step, sending up a cloud of creatures like flies on a disturbed carcass.

Right now, The tortoise was eating enormous old oak trees like heads of broccoli, chewing with a glazed look.

They didn’t seem interested in going up the mountain, thank god. The creatures filling the sky seemed to fly around the flaming mountain, giving the smokestack and everything below it a wide berth.

This might just work.

Jeb squared his shoulders and took a step toward the enormous hole in the side of the mountain.

Or we all die a horrible death. But that was always on the table.

He stepped into the darkness that seemed to fold around him.

You have entered a Dungeon!

Grave of the Titan.

“It’s a dungeon,” Jeb said, stepping back out. “Last one I went into was a deathtrap. Let’s find a different place to sleep.”

No matter how convenient its appearance, Jeb knew that it was no place for an infant and mother. Matter of fact, Jeb was suspicious of it because its convenience.

He’d flown all over these mountains just a day before the Safe zones dropped. He or Jessica should’ve seen something.

That night they slept in a tiny cave, the five of them crushed together by necessity while Ron’s zombies formed an unliving wall at the narrow entrance.

Jeb couldn’t help but be a tiny bit envious of the baby, the only one who wasn’t pressed up against a rock one way or another.

The morning came, and they had water and roasted scarabs for breakfast.

Before they got started with their plan to ‘cheese the healer’, there were some experiments Jeb wanted to run first.

He wanted to see how difficult it was to pick up or move someone’s body against their will, using his Myst.

When he used the ability on Brett, it was like a bird in the hand, similar to the lamprey-dragon.

When he used it on Jessica, she felt more like a struggling cat. Squirmy, but not particularly hard.

With Amanda, her resistance felt like wrestling a full-grown woman. Difficult, but not impossible. The amount of time spent forcing his Myst through hers would easily open him up to counterattack though, so it wasn’t an efficient way to go about it.

When Jeb tried to pick Ron off the ground against his will….

It felt like he’d called Schwarzenegger a sissy.

“I think it’s fair to say that the difficulty of using your Myst ability on another person is related to the strength of their Myst Core,” Jeb said,