"Did it really take fifteen minutes to reach the Church?"
Emma asked, after a mere two minutes atop her floating platform of earth brought her back to the starting point, where she first encountered the Scavengers.
[I can confirm fifteen minutes, and twenty two seconds outbound. Two minutes and seventeen seconds inbound.]
"We're not even moving that fast," Emma protested, watching the world drift by at a leisurely thirty miles an hour. "The convoy should have overtaken us immediately, but they're nowhere to be seen."
[Best not to think about what's beyond your control. Focus on the palace.]
"Right..."
Emma shook her head, did another check of her inventory, and tried to take Edith's advice and refocus. As they retraced what was by now a very familiar dirt footpath, she took the time to draft and send a short note to Noah, explaining that Woodstock was best avoided in future. A precaution, in case the convoy never returned to pass on her warning. With that last bit of business taken care of, Emma returned her gaze to the horizon, head held high as she prepared for round three against the palace doors. Of course, it couldn't be that easy...
"Where's the palace?" Emma groaned, feeling yet another phantom headache as she stared at the empty patch of land before her: no palace, no gardens, just fallow fields with a crater at the centre.
[Blenheim Palace was destroyed in the first week of the apocalypse? Hold on a minute. Switch Null Zone off.]
Emma did so, and the familiar front garden faded back into view.
[Blenheim Palace was untouched by the apocalypse, and remains standing, albeit abandoned, to this day.]
"You okay, Edith?"
[Yes, but the System is not. I can see activity and reconnaissance logs updating themselves in real-time, retroactively. This is most perplexing.]
Hearing that, Emma couldn't help but turn Null Zone back on, then off again, then on, then off again, her surroundings flickering with every change.
[0.5 EXP gained for being annoying. Now your status page looks untidy: enjoy!
EXP: 8065.5/10000]
"Sorry," Emma apologised immediately, feeling a twinge of agony as she beheld her updated EXP gauge. "I won't do it again?"
—
Some time ago...
[Irregular System broadcast incoming, by order of Overmind.]
Astrid Rosén looked up at her notifications, absently wiping her blade clean on the fur of a massive Mammoth Demon that lay dead at her feet.
"Overmind?" The name was familiar to her, as it was to every child born and raised as part of the magical community, but it wasn't one Astrid had ever expected to encounter. "I didn't know she was an Administrator."
[She's not. She does, however, have elevated broadcast privileges, allowing mass communications to those under her jurisdiction. There are others overseas with similar privileges: the official term for such individuals is Faction Leader.]
"I see."
Astrid breathed in, drawing the power of the distant Sun into herself, cleansing her body of poison and fatigue. She exhaled, a rippling wave of light that struck down three lesser demons trying to take advantage of her momentary stillness.
"Three down, and a hundred to go," Astrid huffed, feeling the ground tremble beneath the hooves of a vast, incoming horde.
[Reinforcements required at Blenheim Palace. Situation is unknown, proceed with caution. Class A rewards to be distributed to all participants once the crisis concludes.
You are: 75 miles away.]
"Class A rewards?" Astrid whistled, raising her sword to impale a swarm of bat demons with beams of light; the blade shattered, its duty done. "The highest I ever saw before today was Class C."
[The rewards are justified, given the danger involved.]
"Then I won't waste any more time here," Astrid decided, reaching into her inventory and pulling out an ancient stone ring, placing it upon her finger without hesitation.
[Don't Be a Stranger activated: Taking on the form and powers of a fallen ancestor.]
From one moment to the next, Astrid vanished and Princess Astaroth returned.
"We've got a lot of ground to cover, and not much time to do it; but first, let's take out the trash."