“So all I have to carry is my one canteen?” Heather asked cautiously, considering Danielle’s proposal for reading outdoors.

  “If it’ll convince you to come out, I’ll carry both of your canteens and your book,” Danielle promised. “I’m sure it’ll be burning hot or pouring rain soon enough, and we’ll be so busy we can’t even stand to stop and enjoy it if it was nice; we should enjoy today while we have a day we can enjoy.”

  “All right, all right, you convinced me,” Heather said. “To come out, not to do Akari’s exercises.”

  “I’m leaving that up to Akari,” Danielle said. “I’m only about half convinced myself. It did feel really good to stretch when I got up to come get you guys, though.”

  “I’m not doing any kind of workout today no matter what she says,” Sadie complained. “We overdid it yesterday, even for me and Akari. We need to rest and recover!”

  Nonetheless, she got up, and went to her footlocker. Danielle heard a metallic plink as she tossed in something small, presumably the mana token. She stood up with the plate from the Necessities Store’s cheap mess kits in her hand instead.

  Danielle collected Heather’s canteens and her book, then the other books, and put away the journals sitting out on her bed. She pulled one mechanical pencil and one pen out of the pencil case, and put that away too. Then she rummaged for the composition books under the kitchen counters.

  “We really need to organize that stuff, huh,” Sadie said from the sink as she refilled her canteen.

  “Yeah, we should probably spend some time on it tomorrow,” Danielle said. “Mmmaybe after we find food, though. We’ve got one oatmeal packet left from the boxed dinners, and then we’re breaking into the emergency rations, you know?”

  “We need to start planning our breakfasts the night before, don’t we?” Heather said. “We can eat Inside jerky if we have to, but we all need to be paying attention and agreeing on what breakfast will be, so whoever’s up first can get things started like you did today, Danielle.”

  “Yeah. Did we by some miracle find any tea in the dropped food? It seems way too light to ditch, but maybe in some of the extra bags people dropped more-or-less as packed? I didn’t get much of a look at the open-topped ones,” Danielle asked.

  “I think there was some tea,” Sadie said. “I’ll look for it when we come back. Got your staff, Heather?”

  “You mean my limping stick?” Heather joked. “I’ll get it on my way to the door when we’re actually ready to go.”

  “I found the notebooks!” Danielle announced. “I just need to fill these two canteens.”

  Sadie moved into the odd nook behind the door so Danielle could get to the sink. She filled her canteen and Heather’s, then opened the door a crack and peeked out.

  “Don’t you have a Skill for that?” Sadie joked.

  “Yeah, but it costs mana to activate, I know it was clear five minutes ago, and we’ve got Akari keeping an eye on it from the outside, so I figured a quick look would be safe,” Danielle explained, anyway. “We’re ready to move, Heather!”

  “All right, here I come.” Heather walked to the door, very slowly.

  Danielle couldn’t help wincing in sympathy. She decided not to comment on it, though; she figured a short walk and some warm sun on the sore muscles would help. Instead, she opened the door fully and stepped outside, books and canteens weighing down her satchel while the skewers and her staff took up her hands. “I hope I manage to get that mana enhancement Skill soon,” she told the others. “Otherwise, I’m going to get another level of Body just from carrying things. Shall we go around to the stairs?”

  “Yes, please,” Heather said. “I’m not in a mood to climb.”

  “Maybe I should carry the bag,” Sadie said, sounding a bit guilty.

  “No, it’s fine, I said I’d do it,” Danielle said. “Besides, I actually am feeling a little better after moving around a bit more, and this is n- well, OK, not nothing even after yesterday, but we’re not going very far.”

  Heather chuckled at that, and Sadie gave a lopsided smile. The three of them walked around the end of the building and back to the middle of the other side for the stairs.

  “It’s so unfair,” Sadie complained. “The buildings by the road have stairs on both sides, but here in six, we all have to use the odd-rooms side.”

  “Huh. I hadn’t noticed that,” Danielle said, looking back over her shoulder at building five, across the odd paved area between them. Sure enough, there were a set of stairs mirroring the stairs up to their building, but whereas building five had a like set on the side facing the road, the side of building six facing the trees had unbroken railings on all the balconies, and a smooth stretch of the retaining wall from one end of the sunken walkway all the way to the other. “I wonder if it’s supposed to be a subtle way of discouraging us from going east, or if there’s stuff in the forest they don’t want to give an easy way up, or what?”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Well there’s a happy thought,” Sadie said. “I hope it’s the first one, because if they’re trying to keep stuff from the forest away from the doors, those of us on the even-numbers side of the bottom floor are in trouble.”

  “Yeah, note to self, don’t leave anything food-like near the doors,” Danielle replied. “Attracting animals might be a real bad idea.”

  “We have to have food, first,” Heather said. Then, looking ahead to the campfire, she added “Oh, Cassy’s still with you?”

  “Oh, yeah. She’s kind of afraid of her roommates right now,” Danielle explained.

  “We only cut the rabbit in four pieces,” Sadie said.

  “It’s fine, we’re not even cooking yet, we’re studying,” Danielle replied. “Where do you want me to put your water down, Heather? Closer to the forest, or closer to the building?”

  “Building side,” Heather said immediately.

  Danielle made herself speed up just a bit, and set down Heather’s water bottles, book, and notebook on the side of the fire closest to the building. Then she handed Akari a notebook and one of the copies of the guidebook, and sat back down in her own position on the walkway, with the building on her left side.

  “What’s this now?” Akari said, taking the book and notebook.

  “We’re studying out here,” Danielle said. “You can bring up exercise again in a little while, but for now, we’re getting that reading done out here where we can get sunshine and fresh air, instead of inside a concrete box we’re all going to see far too much of soon enough. Everyone gets a notebook from, um, the SHAD Party supplies, to take notes in.”

  “Sneaky plan,” Akari said. Danielle was about to object to that, but Cassy was already saying something else.

  “SHAD Party supplies?” Cassy asked. “You guys have stuff that belongs to your System org already?”

  “We all helped carry it,” Akari said, truthfully and yet deceptively. “Danielle helped these two with the packing, too, she might be just slightly a genius at it.” Also true, Danielle noted, and also not quite relevant to the group supplies.

  “Oh, right, you all knew each other before,” Cassy said. “I’m so jealous of that right now. It’s not that I didn’t have any friends, but not a whole room’s worth that are all my same age, and girls.”

  “Don’t feel bad,” Akari said, “I almost ended up in the same boat just because I forgot that I could ask for people outside my class-year.”

  “What’s this about being afraid of your roommates?” Sadie asked.

  “Oh, um, they just – they’re all real close, and they got mad when I wanted to talk about get-to-know-you stuff, and kicked me out of the room. They told me to chop wood, but I don’t think they wanted the firewood really, they just wanted me to go away,” Cassy explained again. “Now I’m afraid to go back in case they get even madder and decide to, you know, make it a three person room. They say there’s at least two girls with Outlaw tags in our building already, what’s one more if she’s among friends?”

  “What? Who says there are?” Heather asked, alarmed.

  “My roommates say they saw two girls with Outlaw going up the stairs yesterday evening,” Cassy told her. “And they ran into people out hunting who said there were a bunch more Outlaws, and some boys with a System club they call the Wolf Pack area supposedly already level 3.”

  “Whoah, that’s crazy,” Sadie said. “It’s only the third day! How do you get to level 3 in less than three days?”

  “The very hard way, obviously,” Cassy said. “And then you spend the next three days hiding in your rooms, but you’re still level 3.”

  “Doesn’t get you any food unless you’re ready to go cannibal,” Akari said. “I’m happier with my twenty-five-mana rabbit. Let’s stop talking about the murderers and concentrate on not starving.”

  The others all nodded and got themselves settled around the fire with their books and their composition notebooks. Cassy quietly asked Akari if she could read over her shoulder, and settled in next to her to study the Ranger’s Guide. Danielle reclaimed Useful Crafts for Skill and Trade, leaving Sadie with the other copy of the general guidebook, while Heather stuck to the Guidebook to Edible Wildlife.

  Danielle read up on snares and traps, and copied diagrams and particularly important lines of instructions or advice into her notebook. She started a list of materials to gather on the last page of the notebook, making a column for stuff she would need to make tools and stuff she would need for the crafts themselves.

  Time passed, with everyone reading and taking notes, and of course drinking their water. At some point, Akari went back inside and refilled her canteens. Danielle went back in to use the bathroom a bit later. When she got back, she moved on to other types of crafts – less hunting related and more living related. Soap could be made entirely with wild materials, if they collected fat from animals they killed and cooked. Candles were also possible, with enough of the right kind of fat, or lamps with softer fats – lamps, Danielle noted, which resembled cruder versions of the oil lamps they had been offered on Decision Day. That made a bit more sense of them; a candle just burned away, and lamp oil like they had in the flasks might be hard to come by, but the lamps were simple enough to use other fuels, and wicking could be made from cording which in turn could be made from various plants, even plain grasses. The grass around the Rooms had been mown for some reason (perhaps as simple as giving the new Sent a place outside to relax?) but there was plenty of tall grass growing in the old town.

  Heather got Akari to walk with her to go inside to use the restroom and hang the mint to dry. Danielle had almost forgotten the mint and tomatoes, after the excitement of finding the scavenging and convincing the Rangers to let them take some of it. She flipped back to the last page of her notebook again, and added another column – a to-do list. Pick tomatoes, move mint, and dry mint went on the list. She almost asked the others about drying tomatoes, then reconsidered, since that was Party information and Cassy was there. Dry tomatoes got added to the list with a question mark. Danielle was pretty sure dried tomatoes were a fancy salad ingredient, though, so the thing should be possible.

  Danielle wasn’t exactly watching the building, but she was trying to stay aware enough of her surroundings that no one could just walk up behind her unaware. She was loosely aware, therefore, that the audience at the end of the building had dispersed, that small groups of people had been coming and going from various levels of the building, and that a number of people had gone south into the woods, mostly crossing the bounding walkway at various spots between the buildings. One group had even come around building six on the north end, and gone into the woods to the east.

  Suddenly, a shout came from the treeline close to Cassy’s pile of firewood. “HEY! She’s right there!” someone exclaimed in outrage.

  https://discord.gg/u5dtzpShv2