Grem stared at the stadium from the window of a building, his eyes keen as he saw different groups rotate in and out of it, a piece of gum in his mouth as he chewed, scratching the stubble beneath. New Nashville. New hell-hole, more like. The people running it had gotten uppity and started with grand proclamations of ownership of the remaining wastes of the city.

  Join or get out.

  Fuck’em.

  Grem scratched his greasy black hair and looked at the two guys behind him. Liam and Ralph. “See’em?”

  “Yeah, boss. Cozy.” Liam said.

  “How much food they got, ya think?”

  “Much as they can get. We’ve seen their scavengers and scouts picking through buildings.” Ralph reported, his eyes glowing as he ran through that head-skill of his. Recall? Something like that. “Estimating from the in and out, they probably have somewhere between three and five hundred people in there. Our infiltrator said as much, too.”

  Grem whistled.

  “And they got people running dungeons?” he asked after watching a new group enter the building. They looked torn up, five of them. More torn up than he was used to seeing with the scouts and scavengers.

  “More by the day.”

  “Mhmm.” Grem scratched at his chin again.

  So their boss wanted the reward from the dungeons and to strengthen his army. Some combination of the two… But the people in there didn’t know. He didn’t think they didn’t know. “They know what ya get when you dungeon clear?”

  “Our guy inside says no. Tight-lipped. They can guess a little cuz the system says so, but they can’t guess what.”

  Ah, they didn’t know.

  Faction points, and the System Store. That was a weighty secret to keep. Kinda fucked up. “Ah,” Grem grunted and kept scratching his beard.

  “Some of them started calling themselves the New Nashville Rangers.” Ralph kept going with his report. Then he kept on going after that. Pushing out, clearing dungeons, starting to say this and that was theirs, even with damn monsters roaming around.

  The more he listened, the more it boiled Grem’s blood.

  What right did they have to rule?

  This wasn’t no America no more. This wasn’t a place to get pushed around by a bunch of guys saying they were right. No. If you wanted to take charge, you had to have the firepower to back it.

  Grem kept chewing his gum.

  “More dungeons then. All of the boys. If they’re running’em, we runn’em better. We do it faster. We get stronger. Move up to the D- ranks—bring along the weaker guys.”

  “We’ll lose people,” Liam said the fact.

  “Think they aint either? We aint getting pushed outta our home by a bunch of upstart pigs with too greedy to share.” Grem narrowed his eyes as the latest beat-up citizens entered their cozy little town. Those people inside lived in their little world, in their little heads. They needed someone to come and tear down those steel walls, force’em to see the outside and live in reality. That’s what they needed. Anyone who couldn’t cope with how it was wasn’t meant for it.

  That’s the way Grem saw it. That’s the way these people should, too.

  Grem clutched his hand and got back from the window, taking a glance at his two boys. Liam, level 58, and Ralph—level 54. They went through that dungeon with him that kick-started this whole thing, but they were his boys long before that. Now, they’d keep on moving on.

  Nashville was theirs. New Nashville was just that sad clown Denny’s little too for power. He and his boys would never bend the knee for that prick.

  “Let’s go. Work to get done.”

  ###

  Colt sat with the rest of his group—they’d hopped the wall up and taken to a small bar in the stadium itself. Less than a month ago, there were people here slinging overpriced beer and food while people watched a football game. Now, the place was getting dusty. New Nashville hadn’t extended much up past the stadium grounds itself past security sweeps.

  A perfect place to train and concentrate.

  He did a quick scan of everyone. Julia was still unhappy and confused. Nick was rather reserved, Nate and Sarah were reliable and present. He’d wished Jimmy could be there with them, but the healers were under strict control, and a schedule to be on-call was needed for an emergency to happen. Among the total of New Nashville, only about five or so had any healing capabilities, and Jimmy’s was one of the top and most straightforward of them.

  He also inspected everyone.

  Low thirties. Aside from Nick, who’d hit forty in the fighting, that gave him the edge over everybody. But, the key to focus on in their training were two things, and that wasn’t levels.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Skills and Edicts.” Colt began with a sip of his coffee. Nate followed suit, rubbing at his eyes. “The two of these things, I think, have the ability to surpass pure levels. My Edicts are what let me close the gap between me and the enemies we fought. They’re the only reason we could take down Cerberus, and I think if we just barrel ahead taking down dungeons without refining these two things, we’ll get nowhere.”

  “I don’t understand Edicts. Please explain.” Nate asked politely.

  “…It’s like this,” Colt gestured to the space around him, “Everything has something going into it. A universal law, or set of laws, they operate under. At least, I think. When you step back, we’re all just being tugged along by these forces—these threads. An Edict is a set of those threads. I have two. Cut, and a much stronger Edict movement. Getting an Edict is coming to an understanding of this universal force. And being able to use it like a tool.” Colt raised a hand to stop Sarah from digging in with her questions.

  “It’s reliant on the Soul state. I know you probably haven’t invested much, but I’m not sure if all Edicts are completely reliant. I think… I have this Skill called meditate. If you can learn it and practice it, it might help bridge the gap and get you your first Edicts.”

  He could see that three of his audience members were lost. Nick was well aware, nodding along.

  Ah well.

  “Fold your legs and focus on your breathing.” Colt dove into the practical instructions on the skill, at least the best he could understand it. At its most basic form, it wasn’t as different as expected from any kind of meditation before the system took over.

  After about an hour of going over it—and breaks every fifteen or so minutes—they hadn’t made much progress.

  Teaching someone a skill, it turned out, was more difficult than anticipated. Colt had thought about doing so with Mental Resistance back in the Endless Alleys, but Bill’s manipulation had kept anyone from taking him seriously at the time. This was just further confirmation of the difficulty.

  Two hours later, they were hitting the point of giving up and moving to individual practice. This wasn’t all to waste, given Colt received the following:

  ———

  *Meditate* (Intermediate) has gained a level!

  ———

  A welcome reward. While training to train the others, he managed to advance it; he did so with a particular focus on Cut. But in doing so, he felt he was near an almost cliff in the Edict. Once he’d reached the peak of greater, there was something there like a wall. It was hard to define by sensing it out with his Soul—and something to explore more when he got time to sit down and focus.

  About an hour after that, Nick obtained the skill by focusing on his own Edict, which changed their perspective. It was probably possible for everyone to obtain it.

  After giving it just one more hour, they gave up on specific training for meditation. Colt told everyone to give it focus in their spare time, or at the very least to start throwing points into Soul as they leveled up; Julia seemed the most unconvinced out of anyone, considering she had to contend with magic too. But oh well.

  He tried to make heads or tails of that girl, but she didn’t make much sense.

  So, when they broke up into smaller groups, he picked her to be his partner—she to train her magic, and he to train his Phantom’s Gambit.

  They broke apart from everyone else, one of the little interior tunnels of the stadium where people sold food and merch. Julia held up her silver staff with a sapphire orb on the top; the gem spun slightly, flaring with a light blue glow as she channeled her water magic through it.

  An orb of water came at him, which faded right through his stomach with a quick activation of Phantoms Gambit.

  “So you’re the rogue in the group,” Julia said, watching her ball of water splash against the wall. “Shouldn’t you be more sneaky?”

  “I don’t exactly have stealth military training like Nate. I think… Rogue might be a bit of a stretch.”

  “We need someone to steal stuff.”

  She fired off two water orbs in rapid succession—these Colt managed to pass through him with a single use of Phantom’s Gambit… She seemed rather lackluster in the training.

  She fired off another single ball, and Colt got annoyed.

  “I’m not going to steal stuff.”

  “That’s too definitive. You’re the rogue. You’re the one who gets in trouble for getting their hands caught in someone’s pocket. This game sucks. I’m tired, and I’m sick of it.”

  “…What do you mean?” Colt asked as Julia set down her staff. The girl rubbed her eyes and let out a dramatic sigh.

  “I mean, I’m done. Go talk to your master AI or whatever, and move on to the next part—or if my kidnapper is watching, like… Come up with a better game. Come on. This sucks. This guy isn’t even being a rogue right. They made me waste hours on meditation and a Greek dungeon. Really? Lame.”

  Colt paced closer to her, wary. He’d seen Donny snap in a way like this, thinking the kitchen was still functioning. He waved his hand in front of her eyes. She tracked it with a pout on her face. Behind those eyes of hers, there was a part of this girl still functioning.

  “You’ve snapped?” He asked.

  “No, I’m just done playing pretend. I’ve read books just like this. Well. They had more dragons and stuff in them, and that was way more interesting, but come on.”

  “…Julia, this isn’t a game. The world ended.”

  “Just like an NPC would say. Are you going to give me a quest now to save some princess or something? Are we going to go do the water level next?”

  Wow. Colt stepped back from her.

  He didn’t know how to address this, but this disconnect from reality here… This was a serious issue.

  “Want me to shoot you with more water?” she asked while he thought.

  Colt stared at her. “No… Julia, how about you head home for the day and take a long rest? I’ll chat with everyone else and do some more training. I think you’ve worked hard enough.”

  “No thanks. If they aren’t going to end this, I guess I just need to grind out my levels. Then maybe I can build a cozy farm somewhere. Dodge, rogue.”

  Then, Julia fired off a flurry of water—to which Colt had no choice but to dodge; she drove him back with ball after ball, and he weaved in and out, activating his Phantom Gambit while trying loudly to talk her down. Each attempt made the girl only lay the pressure on thicker; the orbs of water grew denser. When they hit the wall, they hit it with a clunk.

  Water magic, it seemed, wasn’t something to play around with.

  It took her fifteen minutes to run out of mana.

  ———

  *Phantom’s Gambit* (Basic) has gained a level!

  ———

  Not how he pictured training, but when she finally settled down to recover his mana, he went and had a chat with his team. Julia was off the deep end; that much became clear. But nobody knew what to do—they sent her home, claiming they were done for the day, then Nate vowed to head to the White House and sort it out with the Mayor.