In all, ten groups of students returned over the course of the afternoon, though only the first five had finished the quest.

The rest had seen the completion point and ignored the quest, assuming that wherever it was leading them had to be safe. When they saw that it was the Academy, and that there were students in uniform, plus soldiers on the walls, they rushed in to join the crowd.

But that presented its own problems.

Sure, there was food in the Academy, but they had just received fifty more people who didn’t bring anything at all with them. If nobody started to go out and find edible monsters, they were going to start running out quickly.

Two weeks, perhaps three, and they would start running low on the pork that Gerry had butchered.

Then another two months after that, everything else would be in short supply.

Not an emergency by Kalli’s standards. She was used to living payday to payday. But for the senior students who had been training to take over major corporations, it was a liquidity crisis.

So, Kalli decided that she would issue the quest again tomorrow, and perhaps add a hard difficulty quest as well, to see if there were options for the giant boars.

But not until morning.

If she sent them now, there would be chaos in the compound. However, if she sent them in the morning, the missions would be reset, and the others would assume that they were daily missions not something that she was making up on her own.

The illusion that all the quests came from the system was her only defence against the anger of teams that didn’t get the rewards they wanted, or in the worst case, might even suffer a tragedy during a quest.

If they knew that she was making some of them up to give them a chance at points, they would definitely blame her for every death, and every injury that was suffered while completing the quests.

So, Kalli turned in early, and woke up at midnight to take over the watch on the wall.

They had more members in the Academy now, but they still hadn’t had a chance to reassign the roster, and the students were much more comfortable with the special forces taking night watch.

They were trained soldiers, after all.

When she arrived at the tower, Sanchez was in the same spot, watching out the window.

"Welcome back. The rats are on the move early today. Only a few of them, and I think they’re collecting corpses from our missions earlier. But that gives me an idea. We can track them back to their dens and eliminate them there.

That will keep their numbers in check, even though we’ll likely never get rid of all of them.

There are simply too many places to hide.

But mostly I’m watching for the boars. I asked the others to do the same. Anything that looks like it might be an edible monster, I want it tracked and noted. If we can bring it back to the Academy and test it, we can keep up our food supply.

There are also strange plants out there, and some of them might be edible.

I will collect some in the afternoon when my team goes out to patrol. Even if there isn’t a quest, we will go out again. Killing monsters gives experience. Less than completing quests, but enough to matter.

If we can make level three, we will gain extra abilities, and more System Points. I’m looking to get another skill from the skill tree when I have five points again. It increases the damage done by projectiles, and it will help my team with stronger enemies like the boars."

Kali nodded. "I fear that these might be just the start. We got lucky with monsters that we could handle, but if there are things like whatever is out in the bay, then there might be similarly deadly monsters on land as well.

We will need to be careful not to overstep and end up in the territory of something that we’re not able to kill."

"I didn’t think of it that way. Gathering supplies is core to the survival courses that we were trained in, so that’s where my focus went. I will be sure to warn the others about the possibility of a more powerful monster.

There might be one in the rat demon dens, but given how weak they are, it should still be manageable.

Or, it could be more vulnerable than the ones we’ve seen, and that’s why it’s hidden. There is no way to know until we’ve actually found a den."

"Good point. Either way, it’s likely where they’re breeding more rats.

They’ll have to be stopped eventually, even if we don’t find all the nests. Just keeping the pest population under control is going to be essential to protecting whoever else is still alive in this part of the city.

Groups like that other one that came here might defend their building for a while, but if they’re swarmed by rat demons, the building will be overrun before they can get to them all.

But if the levels are making you more powerful, they’re worth it on their own.

How much did you get?"

"I got two points to strength and two to agility, which doesn’t sound like much, but the base seems to be a one to ten scale. So, if I can make it to twenty in any stat, I would be twice what an elite athlete would be able to accomplish.

That’s enough to jump over low fences, run twice as fast as an elite sprinter. Nearing comic book level superpowers."

So, by level five or six, they should be able to reach that physical level if their stats were already good. At worst, they should get that much bonus in their main abilities by level ten.

"How close are you to level three?" Kalli asked.

"It takes more than level two, but give me another two or three days, unless we get one of those hard mode quests. They give quite a bit, and then I will be level three for sure in two days. That’s not bad, and I think we were intended to be there very quickly.

If we had gone to kill more monsters than just the immediate threat, we would have been there today.

Going by the evidence, the system wants us to gain power quickly at the start, so we can live up to the ’hero’ title that it gave us."