“Ryder?” I call out to the group, who all stand in various points among the slowly dwindling number of monsters. “How many Rank Tokens did you get today?”

  “I’m at eight so far!” he screeches, and I wonder how long he’s been busting to get that out, waiting for someone to ask. “The surge gave me three!”

  “I’ve got eight, too,” Nancy tells us from where she stands. “Two from the surge, the rest from… this.”

  “This is the best day ever!” Ryder exclaims, his excitement making me laugh.

  “Savannah? Beaker?” I rotate in my spot, being careful not to step on the dead raccoon at my feet.

  “Ten for Sav, eleven for me, so far,” Beaker answers. “Is this.. normal?”

  “Definitely not!” Ryder answers.

  “We got three in one day, over three different surges, and that was a big deal,” says Nancy.

  “Wait, they got more than we did!” Ryder says, the numbers that Beaker said catching up to him. “Not fair!”

  Nancy lets out one of her hums. “I think it makes sense. In a regular video game, don’t you need to get exponentially more experience for each level? Maybe we need exponentially more exposure to magic.”

  “Oh,” Ryder says, scuffing his feet and kicking a small critter. I cringe, but it doesn’t seem to bother the kid. “I guess that makes sense.”

  “Jane?” Nancy asks. “What are you at?”

  I wonder if I want to mention the weird symbol that showed up for me, or the weird vision that preceded it. “Um. Well.”

  “Just spit it out,” Ryder says, sounding a little defeated. “None of the rest of us passed out, so you must have gotten a good dosage.”

  “I’m at fourteen.”

  Ryder drops to his knees, lifts his hands into the sky, and cries out, “Whhyyyyy!?”

  The rest of us laugh, but the tense mood isn’t quite dissipated yet.

  “That kind of thwarts your theory, Nancy,” Savannah says.

  Nancy nods. “True. But Jane’s also the Party Leader. Maybe she gets a cut of all of ours?”

  “The Game just said we share inventory and map stuff. It’s never said anything about me getting extra perks.”

  “Because the Game’s always been so thorough and outright with its information,” Nancy deadpans.

  I stifle a laugh at that, but Nancy hears me anyways, and a small smile tugs at her lips. I immediately try to shove four of my Tokens into my Telekinesis skill. The thing needs serious upgrading.

  You can only distribute up to three Tokens per day.

  “What!?” I say, the sound bursting out of me. “That’s never been a rule before!”

  “What’s never been a rule?” Ryder says. But the Game is already answering me:

  You’ve never tried to use more than three in one day before, so how do you know?

  “Watch the snark, mister,” I grumble, but I spend the time casting my brain back and thinking it through. I think it’s right. Wait, no—the day I first gained the Compass Ability. I’m pretty sure I used four that day! “Didn’t I use more than three the first day I got the Compass? I’m pretty sure I levelled it, and my strength, and my telekinesis, all on the same day.”

  “Who’s she talking to?” Savannah asks.

  “The Game,” Nancy says. “She must be pissed, because she’s pretty good and keeping her private conversations with it in her head.”

  “We can talk to the Game?” Beaker asks.

  Please hold.

  …

  It appears you are correct. But the rules can change. From this point forward, you can only use up to three Rank Tokens in one day.

  There was a change in the way the words appeared in my mind, for that last sentence, and I realized a moment later that it was because the Game was broadcasting it to everyone. Ryder lets out a groan. Even Nancy says a small “Oh, drat.”

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Guess we’ll have to be a little bit more careful about what we spend our Tokens on,” I say. What I don’t say is that it means we have some time before we need to go hunting for surges again. At three a day, Ryder and Nancy won’t need new ones for another two days—and that’s assuming they don’t still gain a few more, as the pile of dead animals continues to shrink around us.

  I’m not mad about that, to be honest. It means we’ll have time to build up Beaker’s contraptions, or walls around the neighbourhood.

  Do we need to go looking for new people, too? I haven’t quite figured that part out. Do we go and try to recruit people? Or do we wait for people to search us out?

  We don’t say much else as the last few monsters release their magic and the ash spirals up into the sky. Then we’re left alone with a field dyed red from blood and innards. At least with no corpses left, we’re able to retrieve the weapons that were dropped, thrown, or lost in the fight. I pull the few I grab into my weapons stash, and Ryder hands me the ones that he found. He scans around him quickly, and when he realizes that we’re alone, he takes a half-step toward me.

  “Hey, Jane,” he says, his tone a little wary.

  He immediately has my full attention. “What? What’s wrong?” I look him over, head to toe, to make sure he’s okay. There’s no injuries—or if there were, Nancy took care of them—but he’s still covered in the after-effects of a battle. “Is everything okay?”

  “Oh, no, I’m fine. Nothing’s wrong,” he says, understanding my reaction. “I mean, other than the emotional turmoil that these battles bring on.”

  I stifle a laugh. “Was that supposed to be a joke, or do we need to scope out a therapist to move into the house on our other side?”

  “A joke. Mostly.”

  And let’s be real, we should probably all be talking to a therapist regardless.

  “Okay, so what’s up?”

  But before Ryder can tell me whatever was on his mind, Savannah and Beaker pop up beside me. “We got everything,” he says, “and I don’t think I can handle the stench here any more, so let’s head back? We can shower, clean up, and reconvene at your house to talk about how to use these Tokens and what we do next?”

  As Beaker spoke, I turned to him. Now I turn back to Ryder, to see him biting his lip, but he doesn’t say anything untoward to or about Beaker, and instead just nods and smiles. “I think that sounds like a great plan,” he says.

  He pivots and starts heading back toward the car.

  “Is he okay?” Savannah asks.

  I nod. “He’s nine, and that was a big fight, and we watched a giant pile of monster corpses decompose in front of us. Would you be okay?”

  “No, probably not.”

  “Not to mention that we learned today that all the monsters we’ve killed over the last week would have released their magic, meaning it was a resource that we missed out on. There’s plenty that we’re not really okay about.” I turn away from where he and Nancy stand beside the Volvo. “But we don’t really have a choice, so we’ll all be okay.” I look first at Savannah, then at Beaker. “Are we okay?”

  The two of them share a glance, but then they both turn back to me with nods. “This part of it really sucks,” Savannah says, gesturing to the destroyed farmland. “And to have spent the last however many days—”

  “Five.”

  “Five days. Jeez.”

  “But we get it,” Beaker says. “These Rank Tokens, the way we can level up, it’s… it’s more than helpful. It’s make-or-break.” I nod, but I say nothing else. “So we get it. And we’re grateful that you’re letting us in.”

  “So… friends?” Savannah asks, offering me her hand.

  “You sure you wouldn’t rather have me kiss you again?” I ask, because being a little difficult is too easy to avoid.

  Savannah’s lips thin and the colour drains from her face.

  “I’m kidding,” I say with a chuckle, and I give a firm shake of her outstretched hand. “Friends.” I glance at Beaker, give him a nod.

  And that’s that. We go back to the car, we make the drive home, we head into our separate houses and clean ourselves up.

  Later, after I’m clean but before Savannah and Beaker come back, I stare at my profile from the comfort of my bed. After all of it, the surge and the animals and the weird vision, I got twenty new Rank Tokens today. The weird part, though, is that the last one arrived after we left the scene of the battle. Somehow, I’m still gaining Tokens despite not being anywhere near any magical ash. And that sort of confuses me.

  I look at my profile as a whole, something I don’t do too often.

  Party Leader: Jane

  Race: Human

  Class: Fighter

  Secondary Class: Magician

  Level: 4

  Rank: 33

  Statistics:

  Mental [5]

  Physical [6]

  Magical [7]

  Abilities:

  Telekinesis [level 3]

  Compass [level 4]

  You have [20] unused Rank Tokens.

  I’m not sure where that level 4 comes from. That’s new since I last looked, but I don’t recall fighting another human. It concerns me, when I don’t understand it. And the Rank: 33 doesn’t confuse me, but it does terrify me.

  I don’t feel different. And yet, I know that I’m not the same. I can run long distances now when I used to get a cramp after about twenty feet. I can pick things up easily that used to be heavy, or difficult, or impossible. I’ve definitely lost weight, but whether that’s the restrictive diet or the magic, it’s hard to be sure. Maybe a little bit of both. As my physical stat raises, with each Rank Token I put into my strength, it’s making my whole body a better physical tool. I suppose that means slimming down.

  We might have to make another trip to the mall. My jeans are getting a little low on my hips. A knock on the front door echos through the house. Guess Savannah and Beaker are here.

  I take my time. And for the first time in a while, I miss my mom. I miss the ease of someone else being in charge, or being able to lean on someone else for help or support. I know that Nancy is there, if and when I need her. But she still looks to me for decisions. And I still know nothing about leading any sort of community. How exactly am I going to build one?

  At least it means I know what my plan for tomorrow will be. A little shopping trip and then checking out the address that Sutherland Beverly gave me. If I don’t want to be in charge, then I’ll just have to find someone who seems able and ready to do it instead. Hopefully not going to that address today is going to be okay. But if he is truly a precog, wouldn’t that mean he’d already know we weren’t going to make it today?

  It all hurts my head.

  I close up my profile. I think about asking the Game for advice, or if that’s a terrible idea. The Game seems to want to help us, but it can’t entirely be trusted.

  Letting out something between a sigh and a groan, I sit up on my bed. I guess I should go gather with the others, discuss our next steps. Though it seems kind of weird to me, now that I’m thinking about it, that Beaker and Savannah knocked on the front door.

  “Jane?” Nancy’s voice calls up through the house. “There’s someone here you should come see.”

  I guess it wasn’t Beaker and Savannah. I head out of my room and over to the top of the stairs, glancing down into the front foyer.

  No. Freaking. Way.