As they ate breakfast, everyone started to make plans for the day.

Most were still going to go into the dungeon, despite it no longer having a quest. It still had items to be claimed, and random food items that could be collected and traded to the kitchens.

Keeping head chef Gerry happy kept the meals pleasantly tasty.

Sergeant Sanchez had the most concrete plan. "I think that we should check out the area for edible plants. If there is a quest for it, there might actually be more than expected. And if there is a lot of edible food, there are likely to be herbivore type monsters.

Most of those should also be edible, so even if we don’t find enough vegetables and such for the quest, we can still stock up and get familiar with the new layout of the area.

I want to know how much of the old city is left.

There were countless buildings with basements, plus the underground tunnel system. If those are still intact, we will be able to move around the area largely undetected so that we don’t constantly draw attention back to the Academy.

Keeping the enemy away from your base is always best, and those tunnels run for kilometres under this portion of the city."

"Alright, only the Rangers might be good at finding things, but we’ve all taken botany, and we’ve got a full Library here in the app. Some of these things have to be similar, right?" One of the students asked.

"It’s a good thing that we got that working again, or you’d be lost. When is the last time you read a physical book?"

The boy nodded frantically. "If my phone ever breaks, it will be an existential crisis."

A few of the students turned to Kalli, looking for assurances.

She pulled up the household supplies section and showed them the display.

{Smartphone} Universal use. Available as handheld or wrist mounted form factors.

{Price} 50 System Points

"Damn. Alright, job one, find a surviving phone store. Job two, never break your phone."

Kalli just laughed. There was literally no need to carry them anymore, except to keep in contact with their classmates when they were outside the walls. That was still a valuable ability of the phones, but the only option that Kalli had to replace them was super expensive.

However, when she read the description, they were much closer to the holographic communicators of her past life than the simple smartphones of this world.

They had a thousand kilometre transmit range, no need for towers, as they shared a common frequency, and they came with built-in tracking so that the heroes could find each other. In her past life, everyone turned it off, so their boss didn’t track every movement that they made.

"Do you think that things are getting better? We survived the trial, right? Doesn’t that mean we’re winning?" One of the younger students that the Student Council had rescued asked.

"Not even close. We’re on a seven-day break between trials. This is when everyone should be working extra hard to build their combat skills, stats and stockpile supplies. Once that timer runs out, we’re all going to be in for a rough time.

Everything that we’ve seen so far has been under level five. But that’s just what it gave us for the first trial.

Following that progression, we need to be ready for level ten or higher monsters in a week."

That got the kids suitably motivated again, and they started making plans to get the Special Forces to teach them how to fight more effectively, and how to improve their gym routine.

The first teams began to trickle out of the Academy, while others went into the Dungeon to start their day.

The ones who had Rangers in their teams would go first, along with those who knew the most about plants. They had the best chance of finding edible plants, and the crabs were less active in the morning, so the teams mostly planned to hunt them in the afternoon.

Once the students started moving, one of the younger people from the building across the road came over to meet with Kalli.

"I know that you’ve hired some people, but it says that I’m a {Level 0 Commoner} now, and I’ve got a quest option. Something about gathering plants?"

Kalli smiled. "Oh, that is good. I didn’t think that you would get it, most of the other quests are only for those with Hero status. If you go more than 500 metres from the Academy and find five kilos of edible plants, you will get a reward.

It’s likely to be a Mystery box that gives a Common Grade item. But if you don’t need it, we can likely trade it for something that you do."

"Alright, I will get some of the others together."

Kalli shook her head. "There are still monsters out there, even if we can’t see them from the Academy. I would suggest that you get people to accompany a team of Heroes. You can hunt for plants while they look for Stoneshell crabs.

That reminds me, I will get your building one of the crab legs. That will feed you for a while, and we’ve got a lot, with quests to get even more.

We’ve got time to stock up while things are relatively good, so we should take advantage."

The boy smiled. "I know just the thing. We’ve got a bunch of backpacks we saved to move supplies. We can carry the food for the mission for the whole team. That should make them let us come along."

A few of the teams looked intrigued.

Getting a pack mule to carry all the plants for them? That sounded pretty good. They had mostly figured out how to access the storage function, but it was not large. Loading another five kilos of alien potatoes or leaves would stuff it to the brim, and none of them wanted to carry a backpack when they had to fight.

But a pack mule didn’t fight, they would stay back with the supplies.