Grey was not used to waking up at 5AM; and if he was going to be ready to leave that early, he needed to get up before that.

  And so he found himself showering and getting ready at four in the morning; and determined that however little emotion he might have left, he was still capable of getting angry at that as he cooked himself some eggs.

  The ‘Medium Armored Bodysuit’ had come in a dull grey when he’d looted it off the Minoans; but aside from letting it stretch and warp to fit his much smaller frame, it also let him re-color it; and he set it on a dull greenish brown, almost but not quite the same as the faded army jacket that was in Joshua’s closet.

  To help present a more militaristic look, he used a holster; and the TK-pistol; and checked himself in the mirror.

  The armor was obviously strange; the contours not quite matching any armor made on earth. But with the color change, it was almost right. Just… not quite.

  As 0500 approached, and he was ready to head out, he considered kicking Kylie out for the day… but decided to let her sleep. Everything of value was already in storage; the only thing left here he really cared about where his ongoing experiments with chemical sprayers in the shed; and he already had an effective improvised flamethrower, acid sprayer, venom sprayer, and venom grenade.

  At 4:50, he took his current experiment… an empowered zombie rat… and dumped it into an ice-chest full of ice… before stuffing it into the storage unit.

  And then, of course, stepped outside… to find a Humvee already pulling up.

  He nodded, and as it slowed down, stepped right up… and saluting the driver. “Sergeant Grey, reporting. Formerly.”

  The driver nodded. “Corporal Wallace. Come on in, sir. Wheels-up in forty-five.”

  He nodded… as the humvee took off. He’d comment about this being a bit late for a 5:45 flight; but then again, this was the military. There’d be no waiting in line anywhere but the base entrance; and he was certain they were waiting for him at the Fort.

  Beside him in the back, amusingly enough, was a pale young woman in black leather pants and shirt; a goth girl he recognized from the excursion to Chihuahua. Another Necromancer.

  He looked her over for a moment, and nodded. “Didn’t do too bad for yourself down there. You sure about signing up for this?”

  She glowered at him. “They’re starting up a draft. I’d rather have a bit of say in where I’m going… and you seemed competent, at least. God knows who the fuck I’d end up with if I just went out with some random chucklefuck.”

  Grey nodded. “Ahh. Hadn’t heard. If its as bad as I’ve been hearing, makes sense, though. How many countries have fallen now?”

  “...thirty-seven. I’ve got family in Australia; the whole place is just some armed camps on the beaches refusing to give up. The whole interior has been abandoned. Technically its 38…… but the prime minister there refuses to admit they’ve lost.”

  Well. They weren’t in the best position for this. “....Unfortunate.”

  He leaned back in the chair, as far as he could; it wasn’t really comfortable at all. This was terrible. Nightfire might already be over in Australia fighting the enemy. He needed some sort of threat to keep the Chosen here.

  ….The spiders. He’d completely forgotten about them. What if he encouraged them to multiply… eat people? Would that work to keep them around? He’d been planning on discussing them, among other things, with the military. But…. Hmm.

  He was lost in thought on ways to create crises as they drove to Fort Bliss; and when they finally stopped, he followed one of the soldiers onto a plane… though once he was inside the cargo plane, he was a bit surprised how quiet it was.

  He glanced up at the roof, and settled into a chair… next to Parsons, who gave him a nod, before strapping in. “We’ve got an escort to Washington. There’s things out there that can take down a plane… but nothing so far that can survive an F-35. That can fly, at least. You given any thought as to plans for this? How we can use Necromancers?”

  “Of course. I’ve got some basic, core plans we should definitely implement, and some more out-there ones that might save our asses in the long run, but are risky. And a bit more intel about the ‘Chain’, if we want it.”

  The man nodded. “Well, there’s a bounty on Chain members. The Committee claims they’re parasites; leech off of worlds, stealing their mana over time, and building their own private paradise.”

  Grey nodded. “Seems about right. Not harmful to us, granted; in fact, probably beneficial until we get things settled down, if we could make peace with them; but parasites, yes.”

  Parsons blinked. “...Beneficial how?”

  “They only show up in places where a whole bunch of stuff died, but nothing was around to absorb the mana… and then they keep the area clear for a while until they level up… and then they flee. No long-term harm for us, and they take the place of a possible serious threat; whatever would be there instead of them would be much more of a problem to deal with. Obviously killing them for the bounty is to our benefit, but aside from that, we’d be best off leaving them alone.”

  He gave a slow nod. “That… makes a bit of sense. Honestly, so far the plan has been to hunt them down and wipe them out; our troops have been racking up bounties and paying them into the budget. Not the ‘Chain’ people, for the most part. There’s some Empire wants to make Earth one of its colonies. Not part of the Committee.”

  Grey leaned against the wall. “Well. Who are we going to be talking to when we get there?”

  “Your new boss. Secretary of Defense Owenson. He’s opened up seventeen departments, and is staffing all of them like crazy. Basically trying to figure out ways to save the US… and the world too, if we can.”

  “How’s it looking?”

  Parsons sighed. “The heartland is on fire. Every day we have a handful of Kaiju emerge to deal with that need multiple Chosen to handle, or heavy military hardware, or both. And its getting worse. Louisiana is mostly gone, and Mississippi as well. Give it a few weeks and the overflow is gonna start pouring into Texas, and this place will get exciting again.”

  Ahh. Good. She’d come back. Hopefully he’d have time to prepare. Or she’d die fighting monsters. It’d be a shame if he didn’t get to kill her himself.

  He got lost in daydreams of himself, covered in Nightfire’s blood, tearing her apart with his bare hands, leaning against the seat. Whatever it took. He’d make it real.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  ***

  The meeting room was massive, with a long table lined with people in strange, varied outfits; though there were three others wearing, like Grey, clearly system-generated armor.

  The man at the head of the table was familiar; Owenson was a former general turned Secretary of Defense at the most recent election; though he looked like a young man once more, albeit the same person; clearly he’d opted to remain human.

  Once everyone was settled, he rose to his feet.

  “Ladies. Gentlemen. We are in the midst of an apocalypse. Each of you is here because you have insight into one of the various aspects of the system that we’re dealing with. Some of you are Chosen, who have had a year to get used to this nonsense. Others, just survivors who have had much less time… and acquired skills the hard way. Regardless… lets start with the current plan. Marshal.”

  He nodded at a man wearing vivid blue scale mail, with a spear strapped to his back, who rose to his feet. “My name was Marshal; but I now go by Dragoon. I’m one of the Chosen, of course, if you didn’t already know… and I’ve had the chance to see what the various plans mean. There’s four types of worlds out there that have been taken by the system.”

  He inhaled… and looked around. “The first… are the Chaos worlds. Filled with little or no remaining sentient life, they tend to be a constant war between various factions of monsters. The Committee visits these worlds to help level up Chosen, and their own troops. Nobody goes there without significant prep.”

  “Then… we’ve got the Bastion worlds. Its what earth is probably going to become, unless something changes. Most of the world will be covered with monsters… with scattered city-states, heavily walled-in and defended, struggling to survive, but holding off the monsters. If this is what happens, each of the Chosen is prepared to found a City-State… which means there will be less than a thousand on earth. Which… is likely as many as we can defend.”

  This... actually sounded fine to Grey. If Nightfire were in charge of protecting a single city-state, he could engineer the downfall of that one city-state, and just make sure the collapse was inescapable. He'd know exactly where to find her.

  “..If this happens, we’ll be looking at the loss of most human life. Frankly, we’ll likely only be able to achieve this because of the infrastructure we’re putting into orbit right now. Which, if Earth turns into a chaos world, will serve as an ark to allow humans to settle Luna, or Mars.”

  The room had grown dead silent. Knowing that the plan, at present, was for most humans to be dead… was both positive and negative.

  “What we want to achieve, if we can, is to become a Harvest world. One where there are safe zones, and Monster zones. Rather than just city-states, the continents are divided into walled sections, with one side safe, the other side being actively hunted by humans and Committee members to gain resources and mana. This… seems unlikely, at present. We might manage a handful of larger safe zones, but…. Well.”

  A man in a suit glanced up. “And the fourth type?”

  “Safe worlds. Mana peacefully allowed to grow, managed and controlled. High-density areas are walled-in and fortified, and the only place where monsters are slain. We… probably won’t manage that. So. Here’s the problem.”

  He tapped the table… and the wall lit up with a photo… of a giant monster of an Elk; at least four stories tall, with six legs each ending in a car-sized hoof.

  “We are constantly sending out troops to kill monsters. We’re using helicopters, jets, bombers, tanks, guns… and all the magic we can bring to bear. But when we kill a monster… We fly over an area, kill the big monsters, level our people up… and the next day we have to do it again. And again. We run low on fuel. Ammo. We lose choppers, and people. And once you get about level 25, you start reaching creatures that can pose a threat to military vehicles. A level 40 Kaiju can crush a tank flat, swat a helicopter out of the air… and survive a direct hit from a hellfire missile. Ultimately… the problem is logistics.”

  “We don't have enough non-expendable resources to keep up. Unless we can find a better way… in about three months, we’ll have run low enough on expendables that we’re going to have to start only defending places that are manufacturing munitions. We’ll be loading rounds directly out of the factories onto the tanks… and eventually need to abandon the less productive areas. If we hadn’t lucked into a variety of mana-using weapons, spells, and powers, we couldn’t manage that either.”

  “So. Suggestions are welcome. We want to either make sure our Bastion world is safe, with more city-states than just a thousand… or become a Harvest world. Whats the plan?”

  Grey nodded thoughtfully to himself. Three months. That would put them into late fall, early winter territory. The first freezes of the year for much of the country.

  He let the conversation go on for a while. People were suggesting training corps to induct magic-users in Area-of-Effect spells. Enchanting vehicles. Creating wards along highways, using magic to send competing groups of monsters against each other, with humans lurking nearby to gain levels just by soaking up ambient Mana. Grey was considering not making his suggestion; these people clearly had what they needed to ensure earth became a Bastion world. The warded highway option, and driving monsters against each other? Particularly interesting. But. He wanted to be valuable enough to power-level.

  When he judged the time right… Grey raised his hand.

  “I’ve actually got a suggestion. Albeit one that would require us to temporarily abandon some of the northern territories, aside from secure forts.”

  Faces turned to stare at him. Dragoon nodded. “Ahh… the necromancer? Sergeant Grey? Whats the suggestion?”

  Grey rose to his feet. “A while ago, I acquired an ability, called ‘Empower Undead’. It lets me give my creations any abilities related to those I possess. While this lets me create them with a variety of powers, I realized after I was doing an upgrade that the descriptions don't give you all the details; I can also give them disadvantages I possess, and experimented to ensure this was true. I can give them weaknesses. Including a weakness to cold.”

  Dragoon frowned. “...How does making Undead that are weak to cold help us?”

  “Lets imagine I created a strain of Infectious undead, which could make a cloud of venom around them as they moved, curse nearby enemies, just all-around nasty to deal with, meaning that a swarm of them would overwhelm a swarm of even equal or somewhat higher-leveled monsters… but vulnerable to cold. Any monster they killed would gain the same strengths and weaknesses when it arose as an undead.”

  “...Cold magic isn’t that popular. I mean… we can always spray liquid nitrogen, but that…”

  “It doesn’t have to be magic. Or even a direct attack. Serpentfolk are paralyzed if they spend much time in below-freezing weather. Without a good thick jacket or armor, our muscles will start to freeze up; the Serpent-folk versions of armor like this aren’t just insulated, but have built-in heating elements. I wasn’t certain if it would work, so I tested it. If I give my vulnerability to an Undead, and stick it in a refrigerator… it becomes sluggish, Almost helpless. A freezer? Its paralyzed and completely helpless.”

  After a moment, he summoned up the cooler from storage, and set it on the table… and opened it… lifting out the undead rat. “This thing has been sitting at around thirty degrees for a few hours now, the ice slowly melting. I’ve got it under control…. But its muscles are frozen. Unable to respond to my commands. If I try to tell it to do something…”

  There was audible cracking. One tiny frozen paw actually fell off.

  Grey glanced around, then back at Dragoon… and then set the undead, and its paw, back in the cooler.

  “If we focused our efforts on the south until winter, and let such a strain of infectious undead run through the monsters… every time a freezing night hit, we could mop up the swarms with a handful of troops with mining picks, bringing a necromancer along to ensure any that thawed out weren’t a problem. And, well. Even if they got further south than we’d like…. It’d allow us to safely clear out everything far enough north that it gets below freezing. Obviously, we want at least a few Necromancers around to defend any given safe haven; so if a swarm heads their way, they can force it to infight and slow itself down while the defenders evacuate or deal with it.”

  Dragoon blinked. He looked at Secretary Owenson… then back at Grey. “That…. Honestly, the Committee bans necromancy on most of its worlds. They didn’t even have classes on it for the Chosen. If that could work… Hell, maybe the Serpentfolk already do something like that, they're the only major race that doesn't ban necromancy on its homeworld, we could ask.”

  “I haven’t taken the Infectious upgrade yet, for obvious reasons. But if you want to try this, and you were going to help us level anyway? I can grab it next. Then we can test it out by taking a flight north, into somewhere its below freezing… and we can cover a few controlled undead in thermal blankets, and use them in a controlled environment. Observe what happens to the Undead that are created. If it doesn’t pan out… we burn out the whole mess. If it does… we train as many people up as necromancers as possible… and we prepare for a world where we can ensure the whole section that regularly gets below freezing remains a safe zone. Combined with some of these other suggestions, it would mean we'd have safe bastions in some parts of the world... and other parts just completely safe. Somewhere between Dragoon's description of a Harvest and a Safe world."