"What was that pressure?" Tara asked. "It kind of felt like Eli's presence…" she trailed off tapping her chin. "You copied his will skill!" Tara shouted.
"Yes, we were able to copy it, with a little modification and a lot of effort. I have a subordinate version of his mythic level will skill," Audrey said. "I've only had it for a day or so, but it is so complex I'm surprised I used it correctly."
"We don't have time for this right now," Eli said, noticing that Tara didn't like him changing the subject. "What do those people want?"
"Those people," Audrey said while pointing at them, "are a family on the run. Apparently some town or city leader wanted the man's wife for his own, when she refused he said he would drag her children outside the safe zone and kill them if she didn't agree. Their son, Greyson, stabbed the man and they ran, they gathered up the family and came straight here, the only place they could think of that they knew no one would follow."
"Why would no one follow?" Eli asked, "Are we like a cursed forest or something? We haven't killed anyone… kinda… I mean there weren't any bodies left behind so they couldn't know that."
"Really? You don't know why? Bethany asked, "A strange man with a mask and a cloak, kills thousands of monsters in a day and explodes himself so powerfully that it scars the land!"
"Well when you put it like that…" Eli trailed off as everyone was giggling at him.
"Focus, what are we going to do about Greyson and his family?"
"Oh, it's Greyson's family now, is he in charge?" Tara said, teasing her.
"He is just who talked the most, no one said anything about how cute he is," Audrey said, then realized what she said and her face turned bright red as Tara and Bethany fell down laughing.
"Anyways… " Eli emphasized to get everyone's attention back on topic. "I have an idea for a test to see if they are lying or spying or something. Tara, let's go talk to their youngest child."
Tara was confused but went along, she trusted him and knew it would pan out, things with Eli always did. The two of them approached the barrier, after a short pause Tara walked inside alone and spoke to the parents. They argued for a minute or so and the mother and the youngest girl came out of the barrier and over to Eli. The mother looked terrified, and the girl noticed her mother's fear and hid behind her. The mother bowed and so did the girl.
"None of that, just call me Ash, now I want to trust you, but I don't know you so I propose a trade of trust. I will show you my face, and in turn you will let me talk to your daughter here. Deal?"
"Do I have a choice?" the woman asked.
"Of course you do, you can leave now and we will forget you ever existed."
"What are you going to ask her?"
"That would be why it takes trust, I'm not going to tell you anything, I'm just going to talk to her."
"Ok, no funny business." the woman said and instructed her daughter to be respectful.
Eli walked around them so he was facing away from the barrier and took off his mask. He knelt down to look at the girl eye to eye.
"What is your name, little one?" Eli asked her.
"Her name is… " Her mother started, but stopped when he and Tara gave her fierce looks with a bit of the purple lightning arcing from both their heads.
"My name is Alice Mr Ash, don't be mad at my mom, she is overprotective." the girl answered.
"Ok, that's a good name Alice, now I need you to tell me everything that happened today, from when you woke up until now." Eli asked her, the girl looked up at her mother but Tara stepped in between them.
"You tell us, no cheating with your moms help." Tara said.
The girl took a deep breath and told the story. It was a typical child story, with irrelevant details and having to go back and fill in things she missed, but it matched what the others had said enough that Eli was satisfied. He walked away and Tara told them to head back to their family. When Tara got back and they were all together they discussed options.
"Well I think they are telling the truth," Eli said.
"So we let them join?" Bethany asked.
"No, I just think they are telling the truth, I don't want to be involved with whatever you guys choose. I'll back whatever you guys decide." Eli said.
"What? Why?" Tara asked. "Don't you care?"
"I do care, but I also think I should recuse myself due to recent information."
"Wait," Bethany said, "Is this because you don't think you are human?"
"Well you suck at secrets," Audrey said, "I can't believe you would just blurt that out."
"It's getting dark, focus people, you guys figure this out, and suggest hearing Bethany's idea before making a decision. I think her idea will be the best option, in my non-human opinion."
Bethany smiled so big, it was almost scary, at least to everyone but Eli. He knew she would appreciate the specific attention. Eli walked away a few steps as the others discussed options. The family was looking around as the daylight was fading with nervous expressions. Finally they made their decision and Tara walked toward the family and Bethany walked up to Eli. She bumped shoulders with him and thanked him for his support, as well as informed him that they did decide to go with her idea.
After a few seconds passed she asked how he knew what her plan was. He shrugged and told her he didn't know what her plan was, but he trusted her judgement when it came to decisions for the group. She smiled again and put her arm through his and walked him over to the others. They explained to Eli that they plan on buying a system building just inside the barrier for them and the person on rest every two minutes can guard it. He gave Bethany a hundred thousand credits and told her to make it nice with some small walls.
She went to the others to get a donation and she and Tara went on a spree, building a group of 4 small buildings with an 8 foot wall around them. They ran out of money before they figured out a gate so it was just a solid wall all the way around. The wall in space was a circle about 80 feet in diameter with 4 small 20 by 20 two story buildings inside placed 4 feet apart. They carried them inside and told them they could use one of the buildings for now. Greyson wanted to fight, he said it was to protect his family but everyone thought he wanted to impress Audrey. They told him he could stay on top of the walls but if he went further they wouldn't help him.
With the horde starting shortly, everyone was standing in a circle in the middle of the crater discussing how they were going to start. Eli was pretty sure that you gained more experience depending on how personally difficult the fight was, so they decided that until called upon, he would wait just outside the barrier near the tiny town. He was standing there going over system menus to keep his mind busy, there was a lot to unpack in his head from not being human to his mom being some all-powerful being. He was also wrestling with the fact that he hurt Tara and she has the scars to prove it, as well as his runaway emotions and budding feelings for Bethany. So when the boy from the family walked up to him, he was grateful for the distraction.
Eli did his best to keep his posture and voice intimidating, "What is it boy?" he asked with a flat tone.
"How can I be strong? You and your group here are all so powerful, way stronger than most."
"Why do you think we are strong?" Eli asked in his best wiseman tone. "What is it that you think strength is?"
"Survival, you and your people can survive in the wilds without trouble."
"If a man hides in a hole and survives, is he strong?" Eli said, again using his best wiseman voice mixed with a movie kung fu master voice.
"I just want to be able to protect my family, my parents and sisters barely survived the tutorial. I was in a different one, but I did ok, because I used to play a lot of video games. My family needs me to be strong."
"Just focus on your dedication and resolve and everything else will work out," Eli said to him. "Now go back to the wall, it's starting soon."
The boy hung his head low, obviously not getting the 'get-strong-quick' scheme he was looking for, he jumped and climbed back up the wall and sat on top of it. Eli prepared himself for what this event was going to be like, last one was all beasts, this one could be elementals, or all flying creatures. There was no way to know until the fighting started. Just like last time, he could feel the magic changing in the air, it was stale and old with a tinge of death.
It was different from his death node magic, it was eternal, or maybe continual. Eli's death magic and even his cudgel conjuring skill felt like the end, it had the flavor of an inevitable unstoppable ending. The magic in the air was like death, but not an end, a continuation or like a never ending end. It's as if the magic is an end, but an end that never stops ending like dying but being stuck in the moment you died forever. Eli's death node vibrated at this affront to its finality, it railed inside him, pushing him to burn the world to its core to stop this magic.
He used blink to land next to Audrey and asked her opinion about it. She could use magic sense but she was not as good as he was at parsing out the flavors and meaning behind them as he was. She explained to him that she was sensing in black and white while he had high definition with a million colors. He did his best to describe it to everyone.
"Sounds like undead, so we might be facing skeletons or zombies," Stevens said, not seeming worried.
"Ok, yeah, that's something we can handle, in our stories that's usually something like a massive amount of easily killable trash," Tara said.
"I don't think you guys get it, it might not be as easy as it sounds, the magic feels like these things might be immortal, existing in the moment of death eternally," Eli said trying to explain again.
"Just go for the head, the only thing we should have to worry about is magic users," Stevens said, still not seeming worried.
"I'm going to start out fighting, I won't get much experience but I can try to push my skill levels up." Eli said with a white face that they couldn't see under his mask.
The monsters started spawning and all the trees that they could see from their perch atop the southernmost edge of the crater died and their leaves fell in about a minute's time. They couldn't see this wave yet but they could hear it, the clattering of bones. A hollow soulless sound that had them all standing perfectly still, the sound triggered a primal fear response in all of them. Even with all of Eli's power and magic, he was just as scared as the rest of them, maybe even more so since he could feel what was coming.
The magic in these creatures was hungry. It felt like the need for a drug fix and the edge of starvation mixed with a magic compulsion to feed that hunger. The sounds were getting louder, the magic was getting thicker and there was a greenish purple haze or fog coming out of the dead trees. At first Eli thought that the system was terraforming for the monsters because of the event, but it didn't feel like system magic to Eli. This was a natural occurrence, something that these monsters did on their own, they tainted their surroundings just from their existence. This was going to be a tough fight, his light's purification spell was going to get a workout.