We finished making our way through the massively long warehouse. Sergeant Hamm started with, “I’ve kept us in Air conditioning for as long as I could. This last stretch is going to be outside on the train tracks.”

  After we all provided our obligatory groans, we made our way to the train tracks on our left. We could have been taking the train tracks the entire time, but I didn’t want people to trip over train tracks if we could avoid it.

  Nora was the one to finally ask a question, that had been on my mind for a while, “If you guys have been integrated into the system for so long, then why aren’t you level 30 or more?”

  “All you noobs are getting up to nine times the normal amount of experience that you would normally get. You can set experience to numeric and not percentile. We know exactly how much a level one human gets for killing a variety of levels of monsters, even with variances in affinities. The YAHWEH peace accord grants all humans on earth triple the experience of normal. That is one top of the rising mana doubling or tripling experience gains. Humans are getting six to nine times the normal amount of experience. You folks don’t know the slowdown that happens after level 5 or 10.” Hamm sounded almost bitter or defensive.

  “What the Fuck!” I blurted out. “How long did it take you to get to level 2?”

  “Less than a week. Level 1 to level 2 is the easiest and quickest journey. Level 5 to 6 took 2 months of missions. Until all hell broke loose, I was stuck on level 15 for better part of a year.”

  “I guess that explains why the low levels we keep fighting. If they were higher, we’d be screwed.” Frank said.

  “I’m guessing they are actually being penalized going from a 100% mana saturation to less than that. That would explain their very static sets of levels in our world,” Nora calmly injected.

  Sergeant Hamm replied, “You are both correct. If we were fighting their more elite troops right now, we’d all be dead. Killing a bunch of level 3 to 5 abyssal orcs is fairly easy with the right gear. Killing their level 15 berserkers is rough.”

  I interjected, “We did kill one of their shaman yesterday. It was difficult, but not impossible.”

  Mo replied, “Oof, I know those stone and ice spikes well. Sniping spell casters has always been our best bet. When they get the opportunity to get defensive spells and other abilities going, they become absolute pains in the ass.”

  “We have figured out how to make enchanted bullets, but are you guys able to imbue them with extra damage?”

  “Classified, for now.” Sergeant Hamm cut off the question. “If the General gives the go ahead, we will read you in more thoroughly. Until then, there are some limits to what we can explain.”

  This whole conversation continued as we walked down the train tracks. I didn’t want the conversation to end. This was the best intel we’ve had since the start of the apocalypse. I knew it would end soon, but any extra information we could squeeze out would be so beneficial.

  I ventured the big question, “Do you guys have class cores?”

  “Not on us,” Hamm responded.

  “Crap. The problem is that I have sort of…”

  “Maxed a 5 level class?” Hamm finished my statement.

  “Yeah. Does that happen often?” I was more than curious. He could have serious answers.

  “More often than we’d like. Our classes are typically 10 to 15 levels. I was told you had some sort of politics career.”

  “Legislative Aide.” I just told him that. Before we were just getting information, but now I felt like I wanted to answer questions. It was a strange foreign feeling. I concentrated on my passive for a moment, and it went away. Maybe these guys have an aura or passive to increase people talking to them. It certainly made sense.

  “That gives you… Assess?” I bet they knew a ton of classes and the class abilities. It was a good way to study potential enemies. I hope he didn’t consider me an enemy.

  “Yes. I am almost at level 7 experience point wise, but I’ll stop getting experience really soon.”

  “There are options, but back at Colorado Springs. We have… resources.”

  Frank spoke up, “How dangerous is the world dungeon?”

  “Depends. There is nothing near Colorado Springs or even up in Ray Mountain in Alaska that is dangerous. We routinely clean out the levels down to the 5th level of the world dungeon. We haven’t lost a soldier in over 3 years down there.”

  “I’m guessing there aren’t a lot of you,” Frank continued.

  “Not nearly enough. Not enough to fight or win a war. We could have 100 times what we had pre apocalypse, and still not win a war.”

  “Yeah, but everyone’s been inducted into the system?,” Frank looked confused.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “If we had time to train everyone and level them up to 20 or higher, then we could have shut down a lot of this from the get-go.”

  Nora butt in, “You aren’t even level 20!” She had this flabbergasted look on her face.

  “Kind of my point,” Hamm replied calmly. “We know that we aren’t up to the kind of level you need to be to raid the abyss and shut down their portals.”

  “Are you saying we have no chance to win?” Nora was pissed, but she tried to keep her emotions in check.

  “We will win, but we will be fighting a retreat from major cities for a while. We’ll establish perimeters and then slowly close back in on the demons. Right now, we have to contain them to the best of our ability, while getting as many civilians as possible out of harm’s way. The last 6 days have been crazy.”

  Now, I was annoyed and angry, “How is that whole containing thing going?”

  “Like Shit,” Mo said real fast before Hamm could respond.

  “How did you guys get stuck at a rail yard anyways?”

  “Billionaire woman and her truckloads of historical art she had to save.”

  “How did you get stuck on escort duty?” I asked before Frank could.

  “She has connections. She is in charge of some hedge fund that invests heavily in the defense industry.”

  “You don’t mean Karen Conway?” I was worried.

  “Yes. Do you know her?”

  “She knows my family. Not a fan. She keeps supporting people to unseat my dad from his congressional seat.” This was not good. A person who didn’t like my family, and had a history of trying to sabotage us politically. Well, at least I knew what I was walking into.

  “Maybe you can win her over, Neal!” Frank stated almost enthusiastically.

  I shot him a look. “Frank. That may not be in the cards. She wants a politician that would do her bidding on anything related to military spending. It’s not how I or any member of my family rolls.”

  Hamm smirked, “Your dad never struck me as some sort of lackey or something.”

  “He isn’t. He supports the military. The whole family does, but we aren’t here to enrich a bunch of defense contractors. We’d rather see stuff go to the troops that actually helps them.” I shrugged. I needed to use the next however long to mentally prepare myself for a woman that was just a raging bitch.

  Frank kept asking about the World Dungeon. He seemed fascinated by it. There was apparently an underground highway they created for the three western hemisphere entrances. It took a lot less time to travel the world dungeon that it should normally. The way it was explained was confusing for me, and my intelligence had gone up 2 points in less than a week. How could space be compressed and expanded at the same time. I just nodded along while mentally preparing myself.

  Natalie’s hand slipped into mine. “Neal. It’s going to be okay. This Karen Conway isn’t going to ruin our day.” My head turned to face hers. She searched my eyes before giving me a small smile, “Today is going to be great. We’ll get to this rail yard, get those trains hooked up, and then we are all going to get the hell out of here. You’ll see.” Hearing her say those words did put me more at ease. I felt better with her hand in mine. I really do like this woman. I couldn’t help myself. I smiled.

  That smile lasted until we heard gunfire up ahead. Hamm and Mo started moving faster, while I spoke up, “Everyone we need to keep up with our escorts the best we can.” I sped up, but I really wasn’t going to completely keep pace with them. I released Natalie’s hand as it got ridiculously difficult to hold her hand while jogging. Nora and Frank had no problem pacing me, but it was our dream team. I didn’t bother assessing their classes and levels, as I had bigger problems to worry about. Now, I was worried we’d leave them behind and exposed.

  I looked to Natalie and nodded my head towards the group behind us. She smiled and slowed down to stay back with them. I felt better now that she was behind me. Maybe men do have it hardwired into them to be protectors.

  On our right, the tracks expanded to several more lanes. On these, underused I guess, lanes there were still dozens and dozens of train cars. Our goal became to get to the first ones. We were still behind Mo and Hamm, but they were shooting at some creatures on a bridge up ahead. If it didn’t have a giant sign beneath the road portion stating loudly that it was Arsenal Street, then I would have had no clue which street was ahead and above us.

  Natalie helped chorale our train experts and keep the moving forward, though at a slower pace. Natalie moved up and small bolts of fire at the creatures, which were looking a lot like more goblins on top of the big horse sized spiders. The first bolt knocked a spider at a leg joint causing it to back up. Mo and Hamm kept popping goblins off the backs of the spiders. There were only three spiders, but they were all fairly spaced apart. There was really no opportunity to use an area ability or grenade.

  Frank rushed forward behind his giant riot shield and activated his taunt ability, “Hey, stupid little goblins, I’m right here and waiting for you!” Frank should lose experience for the lack of originality. However, it was extremely effective as two of the oversized spiders rushed down the sides of the bridge, even dropping to the ground to get to Frank faster. With only one left on the bridge, I took aim and activated predictive aim. There were three images of the spider at first as it moved back and forth to avoid the two guys with magical assault rifles. I really needed to get myself one of those. One image merged with a second, but the spider kept moving in a strange pattern. After a dozen seconds of shooting by everyone else, it finally slowed, and the images joined together, flashing green for a second. I pulled the trigger. A shot through one of its eyes. I was getting better with my shooting from that ability. The focus was amazing. I had a brief headache that went away as I looked at the spider rearing up to protect its eyes. At which point someone else quickly dispatched it.

  The fight on the ground was much more precarious. Frank was fending off two different spiders. If it wasn’t for the large size of his riot shield, he would have lost body parts by now. He looked like he needed a large shield on each arm. He shoved back on the spider from his left with his shield, only to jump back to avoid the other from flanking him on the right. The little goblins on top of the spiders really just added to the chaos, throwing javelins at him and the rest of us.

  Nora shouted, “Fire in the Hole!” A small bead of fire shot from her extended index finger. It went behind the spiders as Frank turtled as best he could behind his shield. The resulting fireball engulfed the Spiders and the goblins on top. The spider slightly closer to the impact was turned into a burning mess, every fiber and every hair on it’s body was alight with fire. The one to Frank’s right was better off, but not by much. The biggest problem was Frank’s shield; it looked more than a little burnt. Some of it had melted at the edges. Frank came out of the whole thing with scorches on his head. His armor came through surprisingly well. It didn’t have any specific fire resistance, but it was a sturdy set of armor. Mo and Hamm finished dispatching the spider. That was a very brief fight, and after checking with everyone, we all seemed to have come through. The only real problem was the mana expenditure. I genuinely hoped that it wouldn’t come back to bite us in the ass.

  Our escorts moved forward. They were heading towards gunfire in the distance. All we could do was follow behind as quickly as we could. We arrived at absolute bedlam. A large group of abyssal orcs was tearing into civilians. Fireballs weren’t going to fix it this time.