The Connected System

The three men left, leaving Loch and Darren.

“Who do we have for scouts,” Loch asked.

“There’s Davis Millman and Harper,” Darren answered. “They’re probably the two best, at least the highest Leveled. Two, maybe three more, that I’d call a scout. All three are classed. Barely.”

“We need to get eyes on the Gaunts,” Loch said, clearly not happy about it. “Can we organize something to give the scouts a support team?”

“Not really. We just don’t have the manpower right now.”

“There’s not enough front line fighters,” Kristin said, walking back into the office. She had her notebook under her arm, the thing never far from her side. Flipping through the pages, she ran her finger down until she found what she was looking for. She looked at Darren, who quickly got up and away from her desk. “We have around one hundred and twenty people right now. It’s hard to get an exact count as more keep coming in and luckily most of those coming in have some combat experience, but still don’t have the numbers to send out protection teams. Not if we want to keep the guard rotations.”

“And will probably need to add more guards,” Darren said. “There’s a lot of area here, especially if we want to expand.”

“Maybe this was a mistake,” Loch muttered, elbows on the table as he leaned his head down into his hands.

“What?”

“Coming here,” he said. “To the school.”

“Naw,” Darren said.

“Absolutely not,” Kristin replied.

Loch looked up at them, wondering if they just said that because he was the Clanlord, but from their expressions, they really did believe it, especially as Darren started to explain.

“The churches were never going to be a viable option long term. There were just so many issues and we were already outgrowing them. I hadn’t thought about coming here to the school as I had been thinking that we’d need to find something else but I never really had the authority to say anything to Mr. Turner.”

Loch nodded. Another example of his higher Level being the push. Or his more forceful personality? Either way, Loch had gotten what he wanted. He just wasn’t sure it was the right move.

“But think of it as a medieval town,” Darren continued. “The school is the castle. The most defensible place. We’ll grow around it, and retreat to the fortress when danger comes. The churches never were going to offer that.”

“Darren is right. The school is a solid structure. It’s basically a castle. It gives us a solid place to defend from. It was the right choice.”

“Thanks,” Loch said.

They were right and it was the same reasons he had wanted to come to the school. Every time he’d driven past it, which had been almost every day since they had moved to Northwood, he’d thought the large brick building had looked like a castle on a small hill. There was a lot of area around it, with the fields and anything they started building for housing and crafting. But Darren was right, if they approached it like an old medieval town, it would be defensible. Build a wall around the school and another around the first town, a third around any future growth.

Long term, if they got enough fighters Leveled, they could keep the monsters in the surrounding woods down and not a threat.

He had already generated a Quest, could he do more? The school was the Clanhold, which gave Loch a lot of Abilities and options, things he hadn’t even started to look into, but could he issue kill quests? Gathering quests?

The crafters weren’t necessarily going to be fighters, they might not be able to go out and gather their own materials. The old MMOs he’d played, gathering quests were very common. Adventurers and the heroes of the stories, would be tasked with getting those materials especially ones from dangerous areas.

It would make sense in this new Connected World. Earth was a Resource Planet, which meant there were going to be a lot of Resources out there to find. And monsters.

They had the Dungeon, and probably more nearby including a possibility at the Lynxia den, but by the rules of the Dungeon and it needing to regenerate the Spirit used to create the monsters and the Dungeon itself, there was a time limit to how often a group could enter. That slowed down the overall Leveling speed of the community.

The Clan.

He had to start thinking of it as a Clan.

Clan Brady.

His Clan.

That was going to take a lot of mental adjustment to get used to.

But if he could start issuing quests to kill monsters and gather materials, earning experience, it would go a long way to getting more people Leveled.

“So how do we deal with all of this,” Loch asked.

“Deal with what,” Ed Turner asked, stepping into the office area.

All heads turned to watch the shorter man walk around the counter. Ed had been a town Selectman with dreams of becoming a State Senator and then a National Senator. He had been the first one to think of using the Town Hall as a natural gathering place. The building itself had been one of the ones removed by the Connection, which had prompted him to start organizing the survivors at the churches down the road. He’d been doing a good job.

Loch still felt bad about taking over. It hadn’t been his intention, it had just happened.

“We were just talking about how to keep an eye on the Gaunts, keep enough patrols out and get everyone Leveled,” Kristin said.

Ed’s face turned into a slight pout, looking hurt, that quickly disappeared. Loch caught it, feeling guilty. It was the type of conversation Ed should have been around for. Ed might not have been in overall charge anymore but he was in charge of the day to day running of the new Clan Brady and the Clanhold.

It had been a conversation Ed needed to be around for, more so than Loch who wanted to step away from all the decisions.

Loch felt like apologizing but that would have probably made it worse.

Ed wasn’t a bad guy, a little too political for Loch’s taste. His wife, Susan, and Loch’s wife, Kelly, had been very good friends. The two families had spent a lot of time together. Something Harper hadn’t liked, as Ed’s son Mike was kind of creepy. Loch had never really looked forward to those joint family gatherings. He just didn’t have anything in common with Ed.

At least they hadn’t.

Now they were starting to.

But it had been set up with Ed in charge, Loch the power.

Which is the way Loch wanted it.

He just had to remember that and not do meetings like he just had without Ed around. He’d apologize later, when it was just the two of them.

“Even with the newcomers, we don’t have enough,” Ed said, more a statement and not question.

“Not really,” Kristin said.

“We have a couple scouts we can send to keep an eye on the gaunts, but not enough to send a support team with them.”

Ed’s desk was in his own office, he didn’t have a space out in the open area, so he joined Darren in leaning against the counter. Loch wondered if they could get smaller desks, maybe add one more or at least get enough space for some seating. The open area hadn’t been meant for meetings, but it appeared it would end up that way.

“I’m assuming we’re adding the fields to the guard rotation, considering what happened earlier today,” Ed asked, getting nods in return. To his credit, Ed didn’t make a comment about how he should have been there for the meeting. “So that takes manpower away from the support teams?”

“Why do we even need support teams?,” Kristin asked.

“Protection for the scouts,” Darren replied. “Back in the Army, the forward observers would be out in front, maybe with an additional person, but not that far away would be a squad. There’d be a communications person, someone with medical training, but really their purpose was to protect the observer getting to the target zone and back, and to provide covering fire if the observer was seen and had to exfil quickly.”

Kristin nodded. She hadn’t been military but understood the concept.

“And we’d want the scouts to be in shifts,” Ed asked.

Darren nodded.

“We could make a smaller support team, just enough that there is one awake at all hours. If the idea is to just provide some muscle if the scout runs back with a bunch of monsters chasing them.”

“That might work,” Loch said. Like Darren, he’d spent some time in the Army, and had the basics of tactical thinking. There were probably others in the Clan that had more, they just hadn’t found them yet. “Three scouts on shifts, and four or five in a group for support?”

“We could probably manage that,” Darren said, still not convinced. “I don’t like sending Level Five’s out there without a higher level with them.”

“Send Brian or Davis,” Ed suggested. “Some of the newcomers are around those Levels but…”

“We don’t know them,” Darren said.

“Does that matter,” Loch asked. “We’re not keeping secrets or hiding anything, just looking for muscle to scout out the threat.”

“Potential threat,” Ed corrected.

“No, the gaunts will be a threat,” Loch said. “Which is why we need a scout to watch them. The gaunts are a threat to everyone here, which means everyone should help out.”

“I guess,” Darren said, shrugging. “We’d already talked about building a wall. That’s something we need to get started on. There’s enough people to provide manual labor for that project.”

“And it will keep them busy,” Ed said. They all knew how important it was to keep the survivors motivated and working. Everyone had to keep busy.

“We need to get more food,” Kristin said, looking through her notebook again. “Even with what was brought back this morning.”

“Nick said the hunters will get back out there in the next day or so,” Loch said.

“Didn’t you say you had maps of the area?,” Darren asked. “Those would come in handy, not just for the hunters. We might want to look into setting up outposts in the forest.”

“Yeah, back at my house. Shouldn’t take more than a day or two to go and get them.”

And there was his excuse. Loch was glad he hadn’t come up with it. It felt selfish to want to go to his house, when everyone else was leaving theirs. There would be an added benefit, he realized. If he was gone for a couple of days, that would give time for Ed to step fully into the leadership role over the Clan and Clanhold. If Loch wasn’t there, they’d have to go to Ed.

Perfect, Loch thought. Finally, he was going to get to go home.