To prevent Amandla from continuing to harass him to go to rest Lazar had left the kitchen and went to isolate himself in his room, he was lying peacefully on his bed for several hours now meditating with his eyes closed in order to clear up his mind.
*BIP*
It was the sound of the alarm he had set. The time seemed to have passed extremely quickly to him so he opened his eyes and checked the hour that was indicated by his watch on his left wrist in case he had made a mistake when setting the alarm time, '1:55 p.m.'
It was time, before going up to his room, he had asked Amandla to be ready to leave a little before 2 p.m. For his part, his blade was at hand leaning against his bed and he had already put on the clothes with which he intended to go out before lying down, all he had to do was put on his shoes to be ready to leave.
'I don't think I heard Amandla go upstairs to change into Lana's room.' Lazar straightened up, grabbed his trainers on the floor next to his bed and put them on while hurrying to make his shoelaces, he then left his room and rushed down the stairs with the apprehension to find Amandla still in her pajamas on the ground floor.
Arrived at the bottom of the stairs Lazar was relieved to see that Amandla hadn't forgotten the departure time. He saw her from behind in the kitchen humming an air while finishing doing her braids. She had the same clothes he saw on her yesterday in front of the house, except that she wasn't wearing her track jacket this time.
Amandla stopped what she was doing and turned around when she heard the sound of Lazar's footsteps, "Take this, you must be hungry." She took an apple from the fruit basket in front of her and tossed it to him.
Lazar easily received the apple with his free hand and crunched a piece of it in stride. Even after 24 hours of fasting, he hadn't really regained his appetite yet he preferred to force himself to eat. His body was stronger than before with all the points he had invested in the constitution but not completely healed, he didn't know how it was going to react to muscle fatigue or to energy drain, 'A few calories before leaving doesn't hurt.'
Amandla had finished making her braids while Lazar was still halfway through his apple so she began to wait beside him at the entrance. Strangely she looked impatient to leave, she was tapping her left foot at an increasingly fast pace and staring at Lazar's mouth as if it was going to make him eat faster, "How do you feel?"
Lazar swallowed the piece of apple he had in his mouth before answering her, "I'm not at 100%, that said, not to the point of qualifying me as dead weight. Speaking of injury, your hands are healing well?"
Amandla extended her arms in front of her and turned her palms towards Lazar so that he could see their condition by himself. She had removed her bandages, it was no longer useful since there were hardly any traces of her nail marks left, "Bluffing." He said, amazed at such a regeneration speed.
"You haven't seen anything yet."
"Stop bragging and let's go." Lazar blocked the rest of his apple in his mouth and walked past Amandla to open the front door, he preferred to eat on the way since her eagerness was making him uncomfortable.
Lazar still hadn't taken the time to repair his door but he was confident that no one would try to enter. Burglars make sure that their victims aren't at home before breaking in and this time no one would know that he went out. Since around 8 a.m he had heard no more noise coming from the street and as he expected when he set foot out of his home there was no one, not even a soldier to stand guard, only trucks and things that they must have judged useless for their attacks.
"Aren't they overconfident leaving all that unattended?" Amandla was reading Lazar's thoughts by saying that.
"Maybe Slawn until now has only seen stupid monsters and made a generalize of that for all of them."
"Not only the monsters, civilians could also have the guts to steal from them."
"So far, I've never seen one of them come out but even if someone had the guts to do it, believe me, Slawn would be very happy if they're not caught red-handed, it would be a perfect excuse to blame everything on us."
When they got to the sidewalk in front of his house, Lazar realized that something was weird and turned to Amandla, "Where's your bow?" They were gone to fight and Amandla had nothing on her for that.
Amandla smiled, "I was waiting for you to ask me." Golden particles came out of her hands and a long golden bow appeared in them. Satisfied of the undisguised astonishment of Lazar who couldn't take his eyes off her bow, she decided to explain to him what had just happened, "This is one of the new features of the system that you will discover soon, if you don't die before of course."
She did well to point this out because Lazar first thought it was a skill-specific to Amandla, "This is an inventory function, for short, you can store things and the storage capacity increases with your level. The cool thing with the golden effects works only with my bow though." She said with a self-congratulatory expression.
'I can't wait to stop carrying around my blade everywhere...' Realizing that he was wasting his time slobbering about this inventory feature on the sidewalk of his house Lazar swallowed the rest of his apple entirely and resumed walking side by side with Amandla.
"The kind of person who doesn't leave the core, I see."
'Like it was the kind of details that would teach you more about me.' After a moment Lazar ends up spitting only the tail of his apple on the lawn of one of the neighbors, that moment gave him time to think about several questions he could ask Amandla before they reached an area where they would have to be discreet.
"What are the other features?"
"There is only one other, the shop, basically you can exchange skills and equipment in exchange for contribution points. It's super expensive, I still can't buy anything yet, but at least the contribution point system is much fairer than that of experience points."
'Contribution points, another thing to which I'm not yet entitled.'
"What do you mean by fairer?"
"For a rank E ★☆☆☆☆ monster you gain 50 experience points, 75 for a rank E ★★☆☆☆ and 150 for a rank E ★★★☆☆ it's unfair when you think of the difference in strength between each rank. Personally, it was quite easy to gain experience, I was in a district infested with goblins, monsters of rank E ★☆☆☆☆. They are stupid, small and are armed only with knives which they can't throw effectively so they aren't dangerous from a distance. All I had to do is posted myself on the roof of a van, attracted them one by one, and kill them, it's in no way comparable to what we will fight now. The contribution points for example will take into account the fact that you are fighting against a group, the difference in strength between your opponent and you, lots of stuff like that."
'Seen like this it looks like the experience point system favors people who didn't know how to fight before the Apocalypse. They can just kill weak monsters and level up quickly while people like me bust their asses by killing stronger monsters and ultimately gain fewer experience points.'
"Amandla, you really are a fraud."
"Stop complaining, if everything goes according to plan we'll be pretty much at the same stage at the end of the day." The goal of the day was for Lazar to get his class.
"Yeah, well, I'm going to teach you something too, I hope you're not afraid of heights."
"As long as I know I'm not going to die when falling I'm fine." Amandla and Lazar had left Fenno Street for a few minutes now and had arrived in front of the building to climb before starting to move through the roofs.
Lazar had one last question before going up, because after that they agreed that they had to stay silent, "I've seen that you don't have any arrows, I guess in a way you generate them with your energy, don't you?"
"Yes, you will see that my way of fighting is undoubtedly very different from yours. My arrows cost me a lot of energy points so I rarely use my skills and I prefer to shoot little but right on target rather than finding myself defenseless." It was a big weakness, Lazar was all the more surprised that Amandla reveals it to him.
"We're going to climb." It was a brick wall about twenty feet high, the space between the grooves of each row made the ascension not too complicated.
Amandla stared at the wall, put her bow in her inventory then turned her back at the wall and put herself in the position of giving a leg-up to Lazar, "I have a better idea."
Lazar wasn't against it if she had the strength to propel him, "I warn you, I won't come back down if you can't climb."
"Don't worry." Said Amandla confident in herself.
Lazar shrugged, took a few steps back then sprinted towards Amandla. She propelled him in full synchronization with his jump and he found himself without a problem at the top of the building. He waited for Amandla to join him before setting off, which she did after only a few tens of seconds of climbing.
***************************************************************
Amandla was doing very well, she easily followed Lazar through higher and higher roofs. To start he told himself that it was better to choose one of the least dangerous areas and then become more ambitious if he saw that his body was holding the shock and that Amandla was as strong as he thought, but barely halfway, she suddenly caught up with him and pulled on the sleeve of his t-shirt.
"What?" He whispered paying her full attention, seeing how seriously she had behaved he knew she wouldn't disturb him for anything.
"We've been discovered, we're being followed from a distance."