TT:E C13

“Amelia, that’s excellent!” Maeve cheered quietly. “Having a healer solves so many worries I had.”

“I know.” Amelia grinned, looking triumphant. “I was thinking the same thing. The first aid kits we brought are only going to last so long, and with magic and stuff there’s no way they’d be useful forever even if we did find more. When I saw this class as an option, I knew I had to take it.”

“Were you thinking that, or thinking about healing me?” Alex asked, sounding mildly disapproving. “Did you lose a better option just for me?”

“Of course I was thinking about healing you! And Maeve, and Scarlet, and Ed. You getting a gash in your chest just made me think about it more.” She stood on her tiptoes to give him a quick kiss. “What would have happened if we didn’t get a healer of some kind, whether it was me taking the class or finding an item that did something similar or whatever? We’d get worn down, bit by bit, until we fell apart. It’s not perfect, but I’m thinking of this like a tabletop campaign, which is helping me cope a little, but it’s also giving me thoughts about what we need. Healing gives us sustainability, which is really important right now.”

“Which is great, and I’m happy, but what about you? You just gave up other options for the rest of us. For me.”

Amelia reached up and whacked him on the back of the head. “Of course I did, dummy! We might die soon if we don’t work together, choosing a class that helps all of us is the only option we have! I went in to class selection trying to focus on what we needed as a group to survive. You two better do the same damn thing!” She whirled to look at Maeve. “Maeve, what did you pick?”

“A buffer and debuffer focused on support and making enemies weaker.”

She spun back to her boyfriend. “See? Maeve could have picked a class that would let her throw the might of magic at our enemies-”

“I got a generic sorcerer option.”

“-which she would have loved-“

“Meh, I’m into battlefield control more than-“

“-but she picked the option that helps the group stay alive in the apocalypse!” Amelia kept going, completely ignoring her friend’s rebuttals. “And I expect both of you to do the same thing! If there’s an option between your best class that makes you into your perfect self that doesn’t keep all five of us stay alive longer you better kick it to the curb-“

Maeve stepped forward and wrapped her hand over her friend’s mouth. “Volume.” She chided Amelia. “Also, you’re not wrong but you’re going to put thoughts in their heads that might be wrong.” She looked up at the two men, who were staring at Amelia with two different kinds of shock. “You do need to pick classes that benefit us all more than they benefit you individually, but that’s different than me and Amelia picking our classes.”

Amelia pulled the hand off of her mouth. “How!?” She demanded, although at a much lower volume than before.

“Because we already have a support and a healer, we don’t need more of them.”

“Oh, yeah I get it.”

“The classes that are going to be best for the two of you are probably going to be best for the group too, because what we need now are heavy hitters.” She pointed at herself, then Amelia. “I can’t hurt anything with my class yet, and I bet she can’t either.”

“Nope, all healing.”

“And we’re going to have to kill monsters. So pick classes that let you kill things, because we can’t.”

Alex waited a moment to make sure both of them had finished speaking. “I get it. Sorry, babe. I had the idea of pulling together for all of us in my head, but I knew that I was probably going to get to pick something that suited me and then Maeve woke up with what I would call a perfect starting class for her. She likes being the strategist and controlling battles and I like hitting things with swords, so I was just thinking about you picking something you’d like too.”

“Thank you for apologizing.” She kissed him again. “And I forgive you for your transgressions.” She grinned as he rolled his eyes. “Seriously though, I didn’t get offered anything that made me think ‘this is it!’ or anything like that. I got three common options that seemed like something anyone could get, what seemed like a basic spellcaster class called Sorcerer-

“I got that too.”

“-and Magical Healer. None of them were perfectly what I would have liked, but I also don’t know what I would have liked so it’s moot.”

“Okay.” Alex pulled her as close as he could without hurting her with his armor. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Now which one of you is going down next?”

Alex and Ed shared a look.

Ed shrugged. “I can go now or go last. I have no problems picking something that’ll be better for everyone but I also don’t play as many games as the rest of you. If you go first I could piggyback off what you picked?”

“I don’t think you’ll have too much trouble.” Maeve told him, “You’ve played enough to be doing better than anyone who hasn’t played an RPG must be, and the System is helpful even if it isn’t spill all its secrets out.”

Amelia looked down at Alex’s chest. “I think Alex should go first. Ed, you’re not hurt and I can tell I didn’t fully heal Alex. Just getting some experience in him made an injury that should have been debilitating into one her could deal with, so getting his class might be even better for him.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Alex corrected her, “People have definitely kept fighting for a long time on worse.”

Ed nodded like it was settled, “Either way, that’s a better reason than me trying to copy you. You go first.” He gently pushed Alex through the open door frame and positioned himself in it. “You get some shut eye and I’ll keep watch till you’re done.”

He looked conflicted for a moment, but Alex agreed. “Alright, I’ll be quick.”

“Don’t rush.” Maeve scolded him. “We don’t know how many options you’ll get or what kind of skills you’ll need to pick from, so choose wisely. Don’t get stuck with something bad just to switch with Ed.”

Amelia added to Maeve’s words with a stern glare.

“Alright, alright.” He held his hands up in surrender. “I’ll properly balance speed with doing a good job.” He and Amelia kissed one or two more times before he slumped down near Scarlet and promptly fell asleep.

“We get to pick skills?” Ed asked after Alex was out.

“We do. I got to pick five from a list and since I picked a magic class I got offered a bunch of different types of magic, but I could only choose two.” Maeve replied.

“Me too. I picked up life magic and nature magic, and I got two spells from each of them.” Amelia said as she pulled up her screens. “I also got offered water magic and body magic, which I passed on for now. The System told me it was possible to gain new magic types later on when I asked.”

Maeve copied her by pulling up her own status again. “I asked the same thing. I picked body magic and shadow magic for mine, and also got two different spells from each, so that seems to be the standard. My other three skill picks were Lingering Magic, Mana Control, and Magic Resistance.”

“Oh, nice choices! I picked Mana Control too, and I got offered Lingering Magic, but I didn’t take it. The other two I got were Ward Against Disease and Resourceful Healing.”

“What’s Resourceful Healing do?” Ed asked. He was still standing guard and had his back to the break room, but he was listening attentively.

“It didn’t tell me what each skill did when I had to pick and I haven’t looked yet…” Amelia paused for a second. “Ha! I was right. Or at least my second guess was. Here, can I…? There we go.”

A screen popped up in front of Maeve.

___

Skill: Resourceful Healing - Neophyte 1 (0%)

Magical healing, as well as the vast majority of healing done using Quezeuq Energy, is resource intensive for the person being healed. The body requires nutrients and other materials along with rest to make the most of any magical healing, and eventually the body’s limit will be reached, preventing any further magical healing until the body can recover and potentially causing great harm if this limit is ignored. Resourceful Healing replaces the resources needed by the recipient of the healing and replaces them with mana from the healer. This replacement is at an extreme deficit, costing the healer significantly more mana than resources that are gained. Unless specifically tailored or controlled to do otherwise, this skill makes all healing spells cost slightly more mana but passively decreases the amount of ‘healing cooldown’ the person being healed receives.

___

Ed jerked back, his hands going to his weapon before he stilled. “Dammit, Amelia, I would have appreciated a warning.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“It’s fine, but think about it in the future, especially if you’re sharing with someone who’s on watch.” He took a second to read the explanation. “That sounds like a really good pickup. I remember you mentioning that healing cooldown idea when you were talking about one of those stories you were reading.”

“Oh yeah, I was telling you about the one Malachi got me in to. Yeah, my first guess was it would make my heals cost less, but then I saw a skill called Cheaper Healing, so I thought Resourceful Healing might do what it turns out it does do.”

Maeve suppressed the hit of worry and anxiety that spiked in her at the mention of her younger brother. She didn’t, they didn’t, have the luxury of worrying about other people that weren’t with them right now. When things were more stable she’d worry about where her family was, but not yet. “How did you share that?”

“I just thought about wanting to do it, and then it prompted me if I was sure.”

Maeve tried that with her whole status and dismissed the conformation prompt when it appeared. “Cool, we can share out entire statuses too. Let’s go through everything new we just got and see what the System will tell us while we wait on Scarlet and Alex. Ed, we’ll tell you what we learn and I’ll remember to let you know when I’m going to share something with you.”

“Instead of doing that, just read out anything you want me to know for now.” He countered, “The screens are mostly translucent but they still block some of my view. Once I’ve had time to mess with the settings and make something work better we can share whenever.”

“Smart. Yeah, I’ll just read out whatever seems important.” Concentrating on a line on her status page, Maeve pulled up an explanation on hit points. It wasn’t what she was most curious about, but it was the most important. If there was a sudden numerical value that represented the boundary between life and death, she wanted to know.