The System Apocalypse Books 4-6: The Post-Apocalyptic LitRPG Fantasy Series

by Tao Wong

  After that, I scavenge some old clothes. Blue jeans and a T-shirt with a goth girl with an ankh design on it replaces my combat gear. I keep the sidearm and a beam rifle though, wearing both out in the open, along with the combat boots. While the weapons might be a tad more expensive than normal, everyone’s packing these days. A quick discussion with Ali has him shifting some information on my Status. He can’t do much about the Level, but I now read as a Level 39 Guard. High enough to raise more than a few eyebrows, but at least to all casual scans, I’m just a Basic Class.

  Working my way towards downtown Vancouver the next evening is easy. Making sure to come in with the scavenger groups means I’m just another dot on the Sect’s sensors as I walk in through the streets of Coquitlam. That’s the thing about the Lower Mainland and Canada. While we might have lost ninety percent of our population, Canada’s population has always been concentrated in a few major cities. Even ten percent of a million is a lot of people, and with all the towns around the city abandoned, the survivors have concentrated significantly. All those people need to hunt, farm, build, and otherwise improve themselves. Which means hunting parties, scavenger parties, farming groups, and more. The Sect might own and run the place, but they don’t have the numbers to check out everyone.

  That’s the next thing I notice. Roxley had his guards in his livery to make themselves easy to notice. Policemen normally are noticeable; after all, it helps keep the rabble in line. The Sect members do the same here, mostly by just being different than us humans. It takes only a short while for Ali to point out that not every single alien is a Sect member though. After that and a bit of grumbling, he adjusts the aliens’ descriptions. Now, every Sect member who publicly displays his allegiance—which is likely all of them—is marked above their heads via their Status bars as well. That’s good, because I really don’t want to kill an innocent.

  It’s interesting to watch the reactions of the other humans to the other species. Few humans talk to them. Even fewer seem friendly with any of the aliens. Oh, some are worming their way into the Sect’s good graces by toadying up, but whether it’s because they suck at that or are just exaggerating for the aliens, picking out their motives is easy. But for the majority, the silent edge of resentment and anger is there in the sidelong glances and twisted lips when the Sect members aren’t looking.

  Not that the Sect members are helping matters. Most act like the small-time bullies they are, giving a shove here, a shakedown there. Lording it over the humans wherever they can.

  “They’re making this too damn easy,” I send to Ali, glancing at a pair of beast-like creatures shaking down a scavenger party. It also explains why most of the humans use normal bags rather than their storage. Though I’m curious how the Sect is stopping people from sneaking things in via storage.

  “Auditors. They’ve got the ability to look into your storage, with your consent or without if they’ve got enough strength,” Ali says, answering the implied question. “Go right here. There’s a group of Sect members coming down the street who are looking bored. Better to skip around them.”

  “Got it,” I say, sighing. I’m not the only one who does that, though most who duck out are ahead of me, I notice. Pissing off the humans they guard is definitely helping me blend in, since no one wants to meet the Sect members if they can help it. “Not many Serfs here.”

  “We’re still on the edges. They’ll keep the Serfs close on hand. Don’t want them running away,” Ali says.

  I nod, rubbing my chin absently as I assess the areas. Truth be told, so far, the city looks much like the towns I’ve seen. Windows and doors broken, abandoned cars rusting on the streets, occasional monsters popping up then hiding as they sense the Level difference. On occasion, a few utterly insane monsters attack and are put down. More cars of course, a lot more cars on the major roads, abandoned and useless, but I don’t stay on those byways much.

  But in time, I spot the differences. The Mana flows in a big city are more concentrated and grow greater as I head deeper into the Lower Mainland. While Coquitlam might be a “Village,” it could easily be considered a Level 10-20 zone, with a few of the wooded parks and neighborhoods jumping up another zone level again. Monsters grow and populate around here, seeming to thrive on the unregulated flow of the city.

  The blooming dots of monsters at certain buildings—the hospital, the campus, a weird strip mall—all speak to monster hives that haven’t been dealt with. Maybe even dungeons in the making. And then there are the occasionally destroyed neighborhoods, entire buildings wrecked in what must have been periods of intense fighting.

  But no humans—at least none who have made it their goal to live out here. Which is surprising. I expected holdouts, groups settled into defensible regions, creating their own tiny communities. Instead, I see none of that. A few groups here and there stay alone, but no large settlements.

  “Is this normal?” I say to Ali.

  “Nothing’s normal. But if I were the Sect, I wouldn’t want an independent group all the way out here. Be really easy to put pressure, draw them in where you can keep a better eye on them,” Ali says. “And those who don’t… well, there are monsters out here.”

  “Convenient excuse,” I say, grunting. Anger flares for a moment before I push it down. Not the right time. Still, a part of me burns at the thought of people being forced to give up the little stability and protection they’ve built for themselves, all to make the Sect members’ lives easier.

  “It’s kind of what you guys did too,” Ali says, sending a chiding thought to me. “How many towns and people did you drag back to Whitehorse or to the next safe zone?”

  “I always gave them a choice,” I say, pointing out the major difference.

  As much as I wanted to, I never, ever forced my choices on others. Even if it meant their deaths. God knows I wanted to. Especially for those idiot families who decided it was still safer to hang out in the middle of a monster-infested zone than to proceed to a safe zone because humans are evil.

  Idiots.

  They were so fixed on their beliefs that humanity is evil, that we devolve to our basest instincts the moment the lights go off, they refused to accept the evidence before their eyes. And doomed their children and themselves to struggling and fighting in the wilderness alone. Some days, I wonder if I should have just taken the children.

  There’s no good answer here. Pull the kids away and I’d probably have had to kill their parents in front of them. I somehow doubt that would help them become well-adjusted, stable individuals. Even if I didn’t, who would take care of them? Do I drop them off at the nearest town and hope that there’s some kind soul willing to take in a group of traumatized children? It’s one thing for a government that, technically, has a series of methods to take care of such children. It’s another for my team and me to kidnap children because we don’t think their parents are doing a good job.

  Yet… I can’t help but think about them sometimes.

  “Getting late out here. You might want to get a move on it.” The voice, low and rich, breaks me out of my morose thoughts.

  I blink, staring around, and find myself grinding my teeth, hands clenched while standing in the middle of the street. I blink, shaking my head. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’ve all been there,” the guy says, smiling at me kindly. He’s in his late thirties, a hint of wariness in his eyes as he offers me his hand to shake. Six feet tall, thin, with brown hair, he’s got a guitar slung across his shoulders and a bag by his feet. A quick check shows his Class and Level—a Level 21 Appraiser. “Damian.”

  “John,” I say, shaking his hand. I’m glad he doesn’t ask why I was frozen in the middle of the street, but the way he looks at me sympathetically, I can guess what he’s thinking. All of us have our own nightmares.

  “That’s Analyn and Jonah.” Damian indicates a short Filipino woman armed with a beam rifle the size of her body and an older, almost grandfatherly, man who seems to be their pack mu
le, carrying four bags on his shoulders. “You a hunter?”

  “How’d you know?” I ask.

  “No bags, so you’re not a scavenger,” Damian explains, pointing at my guns. “And those look like they’ve seen some use. Like you.”

  “Pretty smart,” I say, smiling at Damian. I don’t move away, since I’m curious to see where he’s going with this.

  “Get anything good?” Damian waves down the street, indicating we should continue walking.

  I fall into step with him. “A little.” I shrug, thinking of the various random animal bits I’ve picked up from the monsters that have refused to leave me alone. It’s more habit than anything else that has me grabbing the loot, since the amount of Credits I’d get is pitiful. “I was mostly scouting this time.”

  “Outside the Mainland? You’re either brave or stupid,” Analyn says then smiles slightly.

  “Going alone lets me hide better,” I say, shrugging. “I have a few skills in that area.”

  “Ah…” Analyn says, nodding.

  “If you made a map, I know a few people who might buy it,” Damian says. “Good information about the land outside is hard to find. Everyone’s focused on the dungeon the Sect made in UBC and the new dungeon formed in SFU.”

  “The UBC dungeon must be Town-formed. Expensive, but it’s a great way of focusing the Mana flow in the region. The dungeon northwest of here that they’re talking is natural,” Ali sends to me. “The places around here are all villages, except Vancouver itself, which is a full Town.”

  I grunt in acknowledgement of both, letting my eyes roam over the area. We’re making good time, even burdened down with gear. The higher-than-human stats means a normal walking speed is nearly a jog pre-System, without any concern about running out of stamina.

  Since Damian seems talkative, I probe him for information, just basic things. He’s more than happy to discuss the Sect, giving me a spotty overview of the city. I do my best to hide my ignorance, asking leading questions while letting Ali fill in the blanks.

  As Ali mentioned, the initial period was bloody. Monsters, both mutated and portalled, showed up all over the city. A lot of people died, but things held together surprisingly well after the initial death toll as people learned to run, hide, or fight. Unlike Whitehorse, a number of really high-Level monsters had appeared, including a land drake that had taken the entirety of Stanley Park as its home. Even then, things had settled down, the local army and police managing to deal with the evolving monsters.

  Unfortunately, the System—or maybe the Council—decided that wasn’t good enough and portalled in more high-level monsters in a single night. The devastation was amazing. The entire False Creek area, including the brewery and armory, had been destroyed, the Sky Giant finally dying under the continuous assault of hundreds. The land drake actually took out one of the portalled monsters when a multi-headed chimera was forced into the park.

  The sacrifice of the fighters didn’t stop thousands from dying that night. That same tragedy repeated over and over again all across the city. Any major staging area had to deal with an attack by a high-level monster. At that point, resistance had been shattered and groups broke up into much smaller sections.

  “Suspicious, no?” I send to Ali.

  “Would you be interested to know that it isn’t a singular experience? In the same period, there’s constant sudden drops in your population—from such attacks, I assume. I’d need to buy the information to be certain but…”

  I keep my face neutral, continuing to listen to Damian, but a part of me growls. There’s a story there, and one I need to dig into at some point.

  A week later, the Sect appeared and claimed all the cities of the Lower Mainland. According to Ali, they actually purchased the village keys nearly the same day they were released. Rather than improving the rest of the cities, the Sect focused their attention on Vancouver only, turning it into a Town in four months. Pretty much the entirety of the downtown is their exclusive property—outside of the Downtown Eastside, where some humans gather.

  Unlike our smaller towns, quite a few Shops are clustered in the Lower Mainland. Each city has their own, with Vancouver having two—one in the art gallery downtown and another in the middle of Queen Elizabeth Park. Burnaby’s Shop is in the Metrotown which has a significant human presence living in the giant shopping mall and thus outside the Sect’s direct sphere of influence. Unlike the downtown of Vancouver, where most of the Serfs live, the mall in Burnaby is actually owned and run by free humans according to Damian. Well, technically rented mostly, but it’s close enough.

  When I hear that news, I change my mind of where I intend to go tonight, deciding against a direct trip to downtown Vancouver. If I’m going to find out what I want, and potentially locate a safe place to rest, the mall seems to be a better choice. As we get closer to Burnaby, I notice more and more humans. Some of them are rather interesting too…

  George Pierre (Level 19 Breacher—Sect Member)

  HP: 380/380

  MP: 170/170

  Conditions: None

  “Fucking traitors,” Analyn swears under her breath when she spots the group of five Sect members, each of them with a simple grey cloth with the Sect’s symbol on their arms.

  My eyes flicker over them while Damian glares at the lady before he glances at me, concern on his face. I flash him a little smile but make sure to swing around the group. That action makes him relax slightly.

  “Seems to be more of them,” I say to Damian softly.

  “The Sect pays well, gives discounts on goods in the Shop, and if you join them, you’re immune to becoming a Serf,” Damian says, his tone neutral. “After they crushed the resistance, can you blame them?”

  “Yes,” Analyn hisses while Jonah nods firmly.

  “Dangerous words,” I say, my tone light. I’d love to ask about the resistance, but it seems a bit too obvious to duck into that question right now.

  “Eh, everyone’s said it,” Damian says with a careless shrug. “No one likes them, but…”

  But it’s a way of surviving, and we all have a certain degree of empathy for each other over things like this. We might not like it or agree, but we can empathize. There’s been so much going on that a period of safety or comfort is attractive. Even if you have to sell out.

  Having skirted around the human Sect-members, we head south. Surprisingly, the group follows me to Metrotown. Or perhaps not, considering the views they’ve expressed to me, a nominal stranger. Once we get past the rather foreboding warehouses and industrial complexes—many of which are breeding grounds for groups of monsters—we hit the residential zones. Those, as usual, are depressing lots, which is why we continue south at a jog. Conversations grow sparser and less useful, turning to the usual jokes and ribbing, which I eventually tune out.

  Before I know it, we’re down at Kingsway, which runs at a diagonal to most streets with its multi-story retail stores, and only a stone’s throw away from the Metrotown mall itself. Surprisingly, none of the retail stores are owned—most shuttered, others vandalized and looted. I stare at the buildings for a second, shaking my head as happier memories clash with reality before I hurry up to follow the group.

  If you’ve been to one shopping mall, you’ve been to them all, it seems. Or maybe if you’ve been to one mid-class, sprawling giant mall, you’ve been to them all. They’re all filled with brand-name shops, each segregated into their own little niches, with bright, artificial lighting and a food court or two with “food” that is, at best, barely edible. In other words, soulless and vapid.

  Not much has changed, it seems. With the Shop located in what used to be a giant bookstore, the rest of the mall has been partitioned to make buying and selling goods easier. Rather than ask questions that might expose me for the stranger I am, I follow the group, playing as if I’m happy to continue chatting with them. Occasionally, I pull things from my storage to sell too.

  Each portion of the mall seems to be taken over by different group
s. We spend most of our time in the scavenger area, where “normal” human goods are bought and sold. While Spells are nice, dishwashing liquid, hair gel, toilet paper, and replacement sets of clothing are all still desirable. Sure, you could scavenge it yourself, but convenience trumps cost for most people. I don’t get a lot of Credits and the group spends some time haggling as prices fluctuate depending on what other groups drag in, but eventually everything is sold.

  After that, it’s off to another part of the mall to sell monster parts. Interestingly enough, there are two sections, one for food and one for non-consumables. We hit the non-consumables first, haggling with various merchants who are only willing to buy a portion of what we have. This time around, I take a more active role, as my cover as a hunter means I should have more loot.

  “You know, he ripped you off there,” Jonah says, shaking his head. “Five Credits for Creller teeth? You should have gotten at least eight each!”

  I shrug, not wishing to comment. Ali looks unhappy as well, floating invisibly next to me, obviously itching to get involved. While it might be a break from my role, I just don’t have the patience to waste time haggling over a few Credits. A single good kill could easily replace all the funds I lose. That’s why I never bothered with it all in Whitehorse, leaving the money matters to Ali.

  From glancing around, it’s obvious that many of the individuals buying in this portion of the mall are just middlemen picking up small numbers of lootable components for others. The way the various merchants perk up as the direct buyers wander along is an obvious tell, since direct buyers generally don’t haggle as hard. It also helps that I can see their Classes, which range from the mundane Toolmaker to the specialized Weaponsmith or Alchemist. Some are truly weird, like the Augurer and the Binder.