The sunrise streamed in through a glass window of the student center. A ray of light traveled with the sun's rising until it rested squarely in the perfect spot.
Sylas stirred, opening his deep blue eyes as he tilted his head to get the light out of his left eye. Looking around, he saw the rest of the group still resting in their bean bags.
Sam had flipped around at some point during the night, now having her legs draped over him. Swain was softly snoring while starfished across his bean bag. Diana ended up on the floor with the bean bag on top of her, while Professor Medina still sat relaxedly in the same position as he had seen her last night.
'Just after 5', Sylas thought after looking at the system clock as he stretched. 'I'll let these guys sleep in. There's no reason to disturb them so early after a hard day. There's plenty I can do without moving anyway.'
Sylas started to scroll through the System interface, looking at what options laid before him since he didn't really get a chance to do so yesterday.
He thought there would be more, but the main menu didn't look how he remembered. At the start of the integration, he saw many options, even if they weren't actually available and showed as X's instead.
Now he only saw four options: Stats, Tutorials, Quests, and Message Logs.
Checking on his stats quickly, he saw no massive changes. Only a point increase in each stat. So he went to a new option: Quests.
A new blue screen popped in front of his eyes with Quests at the top, but there were no quests so he closed it quickly. Sylas opened the Message Logs to see it was exactly what he expected, all the notifications he'd received from the System up to this point.
Underwhelmed by the new additions, Sylas decided to go through the tutorials he had ignored for the most part. Scrolling through the options, he noticed all the tutorials he had access to were about topics he had seen through the System, like Class and Tier from his Stat panel.
Sylas went through each tutorial he had access to for the next half an hour, absorbing each piece of information he saw, comparing it to normal video game logic, and trying to use his newfound knowledge to his advantage.
'Interesting…' Sylas thought to himself, 'I'll tell them when they're awake. After we find out if anyone's leaving.' His eyes narrowed at the thought, but quickly relaxed. 'It's okay if they leave. We just saved them yesterday and it's not like I think they owe me for that.'
'Mana is going to be extremely important for the future. I should see if I can feel it again.' With that thought, Sylas relaxed in his bean bag, focusing on his stomach area in search of mana. He tried to will his mana to move around, but wasn't able to feel anything. Not giving up, Sylas focused for 15 minutes before resting while he thought about plans for the future.
Cycling between mana training and planning for the future, an hour and 45 minutes passed. Sylas was getting more and more excited with each mana training session as he was now able to feel the mana in his core area. It was faint, but he was positive he was moving mana out of wherever it was stored within his body.
As he was pushing himself further by trying to expand the faint mana presence, Sylas heard a shuffling coming from in front of him. He opened his eyes to see Professor Medina stirring from her sleep and stretching. She jumped a little when she opened her eyes and saw Sylas look at him, but soon gave a sheepish smile.
After a quick look around, "Food?" Professor Medina softly whispered towards Sylas. Glancing at the System clock to see it was 7:30, he nodded. They both stood up, stretching again before Sylas went over to the windows to crack them open so the fumes from the gas grill wouldn't kill them before the zombies and mutated animals had the chance to. He was barely able to hold himself back from laughing at the absurd thought.
The smell of food woke Swain, Sam, and Diana when the professor was almost done cooking. With a bit of grumbling from Sam and Swain, they got up and prepared themselves for the day.
****
The group of five sat in their bean bags after having eaten a stew for breakfast. Sam and Swain looked as though they were going to fall back asleep if no one stopped them so Sylas cleared his throat, gathering everyone's attention.
"I think it's time we talk about the future." Sylas started with a grim voice. "To begin with, I'll tell you the basics about my plans so you can make informed decisions." Sylas looked around to see each person paying full attention to him.
"Okay, mine, Sam's, and Swain's family are all in the suburbs of Red Oak City so we are heading there." Getting to this point, Sylas made eye contact with Sam and then Swain who both nodded, affirming his decision. "I don't know if the military or government is still functional, but I can't afford to wait here to see.", He continued.
"Getting to our families is the most important objective for us at the moment. Getting there would typically take an hour using the train, but with the power out, I doubt they'll run even if we knew how to get them to move." Pausing for a moment to reassess how much he wanted to divulge before he heard from the professor and Diana, Sylas added one last bit of information. "When you make your decisions, I don't want you to factor in that we rescued you. We were there for Sam and you two were just lucky to be there too. Okay?"
'That felt a little mean, but I don't want them to follow me out of obligation.' Sylas thought, 'Hell, I don't even want anyone to follow me. Swain is already enough of a headache.' Sylas shook his head as he looked over to Swain who was smiling to himself while stroking his mustache without a care in the world.
Sylas focused again as he heard a quiet voice. "I want to go with you guys. I… I don't have any family so I have nowhere to go. I'd rather stay with you." Diana wildly blushed and looked down as she finished speaking. Sylas smiled as he noticed she kept glancing up at Swain before returning her gaze to the floor.
His gaze drifted to Professor Medina who was lost in thought. After a few more seconds, her gaze focused and landed on Sylas. "I'll follow you." Just as Sylas thought that was the end of what she had to say, Professor Medina sighed and started to speak again. "I also don't have anyone to go to. My family isn't in Silver Oak Country so I doubt I'll have any way to see them anytime soon."
Sylas gave a small smile and looked between the two women. "Alright then, Diana, Professor-" He was cut off mid sentence. "Call me Jackie. I'm only a couple years older than you guys and I'm not teaching at a university anymore." Jackie said with a self deprecating smile.
"Diana, Jackie," Sylas chuckled, "Welcome to the team. As you saw yesterday, we have pretty good chemistry while we fight and decently varied strengths. One thing you must know is that everyone will have a role in our group whether that's in combat or out of it."
There was a flash of fear in Jackie's face. The fear quickly faded, but Sylas was paying attention to her when he mentioned combat so he saw everything. Jackie had participated yesterday, but she had been very timid, only doing exactly what she was told and staying as far away as possible.
"Jackie, I know you don't want to fight, and that's okay. The only time you'll be asked to fight is when we're being overwhelmed, like yesterday when the packs of zombies didn't stop showing up." Sylas tried to reassure her, but Jackie only gave a small smile before looking at the ground again.
"Alright, before I tell you what I found out from the tutorials I went through this morning, does anyone have any questions?" Swain raised his hand in response, making Sylas roll his eyes. Sylas pointed at Swain saying "Yes, young Shieldgrove?"
Swain stood up, bowing, "Thank you for calling on me, Sir Mr. Professor Leader Redstone, Sir. When are we going home?" Sylas went from shaking his head at how Swain addressed him to a sheepish smile. "Oh yeah, that's important to know," he chuckled. "I was thinking about tomorrow."
"Today we'll go out to gather any supplies we can. I also want to find a vehicle we can possibly commandeer, but that may be difficult since we don't have the keys." Jackie raised her hand so Sylas stopped talking and indicated for her to start.
"I don't have to call you all that, right?" She asked with a huge smile on her face. "Please don't." Sylas blushed a bit as the rest of the group laughed. Still chuckling, she continued "Okay, then," she pulled a set of car keys out of her pocket, "I have an SUV that you can commandeer."
The group all smiled as Sylas began again, "Alright, one step down. I want to head to each of our dorms to grab clothes and any other supplies we might think are useful. We'll go get Jackie's car, and bring it closer to us so we can load it, and we'll continue to learn more about this world. We'll move as a group."
Sylas asked for any questions again, but was met with no responses this time. "Then it's time to talk about some of the things I learned about what's happening."
He lectured them for the next hour about stats, classes, tiers, ranks, and what conclusions he came to when he learned everything. He told them how each stat was an average of multiple hidden stats that fell within the main category. The examples for hidden stats were pretty easy to guess and he went over them as well.
Swain enjoyed learning about strength as he was leaning towards a strength build with his large axe. Strength was made up of pushing strength, pulling strength, and then each individual muscle group's capabilities.
Vitality was a mixture of endurance, recovery, healing, and sturdiness.
Dexterity helped with precise movements, whether big or small, but didn't factor in speed.
Agility was focused on speed rather than precision, whether that was acceleration or max speed.
The conversation about Intelligence was the longest as it was what Sylas was the most interested in and had spent a large amount of time contemplating. He ended the conversation about stats and went in depth with his thoughts on mana.
"Mana is the new energy that was introduced to Earth at the start of the System Integration. As far as I can tell, mana is going to be a core part of everything in the future. Mana will be a part of each survivor as we level, hunt, and train. I believe mana, and the Int stat, will be important for everyone, even those who prefer to be meatheads."
Sylas got a chuckle out of the group while Swain gasped and feigned he was hurt by the comments.
"As far as I can tell, mana is used with any System skill, but I think we can control it on our own. I haven't had much luck with it so far, but I have made progress this morning so I'll be able to share more about it soon."
He continued for a while longer until Swain's eyes were glossed over. Sylas stood up, regaining Swain's attention, "Well, I'd say it's time to head out. Empty the bags and we'll go tell Brock we're heading out."