By the time Jessica’s face had recovered its usual color, Amy and Yuki stepped out of their vending machine circle.

It wasn’t immediately obvious what either of them had spent their credits on. Neither of them was wearing flashy armor or carrying a new weapon.

Jessica, seeming to be curious, asked them where their credits had gone.

Amy answered her by casting a spell.

She mumbled a quick incantation, and threw her arm up. At the same time, seemingly unconnected, Mike felt a gentle warmth surround him, from the looks on their faces Troy and Jessica felt it too.

They all looked slightly confused as they realized they felt stronger, like they could take on anything.

“W-what did you just do?” Mike asked, his eyes open wide as he stumbled over his words.

“I just blessed you. I’m a cleric now. Its sort of like a combat healer job. I can still fight with hammers, clubs and maces. I can also still use my magic even when I’m wearing armor. It kind of feels like I looked through the entire common ranked jobs list to find it. I was originally going to be something like a priestess or a healer.

I looked at both of them pretty closely and they don’t seem to have any fighting abilities. If I chose one of them, what would happen to me if somehow I got separated from the group and surrounded?”

Mike nodded. Her choice made perfect sense to the gamer in him.

He was a little surprised that Amy had put so much thought into it though. He’d never admit it out loud, but he’d kind of assumed Amy was just a pretty face. It was unfair to her. Just because she was pretty didn’t mean she was stupid, one thing had nothing to do with the other.

Mike was a firm believer that nobody was too gifted, too much talent in one area should mean an equal dearth of it in others.

Amy was really good looking, and seemed like a nice person, so she should have been stupid. Something like that. It was a stupid theory, but it usually turned out to be right.

Amy clearly wasn’t stupid. Not only did she sound like she knew what she was talking about, but she sounded like she’d thought of it from both the angle that the world was now a game, and from reverse angle that the world was still reality even if it had game like qualities.

Competency was always a good thing though, so Mike put it out of his mind.

Agreeing that Amy made a pretty good choice in her selection, he asked what Yuki she’d purchased from the vending machine.

Yuki, who was also gorgeous, was a quiet person in general. She wasn’t rude. If she was asked a question she would answer it politely. But she didn’t go out of her way to talk.

She kept it short, without details as she revealed her common rank job of thief and its basic skills of [Pickpocket], [Lock Pick], [Sneak], [Hide], and [Acrobatic].

Even common rank jobs cost a full thousand credits. So neither Amy nor Yuki had, had enough left over to buy anything else. Mike found it a bit funny that the two who’d shopped the longest purchased the least, but it wasn’t funny enough to turn into a joke or anything so he left it alone.

Everyone gathered their things and without much talking they returned upstairs.

Tiptoeing past the third floor they didn’t run into any obstacles before they made it back to the roof where Rajesh, the dwarf was standing guard.

At just under five feet he was nearly square shaped, his shoulders were so wide. Mike could see he had the beginnings of a thick beard. growing in, his hairline had receded quite a bit, and his nose was thicker, more bulbous than a human nose would normally be, his eyebrows were also impressively thick.

I guess my bloodline didn’t change me that much after all, Mike thought, looking at him. He remembered Rajesh, they’d had a few computer science courses together. They weren’t friends. They were barely even acquaintances. But Mike knew what he’d looked like before the changes.

Rajesh had been seven or eight inches taller, thin as a rail and he’d kept his face smooth shaven. Now even his face was square, and his body looked like it belonged to an entirely different person.

“Hey Mike, you guys score anything good?” He asked from where he sat, leaning against the lip of the roof, as they exited the stairwell.

Mike lifted his ax, making it whistle through the air once with a smile.

Rajesh laughed, “Nice ax, maybe I should get one too now that I’m a dwarf and all. This golf club is hardly tolkien.” He lifted his golf club, a pitching wedge, with a laugh.

Mike laughed with him as Troy and the others crowded onto the roof.

A few minutes later, everyone on the roof was gathered together around the east stairwell for a meeting. Everyone except Troy who’d chosen to take back his post as a guard on the west side of the roof.

Nobody was fooled into thinking he liked guard duty.

It was obvious he just couldn’t wait to start messing with his magic again. More and more it was seeming that Troy was obsessed with magic. But since nobody actually expected to be attacked on the roof, and he was still technically doing his job while messing around, no one actually cared what his motives were.

His presence freed up Rajesh and Dan to attend the meeting with the other survivors. Since the search group hadn’t found a single new survivor in their round trip, that made eleven people total at the meeting. It seemed that everyone who escaped the zombies had either retreated to the roof or left the building entirely.

The meeting was brief.

Jessica recapped the mission for everyone. Explaining that every floor except the third, with the troll, and the second, had been cleared out already, and that the vending machines on the ground floor could be used to purchase items from the 「System」and gave a basic rundown on prices for things like jobs and simple skills.

Then she offered to take anyone who wanted to raise their level down to the second floor to kill a few zombies.

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Author : The Steve

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