It didn't take them long to reach the back of the school. The school was backed up against a steep slope covered in trees, and only a single road separated the trees from the school. Abbadon looked up; the sun was already setting. He looked over at Tom.

  "Could you get us some lights, please?" he asked.

  "Sure," Tom said.

  Tom cast a few glow lights that hovered in the air, providing them with plenty of light.

  Abbadon wasn't really looking forward to getting covered in Hydra's blood.

  "This is going to suck. Hydra blood is stupid poisonous," Abbadon said.

  "What are you talking about? Your [giant] type is immune to poison," Tom said.

  Abbadon frowned.

  "What are you talking about? Hydras have [Corrosive Poison], remember? That will bypass my immunity."

  "You're thinking about proper Hydras. Lesser Hydras don't have that skill." Tom pointed out.

  "They don't?" Abbadon asked, confused. "Why don't I remember that?"

  "Because most people don't have poison immunity this early in the game, so unless you actually study monsters, most people wouldn't care enough to learn the difference. Hell, I only remember the difference because I have a memory skill."

  "Huh," Abbadon nodded. "You learn something new every day."

  Abbadon watched as Tom started to draw lines in the air, a summoning circle. Hydras existed in the nether realm. They couldn't go to the Nether, so Tom was going to call one. A magical spell that allowed a creature to show up if it answered the call. Of course, it wouldn't be controlled. This would be a wild hydra. Abbadon had no idea how Tom managed to keep all of those glyphs and symbols in his head, though it was probably the knowledge skill he had.

  As Tom finished the ritual, a three-headed hydra the size of a car dropped out of the air and landed on the pavement. Its four legs scrambled as the three heads hissed at them in outrage. Abbadon got ready to rumble, but Tom pulled out three scrolls and activated them simultaneously.

  "Fireball," Tom called out.

  Instantly, the lesser hydra was consumed in the fire as three fireballs detonated center mass. The fire immediately roasted the hydra's flesh, stripping it from its body as it writhed in agony. The hydra immediately charged at Tom, but Tom was already casting two more spells.

  "Water Blade, Solar Lance," Tom said without an ounce of care.

  His water blade decapitated two of three heads, while his lance impacted the hydra's center of mass before exploding, killing the hydra instantly.

  "What the hell? You just … anti-climatic." Abbadon protested.

  "Really, you want to waste hours fighting a lesser hydra? Its bane is fire magic, with three fireballs that do about nine hundred points of damage," Tom said.

  "Just feels like you're sucking all the fun out of it," Abbadon said.

  "Now check the corpse and move it aside. I want to take [Master Aquamancer] and [Master Geomancer] classes before we activate the beacon. So I need at least one more level."

  Abbadon shoved his hand into the lesser hydra's gaping chest. He forced his hand through the bloody chest wound, his fingers digging towards the hydra's heart. When he was up to his elbow, his hand met the stringy tissue of the heart. Grabbing the organ, he ripped it out. He stared at the heart, looking for a small crystalline core anywhere on the heart, but found none.

  "Dud," Abbadon said.

  "Fuck" Tom said. "Alright, we need to move it. So, where do we put it?"

  Abbadon looked around. Quickly spying on a dumpster.

  "Dumpster," Abbadon said, pointing it out.

  "Really? We're going to be infusing you with hydra blood. Do you really want garbage mixed in with that?" Tom asked.

  "Then wash it out," Abbadon said.

  "Ok, yeah, that works," Tom said.

  Abbadon moved over and picked up the dumpster. He was a little surprised that he could just pick up a freakin dumpster. Walking up to the ledge that sat at the back of the school, he dumped the contents of the dumpster out, sending bags of garbage down the hill, bouncing off trees and painting the snow in a myriad of colours.

  "My turn," Tom said.

  Tom held up his hands, and two streams of water shot out of his hands as he hosed down the inside of the dumpster. They made sure to get all of the nasty crevices. When the dumpster was completely soaked, Tom stopped.

  "Good enough?" Abbadon asked.

  "Hydra blood is poisonous. It should be good enough," Tom said.

  Abbadon nodded and dragged the dumpster back to the lesser hydra's corpse. Picking up the corpse, he dumped it into the dumpster.

  "Alright, next hydra," Tom said as new lines of light magic began to form.

  Abbadon stepped back and waited as Tom summoned another Hydra. They started to get into a routine. Tom summoned a lesser Hydra, killed it, and then Abbadon checked for a magic core before he placed it in the dumpster. They did this eight more times before they found a magic core.

  "It's got a core!!" Abbadon said as he tore out a small red orb from his massive reptile hand.

  "Finally," Tom cheered. At least we've got twice as many corpses as we needed. Alright, dump the bodies on the ground, get out of your clothes, and I'll do the ritual again."

  Abbadon quirked his eyebrow as he pulled an additional four lesser hydras from the dumpster and placed them in a pentagram set up on the ground. He then sat in the center with the hydra's magic core in his hand.

  "This would have been so much easier if we had the harvest skill," Tom muttered.

  "I'm more surprised you picked up a ritual skill for bloodlines," Abbadon said.

  "Oh, I didn't," Tom muttered as he started to draw a circle above him.

  That caused Abbadon to pause.

  "Then how are you planning on doing this ritual? You normally need a bit of help getting a bloodline ritual to work."

  "The ink heart bloodline helped with rituals, and the bloodline of the keeper of akashic records makes this painfully easy. I can remember how the ritual is supposed to look, and I can feel any mistakes I make."

  "Really?" Abbadon asked, surprised as he pulled off his shirt.

  "Chloe has the same bloodline, somehow. While I'm not sure, I want her to try to write out a bloodline ritual without any help. She might actually be able to do something a little less complex on her own."

  "Damm, that's cool." Abbadon nodded.

  "Says the guy who's about to be able to regrow limbs." Tom snorted.

  Abbadon watched as the ritual circle turned crimson, the seven lesser hydras now each at the seven points of the … It wasn't a pentagram, but he didn't know what it was called. Regardless, angry blood-red glyphs started to appear along the lines of the pentagram, almost bleeding into reality. Abbadon immediately felt his … hair … scales. Something stood up on end. Abbadon could hear his own heartbeat quietly at first, but it started to get louder as Tom's first blood ritual began.

  The blood of the hydras started to rise up off the ground, vibrating and bouncing as the drops of blood began to orbit his body. Tom started to chant words of power, energizing the ritual, words Abbadon couldn't understand even if he knew what they were. The drops of blood spun around him faster and faster in a crimson vortex. The lesser hydra's body broke apart as more and more blood joined the ritual. At this point, Abbadon's heart was beating so loudly in his ear that it was deafening, and his nose was filled with the stink of sour iron.

  The magic core in his lap started to sink into his skin painfully. It was like someone had dropped a molten orb of glass into his lap as the core fused into his body. He tried to scream but couldn't; he was frozen as he fused with the orb.

  When the orb finally finished integrating with him, all the blood swirling around him stopped before rushing toward him. The blood went up every orifice his body had as the blood tried to change him. Eyes, nose, mouth, ass, It even seeped into his scales and into his skin as his bone marrow was changed and altered at the most fundamental level. In the meantime, Abbadon was literally drowning under the literal ocean of blood as it tried to force its way into him.

  Then it was over; he was lying on the ground with a notification in his vision.

  "Hey, are you ok?" Tom asked. His friend's voice cut through his mind as a golden light surfed his body, trying to heal him and failing. His new regeneration had already repaired all the damage he had suffered from the ritual.

  "I feel great," Abbadon said. "I think I'm going to buy some skills, then I'm going to bed. I need [Heavy Blow], [Power Strike] and [Inflated Muscles] eventually."

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Tom looked at him in confusion.

  "Doesn't [Inflated Muscles] cut your Agility and Dexterity in half for a 50% boost in your Strength? That skill is a joke."

  Abbadon rolled his eyes.

  "Yeah, but if I upgrade it to [Enlarge], I can grow bigger, and once I do that, I can combine it with [Monster lifeforce] to unlock [Lesser Colossus]. Unfortunately, I don't have enough skill slots, so I'm going to take [Power Strike] and [Heavy Blow] first and combine them into [Giga Impact]."

  "Alright, I will take back my complaints," Tom apologized. "Also, here are your pants."

  DING!!!

  DING!!!

  Tom's teeth chattered as he and Abbadon made their way back to the third floor. He had needed to hose them both down in the middle of winter due to all the blood. They came back inside shivering, but they wouldn't accidentally poison anyone.

  When they got up to the third floor, they found Alex had arranged their rooms. She had picked the classrooms overseeing the courtyard from the east side, all four of them. She had removed all of the desks and chairs into the hallway before setting up their new rooms. Unfortunately, her parent's house only had two beds and a pull-out couch, so Abbadon and Skippy would be sharing the pullout for the foreseeable future, and Tom was sharing with Chloe. Alex might have been the luckiest as she had been able to transport the entirety of her old room into her new room.

  But Tom was fine with that. He looked around his new room, which had somehow also become the group's meeting room. He and his sister had a massive king-sized bed in one corner of the room, with a living room set up for the rest of the room, with furniture from Alexis's living room. All of his friends were currently in his room.

  Alex had kept the teacher's desk but switched out the old computer with Tom's own upgraded rig, the wifi was still working, and Skippy was sitting at the desk.

  "What are you doing, Skippy?" Tom asked.

  "I'm on the Legend of Noralon Forums," Skippy said. "Seeing how the rest of the community is doing."

  "Anything interesting?" Tom asked.

  "I'm not sure how to answer that question," Skippy said hesitantly. "The system seems to be everywhere. Sultans fighting Racsasha in India, Artemis is texting in from the Tower of London, and I've got messages from a few other people we know around the North American region. The message is the same: system this, monster that, we claimed this settlement, lots of celebrating, lots of concern."

  Tom sighed. "Well, I can't complain, especially considering we did literally the same thing. See if you can set up a proper chat. We want to start sharing information as much as possible. The last thing we need is to find out we're sitting on a ley line."

  Skippy jerked at his mention of a ley line and started typing rapidly.

  "Loving the setup, by the way," Tom said as he turned to Alex.

  "Thanks; I figured you would, " Alex said as Betty kept trying to get the TV from Alex's house to work.

  Abbadon had crashed in the lazy boy chair and had almost instantly fallen asleep.

  Someone even managed to plug in some appliances, such as a fridge and microwave, which now occupy the room like a loft apartment.

  Tom looked at Chloe. She had been burning through the paper and pens they had brought for her before she crashed and fell asleep on the bed with Lucy.

  Tom took a few moments to go over to the room's bookshelves. He removed all of the old textbooks and replaced them with what he had regarding the Legend of Noralon. He also went ahead and added a few other books. He had managed to grab mostly a lot of fictional stuff, like Lord of the Rings, Percy Jackson, and Harry Potter, stuff he could read to Chloe. He had also grabbed a bunch of movies and stashed them on the shelves.

  "I'm pooped," Tom muttered as he lounged on the couch next to Alex. He was utterly exhausted. He had managed to get the levels in aquamancer, earth mage, and geomancer, but he was way too tired to combine them at the moment.

  "Same, but it feels good. Right?" Alex asked

  "Yeah, I know that this was probably the end of the world for a lot of people, but I think today was the best day ever," Tom said as he leaned against his friend.

  "I got it," Betty said as she finally got the TV working. The new channel clicked on the TV. The news was talking about the appearance of screens and animal attacks. No one appeared to be using the word system apocalypse. In fact, It didn't appear as if it was an apocalypse. There have been lots of animal attacks so far, even plenty of chaos. But nothing truly apocalyptic yet. Tom couldn't help but notice that there had been no mention of the Wyvern they had seen earlier, and from what Tom knew about Wyverns, that thing was definitely bulletproof.

  "So this is happening everywhere?" Betty asked, horrified.

  "Yep, welcome to Noralon," Tom said.

  Betty just sat down next to Tom and Alex, not saying a single word. Tom wasn't sure what he could do for her. She was traumatized, and other than giving her time, Tom couldn't do anything for her.

  "So, should I activate the beacon now or later?" Tom asked, bringing up the option in the settlement interphase.

  "Set it up to activate in the morning," Alex said sleepily.

  "Shouldn't we do it now?" Tom asked.

  "Hell no, it's going to be dark soon. If you activate it now, people will be wandering around in the dark. "

  "I hate it, but you're right," Tom muttered sleepily to her.

  But Alex was already asleep against his shoulder. Tom signed the cheapest and set it to activate at 9 a.m. tomorrow. He used the settlement interphase to lock down the school, and then he fell asleep, wondering how the rest of the world was doing.

  You may skip to the next chapter.

  Base

  Personal: +4 END, +3 STR, +3 CON, +2 PER +2 SPIRIT

  Racial: +3 END, +2 STR, +2 CON +1 PER

  Bloodline: +3 CON

  Giantslayer Skills: +2 AGIL

  Level Bonus: +1 to all Stats

  Mini-Character List

  Tom: Our Protagonist, the party healer

  Alex: Tom's best friend and the group's wizard

  Skippy: Tom's friend, the squirrelly duelist

  Abaddon: Tom's friend, a tanky lizardman

  Chloe: Tom's little sister

  Lucy: Alex's former dog and Chloe's animal companion

  Ms.Lewis: Toms former teacher

  AN: