With that, they all headed back inside. Once they were in, a couple of the other survivors stood watch at the door as Adam and his group made their way back inside. While all of the people seemed to know that something had happened, most had not seen Adam and Michael’s transformations. Unfortunately, some of those that did had quickly spread out, whispering about what had happened.

  While some of the looks thrown their way were full of interest, others showed distrust and hostility.

  Super cool. One idiot can’t keep his shit together and now we are looking over our shoulders, wondering who else hates us.

  Their group made their way back to the second floor of the room where they found Sylvia talking with a family of four. Adam recognized the mom as a professor from the music department named Marissa Bain. A man that could only be her husband stood beside her, and two children sat against the wall. One of them, a young boy that looked to be about five years old, slept. His shaggy black hair obscured his face as he leaned against his sister, a young girl who looked about twelve.

  Interestingly, when they got close enough to hear the conversation between Sylvia and Marissa, Adam and Michael both stiffened. A quick glance between them was enough to confirm that they both had sensed it. Adam’s bestial instincts had reacted like this only once before; the first time he had seen Michael, after the Integration started.

  At first, he thought that his senses were pulling him toward the father. Adam didn’t know his name, but his heavy Carhartt sweatshirt hid the bulk of his frame. Mr. Bain looked as if he came directly from a construction site where he had put a house together by hand. His blond hair was clean cut and tucked under a ball cap, while his burly beard hid the lower half of his face. The man had a presence about him but it wasn’t what had alerted Adam.

  His gaze slid past the man back towards the children, where they fell on the daughter. The daughter that was staring straight at him with fear in her eyes. She instantly stiffened up and glanced at her parents before looking back at Adam and very slowly shaking her head.

  Oh, no.

  The girl was a beast too.

  With all of the insanity that he had experienced so far, Adam had not even considered who all had gained powers. The girl was just a kid! Did the other kid have access to the system too? The implications raced through his mind as the group approached.

  Emi, who had arrived prior to the rest of the group, was in the middle of talking with Sylvia, Professor Bain and Mr. Bain as they approached.

  “...positions don’t matter anymore anyways, so we might as well have a couple of you take charge.” She gestured to Tang as Adam and the others arrived, “The big guy over here seemed to be in charge when we came in, so shouldn’t he be able to help with decisions?”

  “Could you explain what you’re talking about?” asked Tang. “Now that Professor Johnson is here too, shouldn’t he and Professor Bain be in charge?”

  Michael shook his head, “Tang, given the situation that we are in, I don't think that it should be assumed that Marissa and I should be in charge simply because we are faculty.” He nodded to Professor Bain in acknowledgment, “Not unless you went to a training for the apocalypse that I missed.”

  She shared a tired smile with her husband, “Unfortunately, I also missed that training.”

  “Having someone with disaster relief or law enforcement training would be best right?” asked Tang. “At least they would have some semi-relevant training experiences.”

  Michael nodded and turned to Marissa’s husband, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you retired military? Do you have any experience with command or leading?”

  The blonde man's beard shook as he laughed, “Sure, I was in the military, but I was just a civil engineer. I did a couple deployments and fixed forward operating bases. No leadership roles for me.”

  The professors, Emi, Tang and Mr. Bain, who introduced himself to everyone as Chuck, continued to talk about what should happen next. Feeling that they had nothing to add, the others all broke away to do their own thing. Shawn and Dimitri walked back downstairs to join the others guarding the main entrance, stating that they were the only people aside from Tang and Everett that had fought any monsters. Sylvia and Otto split off on their own as well. As they walked away, Adam could hear Otto asking Sylvia a slough of questions about mana. Between the intensity of his questioning and the look on his face that Adam had seen earlier, it was obvious to him that Otto was feeling left behind. While he, Henry, Syl and Michael had all leveled up and gained more abilities, Otto was still at the same place as before. In the grand scheme, it wasn’t all that surprising though. There was no way that everyone would have as easy of a time leveling up as they had. Adam and Michael literally turned into monsters and crushed creatures easier than they likely should have, Henry was a trained fencer and was able to use his years of experience to quickly progress, and Syl… she might be a genius? Adam wasn’t sure how hard it was to learn magic but she seemed to have picked it up pretty quick.

  Henry and Everett went to the far side of the second level where Everett kept watch over the lobby from the open doorway that used to lead to the balcony. While he kept watch, Henry drew his sword and began to practice his swordsmanship. To Adam’s untrained eye, his friend looked like he was just lunging and swinging his sword around. To him, there was no particular rhyme or reason to his friends movements, but he could tell that each swing or stab of his friend's sword was filled with intent, his instincts telling him that each movement could definitely harm him.

  I wonder if his attacks would hurt me in my beast form.

  Hopefully, he would never have to find out. I should ask him to fight me so I can learn. Wait, is it fighting or sparring? Whatever, that's a question for Future Adam.

  After a couple more minutes of discussion, Emi decided to snag Chuck and see what they could do to shore up the defenses of the auditorium. Apparently, the big man hadn’t even been offered the Warrior’s Pursuit and so he chose Crafter just like Emi. Surprisingly, his wife had chosen the Path of the Warrior despite her low compatibility with it. She had justified her choice by saying that she would rather have the skills to keep her children safe than anything else. She had a spare baseball bat of Dimitri’s within arms reach at all times and even throughout the conversation, never went more than ten feet away from her kids.

  Marissa’s daughter, Ellie, kept glancing between Adam and Michael, but made no attempts to talk to them. Adam had to contain his surprise when Marissa had expressed her relief that neither Ellie nor Will, her son, had gained access to the system. He wasn’t sure why she would be lying to her parents, but he didn’t want to bring it up to them when she was so close by. After experiencing the things he had, Adam was worried that the little girl could be dangerous. Luckily, at this point, she had not had to use her abilities.

  As Michael, Tang and Marissa continued talking about next steps, Adam moved to sit by himself. Now that he was in a relatively calm space, he felt like it was a good time to go over the rest of his gains from leveling up. Sitting in one of the seats in the top row, Adam observed the other survivors. So far, the auditorium had worked well as a safety zone, allowing them to move around and rest peacefully. Scattered around the room were small cliques of people. Some seemed to be terrified, curling in on themselves, barely holding it all together, while others seemed to be arguing about what to do next.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  There was no cohesion amongst the people here and from what Adam could tell, the survivors were not interested in group survival. Personal needs came first.

  Which brought Adam back to his current situation. He had time to see just how much he had grown. He opened his previously dismissed system messages.

  While he was excited to check his stats and see the numerical values of how he had grown, Adam needed to see the rest of his information first. What kinds of stuff had the Bone Glutton class given him?

  Seriously?! That brings my total stats per level up from seven to sixteen!

  He wasn’t sure if that was a lot but based on the fact that he had some kind of special class, he could only assume that it was.

  One thing kept standing out to him though whenever he saw anything to do with the class. What exactly did the Class Specialty Stat of Magnitude do? He focused on the word, hoping for clarification and another smaller window appeared.

  …What the hell?...

  That didn’t tell him much of anything. It was like a sarcastic urban dictionary definition. Adam focused even harder on the stat, hoping for more clarification and got nothing. Frustrated by the lack of information, he moved on to the most important messages, his new skills.

  Excitement burst within Adam’s chest.

  Now these feel like magic, he thought.

  Skeletal Augmentation was interesting for a couple of reasons. The first was that it seemed to be a skill that everyone that had a Beast Pursuit had. He would need to check in with Michael later to see how his skeletal version differed from the professors.

  Bone Shaping seemed unique in that it was likely an ability that seemed pretty useless while he was transformed. That didn’t mean that he found it worthless, though. Images of barbarian figures from fantasy media flashed through his head. Skull helmets and pauldrons, bone clubs and gauntlets with bone claws all stood out to him.

  These thoughts brought a momentary frown to his face. If I armor myself with a shit ton of bones, there is no way that I'll beat the Orc allegations… He brought his hand to his face and ran his thumb along one of his new tusks. It was amazing how easily he ignored them. When he was in his beast form they were hard to miss as he could see them, but aside from the initial discomfort he had when talking, they were almost completely forgotten when he was in his human form.

  Another surprising thought momentarily distracted him. Adam realized that he hadn’t gotten to see what he looked like yet. Ever since the Integration started, he had not had the chance to get a good look at himself in either of his forms.

  Note to self, find a mirror soon.

  With that, Adam refocused on the most exciting ability he had received. Gluttonous Expanse.

  I have a soul Bag of Holding! While it seemed less impressive than altering his body or enforcing his will upon the bones of another to craft armaments, which wasn’t edgy at all when said like that, having a pocket to magically store stuff in was super handy. The only caveat that he could see was the fact that he had to “consume” the things he put in there. That meant that if he couldn’t eat it then he couldn’t store it.

  Adam wanted to try his abilities out as soon as possible but a quick look around confirmed that he didn’t have the necessary materials to try them.

  His quick scan ended when his eyes landed on a group of men on the stage of the auditorium. Amongst the group was an elderly man, probably in his early seventies, in a suit tailored to fit a man twenty years younger. Clearly, the man wasn’t one for formal events. His tie was loosened and he leaned heavily on his cane while he spoke to the others. An instant after he laid eyes on the man, Adam grinned as he remembered something.

  The survivors in the room were from three different groups. Students like Tang who were in Professor Bain’s Music Theory class, plus her family who had shown up to take her to lunch, people who came to see the History of Man lecture, and one last group.

  The old man, and the rest of his group, moved from their position on the stage, revealing a sign with the image of a Wooly Mammoth above the Wildcat mascot for Central Washington University.

  There was an archaeological exhibit being set up in the building.

  Maybe they have some bones I could… borrow.

  Happy that he had a plan and might get to try his skills soon, Adam turned toward the final thing he could do on his own. His status sheet.

  Time to distribute my free points and see just how much I’ve grown.