Reincarnated As The Heroes Guide

Slowly, Kalli’s nerves calmed down, and she took out a bag of chips to give her hands something to do.

The response from the crowd was instant.

"SNACKS!"

"Where did you manage to get a bag of chips? The Academy doesn’t stock junk food."

"There are chips? Did someone find a shop that wasn’t looted or burnt?"

"Did someone say chips?"

Kalli sighed as she looked at the bag of chips and the dozen students still in the compound.

"Leave some for everyone else, it’s not a big bag," she instructed, after taking a small handful for herself and passing the bag over.

She was not seeing that one again.

Kalli inventoried her snack supply in a new light. If the Academy didn’t allow junk food, then nobody had a decent stash in their rooms. That meant that every bag of chips, candy and bar of chocolate was a precious commodity.

Though, the ration packs came with either chocolate or candy.

So, there was a chance for them to continue to get sweets, but they would be a rare treat most of the time, unless things devolved to the point that everyone was just acquiring ration cases for individual consumption.

Eventually, they were going to have to make an arrangement to keep the kitchen stocked, as the Academy had a large garden, and there were edible monsters outside. But both required work, and they had no roster of work duties for that.

There was a lot that had to happen to keep things running, even in an area as small as the Academy. Fortunately, they had the Student Council here, who knew how things were supposed to work. If they could find a few more students, they could surely sort something out that would keep the Academy stable.

The chips were gone in seconds, just in time for the first group who had gone to kill rat demons before going hunting for other students returned to the Academy.

"We wanted to grab our loot before going out again. Why is there blood on the driveway?"

Kalli gave a grim laugh. "There was a small incident with some people who thought that they could rob students. Don’t worry about it. Come get your rewards, and you can head out again."

The students rushed back out to take on the mission to find their classmates and convince them to come back.

Everything else was secondary when there were points on the line.

While she waited for more teams to come back, Kalli went to sit on the wall. From there, she could see a bit more of the city, which had a large fire burning on the west side, and occasional beacons of civilization, where someone had gotten the power back online.

The lights on in various buildings, either marked somewhere with an automatic generator that was still online, or somewhere that had found a way to get the power working again.

One glaring exception stood out, and it was giving Kalli the feeling that they had been played by those at the top.

The Parliament Buildings, the seat of government, stood completely intact, abandoned, with some sort of small monsters moving around the yard. If the nation’s leaders had actually been at work, there would be signs of a battle. But Kalli couldn’t see anything damaged from where she was, and there were no cars in the parkade, which had open sides.

Nobody left their car at work when they were attacked for the first time?

Not even to be evacuated by helicopter?

If that wasn’t a suspicious sign, she didn’t know what was. It strongly implied that they had known what was coming, and they had moved to somewhere that they considered safe in advance.

Not a promising sign for the city.

A half hour later, the first group came back with rescued students. Kalli counted nine in total, and the other four looked like they had definitely not been doing well after they left.

She greeted them at the gates, and found that both groups had actually completed the rat demon killing mission.

"Where did you find them? Should we search other buildings nearby?" She asked.

The warrior leading the team shook his head. "I don’t think that’s necessary. They were in the villas down the hill. The whole area is overrun. Not just rat demons, but green skinned creatures as well, plus some sort of giant pig men.

It’s not a great spot, and they were barely holding on.

The monsters were clearing buildings, killing everyone that they found. We got as many as we could, but the monsters were getting reinforcements, so we had to retreat.

None of the other buildings in the area were intact, they didn’t have anyone awakened to defend them."

Kalli nodded. She remembered the soldiers mentioning that the rate of awakening was less than one in a thousand. So, it was really only one building in a neighbourhood that could realistically even fight back.

Unless the awakened members had gathered together, as the students had, there was little chance that a large area would be secure.

However, that also meant that there were going to be fewer powerful people elsewhere to defend the city. One area would do better, but a large area would be completely undefended.

The four new arrivals stared at the boxes in their hands, the rewards for completing the quest to kill rat demons.

"How did we not know that this was available? Like, there was no notice or anything."

Kalli shrugged. "You might have been too far from the Academy to get the notice. This one was repeated from yesterday, and there is one more to kill the Rat King. There is a team out searching for it now."

"You’re all insane."

"Possibly. But we’ve got supplies, weapons, food and shelter."

The first of the new arrivals opened their box, and gasped as it was replaced by an entire case of chocolate bars.

"Ooh, that’s a good pull. Candy is a top request, and I think that you’re the first to get a whole case of them. At best, it’s usually a few bars in a case of rations. Everyone else, go ahead and open your loot. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

The others opened the mystery boxes, and all collected Common Grade weapons and a piece of armour.

"How does this compute? They get expensive weapons, plus armour, and I get candy?"

"It’s based on the expense of items according to the System. A case of chocolate bars is worth two points, the gear is worth two points. Once things settle a bit, they will trade for roughly equal amounts, I assume.

Besides, the chocolate is food. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but with no power, everything perishable went bad days ago, and this district doesn’t have any major warehouses full of canned goods."

The boy with the chocolate laughed. "Neither does any other section, from what I can tell. The whole western industrial district is on fire. That’s where we would normally order wholesale products from if they were in stock locally.

My family runs a chain of stores here in town.

Or, they did. Now, I don’t know what to tell them when they get back from overseas. Assuming that this is a regional event, and they’re not going through the same thing at their vacation house."

Kalli was going to say something about ditching their kid to go on vacation, then she remembered that school had just started, and he lived in the dorms like the rest of the students.

It was actually the perfect time to go on vacation.