Doug's plan wasn't a complicated one, all things considered, but it required context, and a bit of a story. The old man was grinning as he explained, but there was a twinkle of anger in his eyes that he couldn't hide.

"Things are bad in Watford. Gotta be clear about that," he said. "But monsters weren't the only problem we ran into up there. I mentioned the lunatics that thought all this was some survival of the fittest trial, right? Pretty sure I did."

"Briefly, when we first met," John said. He'd forgotten all about that, since it was an off-hand comment that merely confirmed an assumption John had already made.

"What happened?" Jade asked.

Doug waved a hand. "Drove the buggers off. But they aren't dead, is the thing, and I doubt the beating they took changed their outlook on the apocalypse much. Knowing what I do now, from meeting you lot, it wouldn't surprise me to find out these people had systems specifically geared to reward them for going after other humans, and so maybe they weren't exactly wrong in their interpretation of the situation." He sighed through his nose. "Regardless, my plan needs to account for the fact that those little shits are probably still going to be out there, treating the town like a human vs human death game, with the monsters as a backdrop."

"Are you advocating for going after these guys?" Chester asked, wide-eyed. "Wouldn't that just make us part of their game, proving them right?"

"Nah. I'm advocating for using them as a distraction so we can get to the portals."

The situation, as Doug explained it, was this:

There were a lot of monsters in Watford, to the point that the outskirts of London where they were currently located seemed sparsely populated, from Doug's perspective. Certainly, there had been very little opportunity to sneak around like John and co had been doing. John privately thought he could manage it, with Mana Sense and Soul Vision, but kept his mouth shut.

The difference was, the monsters moved in huge packs that flowed around the town like tidal waves.

"Like the massive horde that was chasing you, when we first saw you," John realised.

"Just so," Doug said.

Apparently, that wasn't a freak occurrence, as far as Watford was concerned. There were dozens of hordes like that, moving around the town in odd patterns that even swept through buildings, ignoring the concepts of roads and boundaries. It meant they were constantly being flushed out, having to keep on the move, away from the great horde. Resting for a night like they had here simply wouldn't have been possible over there.

But, crucially, the monsters didn't tend to individually break apart from the pack and take the initiative. They were swarms, exhibiting hive mind behaviour, almost. If you found yourself caught up in the midst of the mass, then they attacked.

"In retrospect, they were herding us, forcing us into specific zones, since we weren't strong enough to punch through the waves of monsters." Doug's eyes were flinty. "I reckon you might have more luck with that."

John grimaced. "Maybe."

From what Doug was saying, it sounded like the monsters really were facilitating a sort of PvP game, creating an enclosed arena for the 'players' to battle it out in. Except Doug's group had slipped the net and escaped, and only then had the monsters truly pursued them in earnest, only for John's intervention and their flight to the portal world to stymie their attempts to punish the players who broke the rules.

They hadn't figured out any of this at the time. It was only after seeing the odd rules that had been present in the portal world that Doug thought back on his experiences in Watford with a new light, peering through his memories of panic and frantic fleeing to really analyse his experiences there.

Chester let out a shaky breath. "It's like a Battle Royale game. Fortnite, or PUBG, or whatever. Except the zone doesn't shrink, it just… changes."

Shooter games had never been John's thing, but he got the reference. "Combine it with a zombie game, or a Doom-like, and you've got Watford." The others were staring at them blankly, Doug in particular, and he shrugged. "Just more game stuff. London has been kind of a stealth-survival scenario. Watford is zone-based PvP. Makes me wonder what else is going on, out there, and what else we might see in the portals."

And what the fuck is behind all this.

"Speaking of portals," Doug began.

Doug and Alissa had said when they first met that they reckoned they'd seen easily twenty portals each, and many of those were separate. John hadn't exactly been looking out for them himself before their trip through the London Underworld, but he could only recall seeing two. Lily, Chester, and Jade had only seen a few more themselves. That led him to believe the population of portals was far denser in Watford, which he supposed would make sense, corresponding to the supposed high number of monsters running around the area.

Doug repeated that assertion here, further revealing that they were almost all blue, with a couple that might have actually been green, and he'd just mistaken them for blue.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Wouldn't swear by it, though," the old man said with a toothy grin. "My eyes weren't so good back then."

The point was, there were a lot of portals they could gain loot and levels from, in the town. Doug even remembered where a lot of them were, so he'd be able to direct them on an efficient route through the town, picking off the portals one by one. It was a decent plan. John very much liked the idea of bulldozing their way through the town with brute force, closing portals and slaughtering monsters, fairly secure that most of the enemies would be blue and green.

However, they did have to acknowledge that not all the enemies would have any colour at all. "What do we do if we come across humans who are intent on the whole death game thing?" Jade asked grimly.

John was glad he hadn't needed to bring it up himself. He wasn't sure how his system would interpret the implied concern about fighting, and possibly killing, other human beings—not to mention his newly realised worry about potentially activating any secret quests.

That being said, I really hope other people saying shit doesn't lock me in to quests. That would be hella unfair. He had to hold back a groan following that thought. But what about this whole thing is fair? If quests exist, other people saying shit will totally lock me in to them. That's how it works in a lot of games. You talk to an NPC and hear its story, and you get a quest to help it.

Doug took a while to reply to that, looking around at them all. "Any of you ever been in a fight with another person? A real fight?"

John assumed that getting beaten up by another person wouldn't count, so said nothing.

No one else replied, either.

"Didn't think so," Doug said. He rolled his shoulders. "Well, I grew up in a rough area. The slums of Manchester, before they bulldozed them. Horrible place. If there was one lesson I learned there, it was this: sometimes, you have to fight. Even when there are other choices, fighting might still be the best one. There're people out there who just won't understand the word 'no' until it's delivered to them by way of your fist. Repeatedly." His eyes darkened as he leaned forward. "And sometimes you have to put dogs down."

Silence hung between them.

Doug continued, "There were other people in Watford who didn't want the fight, I reckon. Things looked bleak, but I know we weren't the only ones left who wanted out of the madness. Don't know if any of them will still be alive. In fact, I doubt it. But even so… Well, this is the part where I confess a bit of an ulterior motive." Steepling his fingers under his chin, he stared at John. "Just for the chance that there's anyone else trapped in there that wants no part in it, I want to see if we can break the death game's hold over the town and free them."

Well. If there were quests built into the underlying framework of the system, that sounded like one of them. "Sounds like a plan," John said. "We'll destroy as many portals as we can, and see about getting rid of those swarms, too."

+400 Aura

Whether that was just another reward for coolness or a confirmation of the quest, John couldn't tell. Either way, he was locked in.

Of course, it wasn't as simple as John declaring it and it being so. Chester, Jade, and Lily had their own say in the matter, since he couldn't and wouldn't force anyone to come along.

Chester, of course, was reluctant. Watford sounded hellish, and he and John had something in common: there were circumstances where facing humans sounded scarier than monsters. In John's case, it tended to be social interaction. Chester was more hung up on fighting.

"I'm really, really bad at fighting," Chester whined.

"You look like you could snap a man in half with your bare hands," Doug replied, eyebrow arched teasingly.

Chester shook his head so hard he was surely in danger of whiplash. "Trust me, I haven't had much of a chance to show how much of a clumsy shit I am. Picking up and putting down heavy stuff is my limit. Put me up against something with a functioning brain, and I don't stand a chance. Hell, I barely stood a chance against monsters that were thick as shit."

"Luckily, you won't be on the front lines," Doug said with a grin. "That's the whole point of teamwork."

Chester slumped his shoulders and dithered a bunch more, but eventually he nodded his head.

Jade agreed more easily, though she was frowning when she said, "I'm willing to try it, but we need a solid plan, with exit strategies. I'll want to hear how you slipped the net in depth."

"Sure," Doug said with a shrug and a grin.

Lily simply said, "I'm in." When everyone silently stared at her, she elaborated: "If I ever want to see my family again, I have to get way stronger than I am now, so I can fight my way there or grow influential enough to get people to help me fight my way there. Figure I have to take risks for that, right? Besides, if I left you guys, I'd just have to find another group to team up with. And that one might not have a combat weirdo like John to carry us through dicey situations."

Weirdo.

John hoped no hurt showed on his face. Getting offended by a word as innocuous as that was the furthest thing from cool, and it wasn't even the first time they'd said. Intellectually, he knew that no harm was meant. It still stuck a tiny dagger into his heart, though. There was nothing he could do about it.

John cleared his throat. "So that's the five of us, at least. Who else?"

Doug told them there was zero possibility of Sam going back into Watford while he was looking after the two kids, and he was pretty sure the same could be said of Alissa, hence why he hadn't even bothered to involve them in this talk.

Since he seemed iffy on the latter, Jade insisted they should check, and Doug called for her.

"Fuck no, man," Alissa said immediately, standing in the doorway with her arms crossed and staring at them all like they'd just asked her if she wanted to jump into a pit of boiling lava with them. When it was clear that was all they wanted, she retreated back into the kitchen, shooting over her shoulder. "I fucking knew you were going to do something like this. You're all insane."

The birds, however, were another matter. After explaining the situation to the crow as best he could, the mismatched flock fluttered back up into the pine tree to quietly confer. The parrots even stopped their crude cursing for a while. They took so long that John ended up going back into the house, and nearly an hour later was startled during a planning session around an old ordnance survey map of Watford by a tap on the window. When he looked over, there stood all four birds on the outside sill, and they nodded simultaneously.

It looked like they had their team decided.

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