Chapter 53

Chapter 53

Drew reached out to his mental connections and felt his minions nearby. They'd lost sight of the enemy mage. Interesting. It seemed she had some tricks up her sleeves if she was able to escape his unliving horde.

She didn't. She didn't have any tricks up her sleeves at all. Drew found her footprints in the slightly muddy earth near the area she disappeared from. He had thought she'd had gone invisible, or had some grand power to stay hidden. She didn't. She'd outrun the skeletons by only a tiny bit, dove behind the corner of a house, and into some bushes where she'd stayed silent, hoping to hide from his minions. The skeletons may have been far more intelligent than they used to be, but they weren't exactly bright. Maybe a child-like intelligence sure, but nothing to write home about. Drew had found her shivering in the bushes, trying to hide from everything.

He'd simply reached into the bushes and picked her up by one shoulder. When he brought her to eye level, the cursing and obscenities began. The good news, it was very clear that she was a member of the town council, just due to the very Christian nonsense she was spouting. Hellspawn this, God that, Judgement day crap, Devil won't tempt her and so on. He could have killed her right away, but he still needed some answers, even if they were unlikely to come from her. So he dragged her back with him to the townhall building. The god talk and hateful crap spewing from her mouth never ceased, but he just let her talk. When his patience ran out, he could always rip out her tongue and have her healed later. But for now, he just drowned the sound out.

When he made it back to the building he left the mage with members of the rescue team, and she was held, closely, by his skeletons.

The atmosphere changed when he walked into the dour townhall. Miranda and several others were standing over Robert, and Drew's thudding boots gave away that he entered the front office. Miranda, Amber, and Mark all looked up as he strode forward.

"Well?" Drew asked.

"Dead." Mark stated bluntly.

"I see." Drew replied grimly.

"He was stabbed. Repeatedly. His throat was also cut open." Miranda said in a low voice.

"Knife guy." Drew's thought came out.

Mark nodded his head.

"Alright then, let's see if I can get him back here."

Drew reached out with his senses as he touched his lantern. Nothing. No soul was in the body. Drew shook his head.

"He's already moved on. There's nothing I can do." Drew said

"Dumb bastard." Amber said with anger.

Drew tilted his head and Miranda looked shocked.

"You told him what would happen, we all did. We all tried to prevent this from happening. But he came here anyway. Stubborn fucking man." She replied to Drew's questioning body language.

Drew stood there and looked at Roberts body. It was mangled to hell and back.

"We killed the guy who did this though." Drew said, hoping to improve his wife's mood.

"That won't bring him back." Amber replied.

"No. No, it won't. But, it was his choice. As you said, he was warned. Many times. He was a good man, one of the best of us. But he just couldn't see reality for what it is. I love you Boo Bear, but we did everything in our power outside of forcibly keeping him caged. Unfortunately, his soul has moved on, or I could bring him back. He's likely in the Hall of Reflection right now."

"Could The Baleful Lady do anything for him?" Miranda asked.

"I... don't know. It's possible, but to the best of my knowledge she doesn't bring people back to life. They're given the option between an afterlife, working for her, or being reincarnated. I could ask her, but I'd rather wait until we're done here. He'll be in the Hall for many years before going to meet her, so we're not in any hurry. Right now, we have other people who need saving."

"Right." Miranda's hope lowered.

"Speaking of which, how are our people?" Drew asked.

"Four dead, everyone else remains uninjured." Miranda replied again.

"Alright, I'll go take a look at them, see if there's anything I can do. I need y'all to start organizing search parties for after we check the school out. The mayor is still around somewhere, so be careful."

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Drew stood looking over the dead community members. Only one soul hadn't left yet. Only one person he could bring back. Two mages, and two archers were dead. Four of his people. Five including Robert. He sighed. These people were dead just before they hit the ground. Each had only been hit two or three times each by the knife bastard. That's what happened when people didn't put any points into Vitality. All the intelligence or mana in the world was worthless if they managed to get hit just a couple times by someone near their level. People needed Toughness, they needed Vitality and Endurance. This wasn't a video game where you could afford to min-max. There was no respawn, only death .

Sindra had tried to drive that information into peoples' heads, but some folks were just too stubborn. They'd swear up and down that if they ran out of mana, or weren't fast enough, that they'd be useless. They had it all wrong, they were only useless if they died, as long as they could live to fight another day, that's all that mattered. But there were always going to be people like that, that thought they knew better than someone so much stronger and wiser than them. Drew was glad he'd followed his gut and spread out his early points. Sure, it meant he was a bit lackluster in the early levels, but now he had so much mana that it didn't even matter. It'd take a really serious fight to drain his mana supply now. He hoped future people would learn from these mistakes.

Drew reached out to the soul and reattached it to the body, forming a link and creating a soulbind. Up popped the newest soulflame.

"I...I died... didn't I?" The mage asked Drew as he looked around.

"You did."

"The others?" The soulflame inquired.

"Gone. They moved on before I could get to them."

The mage nodded his head. Blue glowing eyes looking around the small battlefield.

"What do you need me to do?"

"Join the others, we're getting ready to head into the school to rescue folks. Try not to die this time please, and throw some damn points into vitality and toughness will ya?"

The soulflame chuckled.

"Yessir!"

The mage ran off to join the the rescue team.

Drew spread out his mental connections and searched them. The main battle in the center of town hadn't been too bad on the minion front. He'd lost about twenty of his weaker ones. But, the battles on the outskirts had cut his minions down by a third. The other security patrols were all reported dead, but it had cost him a lot of his minions. Overall he'd lost about eighty minions, which was a bit more than he had expected to lose by this point. The other teams must have been far better than the one he'd dealt with in town. Eighty minions were going to be a pain in the ass to replace. Drew sighed. Always more work.

He walked back to town hall only to find a peculiar sight. A large demon in armor with dropped trow squatting over a body with kicking legs. Curious, Drew walked up to see what was happening.

"Hey buddy, whatcha doing?" Drew asked casually.

"Do humans often talk to each other when dropping the kids off at the hellfire pool?" Beefcake asked as he grimaced.

"Some do, I've always found it to be strange. Only reason I'm asking is... well, yeah." Drew shrugged while pointing at the kicking feet.

*PLOP!*

"Ahhhh, that was a big bastard." Beefcake sighed.

The feet kicked even harder, and now in every direction.

"Yeahhhhh... sooooo..."

"This human refused to remain quiet. She continued to insult me and I threatened her."

"Uh huh..."

"I told her that if she didn't shut up, I'd break her jaw, and shit down her throat."

"I'm guessing she didn't shut up?"

*PLOP!* *PLOP!* *PLOP*

"What gave it away?"

"The kicking feet mostly. I'm guessing this is our most esteemed guest?"

"Beats the fuck out of me. She had a mouth on her though. Ah, excuse me, time for clean up."

The demon grabbed the woman's long hair and proceeded to wipe his ass with it. He then stood up, conjured fire out of thin air, and did a quick burning of his hands, which smelt about as bad as one would imagine. His... job... done, he waved over to a pair of skeletons who came running over to pick up the woman, and dragged her off to the side. Her feet were no longer kicking. Her face, and most of her head was also missing. It turned out that demon shit wouldn't clog a toilet, but burn through it, the pipes, and then the floor. Much like how the street now had a new, small, steaming pothole.

"Alrighty then, I really hope it was the mage bitch and not one of our people."

"Oh, she was definitely a mage. She tried to use mana shield for the first two turds. Ran out of mana."

"I see... I'm just going to pretend this never happened." Drew said with a shiver and an upturned stomach.

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"Okay folks, it's time for the rescue op. Remember, the mayor is still missing, you need to be careful. Oh, and if you have any extra stat points, please for the love of The Lady, put them into Toughness and Vitality, we've already lost good people." Drew said.

The crowd grumbled. Drew sighed. It was like trying to tell flat earthers that the planet was a sphere.

Having just lost Robert because he wasn't more aggressive with his tactics, Drew decided to go hard and fast this time. He had pulled all his minions nearby for the rescue portion, and was going to send them into the school all at once, hitting every exit and entrance simultaneously. Meanwhile, the rescue team would follow behind the main group of minions entering the front entrance of the school. The most likely places that the captives were being held were the gym, bathrooms, and cafeteria, due to the lack of easily breakable windows. Given that educated guess, those were the areas that he planned to go to first.

The commands were sent out, and the minions breached the school.

"Alright people, give them a good ten second head start and we'll head in. Remember, the minions are there for a reason, don't be a hero." Drew said.

Drew led from the front, entering behind the main breaching minion team. Mark and Beefcake were to his sides, and Amber, and his mom were behind him. Spock brought up the rear with Miranda. Every door he came across, he opened. If it was locked, he kicked it down. The missing, or rather sleeping security team soon engaged one of his minion teams, just as planned. He knew the other team was likely sleeping, and was using the school as a base of some kind, so he was happy to have it confirmed.

He briefly looked through the eyes of the minion team to see that most of the defending security group was using firearms. He heard the gunshots ring out throughout the school as he continued searching. Them using firearms was good news, bullet wounds wouldn't do much damage against magically reinforced skeletons, and it would take many shots to take just one minion down. Meanwhile, they'd be wasting limited ammo. As long as he kept the living out of the way of the bullets, the minions should be able to handle them without much effort. He'd taken a page from the monster and beast waves and used overwhelming numbers this time around.

Drew kicked in a bathroom door, which wasn't even locked, it swung open with so much force that the door stopper on the ground was ripped out as the door embedded itself into the wall.

"Oh God..." Mark whispered.

The bathroom was littered with bloated corpses, and the smell wafted out into the hallway, he could hear the people behind him gagging on their own bile. The bodies were everywhere, thrown on top of each other, flies swam through the air.

"Further confirmation of what we've heard." Beefcake said.

The demon grabbed the door, and pulled it from its embedded location, closing the location back off.

"Someone mark this door please." Drew called out.

Those bodies would either need proper burials, or would become replacement minions, but that was a problem for future Drew. Present Drew had another job to do.

Drew found the administrative area, which given that it was a small grade school, the area was relative small. However, he did find a nice surprise waiting for him in the principal's office. A drunkenly passed out mayor, on a couch, covered in her own vomit. Empty liquor bottles and beer cans covered the floor and nearby desk. It was clear that this wasn't the first time that this had happened. Someone clearly had a substance abuse issue.

Now, most people would see the woman laying on the couch and think to themselves that she should face justice for the atrocities she had committed, or ordered. People would want to see her tried in court and either thrown in jail for the rest of her life, or executed. Drew wasn't those people. Drew saw a level twenty-one threat, one that he didn't have a justice system or anything else in place to deal with. So, he cut off her vomit-covered head while she was passed out. Could he have set up the required institutions and created a form of government for his tiny community? Yeah, most likely. But it would be a giant pain in the ass and everyone there was stretched too thin already. Adding additional jobs without the people to do them was just asking for trouble.

Eventually he would need to set up some form of laws and government, but only if and when they had more people. For right now, he took care of one of the biggest threats to the local population of humanity. He didn't see it as cruel, she had died in her sleep and didn't feel anything, and now he wouldn't have to have his people carry a major threat with them while saving other people.

Alerts came in from his minions. They had killed off the defensive team and found survivors. Good. But if the mayor was passed out drunk, and the defensive security team was sleeping, who was guarding the survivors? The answer came when he looked through his minions' eyes. No one. No one was guarding them. No one was needed. All the survivors were huddled near each other. People of all ages, but the one thing they all had in common was their condition. They'd been starved, there was clearly a makeshift bathroom area in one corner of the gym, the doors were all chained shut and held in place by multiple locks

His minions had gotten in due to their sheer magically enhanced strength and nothing else. Normal people that weren't highly leveled would never get out with all the chains in place, and without any tools. Drew had the minions pull back, and close the doors. He left several skeletons to guard the door, while he sent the rest to continue searching.

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Drew stood before the doors of the gym, his minions moved off to the sides. Between the rescue team and the minions, they had cleared the school. Sadly they only found two groups of survivors. The first, and largest group were behind the doors to the gym in front of him. The second group he and his team had found locked in the school's old walk-in freezer. Their condition was even worse than the people in the gym. The freezer group had all been repeatedly sexually assaulted, and it consisted of both young women and young men, some of which were clearly minors that looked like they belonged in high school, at most.

Once he had ripped off the chains, entered and saw the state of the young people inside, he sent Miranda and the other healers inside to help. They couldn't do anything about the malnourishment, or the general level of weakness the victims had, but the healers managed to heal wounds, bruising, fresh scars, and the many... less pleasant injuries they had. He held very little doubt in his mind now, he was glad to have killed the mayor, the council, and the security teams. There were some lines that were never meant to be crossed, and they had crossed them. Repeatedly.

Drew had stood outside that freezer door, looking out into the cafeteria for a long time while the healers did their work. He'd seen dead bodies, he'd risen undead and watched flesh roll off bones like someone peeling the meat from BBQ ribs, but the image of those kids and young adults haunted him. They had been beaten, strangled, raped, cut, and even stabbed. They were fed just enough to prevent death, but not much more. The only ones he allowed in that room were the healers and a couple of the younger females in the rescue group. They needed friendly faces. He didn't know if both men and women had victimized them, but he figured it was better to play it safe and keep the people he sent inside to a minimum.

The healing had taken almost two hours, and several of the victims had to be transported out via makeshift stretchers. The rescue team had opened their spatial inventories and handed over blankets and spare clothing to the healers so they could distribute them. The whole event clawed at Drew's brain as he tried to push the image out of his head and focus on the other people in the gym that needed help.

Drew pushed open the doors to the gym, the healers and several others following him. Drew stopped ten yards away from the huddling people. They were crying, several were rocking back and forth. There were a couple folks just curled up in the fetal position trying to remain silent and motionless as possible. Many of his people gagged once again as the aroma of human waste hit the back of their throats. The healers rushed forward to begin healing people, but many tried to crawl away thinking they had been chosen to be killed.

"You are all free. We have killed your captors, and my people are offering magical healing, please allow them to render aid." Drew announced loudly.

The captured people turned to stare at him, eyes still wide with fear. Right... he was still wearing his scary ass cringe armor. Drew auto-unequipped it and stored it in his inventory. Several people leaned backwards upon seeing his face. Oh yeah... divine facial tattoos and glowing heterochromatic eyes... there was fuck all he could do about that... still, it hurt his feelings a little bit that they seemed less scared of his black armor covered in goth skulls and blue flames, than his face.

"We are here to help. I know I look strange, and I apologize, but there's nothing I can do about it. Instead, focus your attention on the people with me. Many of them are your neighbors and friends that lived outside of town limits. We came to rescue you when we heard what happened to y'all. You can relax now, the bad guys are all dead and gone."

Drew pulled the mayor's head from his inventory and tossed it onto the ground in front of him, where it rolled awkwardly before stopping. The peoples' eyes drifted to the head.

"The mayor..." a voice whispered.

"Yes, the mayor. She was found passed out in a drunken stupor. I took her life as she had taken so many of yours'. As I said, you are free now, let the healers do their work and you're free to go." Drew said loud enough for everyone to hear.

"But...there were skele..." A woman said shaking.

"They are my minions. They're like puppets, or pets. I control them. I know they're scary, but they also helped free y'all." Drew turned his head to address the woman's concerns.

"Where...where will we...everything is..." An older man said, almost to himself.

"You're free to go wherever you choose. You may return to your homes if they still exist, you can choose another house if yours was destroyed, or you may join us should you wish."

"Join...you?" An overweight middle-aged woman asked.

"We live about eight miles outside of town, down the old county road. We've built up a small community there. We have food, we have farms, we have a small amount of livestock, and we have security." Drew replied.

"Food..."

"...Water..."

Voices repeated Drew's offering.

"Security?" The obese woman asked.

"Gates, fences, watchtowers..." Drew started.

"Pffff, it sounds too good to be true." A older man said brushing off what Drew was saying.

"That's because it is. There's no such thing as a utopia. If you join us, you'll be required to remain productive. In one way or another. Whether that's farming, learning a profession, teaching kiddos, cooking. It doesn't really matter, as long as you're doing something productive. But there's hardships too, we're still building houses, water has to be hand-pumped. We don't have showers or running water, but neither does the town. It's not perfect, and you have to work. But you'll be relatively safe. Or, you can do whatever you'd like and stay here or try going somewhere else. I'm not going to pressure y'all. Either you come, or you don't, either is fine." Drew replied.

Some murmuring broke out as the healers began their work as people had finally started to settle down.

"Ah, yes, what about me, will I need to work?" A woman in a wheelchair asked.

"Yes. But the good news is that you'll be able to do it while standing on your own two feet." Drew answered with a warm smile.

"I'm afraid that isn't possible sir, I haven't walked in nearly seventeen years." The woman replied with her head cast down.

"How about we come back to your question after the healers take a look at ya? Like I said, it's magic healing. Not the old idiot doctors in stuffy offices kind, but the type that lets you regrow limbs, and heals bad backs like they never existed."

"No offense, but I'll believe that when pigs fly." The woman gripped.

Pigs did indeed fly, because once Miranda made her way to the wheelchair-bound woman, she could soon move her toes, then her feet, and then finally her legs. It wasn't long after that the elderly woman took her first unsteady steps in seventeen years. Drew must have been looking pretty damn smug because when the woman turned her head to him and saw his face, with his arms crossed she laughed. Small miracles happened that day for those people, as arthritis was cured, a veteran's foot grew back, and the old and infirm walked without pain.

It was times like these that made Drew feel better about Earth and the powers people had now. Yeah, there were still corrupt evil bastards, but there was also good that could be done to help people. The System healed diseases and mental illnesses when The Descent came, but it didn't do anything for amputees, the crippled, or the elderly. Thankfully, healing spells could.

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Minions and rescue team members combed through the houses and wreckage of the town looking for survivors, or people in hiding. Many homes and other buildings were empty and barely standing, but a few people were found. Altogether, a total of seventy-three people, four dogs, one cat, three chickens, and a pair of bunnies had been found. It was more than he had expected, but it was a happy occasion nonetheless, and something that would need to be celebrated in the future. All but two people chose to come with him and his team. Two very stubborn and ornery old folks that were determined to live out their days in the wreckage of the town they were born in.

True to his word, he didn't force the two people to come, even if doing so would have been considered kinder than letting them die to starvation or beasts. But he refused to force people to abandon their home. If they wished to die there, then that was their call, and he'd respect it. Even if they were idiots.

Rescue team members made their way back to the community and picked up the old, still running trucks, and used the vehicles to ferry the malnourished victims to safety. Drew went to work processing the bodies of the dead. Several souls had lingered throughout the town, and a couple were close to becoming damned. He harvested their souls in his lantern to help them pass on. He did this for the souls of the older folks that likely would have a harder time accepting the new reality of Earth, and would be miserable as a soulflame, especially in a skeleton. The security teams that had victimized the towns' people were also collected.

The bodies of the assholes were raised into undeath as skeletons and he pulled their souls to his lantern. The souls of the younger people he bound to skeleton bodies and brought them back, offering them a choice. Live in their boney body, or receive help moving on into the afterlife. Many chose to move on, uncomfortable in the skeletal bodies Drew provided for them. It was better than putting them into their own bloated, and reeking corpses though. A couple of folks decided to give the boney unlife a try to help protect their neighbors though, which was a nice surprise.

The sun had set, and Drew was on the last truck heading home, sitting in the bed as his minions pushed ahead up the road and back to the community.