Hanging in the darkness, which he realized was the cut down version of the white space with no sense of self, ability to move or other people, David turned to the notifications he had been putting off until later.

  There was a wall of notifications he could scroll up and down, both the floating system text and the full blown box notifications the System seemed to use for important stuff.

  He left those for last.

  First came notifications that he quickly cleared, many serving as little more than a log of trauma and achievements from the day before, and thanks to magical healing, no longer relevant.

  Concussion, delete.

  Completed quest, delete.

  Then he got to the first one still needing action.

  [CONGRATULATIONS – YOUR MASTERY OF HALT HAS REACHED A LEVEL WHERE YOUR SYSTEM IS COMPATIBLE WITH NEW SKILL OPTIONS. CONTACT THE OBELISK FOR MORE INFORMATION]

  Now this was the good stuff. Halt was his single most important ability and unlocking something like that would be incredible. He quickly reached out to the Obelisk and got his options.

  Well, that rapidly poured cold water on those options. He didn’t have the available XP to unlock either of the two options. A quick inquiry revealed why the costs were so different. Stun was an extension of Halt, focused against a single target and able to disable much stronger foes for longer. It sounded incredibly useful for the style of fighting he hoped to adopt.

  Bind was even better. It worked by physically locking a single target in place. Magic like that was unbelievably useful and he could already see dozens of applications for it. Suddenly the price didn’t seem so steep, especially if he wanted to delve more deeply into the power words. Still, this was effectively entirely out of his price range, at least for now…

  Hoping for better news he quickly moved on to check his next unlocked skill.

  [CONGRATULATIONS – YOUR MASTERY OF REINFORCE HAS REACHED A LEVEL WHERE YOUR SYSTEM IS COMPATIBLE WITH NEW SKILL OPTIONS. CONTACT THE OBELISK FOR MORE INFORMATION]

  He had no idea what Reinforce would give him access to. It turned out that he actually did have some information though.

  Again he grimaced, he already knew that Iron Skin was a great defensive option especially against slashing attacks, though as Katie had discovered it wasn’t a panacea. Resistance was interesting, you had to specify what you were developing resistance to (there was a list which included fire, poison and the like) and it was then extremely effective. He still felt the cost was a bit extreme for such a narrow defense and decided that it was one to explore in the future.

  Stii nothing he really wanted to get right now and could afford, where were the super cheap unlocks he had grown accustomed to? Sure, Iron Skin would be nice but he already had a high defense so it might well be overkill.

  With that settled he moved on, sure the next notification was worth waiting for.

  [CONGRATUALTIONS – YOU HAVE PROGRESSED A BASIC SKILL REINFORCE BEYOND LEVEL 10. UPGRADE OPTIONS ARE AVAILABLE FROM THE OBELISK]

  He eagerly checked his options and more importantly the costs, as he was quickly realizing that nothing was free in the System…

  Now that was a lot of choices. He started firing off queries to the system about his options and quickly came to understand the limits of his choices as each specific manifestation sounded extremely useful. Also narrow.

  About the only one he eliminated quickly was skin as he had another option that frankly sounded better. He suspected that there were more skills they could discover to cover these various points, which spoke against picking any of these right now. A little more research and thought left him with the impression that most of the options would be incomplete at this stage as having great bones for example didn’t help much if you then found yourself disabled by ligament damage and dislocation when your bone didn’t snap. The general focus seemed to be the way to go, adding a resource which could power the skill didn’t just give you another resource to fuel it, instead it widened the scope of protection.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  For now the only focus he gave serious thought to was nervous system, both because of his recent concussion and the fact that it would harden his nervous system against what the system described as ‘stunning effects’. Still, he knew that picking up anything new would come at the cost of multiple levels advanced in his already purchased skills, attributes and resources.

  His last couple of notifications were the best, as they marked things he had already gained where he didn’t have to pay a cost.

  [CONGRATULATIONS – YOU HAVE EARNED THE MARK ALLY SKILL AS A REWARD. CONTACT THE OBELISK TO ADD THIS SKILL TO YOUR SYSTEM]

  [CONGRATULATIONS – YOU HAVE EARNED THE BESTOW MEDITATION SKILL AS A REWARD. CONTACT THE OBELISK TO ADD THIS SKILL TO YOUR SYSTEM]

  He eagerly reached out to add the skills to his system. There was a flicker from the dark void around him and he was done.

  His final notification was strange.

  That was just weird, it basically looked like the equivalent of a senior manager saying ‘get started on the project, we’ll worry about authorization, scope and a budget later…’

  In David’s admittedly limited experience that sort of thing went very poorly, usually for the poor sap who was working on it when they had their next performance evaluation.

  Skills added, just waiting for his Domain to finish forming. The fact that it took time to build gave him a little more time to think. Reluctantly he decided that the most important thing right now was to take the Heralds advice and round out his existing powers rather than adding new things.

  He filled the time asking questions of the Obelisk about the potential upgrades they could purchase and quickly decided that was something they needed to hang onto and likely would have to coordinate not just with their group but with an eye to the needs of the wider survivor community. What made sense for dozens might be totally useless for tens of thousands and there were definitely that many people floating around.

  He was still digging into all the options which he could see now he had the first rank of Squire as the dark void faded and his senses were restored revealing the dark, shadowed expanse of their secluded training yard, dimly lit by the light of the barrier and beacon.

  The others quickly gathered and after comparing notes on the experience everyone checked their Status to see what they could learn about their Domains.

  David reviewed his updated status, noting his progress and the new skills.

  After that it was testing time. Most of them were still pretty battered but it was easy to at least apply their new Mark Ally skills to each other. Then they started to do the easy testing.

  First, their domains were not all the same size. Though they couldn’t figure out all the factors it became clear pretty fast that your linked attribute was important, as was your level. They only worked that out because the biggest domains were held by Camila and David, who happened to be the only people who had the superficially weak and expensive level stat increased.

  They also found that while the boost to resource recovery wasn’t massive it stacked, at least in the case of Magic and Stamina. Testing the various attribute gains was harder as most of their linked attributes didn’t lend themselves to easy quantification.

  The exceptions were that Camila gave out a Mark that measurably increased strength based on an incredibly crude test where it was noticeably easier for the others who lacked the strength stat as they could heft and move around a set of concrete breeze blocks they used for testing purposes with less effort.

  Everyone also agreed that they felt it was ‘easier to move precisely’ with Carl’s buff, which focused on his main stat dexterity, which apparently he had chosen for the benefits to shooting.

  Again, not revolutionary but measurable boosts that added up to enough gains to be pretty compelling.

  The final standout was revealed when Charlie marked Sarah and her attack jumped noticeably in size, though the reverse wasn’t as clear and Charlie refrained from using his big fireball to avoid attracting attention. They didn’t really have a way to gauge what the size meant but it was worth investigating further.

  David’s domain was the opposite of impressive, marking the others as allies caused no detectable change to their regeneration rates, it wasn’t possible to really identify the effects of willpower, though Mark, Sarah and Charlie all felt that their mana skills ‘maybe’ responded a bit better and were perhaps easier to cast.

  David wasn’t sure if that was them being nice to him, so he moved to experimenting with his spirits.

  That was when he made two exciting discoveries.

  First, within his domain his spirits were functioning better. It was almost as though he had infused them with a small amount of his system resources, which was his usual trick to direct and use them.

  Some tinkering with this soon revealed that he had a much more precise, almost proprioceptive, sense of exactly where the spirits were within his Domain. Which was extremely useful.

  He also found that the domain offset the miniscule costs of just keeping a spirit outside – almost as though his domain now counted as inside whatever strange storage area he was using to keep his court of captured spirits.

  Second, when he marked the others as allies there was a difference which wasn’t obvious to him, but which his spirits could easily sense and focus on.

  He made real progress once he had a spirit focus on his marked allies. He now had an intuitive easy information stream about each ally within range. Minimal testing revealed that he was aware of everyone’s position, even through walls. Plus, he could set simple conditions for his spirits to attract his attention.

  This was proven with Mark doing a series of comical dives, something he volunteered for once it became clear how stiff all the others were with their ongoing healing slowing them down.

  As Charlie and David started to devise even more elaborate ways to start testing and exploring the effects of the domain skills the others, having run through the simple tests they could manage given their mostly healed injuries brought them up short.

  It was Carl who proposed something radical. “Look, guys I know y’all want to play with the new toys and then probably have a long talk about spending XP or something. Why don’t we go and have a little live fire exercise? I reckon we can bag a zombie or two if we’re careful and that will give us a better idea of what our Domains are capable of.”

  Charlie pushed back on that. “That’s what we are doing, we need to have a good handle on our abilities if we are going to do well when…”

  Sarah gently interrupted even as she made a shushing gesture a Camila who was about to say something, likely harsh.

  “No, Charlie. We aren’t going to change how well we know our skills without real testing. My Ice magic is bigger when you use your Domain, but what does that mean? We can be careful and save a lot of time.”

  “What about the death cries?”

  “I think I can suppress them if I really grip the Nath with Halt. It’s worth a try anyway.” David endorsed the plan.

  One by one they all agreed, it was a risk, but that was their new life. So carefully, relying on David to scout they started to go looking for zombies.