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Forcing himself up, Stanis picked up the dagger he had dropped, from the ground, before tensing himself. The ground which had been previously invisible was now visible to naked eye. This was due to the dead calf, now lying in a pool of its own blood, and also due to Stanis's last meal which now lay across the ground. It seemed the ground was some kind of advanced glass as you couldn't tell the difference between the air and the ground without something being on its surface. His fur-coat, which had been light brown, was now tainted by blood outside and sweat inside. He would have taken it off was it not for the fact that his mind seemed to have short-circuited due to all this pressure; all that now remained in his head were instructions on how to fight. One minute is up. Prepare to face the second trial. Once again a metal pole formed in front of him: chained to it were two animals similar to the calf from last time. There were slight differences in the fact that these calves had bigger eyes and smaller, more defenceless bodies. However, the biggest difference was demonstrated when Stanis took one, firm step forward. Both calves prostrated themselves down at him, before facing up with fearful, naïve gazes. Stanis couldn't help but stop as he saw this; their actions were far too much like humans, far too sentient to be just animals. In front of you are two Monsters, both chained up. Kill both of them within 20 seconds or face your demise. It was almost like the calves themselves also heard the vicious entity inside of his head as they repeatedly banged their heads into the ground as if begging for forgiveness. This was far too much for Stanis as he stopped dead within his path. He was only 4 steps away, and yet those 4 steps seemed so far. Enough distance for him to transform as a person, becoming a mutant unrecognisable with the current him… Perhaps that's what the entity within his mind wanted; perhaps he would need to transform if he was to pass this godforsaken trial. Tick Tick Tick Once again the ticks seemed to be the biggest challenge to his morality: the pressure of closing death against the morality he lived by. Tick He let his body go; once again it was out of his control as it took a single step forward. The two calves seemed horrified at this as they began to weep, bawling with intensity as they stained the floor with tears. Perhaps that would have stopped Stanis, but this wasn't Stanis. It was the darkness within him, the evil inside of him which he had no connection to. And so anything it did was fine, right? Tick His other foot moved forward. Stanis tried his utmost to think nothing as he moved. He needed to detach himself from the moment as much as possible… Tick He was now within breathing distance of the animals. It was almost as if something had broken the switches inside of the calves as they now wept at a volume you would think impossible. Thinking nothing of it, Stanley placed his foot forward one last time before he stabbed downwards. It was a clean strike, well bloody, but it was well performed. The blade slid through the calf's neck and out of its throat: it was dead in one strike. This time blood didn't shoot out like a fountain, instead, it was more like an open tap as the crimson liquid calmly flowed onto the ground, quickly creating a pristine pool. In reaction to this, the other calf attempted to run away like its predecessor during the first trial. And as before, all that happened was that the chain grated against its neck, despite all its effort. Almost as if it was cursing him, the last thing it did was turn its head to look Stanis straight in the eye, before letting its trembling pupils let out one last tear as Stanis pierced downwards.. … It felt like heart-ache, his chest felt extremely tight and hot. Finding no physical nor mental support, Stanis quickly found himself on the ground once more as he frantically attempted to clutch his heart. His whole body felt terrible, his whole mind felt horrible. Clearly he hadn't detached himself enough… Well done. You have passed the second trial with 6 seconds to spare. Here is your Status: [Average for your species is …] Stanis Volkov Age: 18 years Level 2 (Progress to the next level is 0%) Unallocated Stat points: 2 Strength: 12 [11] Dexterity: 13 [11] Constitution: 14[11] Intelligence: 12[10] Wisdom: 10[9] Tenacity: 12[13]   Please allocate your unallocated points. You will have to remain strong to survive and thrive. It was almost as if the entity was taunting him, poking fun at how he had fallen for its tricks once more. Stanis felt hatred blossom inside of him as he realised that he was only in this nightmare due to this despicable entity, whatever it was. It was slowly transforming him into its little slaughterhouse. And yet he couldn't find anything inside of him to contest the entity's claim. Knowing such thinking would be useless, Stanis stayed on his knees for a few more seconds as he recollected his mind. He had to survive this; Stanis didn't know why, but alongside his blossoming anger had blossomed a strong feeling of self-preservation. Within his mind, he expanded Tenacity. Tenacity is the ability to go through pain and suffering, and remain in that path. It is the longevity of courage, the quality which defines how stalwart you will remain in the face of danger. You currently have Tenacity below your species' average. Within his mind, Stanis told the entity to allocate both of his points into tenacity. Perhaps that would take away the immense, racking pain he was facing right now in both his mind and body. Instead, Stanis found himself disappointed as he noticed no difference whatsoever, to which he opened the Status once more to check that there had been a quantitative change. Because there definitely was no qualitative one. Prepare yourself for the next trial. This time the monster will not be defenceless. Brace yourself for combat, the universal language of life. You have one minute until your trial begins. Stanis stood still as he waited, unable to decide what he wanted to do in the one minute given. He dared not to do anything to the three corpses of the calves that now littered the ground, since he knew seeing them anymore would only cause him to feel worse. It was by luck that his mind seemed to calm down a bit, and he instantly thought of stretching. And so he spent the remaining minute stretching his legs out and then his arms, followed by his neck. This would have little to no effect on the actual fighting, but it did allow him to calm his turbulent mind. One minute is up. As always, a metal pole appeared which was embedded in the ground. Chained to it was a calf as per usual. However, there were major differences from the previous ones, the biggest change not being in the calf but rather to the chain. The chain was twice the length of the previous chains around the calves' necks, allowing this particular calf far greater motion than the others had. Next would be the calf itself: this one was a head taller than the others, so it reached his chest and was also not nearly as scrawny. On the top of its head, it had two pointed horns, both dangerous enough to cause severe damage in the right situation. In front of you is a Monster. You have two minutes to kill it, else face your death. While Stanis had stared at the horned calf, the horned calf did the same to him. It was during this time it saw blood dripping off Stanis's dagger. A quick scan of the area revealed to the horned calf where the blood came from. In response to this, the horned calf bellowed a roar wrought with grief. It then went on a rampage as it began attempting to charge Stanis, causing the chain to repetitively stretch out. The growls of the horned calf alongside the clanging chains created thunderous sounds, which in turn heavily put Stanis off directly facing the animal. Seeing how active the horned calf was, Stanis decided the best way to kill it was waiting until it got tired, before going in for the strike. For every second he waited, he could feel his adrenaline further build up as his mind and body anticipated the moment it would have to move against obvious danger. However, the adrenaline wasn't alone within his mind as fear hid at every corner. It was a minute later that Stanis noticed that the horned calf had neither calmed nor fatigued within the time. He knew he had to make a move as he had already spent half the time standing still. And yet he couldn't bring himself to confront the enraged, horned calf. It was a few seconds later that Stanis noticed that calf was actually getting tired from moment to moment. In fact, it had been for most the time, it was just that it would glance at one of the bloody calf corpses before renewing its assault on the chain with greater vigour. In an attempt to test his theory, and also an effort to build up some courage, Stanis ran over to the corpse in question before looking back at the horned calf. In a complete reversal to his expectations, the horned calf stopped moving and instead just stared at him with smoky eyes. If one looked close enough, you could see tears jumping off the eye-lid cliffs. At this, Stanis picked up the corpse with both hands before walking slowly to the horned calf. He could clearly see the horned calf's calves fully tensed with veins bulging out. It was ready to strike the second he came into its range. It was as he was a mere six steps away from the horned calf that he stopped. He could feel his adrenaline working its hardest within his body, and yet he still dared not walk any further. The calf's breath had turned white and rapid, adding to the tension alongside the other multitude of things at the moment. Stanis could hear his own heartbeat as he stood there, staring at the calf. Within the next second, he could hear the horned calf shrieking in anger as its partner's corpse came flying onto it. Unwilling to harm its precious partner any more than it had been, despite it being dead, the horned calf didn't charge and instead dodged to the side. It was to its surprise that it saw Stanis right behind the flying corpse, his knife already striking down. The horned calf had no time to react as the knife flashed one last time before biting hard into the calf's neck, giving it just a few more seconds to squeal before it collapsed onto its partner's corpse. Stanis had scrambled away in fear after he had stabbed downwards, before watching the calf collapse from a safe distance. Perhaps he would have felt emotion was it not for the fact that he forced himself to not think. He had no desire at all to think about what had just happened, each one of the calves had acted so much like humans and yet he had still killed them all. You could even see the intensity of love the horned calf had for its partner: that was obvious even to idiots… Well done. You have passed the third trial with 11 seconds to spare. You have levelled up! Here is your Status: [Average for your species is …] Stanis Volkov Age: 18 years Level 3 (Progress to the next level is 0%) Unallocated Stat points: 2 Strength: 12 [11] Dexterity: 13 [11] Constitution: 14[11 ->12] Intelligence: 12[10 ->11] Wisdom: 10[9] Tenacity: 14[13] Stanis barely put any thought into his unallocated points as he immediately chose Wisdom. He needed all the wisdom he could get to remain sane in such a situation, especially with all the blood that was now over his hands. Wisdom increased by two points to 12. The average living human has a wisdom of 9. It felt the same as last time. He could not feel any instant effects, perhaps this was due to how low of an increase his statistics were having? Stanis' thought-track was quickly interrupted by the entity within his head. Your next trial begins in 5 minutes. Prepare yourself well from the arsenal. In front of Stanis appeared a small shelf of items. None of them looked very hardy, nor intimidating. Nevertheless, Stanis felt a small bit of sunshine after torrential rain as he saw pieces of leather armour. A message from the host:" Well done humans. A far better effort this time. The next trial will be catered to fit your personal skill so far. Therefore do your best not to disappoint!" Stanis Volkov, your skill in battle has been judged mediocre for your race. However, an exemplary example of cunningness and manipulation was shown by you in the last round. Therefore you will face the second hardest trial. Good luck!

The preparation time was almost over. In the last hour, Stanis had managed to find some strips of leather, from the arsenal, that he bandaged his arms with to the best of his ability. After this, he had sat down and rested, each trial had only gotten harder which meant that the next one would not be any simpler. It was also during this extended break that he began to think back on what he had done in the past few hours. He had been brought up as a strong Christian household and had only ever once bloodied his hands in real life when he had visited his grandparents in Siberia. They bred reindeers and protected them from the wilderness in Siberia. It was a fairly lucrative business as long as you knew the right buyer for the reindeer products. It was there that Stanis had killed and skinned a Reindeer. His parents had gone to the state school there and had managed to move to Sweden just before he was born. Finally, they had moved to England, where Stanis had been brought up. Such an upbringing meant that he was brought up in a safe, protected environment compared to what he could have faced in Siberia. And thus it had come as a shock when he had been told to kill the reindeer, and even more of a shock when he had to skin his own kill. It was fair to say that he had been sick more than once during that time. Such memories brought back feelings of longing for the past. His family were now all dead, his mother had been the last and she had died 2 years back. This had made his life far more difficult, and had eventually led to him hanging out with the wrong crowd. It was only a few months back that Stanis had an epiphany and thus had decided to turn his life back around. Maybe he had lost all his friends where he had been, but he was going to make new, better ones as he went to University. Or at least he would have, was it not for this Tutorial shit ruining the life that he had just salvaged back together. Slowly but steadily, the tears began to stream out. Time is up. Prepare for your next trial. Stanis only had enough time to wipe the wet tears from his face before once again feeling the sting across his body; he had been transported. Welcome to the first group trial. Your opponent shall be much stronger than what you have faced so far, and so teamwork is heavily recommended. However any path is viable, all you have to do is survive! The first thing Stanis saw was the ground: it was the same as last time, dry and solid. He then proceeded to look at his "teammates" who were similarly bringing their heads up to look around. There were three of them, four in total if you included Stanis. One of them was a tanned European boy who looked like he was in his early 20's. He had short, dirty blonde hair with dark green eyes, as well as a strong jawline. He was wearing a casual t-shirt with the leather cuirass over, normal jeans and a pair of sneakers. With the muscles bulging out of his t-shirt, it was quite obvious that this guy was quite strong. Over his left arm were leather strips tied tightly, creating a bandage. However, this couldn't staunch the blood flow which continued to slowly drip out. The next one was the only girl there. She was a young Asian who shared the yellowish-tint to her skin with Stanis. She had the normal Asian features of slanted eyes, smallish face with long black hair set loose behind her head. She was wearing a loose jumper and a pair of skinny jeans which had a long vertical rip down them. This wasn't for fashion, but rather because she had been slashed as you could see the bloody wound underneath the jeans. It wasn't deep but it was quite long as it went down most her left leg, which is why it hadn't been bandaged up as there hadn't been close to enough bandages in last trial's arsenal. The last one was an aged, bulky Indian man. He was the largest of everyone there, being a head taller than Stanis who was around 5'10. He was also the bulkiest by quite far as he seemed a big mix of muscle and fat. He had dark brown skin, a large nose and a bushy moustache which had begun greying. On top of his head was shaggy hair, which too had begun greying. The man had sullen, slanted eyes which were severely fatigued as they were practically red. He was wearing a bloody, striped shirt, alongside a Sarong, which was a long tube of cloth wrapped around his legs, and a pair of sandals. Neither he nor the Asian girl had the leather Cuirass armour on. Stanis didn't know why the girl didn't have it on, but he was sure the reasoning for the Indian man was because he was too big for it. Stanis felt that each of them were very weird, even more so considering the fact that you wouldn't ever see such a varied collection of people in the same room. It was unbeknownst to him that the other three felt he was the weirdest there: a young Mongolian man who was wearing several layers of coating, with a Cuirass over the top. He hadn't even taken his coat off, despite it being drenched in gore by now… Now that everyone had judged each other, they should have begun talking. However, this wasn't the case as all four stood still, not knowing what to say. In fact, even if they did say something, would the other three even understand them? Stanis looked at each of them: the Indian man seemed tired, the Asian girl seemed nervous and apprehensive, whereas the young European seemed half stoic, half nervous. It would seem it was up to him to start up the conversation. It was as he was wondering what to say that he was beaten to the punch by the European boy. "Hellooo, can you understand me? My name is Lucas, what are your names?" He then followed that with exaggerated sign motions in case they didn't understand. But they all did, which was even more confusing. Stanis knew what he was hearing wasn't English nor Russian, and yet he understood what Lucas said without a flaw. Although this was definitely down the list of bizarre things that had happened today. "Yes I can understand you. My name is Stanis." The Asian girl followed course, "Hi. I can understand you as well, my name is Xiu." Finally, the Indian man spoke in a very deep, rough voice, "Hello friends. I am Jayesh Kumar." Introductions done with, the atmosphere seemed to improve as the tension went down. Everyone was friendly so far and not crazy, which seemed to be a worry on everyone's head, although that was quite a normal worry considering the ordeal they had just been through. Once again Lucas won the race of what to say next. "Do you thin—" The battle will begin in 30 minutes. You have an arsenal of weapons to pick from. Prepare well in order to lower casualties. He quickly shut up as everyone, including him, turned to face the wooden shelves filled with weapons form out of nothing. Within it were several weapons and leather armour, all of it a higher quality than last trial's. Apparently self-conscious of each other, no one rushed as all of them walked over. It was quite apparent that all of them got more nervous and tense as they closed in. As they were glancing over the weapons, Lucas perked up as he asked: "Oh did you guys also fight the bear last time?" Stanis and Xiu became quite confused, whereas Jayesh understood. "Yes, I also fought the mountain bear. Nasty foe if I'm truthful. Nearly managed to maul my head off several times, and tattered up my shirt." Stanis joined in, "What bear? I fought a Chimpanzee last time…" Xiu became even more confused as she also joined in, "I fought another calf like I did for the first two trials, although this one had much longer, sharper horns." She then pointed towards the long cut on her left leg. "Ah. I think it could be due to what the entity said during the trial. It said I was placed in the hardest trial or something due to my past performance" replied Lucas with more than a bit of pride in his voice. This dampened both Stanis's and more so Xiu's spirits as they realised both Jayesh and Lucas were skilled fighters compared to them. This was good in the case that they were going to fight together, but it would turn into a double-edged sword in case either or both wanted something from them. They probably wouldn't have much of a chance against one skilled fighter, nevertheless two. Jayesh noted the change in atmosphere very quickly as he countered it. "Yes, it said that I had fought well during the previous rounds against those mutant calves. Although I'll have to disagree, it was more a battle of morality and viciousness than one of physical prowess." Jayesh was definitely underplaying his skill significantly, but as the oldest, he also knew the importance and significance of teamwork. Even the smallest rifts between members could cause trouble down the line, especially when the stakes were your lives in life or death battles. His reassurance brought back confidence into Xiu and Stanis, but also caused overconfidence in Lucas, who had felt his social position challenged moments back when Jayesh had replied to him. He had known from the start that he had been placed against the most dangerous opponent, he had just wanted to subliminally create a social hierarchy among the people here. They continued on small talk, mostly engaged by Jayesh about the situation they were in, as they picked out weapons and armour. Lucas replaced his jeans with military-style trousers from the arsenal and his tattered cuirass for another, nicer one. He chose a sharp, one-handed, straight sword alongside a circular, leather shield that covered half his forearm. Xiu and Jayesh finally equipped themselves with cuirasses as there was a greater variety of them here. They also used this chance to bandage their wounds as both of them had the worst injuries here, injuries that could be massively detrimental in a fight, as well as equipping themselves with the military-style trousers Lucas had on... Xiu then picked out a long knife and a smaller shield, whereas Jayesh picked himself a menacing, thick club with sharp nails sticking out the end, alongside a large, heavy, wooden shield which was quite a lot bigger than Lucas's. Out of all of them, Stanis changed his attire the least. He already had quite a bit of protection due to the three layers over his chest, and so he only swapped the tattered Cuirass for a nicer one. He would have swapped his thermal trousers for the military-style ones, was it not for the fact that he already felt comfortable in his ones. However, he did pick out new weapons, a light but sharp axe alongside the same shield Lucas had. They had equipped themselves quite quickly and so Jayesh offered to give some fighting advice. "Whenever fighting, keep your body closed and small but take a wide stance. This means they have less chance to hit you in the first place, and even if they do, you have more stability than otherwise. Both Stanis and Xiu were engrossed in the advice, whereas Lucas stood at the side with a knowing expression plastered over his face. He had practised a few martial arts and had recently begun boxing, and so he knew the basics to fighting. That had been the main reason why the trials had been plain sailing for him. Well that and his narcissism, he didn't have nearly as many moral issues to think about as he had stabbed the animals. Jayesh carried on, despite Lucas's contemptuous look. "Both of you have shields. Lower your heads and tilt your spine inwards as you hold your shield. This way you can cover more of your vitals than having an open posture. That should protect your vitals, but don't do that and just stand there. I don't know what we are going to face next, but standing stationary basically makes your legs a vital point. One good strike to them, and all your stability and balance is gone. You will be lying on the floor, and most likely dead in a few seconds." It was quite clear to Stanis that Jayesh must have had a managerial position in the real world, as he was very talented in teaching. So far Stanis felt the greatest goodwill towards Jayesh, for his advice and help, and to Xiu, due to their shared vulnerability. Her also being a girl of smallish stature helped as well when compared to the other two who were large, muscular men. As for Lucas… Stanis was pretty sure that he and Lucas were around the same age, and yet they were so different. It was almost like Lucas lived in his own world… The time to prepare is over. Know that if you pass this trial, you only have one more remaining. Focus on killing and you will survive. All four of them felt a sting across their body before they reopened their eyes. They were in the same place as they had been before, with two differences. One would be the fact that the blood on the ground and the arsenal of weaponry had disappeared. In its place stood a pack of 6 wolves. The wolves were hip height and had long, messy strands of hair over their slender body. More importantly, they had vicious jaws which they revealed as they began howling at the Humans. Behind the Wolves formed another being, although not a wolf. It was hip height as well but had a humanoid shape. Green skin, long ears, big nose, bald head and nasty claws which held onto a tribal stave…   A few hours ago the Human species had disappeared from Earth. Now one by one, each of the other species also began to disappear. The apocalypse was now fully underway…

A fickle thrill coursed through the cold, barren soil, pumping anticipation into the air. The hot-headed Aliens breathed in this very anticipation and grew drunk off it, eyes roving the fields to find a body to pass their excitement onto. They stood in many ranks, jittering and babbling uncontrollably. To their front, their commanders lectured them on what was to happen with fail-proof confidence: they would charge the walls in an orderly fashion, they wouldclimb it and destroy the scraps of metal the humans had built up, they would massacre the populace, and they would do all of this with minimum casualties. But the confidence on their side was met by silent glares on the other, by both the gangs of humans who held the walls and by the numerous cannons’ lips, ready and eager to spit out some bone-crunching saliva. Alyona thundered down the Battlement, trailed on by Richie and Sofia. She religiously looked down the parapet every few steps, the sinking feeling in her stomach growing heavier. “Tell me you can see them. Tell me that I’m just looking in the wrong area,” “You’re not, I don’t think they’re coming back now,” Richie meekly said, his chest and belly heaving up and down due to following Alyona’s pace. Alyona swore and looked down the parapet once more, before turning to face the two. Richie seemed to have leaned considerably in the hours leading up to the war and yet he was still fat, still unfit to do anything else other than management. Sofia caught her eyes and stared grimly. Her clothes stuck to her skin and her forehead was furrowed, her hands tense by her side. “Do you think you can hold them off?” Alyona asked her. “I… No,” Sofia said, miraculously maintaining eye-contact. “Fuck. Where is that necromancer? Or at least where are the girls? Or at least where’s Stanis and his trio of bastards?” Alyona said harshly, her voice cold and alien even to herself. “I think the girls have failed,” Richie answered, “As for Stanis, I’ve heard a lot but I’m not any wiser as to where he could be. But… Do you think he could’ve figured out?” “I think that would explain a lot. The Jaguars are gone, Pete and his goons are gone, and Stanis is gone.” Sofia said bleakly. “I think we fucked it,” “WELL, HOW WERE WE SUPPOSED TO KNOW THIS WOULD HAPPEN,” Alyona roared back at her, her eyes on the brink of insanity. Sofia and Richie stood in silence, taken back by the sudden outbreak. “I… Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you. It won’t help anyone,” Alyona said after a few seconds of awkward build-up. But before the other two could respond, a bearded man tapped Alyona on the shoulder.“They’re about to begin the charge. Do we fire immediately or wait till they’re clumped up under the walls?” he asked. “Begin fire the second they enter our range,” Alyona snapped back, before being drowned out. Over the walls and past the fields, the army of Aliens began to collectively roar, their warcries adding and stacking upon each other. The end was nigh… **** Stanis watched the charging Aliens through a flush of nostalgia. The noise, the bloodlust, the fear: he had lived it all, in fact, that was all he could remember of his past now. The thrill of the fight, the fill of lust, and the brutality of might. He had once known it better than a lover but now he craved it like a broken ex. His fingers trembled and he bit down on his teeth, holding back his desires. The cannons barraged the fields over and over, the ground transforming into bloody marshlands. The air stank of smoke and metal, both from the cannons reigning high over the walls and from the floods of blood down below. Despite their losses, the Aliens continued to move forward until they clashed with the mud-stained walls. Several of them scampered up it with shocking agility, dodging incoming cannonballs with a previously unseen finesse. Within seconds of them making it onto the walkway, the effects of war cast itself onto the humans. Grief, pain and vehement bloodlust ran free, parading their multiple faces to legions of victims. No man or Alien was exempt from this effect and the strongest fought the ugliest, their actions mirroring that of a swine’s. It was at this moment that Stanis finally felt a respite from his lust; they were here. Legions of undead in various stages of decomposition charged over the hills, dropping flesh and staining stench all along their path. And in the centre of this dashing company stood the woman Stanis had given up so much for. He jumped from his coverage and began to make his way down to the battlefields. Considering the number of zombies she currently controlled and the eye-catching scene in front of them, it was almost impossible that she would notice him, but just to be safe, he withdrew his fluctuations and moved slowly. He held back his hands and waited for her to begin her work, for her focus to drift. All he needed was one moment… Her zombies ate away at the heel of the Alien’s army and voraciously moved forward. The two corners of her army broke away from the main force and began to head towards the wall. She wanted to raze both the Aliens and the humans, how predictable of her. But Stanis knew that it was impossible for her to do so, after all, she simply didn’t have enough forces. That was, of course, unless she raised more corpses, such as the fresh ones lying on the battlefield. How predictable. She was left behind with fewer zombies than before but the remaining ones began to converge on her point, thickening her defence. A dark mana-shield began to stabilize and the pools of crimson blood turned a deathly black. She raised her arms within her barrier and began chanting, the pools twisting and churning in accordance with her words; it was a large-scale spell. Perfect. Stanis finally broke free of his shackles and shot forward. He reached the barrier in no time and swung his sword at it. The second the blade met the barrier, hundreds of lightning bolts burst from his body into the blade and against the shield. Splitting thunderclaps simultaneously boomed over the battlefield, causing all heads to turn towards him. The barrier crumbled under his blade and he streaked in, his body lit up bright by the smatterings of sparks. He looked ahead and felt the grip over his handle tighten; she stood with her fingers pointed towards him, a prominent flush in her cheeks. “Fool me once,” she roared over the noise of the battlefield,” Shame on you,” Simultaneously, her remaining Zombies turned direction and scrambled to tear Stanis apart. “Fool me twice, shame on me,” she said as Stanis cut through her forces like a hot knife through butter. His eyes were locked on her as he moved forwards at a frightening pace. “But fool me thrice,” she said. “Oh wait, you can’t. I know how strong you are now, no more lucky escapes for you,” Stanis flicked his head around and saw that the two streams of her army that had headed towards the walls were actually nowhere near the walls and just seconds away from him. There was no way they could have backtracked such a distance in that time, meaning that they had begun to backtrack far before he had attacked. She had baited herself; this was a trap. He flashed his teeth at her in response to his realisation. So what if this was a trap, it wouldn’t be fun anyway if his long-anticipated kill was easy. <Layman’s Rush> He cast his oldest skill and dashed through the remaining Zombies. From his back, icicles the size of cars began to shoot out towards the returning undead. While they wouldn’t cause much damage, they did have enough of a size to elongate his precious time with Jen. <Scout and Sense> With perfect sight of his behind, he began to shoot several Blueshot spitefires at the undead who made it past his defensive icicles. His mana-pool began to drain very quickly and so he cast Destructive mana recharge in response, sucking in the Earth’s mana through his feet. The mud grew stale and the midnight-stained pools lost their lives, draining into the ground as if they had never existed. Jen shot several Darkshots his way, and in the sky, Stanis could sense another meteor making its way down; she was making this a game of time. And yet, she reined her cards quite a bit as she threw missile after missile at him, instead waiting for the exact moment when he tried to make a link. It was simply her bad luck that he was just as wary of his links now as she was eager for it. He clashed with her last, remaining mana-shield and broke through it. Instead of running, Jen stood her ground and took out her dagger, his dagger. It looked nothing like the one he had made but he knew it was his. She had somehow corrupted it so much that the very formation of the dagger had turned into something far more sinister. She circled around him with the dagger in front of her, perfectly aware of the fact that he knew the damage it could cause. But instead of edging away from it, Stanis spat at her and stepped in, using his sword to strike the dagger. Like before, the second that blade touched blade, he overloaded it with lightning and she immediately dropped the dagger and retreated. She snarled at him and glared, hoping that he would be cautious enough to give her one more second. Her hopes were misplaced. He threw the sword at her head and moved to where she would side-step to; the sword was simply a decorative facade for his inner powers. She shot several Dark shots at him, the first one breaking through his shield and the rest burning into his flesh, causing him to cringe. But he didn’t stop, he couldn’t. He caught her shoulders and gripped, pressing as hard as he could. “Electric transfer…”

There had been a single thought in his mind: Walk into the puddle. But the system notification brought another thought, a more interesting one. You have found a path to the Origin. All of a sudden, all the information he knew about his class appeared in his mind. It was a class about chasing the origin, whatever that meant. And now he had apparently found a pathway to that very origin. This piqued his interest further and so he investigated the link between himself and Jen in more detail. Around him, unbeknownst to him, was ongoing a battle. Berry, Johnny and Keiko were struggling to hold off the five clothed false-humans. In fact, they were getting dominated and would be dead in a few seconds. Roars filled the clearing, splattered blood tainting it. Jen shivered as she cast spells against the clothed false-humans. If she had a few zombies at the ready, such a force of enemies wouldn’t have had an effect on her. But she didn’t, and worse still, she had just wasted half her total mana on pacifying Stanis. The trees swayed in the furious winds. The cold air had dropped ever since the group had arrived at the jungle and was now a chilling freeze. There was no rain pelting down on the world but the scene was miserable nevertheless. Blood, roars and fear, a lot of fear. Stanis was now just a few metres from the ditch filled with darkness. The deeper he went into the link, the more marvellous it seemed. But sadly, some unknown force inside of him pushed him away from the marvellousness of the link and instead towards one of the simplest parts of the link. It was essentially his gateway to the link. The link itself was a road that went two ways. On his side was a gateway with two entrances: one was open with mana passing through it, the other was closed without a single hint of it ever being opened. He prodded at the closed gate with his touch. It reacted back violently and he felt a hurtful sting travel his head. Perhaps it was curiosity but he felt an intense desire to open the closed gate. And to add to this, there was a desperate voice deep inside of his mind saying that this gate needed to be opened now. Thus, he braced himself and touched the gate again, only to be forced back all the same. Lost for ideas, and not very intent on harming himself, he searched for different options. But no matter where he looked in his mind, he couldn’t find any answers. The only one he found was to forcefully open the gate with mana: crude and dangerous, but workable, perhaps. So, he went at the gate again, this time, however, with a greater load of mana behind his touch. To his surprise, the gate didn’t even budge under his touch, his recklessness only serving to harm his mind with greater intensity. He screamed in his mind and retreated, now fearful of the gate. But then a system notification popped up. A new class skill discovered. Mana connection: the ability to connect one being to another His mind found the new skill lacking in both power and grandness, but the quiet voice, which had grown quite annoying by now, urged him to use the skill immediately. Lost for actions anyway, his mind followed and used the skill on the connection to Jen. There is already a connection here. As before, his mind felt defeated as he read the notification. But then as he looked at the link itself, his hope regrew and blossomed. The gate that had looked immovable was now lit up and gentler. Excited, he pushed the gate and it opened under his touch. The voice told him to flow mana down his gate and to close the other one that went from Jen to him. He hesitated, after all, he had an order to follow. It was then that the rising voice told him to look at his surroundings. Stanis opened his eyes and saw that he was already in the puddle, his knees-down now hidden under the opaque, thick liquid. Satisfied that he had completed his order, and lost at the fact that there were no more orders, his mind decided to listen to the quiet voice in his mind, after all, what harm could it do? He flowed mana down his gate to Jen and closed the other. The second he closed the one that came from Jen, his mind shook and he collapsed. The voice that had been whispering advice usurped the throne and came back into power. Stanis was back to being himself. He immediately looked down and saw that the water was now waist-height. Jen had noticed the link between them breaking but didn’t attack him as she saw he was already immobilised. Her puddles were incredibly sticky and there was no way he could get out when it was continuously pulling him in deeper. Stanis gritted his teeth and thought back to his original purpose. He had only a few seconds to kill Jen. Looking across the clearing, he noticed how Johnny had been killed, and how Berry was in the process of being butchered. Keiko had seen her teammates fall and thus had made a run for it. However, she seemed to be out of luck as she had been struck across her right foot seconds later, leaving her to limp now. If everything went right, everyone here, including Jen, should be dead in less than a minute. Stanis knew he would die, he had known that from the start, whether he killed Jen or not. But he wasn’t certain about Jen, after all, she could kill the clothed zombies one by one and zombify them. Even though the possibility was low of her leaving the jungle alive, even the slightest possibility was too high for Stanis to accept. The darkness was now up to his wrists. He knew he couldn’t use any of his skills, none of them would come in very handy here. He doubted he could even escape the darkness. Ignoring the sinking feeling of being drowned in his heart, he focused his whole energy into finding a method to damn Jen. The first thought that came to mind was their connection. He had been able to fight back even when his personal gate hadn’t been open, meaning that you could send mana across any pathway that was open. But he hadn’t been able to give out orders; he didn’t know whether this was something to do with Jen’s class or if it was to do with the links themselves. Stanis was certain that opening his own gateway had had some kind of effect, and most likely had opened up new possibilities as well. But the desperation of his situation proved that this was not the time to discover them. Instead, he went to what he knew and flooded his pathway to Jen with malicious mana. His head was now sinking into the darkness and so he couldn’t move it to see what effect it had. However, from the initial, short scream he heard, he knew he was onto something. Knowing that he was going to die in a second anyway, he used up the rest of his mana to flood her once more. He would never know the result of this as the tip of his head submerged at this moment. A few seconds later, his hand shot out and he pulled himself out of the puddle. There was a blank look in his eyes as he looked around. To the side, he saw his master being chased down by two clothed false-humans and so sprinted towards her. But before he could help her, another clothed false-human barrelled into him and wrestled him to the ground. It then bent his arms around his back and kneeled on him. It forced him to watch his master fighting desperately against 4 clothed humans. Her mana-shield was slowly chipped at but she managed to get two down in this time. The two who were downed fell into darkness puddles of their own. This should have been enough to turn-around the fight but instead, his master stood still and solemn. She was out of mana; she had wasted it all on breaking Stanis’s will and attacks. The remaining two clothed-false humans showed no mercy and immediately struck her down, only stopping once she was shredded to pieces. At this, Stanis felt his own heartbeat stop as well. He had died…

The feeling was exhilarating, electrifying even, as Stanis ran his eyes over each of the members one by one. The way they flustered, the way they looked down, the way their fear sprouted into the world… He could tell from the smell of toasted skin wafting from below him that he had ruined his own show, but at the same time, he didn't care. He wasn't a diplomat, no, he was more than that. He reached down and picked up Drak's body with one hand. He lifted it to eye-level and scrutinised the corpse. The smell, the sight, it was all horrible. Pulling his shoulders back, he flung the corpse behind his back before lobbing it at the wall. *thump* Despite their desire to look at the state of the corpse, none of the people inside the hall turned their eyes away from Stanis. He, in response, snorted at their fear. "Who is the strongest here?" Several heads turned to Drak, finally relieved by the fact that they were no longer courting death by doing so. Other heads turned towards David, while others turned towards Xin, as well as a healthily-tanned woman from the portly man's group with bright, red hair. Stanis followed each gaze and judged each of the champions, gritting his teeth harder after each judgement. "Too weak," he said. "You will all die," The groups of people reacted differently to his statement. Some reached for their weapons, before hesitating as they remembered the offence Stanis had taken at Drak's armament. Some didn't even react, easing themselves before the inevitable slip into death's own embrace. But to Stanis's interest, a few people armed themselves and held onto their weapons, despite the lack of public support. "You will all die in a week," he finally clarified, chuckling as he lowered himself into Drak's seat. He crossed his legs and relaxed his shoulders onto the backrest. "One week and enemies my strength will flood the world. I will live, but you will not," "So," he paused. "I will lead this village, and all of you will follow me." Another uncomfortable shift passed through the hall. Stanis knew that what he was doing was putting people off, but at the same time, he had to show that he wasn't here to take shit from them. However, at that very moment, the most important fact he had been musing upon for the last few days finally came to fruition: he might be able to survive the apocalypse that was coming, but he definitely wouldn't be able to thrive afterwards. Humans were social creatures, and isolating himself wouldn't lead to success even in a thousand years. "But, if you want to leave, be my guest. Just don't forget while you're being torn apart that you ran away from the strongest human on Earth. Just don't forget while you're waiting for death that you had you dug your own grave. Just don't forget," he paused. "that you could've lived…" A cold and vicious silence took hold of the hall, usurping the throne. And it was clear that it was here to stay as Stanis looked comfortably around the room while the others pondered inside of themselves. Even after they had come to their own answers, no one spoke for fear of being the one to break the silence. Eventually, Stanis closed his eyes and sat in his seat peacefully. He sat there with nothing on his mind; the blood he had drawn in the past few seconds didn't disturb him whatsoever. But all good things must come to an end, and this turned out to be the case with the silence. "How do you know this?" Alyona asked, her voice raspy and wet around the edges. "Because I am tier-four," Stanis answered as he opened his eyes and stared at her. From just a few seconds of looking at her appearance, he could tell the heart-wrenching story that must have taken place between her and Drak while he had been away. Not that he cared though, she had only made her own battles harder for herself. "And how can we trust you?" the portly man asked. His voice was surprisingly high-pitched and Stanis found himself laughing out loud in the next second, half-due to his voice and the other half due to the question. "Because I'm strong," The portly man shifted in his seat and looked at Stanis with all the sternness he could muster up. Stanis sighed internally but kept his mask expressionless. "You don't have to listen to me, but time waits for no one. And none of you have much time in your hands in the first place." Alyona gulped before taking another shot in the dark. "Can we at least talk?" "Ha-ha, I won't murder you for talking about your fates," he replied. "Maybe," His ever-so-ungrateful audience shifted in their clothes at his beautifully-crafted joke. The talks between the groups didn't last long as no one dared to mouth a directly opposing argument to Stanis's. Thus, it wasn't a long wait till he got his first answer, "We will join you," Alyona said. Stanis raised his eyebrows in response and turned his attention to the portly man. "Ugh-hem. We will also join you," Finally, after seconds of internal battle, the raucous laughter locked up in his stomach made its way out. He chuckled and waved his hands in expansive gestures. "Excellent," He pointed at the Jaguars. "Go back and tell Serb to come back with the whole pack," They nodded in response and immediately made their escape from the hall, sprinting the second they got out of the door. He had changed. "Now, tell me everything that's happened," Stanis said while pointing at Alyona. "And be snappy about it, we don't have much time to play about with," "Umm." Alyona flustered under the spotlight as she thought back to everything that had happened. ‘She hadn't been like this' Stanis thought. "I can tell you," Jayesh finally offered. The wizened Indian man seemed to have aged several years in the minutes Stanis had been here. And yet, from the start of Drak's slaughter in broad daylight to the current moment, he was also the one who had reacted the least to Stanis's theatre. Instead, he had watched it all with a borderline grateful expression. "Go ahead," Stanis said. He didn't look at Sil as he said this, only Jayesh. "After you left, the blacksmiths you had blessed skyrocketed. They began teaching others and we began winning the war with Haven. More people began immigrating here as time passed, and soon we reached a stalemate with Haven, but then the village fractured. The stalemate was beneficial for both of our villages so some of us wanted to keep it as it was, but others wanted to push onwards and clean up Haven. Drak won, and we shifted our focus from winning the war to improving the village," Stanis raised a single eyebrow at this. From what he had heard of Haven, it was certainly not a pleasant place to be. And yet Jayesh had aligned himself with Drak, despite his moral compass being at total odds with Haven. Or maybe it no longer was? Jayesh didn't break eye-contact at Stanis's response, nor did he back down in any visible way. He instead carried on the story as if nothing had happened. "Richie came to the village at that point," he said while pointing at the portly man. The portly man bowed his head at Stanis in response, showing off his balding head in all of its glory. "And Moonshine worked with Rikkey, making the defences that are now around the village," Jayesh said while pointing at the redhead woman. "Moonshine," Stanis spluttered out, snorting at the name. "What is your name?" "You wouldn't be able to pronounce it," the tanned, redhead responded. While her actions and words were polite, they were also soaked in poison. Stanis's heart fluttered but he managed to keep his body still. He wanted to, but he knew not to. "Moonshine it is then," Stanis said expressionlessly. However, the way he gripped the arm-rest didn't escape anyone's eyesight, especially Moonshine's who looked at the squeezed, wooden block with interest. "And then," Jayesh carried on before Stanis could impart another word, "you came." "What a story!" Stanis said with a dead tone. "And now that's all over, tell me who's actually the strongest in the village," he said while pointing at Richie. The layers of neck fat shook as Richie raced his head for the right answer, before finally coming up with an innocuous one. "You are, Stanis?" "Yes, I am Stanis. Yes, I am also the strongest," he confirmed, "but who's after me?" "In my humble opinion, it would have to be Caleb or Orena," Richie answered. "Following them would be the men and women you see in here, especially the talents such as Moonshine, Sil, Xin, Jayesh, Ji-yeon—" "Yes, do you want to list everyone here in the room?" Stanis asked. Riche quickly sensed the hole he been in the process of digging and quickly backtracked. "Of course not, good sir. Just that everyone in here are the strongest." "Well, certainly not." Stanis ended, giving both a writ of freedom and a bounty for death to Richie at the same time. "But worry not, I'll make sure you all reach an acceptable standard"…

… **** Stanis woke up and looked around him. He was in a room, not a house-type room but instead a laboratory type. He was in a room with clear-glass walls. Outside of it were two people and several machines with buttons and levers. One of them saw him wake up and walked towards the door, opening his room to theirs. "Come here. You really don't want to stay in that room," Stanis was confused but decided to trust this man anyway, after all, he was currently naked without the slightest of protection on him. Besides, what else could he do other than just staying in the room? He walked out of the room and instantly felt a difference; he felt like he was choking for a second before the man helped him breathe. The man guided him to seat and walked off to get a tray of goodies. He then came back and offered Stanis a collection of biscuits and a glass of water, as well as some simple clothing. As he looked at the water, he was suddenly reminded of the woman. Was that a dream, or…? "Right, so what's your name?" the man who had helped him asked. "Stanis." "Stanis, eh. I'm Bill and that's Jay," the man said while pointing at his partner. "So, you basically failed the first stage!" Stanis stared back at Bill with a blank expression. After a few seconds of waiting, Bill seemed to give up on waiting for a reaction. *cough* "Right. Anyway, we'll basically be guiding you through the second round. No need to worry about those falsies anymore, we'll make sure you're strong enough to steamroll them by the end." At this comment, Stanis immediately thought of Jen. If he was still alive, then she was still alive… "Do you know where the others are?" he asked. "The other ones who died? They'll also be going through the second stage right now. I'm sure you're all chums and that but you'll have to wait till this training is over before meeting them again." Bill said with a sympathetic expression. It was clear he had misunderstood Stanis's sentiment but Stanis wasn't bothered enough to correct him. "So, what do are we doing?" he asked. "Ha, I thought you'll never ask," Bill answered. Jay cut in at this. "Bill, cut the crap and start already. He should be in training by now," he said with a deadpan expression. Bill sighed before turning to look at Stanis. There was a bit of longing in his eyes but that was quickly gone. "Alright, what we basically do here is hone your skills into blades. You've had a chance to fight enemies your own level, so you should now have some idea of how you're going to deal with them," he took a quick breath of air, "And here we will test those skills and techniques out, making sure you perfect them in a minimum-danger environment." "If you'll follow me," he ended as he walked out of the main door. Stanis followed him down a set of stairs and through another collection of doors. On the way, he saw two guards by one of the doors. Unlike him, or any of the top ten, there weren't any type of mana-fluctuations coming off these men. Or if there was, Stanis had no way of detecting it. But despite this, he could tell straight away that the guards weren't people to be messed with. The very fierceness in their eyes as they watched him, it was almost like they weren't even human… Eventually, they entered a grand hall quite similar to a school gymnasium. The floor was wiped clean and shined with a gleam, and the walls looked concrete enough to take a punch. But considering this was the testing room, the walls could most likely take more than just a punch. Stanis's thoughts were reigned in as Bill asked him to perform a skill. If a normal human had just asked him that, Stanis would have used one of his most unassuming or least impressive skills, after all, he needed tricks to hide that he could use in the heat of battle. Such as his darkness dagger. This brought a bad taste to Stanis's mouth and so he looked at his own shadow, before dragging it out with his fist and making it semi-corporal. "Is that it?" asked Bill incredulously. "This is your own time you're wasting…" Stanis cleared his throat loudly, slightly embarrassed by Bill's comment, before deciding to show off one of his greater moves. He circulated the mana inside of him and transformed it into lightning. Thunder rumbled from him and eventually, the lightning broke out in an impressive burst. The whole hall lit up blindingly bright and the floor and walls became scorched black. Stanis opened his eyes and scrapped his previous thought; the walls and floor hadn't become scorched black, instead, they looked exactly like they had previously. "A bit better, but you're wasting far too much energy on the release," Bill said. "The power of the lightning you built up in your body is far higher than the amount that was actually released because you released it like a loose cannon without a single target or pathway in mind." Stanis turned his head and shook his head in disbelief. "If it was that easy, I would have done it already. But it's just so explosive, there's no way I can control that release," he said. He was certain that Bill was strong, and perhaps Bill could even do what he had just suggested, but there was no way Stanis could. It was simply too large of a release to be able to control, it was like asking a man to hold onto a 1000kg dumbbell and not drop it. Bill laughed in response. "That's where we come in, isn't it?"…

Eastwards from the northern side of the mountain was the land just above Haven and the other cluster of villages in that region. Stanis had initially thought he had been heading there but quickly realised he was going further north than expected as the line slowly angled towards north-east. Not that it worried him or anything. He doubted he would be in any danger whichever way he went. Perhaps this was just his overconfidence speaking, overconfidence that would soon lead him to death, but Stanis thought little about it. The region, which had been forested, was slowly becoming more barren as he followed the mana line. Eventually, he was walking through plains instead of forests. What should be dwarfing trees and dozens of wild plants instead was plain, ankle-height grass. This made Stanis even more relaxed, after all, he no longer had to fear an ambush hiding around every tree. Not that he became completely careless due to this though, no, instead he still cast Scout and sense every few minutes. Perhaps it was the slow winds or maybe it was the pressure being lifted off him, either way, Stanis found himself drifting towards his memories, towards his life before the apocalypse. After the apocalypse had commenced, Stanis had been bitter about the fact that he had just turned his life around, only for it to be stolen from him once again. Now he watched his memories drift past with a melancholic smile. The pressure-less life he had then made him smile, but underneath that smile was a deeper sadness at how he had wasted those times. Sharper than any blade was the fact that he couldn't remember many happy memories. It cut deep into his mind and threatened to make mincemeat out of him: make a madman out of him. He let a deep breath out and sighed, shoulders dropping and upper-body hunching inwards. He then shook his head, before taking a deep breath in and rolling his shoulders back, chest popping out. So what if he didn't have many happy memories now? At least he was still alive, and more importantly, strong. This gave him every chance to make many more in the future. And thus another load was lifted off his weary heart, his steps practically springing upwards. **** It was after many hours had passed that Stanis reached his destination. Across the plains, atop a hill was a large cave that seemed to lead underground. Stanis could feel the pull from his mana-line stronger than ever and pointing exactly towards the cave in question. It was also his luck that across the plains to the other side, at the edge of his vision, were other humans. He hadn't seen a single one in hours and here three of them popped out at once. It was clear what they were here for as Stanis doubted people came here, to the middle of nowhere, for fun. They were about the same distance from the cave as he was. This meant that either of the parties could walk back and the other party wouldn't be able to chase them down. It was not surprising, however, when both of the parties began walking towards the cave, seemingly careless of the other. **** "Baws, what'd you think?" asked Skint, squinting his eyes to bring Stanis into focus. Pete kept silent as he watched Stanis walk towards the cave. "He come here for same reason," said Bear. He had just pointed out what the other two had realised minutes before but they let him off the hook. After all, he was Bear, this was to be expected of him. It would have been a perfect silence was it not for the winds and the loud steps the trio made as they walked over to the cave. "Well," started Pete, still staring at Stanis. "If we can see him, he can see us. But, he's still walking towards it, meaning he clearly believes he can beat us up. Now correct me if I'm going blind but there's only one of him and three of us." "Ya" confirmed Bear. Sometimes Pete forgot why he had allowed such a simpleton like Bear join him but it was moments like this in which Bear furthered his dramatic, tense, amazing parts in which he remembered. "I think we all know what that means." finished Pete. Skint sniggered at this, hoisting out his bow from his back. Bear needed a second to take it all in but then rumbled out deep laughter from his heart, unsheathing a bastard sword from his back. "Now remember boys. We don't hurt our good guest if he's willing to have a good chat, alright?" added Pete. "Of course, of course" responded Skint, Bear nodding with him. Pete looked at his two men and grinned. "I'm going in boys. See you on the flipside," He took his canteen and uncorked it, putting it to his mouth and taking a deep glug. **** Stanis was now a few metres away from the cave, double that distance away from the other party. He watched them intensely as he walked, waiting for the inevitable confrontation. There was a little guy, 5'5 maybe, with a clean-shaven face walking to the left. He had quite a stubbly nose and shorty cropped black hair. He was white and wore loose leather clothing, the colour dulled and muddied at parts. No effort put into hiding, the man held a thick shortbow in his hands, the string pulled back. He reminded Stanis of Tanya but stronger. To the right stood a massive guy, a massive contrast to the 5'5 man with his 6'3 height. He had an equally impressive torso which bulged out. He wore thick fur clothing but Stanis could see the muscles bulging out of them, anyway. In his hands, he held a wide bastard sword that definitely took quite some strength to wield. Despite this, the most disconcerting factor about this man was his expression. He had an unshaven face with great, scruffy hairs tangled into a beard. He had thick eyebrows and a flat nose, thick lips wrapping up the whole package. It was this face that was currently struggling to keep laughter in, Stanis put on edge by the giggles that occasionally made it out. And in the middle of the two stood a man a bit taller than Stanis, so around 6 foot. This man had leather armour and trousers on. He had a short sword at his hip which was surprisingly still resting in its dirty scabbard. He had open forearms from which Stanis could see that the man was lean and lanky under his clothing. He had a great beard, similar to the massive guy's, but his well-groomed. His lips were dark and eyes even darker, his pale skin making him look sickly. But the most interesting thing about this man was the way he walked, stumbling across like a drunk. In fact, Stanis was almost certain he was drunk or a very good actor. Looking at the three in front of him, the one thing they all shared in common was the metal canteens hanging from their hips. The big man carried a large bag on his back and the little man carried a smaller bag, with the lanky drunk carrying nothing, but all of them wore their dulled canteens like medals of honour. "Oi, ELLO there, ugh," said Pete, hiccupping afterwards. Stanis was now only a few metres away from the three but stood without any weapons in his hands. He stood casually as if he wasn't intimidated at all by the glints of metal pointed at him. His face had been drained of most of its fat and what had been left behind was quite a fierce, lean face tanned dark-orange. "ELLLLLLO," roared Pete. "CAN UU HEAR MEEE?" Pete stumbled forwards, the other two staying their ground. Stanis's face stayed passive but his eyes squinted and his hand crawled towards his sword. "Back off," said Stanis, his tone cold. "Woah Woah WOAH! Calm yer tits. Y'know what, hand uss those shiny metalies and ur scot-free. Elsse, you can stayy here and plaay with us," said Pete. The trio wasn't blind. Although Stanis carried very little on himself, they could see the fluctuations coming off from his sword and cuirass. "Back off," repeated Stanis, this time his tone stone-cold. "YOUUUU. DON'T TELL MEE WHAT TOO DO? ‘KAY?" yelled Pete. Stanis had been relaxed but Pete had done a grand job in putting him back in a bad mood. He scowled once, and then twice, before unsheathing his sword. The lightning leapt off the blade, giving itself quite the entrance. "OOOO. SHINEEEEY!" said Pete as he made his last step forwards. He was now within striking distance. Stanis brandished his sword before stepping forward, the blade on path to chop Pete's neck. <Empathetic spread> roared Pete as he smoothly flicked out his short sword and stabbed towards Stanis. Stanis, on the hand, felt the whole world grow blurry and foreign within a second. Noise echoed in his head and he struggled to get out of Pete's way. Pete stabbed towards his neck but Stanis stumbled out of the way and instead got hit in the chest. Despite getting struck, it was Pete who actually took the damage as he recoiled back with a string of curses, his hand shaking out of his control. Stanis had unconsciously dropped his pseudo-mana shield when Pete had activated his skill. And due to this, Skint's released arrow had made it through to him, the thick, stubby thing ripping through his leather trousers before striking his shin. It then deflected off his shin and dug itself into the ground, a small trail of blood leaking from the wound. Despite his actions, Pete had actually been watching Stanis very closely all this time. After he saw the arrow deflect off Stanis's shin and into the ground, he immediately dropped his act, instead roaring "RETREAT!" However, it was already too late. Bear was flying overhead, his bastard sword swinging towards Stanis's chest. Stanis himself was stumbling over his own feet one second, the next second regaining all sense and control of his body. <Layman's rush> He dived within that short second, picked up his sword before clashing against the falling Bear. Having broken the physics of reality once already, he wasn't shy to do it once more as Bear went flying back through the air, falling onto his arse a metre away. Stanis growled loudly as multiple Ice crystals began forming around him. Skint and Pete were already sprinting away from him but what they didn't know was that it was all pointless. Over the next few seconds, Stanis easily chased them down and shot ice crystals into their feet. Pete used some kind of defensive skill in the last second but was steamrolled over anyway by the Ice crystals which kept coming. It was close to a minute later that the trio were lying outside the cave, their legs pierced through with ice crystals. "Bossman, please don't kill me. I can help you," said Pete, his voice strained and rushed due to the pain he was currently in. In fact, he was actually better off than the two around him due to the alcohol he had drunk beforehand. Skint and Bear were currently groaning in pain; they were used to battle wounds but certainly not used to be having several freezing crystals stabbed through their legs. Stanis was going through their backpacks when he heard Pete talk. He chuckled softly from his heart before walking towards Pete, who was currently lying on the ground with blood gushing out of his legs. "I know you can," said Stanis, his lips curling into an enigmatic smile. "Oh, don't you worry. You three will be helping me out a lot"…

A dragon-sized bolt of electricity speared into Jen, causing her to drop back her head and scream… nothing… She begged but her voice didn’t care, instead cowering in fear of the invader. Thunder clapped around them and boomed across the fields, throwing further people and Aliens on edge. Even the strongest Aliens backed away from the fight, terrified of the wolves in sheep’s clothing in front of them; while they had initially considered Jen’s and Stanis’s appearance onto the battlefield that of a challenge’s, now they saw them as rightful hunts, them the predators, they the prey. And this was all without even mentioning the star-stone plummeting down to Earth… The electricity coursed from Jen’s bloodstreams back into Stanis’s, causing him to cringe on the edge of his teeth. One round. Jen cocked her head forwards. Something snapped within her, reflected in her eyes, and her voice stood up, towering over her previously held fear. She would fight fire with fire, and she would win. Darkness squeezed out of her pores and streamed towards the incoming round of lightning, clashing with it and throwing buckets of condensed mana all over themselves. They roared to life like internal infernos but Stanis fought through the pain, instead draining even more of his mana into the lightning. It would be beyond dangerous when the round returned to his body but it was a risk he was willing to take; it was a risk he had to take. The lightning cut through the thickly-weaved darkness and pierced her, puncturing her lungs and throwing her mind into oblivion. She felt a short respite as the lightning left her and her head powerlessly fell forward. Her eyes caught onto his brightly lit body and saw in his eyes what she had never feared till now: death. Not his, but hers; she would die the next round, weak and feeble against his tyrannical force. Well, if she was going to die anyway, what was stopping her from cursing him? This thought cheered her up for the briefest of moments, one so short that she didn’t even have the time to smile in it. But what she did have was enough time to let go of her body and the world that shackled it. Explosively. Before the third wave of lightning pervaded her holy-temple, her body disappeared from existence. Every cell turned into the thickest and most pungent of darkness imaginable and exploded with a cheerless bang, lacking both firepower and splendour. But for what it lacked, it made up through a primal, bloodhunting force. The coal-black liquid splattered over Stanis and sent him sprawling to the ground. He struggled and failed, the darkness eating and growing at the expense of his flesh. He tried to cast Light Healing but failed all the same, reducing down to a sickly sack of flesh and bones. But then flags of lightning soared out of his deepest reserves, claiming back the body which was rightfully his. It fought the darkness and won, tearing away at its formation and slurping away the seeds it left behind. He struggled and won; he was finally the figure of power he had always wanted to be. He opened his eyes from the nightmare and faced a far grander one shining in the sky: the meteor. Gulping, he looked to his sides, before releasing the Aliens had cleared out from over 100 metres around him. He stood up and ran, before falling face first into the bloody ground. The meteor was casting an intense pressure on him and over his surroundings. He considered the distance and weighed the risks: he could either wager his life and attempt to escape the point of impact in time, or he could build up impenetrable walls around him. One, two, three, the walls built up around him. Eleven, twelve, thirteen, he stared up and felt an uncertainty, no, he could do this. Twenty four, twenty five, twenty six, the final barriers stacked up. While the individual barriers weren’t as strong as Jen’s had been, the combination of all of them was far stronger. Hopefully. Giving no heed to pleasantries, the meteor crashed into Earth and sent flames and cracks alike running through the ground. It lobbed Stanis like a ragdoll high into the air, the last of his barriers collapsing under the heat and pressure. He rammed into the ground and felt the Ocean follow, stacking onto his body. He tried to breathe but he couldn’t: there was no air. He tried to stand up but he couldn’t: there was too much pressure. He tried to squirm and squeal but couldn’t, his echoes lost to the abyss. Then, hope reignited itself in him. There was no ocean, and there was no foe he couldn’t beat. He had killed the strongest human with his own, bare hands; he was now the strongest, the greatest, the invincible. He rapidly cast Light healing with his eyes shut and his body, crumpled over the ground, began to solidify, giving further strength to his hope. He stood up and roared, catching eyes with the multiple Aliens charging towards him. Why? As if in his own world with the passing of time a fraction of what it was on Earth, he looked around and saw Alyona in the distance. He couldn’t hear what she was saying but he could read her lips. “A monster has taken control of his body,” she said. “It will kill all of us,” she said. He then looked at the army of soldiers standing beside her on the wall. “No, such a lie can’t be true,” their incredulous eyes read. But their faces said otherwise, preaching to them that a human couldn’t be this strong and this cruel. Cruel? He wasn’t cruel. Stanis put his palms over his face and felt that his muscles were tightened. He was… grinning? Why? … Oh. He looked back at the soldier’s faces once more, and this time their expressions made sense. They were jealous and scared, frightened but selfish, dumb and bitter. His grin grew wider and devoured his whole face. So it be, if what they wanted was a monster, it was a monster they were going to get. The last smatterings of energy burst out of his body and formed lightning gauntlets: it wasn’t a lot but it was more than enough to put down a few rabid dogs. He flickered out of sight and appeared next to the closest Alien. It didn’t even have enough time to turn around before its head shot to the ground, eventually followed by its limp body. The Aliens began to squeal in their shrill voices but it was already too late. Stanis then moved to the strongest of the Aliens. It produced several barriers and cast a violent force against his abs. Unfortunately, its attack turned out to be nothing more than a scratch and its defence as strong as drenched paper. At this, the Aliens truly began to fear. One by one they ran with their tails between their legs; they had focused on him because they had feared he was stronger than the village put together, and he had proved their theory more than correct, more than what they could certainly take. Stanis would have chased them but his target was of a different breed altogether; he turned his head and faced the walls and the cowards who manned it. He bolted down the corpse-filled battlefield and immediately jumped the walls, landing onto the walkway. His lust sung and he listened, his arms moving in harmony with his hatred, his loathing. His symphony played timelessly, until it stopped. Confused, Stanis finally awoke from his trance and looked around, noticing nothing but blood and limbs around him. He tried to walk out of the pools he stood in but found his steps heavy and clumsy. Why? He looked down and noticed the small scratch the strongest Alien had gifted him was actually far more than a scratch, instead a gash that ranged from hip to rib. <Light Healing> He tried to heal but noticed his body devoid of all energy; he had already spent all of his wealth. Fuck. Mind blurred and puzzled, he tilted his head up and noticed a sound for the first time, a call even. “ ******ay!” Stanis rubbed his eyes and tried to listen again, although all that did was pour blood into them. “****ke way!” “WHAT?!” Stanis shouted back. “MAAAKEE WAY!” It was closer this time. Stanis turned to face the sound and saw Bear, followed by Skint and Pete. He tried to raise up his arms in time but failed as Bear hit him like a ball against bat, only with the side of a bastard-sword instead. Stanis grazed the stone-floor with his landing and infected it with his blood. He immediately tried to stand back up but quickly realised that he was done for; he had no energy left and no miraculous seeds of hope waiting to sprout. Pete squatted over him and lightly patted his back. “You’ve done me a service, boss man. Pick him up, Skint,” he said. Skint softly gripped his skin and allowed him to lean on the smaller man’s body, finally letting him stand to full height. “Think about it this way: two monsters who you just can’t beat. Why bother with two plans to kill both when you can just use one,” he said as he pointed at Stanis. “And you, yes you, are a monster but also the plan. You really did me a service, boss man. I thought you’d fail and I’d have to risk it to finish her but look at you go, tearing through even her suicide attack without batting an eye. I respect you, I really do.” He paused and Skint slightly pushed his body forward so that his head fell to face the floor. “So, that’s why you’ll have to go…” A hatchet buried itself into his neck, before going out again. A distant swear sounded out, before another swing. Another swear and a final swing, finishing the job. The strongest Human had died. Stanis Volkov was dead. **** Yils stared into the starless sky and spotted the faint discolouration. She grabbed out and latched onto a soul, pulling it so hard that it fell out of the sky and into her hands. She turned to Zelgard and showed him her catch, although he seemed to not care as he whittled away at a hollow tube. “Look Zel, I got it,” she said. He didn’t hear her and instead kept shaving the wood, allowing the soft tufts of hair to fall to his feet. “Zeeel, look,” she repeated, pointedly pushing it into his face. “Oh,” he said, taken aback by the sudden interruption. “You were right. He died exactly 6 months after he first climbed his way up,” Zelgard nodded in agreement and approval and acceptance, and fuck off I’m busy, as he returned to his whittling. “But I was right as well,” she continued, mostly to herself as Zelgard had already blanked out. “I did say that he would die drowned in resentment,” Zelgard continued nodding, hoping that it would appease her. He was the overseer meant to look after the planet but he found her distractions far more urgent than the problems of Earth. He was the grand overseer, a position others only dreamed of, and she was a lowly servant, built up to the powerhouse she was now, and he, well, he was just another human powerless against the powers of fate, a person who was just not worth his time. The End.

Out of Silvermoon marched the few hundred warriors. At the front of the march were the 3 Haven boys and Stanis, followed closely by Sofia and Silvermoon's other powerhouses. Just minutes prior, Stanis had seen Silvermoon's strength first-hand. Once the talks had finished, the whole village had moved with a frightening dedication, each and every person immediately packing up their items and getting ready to jump ship. Of course, such dedication was something Stanis had seen before but never on a village-scale, and it was also this which had shown him why Silvermoon had been Haven's strongest resistance for such a long time. He had been surprised when Sofia had revealed where she was from because he had never heard of Silvermoon before. It was through the trio's comments that he had realised how small of a village she was from, which only made her origin more confusing; why would a powerhouse, such as herself, restrict themselves to such a small pond when there was a whole sea to swim and grow in? But whatever doubts and questions he had previously had been washed away; he was now certain that Pete's idea to include all the smaller villages was the right one. Stanis relaxed as the conversations around him grew more casual. Time ticked away and before night had even fallen, the entire Silvermoon cohort found themselves staring at Yora's defences. Stanis guided the group past the traps and defences, telling them to be careful as they traversed the field. He was inwardly proud as he heard and saw the awe of the people around him despite not having done anything himself. On the other hand, it was he who was aweful as he came to the wall. Sitting on the walls were the disembowelled cannons he had seen last time, only now they were ready and watching the fields with wide, vicious mouths. Patrolling the walls were close to 200 more warriors than last time, obviously an effect of his warning. They quickly let him and the Silvermoon warriors through without any complication, much to Stanis's joy. Following this, after quite the wild goose chase, Stanis found Richie and handed over to him the responsibility to find accommodation for the Silvermooners. It was then that he heard from Richie that two other villages, albeit smaller, had also migrated to Yora. Richie also told him about the upgrades they had made to the defence and offence during the time Stanis had been away. Stanis felt a rising joy as he listened to Richie list activity after activity. They had actually listened to him instead of ignoring his warnings. It was a social power that he had never truly enjoyed with other humans, trust to the point where they believed your word without proof. Eventually sick of Richie sucking up to him, Stanis left the portly man to his own work and walked towards the forges. He was allowed in without question and immediately saw the change in atmosphere. The multiple blacksmiths, who had, in the past, been forging quite creative, but also decadent, works of metal were now creating cruel and vicious weaponry: minimum on design and maximum on practicality. He visited Rikkey and her team, and had a little chat with Kevin as they watched the blacksmiths hard at work. While the multiple other blacksmiths were creating high-quality weaponry for the whole village and the newcomers, Rikkey and her team were solely creating a set for him. After seeing Haven's true dark side, he had hoped that Rikkey had initially overestimated her guess as to how much time his armour would take to be ready. It was, however, while watching the blacksmiths at work that he realised that they would keep true to their word, but also not a moment quicker. In fact, he found himself happier about such a fact as he looked around at the parts they had already made. It was as the Moon was high in the sky that Stanis finally left the forges. He headed towards the market which was still burning with life despite it being the dead of night. Throughout his time at the village, he still hadn't caught sight of a single Jaguar. It was earlier when he had been talking with Kevin that his worries had been washed away. According to him, the Jaguars had actually responded to his call immediately, coming to the village within a day of the event in the hall. But since he had already left by then, they had decided upon staying in the forest they had stayed in before. ‘And thank goodness for that,' Kevin had commented, ‘You would not believe how big some of them are now, we would just get crushed by walking on the same street as them'. While Stanis didn't believe Kevin's exaggerations, he was also sure that Serb and Niss weren't that far off Kevin's descriptions either. In fact, if it turned out that the Jaguars hadn't had such an extended competition and training period like he had, it was more likely that tens of the Jaguars were already Mosyte rank. And to celebrate all of their rises to such power, Stanis knew that there was only way they could, and would, all celebrate. This was why he raided the market of all its strongest alcohols, ordering several strangers he saw on the street to help carry them. They staggered out of the village walls, simultaneously creating quite the comedic sight for the guards who manned the walls. They passed the river and the fragile-looking bridge which had been there since Stanis had first arrived at Yora. It was only then that Stanis gave them back their freedom, although many of them still stayed with him past that, after all, they already knew what kind of a night it would be if they stayed around. The Jaguars all roared and made way for Stanis as he walked through their midst. Looking around, Stanis realised that every single Jaguar he saw was tier-three without fail, and yet he couldn't find a single tier-four. This perplexed him until he reached Serb's cave. Around the cave stood tens of Jaguars, each with rich, bronze fur that stuck to their bodies. They were over 3 metres tall and had long tails. More importantly, however, they had claws that scraped against the stones below their paws like knives against butter. Worse still were their mouths which housed the maws of true monsters. In the centre of the Jaguars, most tyro Mosyte and some medial Mosyte, stood Serb and Niss, the strongest and only two adroite Mosytes in the whole pack. The two of them were slightly larger than the Jaguars that surrounded them and had sleeker fur. But the main thing that separated them from the other Jaguars wasn't anything to do with their appearance, instead having to do with the authority they stood with. Before, they had been at the peak of the Jaguars and had stood and moved with knowledge of that. Now, they possessed true power and therefore moved in a subtler, but also more tyrannical way. "Stanis," Serb roared as he came close enough. "Drinks," he roared next as he saw all the alcohol that trailed behind Stanis. Stanis chuckled and threw a bottle to Serb, who immediately swallowed it. Niss did likewise, and before any talking could be done about serious matters, the whole forest devolved into a raucous party. The few men and women who had tagged along with Stanis quickly found themselves regretting, and also simultaneously thanking themselves for the decision they had made. It was only hours later that Stanis cleared the alcohol from his bloodstreams, finally coming to as the sun was high in the sky. He looked around and saw Jaguars and the occasional human sprawled across the forest, hanging off branches and felled on the muddy sod. He eyes the few remaining bottles before pulling himself away. Looking around, he noticed that Serb and Niss were no longer anywhere in sight, in fact, nothing had been in his sight for the last few hours. Shaking his head, he walked into Serb's cave and eventually found Serb collapsed on the ground with Niss lying over him. As he walked over, Serb groaned awake and immediately went on defence. Stanis waited a while for him to actually wake up, by which time Serb dropped his defences and gestured Stanis closer. "That's good stuff," Serb said. "But I guess we can't live in our own little worlds forever. Come on then, let's get to the real stuff,"…

Hey guys, Thank you so much for reading this! So, I'm sure quite a few of you disliked the ending. It's understandable. I had to rush the ending due to exams last year (when I wrote this) and I didn't have a desire to come back to this then. Simply, I felt I made too many mistakes for it to be worthwhile. I'm sure you all noticed at least one or two flaws, and there were plenty, trust me. Feel free to read my other fiction as well, The Abandoned Sorcerer. It's a high fantasy which I completed a few months back. Anyway, I'm currently writing another litRPG story now. It'll be out in July 2019. It'll be much better simply because I've written so much and learned so much from my mistakes/ other material over the year. Make sure to follow me as I'll post an announcement then. Thanks for your patience, all the best!

The first feeling Stanis experienced when he saw Yora village was shock. He had been gone for about a month so he had been expecting village growth. But the sheer amount of growth he was now faced with was something that should have been impossible to achieve in the time period. Yora village had been built over the skeleton of a former town, and Stanis had initially thought that the past would always be larger than the present. But it was now clear that he had been as wrong as wrong could be. Houses and shacks and tents and huts all sprawled outwards from the former town; Yora village had clearly outgrown its name. The next thing he noticed was the multitude of ants bustling around. He was currently standing on the top of a hill and this made the village look more like a messy toy-set than anything else. But despite his high vantage point, he still couldn't tear his eyes from the dark shapes that constantly moved. They were clearly people; what else could they be? But the number, the sheer number! Excited, Stanis began his descent downwards. Even if everything else he saw was crap, just the sheer growth in terms of numbers had already impressed him. And it was all his, after all, who could contest him if he got serious? No one, especially not Jen… It was as he walked closer that his mood began to simmer down. There were defences all around the village, sticking out like needles on a porcupine. This macabre part of scenery had been overshadowed by the buildings at first but as Stanis got closer to the artefacts of war, it became increasingly obvious that battle was an everyday occurrence to the village. The first ring of defence was a large ditch. It was an easy jump for anyone who had survived the apocalypse till now and thus Stanis had been confused at first about the practical purpose of such a defence. There were four bridge-like posts on each side of the village but Stanis decided to ignore them and jump over. It was the second his leg passed over the ditch's boundary that a strong suction forced pulled at him from the ditch. He easily broke the force and passed by, but not without looking into the ditch one more time. Inside of it were countless monster corpses. Some had long ears, others had racoon-like teeth, whereas other ones were completely hairless. The list went on but there was one thing common between all the corpses, and that was the fact that every single one of them looked like they had been squeezed dry. It was as if some giant had stepped all over them and squeezed whatever coloured blood they had, leaving behind a thin layer of skin and bones. Finally realising the defence's purpose, Stanis picked a stone from the ground and threw it into the sky well above the ditch. The second the stone passed over the ditch's boundary, it instantly shot down into the layer of gore like a bullet. He smirked at the result before turning around and moving towards the second major defence. The second defence was just a simple wall. The reason why it was a major defence was because of its scale. It wasn't perfectly circular but it just about circled the whole village. The dark-purple stained walls were 4m tall and made out of stone. It was as he thought of jumping over the wall in a single step that he realised that a similar gravitational field to the ditch's was around the wall. It wasn't quite as strong but still strong enough to make sure people had to scale the wall if they wanted to get over. At this time, most likely due to him hopping over the ditch, Stanis could feel a few stares on him. He didn't need to turn around to know that people were watching him as his mana sensitivity did it for him. There was a gate through the wall a little distance from him but he wanted to test the wall out and so he instead began climbing where he stood. What he had initially thought to be an easy climb grew much harder as he realised that the rugged-looking rock was actually very smooth. Very smooth… A few attempts later, without using his mana, he climbed to the top and pushed himself to the other side. What met him there was the third line of defences, which didn't look quite ready by his standards. It was tens of cannons lined in a circular formation! But it was clear from the cogs lying around and the various other parts that the cannons weren't quite in working form yet. The most likely scenario was that the cannons would be pushed onto the top of the wall once they were all finished, but it was clear that there was quite some time till that became a reality. He confirmed that the cannons were made out of metal as he passed them by. The cold touch of steel instantly reminded him of Rikkey. But he then shook his head at the thought in the next second; Rikkey was definitely a talented and hardworking blacksmith by his standards but it took more than just hard work or talent to make something as advanced as a cannon. That required knowledge. Out of the crowd of people warily watching Stanis, one of them revealed himself and walked forwards as he saw Stanis fiddling with the cannons. Stanis stunk of power, whether it be the confidence he moved with or the occasional mana fluctuation that escaped his cage, but the cannons were too high a cost to sacrifice for just a bit of fear. Stanis noticed the man walking towards him but at the same time ignored the man, instead opting to walk into the Yora village. He walked slowly as he took in everything around him but it seemed the man who had been meaning to confront him had decided against such a decision as the time passed by quietly. It only became loud again once he reached the market. When he had last been here, it had been his personal storage room where he could take out whatever he wanted for free, but it was clear it had grown quite a bit since then. The vendor's stalls were all marked brightly with bright ribbons and flags. There were arguments and haggling, cheers and whispers, and a whole lot of shouting to tie up the whole package up. Stanis navigated the disastrous maze with his nose instead of his eyes or ears. And due to this fact, he navigated the market with striking efficiency as he moved from food stall to food stall, gobbling up whatever he fancied. It seemed the rest of the people paid for items with money but for Stanis that was an unnecessary complication, borrowing indefinitely was a lot more quiet and discreet: much more his style. He eventually walked away from the market with a full stomach and in a good mood. For some items, he had needed to serve up money but it turned out that passer-by's pockets were just as good hunting grounds as the forests outside. Stanis had expected for one of the watchers still on him to run to the leaders of the village and announce his return, and then for the leaders to run to him and welcome him. But it turned out his dreams would have to stay dreams for the day as it seemed no one in the village recognised him. Sure, he had been killed, resurrected into a tighter body, killed again, born into another body, but he had still hoped for at least one person to recognise him. After all, he still had his tanned skin and black hair, alongside with his chubby cheeks. He reigned his thoughts back in as he reached a crossroad. There were many people and places he should visit but his desires weren't much in order right now. He thought of Alyona, and Riverbeat's former leader Drak. He thought of Rikkey and Kevin, alongside the rest of the squad he had essentially baptised. He then thought of Orena, Caleb and finally Sil. The last thought served him well and he licked his lips. While he had nothing romantic with Sil, even a physical round with her after a month of hell was something to look forward to. After several minutes of wandering around, he eventually found himself in front of the house where she had used to stay. He knocked the door and waited. A young man opened the door and looked at Stanis threateningly. "Is Sil here?" The man looked at him as if he had just asked a bear to sing a song. "Sil?" he answered with even more confusion on his face. "White hair, slim, girl?" Stanis tried again. "Oh, you mean that Sil. Man, I don't know why you're here looking for her. She should be somewhere near the centre, nowhere near here man," "Oh, cheers," Stanis ended. The man closed the door and went inside. As Stanis walked away, he could hear laughter coming from inside the house. Ignoring the slight incident, Stanis restarted his search for Sil. After asking for directions from many people, he eventually found himself at a house much, much larger than Sil's old one. It was clear that she had done well for herself. Before he could knock, he heard laughter coming from inside. Curious, Stanis consciously killed all the mana fluctuations coming off him and cast Scout and sense. Inside, he saw Sil lying in another man's arms. That man was Jayesh Kumar…

The pebbles cluttered under Stanis's feet as he walked out of the village hall. The second he stepped out, he could sense the brief glances and brazen stares people looked at him with. The news had spread fast and now the whole village knew their king was back. A smirk filled Stanis's face as he headed towards the forges again. Inside the village hall, he had finished off the meeting by dedicating roles to people. To the strongest fighters, he had told them to follow the trail and ascend to tier-four. To the others, he had told them to start up the war-effort and then boost it. Despite the village being used to battle, the magnitude of the coming war was something they could never be ready for. All they could do was survive, and Stanis was determined to make that the case. Now, as for them listening to his warnings and heeding his orders, well, that was a whole another story. He knew he couldn't force them: too much fear and they would simply run away from the village. And so their fate was really up to them. Moving his thoughts from them to himself, Stanis fingered the holes in his sleeve. Despite not being able to control everyone in the village, he could still increase his chance of success in the coming war. He would, without a doubt, be pitted against the strongest, and fighting enemies of that skill without sufficient armour or weaponry was, well, suicidal. He was quickly let through the defences by flustered guards and soon enough, he was back in front of Rikkey's smithy. He walked into the building and was met by the same scene as before, minus Caleb and Kevin who had wound themselves somewhere else. The greatsword Rikkey and the other blacksmiths were making was close to completion. Instantly, Stanis could sense that Caleb's sword was going to be one better than anything he had seen so far, let alone held. In fact, was it not for the fact that a greatsword wasn't suited to him, he would have willingly taken the sword and faced Caleb's irritation without batting an eye. "Rikkey," Stanis called out. Rikkey didn't respond to his call. "Rikkey!" he shouted. This time, she spun away from her work and looked at Stanis with a mix of anger and surprise. This quickly transformed into just anger, before finally evolving into a mix of surprise and joy. "Stanis!" she exclaimed, before running to him. She gave him a wide bear hug. By this time, the other blacksmiths had also broken out of their spells. They looked at Stanis with a sense of awe and respect. The truth was that all of them were now more skilled at blacksmithing than Stanis had ever been, but at the same time, they had only reached this level of mastery due to him. "You been here long?" Rikkey asked. "Not too long, just went and dealt with the uppities in the hall," "Oh, you dealt with them?" she asked. Stanis laughed at her two-questions-in-one, before answering. "Yeah, don't know if they'll listen to me but that's up to them to decide. Anyways, I've heard things about you. About all of yous," he said while waving his arms at all 5 of the blacksmiths. "Yeah, we all just exploded off after you left, I guess," Rikkey said. Stanis nodded and pointed at Caleb's sword-in-the-making. "Clearly, that thing looks absolutely amazing. In fact, that's what I'm here for," Rikkey gave him a confused look. "The sword?" Stanis laughed, before shaking his head. "No, no, no. I don't use no bastard-sword. Look at my threads, no defence whatsoever. The advancement to tier-four turned out to be more dangerous than I had expected. Had all of my stuff taken and broken," The blacksmiths quickly caught onto his request, or better put, demand. "Not a single problem. We'll make sure you get our best work to date," Rikkey answered. "What do you want though?" Valentina asked. "Mm. Full body armour, a long sword and a dagger are good enough," he answered. "Actually, add in a good shield to that lot," Rikkey nodded, before making her say. "Well, we only got this sword to finish off and if we rush, we can get it done in a few hours. We got quite a few orders after that but I can't see anyone complaining if it's you who's skipping the line. Should have the whole lot done in about 3 days," "That's fine," Stanis answered. He thought about staying with the blacksmiths and spending a bit of time with them but eventually decided against it. "Alright, I got to go now. Also, I'm sure you'll hear about this soon but a war bigger than anything you've experienced so far will be coming in about a week. Be prepared for that," Before they could ask any questions about the large truth-bomb he had just shelled on them, he had already slipped out of the door. Smiling, Rikkey shook her head and brushed her dirty, short hair with her even dirtier hands. "Aight, let's get back to work and finish this off!" **** Outside of the forges, Stanis looked around while deciding on his next action. He could go and make sure the leaders had listened to him, instead of starting to plan their betrayal the second he had left. On the other hand, he could go find the Jaguars and spend some quality time with them. Or he could confront some past ghosts in the form of Sil and Jayesh and find out what had happened. But after a little bit of thought on all of the topics, Stanis deciding against all of them. The Jaguars were already making their way back, after all, Stanis couldn't see them going against his word without a good reason. As for the other two, both would be a waste of his precious time. And, most likely, he would only have more troubles after dealing with either, meaning his time was much better spent on practically anything else. All of a sudden, the perfect idea slipped into his head. Smiling, Stanis cracked his neck and shook his limbs, before making his way towards the marketplace. It was just as loud and rowdy as the last time he had been and still, no one there knew who he was. Thus, instead of making a big commotion by revealing his identity, he decided on sneakily taking all the things he wanted just like last time. 30 minutes later, Stanis exited the marketplace with a backpack cast over his back. The actual stealing had taken very little time, instead, it had been finding the right items that had been a pain in the arse. Within minutes of leaving the market, Stanis was already outside the village. He walked eastwards from there, towards Haven… He knew that Silvermoon village was also somewhere around the area. Sofia, Pete, Bear and Skint were too good as warriors to give up. He had told them to come to him when the time came but thinking more on the topic, why couldn't he just go to them before the war began. This way, he also had a good chance of taking over the villages. Of course, no one would consider him a true leader but just moving the villages closer, or even better, into Yora, would mean a larger defence to fight back with. At the same time, Stanis knew of the problems that would arise from bringing the villages together. But, he was sure that they would all be problems that he could solve with a bit of showmanship, after all, when did a good bit of murder ever hurt anyone? With enough power, he could keep the squabbles down to a minimum before the war. As for afterwards, well, he was sure he would have much greater things on his mind by then than the problems that plagued him now. He picked up his speed and soon he was running. The backpack shook from side to side and his clothes struggled under all the mud he was splattering on himself. The air was clean and fresh, completely unlike the air he had been used to for so many months now: bloody, stale and cold. The sun was out and shining, and the grass shone like soft emeralds from underneath his feet. A few hours later, Stanis was running faster than before. The faster he went, the more alive he felt. It was almost like a simulation of battle with a weak flow of adrenaline in his bloodstream and the endorphins flooding his mind. It was at this time that Stanis saw the first sign of Haven across the horizon. It looked to be a collection of crudely built huts. However, Stanis shook his head at that thought and told himself otherwise. There was just no way that this was the outside of the village Yora had struggled against for so long. A short minute later, Stanis felt gobsmacked as he realised Haven was a village just as nefarious as he had heard. Instead of the wall most villages had for their main defence, Haven had hundreds of crudely built huts and homes, each with people living inside. In the distance, however, nearer the centre of the village, Stanis could see grand houses built out of stone. It was at this moment that he thought back to everything he had heard of the village. The people were evil and morally bankrupt. The people were bloodthirsty and at the peak of scum. The village had waged war on many villages at once, just in order to reduce the population. All of a sudden, Stanis began to get the feeling that just maybe, god forbid, that Pete had been one of the better people to come out of the village…

Stanis could hear the footsteps from outside the door getting louder. His eyes felt bloodied and his body felt weary; a full night of mana-warfare turned out to be not that good for relaxation. He had been losing for most the period but there had also been few moments when he had broken past Jen’s defences. The instructor touched the door and it flung open, revealing the sorry sight Stanis had become. It would be wrong to say that the instructor was surprised by what he saw, instead it was more a mixture of disappointment and apathy. “Go downstairs to the basement. Your group is going into the jungle,” After saying this, the instructor walked over to Jen’s room. Stanis had nothing of his in the room and so he got up and left. He didn’t know where the darkness dagger was but he guessed it was still with Jen. As for his sword and cuirass, he hadn’t caught a sight of either of them. Neither of them were easily hideable so it was most likely that the two equipment had been left behind after he had been killed. As Stanis reached the ground floor, he noticed Pete standing a few metres off in a room. “You don’t look good,” Stanis commented. “Ha. Look at yourself,” Pete responded. The conversation dulled at this, Stanis stuck at what to say. He would have easily found words to talk to the old Pete, the one who seemed carefree all the time without a worry, except for booze, on his mind. But the current Pete, the one who had gone through three runs of the jungle now, was different. He was colder and seemed more calculative, more restrained of his actions, and god forbid, drinking. Perhaps this was what he had always been on the inside… “I heard from the others,” Pete said. “They say she made you one of her zombies, how she can command you now. No wonder you look terrible,” Stanis laughed, releasing a bit of tension from his body. “I guess so.” “You’re going to leave it at this?” Pete asked surprised. “I don’t know. I want to kill her, believe me. I want to kill her so badly. But I apparently die when she dies…” “So?” The question was like a hammer to Stanis’s heart; it was almost like it stopped moving in that moment. What was the point of living under someone else’s control? He couldn’t decide on anything and had to fight to just get his view across. It was an absolutely terrible life. Miserable. She had killed him for simply taking back what was his. Well, no, she had killed him for his body. To hell with the miserable life awaiting him, it was better to pay her back in full for what she had done. Pete moved from the table he was leaning on and stood straight. The very feeling Stanis gave off had transformed in a few seconds, to one absolutely cold and joyless. “Whatever man, you make your own choices. I’m sure I’ll see you on the flipside anyways,” he said as he walked off, leaving Stanis all alone. Stanis heard footsteps coming down the stairs and broke from his thought track. He turned around and saw the instructor walking ahead, followed by Jen. She looked bad, with red eyes and a lifeless face, but the glint within her eyes told Stanis exactly what he had wanted to hear. He walked after her down into the basement. Berry, Johnny and Keiko were already there. They gave him weird looks but to Stanis, it was almost like they were just egging him on. The fact that she was stronger than him didn’t matter anymore. Without her zombies, her firepower went down massively, and he was no longer the same person he was yesterday; he know knew her fighting style. The instructor looked at the five one last time. From the looks in two pairs of eyes, he already knew the outcome. They were ready to go to the second stage, they themselves had decided that. He turned on the teleporter as he always did and watched them hop in. Then after, he closed the portal and walked away. **** Stanis hit the ground running and immediately moved, despite the sting from the teleportation. Jen, perhaps predicting his movement, had already prepared a mana-shield and stood proudly within, regal even. She immediately cast a dark bolt. It was essentially saturated darkness and it shot through the air in a straight line. Stanis grinned and merely sidestepped it. On the side, Berry, Keiko and Johnny watched with wide eyes. Of course, they knew there would be friction between the two, but for them to all-out fight each other, it was basically a suicide wish in here. “What are you doing? We will all die if you fight each other!” Keiko shouted. Jen laughed in response. “I already killed him once, I can do it again easily. Besides, if I zombify him once more, I’m sure his rebelliousness will end—“ Stanis laughed at her. It was not a pretty thing, more as if he was proving he could still laugh. It was desperate and yet solid, quivering on the edge of madness and yet strong. Around Jen’s barrier formed a moat filled with the darkness. Stanis couldn’t waste another second and so he moved. He shot to the left and slipped past a dark shot, and then sidestepped another. He could feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins, he felt alive as he moved. Stop came an order. Stanis found his legs stuck and looked up to see a dark bolt coming his way, quickly striking him and throwing him back. He got up and looked at the wound; the skin had peeled away and blood was leaking out, and yet the wound was somehow cold. He jumped to his feet and barely dodged another bolt. It seemed she was going to use orders to break his momentum, but that was fine, after all, he was used to splitting up his mind in two. He forced a part of his mind to form a barrier around itself. The orders would still hurt as he resisted them but at least she wouldn’t be able to stop his momentum in one word. “Hey, help me kill him,” Jen said. She wouldn’t usually stoop so low to ask for help but she got a bad feeling from Stanis. Her main combative ability came from her zombies, and having only a single rebellious one took much out of her power. Stanis merely grinned in return. As he ran forward, he snarled out, “I will kill all who help her. I’ll make sure you all fucking die if that’s what it comes to,” Johnny was still on the fence but it was clear Berry had already come to a decision. She moved towards Stanis with her hammer out. “We’ll all die if you kill Jen,” she said in an attempt to rally the others as she moved. This seemed to work as Keiko followed her, and finally Johnny who merely trailed on behind. Stanis ignored these three and reached the barrier. He felt another order to stop on the puddle but resisted, instead breaking another piece of his mind to cast Destructive mana recharge by it. It ripped through the barrier and even through the puddles as it spread out. To break his mind any further was to potentially do permanent damage but Stanis didn’t have much of a choice as the three were almost on him. He shattered himself one more time and cast Blueshot spitfire towards the three. It didn’t have nearly enough punch to stop them but it did distract them, enough for Stanis to cut a whole section of Jen’s barrier out. She had been forming 3 dark bolts in the time and cast them simultaneously. Right afterwards, she sent a mana-reinforced order for Stanis to hold his ground. At this, Stanis switched his mind’s focus from Destructive mana recharge and Blueshot spitfire towards a mana shield of his own and Layman’s rush. The order broke through his mental barrier and the dark bolts broke through his physical one, both attacks hitting him at once. They downed him and he should have screamed in pain, but instead he instantly got up and ran through Jen’s barrier, towards her. The three tried to catch up and stop him but they were already too far back to do so. Instead it was simply Jen versus him. Excited, Stanis used half his mana to create lightning inside of himself, releasing it all as he was a metre away from her. She was hurt by this but not enough to drop her dagger as she stabbed out. His body was already contaminated with darkness but the power within the dagger was more than just that and so Stanis recoiled. Stop Jen commanded; at such close proximity with an open wound, her order was hard to resist and so he stood still. She cast another skill and the ground itself responded, the slab of ground he stood on popping out with such a speed that it sent Stanis flying. Stanis landed far away, and immediately began casting Light healings over his wounds. “Beat him and throw him in my puddle already,” Jen said as another deep puddle formed beside her. From outside the foliage sounded a war-horn. The tension in the atmosphere immediately rose as clothed false-humans stepped out from the trees. The instructor hadn’t mentioned but this run was meant to be harder than the last two… “No, actually go and stop them and I’ll deal with Stanis myself,” she said. She invested close to a half of her total mana into an order. Walk into the puddle. And for the first time, for many reasons, Stanis found himself following the order to the t. This time, there was not even a single bit of doubt in his mind, no desire to resist at all. Instead he just felt a warmth from his link to Jen. But all of a sudden, that warmth became something else and Stanis quickly looked at it with his mind’s eye. The link between them was the same as before, but only this time there was an extra feeling of familiarity in it. You have found a path to the Origin. …

One more strenuous week had passed. Stanis had already lost any concept of time off that he had left, instead entirely focused on beating Yils. After her snide comments last week, his ego had been fully awakened and thus had forced him to train at a dangerous intensity. His body had broken down over and over again, although that wasn't anything the mana water couldn't fix. His mind had broken before and he could do it again, as he was very well proving right now. However, there were also good results from his madness afflicted practise. His skills and stats had sky-rocketed, the improvement almost triple what he had made last week. He checked his status: Stanis Volkov Age: 18 years Mana capacity: 59 (regeneration is capacity/4 per hour) Level 27 (Progress to the next level is 92%) Strength: 44 [33 -> 35] Dexterity: 46 [31 ->33] Constitution: 47[33 ->34] Intelligence: 40[23 -> 26] Wisdom: 38[22 -> 26] Tenacity: 49[29 -> 31] Skills: Layman's Rush, Scout and Sense, Light Healing, Destructive Mana Recharge, Ice shot He had forgotten to check his status for the whole week as he had solely focused all his attention onto training, the mana constantly making rounds through his body. It was now that he realised how far ahead he was off the average Human, over 80 points to be precise! His skills, too, had made progress. Layman's rush hadn't had any direct changes but all the skill did was maximise his fighting ability. His surge in stat points had increased his upper limit and simultaneously, the effect Layman's Rush would have. In fact, since his tenacity was just shy of 50, Stanis was almost certain he could now take on the drawbacks of the skill without crashing. This meant that it was now an extremely strong skill with only the long cooldown of 6 hours to be wary off, just like Destructive mana recharge. He wasn't very sure of the changes Scout and sense had made. He had used it multiple times here, and yet it was almost like the skill was malfunctioning since nothing came up. It was to the point that he had a growing suspicion that it was actually due to his location, rather than the skill itself. Light healing hadn't increased by much either. It was a spam skill to begin with which meant that was fine as he now had a much larger mana pool, meaning he could use the skill many times. The side effects of it such as the tearing headaches and what-else were also now negligible due to his monstrous tenacity. As for Destructive mana recharge, the mana he could now absorb was just over 20. This meant he could absorb for about four seconds straight. He didn't even need to imagine what kind of damage this would cause to a living being… And the skill that had made the greatest improvement: Ice shot. Best said, it was no longer making quantitative improvements… As for his traits, only his transformation trait had improved. The skin over his left arm had stopped growing thicker and was now just getting tougher, an almost metallic gleam visible in the right light. However its increased toughness was useless in battle anyway, at least against Yils as she would cut through it just as she would do for the rest of his limbs. His body had been torn apart and regenerated so many times that it no longer even felt dreadfully painful! But all of this quickly went to the back of his mind; it was now time for vengeance… Yils had already begun walking towards him, not waiting for pleasantries as she hunted her prey. For the first time ever since training with Yils, a malicious grin filled his face, an ice crystal forming in his hands. Not an icicle but an ice crystal… The idea came to him while he had been making his icicles bigger, to the size of his full arm-span at their largest. It was then that the realisation had struck him; perhaps Yils hadn't sliced through his icicles just for show of strength but rather for something else. Because although he hated her, he also had no way but to respect her greatly at the same time: he was pursuing power so that he would no longer be trodden on, and it was obvious she was teaching him that, even if her methods were a bit macabre. What if what she had actually been doing was pointing his weaknesses? One thing he had realised from using her practise techniques multiple times every-day was that each mana circuit had different effects. Some stabilised his body, making him feel heavier: unmovable. Others made him feel lighter, some stronger and some even weaker. So he put what he knew into practice, attempting to circuit the mana outside of his body. It was fair to say he had absolutely failed, for the first 5 days at least. But then he began chipping away at success, small parts dropping onto him over time. Forming inside his hand was an ice crystal, the colour deep blue with metallic gleams on the edges. It was nothing like his large icicles, instead he was struggling to even get it to finger size. He reached his limit at about 10 cm. His grin grew wider and wilder as he sensed the feeling of true power for the first time in his life, and the Gods be damned because he fucking enjoyed it… He could feel his insides roaring with joy as he released it from his hand with booming speed, their pain over the previous days not for nought. His grin was reflected by Yils, her face a wolfish smirk. His own smile dropped… The ice crystal sped towards her, a glittering path of blue almost visible in its wake. It was when it was mere centimetres away from her that she acted, her hand moving with an insane speed as she lightly flicked the crystal on its edge. "SKKRTT" The crystal itself seemed to scream as it was touched, but nonetheless had any power to resist as it flickered past her, mere millimetres away from her open skin. "A-bout Fu-cking ti—me" she said, stretching out every word, "I was about to properly kill you if you didn't get it this time." Yes, it was true; he would be beyond grateful later on when he realised what she had done for him. But he was hurt right now, the power he deeply trusted failing to do anything but further enlighten him on her strength. His emotional breakdown was obvious as his face itself seemed to droop, before regaining its rigidity as he moved with haste. Two more ice crystals were forming in his palms as he dashed. They shot out and she stood there, doing nothing as they hit a barrier and fell. But Stanis wasn't done, pelting her with even more crystals. These bullets weren't at all cheap and thus he had to soon use destructive mana recharge, before restarting his attack with the same fervour as before. His anger only simmered down when the world went black… Yils had done nothing but take 3 steps forward in the whole fight. He had done it all himself, pushing himself to exhaustion. He woke up as he had done for the last few weeks: a burning sensation in his stomach as the rest of his body regenerated. He had wondered how the mana still hurt so badly despite him having drunk it countless times already. He hadn't figured out any answers to this and thus had asked Zelgard, who had responded that he was actually increasing the mana concentration inside the water. This was almost unbelievable to Stanis who had strong faith is his mana sensitivity to the point that he believed he could sense even the minute changes. That belief had crumbled away as Zelgard had kept his serious face, not breaking out into a smile. Stanis looked around; he was in his room. He knew he wouldn't be able to get up for at least an hour or so, nevertheless walk, and thus he began practising his mana circulation. It only after a couple of hours that he got up, his head cool and his body whole. The first thing he saw as he exited his room was Yils, reading her book across his door. She shut her book as he stepped out, bringing an intense fear out of Stanis. She had never closed her book for him, and he, for some weird reason, now believed everything she did in consideration for him was actually just hidden torture. Zelgard was also there, sitting on the main table with a toothy smile on his face. Stanis was now sure it was something bad… "I hope you have enjoyed your stay, Stanis", her tone not as dry as usual. "I've talked with Zelgard and made him agree that it is now time you left". Stanis looked at Zelgard who put his whole strength into nodding his head, his message gone undetected as Stanis couldn't read this enigmatic man. "You've made as much progress as you can from staying here. All I can tell you is that you came here weak and prey for the strong. You are now leaving just as weak, only this time you have the potential to be the predator. You should always keep that in mind." finished Yils, her voice straight. For a moment, Stanis was shocked as he looked at Zelgard, whose whole character seemed to transform in that moment as he sombrely nodded, the playfulness gone. That was but a fleeting moment though as Stanis found tears clouding his vision, hastily rubbing his eyes with Zelgard's worn out clothes as he surprised himself. He was crying? Why? No, of course, that was why… He could feel Human warmth as he realised Zelgard was hugging him. He heard the unusual man whisper in his ears, "Stay strong!" before letting go, Stanis once again left to his tears. Yils then came forward and hugged him, whispering in his ears, "You were pretty shit for my first student. You should thank Zelgard for asking me to teach you in the first place." He was stuck for words and struck in place as the stream only widened, drops of water hitting the ground. He was no longer the broken, battle-weathered, power-hungry man he believed himself to be, rather he was now the man he was truly on the inside as he couldn't stop his inner emotions. These had been the first people, ever since his parents had died, who had properly cared for and helped him. Even if their methods had been a bit heavy-handed, Stanis didn't know how to thank these two for what they had done. The next few minutes were a blur, mainly due to the tears, as he walked out of their House. He turned around one last time before leaving, only to see Zelgard wildly waving and to hear Yils calling out, "There is a tier-three close to your Village. Fight it and kill it; do not allow yourself to fall back into comfort…" Stanis knew there was no way he was coming back. Both of them had already told him it was time to leave, and he cared too much about them to do otherwise. He was now to go the Village, to get himself a Class…

"Oh my gawd Stanis, you see all the progress I've made. Y'know, at the start I was just strengthening the metal but then I figured out that there were actually ways to affect it in different manners", she leaned in closer, whispering now," by circulating my mana in certain directions and such." She leaned back out," I mean I only discovered it recently, but the fact that it is there opens up a whole new frontier." Stanis was both inwardly worried and joyful that Rikkey had discovered circuits. He had felt like a sage almost, imparting circuits and circulation onto others while standing in a higher position to them. It was now that he realised that the mountain-top from which he looked down from wasn't as high as he'd once thought, others using tooth and nail to climb up. This meant it wouldn't be too long until the craziest, strongest humans became a threat to him. On the other hand, he was joyful because it was Rikkey who had discovered it, and recently too through lots of practise forging. Forging was different from killing and so Stanis hoped that the hard-core fighters would still have a bit of time before getting here. This added time, but not too much, not enough for him to breathe in. He hadn't known Rikkey for long, in fact less than a day, but some people were simple to see through, and the couple Rikkey and Kevin were such. It was why he was fine with them catching up on him, of course he was now going to pick up the pace and further his lead, but at least it was these two behind him. At least for now... "Sweetie, y'know that all of us had to go and fight him just a few hours back. They called a whole army to stop his advance" said Kevin, failing to contain his laughter mid-way through. "Oh. I'm not surprised, after all you were hella strong last time you came here. So, what did you think of my weapons?" Stanis stared blankly for a second, his brain failing to bring together all the links. Life returned to his face a second later but Kevin had already started speaking. "Naa, he came with this wild group of Panthers. We alls thought we were gonna to die from the Panthers, instead it turned out that only Stanny-dog, Caleb, Orena and Sil were going to fight. But even then they were toooo overpowering, no one even got a chance to test yer weapons before being blasted away." This earned more than a few gasps from the four blacksmiths behind Rikkey, Rikkey herself worriedly raising her eyebrows. "Oh shit. I knew you were strong but not this strong." There was a pause as both parties searched for the right words to restart the conversation. "Show me your strongest weapon" said Stanis. "YES!" screamed Rikkey, her cheerfulness infectious as Stanis found himself smiling. She ran deeper into Forge where a large storage building at the back stood. She went in and disappeared for a second, Stanis turning around to talk to Kevin while the four blacksmiths finally breathed, this tension far too much for a short catch-up talk. It was about a minute later, after countless curses had been sworn and countless crashing noises had been sounded, that she came out, a dirty cloth in her hands. She rushed forwards and opened it in front of Stanis, revealing a slender sword gleaming bright in the dusk sun. It was a simple sword for the most part, a simple wooden handle leading to a blade. However, it was also the blade that earned itself the silence that now filled its surroundings, the blacksmiths not daring to make a sound, Kevin and Rikkey worriedly waiting for Stanis's judgement and Stanis himself scrutinising the blade. He rubbed his finger along the groove of the blade, feeling an unnatural warmth as he did so. He pressed his finger along the edge and felt a sharp sting, turning his finger around to see blood leaking out. No wonder this was her best work, it reeked of hard-work. But just as he had been awakened from his dream by Rikkey, he was willing to do the same for her. He applied some mana over his hand, not too much nor too little, before gripping the handle with his left hand and pushing downwards on the blade with the other. In order to further prove his point, he pushed down on the edge and not its face. There was no sudden splattering of blood and instead only a creaking sound as the 8 men and women watched Stanis bend the sword, not relaxedly but with the amount of effort one would take to open a tightly screwed jar. *Ccrrreeeea* *StrrrpPTFTP* It cracked, splinters of metal shooting out like collateral. Now in his hand lay two items, a handle leading to a broken blade and the rest of the broken blade. "It's not strong enough" said Stanis, Rikkey taking a second to come back to reality, before understanding his sentiments. "But since I broke it, I guess I'll have to gift you something as well." Rikkey was once again out of reality, only this time in cloud nine. He gestured her forwards, she sprinting for her life as if one of the others were going to steal her spot. He firmly held her before applying his improved circuit onto her. It only took 20 seconds in total from start to finish, but the whole time was filled with Rikkey groaning and moaning. The Jaguars had never reacted like this… By the end she fell to her knees, sweating and panting. Stanis turned around to see Kevin give a eat shit smile, sighing while gesturing him forwards too. It was to Stanis's, and all the four blacksmiths', joy that Kevin didn't have the same reaction as Rikkey had, instead taking it as a normal person should. The four blacksmiths might have been confused at the start what he was doing, but it was clear as day what was going on by the end. The mana fluctuations in the air had several times increased over the course of his baptism. They too were eager to have Stanis start the process on them, only to be disappointed as he blanked them. "I feel so powerful!" exclaimed Rikkey, circulating her mana while saying so. "Alright, alright, calm it down and reign it back in" replied Stanis, still joyful from Kevin's lack of response. He had gotten lost in the moment but his mind suddenly reminded him why he had come to the Smithy in the first place, in fact, to the Village in the first place. "Rikkey, can you get me a good piece of metal. I'm going to be joining you guys from now on" revealed Stanis, simultaneously falling to the blacksmiths' pleading glances as he beckoned them towards him too. Rikkey ran back into the storage room, Kevin gone with her to help. Stanis used this time to open up the right mana circuits for the 4 blacksmiths. There was an African man of medium stature, two Asian twins and a Russian girl with shoulder-length hair. They were all grateful beyond words when he had finished, finally understanding what Rikkey had gone through. They managed to utter out thanks and it was through this that Stanis realised that the girl was Russian, hearing her words with double meaning in his head. In the rest of the time in which he waited, Stanis talked to the four he had just helped. The African man was called Calu, the two Asian Vietnamese called Giang and Duong and the Russian girl called Valentina. Rikkey and Kevin eventually came out carrying a heavy piece of bronze-coloured metal. Stanis thought for a second, practicality fighting pride, with practicality winning in the end. "Can you guys teach me how to make a sword?" he asked. He had worked in the Smithy before when he had come down from the mountain but only for one day. He didn't know how long the other 4 had been here for but he knew Rikkey had been doing this for over a month. It was far too stupid and prideful if he ignored such a fact and tried to create his own method. The whole Smithy exploded into life at his words: Rikkey ordering Valentina and Calu to get the flames roaring and Giang and Duong to bring out the anvil over here. The fire was screaming curses a minute later and the process began, a roughly rectangular piece of metal being cast in. The hungry flames licked away at the metal, soon hot enough that a few droplets of liquid metal dripped down. And yet, instead of appetising their hunger it only made them more ravenous, the flames burning higher and hotter. Rikkey struck out the metal and put it on the anvil, one foot parallel to the anvil's base and the other facing it as she struck down with her hammer. The first few strikes were hits, but they quickly grew into smashes, small sparks flying off. She then wiped her forehead as Calu took the metal and put it back into the fire once more, the flames this time licking a different section, before once again being cast out. This process was repeated 5 times and Stanis could feel a rise in temperature and see the glistening sweat over everyone here. He could see that Rikkey was really putting her all in it right now since her arm was shaking by the end. Valentina and Giang had been working on something else all this time. They had prepared another furnace with a hole down the middle, the sword now being placed down this. The flames were gentler than before as if the calm before the storm. Rikkey then took out the sword, a grinder roaring to life by her side at the same time. She gently struck the sword against the spinning metal. When she had been hammering, Stanis had caught sight of small sparks. Now it was large, monstrous sparks that flew out, threatening to eat away at all of life if they didn't stop this. They didn't. After all the edges had been thoroughly sharpened to the T, and Stanis's eardrums had been thoroughly grated, Rikkey once again threw the blade into the first furnace, the one which had burned loudly. She waited a second before simultaneously throwing both coal and fuel into the furnace. The roaring turned into thunder as the 7 people shared a silence in between them. Calu and Duong had poured out a mass of water into a tub by this time. Stanis might be new to forging but even he knew what was coming next. The blade was at its hottest when Rikkey picked it out and pushed it into the water, the sparks holding nothing next to the explosion of steam that came out. The sizzling sound eventually stopped, although not without leaving its mark as Stanis could now taste the raw metal in the air in contrast to the soot he had been tasting all this time. He could feel the blood rushing through him as he watched her pick out the sword with a grimace and throw it back onto the flames, although this time with a lower heat. Following this was another quenching, plumes of smoke now escaping the Smithy. Stanis was surprised to learn that there wasn't much sweat over him, instead all of it had evaporated over the time he had stood there watching. His clothes, which had been clean a few hours back, now stuck to his skin like never before, his flesh almost clear through the fabric. He was feeling hot and sweaty but was fine as he had been through far worse before, instead surprising himself by discovering the grin plastered over his face. He was excited! The blade was heated and quenched one last time before Rikkey, tired but also excited, brought out the blade in front of Stanis. She hadn't fully utilised her mana-skills or much of anything during this run, instead only going through the basics for Stanis. It had taken a grand total of just under an hour but her muscles were still shaking from that. She knew from the second she lifted her head that she was no longer to be the best blacksmith in the village, Stanis's expression was filled with a menacing smile so wide that it threatened to eat his face…

Stanis tried to keep his expression cold but couldn't stop his lips from curling as he walked towards the Yora leaders. Yes, when he had first sensed the scout watching him, he could have told the Jaguars to run even faster in order to catch the village off-guard. But for what reason? It wasn't like he wanted to completely eradicate the village or anything, there was no reason to do a surprise attack. In fact, it was preferred that they welcomed him with such a large force, after all, it was the perfect way to showcase his strength. He could have run forward towards the Yora village leaders and told them that he and the Jaguars were coming in peace, but why would he do that? Their side was the stronger of the two, instead it should have been the Yora leaders coming to him if anything. The real reason why he didn't though, past his pride, was because he wanted to show them how strong he was right off the bat, so that they wouldn't do anything stupid later on. He had no interest in hiding his strength, nor any in slowly allowing them to figure out his strength as time went on. No, the best way was to show them how weak they were compared to him right from the start. All the warriors who had been struck down hadn't been critically injured. Stanis had only aimed at their legs, Sil had only used Wind's embrace, Caleb had only used a wooden sword and Orena had been fighting half-heartedly. This meant that the Jaguars with healing abilities were easily healing up the injured humans as they walked past. The fighters had retreated quite a way back, only the Yora leaders standing in the front, although this was mainly because they knew they had no escape. This group consisted of 5 people, only two of which Stanis recognised. There was Alyona, good old Jayesh, some cold looking, aged Caucasian dude, an African warrior and finally an Asian guy giving Stanis the death stare. Stanis smiled past this while moving to meet them, motioning the Jaguars to stop their advance as only Sil, Orena and Caleb followed him. Now that they were no longer in the heat of the battle, most of the people from the village easily recognised Caleb, Orena and Sil. They had all been the top powerhouses in the village just a month ago. Their appearances had changed a lot but their base features were still there, such as Caleb's tattooed mammoth arms or Orena's dreadlocks and spear or Sil's snow-white hair. All of them looked haggard and beaten up, although this was clearly not the case as they had just proven otherwise. What caught the most attention, however, was not what they knew but what they didn't know; who was the man that these 3 powerhouses were following. Stanis was wearing tight trousers and nothing else, his body painted with scars of varying sizes. His messily cropped hair was thick with dirt and mud, in fact his whole body was dirty. He wore no armour and held no weapons, hell, he didn't even have a pair of shoes over his feet. And yet it was this man that led the 3 powerhouses: it wasn't a surprise that all the attention quickly shifted towards him. The few who recognised him were far too shocked to speak, after all, not only should he be dead right now but he was also the opposite of what they remembered him being. It was almost like a monster had taken control of his body after his death… "I heard there's a war going on" said Stanis, smiling ambiguously as he spoke. Alyona and Drak had managed to keep their cool but Stanis could sense that they were obviously on edge, as for Jayesh, the aged Indian man looked as if he had seen a ghost. Alyona's brain whizzed to life, buzzing with noise as it went through countless scenarios in order to find the best way to respond to him. "Yes. I assume you are Stanis, no?" she said eventually after a slight pause. Stanis made no show of response as he blankly stared at her. "Ha-ha, we haven't met before. I'm Alyona." She stuck out her hand. Stanis shook her hand before standing back still, half amused by how worried they were. "I'm assuming b-by. Excuse me" she cleared her throat, "I'm assuming by the fact that you got the message that you are part of the Village." She didn't wait for a response this time as she carried on. "We are in the heat of a war now against a detestable enemy, I'm hoping you're here to, mm, help us." She carefully worded the last part, not wanting to seem as if she was underplaying his strength in any way. "Not really" replied Stanis, "But these guys are" pointing to the 3 behind him. Alyona's eyes wandered as he spoke, finding it hard to focus on Stanis as a white Panther double the height of a tall Human wordlessly walked over. Stanis noted this and fluidly turned around. "Serb, can you take all the Jaguars to that Forest" said he while pointing to the Western Forest, past the stream. "Sure" rumbled Serb, the rumble turning into thunder as he roared, the chattering Jaguars instantly silencing. The humans on the other side more than blanched at this, firmly understanding that these Jaguars were no weaker than the humans they had come with. "I'll come over once I'm done here" said Stanis, Serb nodding before leaving with the army of Jaguars. Now that the imminent Reapers were gone, the humans should have felt breath back in their lungs. It was instead the opposite as they fearfully watched the Jaguars leave, further intimidated by Stanis and his seemingly mutual alliance with these monsters. "Should we now go inside?" motioned Stanis. Alyona immediately responded by agreeing with him, Drak screaming that the battle had been just a false alarm. Of course, not a single person believed this after seeing what had happened with their own eyes, but were happy either way as it seemed like Stanis and co. were here to talk, not destroy. It was as Stanis was following the village leaders to the village hall that he noticed the guilt in Jayesh's eyes. Alyona might not have known who he was but he knew who she had been, the sole leader of the village before it had merged with Riverbeat. The fact that Jayesh was standing with her in this little group meant that he had clearly done well for himself while Stanis had been away. It was knowing this fact and seeing the opposite, Jayesh downtrodden and spiritless, that Stanis felt a bit of his inward, hidden spite towards him disappear. It was clear by Jayesh's actions that he felt guilty for what he had done to Stanis, especially so after being reminded by the living thing appearing before him. Knowing that Jayesh and the others must have had a good reason for leaving him there didn't lessen his feelings of being betrayed, but seeing them apologetic and guilty for the actions did. Stanis turned his sight away from Jayesh and looked around the village. It was much larger than what he remembered it being a month ago. It also looked grand and full of life, well, for the most part. He was sure that's what it was like that at least before he and the Jaguars had made their appearance. It was clear that the Yora village had come by their own luck as well, as this kind of growth meant higher security. Stanis and the others soon walked into the village hall, immediately being given refreshments as they walked in. Sil, Caleb and Orena were at least used to these motions as they had been staying in the village before Stanis had come, but to Stanis, these actions were foreign as it felt like a lifetime since he had last received such hospitality from other humans. Opposite to Stanis sat the six from before, Caleb, Orena and Sil sitting beside him. "So what's this about fighting another village?" asked Stanis, not caring about pleasantries as he went on the meaty subject. "Umm, we discovered a village east of here, well past the forest, a few weeks ago. Initially we had planned good relations, after all, we are all Humans fighting against this world." Stanis nodded at this, giving Alyona a bit more confidence as she had been indirectly questioning his stance. "But when we sent a few scouts to check it out in greater depth, we discovered they were everything but Human." Alyona said while gritting her teeth. "Why so?" asked Caleb, interested by the calculating Alyona's change of character. "Best said, they have gone into a feudal system there" said Drak, suddenly piping up and at the same time becoming 10 years older in Stanis's head as he heard the exhaustion in the middle-aged man's voice. "Yeah" followed Alyona, "There, the strong have everything and the weak have nothing. It's called Haven as that's exactly what it is for the powerful. Now I won't act like that doesn't happen here either, after all, that is just the natural order of this world, but I emphasise the fact that over there, the weak havenothing. No rights whatsoever." She paused, Stanis now piqued by this other village. "Rape, wanton murder and injustice are just commonplace there. If you are a woman, you are nothing but a sex slave. If you are a man, you are nothing but livestock. They completely go against a union of humans against this new world, instead, they have merged with the new world and now play around with the rest of us." "That's not the worst of it" spoke up Jayesh. Stanis could sense a myriad of emotions in his voice: frustration, guilt, exhaustion, anger. "The worst is the fact that their lifestyle is alluring now. It is seen as a gamble by most, after all, if you do turn out to have more strength than others, even a bit, then you enjoy the lifestyle of a King." "Yes" carried on Alyona, "We have around 2000 people, more than half of them currently fighting against Haven. As for Haven though, they have around 10 000…"

Stanis woke up in pain, the pain so sharp yet spread out that he felt his body was ripping him a new one. He gritted his teeth at one point in order to cope, but eventually released his jaw as all the drowsiness left his body. He had such a high tenacity; this was pain he could cope with. He discovered that his body was numb and unresponsive due to the pain, but was pleased to find that all its functions still worked. He pushed up onto his arms and surveyed his surroundings, quickly noticing that he was in a cave. It was dark and damp but also had a warmth to it. He slightly moved his arm to the left and felt resistance, warm resistance. He looked down to see Sil sleeping next to him, breathing so quietly that he could barely hear her. He brushed the hair off her face and saw that she had a worried expression, her brows furrowed and quivering. *thumpf* A wet footstep echoed through the cave, Stanis binning all his thoughts as he was thrown on guard by this. *thumpf* He focused on the footsteps and noticed that it was a set of four feet. Hopefully a Jaguar. Nevertheless, he wouldn't leave the outcome of this meeting for chance to dictate as he scanned his body, surprised as he saw that he was completely naked. Well, it made sense considering that he had worn Zelgard's clothes all this time and that they had obviously been ripped apart during the fight, but the lack of defence made him feel weak for the first time in forever. *thumpf* The incoming Jaguar was clearly not going to wait for him to collect his mind as it continued, each footstep echoing louder. Stanis next checked his mana, focusing inwards to circulate his mana when he noticed that there was nothing there… He was now properly close to losing his mind as he frantically checked once more, and then again, finding only droplets of mana where there should have been mighty, uncrossable streams of it. There wasn't even enough for him to use Light healing, his cheapest skill at only three mana per use. *thumpf* Stanis activated Destructive mana recharge. Well, half-activated… It turned out that the ability worked by a suction force from his hand, and well, he just didn't have enough mana to produce that suction force in the first place. In fact, he doubted he even had a single point worth of mana inside of him right now. *thumpf* The Jaguar was now just out of sight and so Stanis decided to leave behind his mana, he had no time to figure it out right now. Instead, he decided to go to his last source of strength: Yils's movements. At least he had a fighting chance with them if the incoming Jaguar decided to get violent. He pushed up with his arms and fell back down, finding no support from his legs. He only had a second to look over once more, this time noticing that half his left leg had been ripped off and not even cleanly at that… He had no time left to act as the looming shadow announced the Jaguar's presence, the Jaguar King's presence… Serb walked in, his fur wet and shaggy as they drooped down. He seemed to have gotten larger than last time as he seemed like a monster to Stanis, a hungry, evil monster… Most eye-catching, however, was the wide, crimson gash he had ranging from the top of his left shoulder to the right of his hips. "I sensed you were awake" said Serb, his voice like thunder in the cave. It was at this moment that Serb sensed that Stanis was edging back, moreover quickly noticing the fear in the Human's gaze. Serb leapt onto Stanis's right leg, crushing bone as he shackled Stanis to the spot. "Why are you running away? Are you scared I'll kill you now?" His questions sounded genuine and Stanis's expression dropped further at this. "Do you think I'm going to give you a dog's death after everything you've done for us?" He moved his paw down Stanis's leg, crushing more bone as he did so. Stanis cringed at this. "You better learn how to trust soon, else those who trust you will start treating you the same" Serb took off his foot and wiped the blood on the cave walls, leaving Stanis to deal with the pain and the piece of Serb's mind he had been given. "Now that we're on the same page" Serb said, Stanis nodding at this, " let's tell you what happened." "I mean I was struck down, but something of this size isn't enough to kill me" said Serb while scratching his large wound, some of the dried blood coming loose at this, " In fact, I managed to get up and watch the rest of the fight. Although I wanted help, my body decided against that, forcing myself into a position where I was unable to do anything but watch. I saw the Spectre whizzing off towards you. You released an utter fucker" said Serb, pausing at this. "Spectre was struck down" he continued, " but you were worse off, falling to the ground like a felled tree. The Spectre carried on, clawing its way across the ground in order to at least feast on your body before dying. I saw my people move, finally gaining some sense as they chased the Spectre down. Too late though, it had already gotten to your body. It chopped down, its claw easily slicing through your leg like it was mud" said Serb as he nudged Stanis's stump of a leg. "Never seen a monster happier than that. That piece of shit was delirious with joy as it sliced through you, cutting more of your leg each time. It was so absorbed in its actions that it must have thought it had all the time in the world, which it didn't. Niss got there first, striking him off your body. And that was enough, it had already been a nudge away from death and her violent bash was far more than a nudge." He paused once more, searching his own mind for how to continue. "We had won, not a single Spectre was left alive. I was healed up to a standard and we searched the rest of the Spectre's territory in no time. I destroyed this crystal of theirs and killed the remaining Spectres while at it, all of us levelling up due to that. I guess you held up your side of the deal, Stanis" said Serb, calm, before a fit of fury overcome him, "But at the cost of 64 of us." It seemed Serb would lash out anytime and snuff out Stanis's life, but he managed to hold off and finish his sentence. "But then again, we gained around 60 little ones since you arrived, so I guess it's even." Serb moved forward and firmly held onto Stanis's unflinching hand, flowing some of his mana into Stanis. "The partnership is now set, Stanis" He moved away after a few seconds and began to walk away. "We thought you were dead afterwards, your body colder than cold. But Sil said you had just over-drafted your body, and so each of us gave a little bit of mana to her. She channelled it into you over the last few hours, bringing you back to life." His voice was nothing but an echo as he finished. "Enjoy" Stanis smirked and looked over at Sil, ignoring his newly made injury as he tussled her dirty hair. He stared at her sleeping face, her face better than flawless. A thin neck, thin jaw, soft cheeks, perfect nose, eye-brows thin, hair flowing and pure. Everything about her face seemed to be just right in that moment. His touching around made her wake up with a groan. Stanis stared at her maroon eyes for just over a second before going in, clasping lips while holding her tightly. She was surprised and even shocked for a second, before gladly accepting it as she took the offensive, moving her hands lower. Stanis managed to escape her deadly lips for a moment as he grinned. Even if it was just for that fleeting moment, he forgot all about what he had gone through and what he needed to do and all the system messages he needed to read and all of that as she took off her dirty clothes. Even her scarred skin seemed beyond perfect as they once again met lips, hands searching each other's bodies. The hours passed by quickly, the night filled with moans…

Only after a thorough search through their bags, and then their clothes did Stanis finally give up. These 3 bandit-esque figures had less than him, far less than him. All they had were few clothes, food and a lot of drink. Exasperated, he used Light healing on the three and waited till the two of them regained their consciousness. This waiting time wasn't quiet, instead the opposite as Pete showered him with praise after praise, in between fishing for clues about what Stanis was going to use them for. Now Pete, he had done a lot of disreputable things in his life but the way Stanis had said it made him fear that it wasn't reputation Stanis was going to trample on but morals… Stanis waited a fair few minutes before slapping the two awake. They groaned as they regained consciousness, but soon stopped as their memories caught up to their minds. What followed was an awkward silence as Stanis intently watched the 3. They were cattle waiting to be sold, Stanis peering over their features. "Your lives are in my control," said Stanis. His eyes were roving at this point, looking at the clouds high above the cave. "Of course. Our foolish mistake in targeting you, ain't it boys?" answered Pete. The two sitting beside him weren't sure what question he was answering but they got the picture a few nudges later. "Oh yes baws and greater baws. We're still living and you even healed us. How can we ever repay you?" "We unworthy. We in your debt." It was hard to keep the smile off his face but Stanis managed, staring dead-faced at the three. "You're my lab rats. One step out of the boundary or out of line and you're finished." "We wouldn't da---" "So, tell me," Stanis cut in. "What does your skill do?" he asked while looking at Pete. The skill had caught him off-guard and thus thrown his balance out of the window, endangering his poor life. Stanis couldn't see any signs of hesitation in Pete's actions but the silence alone was a giveaway. An ice crystal began forming next to him, the very sight helping Pete find his words. "It shares my feeling with anyone around me," answered Pete. It was like cogs turned in Stanis's head as he heard this, connecting all the links together. It was but a brief second before he spoke again. "You dirty fucker! You're soaked in it, aren't you? You drink it up like a sponge," He made no effort to hide his astonishment. Pete giggled abashedly. Stanis's compliment, at least that's what Pete took it as, had caught him off-guard. Stanis peered at the two sitting beside him, both of them crossing their arms in front of themselves and shaking their heads. They had fallen, sure, but they hadn't fallen as far as Pete had. They still had their dignity and pride, albeit only a bit. In no time, a hearty laugh was rumbling out of Stanis's stomach. Pete joined him, whereas the other two watched the scene for a second before committing to controlled laughter. Pete, who the two of them respected and trusted to get them out of this precarious situation, was lost after a single compliment. He was now already in the tiger's pit, laughing just as hard as Stanis himself but the other two were not going to throw themselves in like he had. If he gambled well, great. If not, they could always take a step back and act like they were merely corrupted by the devilish person in front of them. After several seconds of hard laughing and after wiping a few tears across his face, Stanis regained his composure. "You're beyond dumb if you're actually that drunk while fighting," said Stanis. "I have a good tolerance, "answered Pete. "Far higher than others'." Stanis took a deep breath in before shaking his head. That was all he had been curious about and the answer had loosened him up plenty. "Alright then. Come on, get going," said Stanis while pointing towards the cave they were sitting beside. He used Light healing a few more times across their feet before making them walk into the cave ahead of him. Perhaps he should have killed the trio then and there but he felt it would be better if he had a few mice to test the waters with before diving in himself. If he learned anything valuable from their deaths, that was enough for him. Of course, there was the added threat with having them around. He had already seen their typical behaviour from the first meeting and he'd be damned if he actually thought they had changed after a single beating. But it didn't matter either way, Pete's trick was only a one-time thing on him as he now knew the treatment for it. As for anything else they could pull out, well, the ice crystals he had floating around him weren't for show. The cave wasn't very large in terms of width or length, but it did have an increasing difficulty. As they walked through, Stanis noticed how the mana intensity was getting stronger. It wasn't dastardly high at its peak but it was enough to push back anyone who didn't have mid-tier 3 strength yet. All in all, the walk was about ten minutes long, and quite a pleasant one by Stanis's standard. Skint had lit a torch at the start and thus they hadn't walked in blinding darkness. Stanis could easily tell that the 3 walking in front of him wanted to talk throughout but didn't due to his presence. Not that he minded it much, the quiet was sometimes good for some necessary thought. Not this time though, Stanis spent his time instead watching the backs of the 3 walking in front of him. Bear, an unusual name but not as weird as Scowly or the such, had a straight back and he walked with either confidence or naivety. From the man's stature, Stanis had guessed it was confidence but then reconsidered it after thinking of Bear's character. Skint walked with a bent back, his forearm tightened as he tightly held a short-bow in his hands. It was obvious he had taken some kind of ranger/scout class as he repeatedly mumbled under his breath scouting skills. But he found out, as Stanis had done, that all scouting skills proved useless in the cave. There was some type of force blocking them. And last but not least, Pete walked with an ever-changing back. Sometimes it would be straight but he would soon stumble across the floor and it would curve. Other times he was slouching back against the air, his feet moving forwards with a strange confidence. It was obvious that the man was still drunk but Stanis was nevertheless impressed. It wasn't really the man's combat ability nor his tolerance to alcohol that had surprised Stanis, it had been the combination of the two. Stanis now knew that he was playing an act, because the second he had been caught off-guard, Pete's actions had flowed with a finesse previously unseen. Eventually, the party of four exited the cave and found themselves in a barren, rocky landscape. The ground rose into a hill in front of them, the entire ground made out of layered, coloured rock. The first thing that Stanis noticed was that the gravity was far stronger than on Earth's. This meant that they were either not on Earth or in some kind of special area. Welcome to the Initial test You have enough power to start your journey but you must first prove that power. Kill 100 enemies in 30 minutes. There are 4 of you. The enemies have been multiplied by a factor 4. Each person can pass after 100 kills within the time limit or all can pass simultaneously if all the enemies are wiped out in the time. Initial test? So they were being initiated into something, but what? More importantly, what were their enemies? Stanis felt a small amount of joy at realising bringing the trio had been a good decision. If they had been separated after entering the cave, then leaving them alive would have been useless and in fact, possibly dangerous. But since they were fighting together, it meant Stanis could put them to use. "Alright, you guys fight and I'll join you. Eventually," said Stanis, simultaneously stretching his arms. Once in the heat of battle, it was almost impossible to get out and even if he did, his mind would be in a different mindset and close to useless at analysing. But not now, he could watch from a safe distance, recognise the enemies' weaknesses, and then just steamroll over them. This was, of course, in the scenario that the enemies were fightable. If not, Stanis would use the trio as meat shields so that he could get a greater lead. Skint and Bear looked like they were about to argue with the battle plan before better sense took hold of them. "Sure ting boss-man," said Pete, taking the bag off Bear and opening it. He quickly found a shiny hatchet and a mace, taking both of them out. Stanis had seen these while searching through their bags and had initially been confused. Now, he was only more confused than before. "Why those weapons?" "Oh," said Pete, almost joyful that he had been questioned. "These are my proper weapons. Look at the way they shine. Ehergh eghergh," "So, why weren't you using those weapons before?" Bear and Skint seemed exasperated at this question, going to their own preparations at this. Bear began casting spells on himself, whereas Skint began running across the hills, scouting for the enemies while also laying traps. "Bah, what do they know?" answered Pete while sharply looking at his two men. "Tell me bossman, who's going to trust a drunk who's got two scary weapons by his waist?" "No one," answered Pete, showing his yellowed teeth for extra showmanship. "But a drunk stumbling across the place with just a blade sheathed by his waist?" Stanis stared unimpressed at the bearded man. His skill was utterly wasted on him! If a proper leader had gotten such a skill, then the courage and calmness and bravery they could bring to the frontlines were paramount. But hey ho, fate would instead have it that a drunk received the skill, using it to make others drunk in the heat of battle. "ENEMIES" shouted Skint from the top of the hill. In all truth, Stanis had already used Scout and sense and thus had known they were coming. And from the looks of it, it wasn't going to be a much of a battle. It was going to be war…

"Stanis, how did you get this strong?" asked Caleb, staring Stanis in the eye while doing so. "Mana circulation and lots of fighting I guess. Against strong opponents that is, no point in picking on weaklings as it won't do you much good" replied Stanis. This was a question that had been on all of three of their minds ever since they had met him about a month ago. From what Caleb and Sil had heard from Orena, Stanis used to be a normal, if not a bit stronger than normal, fighter, not at all the powerhouse that stood in front of them now. This meant that whatever he had gone through in the time he had gone missing had, obviously, been the key for him to getting such a growth spurt. Despite the question haunting their minds, it was a whole another matter asking him about it, after all, sources of strength had become personal secrets after the apocalypse. It was seen as a private matter, something personal and not something that should be shared publically without thought. The fact that Caleb decided to ask him now, despite not doing so in the weeks they had already spent together, meant that he was most likely frustrated, angry at how weak he had been on the battlefield and how easily he had been knocked away. It was an understandable feeling, Stanis himself had feared the worst of this world when he had lost his arm. Caleb shifted his gaze from Stanis towards the longsword laying in his lap. The gleam it once had was gone, corrupted by blood and bones. "Yeah, I know man. But how'd you get this strong? We been doing all this mana shit and none of us made the rapid improvement you went through, instead we just get knocked out by the cheapest of attacks." Stanis looked towards Caleb. Caleb continued staring at his sword, not daring to stare the man in the eye after what he had just said. This was Stanis's moment, the moment he had been waiting for all this time, the opportunity where he gets to prove himself in front of his subordinates. If he played this well, he would earn their trust. If not, well, … "You've just been circulating mana randomly. There are certain paths to follow that strengthen different parts of you. But as for the bigger picture, it's just about danger and desire. Like it would be nice and all to be powerful and such, but do you really want it? Are you willing to sacrifice tooth and nail, possibly even your life, in order to get it? If you want it that badly, throw yourself against strong enemies, ones even stronger than you are, until you become a shell of what you are right now." Stanis grimly smiled at the end of his little speech. It felt strange talking about what he had gone through. "Ha-ha. That I can do, cheers man" said Caleb while patting Stanis across the back. In fact, Stanis had only told them half the reason why he circulated mana so often. One was the special circuits and the other was the movements that accompanied them. What Stanis had just given them would only work at half the efficiency. Not that he felt guilty doing so; he always needed to have an edge over these guys, after all, people change massively when they realise they have power over you… It was at this time that a tier-three Jaguar walked in, informing Stanis that they were about to begin their journey back home. Stanis understood and soon all three Humans were seated on the closest Jaguars as the gallop began, the Jaguars sprinting across the land much faster than before. It was half-way along the ride that Stanis realised that the Jaguars they were riding were purposefully going slower than the rest. Despite realising this, Stanis was willing to go along with the act, getting into character as he straightened his back and struck out his jaw. It was clear that Sil wouldn't know a true professional even if they hit her in the head as she started giggling away at Stanis's performance. The Jaguars slowed down further as they neared Serb's cave, letting Stanis and the others down, before all walking the final stretch. It was like a King's welcome after a successful war. That was the only comparison Stanis could think of in the moment as the two sides of Jaguars cheered and howled for him, a clean strip of space in between the two sides which he and the others walked through. Every single Jaguar was at least tier-two, even the cubs Stanis could see had been born tier-two, some of them even with patches of white fur. At the start of his walk, it was only tier-twos and cubs, their volume loud but nothing compared to what was coming. It was as he walked through the next bit that he realised this, the tier-threes simply booming with noise as they shouted and cheered. Doing a quick mental count, Stanis could see around 70 tier-three Jaguars, their pride emanating from their white, dotted fur, with around 80 tier-twos currently crossing the bridge into tier-three. Stanis finally walked through the cheering, his ear-drums thoroughly aching by the end of it. There was a clean space in front of him, in front of that the scene where Stanis had first challenged Serb, the large slabs of stones revealing the King's cave up above. Serb came walking out at this, Niss by his side. Stanis was now certain that Serb was of a similar strength to him. The proud Jaguar stood just shy of three metres, his fur pure white with only the darkest of circles corrupting it. He had darker than black eyes that watched the world with disdain, the Jaguar now true Jaguar royalty. But that wasn't the way he looked at Stanis or the others, rather he looked at them as equals, people who had brought his own people so high up. He wasn't a dumb Jaguar, rather a very smart one. He knew what the outcome would have been if the Jaguars had fought the Spectres alone… Serb was now peak-tier three and Niss was just shy of that. As for the reason why neither of them had become tier-fours when other Jaguars had leapt through two tiers in the same time, Stanis already knew why, after all, he was stuck at the same problem. The transition from tier-three to four wasn't a simple strength change like the tiers before it. It wasn't a quantitative change, rather a qualitative one, and further one that he had no idea how to pass. He did have a single clue though, the ice crystal he had released after pushing his body past its limits. Serb roared a victorious roar towards the Jaguars, the cheers silencing at this. "You came here as a foolish Human, wishing to set up a partnership with us just because we were born on the same planet. You were foolish" he paused, "And so I set you two tasks, both that would solely benefit us before we got rid of you, a foolish Human." Another pause. "But now I find myself unable to do so. You have given us far more than was required, far more than I asked for. So how can we rid of you now? Tell me?" asked Serb. "You have no way of ridding yourselves of me" said Stanis, "Our lives are already too attached for you to do so." "Then so it be," roared Serb, "The partnership is set, Stanis." Cheers broke out, not a cacophony of sounds like before, but rather a single-fuelled anthem, every Jaguar adding their part as they sang with passion. That day passed quickly and joyfully, celebrations for their new partnership and old enmity gone. There was no training or planning or any type of scheming that day, each and every person and Jaguar doing their best to cheer up another's day. The night passed and the day whizzed back. The Jaguars no longer had any connections with this land, no longer trapped here by their grudge against the Spectres. And so they left, a victorious charge as hundreds of Jaguars rushed through the valley, their destination Yora Village. It was half-way through the journey while Stanis was debating a few properties of mana with Sil that a system notification popped up, and not the usual type at that. The village you are aligned with has sent out a message. Do you wish to accept? Stanis was a bit perplexed by this as he didn't know that the villages had this type of function but accepted nevertheless. You have accepted the message: "This is Alyona here. I declare that the Yora village is going to war. Any members of the village currently away for whatever reason, come back now. This is a war against other Humans that have devolved beyond such a point. I wish the best on your journeys back. I repeat, the Yora village is going to war!" Stanis looked at the message with amusement, before looking back towards the others who smiled likewise. Seems like shit had gone down in the month they had been away. None of them knew of any other villages nearby. This meant that one had been discovered in the time they had been away, and clearly one that their village didn't get on with if the relationship had come down to this. The order for everyone to come back, Stanis doubted it was for them. In fact, he was almost certain that the village most likely thought them as dead or as good as dead since they had disappeared for a whole month without rhyme or reason. Not that the village would mind their return, of course, Stanis was certain that they would instead enjoy their arrival. And that of the 400 Jaguars that followed…

Stanis narrowed his eyes. From what he had seen so far, Yora Village should not be able to, in the least, contest a village with 5 times their population. This either meant that they hadn't told him the whole story or they were hiding something. Caleb must have thought the same thing as he voiced his Stanis's thoughts. "So how are you still alive?" It was worded succinctly and shared the grey line between a question and an insult. "Ha-ha, that's because it's not just us who think Haven is a blight on Humankind. We haven't been able to check all the way but from what we have seen, we think there are more than 4 other villages currently fighting with Haven." Stanis wrinkled his brows. Considering the fact that Haven was fighting so many enemies at once, it either meant that their leadership was extremely foolish, or more likely, Haven was using the villages to train up their weakest. Meaning that the strongest most likely just stayed in their personal Haven. Stanis got up and cracked his neck. "That all sounds good" he said, "So as I said before, these 3 will join your war effort." The 3 of them had been reluctant before but were now fine, after all, they had thought up the same scenario as him. They only had to get deep into Haven before finding enemies of their calibre, hopefully. Stanis took in the scene once more. He could see a feeling of loss in Alyona's eyes, a feeling of mistrust in Drak's and a clear-cut pleading in Jayesh's. He merely smiled before turning away, walking out of the building. He would never accept rape and such things but nor was he a knight on a holy crusade. He had more important uses of his time. He walked out into the fresh air and immediately felt hundreds of eyes on him. It came as no surprise to him that 100s of people had crowded around the village hall, curious about the goings-on in the building. His exit was suddenly interpreted as exactly what it was, people fearfully getting out of his way as they realised he wasn't going to help in the war. Stanis didn't necessarily hate attention, but he hated the frightened attention he was getting right now. Not that he would change his ways for these people, no, they'd soon come about his way anyway and so it was all fine. He wandered around, trying to find the supply centre. This was as good as wandering aimlessly as the supply centre had transformed into a marketplace months ago, typically using rewards from the Storage stones to barter. It was close to 30 minutes later, after a thorough going through the village, that he found the market. It was then that he realised he hadn't received a Storage stone in over a month. The Spectres, weirdly, hadn't dropped any and Stanis had grown to accept that as the norm, now being slapped back to this insane reality where it wasn't. It was, however, to his joy that he figured out that none of the market sellers wanted to charge him, something he would learn to faithfully abuse in little time. But that was for the future, right now he only picked up a good pair of shirt and trousers, a bar of soap and a bottle of alcohol. He did try on a pair of shoes, only to be thoroughly discomforted, as well as a set of armour, only to seconds later rip through the fabric with his finger. And thus he left the marketplace with these 4 items, walking towards the stream. The number of eyes on him had decreased over the duration but never lower than 5, something Stanis didn't care about as he stripped himself and washed. He had grown accustomed to the dirt having lived with the Jaguars for over a month but he also understood that it wasn't the best look or hygiene, although that mattered little with his stats. Having spent all his time in the sun last month, his skin was back to a healthy tan. He had the figure of a shredded bodybuilder due to all his strength and low body fat percentage. This wouldn't stay because as said before, he would soon learn to abuse the market sellers' generosity, but right now he looked amazing. Or well would have done was it not for the countless scars marking his flesh. Stanis washed himself raw with the soap and sliced his hair to a more controllable length by using his hand with a covering of mana. He threw Sil's old trousers down the stream and got into his new ones, ones which not only looked nicer but also were far more comfortable. He then strolled into the Forest, humming as he did so. It was these moments of calm that Stanis truly feared because it was during these times that he would, by any method possible, slack off. He greeted the Jaguars as he went in, far more amiable to these animals than his fellow humans in the village, before walking to Serb's new boss base. Serb was lying on the ground with his body stretched out, Niss and another female Jaguar called Zu massaging him… "Stanis, good to see you" laughed Serb. "You too" said Stanis as he opened the bottle of liquor. Stanis didn't know the name of it but he knew that all the liquor had been several times strengthened in order to work on their strengthened bodies. And the one he had taken had been the strongest one there. He took a deep glug before throwing it over to Serb, who had Zu pour it into his mouth as he lay there. "Mmm" There was no need for words as the two silently sat, and lay, for a few minutes. "You know…" "I know" cut in Stanis. "That's fine then" ended Serb, yawning loudly as he did so. Being as strong as they were, they instinctively understood what others would need convincing. This was due to the amount of pain and hardships they had to trudge through in order to get to this point of strength this far into the apocalypse. What Serb had meant to remind him was that the Jaguars couldn't stay here forever without something to sharpen their claws against. They simply could not relax with their current strength knowing that stronger enemies would definitely come by later on. If Stanis couldn't find a decent enemy for the Jaguars to begin fighting against in about a month's time, forget their partnership, the Jaguars would simply leave and search for one by themselves. Stanis talked a bit with Serb and a few of the other Jaguars before leaving. They had left the Jaguar's territory early morning, reaching and fighting here around midday. Stanis had spent a few hours doing the rest of his things and thus now it was dusk, the sky burning golden. The village had returned similar to what it was on a normal day, the whole area bustling with noise as Stanis walked through. With his new clothes and clean body, most didn't recognise him until squinting their eyes, yelping backwards in shock once they did. Other than that, Stanis moved through the village without incident and reached the Smithy, standing far larger and prouder than he remembered it being. It was no longer open to all as a massive wall had been erected around it, a small gate the only entry in. There was a large, grim man by the gate, guarding it with scrutiny. Stanis didn't know what had changed but he knew he would soon figure out and so calmly walked towards the gate. The gatekeeper hadn't actually been in the war, instead one of the few people left in the village in order to defend it in case of a surprise ambush. He had heard wild and frantic stories about what had happened outside from his buddies but the current Stanis looked nothing like what he looked a few hours back. This was why when Stanis attempted a manoeuvre in that the gatekeeper stepped directly in front of him. It was during the long passing second that a call came out from behind Stanis. "Ruun, he's allowed in." The large man grunted at this and moved out the way. Stanis turned around and saw a plump looking Kevin. Kevin, who worked at the tannery, had been a slim, greying man whose key feature had been his haggardness. Somehow, following the day Stanis had left, Kevin had worked his way up and now had quite a bit of chub to his body. "Kevin?" "Ai Stanny-dog. I'd thought you'd died or sommin. I'd thought the day had just been a pleasant dream when I'd woken up" said Kevin while he wrapped his arm around Stanis's back and pushed him forwards. Inside the walls was a large Forge, several sets of equipment all over the place. He had seen them from the outside but the plumes of smoke and steam looked far more impressive up close, the whole environment about 20 degrees warmer within the walls. There were also consistent clanging and smashing noises, several tough-looking men and women continuously hammering steel. From the centre of these 4 people came a rumbling bellow, adding layers to the background volume. Stanis and Kevin moved in closer, Stanis peering his head as he saw that the bellower was actually Rikkey. Her closely cropped hair was still there, her face and arms still caked with soot. She had quite a bit of definition to her arms and was viciously attacking the steel in front of her with a ravenous wolf's drive. She was wearing tough, dirty clothes which stuck to her skin due to the sweat. "HEY RIKKEY, LOOKIE WHO COME BACK" roared Kevin, fighting the volume to be heard. The clanging and smashing and crashing stopped at this, all 5 blacksmiths finally leaving their personal little world filled with smoke and steel as they looked up, seeing a well-defined looking Asian guy. Some of the blacksmiths cringed while others openly laughed; they didn't know who this man was but they sure as hell knew that Rikkey hated to be interrupted during her sessions, especially by Kevin. It was to their surprise, surprise so great that a few recoiled back, that they saw Rikkey beam up, screaming as she moved in to hug Stanis. The one who was the most confused, however, was Stanis, beyond confused why Rikkey was so joyful to see him… ADVERTISEMENT

Stanis found himself between a rock and a hard place. She had made a u-turn in her attitude and clearly wanted something from him, but on the other hand she was a follower of Zelgard. After a very awkward pause between the two, Stanis succumbed to the toothy smile and shook her hand, "Stanis". She seemed fine with his short answer as a wave of relief rolled across her face. The following minutes were filled with her making up small talk and Stanis mindlessly nodding while trying focus on his work, until he realised her distraction was far too much. "Cut to the chase, what do you want?" asked Stanis. She seemed shocked but quickly recovered. "A direct one, eh?" said she, raising a provocative eyebrow as she did so. The more time he spent with her, the more annoying Stanis found her… Sensing the drop in temperature, she stopped the jokes and carried on. "I've been trying to work out how mana works all this time. I've had a little success" said she while pointing at a smaller pile filled with sturdy looking weapons, "But I just can't break the final door. You clearly know what you're doing and I've got to hand a good blade to a big-wig in this Village called Caleb within 2 days. I won't ask you to make it for me but can you at least give me a tip?" she asked, her tone pleading. Stanis thought about this; she hadn't pushed her luck by asking him to make the weapon for her and seemed genuine enough about her request. Stanis sighed while nodding his head, lost for words at her joyous expression. He didn't know the true difficulty of controlling mana, after all, Yils had taught him the techniques before he had learnt their uses. However, he could take a wild guess at the difficulty as he saw the joy on Rikkey's face, and thus he decided to hold back on what he was going to say. He wasn't just going to cheaply throw around the things he had learnt from Yils. "Circulate your mana around your body" commanded Stanis. Her joy turned to confusion as she heard this. "Circulate? You mean like move it through my body? What's the point of that?" He ignored her questions and insisted, forcing her to eventually do it. Stanis then gripped her arms, causing her to break the circulation much to his irritation. Once she had restarted circulating, Stanis closed his eyes and focused on her body. He could sense the mana moving through her body, the pseudo-liquid moving at a snail's pace compared to his. He warned her not to stop before injecting some of his own mana into her body. He could hear her jolt but she managed to remain in control, the mana still revolving. After having injected his own into her, he could sense her body with greater ease and forced his own mana into her streams. Rikkey was now sweating bullets as she realised what kind of man she had been messing around with. The mana that Stanis had injected into her body was far more concentrated than her own, almost like wolves next to her sheep-like mana. And his quality wasn't even the most terrifying thing, rather when he had injected his mana, she had briefly sensed the truckloads of mana hidden within his body. She had acted rude to him at first since he had been the worst for wear person she had seen so far in this Village, using him to deplete some of her anger at Caleb, but boy had she dug her own grave by doing so… Within seconds, Stanis had found several mistakes within her circulation. He usually circulated very precise and small steams, all the while training his body. She merely revolved the mana around her whole body, very simple but somehow still filled with a multitude of mistakes. Stanis injected more mana into her streams and used his mana to seal up the areas she was going wrong in. His mana acted as sheepdogs, directing hers away from mistakes and onto the right pathways. This sudden change clearly brought about difficulties as he could hear Rikkey whimpering and struggling as he did so, but he had an iron grip and thus forced her to stay in place. It was at this time that a shout came from just outside the forge. "AI. WHAT ARE YER DOING TO MY GIRL, BASSTARD?" Stanis was about to ignore this rude interruption until he noticed Rikkey had stopped her circulation and was now struggling to get out of his grasp. He let go of her, turning around as he did so to face the rude man. The man was tall and lanky, a greying beard and small wrinkles giving proof of his age. He was wearing leather armour and looked furious at the moment, but the most striking thing was the smell coming off the man. He smelled very strongly of leather… Rikkey had already ran towards the man and was now trying to placate him, her back once again drenched as she feared what would happen otherwise. "KEVIN, SHUT UP OR YOU AIN'T GETTING ANY OF ME TONIGHT!" Faced with the loss of company in his bed, Kevin immediately stopped, his face distraught as he imagined what tonight would be like. "Alright luv, but yous was struggling in this hobo's arms. You gotta at least give me an explanation." Said Kevin, although that only seemed to anger Rikkey even more. Stanis felt a bit hurt by Kevin's comment and looked down at his clothes. He didn't really look like a hobo, did he? The answer was quick and harsh, Stanis's gob dropping as the fact that he was still wearing Zelgard's clothes dawned on him. He had worn them for so long that he had forgotten how dulled and ripped they were. Out of the corner of his eyes, he caught long strands of hair by his chin. He rubbed his jaw, only to be further saddened by the rough texture of his dirty, messy beard. He was brought back from depression as he realised Kevin was actually standing in front of him, rubbing his hands in an oily way as he spoke. "Sorry about that ser, thought you were hurting my girl and that. You know, she would run from me to another man if I left her for even an hour." After getting a good old whack across his head, Kevin carried on. "Could you carry on helping my girl, she really cares about the work. Real sorry ‘bout interrupting you." "That's fine" responded Stanis, gesturing a gleeful Rikkey forwards as he restarted his work. Most of her channels were cleared after a few minutes had passed and he let her go. Dimples were visible through her soot-covered face as she tried her best to not break out into raucous laughter in front of him. Having already thoroughly confused Stanis, she then rushed back to work, zealously hammering away. Stanis took a step back and sat near the corner of the forge where Kevin was drinking. He offered Stanis a bottle and the two began talking. It turned out that Kevin worked in the tannery next to the forge. Apparently, he wasn't from here but had just one day woken up to find their Village in a new place. In shock and worry, the leader of their Village, Drak, had asked several people to scout out their new surroundings. He hadn't been pleased with the news that a large Village was but a few minutes away, even worse being the fact that this Village seemed to have many more people than their own. That night, the Riverbeat Village had held a meeting and the conclusion was that they would try and join this Village if possible. Humans had hardened up ever since the apocalypse but most were still against random slaughterings of other Humans for power, and thus most of the Riverbeat Village was fine with joining the other Village if they agreed to be fair. Meetings between the Villages had taken place and things had gone fine. Apparently, Drak and Alyona had worked out a way for the system to combine the two villages, the new larger Village called Yora village. Kevin was especially glad of his singular wit that had allowed him to turn around Riverbeat's decision from fighting to an alliance as he recounted how he had single-handedly convinced everyone. Stanis trusted the alcohol more than him but was also far too wise to stop a man from singing praises to himself. It seemed their decision had been right though, as Kevin then talked of how shocked he had been when he had come over to the new Yora village. The strongest from Riverbeat were quickly overshadowed by the monsters from Yona; the current ranking in Yora being Caleb, Orena, Xin, David and Sil. Stanis was pleasantly surprised as he realised Orena was still alive, alongside Caleb and David who he vaguely remembered as people from the tutorial. Kevin then talked about how strong monster camps had emerged all around Yora, although there was a good part which was that they seemed to be against each other as well as the Humans. He then drunkenly talked off how he was annoyed none of the others were helping him or Rikkey with their work, and how he was sure that the two of them would become the most famous and requested in the Village in little time. His inner dreams now shared, he strangely looked at Stanis and talked off how he had thought Stanis was a straggler at first, suggesting that he came to Kevin's tannery to get some fresh armour when he had the time. Stanis slightly flushed at this due to the alcohol, suddenly reminiscing of times he had at the top of the mountain. Tears weren't far off and Kevin very quickly found himself having to deal with a crying drunkard. After a bit of talking, he managed to get the now-giggling Stanis up from the ground and asked where his bed was. Stanis, after many tries, managed to say that he wanted to go to the Classer's Hall. Kevin whacked him across the head, claiming this was why Stanis was a straggler, since his judgement was so bad that he would drink this much of strengthened alcohol with no care of repercussions. Nevertheless, Kevin, who was just as drunk, was more than happy to entertain a drunkard and the two of them began stumbling away.  

The two drunks stumbled towards the Classer's Hall. Kevin was still drinking as he walked, his mind now at a stage that he was spreading embarrassing secrets. Not about himself of course, rather about Rikkey. Stanis, even in his drunk state, wished that he could just plug his ears as he was forced to hear what no man should have to… He knew that he could clear his intoxication at any time; he had checked to make sure of that when he had started drinking. All he had to do was revolve his mana and he would be fine, although he didn't feel the rush to do as he enjoyed his intoxicated state, his mind far more relaxed than usual. It wasn't meant to be a long walk but it turned out that stumbling wasn't the best type of transport, and so it was only after Kevin had thoroughly revealed everything about himself and Rikkey before Stanis finally got to escape his grasp. The Classer's Hall was impressive, even more so since he was drunk. The linings of gold and silver seemed to be flowing rivers, the ferocious carvings of monsters realer-than-real as Stanis began to sweat bullets. The fear he felt instantly caused him to revolve his mana, clearing the intoxication within seconds. The sky was darker than black and yet the Classer's Hall still shone brightly, almost like a firefly in the night. "Stahrrp it Rikkaii" That was enough of a cue for Stanis to leave as he left the hopeless man lying on the ground, the door parting as he walked into the hall. The second he passed the boundary, Stanis could feel a wave of mana pass over him, most likely a sensor to make sure he was level 20. It was like a whole another world inside, the decorations outside like a beggar next to a lord. There were carvings made out of precious-looking materials everywhere, the pillars filled to the brim with these, telling grand stories. There was also statues and other decorations all over; he truly felt like he was walking through gold as he moved through the hall. It wasn't a particularly large hall, around 20 metres long, but each step he took, he found it harder to take another as his jaw only fell further. It felt like he was dragging his jaw across the floor as he reached the end, a pedestal the only thing awaiting him. Not that this was some kind of plain pedestal, no, it was fit with more jewels than a person could wish to see in their entire life. Stanis began walking up the spiralling stairs. He eventually reached the top where lay just a plain slab of stone, two hand-shaped holes within the stone. Understanding the prompt, Stanis placed his hands into the holes, his fingers fitting snuggly. Stanis Volkov Age: 18 years Mana capacity: 59 (regeneration is capacity/4 per hour) Level 27 (Progress to the next level is 92%) Strength: 44 [35] Dexterity: 46 [33] Constitution: 47[34] Intelligence: 40[26 -> 27] Wisdom: 38[26] Tenacity: 49[31 ->32] Skills: Layman's Rush, Scout and Sense, Light Healing, Destructive Mana Recharge, Ice shot   You are currently being scanned. It was close to 30 seconds when the next message came. Your scan is finished. Choose one of the classes below: - Origin - Tyrant - Aspiring Mage As Stanis had rushed to the Classer's Hall, he hadn't had the chance to ask anyone about what happened inside the Hall. If he had asked, he would have learnt that the system would give him three options to pick from: one that is based on combat ability and aspirations, one purely based on aspirations and another based purely on combat ability. Not knowing any of this, Stanis expanded the classes to see if there was anything that could catch his fancy. Origin – One who chases the origin. Tyrant – One who has an obsession with power; a person who will do anything to take and remain in power. Aspiring Mage – One who fights with spells but isn't in the possession of enough to be named a proper mage. There wasn't much information about any of the classes from the descriptions and thus Stanis was left to his own devices. From the sounds of their names, he was certain that Aspiring Mage was the worst of the classes, after all, it even had ‘aspiring' before the class name. As for Tyrant, the name itself was like a waking slap for him; it was like the world itself was telling him how obsessed he now was with power. Stanis noted this down in his heart, but even that didn't really lower his desire for the sweet honey. And as for Origin, well… There was really nothing to it other than the fact it had a cool name. It had a grand name and all, but Stanis was iffy about it as it seemed to have little substance behind its mask. Now, if Stanis hadn't gotten himself drunk and had instead asked others about classes, he would have had help making this decision. Some classes had titles before the actual class itself, such as aspiring mage, and the quality of that class depended on the title. In this given example, aspiring mage would be worse than a normal mage as they were only aspiring. Most people were given 2 classes with bad titles and thus usually chose the one without a title, whereas others were given 3 and forced to make a hard choice. As for Tyrant, most people with a desire for power usually had tyrannous or megalomaniac as titles. But there was not a single person in the Village who had yet been offered Tyrant, although this needn't be purely based on his desire as much as a combination of that and his strength. As for Origin, well, the others in the Village would have known as much as he now knew about it: nothing… He pondered on the matter for about a minute, thinking about what each Class could open up for him. He knew from the time he had spent with Tanya weeks ago that Classes got special skills related to the class, which were the real allure behind Classes in the first place. Well, that and the stat boosts they could offer. Stanis had already crossed out Aspiring Mage as its name was nearly not as grand as the other twos'. Now left with those two, he struggled to make a decision but eventually crossed Tyrant out. He didn't have a good feeling about it as its name gave him a bad image of what its related skills would be like… "Origin" He decided to make a leap into the dark as he loudly pronounced his choice, the system very quickly beginning the next stage. Stanis was lifted off the small stage as the air itself began to push him up. He initially struggled but stopped trying after the fifth second as he realised this wasn't a power he could contest, instead opting to curiously watch his surroundings as he was raised higher and higher, eventually coming to rest metres above the centre of the hall. Next came the painful part, barrages of mana pelting into Stanis. Luckily, or unluckily, Stanis found that his threshold of pain was far higher than the pain given as he remained awake through the whole ordeal, the missiles coming faster and faster as he began clenching his teeth and tightening his fists. This went on for about 30 seconds in total. No other Classer would be able to tell him what would happen next as all of them had fainted by this point in the process. Stanis himself was only barely conscious as he saw harrowing wisps of mana appear in front of him. He was trained enough to the point that he was so sensitive to mana that he could almost feel it like a sixth sense, but he didn't need any of that to see these wisps… They were simple balls of burning blue but the fact that they were visible even to the untrained eye made Stanis very scared very quickly, struggling with fervour as he saw the sources of his death drift closer. "ARRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHH" A primal roar, one he had believed he would never scream again after leaving Yils's service, escaped his mouth, his head bent back as he lost all strength. Each wisp penetrated his body, his flesh so concentrated with mana that it began falling apart… It was pain unlike any other type, a whole new category of itself. He had already lost consciousness after the first wisp and thus wasn't awake to realise that his body was now just a skeleton floating in the air. And this wasn't even the end… Time passed and Stanis's whole body fell apart, leaving nothing floating in the air. He was the nothing… And then the rebuilding took place, red coloured wisps appearing which began to solidify into the outline of his body. All of this took place in about 2 minutes and thus Stanis very quickly awakened, shocked as he realised he was falling… The drop onto the floor wasn't that painful but he still clutched his head while roaring, his mind almost like it had just been torn apart. His whole life flashed in front of his eyes within the following minutes, his screams eventually dying out as he became entranced by his own life story. It was only when the last scene had finished that he was shocked back to real life, at last realising that the movie he had just watched was one he himself had recorded. His mind no longer hurt and so he forced himself up, noticing the pedestal at the end of the hall was now gone and thus walking towards the door. Opening the door wasn't much of a struggle but the wave of sound that followed was, the sound almost solid as it pushed him backwards. Fighting back, Stanis forced his feet and took his first step outside, lifting his head, only to notice hundreds of people cheering and chanting with fervour. One person especially stood out, a large gap around her as she walked towards him. She was a woman with braided hair, her dark skin pasted with dry blood and a spear by her side…

After having healed his injuries with multiple Light healings, Stanis lay awake in the cave with Sil lying by his side. She seemed to be sleepy and so Stanis decided to allow her a snooze, good time to also spend checking his messages. Well done to all those who are still alive. You have been recorded as having contributed to the destruction of a teleporter of the Invader species "Sprekra". Below are the top ten people with the most points contributed. Serb Stanis Niss Sil Caleb Orena Raagar Lisi Gragr Hoo Stanis didn't need to expand his name or anything as he knew exactly where he got all his points from: solely from fighting the Spectre boss. You have 43 points for a medium difficulty teleporter. A large number of allies were involved in the destruction and stayed alive during the hunting duration. Your reward has been lowered to: 30 extra attribute points 5 levels equivalent experience. A skill suited to you (based on your class, Origin) Stanis remembered back to when he had received these messages for the Zelts. He had close to double his points then, and the Zelt's teleporter was also graded medium difficulty just like this one. And yet, this time he seemed to have gotten a larger reward than last time as he received 30 attribute points! It was obvious to anyone with a brain that the Sprekras were harder to beat than the Zelts, and yet they were still graded as the same difficulty. This most likely meant that the difficulty was graded against his strength instead of being externally graded beforehand. The System has recorded you as having destroyed 3 Invader Teleporters, all progressively stronger. In response to your accomplishment and contribution, the Hu have rewarded you 15 additional attribute points and a message. Do you accept their reward? Stanis had no reason to deny and every reason to accept, after all every edge he had helped to keep him alive. You have received 15 additional attribute points and a message from the Hu. "Well done, you have done a great service for us. This reward is by no means the last nor largest one you will receive from us if you keep up the good work." If Stanis remembered rightly, the Hu was the race that had sponsored the Humans or something along those lines, the race that had put them in the tutorial in the first place. However, Stanis held no ill will against them, instead their goals seemed to align and Stanis wasn't against getting help from them along the way. It was at this that Stanis remembered the Zelaro. He didn't know if their goals aligned but they had promised grand rewards if he completed any of their missions. Stanis had largely forgotten about them… Even though he had lost that high-quality darkness-veils within the Zelt tunnels, his intelligence and wisdom had grown so much since then that he might be able to kill with normal-quality darkness now. Stanis guessed it wouldn't hurt to try and put it on his mental to-do list. You have received the skill Lightning seed. Lightning seed – Use mana to create lightning outside of your body. This was the simplest skill out of the ones he had so far, its description taking up only a single sentence. However, at the same time, this seemed to have a large amount of potential if he learnt how to control that lightning. But that was all for another time. Right now he had truckloads of money to spend. Stanis Volkov Age: 18 years Mana capacity: 217(regeneration is capacity/4 per hour) Level 47 (Progress to the next level is 2%) Class: Origin Unallocated points: 59 Strength: 75 [49 ->51] Dexterity: 74 [48 ->50] Constitution: 76[51 ->52] Intelligence: 71 [35 -> 38] Wisdom: 70+5[33 -> 37] Tenacity: 83[49 ->51] Skills: Layman's Rush, Scout and Sense, Light Healing, Destructive Mana Recharge, Ice shot, Blueshot spitfire, Lightning seed Half of him wanted to focus his points into intelligence and wisdom, after all, it was now clear that his Class was some kind of spell-based class. Could he see a pattern to his class yet? Nope, but he could at least tell that it something based around mana and magic. But the other half of him wanted to focus on his physical strength and body. When he had clashed against the Spectre boss, with Layman's rush activated, his arm had crumpled under the pressure. Of course, the Spectre boss was a very high standard to compare himself against but then again, he doubted his future foes were going to get any weaker. In the end, Stanis couldn't make a choice and decided to split evenly, after all, none of the attributes were worth ignoring. He allocated 11 points into wisdom, no points into tenacity and 12 points into the rest of them. Stanis Volkov Age: 18 years Mana capacity: 252(regeneration is capacity/4 per hour) Level 47 (Progress to the next level is 2%) Class: Origin Strength: 87 [51] Dexterity: 86 [50] Constitution: 88 [52] Intelligence: 83 [38] Wisdom: 81+5[37] Tenacity: 83[51] Skills: Layman's Rush, Scout and Sense, Light Healing, Destructive Mana Recharge, Ice shot, Blueshot spitfire, Lightning seed That seemed to be all his system notifications and so Stanis decided to lie back down instead of leaving the cave, allowing him a rare peaceful moment for thought. He was happy with how the plan with the Jaguars had gone, almost a perfect success. His plan about training up Orena, Caleb and Sil to become his subordinates seemed to have also done well, if not even better. They had made massive progress under his wing, even if they hadn't been able to display all of that progress against the overpowered Spectre boss, and he doubted they would leave him at the drop of a hat after everything he had done for them, especially Sil. The only thing he felt was lacking was his own personal strength. He had come in as the powerhouse, the sole king even if the others hadn't fully seen it then. But by focusing on the Jaguars and the others so much, he had neglected himself to the point that he was no longer the strongest, in fact, he was almost certain that Serb was now equal to him from what he had sensed from his appearance in the cave. And if Serb had closed in on him, it meant the others were not far off. This was simply unacceptable to Stanis, something that reminded him of his past, something he'd rather not be reminded off… He clenched his fist before loosening it as he saw the snoozing Sil next to him, her body naked and scarred and yet so beautiful. Well, he would train himself with hellish intensity later on, but he wanted to enjoy the easy-going moments right now. He took her into his arms and kissed her awake, enjoying the warmth while doing so. She woke up very quickly and just as quickly sensed how hard he was… It was an hour later that the two of them left the cave. Stanis had used the mana Serb had given him to kick-start his own, healing up the worst of his injuries. He had considered transforming his sliced off leg into the Zelaro's but decided that would put him in a bad position since one leg would be longer than the other. He could have transformed both legs but he had realised that the more spread out his transformation was, the more spread out its defences and power also was… Sil had given him her soft trousers that she wore under her armoured one. It was dirty but not that it bothered Stanis, especially when taking into consideration the clothes he had been wearing all this time. The first thing Stanis wanted to do was check up on Orena and Caleb. He asked Sil where they were and she guided him towards an open shelter a few minutes away. Stanis had thought the Jaguars would have gone back to their territory already but it seemed they were still in the Spectres' previous territory, the trees here all sickly and naked. There were several Jaguar cubs playing around Orena and Caleb when they arrived. The cubs' attention quickly turned towards Stanis as they saw him walk in, his position in the community just as high as Serb's. It was after many minutes spent playing that Stanis finally got a chance to check up on his two subordinates. Orena had burn marks all across her back, but they seemed to have healed up well, especially in contrast to Caleb's. Orena was far more nimble on her feet than Caleb was and thus had managed to move further from the body before it had exploded. As for Caleb, not only did he have burn marks all across his back but they also ranged down his legs and also a few across the backside of his arms. They were far more serious than Orena's as some still looked raw. Stanis could basically see the aftermath in his mind's eye as they told him that the Jaguar healers had healed up their wounds a bit, meaning that these wounds they had right now were actually the ones that had been healed… Stanis had regained enough of his mana in the time that he had rested that he could easily heal up the two of them to a much better standard. He did, however, leave just a patch of burn marks over each of their bodies, serving as a reminder what carelessness could lead to, especially when in the thick of a battlefield. The two of them still had the aftertaste of being the strongest on the battlefield in their minds, something he was determined of washing away. It was then that Caleb asked, "So is the partnership set or are we fucked?" If the partnership still wasn't set up after everything they had done, the Jaguars truly had fucked them over. It was a worry that all four of them had held throughout the whole period, after all, it was too realistic of an outcome to ignore. "Don't worry about that", said Stanis, his lips curling at this, "They're one with us now"…

Stanis jumped from rock to rock as he descended down the mountain, giving care to the wind as he jumped off ledges. It no longer hurt… This wasn’t even due to his tenacity, it just wasn’t painful in the first place. He turned his eyes towards the sun and saw a ledge that led to a 25 metre drop: it was massive. He felt no fear whatsoever as he sprinted down the path, he had danced with Yils so many times that he found it hard to fear such little things like this. He jumped, his arms spread wide open as he embraced the morning sun. For one second he was in a state of emptiness as the world seemed to flow through him, his whole body relaxed. The next second he was falling fast, teeth braced as he wracked his brain to produce icicle blocks to break the fall. Even he would be hurt if he tried to land this without assistance. He barely managed to create a block as his body crashed into it, a shattering sound followed by a loud thump. He could feel wetness at his foot and so he lifted himself, only to see a splintered shard of ice through his ankle. Stanis had his teeth clenched but it was nothing worse than a sharp sting, after all he had been whipped into shape all these weeks. His pains quickly turned to joys as he began maniacally laughing; this was what true power felt like. He healed his foot and carried on, this time sticking to the paths and not the ledges as he descended. In all truth, he wanted to run back to Zelgard and Yils. He didn’t know it when it had happened but he now knew that he craved power, not the fickle type that could easily change hands through uprisings but rather the loyal, true power: the power of this new world. He also knew that Yils had that very power; she had been fighting him like an ant all this time, scared to accidently release her power and eradicate him from existence. She had been bluffing when she had said he had learnt all that he could from them, he now realised it as there were no tears clouding his vision or emotions directing his actions. But their will was his will, at least they had given him a target: the tier-three. Tier-ones, in his opinion, were like teenagers; they were strong, sure, but not as strong as the adult grown Human. As for tier-twos, they were like the talented Humans who had emerged after the apocalypse: not only were they incredibly strong but worse still, crafty. As for tier-threes, well, he had no idea… However, he did have some hints: what he had learnt so far from Yils was that mana manipulation was the path that led forwards, which made him think that tier-threes had something to do with greater manipulation. It was fine anyway, he would crush through anyone or anything that now stood in his way… This wasn’t for Yils or anything, he loved her and Zelgard, sure, but that wasn’t enough to drive him forwards. The only thing that could do that was his lust for power… Hours passed and soon he could see a glimpse of Yona Village in the distance. The first thought to mind was that it was bigger; he didn’t remember it being so large when he had left. His following thoughts were for the people he knew. Orena: he could now sympathise with her desire for power, although he still didn’t share her sentiments of bloodlust. Kei and Callum: nice guys. Alyona: smart leader. He eventually sighed as he consciously stood up to the fact that he was actively ignoring a set of people. Tanya, Jayesh, Scowly and whoever else who had there at the time. He understood their reasons, no one wanted to die there. But to leave him like that? It brought an extremely bitter taste to inside of his mouth. He secretly hoped that they had been hopping off single legs as they had made it out, bloodied and frenzied as they left him to the mercy of the merciless Zelts. The speck-sized Village had grown to, well, a proper Village as he was now a few short minutes away from it. A very notable addition to the Village were plumes of smoke rising to the sky. At first, he had just thought they were burning something but his opinion changed as he had got closer. The smoke was coming from the Smithy. He remembered how the System had always supplied them with equipment. Could it be that the supplies had stopped, or had they finally cracked the use of the redundant-seeming Smithy? A certain spring invaded his steps as he began to half-skip. His questions would soon be answered as he was now only steps away from the forge. It was an open smithy, thus Stanis could very quickly see that there was only one person in there, although that single person was working very hard on their part. Stanis felt the spring in his steps die, before reviving as he shook his head and leapt over the obstacles, coming to a stop a single step behind the man. “Stop distracting me, I won’t hurry up no matter what you say!” said the man, the voice strangely high-pitched and feminine. Stanis peered his head forwards and peeked a look, quickly realising that this man was actually a woman. She had shortly cropped, brown hair, although it looked sticky with grime right now. She was wearing heavy duty clothes as she worked, all of them just as dirty as she was. Her sizeable arms quivered as she hammered the sword in front of her, her expression cringing as she struggled at something. She had noticed him peering over, but grew irritated as she realised Caleb was actually staring at her. “CALEB, I TOLD YOU I----“, her ferocious roar was cut half-way through as she realised the slim man in front of her was a world apart from the bear-built, tattoo-covered Caleb. “Who are you?”, her anger had simmered down but her voice was still rough from irritation. Stanis hadn’t expected such a hello and thus had been taken back, although he quickly recovered as he examined the girl in front of him with greater detail. She had quite a stubby face and just as stubby body, although he was now embarrassed how he could have previously thought her as a man considering her obvious figure. Her eyes were as brown as her hair should have been was it not for the grime, and her whole surface skin was dyed black from smoke. What he didn’t notice with his focused eyes was her simmering fury, a tinge of red starting to show from underneath the dirt. “WHAT. THE. FUCK. ARE. YOU. LOOKING. AT?!” she whispered, the sounds barely escaping the gaps between her teeth but still retaining their dangerous venom nevertheless. “Oh,” Stanis came back to reality as he realised he had been staring at her body over for quite a while now, “I was just here to learn what you were doing? I thought forging was pointless?” Despite the honesty behind his question, he had forgotten what he currently looked like. He was a man wearing dulled and now torn, simple clothing. His healthy yellow-tinted skin was now a sickly-white, all due to his repeated drinking of the mana water without the required capability. The chub that had once acted as his final defence against the world was now all but gone, his body slim but also ripped at the same time. But none of this gave him such a bad image as his hair did: dirty, frizzled and outgrown. His hair, alongside his facial hair, made him look like he had been living away from society for weeks, an image his questions only furthered. She gave him a contemptuous look before turning back to her work, hammering the sword with a previously lacking fervour as she worked with greater intensity. He was just about to call her out when she did it first, all the while focusing on her sword. “You can improve equipment with mana. Now shut up and go back to brood in your forgotten corner of this world or whatever.” She had been pestered for the past few days by Caleb to finish his sword and now she had to deal with this hermit. Chances were that he would die in a day if he didn’t even know this simple data by now. Stanis didn’t particularly take offense from this as he had learnt how to deal with cold shoulders from Yils, and so he instead turned around to look through the pile of metal equipment she had piled up. She ignored the racket as she focused her energy onto the sword; she was this close to working out how the mana worked. Stanis eventually picked a straight dagger and moved to another corner of the smithy. There was only a single furnace and the girl was currently using it, so he instead settled for cold metalworking, grabbing a decent hammer before tightening his grip on the dagger. He swung the hammer, all his strength behind this blow… *CLLLARRRRGGHH* A horrible sound was emitted as the knife broke, almost as if the blade was crying at this show of injustice. He had hit it so hard that blade had bent to the point of breaking, even the metal surface below it compressing under the pressure. Stanis looked at it half-dazed before shaking his head and replacing the dagger with a longer sword. At least now he knew to start from the bottom to the top, not vice versa. *CLING* *CLUNG* *CLIING* It took him about ten minutes to work out the perfect strength. The blade now sung with joy as he struck, no longer striking plain but rather striking while circulating the mana techniques he had learnt from Yils. It was similar to how he had strengthened his icicles to the point of compressing them into crystals, he had simply worked the mana in a precise circuit out of his body. This was, without a doubt, difficult for him but it was also good practise and so he regularly took breaks, before eagerly getting back to work. The girl he worked with had also gotten back into her pace and worked with a similar intensity to him, although to far less success than him. She, however, didn’t cry or beg as she persisted, pushing herself to break her limits. The hours passed and Stanis finally increased his proficiency, his skill at blacksmithing rapidly growing as he began working out its secrets. Behind him lay several shortswords: some were bent to the point of being unrecognisable, whereas the newer ones lay shining, a certain power clear in them. The girl had stopped working almost an hour earlier and now watched Stanis with the same intensity she put into her work, her shock not little as she saw how he was affecting the metal. He finished the blade he had been working on a few minutes later, finally opening his eyes as he stopped imagining the repetitive circulations. It shone with a bright metallic gleam within his hands, its jaws clearly hungry for blood as he inspected it closer. He took the final step and stabbed it into his open palm, the blade struggling but eventually slipping through. A good blade! He was about to turn around and fetch another sword to train with when he was poked at. He peered towards the poke and found the girl from earlier looking at him. “Hi, sorry if we got to the wrong start. I’m Rikkey” said she, smiling a toothy grin as she looked at him. His only weakness…

After Yils explicitly told Stanis and his benefactor that she was not inclined to lend out her articles of clothing through a string of coarse words, Stanis had to settle for the worn out ones. Not that he minded in the least though as they were better than nothing and also surprisingly comfy. His benefactor, whose name he learnt to be Zelgard, seated him in the hall, before walking away into another room to get drinks. Stanis was now left all alone with Yils… Stanis didn't know whether Zelgard was truly special in the head or whether this was some kind of cruel joke. Why else would he leave him with such a strong, nasty being? How did he know they were strong? Well, Yils's glare was a great starter and the fact that they were Human but apparently living a leisurely life up on the mountain, seemingly apathetic about the apocalypse, also helped his judgement. Yils was engrossed by her book and showed no interest towards Stanis, and thus he was able to take many quick glances at her. She wore a red top and leather shorts, both fitting tightly around her skin. Her figure was curvaceous and athletic, her arms more toned that Zelgard's. Her skin was tanned light brown with a hint of orange. As for her face, it was simply without blemish as if an artist had sculpted it as their magnum opus, her eyes deathly grey and a full head of fiery, flowing hair. She had her hair loose and thus the strands rested on her shoulders, her expression pensive as she read the book. Calling her beautiful would be an understatement, although Stanis was fine keeping his precious life and thus didn't bother her, instead opting to twiddle his thumbs nervously. The silence comforted him, his memories from the prison popping up: no screams, no shouts, no cries, nothing! It calmed him to the point that his nervousness eventually faded away. "Ahh, here yoouu gooo!" shouted Zelgard as he walked in, three glasses within his hands. He was clearly in a jovial mood as he hummed as he walked, neither of his interruptions managing to disturb Yils's focus. Zelgard placed one glass by Yils, before briskly walking and handing the other to Stanis. Stanis's hands instantly chilled as he held the glass. He peered into it, only to notice the mana fluctuations coming off it. He then looked towards Zelgard's glass and found that the slim man was basically drinking solidified mana, the fluctuations so strong that it was a surprise that Zelgard was still alive. If he had needed any more proof to believe that these two were incredibly strong, this was far more than enough. He dropped the thought and drank, the cool liquid burning up his insides as he drank it. It was not to the stage of melting his insides, but it was high enough that he almost dropped the glass in response, his whole face cringing as he fought down the urge to cry out. Zelgard had long finished his own glass and was watching Stanis, not at all hiding his expressions as he began laughing out loud. Stanis was close to spitting his insides out as he heard this, although he was saved the effort as a flying book knocked the noisy man off his chair and onto the floor. Not wanting to seem rude, Stanis gulped down the rest of his glass, almost earning him another giggle. Despite the public humiliation he had to go through, the drink was clearly special as he could feel it having an effect straight away, his physical fatigue quickly melting away. Before silence could once again fill the room, Zelgard pulled his chair in front of Stanis's and asked, "So, why were you climbing the mountain?" "Umm, I was injured in a fight and was being chased. I thought they wouldn't be able to find me high up the mountain" responded Stanis. His expression changed the next second as he stood up and bowed to both Zelgard and Yils in turn. "I'm as thankful as can be for you saving my life. I was sure I was in Heaven as I woke up.", his mood was sombre and tone heartfelt as he said this. "Well, it is kinda like Heaven up here I guess. It's peaceful and I have Yils by my side, although I do sometimes get bored" replied Zelgard. He forgot to mention or tactfully forgot to mention that he had only helped him because Stanis had won him his bet. "We have all day, why don't you recount your story to me?" asked Zelgard, his expression almost pleading as if he could see Stanis declining. Yils sat a few steps away, disinterested in the story as she peacefully drank her drink. Stanis guessed he was asking about how he got into such a situation but was a bit lost at where to start. "There's a Human Village just down the mountain. I wasn't quite the level to get a class yet and so I chose to do a raid on the Zelts who live in this mountain." "Oh, they're cuties" interrupted Zelgard. Stanis's heart lurched as he thought of this. Zelgard, catching his expression, added, "Don't worry. They won't dare chase you up here. Haha haha." Not knowing how to respond to this man but his gratitude winning over, Stanis carried on. "I was caught and they put me in a room. They tortured me for some time, but I escaped recently. I then destroyed their teleporter on the way and ran up the mountain." Stanis's face blanched as he recalled the events, skipping out on most of the details. "Oh, that would explain why that Zelt looked like you had killed his mother. No wonder, you destroyed their teleporter." said Zelgard impassively. Yils perked up, adding "No wonder you're like a frightened rabbit." Her voice wasn't filled with as much blade as usual, almost as if her view of Stanis had slightly changed. Stanis didn't know how to respond but was saved as Zelgard asked him another question. "So, what did you get for breaking their teleporter? They're like medium tier or something, aren't they?" to which Yils nodded. Stanis was lost for words as he realised he hadn't checked any of his system messages yet. They had come while he had been crawling up the mountain and thus he had merely ignored them at the time. Well done to all those who are still alive. You have been recorded as having contributed to the destruction of a teleporter of the Invader species "Zelt". Below are the top ten people with the most points contributed. Stanis Caleb Orena David Alyona Ji-Yeon Tanya Oogwagway Rai Jayesh It seemed destroying the teleporter itself earned you a lot of points. He was also pleasantly surprised to see Orena and Jayesh on the list, as well as Tanya who he had warmed up to during the raid. Inside of him, however, a part of his mind was crying out how none of them had helped him when he had been knocked out. If they were still alive now, it meant they must have at least had enough energy to run all the way out of the tunnels after he had been knocked out. And yet they had still decided to leave him to the Zelts, allowing them full reign over his body… Stanis dropped this thought, it was a matter for another time. You have 83 points for a medium difficulty teleporter. A large number of allies were involved in the destruction and stayed alive during the hunting duration. Your reward has been lowered to: 20 extra attribute points 5 levels equivalent experience. A spell suited for you. It was largely the same as last time, although that seemed to be because only 5 people had been alive at the end of the Goblin camp raid. A skill scroll appeared in his hands as Stanis checked his status. Stanis Volkov Age: 18 years Mana capacity: 33 (regeneration is capacity/4 per hour) Level 26 (Progress to the next level is 31%) Unallocated points: 34 Strength: 23 [26] Dexterity: 23 [26] Constitution: 24[25] Intelligence: 23[17] Wisdom: 20[16] Tenacity: 38[21] Skills: Layman's Rush, Scout and Sense, Light Healing, Destructive Mana Recharge It had been a long time since he had looked at his Status and it showed as he stared at his tenacity. It had naturally gone up by 17 points, the source of such an improvement clear as day to him. It had not been worth it… Tears started leaking down his eyes as he thought up ways to use his attribute points. Not wanting his benefactors to see his emotional state, he turned to his side and cleared his eyes using the sleeve of his shirt. He had 34 unallocated points. Stanis decided to evenly spread his points. "Seven points in Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence and Six points into Wisdom." Stanis Volkov Age: 18 years Mana capacity: 44 (regeneration is capacity/4 per hour) Level 26 (Progress to the next level is 31%) Strength: 30 [26] Dexterity: 30 [26] Constitution: 31[25] Intelligence: 30[17] Wisdom: 26[16] Tenacity: 38[21] Skills: Layman's Rush, Scout and Sense, Light Healing, Destructive Mana Recharge He was now well above the average Human at this stage of the apocalypse, and yet his lips couldn't curl up into a smile. It hadn't been worth it, his mind was now haunted by ghastly memories, the experiences leaving him a shell of what he was before. Not at all worth it… Stanis broke out of his thoughts as he realised he was still in his benefactors' company. He turned around and saw that Zelgard had pulled up his chair beside Yils and was whispering into her ear, all the while pointing and staring at Stanis. He seemed flustered at being caught and acted innocent, while Yils stayed dead-pan the whole time, almost as if she wasn't even involved in this. It was unbeknownst to Stanis that his flood-barriers had broken a long time ago, hot tears dripping down his face as he got up and presented his skill scroll to the two. "I don't have much to thank you for saving my life, but I just got this now. Please take it as part of my gratitude." He was on his knees as he said this, the scroll held out in front of him. Yils remained emotionless, whereas Zelgard opened the scroll and threw it back to Stanis. Yils had a knowing expression on her face as he whispered into her ear once more. It was Yils that talked, "No need to thank me, I didn't go out of my way at all… But if you really want to thank Zelgard, why don't you stay as a guest for a bit longer?" Her voice was sharp but Zelgard seemed not to notice as he bashfully nudged her, as if she had just asked Stanis on a date on his behalf. He then gave a toothy smile as he noticed Stanis's perplexed face, all his teeth shining brightly…

The surrounding guards cast both fervent and fearful gazes on Stanis as he walked past them, seemingly unaware of their stares. They saw the purpose he moved with, and felt their stomachs roll whenever his eyes roved past them. He was a living legend, a myth to those who hadn't seen him fight in person. The tales about him were wild and now each and every guard knew the truth behind them. He was just as strong as Moonshine in their eyes, perhaps even stronger, perhaps strong enough to give Caleb a run for his money. Stanis, on the other hand, walked with his mind stuck in his thoughts. The village, which had been his personal playground, had quickly rocketed into the huge mammoth of a beast it was now. He no longer knew how to deal with it; he felt powerless. No, it wasn't that he felt powerless like he had in his early days but instead that he wasn't all-powerful anymore. And that sure was a bitter pill to swallow. Ruun walked in front of him with his chin jutted out. His back was straight and shoulders wide. What had begun as a death-sentence walk was now his catwalk, his chance to show off his skills in hopes of attracting a potential employer. The one behind him, that was. His mixed feelings for Stanis had dissipated after seeing the way Caleb had dealt with him; while he might not be privy to many truths about Stanis, he sure as hell knew many about Caleb, in fact, he had seen them with his own eyes. The two of them walked out of the defences and towards the centre of the village. The sprawling alleyways were second-nature to Omar and before he even had a chance to wrap up his thoughts, Stanis found himself standing in front of the village hall. It was grander and much larger than he remembered, and all of a sudden the pressure revealed itself to him. He now knew that personal power wasn't enough; his power would be eclipsed in the future by the many through teamwork. What he had to do now, more than intimidate and scare, heck, more than even show off, was to prove that he was a worthy leader they should follow. That they wanted to follow. He felt Omar's puzzled glance at him and knew it was time to move. If it was a show they wanted, then it was a show they were going to get. He walked forwards and pushed the doors. They creaked open under his touch and he walked in. Inside was a corridor leading to two doors in opposite directions. In the centre of the corridor was an indent in the wall where sat a reception with a man and woman behind. The man was dressed formally, or as formally as you could get here, and had clearly been picked basely on his appearance. The woman wore fur cloth with scars open to see across her arms and face. She squinted at Stanis and jumped over the table, coming head-to-head with Stanis. "What'ye doin here?" Stanis stepped forward and stared. He was now close enough to cop a kiss, or throw a punch; whichever sailed his boat. The well-dressed man stared at Stanis confused. He knew him from somewhere but couldn't recall from where. It was a second later that the image in his head lined up with the one standing in front of him. His eyes went wild and he immediately called out: "Stella, stand back," She didn't move from her spot but did look back with a clearly distasteful expression. "H-he's Stanis," Stella turned back around and looked closer at Stanis's countenance. "Boo," he said, and she stumbled back. He ignored her and moved towards the door on the right. He could feel the adrenaline running through his veins; why had he been worried? He was Stanis, the Stanis! He pushed the set of doors in front of him with force. The doors hurled to their sides and the hinges wailed. He strode through with his head held high and face without expression. Inside the hall was a large, polished, wooden table. Around this table were close to 25 people, each with a varying expression as they looked at Stanis, mostly anger though. Stanis finally looked across and saw the tens of people staring at him. Among the thirty were many he couldn't recognise, or at least struggled with, but there were also a few he knew well. Directly sitting around the table were three people. One was Alyona. She had more bruises on her face and a far more downcast expression than Stanis remembered her having. Behind her stood 6 people, namely Tanya, Ji-yeon, Oogwagway and 3 others Stanis couldn't recall. Another was a man Stanis couldn't recognise. The man was rotund and wore the fanciest clothes Stanis had seen ever since the apocalypse. Behind him stood 7 people, none of whom Stanis could recognise. And the last was Drak. Any wrinkles he had previously had were now gone and replaced with a chilling confidence. His figure was still muscular and to his side was a longsword. Behind him stood 9 people, many of whom Stanis recognised. There was Sil, Jayesh, David, Xin, and two other lower powerhouses. The other three were new people to him. Around the edges of the hall were 3 Jaguars lying across the ground. All three of the Jaguars were tier-three with bright white fur splotched with black spots. They were also, in fact, the first three to recognise Stanis. They quickly got to their feet and waited for his next action. The next to recognise him was Drak, Alyona and a few of the people Stanis had recognised. It was only the people he had no clue of, such as the portly man, who continued to stare at him with befuddled looks. "Out with him," Drak immediately commanded. The people Stanis recognised who stood behind Drak hesitated, but the trio he hadn't recognised, alongside 2 from the portly man's crew, closed the net on Stanis. "Stop," Alyona said. She seemed surprised when Stanis raised his palm at her, seemingly unaware of the group of powerhouses moving closer. "You don't—" Before she could finish, Stanis raised his palm at her once more. "Come on then," Stanis said to the powerhouses. "I'll take all of you one by one," The two closest to him, both from the portly man's camp, sneered at this comment before stepping up to face him. One swung down an axe while the other chopped at Stanis's hip with a sword. But before either of the strikes could, well, strike, he brushed past the weapons like a ghost and caught both of the men by their necks. Following that, he cast his next spell. Electricity burst out of his hands and into the men's bodies. They screamed and struggled, before falling limp as the electricity left them and went back into Stanis's body. He didn't cringe at the pain but instead threw the unconscious men to the sides of the hall. They clashed against the walls and crumpled into unsightly lumps, especially to the portly man who looked at his unconscious men with a rising fear. "COME ON THEN," Stanis repeated to the remaining men. All three of them stepped back, and then took a few more steps for good measure as electricity began to pour out of his arms. The mana fluctuations surrounding Stanis sharpened into blades of their own. But before he let loose, before he killed all who questioned him, he managed to rein back his volatile feelings. He wasn't here to peacock his power; he was here to show that there was more to him than just his strength. "Men, to me!" Drak shouted. He held his longsword in his hands and stared daggers at Stanis. His eyes told Stanis all he needed to know; I know you're strong, but I'm not scared. "YOU—" Stanis screamed as he sprinted forward before anyone could even react. The wind bellowed at the three in front of him and toppled them to the side. "—THINK—" He leapt at Drak who flashed his longsword in response, before swiftly slashing it down. Stanis dodged the slash and punched Drak in the stomach. Drak recoiled back and raised his sword, although much too slowly as Stanis kicked him in the groin. Stanis stood over the curled up Drak with cold, stretched out eyes. All of a sudden, however, Stanis felt a force pulling him backwards. It was at least as strong as several men pulling for their lives on his waist, and he stumbled back several steps in shock. "YOU THINK YOU CAN STOP ME!" he roared in response, before casting Layman's rush and moving towards Drak's downed body faster than before. Before anyone could respond, his hands were already latched onto Drak's shoulders. Electricity cascaded out of him, before shooting back in. One circuit. He increased the outflow and the electricity poured out like a broken pipe. It returned to him and he looked down. Two circuits. By this time, the whole hall had reacted, but not in the way Drak would have wished for. Instead of closing in on Stanis, they had instead edged away. Growling, he increased the output to the max and shot it into Drak. The man screamed for his life, literally, but God wasn't listening to any of it. As the electricity returned, Stanis visibly cringed and stepped up to full height. Below him lay the product of his stupid anger, or perhaps his foolish pride. Around him stood the men and women he had come to convince, terrified and amazed but not in the way he had planned. And behind him stood Omar, edging away towards the door while trying his utmost to not make a peep. He no longer had any wishes of impressing Stanis, no, the man was just as broken as he had initially assumed…

The Spectre boss furiously stared at all that lived with its non-existent eyes, its gaunt skull shaking from side to side. Waves of mana kept rushing out of its body, keeping away all the Humans and Jaguars until it was done with its transformation. One person, in particular, it gazed at was Stanis, his whole body cold as an electric shock passed through him. It was not a tier-four, that he hoped, but at least a higher tier-three! Stanis briefly surveyed his surroundings, his dismay slightly lowering as he saw that most of the tier-two Spectres had been dealt with, only a few rabbles leftover. “KILL THE SPECTRES AND IMMEDIATELY RETREAT!” Stanis yelled. He didn’t check with Serb this time, no, instead the Jaguars were now as much as his as they were Serb’s. Serb seemed to grunt in approval anyway, after all, any of the lower-tiers joining the fight against this monstrosity would just leave them in a worse position than otherwise. His sole worry now out of his mind, Stanis refocused his attention back on the Spectre boss. The flawless shroud that had previously covered it was now completely gone, burned away to release energy for the Spectre to transform. This left behind the gaunt figure that was the Spectre boss, a mocking copy of a Human’s. It had an open rib-cage, or better still cage, at the centre of its body, its flailing arms sticking out of this cage. It had no feet or legs as it simply floated, nor did it have eyes, ears or a nose, after all, it did all its sensing through mana. The claws it housed on its bony hands were malicious: they had been built by a cruel god with the intent to do pure damage, the serrated edges screaming bloodlust. However, it wasn’t the Spectre’s body that was the most frightening, rather what was coming off it: its red shine. The blue light coming off it had been threatening enough, almost like announcing to the whole world that it was the Spectre boss and they should take double the care with it. This red light gave a whole another feel, rather than one of prestige and royalty, it gave a feeling of madness and malicious desire, even when compared to the other Spectres around it. In fact, the second the Spectre boss had begun to transform, the remaining tier-twos had begun to fight doubly hard, almost as if scared of the consequences if this transformed boss caught them sane. The fight, so far, had drained Stanis of about half his mana. The time he had been staring at the Spectre boss hadn’t been wasted, instead he had been Destructively recharging his mana. This now took quite a few seconds as his mana pool had exponentially increased since the beginning. In all truth, he still had his reservations about using this skill for what it was made for, after all, it worked better as a finisher for a fight instead of the mana recharging ability it actually was. However, this notion had been largely kicked out of him after having fought Yils so many times, she proving that it was a useless skill as long as the enemy could produce a mana barrier. Considering the fact that the boss had made a pseudo-barrier before, Stanis was almost certain that its transformed version would be able to create almost a complete barrier. Finished with its transformation, the boss screeched a shrill warning before blasting its way towards Stanis. It looked like he was target number one… Stanis cut off his mana supply as he retreated back, the air left behind stale and lifeless. The Spectre boss blasted even faster after seeing him retreat, giving neither time nor care as it chased him down, its mind set on shredding him. This was a feeling half brought by anger and half by fear; Stanis was the most dangerous person here, the only one it considered having a chance to kill it. *BMMMFRP* A mega fire-bolt crashed into the Spectre, it shaken to its core as it realised the danger hidden in the other prey. “FLAMING ARMOUR” shouted Serb, his whole body emerging in thick, sinuous flames. When he had last used this skill against Stanis, he had done so half-heartedly in order to conserve his mana. This, on the other hand, was not the time to be hoarding up mana… The Jaguar launched itself at the Spectre, the two directly clashing as the Spectre used its menacing claws to counter his own. The two of them continued this scuffle, the Spectre boss coming out on top as time passed, its mana pool still half-full. Niss and Sil kept well away from the scene, watching with both excited and worried eyes as they saw the strong battle it out. The fight was really only between Stanis, Serb and the Spectre boss since it was obvious from the fluctuations rolling off the Spectre that it would simply rip apart anyone weaker. It would have been helpful if more of the people here had been mages like Sil was, or at least had ranged abilities so that they could support from a safe distance, but such a style of fighting was not the Jaguar’s forte. The growing number of ice crystals around Stanis, now 9, suddenly left him as they shot towards the Spectre boss, the boss only feeling an awful premonition in the final second as it turned around, only for its body to be stabbed with blades of ice. It bellowed a sickly scream before doubling down on its attack on Serb, its teeth grating themselves smooth as it did all that it could in order to finish its current fight, more-than-eager to start the next one with its wretched enemy. Stanis, however, wasn’t going to allow it such a smooth ride as he immediately cast Blueshot spitfire, beads of mana shooting out with explosive force, a ringing sound as they harmfully bounced off the boss’s cage. Before it had been just its mind but now its body too was infected with anger. The Spectre boss decided to risk it as it immediately drained half of its remaining mana in order to cry a blood-curdling scream towards Serb, the Jaguar thrown more than off-his-feet as he stumbled back, the flames dying down as he dazedly watched the World. The Spectre manically grinned as it slashed Serb across his chest, its laughter polluting the air as it turned around to face Stanis. Stanis felt the wind tugging at his back as he immediately turned around and began running. When Serb was using his Flaming armour, his physical body was far stronger than Stanis’s. And yet, he’d still not come out on top when he had gone head-to-head with the Spectre; Stanis wasn’t enough of a fool to try his luck against such clearly bad odds. The Spectre shared his previous sentiments as neither was it going to allow him the easy way out after all that he had done. Its speed began to gain as it cackled out a skill, a bit more of its mana drained but worth the cost as it could now practically see Stanis within its jaws. It was in the last second, the Spectre just a metre away from Stanis, that he turned around, his lips mouthing Layman’s Rush as he fiercely punched out towards the Spectre. The Spectre had been expecting this and countered with its own claw, both fists hitting each other with similar force but Stanis’s arm turning to mush after the first strike. Seeing that the odds were just as bad as he had feared, Stanis used Blueshot spitfire once more to momentarily distract the Spectre as he retreated back, his mind close to hopelessness. Close but not there yet, instead he had one last string left that he was hanging off. The only problem, however, with this string was the fact that not only did he not know whether it would work, but he was also equally unsure about the after-effects of it. What he did know for certain was that he would be out-cold after using it, his body left defenceless to the World but more importantly the Spectre if he lost the bet. Stanis was half-about to just use the rest of Layman’s rush to pick up as much distance from him and the Spectre as possible, fully intent on running away, when he remembered the amount of time and effort he had put into these fucking Jaguars. He couldn’t help but curse as the weak part inside of him grew, fed by the warm emotions and memories he had. “fuck, fuck, FUCK”, the wind carried his last words as he turned around, his palm emanating a chill. Out of it grew an ice crystal, reaching palm-length like the rest of his ice crystals in half the time. Only, unlike them, it kept growing, Stanis this time shrilly screaming as he held dearly onto his life, his consciousness threatening to self-destruct every-second he kept growing the crystal. It was after the third second that he finally let go, his face torn apart into segments by rushing tears as his body collapsed, crumbling under its own weight. The ice crystal he had let go off was a hand’s length, not that larger than his palm-sized ones. However, the major difference was in the aura it had, the mana saturation it had. The ones he had released before had always left an ethereal chilly trail behind, a glimmer of blue if you focused your eyes hard enough. That wasn’t the case this time as everyone, including the Spectre boss, could see the bright blue trail the crystal left in its wake, the crystal only growing jaws in the Spectre’s mind as it focused all its remaining mana to create a mana-barrier. *PHHHMPF* The mana barrier was immediately cut through, although not at a cost as the emerging ice crystal was now half the length it was before, the Spectre this time hardening itself for an unavoidable strike. “KRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHH” screamed the Spectre, the prickles of pain it had been told about turning out to be more likemultiple stabbings of pain. Worse still was the aura of the weapon: the Spectre might have transformed itself to higher tier-three but this crystal was at the peak, giving no cares as it bit deep into the Spectre’s life-force. The Spectre screamed out one last time before beginning to rise into the air once again, now fully aware it would die in moments but nevertheless intent on taking its killer to the grave before that. It managed to float half the way before having to crawl the rest, the other people and Jaguars only now rushing to stop it as they awoke from their shock. Sil had drained herself of mana after her mega fire-bolt and couldn’t even use wind’s embrace, forced to watch as the Spectre finally reached Stanis, Jaguars leaping at its cage but too late as it deliriously laughed, its serrated claws high up in the sky before slicing down…

Orena had a wolfish grin on her face as she grabbed his hand and hoisted it in the air for all to see. If Stanis had thought that they had been loud previously, his viewpoint changed as an explosion of cheering hit him, knocking him off his feet as he fell senseless. It was only 5 minutes of cheering after that the majority of the crowd dispersed, allowing Orena to finally talk with Stanis. He would only learn later that the Classer's Hall had lit up the night sky with a beam of light as he had become a Classer, something that hadn't happened for weeks now. Stanis grew more confused as he saw that Kevin was no longer there, the drunk somehow managing to walk away unscathed from all this cheering. "The whole Village thought you were dead, you know that?" His attention was back on Orena as she talked to him in a matter-of-fact tone. "Knocked out cold by two strong enemies they said; Tanya called the retreat and they left." Her words shined some light onto his thoughts as he had previously wondered why they had just left him for no reason. Despite it making sense to retreat if you saw that your enemies were too strong, it still couldn't eradicate Stanis's bitterness, after all, he had suffered what no human should have to due to that. "But turns out you were alive. We figured that out during the war with those moles: we got a notification that we had an hour left to raise our contribution, whereas they stopped fighting and broke rank, their whole formation going down the drain as they lost hope. The tide had turned and we were all too happy and battle-hungry to care about the reason behind it, instead our minds filled with getting the top spot." She took a breath while enigmatically looking at Stanis. "But we never had a chance at it as it turned out that dead-boy had come back to life, using his second life to destroy their teleporter from right under their noses. People who knew and still remembered you were happy, no longer guilty that they had killed you. But then you didn't appear…" This time she looked outwards towards the shining moon. "We guessed you were dead, either ran away from the Village or had been chased down. Either way you were dead to us once again. But no, dead-boy can never stay dead for long. I can't say I'm too surprised to see that you're alive and kicking right now!" said she as she laughed at her own humour. Stanis could do little but wrinkle his nose as he heard her narrate his story. It was like a fairy tale from her point of view, with all the horrible things taken out, only his achievements left in. He hadn't really taken much thought when deciding to come back to this village: it was the only one he knew off. He guessed he was happy to know that there was still who remembered him, but he sure as hell wasn't going to be their throw-away rag-doll from now on… Orena missed the dark shade that was cast over his face and patted him across the back. "I don't know where you been but it's good you're back. Scowly and that girl Aaliyah both died after those monsters started to come out. Just you, Jayesh and me left." She said with a smile on her face. Stanis looked at her confused but she merely shrugged her shoulders, thinking he was asking about the deaths and not about the mysterious monsters she had just mentioned. "Anyway, I'm guessing you haven't been in the Village for long and need some help? Jayesh is gone somewhere and your battle-ability would be wasted if you wandered around so join my group tomorrow, we're scouting out a few new camps that popped up." Stanis had no time to think as she whisked him away, talking non-stop as she brought him over to a building near the centre of the Village. She seemed happier and chipper than before, something Stanis could only see her being if there were strong opponents to fight everywhere… She quickly got him a room and told him to catch his z's, "cause you're gonna to work up a sweat tomorrow" she said, followed by a tinkle of laughter. Her joy and chipperness gave him a bad feeling as he could only remember her being such at only the wrong moments… The room he was given was far better than the tent he had to sleep in when first arriving at Yona village weeks ago, as it had a proper bed and a bedside table. However, it lost out big-time compared to his room back on the mountain. Stanis felt exhausted by the day and could feel his emotions going out of control, so forced himself into the bed. It was as he was lying that he realised he had completely forgotten about the system messages. Unlike other people who regularly checked it, he wasn't in such a habit and thus only checked when it caught his fancy. You have upgraded from Classless to Origin. You have passed the Hu mission by accepting a class, you are now affiliated with Village#4591. You have gained experience equal to 2 levels as a reward for the mission. You have been given a new mission by the Hu. He was hit by a barrage of messages as he realised he had finally passed the Hu mission. He had all but forgotten about both missions after his time with the Zelts. He had lost his veils of darkness and so couldn't pass the Zelaro mission anymore until he found darkness of similar quality. As for the Hu one, he had long forgotten about it as it hadn't activated when he had first arrived at the village; he only now knew why. He checked his stats: Stanis Volkov Age: 18 years Mana capacity: 123 (regeneration is capacity/4 per hour) Level 29 (Progress to the next level is 92%) Class: Origin Unallocated points: 4 Strength: 44 [35] Dexterity: 46 [33] Constitution: 47[34] Intelligence: 40 [27] Wisdom: 38+5[26] Tenacity: 49[32] Skills: Layman's Rush, Scout and Sense, Light Healing, Destructive Mana Recharge, Ice shot, Blueshot spitfire He allocated all his points to intelligence and looked at his new stats: Stanis Volkov Age: 18 years Mana capacity: 131(regeneration is capacity/4 per hour) Level 29 (Progress to the next level is 92%) Class: Origin Strength: 44 [35] Dexterity: 46 [33] Constitution: 47[34] Intelligence: 44 [26] Wisdom: 38+5[26] Tenacity: 49[31] Skills: Layman's Rush, Scout and Sense, Light Healing, Destructive Mana Recharge, Ice shot, Blueshot spitfire His eyes were half-way popped out as he read through it once more, making sure he wasn't just hallucinating. He had a total capacity of 131 mana! He tried to expand the mana capacity description but failed as all it did was explain it was his capacity of mana storage, and so was forced to expand his class instead. Origin: One who chases the origin. Stat bonus: +5 points to wisdom Passive skill: Your mana capacity is doubled Active skill: Blueshot spitfire Well, this explained why his mana capacity had risen by so much. He expanded Blueshot spitfire. Blueshot spitfire: Use points of mana to create small bullets. If he could compare his class to any other person's, he would have quickly figured out that his class was a bit… barren. Usually, the stat bonus was around 10, some even getting close to a 15 stat bonus, and most people got two active skills and a passive. Like Tanya had Heightened senses as her passive, Piercing arrows as her first active and Bladeworks as her second one. Stanis had hit the mark when he had thought that this class had little substance behind it, and had then missed the mark when he had decided to go with it. In fact, even Aspiring mage had more to it than Origin, nevertheless Tyrant which would have given him a 20 stat boost and four skills! Ignorance was truly bliss as Stanis started chuckling away at his passive. He found it hard to sleep as his exhausted mind had been rejuvenated by his good luck. The grin wouldn't leave his face as he imagined the possibilities of his mana capacity, which was really the only thing fitting the class's grand name as the rest of it fell short. He eventually fell to sleep, although not defenceless as his mind still stayed half-awake, a good habit he had picked up after having to put up withZelgard's night trips for weeks. The sun came out and Stanis awoke, surprising himself as he found out that the grin was still there. He didn't have any armour to put on as he was still wearing Zelgard's clothes. In fact, the crowd that had cheered for him had been a bit confused at their new, strong Classer. After all, it was a scruffy looking man wearing dulled, casual clothes, with a monster-like arm. The arm wasn't that shocking anymore after many had become Classers, nor was his scruffy appearance as there was still an influx of people coming from the wilderness every day, but the casual clothes he wore, weeks into the apocalypse, was a bit confusing. Stanis followed his nose and quickly found himself in the dining area, surprised as he found hot food inside the building next to his. He ate the grub and walked out, half-considering going back to the Smithy but deciding to honour Orena's request as he walked towards the front of the village. It was as he was walking through the village that he realised how many people now lived here. There had been about one to two hundred people in the crowd yesterday, but now he estimated there were at least 800+ people in the village. The most shocking thing, however, wasn't the number of people but the fact that this place hadn't been run down by that amount of people. It clearly showed good leadership at the top, something he instantly connected to strength. After about a 20 minute walk, trying to find his way through, Stanis eventually saw Orena waiting by the front of the village. Next to her was a giant-like black man, one he instantly recognised as Caleb from the tattoos ranging down his arms. And next to him was a lithe girl, smaller than she should be as she stood next to Caleb, with white hair and pale skin. Stanis had stood out while walking through the village but it was nothing next to this group who others actively greeted/ stayed far away from. It was clear he had been hoisted into the wrong crowd…

Stanis sat on the side of the pale, decrepit bridge, swinging his legs over the ledge. His body was fully covered without any weak points, the matte set of armour a harsh sight against his background. Several grey-scaled fish the size of minnows swum in the flowing stream below his feet, seemingly ignorant of him and everything else, including the coming apocalypse. They had already survived one without knowing it, but whether they'd get such blessed luck twice in a row was something only the Gods above would know. The wind was quiet and soothing, almost like the calm before a storm. But as Stanis sat there, the wind picked up, blowing forcefully against the trees around him, causing a cacophony of rustling. In the forest beside him stood an intimidating force that stretched past the furthest horizon, each spot of space filled by a towering Jaguar. Past him and the Jaguars was the village. It sat there without a peep, almost as if attempting to wipe itself off the map. There were no billows of smoke rising to the sky, no calls or cries coming from the marketplace. Instead, it was quiet, eerily quiet. But the quiet was not meant to be, the wind heralding the changes. It began to roar and huff with its heart, threatening to topple over the shabbily built huts down in the village. Next was the booming crackles of thunder that dwarfed the wind, the clouds frantically parting under the volume. But before the lightning bolts could strike the Earth, before the wind could even have a chance to regain its throne, the system notification came. A2 Planet #984 has been upgraded to an A1 Planet. All changes will be implemented and barriers changed by the end of the week. All inhabitants of the planet should resume life as normal. It had been a full week since he had come back to Earth, and they had already been deemed unworthy to own such a precious planet. Stanis felt a rising bitterness in his throat. Looking across the river and his own disfigured reflection, he aimed and spat. The ripples from the headshot broke his reflection into blurry colours. When he had first come down, he had wanted to do his most to ensure the survival of the village and those he cared about. But the reality turned out to be a lot harder to swallow than his fantasy had been. It had turned out that he actually cared about no one, and that he couldn't be asked to put in any effort after the first 2 days after which the novelty had run out. After receiving his armour-set, he had spent his time… unwisely. Not that he regretted it, though. The Hu request has been accepted. All Hu ‘villages' will now be transported. Stanis remained sitting on the ledge. The village still sprawled out in front of him, soldiers still crowded across the walls. His surroundings hadn't changed. At least for the most part that was; across the horizon, high in the sky, he could see a wide, coal-black plume of smoke that hadn't been there seconds before. He shifted from his uncomfortable seat and threw himself backwards, falling onto the wooden bridge. It was just like last time, or at least what he had heard it being like. He heard a similar thing had happened in the past from people who weren't from the original Yona village. They had, all of a sudden, been transported here, only the Yona village keeping position. Picking himself up, Stanis finally saw the lightning. The bolts struck Earth relentlessly, vigorously pelting the planet as if it hid treasure deep inside. And then they stopped, but in their place, the sky opened up… It was like a whirlpool had been fished out of the water and flicked into the air. The previously fluffy, albeit darkly-coloured, clouds rapidly slimmed and began to swim around the vortex, continuously speeding up. Out of the vortex grew an invisible cylinder that grew down to Earth, eventually hitting the sod and stopping. And in this clean piece of sky, in this colourless cylinder surrounded by raging clouds, were formless figures sinking down. They floated like leaves tumbling through the air, their figures soon taking shape. A slim, grim line formed across Stanis's lips as he saw the aliens. His breathing didn't change, nor did he grow anxious, but instead the grip over his handle grew. Eventually, he could no longer help it and the line split and sprout into an awful grin. Serb watched Stanis's reaction with both worry and confusion. Was it fear? Or maybe excitement? Or was it both? Niss stood by his side and rubbed her head across his shoulders, causing him to relax and rub his fur against hers in response. Whatever Stanis's issue, Serb was almost certain that it wouldn't affect his battle ability. Almost. The figures in the distance began to make their descent onto Earth, the first of them landing on the mountain north of the village. Looking up, Stanis could see that the see-through cylinder was getting wider, and more importantly, that the aliens were coming down at a faster rate. He turned to look at the Jaguars who filled the forest. He stepped up onto the bridge-ledge in order to get a better view, to which in turn hundreds of black and bronze eyes turned to him. Most of them wouldn't survive this: he knew that, Serb knew that, they knew that. "Let's win," he said. Serb moved forwards and positioned himself similarly on the ledge opposite Stanis's. "We all know it; we won't all survive this. Perhaps none of us will survive this. But let's get it clear now. Nobody, absolutely nobody, will claim that we left without a fight, that we died without living, or that we fell without standing," In response to Serb's speech, his countless subjects roared their lungs out to him. Stanis took the scene in with wide, curved eyes before turning around. In the distance, he could see that the noise had attracted the aliens' attention. Serb turned to him and nodded. "Let's go!" shouted the bronze Jaguar, sprinting across the rolling fields in the next second. Behind him rode his cavalry of beasts, each and every one of them as prepared to kill as they were to die. Stanis followed on after that. If he tried, he could easily sprint past the Jaguars but at the same time, their charge was not meant to be a race, after all, there were more than enough aliens for each and every one of them. The Jaguars tore up the ground as they moved, their thick legs catapulting mud behind them, leaving piles of upturned land in their wake. As he ran, Stanis turned his head and looked towards the village. He could see a more-reluctant charge from the villagers, unwilling to waste the Jaguars' momentum but similarly unwilling to act as the meatshields. Eventually, Stanis smiled and sped up. He wasn't like the villagers, he was different. He wasn't like the Jaguars, he was different. In fact, the only person he could think of was the one who had briefly taken control of his life. It sickened him but it was true, he had been born a predator, he was meant to prey. He ran past Jaguar after Jaguar, his feet moving quicker and more forceful after each step. He flew past Serb and Niss, their squinted eyes reflected in his drawn sword as he passed them. Out of him came a low rumble, a low roar that got louder as he got closer. He could see the aliens clearly now, and his suspicions were confirmed. His rumble got louder, and the insanity grew in his eyes. Running directly towards him was a 2.5m Alien. It had a single, violet line across its head for sight, and two flicks of flesh on the side of its head for sound. It had a humanoid figure with a colossal back that weighed down on its whole body, its shoulders hunched over its chest. Its legs were as thick as tree trunks, its body naked and bare for all to see. Its skin was thick and dark, a strange incandescent orange layer shining through the dark one. But the body part that resonated most with Stanis was its arms: long and thick with fierce, red claws coming from each finger. Stanis felt the wind at his feet and leapt, his blade shining dark colours onto the world. The alien reacted violently and punched out with its arm, confident in its defence. It was a mistake he had made thousands of times in the past. But now he was different. He whipped his head down and linked the ground to his feet. His flight was instantly cut short and he blasted into the ground. But before he smashed into the solid rock, he broke the link and stepped forward the final distance. His sword swung down naturally and caught the alien by its neck, shooting its head off at a macabre speed. He was Stanis. He was a man born to be King. He was, the Origin…

I wrote this fiction a year ago. It does have flaws and mistakes but on the whole,  I created something I would like to read myself. So, I hope you all enjoy it as well!   Two lifeforms stood within the Exosphere, the outer shell of the Earth's atmosphere. They communicated through sound, the pitch far too high for Human ears to even register.   The first lifeform let out a squeak-like laugh.  "Ha-ha. This planet has life upon it!" The second lifeform instantly felt his mood lighten. The risk had been worth it. "Excellent! Scan what stage of life they are at. I'll begin the registration for Invasion…" Exploding into action, the scan encompassed all of Earth as waves of energy shot right through the planet. At the same time, a deflection field stabilised around Earth: it would act as a barrier for a while, albeit a weak one. The scanning device began to blink green, signalling that the preliminary scan had completed. Bright-eyed and full of hope, the first lifeform immediately absorbed the information. And then the glimmer drained out of her eyes, hopes shattered within a single moment… "It-tt l-llooks l-l-like…" The second lifeform gave his partner a look, one that indicated to her to take a breather. But despite his calm and composed appearance, his imagination had already begun vibrantly visualizing what could cause his partner to lose composure. And none of them were good… Finally calmed down, the first lifeform eventually spoke coherently, "It looks like this planet is host to multiple intelligent species, too many for us to discreetly invade it without others noticing…" Akin to his partner, the second lifeform likewise lost the colour in his face as he understood the situation. He took out a glass-like sphere which had a floating light in its centre. He then applied pressure, causing cracks to rapidly spread through the sphere before the whole thing shattered, which in turn caused the deflection field to collapse. They were being toyed with, they had to be! Why else would such a big catch, one on which they were risking it all, just become useless? Well, useless to them but very useful for their enemies, the very people they were trying to compete with! While the second lifeform brooded upon the latest turn of events, the first lifeform clicked on the comprehensive scan, waiting awhile before rapidly skimming through the returned information, hoping for some gold within all that dirt. And there it was! "WAIT. All's not lost yet!"  Her frantic voice instantly caught her partner's attention, bringing him from the depths of Hell back to reality. "There is a lifeform on this Planet, one which is bipedal with no feathers. It also already has multiple, complex, established societies, and best of all, it holds over 90% similarities with us…. We can sponsor it, causing it to carry our will!" The second lifeform instantly let out a torrent of swears and exclamations as he rejoiced in ecstasy. "Start-up System 98x8p7. And use the latest version, we can't afford to let such a chance escape us." The first lifeform offered no resistance whatsoever as she followed the order to the T. It got even better considering that this species was the reigning Overlords of their planet. All the signs pointed towards success; they had succeeded in their mission! **** Sprawling cities were on every nation, on every continent, across the whole world. People bustled into action as they got on with their day, some rushing in frantic manners to beat the clock to work, while others buried themselves deep within their pillows, ready for bed. Needless to say, whatever the time was in the cities, they all shared the cacophony of sounds that permeated the urban sprawl, whether it be from the skidding of tires, dispersing arcid fumes into the air, or from the countless men and women in the crowded markets, screaming at the top of their lungs. It seemed that the noise would never stop in the cities, even in darkness as they slumbered. And yet they were now silent. The cars stood still on the streets, almost like guilty children being caught in the grand act of a candy thievery. The factories no longer spat out plumes of smoke, nor did they create the gentle vibration that was alike the heartbeat of the cities at this point. The buildings no longer acted as dens of gossip, hidden behind the pretence of being offices when really all that got done in a day was the spreading of whispers and rumours. And then there was sound. Countless animals slowly edging into the cities, reclaiming what was once theirs. It was like the parents had left, and so the kids held a massive party right under their noses. The animals rejoiced as they broke into every building; it was like a lottery, as some held within them countless treats, while others would cause even the bravest to collapse in fear.  Humanity had disappeared from Earth, no longer to be found on any corner of the planet. The hazing had begun, and the few who survived would be in for a surprise as they returned, albeit an unpleasant one. The apocalypse was here…

(This is a note to say that I'm an absolute twat. I was reading through my notes (for once) and I realised I had completely forgotten about one of his skills. He had the skill Electric transfer from upgrading lightning seed, which allows him to circuit electricity from himself to another person and do damage to both of them. I don't think I ever formally introduced it so let's act as if I had never forgotten that. ) **** Stanis took a breath in and relaxed. He dropped his shoulders and flexed his chest. He was done, it had been a long week but he was done. Today it had just been Jay assisting him so the whole day had passed by with minimum words exchanged. Stanis liked that; he also liked Bill but sometimes a bit of peace was due. Jay tapped his foot before leaving the hall through the door. Stanis broke away from his thoughts and followed. Just as he was exiting the hall, he turned his head and took one last look at the hall. It had been his home for 6 good days. It had given him back what he had lost while working with the other top ten. The hall looked the exact same as when he had first entered it 6 days ago. The floor still shone and the walls were still lightly coloured with no marks on them. He let loose a chuckle as he thought about it. He had been so pleased whenever he had slightly scratched the walls or tinged the floors. And yet his marks of achievement had never lasted long as they had always disappeared the day after. He shook his head as the last of his thoughts acted out in his head. It was time to leave; it was time to get back what was truly his. Finally letting go of the door, he walked the usual route as he followed Jay. On the way, he saw the guards who regarded him with the same amount of respect they had shown him the first time he had passed by them: none. They still looked at him in the same manner a hungry mountain lion would look at a fat, juicy sheep. He was certain that the guards were just shy, after all, how could they still look at him the same way after all that progress. They were probably just too stuck for words to call him out and compliment him. Yeah, that had to be it. Eventually, Stanis and Jay entered the room which looked like a laboratory. It wasn't necessarily the equipment that made him think of a lab but instead the cleanliness and orderliness of the room that gave him that feeling. Bill was in the room eating biscuits and drinking some type of aromatic drink. "Ahh, you're going today, aren't you?" Bill asked. "Time flies so fast when you're having fun. Well, back to ordinary life for us, eh?" Jay ignored his comments and walked towards a few buttons and levers. "Get in the room," he said while practically punching a few buttons. Stanis walked towards the room he had first woken up in, before being stopped by Bill. "Oh no, you don't at all want to be in that one, believe me. It's that one," he said while pointing at a similar room on the other side. Stanis walked into the right room and waited. He had no weapons on him, no armour and quite frankly, nothing except a woollen shirt and trousers. But he knew he was ready. Jay looked up from his buttons. He met Stanis dead in the eye as he said: "You are strong enough to fight an adroite Mosyte at your current. There shouldn't be any enemies on Earth, currently, that are impossible for you to kill. We haven't really done much practical fighting this week and so remember to not be careless as you fight the stronger ones," He cleared his throat and Stanis almost thought he was done. Almost. "Remember, you are carrying a lot more weight on your back than you realise. Not just of the people you care about, not just of the people who are useful, but the whole of humanity. Don't fuck it up," "Amen." Bill said. "Good luck," Jay ended. And that was the last thing Stanis heard. His vision blurred and soon he became nothing. **** It was a while later, and a very long distance away, that Stanis woke up. He heard a groan from his side and looked over, noticing Bear. Bear looked more like a bear than before. He had grown his hair and beard out further, and he definitely looked quite a bit more sturdy than Stanis remembered. Another thing Stanis noted very quickly was the fact that Bear still had his wide bastard sword, as well as his canteen by his waist. Next to Bear was Skint, who had somehow kept his appearance still relatively clean despite their trip to the middle of nowhere. His chin and cheeks were clean-shaved, and his matt black hair was cut short. He had a bag across his back, out of which Stanis could see his shortbow sticking out. Next to Skint was a girl Stanis hadn't seen before. She wore tight, leather clothing that showed off her figure but at the same time provided protection. She had brown hair, and more importantly, two vicious-looking daggers in her hands. Stanis could instantly tell that she was not friends with Skint or Bear as she immediately backed away from them with her daggers drawn. Considering the two people on his left, Stanis had a good enough idea of what had happened and thus knew who would be on his right. Pete looked much worse that Stanis had anticipated, and this was despite knowing his drinking tendencies. Perhaps it was because of that that he looked bad as Stanis quickly noticed that Pete didn't actually have a canteen on him. He was wearing similar clothes to Stanis and had no weapons or drink containers in sight. Other than that, however, Pete still seemed the same person. He was still lean and lanky, and now also haggard. He had a great beard similar to Bear's but better groomed. Stanis would have liked to say that it was well-groomed but it was clear that Pete hadn't been privy to same tools Skint had been during the period. "Ahh, the whole gang is here," Skint said before looking at the well-endowed woman to his left, "with an added chick." She growled in response and kept her daggers up. Pete ignored this and ran at Bear, before tearing off his canteen and taking a long gulp, simultaneously giving the large man a scare. From the way Bear moved, Stanis could instantly tell that there was friction between him and Pete. He had followed Pete in the past but that had mainly been due to Pete's strength; was he still strong enough for him to follow now? Of course, there was the added feeling of comradery between the trio but that came second when you were a group of cutthroats. As for Pete, he either didn't notice the tension or ignored it. If Pete was anything like he had shown himself to be during the group stage, then Stanis guessed that it was ignored. If he had also died in the jungle and gone through a similar thing to Stanis's, then it made sense he could now sensibly ignore most threats. As for Stanis, he knew exactly where he was placed. All the doubts that had grown during the group stage had been gulped and washed away by what had followed. "Were you guys also in Twisted Myre?" asked the woman. Stanis grew confused at this but it was clear that Bear and Skint recognised the place she was talking about. "Oh yeah, oh yeah. What rank were you babe?" Skint asked while smiling a greasy, filthy thing. She squinted her eyes in response and backed off without answering Skint's question. Stanis guessed that she had most likely been lowly ranked and thus didn't want to reveal weakness now. Not that he cared, though. Pete eventually took his slimy lips from the canteen, but then didn't give it back to Bear and instead held onto it. Knowing that allowing the trio to take charge would lead to disaster, Stanis wordlessly moved to the front of the group and walked towards the tunnel. He knew where they were from the surroundings. It had been the place where they had taken the initial test, before being transported into the Colosseum. This meant that outside the tunnel was the rest of the world. The woman looked at Skint and the now-walking-away Stanis. After just one look, she was off after Stanis. While he seemed to be a cold and uncaring person, to her that was still better than the lecherous one Skint seemed to be. Pete wordlessly walked past her and next to Stanis, followed by Bear and Skint who were at the back of the group. Skint had purposely positioned himself such, much to the woman's disgust, whereas Bear had just jumped on the train. The minutes passed eventless. Skint split his time between talking to Bear and commenting on the woman. Bear spent his time engrossed in his thoughts. The woman spent her time carefully maintaining her position between Stanis and Skint. Pete and Stanis wordlessly walked next to each other, perhaps understanding each other's situations well enough to be quiet about it. Or Stanis had thought and hoped at least. It was a few minutes into the walk that it became apparent that the alcohol had worked its charm on Pete. "So, apparently all of yous died. Did you fuck her or did she just fuck you instead?"

Sitting on the sandy ground, Stanis dug his finger into the soil and began throwing the dirt out. In his head, he had the image of a perfectly circular hole, although reality turned out to be much more ragged and messy once he had finished. The hole was finger-length deep and as wide as a tightly-clenched fist. Nodding after inspecting it, he began to create similar holes all around him. A few minutes later, he sat around 8 evenly-spaced holes. Unable to hold in his excitement, he beamed a wide-grin as he got up and began searching for rocks. They had to be circular and had to fit the top of the holes but not fall in. A while later, he was sitting down again. He spotted the rocks around him and then closed his eyes. He released his mana and began feeling his surroundings. He could sense the rocks strongly due to their close proximity, but he cast Scout and sense anyway, inwardly worried about what was to come. He made links with all 8 of the rocks and streamed mana into them. And then, he created lightning on the surface of his finger. He was delighted that he wore armour now as he didn't know how volatile the reaction would be. He was now proficient at controlling lightning and at making links with objects and people, but what about both at the same time? Biting down on his teeth, he released the bolt from his finger. It struck the rock and burst into it. Stanis felt current flow through his link with the rock and then felt an electric shock. It didn't even cause a scratch on his body, instead just a soft tingle, and yet Stanis was displeased by this very fact. What was the point of a light shock? He wasn't here to tingle himself; he was here to hurt himself. He built up another bolt on his finger. It grew much larger and was also more saturated with mana. It constantly juddered into morphed versions of itself, clearly far past the volatile meter. He aimed the menacing bolt at the innocent rock and fired, before feeling a wave of guilt wash over him. Wait, no, not guilt but disappointment. The defenceless rock was gone: in its place hundreds of shattered, jagged shards. In fact, a few of the shards were even embedded in Stanis's skin, although not deep enough to draw blood. He shook his body and all the shards fell off. Dispirited, he looked at the 7 remaining rocks. He had been hopeful about his idea of tempering his body with lightning. Using his Lightning seed, he could create lightning on his skin and shoot it out, but not in. So, he had thought of using his class to link himself up to the rocks, effectively creating externally-controlled dummies. This way, he could shoot the lightning back into his body, causing extreme heat and tempering himself. But now it seemed to be a lot more work than he had initially thought; not only did he have to find the sweet spot of the material he was using so that it wouldn't explode, he would also now need to find a stronger material as that bolt of lightning wouldn't do much to his body. Sighing, he was about to get up and leave when he saw a sporadic line form in the sandy-ground. It seemed as if a kid was drawing with a stick from the imprecision and from the activity itself, but there was a lack of stick or kid in Stanis's vision. He waved his hands over the carving and felt nothing, no kid nor stick. Lost for thought, he sat back the next second, waiting for the carving to stop before he made a move. "Yils…" Stanis read out the first word. Straight-away, he knew who it was. In fact, he had already guessed after thinking the handwriting childish; it had to be Zelgard. "… won't yet. Wait, no. won't let me wun. Shit. Won't let me turn off the illusion," He wasn't able to read the last word but he guessed it from the strokes anyway. "Why not?" Stanis asked aloud. "I dun no," the reply read. The stroke was left unfinished so Stanis waited for another minute. He then realised it was entirely possible that Yils had already caught Zelgard in the act. And so, he released a sigh as he saw the stroke continue, still messy and headache-inducing. "But what I do know is that you are doing it wrong," it read. "You're telling me," Stanis replied, "I figured after getting stabbed," Although Stanis couldn't hear anything or see anything being written down, he knew Zelgard was laughing his arse off right now. He also knew that Yils had clearly already noticed Zelgard's rebellious behaviour, most likely sighed, and then decided to just ignore it. "What do I do then?" Stanis asked, his lips wide and curved. "Try creating a mental barrier against the stone, and pool the lightning against it," the ground read. Instead of going wide-eyed with realisation, Stanis went wide-eyed with shock as he realised Zelgard had clearly been looking inside his body all this time. And he hadn't even noticed… Clearly, both Zelgard and Yils were far stronger than he had given credit to. Realising how far superior they were, Stanis immediately tried Zelgard's suggestion. He first created a strong barrier against one of the rocks, before shooting a small bolt into it. He promptly felt an attack against his mental barrier, one that didn't shake up any foundations but did still declare its existence. Excitement reignited, Stanis began shooting stronger and deadlier bolts, but none as deadly as his second bolt. Quickly understanding the sweet spot for the rock, he began shooting bolts just a degree lower in intensity. Eventually, his barrier began to speak of its destruction, threatening to topple over and allow in all the hound-like bolts. In response to this signal, Stanis decided this was enough for a first try and reversed the barrier… A second later, spitting a mouthful of blood, he immediately collapsed. He didn't lose consciousness but he did lose all control over his body. An intense heat bit away at his body, stabbing daggers into every inch of his flesh. It was even worse on his face where it was like a battlefield, the freezing air around him for some reason trying to invade his volcanic body. Unfortunately, he had already lost rein of all his senses but one, and that remaining one made itself very well-known to him. Out of the blue, another lightning strike struck his body, about half as weak as the first one he had shot at himself. However, due to his broken body, it meant that it hurt even more… At this, he let go of whatever remaining grasp he had of his life and fainted. Minutes, or maybe hours, or perhaps days, later, Stanis awoke…

Behind him lay a path of displaced leaves. Not any corpses though, those had already been discarded. Stanis didn't know how long it had been since he had killed his first Goblin scout, but that scene no longer held any importance in his mind anyway. After all, he had already killed several Goblins after the first, and he had gotten drastically better at killing them. Afterwards, he would try and hide the child-sized bodies in a pile of leaves or any natural rubbish that lay there. And so no one would be able to find the corpses, or at least that was the aim. Something that he noticed along his path of carnage was how much better he was now at fighting in contrast to how he been like in the trials. He firmly believed the reason for this being the fact that he wanted to kill now, he wanted to level up. Stanis checked his status. Stanis Volkov Age: 18 years Mana capacity: 18 (regeneration is capacity/4 per hour) Level 8 (Progress to the next level is 23%) Strength: 18 [15] Dexterity: 18 [15] Constitution: 16[14 -> 15] Intelligence: 12[11 ->12] Wisdom: 12[10] Tenacity: 16[14]. Skills: Layman's Rush He had levelled up after his sixth kill and had split his two points between strength and dexterity. It was fair to say that at this stage, even if Stanis didn't have the mentality or the strength of the humans at the top, he still wasn’t far off now. This, of course, had less to do with him and more to do with the opportunities he had, but it still didn't take this achievement away from him. He lightly trod through the multitude of rubbish across the Forest floor. He had also gotten better at sneaking around, especially when considering he was doing this in a Forest. The trick was to lean back and put all your weight on one foot as you placed the other forward. This way you would make as little noise as possible, albeit the humorous pose and the fact that you had quite a bit of your body exposed did take away from his technique. But it had been working a trick for him so far against the poorly prepared Goblins. It was almost like they too were like the Humans, completely surprised at where they were and merely investigating their surrounding area without any structure or organisation in mind… Not that Stanis was complaining though, rather the opposite! It was quite apparent to Stanis that there was a Goblin camp or headquarters somewhere near him. The amount of Goblin scouts he had confronted had only increased as he had come deeper into the Forest. Swiftly, Stanis stopped his drifting thoughts. This area was different from the rest. He looked across it, trying to notice any differences, but couldn't find any other than the fact that the undergrowth was completely trodden on over here. And then he took a deep breath in. Ahh… Of course this area was different, the foul smell of stale urine wafted through the air, with the further presence of a noxious aftertaste. Stanis then squinted his eyes as he looked at the trees closer, and noticed scribbly yellow lines across the trunks of the trees and around the roots… His stomach had enough as he began gagging into a bush next to him, unable to keep in any of today's food. "AWWWWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Shit. Stanis collapsed himself onto the ground, hiding behind a bush as he hoped the Wolf would just keep walking on. And it did, just that it was in his direction. The Wolf began sniffing the air as if was searching for something's scent, a certain something that had invaded its territory. It was finding it hard to re-find the scent, but it was in luck as it smelt something far more pungent than its urine near the bushes. Curious as to what it was, the Wolf began strolling towards the bush. What was a gentle stroll for the Wolf, was more of a dominant march from Stanis's point of view. It then started sniffing across the nearby tree and undergrowth, attempting to find the source of the smell. Stanis finally got a good look at the Wolf, only to realise it had quite a few differences from the other Wolves he had faced. It had long, unkempt strands of hairs all over its body, which in turn created a mat of rough fur. Its body was up to Stanis's chest if he stood up, and had fierce, angular teeth that stuck out as it sniffed the ground with its tongue out. He could see drool building up along the Wolf's tongue, before dripping off onto the ground, creating literal paths of dribble. It seemed the Wolf had caught onto the scent… Stanis didn't fumble under the pressure and instead started grabbing at the ground with his hand. Eventually, he caught onto a rock that his hand could barely wrap around, before he then tensed his whole body. The Wolf was now even more curious as to what this smell was. What it did know about it was that it was something that it hadn't ever smelled before, a new scent, and most likely the scent of new prey. And so it should have been ready to fight, but how was it to know that the prey it was chasing was a single metre in front of it? The Wolf could smell the scent getting stronger as it put its leg into the bush, instantly tensing as it realised the two scents from before merged here. But its preparation was far too late: a fist-sized rock came hurling into its muzzle, causing the Wolf to shriek in pain before falling onto its side. However Stanis wasn't to be deceived, the Wolf was out of it for now but it would easily recover enough to put up a fight within seconds. Instead, the best course of action would be to run. And so he did, grabbing both axe and shield he scampered towards the Camp. He shot past the countless trees that he had just sneaked past in the previous hours, giving care to the wind about noise as he did all he could just to move his legs faster. Now in the distance, he could hear shouts from Goblin Scouts as a few started to chase his trial. More importantly, he could hear a heavy set of four feet constantly hitting the ground in chase of him, currently a distance away but the sound rising in volume every second. It was clear that the chase was now on. Stanis jumped over felled, rotting logs and trod over sprouts as his adrenaline worked in full: cutting out everything in his mind, apart from the chasing footsteps and his own feet moving forward. "AWOOOOO" His adrenaline-induced state was interrupted within the next second as a loud howl filled the Forest. The Wolf had caught sight of him… He was scared… And so Stanis ran faster, his legs working harder than they had ever before. He only wished he could have thrown his backpack onto the ground in order to move faster, but he knew the hassle of taking it off would slow him down, far too much to be worth it. His yellow-tinted face was now going red; blood rushing to skin as his body began overheating. Not only was he doing a long sprint, he was also doing it whilst wearing a coat, an armour and a backpack. Sweat began dripping off his body, embedding themselves within his coat's fur strands, making his whole body hot and sticky. Stanis himself was unaware of all of this as he continued his sprint, unable to think as he forced his body to go even faster. He was now fully utilising his eighteen points of dexterity: not only was he pacing through what had taken him hours before now in minutes, but he was also dodging trees and leaping bushes. And his frenzy was worth it as he reached the boundary of the Forest within minutes of starting. But it wasn't fast enough. A few metres back leapt a large Wolf, intent on taking Stanis down. It caught him by his shoulders as it clawed him to the ground, before using its body weight to pin him down. In a mixture of shock and adrenaline, Stanis backhanded his shield across the Wolf's back. Due to it not having much force behind it, the shield failed to do damage but it did knock the Wolf off his back. However, the Wolf had already left its bloody imprints all over his marked back. It then tried to leap back onto to him, but not before Stanis dived forward in order to dodge the attack. "HEELPPP!" He was only a few hundred metres away from camp, all he now had to do was stay alive until help arrived. But even that was faring to be a challenge as the Wolf constantly struck out at him, deeply intent on killing him and now drunk on its bloodlust at playing around with a new prey. Stanis had no option but to dive his face into the ground every-time the Wolf struck, unable to bring any force into his arms as they burned with pain. But the pain in his arms was nothing compared to his weary legs, which were violently shaking at how fatigued they were. It was as he once again freefell into the mud that the thought struck him. There was still no sight of anyone from the camp, and he heavily doubted he could stay alive for much longer at this stage. So he dashed across the ground, before rolling below the leaping Wolf, all in order to pick up his axe that he had long dropped. <Activate Layman's Rush> The feeling was indescribable. He had once tested it against Jayesh in the trials, but he had been perfectly fit as he had done so. Now he went from a state of tormenting pain into a euphoric state where he felt utterly powerful, able to do anything. He stood up, steam now billowing out of his nose as he once again faced the incoming Wolf. The Wolf ferociously bolted off its two hind feet, causing it to shoot towards Stanis. Not that he cared though, instead he ran at the Wolf with the same vigour and bloodlust it ran at him with. Rather than dodging the Wolf, Stanis used his left arm to challenge its charge. His brain would have lost all sense of the limb in normal conditions, but this wasn't normal conditions. Instead he used his arm to throw the Wolf onto the ground, simultaneously creating cracking sounds all down his arm. The Wolf was utterly dazed as the contest of strength went the opposite direction to what it had expected, but it knew it had to get up and so it forced strength back into its legs. Or was about to, before an axe pierced through its nose, throwing all hell to its senses. The delirious Wolf now found it hard to control its body as it went into a frenzy, or was about to once again. But another swift axe strike to its lower jaw effectively caused it to lose all hope. Stanis found the axe so painfully discomforting. He needed to feel it with his own hands, with his own flesh. So he threw the axe to the ground, before pummelling down onto the Wolf's head with a bloody fist and a broken arm that flung around it the air. Despite only have two seconds left of his skill, he managed to strike down so many punches that the Wolf's very face began to cave in due to the force. Time flies when you're having fun, and it moves especially fast when you're euphoric. The few seconds felt like a single moment to Stanis, before he too collapsed onto the beyond-dead body. Around him were a few people, utterly shocked at what they had just seen. They had come running after hearing the cry for help, only to see a man brutally cave in the head of a massive Wolf, larger than any Wolf species on past-Earth. To the opposite side of the people from the camp were the Dead 4, who had been scouting, before sprinting here. They had been split apart in the Forest but had all been attracted to loud sounds that had followed Stanis's sprint. Only after killing all the trailing Goblin scouts had they reached this scene, to see the same thing the others had seen. It was fair to say that his name would spread like wildfire within the Camp throughout the following hours. It was also fair to say in foresight, that this would be one of the least crazy things Stanis Volkov would do in his life.

A whole month had passed since Stanis had begun his work on the second task. Every single Jaguar had been trained up to a suitable standard, each one now at least able to kill several tier-ones with ease. Quite a few had crossed the bridge from tier-two to tier-three, about 40 Jaguars now donning white furs with black spots and about 20 more currently crossing that bridge right now, their furs half way between pure-black and white with black spots. None of the newly-transformed Jaguars were as grand as their 2.5m tall leader though, but some were beginning to close in on him. Not that it mattered though, after all, Serb hadn't become the leader due to his size, rather due to the ferocity he showed in battle and the intelligence he showed out of. It wasn't an exaggeration to say that the Jaguar camp of today was as different to the Jaguar camp of last month as night was to day. They were not only physically stronger but also far more ferocious and confident, all of them now wholeheartedly believing that today was the day of reckoning for the Spectres. And they owed all of this to the Human that had made this change possible. Not that Stanis didn't make any progress himself during this time, rather the opposite. He had ample time to train himself in peace and also enough test-subjects to try his theories on. His stat page now looked more impressive than ever before: Stanis Volkov Age: 18 years Mana capacity: 217(regeneration is capacity/4 per hour) Level 40 (Progress to the next level is 43%) Class: Origin Strength: 75 [35 -> 49] Dexterity: 74 [33 -> 48] Constitution: 76[34 -> 51] Intelligence: 71 [26 -> 35] Wisdom: 70+5[26 -> 33] Tenacity: 83[31 -> 49] Skills: Layman's Rush, Scout and Sense, Light Healing, Destructive Mana Recharge, Ice shot, Blueshot spitfire He had gone up by 11 levels during the whole period and had also increased the lead over the average Human in terms of stat points. This was boiled down to two reasons: one being the fact that he used the circulation of mana to train himself. In fact, Orena, Caleb and Sil had had explosive growth ever since discovering the proper way to circulate mana, their stats also far above the average. As for the second reason, the real root reason, it was due to the accompanying movements to the mana circuits that Yils had given him. This was the reason why his stats were still much higher than even Orena's, Caleb's and Sil's as he had kept the special circuits with their accompanying movements a secret only for himself. He had fought against Caleb, Sil and Orena every day for the past 10 or so days. Through this, he had managed to sharpen up their battle-ability, the new scars over his body proof of their improvement. All this progress that everyone had undertaken made Stanis believe that they were ready, a feeling shared with Serb. They had chosen a date together, and today was that day!   All 361 Jaguars were grouped around Serb's cave, howling and roaring as Serb jumped onto the rock podium. "When we first came here, we were massacred without mercy, hundreds of us becoming nothing but dirt that day. Today we pay back our debt with added interest. Today we will not leave until the Spectres exist no longer. Today we fight, and we win!" roared Serb, a cacophony of cheering in response. Stanis and the other three jumped onto a few Jaguars as the whole camp began charging, their target the Spectre base. With how much more powerful the Jaguars now were in every sense, it was only a few minutes until the first Spectres were in sight, a few eager Jaguars breaking out into a sprint, totally lost in battle-lust. Stanis felt pride blossom in his heart as he saw the Jaguars attack with a short film of mana covering their claws; they had learnt well from him. The Jaguars weren't prowling into the Spectre base, not stealthily sneaking in, rather they were roaring and crying as they broke in, their raid as conspicuous as could be. Due to this, it wasn't a long wait till larger parties of Spectres began jumping out, although to no avail as they too were cut down with ease. It was about 20 minutes into the raid that competition started to pop up, the Jaguars having already covered a lot of the woodland. These Spectres wore ragged shrouds, barely managing to hide the disproportional claws they hid inside. They glowed bright green and gave feelings of great danger, each green Spectre shrieking with a mix of anger and joy as they shot towards the Jaguars. These were the tier-two Spectres, the real competitors to the Jaguars. Stanis had worked them hard not so that they could slice through the tier-ones like butter, but rather so that they could actually stand a fighting chance against these monstrosities. The Spectres ripped and screamed, drank blood and shrieked, cried and wept as they sliced through flesh. It was obvious a tier-two Jaguar wouldn't be able to solo a tier-two Spectre but that was fine, after all the Jaguars had enough numbers so that they could send two or three against one. When they were killed, the Spectres would scream one final heart-clenching cry before exploding, releasing toxic fumes into the atmosphere. Tier-ones merely disintegrated and released acrid smells, whereas the tier-twos actually released dangerous fumes into the atmosphere after death. It was lucky that all the Jaguars had high enough Constitution, otherwise a Spectre death could single-handedly take out tens of them! The charge continued like this, Stanis nor the others dismounting as they enjoyed the ghastly ride, Spectre after Spectre being struck down. The woodland, which had been filled with healthy, thick trees, became closer to barren the deeper you went into the Spectre's territory. The trees had slimmed down at first, then the leaves beginning to die, leaving harrowing tree-skeletons behind, and then they had started to die out altogether. In fact, it was to the point that Stanis could only describe this place as lifeless and deathly, even the mud below without life. Quite a few minutes had passed since the Jaguars had encountered the first tier-two Spectre, and their opponents had only risen in number. The Jaguars were fighting about 60 tier-twos right now, the air thick with poisonous fumes as it was becoming difficult to even see. The casualties had begun to build up but no Jaguars had died yet. Stanis, Sil and a few other Jaguars with healing spells also healed the injuries, meaning most of the injured would go back into battle moments after their dance with the reaper, just as eager as before to tear apart the Spectres. Stanis watched the incoming group of Spectres with worry. This group was larger than before, about 80 tier-twos shrieking together a blood-curdling song. However it wasn't the singing that put him on edge, well, slightly anyway. It was instead the fact that he was still seated on a Jaguar and not fighting, just like the other powerhouses as none of them were participating in these battles. The 70 or so powerhouses were to fight the strongest enemies and thus were leaving the weaker enemies to their weaker brothers and sisters. But how strong were the strongest enemies? This was what worried Stanis. He had been confident at first, after all, he was without a doubt the strongest within the Jaguar camp. He had believed that the strongest Spectre, their boss, would be as strong as Serb and thus quite easy to beat with all the other powerhouses. But what he was seeing right now made him re-evaluate; the boss Spectre was definitely stronger than Serb, but how much stronger? He had spent far too much time and effort on these Jaguars for all his energy to be just wasted due to a bad raid, but he also knew that the Jaguars wouldn't come under his wing until the Spectres were no more. This meant that he would have to most likely push himself to the limit on the battlefield if he wanted to keep causalities to the minimum. This also meant he would have to dance a very long tango with the reaper… Stanis smiled at this thought; pain and struggling had become second nature to him ever since the apocalypse had begun and he now felt he was qualified enough to say that he was a professional at both of them. It was while Stanis was still musing that a screech tore through the air. The only way to describe it would be akin to a gun being shot, you can feel the sound travel through your body during it. This was the only thing Stanis could relate this alien sound to as he momentarily felt his body being torn in two, the sound breaking more than just his eardrums. Blood was gushing out of his ears in the next second but Stanis found that he couldn't care less, instead all his attention forced towards the sight in front of him. The toxic fumes the Spectres had released had thickened the air, but the light still made it through: 100 tier-two Spectres flying towards them. But no one was looking at this terrifying sight, instead they were all looking towards the centre of it where floated a single Spectre. It was wearing a flawless shroud over itself, without crease or blemish. It was about 2 metres tall and 1 metre wide with feminine hands sticking out of the bottom of the shroud. It had a bony face with a gracious smile on top, its whole body shining bright blue. Its eyes stay shut but its lips parted, revealing a perfect set of teeth underneath. There was blood leaking out…

"Stanis, hold the other one off. You two kill the little ones and then help" shouted Tanya in a hurry, not daring to take the Large Zelt's momentum-filled attack standing as she herself ran towards it. It was not wrong to say that her shortsword was leaking mana, the whole blade imbued with far too much. Stanis trusted her to kill the large male Zelt quickly and thus he was fine with holding of the other for a short while. Therefore he too ran alongside her, dodging the jaws of the male Zelt by the breadth of a hair as he dashed towards the female. Both of the large Zelts were absolutely furious at the countless Zelt corpses lying on the ground, and so were both in frenzy, uncaring about any injury they would befall as long as these Humans died by their jaws. The female Zelt bit at him, although to no avail as Stanis punched its snout with his left arm, his right arm already going in for a strike. Unfortunately for him, this Zelt was no amateur and immediately tilted its head away from the blade, instead using its body to take the hit. When Stanis had fought the little Zelts, his first thought had been how their outer body was like stone, but he had also felt like he had a hammer to break through it. The large Zelt's outer body was also like stone, but now he was given a dagger to break through it rather than a hammer. His strike made a light wound but nothing else as the female Zelt lashed out once again, Stanis barely managing to roll out of the way. To his side Tanya was fighting a whole another battle, the male Zelt being the one struggling instead of her. It had started off with the viciousness and fury the female Zelt still had, but that soon turned into fear and anxiousness after its first wound. Her sword had started its flesh after stabbing, causing the area surrounding to break out into acute stings. In response to this, its body had instinctively cramped the whole area due to the stings, but this was not in the least a good condition to have in a fight. It had been stabbed near the leg and now its left hind leg was convulsing and cramping, even worse than a limp. And yet that wasn't even the worst part, instead it was the fact that this Human in front of it didn't seem at all satisfied with the damage she had already caused, instead she moved with greater speed and savagery than before. On the other side of the Cavern was another losing battle for the Zelts, Jayesh and Scowly effectively massacring the little ones. The two of them had killed enough little Zelts to now know the best method, and this showed as the number of small Zelts remaining went down from ten to four within seconds. Thus Stanis was the only one struggling, his sinews not supple enough to easily dodge the female Zelt, his body not strong enough to take its hits and his arms not powerful enough to even hurt the beast… He used his blade to catch the Zelt's swiping claws, only to realise its surprise attack too late as it viciously head-butted him, sending him sprawling to the ground in agony. His stomach lurched and rolled, making it difficult for him to find his bearings as the Zelt bit into his right arm, tearing a good chunk of flesh out. The difference between getting cut or hit and getting flesh torn out of you is like night and day, Stanis's body going into overdrive as he suddenly grew very angry and scared at the same time. The female Zelt would give him no time though, already in sprint. He needed to change how he fought, otherwise he would be dead or at least limbless by the time Tanya made her way here. This thought led to a question; how could he change his battle-style? This question rang in his head, his mind instantly giving an answer that was of little help: attack its weak points. That was true and all but what weak points? Its whole outer body was made out of steel, only its inner flesh was damageable and he wouldn't even be in this predicament if he could cut that deep. The female Zelt was on him before he could think anymore, but its charge was unsuccessful as Stanis merely threw it off, his anger working charms while his fear made him run the opposite direction to gain some distance. Its senses! That's how he should attack: by damaging its senses. He could hear it growling like a truck as it once again ran towards him, its blood-stained jaws wide open. He only had a short moment to sigh before he set his mind, he would need to risk it in order to win it. And so he charged towards it, its mouth wide open while his sword bore down. But that was just a distraction, instead it was as it tilted its head in fear that his left arm came into play, jamming down its throat. His red claws became crimson red inside as it scratched the walls of the female Zelt's mouth, before clawing the tongue and failing to get his hand out before its jaws shut tight. The dark-orange skin had been scraped off his forearm, leaving a bloody mess of an arm behind. But it was worth it as he had come out on top, the female Zelt now going into an irrational frenzy as it bit into the ground, banged its head and even cried as it begged for the pain to go away. Being the magnanimous person he was, Stanis was more than willing to do this as he chopped towards the beast's neck, taking six full swipes before the head lopped down. Having finally killed the bastard of a monster, Stanis wearily scanned his surroundings, hoping that all the fights were now done and won as he had no remaining energy inside of him. He had finished in just the nick of time to see Tanya's opponent sprawling on the floor, its whole body riddled with sparse but deep holes, before it moved no longer as her short sword kissed its head goodnight. As for the other fight, Jayesh and Scowly had finished as he had and were sitting in the blood, far too exhausted to care, nevertheless get up. There was no sound except the groans of agony and the frantic breathing, both being common among all four Humans. It wasn't until close to a minute had passed that Tanya regained her breath, her lithe figure covered with just as much blood as the others. She broke the partial-silence by saying, "I think we can rest—" Before she even finished her sentence, Jayesh grunted in approval, quickly followed by the other two. She was far too tired to get angry or exasperated and so just carried on, "This is the furthest we've come during the previous raids. Alyona has guessed from the information we have from the other camps that there should, hopefully, only be a final boss-type monster left." Stanis responded, usually too intimidated by Tanya's suspicions to talk against the Classer, but now far too much in pain to care, "I don't care how many enemies are left, all I know is that they'll only get stronger past here and I sure as hell ain't going to face anything stronger with just you three beside me." This was half an insult, especially towards Tanya who believed herself to be strong, but instead of arguing with him, the other three once again grunted in unison. What he said was only the truth; they were far too sane to do such an insane thing such as facing a tier-two Zelt with just four Humans, and they'd be damned if any of the others forced them to do so! Close to an hour passed before the next group finally made their way into the cavern. In that time, Tanya had distributed some of the healing pots she had which the others hadn't the chance to get yet. Stanis was actually beginning to see this girl in a good light, it seemed they had only gotten off to a bad start due to a misunderstanding. This feeling was reciprocated by Tanya, after all strength was something that you couldn't not respect, especially when a person was strong enough to kill a tier-one Zelt solo despite not being a classer. Stanis hadn't regenerated much mana in the time and thus was only able to lightly heal the torn flesh from his right arm and the scraped skin from his left forearm. Neither injury had been completely reversed, but it was as good as he could get. He considered using destructive mana recharge but decided it wasn't worth it. After Tanya had threatened him in the Forest, the last thing he had done before leaving was to use destructive mana recharge. By chance, he had been near the hare's corpse and thus had seen the effect it could have on living bodies. Best said, it was better used as an ace in a fight rather than to just gain some quick mana. He had also considered taking off the veils of darkness around his arms, so that it would give him back four mana and one extra in regen/per hour. However he eventually decided against this. He hadn't used it in his fight against the female Zelt but that was because he was far too much in pain and not confident enough to use it in that state. However this didn't take away from the strength his darkness manipulation could have after a bit more practice. The first group to join them had three people remaining, all were battered, bruised and bloody on top of that. The next group had five, then two and finally another four. This meant there were fifteen people in the cavern overall, having come from four of the smaller tunnels. After a bit of time, Tanya, who became the designated leader as she was the only Classer here, told the four most battered people to split up and walk back down the two tunnels through which no one had come walked out off. Worst case scenario was that all the people there were dead and the two walking back through it would also die. Best case would be that the groups are too injured to move, and thus the two walking back can save their lives. Having had hours to rest, Stanis had already healed his injuries into bruises and done the same for the others with the worst of wounds. It was, however, after using Light healing a dozen times that he felt a headache coming. This seemed to be the after-effect of using Light healing far too many times in a short period, and so he stopped healing the others in order to keep the after-effects low. This sprouted a bit of dissent, but nothing that was worth fighting over. The eleven remaining people walked through the large tunnel, the tunnel being so big that all eleven could walk adjacent to each other with room to spare. About an hour of walking and two groups of small Zelts massacred later, the Humans made it to an even larger cavern than before. It was similar to the last one with large stalactites hanging down, shining a glow onto the water which was then reflected, lighting up the whole room. Tanya instantly barked out orders, "Me, Stanis and Travis will hold off the big one. The rest of you kill the others and rush to help. Don't fuck this up!". Her voice was harsher than before, but it also hinted fear as it was trembling. In front of them were five tier-one Zelts alike the one Stanis had fought, and in the centre of the deepest pool was a Zelt who stood on his hind legs. He smirked as he heard Tanya talk, before calmly walking out of the pool as the tier-ones rushed to support him. "Burrrn my ccave into yor mmemories, Humans. Thisss willl be yor last sigh!" His tone was distasteful, not at hiding the disdain for he held for Humans. He was 6'5, taller than the tallest Humans here, and had a body made of bulging muscles. If this was a step-up in difficulty, Stanis guessed that this Zelt was a tier-two. However he heavily doubted that this would be anywhere as easy as killing the Goblin mage had been…

Stanis closed his eyes as he moved his hands around in the Tree's shadow. The first thing that came to mind was the flexibility of his control in contrast to before. The way he controlled the darkness was by imagining it as a liquid, and by moving around the walls of its exterior, allowing the darkness to flow into the area he allowed it to. All this time, he had been dealing with purely straight walls, meaning he had to imagine multiple in his head to create a curved shape. But this was no longer the case as he could feel the walls bending under his will, the flexibility far beyond what it was prior. The next thing that came to mind took a bit longer, about a minute of playing around for him to realise. The shadow of the tree, that he was using, was slightly darker than the shadows around it, almost as if it was thicker. He could feel a small increase in the graininess of the darkness, which made him believe that his trait was actually powering the shadow up. He then manipulated the veils of darkness around his arms, this darkness being off a higher quality as it was from the Temple. In fact, Stanis couldn't even see through it despite his night vision. He closed his eyes as he focused on the texture of the darkness, before exhaling a deep sigh seconds later. The graininess of his veils hadn't increased at all, or if they had, he couldn't notice it whatsoever. Still, this was fine as the main thing he was interested in wasn't his veils of darkness but rather whether he could kill anything with his powers. His mission from the Zelaro was to claim 20 lives with his darkness. After reapplying the veils across his arms, Stanis sneaked out of the hidden area he had found, before searching the Forest for any small game. A few minutes later he was back in his hidden area, only now with an unconscious hare within his arms. He softly placed down the hare, almost as if he was scared that it would wake up, before moving the shadows towards the Hare. Its soft breathing wasn't interrupted as a cloud of darkness covered it, not even as the cloud of darkness entered its orifices. Now feeling despondent, Stanis was almost out of hope until he remembered the veils he had re-attached to his arms. His control got better as he pulled them off within a short second, before once again willing them to cover the hare's body. This time the hare was affected, and quite violently at that as it began spluttering in its breath, unable to breathe as the midnight's veils smothered its body. The soft breathing transformed into raspy cries, which quickly died within seconds as all that was left was a motionless body. Not willing to get his spirits too high, Stanis proceeded to stab the Hare, before feeling a moment of delight as the corpse lay dead. He now knew that only his veils could cause damage, but was stuck at a crossroad as he realised only his veils could completely hide his monstrous left arm… Eventually coming to a decision, Stanis decided he would choose the best of both as he motioned the veils back across his arms, before willing them off again. It took quite a bit of practice, about an hour or so, before he could shoot the veils off fast enough to cause surprise to an enemy, and more importantly also smother them before they had the time to react. Luckily his regeneration rate of 7 mana per hour had been far more than enough to sustain his practice as he still had a full tank. Therefore, he decided to practise his other active trait. <Activate Transformation> He leaned back on a tree as he thought this, his body quickly collapsing to the ground as his senses shut down. All he could feel was the mana flowing inside of him. What part of your body do you wish to transform? Having previously realised that he didn't want to become anymore the monster that he already was, Stanis willed the System to only upgrade his current left arm. To his luck, it allowed him to do so as he felt a drain inside of himself, his mana quickly being set into action as his left arm began to transform. A few seconds later the ordeal was done and Stanis was back on his feet as he examined his upgraded arm. In all fairness, it was almost identical to what it was like before as it was still slightly longer and thicker than his right arm, with menacing red claws coming off the fingers and a thick, dark-orange shield-like skin over the whole thing. The only change he could find after minutes of looking and squeezing was that the dark-orange skin was thicker than before, albeit only by a bit. Luckily, he already had success in the darkness manipulation trait and was thus largely unbothered by the lack of improvement in the transformation. It was as he was about to re-veil his arms that he felt a deep sense of danger behind him. Taking a deep breath in, he slowly rotated his body, his heartbeat thundering louder and louder every second, only to come face to face with the glint of an arrow… Merely two metres away from him stood a girl his height wearing light, leather armour. She had an athletic figure with dirty blonde hair and bright blue eyes. But all of this skipped his mind as his whole focus was on the arrow she had nocked, her fingers edging towards the end of the string. His whole body tensed as he understood his position, adrenaline coursing through his blood as he went into fight-or-flight mode. Worse still was the fact that he felt an illogical pressure on him, one that told him to not fight but rather run… "What are you?" Her voice was soft but her tone sharp, her brow crossed as she stared at him like a predator. It took one terrifying moment for him to realise that his left arm was still out, which was clearly what she was referring to despite her eyes set straight towards his face. She was watching him, scrutinizing his reaction with intensity. "I'm Human…" responded Stanis, half-hoping for a smile that never came. Instead, her brow further tightened and the tension in the air only seemed to thicken. "Why then is your arm of a monster's?" asked the blonde, her voice now in a very threatening tone. "A skill. Merely a skill". Her glare stayed as scrutinizing as ever, Stanis only tensing his body as he stood ready to respond. But to his surprise, and half to hers, she lowered her bow. "It better be. For your own good…" She was gone as fast as she had come. Stanis would have even doubted his memory was it not for the cold-sweat dribbling down his back as he watched her ethereally flow through the Forest, her pace fast and accompanied by a lack of sound. All he could think off was her last statement as he stood standing, now fully aware of how cold and hot his body felt at the same time. In fear of the lady coming back, Stanis quickly recast the veils across his arms before running towards the Village. It was his luck that she didn't know the existences of allegiances, as one question about that would have given his whole game away. Only ten minutes later and soaked in sweat did he feel himself calm down, now inside the tent for newcomers. The Woman had an awful aura around her, one that instinctively made him feel inferior. He was certain that she was someone from this Village, worse still a big shot with how strong he guessed her to be. Perhaps he was playing with fire by staying here, but he desperately wanted to level up and a Village as strong as this one was definitely hard to come by. She had no way to disprove his Humanity because, well, he was a Human. But this was also the Apocalypse, the only proof she needed was her own dominating strength over his to kill him. He hoped that the number of people here would stop her, but felt suffocated nevertheless as he remembered the insanity of the survivors here, especially within the strong ones… Luckily his exhaustion from the day quickly caught up to him, allowing him to fall asleep within seconds of lying down. Even luckier was the fact that he was still alive when he woke up… The sun was peeking across the horizon as he woke up and so he walked over to the Supply Centre. He managed to salvage a better sword than the one he already had, one which was slim and as long as one-and-a-half forearms. It gleamed with bloodlust, the cold steel comforting him with a sense of power. He chose not to take a spear due to the fact that he was to be fighting in the Caves today, which would greatly limit the effectiveness of a spear. He would have taken a shield if he could have, but there were none left in stock for the rest of the week. However he did find a clean, thick Cuirass which would provide decent defence, alongside a few other leather pieces such as leg-guards. After a bit of practice in the Forest, especially with his new sword and magic, Stanis returned back to the Village. In the centre was a crowd of people waiting for Alyona, each and every one of them eager for battle. He quickly found Jayesh, Aaliyah and Scowly within the crowd, who he joined up with. Pleasantries exchanged, they only had to wait a few moments till Alyona revealed herself to the crowd. Stanis was once again half-listening, half day-dreaming as he listened to her speech: the important thing being that each group should be around 5 men large since any more would be dangerous in the tunnels. This was 4 random people and at least 1 person who knew what the Mountain tunnels were like, to which Stanis's group was a bit stuck for as they began searching for Kei or Callum within the crowd. It was to their luck and joy that another girl from the Village joined them. She had dirty blonde hair, bright blue eyes and had an athletic figure. She also held an awfully scrutinizing glare towards Stanis… It seemed his luck couldn't get any better!

Stanis was back in his room, legs crossed on his bed. Opened wide in front of him was the skill scroll he had tried to gift Zelgard and Yils with. His eyes hadn't been far from popping out when he had heard Yils's request, well technically Zelgard's, but not that changed the amount of shock he had felt. Stanis didn't know how strong Zelgard was but Yils was clearly powerful, and thus staying here meant a carefree life. How could he ever decline such an offer? It was true that they would eventually kick him out, back to the cruel world, but he needed some time to heal after all that had happened in the tunnels. His hand moved towards the scroll, a system notification popping up as he touched it: Ice shot Use mana to create an icicle that you can shoot out. Using more mana will create a larger icicle or a faster icicle, depending on your choice. Upgraded: You can call back shot icicles towards you. This requires half the total mana used to create all the icicles you want to call back. It was an upgraded skill… The face of distaste and contempt Zelgard had made when checking the scroll had made his view on it clear. Stanis was inwardly very happy Zelgard had thrown it back, after all what he was missing was offensive skills. Layman's Rush and Destructive mana recharge both had 6-hour cooldowns and were best used as clutch skills instead of casual offensive ones. He had lost his veils of darkness in the tunnels which meant he only had his left arm to effectively do damage, which made his addition to intelligence and wisdom almost redundant. Stanis instantly accepted the skill and it came up in his status. He was now set for when they would kick him out. Satisfied, Stanis lied across his bed until Zelgard eventually called him for lunch. The next two days passed quickly as Stanis got used to living with them. At first, Stanis had thought that Yils was Zelgard's carer from the way those two acted. It was after a bit of time that he realised that they were actually a couple, something that surprised him for very obvious reasons. Yils would very rarely leave the house, instead choosing to read books inside all day. They had a large library filled to the brim with books which Yils would voraciously devour every day. More interesting was Zelgard's life, since Yils was busy reading all the time, he would spend his time doing the menial tasks. Not that he was bad at any of them, instead he was the best cook, cleaner and househusband Stanis had ever seen. He wasn't that good at fashion, but that mattered little in the grand scheme of things. When Zelgard wasn't looking after the house, he would either talk to Stanis/ Yils or stand outside and watch the Sun. In all honesty, Stanis found it difficult to make sense of the young man, he was as eccentric as they came. One day Yils had gone out to do something and had left her book lying open across the table. Stanis had always wanted to see what she was reading but had also valued his life and thus hadn't pushed his luck. Now that she was gone, he walked over and looked at the open pages. They were blank… He began to feel a bit light-headed and stepped back. A second later he was rolling across the floor, convulsing as if someone had forced his mind to shut down. A few moments after that, Stanis was no longer convulsing but lying perfectly still, his mind without a single thought. Yils was the first one to find him, her hands full of food as she casually walked over. She shook her head and sighed as she saw the still body, before clicking her fingers in front of him. She then went back to her book, reading a few more pages before she got up again. In the time she had been reading, his body had been slowly turning back on, thought very slowly coming back to his mind. This time she picked him up by his shaggy hair and viciously slapped him across the face. Thundering noise filled his head as he came to, Yils's impassive but beautiful face the first thing he saw. She sighed once more before placing him in a chair as a mother would do to a child, before going back to her book. It would be minutes later that his mind finally caught up with his senses, his memories very quickly coming back. His mind had been in shock: whatever he had read on that page had clearly been far too much for it to handle and thus it had just shut down, then and there with no warning. He turned around and looked at where he was, only to notice he was in the hall. Yils was long gone and Zelgard sat next to him, chattering about clouds… "----- and that one looked like a Veloid with their nasty claws. I was laughing so much when I saw it, but then I started to miss home as I kept looking at it." Stanis waited awhile for Zelgard to finish but he had far underestimated the pale man's powers as Zelgard went on, Stanis himself eventually having to break Zelgard's speech as he realised he was never going to stop. "Zelgard" said Stanis in a respectful tone as he got down to his knees, prostrating as he put his hands in a begging gesture, "can you teach me how to be strong?" To Stanis's surprise, Zelgard didn't seem fazed or surprised in the least as he thoughtfully massaged his chin, as if wondering what Stanis's potential could get him to. "Sure, that would make life a bit more fun!" responded Zelgard after a pause, laughing as he lifted Stanis up. "Come with me now, let your master train you." Stanis followed him outside, where he proceeded to lay across the ground cloud-watching. Stanis copied his actions and also laid on the ground, for the first time in a while noticing how large the clouds looked from the top of the mountain. "Now use your ice skill to shoot into the cloud. You have to make it part" stated Zelgard as he pointed to the closest, largest cloud. And thus the following hours were filled with Stanis trying to shoot an icicle into the cloud. He did this the next day, and the day after that as Zelgard still demanded of the same thing. It wasn't as if he hadn't made progress as he could now shoot the icicle much further after lots of practice, but he still wasn't close to splitting or even parting the cloud with his icicle. It was two days into his practice that Stanis asked Zelgard the point of this. His intelligence had naturally increased by 1 point, but that had been the extent of his progress as he had gotten stuck thereafter. It was clear as day that Zelgard was caught off guard by this question as he looked confused, thoughtfully rubbing his chin as he tried to articulate a response. It was fair to say that Stanis had gotten his answer after ten minutes of silence and thus decided to ask another question. "Can you train me in some other manner?" pleaded Stanis, a hint of exasperation within his voice. He wasn't angry at Zelgard as he didn't have the right to be at the man who had saved his life and had now made it easy, but he was irritated by the fact that this exercise seemed to be pointless. Zelgard went deep into his thoughts again at this, this time actually coming out with a response. "I don't know, this was the first thing I always started with. Let's go and ask if Yils can teach you, she knows a lot more than me." Stanis's emotions wavered for a second as he heard this and thus was too slow to stop Zelgard from shouting out her name, fear and anguish rapidly building up in his heart. Yils was not at all hurried as she ambled out, her eyes still stuck to the pages of her book. "Yils, can you teach Stanis? I don't really know how to do it…" Her eyes finally left her book as Zelgard said this, a hint of amusement on her lips as she stared at Stanis. It wasn't as scary as last time but it was still pretty fucking scary nonetheless as Stanis felt stuck to the spot, his heart silent as if it didn't want to irritate her anymore. "Sure. I was waiting to see how long it would take you." said Yils, this time her amusement clear as day as she started chuckling after that. Zelgard was clearly offended by this as he began egging her to tell him what she meant by that, although to no avail as she kept mum. "We'll start training tomorrow, make sure to be in tip-top condition by then."

Omar’s eyes searched left and right as he led Stanis toward the forges. He knew exactly why Stanis had wanted him to lead the way towards the forge, and it wasn’t because Stanis couldn’t find his own way. No, it was obvious where the Smithy was from the plumes of smoke and ash in the air above the forges. Instead, he had been ordered to lead the way so that he could be conveniently killed if Stanis found any holes in his story. Omar himself knew that he had told the truth but there were also many a thing that Omar didn’t know. Now, if Stanis discovered them and decided them a good enough reason to execute Omar, well, then there was nothing stopping him. Perhaps Omar shouldn’t have been so worried but what he had seen of Stanis so far, his lack of common sense in particular, told him that Stanis was an unstable character. Thus, it was as he walked that he also looked for a way out, a way he could run away from Stanis. However, to his misery, there seemed to be no open opportunities along the way and the two of them were soon in front of the forges. The forges had changed since Stanis had last been. What had previously been a building was now a whole area fenced off with defences everywhere; it was clear how highly the village valued the industry. There were multiple plumes of smoke ascending into clouds in the sky. All the constructions in the area, whether they be the gates, walls or buildings themselves, were all covered in thin layers of grime. Just like the village, the forges were also defended by rows of defences. The first layer was a thick, tall wall which seemed to have a gravitational pull similar to the other walls. Behind the wall was a row of large, glass orbs. They were all arm-span length and had flickering, orange lights whizzing around inside. The last layer of defence was the most banal but also the most effective in case of an attack. It was simply a collection of guards, all armed to the teeth with high-quality equipment. The only way into the forges was through a set of large gates that went through each layer of defence. Stationed at each gate were 3-4 guards casually talking the day away. This was because despite how high a priority the forges were to the village, due to their high defences, no one had attacked the forges so far. Omar shivered as he realised that if the talks went wrong, he would soon be witness to the first ever attack. And despite wanting to trust their defences, his mind sadly foresaw another future. Either way, he knew that there was no way out now and so walked towards the first gate, closely followed by Stanis who peered at the defences like a kid at candy. One of the guards walked towards them and stopped just in front of Omar. She was wearing full-body, metal armour and had a longsword by her waist. On her left arm was a solid shield decorated with simple colours. It was obvious from the thickness and mana-density of her equipment that she could easily take hits from tens of bulls and still keep moving. “Halt,” she said, “What is your purpose at the forges?” Omar turned around and looked at Stanis. He had spent the whole journey searching for a way to escape that he had forgotten to ask Stanis why he actually wanted to go the forges in the first place. “I want to meet someone,” Stanis answered after a moment of thought. The guard scrutinised Stanis and Omar before speaking. Omar was wearing leather clothes and a few defensive articles on top. He had a shortsword by his waist and looked quite good for wear overall. Most likely a rogue, the guard decided. She then looked at Stanis. He was wearing a simple thread shirt and trousers. He was barefoot and had no weapons visible on his body. His figure was gaunt and slim with the only fat being on his cheeks. His appearance told her that he was a failure and yet the odd mana-fluctuations that emanated from him said otherwise. Unfortunately, that only worked to make her more suspicious of Stanis than otherwise. She turned around and met eyes with the other 2 guards, before spinning around to Stanis and Omar once more. “Sorry, none of the blacksmiths will be meeting anyone during this time. Come back early tomorrow and you’ll have a better chance,” “Just call Rikkey out here,” Stanis replied, completely ignoring the guard. She glared at him in response and made her message a bit clearer. “The grandmaster blacksmith will certainly not be meeting anyone without an appropriate appointment. If you want to meet her, go to the town hall and talk to one of the higher-ups about it,” She saw that he still didn’t understand her message and so spoke before he could. “Any further action will be seen as aggression. Leave.” Omar felt his heart fall. He felt a nudge by his side and he moved over, allowing Stanis to step up to the guard. The guard instantly unsheathed her sword and straightened her shield. “BACKUP!” she shouted. The two other guards at her gate ran to her with swords out, and several other guards peered from ways away at the commotion. Stanis didn’t respond to their defence and instead just stepped forwards. The woman saw her chance and slashed down at his neck. But he moved far faster than her and caught her sword by the edge. He gripped it and grabbed it out her hand, before throwing it far away. She stepped back and lifted her shield. Expression still apathetic, he punched her shield. She instantly felt her legs topple and fell to the ground. Her lungs felt pinched and she struggled for breath as she lay there. To her side lay her shield with a large, fist-shaped dent in the middle. “ATTACK!” screamed one of the guards near the back. Soon enough, the whole third line of defence was moving forwards as guard after guard ran out of the gate to face Stanis. Omar watched the progression with dry eyes. He wanted to curse the idiots under his breath but at the same time, he couldn’t blame them. How many people could truly stand up to several, well equipped and trained guards at once? In fact, inside himself, he hoped that the guards would upset the system and somehow win. But as he saw the lightning crackle out of Stanis’s palms, he knew that it was already game-over. “Holy shield,” many of the guards shouted. Out of thin air materialised multiple mana-shields double the height of humans. The wave of lightning struck the shields and tore through them. The mana structures collapsed and the bolts then struck the people. The few at the front quickly fell down and the guards at the back fearfully moved forwards. “STOP!” came a roar from the back of the guards. Stanis curiously looked over and saw a familiar face coming out of the band of guards. Ruun, on the other hand, saw the face of the horror from a month ago, and internally wept. He had been the only guard outside the forge then, and he was a lot more used to Stanis’s powerful displays than anyone else here. He hadn’t recognised him at the first but the casual way Stanis controlled the lightning was enough of a cue to connect 2 and 2 together. The other guards turned to Ruun with mixed expressions on their faces. He was one of the higher-ranked guards and thus he had some say in matters like this. Most were happy that someone had stopped the fight but some were angry that such a villain was to be let off the hook. “This way, Stanis,” Ruun said. All of those who had been angry instantly felt their anger melt into cold fear. And the few who didn’t recognise the name got a good enough feel of it from the reactions from the people around them. Stanis peeked at the reactions before following Ruun through the gates. Omar stood star-struck for a second before closely following Stanis, both surprised and not surprised at the outcome of the battle. Ruun debated inside of himself whether he should mention it and eventually decided to go for it. “You could’ve just told them who you were and they would’ve let you through,” he said. “I shouldn’t need to. They should recognise who I am and instantly make way,” Stanis replied. Ruun then debated whether he should tell Stanis how different he looked now, and how the clothes he wore gave a confusing signal, but then decided not to say anymore. He didn’t want to get any more than his fair share of trouble. “What are those things,” Stanis asked as they passed the glass orbs. “They are flicker-lamps, one of the inventions the forge recently made. They shoot out the wisps inside when commanded. The outcome is similar to your lightning so I think you can guess the power,” Ruun answered. Before he could say anymore and before Stanis could irritate him anymore, they passed the last line of defences and came face to face with the forges…

Now that the deed was done, Stanis opened the door and walked through the tunnel that followed. Despite the ravings his mind kept rambling, the only emotion he could feel was loss as he remembered the Malitsa coat: he wasn't dumb enough to imagine it still being around somewhere but nor was he ready to let go of his past life yet. Perhaps this was the Gods' sick way of telling him to completely accept this new reality, by destroying his last memorabilia and viciously torturing him for however long it had been. A grim smile blossomed across his face as he thought of the torture, but his body betrayed his mind as it began twitching and spasming. His mind might have numbed but his body remembered… The tunnel he was in seemed to have not been used much in recent as he could tell from the signs. He hoped this meant that wherever it led to was just as barren, hopefully having a tunnel upwards so that he could leave this cursed underground. That wasn't to say that Stanis craved freedom, in fact he wasn't very sure what he desired. He knew he didn't want to see or face the slicer; he had fought the guard while his mind had still been completely broken but he doubted he would have been able to beat him otherwise. It wasn't that he was not strong enough but rather the fact that his body remembered; the seeds of submission had already been deeply planted within his flesh. Nor did he have a large desire to wipe out the Zelt from the face of Earth, rather all he wanted was to get out of here. Just like he had ran away from the Camp when it had done him shit, he now wanted to run away from this place which had given him an unimaginable amount of injuries, whether it be physical or mental. The very thought of the tunnels and the Zelts made his hands shake… Soon the tunnel ended and Stanis walked out into another dark, dug-out room. He was as happy as he could be as he realised there were no Zelts here. Leading out of the room were three more tunnels, from which Stanis chose the largest tunnel as he guessed that would be a hub of even more tunnels, hopefully one which led him out. His body slightly wavered at the decision as it brought up dreaded ideas of a crowd of Zelts being there, but his mind eventually cut through. Close to an hour had passed as Stanis saw a light at the end of the tunnel. He had been walking with a worry-stricken mind but it had soon passed as he realised there were no Zelts here… He had even used Scout and sense a few times to make sure they weren't just digging towards him, only to be shocked as he couldn't sense any signs of life. This had transformed his worry into joy as he ambled down the tunnel, towards the bright exit. If it had been Stanis prior to the torture, he would have still been on edge as he walked around in monster territory but the present Stanis's mind was now broken, his worries, desires and aspirations a shell of what they were before. He stepped out of the tunnel, surprised at the sudden drop as he fell onto his face. He was even more shocked as he opened his eyes, the cavern he was now in the largest and brightest he had ever seen. There was a proper lake bisecting the cavern, the water azure and pure. Stalactites dominated the ceiling, some large enough to kill Stanis with a drop. Stalagmites created walls in the cavern, although they didn't manage to hide the most shocking thing Stanis had seen all his life. Near the centre of the cavern was a large crystal, its walls so dark that they seemed to null and devour light. It spun at a constant rate, amplifying its brilliance by a large extent as Stanis realised every single face was flawless, every edge perfect and the whole crystal without blemish. His gaunt, exhausted eyes were the size of saucers when he walked closer, the mana density in the air rising rapidly each step he took. It was as he stepped up to touch the crystal that he saw a small chest next to it. Curious, Stanis opened the chest, only to see a Storage stone inside. But this wasn't the normal run of the mill type, rather the ridge that ran across the middle was coloured velvet red. Stanis didn't know what it was but this was actually a gift that Ryr had prepared for the higher-ups coming down to Earth. He picked it up anyway and crushed it in his hand. You have gained a skill upgrade. Choose the skill you want to upgrade. Stanis said his answer a second after the message came up. "Scout and sense" His voice was still incredibly raspy and without emotion. The only thing he wanted to do was leave this place alive and the only skill that could actively help him with that was Scout and sense. Skill Scout and sense upgraded. Scout and Sense A skill which uses mana to instantly scout out your surrounding area. Using more mana will increase scouted area. Upgraded: The scout information will now be deeper than just visual. Any living creatures caught within the scan will have their simple data presented to you. Admittedly, this wasn't the upgrade he had been hoping for. But it would do nevertheless, at least it would be useful if he escaped the Zelt's base. He then looked at the crystal, his mind sucked in by it as he stood there staring at it. It was a few seconds later when he broke the spell that he also broke out in cold sweat. He didn't know what it was but the fact that it was in such a large cavern, next to what he presumed to be such a rare Storage stone made him believe that this crystal was just as or more important. Well, the fact that this was the most out of the world thing he had seen ever since the apocalypse also helped sway his judgement. Stanis waved his hands below the crystal, checking if there was an off switch or something, only to realise he was being an idiot. This was followed by a manic, but spluttering laughter. The only thing he knew was that this was definitely precious to the Zelts, and although he didn't want to hunt them out of hatred for what they had done, he also didn't mind forcing them to pay back their debt. He had no clothes on him, needless to say any weapons and so Stanis punched the crystal, only to realise how hard it was. Nevertheless, he had his warped version of patience within him and he carried on clobbering the crystal, his left hand actually doing some damage as he saw cracks emerge many blows later. This further motivated him as his blows got faster, both fists now bloody as the skin had been torn off by this unusual crystal. His persistence began to pay off as the cracks spread, morphing into critical cracks. It was in the last seconds of the battering that a thought came up, how he remembered being surprised at being rewarded for the destruction of the Goblins' teleporter after a light nap. He had later asked the group about it and it turned out the "teleporter" was actually a crystal. Despite the pain he was in, his lips spread to grin as he realised the full effect of what he was about to do. This was worth maybe a quarter of the debt they had towards to him. *THHHHHHRT* The crystal shattered, shards flying everywhere as crystal grains filled the air. You have destroyed the teleporter of the Invader Species: Zelts. Kill remaining spawned Zelts to increase your contribution and be alive in an hour to receive your reward, which will be determined by your contribution. Contribution can be stolen. A dead Contributor's points will be passed over to the killer. Stanis rigidly grimaced. He wanted to smile at being right and getting one back at the Zelts, but the shards of crystals embedded in his flesh disabled from doing so. Bah, not like he was unused to the sensation anyway. He picked all the shards out, before lightly healing the wounds so they closed. After a quick search around the massive cavern, Stanis decided there was nothing left and used close to half his remaining mana in a Scout and sense. It was to his joy that there was a tunnel going up just on the other side of this cavern. Soon he was off on his way, his emotions strong but mixed about all that had happened here. **** Rak's heart was pounding tears as he heard the notification. Ryr had set up multiple boundaries around the camp, all of which would release a different signal when triggered. Rak had been beyond confused when he had heard the inner-most boundary trigger, after all the outer ones were still fine. Was it a malfunction or…? Despite being sceptical, he had still decided to rush back to the main cavern. It was as he was bolting down the multiple short-cuts put in place that he remembered about the Human who had ties to the dark race, Zelaro. But then he had put off that thought, he remembered seeing the Human: hopeless and weak. Besides the torture Ryr had committed on him should have broken his mind, how could that Human now go against any Zelts? But the more he thought about it, the worse his worries became. It was just a tier-one after all, they might not have any tier-twos to spare but he shouldn't have trusted that fucking guard when he said he wanted to leave the defence front-line. He should have at least sent another or even a group of tier-ones with that guard, but he had been blinded by his euphoric thoughts of the future. Rak hoped, but his hopes weren't enough as the System declared the teleporter destroyed, all of them now stranded on this wretched planet. The worst fact wasn't even that the teleporter had been destroyed, but rather the fact that it was by some FUCKING WEAKLING HUMAN. His feet moved faster than light, his body burning blood, zipping through the tunnels within seconds. He would be on that Human within minutes, and he would fucking tear. him. up…

Stanis looked through the arsenal of weapons, taking out what he thought could be useful. Beside him were a pile of weapons and armour that he had already picked out. Within that pile lay a few leather pieces: a cuirass, a pair of tough gloves and a pair of shin-pads. In all honesty, only the cuirass, which was a chest-piece and back-piece fastened together would really provide any protection, and even that was limited due to how worn and tattered the cuirass was. As for weapons, he had already found a few swords, knives, hammers and axes fit for use.  After a short while, Stanis ended his rummage through the arsenal after he found a fairly decent spear. Now all he had to do was decide what to actually equip himself with. After a bit of thought and with slight regret, Stanis decided to not use the spear nor swords. Both of them, despite looking simple, took some measure of skill to wield effectively: something he couldn’t learn in the short time he had. Neither could he use the hammer- it was a simple weapon to wield but far too heavy for prolonged use. The carnage that currently lay around him gave him a pretty good idea of how the entity played, and that sure wasn't fair or easy. Thus this left him with the choice between the knives or the axes, both easy and light to use.  In the end, Stanis chose the axe; the knives might be easy to utilise but their length was far too short, he would be better off with a sword than a knife due to the extra length it had. Furthermore, he had never practised knife throwing and knew it would only cause him more harm than good if he tried to throw knives in the fight. So Stanis finally had to choose between the axes. There were three good ones out of the whole selection, two of them were short while the last had the length of an arm. After having a few swings, he knew that the long axe was out of the question as it too needed decent skill to use. He also didn't know what he was to be facing next, and so wanted to give himself as much of an edge as he could.  With just a few seconds to spare, Stanis fully equipped himself with both axes and the leather armours. He tried to calm himself down in the last few seconds but ultimately failed due to thoughts of what he had done in the past hour continuously popping up. In the end he felt his own fuse blow: who would see what he had done, and even then, who would care? If what the entity said was true, the world was facing an apocalypse. Casting morals aside and hardening up would be the norm in such a situation! In fact, it was those who couldn't do such a thing and stayed true to their morals who had died so far, not him. With a fresh mind-set, Stanis tensed himself as he awaited the entity's proclamation.  The five minutes are up. Prepare yourself to fight! Stanis felt a sting across his whole body as he reopened his eyes. The dead corpses were no longer in front of him, instead, he had been transported somewhere else. He could no longer see the blank space with the invisible floor and ceiling, rather, he was on solid, dry ground encompassed under a light-blue sky.  In front of you is a Monster. Kill it, and earn a reward. Fail this, and you will be killed! Stanis refocused himself as he now looked at his adversary. It was a Chimpanzee… Well, it was the same as always, it was a chimpanzee but it was also different from a normal one.  For one, this Chimpanzee had longer arms than the usual already long-armed Chimpanzee. Secondly, it seemed to be significantly taller, reaching Stanis's eyes at full height. However, the biggest difference was the Chimpanzee's face. It was eerily human-like: an aged, wrinkled face with a large-smile across its lips, giving the whole animal a magnanimous feeling. And then the Chimpanzee began frantically looking for something; Stanis was certain the entity was currently talking to the confused Chimpanzee. Within ten seconds, the kind looking face contorted into one of the devil’s. You could see froth drip out of its clenched teeth while the squinted eyes maliciously glared at Stanis. There was no doubt that the entity had said something to the Chimpanzee, and there was also no doubt that it wasn't something very nice…  Giving him no time to act, the Chimpanzee began charging at Stanis. There was only a ten-metre gap between them to begin with, and so the Chimpanzee was in his face before he even had the chance to properly react. In shock, Stanis had no time to think, but his body certainly didn't want the Chimpanzee near. And so without any thought, he had already lobbed one of the axes into the ape's face.  Knowing that it would have to take one in order to deal one, the Chimpanzee used its arm to protect its face as it ran onwards.  *thump*  The blade bit hard, but the Chimpanzee shadowed the pain with anger as it leapt onto Stanis, causing both of them to crash into the ground. It then proceeded to bang out several punches and jabs into Stanis's face. It was his luck that he had subconsciously placed his forearms over his head in defence as he had fallen since he quickly felt numerous shots of pain across them.  Knowing that he would always be on the bottom if he let the Chimpanzee be, Stanis shot his knee up from the floor to whack the ape across its butt. It threw the Chimpanzee well off balance as it stumbled over Stanis and onto the rough ground, it was then that it felt a pull on its leg as Stanis strained himself to half-throw the Chimpanzee into the air. Stanis barely had enough time to pick up his second axe, which he had dropped, from the floor before the Chimpanzee stood back up. This time it didn't rush Stanis and instead just stared him off, its muscles fully tense as it waited. This time Stanis took the initiative as he ran at the ape, who ran back at him in response. Both of them clashed in the middles, although the Chimpanzee had the advantage as it had lowered its body in order to dodge Stanis's grasp, which also meant that it got to tackle him. But with all good also comes bad, and in this case it came with Stanis's face as he smashed his axe into the Chimpanzee's head, all despite being breathless. Perhaps you can ignore the pain in a fight due to the adrenaline coursing through your veins, but you certainly couldn't do the same when something sliced into your brain. Instead, the Chimpanzee instantly lost all its energy as it dropped onto the ground, violently convulsing in agony. Despite the Chimpanzee being almost dead, Stanis couldn't withdraw his fury whatsoever. He began brutally chopping the ape's neck until it snapped. Only then was he certain of his safety, only then was his anger fully sated… Unlike the previous few fights, this time Stanis didn't feel any regrets nor moral issues. Instead, he felt the blood racing through his veins, his heart pumping like crazy, his chest expanding and contracting frantically. He hurt so badly, and yet it felt so good. He felt powerful! He felt so powerful… Congratulations! You have passed your fourth trial! You have levelled up! Here is your Status: [Average for your species is …] Stanis Volkov Age: 18 years Level 4 (Progress to the next level is 3%) Unallocated Stat points: 2 Strength: 12 [11 ->12] Dexterity: 13 [11 -> 12] Constitution: 14[12] Intelligence: 12[11] Wisdom: 12[9] Tenacity: 14[13] Please allocate your skill points.   After taking a while to stabilise himself after the loss of his battle-high, Stanis began thinking about what he wanted to upgrade this time. During previous times, Stanis had upgraded the attribute he felt weak on, and yet he hadn't felt any effect. It was only now as he got the time to think that he realised that he had forgotten about the problems after upgrading the attributes. It seemed his previous judgement that the increase in points was just too low to have an instant effect was wrong: they did have an instant effect, just that it wasn't very noticeable due to the increase being so low. Now, which one did he want to upgrade this time? The first thought that came to mind was the fact how he had been completely taken off guard when the Chimpanzee had first charged him. He could have killed the ape with greater ease if he had just maintained his composure and dodged the ape's charge. He needed to be more agile, after all, maintaining composure would only come with experience. "Add both my points to Dexterity." Dexterity increased from 13 to 15. You are above your species' average of 12. Stanis could now feel that his body was finally completely out of fight or flight mode. The countless punches the Chimpanzee had landed were now created burning pains all across his forearms and chest. You have passed all your solo trials. As a reward, you are assigned 3 unallocated stat points. Use them wisely, even the smallest change can have a large effect. "Put two points into Dexterity and one into Strength." Those were the two attributes he felt like he had to work on right now. Dexterity is increased from 15 to 17. You are now well above your species' average of 12. Strength is increased from 12 to 13. You are around your species' average of 12. "Status". Stanis Volkov Age: 18 years Level 4 (Progress to the next level is 3%) Strength: 13 [12 -> 13] Dexterity: 17 [12] Constitution: 14[12 ->13] Intelligence: 12[11] Wisdom: 12[9] Tenacity: 14[13]   It looked like the other humans had also received such an award as the average for two attributes had increased within moments. A message from the host:" Well done humans, it is clear that you are quickly adapting to the reality of life. There are 3 billion of you remaining, all much stronger than you were when you had started without a doubt. You have completed all the solo trials in this tutorial. You have only two more trials to pass through before you can return to your planet. Do your best not to die!" You have one hour to prepare for your next trial. He could return? Wasn't he cursed into endless duels for the amusement of this sadistic entity? It sounded too good to be true, and yet Stanis felt himself believing it anyway. There had to be a deeper meaning behind all of this…

*Gasp* Stanis jolted awake, heart pounding like a stampede of animals as he continuously took in deep, rapid breaths, causing his chest to rise and fall many times. Many moments passed as he remained sitting on the floor, trying his best to calm himself down. Several more moments would pass before Stanis arose from the ground, only to find himself unable to move after standing up. He stared at what was in front of him: nothing, absolutely nothing. In shock he tilted his head up, only to once more see nothing, no sky whatsoever, and then down to only notice that there was nothing below him… So what was he standing on right now? His heart once again erupted into action, coursing blood filling up his veins as his pale skin began to heat up. He was going to plummet to death: he knew it and feared it. Unable to stand any longer, he fell onto the "floor", and stayed down for a few seconds, before he eventually realised that he wasn't falling. There was no floor, but there was some kind of invisible force holding him up. This realisation brought back courage to the young man as he struggled back to his feet, sweat rolling down his cheeks giving testament to his fear. It was then that he finally noticed the warmth surrounding his body, one familiar to him. He looked down to see that he wearing a thick pair of boots, which were snuggly wrapped around his dark, thermal trousers. Over his chest was a large Malitsa coat, one made out of reindeer skins with matching hood and gloves. It was a gift from his mother when he had last seen her: two years ago before she had passed away. Under his quite traditional coat were more modern garments, namely a maroon knitted jumper over a sleeved shirt. These garments which had once been welcoming warmth were now sweltering heat as he could feel the fur of his hood sticky with sweat. It was as he was about to tear his coat off that words appeared inside of his head. Welcome to the Tutorial A message from the host: "You have no way of going backwards. Staying still means death. You can only survive by moving forward. Remember this at all times, Humans. Your old lives are finished, they are nothing but dreams now. So do your best to adapt, it's what our species' speciality is." Think status to bring up your personal status. The first test will begin in 1 minute. Stanis dropped all his thoughts as he stood in shock at what had just happened. This had to be fake, and yet it had all the aspects of reality. Knowing there was only one way to find out, Stanis immediately thought Status within his mind. Stanis Volkov Age: 18 years Level: 1 Attributes: [Average for your species is currently…] Strength: Your explosive power and physical prowess 12[10] Dexterity: Your general athleticism alongside agility and coordination 13[9] Constitution: Your health, toughness and stamina reserve. 14[9] Intelligence: Your logical processing power 12[9] Wisdom: Ability to think outside normalcy and perception. 10[8] Tenacity: Your ability to go through pain and suffering. 12[11] All his attributes were well above average, meaning he was well above the average human. This meant he had a much better chance of passing the next test compared to the ordinary person. Knowing that he had a higher chance was the only comfort he found within this absurd situation. 1 minute is up. Prepare for the first test. In front of him, which had been just empty space, formed an animal. There was a thick pole of metal embedded deep into the ground, to which the animal was chained up. In essence, it looked exactly like a smaller version of a cow, so a calf. But there were a few minor differences, the first being the fact that this animal had large eyes, which heavily increased the effectiveness of its doe-eyed look as it frantically glanced around. The next was how you could see the veins protruding out from the animal on different parts of its body: this didn't take away from how cute the animal was, but it was still a curious feature. In front of you is a Monster. Kill it within 30 seconds, or be prepared to die yourself. The most effective area to stab will be lit up. It was then that Stanis noticed that within his tightly gripped fist was now a small, rough knife. The blade was straight and sharp, giving the whole knife a dangerous feel. On the calf, its throat was shining red. It was obvious as to what the entity in his mind wanted him to do… As if to add to the pressure, he could hear the ticking of time within his mind. The same way the tutorial communicated to him through feelings instead of words, he could feel a 30-second clock ticking down every second he stood there. Tick Tick Tick Tick He continued to stand there. This was just a bad dream, or maybe a test from God to find out his true morality. He would stand here until the time ran out, in order to prove that he was a good man. But it seemed that God didn't want that proof because as the time continued to tick, he came to the 20-second point when an image was sent straight into his mind: within it he could see a person standing still, refusing to kill the calf. And then their body began to get compressed by an invisible force, as if something was crushing them. He could hear the ghastly screams, in fact, that was all that filled his mind as he watched it. A few moments later, the person was a clump of disgusting meat on the ground. 5 ticks had passed in real life, leaving Stanis with 15 seconds remaining. Then the image repeated in his head, only this time it wasn't a random person. Rather it was him… The figure had his prominent cheekbones that you could see despite the chubby cheeks. His jaw wasn't the strongest and his nose was quite flat and unnoticeable until the end where it lightly budged out. His eyes were folded, giving the look of slanted eyes. He also had a yellowish tan to his whole face, although not one which could block the rosiness of his cheeks blushing to the world. The hair was cut short and dark brown, just the way he liked it. In his mind, he could see himself crying and cursing as his bones began to break under pressure until a few seconds later, he too was alike the first figure in his mind: just a lump of disgusting meat. 5 more ticks had passed. His conscious mind resisted, but his subconscious could no longer. His body began to move without his orders, sprinting towards the calf which jumped back startled. The calf struggled away from him, although all that did was further grate the chain against its neck. Stanis could see the bright red light coming from its throat, which was where he was supposed to stab. And his body followed with no thought, piercing the knife into calf's neck. The blade only went halfway through, allowing the calf to scream in pain as it looked at Stanis with frightened, desperate eyes. Stanis could feel his mind breaking down as he once more stabbed the animal, this time into the protruding vein that went across its neck. It gave an agonisingly long shriek before collapsing onto the floor. Blood splattered all over Stanis, staining his lightly-coloured fur-coat crimson red. Finally taking back control from his fearful subconscious, he felt an even worse fear as the shock finally hit him. He jerked his body away from the fountain of blood, only to find it shooting into his mouth as he moved his body. He could taste the deep, iron taste of the blood; it was the final blow to his mental capacity as he fell to his knees, before heaving out yesterday's dinner. Well done. You have passed the first test, with 4 seconds to spare. Here is your status: Changes are shown with arrows. [Average for your species is…]. Stanis Volkov Age: 18 years Level 1 (Progress to next level is 50%) Strength: 12 [10 -> 11] Dexterity: 13 [9 -> 11] Constitution: 14[9 -> 11] Intelligence: 12[9 -> 10] Wisdom: 10[8] Tenacity: 12[11 -> 13]   Prepare for the next test which will commence in 1 minute. Here is a comment from the host: "Pitiful Humans. Clearly we are not cut from the same cloth! You have gone from a population of 7.6 billion to 3.5 billion… Remember that each task you fail is another life gone."

Chapter 42: Testing The Limits “After some discussion, we’ve decided…” I hold my hand up for a handshake. “Welcome to the party, Heather.” Heather smiles and shakes my hand, the tension bleeding out of her. “Thank you. You won’t regret it.” I smile in return. I don’t know if I’ve seen her smile before. It might be a sign that she’s starting to heal. “Don’t worry about it.” “So…” She asks tentatively, “What sort of jobs will I need to do around the camp?” “Only what you’re comfortable with.” I reply. “Everyone here appreciates the difficulty of what you’ve gone through. If you don’t feel that you’re able to help just yet, then that’s okay. Which reminds me – how are you doing right now?” Her smile grows pained, and I fear that I’ve said the wrong thing. “I… It just hurts. I can’t stop thinking about everything we did together as children, how good all those times were, but even those memories hurt because of how much he changed, what he did. Sometimes I feel like I can’t trust men ever again, but then I remember my father, and you, and I know not everyone is like that, but… It’s still so hard to trust people.” “It takes time to heal. You’ll get through this eventually, don’t worry.” I reassure her. “In the meantime, don’t feel obliged to do things. Whenever you’re ready.” Heather shakes her head. “No, I think I need to help. To be doing things. I can’t just sit and cry to myself every day.” “Well, if you want to help out, there’s always something that needs doing. But that can wait for tomorrow.” I say. “It’s too late for talk about this.” “Hunting is a constant need, of course. We always need fresh meat.” I explain. “Any greens you might find, wild vegetables, herbs, edible plants and the like, those are good as well. And if the stockpile happens to be getting low, you can always collect some branches and the like for the fire. Well, outside of camp it’s best to move in a group, unless you aren’t going far.” “Inside of camp, there’s cooking, watch – speaking of which, we’ll have to build a ramp up to the watchtower or something. You can’t climb ladders, right? – weapon and armour maintenance, although we mostly take care of our own weapons, and the twins take care of minor armour repairs.” I continue. “Our clothing need repairs every now and again, too, and if I’m perfectly honest, none of us are great at that. Then there are general heavy lifting jobs: construction, lugging around logs, chopping down trees, that sort of thing.” “Outside of those, you can train or relax however you like.” I finish. “What sort of things are you good at out of those?” “Well, I think I still remember which plants you can eat from what my father taught me when I was younger… And I think I might enjoy finally being able to go out and hunt. I’m alright at sewing, it was… one of the things the tribe thought ‘suitable’ for a woman.” Heather grimaces. “I can carry a lot, centaurs are quite strong.” I nod in understanding. “Should be good having another helping hand around camp. Especially when one of mine is injured.” With my arm as it is, I spend a lot of time in camp. Some of it I spend keeping watch, twice as often as usual, trying to be of some use while I recuperate. I walk around the perimeter of camp a few times a day, not wanting my body to stagnate, but also not wanting to overtax it while my body heals. Other times I just spend sitting and relaxing, watching as the others begin constructing a building for Heather or thinking to myself. The rest of the time I spend practicing magic. It occurs to me with recent events that my control over magic is quite adequate. For now, at least, I don’t need to spend too much time on it. Rather, I’m more interested in finding my limits. How much I can compress earth mana, how hot a fire I can make, how far I can send mana before I lose control. Reaching out with my unbroken left arm, I release a huge cloud of earth mana, easily as large as our little cabin, and start compressing it. From a cloud the size of the cabin to a ball of earth the height of a person, to a ball of stone the size of a basketball, to a ball of hard rock the size of a volleyball… Three quarters the size of a volleyball… Half… At just over a quarter the size of a volleyball, I’m struggling heavily to increase the current density, so I gradually ease it back up to just under half the size of a volleyball, where I feel it isn’t much of a strain to reach the density. So, this is my practical limit. If I really try, I can probably compact it even smaller than I did just before… But then I would run the risk of it slipping from my control and, perhaps, violently shattering. Explosive shattering… If I could control that, or rather, just ensure that it goes in one direction, that could be a deadly weapon. Another time, maybe. I would want a wall in between me and it when I test that. Or maybe a boulder. That train of thought filed away for now, my attention is drawn back to the sphere of stone resting in my hand. It’s much heavier than it appears, feeling as if I’m holding a small boulder in my hand rather than something a few sizes up from a baseball. I manipulate its form, changing its shape into that of a sword. As it turns out, I have too much material to work with, so I have to split off a fair amount to maintain the balance of the weapon. It trembles ever so slightly in my hand as I shape it, the combined effort of molding the shape while ensuring the density doesn’t decrease pushing the task back towards the limits of my concentration… But only just. Sharpening the edge with a thought, I look around for something to test it on. I find a stick and use the sword to shave pieces off with relative ease, albeit awkwardly due to the size of the weapon - this is not what swords were designed for. The blade isn’t dulled at all. When I swing the blade at a log, it leaves a deep notch. But when I swing it at a boulder, the blade snaps, sending a few shards flying. Too brittle to use as a sword, I guess. Just too much force on too thin an area. I doubt I’ll be able to use this as an actual weapon, but maybe if I make it thicker I could use it as a shield. Then again, I probably can’t do that. It uses way too much mana. A shield at that level of compression would probably take my entire mana pool. But maybe if I’m disarmed I could use it as a temporary weapon, or perhaps as a small hardened plate to precisely block a ranged attack. I reckon if I had a plate like that in between me and that magus’ spell, it wouldn’t have broken my arm. Course, there’s still the matter of creating it and getting it in place before the projectile hits - no simple matter - but it’s a possibility. Another thing I could do is encase the head of my hammer with it. If I did that, the weight of the hammerhead would increase drastically. It would become very, very difficult to wield as I normally would, but at the same time, each landed hit would become much more powerful. If I time it well, that could be a deciding blow. It would also allow me to change the striking surface of my hammer as needed: flat, round, bladed, spiked… There would also be the added bonus of reducing damage to the hammerhead itself. I’ll have to test that out, too, when I can actually swing my hammer again. Figuring that I’m done with testing for now, I relinquish my control over the earth mana. Intruigingly, the broken weapon doesn’t dissipate as fast as I am used to - while at a clearly visible rate, it is considerably slower than the near-instantaneous disappearance that I’ve seen before. It seems that this speed might just decrease depending on how concentrated the mana is. I can’t really think of any way this effect might help me, but maybe in the future. Now I have to wait until my mana replenishes before I do any more testing. Fire mana is different from earth mana. Notably, it isn’t solid. You can’t coalesce fire mana to form an object. You can form a shape, maybe, but not a physical object that you can interact with. Secondly, fire mana is much more short-lived than earth mana. Fire mana is literally burning itself to produce the heat it gives off. Theoretically, so long as you kept concentration, you could keep earth mana in one place forever. Fire mana will be gone long before then, burnt out. Of course, that isn’t to say creating a compressed area of fire mana is of no effect. With the same amount of mana, a less dense ‘cloud’ of fire mana would produce relatively low heat over a large area. A more dense ‘ball’ of fire mana will produce relatively high heat over a small area. There are other factors to take into account, as well. You can control the burn duration of fire mana. You can make a fire that burns low and slow, or a fire that burns quick and hot. The faster you burn it, the hotter it’ll be. Does that mean you could create an infinitely hot fire by burning through fire mana instantly? I don’t think that’s how it works. And even if it was, it’s not that simple. Just like compressing mana, changing the burn rate of fire mana takes concentration. And that goes either way. There’s like a default middling burn rate, and increasing or decreasing that gets progressively more difficult the further away from that default you go. Anyway, the result of this is that if you want to maintain a high temperature fire, you’ll either have to have to produce a dense area of slow burning fire mana or constantly provide mana to an area of fast burning fire mana. Either way is going to take a lot of mana. But for combat what I generally want is a short burst of extremely high-temperature fire. It’s easy enough to create something similar to a fireball, just make an area of slow burning fire mana, move it towards your enemy - since fire mana has nowhere near the same weight as earth mana, this is much lighter on mana consumption - then make it burn very quickly once it reaches them. At shorter range, it’s also simple to just spew a jet of fast burning fire mana it them. So how hot a fire can I make? I suppose it depends how much mana I’m willing to use at once. I pick up a thin stick and, with a bit of fire mana, cause it to catch fire. Not too difficult. Then I become slightly stumped. I’m not sure what temperatures different materials burn at, and what I might move on to from wood to test how hot the fire is. So I figure, what the heck, and fetch a knife from the storage cabin. It’s one of the ones from that group of dwarves. Knives don’t take up much space or weigh much, so we brought quite a few of them back, almost a dozen. Never know when you might need a knife. They’re steel, although I wouldn’t have a clue as to the quality or carbon content. Leaving the cabin, I set a magical fire under the blade. I go with the tactic of compressing lots of fire mana into the area at a slightly quicker than average burn rate, if only because I’m more used to compressing mana. The knife quickly gains a dull red glow which increases in intensity over the next few seconds, shifting to an orange glow, then yellow, until it brightens to an almost white shine. I tilt the blade slightly downwards, and a glowing droplet falls from the tip of the blade, sizzling as it hits the grass. More drops quickly fall, with increased size and frequency until finally, I stop fuelling the fire with more mana. The knife cools, or at least, what’s left of it does. There’s not much there anymore. Stamping at the few flickering flames on the ground before me to put them out, I consider what I’d done. I melted steel. That’s a considerably hot flame. I check how far I can send mana before I lose control with a small ball of pure mana, just moving away from me from where I am in the watchtower. It’s hard to get an accurate grasp on distance, especially when I can hardly see the mana when it gets far enough. I figure it goes maybe a few hundred meters before I lose control and it dissipates, though. What does all this tell me? Well, it seems that my magic is a lot more powerful than I thought. Again. At about this point, Xiltroth climbs up the ladder. “Time to switch. How’s the arm?” “Not bad.” I reply, shrugging. “It’s only really annoying when I forget it’s broken and try to use it for a moment.” Xiltroth nods lightly. “Noticed you practicing magic. Anything new?” “Hard to tell exactly until my arm heals up, but I’ve been testing the limits of my magic.” I reply. “Some surprises. I managed to melt the blade of a dagger.” Xiltroth’s eyebrows raise in surprise. “That’s… A little frightening, really. Wish I could do something like that.” “You know, I wonder about that sometimes.” I muse, frowning. “I mean, you hear stories about warriors that fought on equal terms with magi, long ago. People who could catch arrows and shatter walls.” “It sounds nice, but they’re just stories.” Xiltroth shrugs. “People born with the ability to control elemental mana are just naturally more powerful, that’s all there is to it.” Scratching my head, I say, “I would think the same, but… I saw a man once. He moved like lightning, no magic involved. And I can’t help but think to myself, even if I trained the rest of my life, could I do that? I don’t think I could.” Xiltroth nods pensively. “We’re strong, Xiltroth. Stronger than most people. And you’re fast on your feet, when you need to be. Do you reckon you could outrun an arrow?” I ask. “Of course not. I’m fast, but that’s ridiculous.” Xiltroth replies. “How about after another ten years of training? Twenty?” I ask again. “I doubt it.” He shrugs again. I nod. “The man I saw moved at least that fast, probably faster. We train hard, and I would say all of us are talented. But we still can’t do what he did. There has to be some method, some technique that he knows that we don’t. Something that used to be commonplace, but isn’t anymore.” “If you put it like that, it sounds plausible.” Xiltroth muses. “But why do you think it used to be commonplace?” I look to the sky, thinking. “If I had to name a particular reason…” I say slowly. “It would probably be Tuig, that insanely fast plant-thing. It mentioned that people had become boring in the last millennia. From its personality and ability, I doubt it was stuck in the valley all that time. It probably went all around the place, looking for people to race. I would think it odder if nobody raced it, what with the temptation of immortality. If it was racing just as much as it used to, then the only reason for it thinking people had become boring is that people couldn’t go as fast as they used to.” “That does make some sense.” Xiltroth nods. “I wonder… The gnome town has records from that long ago. Maybe they would have something about that technique?” “Could do.” I agree, nodding slightly. “Wouldn’t hurt to check next time we head that way.” We stand in silence for a while, leaning on the railing as we look into the distance. Normally, I would head down, but I don’t really have anything better to do. “I just remembered.” I exclaim, furrowing my brows. “While I was talking with Ren, he mentioned something about orc tribes to the south-east.” “That’s roughly where we are.” Xiltroth says, frowning. “You’re saying there could be orcs living not too far away? We’ll need to look into that.” “Definitely.” I agree, turning and walking to the opposite side of the watchtower, squinting into the distance as if it might help me see something that none of us had noticed since we got here. It doesn’t. “Their information on the outside world is nearly three centuries old, but large groups of people don’t move unless there’s a solid reason to. There’s a fair chance that they’re still there, wherever there is.” “Heather might know. Her tribe roamed, didn’t they?” Xiltroth notes. “She might.” I blink in surprise. “Suppose I’ll ask. Well, nice talking to you.” I climb down the ladder and go looking for her. She’s about where I expected her to be, practicing archery. Waiting until she has finished firing and is returning from collecting her arrows, I approach. “How’s it going?” I ask. “Slower than I would like.” She shakes her head. “When I was young, I could hit animals as they ran, most of the time. Now, I have difficulty hitting the same spot on a mound of dirt. It’s frustrating.” “You’ve done it before, you can do it again. It’s just a matter of practicing until you can shake the rust off.” I reply optimistically. “I hadn’t expected that it would take so long, is all.” Heather sighs. “But enough of that, did you need me for something?” “I was wondering if, in your travels, you had ever come across an orc tribe anywhere near here.” I ask. “Tribe? It’s more a city, about a day’s travel east across the river.” Heather replies curiously. “Why, are we planning on heading there?” “We could be, at some point. Probably only after my arm’s healed, though.” I say pensively. “What’s this orc city like?” “Friendly, for the most part. In my father’s time, we used to trade there if we were lacking in food or other supplies.” Heather replies, thinking. “From what I can remember, they were rowdy, but not too aggressive. And very proud of their city. I think the… Last chief… Of our tribe didn’t like being around an army stronger than his. He always said we don’t need more supplies, but looking back, he was lying.” “That’s good to know. When Ren said there were orc tribes near here, I was worried that we’d have to worry about raiding parties or something.” I sigh in relief. “Why would Ren think it was a tribe?” Heather asks. I raise my eyebrows in surprise. “Right, sorry, I forgot you aren’t familiar with the gnome town. All the passages into that valley were blocked until just not too long ago, when we opened one by accident. Before that it had been… I think it was somewhere around two hundred and fifty years ago that they last had contact with the outside world.” “Ah, that makes more sense.” Heather nods. I exhale slowly. “So much happening lately. Think I might just head to bed. Thanks for easing my worries about the orcs.” Heather nods, turning back towards the dirt mound and drawing an arrow. I’ve been thinking recently about creation. I’ll probably do it at some point, creating a new world, whether out of curiosity or boredom. But as its god, how would I interact with this world? To be a god is to see all, know all. So long as my people have the ability to choose, there will inevitably be people who choose poorly. People who choose to harm others, themselves, the world, for endless reasons and with endless methods. Should I punish every one of these harmful choices? But then, would it not be as if they had no choice in the first place? That is, if the punishment is too harsh – say, death. But again, if the punishment was too light, then people would just ignore it. And wouldn’t that be unfair, if someone who made a poor but not too harmful choice was punished similarly to someone who made a terrible choice? Then, what of punishments relative in harshness to the severity of the harmful choice? It could work, I suppose. I would have to work out the punishment for every single crime, or in more basic terms, a detailed set of laws. That would take time, but I have plenty of that. Then again, the circumstances around every ‘crime’ would be different, and even the same crimes might warrant different punishments. I would have to judge each crime individually, and if I’m doing that, it may as well be my full-time job until the world is destroyed. And in the end, I’m not perfect. My judgements could be flawed, inaccurate, and my punishments unjustified. If I were to create or delegate from amongst the people judges to do the work for me, well, that sounds like less effective work with extra steps. Looking at it from the opposite end, what if I were to do nothing, and let the people do as they pleased? Many people would argue that having the ability to prevent a crime and not doing so makes you partially liable for the crime yourself. By that argument, I would be liable for the collective crimes of the entire peoples I created. Other people would argue that restricting a person’s ability to choose freely is a crime. Apply both those arguments and I may as well be the devil himself, whatever I do. Huh. And if I saved people from every trouble they fell into, they would become completely reliant on me. Not too bad in and of itself, but it would then mean people will expect me to save them and they won’t be careful or learn skills they should and then I’ll need to help them more… It all just sounds like a humongous pain in the neck. Honestly, doing nothing sounds like the best option.

The belief that one race is superior to another, or even all others is, unfortunately, one of the most common forms of idiocy that plagues this world. Those who adhere to this belief suffer from a sort of extreme tunnel vision, thinking that the aspects of their race that stand out (the craftsmanship of the dwarves or the magical prowess of the humans, for example) prove their superiority when in fact every race has similar outstanding qualities. And even if an individual does not believe in their racial superiority, odds are they will have some sort of racial pride. For instance, if a demon were to hear of a foreign master of traps and mechanisms, they would likely scoff and think of them as an amateur, even if they say nothing. I would say that this pride has been a major cause of many historical wars, as well as one of the reasons the five kingdoms have never been able to fully cooperate. -An unknown scholar “First things first, we should at least try asking at the guard house to see if we can find anything there.” I say, shoving down the suffocating worry that rears its ugly head at the mere thought of a friend’s death. “Already tried. No such luck.” Jakin says with a pained expression. Various thoughts flash through my mind, a tinge of panic edging them. I make my decision, and my turbulent thoughts calm as panic changes to determination. “We should go back to the inn, for now.” They nod, and I lead them to the inn I had booked rooms in. Waving to the innkeeper, we head up the stairs and fishing out a key, I unlock one of the doors and head inside. Beckoning the others inside, I sit down on the bed. The room is far better than the one I had in Ginerbe city, with clean sheets on the bed and a candle on the middle of the sturdy table. Jakin and Boaz turn the chairs to face me and sit on them, looking seriously at me. “I don’t think there be anything we can do this time.” Sighs Jakin. “Not inside the law, no.” I admit, taking a deep breath. “But if the law says my friend dies for no reason, then the law can go to hell.” I growl. “You want to…” starts Boaz in shock. I nod in affirmation. “I’ll understand if you don’t want to. This is your home country, after all. But I’ll ask all the same.” I look them straight in the eyes. “Will you become outlaws with me?” Their eyes widen slightly. “Aaron.” Jakin speaks slowly and seriously. “We used to be military.” My heart sinks. “And dwarven soldiers never leave a man behind.” He grins fiercely as Boaz nods seriously beside him. “Alright then,” I smile, “let’s plan a prison break.” We walk up to the guardhouse, bold as brass. It’s night, so there are no people on the streets apart from the odd guard patrol, which are simple enough to avoid. There are guards on the wall at all hours, of course, but they are mostly focused outwards, so we are in the clear – for now. I grab the handle and pull slightly, then try pushing. Locked, as we presumed it would be. A soft glow from my hand suffuses the area around us with a bright yellow-white light as I convert pure mana to lava mana, forming and compressing it into a thin blade. Slipping the molten knife into the crack between the door and door frame, I work it slowly down, the heat melting through whatever lock they had securing the door. I push lightly on the door and it swings open, revealing an empty room behind it. The lava dagger I keep in my hand: I might need it later. There’s no commotion on the walls - so far, so good. We file through the entrance and start looking through the building for the stairs. As we move into another room, a dwarf looks up from his drink and, eyes widening in surprise, starts to open his mouth. All that comes out is a pained grunt as my fist ploughs into his stomach, winding him. I grab him round the neck and pull, attempting to knock him out the only way I know how – that doesn’t involve bludgeoning. I don’t have any experience doing things like this, so I let go as soon as he stops struggling – only to have him splutter and start struggling again. Again putting the pressure on, this time I wait for a few seconds after he stops moving. Just as I’m letting go, he starts to convulse, arms twisting and stiffening unnaturally. A spurt of vomit ejects from his mouth; but despite all this he breathes not a single puff of air, and he stops moving entirely a short time later as I look on in horror. “…That wasn’t supposed to happen.” I breathe. “It’s done now, and I never expected to get through this without killing in the first place.” Says Jakin quietly. Grimacing, I nod, and we move on. Sure, expecting to get through a prison break without killing someone would be more of a fantasy than this world, but not like this. We find the steps up first. Ignoring them, we move on and find the stairs down in short order. Descending them, we enter the prison. Immediately on our left is a locked door, which should be where the confiscated weapons and such are kept, according to the twins. My molten knife makes a repeat performance, and I open the door to reveal a room that looks very similar to an armoury. Quite a few of the weapons look expensive, but we aren’t here for them. …Besides, they’d just weigh us down, an issue that’s already too prominent for me, what with my full iron armour, warhammer, mace, dagger and pack. After a short moment rooting around, we manage to find Xiltroth’s pack and weapons. Boaz gathers them up, and we exit the room, moving along the rows of cells in search of the familiar demonic face. Various heads turn as we pass, one of them even going so far as to clutch at the bars and beg us to let him out. …Not to be rude, but they would probably kill you if they caught you escaping. Which is what will happen to us if we’re not careful. We find Xiltroth in the last cell, chained to the wall by both ankles and hands. He looks up as we approach, the shock on his face clearly visible by the glow of my knife. After melting the cell door’s lock into a misshapen lump, I swing it open to his considerable surprise. “Since when were you able to use lava mana?” he asks. “Everyone has their secrets,” I state, concentrating on keeping him unharmed as I cut through the manacles. “Mine just happen to be deadly.” Rubbing his wrists, Xiltroth stands up unsteadily. “Legs are numb. Ow. Ow.” He winces, as Boaz hands him his gear. I let the knife dissipate; I shouldn’t be needing it from now on. “Alright, now we need to get out of here. Something is undoubtedly going to go wrong, so keep an eye out.” Quickly fetching the longer mithril dagger from my pack, I hand it over to Xiltroth. “Thought you might need a sharp weapon.” He nods in thanks, and we focus on getting out of here. Moving as fast as Xiltroth’s recuperating legs allow us, we retrace our steps back through the prison and up the stairs. As we pass the front door, it opens. The eyes of the dwarves behind it widen and their expressions harden instantly, reaching for their weapons. Reacting almost as fast, I whip out my mace and slam it towards the dwarf in the doorway. With a screech of metal it hits his shield, the dwarf behind it completely protected from my view. Releasing a wisp more mana into my system than usual, I shift my posture and kick the shield, releasing an even louder sound. The dwarf is pushed back slightly. I grab the edges of his shield with both hands, muscles straining as I keep him locked in place. “Keep going, I’ll catch up soon.” I say without turning my head, as the dwarf shouts out, “Intruders in the guardhouse!” Behind me I hear heavy footsteps moving away and up the stairs. Narrowing my eyes, I grip harder and start to twist the shield. Realising what I’m trying to do, the dwarf headbutts my hand… the one with the gauntlet. He himself is wearing a helmet, so the only result is a clanging sound and a lapse of concentration on his part, allowing me to wrench the shield out of his hands. I bash him with it, sending him stumbling back into his friends. Closing the door, I use a small blob of lava magic to fuse the broken lock to the doorframe, locking them out. That done, I quickly move through the building and dash up the stairs, climbing staircase after staircase as I move up the levels. Xiltroth is tying a rope around one of the crenellations with another already tied and ready to go, while the twins are struggling to fend off the guards in both directions. …I feel tall here. All these dwarves, even the crenellations are smaller than usual. I can see over the heads of Jakin and Boaz to the faces of the dwarves in front of them. The wall itself isn’t wide, only large enough to hold two dwarves standing abreast – excellent for allowing a few defenders to hold of a superior quantity of enemies – which means that Jakin and Boaz are facing two opponents each. With a gesture I send a burst of fire over the head of Jakin and down onto his opponents. Turning around, I repeat the act, leaving the dwarven guards on both sides retreating and patting frantically at smouldering beards. Xiltroth finishes his knot and tugs at the rope, testing it. It shows no signs of unravelling, so he grabs the rope and jumps over the side. I move alongside Boaz. “You go first, I should be able to hold them off better with fire magic.” Boaz nods and takes the other rope. The dwarven guards in front of me are hesitating to attack. “Perhaps he be out of mana?” One ventures. They grit their teeth and charge towards me, shields tilted upwards to deal with my height. …Sorry guys, but I still have plenty fuel in the tank. As the dwarves retreat again, their supply of facial hair rapidly dwindling, I hear a resounding crash coming from downstairs. The dwarves outside must have broken down the door! “I’m down!” I hear Xiltroth shouting from far below us. “You go! I got this!” I shout over my shoulder as I release yet another spout of flames. Jakin nods and jumps off the wall, rope in hand. Turning, I release a blast at the dwarves over there. I hear feet pounding up the stairs beside me, so I toss his shield down at him and flame the wall guards again without waiting for the result. Curses and the sound of people falling back down the stairs sound out, and I smile unintentionally. “Rope’s free!” Boaz bellows from below. Sending an even larger gush of flame first one way then another, sending the dwarves on both sides scurrying back – It really can be annoying for a magus, not having both hands available – I grab the free rope and jump over the edge. It creaks dangerously as it takes my weight, and I begin to slide down the rope at a speed that makes me very glad that I’m not doing this bare-handed. After a few seconds I feel a tug on the rope, and it goes limp in my hands. I begin to plummet. Parallel to me, the other rope starts to fall as well, no doubt cut by the dwarves on the wall. I am still at a height that will easily mean death, so I begin to panic internally. My mind presents me a possible solution, and I begin to enact it immediately, despite never having tried anything like it before. Pointing my non-gauntleted palm below me, I start channelling copious quantities of mana, converting it into earth and attempting to use it to lift myself up. It works for a second, but then I feel the mana below me rapidly disappearing. Pumping out more mana, I make it descend. That slows down the rate at which I’m using mana somewhat, but it’s still a frightening rate. When one moves mana, some of it burns up to provide the energy for that movement. The more mana you want moved, and the faster, the more mana is consumed. Usually, this mana decay is only visible if you are moving very large quantities of mana, or are moving mana very fast. In my case, however, I have the added weight of me, my armour, my weapons and my pack that I am trying to lift, which makes the consumption much greater. After some ten, twelve meters making a still uncomfortably fast descent, I realise that if I keep draining my mana at this rate, I will drain it all and probably fall unconscious – which will be deadly in the current situation, there still being a significant height to fall. If only I could somehow hold onto the wall and climb down… ol’ spidey has it easy. My hand goes to my brand spanking new mithril knife, and I sigh. As the last vestiges of mana below me dissipate, I plunge it into the wall at an angle with all my strength, the blade biting a scant few centimetres into the hard stone. I hang by one arm from the small hilt, perhaps only half-way down the wall. Teeth grinding with effort, veins pulsing equal amounts blood and mana, I wrench myself upwards, slipping the knife free from its rocky sheath in the same motion. Again I fall. Again I slam the knife back into the wall, my shoulder wrenching painfully and my fingers threatening to loosen their grip. I look up. The mark from my last position is only an arm’s length above my current one. A rock whizzes past me. Another scrapes along my armour, and a third bounces off my shoulder. Pulling myself up again, I repeat the action, creating a third mark on the wall. Then a fourth and fifth, speeding up as I start to become familiar with the motion. A sixth. Eighth, tenth. My arm burns, and my hand screams bloody murder. Rocks continue to pelt down at me, seeming to get more painful as time passes, whether it’s from the height or just my imagination. I switch hands after one more, unwilling to risk trying to push through the pain only to have my muscles give way. As I continue to descend, my arms get more and more painful, and the frequency at which I switch arms increases until I’m doing it every other time. After what feels to my arms like an hour, but was probably closer to a minute or two, I reach the bottom. Stones litter the ground around my feet, as well as the two severed coils of rope. Boaz, Jakin and Xiltroth are just to my left, fending off the first few guards that are now trickling out of the gate towards us. Scooping the rope off the ground, I call out to them, “I’m down, lets go!” They break away from their fights, and we flee east, away from the guards. Before long they give up the chase, unable to catch us and unwilling to leave the city bereft of guards. With any luck, we should be able to loop around north-west and make ourselves a place to live out in the wilderness somewhere. Once we get out of sight of the city – a fair distance, since the city is partly in a mountain – we set up camp. Xiltroth hunts down something to eat, but we aren’t able to find any wood to start a fire, so I almost pass out using what little mana I have left to cook it. “We actually managed it. I can barely believe it.” Marvels Boaz around a mouthful of meat. “Hmph.” Snorts Jakin. “It was only possible because all the good warriors and magi had already left fer the warfront. Otherwise, we would have been stopped at the entrance to the guardhouse.” Despite saying this, his lips are still curved upwards as he wipes the grease off of them. Xiltroth says seriously, “Thanks for saving my life.” “Hey, that’s what being in a party is all about, right? Saving each other from death every other day?” I say, yawning. Man am I tired after all that. I mean, we did quite a bit of walking during the day, never got a good sleep, and then all this kerfuffle happened. “Aye.” Agrees Jakin, then adding, “But next time we go for a drink, yeh’ll be paying.” Xiltroth nods, laughing. A deep howl echoes across the land, coming from the west. The voice is soon joined by another, then one more before the howl slowly quietens to nothing. “Damn.” Swears Boaz. “That be hill-hounds. They can track a goat through the mountains without breaking a sweat, and it sounds like they’ve been set on us. They’ll be onto us within a day if we loop around north, and south is even more cities. We’ll have to keep heading east.” Xiltroth frowns. “But surely other cities wouldn’t know about us?” “Messenger birds. By the time morning comes, every city nearby will have our descriptions.” Jakin says simply, then frowns. “Isn’t the forest of befuddlement to the east?” Xiltroth pales visibly. “That forest?” “Damn!” Swears Boaz again. “It is.” “Will someone tell me what’s going on here?” I ask, annoyed. All three of them look at me in befuddlement. My eyebrow twitches. “Yeh know, I thought all along yeh would know about the massive forest right next to Stalia, but no. No yeh don’t.” Sighs Jakin, shaking his head incredulously. “The one near Ginerbe?” I ask. “That forest is a patch of grass compared to this monstrosity.” Boaz says grimly. “They say that it’s impossible to not get lost. People who go in come out near another city, or even another kingdom. Nobody has ever managed to go where they were trying to go.” Explains Xiltroth quietly. “And that’s if you manage to get out at all.” Continues Jakin. “Entire battalions have gone missing in that forest. No one knows if they got killed by something or just wandered around forever, unable to find a way out.” Boaz nods. “Woodcutters go missing, even if they don’t go into the forest itself. I hear they tried to burn it down once, but they couldn’t even scorch the tree bark. Eventually people learned their lesson and began to leave the place alone.” “Not a good place to get backed up against, then. Well,” I say, standing up, “we should get going before they catch up to us.” Hello sleep deprivation my old friend… I’ve come to talk to you again. Packing up our unused tents and scooping dirt on the fire to extinguish is, we take our bearings and continue heading east under the moonlight. Two days later… “Give it up! Yeh got nowhere left to run, and yeh can’t fight all of us!” Shouts a dwarf angrily, one hand brandishing a sword and the other keeping himself balanced on top of his mount: an oversized dog with shaggy black fur, cloven hooves barely visible under the thick mass. It pants roughly, tired after the long chase. Nearby is a dwarf with a similar mount, and together with a large group of some twenty dwarves, they have us pinned against the edge of the forest. The other dwarves seem to be much calmer, some even smiling slightly as they edge closer, step by step. Their armour is much too regular and well maintained for them to be adventurers, but too low quality for them to be guards. Mercenaries then. Figures, the city itself didn’t have the troops to spare but they knew we can easily defeat a few people, so they splashed some money around and hired mercenaries to do the dirty work for them. “You know… that forest looks mighty inviting right about now.” I say slowly, dark rings around my eyes. We hadn’t gotten much sleep over the last few days. Hard when your pursuers are practically on your tail the whole way. Jakin yawns. “…Yeah.” We turn around and run into the forest. The mounted dwarves hesitate, then spur their mounts towards the forest. One of the mercenaries behind him calls out, “Hey. Yeh go in there, we ain’t coming with yeh.” Stopping their mounts, they start to complain to the mercenaries. Meanwhile, the hill-hounds sniff curiously at the air. After a moment they stiffen, then turn around and bolt, throwing their riders off. “See?” Says the mercenary, taking a surreptitious step away from the forest. “Even the beasts know that place is bad news. Alright lads, let’s head back to the city!” The group of mercenaries start to jog into the distance, leaving behind the two dwarven trackers. After exchanging a glum look, they too start to walk homeward.

jinxs2011 Well, It's been a little while, but here's another chapter. Should become less busy around november, but we'll see what happens. I... May have gone over the top with this fight scene. Maybe. Just a touch. Regardless, I hope you enjoy it. Chapter 39: Battle In The Tunnels Some of our projectiles hit home, but none of them fatally. The dwarves manage to escape around a corner, leaving them safe from our attacks… For now, at least. “How much would you be willing to bet that they’re waiting just around the corner?” I say quietly. “A surprise attack, with the added bonus of us having a reduced ability to fire back? They’d be stupid not to.” Boaz replies, before cupping one large hand to his ear to listen. “And if my ears don’t be failing me, I can’t hear them running anymore. I’d be willing to bet a dozen good beers. Takers?” Nobody says anything. “Well, I suppose we’d better be careful going around that corner.” I grunt as I pull the string of my crossbow back into position. After I finish reloading - Xiltroth had already reloaded his by the time I was done, and Heather just needs to have an arrow at hand - I focus, and the spike barrier advances slowly, us following right behind it. As Boaz and Jakin turn the corner, shields raised, they are immediately assaulted by dwarves leaping over the spikes. The twins are strong, but not strong enough to block the full force of armoured dwarves jumping at their shields, not without being pushed back. Their boots scrape along the floor, pushed back by the considerable momentum. The other dwarves attempt to capitalise on the moment by stabbing their weapons towards the twins around their shields. Boaz and Jakin slam their shields towards each other, deflecting two of the halberds into each other, causing them to become entangled. Boaz takes the opportunity while he has a clear view of the dwarf in front of him to spike his pick at the man. The dwarf manages to get his arm in between the handle of the pick and his body, partially blocking it, but Boaz swings it with enough strength that it still manages to pierce through the man’s armour and into his shoulder below, albeit shallowly. Jakin, on the other hand, has a second halberd stabbing towards him, which he is forced to awkwardly push aside with his pick. With both of Jakin’s hands to either side, the dwarf in front of him drops his halberd - useless in such close quarters - and opts instead to draw a long dagger from a sheathe at his side, going quickly for a stab. Seeing this, Jakin, who has somehow still kept stable footing throughout all of this, shifts forward and kicks the man in the stomach. At this point, I’ve just rounded enough of the corner to have a good angle. With so many people in such close proximity, it’s difficult to get an accurate shot at someone’s head or chest, but I have just enough of a shot at the dwarf to the right of Jakin, one of the ones with their halberds entangled, to quickly aim and release a bolt at the man’s right leg. It hits, punching clean through his armour and into the flesh behind it, lodging there. The man instantly develops a limp. As the twins bring their shields back towards the front, Xiltroth manages to snap a shot into the left shoulder of the dwarf to the front and left of Boaz who has his halberd entangled with the other dwarf. The bolt severely hinders the movement of the dwarf’s arm, and further complicates the situation of their halberds. Using her height, Heather has a clear line of sight to the dwarf to the left of Jakin, and she begins firing her bow. The first scrapes past the man’s helm, causing him to flinch away. Recovering, he looks up towards Heather in anger… Allowing her second arrow to slot perfectly through the eye slit of his helm. Jakin, now fully recovered from his brief flurry of activity and back in a firm stance, gives the man a firm push in the right direction, causing him to fall backwards onto the dwarf Jakin had kicked down, stopping him from getting up and slamming him back down to the ground. Boaz swings his pick towards the dwarf in front of him, deliberately targeting the man’s already weakened side. By this point, all the enemy dwarves have already dropped their halberds and are wielding long daggers. However, these don’t have sufficient reach or weight to allow the dwarf to effectively block or parry the relatively heavier pick, especially when his feet are partially trapped in between my spikes, making it difficult for him to manoeuvre. The dwarf takes another, even deeper wound, this time to the side of his chest. I, having reloaded my crossbow by now, aim carefully at the dwarf to Boaz’s left and release. It strikes the left side of the man’s chest, and I hear a cracking sound in addition to the sound of the bolt punching through armour. Must’ve hit a rib. The dwarf reduces his movements drastically, clearly trying to avoid worsening the wounds. Just as Jakin swings sharply at the man in front of him, the dwarf to the left of Boaz’s inaction allows Xiltroth to get a steady aim - another of the dwarves fall. To the front and left of Jakin, the dwarf on the ground laboriously shoves the body of his dead comrade off of himself, only for an arrow to skitter past his head. He rolls furiously to the side, almost against the wall of the tunnel, as another arrow shatters on the ground where he lay moments ago. Lifting himself to his feet, he steps quickly away from the wall, another arrow passing narrowly by his shoulder. Now without the advantage of numbers, a defensive position or even a cohesive formation, the two dwarves still in front of Jakin and Boaz find themselves at the end of their ropes. They can’t even retreat: the only thing stopping them from being shot is their proximity to the twins. As soon as they are at a bit of a distance, we’ll be able to shoot without fear of hitting an ally. The one in front of Jakin quickly takes a piercing blow to his side, and finally, his chest. After he falls to his knees, grasping painfully at his chest in a hopeless attempt to staunch the bleeding, Jakin puts him out of his misery with a swift blow to the head. The dwarf in front of Boaz quickly follows suit, leaving only the dwarf desperately attempting to dodge Heather’s arrows. He is having surprising success, moving erratic and fast enough that he manages to dodge her arrows, pass beyond the spike wall in front of Jakin and Boaz before we have time to take aim, and run off into the tunnel. Circumventing the quartet of corpses, we finally complete our turn into the entrance of that tunnel. I see the dwarf fleeing down the tunnel, and further past him, maybe twenty meters down the tunnel, another group of dwarves coming out of a smaller passage to the right, looking like their armour was put on in a hurry. Silently reloading my crossbow, I count them as they come out. Six. With the addition of that one dwarf that managed to flee past us, that makes seven. To make matters more complicated, the last dwarf that came out isn’t wearing plate armour, but light leather armour reinforced in key places with metal plates. I know for a fact that they have spare suits of plate armour - we didn’t strip the bodies last time we were here. This means that he’s wearing that for another reason, and by the lack of any form of protection on his hands, I’d wager that it’s because he’s a magus. A glimpse of a leather-bound tome holstered at his side only cements that thought in my mind. “They have a magus.” Xiltroth notes, taking aim at the fleeing dwarf. Narrowing his eyes, he releases the bolt a moment later, which manages to find its way into the dwarf’s back. The dwarf stumbles briefly, but makes it back to his companions regardless. “Any guesses as to what his element might be?” I ask, not taking my eyes off of the man in question. “Probably earth.” Jakin replies uncertainly. “Maybe fire.” That wouldn’t be good. We don’t have any effective way of defending against fire. I might, might, be able to block off the tunnel with an earthen barrier, but it would take a significant chunk of my mana every time. “Target the magus.” I say, already taking aim. As if they could hear our quiet exchange, the dwarves group up in front of the magus, creating a wall of armoured bodies in front of him that prevents anything but the most supremely lucky or skilled shots from passing through. We fire anyway. While killing the magus would be best, we still need to take out the rest of them as well. Unfortunately, I overcompensate for the distance with my first shot as I am more accustomed to aiming at more close quarters from the previous combat, and my bolt goes sailing over their heads. Xiltroth and Heather don’t make the same mistake, and their projectiles find their marks firmly in the bodies of the enemy dwarves, although there are no fatalities as a result of the volley. Taking advantage of our reload time, the dwarves step to either side, revealing the magus behind him. He has his grimoire open in one hand with the other resting on the page. I see a brief glow as the formation activates before a small object forms and speeds towards us. Jakin grunts, barely managing to move quickly enough to the side to get his shield in between me and the earthen missile. The sound of the collision echoes throughout the cave, and I can see Jakin’s shield bulging inwards slightly where it was hit. “We have to stagger our shots.” I say, with some alarm. “Give him as little opportunity to cast as possible.” That thing was no joke. It was as deadly as a crossbow bolt, perhaps deadlier on an unarmoured target. Now wary of the magus, we start to alternate our shots. It does decrease the amount of time between each impact, but it does likewise reduce the damage each volley does - and we’ve never practiced this before. We fall out of time all too often, potentially allowing the magus another attack. It doesn’t take long for them to realise this and grasp one of those opportunities. Heather fired her arrow late, I fired my bolt early and Xiltroth is still reloading, giving them a several second-long window before either Xiltroth or Heather can be ready to fire again. Like magic, the opposing dwarves split apart, and the magus is revealed between them. Jakin and Boaz immediately position themselves to defend me, but I know immediately something is off. The magus is facing me, but he isn’t looking at me. He’s looking more to my left, and a bit up. My suspicions are confirmed a moment later, the magus starting to turn to his right as he infuses mana into the formation again. He was targeting Heather. I move, letting my crossbow drop as I push off with my right foot to take a step to my left. As the formation activates, I leap in front of Heather, lifting my arms to protect my head and chest. A moment later, I feel the impact. It forces my right arm against my chest, and then I feel something shift in my arm, in a place where I’m fairly sure things shouldn’t be shifting. As my feet touch the ground and my mind starts to register what exactly had just happened, my arm blossoms with pain. It’s broken. But that doesn’t matter. It’s one thing to target me. I can take the hits. But Heather? One heavy hit, one errant crossbow bolt - she’s a goner. It’s a strategically sound decision, but damn, does it piss me off. “Aaron, yeh alright?” Jakin barks without turning around. “I thought I heard something break.” “Just my arm.” I reply, wincing. I think my bracer is digging into my arm right where the break is, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. “Don’t worry about it.” Think your earth magic is hot shit, do you? Newsflash: It’s not. Lifting my unbroken arm, I lift the spike barrier from the ground and fuse the spikes into one. Then I compress them down to a size a bit larger than an arrow. I add some spin to it, because adding a little spin never hurt anyone… right? Then, burning up nearly half the stony projectile as propulsion, I send it rocketing forwards. In a little more than the blink of an eye, it crosses the gap between our two groups and punches straight through the chest of one of the dwarves there and out the other side, bereft of most of its former momentum. Struck by a sudden idea, I break the remains of the projectile up into a cloud of dust, which I direct to float around the heads of the dwarves. As they say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. “How are we on ammunition?” I ask quietly, readying a second projectile, using a bit less mana than the first. It was clearly overkill. “I can only do another one or two of these before running out of mana.” An arrow sails over my head and into the armour of one of the dwarves. “I only have two left.” Heather replies from behind me. “I’m fine.” Xiltroth says, firing a shot of his own. “Nearly a dozen left.” I fire off a second, more conservative earthen missile. It has nearly the same effect but doesn’t come out the other side of the dwarf it hits - which isn’t necessary anyway. Grunting in pain as I accidentally move my broken arm, I check my own stock of bolts. Dozen and a half. Well, the bigger problem for me is that one of the bow limbs has a crack in it. Taking a deep breath, both to calm myself down and steel myself against the pain, I take stock of the situation. Five enemies remaining in fighting condition, four of which are peppered with arrows and bolts. One in good condition, probably capable of delivering more attacks. All blinded. On our side, two on defence in good condition, perhaps a little fatigued. One ranged almost out of ammunition. One with excess ammunition. One ranged/caster with a broken ranged weapon and a considerable portion of mana exhausted. Injured, unable to engage in melee combat. Not bad odds, for this fight, at least. But if there were more of them after this… It could become a problem. We’ve taken out seven of a possible eighteen so far, with another five here. That leaves six unaccounted for. In the state we’re in, I’m not sure we could take another six. We might have to retreat after this battle. But that is for after this battle. For now, I just stand, trying to keep my arm still and not doing much - or at least appearing to. In reality, I’m keeping the dust cloud from dissipating, and I have a much smaller earthen missile ready and hidden behind my left arm. If that magus shows so much as a hair of his head, I’m nailing him with it. But, surprisingly enough, he doesn’t show his face. Instead, they charge us, raising their halberds as they run. “I’ll take the one on the right.” Xiltroth says, quickly setting his crossbow down and drawing his mithril knife. The twins nod and position themselves to block the other three dwarves, raising their shields at an angle as the halberds come chopping down. Xiltroth is fairly strong, but blocking a halberd with a knife? Impossible. Probably why he doesn’t try, and just slips around the side of the dwarf instead. The dwarf cuts at empty air and falls forward a moment later as Xiltroth knocks his leg out from under him. After that, Xiltroth jams his knife into a small gap in the dwarf’s armour near his neck. The dwarf quickly stills. Now, I’m not a particularly tall man, being just above average height, but I’m still considerably taller than the dwarves in front of me. This means I can see over them to the magus behind them. I immediately cast my bolt, but the man turns and runs as soon as he notices my gaze, fleeing back into the room they came from. I direct my bolt into the room and, seeing as it had already lost a significant portion of its speed and it would be practically impossible to hit anything, I dust it. Meanwhile, the twins have engaged the remaining three dwarves, who have dropped their halberds and are wielding long daggers with very little effect against the heavily armoured and shielded twins. Still, it was better for them than trying to swing around a weapon around a meter and a half long in close quarters, in a tunnel. Regardless, the twins make short work of the enemy dwarves with the help of Xiltroth, who had circled behind them. With that done, the only one left is the enemy magus. From their actions, it’s likely that the magus is out of mana, or at least low. If so, this will be easy. Either way, we proceed with caution. As Jakin proceeds through the entrance, his shield blocking nearly the entire width of it, I hear a light impact on his shield. “What was that supposed to do?” Jakin asks, almost amused. “Please don’t kill me!” Another voice says from inside the room. “I don’t have any mana, I can’t do anything!” “Yeh’re holding a knife behind yer back.” Jakin states, unamused. “So I don’t believe yeh fer a second. Plus, you broke my friend’s arm and attacked a perfectly innocent village.” He strides into the room. After a very brief tussle, he emerges unscathed. “How’s the arm?” He asks me. “Any bleeding?” I focus on my broken arm. Not a very pleasant experience, as I had been attempting to ignore the pain, and this brought it rushing back with renewed intensity. “Painful as you might expect. Can’t feel any blood or anything, though. And my bracer is keeping the arm straight, so that’s an added bonus.” “Well that’s something, I suppose.” Jakin nods. “We should head back and get it looked at by the gnomes.” I hesitate for a moment. There could still be more of them here… On the other hand, I do like my other hand. It’s probably best to get this looked at sooner rather than later. “Alright. Let’s go.” I agree finally. “There’s not many left. We can deal with them next time.” We retrace our steps to the exit, and head back down to town. By the time we reach town and knock on the doctor’s door, it’s practically midnight. He opens the door, eyes surrounded by dark rings. He glances at us tiredly. “No visitations right now.” He starts to shut the door. “My arm’s broken.” I say hurriedly. The door opens again. “You’re kidding me.” He sighs, rubbing his forehead. “Get that armour off before you come in, you’ll take up enough space as it is.” With Jakin’s assistance, I quickly take off my armour - everything except my bracer. Every time I try to budge it, pain shoots up my arm. That done, I follow the diminutive doctor inside. There are a few less people around than earlier, but the building is still almost full to capacity. He manages to shuffle a few people around and get me a table to lie down on. I barely fit on it, with my legs below the knee hanging down from the edge of the table. My feet aren’t far from touching the floor, actually. “Sal, the scratchfern.” He calls back through the open doorway. “We’re out!” A voice replies. “Griddlegrass?” He questions. “Out!” The reply comes again. He turns back to me. “Well, the good news is that you won’t have to chew griddlegrass. The bad news, we’re out of pain relievers.” “Burned through the whole supply, huh? Great.” I sigh. This will not be fun. “Quite.” He agrees. “Now, we’ll have to get this off.” He turns my arm, bringing a candle to the table so he can get a clearer look. “Ah, yes. That would be from whatever caused the break, I suppose?” He says, referring to the dent in my bracer. “Looks like I’m going to have to cut it off, I’m afraid.” “Sal, a saw!” He calls through the door again. Before long, a gnommish woman comes through the doorway and hands the doctor a saw. “Thank you, Sal.” He says gratefully to the woman, and carefully places the saw along the side of my bracer. “Try not to move your arm while I do this.” I nod. Not a problem. Moving it causes significant pain, so I’m already keeping it as still as I can. Slowly and deliberately, he begins to draw the saw along the side of my bracer, stopping every so often to blow away the dust and get a better view. My bracer gets sawn through without incident, and he begins on the other side, such that it would be split in two and simply lifted off my arm. Having done so, he softly slips off the leather glove beneath it and finally takes a look at my bare arm. “Well, first impressions are good. No external bleeding, heavy bruising - but that’s to be expected - and the bone hasn’t pierced through the surface of your arm. Could you try moving your fingers for me?” Bracing myself, I try to wiggle my fingers. The movement does inadvertently cause me to wince, but I am able to move my fingers nonetheless. The doctor nods. “Good. Now, I’m going to feel around your arm to try and get a better idea of the nature of the break. Given that… well, you aren’t on painkillers, this will be quite painful. Please try not to move.” Oh, that sounds just lovely. jinxs2011 I hope you enjoyed the chapter.

Just over 1000 years ago, there were six kingdoms, not five. Five of them were the same as the ones present today – Stalia, Morrock, Enlux, Xin and Binod. If this sixth kingdom had a name, it has been lost to time. However, I have been able to ascertain that the location of this historical kingdom was where the forest of befuddlement is today; at the time it was just a normal forest. This was a kingdom of satyrs. According to the few surviving documents regarding it, they were even more in tune with nature than the elves, and much less inclined to violence. At some point, Stalia declared war on them, intent on obtaining the rare magical herbs that grew within the depths of the forest. But when their armies entered… well, they never came out. The forest slowly assumed the form it has today, and neither hide nor hair of the satyrs were spotted from that day forth. They faded into legend… -An unknown scholar We gather our things and leave the clearing, venturing once more into the depths of the forest. As we walk, I can’t help but think about the things Glade said. So little of it makes sense, and yet his actions prove that they aren’t just the ramblings of a madman. I find myself mulling over them, trying to derive some meaning from them. To no success. We wander aimlessly through the forest, without anything capable of guiding our path or even a destination. Our supplies of water are fine for now, but we have barely any food remaining. What had he said about food? ‘ask nicely’, was it? But who? Not him, he said. But who else is there? Apart from him, we haven’t seen anyone in this forest. Just a few monsters, trees, trees and more trees… Honestly, at this point I’m thinking of just asking the trees. May as well try. So that I don’t seem like a madman, I decide to hear the other’s opinions first. “I tried to ask Glade – that is, the satyr – how to find food in this place.” “Tried?” Xiltroth notes. “Nothing useful came of it, then?” “Maybe, maybe not.” I say, before explaining, “He was a bit cryptic. He just said to ask nicely but seemed to indicate that he didn’t mean ask him. As far as I know, the only living things here apart from us and him are the monsters and the trees.” “Ask the trees for food?” Scoffs Boaz irritably. “What are they going to do, suddenly sprout fruit? And it’s not like the monsters will serve themselves up on a silver platter. May’s well ask the ground to sprout us some vegetables!” “I don’t know.” I admit. “But it’s not like it’ll hurt to ask.” “Sure, go ahead.” Boaz waves a hand. “But colour me surprised if anything happens, anything at all.” Well, we’ll see. I pick a random tree and walk up to it. “Excuse me, could we please have some food?” I say to it. The tree does not reply. “See? Grunts Boaz. “It was worth a try.” I sigh, and we start travelling again. Not a minute later, we come across a dozen apples resting lightly in the grass. “Seems like it worked after all.” I remark, picking one up and biting into it. Its sourness is extremely refreshing. Boaz huffs, picking up another and taking a large bite out of it. “It’th just a coincidence.” He says stubbornly as he chews. An apple falls from the canopy, landing squarely on Boaz’s head. “Eh?” He says involuntarily, completely unhurt from the falling piece of fruit but confused nonetheless. “A coincidence. Yep.” I say dryly. But he firmly stands his ground. “Just a coincidence!” He takes another large bite of apple. I look up, but nothing falls this time. Shrugging, I toss my core and pick up another apple. Stopping momentarily, I turn to the tree next to me. “Thanks for the food.” Boaz humphs incredulously but says nothing. Days pass as we wander through the forest. Every time we feel hungry, we ask for food and something always shows up soon after, eventually leaving even the stubborn Boaz with no choice but to believe. Thankfully, every time we find something different. I like apples, but subsisting only on them… would get tiresome. Sometimes it’s fruit, sometimes berries, other times we find the leafy heads of vegetables sticking out of the grass… pretty much anything except meat. Water’s the same deal: ask for some, and we soon find ourselves back at the stream. It makes me wander, just how often must we be going in circles, if we keep ending up at the stream? After all, it’s not like the stream can move… can it? We also come across monsters every now and again, and they seem to be divided into two groups: most of the monsters we come across ignore us or run away, and the rest attack us on sight. Fortunately, we haven’t had any more incidents with snakes, so we haven’t had to worry about poison since then. Glade hasn’t show up since then either, although we do occasionally hear his music filtering through the forest. I hesitantly did some earth magic the night before with no adverse reaction, so I’ve been experimenting with that to try and replicate what I’d seen – without the music, of course – but with no success. Without any hints or ideas to expand from, I’m clueless. It’s like I’m a caveman who’s just seen cooked meat for the first time: I know it’s meat, but I have no idea how it got from raw to cooked. “Just a thought, but if we can ask fer food and water, do yeh think we could ask to leave the forest?” Muses Boaz. My train of thought immediately derails entirely. “Ah. Um, I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe. We can try.” “Genius!” Jakin exclaims. “I always said that Boaz got all the brains.” All of a sudden, everyone’s all smiles. “Alright, go ahead.” I say. “You do the honours.” “Got it…” He faces a tree. “Can we leave the forest? Please?” He adds. After a moment, he turns around again. “What now?” “We walk, I suppose.” So, we start walking again. After a few minutes without any discernible changes in the environment, Jakin breaks the silence. “Don’t worry about it Boaz, we’ll find a way out eventually.” “Why do you want to leave, anyway?” A voice comes from behind us, and I turn around to see a pair of hairy legs waving in the air. I look down and break into a sweat. Glade is balancing on two fingers, moving one in front of the other to move towards us, the digits sinking slightly into the earth as he moves. Just how strong is this guy? “It’s such a great place.” He continues carefreely, not even breathing hard. “Because we want to eat meat!” Jakin says longingly. Glade tilts his head. “Meat tastes bad?” He half states, half asks. “Not if you cook it right. Then it be… delicious…” Jakin wipes away a spot of drool from his mouth. Glade’s head tilts farther, and he looks dangerously close to toppling. “Cook?” Jakin raises an eyebrow. “Over a fire. Don’t you know fire?” “Ah.” Glade nods. “No fire allowed in the forest.” “Why not?” Jakin asks curiously. Glade shrugs, the motion moving the entirety of his body due to the position he’s in. “They don’t like it.” Jakin’s eyebrows narrow. “Who?” Glade waves an arm, causing him to wobble precariously. “Them.” He says, as if that explains everything. “Right…” “So, can we leave?” I ask. “Yep.” Glade shrugs again. “So we just… keep walking?” “Yep.” “Hm. Why are you upside-down?” He smiles up at us. “Why not?” He walks away on two fingers, legs waving in the air. “Huh. Well, I suppose we keep walking.” I shrug. We resume walking. After a while, the trees start to thin, and we begin to walk faster. Finally, we burst out into the open, Jakin joyously yelling out, “FREEDOM!” The regiment of demon troops standing in front of us unanimously look towards us in surprise, which quickly turns to wariness as they take in our motley races. “Back into the forest?” I suggest. ““Back into the forest…”” The others sigh, and we turn and plunge back into the depths. “So then, we can now be certain?” Sighs King Allen, looking to the retainer before him and hoping against hope that he would be contradicted. “Without a shadow of a doubt, sire.” Affirms the retainer grimly. King Allen grimaces. “But why? They of all people should be advocating peace, so why did they go and start a war?” His grip on the arm of his throne is uncharacteristically tight, the only outwards indication of his inner turmoil. The retainer wrings his hands nervously. “I’m afraid we don’t know, sire.” Nodding, King Allen waves a hand. “You may go.” Bowing, the retainer quickly retreats from the room. The importance of the information he had brought, as well as its sensitive nature had prompted the King to dismiss all others from the room prior to the meeting, so he is now alone. Confirming this fact, King Allen brackets his face with his hand in great distress. “And the worst part is that we can’t do anything about it.” He groans tiredly. “A war, a war between all the kingdoms, and for what? Why!?” He shouts in frustration. “A period of peace that might have resulted in racial tensions disappearing for good, tens of thousands of lives in casualties – and that isn’t even counting all the families left afraid and alone without any support. The way it’s going, it will only escalate further! Conscription will become necessary within a matter of years, and then what!? Poverty, famine and disease, not to mention an economic decline that will take who knows how many decades to recover from!” His tirade stops as suddenly as it started. “Perhaps the heroes could do something…” He muses. “Few know of their connection to us, after all. But then again, what could they do? Even heroes can’t fight the whole world…” A streak of lightning sparks between four soldiers, who fall limp to the ground with soft wisps of smoke curling up from their armour. From behind the eye slits in their helmets, Greg can see their lifeless eyes staring at him. Those eyes again. Clearing the image from his mind and choking down a mouthful of vomit, he flips a few pages in his grimoire and a swathe of ice spreads across the ground in front of him, tripping dozens of enemy soldiers who are unable to deal with the sudden loss of friction. His allies descend upon the downed foes like a pack of wolves, stabbing and slashing through armour with brutal efficiency. Greg looks away. Twang! Hearing the crossbow firing, Greg’s head whips around and his free arm shoots up. The demon soldier who fired the bolt pales visibly and turns to run as Greg flings the intercepted projectile back at him. It goes wide by a meter and thuds into the dirt, but the soldier doesn’t notice and keeps running. Shaking his head, Greg ignores the man. He looks around with a sense of detached disbelief as men and woman who he has known for years – some of them very kind, very sweet people – wield cold steel against other people. Explosions rock his surroundings and swarms of crossbow bolts hiss past. Hardening his heart, Greg hurls himself back into the fray. Some time later night begins to fall, and both armies order a retreat. Keeping wary of surprise attacks, the group of heroes retreats along with the rest, the two holy magic specialists within the group treating what few wounds they had taken as they walk. Feeling a sudden wetness in his hair, Greg looks up. Dark clouds hang overhead, threatening to release their payload upon the battlefield. Greg winces at the thought of fighting on mud. With enhanced speed, a single misstep could easily send one skidding into an enemy spear. For whatever reason, Greg looks back. He takes in the hundreds of corpses littering the battlefield, and the blood that gilds the grass and trickles through the dirt. He grimaces and turns away, hardening his heart. Carrying nothing and wearing only simple clothing, Greg sits on a log in the darkness and frigid rain, thinking. A child who can’t be older than nine walks hesitantly up to him, looking like he’s on the verge of crying. “Sir, do – do you know where my dad is?” He asks. Greg regards the boy before him with some surprise. After a moment, he replies, “What’s his name?” “Alex.” The boy says quickly, then adds, “Smith. Alex Smith.” Shaking his head, Greg says, “Sorry, I don’t know him.” Almost immediately the child’s face screws up with worry, but he manages to get out, “Thanks anyway…” He starts to walk away, but Greg quickly shoots to his feet. “Woah there, you aren’t going to go wandering around in the rain like this, are you? You’ll freeze!” Greg says with concern. Shivering, the child says frantically, “But I need to find my dad!” Thinking quickly, Greg says, “Your dad would hardly be happy if he found you sopping wet and shivering yourself half to death, would he?” The boy looks unsure, so Greg says, “Look, I’ll get you warm and dry, and then you can go look for your dad again.” The boy nods hesitantly, and Greg gets him to sit down on the log while he starts scrawling in the dirt with a stick. “W-what are you doing, sir?” The boy asks. “A magic formation. Haven’t done it like this before, but it should work.” Says Greg without looking up. “First we need some shelter from the rain, then I can get a fire going.” “Magic? Are y-you a magus?” The boy asks, hugging himself for warmth.” “Something like that, yes.” Greg replies, then mutters to himself under his breath. “Do you think I could be a magus?” The boy asks. “What? Oh. I don’t know, maybe. You’d have to get your aptitude tested to see if you’re magically gifted.” Greg says distractedly. “How d-do I do that?” The boy asks curiously. “Uh… for me there was this plate that just took my mana and showed my aptitude, but I don’t know where you’d find one.” Greg says, then puts some mana into his makeshift formation. A large earthen umbrella quickly springs up from it, protecting them both from the rain. “WOAH!” The boy cries in amazement. “Huh, that worked surprisingly well for a first try. Terrible mana efficiency though, no wonder nobody does this.” Mutters Greg, sitting on the log and setting a large ball of fire on the ground, where it hisses and crackles as it reacts to the water there. “Woah… that’s so cool.” Says the boy, momentarily forgetting his worry as he stretches his hands out over the fire. Greg sighs. “Depends what it’s used for.” The boy tilts his head at the comment, not quite understanding what he means. “It’s nothing.” Greg waves off the unspoken question. “So, what are you doing out on the battlefront? You’re a bit short for a soldier.” The boy goes silent. “My Ma got sick a couple years back. They couldn’t figure out what she had, and she died soon after.” He says finally. “We don’t have any other relatives. When the war started, and dad got orders to come out here, there wasn’t anyone who could look after me. So he brought me with him instead.” “Must be hard on you.” Greg sighs. “Not really.” Says the boy sadly. “It’s harder on dad.” The two lapse into silence, The boy rubbing his hands together over the fire in an effort to warm himself faster while Greg leans backwards, uncaring that his forehead is outside of the umbrella’s reach and soon becomes doused with fresh torrents of rainwater. Sniffling, the boy wipes his nose on a still damp sleeve. “What,” he pauses for a moment before continuing with a trembling voice, “what do I do if dad doesn’t come back?” Greg sighs to himself and thinks. “A place like this, it always has people coming and going, ferrying supplies. Shouldn’t be too hard for you to hitch a ride with one of them, get yourself back to town.” He muses before continuing, “After that, you’ll need a way to get food, money and shelter. Maybe you could work for a farmer in exchange for food and board?” “Maybe…” The boy repeats half-heartedly. They lapse into silence again. After a while, the boy stands up to leave. “Hey, kid.” Greg calls out quietly. “If you don’t find your father, come back here. I have a spare cloak you could use.” The boy turns and bows in thanks before running into the rain again, navigating through the tents with the help of the occasional lamp lighting the way. Greg stretches out a foot, scraping a furrow through the makeshift formation in the dirt. The earthen umbrella begins to fragment and crumbles into nothingness within seconds, the fire winking out at the same time. “Hero…” Greg laughs spitefully at himself in the dark and damp. “Even the kids in this world have gone through more hardships than I have. What qualifications do I have to be called hero instead of them?” About an hour later, the boy walks back through the rain with slouched shoulders. Greg leads the boy to his tent, ducks inside and comes out with a cloak. “It may be a bit big, but-“ The boy throws his arms around Greg, crying into his already sodden tunic. Greg pats him softly on the back. “Hey, hey.” He says soothingly. “I know. I know. You’ll have to be strong from now on, and smart. And careful, very careful.” Nodding into Greg’s tunic, the boy continues to cry profusely, and Greg pats him comfortingly as they are both drenched in the rain. Eventually, he calms down and takes the cloak. “Do you have a place to sleep for the night?” Asks Greg. “It’s probably best if you don’t leave until morning.” The boy nods numbly. “My dad’s tent’s still there…” “Alright. Good luck, kid.” Says Greg, lifting the entrance flaps of his tent to one side. “Thank you, sir.” The boy says earnestly as Greg disappears into his tent. As the boy moves away again, Greg sits on the ground and contemplates. “War… what is it good for?” He mutters sullenly. For hours he sits there thinking until he finally comes to a conclusion and reluctantly admits, “Absolutely nothing. Phil was right, why are we getting involved in this at all?” Torn with grief, frustration and indecision, Greg weeps. The next morning, the boy wakes up and looks around with just the faintest hint of hope. Tears well in his eyes when he sees that he is still alone, but he quickly wipes them away. Pulling the voluminous cloak tighter around his body, he is about to leave the tent when he notices the cloak feeling heavier than it should down the front. Running his hands down the fabric of the cloak, he quickly finds a large bulge. There is no give in the area that might indicate a pocket, so he checks the inside of the cloak, and indeed there are a few pockets there he hadn’t noticed last night. This particular one, he finds to his astonishment, contains a pouch heavily laden with coins. Most of them are coppers, but he spots the unmistakeable glint of silver once or twice, as well. ‘He must have forgotten to take out his coin pouch when he gave the cloak to me!’ Is the boy’s immediate thought, followed swiftly by, ‘I need to return it before I leave!’ The boy hurriedly tucks the pouch away again and leaves the tent, trotting through the camp and out of it until he finds that same log, now empty. ‘Of course, he must be in his tent.’ The boy thinks, so he walks over to the tent and knocks on one of the tent poles. There isn’t any reply, and he doesn’t hear anything from inside, so he tentatively peeks in-between the entrance flaps. “What’re you doing here, kid?” The voice that suddenly comes from behind him causes the boy to jump in shock, but he is somewhat reassured when he turns around and sees that the person who spoke looks more curious than angry. “I’m looking for the person who sleeps in this tent. Do you know where he is?” Asks the boy, trying to sound more confidant than he feels. “Greg?” The man groans. “He left about an hour ago.” The boy’s eyes widen in shock. “Another battle, so soon!?” “No, it’ll probably be a little while yet before the next one. He’s gone, as in, gone.” The man shrugs. “Left the battlefront entirely. Who knows where he is now.” “Thanks anyway…” The boy walks away, feeling conflicted. The money isn’t his, and yet there’s no way to get it back to it’s original owner. It feels like he shouldn’t use it, but he knows he might very well need to… A man hikes up a hill, moving smoothly and quickly upwards despite the lack of a proper path. Reaching the crest, the man looks over at the distant plain that had hosted yesterday’s battle with a mixture of sadness and relief as the early morning sun peeks through the clouds, sending down streams of light that illuminate the damp lands below. After a minute, the man looks away, and with a hint of anticipation sets off towards the east. Sword on one hip, grimoire safely secured within its pouch on the other, garbed only in simple travelling clothes and carrying a pack containing only a few essentials, Greg sets off towards elven lands.

I believe slimes may be the most diverse monsters. Let alone having a variant for each element – both primary and secondary – slimes have multiple for many, such as the rock, iron and sand variants for the earth element and the flying, gas and transparent slimes for the wind element. It can be said that no matter what environment you are in – plains or mountains, tundra or volcano, or even out at sea – you will be able to find slimes if you look hard enough. Honestly, with this unique adaptability and ability to self-replicate, if they had even an iota of intelligence they would have dominated the world. Luckily for us, they’re probably the stupidest monsters in existence – well, apart from a few of them. But they halve their intelligence every time they split, so no worries there! -An unknown scholar (POV Jakin) I jump nearly half a meter from shock as a face appears upside-down in front of me, grinning wildly. He flips to the ground, laughing and clapping his hands as he looks in glee at my face, which is no doubt shining red with embarrassment. “Haha! Short man jumped almost half his height!” He says breathlessly, his bare chest still heaving with mirth. “I’m not short! I’m a member of the Dwarven Race!” I retort instinctively. “Dwarven race? Who is making the all the dwarves race? That’s mean!” He says, frowning, before he bursts into a smile again. “But races are fun! Let’s have one now! One-two-three-go!” He belts out, dashing off into the forest. A second later, a voice drifts back towards us. “Slowpokes! Slooooooooooooooooooooooooooowpooooooooooooooookesss! Hurry up, or I’ll win!” My jaw drops in incomprehension. “We better follow him quick. He might know a way out of here.” Xiltroth adjusts Aaron’s position and jogs off into the forest, closely followed by Boaz. Unwilling to be left behind, I quickly follow after them. “But he’s clearly loopy!” I protest. “Maybe. But I’ve never seen someone with the upper body of a man and the lower body of… I don’t know, a sheep? A goat? It’s almost as if he’s the result of love between a human and a goat beastman, but I’ve never heard of a half-breed that comes out like that.” Wonders Xiltroth. I didn’t even notice… he had come and gone before I had time to react. We run as fast as we can through and around the trees, following his distant shouts of ‘slowpokes’ and doing the best we can to stay together. After a few minutes of this, we slip through a gap between two trees, their tops intertwined to form a sort of natural archway. “BOO!” His face appears in front of me again, poking out his tongue and opening his brown eyes wide. This time, I just manage to keep a straight face. “Aww… you’re no fun.” He groans, flipping to the ground again. Thankfully, he doesn’t dash off again this time, so I can get a good look at him this time. He isn’t wearing anything, but from the waist down his entire body is covered in jet black hairs, conveniently obscuring his nether regions from the world. Instead of feet, he has cloven hooves – definitely a goat’s. Oddly enough, his hair is green and almost… puffy. It looks almost like a treetop, apart from the long goat horns that curve gently backwards out of it. “Who are you?” I ask, but he ignores me and trots away. Without any options, I follow him. He’s our only lead to a way out of here – this place is unlike anything else we’ve seen here so far, and he was able to get to it easily. Stepping in between the spreading roots of a huge tree, he disappears from sight. I step around them as well and see him lying on a bed of leaves concealed between the roots. He’s fast asleep. A hint of anger flashing through my mind, I stoop down and shake him roughly. He shrugs me off and turns over the other way, so I shake him again. He sits up and glares at me. “Hey! Can’t you see I’m sleeping here!” “And I have a friend there who’s dying, so I don’t give a damn!” I explode. “So if yeh’d kindly show us how the hell yeh get out of this place, we’ll leave yeh to sleep however long yeh want!” He lies down again, and I’m about to try and initiate forceful persuasion when he points to the opposite side of the clearing and says, “Feed him one of the purple mushrooms.” He yawns. “It’ll cure the snake-cat poison.” The hell is a snake-cat!? “Jakin, he’s gone blue! I don’t think he has much time left!” Shouts Xiltroth, hands shaking as he kneels next to Aaron, completely at a loss as to what he should do. “Purple mushroom!” I bark, sprinting across the clearing. “Goat man says it’ll help!” Reaching the edge of the clearing in seconds, I frantically look among the tangle of roots for a purple mushroom. Spotting some, I tear them from the ground and sprint back towards the others. “Are you sure? That looks more poison than cure…” Boaz’s voice trembles slightly. “It can hardly make this worse.” I say grimly, dusting off some of the dirt and crushing them in my gauntleted hand. “Open his mouth.” Xiltroth opens Aaron’s mouth, and I drop the weirdly coloured pieces of mushroom into it. I try to poke them down his throat, and after a second my efforts are rewarded as he swallows. We wait with bated breath for something to happen. Aaron’s skin quickly changes back to its normal tone, and he makes a confused expression. Suddenly, he opens his eyes and spits bits of purple everywhere. “PLEH! Pleh, pleh!” He sits up, spitting repeatedly with a look of disgust on his face. “Oh god, that’s horrendous!” Scraping at his tongue with his fingers for a second, he quickly gives up and starts tearing up the grass, stuffing it into his mouth under our shocked gazes. After chewing for a few seconds, he spits out a ball of green and purple goop. “What the fuck was that? Wait, why do I suddenly feel fine?” “Err… Purple mushrooms?” Boaz says, taking off his helm and scratching his chin. Aaron pauses. “Why does nothing make sense anymore…” He groans. “We fed you purple mushrooms which cured you, but apparently they also taste terrible.” Explains Xiltroth. “And how did you know that would work?” Aaron asks. “The goat man told us.” I say. “Goat… man?” Aaron stares incredulously at me. “Look, someone just explain to me what happened since I got poisoned. My memory’s spotty.” (POV Aaron) “…And so I made yeh swallow the purple mushrooms, and yeh suddenly got better.” Jakin finishes. “…Why do all the interesting things happen while I’m out…” I sigh, turning my head to get a look at this place. Apart from the singular opening, the perimeter of the clearing is bordered by huge trees, twisting around each other or just growing so incredibly close that there isn’t a single gap. Unlike the rest of the forest, various flowers, ferns, mosses and of course, mushrooms grow around the edges of the clearings. But none of them look ordinary – strange colours and patterns run along them, leaves in wholly unnatural shapes… Wait… these can’t all be magical herbs, can they? I don’t suppose we could… nah, it seems to be the goat man’s place, and we wouldn’t be able to sell them or use them, even if we do take some. “So where is this goat man?” I ask. “Sleeping somewhere over there, as far as I be knowing.” Responds Jakin, pointing to a spot among the tree roots nearby. “Right… can I have my stuff back?” “Be our guest.” The twins immediately start unloading my armour, weapon and pack onto the ground. After a few minutes spent sorting it all out and suiting up, I’m battle-ready again. Annoyingly, the metal on my greave where the snake bit me is still caved inwards, and it scrapes against my leg whenever I move. Taking it off again, I give that section a few solid whacks with the hilt of a dagger until it’s mostly flat again. Then I put it back on. I hear a yawn and turn towards the sound. A pair of horns rises into view above a nearby tree root, followed by an oddly coloured afro, then a head and shoulders. He looks blearily at us, then walks out towards us. “A satyr?” I say in surprise. “You’ve seen people like him before?” Xiltroth asks in surprise. Oops. I can’t exactly say that I know them from Greek mythology. Greek mythology doesn’t even exist here, as far as I know. “No, I’ve only heard stories.” “What, do they only live in forests or something?” Asks Jakin. “No clue. I didn’t think they existed until just now.” The satyr walks up to us – and proceeds to whack Xiltroth over the head with some sort of short, misshapen tree branch. He raises it again and proceeds to wallop Jakin on the noggin in the space of time it takes for Xiltroth’s face to twist in pain, the two impacts sounding almost simultaneously. But by the time I take my mace from my belt, the satyr has already turned and walked away again. The strangeness of the situation leaves me wondering what exactly I should do, for a moment. But he isn’t continuing hostilities, his arm moved too fast for me to catch and both Xiltroth and Jakin seem to be uninjured, although in quite some pain. “What in the blazes was that?” Groans Jakin, taking off his helmet and tentatively running his fingers over his head to check the extent of the damage. The helmet has a sizeable dent. “Ow. Ow, ow, ow ow.” Repeats Xiltroth through clenched teeth, grasping his head. “You two alright?” I ask. Jakin looks at his fingers. “I’m not bleeding. Should be right.” “I’m going to have a massive headache after this…” Xiltroth groans, holding his head in his hands. They’ll be fine. I turn my head to see the satyr disappearing among the roots of that tree again. “What now? Do we stay here and hope he’s less angry the next time he wakes up, or take our chances in the forest?” I wonder aloud. “Hmph. Only took us, what, two days out there fer one of us to start dying. Least this one we can reason with.” Grunts Jakin. Xiltroth looks uneasy at staying around someone who just bashed him, but it’d be going back to running around blindly once we walk out of that arch. He doesn’t take much convincing. “But… the Satyr’s sleeping again, right? What do we do in the meantime?” He asks. “I say we follow suit. Don’t know about you, but I’m knackered.” I fetch a blanket from my pack and lie down. “I’m fine with third watch onwards. G’night.” I black out within moments, slipping into that nebulous unreality that is the world of dreams. I open my eyes and look at what is in front of me. A nondescript hallway with a carpeted floor, lined on either side with numbered doors. Not unlike the hallways of a hotel. The edges of my vision blur slightly, and as I look away and back again I see that the doors have different numbers from before. Lucid dreaming is an interesting experience. A world free of morality and responsibility, where anything and everything can bend to your whim. You can be whatever you want to be – a superhero, a pirate, a king, or even a dragon. You can feel the wind slipping through your hands as you soar through the sky, and in those few indescribable moments your ability just makes so much sense that you resolve to try it out in the morning. You can climb a ladder using a single finger or crumble walls with a punch from across the room. Conjure up wonders of art and artifice that boggle the mind and enrapture the soul. Music you never want to forget, images you wish you could paint and scenery you can only hope exists somewhere in the universe. In a way, that’s what makes it so tragic. Inevitably, you do forget. The heights of extasy and exultation and the depths of fear and panic the likes of which you can only experience in some contrived situation from the minds of angels or demons is, in the end, just a passing fantasy. A passing fantasy… Opening the door on my left, I sidestep through without a glance and tumble into a nightmare… those delightful tragedies. I wake up in a cold sweat to the sound of music softly making its way through the clearing. At its source is the satyr, perched upon a low-hanging branch which gently sways as he strums the strings of his instrument. Unstructured and free-flowing, his music does not follow a particular melody, nor do sections repeat themselves. Like the musician himself, it is somewhat wild and irregular, infused with the sounds of nature. Within it I hear the breath of the wind, the gurgle of creeks and the whispers of the forest in a strange yet soothing melody. Somehow, I find myself waking up and growing more and more relaxed as I listen, and I can almost feel the blood coursing through my every vein. I feel like I can run a marathon without breaking a sweat. Two marathons, without much difficulty. Startled by my own body, I look at my hands in confusion. My right hand is still covered in a gauntlet since I fell asleep in my armour, but I can see the palm of my left through my self-modified leather glove, which I did in order to be able to use magic more conveniently. It looks somewhat different than usual, but I can’t quite pick it, so I strip off my glove and inspect my now bare hand closely. To my astonishment, I spot an almost imperceptibly dim blue glow emanating from my hands. …Water mana? But, how? From where? There isn’t any mana around me that I can see, and for a while I just look around fruitlessly for the source of the magic that’s somehow enhancing me. That is, until I notice that the mana pulses along with the ebbs and flows of the satyr’s music. …Magical music. Honestly? I think I have a general understanding of how the magic of this world works, and then it throws something like this at me! From what I know, this is impossible. Plain and simple, it doesn’t work. But it does. But it shouldn’t. But it does. Why does it? Obviously, what little I know about magic is incorrect. I stare in awe and confusion at the satyr as he plays an impossibility, thoughts whirling through my mind as I try to make sense of this upheaval, this unforeseen revelation. I don’t get very far. I know now that this can be done, but not how. Is it something about the music? Something about the musician? The instrument? Does it only work with water mana, or can the same be done with other elements? …Is there anything else magic can do that I don’t know about? As I’m overcome with questions that I can’t answer, I notice the music has come to a close. “That was impressive. Even in the best of times, music be a rare thing, but with the war going on… I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be hearing it again, especially in this forest.” Exclaims Jakin. “Yes,” agrees Xiltroth, “although it sounded different to what I’m used to, it was quite good. And did you notice the magic affecting us? He must be quite the accomplished magus.” Boaz nods along silently in agreement. Ignoring the three who apparently know very little about both magic and music, I walk closer to where the satyr is sitting on his gently swaying branch. Craning my neck to look up at him, I call out. “Hello there! Thank you for telling my friends there how to cure me.” The satyr looks down at me and idly swings his legs. He says nothing. Err, okay. Introductions then. “I’m Aaron, an adventurer.” He continues to look silently down at me, swinging his legs. “And your name is…?” I ask awkwardly. “…They called me lord.” He replies finally. I start to say something, “Lo-” but he interrupts me. “I never liked that name. Call me Ash.” “Alright Ash-” I say, before he interrupts me again, scowling. “No, that’s a terrible name. Willow. Willow is a much better name.” “Wi-” I start half-heartedly. “On second thought, that’s even worse. Maybe Franklin.” He says, interrupting me happily. “…Franklin?” I ask. It’s just so abruptly different from the first two that I can’t help but ask. He nods. “I knew a Franklin once. But then again: that’s his name, not mine…” He muses, stroking his goatee. Clapping his hands together, he says, “I have it: Cheese.” “I’m not calling you cheese.” I state, and his face falls. “But it’s delicious!” He protests, but I shake my head firmly. “Fine, you meanie. It’s Glade.” “…Glade?” I ask hesitantly. “Yes.” Glade nods. “You aren’t going to change it again?” I ask to confirm. “No.” Glade shrugs. “Not today, at least. Probably.” “Alright. Good.” I sigh. “Glade, how did you do that earlier?” “Ah yes,” He says, “Music. Probably the best thing your peoples have ever created. Although, cheese might come close…” He muses thoughtfully. Cheese is pretty good. Wait, that’s not what I asked. “No, I meant the magic. How did you do that with magic?” Glade slips off the tree branch and lands easily on the ground. He shows his instrument to me – it must be the strangest instrument I’ve ever seen. It has the basic shape of a lute, except instead of being made of carefully crafted and treated woods, it seems to have been made of a section of a tree branch or root, complete with smooth bark. Only thing is, I can’t see any spots without bark that could indicate where it was separated from the rest of the plant. The strings are an odd glistening silvery white colour and seem so thin that I can scarcely believe they can be pulled taut without snapping. Glade plucks a string, producing a clear note. The faintest of shines arises from my skin for a short moment before it fades away again. “Like that.” He says. “Yes, I see that you’re doing it through the music, but how do you do that?” I ask. He plucks the same string again. “But how does it work?” He plucks it again. “…Can you do it with any other elements?” He nods. “Can you show me?” He shakes his head. “Please?” He shakes his head again. Frustrated, I ask, “Why not?” “Because blue is prettier.” I slap my face in exasperation. “Can you please explain how you do it?” He plucks that string. “And… we’re back to here. Is there anything special about the string that lets you do the magic?” He shakes his head and plucks the string in question. “Is there another way to do it?” That string, he plucks it. And shrugs. “Why does it even work? As far as I know, most types of magic work exactly like they would in nature, except that you can control them.” He shrugs again. “Whoever told you that is an idiot.” I imagine the expression on arch-mage Jamison’s face if he knew he’d been called an idiot by a goat man who runs nude through the forest. The thought is amusing. Still, said goat man does seem to know his stuff. Even if he won’t tell me. Sadly. My stomach chooses that moment to growl loudly. “I don’t suppose you could tell us where to find food?” I ask sheepishly. Glade raises an eyebrow. “Ask nicely.” “Please?” I say. He shakes his head. “Not me.” “Who, then?” I ask curiously. There are others in this forest? He smiles mischievously and trots out of the opening in the clearing. I’m about to follow him when I remember exactly where we are – the others are still chatting, and if I leave them here, I might not see them again. I stop moving, and his shadow vanishes into the forest.

jinxs2011 Wasn't sure what to call this chapter. I usually have some trouble with this sort of thing, but it was especially difficult this time because the first and second halves of the chapter are very separate. Was not sure whether to call it what it is or 'assault', or something else. I think this one is fine, but I would welcome any ideas. Regardless, I hope you enjoy this chapter. Chapter 38: A Sorry State of Affairs We travel down the path and across to the town, thankfully avoiding any encounters with monsters on our way. As we reach the outskirts of town, Jack hobbles out to meet us, leaning heavily on a cane as he comes. “Dex!” He shouts, his face twisting in pain. “Did you find – Oh, god.” His face falls, staring at his son’s bloody body in shock and despair. “He needs help. Where do we go?” I shout back to him. “Follow me!” Jack turns around to start hobbling into town, but the sharp movement unbalances him, and he topples over, shouting in pain. I move to help him up, but he pushes my hands away, groaning, “Don’t worry about me. Get Dex to the center of town. Someone should be there. Quickly, please!” We hurry down the road, enquiring with the first person we come across as to where we should go. The town is quiet and contained, absent of its usual steady bustle and conversation. Even the ever-present interruption of Ren’s explosions has stopped. Windows and doors have been hastily reinforced with wooden boards, and the few people we come across, without fail, glance fearfully towards the mountain every now and again. Heather gets constant odd looks from people we pass, but nobody says anything, perhaps because she’s with us. After what felt like an age but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, we find the place. We knock urgently on the door, and after a few moments it opens. The face of the gnome at the door falls. “Another one. Just what I needed. Well, follow me, and try not to tread on anyone.” He turns and shouts into the building, “We have another one! Someone find me a place for another bed!” Before we head in, I turn to Heather. I have difficulty going under these doors, so Heather has no chance. “Sorry, but it looks like you’ll have to wait out here for a while. If anyone asks, just say you’re with Aaron. You should be fine.” Heather nods absentmindedly, looking around with interest. I shrug, and duck under the doorway. Every piece of furniture and most of the floor space is occupied by injured gnomes, which we have to carefully step between as we navigate through the building. “There’s a space here!” A voice calls out from another room. “Well, that’s something.” The gnome in front of us mutters, before heading in that direction and calling back, “Try and make some more room, if you can! It’s a bad one!” He ushers us into the room and points to a vacant stretch of fabric. “Set him down there, please. And carefully does it!” Xiltroth slowly lays Dex down on the bed, and the gnome waves us out. “Now out! There’s little enough room without you four in here!” “Will he be –” I try to say, but the gnome cuts me off. “I’ll do my best, now out!” We file back out. To my surprise, Len, the keeper of records, is outside and is peppering Heather with questions. She seems distinctly uncomfortable with the entire situation. “Is everything all right?” I call out to him. He looks up to see me ducking back through the doorway. “Aaron! So you are here. Excellent, excellent. I was just asking your friend here about the current culture of centaurs. As you know, we haven’t seen their people for two hundred and sixty-four years. Quite a lot is bound to have changed in that space of time, so I was hoping to update our records, but she isn’t being very cooperative.” “Now’s not really a good time to update the records. How’s the town?” I reply. “Not good, not good.” He shakes his head sadly. “Quite a few people were badly injured. They clearly weren’t here to kill us all, but most people took offense to their belongings being taken, unsurprisingly. Fortunate that you came here now, we could certainly use the assistance.” “That’s why we came.” I nod. “We took down seven on our way here, and I interrogated one of them – if the information I got was correct, there should be eighteen of them left. And if we’re really lucky… Well, it sounded like they were experimenting with Ren’s research and created an explosion. Some of them might have died in it, but it’s impossible to say for sure.” He nods with a slight smile that quickly turns into a frown. “That is good, but the real problem is those weapons they have – they are too accurate and powerful. Our guards couldn’t get in range before getting shot down.” “Actually, that advantage is on our side, now.” I smile. “They had eight crossbows. Now we have six, and one of theirs is broken. Who knows where that last one was – might have been caught in the blast. Worst case scenario, they have a single functioning crossbow, and that’s hardly an advantage.” “Excellent!” Len exclaims. “With that and you being here, we shouldn’t have any trouble fending off further attacks.” “Problem is, that’s not enough.” Boaz interjects. “We dwarves aren’t famous for our fortresses fer no reason; almost every dwarf alive has tried or succeeded in becoming a blacksmith, architect or stonemason in the past. I guarantee yeh that in that group up there, they have more knowledge about how to defend and fortify a position than this entire village put together. The longer we wait, the more they’ll reinforce and the harder it’ll be to assault their position.” Len nods slowly. “That is a problem. And they won’t run out of food or supplies?” “The river is a bit far, but not so far as to be an impossible source of water, if they’re determined. The local monsters are simple enough to hunt, once you figure out how to avoid the annoying ones.” I stroke my beard thoughtfully. “It’s not the best of places, but if they really want to, they could probably stay there indefinitely.” Len frowns. “Meaning that if we want them gone, we have to get rid of them ourselves. That might be difficult - we don’t have many fighting people left in good shape.” “Can your fighters even get through their armour?” My eyebrows furrow in concern. “Not with conventional weaponry, no.” Len shakes his head. “But according to the records, armour isn’t exactly watertight. Now that we have advance notice, we can concoct some acids that would…” “I don’t really need to hear the rest of that, thanks.” I shake my head. “I’d rather not resort to that, if possible. Eighteen… We’ve beaten worse odds. We’ll go in again tonight, see if we can clear them out.” Len blinks. “If you think you can… Right then. If you need anything, just say the word. Least we can do at this point.” Nodding to us in thanks, he heads off. “Aaron… Are yeh sure? This is eighteen armoured, trained soldiers, not some bandits. They’ll be on alert now; it won’t be as easy. And that time… That was not a good night.” Jakin says grimly. “I’d rather not do that again.” “Acid is worse, trust me.” I grimace. “But no, I’m not planning on doing that again. In a cave like that, the smell alone would take an age to dissipate. Still, there are only eighteen of them. There’s only so many they can assign as guards – at most nine, for them to be able to switch out the guard when they get tired.” “Nine there may be, but from a naturally defensible position like that, that’s plenty. It will be difficult to do anything if they’re determined to keep their positions.” Jakin reasons. I nod. “True. The footing there isn’t the greatest, and a precipice not too far behind us – not the best place to make an assault from. But… What if we turned it around? If we were the ones in a defensible position, they wouldn’t be able to do anything. The cave isn’t that wide, so it would only take two of us to fend them off, leaving the other three of us to fire crossbows – and bows,” I nod to Heather, “while they have little to no ranged options available to retaliate with.” Jakin frowns. “You might be right, but the problem is getting that position in the first place. And even if we do manage to get inside the cave, they have numbers enough that they’d be able to push us back, or just retreat out of the line of fire.” “Getting in isn’t a problem.” I explain. “They may be armoured, but armour doesn’t help against fire. If I start throwing fire towards them, chances are they retreat, allowing us to go in. From there, I can do like I did way back with that wolf horde and set up a barrier of earthen spikes. They won’t be able to do much in terms of damage, but they should be enough to obstruct movement substantially. I think I should be able to make the spikes move forward as we go, so we’ll be able to move through the tunnels while still being defensible.” Jakin furrows his eyebrows, considering it for a short while before nodding. “It could work. It’ll be tough, but it could work.” “When isn’t it tough?” I sigh. “You guys should get some rest while you have the time. Xiltroth, would you mind teaching me how to use this?” I ask, tapping the crossbow poking out of my pack. “I don’t want to accidentally break it trying to load it the wrong way or something.” Xiltroth nods. “Sure, but there might be a bit too little time to teach you how to use it effectively.” Smiling wryly, I say, “I’m a fast learner. Besides, crossbows are designed to be easy to learn.” Xiltroth shrugs. “And how about you, Heather?” I turn to her. “Are you planning on fighting with us, or staying here? We won’t hold it against you if you stay.” “I’ll fight.” She nods, surprising me with how confidant she seems to be. “The fight, earlier, it… Never mind.” She abruptly cuts herself off. I raise an eyebrow, but don’t mention it. “Excellent. Well, the houses here are too small to allow you access, so it’s probably best if you stay with us this time, until we get the chance to introduce you around the place and explain how things work.” Heather nods, and we all move off. The twins head to Ren’s house to rest for a while, while Heather, Xiltroth and I move out of town to find a good place to teach me how to use a crossbow. We find a copse of young trees – not the best targets, but we don’t have the time to find anything better. I fetch the crossbow from my pack, as well as the bolts. Xiltroth takes the crossbow, checking it over. “Before using one of these, you’ll want to check the limbs for cracks or other damage, and the cord for fraying. If either of those break in the process of firing a bolt, you could end up injuring yourself instead of your enemy. This one is in fairly good condition, considering it was probably dropped rather violently onto a stone floor.” He indicates a few dents in the handle of the crossbow. “This bit at the front is called the stirrup. You put your foot through it and use both hands to pull the cord back until it locks into place.” As he explains, Xiltroth demonstrates with the crossbow. “After that, you just slot in the bolt, pulling it back to the string, like so. A crossbow can be kept loaded for a while, hours even, but it’s not a good idea to leave it loaded for too long, as it can cause the cord to stretch and the limbs to bend. One last thing – after loading a crossbow, don’t try to unload it, just fire it. A lot of things can go wrong otherwise, and it’s a lot easier and safer to just fire it at something.” I nod. “Makes sense.” Xiltroth turns and aims the crossbow at one of the trees. “After you’ve done that, all you have to do is aim, then you pull the lever towards the body of the crossbow.” The bolt shoots out from the crossbow, the tip embedding itself in the tree. Handing the crossbow back to me, Xiltroth says, “Try it out.” Nodding, I put my foot through the stirrup, planting it firmly on the ground before lifting the cord up into position. It’s hard to pull back, but not so much that it’s a problem for me. After feeling it lock into place, I ease my hands back away from the cord, take my foot out of the stirrup and lift it up. I slip a bolt from the pouch at my waist and slot it into place, pulling it back along the groove to the string. Lifting the crossbow, I take aim at the tree. There’s no scope or any indication of where the centre of the front of the crossbow is, so I have to roughly guess it. Just before I lift the lever, a flicker of movement catches my eye, and I rapidly adjust my aim before loosing the bolt. After a moment, I say with a hint of disbelief, “I think I hit it.” We head over to check it out, and sure enough, we find a rabbit lying dead with a bolt through its flank. “That’s some beginner’s luck.” Xiltroth says with raised eyebrows. “That crossbow was made a bit shoddily, and the bolt drifts a bit to the left from where you aim. Difficult to hit a small target at range with it, especially on the first shot.” “Yeah.” I say wryly. “Well, I think I understand how to load and fire it pretty well now. I’ll probably stay here for a while and practice. Feel free to head back to Ren’s to rest.” “Sure.” Xiltroth waves and heads back to town. Silently, I cock the crossbow, slip in another bolt, head back to my original position, aim, and fire. The bolt hits near the center of the trunk of the tree I was aiming at. Sighing, I cock the crossbow again, load, aim, and fire. I accurately hit a thin branch, breaking it. “It wasn’t beginner’s luck, was it?” Heather asks in amazement. “No.” I reply in resignation. “You have experience with this… Crossbow, before today?” She asks. “Never in my life.” I shrug. She looks at me with confusion. “Then how?” I reply with a question. “Have you ever found something that just… Comes naturally to you? You just start doing it for the first time, but somehow you already understand what you should and shouldn’t do? You don’t make the rookie mistakes, and you instinctively know how to improve? Something where if you close your eyes, you can imagine it, down to the last detail?” Heather thinks for a moment. “Once.” Smiling wryly, I shrug. “Well, I haven’t once found something that isn’t like that for me. I’m cursed with both enough talent to become the best at anything without trying and the willpower to become the best without it.” “That doesn’t sound like a curse.” Heather notes. “If it’s true, you could become the most powerful person in the world.” “And then what?” I shake my head. “Once you’re at the top, there’s nowhere to go but down… Power doesn’t give you happiness. You know what does? Friendship. Peace. Triumph over adversity. And just sometimes… Losing. At least, for me it can.” “I… I’m not sure I understand.” Heather says in some confusion. “Most everyone in the tribe wanted to be the best hunter there ever was.” I nod. “It’s not unusual, but that was likely one of the largest problems about your tribe. Everyone was only concerned about themselves. The only thing that keeps a community together in that case are the traditions, the laws, and that’s not what they’re there for. They’re there to protect the people who would have followed the laws even if they weren’t spoken or written down, from the ones who don’t. When the group of people who disobey or dislike the law outgrows the group of people who follow it, then the community is liable to crumble, and the laws themselves will become corrupted, no longer serving their original purpose.” Heather shakes her head. “I’m not following you at all. I don’t understand.” Shrugging, I say, “That’s alright. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, anyway. Maybe I’m just a madman spouting nonsense. Maybe it doesn’t matter even if I am. What I’m trying to say… I don’t know. Look, it’s all well and good if people just focus on themselves. Most people do, at least to some degree. A selfish person can accomplish a lot – they can build a kingdom, a city, a fortune. But once they’re gone, all that’s left is people that fight over what they’ve left behind. The best of people are the ones that truly sustain a community, give it life. They’re the people who don’t just focus on themselves. They look around, see a problem and set off to fix it. They don’t just want better lives for themselves, but everyone around them, as well.” “I think I understand a bit of what you’re trying to say.” Heather says slowly, tilting her head slightly. “But why are you telling me all this?” I freeze for a moment and shake my head, laughing a bit at myself. “I don’t know. A bad day I suppose. A bit tired. My mind is wandering. Forget I said anything.” Cocking the crossbow again, I take aim and fire. ‘Miss.’ I find myself wishing that it won’t hit where I expect it to, but it does. I shake my head to myself in disappointment. When your talent is high enough, it almost begins to seem like failure is a greater accomplishment than success. Sighing, I continue to practice. I don’t particularly enjoy this, but I suppose it is better than smoking out the entire cave. Inevitably, night falls, a crescent moon shining in the sky above. We venture out in the darkness, travelling quickly and quietly to the foot of the path to the tunnel through the mountain. I look up the path and see a light coming from the entrance. “Alright, this is it. We’ll go up single file, slowly and quietly, sticking close the to the side of the mountain. The later they see us, the better. As soon as they do, we’ll need to rush to the top.” I say quietly. The others nod, and we advance. Jakin walks up the front, then Boaz, me, Xiltroth and finally Heather. We stay as quiet as we can, but there’s only so much you can do to keep quiet while wearing full plate armour, and Heather’s hooves don’t particularly lend themselves to stealth, not to mention the ground is somewhat gravelly and prone to crunching underfoot. We get about halfway up the path before the dwarves at the top notice us. After a moment, I hear a rumbling sound, but because of the darkness I can’t see much more than what seems like a trembling sheet of darkness descending down the path towards us. “It’s a rockslide!” Xiltroth exclaims from behind me. “Get behind us and stick as low and close to the mountainside as possible.” Jakin grunts before planting his shield on the ground and bracing himself. Boaz does the same right beside his, both angling their shields such that it will deflect the rocks to the side. The rest of us huddle together against the mountainside. A moment later a hail of clanging and pinging sounds come from the front as rocks of all sizes ricochet off the twins’ shields. Just as I think we’ll be completely fine behind their shield wall, a rock skips over their shields and ploughs right into my forehead, startling me into falling backwards. Xiltroth manages to catch me and push me back up. “You alright?” “Yeah, thanks.” I answer, getting my feet again. It had hurt, and I’m sure it would leave a sizeable bruise, but I couldn’t feel any wetness that might indicate bleeding. Although… There was now a rather uncomfortable dent in my helmet. “Wasn’t a big one, thankfully.” After a little while, the rumbling of stones stops, and the twins cautiously lift their shields. “Ow.” Jakin shakes his free arm. “Going teh feel that in the morning.” That was surprising, but mostly ineffective. “Alright, let’s go.” We charge up the path towards the figures of armed dwarves, outlined by the light of a fire behind them. As we draw near, they level halberds towards us. It wouldn’t be a good idea to charge that head on, but we don’t need to. Once I’m sure that we’re close enough to the dwarves that crossbow fire from their side would be likely to hit their own people, I move in front of the twins and stop a fair bit outside their range. Lifting my left hand towards them, I channel my mana and create a blaze of fire in their direction. The sudden rush of light causes me to squint as my eyes struggle to adjust, but through the flames I can vaguely make out the dwarves staggering backwards, away from the fire. Keeping my arm aloft and the stream of fire constant, I advance forward, pushing them back, back into the entrance of the cave. Helplessly, they keep retreating, unable to retaliate. Armour is an excellent investment… But against fire, it’ll more harm you than help, the metal absorbing the heat and potentially causing it to become hot enough to burn. Once we have a foot in the entrance, I stop the stream of fire and let out clouds of earth mana instead, crunching and compressing them down into sturdy and sharp spikes that I line the width of the entrance with, all pointing from the ground up towards the opposing dwarves. “We’re out in the sticks, how in earth is there a magus this powerful here!?” One of the dwarves exclaims in exasperation and fear. “Tough luck, buttercup.” I take the crossbow from my shoulder, already cocked and loaded, briefly take aim and shoot the man in the head. Immediately, he slumps to the ground, dead, with a bolt protruding from the upper section of his helmet. To be particularly honest, I don’t have to aim much. There are enough of them that just shooting in their general direction would hit someone. Still, that extra moment taken to aim can mean a much more effective shot. Then Xiltroth takes out his crossbow, and Heather her bow, and the twins move behind my spike barrier, raising their shields and weapons. The remaining five dwarves take one look at us and start running down the tunnel away from us as bolts and arrows soar towards them.

jinxs2011 It's been a while since my last chapter, sorry about that. Took a bit of a break from writing to get some things done. Didn't work out so I gave up on that and went back to writing. I feel like I should be more disappointed about that, but oh well, I enjoy writing. Anywhomst, I hope you enjoy. Chapter 43: To The Library A new day dawns. Every morning I wake up, take a deep breath, and my lungs exult at the cleanness of it. I take a dip in the river, careful to keep my cast dry, and my skin shivers at its coolness. Then I go for a jog around camp, and my feet complain at every impact upon rock through my boots. Some things about civilisation I do not miss in the slightest. The pollution, the politics, the endless plodding drudgery of education, work and life as a whole. So many advancements that were supposed to save time, allow us to spend more time on recreation, and yet it felt like there was less time than ever. Or perhaps that was how it always felt, and my memories deceive me into thinking that things used to be better. Other things I wonder how it is I took them for granted. A warm bed. A shelter that doesn’t leak when it rains. Access to a variety of ingredients, and instructions on how to cook them. Information. Fabrication. Wonder. Toilet paper. To say that this world is better than Earth would be to deny the advancements of humanity over the millennia. To say that Earth is better than this world would be to deny everything that Earth sacrificed for those same advancements, everything that it left behind. There are many things better about this world. And many things better about Earth. As it is with almost every comparison under the sun. The only real thing that determines which is better is your perspective. But I digress. The sun is shining, the clouds drift by, and we’re not getting attacked by a horde of monsters. The day is wasted on such thoughts. I do some simple stretches to cool down from the jog and inform the others of the orcs nearby and what Heather has told me about them. Best to keep everyone in the know, just in case. If they haven’t come near us since we got here, I doubt that’ll change anytime soon, but you never know. The day goes by without anything unusual happening, and we sit around the fire in the evening at dinner, talking about this and that; nothing of importance. Finishing the last bite of meat, Jakin sets his bowl on the ground and drops his spoon inside it. “So, these orcs yeh’ve been talking about…” He rolls his hefty shoulders. “Seems to me that we need to make contact. If they ain’t hostile, great. If they are, we need to know. How do we go about it?” “We’ll need to head over, try and make a positive first impression. Fortunately, Heather knows where they are, so we won’t be blindly exploring for once.” I smile wryly. “Aye, that’ll be a welcome change.” Boaz nods with a small smile. Heather opens her mouth as if to say something, but pauses and closes it again. I raise an eyebrow questioningly, and she shakes her head slightly, so I shrug and let it be. “Maybe we could hunt something, give it to them as a gift. Back where I came from, they used to say, ‘the way to a man’s heart is his stomach.’ It might not be much, but it could give us a good foothold to start good relations.” I muse. “I think…” Xiltroth says slowly, “If we hunt something powerful and give it to them, that could also send the message that we’re strong, and they shouldn’t mess with us.” “But wouldn’t that be a bit aggressive?” Jakin scratches at his bearded chin. “Being all, ‘hello, look at this monster we just killed!’” “That’s a good point, but I think it’s a good idea, so long as we don’t go over the top or shove it in their faces.” I shrug. “We’ll have to choose what we hunt somewhat carefully. Don’t want to seem as if we’re trying to intimidate them.” Jakin grunts, shaking his head. “These mind games are all going a bit over my head. Strong or weak, intimidation or gift, whatever. We work that bit out when we get to it. So, we go over there, hunt something, give it to them and hopefully don’t end up hacking each other to pieces. Am I missing anything?” “That’s about it.” I nod with slight amusement. “But another thing I’ve been wondering is whether I should go with you or not.” Jakin’s mouth opens immediately, but I raise a hand to stop him. “Just hear me out first. It’s best if we do this as soon as possible, leave nothing to chance. But I’m injured. We may not know much about them, but if the old stories are anything to go by, they probably value strength highly, not unlike the beastman. Me, like this, not the best first impression. Besides, if things get hairy, I’m not able to move about as well as usual. I’d be a hindrance if we had to escape.” “Like hell you would.” Snorts Jakin. “Sure, you’re slower, can’t do a much physically for a while. But yeh’re trying to tell me you couldn’t just create a barrier of fire to stop anyone else from following us, if it came to it? ‘Course you could. Besides, if you’re not there, who’s gonna do the talking? None of us are good at negotiation, at talking and working things out.” “Neither am I, to be fair.” I shrug. “A fair sight better than us, at least.” Jakin shrugs. “Look, yeh’ve got to come. Ain’t safe for us to split up, not for something like this, not here.” I nod slowly. “You make a fair point. It’s dangerous for me to be alone, especially as I am now. Alright then, we all go. Do our best to make some new friends or, at worst, prevent earning some new enemies.” “That’s more like it.” Jakin nods approvingly. Boaz shakes his head at it all, smiling. “Not much of an adventure without our daring leader, now is it?” “Daring leader?” I laugh. “Jakin just had to talk me into going on this one.” “Daring enough to charge into a cave of soldiers with only questionable information saying we wouldn’t be stuck full of bolts the moment we walked in.” Xiltroth chuckles. “Boaz is right. We do this all together, or we may as well not at all.” “I’d drink to that,” Jakin nods, before his smile sours slightly, “but we’re out again.” “I wouldn’t.” Xiltroth says candidly, shrugging. “Can’t stand the taste. Much too bitter.” “The more for us.” Boaz laughs. I smile wryly. “You’d think that it would be difficult to fuel a drinking habit out here in the wilderness, but you two seem to manage well enough.” “Aye, but we can only carry so much back from the town, and it takes a while to get there.” Jakin sighs. “Even drinking sparingly it’s always out before long.” “Good news, then.” I reply. “We’re going back to town soon, probably tomorrow.” “Eh? Thought we were heading to the orcs?” Jakin remarks. “We are.” I proceed to explain. “I want to know as much as we can before we head in there. The gnome’s records of the orcs are hundreds of years out of date, but they could give us an idea into the orcs’ culture and how they think. A whole city of orcs isn’t something we could fight if something goes wrong. So, we have to make sure that nothing does.” Plus… There are a few other things I want to check on. When we approach the town the next day, it feels a bit different to usual. Quieter. It isn’t until we’re actually part-way to the town center that I realise what it is. There are no explosions coming from Ren’s house. No colourful smoke, no acrid smell. I guess he really has given up on that for good. “Well, anyone that feels up for some reading, feel free to help out. We’ll meet up at Ren’s at dusk, discuss what we’ve learned.” I say, pulling open the door to one of the largest buildings in town: the library. “Not for me, sorry.” Jakin shakes his head apologetically. “The war on words is one I’ve never won a battle in.” Boaz nods. “Not much better, myself.” “Well, I’m in.” Xiltroth shrugs. “I, uh…” Heather stammers nervously. “The doors, right.” I nod in understanding. “Well, see you later.” We enter the building and are greeted by Len. “Aaron, Xil. I hope your arms is doing well?” The diminutive man asks warmly. I nod. “As well as you could hope for a broken limb. We’re here today to try and find out more about the orcs. Apparently, they aren’t that far from where our camp is.” “How terrible!” Len gasps. “They haven’t raided you, have they?” “No, we haven’t actually seen them yet.” I shake my head, causing Len to let out a breath of relief. “But Heather – you’ve met Heather, right? The centaur that joined our group recently – says that she’s been there before and it’s less of a tribe and more of a city. What’s more, that they aren’t hostile.” “And you’re inclined to believe her?” Len asks sceptically. “She hasn’t given me any reason to distrust her as of yet.” I confirm. “But I wanted to find out more about the orcs and their culture before we actually go there and witness it in person.” “I see…” Len scratches his hairless chin in thought. “Well, come on through and we’ll see if we can’t find something of use.” Len leads us through a door in the rear of the entrance room, and we emerge into a vast library. It’s comparable in size to libraries on modern earth, but this one is several degrees more impressive, by virtue of a single fact: every single book and text here, every page, was written and bound by hand. The amount of effort and time expended over the centuries to accumulate this volume of knowledge exceeds that of the modern world by magnitudes. “I wouldn’t get your hopes too high on being able to understand the culture of orcs in detail.” Len prefaces as we walk past the groaning shelves. “I doubt there were any scholars in the past that managed to get a firsthand look at an orc tribe, unless it was one that had been vacated or destroyed. Most of the accounts here will be of conflicts between the orcs and other kingdoms – including us, actually.” “You?” I say in surprise. “But to my understanding, your people have never had much of an effective military. How could you have repelled the orcs?” “We had an alliance with the beastmen of Binod. They would leave a force here to defend us, and we would give them exclusive trade benefits.” Len shrugs. “We aren’t a strong people, but there are benefits we enjoyed as the greatest alchemists of the time.” “Wouldn’t that mean that they were trapped here when the valley was cut off from the outside world? I haven’t heard of anything like that.” I remark in confusion. “True. True!” Len barks. “They must not have been here when we were cut off. But why? I’m terribly sorry, but I want to look into this. Everything is ordered by date, you’ll have to look some three hundred years back.” “No problem, we should be fine searching by ourselves.” I reply, nodding as he turns towards one of the bookcases. There are several others in the library, browsing the shelves or reading at one of the tables that dot the area in the centre. A couple of them observe us for a few moments before going back to their books, our presence evidently not of enough interest to distract them for long. I nod towards the closest empty table. “We’ll bring anything we find there, try and get a clearer picture. I’m guessing this’ll take a while.” Xiltroth nods, and we split up slightly, scanning through the titles to try and find something relevant. Within about half an hour we determine one of the things we should be looking for: a series of books titled ‘guard report’, followed by a particular year. Each of them detail anything that happened relating to the town’s security and the guard’s activity that year, major or minor. It is still a lot to go through, however, skimming through hundreds of pages listing comings and goings, monster attacks, crimes and everything in between. But no orc invasions. We go through over twenty years of the books without seeing anything, and we almost start looking for other similar books, to see if maybe larger scale conflicts were omitted from the guard report and listed elsewhere. But, finally, in the guard report for three hundred and twenty four years ago, Xiltroth spots a brief mention: ‘On this date, there was an orcish raid. Casualties number eight in allied Binod’s forces, and three in our own. None fatal. Orc numbers notably lower than the last raid, at an estimated eighty. Allied Binod forces severely outclassed the enemy forces in quantity, equipment and individual skill. Enemy forces fled after short conflict.’ Something, finally. It was no scientific document or social study, but it was at least evidence that there was something here to find. The next mention we find is another three years back, then two, two, one, seemingly becoming more and more common an occurrence as we go back through the records until it seems like it happens almost every other month, several of the raids being recorded in a single volume of the guard report. Violent, indeed. As early as four hundred years ago, there are records of them barely managing to repel an orc raid with extensive losses, or even failing and having food, drink and tools pillaged and carted away by the orcs. “So let’s see, what do we have on them?” I ask, a little bleary from several hours of reading in the dim light. Stuff like this was what ruined my eyesight in the first place. “Not much.” Xiltroth shakes his head softly with both annoyance and tiredness. “Most of what we have is from the guard reports, and that doesn’t exactly tell us much about them except that they did a lot of killing and pillaging.” Rubbing at my neck, I look down again at the numerous books set out on the table. “Looks that way. But maybe we can get something if we look at it another way. Let’s look at these again with the assumption that the orcs today aren’t like this. Something has to have caused that. Look for any changes.” “The obvious change is that their attacks grew sparser in the more recent years.” Xiltroth offers. “There is that.” I agree. “Could be relevant. What caused that?” Xiltroth shrugs, and so we both look down again and start reading everything again. It isn’t obvious at first, since there’s quite a few years delay between the actual cause and the decline in raid, but we eventually figure it out. It’s the Binod allies they had. At first, in the earlier years, it was just the gnomes on their own – physically and magically weak as they are, they were easy targets for the powerful and numerous orcs. It was rare that they managed to repel a raid, and it usually ended with the orcs taking off with various resources. But after they made an alliance with Binod, that changed. The first few raids were shaky, a fair few casualties on either side. But once Binod had a clearer picture of the amount of warriors they needed, they sent more reinforcements. For the first time, the orcs were frequently and consistently taking heavy losses, and rarely managing to loot supplies. Their raids petered off because they became too risky. “So, they stopped raiding the gnomes, unable to overcome their new allies. Where do they go then?” I muse. “Seems like they raided for food, weapons and anything else they needed. They had to have started attacking somewhere else once the easy target hardened up.” “Not Xin.” Xiltroth replies. “I never heard of any orc raid happening, save for some children’s stories. I doubt orcs have been seen around Xin for a long time.” “The closest kingdom to them is Binod… But they wouldn’t have gone there, either.” I shake my head. “They would just be in an even worse situation than in the first place, facing the main might of Binod’s military.” Xiltroth nods. “Where else is there?” “None that I know of.” I shrug. “Maybe we need to find ourselves some old maps.” It doesn’t take long for us to find one from around the same time as the orc raids were diminishing, around three hundred and forty years ago. A short note before the map states that it was originally penned by Xin explorers, and the authenticity of all but the most obscure regions had been confirmed. Nodding to myself in satisfaction, I turn to the map itself. Seeing the title, I let out an involuntary snort. ‘A compleat map of the civilised world’. Complete my foot, this doesn’t even map an entire continent. Chances are that there are others just as, if not more, civilised than this. But it will do for our purposes. The five kingdoms, of course, are dead centre, emblazoned with their respective crests and sporting borders that were likely completely different to modern times – again, not that it matters. Idly tracing an estimate of the route we took from the western border of the dwarven kingdom, Morrock, to that small pond, to the south side of the river. My finger drifts past where our camp is, across the river and to the north-east, to an area marked in shades of red. ‘Orc tribes’, says the label. My gaze drifts further north-east, where a mountain range is depicted. A single, large skull symbol is drawn over them with no further explanation or description, and the area beyond the mountains is blank. To the east of the orc camps, bordering both Xin and the mountains, gentle, shallow peaks and waves illustrate the ‘great northern desert’. Great, huh… Well, I suppose they have no other desert as reference to compare it to. Can’t fault them for that. More accurately, it spans an area perhaps two thirds as large as Xin, spanning north to the mountains and east to the sea. Nowhere close to the big old desert smack bang in the middle of Australia. Then again, if we’re to compare deserts, Antarctica outclasses them all, doesn’t it? To the north and slightly to the west of the orc camps, and east of the gnome towns in the mountains there, is labelled the mystical forest. The mountains themselves, the ones the gnome’s hidden valley is in, has a complex network of passes through it, and not an awful lot is explored past them. To the west is unlabelled plains, forests and hills. Nothing of note. “As far as I can tell, there’s literally nobody else for them to have raided.” I note. Xiltroth nods. “Same here. But they’re still around, so they must have found an alternate source of food and supplies.” “They were forced into a corner. Supplies running low, they had to try anything they could. Maybe one of the tribes tried to imitate what they’d seen on raids, farming and domesticating animals, hunting…” I hypothesise. “Managed to keep afloat. Maybe the other orc tribes noticed and tried attacking them, but failed? Or maybe they recognised that conflict would cause them all to fall, and banded together… Either way, one large ruling tribe is created. Self-sufficient, for the first time in history.” “Not needing to raid outsiders anymore, they would become more peaceful… Right?” Xiltroth muses questioningly. “Ideally, that’s what happened.” I shrug. “Realistically? They could also be biding their time and building up their military. Impossible to say exactly what happened without more information. Rarely is there an actual need for a war, on either side. More often than not, it’s greed. Land, money, resources, manpower. They just create an excuse that sounds good so the soldiers will die for them willingly. But anyway, even though it’s all just conjecture, just knowing that their raids decreased over time makes me think that they are what Heather remembers them as: an at least somewhat peaceful civilisation.” Xiltroth nods thoughtfully. “Should we continue looking for more information?” He asks. I glance out the window; the light is starting to dim. “As much as I’d like to, it’s already starting to get late and I still need to visit the doctor. Ideally, we’ll set off again early in the morning, see if we can find the orc city before the end of tomorrow.” Xiltroth nods, and we start replacing all the books back where we found them. “I kind of enjoyed this.” He says quietly. “It’s been a long time since I could just sit down in peace and read, even if it was for something like this.” “Yeah.” I sigh. “Most of the times we’ve come here we’ve been focused on something else. Might be good if we started coming here more often, or for longer, so we can do things like this. There’s a lot that can be learned from places like these. Centuries of accumulated knowledge… Impossible to know what you might find. Hidden within these pages could be forgotten histories, ancient techniques, the teachings of masters long gone, waiting to see the light of day again.” “Glad to hear you are of the same opinion as myself.” Len says smilingly, approaching. “I noticed you starting to leave. Did you manage to find what you were looking for?” “We think so.” I reply. “And it’s probable that our two questions aren’t unrelated. The historical alliance with Binod was primarily due to the orc raids as far as I could tell, but once Binod soldiers came here, the orcs were getting beaten back every time they attacked. Evidently, they didn’t like the idea of fighting losing battles, as the raids decreased over the years, eventually until there were none at all. I’d guess at that point the Binod soldiers returned to their homeland, not being needed to defend any longer. Not too long after… Well, you know the rest.” “The tunnel collapsed and contact ceased, yes.” Len nods. “It sounds plausible, but forgive me for wanting to confirm it for myself.” “Of course.” I shrug. “It’s always better to confirm from multiple sources to decrease the chances of false or inaccurate information.” “That it is.” He nods deeply, smiling. “Well, I hope that it all fares well with the orcs. I would be quite interested in hearing all about it, presuming you aren’t completely wrong about them and – well, best not to jinx it.” “No problem. Either way we’ll let you know.” I nod in affirmation. “But we best be leaving now. Thanks for letting us use the library.” Len shakes his head. “Don’t mention it. You and your friends saved our town, this much doesn’t even count as a favour in comparison.” “I suppose not.” I scratch my head awkwardly. “But I think what Dex did was more impressive. Not even a warrior, and he ran through the mountains and plains, avoiding monsters where he could while trying to find us.” “Yes, the energetic little tyke saved us all, bless the poor boy.” He sighs. “I do hope he’ll be able to recover from it all, eventually.” Nodding in agreement, I start turning to leave. “I’ll check in on him when I get the doctor to look at my arm again. See you again another day.” “Best of luck!” He calls after us as we head out the door.

Regarding the feasibility of partially replicating the natural monster spawning process in order to create custom materials – I have found it to be possible, albeit completely impractical. The sheer quantity of mana that had to be sourced, as well as the massive, one hundred meter diameter thousand-layer formation array that I found necessary to safely control the reaction, all in order to create a simple square of hard leather brings another question to my mind: How in the dickens does this happen naturally!? Also, is the natural process more efficient than mine? Or less? That brings to mind a whole host of new questions… - An unknown scholar What now? Waking up, I find myself asking this question. We’re free, we can do whatever we want… What now? When I ask the others, Jakin shrugs and says, “It boils down to whether we want to stay here or not. If we be staying here, we build a base – I don’t want to be sleeping in a tent forever. If we don’t, then we make a temporary camp until we can find someplace better.” “Well, this place isn’t that bad…” I muse, taking a drink of water. I make a face. “But?” Xiltroth prompts. “But this pond water tastes weird.” I say in disgust. Jakin nods. “Temporary base it be. We’ll collect the wood, you two clear an area.” The twins fetch hatchets from their packs and start hacking at the trees, and we try to clear the area of twigs and leaves. I find myself a leafy branch to use as a rake that speeds the process somewhat, and we’re soon done. “Now what do we do?” Xiltroth asks. I look over to our tents. “May as well clear the area around the campfire as well.” We soon complete that as well. I shout over to the dwarves, “I don’t suppose we can help with getting wood?” “We only have two hatchets!” Boaz shouts back over the sound of a tree cracking to the ground. “Ah.” I scratch my head. “I suppose we should collect firewood or something, then.” Me and Xiltroth split up and wonder through the forest in search of suitable sticks. We’ll probably have plenty of long-burning logs after the dwarves are done with those trees, but it’s always useful to have a good supply of kindling as well. As I move through, I mark the trees with my mithril knife, leaving a trail that I can easily follow back to the camp. The knife holds an edge quite well – last time I had to hone it was after its violent encounter with a city wall. A flash of brown dashes past. Making a snap decision, I leap onto its back. The deer collapses under the combined weight of me, my armour and the various miscellaneous things I have in my backpack. I cut its throat so that it doesn’t have to deal with a broken back. …Most of my sticks broke. Hah… I gather them all up with one arm and drag the deer along with the other as I head back to camp. When I get there, I shake my head and sigh. Looks like Xiltroth came across a deer as well. What’ll we do with all the extra meat? “We had the same idea, huh? Well, that’s meat for the next few days.” Xiltroth notes from where he’s lying in the grass. “Yep.” I facepalm. “Jakin, Boaz! How’s it coming along?” “We only have hatchets to process this wood! How do you think it’s coming along!?” Jakin shouts back. “It’ll be a few hours before we finish this!” “The building?” “The wood!” Xiltroth and I share a glance. “Want to go, I dunno, fight some monsters or something?” “Sure.” Over the next couple of days, the dwarves construct a small, simple wooden cabin. It only has a single room, but the roof has been layered with leaves and grasses to make it mostly waterproof, and the walls provide shelter from the wind as well as much better protection from monster attacks than simple canvas. Not that we’ve ever had our tents attacked, simply keeping a fire going and a watchful eye at night is enough to ward many monsters away. The rest don’t live long enough to encroach upon our sleeping space. But this is uncharted territory, and it’s impossible to know how strong the monsters we might encounter will be before-hand. Anyway, while the twins were doing that, we didn’t have much to do; we were mainly physical labour. So, we made a few miscellaneous improvements to the campsite: expanded the campfire and built a small rock wall around it to prevent the fire from spreading to the grass surrounding it… which we also dug up and cleared out for good measure. With our knives. What? Not like we had any better digging tools, and mithril doesn’t stain. Cutting off the top layer of soil and roots piece by piece was easy enough, if somewhat time consuming. Washed them off afterwards, too. In boiled water. If we did it in the lake, I think they might’ve ended up dirtier than before we cleaned them. Apart from that, me and Xiltroth put our noggins together and set up a little tripwire around the camp. We didn’t really have a bell or something we could attach to it, but it’s not hard to cobble together something that makes a little noise. We just borrowed one of the twins’ picks to pierce a hole in the handles of some spare cutlery – the metal is fairly soft – and strung them up together. Since all that is done, we have ourselves a fairly comfy camp site. From then on, we start going on expeditions to find another, preferably better, water source. We don’t have the resources – or skills, for that matter – to make maps, so instead, we end up having to keep an eye out for characteristic landmarks: a lightning struck tree, strangely shaped outcroppings on the side of hills, mossy boulders, particular patches of easily recognisable greenery, and so on and so forth. Each expedition, we choose a direction and keep approximately to it, from landmark to landmark until our supplies start to dwindle to around half of our original supply. After that, we have no choice but to head back to camp. It usually takes around four days each expedition – that’s the longest we can safely last, based on how much water we carry: we only have so many water bottles. Food we can usually hunt on the way, but sometimes there just aren’t any animals and around, and we’re forced to return to camp early. We no longer have the luxury of dried meats and long-lasting rations, as there is no place to buy them from and we don’t know how to produce them, so we can only hunt for fresh food every day. Four, five trips pass without us finding much more than muddy puddles, which translates to a bit less than three weeks with no success. By now, we’re quite sick of the taste of this pond water. Another week passes without the trickle of water gracing our ears. It is now our eight expedition, and hopes aren’t high. Our supplies are already dipping towards the point at which we usually turn around. We reach the land mark we have been heading towards, and I take a look around. As per usual, there isn’t any indication of water anywhere. Sighing, I start to turn around in preparation to head back to camp. “Why don’t we go to the top of that hill?” Xiltroth suggests. “It’s not far. Maybe we’ll be able to see something from the top?” The hill in question is still about a kilometre out, and at this point I’m tired of walking, and of this disgusting water. “Fine.” Jakin groans tiredly. “At least we’ll be able to check that there really is nothing at all out here.” Seeing that everyone else is already set on going there, I sigh again. “Let’s get a move on, then.” We jog over to the hill and hike to the top. It’s not a massive hill, but as the land is mostly flat it still allows for a much higher vantage point than anywhere else in view. I look out into the distance, and I’m instantly lost for words. The view is stunning, particularly as the sun is just setting, bathing everything in an amber glow, but that’s not the reason for my speechlessness. Off in the distance, just barely visible, is a river. A river that’s flowing roughly perpendicular to our direction of travel. “If we had just kept going instead of turning around on our first trip, we would’ve made it.” Jakin groans, shaking his head in annoyance. Our expeditions were always headed north, for obvious reasons. Some were more to the east, some more to the west, but the river is so big that all of them would have met up with it had we kept moving instead of turning around. “It seems so…” I sigh. “Thank god Xiltroth suggested we climb this hill. Who knows how long it would’ve taken us to realise otherwise?” “Aye.” Boaz scratches at his beard from underneath his helm. “Let’s be on our way before sundown. We have a river to get to.” Holding my water bottle to my lips, I tentatively take a sip. Tasting the water, I take another couple of gulps. “It’s clean.” I declare. Everyone grins and starts emptying their water bottles onto the ground. We are now at the river, and I just had the first taste of its water after boiling some. As I said, the taste is clean. The location is good as well, so we’ll set up base here. “All right. Let’s get started.” This time, we aren’t in a forest, so we have to roam a bit farther abroad. Thus, we all go, even though only two people can actually cut down the trees. The other two help fight off monsters as we travel, as well as helping to carry the wood back. The twins fell a couple of trees, strip them of their branches, then we haul them back to camp, such as it is. As they chop repeatedly at the trunk of a tree, me and Xiltroth sit and twiddle our thumbs, idly watching out for roaming monsters. I roll an acorn between my forefinger and thumb; the ground is littered with them! Aloud cracking sound splits the air, and I watch as the tree thunders to the ground. It’s a big one… and thus, an absolute pain to drag back. Sighing, I look at the acorn in my hand. Wait, acorns are like tree seeds, right? They’re pretty small, too… Should be simple enough to take some back and plant them. I don’t know how to grow trees, but if we plant enough of them, some of them will survive, right? Than again, it’ll take years before we start getting anything out of them, decades perhaps… Well, there’s no harm in trying. Taking out a spare sack – I have a few of them – I begin gathering up acorns, throwing away the ones that look like they have something terribly wrong with them but otherwise indiscriminately collecting a huge number of them. It adds some weight to my pack, but it won’t make much of a difference when we’re lugging something of that size. Gathering around the now de-branched tree, we put our arms around it and start to drag. After several long, sweaty, arduous hours, we manage to lug it back to camp. Dropping it, I heave a sigh of relief and leave the twins to their work. Walking the brief distance down to the river bank, I wash off my hands and splash water onto my face. I honestly have no clue when the last time I had a bath was… regretfully tearing my eyes away from the sparkling clean water rushing past, I move a few minutes distance away from the camp. Then, unsheathing my mithril knife, I get to digging little holes to plant these acorns. No time like the present, after all, and I don’t want to do it after I have a bath – who wants to dig in the dirt when they’ve just gotten themselves clean? Admittedly, a knife is not the most efficient digging tool, and this becomes clearer with each hole I dig. If I only had a shovel… Or three. And perhaps another axe. Another few pots and pans wouldn’t go awry, either. Maybe a fishing rod. While we’re at it, a spade as well. Still, I can only wish. Not like we’ll just find tools lying in the grass. As I idly fantasise about having the proper tools for the job, I keep digging little holes, plopping an acorn in, covering them up again and repeat. Over and over. In neat little rows, with quite a lot of space between them – I’ve already seen how big these things can grow - until they’re all planted. After finishing all the physical labour, I have my bath in the river. A thin trail of dirt, dust and grime trails downstream in my wake, and I feel better than I have in a good while. Benefiting from their previous experience, the twins manage to finish the cabin a bit quicker the second time around, and it looks a little less rough as well. They may be dwarves, but they never studied architecture – apparently, what little they know is just from observation. And once again, I find myself without any definite goals, nothing new that I can think of to do. So, I sit by the banks of the river, just watching the water flow on, and on… And the slimes keep drifting by, one by one… As I do so, I find myself thinking about the river. Rivers have many meanings, in life, folklore and literature. They provide life-giving water, allow crops to grow, quick transport for boats… The river Styx, which departed souls cross over upon Charon’s boat to pass into the afterlife in Greek mythology, the Sanzu river, of a similar nature in Buddhism. The flow of a river has even been compared to the flow of time, constant and inexorable… There will come a time when there will be things to do. That time will not come any sooner or later for all the anticipation or fear in the world, so there is no point in longing for what will be. The only thing you can do is prepare for the future, work hard and maybe, when the time comes, you will be able to do what needs to be done. Following this train of thought, I roll myself into the familiar position and start doing push-ups. Fighting will come. Exploring will come. Pain and happiness will come. Right now is the lull, the proverbial calm before the storm. We left the world behind us, but one day… one day I want to be able to go back. To be able to stand tall and not have to run for our lives every day of the week. Until then, I’ll have to train and better myself, in hopes of creating a better tomorrow. Every morning, I go for a run. Every morning, I try and push myself a little bit further, even if it’s just another couple of steps. Of course, I don’t trust myself to remember a route after I start sinking into the rhythm of my footsteps, so I follow the riverbanks. Most days, I’d have to stop every now and again to fend off a monster attack, and that does sap energy I would otherwise be using to run. Today is not most days. No monsters, fine weather, and I’m feeling good. I passed my personal best a minute back, and I’m revelling in that rush of euphoric adrenaline that comes with that sense of accomplishment. Channelling that excitement, I keep pushing myself to set that flag labelled ‘personal best’ further than ever before. I’ll stop at that tree… No, the next. The next! Once I reach the top of that hill… Once… I reach the bottom… Once… I… Reach… That… Stone… Wall… Stone… Wall? I lift a hand and rub at my tired eyes. Squinting, I take another look. It isn’t a wall. It’s a bridge, a bridge that reaches over the river to link the opposite shores. Intrigued by the sight, I move towards it, but my lungs are screaming for air: I can only stop and rest. After my chest stops heaving and my breathing returns to normal, I have a drink of water, take a deep breath and walk the short distance to the bridge. When I reach it, I sigh in disappointment: this isn’t the evidence of some formerly unknown civilisation, it’s the remnants of an age long past. The stone of the bridge is old, worn down and covered in moss. I can spot several places where blocks have simply fallen out, and others that look like they’re debating whether they should follow along. It looks like nobody has set foot upon it in the last century and feels as much a part of the landscape as the river and hills themselves. My brief thrill of excitement fades away, but is quickly replaced by curiosity. Who built the bridge? One of the five kingdoms? Their borders probably would’ve been very different back when this was built, after all. Where did it come from, and where did it go? Looking at the grass in front of the bridge, I can very faintly see the outline of what might have once been a road, but when I try to follow it, those slight traces quickly disappear into nothingness. Deciding to have a look at the other side, I start to cross the bridge. Almost instantly, I slip on a patch of moss and almost crash to the ground in what would have undoubtably been a spectacularly loud collision. Luckily, my hand manages to grasp a tiny patch of the wall that isn’t completely covered, and I steady myself. After crossing the dangerously slick bridge I find that the road is just slightly more visible here – just enough to let me follow it. To my surprise, I manage to follow it without losing track of the road for a few minutes; long enough for me to realise that I’m already way out from camp, still quite exhausted from my run and without many supplies. I look up from the road; it’s heading directly towards a mountain range in the distance. And if the destination is in there, it’ll be a long while yet before I reach the end of the road. Sighing, I turn around and make the long trek back to camp. “You were out much longer than usual.” Xiltroth remarks, opening his eyes to look at me as he sits idly by the fire. “Ran a lot further than usual, came across something interesting.” I respond, plonking myself down next to him, rubbing my sore legs in an attempt to relieve the pain. “Had a look into it before heading back, so no surprise there.” “What sort of ‘something’?” He asks with faint interest. I shrug. “An old bridge across the river. It’s mossy and crumbling, but I could just make out the remnants of a road heading from one end of it. Followed it for a short while, and it seemed to be heading towards those mountains in the north.” “Hmh.” Jakin grunts, striding into camp. “Could be something interesting at the end of it.” “Or nothing at all.” Boaz counters, walking alongside him. “Nah.” I casually reject. “There’ll be an old ruin at the very least. Might be nothing in said ruin, but there should at least be something there. What fool builds a road to nowhere?” “Yeh have a point.” Boaz shrugs. “So, we up for a trip?” I ask. “Sure. Worst comes to worst, we be spending another few days travelling without finding anything. Not like we aren’t used to that.” Jakin smiles wryly, Boaz and Xiltroth nodding in agreement. We set off as soon as we fill up our water bottles and store a few remnants of cooked meat to snack on. Reaching the bridge again takes considerably longer than the first time, since we aren’t running at quite the pace I was. Still, we get there before mid-day. “Watch your step – it’s slippery.” I warn the others before we step onto the worn stones. We make good headway through the day, but eventually stop and pitch tents. The next morning, we continue on our journey. As the day wears on, me and Xiltroth are having an increasingly difficult time keeping track of the road. I squint at a patch of grass, wondering if the left half of it being slightly but notably shorter than the right half is an indication that the road continues this way or an indication that I’m overthinking things. “Oh.” Mutters Boaz. “I don’t like the look of those clouds.” Looking into the sky, I see the offending clouds; they’re quite dark and by the looks of it, coming our way. “Oh great, another night camping in the rain.” I moan shortly. “Well, it’s a bit too late to turn back now. We’ll just have to deal with it.” We continue at an accelerated pace, and by now I can’t honestly say whether the ‘road’ we are following actually exists or is a figment of my imagination, but Xiltroth still seems fairly confidant that we’re heading in the right direction, so we press on regardless. The mountains are only a stone’s throw away when the rain starts to pelt down upon us, and it’s then and there that we well and truly lose all sight of the road. It just so happens that we are at the bottom of a downward slant in the landscape – precisely where you don’t want to be when it’s raining. So we hurry onwards under the pouring rain, hunching our shoulders uselessly as dirt turns to rock under our feet. Our path leads us to a narrow pass between two sheer cliff faces, which mercifully guides us slowly upwards. But then the pass ends suddenly, cut off completely; no way to go but backwards. “Rargh!” Jakin kicks a rock in frustration. The rock shifts slightly. The rocks above it shift slightly. The massive pile of rocks said rock was participating in collapses, the rocks rolling back down the path – and revealing the bleak darkness of a cave entrance. “…I meant to do that.” Jakin insists triumphantly. “Later, let’s get out of the rain!”

“I am arch-magi Jamison. I specialise in earth, fire and lava magic, and I will be teaching you magical theory.” We had been led to another room filled with chairs and desks – a classroom. The man who was speaking did not appear like one might imagine a wizard, wizened and perhaps sporting a lengthy white beard. Well, he wasn’t young by any stretch of the imagination, but his skin was dark as obsidian and nearly as shiny underneath his gold-trimmed orange robe. His eyes and teeth are starkly prominent due to the contrast. I vaguely wondered if the presence of other species lessened the intra-human racism, as it would be more focused on the starkly different species such as beastmen and demons rather than people who simply had a different skin colour. But would that be better or worse? After all, inter-species racism would be much easier to cause and much harder to rectify due to there being such a big difference between the two groups… “I will not be teaching you how to cast magic. I will be teaching you the strengths and weaknesses of different types of magic, as well as how to create magic formations.” Jamison continued, breaking me out of my thoughts. Seeing our understanding, and disappointment in some cases, he continued, “Mana originates deep within the earth. As a result, the materials with the most mana infused within them, such as mithril, adamantine or mana crystals, are found more frequently the deeper one mines. Unfortunately, so too does the quantity and strength of the monsters produced increase, which causes mining below certain depths to be wholly impractical.” “But surely monsters can’t just form from nothing, can they? And even if they could form from mana alone, there would be no difference between monsters produced from the same quantity of mana, right?” Someone asked. “The common consensus is that differences in the types of monsters produced are due to differences in the proportions and concentrations of elemental mana. Some few believe that monsters are the product of mana and nightmares, or the magical mutation of normal animals, but no evidence thus far has given any credence to those claims.” Jamison explained. Interesting, but why didn’t they know rather than just believe? Earth – Earth 1… Terra’s scientists would’ve figured something like that out long ago, or at least made a proper effort to. And mana comes from deep within the earth? How deep, exactly? The center? This Earth was round… Wasn’t it? Jamison resumed his original line of speech. “Due to this effect, abandoned mines, cave systems and crevasses are, more often than not, full of powerful monsters. These places have come to be known as dungeons - because those who venture into them rarely return.” How dark. “Now, as you doubt remember from your aptitude test, mana has the six basic elemental forms of water, wind, fire, earth, light and darkness, as well as the fusion elements of illusion, holy, decay, lava, lightning and ice. Then, of course, there is pure mana.” Jamison recounted, before warning us, “Do not attempt to absorb anything apart from pure mana, or perhaps holy mana. Holy mana can heal you, but any other element, fusion or not, will run rampant inside your body and you will die horribly.” “What do you mean by ‘die horribly’, exactly?” Somebody asked. Jamison grew quiet for a moment. “I had an apprentice, once. Talented young lad had an affinity for illusion magic. I had warned him, but he thought he knew better, thought he could control it. I found him outside my room in the morning, where he had been all night, trying to open the door. He was crying, but when he opened his mouth there was no sound, and when I reached out to him my hand passed through his shoulder. He slowly faded into nothingness over the next few days. Nothing I could do.” Everyone immediately vowed to themselves in their minds, then and there, never to absorb elemental mana. Jamison gathered himself. “The main part of casting magic is converting the pure mana inside yourself into elemental mana outside of you. Make sure you do the conversion externally, otherwise the same thing happens as if you absorb external elemental mana.” He warned again. “To do this, one simply manipulates the mana outside of their body and imagines it taking the form they wish it to be.” He holds out his palm, and a sphere of white is immediately ejected from it, hovering slightly over his palm. “This is pure mana.” Jamison explained. “Not useful for much other than powering artifacts or storing in crystals – elemental mana is too volatile to store, and artifacts can generally convert it to elemental mana themselves. But once you have it outside your body, you can then imagine it becoming, say, fire.” The sphere was suddenly engulfed in flames, and I could feel a tinge of heat radiating off of it from where I sat in the front row. He then sticks his other hand inside the raging flame, causing some people to gasp in shock. …That’s not why his skin’s dark, right? But no, his hand emerged unscathed, like that trick you see kids do, except they usually pass their hand through very quickly and use a much smaller flame instead of shoving their hand into the center of a flaming sphere and leaving it there for a few seconds. “Your own mana will not harm you, unless you will it to do so… Which in most cases is a bad idea.” Jamison noted. “Elemental mana can be used as is, by shaping it with your imagination.” The sphere stretched into a sword, which Jamison grasped and flourished. “But a weapon like this has no real form – it cannot parry or block an enemy weapon. This is because it is simply fire in the shape of a weapon. There are elements through which one can conjure a physical weapon: Earth, Ice and Lava. But that is not how most magi fight. It is too limited by your imagination, and weak to distractions.” I don’t know… I have a pretty big imagination. He pulled a large, leather-bound book from under his cloak and holds it up for us to see. “Most magi use these: Grimoires. Its pages are made from monster hide and are extremely durable. They are used to record magical formations which can then be used to instantaneously cast spells, like so:” He opened the book to the first page, and a red glow travelled from his hand to the page, at a speed almost too fast to see. Then, in an instant, ten burning arrows appear hovering in the air before him. “As you can see, you can cast a spell as quick as you can find the right page. I advise clear labels and rational organisation, so you never accidentally cast the wrong spell. Apart from that, formation spells are the same as manual ones, and can be controlled and cancelled just as easily, if not easier.” The blazing arrows dissipated into nothingness, leaving a few spots on my vision. I wondered if I could make magic sunglasses. From how often I was getting bright lights in my face, it would probably have been useful. “The only notable deficit is that if you use the same formation too many times in succession, the mana can cause the page to deteriorate and fall apart.” Jamison said, before stepping aside to reveal a pile of books. “Now, I have here a stack of basic grimoires – empty, of course. Come up here grab one each.” We did so rather quickly. Sitting down, I looked at the book. It looked normal, although the pages were thicker than I was used to. But that was to be expected, I suppose – they were most likely parchment, not paper as I was used to. The cover itself was made out of a similar material, if slightly thicker, with a small crystal embedded in the center of the front. “In time, I will teach you how to develop your own magic formations, and you can start filling up the pages yourselves.” He said, before replacing his grimoire within his robes and instead producing a chunk of light bluish crystal. “But before that, it’s best if you can use the mana inside of you. This crystal has a formation that will slowly draw out the mana of anyone who touches it. The stimulation will allow you to better sense the presence and source of your mana.” He smiled, placing the chunk of crystal on the desk in front of him. “Who’s first?” My hand shot up. “You up the front, you look eager.” Jamison said. I got out of my chair and took the few steps towards his desk. “Put your hand on it, close your eyes, and pay attention to any feelings you get that you don’t usually have.” Jamison instructed. Feeling a mite nervous, I placed my hand on the crystal. Almost immediately, I noticed something flowing through my arm towards my hand. Was that mana? Or just my blood flow? Either way, I tracked the sensation to its source, finding… The crystal. Mentally facepalming, I followed the flow opposite to the direction of its movement and found this ball of something, presumably mana, just sitting there. To be exact, it was slowly being drawn towards my arm, just a bit at a time, as if someone was slowly sucking it through a straw. The amount escaping was negligible in comparison with the whole. The physical location of the ball was… Next to my heart. “I think I can feel it… It’s like a ball near my heart.” I said. Jamison nodded. “That’s it precisely. We call it the mana heart. Imaginative, I know.” He looked down at the crystal. “Oh, you can let go of it now.” I remembered that I was still holding onto the crystal and let go of it. My mana stilled, but now that I knew where it was, I could still sense it. “Good. Now, try and pull a small amount from your mana heart. Just imagine pulling a bit along your arm and pushing it softly from your hand.” Jamison said. I nodded, and tried it, imagining a small amount separating from the main ball. Straight away, a small ball popped off, much easier than I thought it would be. I pushed it along my chest to my shoulder and down my right arm. I wonder if you could see my arm glowing if you looked closely enough? The small distracting thought caused the mana to start dispersing, which I hurriedly stopped, and continued its journey to my hand. Once it reached there, I pushed it out very softly. Glowing white stuff spills from the top of my hand. I wished it looked more like magic and less like I’d spilt the contents of a glowstick over my hand. “Good job.” Jamison said, nodding. “That often happens the first time. Just imagine it forming a ball above your hand and it will look a bit better. Still mostly useless, but better. Pure mana doesn’t even give off enough light to be used as a torch.” A simple mental image later, and there is a small ball of mana hovering over my palm much like Jamison’s, earlier. “Now pull it back into your hand and into your mana heart to reclaim the mana. You can’t do this with elemental mana, in which case you would have to disperse the mana throughout the air around you.” Jamison said, and I did so. “Good. Now, everyone take turns with the crystal. Once you can sense your mana, practice moving it in and out of your body. Once you are comfortable doing that, try manipulating it into different shapes. We won’t be converting it into elemental mana today.” I pulled the ball back into my hand, through my arm and back into my mana heart. A thrill of excitement coursed through me. After all those years, I finally experienced magic, true magic. I was eager to see more, so I started practicing right away. As I moved a ball of mana from my mana heart to my hand, out and back, I watched the others as they try to sense their magic. It looked as lame as I had imagined. Of course, as the person who went first, I had had a relatively long time to train in comparison to the others, who watched on in envy at I revolved multiple balls of mana around my head with barely a glance at them. I’ll admit, I might have been showing off a bit. “If you happen to run out of mana, or feel you are close to running out,” Interrupted Jamison, speaking to all of us, “Don’t push it. You saw how bad it was when we summoned you. To restore mana, one simply has to be aware of the ambient mana surrounding themselves and breathe it in. Only do this if you need mana, however. Taking in mana over your capacity has disastrous consequences… With one notable exception that I will discuss tomorrow.” Given that I had already been practicing for a while, I figured it should be plenty safe for me, so I immediately tried it out. To ‘be aware of the ambient mana’ was a rather nebulous concept, but when I closed my eyes and tried to feel mana outside my body, I was able to notice its presence, like waves of light surrounding me. I breathed in. Mana entered me alongside the air, replenishing some of what I’d lost. Next to me, Greg was busy concentrating, trying to form the most awesome weapon he could think of. At that point, it didn’t look like much more than a softly glowing white mass in the rough shape of a sword. Still, it was cool. At that point, everything we did with mana was cool. It was like we were children again, playing with a brand new toy. In a way, we were. Who hadn’t dreamt of magic as a child? And now here we were, with those fantasies realised. Interested in perhaps doing the same, I combined my balls – which sounds quite strange, now that I say it aloud – and stretched the resulting mass into a pole. Then, adding a little more mana to one end, I moulded it into the shape of a diamond, hollowed it out and added some patterns to the surface. And then I had… A disappearing haft, as I hadn’t been concentrating enough on it. After a bit of touching up, I turned around and showed it to Greg: A mana replicate of Gandalf the white’s staff. Admittedly, it was made purely from memory, so there were bound to be some discrepancies. He smiled, showing me his own. He’d given up on the sword, but it appeared his mind had wandered in the same direction as mine, because he’d formed his mana into Gimli’s axe. After we finished marvelling over each other’s creations, we moved to the back of the room and played catch with a magical ball. At first, we were just throwing and catching the ball, but as time went on and we got more used to it, we changed it up: one ball each. Then we made it a competition. It was… Difficult to say the least. Each of us could control our ball at range to dodge the other’s hand, but that in turn would distract us from catching the other’s ball. It turned out to be surprisingly good training, in a number of ways. Before I knew it, a few hours passed just with us getting used to controlling our mana. We were directed back to the mess, had a meal, and then captain Pierce brought us all to the yard to begin physical training. Now this… This I was not excited about. “Thirty-six! Thirty-seven! Thirty-eight! Thirty-nine! Forty! Why are you breathing so hard!? We aren’t even halfway, you pansies!” Captain Pierce shouted at us as we swung wooden swords up and down. I never did any physical training or exercise back on Earth – old Earth, that is. Still, I ate healthily and in moderation, and my body was naturally strong by some freak accident of genetics, so although my fitness had deteriorated from neglect over the years, it still wasn’t as bad as a couple of the others there. That said, I wasn’t even close to being among the fittest, and it didn’t take long for my breath to run short and my arms to grow leaden. The captain’s voice continued to count out the swings, and we kept swinging. It turned into a sort of droning in my head – just background noise. I used this trick I figured out at some time in the past: if I could manage to get into a state of contemplation, one where I was completely focused on thinking about something, everything else would fade away, and my body would go into autopilot; if I was sitting still I would remain sitting until I broke out of the state, if I was singing I would continue to sing – lyrics and all, somehow – or if I was performing some basic action, like swinging a sword, I would continue to do so. It took me a little bit of time, but I managed to slip into that state, thinking about random, seemingly meaningless things. Everything in the world is more complex than it first appears, and simple contemplation is enough to draw one into the infinite intricacies the universe has to offer. So engrossed was I that I didn’t notice it when someone complained about the difficulty, and the captain reset the count as a result. Would it have mattered, even if I had? Perhaps. But I didn’t. I just kept on thinking, and my arms kept on swinging. It was only when the captain called a halt that I was broken out of my reverie. There was a faint feeling of sadness as I lost a grip on that profound thought and returned to reality. And with it, pain. My hands were clamped around the handle of my mock blade as if they were fused with its hilt, my arms were acting like strands of boiled spaghetti and my lungs felt like they were acting as bellows to the furnace that seemed to be heating my body to obscene temperatures. “Alright, five minute break! There’s a water barrel over by the wall, try not to crowd it.” The captain’s shout barely registered in my ears. I looked over at it absentmindedly, my mind hazy in stark contrast to its state just a few moments ago. People were already crowding around it, completely ignoring the captain’s instructions. A part of me wanted to join them, a large part, but that one small part of me that still held rationality knew that I wouldn’t even be able to get a drink until I got my hands off the sword. Dumbly looking down at my hands, I wondered how I might go about doing that. My fatigue-numbed mind gave me no solution, but I finally decided to ask the captain. He should have experience with this sort of thing, right? When my breathing managed to slow down enough to speak, I walked over and asked him how to unclamp my hands. “Looks like you have some grit.” He laughed. “Sit down and rest your hands for a minute. You should be able to unclench them before long.” In the end, there was no quick solution, so I walked over to the wall and sat against it. Greg sat down next to me a little bit later. He didn’t seem up to talking just yet, and that was just fine by me. Eventually, my fingers relaxed enough that I was able to get them off the hilt. Flexing the feeling back into them, I stood up and walked over to the water barrel. Everyone else had already came, saw, and had a drink, so I was able to pick up the ladle with some difficulty and take a drink. At that moment, that water tasted better than the sweetest wine. It took another few ladles before I felt completely satisfied. I sat back down, but before long, the captain had us back up again. We walked over, feeling somewhat better but still nowhere near one hundred percent. I knew that if we were asked to do the same thing again, I simply wouldn’t be able to do it, contemplative trance or no. So, in a way, it was a relief when he just asked us to run around the courtyard. Five times, yes, but at least we weren’t using our arms. This time I wouldn’t be able to get into that contemplative state of mind. If I was on flat ground, going in a straight line, maybe, just maybe I could do it. But going around corners, with other people to stay mindful of? I’d bash into something quicker than you could say ‘watch out for that-’. We started jogging. At first, Greg and I jogged together. But before long, he was outpacing me as the heat forced me to undo more and more buttons of my shirt. That liar, he had totally exercised at some point in the last decade. The first lap wasn’t too bad. By the end of the second, I had every second button undone to try and stay a bit cooler. By the end of the third, I was briefly contemplating whether captain Pierce would notice if I cheated. Briefly. By the fourth lap, I was stumbling along like a drunk. A drunk with asthma. Finally, I decided that I could go no further without a rest. I sat down against the wall and struggled to regain my breath, coughing heavily. In my defence, I wasn’t the first to do so. Boris was sitting ahead of me; chest heaving and face flushed an unusual shade of pink from exertion. Boris had a habit of going through a small box of donuts every day at the office, although I had no clue what he ate at home. Basically, he’s considerably overweight. And while that may be quite the inconvenience in everyday life back on old Earth… Here it was much, much worse. Why was he ahead of me, you may be wondering? He wasn’t. A dozen more meters and I would have lapped him. Still, the poor guy doesn’t look like he could take another two steps, let alone another two laps, and by the distressed look on his face, he knows it. He’s looking blue. Maybe there’s something I could do?

Rules of survival in the forest of befuddlement: Do not harm the trees. Fire is forbidden. If you are with allies, NEVER separate. Don’t bother leaving a trail, since it won’t work anyway. Don’t try to draw a map. Don’t bother keeping directions. If you find some source of food or water, remember that leaving it means you will never find it again. Stay calm. Whatever you do, don’t irritate the locals. If you follow these rules, not only will you escape with your lives, you may even find yourself benefiting from the experience. -An unknown scholar As soon as we enter the forest, it’s like we have entered another world. All sound falls away, leaving only an eerie, stifling silence. I find myself holding my breath; somehow loathe to be the one to break the quiet. By unspoken accord, we move forward. Right now, we couldn’t care less about the potential danger. We just want to get away from the edge of the forest and find somewhere to sleep for a while, everything else be damned. The grass underfoot is soft, and clear of any leaves or sticks – strange for a forest, some small part of me thinks. But it allows us to continue forwards without a sound. We don’t see much. Just trees. Lots. And lots. Of trees. Every time we round one, I get déjà vu. It hardly feels like we’re getting anywhere. Maybe we aren’t. The treetops make it impossible to see more than a sliver of the sky above. What little light filters through creates shadows everywhere, constantly shifting and making it difficult to gauge time or direction from the sun. After a little while we give up on finding any place better and just settle down for the night. “Fire?” Jakin asks tiredly, breaking the oppressive silence. The treetops shift, the wind breezes past airily, and nothing seems to have changed. I breathe a sigh of relief. “Too much greenery, too dangerous.” I shake my head. Jakin shrugs and lies down with his back to a tree, covering himself with a thick blanket. Boaz just lays where he is, the grass a much softer mattress than usual. I look to Xiltroth and he nods, indicating that he will take the first watch. Smiling weakly at him, I lie down myself, sleep taking me almost before I close my eyes. I get woken up after what feels like a few seconds. Stubbornly shaking off my post-sleep stupor, I get up. That never goes away, sadly. You just get used to ignoring it and overcoming it. Xiltroth nods at me, and curls up beneath a blanket, his soft breathing soon growing regular. Feeling much better after even a short rest, I take a look around. It’s still light out, and I can’t really remember if it was brighter or darker than this earlier. There are no monster corpses lying around… were there no attacks while I was sleeping? I would have thought a forest like this would be teeming with wildlife. But as I look closer at the ground, the trunks of trees… I can’t even see a single insect, let alone an animal. My brows furrow as I look around and notice something stranger still: the trees themselves. Some have dark bark, some have light, some have thin, peeling bark and others are white. I think I can see one of those rainbow eucalyptus trees. …Impossible. The few of these I recognise, some don’t even grow in this climate! And some trees… don’t some trees prevent grass growing around them? How is there so much grass with so little light? …Why is the grass so regular in height? Why are there no saplings? Bushes? Fallen trees? Whatever, magic. Common sense = dead. Speaking of magic… As I generally do when I have nothing else to do, I start to create a small ball of fire to practice with. The moment the first wisp of flame appears, I shudder involuntarily, and the flame dissipates. …What was that!? I quickly scan the perimeter, but there is nothing except the trees, shifting slightly in the breeze. For a second, it felt like there were a thousand eyes looking at me with intent to kill. It’s lessened a bit now, and I want to think that it’s just my imagination. My skin breaking out in goosebumps and shivers says otherwise, however. “Is anyone there?” I call out softly, not wanting to wake my companions. There is no reply. I decide against practicing magic for today, and just sit there, keeping a watchful eye out as I shiver. I sit there for a long while, long past what we would usually call a normal watch. But with my nerves like this, I won’t be able to sleep anyway. The feeling slowly decreases over time, but I can still tell that there’s something, somewhere, watching me. And it doesn’t like me. Eventually, I wipe my prickling eyes as the light fades, wake Jakin, take a swig of water and lie down. When I rise again from a fitful sleep, the feeling is still there. Again a bit less than before, but still there. The others are packing up their blankets, and light is filtering through the treetops again. “There were no monsters on your watches, either?” I frown. Jakin looks up. “None.” He grunts. “It be strange indeed.” “What’s stranger is that there’s no sound. It’s downright unnatural.” Xiltroth grimaces. I scratch my head. “Well, we should get going.” My stomach growls. “…And be on the lookout for anything edible.” They nod in agreement. Boaz takes out his compass and looks at it; the needle spins in endless lazy circles. He shakes it, but the needle keeps spinning. Boaz looks around. “Which way should we go?” “Doesn’t matter. We don’t know where we are or where we’re going; directions are useless.” Jakin says. “We should mark the trees, so we know where we’ve been, at least.” “Don’t.” I say, feeling my neck prickling uncomfortably. They look at me peculiarly, and I don’t blame them. It’s common practice to leave some sort of trail if you aren’t familiar with a forest. Seeking to give an explanation other than ‘Because I feel like something will kill me if we do’, I explain hurriedly, “Everyone before us must have tried that as well, and it obviously didn’t help them, so why bother?” Jakin shrugs and takes his hand off the hilt of his knife. “Well, it’s not as if we can be more lost than we already are.” He remarks. We make our way through the trees, not seeing much other than more trees. A willow, a pine, spruce… Mahogany. Definitely not normal... It does smell quite nice, though. At some point in time, we begin to hear the trickling of water. Excited at the prospect of being able to refill our water bottles, we head towards the sound. After a minute, Xiltroth hesitantly asks, “Does it sound like the water is getting further away, or is it just me?” “Maybe? It’s hard to tell.” I scratch my head. I pay closer attention to it as we walk, and it does seem to be getting slightly softer. “I think you’re right. But how can it be getting further away if we’re going towards the source of the sound?” I shake my head in confusion. “Forest of befuddlement.” Jakin reminds me sadly. We try changing direction a few times, but we never seem to get any closer, and the sound soon disappears entirely. Feet heavy with disappointment, we keep walking. For the umpteenth time, we round the trunk of a tree, and as ever, see yet more trees beyond it. Then a wolf walks out in front of us. It turns its head towards us, and for a second we just look at each other. By now, we have become completely used to an utter lack of wildlife in the forest, odd though it may be, so when we see the wolf our first reaction is shock, rather than to reach for our weapons. A moment later we overcome that shock and our hands move towards our respective weapons. The wolf turns towards us and bares its teeth but makes no further movements. Just as I’m about to charge forwards test out my new warhammer on it, Jakin sighs heavily, putting his military pick back onto his belt. I look over at him, and he shrugs. “There be nowhere for a fire to cook it, even if we kill it. And it doesn’t seem to want to fight, either.” He gestures towards the wolf, who is looking at us warily, but not doing anything in particular. Glancing over at the wolf, I realise that he’s right. Fighting now would only waste energy in a situation where supplies are already limited. Nodding, I re-holster my weapon. Boaz and Xiltroth shortly follow suite, no doubt realising the same thing. Seeing us making no other movements towards it, the wolf turns and pads slowly into the forest. From then on, we occasionally see animals and monsters walking by, and even insects start to pop their heads out of whatever holes they were hiding in and move about their business. Some of them growl at us menacingly while others just keep a wary eye on us, but none of them have attacked us in the last few hours. We still haven’t found any water or food. We generally carry enough to last us a week, but we usually have the opportunity to supplement that with fresh meat and water from streams, and we haven’t been able to resupply at all in the past three days or so, so that amount will only last us for another two days, maybe three if we’re frugal. Another hour passes, and we are attacked for the first time. Something large drops from the branches above us, and I barely manage to dodge as its fangs lunge for my face. A snake! Not only that, it’s scales are changing colour to blend in with the ground beneath it, which is why it had been able to get the drop on us. Having missed with its attack, it falls heavily to the ground and begins to slither towards us. Sighing to myself, I draw my mace. My warhammer is a bit too unwieldy to use against something like a snake, so I’ll need to use the relatively quicker weapon. “Watch out, it has friends!” shouts Xiltroth. I glance to the side for a moment, which allows the snake in front of me an unobstructed attack. Darting towards my leg, the snake opens its jaws wide and bites down. I feel a piercing pain as its fangs crunch through my armour and into my leg underneath. “Damn!” Cursing in pain, I crouch down and smash it with my mace. Luckily, this monster doesn’t appear to have that tough of a defence, because my mace crushes straight through its scales and into the flesh below. But it isn’t dead, so I smash it again. And again. It goes limp, that part of its body practically mincemeat. “Where’d they go?” One of the twins asks behind me. I send a quick glance around; there’s no monsters in the area, so I turn my attention back to the snake on my boot. It’s dead as a doornail, but is still stubbornly hanging on. Getting a grip underneath its slimy upper and lower jaws, I pry them apart, wincing as the fangs slide back out of my flesh. “Woah, you alright there Aaron?” Someone asks behind me. I start to reply as I turn around. “I’m alri-” (POV Jakin) When it lunged at us from the canopy, I was surprised and relieved at the same time. Thing must’ve been a few meters long, and thick as a forearm to boot! Well, maybe as thick as Xiltroth’s forearm. It was all shifty, too – kept changing colours. But in the end, we’d seen bigger ones, and stronger ones too. Then others started slithering down the trees, then – I admit – I may have started to panic a mite. But we got ready to face them. It was it bit strange really. They just… sort of waved their heads at us, bared their fangs, like you might expect a snake to do. They didn’t attack. Then they all vanished. Like… one second they were there, the next they weren’t. They didn’t run away, just… disappeared. Like they’d gone invisible… or were never there in the first place. Then it hit me: they weren’t. We’d run across a damned illusion beast! I’d never seen one before, and it seems like most others are the same, because stories about them are scarcer than strong beer in Enlux. Damn I miss a good Dwarven brew. Ehum… once I had that nut cracked, I figured that one of us must’ve killed the real one. Turns out that was Aaron, ‘cause he was standing there with this massive dead snake in front of him. “Woah, you alright there Aaron?” Boaz asks him, and it’s then I notice there’s blood running down one of his greaves. Aaron starts to turn, saying, “I’m alri-”, but then he keels over sideways. I rush over and manage to catch him before he hits the ground, and lower him down. He looks up at me in confusion. “Woah… spinning… not normal. Think, poison?” He mutters. “Yeh don’t say.” I thumb for his pulse. I find it, but it be abnormally slow. “He’s been poisoned.” I say over my shoulder, before I start to strip off his armour. Boaz and Xiltroth start to help, and soon we have it all off. The bite be on his calf and it be slowly oozing blood. At least blood loss isn’t an immediate issue. After cleaning out the wound and bandaging it, I get Xiltroth to carry him. Strong though I may be, carrying someone nearly twice my height is no easy feat. Instead, me and Boaz have to carry all of Aaron’s gear between us. …Why’d yeh have to go and get yourself poisoned, Aaron? This might just be the worst time fer it. Now we need to get out of this place, soon as possible. Find a healer or an alchemist that can cure him… But we aren’t welcome anywhere now, except maybe Binod… and finding a healer there is harder than finding a diamond in an iron mine. Even getting out of this blasted place is unlikely, we’re already doing what little we can to make our way out of here… which is wandering around aimlessly in hopes of stumbling out of here. “I’ll climb a tree, see if I can see anything from topside.” Says Xiltroth, laying Aaron on the ground and scurrying up a nearby trunk. Honestly, that guy… He may be a demon, but sometimes I think he acts more elvish than some elves. The tree’s branches sway slightly, then become still. A moment later, he slides down the tree again. “Nothing but green in every direction.” He shrugs, picking up Aaron, who promptly vomits on the forest floor. Xiltroth wrinkles his nose and wipes Aaron’s mouth with a bit of scrap cloth. Boaz sighs. “Well, it was worth a try. We’d better get moving again.” As we move through the forest, Aaron gets steadily worse, slipping between delirium and unconsciousness and sweating profusely. We start to hear running water again, off to our right. Having learnt our lesson previously, we don’t deviate from our course – such as it is. To our surprise and delight, the sound grows steadily louder until finally, we see the stream right in front of us. A deer startles as we approach, disappearing into the forest in an instant. The banks of the stream are dotted with animals and monsters drinking from it; some coming, some going. Some stop and look at us, others give us a brief glance before going back to their drink; a few ignore us entirely. “Alright lads, let’s go. Keep an eye on those monsters.” I say quietly to Boaz and Xiltroth. They nod in reply, and we walk to the stream. Nearby animals shuffle away nervously as I dip my thumb in the water and give it a lick. It tastes pure and clean, but then again, I have been drinking out of an old leather bottle. Everything from that tastes like boots. Still, it tastes good, looks clean, smells… *sniff* smells normal. “Should be good.” Snatching the bottle from my belt, I drain the last vestiges of liquid inside it and dip it into the water, waiting for it to fill up. Well, no monster attacks… so far, so good. I chug down another few mouthfuls of water before I’m satisfied, and fill it up again. “We better try getting Aaron to drink some water while we have a ready supply of it.” Xiltroth nods, laying him down on the grass beside the stream. Aaron looks like he’s sleeping, although the occasional pained look crosses his face. “Lift up his head a bit. Helps it go down.” I instruct, and Xiltroth dutifully follows along. Through some combination of skill and luck, we haven’t had many injuries before now, and none of them significant ones. Now is as good a time as ever to teach him how to look after someone who can’t look after himself. “He feels a bit… cold. Is that normal?” Xiltroth asks, making me freeze. Putting my hand to his forehead, I curse involuntarily. “Damn. No that’s not normal, and it could be very bad. We’ll have to somehow make a fire soon.” Xiltroth is about to reply when Aaron’s eyes shoot open, startling both of us. His eyes roam about, unfocused. “Fire, no… They hate fire…” He mumbles, seemingly unaware of our presence. Then his eyes widen further, a few bloodshot veins visible at the corners. “Leave me alone!” he shouts suddenly, making me jump in fright, and some animals to flee in panic. “I’m sorry!” His face slackens, returning to sleep. “What happened? Is everyone alright?” Boaz urgently asks. Having been on the watch for sneaky monsters, he had likely been startled by the sudden shouting. “We’re fine. Aaron just woke up, started shouting then fell asleep again.” I explain. “He wants us… to leave him alone?” Xiltroth says uncertainly, tilting his head in confusion. I frown. “No, I don’t think he was talking to us. ‘They hate fire’, he said. ‘They’. Who could ‘they’ be?” I stroke my beard in contemplation. “He said ‘I’m sorry’… ‘They hate fire’… Doesn’t Aaron usually practice magic while he’s on watch? Maybe he was using fire magic, and something happened?” Xiltroth ventures. My brows furrow. “He didn’t mention anything in the morning.” “But he did seem a bit more… skittish, than usual.” Boaz says slowly. “I think yeh might be right, Xiltroth.” “So there be something around here that hates fire. We still need to heat up Aaron!” I remind them. Boaz nods, but Xiltroth looks pensive. “…Do you think this stream goes out of the forest? Because then we could follow it out, right?” …Maybe, but… “This be the forest of befuddlement, so we can’t be sure it’ll work.” “But it’s worth a try, right?” He looks at me hopefully. I groan in frustration, entirely unsure what we should do. “Fine. But wrap Aaron up in some spare blankets before we head out.” Trees, trees, and more bloody trees! I’m a bloody dwarf, so why am I always in a bloody forest? Next time, I’m making sure we have our backs up against a nice mineshaft, or a dungeon. At least then I could find my way around better. Draw a map of the tunnels, nice and easy. Can you map a bloody forest? NO! I’m in a foul mood right now, and it’s no wonder. Friend sick and dying, us low on food and tired, and on top of that, we’re lost in THIS, BLOODY- “BOO!” WHAT IN THE BLOODY BLAZES!?

Meanwhile, Aaron has no clue about this crucial ability for any aspiring warrior and is soundly sleeping under a single layer on top of a wooden floor, the very picture of poverty if not for the sword sheath propped up against the wall beside him. Aaah, that was a good sleep. Yawning, I stretch my limbs as I get ready for the day. The lack of bedding really does hurt these old bones. I redress myself and check my coin pouch, now considerably heavier than before. After getting back to town yesterday, I had sold the furs and boar hides I had arduously carried back to town. The furs, which had varying amounts of damage, tears and stab wounds, sold for 4 coppers apiece. With four of them, that totalled sixteen. The boar hides sold for a bit more; they could be made into a rudimentary armour, making them high in demand as cheap protective equipment. They sold for seven coppers each, leaving me with a total of thirty coppers. I’m rich again! Hah, hardly, but it’s great having cash, you know? I count through again. I have a neat sum of thirty-three coppers and three silvers. Huh, what a coincidence. I chug a bit of water from my water skin. Ah… How satisfying. The water here left a strange aftertaste in my mouth, and very obviously didn’t have the added chemicals that the Australian supply had to keep it free of bacteria and strengthen teeth. Talking about teeth… Now, we obviously weren’t carrying toothbrush and toothpaste with us when we transmigrated to this world. So how aren’t all of us obsessing over how disgusting our teeth are? Well, some of us have it better than others. For instance, those with a water affinity can move a stream of water around in their mouth to collect and scum and grease. People like me… Opening my mouth, I swirl the mass of fire inside around like some sort of hellish mouthwash. It doesn’t burn me unless I want it to, but I do want it to burn off all that fat and grease from yesterday’s meals. And so it does, leaving the unpleasant taste of ash in my mouth, but leaving my teeth considerably cleaner. The fire quietly puffs out, leaving a thin trail of smoke drifting from my mouth in the darkened room. As for those that don’t have either of those affinities, they have to use the mundane way. Surprisingly, the people of this place are quite conscious of their dental hygiene. In one of the more useful general knowledge classes, we were taught how to make a few powders and pastes that, when put on a cloth and rubbed on the teeth, leave them cleaner and fresh-smelling. Now for some breakfast. I need me some greens - I’m feeling a bit queasy, having eaten only meat for a few days. So, I head to the farmers’ market. I’d done some more exploring of the city yesterday, and this is one of the places I had found. A street lined on either side with stalls, chock full of green goodness. A few other colours of goodness as well. When I get there, everyone is just finishing setting up their stalls and are starting to call out their wares to passers-by. “Tomatoes, red and juicy, straight from the vine this morning!” “The freshest and greenest of cabbages, bursting with flavour!” “Carrots more orange than an orange! Come get some!” So, what’s good? I don’t like tomatoes that much, maybe some peas, carrots and a nice leafy cabbage. I head over to the carrot man and ask for a few carrots. A couple coppers each, I’m down to twenty-seven. Next are some peas. Naturally, they’re still in the pods. And he can’t exactly sell these at a price per pod. He grabs a handful and pops them in a bowl on one side of a set of scales. Slowly adding weights on the other side until the sides are balanced. Seven coppers. Twenty. Then I walk over to the cabbage man. As I get there, someone in a cloak brushes past, kicking over the cart and seizing a cabbage as they fall, before turning and sprinting away. The spindly man behind the upturned stall lets out a despairing shriek. “MY CABBAGES!” Well that brings back good memories. I help the poor guy collect the cabbages rolling around on the ground. Once they were all back on the now righted displays, he thanks me. “Thanks for the help. I don’t know what I would have done if my precious cabbages rolled around in the dust much longer!” He looks quite distraught as he says this. They did look like nice cabbages, but now they have a bit of dust and dirt on them. He turns them over, meticulously dusting them off, one by one. I ask him how much for a cabbage. “Yes, yes, very cheap, very delicious cabbages, only eight coppers! But because you helped me so kindly, I’ll bring it down to six coppers!” Excellent, I’ll never reject a discount. As long as I already plan to buy it, at least. I pay the cabbage man and deposit my newly acquired leafy greens into a sack with the rest of my veggies, and put the sack into my knapsack. Next stop is the blacksmith’s. The city looks to be sectioned into districts, with places like blacksmiths or dyers with their smoke and smells away from the more ‘civilised’ parts of town. The farmers market isn’t exactly in a higher tier part of town, but it is in a different area. Heading over there takes a short while, but after that I find myself stepping into the shop area of a blacksmith. Not a fancy one, of course. There aren’t too many blacksmiths around in this city, so there’s only three to choose from. I’m not exactly here for a mithril lance, so I head over to one of the two without a fancy sign. The room is warm, and I can hear the loud sound of hammering coming from the back. A burly youth welcomes me from behind the counter, the wall lined with all manner of weapons and tools. Youth? Well, from some perspectives, early twenties is young. That is around half my age, after all. “Hey. What you buying?” How blunt. Like his hammer. Get it? Eh, it was pretty weak I suppose. “Got any knives?” He smirks and pulls out a thick, folded piece of cloth. Unrolling it along the counter, a good dozen knives are lined up in little pouches along it. “What type of knife you want? Dagger, meat cleaver, vegetable, fruit, throwing knives, we have them all.” Hey, throwing knives do sound useful. It would take time to get used to them and I don’t have much coin, so maybe not now. And that’s not what I came for. I came for… “Vegetable knife, please.” His smile decreases slightly in size, but it’s still there. He slips a knife out of one of the pockets and holds it up for me to see. “Bronze knife, single edge. Thin, blade length of ten centimetres. Comes with simple leather sheath. Twenty coppers.” Sounds good. I’m currently on… Fourteen coppers. “Do you have change for a silver? I’m nearly out of coppers.” He does, so I get a neat eighty coppers in change. I count them, one by one. I wish there were an easier way to do this. Sweeping them all into my coin pouch, I pull the drawstring tight and attach it back to my belt. Collecting my new knife, I deposit it into my knapsack. As I leave, he calls out to me. “Come again when you need a bigger blade.” I wave farewell as I exit the store. Aaaannd there goes all the cash I earned yesterday. Oh well. Worth it. If I don’t eat vegetables I won’t be able to get far, I need all those nutrients and minerals and sciency things. I suppose, I’ll just have to earn the money back. So I head back out into the forest and find another clearing. As I get there, I see a peculiar sight. A jumble of multicoloured light congregating into a single point. I wonder if this is dangerous? It sure looks dangerous. Then the world exploded. Just kidding. Then out of the multicoloured light stepped… A boar. Oh, hello breakfast! It must be severely disoriented, because I just walk up to the thing and off it. Then I skin it and carve myself a slice. Looking around, I find myself a nice long stick, which I clean with a spot of magical fire and impale the hunk of meat. Sticking that stick into the ground, I set about making a fireplace. Clearing an area of leaves, finding kindling, some thicker branches which I can still snap apart, and I have a fire set up. Then all it takes is a little flame to start the fire, and I soon have a warm blaze going. I move the stick to hang over the fire. Then I get out the vegetables, only to realise I have no surface to prepare them on. Awkwardly placing the vegetables on top of the sack they were previously in, which is now stretched out on the ground, I start to prepare them. Cabbage is easy, it doesn’t really need anything. But I give it a quick fire treatment to get rid of a bit of whatever bacteria or bugs may be dwelling on or in the cabbage. I do the same with all the other veggies. I’m sure this isn’t the best way to do it, but it’s better than doing nothing. I cut open all the pea pods with my new knife – yes, this is pretty much all I got it for. I check for insects in all of them, because I’m a bit paranoid about accidentally eating bugs. Then I give it another round of fire treatment. I eat some of them, and put the rest back into the sack…. That the rest of the veggies are still on. It creates a bit of a lump near the entrance. I cut a carrot in half and cut the leafy bit off the end. Chucking one half and the other two carrots in the sack, I find myself another stick, fire treatment, impale carrot, stick over fire. While I’m at it I turn the meat. Ripping off a few leaves of cabbage, I straight up eat them. Ah, fresh veggies, how I have missed you. The stew back at the keep wasn’t bad, but I needed something different. I chuck the cabbage back in the sack and the sack back in my knapsack. Y’know, if I’m going to stay around town, why did I even get the canvas for a tent in the first place? Anyway, there should be some monsters coming here sometime soon because of the scent of blood and cooking meat. I suppose most people won’t cook wolf or boar meat usually. It doesn’t taste very good, after all. …Although, that might just be my cooking. I blame it on the lack of herbs and spices! Yes, there is no salt! I am perfectly capable of cooking back on earth with a large variety of dried herbs, pre-processed meats and pre-made sauces! This does not sound like an excuse whatsoever! Ah, here they are. There are less than yesterday, it seems, with only a few wolves peeking between the trees. I ready some of the earthen needles I used yesterday, they seemed to work quite nicely. One of them whips through the air towards a wolf, nailing it right between the… Foot and shoulder blade. Okay, accuracy is still a bit of an issue when there’s a moving target. But I crippled it, and my second one kills it. Even better, this doesn’t damage their hides much, so I may be able to get a bit more for these. Wolves really are quite weak, which is why their skins are so cheap. A normal person with a sword, or even a farmer with a pitchfork or hoe, could probably beat them in a one-on-one fight. Only problem is, wolves are pack animals. Or monsters. So normal people get overwhelmed by multiple enemies attacking them at once. Which these are currently doing. I kind of miss having a shield, being able to block or bash with it, it really was quite useful. I might get another one in the future. Or maybe not, who knows. Kicking works quite well against beasts like these, I think as my booted foot clips the furry chin of a wolf, sending it reeling backwards in pain. Meanwhile, the last wolf is getting treated to my professional acupuncture techniques. Or maybe not so professional. Turns out, ‘right between the eyes’, there’s bone. Eyes are better targets, all soft… tissue? It looks like it has a little brown horn. The amazing, unique, uniwolf! Yeah, doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. A moment later it is a biwolf, as my last needle punctures through one of its eyes and into the brain. Not much of the needle is above the surface - it looks gruesome. I’m about to clean my sword on the grass when I realised that I hadn’t used it. So much for being a warrior. I should really only use magic if I have to. Sheathing the sword, I walk back to the fire, turn the meat around and grab the stick the carrot is on. The carrot is on fire. Great… I blow it out, but it is now burnt a crispy black. At least the meat is fine. Waiting a few moments for it cool down, I bite into it. The surface is charcoal, but inside is nice soft carroty goodness. Delicious. Apart from the charcoal. I set out to skin the wolves, while making sure I keep an eye on the cooking meat. Three wolf skins and a boar hide. That should be at least nineteen coppers, enough for another couple days of rent with some left over. If I can get at least this much every day, it should be sustainable – no need for a part-time job after all. Now I need to find some place to train. It’s not enough just running back and forth between the city, that’ll only strengthen my legs, heart, maybe lungs a bit… I need a place where I can do weightlifting, swing my sword, maybe some sprinting. And all without being bothered much by monsters. Which is a bit of a tall order. After all, this isn’t modern day civilisation, where you can buy yourself a treadmill, a set of weights and an exercise bike to be all set for getting fit. You want to lift something? Find yourself a big rock, or a rotting log. You want to go running? What are you waiting for? There’s a whole field out there for you to run around. Cycling? What’s that? That might be something to think about, actually. Could bicycles be introduced here? The bicycle chains and gears would be hard to reproduce, though, wouldn’t they? The only processing method for metals here is hammer and tongs, and that won’t exactly cut it for gears, will it? Eh, that’s all irrelevant to me anyway. If I can find a secluded place with some big rocks or logs that would be good. So, I have a bit of a wander around the forest, head towards the mountains in the north a bit… After a few hours of looking around, I find a nice little place… Not really. It’s a cave. But! But, it’s not one of those big, dark, deep, dank caves with long tunnels that inevitably lead to dangerous monsters surrounded by deadly traps, not one bit like that at all! Small cave, dry, a few boulders and rocks, dust, insects, that sort of thing. One entrance, a bit of space, everything a guy could want. Kind of. Not much light, is there? Don’t s’pose there’s any convenient torch brackets lining the walls? No? Oh well. I’ll be back in a minute. Arms wrapped around a large bundle of sticks of various shapes and sizes, I step into the entrance of the cave. I then proceed to dump the bundle with a clatter, the sound echoing in the large, vacant, and still quite dark space. Fumbling around in the near perfect darkness, I pick up a big stick and set one end – the one I’m not holding – on fire with a miniscule exertion of magic. Placing it on the floor in the middle of the cave, I return to the bundle of sticks, pick up as many as I’m able to with a single arm, and begin to lay them down. I place them end to end on top of the burning stick, until there is a long, twisting coil of sticks in the middle of the cave. I don’t have the spare cloth and or oil to make a proper, long burning torch, so a trail of sticks should prolong it sufficiently, right? My brilliant and innovative idea will undoubtedly provide me with light for however long I decide to stay in here. Now, to get down to business lifting excessively large pebbles. How should I describe this while staying entertaining? Hm. I’ve got it! I won’t. Noticing the sunlight from the entrance growing dim, I stop my sweat-inducing heavy lifting of compacted earthy substances for extended periods of time. Wiping the sweat induced from said sweat-inducing activity off my brow, I remove the next stick in line to be a light source; No point in wasting the effort used to bring them here. The light the sticks provided was, admittedly, quite dim. This grows quite apparent when my eyes instinctively shut upon reaching the cave entrance. Squinting against the comparatively bright light streaming down from the heavens, I forge my way forwards with one arm thrown overhead, shielding me from the heavy blows the sun is raining down upon me. After approximately seven hours (I may, may be exaggerating here), my eyes adjust to the laser-intensity light boring holes into the earth, and I have made my way to the river. I can’t go back to town like this, can I? Covered in sweat, smelling like a wild animal, clothes quite sopping with sweat and stained with no small amount of blood. I would clean my clothes, but I don’t have another set. It would be quite strange to walk into town sopping wet, wouldn’t it? So, it’ll have to wait until I’ve saved up enough for some more clothing. Which means that in the meantime, people will be giving me a wide berth in town. Could be worse, I suppose. People could be crowding around me. Now, why do I have this nagging feeling that I’m missing out on something important? Oh well, I’m sure that it will resolve itself conveniently at some point in the near future.

jinxs2011 This took me longer than expected to write. Not sure if it was due to a lack of motivation or what, but I seemed to have more difficulty writing conversations in this chapter than usual. Maybe it's because I prefer to write things happening rather than talking. The first part of the chapter - no talking - that came easy. Later, not so much. But, well. It's done now, so here you are. Hope you enjoy. Chapter 41: Four, Then Five The fire sizzles, morning dew evaporating from the sticks and logs as the heat picks up. Thump. Sparks scatter into the air and sticks shift and crack under the weight of the impact. Thump. Yellow tongues of flame rise higher, eagerly devouring the new, dry fuel. Thump. Black encroaches upon white, spreading rapidly and eating away at the feast presented to it. Thump. Ash tumbles on the wind, borne aloft by the heat of its own inception. Thump. Ren’s hands clutch at the binding of one of his research journals. He turns towards the fire with dread, breath catching in his throat. Staring at the cover, his grip shakes as he wrenches his hands from the journal, more dropping it than tossing it into the fire. His gaze lingers on it as its pages start to curl, his eyes filled with sorrow, asking for forgiveness. The fire pops and he shudders. An arm reaches out hesitantly, instinctively, seeking to rescue his children, the fruit of his life’s work, from the doom he himself brought upon them. His eyes focus on the fire, and his outstretched hand curls shut, clenching into a fist. He closes his eyes and averts his head, blocking out the sight even as his scrabbling fingers grasp the spine of another journal. Tears flow in unending streams as he throws away years of work, years of careful and thorough research, years of searching for the reason that his parents died. I stand solemnly, watching. The decision was his own. He knew what the consequences would be, whichever he chose. Even so, I somehow feel a measure of responsibility for this. If I hadn’t said anything, he might have spiralled further into depression. It was all I could think to do. Even so. Jakin stands nearby, eyes scanning the area despite the fact that we are still within the radius of the town’s monster-repelling powder. He blames himself for my arm, I can tell. When it’s a better time, I’ll tell him it’s not his fault. None of us are used to having a fifth person on our team. All of us knew what our roles were, what to do if any of us were targeted, melee or ranged: Me, Boaz, Jakin, Xiltroth. But not Heather. None of us knew what to do when she was targeted, didn’t even realise that she was. It wasn’t a party of five fighting back in those tunnels. It was a party of four, with another person fighting alongside them. We were simply too used to it just being us. If anything, it was my fault for not realising that there might be a problem. Boaz is standing next to him, leaning against a tree and watching Ren as he burns his journals. The more I get to know him, the more I realise how different he is from his brother. I’ve known them both for quite a while now, and I think I’m just starting to figure him out. He trains alongside his brother everyday, just as hard, maybe even harder. But it’s not for the power. He doesn’t like to fight, and he certainly doesn’t like to kill – neither of them do. He’s not doing because he feels he has to. He does it just so that he can stand by his brother’s side, and that’s all the motivation he needs. I don’t think either of them know just how important they are to our party. Jakin and Boaz – the twin pillars that guard us all. If it weren’t for them, holding back all the enemies, I wouldn’t even have dared to venture into those caves. Heather, Xiltroth and I? We were just the fire support. Even if one of us weren’t there, I have a feeling that they still would have been able to push their way through. Sitting cross-legged by the fire, Xiltroth observes the books burning, reflections of the yellow flames dancing across his crimson eyes. He seems to be contemplating something, though I couldn’t guess what that might be for the life of me. I wonder who he was before he met us, what he did. He was just a clueless young man, lost at the edge of a forest when we came across him. He didn’t know how to cook anything, but he could knock a man twice his weight to the ground. But then again, I don’t really know anyone’s history, save perhaps Heather – ironic, that, since I’ve known her the shortest amount of time. I know the twins were military, but why they joined, why they left? No clue. None of us have ever brought up the topic, perhaps because none of us want to answer if the same questions were directed back at us. Just four men in the middle of nowhere, running from a past they’d rather forget. I’ll have to face them, one day. Go back, look my fellow co-workers in the eyes and tell them I am still alive. I look back on what I did now, and it feels almost cruel. It was necessary – they really weren’t taking the situation seriously – but at the end of the day, they think that I died horrifically right in front of them. Especially Greg, he didn’t deserve something like that. But not now. Not when there’s a war going on, when we can’t move through the kingdoms without hiding ourselves as if we’re criminals. I sigh. We haven’t had any information on the kingdoms, apart from that one dwarf the other day. The war’s still going, but we don’t know any more than that. How long will it go on? My eyes roam idly, finally coming to rest on Heather. She’s lying down in the grass, quietly whittling at a branch with a flint knife. She seems to have decided on taking up archery. No problem with that, it’s excellent for hunting and the like. But if something sneaks up on you or is fast enough that they manage to dodge your arrows, you need a melee alternative. Something else I need to mention at a better time. The books keep piling on the fire, one by one. Finally, Ren wipes the tears from his face and tosses the last one into the roaring fire. Letting out a long sigh of pain and relief, he turns and walks back towards his house. People rarely put much thought into it when they come across the words ‘time stop’ in fiction. As soon as you do, you realise that the problems just keep heaping up. Just consider the equation speed equals distance divided by time. Rearrange that, and you get distance equals speed times time. If time is stopped, that means no matter what the speed is, you can’t travel any distance, because time is always zero. But, they say, the person who stopped time is exempt. Time moves normally for them. That would still be a big, fat, ‘no’, on the movement. Consider walking. Move your legs through the air – stop right there. The air. You’re still surrounded by air. Which is frozen in time. You try to move through it, but any force you exert will have no effect, because again, no time is passing, no distance can be covered. Which brings us to another point. You can’t move the air. Therefore, you can’t breathe. You’ll suffocate. There are a couple of ways around all this, actually. First requirement, obviously, is that you don’t need to breathe, eat, sleep, and so on. Then you could do a spatial exchange with the air, switching yourself with a pocket of air (or other matter) the same shape and size as yourself. Teleportation, by definition, is travelling from point a to point b without passing through the space in between. The distance is technically zero, which means that even though time is also zero, it’s possible. Zero distance equals any speed times zero time, after all. Or, alternatively, you could be immaterial and have the ability of flight. Then you could move freely through space. But there’s also another problem. You’d… Kinda be blind. Light would also be stopped in time. No light reaching your eyes, no sight. You would be deaf by the same token. That would require you to have another method of sight, some kind of ability that allows you to sense everything around you, something that doesn’t rely on EMR, magnetic fields or anything else that would be stopped in time. Even then, what would you do in this stopped time? You wouldn’t be able to interact with anything. You might be able to move around freely, but if you had all those other abilities, you could already do that anyway. I think the only real use is what I’m using it for now: to give me time to think. Do I need it? Not really. But it makes things simpler. I don’t have to worry about the ‘Aaron’ personality thinking or saying something that could lead to him or others suspecting that there’s more to us that meets the eye. But that’s by the by. At this point, I think it’s fair to say that I’m a godlike entity. I can’t die unless I want to, and I’m capable of literally anything I can conceive. I can sculpt reality on the scale of galaxies and universes. I can re-write the laws of space, time and dimensions beyond. I make the rules. I dictate morality. But… I feel like things are good as they currently are, at least for now. For all my power, for every new thing I realise that I can do, inconceivably, I just feel ever more human. I have the same questions that I want answered, just like everyone else: What should I do? What do I want to do? What will I be like in ten, a hundred years? Did I make the right decisions? Does it matter? Who am I? And more importantly than anything else, why me? Why did the universe pick me to have this power? I’m not perfect, and even with all of my abilities and powers, I can’t make myself perfect, because I don’t know what perfect is. I just know that I’m not it. Something that is imperfect cannot create perfection. If I create life, it will be flawed. If I create a world, it will be flawed. If I create a society, it will be flawed. Those flaws could be any number of things, and I might be able to fix some of them, improve the design so to speak. But there will always be more. Who came before, and what were their reasons, that they chose me? There must have been something before. My very existence spits in the face of science. That leaves only the supernatural. Supernatural to create supernatural. Creator to create creator. Perhaps the first creator was the first thing to exist, but not me. I had a beginning. I know it. I remember it. And there were things before. I was created. I was chosen. But how? But why? Why me? We decide to head back. I would have liked to say a few words to Dex, but I can’t have us waiting around here just for that. There are things we have to do back home. Plus, I can tell Heather isn’t comfortable with so many people around. It’s time for us to head back. We buy what supplies we need. All the shopkeepers insist on giving us a discount, and why should I deny something like that? I make sure to thank them, but it ends up with them thanking me, instead. I suppose we did save the town. This time when we pass through the tunnel, our passage is uncontested. Picking up the least damaged set of armour we find, a few of the halberds and the magi’s grimoire – it could be worth something, perhaps - we make our way down the mountains, follow the faded pass, cross the old bridge and follow the river back to our base. But when we get there, to our surprise, a helmeted face peers down at us from the watchtower. “Back off!” He bellows down at us. “Or we’ll riddle you full of bolts!” I roll my eyes. If they had a crossbow, he’d be pointing it at us right now. There wouldn’t be a need for him to say anything at all. At this point, I’m honestly just sick of dealing with them, so I just walk toward the gate. “Hey!” He shouts. “Fuck off! I’ve got twenty lads in full armour behind this gate, just rearing to knock yer heads off!” “Sure you do.” I call up to him sarcastically, reaching out to the gap in the gate with my good hand. “Xiltroth, make sure he doesn’t do anything tricky.” “No problem.” He replies while I move some fire mana through the gap in the gate, willing it to not burn anything but a narrow vertical slice of the bar holding the gate in place. Once that’s done, I simply push the gate open, revealing that – surprise, surprise – there’s just a single dwarf waiting for us, practically quaking in his boots. “L-look,” he stammers, “there be no need for any violence. Why don’t we ju-, just talk it out?” I sigh. “I don’t suppose you have any books, do you?” “The fuck would we get a book, out here, in the middle of fucking nowhere?” The other dwarf curses, climbing down the watchtower. The stammering dwarf shouts fearfully at the other, “Stop pissing them off! Don’t you know we’re screwed if they want to fight?” The other dwarf grimaces, but doesn’t retort. “Look.” I sigh. “Just get out of here. I don’t want to see your faces again, and neither do the townsfolk. Go there again and you’re dead.” “Thank you! Thank you!” The stammering dwarf bows fearfully, and the two of them edge through the gate, around our group and start running away. After we get everything put away and sorted again, the day starts wearing on. I’m still getting used to doing things with one hand, so Boaz cooks dinner instead. “It’s not as good as usual.” Heather remarks quietly. “Aye.” Boaz admits. “Learned to cook in the army. Flavour wasn’t considered important. So long as it was filling, it went in the pot.” After dinner, I go for a walk around the camp, check that the walls are still in good shape. Not much else I can do with one arm, except keep watch. As I’m going along the wall, Heather walks up to me, and starts walking alongside me. I nod to her, but she doesn’t say anything, so I shrug internally and keep walking in silence. She seems content to do that for a while. Eventually, when I’m about to complete a circuit of the wall, she stops. Turning to face her, I raise an eyebrow questioningly. “I just wanted to say… Thank you for saving my life.” She speaks, finally. “You’re welcome.” I reply. “Sorry Jakin didn’t block the shot. We’re not used to working in a team of five, and he didn’t realise the magi wasn’t aiming at me. I barely did. It’s lucky we got out of that with only a broken arm.” She winces. “I thought I was about to die for a moment there.” “Make you regret coming with us?” I ask, curious. “Almost.” Heather admits. “But when we got back here, I knew I’d made the right choice. I wouldn’t have been able to fight off those dwarves on my own.” “Lucky you did, then.” I say, eyebrows furrowing. I hadn’t thought about that. “It made me think.” Heather says, crossing her arms. “It would take more than luck for me to survive on my own, out there. It would take a miracle.” “Pretty much.” I agree, nodding. “So,” she continues, watching my face carefully, “I wanted to ask if it would be okay if I were to stay here… As a more permanent addition to the group.” I blink, a bit surprised. “Are you sure? It’s not like there’s no other alternative. You could live in the gnome town, probably a lot more comfortably than you would out here.” Heather shakes her head slightly. “I don’t know them as well as I know you, and besides, if I stayed there I would always be the odd one out. Here, everyone’s the odd one out.” “We’re not exactly what people would call normal, no.” I smile wryly. “To answer your question, I’d be fine with it, but something like this will have to be a group decision. I’ll go around and ask everyone’s opinions of you and see how we go from there.” “Alright.” She nods, her face slightly tense. “I’ll be in my tent, then.” “See you later.” I wave as she walks away. Alright… I suppose I better get talking while the night’s still young. I head to talk to Xiltroth first. Of all of us, he’s the most likely to answer a question honestly and bluntly. “Out of curiosity, what do you think about Heather? Character-wise, I mean.” I say. “Hard to say.” Xiltroth shrugs. “She’s not exactly the talkative type. I think… She’s afraid of people, of everyone right now. But she isn’t being mean, or lashing out… I think she’s a nice person. Good with her hands too. She managed to make a bow with just basic tools, so I wonder what else she knows how to make?” I nod, stroking my beard with my left hand. It feels different. “It’s pretty impressive. Not at all what I was expecting when she asked for that wood. Well, that’s all I wanted to ask. See you in the morning.” “See you.” Xiltroth nods to me. Next I go see Jakin, ask him the same question. “Heather?” He grunts, considering it. “Well, she’s quiet – but that’s to be expected after what happened. Terrible, that. She’s strong, still up and kicking despite it. Good with the bow, too. Even rusty, she managed to pull off some pretty good shots. Anyway, she seems like a good enough person to me. Damn near got her killed, though. Thank God you were thinking straight.” “Don’t blame yourself.” I reply. “I barely noticed as well. If I had paid more attention, I wouldn’t have had to do something so risky, either. We were just too used to it being just the four of us. We need to make sure we keep it mind next time, so that it doesn’t happen again.” “Aye, you might be right.” Jakin sighs. “But still, I’m thinking of stepping up my training. Make sure I notice next time. Make sure I can react.” “No harm in that, either. Best if we’re as strong as possible.” I reply absent-mindedly. “Hm?” Jakin grunts. “Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say, for now. See you later.” I say, waving farewell. I head to Boaz. Things are looking positive for Heather so far, and I don’t expect Boaz to be the one to bear bad news. “Quiet, polite, determined despite what happened. Hard to say much more. Hasn’t been long since we met her.” Is how he replies when I ask, sure enough. “True enough. I reply. “Well, there’s something we all need to discuss. Watchtower in five?” “See you there.” Boaz nods. I gather up the others, and we all climb up the watchtower. “So, I’ll get straight to the point.” I start. “Heather wants to join our group. What are your thoughts on it?” “Ah, so that’s what it was about.” Jakin nods. “I’m fine with it. We could use a ranged fighter, and I’m fairly sure we can trust her at this point. Boaz?” “I agree.” Boaz says. “Same.” Xiltroth agrees. “And so do I, of course.” I say. “Just a few other things to discuss in regards to that, then. Since she’s not just staying temporarily anymore, we’ll need to build her something better than that makeshift tent.” Jakin strokes his beard. “We can do that. Plenty of room, after all.” I seem to remember something. “Last time I asked you how you are with women, you had a strange reaction. You sure you’re fine?” Jakin sighs. “Yeah. Just a bad experience we had because of a woman, once. A bad memory is all it is, it won’t affect how we act around people.” “Good. Well, as it seems we’re all in agreement, I’ll go down and tell her the good news.” I say. “See you all tomorrow.”

Chapter 44: Orcs We make our way to the doctor’s and knock on the door. After a minute or so of waiting, it opens and the doctor peers out at us, nodding when he recognises me. “Here for your check up? Good, come in.” The building is much less packed with patients than the last time I was here, thankfully, and we don’t have to pick our way around improvised beds. The room he takes us to is completely empty of patients, in fact. “It looks like things are slowly starting to return to normal.” I observe. “Slowly, yes.” The doctor nods. “Repairs are still in progress on some buildings, but the wounds are starting to heal, and people are easing back into their normal lives. Still, it’s going to be a long time before people start to rest easy again.” “But enough of that. Your arm?” He holds out his hand, and I rest my arm, still in its cast, on his palm. He looks it over carefully, asking several questions as he does so. Once he is satisfied, he lets go of my arm. “Well, it seems to be healing as expected, so long as you keep taking care of it as you have.” I nod. “That’s good. How’s Dex going? I was hoping to check in on him if he’s well enough for it.” “He’s… Healing. Slowly.” The doctor says gently. “He had lacerations all over his body, lost a lot of blood. Broken bones, too, some ribs, an arm, and none of them as straightforward as yours. He’s awake and talking, but I keep him on painkillers most of the time, so he’s not always entirely coherent. I’m trying to keep visitors away for the most part, but…” He sighs. “He has been wanting to talk to you. Just try and keep it short, and don’t get him too excited.” The doctor leads me to another room, where I see Dex laying on a bed, almost every visible part of his body swathed in bandages and casts. A nurse, sitting by the bed, looks up as we enter and nods to the doctor. “He’s mostly been sleeping since you last checked on him.” He says. “But I think he’s awake right now.” Dex’s eyes crack open. “What’s up, Doc?” He croaks, trying without success to get a view of the doorway just by moving his eyes. “You have a visitor, Dex.” The doctor says softly as we move around to the side of the bed. “Aaron?” Dex gasps, wincing as his fingers scrabble weakly to push himself up into a seated position. Two pairs of hands quickly and carefully stop him as the doctor and nurse prevent him from hurting himself. “Woah, calm down.” I say. “We can just talk like this. Probably best not to move too much in your condition.” The nurse nods in vigorous agreement. “Okay. I… Your arm?” Dex asks slowly, clearly noticing it for the first time. “Nobody told me you got hurt.” “What, this?” I gesture to the cast limb with my other hand. “I took a hit, it did some damage. It happens.” I shrug. “I’m more concerned about you.” I say. “How are you holding up, Dex?” “I…” He trails off, blinking slowly as his eyes shift down to look at himself. “The pain is better. The medicine helps. But when I move, it shoots up all over my body. Like I’m on fire.” He rasps. “Doesn’t surprise me.” I nod softly. You took a lot of damage, and it’s going to take a while to heal completely. But it will get better.” “I know.” He blinks. “But I wish I could move.” I nod and smile wryly. Him and me both. I don’t say as such, of course. He’s got it much worse than me. “Hey, Dex. You’ve probably heard it a dozen times by now, but I wanted to thank you for coming to find us that day.” “What? No, I should be thanking you.” He slurs. “You saved everyone.” “But it’s only because of you that we knew something was wrong in the first place.” I say, shaking my head. “If you hadn’t come, we might not have come back here for a while, and things could’ve been much worse.” “Yeah, but… You did all the fighting... and stuff.” He replies, blinking repeatedly as his eyelids droop continuously down. “And you ran through places infested with monsters without any armour, weapons, training, allies or idea where you were going. Even I would be quite hesitant to do something like that.” I admit. “I guess… So…” Dex says slowly, not even finishing his sentence before he falls asleep. “Don’t worry, it’s just the medicine.” The nurse reassures me. “It’s better if he’s sleeping most of the time, both for healing and relief from the pain, so we have him on sedatives. You’ll have to come back another time if you want to talk to him again.” “No problem.” I nod. “Thanks for letting me see him, and for all your work.” “You’re welcome.” And with that, we head out for Ren’s place. When we arrive, it’s much quieter than usual, with no explosions sounding out. Even the normally lingering acrid smell has diminished. Upon knocking, Ren opens the door and ushers us in, smiling. “Aaron, Xil, good to see you. Come on through, the others are just out the back.” I nod in greeting. “And you, Ren. How are you doing?” “Well. Better than well, actually. I’m doing great.” He says, smiling - I think the first time I’ve seen him do so. “I obsessed over my parent’s legacy for far too long. So many experiments, so many resources, so little progress and nothing at all to show for it.” He shakes his head with a sigh. “It’s only now that I’ve put it behind me that I realise how much of a waste it was. There are so many other things - constructive, useful things - that I could have been doing. I could have learned so much from my experiments, but no, any result that wasn’t a snap, crackle or bang wasn’t a result at all.” He says sarcastically. “Well, it’s good to hear that you’ve been able to put that behind you.” I say. “What are you working on now?” “I’m not sure quite yet. I feel like there’s so much of alchemy I neglected, and I’ll need to re-learn and research some things. But once I’m done that…” He muses, “I’m thinking maybe I’ll try and develop a new fertiliser. The amount of magic herbs we harvest is always only just enough. If I could increase the amount we can grow or how fast, it could go a long way.” “And it wouldn’t go astray on regular crops, either.” He adds as an afterthought. “Those are the ones grown for the monster-repelling powder, right?” I say. “Would always be good if there was more of that.” “Just so.” Ren agrees. “Right now, it’s being used exclusively to protect the town simply because we don’t have enough of it to be used for anything else - and it’s the same for the other couple towns in the valley. But if we had an excess it could be used for other purposes, such as to protect those who venture out looking for herbs, or those travelling between towns.” We reach the door to the back garden, and Ren holds it open for us. “I have things to get back to, and from what I hear, so do you. I know I haven’t been the best host, but for what it’s worth, I wanted to express my thanks for everything you’ve done, both for the town and myself.” I nod in acknowledgement, stepping through the open doorway. “You’re welcome. I’m very glad we found this place, too, despite all the hiccups along the way.” With a quiet sound of assent from Ren, the door closes behind us. “Well? How’d it go?” Jakin calls out to us. I shrug. “Well enough, I think. Hard to get much detail on something so long ago, and even less with how they used to be so hostile to outsiders, but we managed to piece together a few things. Turns out this town was a major target for the orc tribes back in the day.” “Makes sense.” Jakin nods, thinking. “The gnomes have got lots of resources, but not much defending them. Could hardly ask for a better target – for a raider, that is.” “At least until they made an alliance with Binod and were reinforced by beastman troops.” Xiltroth notes. “That… Would put a damper on any attacks, yes.” Jakin agrees, raising his eyebrows. “Interesting little history lesson and all, but how does that lead to them becoming peaceful?” “Because there was nowhere else for them to raid.” I say. “It’s just a guess, but we had a look at maps from around the same time and the only civilisations near them were significantly stronger, military wise. To survive, they must’ve become self-sufficient, maybe farming, maybe hunting, maybe domesticating animals, maybe even fishing for all I know.” “Couldn’t pick any fights without losing, so they stopped picking fights.” Jakin nods, summing it up nicely. “Good enough for me. We’re heading off in the morning, then?” “I’d say so, yes.” I confirm. “Not enough time to go anywhere tonight.” In the morning, we collect our things, say our farewells and make our way through the tunnel in the mountains. After we are out of the mountains, we start heading east and a bit south, where we estimate the orc city should be. We have plenty of time along the way, so we discuss what we should try to hunt as a peace offering. “One of those bloody bison would be about right.” Jakin suggests. “Strong, good taste, and I’d wager even a group of orcs would have trouble eating it all in one sitting.” “Too big.” Boaz shakes his head. “We’d be needing a cart or somesuch to lug it around, or we’d tire ourselves trying to carry it such a way.” “True enough.” Jakin shrugs. “Then, how about a lion? There should be some around here.” Heather offers hesitantly. “Eh, they’re tough alright.” Jakin grimaces. “The meat too. Then again, maybe orcs would like that?” “Best not risk it.” I say. “Then again, not like we want to turn up with a rabbit or something. And it’s not like there’s a huge population of edible monsters around here. I don’t think we could even kill one of those boomer bats without it detonating, let alone cook it.” “Is bat even edible?” Xiltroth wonders. “Who knows.” I shrug. “I don’t plan to find out the hard way if it’s not.” “How about a gazelle, then?” Xiltroth suggests. Silence falls for a few moments as we consider it. “That’s… They’re certainly tough to hunt, I guess.” Jakin raises an eyebrow. Gazelles aren’t particularly strong or tough, but one thing they certainly are is fast, and quick to spook. Putting Xiltroth and Heather aside, the twins and I, with our big, clunky, loud armour? We wouldn’t stand a chance of actually catching one. Stealth and an accurate shot are the only chance anyone could have, outside of trapping – and that isn’t exactly our forte. But besides that, they aren’t dangerous, and they’re small enough that I could comfortably carry it. “I think a gazelle would work.” I say, thoughtfully. “You think you’ll be able to hunt one down? They’d probably run before we’re able to get within a hundred meters.” I gesture to myself and the twins for clarification. Xiltroth nods. “I think so. Might take an hour or two depending on my luck, but I should be able to manage it.” “Alright.” I nod. “Just make sure keep an eye and an ear on your surroundings. We’ll set up camp here for a bit, maybe cook something up for an early lunch. Look for the smoke of the fire to make your way back.” Xiltroth nods in understanding and jogs away. In the meantime, we clear an area, collect sticks and fallen branches to fuel a fire and stones to line it. We have tools like flints and steel to help start a fire the mundane way, but a little bit of fire magic really makes the process simple. Then we need to find something to eat. Most smaller animals and monsters have ways of avoiding predators or hunters such as ourselves. Rabbits or hares are incredibly agile, very difficult to catch in such an open space without traps, for instance. Others can hide underground, or take to the skies, or camouflage themselves. Others still are poisonous, or just taste plain terrible. So most of the time, to keep things simple, we just go for something that’s confidant (or stupid) enough to fight us. That means bloody bison, often enough. They’ll charge anything that comes within range. Still, we might be able to manage one or two, but a whole herd stampeding at us is much too much. We have to get one alone. They are pack animals, though, so you rarely find them alone. The best method we have found, therefore, is to find a small herd and try to attract the attention of a single member of the herd, usually whichever is the most separate from the others, or that the others aren’t paying attention to. Once it charges after us, we can lead it a distance away and deal with it. We’re not always successful at separating one, but they aren’t the smartest of beasts. Oftentimes just ducking behind or climbing a tree, if necessary, is enough to confuse them, and they go charging past. Still, we have a safer option now that we have access to some ranged weaponry. We can just shoot one before they notice us, lead off and lose the rest of the herd, and that’s that. It’s not exactly the easiest thing in the world, or without its own dangers, but we can handle it. Takes us about half an hour to find a small herd – they’re dotted all across the place – and drag the bison we fell back to the fire. We don’t have much in the way of cooking utensils with us at the moment, and we’re still a ways away from the river, so we make do with roasting portions of meat over the fire. Xiltroth reappears about an hour later, a gazelle carried over his shoulder. It has a single small hole in the back of its head. After a short rest and Xiltroth eating a bit, we continue on our way. The rest of the bison we have to leave behind for the vultures. The gazelle is small and light in comparison, and is carried easily enough. Another hour and a half passes, and I’m starting to consider where to camp if we don’t manage to find the city when we spot some buildings in the distance. We climb a slope, more a grassy knoll than a proper hill, to get a bit of a view. “Looks like a village to me.” Xiltroth says, shielding his eyes from the sun with a hand as he peers into the distance. “The buildings are small, it’s mostly fields and pens.” “That makes sense, I think. Most cities need nearby villages to support them. This must be one of them. I think I can make out some figures, but they’re just a bit too far away to tell any details.” I nod, narrowing my eyes as I try to make out what I’m seeing. “It’s the orcs, I’m sure of it.” Heather says. “The buildings are in much the same style as I remember, very rough and irregular.” Jakin squints in the direction we’re looking, before shaking his head in disgust. “Nope, can’t see a damn thing. How in the blazes can you people see that far!?” Boaz shrugs in resigned agreement. Well, since my eyes were healed, I guess I have twenty-twenty vision again. “The mining probably has something to do with it, I think.” “Mining?” Jakin raises an eyebrow. “We’ve not done much of that for a while.” I shake my head. “I didn’t mean you in particular. Dwarves are famous for their constructions and craftsmanship. On the flip side, that means that historically, a much larger portion of their population needed to mine for the resources needed for those constructions in comparison to the other kingdoms, right?” “Guess that sounds about right.” Jakin agrees. “Straining your eyes in the mines by the light of a torch or lantern, that’s going to damage your eyesight. And often enough, traits like poor eyesight can be inherited - just like a child will often bear a striking resemblance to their parents.” I explain. “That happens to enough people over enough generations, the average eyesight is going to fall, although of course there are still going to be people with good or even great eyesight here and there.” “Huh.” Jakin rubs at his beard. “Never thought about it that way. That makes some sense.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, enough about that. We should head down to this village.” “Yep, let’s.” I nod. We head down the knoll and towards the village. As we approach, I can start to make out more details. The main area of the village is surrounded by a low stone wall, maybe waist height, that looks to be constructed of just piled stones. The fences around the animal pens appear to be draped with branches, or perhaps itself constructed of closely grown greenery. The buildings aren’t much more than rectangular cabins constructed from logs – I can even spot one that still has a few branches attached. It seems immediately clear that while the orcs had changed their warmongering ways, they hadn’t magically become architects, carpenters or masons in the last few hundred years. As for the orcs themselves, they are much like the stories portray them. Tall, with broad shoulders and rippling muscles clear underneath their green skin. Smallish eyes peer from within slightly sunken sockets, and a pair of small tusks or overgrown teeth pull the corners of their mouths into what could be perceived as an eternal grimace. Their hair, if they have any at all, is a tangled, oily mess roughly cut short not to hang below the shoulders. Covering their bodies are simple yet well-made hide and fur clothes. One of them, likely a guard by his weapons, notices us approaching the entrance to the village and calls out to us loudly in a gravelly voice. “Outsiders? Why have you come!?” We stop approaching. I take a quick breath and restrain the urge to reach for a weapon. “We come in peace!” I call back. “We are adventurers from across the river, and we heard word of an orc city nearby. We thought to visit it and start good relations with the people there. We bring a gift of goodwill!” The guard holds up a hand. “You wait there.” But he doesn’t go anywhere, he just stands there, his face screwed up in concentration. We stand there awkwardly for a minute. Eventually, he nods slowly. “Outsiders want to be friends with orcs? Bring gift?” “Yes!” I call back. I flinch slightly as his face splits into what I, after a moment, optimistically decide is a smile, instead of a snarl. “Good! Come with me! I bring you to village chief!” I nod, and start following him. “Well,” I say quietly to the others, “They seem friendly enough.” Eyes stare at us with curiosity as we pass through the village, but at least without overt hostility. Orc children point and stare at our armour and weapons as we pass by where they play on the dirt streets. An orc women, who looks not one whit weaker than the men, barks at a kid who was about to run up to us, the kid turning around immediately with a chastised expression. It doesn’t take long for us to reach a slightly larger building near the middle of the village. The guard leading us bangs on the door. “Chief!” He calls out to whoever is inside. “What is it?” A voice calls irritably back from inside. “Outsiders!” The guard replies through the doors. “Outsiders?” Footsteps start thumping towards the door. “The good or bad kind?” “The good kind… Probably?” The guard replies, scratching his bald head uncertainly as the door opens. The village chief, large even for an orc, stares down at us for a moment. “…Hello?” I proffer. “Hm.” He grunts, narrowing his eyes. He looks back to the guard. “What did they say? Did you think three times, like big chief said?” “I did!” the guard nods emphatically. “I remembered this time, I thought three times! The outsiders said… Hm, said they are adventurers… From across the river… They heard of orc city… Came to be friends with orc people… And brought gift.” “Gift?” The village chief looks at us. “What is this gift?” I gesture to the gazelle slung over Xiltroth’s shoulder. “This gazelle Xiltroth hunted.” “Hmph.” The village chief snorts. “Good gift.” He looks back to the guard. “I think you are right. Did good job. Outsiders… I can’t decide. Big chief will want to see them. He will decide. You go with outsiders to Ra’tlub, explain to big chief like you explain to me.” “Me?” The guard blinks. The chief rolls his eyes. “Yes. You.” The guard nods. “Yes chief. I will take outsiders to big chief. Tell him what I told you. Won’t mess up this time.” “Good.” The village chief nods. “Go, reach there before night falls. Return tomorrow, tell me what big chief decides.” “Yes chief.” The guard nods again and turns to us. “Come. I will take you to Ra’tlub, orc city. I think you are good, but I am not clever. Big chief is clever. Big chief will know what to do.” I nod, and he leads us out of the village, further east. Well then. To Ra’tlub we go.

jinxs2011 This took longer than expected. Still, here it is. Hope you enjoy. Chapter 46: The Hall Of Warriors Greg stands up from his seat and walks towards us, his clothes flapping lightly around his wrists and feet as he moves. The movement attracts Jakin’s eye, who says, “Ain’t that… What’s his name? Met him escaping from Ginerbe, I think…” “Greg.” Boaz supplies. “Aye, that’s the one.” Jakin nods. “What in God’s name is he doing here?” “I could ask the same of you guys.” Greg notes dryly, now standing in front of us. “It’s not exactly as if this is a popular tourist destination.” Jakin claps Xiltroth on the back. “Xiltroth here joined the group not long after we last saw yeh. Then, well, the war. Wasn’t a safe place left in the five kingdoms for us, so we left them. Happened to set up camp not too far from here. Found out about the orcs and came here to make sure the first meeting was a friendly one.” “The war is affecting everyone, it seems.” Greg nods in understanding. “I was on the warfront myself, with those of my group that survived. After a while, I realised that I didn’t have any reason to be fighting. I don’t hate the demons or beastmen, and neither do I have any debt or loyalty to Stalia. I left, heading east and then north. Getting through Xin was… difficult, but I managed eventually. Didn’t realise there was a desert up there, but I found myself uniquely equipped to survive it. Ice magic is great to beat the heat.” Jakin curiously raises an eyebrow. “Aye? The heat may be one thing, but I hear there are no plants or animals living in the desert. How’d yeh manage to find food in a place like that?” “It’s a long story, perhaps for another day.” Greg shrugs. A large shadow looms over us. “Are you gonna keep yakking, or can we get to business? Utak says you need a room for the night.” Greta says, looking vaguely angry and threatening. “Yes, of course.” I quickly turn to face her. “What would be suitable payment?” Greta rolls her eyes in annoyance. “What you got?” “Well, I noticed that some of your furniture got broken. Jakin, Boaz, do you reckon you can fix them?” I ask. The twins cast an evaluating gaze over the pile of broken wood. “Aye, we can.” Jakin nods. “We’d need some spare wood, though. A lot of that’s too broken to use.” “Hmm…” Greta grunts, mulling it over. “Have a lot of firewood. Could spare some. That do?” Jakin nods. “So long as you have a few logs that are long and thick enough, it should do fine.” Greta considers for a few moments. Or maybe she’s glaring at us, I’m not entirely sure. “Furniture pays for room. Need pay for wood. After fixing furniture, you clean up all the broken wood left over and mess you make fixing. Take it to firewood pile out back. Can use as kindling.” “Seems like we have a deal.” I agree, holding out my hand. She takes it, her unarmoured hand almost as large as mine covered in a gauntlet, and I can feel the crushing strength of her grip even through the metal as we shake on it. “Right. Well, if yeh’ll show us to the firewood, we’ll get started on that.” Jakin nods. With Greta leading Jakin and Boaz to the wood storage, it left Xiltroth, Heather and I alone with Greg. Precisely the situation I had been trying to avoid. “So…” Trails Greg. “Can’t help but notice your party is really diverse. Most people tend to stick to their own race – something about everyone being at war with everyone else at some point in history.” “History is history.” I shrug. “The people who fought them are dead. Their causes have been long forgotten. I judge people by their own actions, not by their ancestors’. If others want to live in the past, then that’s their mistake to make.” “I hear you. Everyone would be better off if the war never happened, but everyone seemed to be of the opinion that it was inevitable.” Greg sighs. I nod in resignation. “Guess humans are just warmongers. Always seem to be starting wars.” “What do you mean?” Greg tilts his head. “Sure, the three kingdoms retaliated rather strongly, but the demons are the ones who started it.” “No we didn’t.” Xiltroth, who had been listening silently until now, interjects. “It was the humans that sacked Vaaslav city and forced us into a war.” “Huh? I hadn’t heard about anything like that.” Greg looks at Xiltroth quizzically. “And, well, I knew some people pretty high up. I would’ve known if something like that happened. No, the demons raided and destroyed an elven village, Willowheim and the three kingdoms moved in retaliation.” “It happened.” I state, raising an eyebrow. “We were in the city just over from Vaaslav when it got destroyed. The people were pretty enraged, trust me – we had to leave pretty quick once the news arrived, or chances are we would’ve been mobbed. You sure about that village?” Greg considers for a moment. “I think so. At least, as sure as one can be without seeing it themselves.” “Sure you weren’t lied to?” I wouldn’t put it past the kings, lying to the ‘heroes’ to ensure their cooperation. “You can lie about a lot of things, but not about a whole village.” Greg nods. “Too easy for people to see the lie for themselves. Met some elves on the warfront who had joined the army after seeing the wreckage themselves… Those eyes don’t lie.” And Greg wouldn’t lie about something like this, certainly not to protect the kings or their reputation. We never trusted them enough for that. “Well, the implications for that are nasty.” I note. “You don’t think that both were framed to cause the war, do you?” Xiltroth frowns. “Unfortunately.” Greg nods. “That does seem likely. Some other group did this.” “Can’t we tell people? Stop the war?” Xiltroth asks, frustrated. “Wish it were that easy.” I shake my head in resignation. “Chances are all the kings have caught on to it by now, too. If not, they may as well get rid of their information networks, because they were just upstaged by some people chatting in a bar. But war is like a massive boulder at the top of a hill. Hard to get rolling – there’s always some sane people trying to stop wars from starting – but once it is, you can’t stop it. You either get flattened or get the hell out of its way.” “And rather than the ones who caused it, it’s the common man, the soldiers and the peasants, who take the hardest hits from the warfare. Honour, justice, for king and country, that’s what the songs speak of.” Greg agrees bitterly. “To ‘protect the ones back at home’. They’re all lies that the upper class spout so they have willing soldiers. Don’t get me wrong, there’s also some people higher up who believe the same thing. People who understand the truth of war, but believe that there is no alternative.” “There’s always an alternative.” I curse. “If, rather than immediately declaring war, both sides communicated, it’s possible they might have noticed the discrepancy before they reached the point of no return and both sides could have united against the true culprit. But it’s too late now. As I see it, the war can only end one of four ways: the most obvious being that one side or another is defeated.” “Alternatively, a treaty could be brokered before that happens. Seems unlikely with public opinion as it was before I left, but the war wears on everyone.” Greg shrugs. “Maybe one or both sides eventually realise that it would be worse for both of them if they kept fighting.” I nod. “That, or one of them simply runs out of resources and can’t continue, and they negotiate because of that.” Greg pauses in thought for a moment. “I can’t really think of anything else. Well, apart from the fighting part I’m not that familiar with war. What’s the last one you thought of, Aaron?” I shrug. “This is a world of monsters and magic, right? Maybe something extraordinary will happen that nobody’s expecting that somehow stops the war.” “Heh.” Greg chuckles, shaking his head slightly. “Yeah, I guess given all that’s happened to me, it might not be too farfetched after all.” “But enough about the war.” I sigh. “It sullies the mood, and it’s far out of our hands – and sight, for that matter. We should find a lighter topic of conversation.” The room is as simple as one might expect. Obviously, Greta doesn’t have any beds fit for centaurs, so Heather has to make do with sheets and straw pillows on the floor. Still, she assures me, she had slept on far worse when roaming with her tribe. Fortunately, with many orcs having even larger statures than humans and most beastmen, their doorways are similarly larger, large enough that Heather can fit through, although she still has to stoop down a bit. It had been a long time since we’d stayed in an inn, so it felt a bit strange leaving the room in the morning to find plenty of people already up, eating, drinking and talking. Greg notices us entering the room and gets up, seemingly having been waiting for us. “Morning.” He greets. “Have any plans for the day?” “Nothing concrete.” I reply in the negative. “Maybe explore the city a bit.” “I have to return to my village.” Utak says. “Let chief know what happened.” I nod and shake his hand. “It was nice to meet you. We’ll probably see you every now and again when we pass through the village on our way back to camp or from our camp to here.” “Look forward to it.” Utak smiles, before turning towards the counter. “Greta, I’m heading home. Thanks for the room.” “Anytime.” She waves. “Don’t be afraid to visit when you around.” Utak nods in reply and heads out the door. Turning his head from the door back to us, Greg says, “Well, thought you might be interested to visit the orc equivalent of an adventurer’s guild. You used to be adventurers, after all.” “I still think of myself as an adventurer, even if I don’t work for the actual guild anymore. It’s more of a lifestyle than a job.” I reply, shrugging. “Anyway, yeah I’d be interested in seeing this…” “Hall of warriors, they call it.” Greg supplies. “Had a bit of a rocky start, I hear. Orcs enjoy fighting, but only if the fight is challenging. It was hard for them to incentivise battle-hardened fighters to take care of a few stray wolves that were attacking a village’s livestock, for instance. They thought it was beneath them.” “Makes sense, I guess.” I nod in understanding. “Historically speaking, they only started the transition from a tribal society to a civilisation some three hundred years ago, from what I know. Wouldn’t surprise me if they still kept most of their values from that time.” “I wouldn’t know anything about their history, but yeah.” Greg shrugs noncommittally. “Their solution was to reward success with tokens they could exchange for goods and services – basically, money. The warriors still don’t like fighting weak enemies, but they do like being able to get things they need, so they put up with it for the most part, although there’s still a few stubborn guys who refuse to fight easy battles.” My eyebrows raise in surprise. “Money? As far as I’ve heard and can tell, this place uses a barter system.” “For the most part.” Greg nods. “The tokens are fairly recent. You could say they’re right at the beginning of a transition from the barter system to a monetary system – if it catches on, that is. Sure would make things easier if it does. The barter system’s fine when both parties have something the other wants, but if you don’t have what they want or the skills to get it, it can end up in a long, painstaking chain of trades to get what you want, and chances are you’re taking a loss somewhere along the line.” “Yeah, having to rack my brains to figure out what to exchange for every little thing would quickly become tiring… I like it much better when things are simple and clear.” I agree. “Anyway, we’re just going to have a quick breakfast first. We should have enough for an extra, if you haven’t eaten yet.” Greg shakes his head slightly. “I’ve already eaten. I’m used to getting up before sunrise, and haven’t had enough time to get out of the habit yet.” “No problem.” I nod. “Thanks for guiding us, this city is like a maze.” I say to Greg. We stand in front of a relatively large building. There’s no signage, but the presence of the horned skull of some huge beast mounted above the door clearly marks it apart from the other buildings around. “No skin off my back.” Greg shrugs. “Fair warning though, orcs, especially the ones here, value strength highly. Outsiders like you and I, they’ll test to make sure you’re worthy of taking the quests here.” “No problem. We can take hits, or deal them if necessary.” I reply. “I’m sure. Just… yeah.” He says lamely. “No time like the present.” I mutter, pushing the door open. The ruckus from inside spills out onto the street for a moment before the attention of those inside shifts to us and much of the conversation abruptly cuts off. “These the outsiders?” One of them growls. “Shiny armour, but small. How can these ones be good warriors?” “Want to fight this small one to find out, Urbok?” Greg steps inside. Urbok’s mouth twitches into a slight grimace. “These ones are warriors, not wizards. Not the same.” “The only difference it would make is whether I would kick your ass – or light it on fire.” I step forward and raise my hand, a small orb of flame flickering above it. I close my fist around it, letting it dissipate. “Pretty sure I could do both.” Urbok chuckles, although it sounds a little bit forced to me. “It take more than fire to intimidate me, outsider. You have to prove your strength before you join us on these hunts.” These words are met with scattered growls of approval in the room. “Simple, then.” I nod. “You know how to arm wrestle?” “You think me a fool?” Urbok scowls. ‘Yes.’ I leave the thought unspoken, saying instead, “Let’s do it then, you and me. Your table should be fine, yeah?” Urbok sneers, sitting back onto his seat and placing his elbow on the table, his thick green arm bulging with muscles. I walk over and sit opposite him, taking off my helm and setting it down between my feet before locking my eyes impassively with Urbok as I set my elbow on the table. “We’ll have to use our left arms.” I state. “Broke my right in a fight recently and it hasn’t fully healed up yet. We’ll need someone to count us down, too.” As far as I’ve seen, orcs are on average significantly stronger than humans. And as a warrior, Urbok should be on the higher end of the scale among orcs. Still, I’m not overly worried. Urbok scowls but switches arms, grasping my hand firmly while another orc slowly counts down to the starting mark. The attention of near everyone in the room is on us, and our own eyes are locked with each other’s, Urbok’s a fierce glare, and my own is resolute, determined… Confident. Never once have I let up on my training – excluding recently, with my arm being broken. To be honest, apart from hunting for food, keeping watch, various maintenance and camp tasks, there isn’t much to do around here. I can’t exactly take part in any of my hobbies from earth; those being reading, games and such. Nor have I picked up any new hobbies since I got here. So, in general, if I have spare time, I spend it training. “GO!” The mark is called by the orc, and we immediately start straining against each other. A glint of surprise runs through Urbok’s eyes when he isn’t instantly able to slam my hand onto the table and he redoubles his efforts, the muscles in his arm bulging and his veins standing proud from his skin as the orcs surrounding us shout and cheer on the show. Our hands tremble, and my arm slowly starts to dip towards the table. “I’m glad,” I manage to grunt out through the strain, “that you weren’t just posturing. You really are strong.” “Just give up.” He grimaces, beginning to pant slightly. “Not… Yet.” I grunt in reply, starting to circulate my mana. Our hands start to creep back towards equilibrium to the excited shouts of onlookers as his eyes widen. He throws his shoulder into the push, but still isn’t able to stop his hand’s descent. A few moments later, with a slightly pained grunt, his knuckles hit the table. We loosen our grips and I shake out my arm, taking a deep breath. I have won, but it put considerable strain on my arm. The doctor would probably have something to say about me exerting myself so much while I’m still healing if he knew. “You are strong.” Urbok admits. “But the others? They must be tested too.” Boaz and Jakin are naturally next because of their diminutive size, facing off against two other orcs. Well, despite their shorter stature, dwarves are actually of similar or even greater strength than humans, and unlike me the twins are in the prime of their youth. And while we don’t exactly speak about our past, they have mentioned they used to be in the army – meaning that they have been training themselves for a long time. They win, of course. “What about you, demon? Can those twigs you have for arms even lift a weapon?” An orc approaches Xiltroth with the obvious intent of humiliating him, but before he can lay his meaty hands on Xiltroth he is forced to frantically backpedal as a knife appears at his neck, Xiltroth taking none of his nonsense. “Never mind! My bad.” The orc touches his neck with a finger to make sure there isn’t a mark, and retreats with a foul expression. As for Heather, she looms over even the tallest of orcs and has enough bulk in her lower body to give them pause. Perhaps they have some knowledge about animals, or perhaps it’s simple instinct, but they unanimously give her rear a wide berth, and leave her out of their ‘tests’. Probably for the best, as I doubt her upper body is as strong as her lower body naturally is. Once all the orcs were done with ‘making sure we were strong enough’, we are finally able to head to the bar. Behind it stands an orc with greyed hair and a chipped fang. “What sort of jobs are available?” I ask. He glances over us. “Always lots to do here. You new, so I tell you how things go here. Lots of beasts and monsters near the city – bad for people moving between here and villages. Bring me their heads, and there will be a reward. Stronger beast, bigger reward – simple.” The orc starts explaining, seemingly not having the same inclination to look down on us as some of the other warriors here. “You bring back the meat or useful parts, I buy them from you too. Too many bronze horns lately. Good if you could hunt them. Those the simple things, always the same.” He shrugs. I nod in understanding. “And the more specific, urgent things?” “Howling heard near the village to the east, has put the villagers on edge. A couple livestock went missing not long ago.” He says seriously. “Livestock?” I question. “Are those the same type of livestock as they have in the village west of here? Those things looked like they could take on most monsters by themselves.” “Same ones.” He nods. “And they can.” “Werewolves?” Jakin guesses quietly, and Greg flinches in response. “Sure as hell hope not.” I reply. “Could be some sort of wolf variant as well. A pack could probably take down a lone beast without any trouble if they worked together.” “Still, if there are werewolves near here, we need to know as soon as possible.” Greg scowls. “Greyguts, I’ll look into this one. I’ll take them out if I can, or get back here as soon as possible if I can’t to let you know so a hunting party can be organised.” “Hope it doesn’t come to that.” Greyguts shakes his head grimly and puts his arm forward. “Strong arm, thick skin, Greg.” Greg grasps Greyguts’ forearm and returns the farewell before heading out of the building with a quick stride. “He’s going alone?” I note questioningly to Greyguts. “Mm.” He grunts in reply. “Always does. Still, while some cry that his magic isn’t in the spirit of a warrior… He’s strong. Gets the job done. Enough for me.” “Besides,” He gestures to the room full of musclebound orc warriors, “Many like to fight alone or in small groups. Two, maybe three. You… five? To our eyes, this is strange.” “Where we come from, it wouldn’t be odd to see groups of eight or ten adventurers working together.” I shrug. “The whole point of a party is to have people with different skills so they can cover up each other’s weaknesses.” “There’s wisdom in that.” He nods pensively before snorting slightly. “And it says something of the wisdom of orcs that we ignore that.” I shrug. “Anyway, is there anything else?” “Always more.” Greyguts grunts. “Heard from the north village a week ago. Goblin sightings, people were worried about their food or tools getting stolen. Want someone to track them down, take them out.” “A week ago?” My eyebrows furrow. “Surely someone has already started looking into this.” “One.” He nods. “Few days ago. Shouldn’t take this long. Hope he just found a woman in the village, but…” “Only one? In a week?” I say, taken aback. “Goblins are weak.” He shrugs. “It is no proud feat for even a child to kill one. Most think the village will be fine even without our help. Think the one who went is lazy or weak for taking so long.” I look him in the eyes. “Was he?” After a moment, he shakes his head. “No. I think this is not a cave of goblins. Goblin tribe, maybe. Could be trouble for the village.” At this point, Jakin nudges my elbow. “Are yeh sure we should be taking on something like this? Yer arm still hasn’t healed.” “True enough.” I move my broken arm around a bit, getting a feel for how it’s going. “Doesn’t seem too bad, but it’s better to be safe wit these things. Still, it’s not like they’ll have armour. I should be able to do just as much damage with magic as I would normally do with my hammer. Worst comes to worse, we’ll just turn it into a recon mission.” Jakin shakes his head, smiling wryly. “Yeh’ve got a love for trouble, don’t yeh?” “We’re adventurers; it’s what we do.” I shrug. “Guess so.” Jakin agrees with a sigh. “Any other thoughts on this?” I turn and ask the others. Boaz speaks up first, saying, “Yer call.” “I think we should.” Xiltroth says. “Even if these warriors don’t care for it, the people in the village will be grateful, and by extension the big chief. It’ll go a long way towards proving our goodwill here.” I nod along at his points. “I agree, not to make them like us,” Heather says disapprovingly, “but because they need our help.” “I didn’t mean it like that!” Xiltroth denies firmly. “Of course we try and help people when we can, but sometimes we have to weigh the risks and advantages, make sure we don’t get in over our heads. The facts are that we would be going into a place we don’t know, to fight an unknown number of enemies that we’ve never fought before with practically no information, and our best fighter isn’t able to fight how he usually would. Before committing we need to think about the worst case scenario, how probable that is, whether and how we could survive that, and – although we hate to think about it in such a way, which is why we never mention it directly – whether the outcome is worth the risk. I was simply putting forth another advantage on top of the commonly assumed one for us going.” “It didn’t sound like you were saying that,” Heather rebukes angrily, “It sounded like -” “Calm down, Heather!” I interrupt her as I subtly slide myself physically between them, suddenly becoming very aware how much force she could very easily bring to bear upon me at a moment’s notice. “Xiltroth agrees with you, he just has difficulty conveying his emotions to others. Trust me when I say that there’s a lot more going on inside him than it appears, and he is actually a very empathetic person.” Her eyes flick between us for a tense half-moment before she sighs. “Fine. I trust you.” My body relaxes slightly. “Okay. Good. Thank you. We’re all in agreement then?” At everyone’s nods, I turn back to Greyguts. “Then we’ll look into this goblin problem. Could you give us directions to this village in the north?” “Sure.” He grunts in reply. “North.”

It’s calm. There are even conversations here and there, interspersed by laughter as everyone cleans up after the battle. I look back down, the bloody corpse of a boar half bereft its hide. Rivulets of blood trickle slowly from open wounds and its gaping snout. The sight disgusts me. I stand and walk away. Nobody asks where I’m going. Nobody even glances at me. It’s as if I don’t exist as I leave the clearing. As soon as I step past the first tree, I’m in another place. The office. As if everything from the last month was just a dream, a normal day. I have reports to complete, files to look over. I sit down and begin work. But the papers are signed, the reports submitted. A hint of confusion enters my mind. I’d just started, hadn’t I? Why was it done already? Maybe, maybe I just forgot I’d already done it. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds right. My vision hazes. What’s wrong with me? I blink hard, but it makes no difference. Maybe my glasses… Where are my glasses? In a daze, I move over to Phil’s cubicle. Maybe he knows where they are. As I am about to enter, I feel myself paralysed. What is this? Fear, why is it fear? Why am I so afraid, I, I don’t understand, it’s Phil, there’s nothing to fear, why am I so afraid? I take the last step, and my vision clears abruptly. I don’t remember when it began, but there is a soft creaking sound. The office chair in his cubicle is slowly spinning around, creaking as it goes. Upon it is seated a pair of legs. Only a pair of legs. Bare flesh faces the backrest, spilling streams of scarlet and dying chair and floor red with pools of blood. Then, the whole floor gets covered in blood, a thick layer of it. The chair spins a half-revolution, giving me a frontal view. No, no no, please no… His entire torso is gone, just… gone. On the legs lay a small cat curled up, licking the blood off. But it keeps spilling, and flowing, and spurting out, causing the liquid to get higher and higher. The cat pauses its demented grooming, looking at me. It disappears. And I wake up. Sitting up, I rub at my eyes. They weren’t bleary from the sleep, but tired and bloodshot. I feel them straining to take in light that doesn’t exist. It’s still pitch black, despite the small windows on the far wall. It is still night. Since that day, I have trouble getting to sleep, instead of trouble waking up. The food is tasteless. Well, more than, it… al… Humour seems dull. Life, seems dull. I know I won’t be able to get back to sleep, so I stand up, and dress myself. My face is stiff as I leave the room, closing the door behind me. In the darkness, I navigate through the stone halls and out the front doors. The guards there look at me but say nothing. This isn’t the first time I’ve done this, and it won’t be the last. I get to the outer wall, and turn to move along it. My limbs move, my heartbeat accelerating as I run faster. And faster. And faster still. My hands cut through the air as they pump back and forth like pistons in a well-oiled machine. With every step, I dig my feet into the packed dirt, pushing off with all the strength I can muster. Faster. If this were a few days ago, I would still be marvelling at the lack of flab lining my midriff for the first time in over a decade. Now, I don’t want to think about anything. Just move faster. My body is hunched over to reduced air resistance. Palms straight, like blades. Step after step. Breath after breath, inhaling and exhaling as rapidly as my feet pound against the ground. A wall looms ahead. Changing the direction of my feet to face the wall, I push off with both feet, rocketing towards that hard surface. Slightly shifting my body in the air, I impact feet first, bending my knees to neutralize the force surging through me. Snapping my legs straight again, I push off of the wall. My trajectory still intersects with the wall ahead of me. With a somewhat awkward movement, I stretch out a leg to kick off that wall. My airtime is gone, and I land with a slight stumble, but my momentum is now in a direction parallel to the wall. Again. Faster. Until I’m fast enough to overtake that monster. A cold tremor shakes my body. My legs seize, sending me crashing to the ground. Due to my speed, I scrape and tumble along the ground for a couple metres, opening gashes along my legs, arms and back. Trembling, I turn myself over, flopping onto my back. I sit up, looking at my stinging palms as blood begins to well out of the wounds. Tugging strands of mana out from within me, I turn them to holy mana and sink them into my various wounds, watching as new skin grows to cover the wounds. I can heal this, but I couldn’t heal him. My talent lies in lightning magic, not holy magic. It’s too late to heal him. He’s gone. But… I can still avenge him. And if I’m gonna kill that monster, I’ll have to be faster than it. And be able to see that speed. Lightning… lightning is fast. But I’m not lightning. I only wield it. Channelling it through my body? Ridiculous. It’d be more likely to kill me than make me faster. But maybe wind can. My affinity to it is a bit lower, but still pretty good. If I could make the air part in front of me, that would eliminate most of the air resistance. But it could also reduce the amount of air I can breathe. Perhaps a tailwind would work. If I can somehow make the magic parting the air in front of me to let air pass through in the other direction, that would lessen air resistance and make me be able to breathe at the same time, right? But wait, you can’t breathe in wind magic, so making a magic tailwind to let me breathe wouldn’t work. Damn. I suppose I’ll have to exclude my head from both magics to allow myself to breathe. Would that cause a bit of whiplash? Maybe… But… that might not be too hard to rectify! If I can just get a piece of metal that runs up the back of my neck to keep it straight, that should work, right? It could be secured around my forehead. If there’s a lot of padding, it won’t hurt too much. I flinch as I come back to reality. Think later, now: run! Stretching forwards to put my hands on the ground, I put my feet on the ground behind me, and kick off again. I’m still dripping sweat from my earlier sprint, breathing heavily with aching muscles, but I push on regardless. I push off with my left foot, using the painful burn of the various muscles I’m straining as fuel to push even harder. As my left leg moves forwards, my right foot meets the ground, and strains against it to push me further, faster. As my right leg moved forwards, my left… As my left… I pump my limbs, terror forgotten. I am only able to do a lap and a half sprinting before my legs give out. I push myself onto my back and lay there, unseeing, until the first rays of light peek over the horizon. Then, getting up, I move my aching limbs to a nearby water barrel. I take a deep drink, then take a moment to look at my reflection. My normally wild, bushy red hair has dried to the surface of my head over the course of my rest, making me look like I’m wearing some sort of red helmet. My face is caked in a mixture of dust and sweat, bits flaking off as I rub at it. I look down at the barrel again, and a pair of green eyes stare back at me, not shifting or moving at all, completely and absolutely still. Turning away, I start running again. A slower pace, no doubt, but still torturous to my overworked legs. I traipse on, body clad in sweat and dust. As I stumble my way through my third lap, I’m joined by Boris. He’s a good guy, but we hadn’t had much in common, before… This. I’m amazed by how much weight he’s lost. He’d confided a while ago that he had tried to exercise and slim down once before this, but he’d taken the wrong advice. He said he’d been told that if he gave himself a little ‘treat’ after every period of exercise, it would make him more motivated. Only problem was, after he’d had one, there were another eleven in the same box, and he kept slipping up. He’d joked it was much easier now that he had no access to sugary foods. Now though… we don’t joke. We don’t even say a word to each other, and he soon outstrips my exhausted self with little more than a glance in my direction. I sit in magic class, my limbs limp – but my mind in overdrive. Lightning flashes around me, crackling and highly lethal. Despite this, I make it writhe around my body like a twisting snake of electricity. That’s what lightning is, after all. Electric discharge. Normally the charge has to build up to such a point that it can overcome the resistance of air, but here, mana is a direct conduit. It IS the lightning. Within the mana, there was no resistance. Man, the scientists back home would go crazy over this stuff. Something that’s superconductive at any temperature? Science would rocket forwards a decade or two, I bet. Of course, that doesn’t mean much here. What can you do with electricity, but no electrical devices? Nothing beneficial to humanity at least. The lightning disperses into nothingness with a crackle and a faint smell of ozone. Ozone is harmful to the body, right? Would it be viable to use that as an attack? Probably not, I don’t know how much lightning I’d need to create to produce lethal or damaging levels of ozone. My clothing rustle as a breeze moves past. We are indoors, so this would be very strange – were there not magic in this world. I look at my palm and send the wind there, spinning. Outlined in particles of dust is a miniature tornado. This isn’t even near viable as an attack. Disregarding the small size, it isn’t an actual tornado. Rather than the spinning air currents being formed by cold air and warm air twisting around, it’s just spinning air. To make a bigger one, I’d need an obscene amount of mana. Creating blades of air? You’re joking, right? Air isn’t sharp! It’s bloody air! To make something get cut by air, it needs to be going at obscene speeds. If I could send air mana at such speeds, why wouldn’t I just send a chunk of earth or a blade of ice? You know, things that have significant mass. And things like that need less speed to do the same damage. Sure, if it’s air you can’t see it, but you can’t see pure ice easily either. Ice… Ice? Wait, can’t I do something with ice? Ice skating would make me go faster without much effort, right? As for laying down the ice where I’m going, that’s what magic formations are for, right? Only problem would be the skates themselves. Not just making them, but having to put them on before every combat would take time – time you don’t usually have. But it’s a thought for the future. For now, nothing I’ve thought up will help me at all… they need some piece of equipment and magic formations too complicated for me right now. So, there’s only one thing I can do. Ask the captain how he got so fast. As such I sit on my chair, and wait until the lesson is over. He isn’t talking about anything I can use anyway, so I stare into the distance as time passes away. I walk around outside, looking for the captain. I find him doing push ups as a man in full plate armour sits on his back. I waited until he is done. “Forty… Eight! Forty… Nine! Fif…ty! Alright Frank, that’s enough.” The armoured man gets off his back and walks away. Standing up, he wipes the sweat off his brow and notices me standing there. “Hello Greg, it’s a bit early for training, isn’t it?” “I wanted to know how you moved so fast back when you reprimanded Antonio”, I say. He laughs. “I wondered when someone might ask. It has been a month, you know?” His smile fades away, and he gets more serious. “I’ll tell everyone in training today. It’s about time anyway. That aside… You were his friend, right?” Not much I can say to that, so I just nod. “Have you lost someone before?” Again, I nod. He leads me to the wall, and we sit with our backs to it. I open my mouth and start to talk. “It’s just different, you know? I’ve lost people, a couple friends, relatives… But it was to sickness, accidents, that sort of thing. I never had someone die so suddenly, so close to me, and in such a horrific way…” He lets out a long sigh. “It’s always like that. Doesn’t get easier, either. I’ve seen a lot of people die to beasts, monsters, men… But in the end, they joined the army knowing they could die. They made their peace with that possibility. But when I looked into your eyes back in that cave, I could see that none of you had.” Unable to help himself, he gives a short chuckle. “You looked like frightened rabbits, ready to bolt. I still wonder, sometimes, whether all this was the right idea. You’ve all got the power, the talent to do it, sure. But do you have the guts? I don’t think so. A month in, and you’re still greener than the salads my mother used to make!” That sounds about right. We were just civilians until a month ago… He continues, without the humorous tone he’d just had, “You should give it some thought… whether you really want to fight or not.” I already have. Phil got me thinking about it when we’d just got here, and after the... events, a few days ago, I have decided what I want to do. So I told him. “I’ll fight, if only to kill that cat. After that, we’ll see.” “Good enough.” he says. Then he gets up and points at the people trickling into the courtyard. “It’s about time for training.” We walk over, and the captain gathers everyone around. He starts speaking. “Alright people, it’s high time I teach you something a bit more interesting than what you’ve done so far. Now, from what you’ve been taught so far, you know that people without elemental affinities can’t use magic.” A few of us nod along. “Well, that’s not strictly true. They can’t do anything fancy like the magi, but they can still manipulate pure mana. Pure mana, as you know, is used to power the formations in coins. Outside that, it isn’t much use. However, there is still one more use for it, although it isn’t really a spell. It’s called mana reinforcement.” Phil was right, there is magic to reinforce the body. Damn, why did I have to go and think of Phil again? “All you have to do to use it, is move a bit of mana from your mana heart, into your normal heart, and let it go. Now make sure you start with a small amount, it takes a long time for your body to get used to pumping mana through it.” That easy? I move a trickle of mana a few centimetres across my chest to my heart, then just… let it go? For a few seconds, nothing really seems to happen. After that, I feel slightly different, but I can’t tell what has changed. The captain starts speaking again. “Some of you may have noticed that you don’t feel any different. That’s mostly because the amount of mana you used was small, so the effect is small. But you are currently slightly faster, stronger, can fight longer and the world around you appears to slow down.” The soldiers sparring against us weren’t even using this, were they? That means they’re even stronger than we thought. “Now that you’re done standing around, draw your swords and get swinging!” Back to torturing myself, then. The sun slowly tracked its way across the sky, its movement ponderous, yet inexorable. My gaze is directed at it, and yet I do not see it, thinking of other things. Of Phil, specifically. The memories are like fire. Warm, but painful. I remember meeting him. Almost a decade ago, different job, different place to the one before all this happened. He didn’t talk much with the other employees. Not at all to me. Seemed like a bit of a shy guy at the time. At some point, I quit that job. The atmosphere there was stifling. I didn’t have much of an impression of him back then, so I forgot about him a short while later. Imagine my surprise when the next month he shows up at my new workplace, a fellow employee. We shared a laugh about it, and chatted every now and again. It surprised me that he seemed comfortable with conversation, contrary to what I’d thought earlier. Still, we were at the level of acquaintances. I said goodbye to him a few years later. The atmosphere at that workplace was fine, but the workload was huge, and I felt myself aging a few days every day of work there. The third time, I seriously wondered if he was stalking me. But he seemed seriously shocked to see me, and we shared another laugh about it. After that we chatted some more. He was quite obsessed with reading, to an almost strange degree. Whenever he wasn’t tapping away at the computer he was reading. I think I saw him take a novel with him when he went to the toilet a few times. Lunch time? Who needs food? I’d rather read. End of work? Let me finish this chapter first. A cliff-hanger!? I must read the next! You just got to work in the morning? Hello, I’m reading. Staff meeting? Don’t worry, I can multitask listening and reading. Going out drinking with co-workers? What do I do, I finished my novel already? Oh well, I’ll have to start the next one early. *pulls out another book from bag* It was starting to get scary at some point, so I staged a cleverly thought out intervention. I introduced him to light novels, web novels, and how to find them. How did this help? Well, you see, he had to use a device to read them, which produces light and is a lot more visible to disapproving managers. It… was not a good idea. From light novels and their forums, he found anime, manga, and thus he became more consumed than before. Watching anime in one window, a novel in another, work in yet another… I have no clue why he wasn’t fired. That craze lasted a fair while, then died down suddenly. Yeah, he got into meditation. Huh? One day he was staring at his screen, scrolling down one page rapidly, occasionally switching to another page to rapidly type, and the next he was just sitting there staring blankly at his screen. I remember going over to ask if anything’s up, and he looks like he’s just woken up, blinking eyes, confused look and everything. Then he says he was trying out meditation because it ‘sounded fun’. Looking back, he was one crazy fella. Then, when this all started, he just seemed to take it all in stride… To be honest, I was jealous of how relaxed he was. There he was, laughing and excitedly joking with me about what was happening, and while I was instinctively responding to his comments, I was actually a nervous wreck. That day, I hit a new high score for blood pressure. I brake myself out of my reverie as people around me start getting up. End of the lesson, then. After I get myself some grub, I head back outside. The cold wind bites at my face. I get to running again, trying to tire myself to sleep. It hasn’t worked so far. I guide a bit of mana to my heart. If it lets me run for longer, more time will have passed, and I’ll be more tired, hopefully. I got somewhat used to activating it during practice earlier. As long as you channel a steady trickle in, it’ll keep going. My mana pool isn’t as obscene as Phil’s was, but it goes a fair way, and this is but a drop in the ocean. The sun is dipping over the edge of the world by the time I collapse onto the ground. I place my palms on the ground either side of me. My arms aren’t tired yet. One… Two… Three… My arms buckle under me. I use other muscles to twist myself onto my back. I start doing sit-ups. It hurts to move my body, now. I get on my feet and move slowly towards the doors to the keep. The sky is black as pitch. I fall into bed, body too exhausted to move. And yet, it seems, not too exhausted to think. My mind wanders through memories sharp as knives in an agonising eulogy. I, an adult to over forty years, thus cry myself to sleep.

Chapter 36: Heather (POV Aaron) She was right. In the morning and for most of the day, we see neither hide nor hair of the centaur herd. We keep on alert throughout the day just in case, but there is no attack. Nothing. Nor the next day. Or the day after. By the fourth day, we assume that we have seen the last of them and are almost completely back to our normal activities, save that we are keeping within the safety of our walls as one last precaution for a couple more days. Naturally, we have to pop out now and again for food and water, but we keep those trips short and quick. On the sixth day, we decide all’s well and completely resume normal activity. I’m on my usual run along the riverbank, a little past the bridge and still evenly puffing my way along, when I notice something ahead of me. Before long, I’m able to recognise it as a centaur. A little bit longer, and I’m able to recognise her as the same centaur that asked us for help just under a week before, slowly treading in the same direction as me. I reach up and take off my helmet. Once I’m within earshot, I call out, “Morning!” She jumps slightly in surprise and quickly turns her upper body to look at me, all while seemingly ready to bolt. After an initial moment of panic, she recognises me and turns to face me, wiping her eyes surreptitiously. “Are you following me?” “What? No.” I reply, slowing to a halt a generous distance away from her. “I was just on a run and happened to see you. Are you alright? You seemed a bit startled when I called out.” “I… Things didn’t go as well as I thought they would. At first everything seemed fine, someone found the body and the whole camp was suddenly up and talking about it…” She sighs. “Nobody liked him, so everyone was quick to move on. A new chief had to step up. The next few days those interested in the position competed in the hunt, as is tradition.” I nod with furrowed eyebrows. I sense a ‘but’ incoming. “The victor was a childhood friend of mine. I was happy, even happier when he proposed to me.” She shakes her head. “He hit me just for asking a question, then again when I asked why. It feels like all the men in the tribe just see me as a trophy mare, and not actually as a person.” A silent ‘but’, but a poignant one, nonetheless. “Damn.” I shake my head. “Tough break. But you’re here now, so you must’ve left, right?” She snorts. “Of course. I wasn’t going to stand there and let that happen to me again. Left then and there, and nothing he could do about it. He may be the best hunter in the tribe, but I’m the fastest.” “The tribe will probably question his leadership now that I’ve left the day after we were wed, and so dramatically.” She muses. “Serves him right.”  I nod. “It’s good that you’re out of that situation, but what are you going to do now? Are you strong enough to survive out here on your own?” “I don’t know…” She sighs. “I left on the spur of the moment, but now I’m afraid I might have to go back before long.” I stare at her. “That’s not a good idea. That’s the last place you should be, especially right now. Look, if you want, you can stay with us until you find your…” I look down. “Hooves.” “I… I don’t know if I can be around men right now.” She replies hesitantly. “Fair enough.” I nod. “But I swear that we would never treat you that way. If you change your mind, you know where to find us - my offer still stands.” She nods somewhat stiffly but says nothing. “Well, hope you do well.” I say, replacing my helmet. “Goodbye.” She replies half-heartedly. I turn around and start jogging back. The trip back to camp is mostly without incident. My wrists are a bit sore from the time I sidestepped a charging bull with bronze horns then smashed my warhammer into its head while it was still charging, but otherwise a normal morning jog. Boaz is in the watchtower, and together we haul open the crude gate so I can get inside. “Good jog?” He asks. “About the usual.” I reply, starting to take off my armour so I could clean it out. “Came across that centaur woman from the other day.” “Huh. Did yeh find out what happened with that?” Boaz asks. “Yeah. I’ll need to discuss it with everyone.” I reply. “Do you happen to know where Xiltroth and your brother are?” “Jakin is in the storage cabin, trying to fix a hole in his pants.” Boaz says, straight-faced. “I think I saw Xiltroth down near the river.” “Thanks, Boaz.” I head towards the storage cabin. As I approach, I hear a voice furiously cursing from within. It seems he isn’t having any luck. The floor of the cabin is strewn with various bits and pieces: sections of monster leather, bones, carapace and horns, and anything else we thought was worthwhile to keep. I enter the cabin and see Jakin sitting on the floor with a pair of pants, a small patch of fabric and some thread laid upon his lap, glaring wrathfully at the tiny needle in between his fingers. I set my armour down in an empty spot. “It’s these blasted fingers of mine.” He growls, noticing the clamour. “They’re so thick and clumsy. Couldn’t thread this bloody needle to save my life.” I walk over and proffer my hand. “Everyone has their own set of skills and talents. Yours just doesn’t contain this. Let me.” Sitting down next to him, I take the various items from him and carefully thread the needle. Settling the patch in place on the ripped pants, I begin to stitch them together. “Doesn’t seem to bother yeh.” Jakin grunts. “Yeh seem to have a knack fer everything yeh do. Never seen anything like it.” I nod. “Doesn’t make my life much better, though. Sure, it makes it easier, but… How do you enjoy something that’s easy to do?” “I wouldn’t mind if it were easier to get a drink around here.” Jakin shakes his head. “We can only carry so much back from the halflings, and it’s always gone within a week.” “Alright, imagine you have a beer right now. It’s a nice beer, and you enjoy it.” I say. “Now imagine you have a hard day of work, and you’ve just gotten your pay. You take the money you just earned and buy a beer - the same beer. But this time it doesn’t just taste good, does it? No, it tastes great. It’s like that. You work hard for something you like, and it just feels so much more worthwhile when you get it.” “Aye, can’t argue with that.” Jakin gulps. “Now I really want a bloody beer.” “Everything’s easier, everything becomes less enjoyable the better I become at it.” I sigh, before giving him a wry smile. “Exception being things done with friends. Somehow, that never gets old.” “Company makes everything better.” Jakin agrees. “If not for Boaz standing by me, I would have turned down a much darker path.” I finish my very basic running stitch and tie off the thread. After handing the pants back to Jakin, I set the needle and thread back away in their box. “There we go. I almost forgot; I need to talk with everyone about something. Could you meet me at the watchtower in 10 or so? Just need to get Xiltroth first.” “Sure.” Jakin pushes himself to his feet and groans, stretching. “See yeh there.” Nodding, I leave the cabin and head back out through the gate again, towards the river. It doesn’t take me long to find Xiltroth sitting cross-legged on the banks, facing towards the river. As I approach, he evidently notices me, because he calls out to me without turning around. “Aaron. Something up?” He asks. My eyebrows raise. “You can tell who it is by the sound of our footsteps?” “Between you and the twins? Yes.” He replies. “But between Jakin and Boaz themselves? It’s a work in progress.” I nod, mostly to myself, as he still has his back to me. “Huh. Well, are you free right now? I’ve got something to discuss with everyone.” “Free as a man can be, I think.” He replies, getting to his feet. “Let’s go.” We return back to camp. Boaz and Jakin are already there at the watchtower, idly chatting. After they open the gate for us, we all climb up the ladder and crowd the small platform of the watchtower. We’ve been holding meetings up here for a while now, mostly because it lets all of us participate in the conversation and keep watch at the same time. “When I was out on my run, I happened to come across our centaur friend.” I start. “Huh.” Jakin grunts. “Have they decided whether they’re attacking us or not yet?” I pause. “I actually don’t know. It completely flew my mind. I doubt they’ll attack us, but I can’t be sure.” Jakin’s eyebrows raise. “What’d you talk about, then?” “To make a shortish story shorter, her childhood friend became chief, he proposed, they married but then he was abusive, so she left.” I explain. “...She has rotten luck with men.” Jakin comments, shaking his head.  “She does.” I agree. “And she seems to think the rest of the men in her tribe are much the same. I don’t know how accurate that is, but I do know she shouldn’t go back there.” “You offered that she could stay with us?” Xiltroth asks. “Pretty much.” I confirm. “How are you guys with women?” The twins visibly wince. “Uhh… Fine. Fine.” Jakin repeats himself numbly. “Just fine.” Boaz agrees in a half-whisper. “Are you two okay?” I ask, confused. “Fine.” Jakin repeats, before shaking his head. “Bad memories. I think I still have half a bottle of something…” They both clamber down the ladder. Still confused, I turn back to Xiltroth. “How about you?” He shrugs, curiously following the twins with his eyes. “Don’t know. Haven’t really talked to a woman in years.” “Great.” I sigh. “Do you think she’ll come?” Xiltroth asks, leaning over the railing and looking into the distance. “Hard to say. I hope so, but it’s difficult to predict what someone will do when they go through something like that. This place is the logical decision, but…” I shake my head. “She was hit hard just when she thought life was turning for the better. She might not be thinking too logically. If she does come, we’ll need to give her space for a while.” Xiltroth nods silently. We stand there silently for a while, watching the landscape. The twins come back a while later, their eyes a bit redder but looking completely sober. “We’ll be fine, don’t worry.” Jakin says. “Just… Old memories hit us hard.” “Don’t worry about it.” I wave it off. “Anyway, if she’s coming, she’ll probably come before the end of the day. We’ll need to give her some space until she’s able to collect herself.” “Speaking of space, where’s she going to sleep?” Jakin asks. “Good point.” My eyebrows furrow. “Do we still have our old tents?” “Should still be hanging around in the storage cabin somewhere.” Boaz shrugs. “Should be simple enough to sleep in them for a while. We can build another cabin for her to live in eventually.” I muse. “What if she doesn’t stay around that long?” Jakin questions. I shrug. “We could use it as an armoury. We’re starting to run out of room in the storage cabin, so another place for our weapons and armour could be helpful.” While we do wear our armour quite a lot, and generally carry weapons with us at all times, it isn’t like we never take it off. Sometimes we need to clean and do maintenance on it, and other times… Well, even we like to relax every now and again. In the afternoon, almost evening, Jakin spots her in the distance. It takes her a while to reach us; she’s walking slowly, almost dragging her hooves. When she does reach us, she nervously looks up at the guard tower. I’m there, of course. Jakin had alerted us immediately upon seeing her. I’ve left my armour in the storage cabin so as not to appear too threatening. “Before I come in there…” She calls up, “how many of you are there?” “Just four.” I call back. “Including me.” That must have surprised her, because it takes a couple of seconds before she calls back up, “Alright, let me in.” I signal Boaz and Xiltroth to open the gate, and after a few seconds they haul it open. She walks through into the camp and looks around, relieved when she sees that there are indeed only four of us. I climb down the watchtower, with Jakin following after me, and walk over. “I’m glad you decided against going back. I suppose we should introduce ourselves. I’m Aaron, a human, in case you hadn’t guessed.” “Jakin, dwarf.” Jakin says shortly, but not unkindly. Boaz introduces himself immediately after. “Boaz, also a dwarf.” “They’re twins.” I supply, seeing the vague look of confusion on her face. “Jakin has a scar on his face you can use to tell them apart.” “And I’m Xiltroth, a demon.” Xiltroth finishes. “...Heather.” She says, cautiously. “So Heather, what do centaurs eat?” I ask. “I should start making dinner before it gets dark.” “I can eat anything, meat or vegetable.” Heather replies, before seemingly registering the latter half of what I said. “You cook? Aren’t you their leader?” “Sort of.” I reply, shrugging. “It’s more that nobody else wanted to lead the group, so I stepped up to fill the gap. We all do what we can to help the group, which in my case includes cooking.” Heather blinks in vague confusion. “I… See.” “Right, just one other thing, then.” A sudden thought strikes me. “Wait a second. We were going to have you sleep in the house, but can you fit through the door? I don’t know if the door is large enough.” The door is a bit taller than I am, but Heather’s waist is practically at my shoulder level, let alone her head. We lead her over to the house. Heather takes one look at the door and says, “It’s too small.” “Right.” I nod, thinking. “We’ll have to put a tent up for you instead.” “We’ll get onto that.” Jakin nods. “Should be able to put a few of our tents together to make a bigger one.” “I’ll keep watch.” Xiltroth moves towards the watchtower. “And I’ll get started on dinner.” I say, to no one in particular. “Feel free to take a look around. There’s water in the barrel there if you need it.” We had bought it from the gnomes on one of our last trips there. I hadn’t really thought about how useful it might be beforehand, but now we have it, it amazes me just how useful it is. Filling it up is a bit of a pain, but once it’s done, we don’t need to keep going to the river every time we need to fill our water bottles. The twins somehow manage to erect a centaur-sized tent using only sticks, stones, rope and a fair amount of canvas, and I cook something up for dinner. We’re generally able to hunt one or two monsters that are edible every day, and we have vegetables from the gnomes to supplement that. It’s pretty fine eating, considering we’re in the middle of nowhere. Heather is silent while we eat, and moves off almost immediately to the tent once she finishes eating. By the time we finish eating, it’s getting fairly dark out. We don’t need to discuss the order of watch; we worked out a more permanent order a while ago. “Make sure you keep an eye on Heather while on watch.” I say. Jakin raises an eyebrow. “What?” I say, somewhat defensively. “Just because I’m kind doesn’t mean I’ll trust someone I’ve just met.” Jakin shrugs and wonders off towards the house. It’s not like I expect her to do anything. But you never do, and it’s better to be prepared, just in case. The door to the house has a latch locking it. Just a little wooden thing, not enough to stop anything determined, but at least enough to give early warning should anyone force the door open. And I think it’s fairly impossible for centaurs to go up ladders, should she decide to go for whoever’s on watch. Again, not that I expect it to happen. Nothing of note happens overnight, unless you count the slight scare of a passing flock of boomer bats. Nothing much happens during the day, either. Heather is silent all day, and after a brief time aimlessly walking around in the morning, retreats back into the tent. The next morning, while we are having breakfast as usual, Xiltroth picks up a section of log from the wood pile to add to the fire. The log was originally intended for use in the construction of the storage cabin, but like many similar pieces of wood, was rejected for whatever reason. It is particularly long, and has been sitting at the bottom of the pile for quite a while.  Xiltroth goes to break it in half so that it will fit on the fire. “Don’t.” Heather says, surprising us with the first word she has spoken since two nights before. Xiltroth stops his motions and looks at Heather quizzically. “Can I have that?” Heather asks. Xiltroth looks down at the section of log in his hands, then at Heather. “Uh… Okay.” He hands it to her, still looking at her with confusion. Heather takes the log and what’s left of her breakfast, gets up from the ground and walks back into her tent. Xiltroth looks at me. I shrug. Maybe she wants to make something out of it. We don’t see Heather for the rest of the day, not even at lunch. We do see her at dinner, but she just grabs her dinner and snatches up some long, straight sticks before retreating back to her tent. The next morning, I’m distracted from my watch by the sound of something thumping into wood somewhere nearby. I take a look around and see Heather holding a bow, slowly firing arrows at a stretch of wall from across the open area in the camp. After a short while, she walks over to the wall, pulls out the arrows, walks back and starts firing again. So that’s what she was doing with that wood. I wonder what she’s using for the arrow heads. Some time later, she stops and returns to her tent. “It seems Heather has made herself a bow and some arrows. Noticed her practicing this morning, shooting at the wall.” I mention to Boaz when he comes up to switch with me. “At the wall? I hope she’s not damaging it.” Boaz narrows his eyes. I shrug. “Easy enough to check. Easy enough to fix, as well. Shouldn’t be difficult to put together an archery target.” “Mightn’t be. What do they look like?” Boaz asks contemplatively. “You haven’t seen one before?” I ask in surprise. Boaz shifts uncomfortably. “There aren’t many dwarven archers. Too short to handle most bows, yeh see.” “I suppose that makes sense.” I nod thoughtfully. “Well, most of them are round targets on a stand. Some people just shoot into bales of hay… In fact, I think some people just shoot at mounds of dirt.” “Dirt?” Boaz raises an eyebrow. “It shouldn’t be difficult for your average man to knock together a simple wooden target. Why shoot into dirt?” I think about it for a second. “Well, I’ve heard that the arrows can be damaged if they get shot into something that doesn’t have a bit of give. Wood doesn’t have much give, but dirt does. That might be why.” “Hm.” Boaz grunts. “Well, feel free to get onto that. I have watching to do.” “Why you…” I growl jokingly, before shaking my head in defeat. “Fine then, I will. I’ll make a mound of dirt so majestic you won’t be able to believe your eyes.” “Right.” He rolls his eyes. I set off down the ladder to go make me a mound of dirt. Looks like my run will have to wait.

Goblins. While technically a sapient race, they are regarded as vermin by most other races, since goblins often attack without provocation and kidnap females of humanoid races. The reason for the kidnappings is clear, but extremely unusual. Unlike seemingly every other race (not including races that consist entirely of one gender, or are genderless) in existence, goblins are able to successfully produce children much more frequently when mating with other races than when mating with their own. Their savagery, on the on the other hand, can be attributed to their tribalism. They view anyone not from their tribe, even other goblins, as enemies to be killed or enslaved. Physically, goblins are inferior to most other races, with weak strength, low intelligence and thin skin. They use primarily clubs or looted weapons in combat, not possessing the ingenuity to create their own. However, there are always exceptions. Occasionally, goblins with exceptional physical or mental capabilities are born. If they make it past their race’s very brief childhood, they generally become the leader of their tribe, resulting in a much larger threat than normal. -An unknown scholar I swing my mace up and down, up and down, flinging droplets of sweat into the air with every repetition. Although I had said that the use of a mace is very simple, I still need to adjust to its weight and centre of gravity. Otherwise, if I swing it in the same manner that I would a sword, the power of the strike won’t be focused on the point of impact. Well, its always difficult to do that perfectly – your enemy is usually trying to avoid your blow, so you rarely know when and where your weapon will hit precisely. Still, almost is significantly better than way off. Unfortunately, with the move to Vaaslav city, my training cave is much too far away to use any more. And there still isn’t a usable amount of space or training area in the city – apart from one reserved for military use. So, I can only do it here, on the grassy plains outside the city. Not as convenient or as prolific with things I can use for weight training as the cave, but things are rarely as convenient as that. As I am training away, I hear angry voices shouting intelligibly behind me. Sighing, I stop and turn around. Goblins again. Barely an hour, and already another group comes along. They are short, but still tall enough that it isn’t cumbersome to strike at them. With light green skin, little more than a few animal furs to cover their bodies and brandishing clubs at me, they almost look like little green cavemen. Honestly, I could probably defeat them with one hand tied behind my back. But rule numero uno of combat: Never take your enemy lightly. One of the other rules up there? Attacking first gives you an advantage. Unless your enemy is in a fortified location. Good luck getting an advantage then. Wiping the sweat off my brow to prevent it dripping into my eyes in combat, I charge at the group of four goblins. They try to spread out and surround me, but I dash to one side, leaving the one on the left facing me alone for a few seconds. A few seconds is all it takes. Sweeping in with a heavy blow to the head before the goblin has even started swinging, the goblin’s skull caves inwards. If anything, their heads are softer than a human’s. …I hate that I can tell the difference. Grimacing at the sight of the gore covering parts of my mace, I kick the still falling corpse into the goblin behind it, causing the goblin to fall backwards with the body of its comrade on top of it. By now, the other two goblins have made their way around to me, coming at me from either side of the fallen goblin. I focus on the goblin on the right first, taking my left hand off the hilt of my mace. They both leap at me, swinging their clubs down at me from overhead. Swinging the mace up at where the right goblin will be in a second, I turn my head to face the other one. So long as I didn’t predict that horribly wrong, my blow will hit it before it hits me. Raising my left arm towards the swiftly descending club, I angle it such that the club glances off my gauntlet. At the same time, I feel the feedback of my mace hitting flesh. The goblin lands off-balanced, but then again, so am I. However, if my arms can’t attack right now, my foot will do just as well. Drawing my arms back towards me, and disentangling my mace from the ruptured stomach of a goblin, I snap one iron clad foot out at the final goblin. These boots have simple, rounded toes, so the strike doesn’t kill the goblin. However, the blunt force trauma leaves it doubled over, retching. After that it is a simple matter to dispatch it. Wiping a fresh layer of sweat from my forehead, I sigh as the brief thrill of adrenaline fades slowly away. Goblins are a nuisance to everybody. They attack travellers, merchants, even other monsters, making it harder for us adventurers to make a living. The guild even has a permanent extermination quest running for them: hand in the right ear of a goblin and you get a copper. In other words, you can work at killing them all day, and only get a handful of coppers. Not that there aren’t other monsters in the area. There are slimes, boars and horned rabbits, as well as a smattering of less harmful animals. About now you might be thinking that this place is your typical beginner area, right? It might be, if not for the true rulers of the area – tigers. All I can say about them, is that I’m thankful that they’re usually solitary, nocturnal hunters. They’re not even monsters either, just your everyday animals. It probably isn’t difficult for me to defeat one in single combat, especially if magic is involved. But tigers are prone to ambushing their prey, and a surprise attack by an animal that big can be deadly, even for hardened fighters. Taking a coarse square of fabric from my pack, I wipe off the filth covering my mace and put it back on my belt. The cloth itself I wipe off on the knee-length grass around me, and put it away again. I grab my knife and off the ears of the goblins: cash is cash. Seeing their expressions in death makes the work seem even more grisly, but it’s not as if I feel sorry for them. They did just try to kill me, after all. Putting the ears in a small pouch and cleaning and stowing the knife, I start heading back to Vaaslav. Maybe I should check up on the dwarves. The events yesterday made them remember all the death back at Ginerbe, and they went drinking to try and cope. …Or just for the sake of drinking. Don’t know which. As for myself, other than thinking, ‘that truly was a terrible night’ or similar things when I think back to the event, it doesn’t seem to have traumatised me at all. How strange… Unless we find a way to reliably hunt tigers, this place isn’t challenging or profitable enough for us… we’ll probably move to a bigger city soon. But until then, training is the game. (POV Xiltroth) Dreary days, enjoyable nights. That’s how time had passed for the last few years, since he decided to fire my teacher. Until tonight, that is. This time, when I got back to my room, he was waiting for me. He forbade me from going out at night again, and had a bolt installed on the outside of the window, as well as the original key lock to ensure I couldn’t use the same way to sneak out. And so begins the most wretched days of my life. Ten days later… I dumbly stare down at the mechanical pieces in front of me, unable to comprehend how they might fit together, or find it in myself to care if they do at all. Finding my thoughts drifting to martial arts, I jerk them back to the present. Thinking of that is just torturing myself, now that I can’t do it anymore. So, I have nothing to look forward to in my life, if he has his way. …I want to get out of here. I glance at the parts again, looking blankly at them for another minute. Then, it feels as if my whole body is suddenly infused with energy, excitement bubbling over. Why shouldn’t I get out of here? My father keeps exploiting me for his own gain, I couldn’t care less about him. And my mother died from sickness when I was young, so I don’t have anything holding me back! And why can’t I escape? Even my father has no clue what I’m capable of, let alone the guards! My excitement turns to determination. I’ll have to prepare for my escape. Or rather, the escape is the easy part to manage. I’ll need supplies, money… something to hold them in… I begin to plan. Scanning the grounds through my window using a telescope, I mentally track the movements of the guards. It looks like they’ve changed their patrols since last time… I can only learn them all over again. My ears catch the sound of footsteps in the corridor, and I shoot swiftly into bed, covering myself with the sheets and remaining perfectly still. A moment later, a shaft of light spreads throughout the room as the door opens. I feel his gaze passing over me, then the door closes again. I wait for his footsteps to subside, then get out from under the sheets again, observing once more. I curse internally as I assemble yet another mechanism. I won’t be able to get money, it’s just impossible. He never gives me anything, and his own stash is too well guarded. My mind churns through ideas as I go over the locations of every coin in the house. Then my eyes drift towards my hands, and I smile. I consider the problem of food as I munch at a plate of deliciously cooked venison and vegetables. There’s plenty in the kitchen, of course, but the chef is almost always in there, preparing food or newly bought ingredients. But then again, it is a large kitchen, and he’s the only one in it. It shouldn’t be difficult to sneak into the pantry and grab a few things. …With this, that should be everything taken care of. Now all that’s left is to wait for the next time he goes on a business trip, so there’s less people coming after me when I escape. (POV Aaron) Over the past two weeks of training, I’ve found out a few interesting and annoying things. First of all, although it may be a bit obvious by now, mana can’t pass through solid matter. Consequently, my gauntlets prevent me from emitting mana from my hands. But that won’t stop me from casting magic, since I can just emit it from my face. What, you thought that it had to be emitted from the hands? Nah, it’s just an image thing. I’m more used to using my hands, so using them for magic is habitual, even if they aren’t always the best for the situation. Also, the effect of my mana reinforcement has now reached more noticeable levels. It looks as if I’m somewhat talented at this. …Why does that thought somehow irk me? Another thing is my control of magic is slowly increasing. Now, I’m not saying I could prevent my mana from burning a tree, but protecting my clothes ought not to be much of a difficulty anymore. Again, obvious, but wearing iron armour in the sun for too long makes it practically sear any exposed skin! I REALLY don’t want to experience what that would’ve been like without gloves. And we’ll be moving to another city soon. The only iron rank requests we’ve seen during our time here are that one bandit elimination, and the tiger hunting ones that pop up regularly. Me and the twins aren’t suited to dealing with stealthy types, so we can hardly do those without being in high levels of danger every time. So – new area, new monsters, new people, and more money, hopefully. There have been some interesting things here, at least from the perspective of a native of this world, so I can have a reasonable hope that there will be even better things to see in bigger cities. Going and seeing for yourself is the way of the adventurer, right? You don’t wait for other people to tell you about it, or look at paintings, you walk the untrodden paths and see what there is to be seen. …Not that this is an untrodden path, but that sort of adventuring can wait for when we’re a bit stronger. And have more people. Not like any of us three are experienced in wilderness survival. And in one last piece of news, I’ve finally been able to take off my bandages. Now I have these badass scars across my face, and people aren’t looking at me strangely anymore! They’re looking away in fright instead… Well, this face suits an adventurer, I think. No veteran fighter is without scars, after all. (POV Xiltroth) Tonight is the night. He has finally gone on a trip – weeklong, no less – leaving only the guards and servants around the place. I’ve already started carrying out my plan. I created a simple pack from some older clothing a while ago, hiding it in the hidden compartment that he still hasn’t found. I start packing after lunch, since the maids clean after breakfast, and the compartment isn’t large enough to hold even a partially filled pack. Some carefully wrapped meats I pilfer after the meal, clothes, my lockpicks, a vial of particularly strong acid and a vial of potent poison secured in a padded container… the essentials. Right now, I’m smuggling a few choice pieces of equipment from my workshop… I’ve never been questioned by the guards before, but I can’t help but anticipate the worst. Even though I know that they can’t know, this irrational fear that they’ve already found out about my plans grows in my mind as I walk into my room. Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I pack one of the pieces of equipment away in my pack and fit the other on my arm – an arm mounted crossbow. Small by design, the power is less than a more conventional crossbow, but it’s also easier to conceal and carry around. I put on the pack. Now comes the most terrifying part, even if I’ve done it a thousand times before. First, getting out the window. Usually the bolt would be a problem, since I don’t want to damage the window, for obvious reasons. Now, however, I have no such qualms. Taking out a large square of cloth from the closet and a few pieces of clothing I won’t be taking, I lay the clothes down in front of the window. My floor is wood, so any glass that falls might shatter and make more noise. As for outside the window, that’s grass. Opening the hidden compartment for the last time, I take out a small container of glue, and laying the square of cloth down on the floor, start pouring the stuff all over it. That done, I carry it slowly over to the window and slap it on the glass, pressing my hand over the surface evenly to ensure the whole thing adhered. Glue oozes out from the edges, which I would usually wipe with a separate cloth, but I don’t care about spillage right now. Then after waiting a minute to make sure the glue has set in properly, I punch it sharply, holding my breath in anticipation. I hear a low crunch and a few soft impacts on the grass outside. Letting out my breath slowly in relief, I give the cloth a series of punches around the edges, the cloth falling through and onto the grass with another soft crunch. Looking through, I don’t see any guards around. I pull the bolt and lift the window, the frame of which makes it slightly too narrow to fit through without doing so. I pause for a moment. The window looks different, now. Before it was a path to a momentary escape, but now it’s a doorway to a new, unknown life. The thought brings a smile to my face. Lifting myself up and out, I lower myself softly to the ground. Still nothing, but there will be a guard around here in a minute. If he could afford more than ten guards, this might be more difficult. He always has two stationed at my workshop – it is his main source of profit, after all – another two at the entrance to the building, two at the safe, then four patrolling the grounds. He used to just have the guards check this, and the opposite side of the house, briefly, but now the two pairs of guards patrol the entire perimeter – which they should have been doing originally, if he was thinking clearly. The next time they come around, they will almost certainly notice the broken window, so I will have to create a distraction. Keeping low to the ground, I dash as far as I can until there is just ten seconds until a patrol turns the corner. Turning around, I readied the crossbow and took aim. I shoot the bolt at a window and flatten to the ground, watching as it smashes loudly through, just as a patrol rounded the corner. One of them runs to alert the other guards, and the other starts looking around. Uhh… I thought they’d both go inside, thinking it was a robber or something. One is better than two, and I can only start crawling slowly backwards, constantly keeping an eye on the guard and checking for any others around. When he starts looking and walking in my direction, all I can do is get up and start running towards the tree line. Without even looking back, I can tell he’s chasing after me. And from the sound of it, he’s catching up. I hear his footfalls getting closer, and just as I am about to reach the edge of the woods, I take a glance over my shoulder and my heart pounds in panic as I see him only a few metres behind me. I stop and turn around as fast as I can, heart pounding even harder as his sword swings towards me. Reflexively, I step in towards him, the sword narrowly passing by my side, and slam my palm into his stomach with all my strength. Not waiting to see the result, I turn again and rush into the woods. (POV Aaron) The next morning me, Jakin and Boaz head to the next city, Xantor. As we travel along the road, long grass gives way to fields of wheat, roaming cows, sheep and farms. The path goes straight through the centre of a farming village, and continues on as we soon pass it by. Taking off my gauntlets, I stick them in my pack and shake the stiffness out of my hands. Idly, I lace my fingers together, pushing the backs of my hands towards each other, cracking all my knuckles in one fell swoop. I then proceed to grasp each finger one by one, bending them sideways to crack the second joint, then after that, the last. As I bend both thumbs abruptly, cracking them as well, I can’t help but notice the twins looking at me, wide eyed. “What? I have flexible fingers.” I demonstrate, putting my fingers up against each other and bending them over ninety degrees backwards. They shake their heads simultaneously, turning to face ahead again. I shrug helplessly, putting my hands loose by my sides again. Gaze roaming around as we walk, I take in the sky; blanketed with white clouds, the woods off to our right; all tall trees and green leaves, the demon walking unsteadily out of them; collapsing to the ground after only a few metres – wait, what? I hurriedly head over to the collapsed person, ignoring the questioning voices of the twins and just gesturing at them. As I get closer, I take in his appearance. White hair, dark clothes, wearing a roughly made pack and holding a wooden staff in his hands. Reaching him, I turn him over. Weakly, he mutters, “Food…”

I wake up, my arms entirely numb. Cracking my eyes open, I begin to sit up, only to hit my head on the wooden ceiling. Arms flopping around like a fish out of water, memories of my current circumstances come flooding back, washing away the dream still lingering in my mind. Light filters through the cracks between the boards of the overturned cart, burning into my retinas as they adjust. Ah, I wonder if there are any monsters lingering outside? Twisting around in the narrow space, I put my face close to a gap in the boards, peeking out at the world. I see the slavering mouth of a wolf. What a great start to the day! Now, it’s practically impossible to do any real damage to the wolf, or wolves, with my sword, due to having to lift the cart to get at them. That leaves magic. A wisp of mana escapes my palm, turning a dark brown that smells of dust and mildew. Concentrating it on a small spot on the wood in front of me, it begins to rot, flaking and breaking apart as I watch. Picking up my sword and awkwardly manoeuvring it within the tight space, I give the rotting portion a solid whack with the pommel, collapsing that section of wood and a bit more. It’s more effective than I was expecting, having an entire section of the plank collapsing instead of the small hole I intended. A wolf shortly sticks its nose in, trying to get at me. What do you expect from a dumb monster? Heck, I’m not even sure whether these are monster wolves or normal wolves. The weaker wolf monsters don’t have much difference from the beasts. Anyway, it is too difficult in such a small space to draw my sword and attack it, so I drew out some more mana from within me. I’m a bit low from that stunt yesterday with the earth mana, but I have more than enough for something like this. Moving it to surround the muzzle of the chomping wolf, and filling the gap between the boards, I turn it to ice mana, trapping it. It’ll only take a few moments to get out of ice that thin, so I quickly draw out another portion of mana, directing it into its mouth, before turning it into molten rock – lava. It melts through the bottom of its jaw, falling onto the planks and the ground around. Flames appear as the wood around the wolf chars black. Oops. I splash water magic everywhere. The flames go out and the lava hardens to rock, producing copious amounts of smoke and steam and causing me to be uncomfortably hot. I cough heavily as the smoke filters slowly out. Great job, me. Also, the hole in the cart is now considerably larger. Wolf size larger. Testing out lava magic was a great idea! Unsheathing my sword, I get ready to poke it out at any wolves that might come through. I wait with bated breath. Not a single wolf is forthcoming. Seriously, was it just that one? Poking my head out the hole, I look around. No wolves. Huh. Well, now I can get on with the day. Crawling through the hole, I stand up, outside. I don’t know if you could really call that inside, though. Now that it isn’t so dark, I can see the various items strewn on the ground. Neat. Double-checking that there are no wolves, which there aren’t, I start foraging from the wreckage. Any foodstuffs had probably been eaten by monsters, because I don’t find any, but the valuables are untouched. That probably means the driver of this cart was either killed by monsters or had a sudden heart attack and died. Hey, you never know. Strangely, there is no corpse, not even bones. It doesn’t have anything to do with me, so I just forget about it. I find some sacks, some rope, and – jackpot - a small pouch of coins, with a mix consisting mostly of copper and a small amount of silver. I’ll be able to use all this stuff to good effect. I place anything useful I find in a sack - bar the pouch of coins, which I tie to my belt by its drawstrings. No wonder you always hear stories of thievery in medieval settings, nobody has any pockets to put things in! I mean, if you just have some sort of over shirt or coat with pockets on the inside, you could put your coin pouch there and you would be good. The sack has no straps or handles, so there isn’t much I can do except grab a fistful of the rough fabric and carry it over my left shoulder as I walk away from the wreckage, back towards the river a short way away. I look an utter mess, with my clothes covered in dust, dirt and the odd splotch of blood from my fights. My hair is slick with oil and yet more dirt and dust. This world doesn’t have shampoo, so I could only rinse it with soap back in the keep. And of course, the last couple of days, it didn’t get washed at all. And these facts please me. Why, you ask? It’s obviously because everyone else is the same. There are no washing machines here, meaning clothing must be washed by hand. You can’t exactly do that every day because of the time it takes, so people should often have clothes with dirt and dust on them. And if someone were to turn up with silky hair and immaculate clothing, it would bring more attention than I would like. So, it’s good that I’m dirty, to an extent. Well, dirt in the hair won’t matter, so after reaching the river, I look around just in case there is anyone there. There isn’t, of course, so I take off my clothes. Placing them on the shore with my weapon close at hand, I step into the cold, rushing water and rinse my body and hair of the sweat and dust. A water slime drifts towards me, which I give a swift punch, causing it to splatter over the surface of the water. The gelatinous particles are swept downstream as I step out of the water again. Then I stand there for a moment, sopping wet. I forgot I don’t have a towel. Ah, whatever. One by one, I vigorously shake each limb to get as much water as possible off, then don my clothing again. I’m still a bit wet, so it clings to me as I walk along. It’s particularly unpleasant for my feet, having damp socks and boots. I may as well get used to the discomfort, because I’ll likely be doing things like this, or worse, for the rest of my life. Now, on to more serious things. In terms of the magic I will use in the future, I think I’ll ignore formations. They’re too convenient and powerful in battle. And I can’t use magic of all elements either. If someone with that talent shows up out of nowhere just after somebody of the same talent dies, people will start asking questions. How about I restrict myself to earth and fire? Yeah, that sounds good. Extensive deliberation of pros and cons? Hah! I fart in your general direction! Now for the last – and most important – point. Immersion. A battle isn’t a true life and death combat unless both sides believe in the possibility of death. There are people who go into a fight, thinking it will be effortless, sure. But as soon as that blade approaches their body, they begin to realise their imminent demise. Unfortunately, I don’t. Because nothing can kill me. Not unless I myself decide to die. But… there are ways I can make myself believe I can die. And so, from now on, I will believe that I am a normal human being. I will not remember anything about my powers, although I will still remember that my face has changed and that I do not wish for my identity to be discovered. As for the details around these points, I will henceforth never think of them again. I rub my head. Did I hit it on something in the night? I’m getting a bit of a headache. Well, it isn’t that bad, so I’ll just ignore it. As my boots scuff against the earth over and over, the trees slowly fade into the distance behind me. I’m out of the forest. According to what I remember of the map, there should still be some distance to go. I continue following the river. In a short while, I should be able to see the road, which curves somewhat to draw near the river. The calm whisper of wind brushing past the grass and quiet rush of water alongside me almost makes me forget about the monsters roaming around in its tranquillity as I stroll along the shore, my clothes slowly drying under the warm rays of the sun. I half wish I could start exercising, with great weather like this. I wonder what season it is here? I don’t think I caught that info in general knowledge class. If this is summer, I wonder if it’ll snow in winter? Is it easier to survive low temperatures or high temperatures for poor people? With cold, you have frostbite, crops can die leading to a rise in food costs, it’s harder to work, meaning it’s even harder to get money for food… And more, I suppose, but I never thought to learn anything related to such subjects, beyond the very surface. With heat, you get heat strokes, plagues of insects, which cause actual plagues, can also eat crops… If crops are always dying, how do we still get their produce? I smell a conspiracy… Just kidding. You only really get one of these extremes in any given place, so crops still have time to grow. I see the road off in the distance, so I start walking towards it. Even if one were to say my travel today was unproductive, ignoring the distance travelled, I have been drawing in the pure mana from the air, slowly replenishing my mana heart. The crunch of my boots on the ground marks the transition from soft grass to hard dirt. I have reached the road. Furrows in the ground mark the passing of many carriages, although I imagine it would be worse if it rained. Beyond the first few who pass by, the deep and jagged marks left behind would greatly impair passage of those behind. Interesting how people in the modern world complain how hard it is to see and drive in wet weather. Do they not realise that wet weather used to mean that the only travel possible was within walking distance? But then again, humans are like that. They are a creature that does not wonder at how much things have improved, but rather gripe and moan that it is not perfect, expressing myriad ways some aspect of living could be greatly improved. And if their suggestion is implemented, they still criticize it. Enough philosophy, let’s get some exercise done. Now that I don’t have to worry about monsters or getting lost as much, I can run without restraint. And by ‘without restraint’, I mean a light jog. What, you build stamina by sprinting for twenty seconds before exhausting yourself? If you look up the definition of stamina, notice the words ‘ability to sustain prolonged effort’. Prolonged. As in for an extended period. And thus, my pace that one might remark to be slow, is quite efficient in building stamina. And as every player of skyrim knows, stamina is important. After all, it lets you carry several times your own weight - wait, no, I mean it allows you to do a series of power strikes against your enemy without tiring… Excuse me a moment, would you? *Mumbles* What was I actually meaning there? Should the point have been that it lets you run a long time? But I’m already doing that. Ah, right, that’s it! *Cough* Sorry about that, I mean, stamina lets you outrun your enemies. And your companions, but hey, it’s not your fault if they can’t keep up while you’re jumping up the side of a mountain. I scratch my head a bit. Wait, that is your fault, isn’t it? And you don’t jump up mountains in real life, you use… The dreaded… Proper path. *shudders* Unlike the more direct route taken in most open world games, the proper path is often winding and needlessly long, not to mention devoid of any excitement of discovery. A well-trodden path is only an unwelcome reminder that you are not the first to be there. The bag slips out of my sweaty palm and falls to the ground. Stopping, I wipe my hands on the front of my tunic, pick it up again, and continue jogging. Looking up, I see a carriage moving towards me. Moving to one side of the road, I jog past it. It doesn’t stop, and with its superior speed, it quickly evaporates into the distance. Not too far now, I think. I keep jogging, feeling the heat building up in my limbs and chest heaving at increasing rates as time flies on. When my energy inevitably runs dry, I slow to a walk. I look up at the sun, slightly missing the convenience of watches, before dismissing the thought. I don’t know when I started running, or the time now, so I can’t say how long I’ve been running. My watch disappeared back… But I can say with confidence that my jog was considerably longer than I was capable of back on Terra. Should I change that to earth 1? It’s still confusing me. Whatever, it doesn’t matter. The first part of the city that comes into my view is the walls. A couple minutes later, I spot the peak of a tower peering over the top edge of the wall. After that, I begin to see the line of horse riders, carriages and people on foot, trailing back a kilometre from the city gates. Just great. I sort of expected this, but I had been trying not to think about it. I reach the line a short while later. Then begins the hour long wait as it slowly creeps along. If it not for the tough, salty pieces of meat I chew the entire time, I would likely be falling asleep on my feet. Or perhaps not. As it is, a brightly decorated carriage occasionally bypasses the line entirely, startling me out of my sleepy stupor. Nobles, no doubt. I feel a slight touch of the righteous anger that results from watching someone cut in line smoulder within me. It fades away shortly as I again begin to relax into sleepiness. Eventually, I reach the front of the line. The guards at the gate look at me, shuffled through a few of the papers in their hands, then wave me through. Wanted posters, most likely. I’m in the city, now I just need to find food and shelter. An inn, then, and a cheap one, I don’t have much cash. Then I need a way to make cash to sustain myself, while I train. That might be a problem. Sure, I can hunt weak monsters in areas near the city to earn a few coins – but so can everyone else. Monsters get hunted everyday by large groups of newbie warriors. I can get up earlier, go out hunting earlier, get to the new monsters that spawn earlier. Others that are just as determined could do the same. There will be less, true. Still, it would be hard. And that’s why… I probably need to get a part time job. Which will be hard to do, in a new town, where I know nobody, and nobody knows me. But I should be able to go without for a time on the coin I currently have. I walk down the busy street. Buildings of wood and stone line the edged of the street, broken occasionally by side streets. The ground is paved with cobblestones, and the sharp clack of hoof on stone echoes out as carriages move by in the centre of the road constantly. It is near mid-day, and traffic is high. I have some time before sunset, so I use it to acquaint myself with the city. There are some aspects I already know, or rather, expected of the city; main roads, such as those leading from the gates, are well patrolled by guards, and the closer to the centre of the city you get, the bigger and more lavish the buildings become. The further away you get from the centre of the city, and main roads, the shabbier places get, and the shadier people you find. I had half-expected the place to stink to high heavens as well, but I’m very glad that the place has disappointed me in that regard. I suppose they must use water magic to deal with sewage issues. Otherwise, with their level of technology, sewage and washing water being tossed out of the window onto unsuspected street-goers wouldn’t be an unusual sight. Wandering around only on heavily populated streets for safety, I see a wide variety of stores, houses, inns, a few restaurants and a few other places. Remembering what is where is another thing entirely, but I’m now fairly confidant I can find my way around the place. Beginning to make my way to one of the less fancy inns I had noticed, I question the owner about room availability, thank him, then leave. I have a large list to go through before the end of the day. My goal is to find something cheap, yet close enough to the main streets to ensure some semblance of security. As the sun slowly sinks down in the sky, I find what I’m looking for. A small place, with only a few rooms, the price dirt-cheap at eight coppers a night. But the doors have locks, and there are fittings on the windows to place a board across them, and that’s good enough for me. It isn’t in the best part of town, but it isn’t near the slums, either. And as for the reason this place isn’t teeming with residents? Well, that’s because they have standards. I pay the price and receive a tarnished copper key. It looks normal, and it makes me hope the doors have different locks and keys. Unlocking and opening the door to my new room, I step inside. A small, square room greets my eyes. It is barely large enough to hold a bed – reason one for people disregarding this inn. The rooms don’t have beds. Their only furniture is a small wooden chair that looks like it had seen better days. I breath in, and a musty smell filters through my nostrils. I doubt this place has been cleaned in a long time, and that is another reason. I could, with some time and effort, clean this place with water magic. But I have decided not to use any magic besides earth and fire, and those aren’t going to help me here. In fact, I’m not sure I have any way to clean the dusty room at the moment. So, I settle for moving what dust I can to one corner using my foot. I grasp at the resulting pile of dust, some drifting down from my hand as I move to the window and toss it out. Repeating this last action a few times, I now have somewhat less of an urge to sneeze uncontrollably. I notice that it is starting to get cool, and I’m hungry. I need to get a blanket and some food before sundown, or I’ll be spending the night cold and hungry. I’m not stupid enough to think I can safely roam the streets at night. The night is the territory of thieves and thugs, and they don’t like intruders. I move out again, placing the supplied wooden plank in the window fittings and locking the door behind me, although I hardly need to. I have nothing to leave in my room. All my worldly possessions are on my person. I strode quickly through the streets, less people roaming around as the sky grew steadily darker. Food first. My destination is some street vendors I noticed selling food earlier. I should have gotten some food earlier, I’ve no clue why I didn’t. Oh, right, I was chewing on jerky at the time. That was shortly before I ran out of the stuff. I walk up to one. “What’re you selling?” “Wolf meat. Cooked.” “How much?” “couple coppers.” “Sure.” I hand him the cash, and receive a chunk of slightly warm meat in return. Well, he didn’t say anything about how long ago it was cooked. I’m lucky it’s not stone cold. “Thanks.” He shrugs, and I walk off. I bite into it. It’s tough, chewy, and tastes pretty bad. But it has the nutrients I need, so I rip off one piece at a time with my teeth, and slowly chew until it’s broken into small enough bits to swallow. My hands are now covered in grease. Let’s add a fork to the shopping list for tomorrow. The next destination is a fabric store. Not one of the high-end ones, just a small store. I waste a bit of time trying to find it again. I got a little lost. As I arrive, I wipe my fingers on my tunic. With how chewy it was, I have just finished the wolf meat. “What do you need? We got everything from sacks to drapes here. I’m about to close up shop, so hurry it up.” I was greeted by a woman standing behind a counter, the wall behind her lined with shelves, stocked completely full of fabrics of all colours of the rainbow. “Cheap blankets.” She nods, but indicates that she needs more info. “What’s your definition of cheap?” You think I’m loaded with this getup? “Under twenty coppers.” She pulls a neatly folded blanket from behind her. “Nineteen coppers. Thick, warm, a little itchy but it’ll do the job.” “Sure. Here you go.” I hand over some coinage from my money pouch. It’s noticeably lighter than earlier today. Twenty-nine coppers lighter. I need to learn to barter. Taking the blanket, I hurry back to the inn. It probably has a name, but I haven’t bothered to ask. As long as I know where it is, I was good. Because I prioritised saving money, the inn, fabric store and food vendor are all a fair distance away from one another. By the time I make it back, the sky has grown almost completely dark. Stepping inside, the innkeeper’s reception counter is dimly lit by a single candle. The innkeeper is sitting behind the counter, rolling a set of dice around. He’s a large man, an ugly scar crossing from his left eyebrow, across his nose, and ending at his upper lip. I nod at him and climb the stairs, entering my room. I place my sack on the floor. I had gotten so used to holding it over one shoulder that I hadn’t set it down last time… silly me. I unbuckle my belt and detach my sheath from it, putting it on the ground. I Take off my boots and stockings, they reek of sweat. Ugh. Grabbing my coin pouch, I stuff it halfway down the leg of my pants as I lay on the hard floor. I couldn’t afford to lose my money right now, and this is the best hiding place I can think of. Wrapping the blanket around me, I close my eyes and fall slowly into an uncomfortable sleep.

Magical herbs are rare and extremely diverse. Essentially, they are plants that contain a particular type, or types, of elemental mana. The more mana they contain, the more likely that herb possesses some sort of magical defence: a shroud of fire, or perhaps an earthen barrier that shields them from sight. Most of these defences are passive, always there. But the very rarest and most valuable herbs actively attack those who wander too close. For those herbs, you not only have to find it, but possess the strength to defend yourself from it. Of course, these are incredibly rare… mostly due to people pulling out the roots when harvesting them. Magical herbs often dwell in unique, strange or dangerous environments. The depths of a forest, deep under the sea or on the lip of a volcano, perhaps. And that’s why the rarer the herb is, the harder it is to cultivate. Well, I have a whole garden full of them out back, though. People need to give gardeners more credit, it was quite difficult to stop them all from killing each other. -An unknown scholar After a few moments of silence, parties begin quiet internal discussions. The war will mean that some cities could be besieged, and others have curfews enforced… all of which will have terrible effects on the adventurer’s livelihoods. And I can already imagine… In a war between two nations that are also different races, the racism that had been slowly decreasing over the last period of peace will rear its ugly head once again, increasing tensions further. As for us… What the hell should we do? From what I know back from when I was summoned with the rest, both the elves and dwarves are going to ally with the humans in this war, and the beastmen are a bit of a wildcard. With us having party members from races on both sides of the conflict, we won’t be welcome anywhere. “Where should we go?” I ask, not being able to come up with any ideas myself. Xiltroth looks puzzled. “Go? Are we leaving the city?” “Not the city, the country. If a war is starting between the humans and demons, Aaron won’t be trusted by the people here, because he’s a human. Same for you and the human kingdom.” Explains Boaz. “We could go to Morrock, our homeland. The cities here are nice, but the ones in Morrock are so grand… it’s beyond words, I tell yeh.” Says Jakin. Well, perhaps they won’t join the war immediately. And I would like to see the dwarven cities… “Alright, how far is it?” I ask. He narrows his thick eyebrows, thinking. Boaz intercedes. “We’ll be going west, past Binod kingdom, and a mite south, so… maybe a month? A bit more?” “That’s quite the distance… Could we hire a carriage?” asks Xiltroth. I shake my head. “It’s unlikely. There will be a lot of people trying to get away from the border because of this, so most carriages will already be gone come morning.” “We should get some sleep. Things are going to be very different from now on.” Says Jakin, downing the rest of his beer. When he finishes, he looks more sober than when we started drinking. We all quickly finish our own drinks and head off to bed. The next morning, we start stocking up on the essentials for travel: Jerky, salt, some herbs for cooking, etc. Town criers proclaim the news loudly in the streets, which are much quieter than usual. The people outside hurry along, and there is a marked increase in military presence. I was right about the carriage situation, by the way. It’s like some sort of migration, seeing all the people leaving the city. Some people stay, of course, and all the military and important people in the city can’t leave, so they’re still there. Each of us fill our water bottles, and a few spares besides. Then we are on the road. With the amount of people travelling every which way, we have no trouble with bandits. Monsters are still an issue, but even they stay away from us all, for the most part. A gusting wind pulls at the hair and clothing of the travellers, drawing the occasional frustrated yell as loose cloths, scarves and similar clothing get tossed into the air. Something in the sky catches my attention: the cloths and clothing swirling around a single point in the sky. I nudge Jakin and point at it. “What’s that?” He looks at it and shrugs. “Wind elemental’d be my guess. Mostly harmless, that sort of antics is about as bad as they get. Hard to kill, since they usually be floating around in the sky, so people don’t usually bother.” I look at it again. It just swirls and drifts through the sky. Shrugging, I ignore it and continue on my way. As days passed, the news travels further and further, and it seems as if with every city we visited, the guards grow more and more suspicious of me, until they barely veil their hostility. People on the streets avoid being near me, and even shopkeepers and merchants try to keep me away. At some point, I just stop going into the cities, sitting somewhere nearby under a tree as the rest of the group restock supplies and inquire of the latest news. People pass by where I’m sitting, avoiding my gaze as I watch them go. A few children stop to throw stones at me. They bounce off my armour, but it’s still saddening. Their parents quickly grab them and hurry along, glancing anxiously at me as they go. I can see fear in their eyes, and that hurts more than any amount of rocks did. We hear news of skirmishes along the human-demon border. The war truly has begun now, but it confuses me that I haven’t heard any news of elves or dwarves being involved. After a week and a half of travel, Boaz checks his maps. “Welcome to the beastmen kingdom, Binod. We should make it to their first city in a day or two.” Back on the battlefront… Another skirmish is taking place between the two armies of humans and demons. To be exact, the ‘human’ army is made up of both humans and elves. But the demons have not yet noticed the alliance, because elves are fairly similar to humans and stature, and their distinctive ears are covered up by helmets. What’s more, every battle so far has either ended in a draw or defeat for the demon armies, and so they have never had an opportunity to inspect the fallen on the battlefield. The two armies line up in formation at either end of an open plain. Whatever animals or monsters once dwelled here had long fled before the thunderous sounds of thousands of feet marching in concert. After a final resounding thump, there is silence once again, the troops of both armies ready and in position. A moment passes as the soldiers of both armies observe one another impassively. Then a signal is loosed, and squad leaders shout the charge. Not even a second later, the rank and file troops raise their weapons and their voices in a deafening yell and begin to charge. On the side of the human alliance, groups of elven archers nock arrows, aim into the sky, pull and release in unison. For a moment, the battlefield seems to darken as the flight of arrows passes overhead in a dense sheet, curving gracefully over the heads of the allied troops and open earth to rain down upon the demon troops. There are very few fatalities, but injuries are more plentiful as some arrows find their marks between armour plates or eye slits, by sheer virtue of volume. The rest pierces into the earth, serving only as a hindrance to soldiers passing by. In a large scale battle, archers don’t need to aim. They just need distance. Again and again the elven archers loose flights, with minor adjustments to angle, and time after time the demon army is beleaguered by raining projectiles. And yet, they are not the only ones to have the use of ranged weaponry. As the demon army reaches within perhaps 150m of the human one, its soldiers stop, the entire front row of soldiers dropping to one knee, both them and the second rank of troops taking crossbows off their backs. Already knocked, they simply slip bolts into position, take aim, and loose their own deadly flight into the enemy ranks. The humans raise their shields, but they cannot cover their whole bodies, nor can they stop; the weight of an army pushes them ever forward. Almost every quarrel hit a soldier: if not in the first rank, the second; if not the second, the third. The front rank is so thoroughly peppered with bolts that every one of them falls dead on the spot. The second rank, not without casualties of its own, steps forwards over the still-warm corpses of their shield brothers, and advances forwards. But this is not the end of their slow bleeding. There is still over a hundred meters left to traverse, after all, and after the first two ranks fire, they simply step back. Two more lines of crossbowmen step forward in their stead and loose a second volley while the first two re-cock their own. However, it isn’t as if the human commanders are about to let them slaughter their troops without recompense. No, it’s just about time for the magi to start their attack. A group of perhaps a hundred magi stand around a formation drawn in some sparkling ink, pouring elemental mana into the crystals in the formation. Moments later they are filled, and a black-skinned magus wearing gold-trimmed robes places his hands on the edge of the formation, providing it with that last requisite piece of mana. A huge rock perhaps ten meters across emerges from the formation, wreathed in flame. It shoots into the sky and over the battlefield, towards the demon front lines. In response, a large earthen shield ascends from behind the demon army into the path of the flaming boulder in hopes of blocking it. The magi watch on anxiously. A single magical spell cannot have multiple controllers. The arch-magus has sole control and responsibility over this one. Staring intently at the now distant magical projectile, he waits a moment longer, then speaks a single word from between clenched teeth: “Break.” The flaming boulder splits into over a hundred smaller rocks that go almost everywhere - except where the shield is. The shield, unable to react to the new situation, simply moves to stop the rocks from hitting some more important parts of the army. Before impact, the rocks each expand to almost the size of the original boulder. The fires around them glow with less intensity and the rocks themselves are less solid, but this spell was never meant to be a sure-kill for one enemy. No, widespread destruction was the single goal in mind during the creation of the spell known as ‘meteor shower’. And widespread destruction is its result, destroying large portions of the demon army and leaving flaming craters in its wake. The human magi clap each other on the back, the arch-mage in particular. He gives a strained smile, but when he turns to face the demon army, all hints of happiness drain from his face, the corners of his mouth lowering into a grim line as he beholds the damage he has wrought. Demon magi attempt to retaliate with a dense flock of fire arrows, but the human water magi simply encapsulate the army in a dome of water, the fire arrows simply fizzling out in a wisp of steam. There were simply too many human magi, and more skilled ones, in comparison to the demon army. With the crossbowmen stopped, the human soldiers are able to advance unimpeded, and soon begin to clash. They seem to be evenly matched, trading injury for injury and death for death, but with the human army being larger from the start, and with the huge losses caused by the meteor shower… It is a foregone conclusion that the humans will win. It quickly turns from a battle to a retreat, and then to a rout as the remnants of the demon army run for their lives from the steadily advancing lines of troops. One last time, the elven archers draw their longbows, pulling the strings to their utmost limits. They take aim, eyes squinting against the glare of the sun as they strain to see their targets. In less than a second, they adjust their aims to suit their individual targets, and loosed their arrows. Unlike their earlier volleys, almost every arrow finds its mark, and scores of fleeing men fall, wounded or dead. Later… In the human army’s camp, the commander stands in the command tent, reading reports and formulating a clearer view of their losses and gains for this battle. A soldier knocks on one of the entrance poles, states his rank and intent, and steps inside after receiving permission. He presents a sealed letter to the commander, then is dismissed and leaves the tent. Breaking the seal, the commander unfolds the letter. The contents are as follows: Herein lies the information obtained from the interrogation of the captured Demon Captain. Name: Zuikot Longhorns Age: 38 years Place of birth: Vagoz (Xin capitol city) Rank: Infantry Captain (Commanded 100 men) Listed underneath were various pieces of information about the demon army: troop movements, amounts, supply convoy information, etc. At the bottom, there was one final note: Additionally, I questioned him on why they suddenly raided an elven village and started a war after decades of peace. His answer was confusing: He had no knowledge of the village in question, nor had he heard of any military movements prior to the war. He also said that we were the ones to start the war by destroying Vaaslav city. I asked him this at both the beginning and after the interrogation: his answer was the same both times. He seemed genuinely enraged at the question, and I think he truly believed his answer. Signed, xxxxxxx The commander ponders for a moment, then dismisses the last part of it entirely. Perhaps he does believe it, but that doesn’t make it true. It could be that the demon king has spread misinformation so that his soldiers believe that they are in the right. Morale is an important factor in any battle, after all. Besides, if he was telling the truth, then who did raid that village? Not us, certainly. And the demons are the only other ones who border on the elven kingdom. The matter of Vaaslav city is strange indeed, however. Spies have already confirmed that the city had been destroyed, but we hadn’t done that either. But then… who had? The demons themselves? The notion is too farfetched. And yet, destroyed it is, and the culprit is completely unknown. Perhaps he should hand this over to his superiors, just in case. If one were to say that human society and demon society are fairly similar, just with more focus on magic and machinery respectively, then Binod is an entirely different system. It has laws similar to the others, with one crucial difference: instead of having to stand before a trial or something similar, the offending person is required to duel with the person they committed the crime against, or their representative. In the case of the offending person being victorious or the defending party surrendering, they walk away with no consequence. However, the offending party is not permitted to kill their opponent, while the defendant is. In a way, the society runs on the rule of survival of the fittest. Still, it isn’t like people go around stealing and killing brazenly. After all, while the offending person has to personally duel, anyone at all can champion the defendant, as long as the defendant agrees to it. So, if you rob someone on the street, and some passing mithril rank adventurer takes offense to it, they can legally duel and kill you. Or perhaps you have a doting uncle that’s ripped to the high heavens. It’s not only how strong the person is that one has to consider, but also the strength of the people they are close to… or can pay for. Only people with a death wish touch wealthy merchants, or so the wolf beastman next to me says. We are currently sitting in the seats at an arena, watching one of those same duels. This time, the offender is a vagrant child, a mouse or possibly rat beastman who stole a meat skewer from a food stall. The other party isn’t the shop keep, it’s the captain of the guard, a tiger beastman. Poor kid had the misfortune of stealing the skewer just as the captain was about to buy it. He doesn’t have a shadow of a chance. Both are wearing simple grey pants and shirt, and are wielding plain iron weapons. The duel is meant as a test of strength, not wealth, so all equipment worn by either party is standard stuff provided by the arena itself. Still, to the kid’s credit, he looks to be about as strong as I was after captain Pierce’s training way back when, and he doesn’t look older than twelve. Not that any of that means anything against a battle-hardened warrior. He is thoroughly trounced within a few strikes. The captain of the guard holds his weapon high amidst applause from the audience. The fee for watching is a single copper, so there are quite a few people in the seats. Instead of killing him, the tiger beastman cuts off both his thumbs. A grisly but effective way of stopping a repeat offense, I suppose. Without the thumb, most actions become difficult. He’ll never be able to hold a weapon again. Or, in all likelihood, perform any of the other skills he could have used as an alternate source of revenue to skulduggery. Honestly, I’m not the sort to enjoy this type of… ‘entertainment’, and I think the sand in the arena is reflecting some light into the stands, because it is hot in here. “What say we leave for the next city soon?” I say to Jakin, sitting on my other side. “Aye,” He says, already getting up, “I think I’ve seen enough already.” Boaz stands up next to his brother, and Xiltroth on the other side of him. We filter down the stairs and back onto the streets. The buildings here are fairly simple, with the arena being the largest and grandest construction around. A building having multiple stories here is unusual, as are clay bricks. Wood is the most common material here, apart from important constructions such as the wall around the city, which is fairly low in comparison to cities of other nations. And yet, the city is larger than any I have seen before, although it seems more because the buildings have more space between them than a larger population. It seems as if everyone on the streets is wearing a weapon, and most of them armour as well. A culture like this, I bet mercenaries and adventurers are pretty popular occupations. But be that as it may, I doubt I’ll ever feel quite safe in an environment like this. I might fight for a living, but I don’t want to have to worry about being stabbed or having my things stolen all the time. I prefer my enemies in front of me – ideally with my mace having an intimate moment with their face. As we get onto the road again, I can’t help but think of another potential consequence of a warrior-centric culture… won’t there be more bandits? And stronger ones? The thought gives me a vague sense of foreboding…

Chapter 45: Meeting The Chief The road to Ra’tlub is a simple one, a dirt path more the result of many treading feet than planned construction. As we walk upon it, I look to our guide, the guard from the village we had just left, and ask, “So Ra’tlub, this city your people have built, what is it like?” He furrows his brow in concentration for a few moments. “Big chief said… Don’t tell outsiders about us. Can be… Dangerous, big chief said.” “I understand.” I nod. “I guess we’ll just have to see for ourselves when we get there.” “Yes,” he agrees, “Is much to see. Big city-” he claps his hand over his mouth. He speaks again, his voice muffled by his hand. “I stop talking now.” We walk on in silence. It doesn’t take us more than an hour, maybe an hour an a half until we actually see the city. It’s much more impressive than the village, in many ways. It is, in a word, big. Bigger than most cities we have visited as of yet, although also lower to the ground at the same time. There are walls, but they are much lower and simpler than any other city walls we’ve seen before, made not of quarried stone but of wood, not unlike the walls of our own camp, albeit thicker, taller and possessing walkways on the top. Our guard walks straight up to the gate, which is guarded on either side by a pair of particularly burly orcs. “These outsiders came to our village. Said they wanted to be friends with orcs. Village chief could not decide. Said to bring them to big chief, big chief will decide.” He explains. The guard on the left of the gate nods slowly. “Big chief will decide.” He repeats. “Big chief will know what to do.” “Big chief is clever.” The guard on the right agrees, scratching his head. “Big chief… said outsiders can be crafty. I will go with you to the chief.” “Hm.” The left guard grunts. “There are…” He pauses to count us, before shaking his head. “A few more than us. I will go with you as well.” The right guard shakes his head. “Big chief said always someone at the gate, remember?” “Uh…” The left guard mutters uncertainly. “I think so.” “You stay, guard the gate. I take them to big chief.” The right guard nods. “Okay…” The left guard agrees sadly. They push the gates open and the right guard ushers us through, the gate closing behind us. The city itself is bustling, orc men, women and children walking every which way. It is immediately clear that there was no layout planned during the construction of the city. There are roads between the buildings, but that seems to be the extent of the organisation. Houses, shops, workshops and who knows what else are all side by side along the streets with no rhyme or reason to them. In other words, it’s a bit of a mess. Even the guard from the gate of the city has to pause for a moment at crossroads to get his bearing. Still, he didn’t get lost at any point and we reach our destination without any particular problems. Before us is the only two-storey building that we’ve seen so far, perhaps the only one in the entire city. Almost as unique are the decorations upon the building of various monster skulls, claws and bones, many of which are painted in various colours and patterns – most of the other buildings are simple and functional, unadorned. The entrance to the building is both wider and taller than their other doorways, enough that perhaps even Heather could pass through it while only having to duck her head a bit. Said entrance has another guard standing beside it, whom the gate guard shortly approaches. “Some outsiders have come.” The gate guard explains, gesturing to us. “Need to bring them to big chief so he can decide what to do.” The guard at the door grunts, nodding slowly. “Big chief will want to see them… But big chief busy. I… Tell him you are here. You wait.” Having decided as such, he opens the door and enters the building. A few minutes of shifting from foot to foot in restless silence later, he re-emerges from within the building. “Big chief will see you. Come in. But leave your weapons here.” He says, gesturing to the small entrance room visible through the door. I nod and enter the room, taking off my warhammer and leaning it against the wall. Unstrapping the sheathe of my mithril dagger from my belt, I place it beside my warhammer. The room is large enough to hold a bunch of weapons, but not large enough to hold a bunch of people, so I follow the guard into the next room. After the others removed their weapons, we are guided into a large, open room, headed at one end by a rather large chair, upon which an elderly orc rests. White and thin though the hair on his head may be, his eyes still follow us like a hawk’s as we walk into the room, and his arm ripples with muscle obvious even through his clothing upon the side of the chair as he shifts his position. On the topic of his clothing, it is much finer than the garments I’ve seen worn by other orcs. Not fine by the standards of, for instance, the nobility of Stalia, but the work of skilled hands, nonetheless. For some reason, it even seems somewhat familiar. Soon, all of us are standing in the room before the orc’s big chief. His gaze roams over us before stopping at the guard who guided us here from the village. “Utak? So, they came to your village. Tell me what happened.” “Yes, big chief!” Utak straightens his back like a kindergartener trying to impress their teacher. “Was guarding the village, then outsiders came. Asked them why they came. They said… They came in peace? That they adventurers from… across the river. Heard of the city, came to be friends with orc people and brought a gift. I thought three times, thought they seem nice. But I know am not smart, so I brought the outsiders to the village chief. Village chief agreed with me… But said big chief would decide.” The big chief nods slowly. “Good. You followed my instructions and thought before acting. If you keep showing that you can learn from your mistakes, I will have you return to guarding the gates of Ra’tlub.” Utak straightens up even further. “Yes, big chief! Do my best, won’t mess up again!” Nodding once at Utak, his eyes shift back to us. “So, outsiders. I have heard from Utak, but I would hear it in your own words: why have you come to Ra’tlub?” “We recently heard of this place, but we didn’t know much about it. So we decided that we should come and take a look, and hopefully form a good relationship with the people here. As a sign of goodwill, we have brought a gazelle that Xiltroth here hunted.” I nod to Xiltroth. “I understand, and the gift is a welcome one.” The big chief says. “But why do you want to become friendly with my people?” “Our camp is not too far from here, to be honest, not even a day’s walk away.” I explain. “With how close we are, it would only be a matter of time before some of your people came across our camp. We just wanted to come to you first, so that there wouldn’t be any misunderstandings between us.” He furrows his thick brows. “You are not from the five kingdoms?” I shake my head slightly. “No. We used to be, with the exception of Heather,” I motion to her, “but we left there and have been camping in the wilds ever since.” “Ah, I understand now.” He nods. “But why leave your peoples?” “There was a war.” I say simply. “And the races of some of those in our party were on opposite sides in the war. Simply put, our party wasn’t welcome anywhere anymore, so we left.” He nods. “We know of this war. It is a terrible thing. Our people know better than most how war can destroy lives, tribes, entire peoples. Progress, we have found, you get by working together. Speaking of such… Heather, of the roaming tribe. What news of your people? We sorely miss the work of your people’s weavers, bowyers and fletchers.” Heather blinks, clearly not expecting to be addressed. “I, my tribe, the chief who led us when we traded with your people was killed, and the new chief… He insisted we be self-reliant.” “Harold was killed!?” The big chief exclaims. “Ah, what terrible news. What sort of man or beast killed him? He was a great hunter, and wouldn’t have fallen to any ordinary enemy.” “He was taken by surprise and killed in cold blood by another member of the tribe. That person is dead now, I’d rather not talk about it.” Heather explains shortly. “You knew my father?” “Your father?” The big chief’s eyebrows raise, and he looks more closely at heather. “Yes, you do look similar… But yes, Harold was a good friend of mine, in the rare times we saw each other. What with him leading your people and me leading mine, there wasn’t much spare time between us. Still, this last time was strangely long, and I had started to think something had happened… But one never wants to believe that they have lost a friend.” He sits silently for a few moments with his head bowed before speaking again, this time addressing us as a group. “Your words have been honest and truthful. You are welcome in this city, but we will be watching you.” He waves an arm to the guards. “Guide them outside, and one of you take the gazelle from the young man there. Let the guards know that they may be let into the city without asking me in the future.” We exit the building, collecting our gear on the way out. Utak and the guard from the gate leave with us as well. The gate guard turns to Utak, clapping him on the shoulder heartily. “Good work Utak! Not long before we work together again, I think!” “Hope so.” Utak grins. “Will work hard. Maybe not so hopeless after all.” “Look forward to it. Gal’der is strong, good guard… But not smart.” The guard says. “Very not smart.” “Am not so smart, either.” Utak shrugs. “Hah!” The guard laughs. “Utak smart. Just made mistake. Yes, big mistake, but all make mistakes. Think chief knows you smart, too. Maybe if Gal’der guarding that day instead of Utak, Gal’der not guarding at all, anymore.” “Hmm…” Utak grunts sceptically. “Well, have to go back now, let others know. Good luck, work hard.” The guard nods to Utak and starts walking away. I look at Utak. “So, what exactly happened, this mistake you mentioned?” He winces. “Happened a little while ago. Another outsider came to Ra’tlub, I was at the gate. Seemed nice, so I let him in. Didn’t think to let the big chief know. Lucky he wasn’t bad, but big chief wasn’t happy.” “Ah.” I nod. “Understandable, I guess. Do outsiders come here often?” Utak shakes his head. “No, very rare. There is you and the one before. Before that, last time is years ago. Outsiders fear orcs, some say.” “True enough.” I nod. “Most places have fought with orcs in the past, and don’t think very well of them.” “But not you?” Utak asks. I blink slightly, surprised by the question. “I… I think life throws enough problems our way without making more of them ourselves by assuming someone is an enemy just because of their race. It’s better to make allies and friends instead of enemies, right?” “Don’t understand…” Utak scratches his scalp. “…But I feel maybe you right. You strange to me. But maybe good strange.” “Thank you.” I nod in appreciation, deciding - despite the unusual wording - that he meant well. I wince internally as I realise – I hadn’t introduced myself, not to Utak, nor to their chief! I feel like this might have happened before, but I couldn’t remember when. Maybe it hadn’t. But with everything happening, the stress of the possibility of civil explanations degrading and us having to fight our way out through a city full of orcs, of it somehow being entirely avoidable and yet I slip anyway… Introductions were the furthest thing from my mind. Better late than never, I guess. “Almost forgot; my name’s Aaron. Boaz and Jakin are the twin dwarves, Xiltroth is the demon, and Heather’s the centaur.” Utak nods. “Thank you. Will remember your names. But come. Too late to return to my village now. Will show you a place we can stay the night.” He starts walking into the city, and we follow him. “That would be very helpful, thank you.” I agree. “It would be difficult for us to find our way around this city on our own.” “Ra’tlub is messy.” Utak agrees. “Could have been built better. We orcs not so good at planning, thinking ahead. Each place was built thinking about what was best for that building, sometimes not so good for another building or the roads. Once building finished, too much work to try and fix things.” “That does make things difficult.” I nod. “But speaking of somewhere to stay, how would we pay? We don’t have any of your money.” “Money?” Utak replies blankly. “Don’t know money. But will be fine. We trade. They let us stay the night, we do something for them, or give them something for it. Always things that need to be done. Always something you need.” “That’s good then.” I shrug. Something more like a barter system then? It’ll definitely be a bit difficult to get used to this sort of thing, since I’ve always just used money. Our group draws more than a few eyes, but most of the people we pass by just shrug to themselves when they see Utak leading us. I guess if there is another outsider here, and that they used to trade with the centaur tribe, that they must be somewhat used to unfamiliar faces and races passing through. As we reach what is evidently our destination, a large – that is, wide and long, rather than particularly tall – building, we hear a loud crashing sound coming from inside. “Break it up!” We hear a voice roar from the building. Utak opens the door, unphased by the ruckus, revealing a fairly open room with several tables and chairs, with orcs seated upon most of them, eating and drinking. Two orcs are wrestling over the ruined remains of their chairs and table, their thick skins the only thing keeping them from suffering terrible splinters with each movement. A burly orc woman storms out from behind the counter and wrenches the two bodily apart before proceeding to shout in their faces, causing the both of them to sober immediately and their faces to pale. “Hell are you doing!? You wanna fight, do it outside, numbskulls! Look at what you did! Which one of you is gonna fix them, huh!? HUH!?” The room goes mostly silent as those who weren’t already watching turn to look at the three of them. “Uh… I, uh, don’t know, know how fix chair.” One of them stutters weakly. “Of course you don’t!” She pulls his face within centimetres of hers, then thunders all the louder, “THEN WHAT PASSED THROUGH THAT ROTTED PUMPKIN YOU CALL A SKULL, THAT MADE YOU THINK YOU COULD BREAK MY FURNITURE!?” I wince, covering my ears, but still completely able to hear everything being said due to the sheer volume of the exchange. “I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT!” She roars in response to some mumbled excuse from one of the orcs, dragging them towards the door. She only registers that we are standing in the doorway as she reaches it. “Move.” She growls. We politely move out of the way. She tosses the two orcs bodily onto the street, yelling after them as they scramble to get up and flee, “AND DON’T COME BACK, OR I’LL BEAT YOUR FACES UNTIL YOUR OWN MOTHER WOULDN’T KNOW IT’S YOU!” Chest heaving, her glare follows them until they’re gone from sight, and then she continues to glare in the direction that they escaped until the rage bleeds from her eyes enough that she actually recognises our existence. “Hell do you want?” She barks. “Good to see you, too, Greta.” Utak laughs, clapping her on the shoulder. “Were looking for a room for the night. Bad time?” “Utak?” The lingering anger in Greta’s gaze vanishes like a puff of smoke. “When did you come back to Ra’tlub? Good to see you back.” She leads him to the counter and pours out a tankard of something, placing it down in front of him as he takes a seat. “Just earlier today, had to see the big chief.” Utak replies, drinking a mouthful of the beverage. “The big chief?” Greta repeats questioningly. “What for?” Utak hooks a thumb over his shoulder at us, causing Greta to apparently notice that we aren’t orcs. “Outsiders again? And at your village? God plays tricks on you, Utak.” She sighs, before her expression turns serious. “How did it go?” “Good, I think. Remembered big chief’s instructions and followed them, so he was happy about that. Said if I kept doing good he would have me guarding Ra’tlub again.” Utak smiles, taking another drink. “Hah! Told you it would not be for too long.” Greta grins. “Good work!” I idly look around the room as they chat. Most of the people in the room are back to their drinking and merrymaking, although a few curious glances are sent our way every now and again. The remains of the broken table and chairs are still lying untouched on the floor. They didn’t look to be in terrible shape, actually, and they were of straightforward construction. The twins might be able to fix them if we have some spare wood. Could trade that for board for the night. My gaze drifts to one corner of the room, to a table with only one occupant, who looks distinctly different from all the other people in the room. His clothes are light, and cover his entire body. He looks too thin and small to be an orc – perhaps the other ‘outsider’? Perhaps sensing my gaze, he looks up from his drink, and I see underneath his hood. I stare at him in shock. His skin is darker and he looks more weathered, but it would take more than that for me to be unable to recognise him. How and why in the world is Greg here, of all places? When I was a child, I delighted in my power. I revelled in it, eagerly anticipated and explored each new power and ability I gained. I felt so powerful, so in control of everything. I was divine, I was almighty, I was a god. I was a monster. Every child eventually learns that there are consequences to their actions. Cause and effect, karma, fate, call it what you will. Usually, a parent’s punishments would be the avenue to teach this, but I was above them. They couldn’t teach me anything, any more than the insects or the dirt beneath my feet. I frolicked wildly, a child in a room full of toys with nobody to tell me how to play or when to stop. But my greed for power, my own curiosity was what unmade me. Changed me, permanently. My powers are not to be bandied about, wielded with reckless abandon in childish curiosity. There were real and serious consequences for my actions, even for one such as I. In a moment, a single infinitesimally tiny instant, I understood all that is or was. In that same moment, I came to know that I knew nothing. I was but a child, who thought themselves a god, that the world folded to their whims. How ironic was it that as I thought myself so high above, I was acting just like so many of the spoilt brats I considered below me? It was too late. What is known cannot be unknown, lest one loses all that is oneself. To knowingly and purposefully forget that which is so crucial is to drink of deadly poison, for who can simply take a sip to rectify a perceived wrong without falling to the temptation of doing it again, again and yet again until they perceive themselves to be perfect, but yet so far from who they truly were? With knowledge came questions, as is ever the case. I questioned the world. I questioned myself. What was I? I was not a man, for what man could do as I could? And yet I came from a man. I thought on the question, and realised I had no answer. I resolved to think on it more, and moved on to another question. Who was I? This I found simpler to answer. I was Phil. A child, no older than three years. I had had two parents… I realised that they would have loved me, had I given them a chance. Too late – They had moved on from this world, with my disappearance most probably pushing their time forward considerably. Where was I? Well, I knew that. Or did I? Where was here? Or was here where I am? Was I anywhere at all, and could there truly be a concept of here, if here is not the same now as it was then? Thus, I understood even that which is simple is complex, if looked at closely enough. I resolved to ask myself these questions frequently, even if I thought the answers were clear. When was I? I found that the question would become more complex as I grew in power. At the time, however, I was now, although I am now not. Why was I? Why? Why. Why… Why? Why, why, why, WHY, WHY, WHY! WHY! WHY! Why was I!? Why was I me, why was I me and not one of the myriad other creatures, and why were THEY not ME! Why was I the one! Why not somebody else… Perhaps they would not be so foolish… …How was I? Bad. I was doing bad. I knew what I had done. I knew I could not turn back. Yet I did not know how to move forward as the being I had become. I knew that I was a fool, and in possession of this knowledge, I performed the first wise act of my life. I sought counsel.

Chapter 40: Aftermath I awake in a cold sweat. I turn my head, and see sunlight streaming in through the window. It must be a fair way through the day to be this bright. Out of habit, I almost try to reach out my arm and get up, but a slight twinge of pain stops me. Right. My arm. Good news is that it’s not too serious. The fracture seems to be a pretty simple one. So long as my arm is kept straight and still, it should heal up without much difficulty. Bad news is the doctor was out of practically all his basic medical supplies. He didn’t have the materials to make a cast or a plaster. All he was able to do was wrap the area in some boiled rags and apply a simple splint. Until people return from the neighbouring town with supplies, I’ve been told not to move from here. Either way, I’m going to be out of action for a while. According to the doctor, even after the bone has healed it’s best to take it easy for another couple weeks, or it could break again. Well… Even without me, the others should be fine. Jakin shouldn’t have any problems leading them, for now. After the assault, there shouldn’t be many of the dwarves left, and with any luck only a single crossbow between them. Doubt they’ll dare to attack again after that debacle. So, I guess I’m fine with this. Maybe it’s the world’s way of telling me to take a break. A holiday. Yeah, a holiday, that’s what this is going to be. I’ll just kick back, and take it easy. Yeah… As I lay on the table, breathing steadily, my mind wanders back to the previous night. It had been painful, dreadfully so. Fingers, small but strong, probing around the break, feeling for the edges of the fracture. Every bit of pressure felt like the strike of a hammer, beating down into the core of my arm and spreading waves of aching pain. But despite that, I was alright. I watched the entire time, and listened as he slowly explained what he was doing in an exhausted voice. I coped. But how? I’ve heard stories of injuries like this. Sometimes people go into shock, or faint from the pain. Can’t move because of it. But me, the guy who’s never had so much as a broken bone, just grimaces and shrugs it off? It doesn’t make sense. Wonder if this makes me a masochist. Probably. Hell, I think I’ve noticed people wince just watching me train sometimes, back in the kingdoms. It’s not normal. I wonder if part of the summoning process was that it picked people with greater mental and emotional tolerance for pain? Then again, the more I learn about magic - though I’m not learning much - the more I’m convinced that the kingdom didn’t have much of a clue about what they were doing with the summoning. It’s so removed from every other application of magic I’ve witnessed that it almost feels like something else entirely. But if not magic, what else? God? But if it was God, then why the complex formation in the first place… A snap of the fingers would have done it, a blink, even a thought. Well, thinking about it isn’t going to get me anywhere. I best catch up on my sleep. Lot of sleepless nights, lately. (POV Jakin) We all try and get some sleep - me, Boaz and Xiltroth in Ren’s house, and Heather in a tent outside that someone was nice enough to set up. It’s difficult. I’m more used to sleeping in a mine than I am while the sun still shines, but I am… Was, a soldier. I manage to slip under, sleep for a few hours. I dream of the dwarves that we fought last night. Their eyes, that’s all I could see. Did I know them? Might’ve. Maybe we even fought side by side once. Damn if I don’t hate fighting people when I can’t even see their face. What they did was wrong, no two ways about it. But killing my kinsmen always puts a foul taste in my mouth. We’ll have to do it again later. In the afternoon, I think. Clear out the ones that are left. Shouldn’t be too many of them, so they won’t be able to post much of a guard. Even if they do, we can just wait. They can’t all guard the place forever. And if there are only a few guards, we can take them. The doc says Aaron should be fine, just needs some time to heal. Hope he’s not too stubborn to stay put. Seen too many soldiers get up while they’re still injured and try to return to duty. Only ever makes it worse in the end. Sometimes leaves them injured for the rest of their lives. He shouldn’t even have that broken arm. Should’ve known that that magus wasn’t going to target Aaron again, don’t know what I was thinking. Should’ve looked where he was aiming before I tried to block the shot. Didn’t turn out too bad, but it could’ve. Don’t know Heather that well - haven’t even talked to her, I don’t think - but she’s under our protection. And we almost failed at that. Glad Aaron had his head firmly on his shoulders. Looks like I need to increase the training. Can’t have something like that happen again. There’s no smoke coming from outside the cave entrance. There was a fire there last night, but not now. Is it just too early? Military protocol is to keep it burning at all times. Even if they defected, that should be habitual. Heather decided to stay behind this time. She didn’t have many arrows left, and wanted to focus on making more. It’s just me, my brother, and Xiltroth. We creep up the path, watching and listening for any hint of ambush, but there’s nothing. Silence. We get to the top, almost holding our breaths from the tension the entire way - expecting there to be some trap, or something waiting for us. Nothing. There’s nobody guarding the entrance. It makes no sense. You have to have a guard. Otherwise, monsters or your enemies can walk right in. There might be some times when you don’t want a guard, when you want to draw an enemy into a trap… But if they were going to build a trap, the path up to the cave would have been the place. Knock us off, and we’d be done for. Besides, half a day is hardly enough to build a lethal trap, even if they had their whole group left. Once again, we advance cautiously into the cave. Nothing is waiting for us, apart from five corpses around the first corner. Don’t even seem like they’ve been touched. We search down that path. Find the rest of the bodies, also untouched. We continue down the tunnel, don’t find much. A few rooms look like they had been used as residence. Then we get to the end of the tunnel, and we figure out why there weren’t as many of them as we expected. A cave-in. Must’ve been that rumbling we felt, back when we were coming in the other end. It takes a while, but eventually we search every tunnel. Not a soul, save some bats - not those boom bats, thank the earth - and we come out the other side none the worse for wear. There’s a fire here… The remnants of one. There are only a few embers glowing dully in it now, but that’s still much more than could be said of the fire at the other entrance. That one was cold, and that must’ve been at least an hour ago. This one was left to die out, but it must’ve been left more recently. Around midday, maybe? Doesn’t really matter when exactly. It was after the one at the other entrance, and the dwarves were never reinforced from this direction when we were fighting last night. That means there was at least one dwarf that was left. Probably fled on seeing all the bodies inside. Doubt they’ll survive, even if there’s a few of them. “Looks like that’s the last we’ll hear of them. Let’s head back.” I say. “I need sleep. And beer.” (POV Aaron) “So they’re all gone? Dead or fled?” I ask, my head turned awkwardly towards Jakin from where I still lay on the table. “Looks that way.” Jakin agrees. “Thank goodness.” Len sighs, his shoulders slumping as the tension suddenly bleeds out of him. “That is such a relief. Everyone will finally be able to breathe easy again.” “I suppose that just leaves the cleanup. I’m suddenly glad I broke my arm.” I joke. “Hmph” Jakin grunts. “Job for tomorrow. It’s cool up in that cave, shouldn’t decay too much by then.” “Yes, well…” Len interjects. “Pardon me, but I’ll be heading off now. I need to spread the word.” Jakin starts to say something, but then the doctor bustles in. “Alright, that’s enough, visitation’s over! I have enough people to attend to without others crowding up the place.” Everyone is quickly herded out, and relative quiet returns to the room. “Do you reckon I’ll get any back problems from lying like this?” I ask. The doctor eyes me. “I’ll see if I can find a blanket for you to lie on.” “Thanks.” When the doctor leaves, the only sounds are the occasional groans coming from other rooms. No matter where you are, it seems even silence isn’t silent. The twins and Xiltroth will have to search the bodies of the dwarves for anything useful, pull them out of the tunnels and dig them a mass grave. At least, I’m guessing that’s what they’ll do. Can’t exactly leave them there to fester and foul up the air, not to mention attract all sorts of critters and monsters. And they’ll have to clean up all the blood, urine and faeces that has been expelled from the bowels of the deceased dwarves. No, I don’t envy their job. I don’t envy it at all. After a while, the doctor comes back in bearing a thin blanket. “Not much to go around, I’m afraid.” “Don’t worry about it. I’m an adventurer, even a bit of padding makes a luxurious bed to me.” I say, getting down from the table temporarily. Even with the splint holding my arm relatively still, I try to jostle it as little as possible. The pain doesn’t seem to bother me, but the concept of causing permanent damage to my dominant arm does. I mean, I am ambidextrous, but most things are designed right-handed, so I use it more often. Besides, two arms are better than one. “So, how’s Dex doing, doctor?” I ask. “Not critical anymore, thankfully.” He replies, spreading the blanket atop the table. “He’ll take a long while to heal, and there will likely be some permanent damage. It’s hard to tell precisely until he wakes up.” “He hasn’t woken up?” I ask, alarmed. “In almost two days?” “He has,” The doctor reassures me, “but only for very brief periods, not long enough to do tests.” “That’s a relief…” I sigh. “Well, thanks doctor. I should be fine for a while, you’ve got people in more pressing condition than mine, right?” “A seemingly endless supply.” The doctor groans, walking out of the room. I turn my head idly to the side, where my eyes awkwardly meet the eyes of a gnome lying on the couch nearby. “Hey.” He says weakly. “Hey.” I reply, turning my head back to stare at the ceiling. New supplies arrive from the neighbouring town the next day. We’ve never had a reason to visit it, but Den - the gnome on the couch nearby - tells me that it’s not unlike this one. The doctor gives me some herbs to chew. At first, my tongue feels vaguely itchy, before the sensation is replaced with a general numbness. A short while later, the numbness spreads to the rest of my limbs, alleviating some of my aches and pains. All in all, it’s a rather interesting experience. I spend most of my time staring at the ceiling, thinking, or chatting to Den about the town. Only so much sleeping one man can do, even an injured one, and I’d done more than enough of it yesterday. We get food every now and again, of course. Mostly porridge, made in large batches. It’s not bad. Could go for some brown sugar or berries to go with it, though. As the doctor makes his rounds again, a question occurs to me that I take the opportunity to pose to him. “Doctor, would it be helpful if I used mana reinforcement?” He pauses. “Sorry?” “You know, circulate mana around my body.” I say. “Would it speed up my recovery?” He blinks. “I… Well, yes, I suppose it would. Mana reinforcement. Yes, you should do that.” “Could have mentioned that earlier.” I sigh, starting to channel a steady stream of mana into circulation. The doctor raises an eyebrow. “You probably haven’t realised that we gnomes are not just physically weak, but also magically weak. Even the most talented among us have mana capacity that pales in comparison to magi of other races. Most of us have so little that mana reinforcement has negligible effect, so it doesn’t generally come to mind.” “Pardon me.” I apologise. “I didn’t know.” He shrugs. “It is what it is. Besides, our alchemical, historical and medical knowledge is far beyond that of other races, if I do say so myself.” He glances towards me. “The five kingdoms haven’t made sudden advances in those areas in the past two hundred and sixty-five years, have they?” This time it’s my turn to shrug. “I wouldn’t know, to tell the truth. But as far as I know, alchemists are quite rare back in the kingdoms.” He nods with just the slightest hint of satisfaction and, point made, bustles out to tend to the other patients. I leave the doctor’s for the first time in a couple of days. The doctor had finally had the time and resources available to create a cast for my arm, so I am free to go, so long as I come back regularly to get checked up. Wearing just plain clothes with not a piece of armour or weapon on my person, I haven’t felt so unprotected in quite a long while. Still, even down an arm and weaponless I can take people or monsters down. Granted, I’ll have to use magic, but that’s beside the point. Making my way through town, I realise that despite the passage of time, the dwarves being defeated and life here slowly returning back to normal, there is still one thing missing. There are still no sporadic explosions, no colourful - and potentially toxic, now that I think about it - smoke drifting over the town. Ren isn’t experimenting. And with Ren, that means something is wrong. Upon reaching his house, I knock on the door, only for it to be answered by Jakin. “The doctor finally let you off the leash, eh?” He cracks a smile, seeing me at the door. I gesture to the cast. “Not before making sure I couldn’t get away. How did the cleanup go?” Jakin grimaces. “Took a while. Could’ve used an extra hand, not that yeh had one to spare. Borrowed a cart from town to bring some of the stuff back. Lots of stolen food, some tools that weren’t of dwarven make… We returned what we could find owners for.” “And the rest?” I ask. “More than we knew what to do with.” He frowns. “Found some bolts, coins, other bits and pieces, those’ll be useful. But the halberds? The armour? There’s only so many spares we can keep before it gets stupid. No point. And even if we wanted to sell them to the gnomes, who would use them? Left them in a room back in the cave.” “Fair enough.” I nod. “How’s Ren?” “I was going to say something ‘bout that.” He strokes his beard in a mixture of confusion and agitation. “He’s just sitting at the table, staring at one of those books of his. Not even reading it, far as I can tell. Just… Staring. Can’t get much out of him.” I nod worriedly. “Did you happen to find the books the dwarves stole?” He shrugs. “Not so much as a page. Must’ve been buried under the rubble.” “Alright. I’ll see if I can do anything.” I reply. Jakin nods, letting me through the doorway and into the house. As he’d said, Ren is sitting at the dining room table with a book open in front of him, looking at it intently. But the pages aren’t turning. Maybe the gears aren’t either. I nod to Jakin and Xiltroth in greeting, also standing uncomfortably nearby. “Ren.” I say, but he doesn’t react. I try again a bit louder. “Ren!” Nothing. I try shaking his shoulder, but all I get from that is a creasing of the brows and a slight shake of the head, as if he were trying to shoo a fly with a particular attraction to his nose. “We tried that.” Jakin says. Next, I try taking away his book, but as soon as I start moving it he grasps it in a white-knuckled grip. I let it be, wary of damaging the book, or worse, his arms. “Tried that, too.” Xiltroth notes. “Maybe we should just leave him. He can’t stay like that forever. He’ll have to sleep, and eat.” “Or he could ignore the hunger pains and starve himself to death.” I sigh. “It could work. But if it doesn’t, we’re back at square one.” Sitting in the chair opposite him, I stare into his eyes, unblinkingly. Discomfort could work. But after a few seconds, I shake my head. He’s looking forward, but he’s not seeing. “Almost looks to me like he’s deep in thought.” I muse. “Done something similar once before. Got so deep in thought that I completely tuned out my surroundings. Still, he must be in even deeper than I was. I came out once someone pushed my arm, but he doesn’t seem to want to come out at all.” “Can we just whack him?” Jakin shakes his head in annoyance. “That’ll wake him up.” “Actually, that sounds like a good idea.” I reply after a moment of thought. He might not want to think about the real world right now, for whatever reason, but it’s not like he can control his subconscious. Cause some pain, it’ll kick him right out of whatever he’s thinking about to deal with the situation. Fight or flight response. Simple. So I slap him. Lightly. Ish. He jumps about half a meter out of his seat - impressive for someone of his size - and holds his cheek, blinking several times. I can see his eyes refocusing on his surroundings. Jakin. The book. Me. “Did you just slap me?” Ren spurts, more in disbelief and shock than anger. “Yeah.” I admit. “You were just staring at your book for… How long was he doing that?” “Found him like that in the morning.” Boaz replies. “You were out of it for quite a while.” I continue. “You alright?” “I am most certainly not alright.” Ren retorts. “As we speak, a considerable portion of my life’s work could be in the hands of bandits and thieves, leading to who knows what untold havoc?” “They’re dead, Ren.” I say gently. “We couldn’t recover your notes, but the dwarves that attacked the town are dead.” Ren shakes his head vehemently. “Some of them escaped. They could have had some of my notes. The explosion collapsed a section of cave… Imagine what it could do to houses… To people…” “Look, Ren…” I turn in my chair. “It might make it a bit easier if we could talk alone.” Xiltroth, at the first hint of an opportunity to escape from the situation, has already headed for the door. Jakin shrugs and heads in the same direction, with Boaz not far behind, sending a concerned glance our way. Once the door is closed, I start talking again. “Look, Ren, even if some of them did escape, and they did have some of your notes - and that’s a big ‘if’ - they won’t make it far, and they can’t go back to their homeland. They’re deserters, and there’s a war going on. Nothing will happen.” “This town and the five kingdoms aren’t the only places in the world, Aaron.” Ren rolls his eyes scathingly. The bags around his eyes suddenly make me wonder how much longer he’d been staring before someone found him. “The wandering centaurs, the orc tribes to the south-east, even the mystical forest to the north-east… My notes are so concise and detailed that even a deranged pixie addicted to mushrooms could figure out a way to blow something up.” I rub my forehead. He was really making this difficult for me. “It’s not exactly like the materials you’re using are common, right? Most people probably wouldn’t even recognise them, let alone find some.” “Perhaps, if not for my detailed sketches of the plants. Besides, you only need one big, toxic conflagration to put a black spot on the map.” I feel like I’m starting to get a headache. “Even if, somehow, someone manages to blow themselves up… There are monsters out there that can do much worse. It’s not worth worrying about.” “You don’t understand.” Ren argues. “In the wrong hands, this could collapse entire buildings with ease.” “And I’ve seen monsters burn down a city!” I finally explode. “Slaughter the guards, adventurers, heroes and anyone else stupid enough to stand in their way! One of them, just a single one, tossed the twins around like sacks of potatoes, snapped my sword like it was a twig into a million tiny little pieces, left me permanently defaced,” I point to my scars, “then continued on its merry way as if nothing had ever happened! And that wasn’t even the strongest one there!” Ren shrinks into his chair under the force of my outburst. “...You just don’t understand what sort of impact this could have.” “I don’t understand?” I freeze, and the frustration bleeds away, replaced by an irrational, smouldering anger. “Fine. Fine, get out a quill.” Startled, slightly afraid and perhaps a tad curious, Ren fetches one. “Saltpeter - write this down.” I state, waiting until his pen is poised over an empty page before continuing. “Saltpeter, seventy-five parts. Charcoal, fifteen parts. Sulfur, ten parts. And some water to help mix. Prepared properly, these produce a substance known as black powder. It’s fast burning, can produce quite a bit of force, and at least two of the main ingredients can be easily obtained in mass quantities.” “What?” Ren’s quill pauses. “How? How do you know this?” “Doesn’t matter.” I wave the question aside. “What does matter is that if this formula gets into the hands of a competent military, every single known weapon and military tactic will become obsolete. They would be able to create weapons that could penetrate and collapse castle walls. And what use does chainmail have against weapons like that? Even magic - how can a gout of fire or an earthen missile compare to a weapon that anyone can use to twice the effect? This formula could start and end a dozen wars, each larger and more terrifying than the last.” “I…” Ren’s eyes are wide with shock. “If what you’re saying is true, then-” Ren decisively tears out the page, wincing as he does so. “I need to burn this.” He strides towards his lab, then stops dead in his tracks. “Oh.” He whispers. “Oh, dear god, that’s it, isn’t it? That’s what I have to do.” After a brief moment of incomprehension, I catch on to what he’s thinking. “It’s your choice. Whatever you do, I won’t judge you - it’s your life’s work. I doubt anyone else will think twice if you continue as you are. Either way,  you’ll feel the consequences of your decision for a long time.” “I… I think I need to think on this for a while.” He says, walking towards the master bedroom as if in a daze. “That’s probably for the best.” I agree. The door clicks shut softly, leaving me alone at the table.

Tiny monsters. People don’t think about them much, but they exist. Like the insects they share their diminutive stature (and sometimes form) with, they can often fly, and many of them utilise powerful toxins and acidic excretions to defend themselves. Almost without exception, they are only copper ranked monsters (perhaps even less), but their tendency to swarm can escalate their danger to steel or even mithril levels. Luckily for us, the vast majority of them find the smokes and fumes of civilisation repugnant. What’s really scary, though, is when you get one of those rare exceptions - when you find a tiny monster with the physical capabilities of a normal-sized monster. They’re bloody impossible to hit, and they pack a fair punch, too… -An unknown scholar As we follow behind Ren, the gnome, at a pace that makes me want to yell with restlessness, I can’t help but look around and notice how orderly everything here is. The streets are very neat and methodically laid out; I could probably find my way around this place without much difficulty, even though I’ve never been here before. Eventually, we reach his house. It’s not small, but not large. Actually, if I were to describe it by height, it is small. Ren turns the knob – no lock? – and opens the door, walking in. We follow after him. “Sorry for the mess.” He says, not sounding at all sorry. “I wasn’t expecting visitors.” He begins picking up the pieces of paper that are laid out all over the tabletop. “Most of this is no longer relevant anyway. I’ll have to clean out your rooms, too. In the meantime, take a seat.” He lifts stacks of papers off of the tiny stools. …I sit on the stool. I feel as if I’m sitting in a kindergartener’s chair. It creaks ominously beneath me. I decide to remain standing. As I look around the comfortable but annoyingly short room, I notice that the boards around one of the doorways are blackened, and the door itself is of a different design to the others in the house. “What happened over there?” I ask the busily moving gnome. “That’s my lab. I’ll have to ask you to never go in there.  With your size, you’re likely to turn around, tip over some vials and burn my house down. As for the what happened…” Ren sighs. “Well, you stay around the village long enough, you’ll find out anyway. May as well tell you.” Setting down the papers he is holding, Ren takes a deep breath and starts talking in an almost clinical tone. “It happened when I was young. Like me, my parents were alchemists. The best in town. They were working on something – I don’t know what, as they wisely kept me out of the laboratory. Something went terribly wrong, and the entire laboratory exploded, killing them both and incinerating most of their notes.” Walking up to the wall, Ren adjusts one of the paintings slightly. “They had been working on that project most of my life. And I’ve been trying to finish it.” He sighs heavily. “But without any notes, it’s nigh impossible. That’s why I’ve been trying to recreate their failure, instead. At least then I’ll have a starting point.” “Wouldn’t that… kill you, too?” I ask. “Don’t be ridiculous.” Ren snaps. “I’m working with miniscule quantities precisely to stop that from happening.” Raising an eyebrow, I note, “They don’t sound too miniscule.” “The reactions often produce more sound and smoke than they do actual explosion. I assure you, I am taking every possible precaution. However…” Ren continues begrudgingly, “I am running out of reagents. Herbs, powders, raw materials. It isn’t difficult to get more of the common herbs around the village, but…” Ren sighs, absent-mindedly readjusting the painting with a frown. “I have long suspected that my parents were using rarer herbs, from farther abroad. Very few are willing to brave the danger, fewer still while escorting a non-combatant such as myself. Then you came along.” He smiles. “It’s as if the heavens want me to succeed.” “Can’t you just… you know, use that monster repellent?” Xiltroth chimes in. Ren shakes his head. “The town gets a bit larger every year and with it, so too does the amount of monster repellent we must produce. Our annual harvest of the requisite herbs is barely enough as it is, and the rest is needed in case of emergency. This may have been my sole dream for the past decade, but I’m not so enamoured by it that I would risk others to complete it. Besides, the effects are reduced on stronger monsters.” “So, you want us to help you collect herbs?” I say. “We can do that. We’ll need to work out what the payment will be, though.” “Yes, that’s fi- I’VE HAD IT WITH THIS!” Ren screams halfway through his sentence, storming off down the hall. “Was it something I said?” I ask the others in confusion. “Not you!” Ren’s voice calls back. “This!” He comes striding back down the hall with ruler, square and spirit level in hand. He begins measuring every dimension of the painting, checking that it’s level and that the corners are 90 degree angles. “It’s not a perfect rectangle!” Ren says in disbelief. “The bottom is wider than the top! No wonder I kept feeling that something wasn’t right.” “Are… Yeh alright?” Jakin asks quizzically. “Perfectly.” Ren says, taking the painting off the wall. “I’m going to get this fixed. Don’t touch anything while I’m gone!” He walks straight out the door, leaving us with mouths agape. “Well that was… Strange.” Mutters Jakin. Boaz concurs. “Aye.” “D’yeh think he has a screw loose?” Wonders Jakin idly. “No, he’s just eccentric.” I reply, shifting uncomfortably. “Yeh’re eccentric.” Jakin retorts. I shrug. “Why thank you.” “Is that a compliment?” Jakin asks Boaz. “I don’t think that’s a compliment.” “Not usually.” Boaz replies. Xiltroth suddenly speaks up. “Am I eccentric?” Jakin looks askance at him. “What? No. A bit quiet, maybe. Yeh need a healthy dose of confidence, I say.” Nodding in agreement, Xiltroth resumes his silence. A short while later, Ren comes bustling through the door with his painting in hand. Stepping up to the wall, he hangs the painting back up, takes a step back and looks at it critically. “Perfect!” He beams. Turning back to us, Ren asks, “What were we talking about again?” Before we can reply, he raises a hand. “Oh yes, payment. What amount do you think would be adequate for your services?” “Well…” I say, scratching my head. “We don’t actually know anything about your currency, so we aren’t sure.” “That does make things difficult…” Ren nods. After a lengthy period of questions, we get a rough idea of their currency and therefore how much we should get paid. “Alright. When do we leave?” I ask. “One moment.” Ren says, opening the door to his laboratory. “According to my calculations-” BOOOM!!! Orange smoke explodes from the doorway. “The reaction should be starting soon.” Ren finishes, looming out of the smoke. “As I said, sound and smoke. It’s for precisely this reason that I had a chimney installed in here.” The smoke sinks to the floor instead of rising to the ceiling. “…And vents in the walls along the floor.” Ren coughs. I eye the tendrils of smoke pooling across the floor. “So, when can we leave?” “Let me just…” Ren jots down a few notes on a piece of paper. “Right, let’s…” He looks down at his clothes – a restrictive lab coat, stained slightly orange by the smoke. “I need to change first.” He disappears into another room. He comes back wearing more simple, rough clothing, coupled with gloves and a woven basket filled with small glass jars. “Let’s go.” Ren leads us out of the house, out of town and into open plains. Here he slows slightly, keeping an eye on the ground as he walks. Occasionally he picks up some piece of grass or fern and places it into a jar, but for the most part he ignores everything there. We move further and further away from town, and eventually – inevitably – we run into a monster. It bursts from the ground beneath us, taking us all by surprise. Still, we all manage to get out of the way, Xiltroth grabbing Ren as he goes. I turn around, warhammer in hand, only to find that it’s already gone, leaving behind only a hole in the dirt. “A giant mole!” Ren shouts from underneath Xiltroth’s arm. “It’s impossible to predict where they’ll show up next, we should just run!” “We’ll be fine.” I say, carefully looking around. “It retreated instantly once it saw it didn’t get us. That means it’s not confidant in frontal encounters. Probably doesn’t have very thick skin.” “What does that matter if you can’t hit it!?” Ren yells. “Aaron, below you!” One of the twins shouts, prompting me to leap backwards and sweep my warhammer down at my previous position in the same motion. The mole’s head sprouts from the ground just in time to get pulverised. “Told you.” I say to Ren, then wave to the twins in thanks. “What – how?” Ren splutters. Boaz pats the dirt. “I could feel it moving through the earth. Benefits from our mining days.” “Okay, let’s keep going. Doubt there’s anything we want on a mole.” I say. Xiltroth sets Ren back down and we continue on our way. Monsters pop up every now and again, but we defeat them all without difficulty and Ren slowly grows more and more relaxed as he searches for herbs. He leads us into sunlit woods, where a gentle breeze tugs at the boughs above us, creating a soft rustling sound. Just walking amongst the trees makes me feel more relaxed. “Are yeh sure we can’t go into some cave or dungeon to look fer herbs? Every place we’ve been lately has just forests or woods…  I’m sick of all these trees!” Jakin groans. “Well, herbs that grow underground very well could have the properties I’m looking for.” Ren muses thoughtfully. “Perhaps tomorrow?” Jakin grins. “Great!” We continue deeper into the woods. Ren stoops down here and there to ease some mushroom or flower out from amongst the roots of a tree or the hollow of some rotten log, carefully shaking each one free of dirt and sealing each within separate glass jars. “Behind!” Xiltroth warns. I turn to see a large bear padding towards us. Its fur is a light brown, although its legs are much darker compared to the rest of it, and for some reason the sunlight is reflecting off of its fur. Growling, it charges towards us. Jakin and Boaz raise their tower shields together, attempting to block the bear’s charge. But instead of smashing bodily against them, the bear somehow manages to worm its way in-between the twins’ shields, pushing them to either side as it continues its charge towards me, Xiltroth and Ren. Screaming, Ren attempts to climb a tree. Lifting my warhammer, I strike down at the bear’s hear, only for it slip straight off with little more than an annoyed shake of the head from the bear. As I struggle to bring the heavy weapon back under control, I notice the reason why: the bear’s fur is covered in a thick layer of water. Just as it is about to reach me, Xiltroth thrusts at the bear’s front ankle with his staff. Against all expectations, his relatively flimsy wooden staff does not slip, and in fact causes the bear to trip over itself and topple to the ground. It rights itself almost immediately, but even that brief respite is enough for me and the twins to collect ourselves and turn to face the lumbering beast once more. Now better informed as to the bear’s peculiarities, I take my left hand off of the haft of my warhammer and project a disorderly cloud of earth mana from it towards the bear. The earth mixes with the coating of water around the bear’s fur, turning it into mud – and completely blinding the beast as its eyes are suddenly covered in dirt. Fire magic would probably be more effective and damaging, but that wouldn’t be a good idea here; I have made some progress in magic control, but not so much that I’m confident in not burning down the woods. Roaring in rage, it raises itself up on its hind paws and claws wildly before itself; warding off everyone but hurting no-one. As it stops flailing and starts to return to standing on four legs, Xiltroth again darts in and thrusts his staff swiftly and precisely into and through the bear’s eye. The bear shudders and falls to the earth with a heavy thump that causes the ground to tremble slightly. Water flows off of its body and onto the ground, creating a wet patch of grass. “That… was close.” I sigh in relief. “Good job Xiltroth.” Xiltroth scratches his head, smiling slightly. “I only had the opening because you blinded it.” “Is… Is it dead?” A quavering voice comes from the treetops. “Yes, it’s dead.” I reply. “Oh thank God.” Ren quickly shimmies back down the tree. I look at him. “You… Do know that most bears can climb trees, right?” Ren freezes. “Of course! I… Just panicked. Let’s keep going now!” He tries to divert the conversation. There’s no real need to make a big deal out of it, so I just shrug. “Not just yet. We need to strip the bear, and we may as well have a meal at the same time. We haven’t had anything all day.” “Well, if you put it like that…” Ren nods, looking around at us. “Did anyone bring any extra food? I’m feeling a bit famished myself, after that.” I look at him, confused. “What do you mean? There’s more than enough here for everyone.” I point to the bear. “Wait, you aren’t vegetarian, are you?” “No, I just…” Ren stops himself. “Bear? Is it even edible?” “I don’t see why not.” I reply, unsheathing my knife and beginning to saw into the bear’s sodden fur. “We’ve had worse.” “I think…” Ren pauses, looking at the blood oozing out of the bear as we skin it. “I think I’ll just step away for a moment.” Shrugging, I continue to cut up the bear. We soon have a small fire set up and cook portions of bear meat. With its prodigious size, we have a veritable feast – and it actually doesn’t taste half bad either. Once we finish slicing up the bear carcass, Ren rejoins us and quietly samples our cooking. As we finish filling our stomachs and lick the last of the grease from our lips, a strange laugh sounds from nearby. “Hyahyahyahyahya!” “Who’s there!?” Jakin barks, looking around. “Hyahyahyahya!” Finally, I spot where the laughing is coming from. A little brown man – slightly smaller, even, than Ren – wearing leafy green clothing is leaning against a tree, blending into its trunk almost perfectly as his impish face twists wide with laughter. “Catch me, and my fruit is yours! Eat my fruit, and you’ll live as long as me!” It shouts gleefully, motioning to the round, bluish green fruit bobbing from a stalk that seems to sprout directly from its noggin. Jakin rubs at his beard. “And how long would that be?” The thing shrugs. “Eternity?” Its mouth splits into an inhumanly wide grin. “Forget about it.” Ren interrupts. “I’ve read about this thing. People have been trying to catch it for three thousand years without luck. It’s impossible. Besides, the only proof there has ever been that the fruit does as it says are its own words.” “Hmph.” Jakin grunts. “Didn’t want immortality anyway.” It loses its smile. “Nobody chases me anymore!” it shouts, shaking its tiny fists at us. “People got boring in the last millenia!” “Why do you even want to get chased?” I ask incredulously. “Come on, chase me! I’ll go easy on you, I’ll only go at half my full speed.” It says persuasively. Jakin strokes his beard, considering, but Ren cuts in between them again. “Records say that it’s highly intelligent and sly. If it’s offering you half speed, that’s only because it has determined that you won’t be able to catch it at that speed.” “Oh come on!” It throws up its hands. “Stop getting in my way!” “Am I wrong?” Ren raises an eyebrow. “Just because you’re right, doesn’t mean he shouldn’t chase me!” The little man yells belligerently. “There was once a man who chased me every day for twenty years! Never caught me,” It says with a hint of smugness, “but word on the grapevine was that afterwards he was hailed as ‘Lightning Sam’ on account of his speed. Think of what you could gain by having someone like me as your goal!” At this point, none of us are even slightly interested. “Twenty years?” Jakin rolls his eyes. “I have better things to do than chase a little man around.” “What are you, anyway?” I can’t help but ask, never having seen anything like him before. “The name’s Tuig, fastest in the land!” It proclaims, before flicking its wrist smoothly. “Here’s my card.” A single leaf shoots out, slowing down to float gently into my hand. It reads, ‘Tuig. Catch me if you can!’ I look back at him. “But what are you?” I ask again. “Unique.” Tuig says smugly. “Can I have that?” Ren asks, indicating the leaf. Shrugging, I give it to him. “Thanks. Nobody knows about the fruit, but the leaves have been confirmed to be an incredibly rare and useful alchemical ingredient.” Ren smiles. “What!?” Tuig shouts. “Damn, no wonder everyone kept asking for my card. I’ll have to stop giving them out – no, actually, could you spread the rumour that I’ll give leaves to people who chase me long enough?” It suddenly does an about-face and asks. Before any one of us can answer, it cuts itself off. “Never mind. I just remembered that it doesn’t matter anymore. Goodbye forever, suckers!” It disappears, and a moment later a shockwave strips dozens of leaves from the trees, sending them spinning into the air to drift gently down moments later. A damned sonic boom. Good thing we didn’t try to chase it, we wouldn’t have caught it in a million years. “Come on.” Ren says, breaking the silence left in its wake. “We still have herbs to collect.” Hours later, we return to Ren’s house, him happily clutching at a basket full of herby goodness and us tired and splattered with blood. Ren places the basket down carefully on the table and enters one of the house’s rooms. He comes back with a coin pouch, from which he starts counting coins. “Excellent job. Couldn’t have done it without you – and that isn’t just an empty compliment.” He looks up at us. “None of the warriors or magi in town are as strong as you four. It makes me wonder whether the difference is due, at least in part, to the more dangerous environment you grew up in. The monster repellent powder has granted us an age of peace and security, but it seems there have been some negative side-effects, after all.” He proffers the handful of coins, which I take. “Can’t say I’d know about the deeper details, but it seems logical to me that an individual exposed to many hardships will be more resilient than one exposed to few.” “Quite so.” Ren agrees. “Now, I need to ensure these herbs are properly stored, so you’ll have to excuse me. I’ll have dinner ready at around ten, but until then I shall likely be otherwise occupied. Feel free to roam the town – I’m sure there are quite a few people who would be more than interested in a chat.” “We’ll probably head off to that stream we passed earlier, first.” I reply, motioning to the blood on our armour. “Need to get cleaned up.” He nods, and we head out again. After scrubbing the blood and muck off of our armour, weapons and clothes, we head back into town and decide to have a look around. As we do, I discover that the town is designed in such a way that the town as a whole has multiple axes of symmetry around several main roads, which in turn have roads connecting them at intervals in a sort of concentric circles/wheel spokes pattern, making it incredibly simple to navigate. An enticing scent leads our feet through the town, our rumbling stomachs reminding us that we haven’t had a taste of civilisation for… Must have been at least a couple of months by now. Reaching the source of the smell, we see an open-front bakery with a few tables and chairs nestled under an awning. There is a female gnome at the counter, the same one that bribed Dex with a pastry. Noticing us, she beams and waves at us. “Hello! Planning to buy some baked goods?” “We weren’t planning on it,” Smiles Jakin, “but with a smell like that, how could we resist?” “Well, isn’t that lovely of you!” She beams. “I have some bread, baked fresh this morning, or some pastries if you’re in the mood for something sweet. In fact…” She turns around and walks into the back. “You’re in luck, boys! The apple pie just finished cooking!” She calls back to us. There is a collective and audible gulp. After a few seconds, the smell intensifies noticeably, practically leaving us drooling. She comes back around holding a large pie with mitted hands, and deposits it on the counter. “So, what’ll it be?” “How much for the pie?” I ask breathlessly. “Twenty-five copper a slice.” She smiles. “No, he meant for the whole thing.” Jakin replies. I look at him, and he looks back at me. “What? I need some pie in my life right now.” Shrugging, I nod to the lady. “I hope you’ve already found work, because it’s not cheap.” She raises an eyebrow. “Two silver.” “Pay the woman, Aaron.” Jakin’s stomach growls noisily. Although it is a significant portion of our earnings today, I hand her the coins. “Thank you.” She says, putting the coin away deftly. “Now, you boys take a seat at one of those tables, and I’ll fetch you some cutlery.” We walk over to a table. Taking off my pack, I set it on the ground and gingerly sit on one of the chairs. It creaks slightly but doesn’t seem to be in danger of collapsing. As I fully settle my weight down on it, she comes around to the table with the pie and four spoons on a tray. Thanking her, we begin attacking the pie with gusto. For a moment there is silence in the room. “That.” Jakin swallows the remnants of a bite of pie. “Must be the best apple pie I’ve had in my life. How do yeh even begin to cook something that good?” “Ah ah ah!” She tuts. “A girl’s got to have her secrets.” Slowly but steadily we go through and polish the dish clean. “That was definitely worth the cost.” I sigh contentedly. It’s been a long time since I’ve had food this good. Since before I came to this world, in fact. “So, what has Ren had you boys doing?” She asks conversationally. “Protecting him while he collects magical herbs, so far.” I reply. She sighs, shaking her head. “Of course he has. Ever since… Has he told you about..?” We nod, and she continues. “Ever since the incident, he’s been single-mindedly working day in and day out, refusing guests and only coming out of his house to restock on herbs or sell potions when he runs out of money.” “It’s just not healthy.” She shakes her head sorrowfully. “But you can imagine why we were so surprised he volunteered to give you a place to stay. It makes sense now. Most of the hunters and warriors in the village refuse to help him, now. Every time he just wanted to go further and further out, get rarer herbs…” She sighs. “They didn’t want the danger?” I ask. “No, most of them are fully capable of at least escaping from that level of danger.” She denies, smiling sadly. “But they aren’t capable of protecting someone else. They refuse because they don’t want to see him get killed.” A couple of gnome children run up to the bakery, starting when they see us sitting at a table. One of them steps up to us hesitantly. “C-can I see your sword?” He asks hopefully. “I don’t have a sword.” I reply, reaching over to where my pack – and subsequently, my warhammer - is. “But I do have a warhammer that works just as well.” I continue, setting it down beside him. The kids look at it in awe. “Holy-” “Language.” The baker chastises, before looking at us. “At least try to talk to him, when you can. Much longer like this, and he’ll burn out.” Shrugging, I say, “We’ll try, but I don’t know how successful we’ll be. Regardless, it was nice meeting you, miss…?” “Vel. Don’t worry if you don’t remember it, I’ve already forgotten all of yours anyway.” She replies with blunt honesty. And on that note, I stand up and pick up my pack. “Well, I think we should go now. It was a pleasure meeting you, miss Vel, and thank you for the delicious pie.” “Mm.” There is a note of general assent. “I’m glad you enjoyed!” Vel smiles. And with a not so distant explosion punctuating our exit, we head towards the plume of yellow smoke.

The simplest mana-conductive ink to produce is simply normal ink mixed with finely crushed mana mana crystals. Of course, this isn’t a very effective method. There will often be gaps between the fine particles, which cause losses of mana. Slightly better is the ink collected from monster squids, but as it can only be produced in those few coastal cities in Stalia and Enlux, as well as the fact that the squid monsters are difficult to handle, the supply is small. Then comes the blood of magical monsters. It is impossible to maintain a steady supply, and monster blood often only conducts one or two types of mana effectively – the blood of a water snake conducts water mana efficiently, but other elements… not so much. Still, if you manage to acquire blood from a monster of the same element as you need, it is very useful. Of course, the stronger the monster, the better the blood is for conducting mana, at least in general. If you somehow manage to get the blood of something like a dragon or a unicorn… Well, even if you didn’t use it, selling it would have you set for life. -An unknown scholar We stay the night in the cave: cold, but at least protected from the torrential rainfall. Using magic, I try to hold a fire going on the floor of the cave. Unfortunately, without any wood to fuel the fire, I have to keep it going solely with my own mana. I have enough mana to keep it going for a long while, but at the same time, I have to stay awake to do that, and I can’t just stay up all night to keep the fire going. After a while, we decide to just deal with the cold. Pulling my blankets tight around myself, I close my eyes. A ray of light stretches from the entrance of the cave to where I lay, causing me to awaken. The rain has stopped, and it’s now morning. I start packing up my blankets and, perhaps roused by the noise I’m making, the others quickly get up as well. We’re just about to leave and head back to base when Jakin cocks his head. “A breeze be coming from the back of the cave. Must come out on the other side of the mountain somewhere.” “We came this far…” I shrug, and we turn around and venture deeper in the cave. I produce a small flame upon my fingertip to guide our way with its flickering light. Squeaks echo as rats flee from our presence. We come to a fork in the cave, but we are able to find the correct way simply by watching for the flickering of my flame in the slight breeze. Pulling out my knife, I scrape a mark into the walls of both the path we came from and the path we are going into, and then we continue on our way. Minutes pass, and so do quite a few forks in the road. The correct path is invariably straight ahead, with paths branching off to the left and right, although the path occasionally changes direction by a few degrees. Boaz looks at the walls under the flickering firelight. “This cave isn’t natural. The entrance, that was, but this… It be hard to tell because the marks are so ancient, but it was dug, mined out. It’s probably the same for the side paths. Makes you wonder whether they were mining for something, or just digging a tunnel through the mountain.” “When it’s been this long, who could possibly know something like that?” I say, shaking my head. Eventually, I find it easier and easier to see the path ahead, and it’s not because my eyes are adjusting to the dim lighting. Extinguishing my finger, I step into the entrance of the cave and regard the landscape below. The twins and Xiltroth step up next to me to do the same. Before us lies a system of verdant valleys, walled off by mountain peaks. I have a faint suspicion that there won’t be any entrances like the one we found nearby, although it would be strange if none exist at all. The area is wide and long, the plant life fed by mountain streams and waterfalls. It looks like a hidden paradise. Xiltroth is the first to speak. “That isn’t a ruin.” “No. No it isn’t.” I agree. “Which begs the question: Why is the pathway leading to it abandoned?” “Let’s ask.” Boaz remarks, setting off down the decrepit trail. In the middle of the valley in front of us lies a town, noticeably un-ancient and ruined. I would have called it a city, but it lacks some of the features I have come to associate with cities; a large central building - large buildings in general, even. I suppose the central building is large… but only relative to the other buildings; it’s more wide than tall. Strangest of all is that the place doesn’t even seem to have a wall. How do they keep the monsters out? Don’t they spawn in the valleys? We make our way down the trail, one side of which is a sheer drop. The path is wide enough, however, that we aren’t at any significant risk of falling off. In fact, even a horse and cart could comfortably travel along this path with a small gap on either side. Well, once, maybe. Now, sections of the path have crumbled edges and water trails making it impassable for wheeled vehicles. It’s still easy enough for people, though. Reaching the bottom, we set off towards the town. Almost instantly, what I’d thought to be a bunch of mossy boulders lifts itself from the ground and rumbles towards us, standing a bit taller than me but almost three times as wide. It looks like some sort of mossy rock golem, and it doesn’t appear friendly. “Flank it! Something that heavy can’t possibly move fast.” I shout, pulling out my warhammer. Xiltroth pulls out his dagger – his staff would be more likely to shatter than do damage on this thing - and starts to dash around it. The golem reaches out to grab him with a mossy hand, but as expected its movements are quite ponderous, and Xiltroth is easily able to roll under the granite limb, slashing at its leg as he passes. With a screech, a shallow scratch appears on its leg. “I don’t think I’ll be able to do much damage to this one!” Xiltroth calls out from behind it. The golem starts to turn. Great, it looks like it isn’t intelligent, either. Stepping forwards, I raise my warhammer over my head and slam it down onto the thing’s head. Cracks web out from the point of impact, but it doesn’t shatter. It stops turning towards Xiltroth and starts to turn back to me. “Leave this to us!” Jakin shouts. “Just keep distracting it!” “You sure?” I ask. “Sure!” Boaz calls back. “It’s just a rock. We’re going to mine it.” I shrug as Jakin steps close and strikes at the golem’s shoulder a few times with his military pick. He steps back as the golem moves towards him, and Boaz comes in from the other side to mine the other shoulder. Me and Xiltroth barely have to do anything as the twins alternate, and the golem twists slowly this way and that, evidently unable to cope. Soon enough, Boaz strikes into its rocky shoulder and grunts, leveraging the pick. With a crack, an entire arm comes off. Barely a moment later, its other arm comes off, leaving it to look at us helplessly with its stony gaze, unable to do anything. Half a minute later, it topples to the ground with only a single leg remaining. The twins move on either side of it and start mining its chest. The golem’s single leg fruitlessly pushes at the ground as the cavity in its chest deepens. The dwarves start to go slower, as if they are archaeologists trying not to break a relic they know is somewhere just under the surface. “Is there something in there?” I ask. “Golem core.” Boaz grunts, concentrating as he chips tiny pieces of rock away. “It basically be a mana crystal, except it be perfectly spherical, and a bit larger than the crystals yeh can usually mine. Magi love ‘em.” I nod appreciatively as the glowing blue crystal is slowly revealed. After a while of carefully chipping at the stone around it, Jakin reaches in and smoothly pulls out the golem core. As soon as he does, the golem stops moving. “I wonder, if you put it back, will it start moving again?” I muse aloud. “Dunno. No harm in seeing, though.” Jakin fits the golem core back into place, but it doesn’t resume motion. “Nope.” He says, pulling it back out. The golem core is a crystalline sphere, about the size of a tennis ball. It’s almost completely transparent, and a dim glow emanates from within it. Carefully placing it into a pouch, Jakin places it into his pack. “It’s quite a nice crystal, isn’t it?” I remark. “Hm.” Jakin grunts. “I prefer amethysts myself.” Boaz scratches his beard. “That was a lot easier than I remember it looking.” I raise an eyebrow. “You’ve fought them before?” Boaz shakes his head. “We’ve seen them being fought. We used to be miners, and golems like these were fairly common. It always looked so difficult when the guards fought them off.” “That’s because they fought them in tunnels back then.” Jakin thumbs the point of his pick, checking it for damage. “They practically filled up the tunnel, making it impossible to get behind them and use their stupidity against them. In a tunnel, it be like fighting a wall with arms. Out in the open, it be little more than a practice dummy. Made of rock.” Seeing that the point is relatively undamaged, Jakin slips it back into his belt. The golem, now little more than a pile of rubble, is left behind as we continue on our way. Not encountering any other monsters, we soon reach the outskirts of the town, the grass being replaced by very orderly fields. These, again, don’t have so much as a fence surrounding them. A tiny figure in one of these fields speeds towards us. “Hey, misters!” He shouts excitedly, skidding to a halt in front of us. “Who’re you? Where’re ya from?” He asks, before looking at me. “Woah! I’ve never seen a gnome as tall as you before! You must be three times my height!” He isn’t exaggerating – he barely comes up to my knees. His ears are pointed, similar to an elf’s, and his messy hair jumps about as he hops from foot to foot in excitement. He doesn’t look at all put off by our armour or weapons, and I smile despite myself. Taking off my helmet, I say, “That’s because I’m not a gnome. I’m human.” His eyes widen, and he shakes his little fists in excitement. “A human? Here!?” He yelps. “It’s been…” His eyebrows screw up, concentrating, before he obviously gives up on trying to remember. “A long time since other people have been around here. A long, long, long long long long time.” He belts out. His eyes widen even further, so much that I’m afraid they’re about to pop out of his head. “Hey, does that mean I’ll be written into the history books!? First person to meet a human in I forget how long! Only ten, and I’m already in the history books! Yes! Good job, Dex!” “Dex!” A voice calls sharply. “What have I said about running off during work!” Dex turns around and shouts back, “But dad! It’s a human!” “What have I said about lying, Dex?” The figure in the middle of the field shakes his head, walking towards us. “Humans haven’t been seen around these parts for two hundred and sixty-four years.” Then he gets close enough to accurately see our height. “Sorry son, looks like you were right, after all.” He rubs Dex’s hair, messing it up even more. The man is taller than his son, but he still only just reaches my waist. He shifts his gaze towards us. “So, what’s a human, a demon, and...?” He trails off, unable to see what the twins are under their armour. Jakin takes his helm off. “Dwarves.” He says gruffly. “Two dwarves,” Dex’s father nods, “doing in these parts?” he asks curiously, with a slight hint of wariness within his eyes. “A happy accident.” I explain. “We were following an ancient path, expecting to find some old ruin at the end of it, when we got lost in that rain yesterday. Ended up in a cave, followed it through and found this valley.” “Hmm…” He nods. An explosion goes off somewhere in the town and a green plume of smoke starts to rise in the air. “Is that normal?” I ask in alarm, pointing. Dex’s father looks over his shoulder towards the town, then back at us. “Yes. Unfortunately. Shouldn’t be a problem. So, what do you chaps do? You look awfully…” He glances pointedly at our suits of armour and weapons. “Heavily armed.” “We’re adventurers.” I say. “Adventurers, eh?” He says, nodding. “What’s that?” I rub my forehead. “Mostly, we make a living fighting monsters, selling the materials, that sort of thing. But we also do things like providing an escort for people who need to go into a dangerous area, or fight bandits… Odd jobs that might need fighting expertise.” “Oh…” He nods, actually understanding this time. “Not many problems with monsters around here, but I imagine there’s some herb gatherers that wouldn’t turn away an extra hand or two.” “Why is that, by the way?” I ask. “I can’t help but notice you don’t have a wall around your town.” “Oh yes.” He nods proudly. “The alchemists came up with this powder some one hundred and eighty-nine years ago. Didn’t seem like it had any medicinal uses, until they figured out that monsters absolutely abhor the scent of it. We sprinkled it around the town, and none of them even ventured close to the wall. After that, the wall seemed an unnecessary cost, so we took it down.” “That sounds incredibly useful.” I nod in appreciation. “It is.” He smiles. “You plan on staying here long?” I glance over my shoulder at my companions. To a man, they shrug. “A few days, probably? We’ll want to buy some supplies…” Buy… Money… I hit myself at the realisation. “You probably don’t use the same currency as us, do you?” “Dunno.” He digs around in a pocket in his pants – pockets! – and fishes out a coin. It’s copper, same as the lowest denomination back in the five kingdoms, but instead of being circular, it’s a… eight, nine, ten: decagon. “Different.” I frown. “We’ll have to earn some coin before we can buy anything, by the looks of it. We’ll have to stay for at least a week, then.” The gnome nods and turns to Dex. “Son, run to the council hall and tell them to call a town meeting.” Dex, who had previously been sulking at being left of the conversation, perks up instantly. “Kay!” He dashes off, leaving a faint trail of dust behind him. “That boy has so much energy, I doubt even he knows what to do with it all.” He says fondly, before noticing my questioning gaze. “Hasn’t been any visitors for two hundred and sixty-four years. There’s another gnome village further up north, but we rarely have travellers passing between us. Any inns shut down over two hundred years ago. We’ll have to find you a place amongst the townsfolk where you can stay. That, and you are the first non-gnomes in this place for... well, I said that already. It’s best if we introduce you to the people, rather than giving them a heart attack when they meet you in the streets… Introductions!” He exclaims. “Where’s my manners? The name’s Jack.” Jack extends a hand up to me. “I’m Aaron.” I take off my gauntlet – his hands are small compared to mine, even without it – and shake his hand. “Xiltroth.” “Jakin.” “Boaz.” The twins accidentally introduce themselves at the same time. “Xiltho-” Jack attempts. “Sorry, I’m never going to be able to remember a name that long. Mind if I call you Xil?” Xiltroth smiles. “Sure.” “Well, we should get moving. Knowing Dex, he’s probably already there, dancing in anticipation for us to arrive.” Jack smiles, leading the way down the road. We soon pass the farmlands and paddocks – the paddocks have fences – and come to residential buildings. Then a market. And finally, the council hall. As Jack predicted, Dex is just outside, anxiously shifting from side to side. Spotting us, he zips over instantly. “Hey you’re here! The council wants to see them before calling the meeting, just in case.” “I thought they would.” Jack sighs. “I just hoped to speed it up a bit. I still have half a field to weed, and it’s going to take long enough as is.” He scratches his head and opens the door. “Follow me.” He walks straight through the door. I, on the other hand, have to stoop down to get through it. “These doorways are going to be terrible for my back.” “I don’t see a problem.” Jakin says smugly as he strides through the doorway. “Perfect height.” Boaz and Xiltroth follow just behind us, and Xiltroth also has to bend over to get through the small doorway. Inside is a wide space filled with orderly rows of chairs facing a long bench, again with chairs behind it. While the chairs facing them are all empty, these chairs are populated with gnomes of varying genders, ages and appearances, save one. “It’s true, then?” A bespectacled gnome with tufts of white hair on either side of his otherwise bald head asks. “Right. I motion that we should call a town meeting.” All the gnomes raise their hands, including Jack. “Right. Motion passed.” States the bespectacled gnome. “Dex, would you mind spreading the word?” “Yessir!” Dex jokingly salutes before running out the door. “Right. Take your seat, Jack, and we’ll get this started.” “Will do.” Jack trots up and sets himself down on the empty seat. I raise an eyebrow. “You’re on the council?” “Sure am.” Jack replies, scratching his nose. “Representative of agriculture.” Pushing up his spectacles, the same gnome interrupts. “Right. Jack, could you tell us what you know?” “Sure, Len. I was out in the field weeding, when Dex…” Jack starts telling the whole story from the beginning. Len takes notes as he listens. By the time he finishes, people are already starting to filter in. Quite a few of them gasp in surprise as they see us standing near the council with all our weapons and armour, while others are quietly grumbling. After a while, one of the female council members speaks up. “Do we have everyone?” Everyone starts looking around, and someone pipes up, “I don’t see Ren anywhere.” Nobody voices the negative, so the councilwoman turns again to Dex. “Could you…” “Nuh, nuh-uh.” Dex crosses his arms. “I don’t like him. His house is stinky.” “Please Dex?” The councilwoman pleads. “Nup!” Dex pouts. “I’ll give you one of my pastries…” She offers smilingly. “DEAL!” Dex zooms out of the door. “Where does he get all that energy?” A voice asks wonderingly. After a minute, Dex returns, tugging a reluctant gnome through the doorway. After they are both seated – Dex taking a seat a considerable distance away from the gnome, Ren – the meeting begins. “Right. Everyone, thank you for coming. As you can see,” Len gestures to us, “for the first time in two hundred and sixty-four years, one-hundred and seventeen days, we have visitors of other species.” A wave of ‘ooh’s and ‘aah’s comes from the townsfolk. After it quiets down, Len resumes speaking. “We have Aaron, a human, Jakin and Boaz, both dwarves, and Xil, a demon. They are adventurers, which, of course, have not existed among our people for four hundred and eighty-seven years. For those who are not familiar with the histories, it is an occupation mainly based around killing monsters.” Some of the people in the audience visibly relax when they realise that our armaments aren’t for fighting people. “Naturally, as this is such a rare event, there are some questions we would like to ask our visitors. If you have questions, I would ask that you wait until the council has finished asking ours. With that said…” Len shifts to address us. “I must admit, I am curious as to how you reached here. We had thought that the only ways in and out of the valley had been sealed.” “We sheltered from the rain last night in a cave. It had a tunnel in the back, we followed it and ended up in the valley.” I explain again. “A cave?” Len says curiously. “In approximately which direction?” “South. Maybe a little to the east.” I reply, scratching my head. “Ah yes, we have records of that tunnel.” Len nods in recognition. “I had thought, however, that it had been sealed by an earthquake some two hundred and forty years ago… Undoubtably one of the main reasons we haven’t seen any visitors for so long.” Well, it was sealed. “Jakin accidentally triggered a bit of a rockslide that uncovered the entrance.” “Ah, I see.” Len nods, noting it down. “Right, that’s it for me.” Another gnome speaks up. “Is it likely that we will see more people coming from now on, now that you know where we are?” After thinking for a moment, I reply, “I doubt it. To be honest, we ourselves have been secluded from civilisation for a while now. And the cave is quite remote in comparison to our homeland.” “Excellent.” He exclaims. “We don’t have the infrastructure to support more than a few visitors right now.” The council asks a few miscellaneous questions, and then we have to answer another half-dozen from the townsfolk before everyone’s happy. “Right. So, is there anything else?” Len asks. “Ah. Yes.” Jack perks up. “They said to me earlier that they want to buy supplies, but their money is different from ours. So they’re looking for work, and a place to stay for a while.” One of the councilmen frowns. “We don’t have any spare housing. Is there anyone that is willing to house these four for the duration of their stay?” For some ten, twenty seconds, nobody raises their hands, and I’m afraid that we’ll have to camp outside of town. We camp all the time, but when there’s a town right next to us? That would be disappointing. Finally, a single gnome raises their hand. “Ren?” The councilman says in surprise. “Yes, me. What, am I not allowed to?” Ren asks dryly. “No, of course, of course you can. I was just…” The councilman stops himself. “Your house should have enough room to house some guests. Very good.” “Right.” Len states, flipping through his papers. “Anything else?” Silence. “Meeting dismissed.” People begin to stand up from their seats and file out the front doors. Ren walks up to us. He has no facial hair – including eyebrows – and his frizzy white hair is powdered with black flecks. “Well, come to my house, I guess.” I think we have found the culprit of the explosions in town.

jinxs2011 I actually had this written up a while ago and forgot to post it. Yes, really. Chapter 48: The First Battle Begins “Well, you’re not dead.” Len notes. “I suppose it wouldn’t be inaccurate to suppose that things went alright, then?” “More or less.” I nod. “They’re somewhat of a mixed bag, the orcs. Some of them are arrogant and overbearing, didn’t like outsiders being there at all. Some are more accepting of changes and understand things better, mostly the older ones… Older and wiser, I guess. A lot of them aren’t too bright, either. Their leader is something different, though. His words are practically treated like gospel by the rest of the orcs.” “They worship him?” Len raises an eyebrow. “No, not worship… More like extreme respect. All of them believe that he’ll have a solution to basically any problem they come across, and I doubt anyone would disagree with anything he says.” I explain. Len’s eyebrows scrunch together. “Almost sounds like they’re completely dependent on him… That’s not always the best idea.” “Sure, but from what I’ve seen he is the best person for the role, and as a leader having people believe in your competence is a good thing.” I shrug. “Having said that, he isn’t young. Hope he’s grooming a replacement for himself.” “Yes, yes, well enough about their leader.” Len waves a hand. “Tell me more about their city, their culture, everything.” As we sit down in the afternoon to discuss things, Ren pops out of the back door holding a tray of mugs, and a herbal scent wafts over as he approaches. “Tea?” I ask the halfling alchemist. Ren nods, handing me one. “Yes, and I’d appreciate some feedback on the brew. I’ve been experimenting with different blends in my downtime, and this is my most recent attempt.” I take a sip, enjoying the simple comfort of a warm drink. “I shouldn’t be worried, should I?” I joke. “Of course not, my detoxification process is extremely thorough.” Ren says proudly. “Even if an ant were to drink the entire pot, it still wouldn’t have any adverse effects – well, apart from those that would come from drinking thousands of times its volume in water.” “Detoxification?” Heather voices curiously. “The removal of toxic substances or elements from something, basically.” I explain simply. Heather eyes the mug. “This has things that were poisonous in it?” “Aye. Important thing is that they ain’t poison anymore.” Jakin takes a sip, then another. “Ren’s the good sort. How all the stuff he does works is beyond me, but if he says it’s safe, I believe him.” Seeing everyone else drinking, Heather gives it a cautious sip as well. “So…” Jakin rolls his shoulders. “Question on the table is do we fight or not? Assuming there will be a fight, tha’ is.” “The general feeling I got from everyone last time is that we’re leaning towards fighting.” I note. “Anything people want to add that wasn’t said then?” “Their chief is one of the few people left who was friends with my father.” Heather says sadly. “I don’t want to lose that.” There is a moment of silence, and we each nod slightly to her to show our understanding and appreciation. “On a more military note, the fortifications of Ra’tlub are significantly better than ours here. Each of us would do better on their walls, not to mention most of us can attack at range… Putting it bluntly, if we were attacked here by the goblins, and they came in force, we’d have no option but to retreat.” Jakin explains, rubbing his thick neck. “We still have a good stock of bolts, right?” I ask. We’ve been retrieving the bolts the few times we actually use the crossbows, so apart from a few that have broken, we’ve got about the same amount as we got in the first place. “Dozens, but I can’t help but think that might not be enough.” Xiltroth shrugs. “If it ends up being a prolonged battle, and we aren’t able to retrieve any, we’re going to end up running out no matter how careful we are with our shots.” Heather tilts her head. “Why not just make more?” “Our bolts have heads of tempered steel – we have not the resources, tools nor means with which to forge such things. What we’ve got is all we have.” Jakin sighs. I consider, shaking my head slowly. “No, Heather’s right. We can’t make more steel bolts, but we should be able to make wooden ones. They won’t be effective against tough monster hides or armour, but we’re fighting goblins. Even wood should suffice, with the force of a crossbow behind it.” “…He’s not wrong.” Boaz shrugs at his twin. “Aye, true enough.” Jakin grunts. “Still, we’ll have to test beforehand that wooden bolts work well enough.” “We can do that.” I nod. “Heather, can you do the fletching for them? We should be able to whittle the shafts and tips just fine, but I haven’t a clue how to attach the feathers.” Heather nods. “Of course.” “Then I suppose the question is, how long do we have to prepare? We need to make sure we get back before the goblins do – assuming they’re coming immediately, or at all.” My eyebrows furrow. “Hard teh say.” Jakin grimaces. “Takes time for an army to move. They need to transport food, equipment, ammunition, and none of that’s fast… But that’s fer normal armies, not monsters. Hard teh say how they think, how they’ll act. Could be rushing towards Ra’tlub howling their little green heads off as we speak.” “Great, so no clue.” I nod. “If I had to guess, I’d say they aren’t doing that. Madmen and idiots don’t build cities. Still, Ra’tlub isn’t far from the goblin city. Best to be quick. We should get what we need here, head back to camp, and head off before midday tomorrow. If we’re early, I’m sure we can find something constructive to do.” As we enter the western orcish village on our way through to Ra’tlub, I can’t help but notice that the place is rather quiet compared to the last times we came through. There are still people around, but there are no kids playing in the street, and everyone seems to be hurrying about their business, casting eyes towards the alleyways as they pass. Even the livestock… No, they’re just as aggressive as ever. For another thing – Utak isn’t around. While passing one of the orcs, I can’t help but ask, “Did something happen? Everyone seems… Tense.” He starts slightly from being addressed, but replies all the same, “North village, got destroyed. Goblins. Big Chief called most guards to Ra’tlub.” “I see… I’m sorry to hear that.” My teeth clench. It’s happening after all. If the goblins launch a full assault on Ra’tlub, it’ll be on a scale far beyond anything I’ve been a part of or seen before. I don’t know what to expect. “Let’s get moving, then.” We arrive at Ra’tlub before the goblins, at least. We were due a bit of a break. We’re let in without any trouble. Every orc we pass on the street is carrying a weapon or has one close at hand. It’s clear that everyone is preparing for war. As we make our way to Greta’s inn, I see near every emotion on the spectrum among the warriors. Excitement and bloodlust for the biggest fight of their lives. Sadness at the fate of those unable to escape the northern village, and rage towards those who caused it. Fear, veiled behind bravado and drinks. Stoic determination. Despair. But near all of them seem eager for the fight. A man leaning against the corner of a house tests the hone of his axe with a thumb absent-mindedly as he stares into nowhere, a menacing smile splitting his face. The woman swinging a club as she walks down the street, forcing everyone to give her a wide berth. A couple of guys punching each other and psyching themselves up over drinks. “How long you staying this time?” Greta greets us with a nod. “Not sure. Until they get here - The goblins.” I clarify in response to her raised brow. Greta nods. “You fight, then?” “That’s what we decided, yeah.” I confirm. “You fight with us, you stay for free until fight is done.” Greta asserts. “After fight, you owe favour. Got it?” My eyebrow raises in surprise, but I nod gratefully. “Got it. Thanks Greta.” Greta grunts. “Thank me by killing goblins with me.” “You’re fighting as well?” I ask, my other eyebrow raising. Greta nods across the bar to a wall display where a massive ivory sword is mounted. “Been years… But battle’s in our blood. Time comes, everyone fights.” “I’ve seen you handle rowdy orcs.” I say with a shrug. “I’m sure you’ll slaughter mere goblins.” Smirking, Greta waves me away and gets back to managing the bar. “May as well have a drink while we’re here.” The twins break into a smile at my words. “OI!” I look over to see Greg raising a mug to us from a lonely table. “Room for some more if you’re drinking!” I shake my head with a smile. Greg’s still here too, huh? “Might just take you up on that then!” I call back as we make our way over. “Wasn’t sure I’d be seeing you here.” He nods as we sit down. “You guys have your own camp somewhere out there, yeah?” I motion to Greta to bring us some drinks. “A real nice one!” Jakin boasts. “Log houses, walls, even a spike moat. We’d have diverted the river to fill it up, but well, none of us are sure what you might be needin’ to do for a water moat to work proper, so we decided not to risk it.” “Pretty good for something we whipped together on our own. But hardly worth much against a goblin horde.” I shrug, handing over a string of wild fowl to Greta as payment for our drinks and food for the night. “This is our best bet. How bout you?” “I left the five kingdoms because I didn’t believe the war I was fighting for. It’s much simpler this time. No politics or hidden agendas. It’s fight to survive – and that’s it. If anything it reminds me of Ginerbe.” Greg stares into his mug, and the twins and I nod gravely as we think back to that terrible day. The werewolf pack tore through the city that night. Who knows how many people died? Even those who survived, who had more than the clothes on their backs to their names? If the same happens here, the orcs could be even worse off. There’s no other city for survivors to go to. Nowhere that’s safe for them. No allies. “I’m a lot stronger than I was back then. This time I hope to make a difference. Fight. Win.” Greg sighs and takes a gulp of beer. “Why is there suddenly war everywhere? Before we, our generation, there was peace right? Might’ve been shaky, but no war at least. Peace in the five kingdoms, peace here, now everywhere at once…” “I’ll drink teh that.” Jakin raises the mug that was just placed in front of him in a toast both to Greg’s sentiment and Greta for bringing the drink. “Mercenary bands must be getting rich these days.” “If they aren’t getting killed.” Boaz completes Jakin’s notion with the grim reality. “Aye, there’s that.” Jakin agrees. “But mercenaries be expectin’ it, I’d say. ‘S what they signed on for. Adventurers you hire to kill monsters. Bandits, maybe. Mercenaries you hire to fight people. Battles, sieges. Nobody going into that business that hasn’t made their peace with the possibility of death.” There is a chorus of agreeing noises, and we take some more sips of our drinks. “Do you happen to know what defences are being prepared?” I look to Greg. “Ammunition, boiling oil and the like.” “Ammunition…” Greg scratches his cheek. “Well, from what I hear there aren’t many bows around here, nor people trained with them. What little there is, is probably prepared, though. As for boiling oil, I doubt they have much of the like. Plus, with wooden walls, fire is one of the things they’re worried most about. For the most part, they’re gathering stones to throw. Once those run out… Knowing the orcs, well, I hope it won’t happen but I wouldn’t put it past them to just jump down and fight.” Jakin spits out his drink. “Jump down? From a reinforced position? To fight hand to hand!? That’s the stupidest thumpin’ thing I’ve ever heard!” “Putting it bluntly, though, orcs aren’t the sharpest knives in the block. And Greg’s had more interaction with them than we have. If he had that thought, it might be possible.” Xiltroth says quietly. “It’s just a feeling I have. The orcs… They take the idea of a full-scale war seriously. But at the same time, they don’t take goblins seriously at all. Something inside me just thinks some of them are going to do something stupid, and mob mentality might mean the rest of them will just follow suit.” Greg shakes his head. I nod slightly. “Maybe we could bring it up with the big chief. If we were to try and do something ourselves, they won’t listen, but they’ll listen to him.” “How’re yeh gonna bring that up?” Jakin asks. “Oh chief, we’re worried your people’re stupid enough to give up a major strategic advantage, reckon you could put in a word?” I shrug helplessly. “Would you rather risk losing this war to something that stupid?” “Point taken.” The time comes a couple days later. We aren’t privy to the specifics, but we hear that forward scouts had spotted the approaching army not too far out. Where specifically, the numbers, and how long it might be, we don’t know. But considering that all forces are standing at the ready… It should be soon. I look out over the land from the wall I stand atop, seeing nothing but grass, the occasional tree and a few roaming monsters. Not that I would be able to see much from here. They should be approaching from the north, and we’re on the western wall. The majority of our forces seem to be concentrated at the north, both because the enemy is expected to arrive there, and because that’s where the main gate is situated. Fearing the consequences if a fire should start on the wall, it’s been doused with water a few times over the past days. By no means is it fireproof now, but it should be harder to set alight at least. In terms of our team’s own preparations, we have a few small crates full of bolts ready and waiting by our feet. Xiltroth gave our crossbows one last check over just in case, and Heather’s quiver is chock full of arrows as well. Now, all we can do is wait. Greg is here. It feels strange, standing next to him, talking to him… I don’t like to lie. I hope one day I can tell him – no, all of them – the truth. Utak stands not far away, as well. When I asked, assuming it wasn’t coincidence, he said that the big chief had told him to stay near us. Whether that’s because he distrusts us, or for some other reason… I don’t know. Boaz frowns at the wall as it creaks under the collective weights of the warriors and supplies here. It doesn’t show any signs of breaking or caving, but I can’t help but wince at the sound nonetheless. Jakin sits, his breathing measured as he waits, occasionally peering over the battlements to scan the landscape. Xiltroth meditates next to them, his face twitching every now and then at loud noises or conversation. The twins’ shields are set up side by side, providing a modicum more cover for the larger frame of Heather, who can’t do much more than sit down to reduce the portion of her body above the edge of the battlements. Greg looks maybe a little pale, one hand gripping the wall and the other resting on his grimoire, eyes darting back and forth. And then there’s me, calm and collected enough to be just looking over them all casually. I wonder if I was a warrior or soldier in a past life, used to seeing battles and death. I should be… I don’t know. Maybe excited. Maybe afraid. Panicking, eager to fight. But instead I feel detached. Perhaps there is more I could have done to prepare. Perhaps different choices would have led to a better road. But the die is cast – and somehow, I can accept that. Just like that. And face forwards without regret. Clouds drift overhead as we wait. The tension in the air is almost palpable. A distant roar rises from the northern wall, and the orcs around us roar in response, causing me to let out a curse that is completely drowned out in the cacophony as I clap my hands over my ears in a futile attempt to reduce the noise. The next moment all the orcs start to run along the wall. In a split second I recognise and grab the arm of Utak, pulling him towards me and shouting to make myself heard over the yelling, “Where the hell are you going!?” “Fight is at the front!” He yells in reply. “The hell do you mean!?” I shout. “If everyone goes there, what the hell do you think will happen if this wall gets attacked!? I’ll tell you what, they’ll come straight over the walls and we’ll all fucking die!” Utak stops trying to pull his arm out of my grasp, his expression almost looking like he’d been slapped. “Why did all of yeh even come here in the first place if yeh were just gonna be running somewhere else?” Jakin shakes his head in despair. “If it were just to keep watch, just a few men would’ve done. Damn it, If I were in charge I’d be cracking skulls right now.” “I…” Utak looks almost like he’s about to cry. Xiltroth puts a hand on his shoulder and smiles painedly, trying to be reassuring despite being halfway to rage himself. “They’re not angry at you, Utak. We just… Hoped for more. There might not be a way for us to escape from this battle, and our chances of victory just dipped.” “Dived, more like.” Jakin scowls. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath to center myself. When I open my eyes, the wall has almost emptied. I turn around and look out over the plains – still nothing in sight. I open my mouth and speak evenly, “This isn’t helping. What’s done is done, now we need to deal with it. Clearly, we can’t expect the orks to move for anything less than a direct and obvious threat to the city. Utak. The moment we see enemies, I need you to run as fast as you can to the north wall and get reinforcements. Do whatever you have to. If this wall is breached, the city is lost.” Utak nods numbly. “The east wall is probably in a similar situation. Maybe worse. We need people over there. Xiltroth, Heather, Greg, you’re our fastest. Greg, I hope you have some sway with the orks.” Greg shakes his head. “Not really, but I’ll make it work.” “The south wall… I doubt they’re able to assault from down or across the river with this little preparation time, but keep an eye on it if you can. If we have to flee…” I hesitate. Is there even a good place to run to? “East, to the desert.” Greg supplies. “If you don’t have a better idea. I know some people there, we’ll be able to survive. Goblins aren’t acclimated to that environment, we’d be safe from them at the very least.” I nod. “East. If any of you die, I’m going to find your souls and beat your asses in the afterlife, you hear me?” Everyone nods, and the three of them move out. The wall is now empty, save the four of us: Utak, Jakin, Boaz, Me. Not enough to give an army even a second’s pause. Our only saving grace is that this is a hasty war. If they had waited to dig under the walls or build boats, this probably would’ve been over before it had even begun. Not to belittle the orks. I’ve no doubt that however this goes they’ll bloody their enemies. I just wish they understood there’s more to war than throwing everything you’ve got in one direction. Taking a few steps and stooping down, I heft one of the stones prepared for the battle before placing it back on its pile; one of many left without people to throw them. Well, there’s one among the orks with some smarts. Hope their chief is able to manage this situation. At this point, hope is pretty much all we’ve got.

Monster formation… A phenomenon that has stumped researchers for many years. Why is it, that when mana in certain ratios accumulate in the world, they transform into powerful beasts and monsters? And why, if they are formed from mana, do they have a form not composed of the elements that created them, and leave behind their flesh and blood after death? Perhaps the world will never know. And perhaps the world will never care. Whatever, they all call me crazy anyway, I’ll still research it! -An unknown scholar Dawn comes, the sun rising above the edge of the world and tinging the world with colour once again. With long, misshapen shadows, three silhouettes slowly progress down the road to Ginerbe city. A closer look reveals three men, heavily laden with furs of various shades and sizes. The tall one speaks. “You know, I really wish there were an easier way to carry these things. They aren’t too heavy, but,” He shifts his grip on the high stack. “There’s a lot of the darn things!” Jakin replies, with some resignation, “A cart would be expensive and difficult to navigate through a forest like that, and it be bloody difficult to protect a beast of burden, like a mule, in a fight. They don’t know how to stay put, the stupid beasts. Run off at the first sign of danger, and then what happens? They just get mauled to death by some stray monster anyway!” “There aren’t any monsters that can be tamed and used as a mount or to carry things?” Aaron asks with some surprise. “Aye, there are,” says Jakin. “But the ones yeh can buy are even more expensive, and it be harder to tame one yourself than keepin’ yeh beard clean while mining!” He continues. Aaron’s shoulders slump, the towering stack of furs comically following the motion. Counting off at a solid forty-three pelts of ordinary wolves, eight pelts of the ironback alphas, and one black and forbidding pelt that dwarfs the others in comparison. One might think that being softer than the ironback alpha’s pelt, it would be worth less as well, but this evaluation would not be taking into consideration the large size of a werewolf. A werewolf is two or perhaps three times the size of an ordinary wolf, and the dark colour of its fur makes it a luxury item. Unlike ordinary pelts, seamsters won’t have to stitch together multiple werewolf pelts to make a single article of clothing. This makes the clothing more comfortable, as well as much less likely to rip and tear. And the colour makes for an impressive coat or cloak, as well. Thus, it still sells for a greater amount than an ironback alpha’s. …Although, they have to get it there first, and that is proving to be a hassle. Nevertheless, get them all there we do, and with not a few strange looks on the way. Still, the guards and people of Ginerbe city are used to adventurers and their ways, and so we pass through to the guild relatively undisturbed. When we deposit our loot on the appraisal bench of the guild, it gives the workers there quite the shock. There are a few similar benches in the area, a couple already populated with other adventurers getting their materials similarly appraised. It isn’t unusual for this part of the guild to be in use most of the day. One of the guild staff sidles over to our bench and starts looking at the furs, spreading them out over the top of the bench. The bench is a monstrous thing, all thick, dark timber, low to the ground and… makes you wonder how they were able to move it here. Wide and long, the thing must weigh a tonne. Perhaps literally. As he pokes and prods at the furs, nodding to himself and recording some numbers down on a piece of paper at one end of the bench, I find myself idly wondering if there are monsters large enough to fill that entire bench. I am soon startled out of my reverie as the man starts speaking. “The wolf pelts are in good condition, apart from a few.” He points to a group of pelts that have large holes in them. The work of my spiked barrier, no doubt. Or their picks. “I can give you five coppers each for the…” He looks down at his notes. “Twenty-seven undamaged ones, and three for the rest, totalling… two silvers sixteen coppers.” He starts stacking the furs into piles, separating the undamaged and damaged ones. “As for these ironback alpha pelts…” He says, spreading them out on the table. “They all have varying degrees of damage. Normally, they’d be around thirty coppers, but as they are I can only give you twenty-five each, making two silvers.” In the past couple of months, I’ve done some market research on the prices of monster materials found in this area, and that naturally includes the ironback alpha. The price is a good one, in comparison to some other places. He continues, stretching out the pelt of the werewolf. “This one’s a bit rarer, but you’ve made a right mess of it. Look at all these holes and slices into it!” He points out the various places the pelt is damaged. There are quite a few. “I know it’s a tough monster, but did you really have to put so many holes in it? Surely you could have just waited a bit for it to bleed out with just a few. Still, we don’t have many of these in storage, so I can give you forty coppers for it.” Forty coppers, eh? It looks like hunting werewolves isn’t efficient at our current strength. “That all adds up to four silvers, fifty-six coppers. Is that price agreeable to you?” I look at the dwarves and shrug. “Sounds good to me.” “Aye, that price be fine.” Boaz nods. “Very well then.” The man claps his hands, causing a group of men standing to one side to start moving the materials on the bench through a door and out of sight. Reaching into a pouch on his belt, he counts out four silvers. Reaching into another pouch, he painstakingly counts out the fifty-six coppers. I’d hate for anything to ever cost ninety-nine coppers. Hey, doesn’t that mean that the commonplace marketing strategy of selling something for 99c instead of $1 would backfire here because of how much time it takes to count it all out? And does he have a pouch for each different coin? I want a pouch for each different coin. I want another pouch. That looks very convenient. “Now, if you’ll humour me, can I see your weapons?” Such a strange request, but it’s hardly any trouble. I don’t want to cause any trouble, especially here, so I just half draw my sword to show him. The twins also present their weapons. “I see… And which one of you can use earth magic?” How could he possibly know that? “That would be me. How can you tell?” He laughs. “I’ve had this job for over a decade. I’ve seen thousands, tens of thousands, of monster corpses and hides. I can tell the difference between the wounds left by a stabbing sword, a spear, the spike of a mace, the spike of a war hammer, a dagger, you name it. And magic. No burns and bloody wounds eliminates fire, water and ice. Only other element that can do this kind of damage is earth.” That’s impressive. Still, why does he care? “What rank are you all?” Before today, it had just been wolves and boars, so I was still copper. “Copper.” ““Iron.”” He turns to me. “Then congratulations, you’re now iron rank. Most of these ironbacks have wounds caused by earth magic, as do many of the ordinary wolves. And many with sword wounds as well. With this amount, it’s enough to promote you.” He fishes out an iron token from somewhere and flicks it at me. With my almighty reflexes and stunning hand-eye co-ordination, I nearly fumble the catch. Nearly. “I’ll get one of the lads to update the register in a minute. What’s your name?” “Aaron.” He grins, proffering his hand, which I promptly shake. “Mine’s Tork. With any luck, we’ll get to know each other over the years.” “I’ll try my best not to die, but no promises. I might get bored one day.” He laughs. I’m not joking. Splitting the money is a bother. Four isn’t divisible by three, not when you’re talking coins. It ends up with the twins taking three silvers and four coppers, and me getting one silver fifty-two coppers. They say they usually share their money anyway. After that, Jakin and Boaz manage to convince me into a celebration at the adventurer guild’s pub. I have no clue how, and I am regretting it to this moment as I gingerly sip at a tankard of what tastes like pure alcohol mixed with fruit juice. Drifting about in the liquid are flecks of… something. Hm. This goes on my list of the few things I miss about the old planet. Other articles include peanut butter and purified water. Seriously, If I find peanuts in this world, I AM going to make peanut butter. Almost everything can be made tastier with peanut butter. What was I saying before peanut butter? …I’m drawing a complete blank. Let’s see, I was drinking… Oh, the beer. The beer. Should I finish this beer? I look over at the twins. There is froth all over their beards, and they somehow already have an empty tankard in front of each of them, and another being chugged down. The atmosphere in the pub is lively, with many adventurers celebrating a successful hunt or consoling themselves over a depressing failure. Or just plain ol’ drinking. Wh, what? How are they already on their next drink? Wait, there’s six tankards on the table, and they’re downing another couple… They finished off two drinks apiece while I wasn’t looking? My god, with that capacity for drink, I wouldn’t be surprised if over half of their innards consist of stomach and liver. Putting aside the biological difficulties of such a feat, of course. For a while, I simply engage myself in the raucous ambience. In time, I finish my drink… and another is pushed into my hand. And then another. If this wasn’t cheap beer, I’d be worried about the cost right now. …And if I wasn’t becoming drunk. Still, the sensation is somewhat pleasant, even if my thoughts are becoming a bit muddled. The day wears on, people pass through, people pass out, crude jokes are exchanged, and stories are told. It is relaxing, to spend some time not exercising, hunting or training. It was dawn when we left camp; took us a few hours to get back to town after that. Add another few hours with all this indulgence, and that makes it about mid-day when they wandered in. Made quite the scene, too. It’s not every day that 34 people with identical equipment wander into the guild; most adventurers wear mismatched equipment. After all, say you can buy a single piece of armour, perhaps some greaves. Will you wait until you can afford the whole set? No! That single piece of equipment could save you from a life-threatening injury while you’re hunting. So, you can imagine how much they stand out. Honestly, I had expected them to come over a bit earlier. At the start they were all ‘let’s leave as soon as possible’, and now they take a couple more months. As they are now, they should be vastly more powerful than me. At least equivalent to steel rank, probably mithril. Excellent. I watch in amusement as the eyes of the man at the counter grow progressively wider and wider as he writes down their details. It’s to the point that he faints from shock and has to be replaced by another member of staff. When the captain said multiple affinities and fusion affinities aren’t that rare, he may have been exaggerating. According to what I’ve heard on the streets, they aren’t that rare – but only in stories. It’s the kind of thing where you know a guy who knows a guy with a fusion affinity, but you’ve never heard of or seen anyone else with it. So, when a group of 30+ people came along, most with multiple affinities… it was just too much for the poor guy. It’s to the extent that drinkers are getting up and greeting them, hoping to get in the good books of people who could, one day, be among the world’s strongest. Jakin and Boaz aren’t exceptions, and neither am I. After all, Phil was dead. And it isn’t like I won’t be interacting with them in the future, so better to be known to them now. Roaming among the group, I introduce myself to many of the members. Including Greg, of course. It is most amusing, seeing his eyebrows knit in confusion. Most likely, I’m reminding him of me, but he can’t quite pick it. My mannerisms and way of speaking haven’t changed, after all. So, they’ll be hanging around this city for a while. That’s a thing. And they’ll be killing all the monsters… ‘Maybe we should move cities soon?’, I idly ponder as I swing my sword. Honestly, just swinging it is rather boring. Strenuous, but boring. Solution: magic. Setting a few sticks on the ground in front of me, I continue to try not to burn them, all the while swinging the sword. More efficient, and more realistic. You hardly have time to pause in a battle to cast magic. Have I said this before? I’m getting a faint sense of déjà vu. No matter. Now that’s a weird saying. No… matter? As in space? No subject matter? That makes more sense. Ah well. I’ve been accumulating cash over the past two months. Nothing big, but I have a few silvers saved up. And I got myself a spare set of clothes. Darn useful, spare clothing. Awkward washing your dirty clothes when you don’t have a spare set… In the distance, I hear a faint voice shouting. I can’t quite make out the words, but I think it might’ve been something along the lines of ‘get on with it…’ Strange. Well, if you insist, I’ll stop waffling. Later that evening, in the very same cave, a very bored man is repeating his exercises yet again. “Why can’t getting stronger be a bit more fun? Endlessly repeating the same thing, over and over and over and over and over… Why is this so much more fun in games!?” Suddenly, a surge of mana converges, shining bright in the relatively dark cave. Then another surge of brown earth mana, covering the light. Out of it steps… An imposing figure of hulking sto- or not, it looks like one of those natural rock formations where a bunch of rocks are perfectly balanced on top of one another. Except rounder. And smaller. In fact, it’s a bit smaller than me… and it’s slowly rolling its way towards me. Strangely, each rock that composes it is rolling individually in separate directions, and yet it is still retaining its stacked form. …What? It’s so… slow. Picking up a stick, I place it parallel to its movement. … … … Well, not quite snail pace, but pretty darn close. I kick at the thing. “OW!” Feels like a damn wall! But no time to nur- Oh wait, there is. Retreating a few steps, I take off my boot. No blood, good. Okay, now what? Sword is a no-go, I’ll just damage the edge, and it already has a few nicks as it is. And I’ve already tested the boot. Magic it is, then. I create a war hammer of earth and compress it. Compress it further. And further… it looks like a small mallet now… More mana, more compression, and I finally have a sturdy war hammer. I look back at the rock… thing. It’s slowly making its way towards me, a low grinding sound emanating from the ground as it keeps rolling. Okay, let’s see… I’ve not used a war hammer before, is this how you grip it? Heavy… Or it would be if I wasn’t using magic to lift it up. If it’s like this, I should be able to put some good power into it. I take a stance with the hammer, holding it behind me as I wind up for a home run. As I start to swing it around at the thing, I take a step forward. Twist my body with the motion, gathering momentum, I slam it into the monster with a resounding CRASH, smashing a few of the rocks. Not bad for a first try, if I do say so myself. It doesn’t seem to be moving, so it should be dead now. Although it could be argued that it wasn’t ‘alive’ in the first place, it is a pile of rocks after all. Speaking of… What do I do with these? Eh, they’re just rocks. Shoo into a corner for me. Aw, this hammer cost me a good quarter of my mana, what with its size and all that compression. Eugh, that’s it, I’m going back to the city to sleep. Laying on my ‘bed’, slowly drifting into sleep… *AAWWOOOOOOOO!* A long howl splits the quiet, getting louder as more howls join the bestial chorus. Seriously, I’m trying to sleep here… A short while later, the sounds stop, and the world lapses back into silence. For a while it stays that way, until a bell starts to toll. Loudly. Damn, I can’t sleep like this… Wait, that’s the alarm bell. Something’s wrong. In a flash, I snap out of my sleepy stupor, and start strapping on my equipment. A few moments later I’m combat ready. First order of business is meeting up with the dwarves. Thankfully, I know where they’re staying. As I rush outside; into streets busier than during the day, I catch a glimpse of the sky and can’t help but curse. A full moon and howling. This isn’t good. As evidenced by our combat yesterday, the monsters known as werewolves are not restricted to full moons. However, they only spawn on a full moon, and during one their physical abilities are strengthened, moving them up from being among the weaker steel rank monsters to being among the strongest. I can hear the sounds of combat coming from the front gates as I hurry towards the twins’ place. A few minutes later we meet up… and the sounds are getting conspicuously louder. We start heading towards the gate. Another bell starts tolling. “Emergency evacuation!”, Jakin exclaims in shock. “How is it that bad already!? What’s happening out there!?” His question is answered soon enough. When we get close to the gate, we see dozens of werewolves swarming over the walls. Guards, adventurers and mercenaries alike are doing their best to defend the gates, but with little success. There are just too many, and they’re too strong. Joining the fight, it is all we can do to keep one busy. Werewolves are everywhere, and warriors start to fall, grievously wounded… or dead. The battle grows more and more chaotic, and more hopeless. More and more keep crawling over the walls, and the precarious shield wall holding back the tide is getting pushed further and further back, moving from enclosing and open area to blocking the streets, lined with buildings of brick and stone. Brick and stone? Did I just say brick and stone!? I take another look when I have a moment to breathe. They are indeed. A savage grin grows on my face. Fire magic, finally. Pulling most of my mana out, I convert it to fire attributed mana in a massive blazin’ ball above my head. Then I splash it down onto the horde of werewolves. A good portion of them are set on fire, and they let out yowls of pain. But to my disappointment, they put themselves out after rolling around for a bit. Still, it surely did something. A moment later, a bright light shines above the battlefield, and a storm of stone and ice rains down upon the pack, drawing yelps of surprise and pain. The cavalry has arrived. Sure, they may not be the most powerful people in the world, not even close, but in a small city like this? They may as well be. Lightning sparks between werewolves; water encapsulates their heads, drowning them; air magic covers toothy jaws and noses, depriving them of oxygen and slowly draining their strength. Darkness creeps in and light shines in their eyes, blinding. Bolts of fire chars fur and shocks senses. The characteristic scents of burnt fur and melting flesh wafts around the battlefield as the vanguard charges into battle. A solid ten men, muscles visible even under leather armour and wielding bastard swords of tempered steel; these are no longer mere trainees. More surprising to most would be the woman who leaps out with them, fair features and slender figure standing in stark contrast to the boorish men who traditionally dominate the battlefield. Still, it isn’t her face that eyes are drawn to. Long and wide; thick, with a handle that allowed for a two-handed grip: a great sword in all its massive glory is gripped in her hands. Dextrously she spins it, sending a light cut at the sensitive nose of the monster in front of her, stunning it as she brings it around again for a stronger strike, cleaving through its side. It’s down for the count. Arrows arc down in thickets from nearby rooftops. Captain Pierce isn’t so narrow-minded as to not recognise the strategic advantage of such a skill. He must have started teaching them basic archery after they were used to using melee weapons. After all, if you’re useless in close combat, there are many situations where you can even become a hindrance to your comrades. For some, it apparently took. They might not be confident or strong enough for melee combat, or perhaps not magically talented. Indeed, archery is an excellent method in these circumstances. With no need to fear immediate retaliation or the gruesome feeling of viscera upon your blade, it’s the best choice if one has difficulty with these things. Blood, guts and bodies litter the ground, and now the majority aren’t human. Nevertheless, the numbers of the werewolves are greater than the defenders, and the defenders are also dwindling in population. The battle wears on. Mages run out of mana. Archers run out of arrows. Warriors are running out of steam. A scream of despair echoes on the battlefield, a woman holding the broken body of an old friend. One of the werewolves had managed to break away unnoticed, and it is wreaking havoc amongst the ranged units. The first casualty among the summoned, since that day. And not the last. A warrior slips on the bloody soil. He joins the others in eternal rest. Holding his heart aloft, his opponent stands victorious before loping off to find another opponent. Still, slowly – ever so slowly – the werewolves are being pushed back. A howl pierces through the clashing of swords and claws, and they start swarming back over the walls. Panting, I slouch against a wall. Exhausted, I tilt my head and look at my sword. Or what’s left of it. I hadn’t had the time to notice it during combat, but it’s more nicks and scratches than it is edge and iron. A conspicuous crack runs from the tip to halfway down the blade. Forget monsters, I wouldn’t cut cheese with this piece of scrap. I’m not sure this can be used even after melting it down. I need a new weapon… And that’s as far as I can think before I lapse into a blank state of mindless recuperation. But not for long. “What now? No, it can’t be…” At some point Jakin and Boaz had plonked themselves down beside me; I was just too tired to notice. With great effort, I follow their gazes to the top of the city walls. Upon them stand five figures, tall and… regal. Two have fur of faded grey. Various lines cross their bodies, creating a lattice of lighter fur: old scars. They are hunched with age, and yet they stand taller than their brethren who fled earlier. Two with fur a bloody red which dimly glow, ominous and powerful. Their eyes radiate a bestial desire for battle, carnage. Slaughter. Their claws are black and their hearts, blacker. In the middle. Tallest of them all. Strongest of them all. Claws a radiant white. Fur of blackest night. Eyes like rubies, clear and bright. Teeth of shining gold, tougher than even the hardest steel. An image of a full moon nefariously glinting on its forehead. And a blatant disregard for the strength of man, woman and dwarf alike as it sits casually on its haunches atop the wall. The night isn’t over yet.

Very rarely, a monster is born that is capable of human speech. Strangely, this ability seems to be irrelevant to the form of the monster, being just as likely to appear in say, a monkey – which has similar vocal chords to that of a human – as it is in a squid. Regardless of how exactly this ability comes to be – there are much stranger things in this world, after all – each and every monster with this ability is almost guaranteed to be very powerful in comparison with other members of its species. Still, they aren’t all bad. I once met a really nice talking dragon. We still have a chat every now and again… -An unknown scholar “Kill them.” The lead werewolf speaks softly in a guttural voice, echoing in the eerie silence. “All of them.” “So…” Aaron says slowly to his companions. “Time to run?” ““Aye””, They say in unison, and they start running in the opposite direction. In the face of death, exhaustion slips away. The few minutes of rest help as well. Aaron still only has a small portion of his usual mana pool, but he is new enough to mana reinforcement that the upkeep is negligible. Unfortunately, that also means that the effects are equally negligible, and were the twins not restraining themselves, they would have long outstripped him. But their only chance of defending themselves is to stay together. And friendship, that too. Behind them, sounds of battle start. After only a few moments, people start shouting and screaming in pain. Then, a roaring crash. Unable to help himself, Aaron glances back over his shoulder. A building is collapsing, turning in mere moments from a neat construction to a disorderly pile of rubble. Aaron’s eyes widen in shock and fear. Collapsing buildings aren’t the only thing behind them. One of the grey werewolves is loping towards them at nearly double their speed. “Incoming!” Aaron shouts out to alert Jakin and Boaz to the approaching danger. He throws out a compressed block of earth mana to stall it, even for a moment longer. But to the werewolf, it may as well not exist. It ploughs through without even a pause in its stride, a cloud of dust and dirt scattering in its wake. It continues, unfazed, to attack the man behind. The twins don’t hesitate, slamming their shields down in front of him and bracing for impact, planting their stout feet on the ground firmly. In less time than it takes to take a breath, the werewolf is upon them. With great momentum, it barges shoulder first into their shield wall, sending them skidding backwards uncontrollably into a nearby building. Without the weight of their shields and hammers, they would undoubtedly have been sent airborne by the strike. Its charge stymied, Aaron doesn’t leave it the opportunity to recover, sending a quick stab at it. Contemptuously, the grey-haired werewolf reaches out with a clawed hand, grabbing the blade and stopping it dead in its tracks. Aaron tugs on the blade, but it doesn’t budge in the iron grip of the werewolf. With a toothy sneer, it clenches its hand, shattering it effortlessly into a million sparkling fragments. Shooting out like shrapnel from a grenade, they simply bounce off the tough skin of the werewolf, but human skin is fragile. Weak. The shards slice shallow furrows into Aaron’s exposed face and arms. Blood begins to seep from the wounds in bitter trails. ‘So… I don’t suppose there’s a way I can get out of this?’ Aaron thinks to himself as he involuntarily winces in pain. ‘I can try lava magic, that would still make sense with fire and earth magic.’ A dull orange glow blossoms forth, a stream of lava weaving around him like a dancer’s ribbons before whipping out against the werewolf. With a wave of its arm faster than the eye can see, the werewolf splatters the lava against a nearby wall. That wall is set aflame in an instant, not having the fortune of being made of a less combustible material. The blaze spreads fast, bathing the otherwise dark street in a shifting red light. Surging forwards, a claw slashes downwards at Aaron. Unable to make any reaction beyond a slight lean backwards, the claws rip into his face, creating four deep, uneven tears winding across his face. Blood gushed from the wounds, covering one eye in a sheet of red. Just when it seems like the end is approaching for Aaron, there is a shift in his mind. The fear and panic on his face vanish like snow on a summer day. (POV Elder werewolf) He was weak! Pathetically so. The short ones were downed by a single strike, so I had wanted to have some fun with this one for the first time in years, but he’s just too weak! These men… it’s no wonder we didn’t slaughter them years ago. It’s so easy that it’s just… Boring. If not for them killing his son, we wouldn’t be bothering with this. I shivered in fear. Just thinking of him makes my fur stand on end. His power is unheard of among our kind. Why else would I heed the words of one not much older than a whelp? Still… Perhaps I could feed before going back… Running my tongue across my dagger-like teeth, I grin at my prey and sniff at the air. Fear is such a sweet scent… It’s not there. It’s not there, why is it not there, why can I not smell your fear! I leap backwards, putting distance between us. Something is wrong. Very, very wrong. With how weak he is, it’s impossible he doesn’t fear me. Absolutely impossible. He must have allies hidden nearby. Putting my nose to the skies, I inhale deeply. The scent of burning wood fills my nostrils. The musk of tasty morsels, blood, raw flesh… a faint scent of fear coming from where the others are… but nothing here? I swivel my ears around… nothing. I really must be getting old. Striding forwards, I move in for the kill.   Silence suddenly split through all the sounds irritating my ears. Then. The world. Became. Blood.   The next thing I know, I am in the forest, running back to the pack. What… was that? (POV Aaron) It really ran fast. I suppose its base instincts took over at the end there. As for what I did to it… Technically, I didn’t use any powers, I was just taking advantage of a side effect from a past use of an ability. To be exact, I accessed my memories of earth and focused my bloodlust on the werewolf. Think about it: in my memories lie the experiences of countless murderers, soldiers, assassins, not to mention the innumerable wild animals. As it is, my bloodlust is so endless it can practically coalesce as a physical presence. Considering how powerful an effect it has even on strong monsters, I won’t be using this regularly. Still, this should be sufficient way to resolve situations that would otherwise result in death. As if returning from a moment of sleep, I absentmindedly look around me. Then I break out in a cold sweat as I remember the last thing I saw, and I whip my head around frantically. Phew… It’s gone. But why? No, rather than that, the twins! I walk over to their still bodies, and check their pulses. I sigh in relief. Still going strong. But how on earth do I get us out of here? I suppose I’ll have to wake them up somehow. I try slapping Jakin lightly across the face. It leaves a bloody handprint on his face. Right, I was bleeding.  I probably should have attended to that first. Oops? Then I fall over backwards in a dead faint. (POV Jakin) Groggily, I open my eyes. Then, recalling my last memory, I jolt myself into being fully alert. Like any true dwarven warrior, my pick and shield hadn’t left my hands, even when I be out fer the count. Readjusting my grip, I warily look around. The elder werewolf is nowhere to be seen, but both Boaz and Aaron be lying on the ground around me. I take a step towards Boaz, then stumble harder than a halfling sailor after a few pints of rum! That blow took more out of me than I thought. Steadying myself, I take the few steps towards my brother. I be the veteran of far too many hangovers to let some puny dizziness affect my stride! Falling to my knees, I shake my brother. If I be alive, he will be as well. “Brother! Bo, wake up!” He groaned! Praise the earth, he’s alive! “…Eh, what?”, he mumbled sleepily. “Brother? Why is there blood all over yer face!?” Eh? Putting a hand to my face, I feel a slick layer over my skin.  When I look at my hand, it has some blood on it. But I don’t feel any pain on my face. “I don’t think it’s mine, I feel fine.” “Thank the earth!” He exclaims. “But where has that werewolf gone?” “I don’t know, brother, but we can’t stay here any longer. First, though…” I flipped Aaron onto his back. I hear Boaz murmur beside me, “Dear God…”, and I feel the same way. His face is covered in a thick sheet of blood and dirt, along with any other part of his body that was exposed. “Get out the bandages, I’ll get the booze!” We both hurry to extract the supplies from our packs. His life be returning to the ground as we speak! Finding the right flask, I start pouring it all over his body, cleaning off the blood and revealing the true extent of the damage. At the same time, Aaron lets out a pained breath. Good, he is still alive. Looking at his limbs, I breathe a sigh of relief. Nothing serious there, just a whole lot of scratches. But then I see his face, and my skin starts sweating like a pig over a fire. “Boaz! I be needing those bandages about now!” The sounds of rummaging get faster. On his face are four deep wounds, narrowly diverging around one eye, exposing the cartilage of his nose and the bone of his forehead. That nose isn’t going to heal straight without holy magic, and that don’t be an option right now. “Here!” Boaz says, clapping a roll of clean bandages into my hand. Let’s get to it, then. After I be done wrapping him up all proper, he be looking strange instead of half-dead. It’s only then that I finally have a chance to look around. There be a building on fire! No wonder I could see so damn well. “His sword’s in a hundred pieces! What in the name of stone and steel happened here?” Boaz’ voice is scarcely louder than a whisper. “Doesn’t matter, we have to get out of here. We’ve wasted too much time already. Get his legs, we’re carrying him!” I’d carry him myself, but his feet would drag along the ground. Damn humans and their height! I grab his arms, Boaz grabs his legs, and we start hightailing it out of there. (POV Greg) This whole thing is a bloody mess. A bloody mess, literally. This was a normal night just an hour ago, how did it all go to hell so quickly? I don’t even want to imagine what would’ve happened had we not been there. Heck, it was a slaughterhouse even with us there. So many people dead… Dear God. But when those special werewolves popped out, and one of them talked, we knew then and there that we had to get the heck out of dodge. But of course, they weren’t about to let us leave, were they? No, they decided to send both of those blood red werewolves out at us. Some idiots tried to fight.   …It didn’t go well for them. Then somebody shouted ‘run’, and somebody else shouted out ‘split up’. Great idea, we all thought. There are only two of them, they can’t chase all thirty-fo… thirty of us. We conveniently forgot about the horde of ordinary werewolves just outside the wall. Now that we were routed, they came right back over. Great. Just great. So here I am, running for my life from a half-dozen of the damn things, and distracting myself by thinking how screwed up this all is. On the plus side, this has given me a practical opportunity to try out my ice skating. Went well, managed to get me a good lead on the ones chasing me, what with all these turns in the road I can freeze over and make them slide about. Unfortunately, werewolves seem to be spreading throughout the city. Looking for survivors, no doubt.   Looks like I’ll have to leave the entire city. We spend one night here, one night, and the city gets overrun by monsters. How unlucky can a guy get? I round the last corner before the city gates, and see a large crowd of people, crying and screaming, all trying to flood out of the gates at once. Me and my big mouth. Well, there are other ways to get out of here. I look for, and find, one of the guard towers. It has stairs up to the wall, and I quickly climb them. I need only to tie a rope to one of the crenellations here, and lower myself down. Huh, it looks like I’m not the only one here. There are two dwarves tying some ropes around an unconscious guy and… is that a tower shield? This looks a bit suspicious. Still, I shouldn’t assume anything. “Need any help there?” They’re up with weapons at the ready in a flash. Woah. They relax somewhat when they see I’m not one of the werewolves, but they don’t put down their weapons. One of them says, “Who are yeh?” “I’m Greg, an adventurer. I’m just trying to get out of here, same as everyone else.” I reply. “What are you doing with that man?” When they see I have no hostile intentions – I still haven’t drawn my sword – they holster theirs and introduce themselves. “I’m Jakin and my brother here be Boaz. The man on the shield there is Aaron. He took a swipe from one of the werewolves, and he’s out like a log. So, of course, we have to find a way to get him out of the city.” He gestures at the man, Aaron. “Hence the shield. We be lowering him down in a moment, if yeh don’t mind…” With that explained, naturally I don’t. They start lowering down their assembly on ropes. Slowly. So slowly that I start seeing werewolves trickling towards us from the streets. It never rains but it pours. Suddenly, I remember the reason we are up here in the first place. Running back along the wall a bit, a rapidly diminishing, but still sizeable crowd is surging through the gates. “INCOMING WEREWOLVES!”, I shout before moving back to the dwarves. There is nothing more I can do for them, I’m already running low on mana as it is, and I’ll need every bit of it if I want to have any hope of survival here. The dwarves, finished lowering Aaron, are knotting the ropes around the battlements to go down themselves. “Mind if I use the ropes after you?” Barely sparing a glance at me as he jumps over the battlements, rope in hand, the words “Go ahead” floating in on the wind in his wake. His brother swiftly follows. Looking over the edge, I see them already touching down at the bottom, starting to work on cutting their friend free. Now let’s see… when was the last time I went abseiling? Oh right, never. Okay, grab the rope, lean backwards over the edge, you can do this Greg. I feel myself falling, my stomach dropping as my body pivots ninety degrees to its usual orientation. Gravity suddenly feeling very strange. Still, my feet are still safely on the wall, my grip is strong, and despite my fear I feel perfectly in control of my descent. I start walking backwards down the wall. Very strange, but I can see why some people found it enjoyable. I’m not enjoying it, however. Why? Because werewolves. I’m running away from a bloodthirsty horde, no time to enjoy myself. As to why I abseiled instead of just shimmying down the rope? Well, I probably won’t get another chance to abseil for a while, so I may as well. Now, to get out of here… “I don’t suppose you’d mind me going with you for a while?” They glance at me. It’s hard to see precisely in this darkness, but it is clear they are probing for any ulterior motives. He begins saying something, but at that moment we hear a howl from atop the wall and screams coming from the gate. Damn, they’re already this close? Abruptly, he says, “Very well. Let’s go!” They begin running while awkwardly carrying him between them. We don’t have time for that. “Let me carry him!” immediately, they offloaded him onto me. “Fine, but if yeh let him die, we let you die.” I just nod, adjusting him on my back as I run. We can only ignore the sounds of wailing and screaming behind us as we run from the dark tide.   Later, as we pause to rest hours away, I look back at the city. Its silhouette stands outlined against the dark sky with the flickering light of flames spread throughout it. The city of Ginerbe is no more. (POV Aaron) I wake up to a burning pain in my face, arms, legs, and a bit of a dull pain in my torso as well. Ow. On top of all that is a gnawing hunger in my stomach, and my mouth feels dry as sand. Opening my eyes, I see a stretch of fabric above me. Seems we got out of there fine, great. Unless – plot twist – I’ve actually been captured by someone and am now a slave. I look down at myself. No restraints, looks like I’m clear. I try to stretch up in a sitting position. Aaaaand fail. Blood loss SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKS. Okay, trying again. Aaand, hup! Seated position reached, achievement get. …I think standing is beyond me right now. Running my tongue along the inside of my mouth in a futile attempt to moisten them, I crack open my mouth and try saying something. “Foooo… ooood…” Well, it’s a start. A short frame ducks under the entrance to the tent. Here I am, head touching the roof while in a seated position, and he barely has to duck. Judging by the absence of a facial scar, it’s Boaz. “Glad to see yeh aren’t dead. Close call yeh had there.” “Food”, I moan again. He chuckles, and hands me a leg of cooked meat. “It’s not much I know, but we don’t have access to anything better right now…” I don’t hear a word he says, as I’m busy ravenously devouring the meat. I really need to stop getting myself into situations where I’m starving. This is painful. Next, a drink. Taking a water skin out from my bag, which is conveniently placed beside me, I take a long drink, draining it completely. Refreshing… apart from that bitter taste of leather. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that. “So, where are we?” He shrugs. “Somewhere north of the city. Things were a wee bit crazy last night. We’ll have to check our maps before we go any further. Besides that…” He gives me a deep look. “What happened while we were out?” I frown, trying to remember further. Perhaps now that I’m not a panicked mess, I can recall something else? Or… not. “I don’t know myself. The blasted thing was strong. It shattered my sword, clawed my face and looked like it was just about ready to kill me. Then… next thing I know, it’s gone, I’m trying to wake up Jakin, then I’m out again.” He looks at me for a while, then shifts his gaze. “Well, it doesn’t matter now. We’ll be staying here for a while longer, but we need to move after mid-day. Yeh should get some rest till then.” He leaves the tent, and I slump back down onto the hard ground, easily falling into sleep. I get woken up some time later, and start packing up the tent, which the dwarves had taken from my pack. I knew it would be useful at some point. “Hey Aaron, this is Greg, he’ll be travelling with us fer a while.” What? What happened while I was unconscious!?

Fate, destiny, a pre-ordained life upon the path of which you walk, unable to stop. Some people believe that what will be, will be, regardless of the choices you make or the paths you take. Others believe that only the past is fixed, and the future can be changed based on actions made in the present. All I can say, is this: Whether or not you are right or wrong, the world will not change because of your beliefs. The world cares little for us, and in the end our lifetimes are but a single blink in the endless cycle. …What do I believe? Both, obviously. -An unknown scholar Another city, another step closer to the dwarven kingdom. The same forest spreads in an unbroken line to the south. How large is that forest? Although, I must say that it would be hilarious if it was that long but pencil thin. Now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody go into that forest, or anyone come out, which is strange. You’d think with all these beastmen around that there’d be adventurers venturing in daily, but there’s not one. …Scratch that, someone’s coming out now. Oddly enough, it’s a human. Dressed in animal furs and sporting rippling muscles wherever they don’t cover, he looks almost exactly like you would imagine a caveman – minus the grunting and head scratching. And he’s walking towards where I am, out in the open some way from the city. As he gets closer, I can make out a few more details. He has some sort of weapon, probably a sword, tied to his waist, and what looks like a shield is slung over his shoulder. One his face is an unevenly cut beard, and – wait, isn’t that Boris? He looks like Boris. Why is Boris here, and dressed like a caveman? Stopping a few meters away from me, he looks at the city in confusion. “Where am I?” He asks, seemingly directing the question at the air in front of him. I raise an eyebrow. “Hammerquake city.” Startled, Boris quickly turns to face me. After a second, he relaxes again. “Sorry. I was in there for a while,” he gestures towards the forest behind him with a thumb, “and there’s not much in the way of intelligent conversation. Hammerquake city, you said? Where is that?” “In the south-western region of the Kingdom of Binod.” I say casually, stretching. Doesn’t look as if I’ll be getting any more exercise done today. “Damn! And here I thought I was going south-east this whole time!” He looks back towards the forest for a moment, but he flinches away from it instantly. “I suppose I’ll have to take a detour east, through Xin. Thanks for the help.” He starts to trek eastward. “Wait a moment!” I call out. “Don’t you know about the war?” Boris turns back towards me. “War?” He breathes, eyes wide. Nodding, I say, “Yes, war between Stalia and Xin. It’s hard for humans to travel through demon territory right now, so you’d be better off heading further west and looping around that way. Longer trip, but much safer, since you’ll avoid all the battlefields.” Boris hesitates for just a second, then turns around and starts running. East. Sighing, I grasp my mace and ready myself for combat for the umpteenth time this week. The bandits in Binod seem to be some sort of unique variation of the norm. In comparison to the ones you find in the other kingdoms, the ones here are much stronger and more skilled, more common… and at the same time, a group of six bandits would be classified as a large bandit group. Probably because of some stubborn pride in their own strength, most of them seem to prefer working alone, or perhaps with a couple of buddies. In some ways, they are easier to deal with than the bandits elsewhere: you don’t have to worry so much about getting surrounded, for example. At the same time, each one is much more difficult to defeat, with most of them being able to simply shrug off weak magic and swing around a broadsword with deceptive lightness. This particular group has four people, conveniently the same number as us. We spread out, and our opponents do the same, effectively creating four individual battles with a bit of space between them. I square up against a rabbit beastwoman. Another thing worth mentioning about Binod is that it has a much more even man-woman ratio in combat professions than other kingdoms, who will often have very few. Were she to walk along any street back on Terra, she would surely attract plenty of woman and men fawning over her adorably fuzzy form. Of course, I know better than to underestimate her because of that tiny characteristic twitch of her nose that would make any girl squeal, ‘Cute!’ Indeed, I am the very model of seriousness… Especially because she’s wielding a large, two-handed warhammer. I can’t help but mentally compare our sizes… Mine somehow feels woefully inadequate. Stepping forward, she plants her foot heavily and pivots, swinging her hammer in a mighty horizontal swing. Even with my eyes closed, I would be able to notice it’s approach merely by the sound of the wind it’s producing. Broken bones would be the least of my worries if I was hit by a strike of this magnitude, even through the protection of my armour. That is what hammers and similar blunt-force weapons specialise in, after all. Nevertheless, even a planet-crushing blow is meaningless if it does not hit its target. I take a measured step back and am immediately rewarded with a refreshing breeze as the heavy weapon passes mere centimetres by me. I’m about to take advantage of the gap that will inevitably be created while she attempts to reverse the direction of her hammer when I notice that she doesn’t seem to be doing that at all. I take a few more steps back and watch with wide eyes as the hammer passes by me again, even closer than the last time. With a twist of her hips and a few momentous steps, the hammer makes a complete revolution around her body and again comes speeding towards me. I’m forced into a constant retreat as she whips her warhammer around again and again, drawing ever closer to me in an assault highly reminiscent of the ‘whirlwind’ attack in gaming. Of course, this being real life, the attack has weaknesses – rather large ones, in fact. One could simply duck under the swing, for example, and initiate a crushing counter-attack. But with my armour? Not likely. How about jumping over the swing, then? Perhaps not a realistic option back on Terra, but here in a world with mana reinforcement it won’t be too much of a problem. However… Jumping? Against a rabbit? That would be asking for trouble. Utilise speed to strike her in the gap presented by the hammer spinning around her body? Perhaps I could get in and make a strike, but I don’t think I’d be able to get out in time – and even if I were able to land a disabling blow, the momentum would still result in it hitting me. No, instead I will exploit the single greatest weakness of that technique. And so I play the waiting game, continuing to retreat. …She doesn’t seem to be getting dizzy. Alrighty then, plan B. What was plan B again? Well, it doesn’t exist yet, but it’ll be a whopper, I’m sure. As I continue to retreat, I observe the rabbit beastwoman. The movement of her arms, the twisting of her muscles as she spins, the shuffling dancing of her… feet. Indeed, it is the feet that are the greatest vulnerability of this technique. A single misplaced step, or even having the feet placed at the wrong angle could cause the user to collapse under their own momentum. Disturbing another’s footsteps is easier said than done, especially when they are experienced in keeping them steady. I try going left, then quickly darting right as soon as she changes direction – no dice. She only wobbles slightly as she makes the change in direction. Right now, most other people would be in a pickle. Unfortunately for her, I can use magic. A stream of earth surreptitiously crawls its way down my body to the ground, where it spreads out, looking like any other innocuous patch of dirt. As soon as she steps on it, I will it to curl around her shoe and drag her down. It isn’t much mana, so the pull isn’t much either – but as I said, in a situation like this, even a little is a lot. She tumbles to the ground, her warhammer tearing itself out of her grip and skidding a few meters away. Groaning, she tries to get up, but I put my mace to her neck. “I’ve bested you.” I say plainly, but she’s having none of it. Pushing my mace away using her arm guard, she dashes to pick up her hammer again. “Like hell you have!” She shouts, again rushing me. I shrug. This time she doesn’t attempt to execute the whirlwind attack, and instead comes at me with straight swings. I dodge one, and then another of her heavy swings. Lifting my foot, I kick her with my iron boots, sending her stumbling backwards. After that, I quickly subdue her. In the same tone as before I say, “I’ve bested you.” She nods sadly, and I walk over to watch the others. Xiltroth has already defeated his opponent, Jakin looks to be just finishing up, and Boaz seems to be engaging in a fairly even back-and-forth combat. But he doesn’t seem to be in any danger, so I don’t think I’ll have to interfere there either. In no time at all we are on the road again. Perhaps the best thing about beastmen bandits is that after you defeat them, they’ll pretty much listen to whatever you say. Of course, we’ve never tried asking them anything excessive, but usually they’re fine with handing over some of their cash, weapons or armour, etc. As well as that, I hear that if you pass through the same area again later, they usually won’t attack you a second time. One might argue that there’s an issue of morality in letting bandits roam free, but they’re practically part of the culture here. ‘If you can’t defeat them or can’t afford to hire people to defeat them for you, you shouldn’t be travelling in the first place’, or something. And… I’d rather not kill people, as a general rule. If they’re trying to kill me or people around me, I can’t exactly excuse that, but they don’t pose much of a threat to us at this level. We usually just take their weapons – much harder for them to hurt other people then. Besides, if they kill people around here, I’m sure the city guards or whatnot would be clearing them out. -But in the end, it’s mostly because we’d rather not kill people. “So, where are we now?” Boaz glances up from the map. “Wait just a moment, will yeh?” he looks back down. “We be about… here. Unoccupied lands, if this map is recent.” I look around. Apart from the road looking a bit less maintained, this stretch of road looks just like any other. I point somewhere roughly north-west. “What’s up that way?” I ask. Boaz looks up from the map. “I don’t know. Most of this area be blank.” He says simply. I pause. “Want to explore that, someday?” Boaz shrugs noncommittally, Jakin looks pensive and Xiltroth is nodding eagerly. “Yes!” He shouts eagerly. “We are supposed to be adventurers, but we’ve never done any real adventuring!” Jakin nods thoughtfully at that. “Maybe. But I fer one would prefer to be a bit stronger before we brave the unknown like that.” “I agree with my brother. Who knows what dangerous monsters be lurking in the wilderness?” says Boaz. Nodding in agreement, I say, “Of course, we’d need to be much stronger than we are now. But you have to admit, it would be exciting to see what’s out there.” Jakin grunts in agreement. Travelling through uncharted territory turns out to be sort of relaxing. You rarely meet any other people and bandits are almost non-existent, so all you have to worry about is the monsters. Still, you are also removed from any of the many comforts of civilisation – well-cooked food, music, beds and toilets, just to name a few. While it’s not hard to find a bush or something to do your thing, I can’t help but look suspiciously at the leaves… what if they have an effect similar to that of poison ivy? Ugh. I must admit, I know little about the plant life of this world. Putting aside that grim thought, we have seen quite the variety of wildlife while travelling, as well as quite a few strange monsters – large, flightless bats that hopped strangely along the ground; goblins with tough grey skin… even a flying boar. I can’t help but wonder why the road is so empty, even though it should be the main road between the dwarven and beastmen kingdoms, so I ask Boaz. According to him, trade in the past had been marred by constant attacks on the trade caravans. Since it happened almost every single time, and the dwarves had incurred significant financial losses, there has never been any trade between the two kingdoms since. The days wear on, and finally a dwarven city lies before our eyes. Walls tower overhead, their height such that I can scarcely make out the figurers of dwarven soldiers atop them. Made of some light grey stone, it is smooth its entire width and height, as if hewn directly from some gargantuan formation of rock. The city itself is not visible behind these walls, but I can see that the city merges into the mountain, rendering it completely unassailable from the rear. So treacherous are the cliffs of this mountain that I would doubt that its crest had ever been set foot upon – had it not been for the colossal statue set into its face, looming over the city. Massive although it is, the proportions make it clear that the model of this monstrously large construction was a dwarf, and his stern eyes watch unblinkingly over the city. “Tonvar Ironblood, thirteenth king of Morrock.” Supplies Boaz, a rare hint of solemn gravity in his voice as he beholds the statue. “They say seven craftsmen died carving him from the mountainside, and dozens more were left crippled.” “It’s… Impressive doesn’t seem quite adequate to describe this.” I say dully. “This must have taken years!” “Eight months, sixteen days.” Boaz grins smugly. “But- what? How? Huh?” I stutter. My brain can’t connect the enormity of this statue with the time-frame he just stated. Even the pyramids took over a decade to build, and this is MUCH taller, and much more detailed to boot. Shaking my head, I just give up trying to understand it. The answer was probably magic, anyway. It’s always magic. While we are chatting away, the already miniscule line to enter the city shortens to non-existence in front of us. The guards look us over, their expressions hardening as they notice Xiltroth. “You three may pass, but we will have to take you in for questioning.” Says a guard, motioning to his compatriot, who moves to grab Xiltroth. Xiltroth looks like he’s getting ready to fight them off, so I tap him on the shoulder. “Calm down. You’ll only make things worse if you fight them.” The guard eyes me warily as he grabs Xiltroth and pushes him into the guardhouse. “Why?” Jakin asks, stone-faced. “Because we have joined the war against the demons.” Says the guard expressionlessly. “Every demon is a potential spy. Now, get in the city or leave.” Unable to do anything else, we enter the city. Well-constructed, grandiose buildings line the streets, but right now my eyes can’t help but gloss over them. “What can we do?” I ask. Jakin and Boaz look at each other. “I don’t know if there’s anything we can do but hope that the people interrogating him aren’t crazy.” Jakin scratches his head helplessly. “We haven’t been to this city before, and we haven’t even been in Morrock for over two years. Maybe if we ask around, we can find something useful.” Boaz supplies, semi-hopeful. “And what should I do?” I’ve never been to Morrock before, after all. I don’t know a thing about the place, apart from the fact that it’s inhabited mainly by dwarves. Jakin shrugs. “Get your weapon and armour repaired, find an inn.” Okay. “Meet back here in a few hours, then?” They nod, and we go our separate ways. Contrary to my expectations, finding a blacksmith doesn’t take me long at all. After I take off my clunky armour and pay the soot-faced dwarf at the forge a handful of coppers, he quickly repairs it, even buffing it until the metal shines. “Anything else?” He asks gruffly as I refit the armour. I slip on my gauntlet, stretching my fingers to test the movement of the joints. Had he oiled it without me noticing? “I don’t suppose you have warhammers? Ones meant for two-handed use?” He grins, tweaking his nose with a greasy thumb. “I may have a few in storage. Too heavy for normal people, see, so I don’t get many orders for them. What metal you want? Iron, steel… mithril?” His eyes gleam slightly as he mentions the last. “How much for the mithril?” I ask, locking eyes with him. “60 Gold.” He states. I may have some savings from adventuring, but not that much. “I don’t suppose you can sell it for-” “60. Gold.” He says again, eyes narrowing. “Can I look at your steel warhammers?” I ask, giving up. “Certainly.” He says with a tinge of disappointment, vanishing through a doorway. Returning half a minute later with a few massive hammers held in his arms in a frightening display of strength, he places them gently on the counter. Each of the three have slightly different designs – handle length, width of the head, whether it has a spike on one side of the head or is a double-sided hammer, etc. I inspect them carefully, hefting each and testing their balance before making my pick. It looks to be just short of a meter long, with a thick wooden handle and both a flat hammer head and a sharp spike head. I pay him the one gold and sixty-three silvers he asks for it, and then I try and figure out how the heck I’ll secure this on my body. Eventually I figure something out, but before I leave a thought strikes me and I again turn to the dwarven smith. “Can I buy a couple of mithril daggers?” He raises an eyebrow. “If yeh got the gold. Yeh lookin’ fer a pair of daggers, or…?” “No, just two daggers. A long one and one of normal length, if possible.” He moves back into the storeroom, then returns in a jiffy, placing two daggers and their sheathes on the counter. “Six gold, six gold eighty silver.” He states, jabbing a thick forefinger at each dagger as he states their prices. I sigh as I hand him most of my earnings so far. Buckling the long one onto my belt, I put the other into my pack. My old knife, I sell to him for half a dozen silver. This’ll leave me down on cash, but it’s not like I’ll use it on anything else, anyway. Having done that, I head out of the smoke-scented shop and roam the city, looking for an inn. By the time I find an appropriate inn that has rooms open, I figure it’s time to head back. …Watches sure were convenient. Give it a year or two, though, and I’m sure the demons will invent them… Although their research is probably focused in another direction right now. Glancing at the slowly sinking sun, I head back to the gate. Hopefully the twins have found some useful information. When I find them, both are wearing grim expressions. “It isn’t looking good.” Jakin looks considerably worried. After all, us four have been fighting alongside each other for more than a year now, it’s only natural that we have all developed deep bonds of trust and friendship. “The captain of the guard be raised to his position recently, and to top it all off, he’s younger than us.” He says, gesturing to himself and Boaz. “Which means… what?” I frown. Jakin rubs his forehead, grimacing. “Which means that he’ll be wanting to prove to his superiors that he’s fit for the role. People already know about what happened at the gate and… well, one tavern has a betting pool on when, the execution will be… tomorrow has the most money on it.”

The end of the world. Curiously, much of the time the situations people envisage when those words are said are not the end of the world itself. Many people interpret the ‘end of the world’ as the end of humanity on the world. For most humanity ending events, the world itself might actually be better off for it. Don’t get me wrong, even I don’t plan on moving on to the next world anytime soon, but you have to admit that humanity as a whole have a negative effect on anything and everything. -An unknown scholar With the money Ren gives us for our efforts, we are able to buy the tools and supplies we need. The tools have to be custom made for our size, so we stay another couple of days. After those are done, we bid the gnomes farewell and start the long trek home – up the mountain, through the caves, down the mountain, across the plains, over the bridge and down the river until we make it back to camp. Although the town was nice and their food was good, it was a little too safe and easy for us. What was the point of being adventurers if you stay in a place that repels monsters? That, and the place was a little too… Little, to be comfortable for me. Time passes, weeks probably, although it’s difficult to tell when you aren’t keeping a careful count. We got surprised by a stampede of copper bulls a few days back. We managed to get out of their way in one piece, but our camp was torn to pieces. Rebuilding takes time, more because of the scarcity of nearby trees than anything else. Sometimes we have to roam for up to half an hour before finding a suitable copse of trees to cut down and bring back. We build another cabin from the ground up, then a watchtower. It’s nothing fancy, more a small room on stilts than anything else, but at least we aren’t going to be taken by surprise again. For a while, we leave it at that, but then the floor of our cabin starts getting filled up with random monster materials and equipment, so we start building another building to use as storage. After that, well… I suppose we must’ve gotten used to roaming around to find trees, because a stack of logs keeps growing next to the storage cabin. Until the twins decide to use it to build a palisade wall around the base, that is. Xiltroth and I get bored and start digging a dry moat around that, and we sharpen sticks and branches to line it with. All the dirt we dig up we just dump in a pile a short distance from the camp, smoothing it out to little taller than knee height to prevent an obstruction to vision. None of this is particularly difficult or complicated, just exhausting and time-consuming. Once we finish all that, we don’t even have to worry about weaker monsters anymore. The more powerful ones might be able to jump over the wall or simply plough through it, but most monsters around here aren’t that strong. We find and carry – or in one case push – rocks of varying sizes back to our base to use as crude weights. With all the work we are putting into it, the place is starting to feel less like a temporary camp and more like a home. None of this happens quickly. It took us a few months all up, including several trips back to the gnome town every now and again for simple supplies like nails and rope. And it seems our work was not for naught. Xiltroth, on duty in the watchtower, just spotted something coming towards us in the distance. “Another stampede?” I call up, worried. Our wall might be able to hold up under the assault of a few of them, but ten, twenty, a hundred? Probably not. “I don’t think so.” Xiltroth calls back down. “Too few of them. Maybe a couple dozen. And it might just be the distance, but they seem to be strangely… Tall?” The last word he says with a faint hint of confusion in his voice, making it clear to me that he himself isn’t sure what he’s seeing. Whatever they are, we best prepare for the worst. Hurrying over to the gate, I pull it shut and lift a board into place to lock it there. That done, I climb up the ladder to the watch tower, which is right next to the gate, to see if I can see the situation for myself. I squint into the distance and can only barely make out the group. Their movement suggests they are four-legged, but at the same time they look to be much taller than any normal animal I’ve seen – save perhaps a giraffe. They are moving at a steady pace, less than my sprinting speed but more than I could comfortably travel long distances at. It only takes a minute or two before they are close enough to make out more exact details. “What are they?” Xiltroth shakes his head in confusion. “Some sort of deformed horse beastman?” “No.” I say, frowning. “Centaurs.” With the body of a horse but sporting a human torso and upper body sprouting from where the horse’s head would usually be, they are a strange sight to those unfamiliar with their species. They are all wearing similar clothing, woven or formed from leather to cover not only their human upper body but drape over their equine torsos like blankets. After another minute, they slow to a halt a way out from our walls. That’s something, at least. Now we won’t have to fish heavy corpses from the moat. Whether we’ll have to bury some, still… Is up for debate. “You!” A heavily muscled centaur trots to the front of the herd and points his sword at us. “This is our land! Leave!” I stifle an incredulous snort. “We’ve been here nearly half a year now, and this is the first we’ve seen of any centaurs.” I call back down to him. “Besides, there’s plenty of empty land around here. It isn’t hard to find another place like this along the river.” “If you won’t leave, then-” He begins to raise his sword when a centaur woman approaches him and appears to try and talk him down. After a few words are exchanged, he hits her over the jaw with the hilt of his sword and she staggers away, clutching at her mouth. I notice a hint of red dripping down her hand before I am distracted by him raising his sword once again. “Attack!” “Oh, for the love of…” I sigh, pointing my hand down at them as bows are raised and arrows nocked. Fire streams from my hand, billowing in thin ribbons over and through the herd of centaurs before dissipating into thin air. Most of the centaurs rear back, their expressions somewhat frightened but more… Confused. I had controlled my fire to not hurt them, mostly as a show of force than anything else. Mostly. A series of snaps ring out, and the centaurs all drop their bows almost simultaneously as the bowstrings snap and whip at the hands of their wielders, singed through by my flames. “Piss off.” I call down to the lead centaur. With an ugly expression, he turns and leads his herd to gallop away. Apparently, he’s smart enough to realise that attacking a fortification, no matter how flimsy, without and siege or ranged weapons, is a terrible idea. “That went better than I expected.” Xiltroth remarks, watching them retreat. I shake my head. “They’ll be back.” Xiltroth looks at me in confusion. “After seeing how powerful you are? And their bowstrings are broken, what could they do, even if they do come back?” “Their leader is overly aggressive, he won’t be satisfied with this loss.” I say, following their movements warily. “They’ll have spare bowstrings as well, so that won’t stop them from attacking.” Xiltroth nods. “You’re probably right.” His eyes continue to track the centaurs with no concern visible on his face. “It’s been a while since we fought people. I might be a little rusty.” “Doubt it. I’ve seen you practicing your staff techniques every morning. If anything, you’ve gotten better.” I reply. “Perhaps.” Xiltroth nods. “But that won’t help us here. And Aaron… I’m almost out of bolts. The gnome village doesn’t have crossbows, so once I’m out, I’m out.” I frown. “That’s not good. Without your crossbow, I’m the only one with ranged attacks left – and my fire and earth magic are nowhere near as fast as a crossbow bolt. It’ll limit the actions we can take in the future considerably.” “Nothing we can do, I’m afraid.” Xiltroth shrugs. “True.” I nod. “Well, keep a watchful eye out.” Xiltroth nods back, and I climb back down the ladder. Despite my belief that they will be back, nothing happens for the rest of they day. That night, I am awoken by Boaz roughly jostling my arm. “One of them’s coming back.” He says, jerking a thumb over his shoulder towards the gate. “Thought yeh’d want to be awake fer this, whatever it might be.” “Just one?” I ask, already starting to slip on my armour. “That doesn’t make sense. They were practically raring to fight us earlier, but they just send one person?” Shaking my head in confusion, I don my helmet. “Wake the others. If they’re using this one as a distraction and circling their main force to attack from another direction… The gate is the only weak point in our fortifications, but it’s not implausible that it could be breached elsewhere.” Boaz nods, shaking the others to rouse them. “What is it? Monster?” Jakin grunts, standing up and stretching. “Or are those centaur things you mentioned back again?” Xiltroth stands and grasps his staff wordlessly. “A single centaur is approaching.” I explain. “Could be a distraction, or who knows what else. Xiltroth, see if you can spot anything new from the tower-” Xiltroth nods and exits the cabin. “As for us, we get the rest of our gear on and join him as soon as possible.” I finish. After frantically pulling on our armour, we step oustide and jog up to the watchtower. “Can’t see anything around apart from that one centaur.” Xiltroth reports, looking down at us. “Either they’re really good at hiding for their size, or he’s come alone.” “If anything, that just makes this more confusing.” I grumble as I climb up the ladder. Reaching the top, I peer out into the night. A helpful point from Xiltroth soon has me looking in the right direction, and I spot the centaur in question. It is approaching us at a much slower speed than the herd did earlier, but has nonetheless nearly reached our camp. Slowing to a halt a short distance away from the gate, the centaur looks up at the guard tower, where the four of us stare back at it. “I… I mean no harm.” The centaur calls up to us. “Why are you here?” I call back down. The centaur shuffles nervously on its hooves. “I know you don’t… Have a very good impression of us, but I, we need your help.” “You attacked us earlier. Why should we help you?” I reply unsympathetically. “Earlier… You were right. This isn’t our land, ours is further to the east. Our chief just wanted your camp, and he – he’s furious.” The centaur says fearfully. “He’ll lead us to attack again first thing in the morning.” My eyebrow furrow in confusion. “Your point?” “I, I want you to kill him. If he’s dead, a new chief will be elected, and we won’t have any reason to attack you.” The centaur pleads. Now I’m really confused. “But why do you want him dead?” “The previous chief… He was my father.” The centaur says hesitantly. “According to tradition, if one wishes to become chief, they have to compete with the current chief in a hunt: Whoever kills the most powerful beast or monster becomes the chief.” Shaking its head, the centaur continues. “The current chief broke tradition. He murdered my father in cold blood, beat the rest of us into submission and took his place as chief by force.” “Revenge, then.” I nod. “But even if we were to help you, how would we kill him? We can’t just walk into the camp and lop his head off. Surely he would have guards around the camp, and around himself.” “Yeh’re not considering this, are yeh?” Jakin whispers to me. “The whole thing reeks of a trap.” “We’ll make a decision after we have all the information.” I whisper back. “Most of us are asleep right now.” The centaur continues, not having heard our whispered exchange. “There are a few guards around the camp, but not around his tent. He thinks that everyone is too afraid of him to try attacking him.” “Why not kill him yourself, then?” I ask. The slightest sliver of light from the moon glints off of a tear on the centaur’s face before it wipes it off hurriedly. “Because he’s right.” “Look, I can get you into camp. Distracting one of the lookouts won’t be difficult. All you have to do is walk into the tent and stab him while he’s sleeping.” The centaur pleads. “Please, just help me.” “Give us a minute.” I call down. “I still think it’s a trap.” Jakin whispers. “It could very well be.” I agree. “But he seems sincere enough to me.” Boaz nods. “I think he’s telling the truth.” “Either way,” I reason, “It’s not really our decision to make. The three of us, in our big, clunky armour? They’d hear us from a mile out. Only Xiltroth can do it, so it’s his choice to make.” Jakin and Boaz nod and shift their gazes to Xiltroth, who is strangely quiet. He holds up a hand for silence, and after a few moments he nods determinedly. “I’ll do it.” (POV Xiltroth) Hearing him speak made me think about my own father. He was terrible, no doubt about it, but he doesn’t deserve to die for it. If he was killed, would I do the same? Find the killer, get revenge? …I don’t think I would. At the same time, I don’t think I could stand by and let it happen if someone was trying to kill him. Aaron nods. “Alright. We’ll follow nearby. If you need help, give a yell and we’ll run in and start bashing heads.” He glances at the twins. “Or knees.” My mouth pulls up into a smile despite the seriousness of what I am going into. “What if someone else yells?” Aaron shrugs. “If someone else yells, you’ll probably still need help.” There’s truth in that. “Alright, let’s go while the night’s still young.” Aaron says before turning around and calling down to the centaur, “We’ll do it.” Before long we set out, following the centaur back to his camp, or so we hope. If it’s a trap… That would be unfortunate, but I’m sure Aaron would be able to figure something out with his magic. None of us carry torches, or any other source of light. Too easy to be spotted like that. We walk in the darkness, seeing solely by the light of the moon. It takes a short while, perhaps a few kilometres, until we see the glow of their campfires. Moving quietly over to the centaur, I whisper, “Do centaurs have the same organs as a human?” I need to make sure he dies as quickly and quietly as possible, and that won’t happen if I assume their human parts are the same as ours and they turn out not to be. “I haven’t had much contact with humans, so I can’t be sure.” He replies quietly. “But most of our organs are in our lower bodies.” He pats the side of his horse half. Hm. I don’t even know where the organs of a normal horse are, so it’s impossible for me to guess where they might be on something that’s half horse, half human. Still, if nothing else, I know where they breathe from. That should be enough. My foot slips slightly in a patch of mud before I catch myself. Crouching down, I grab handfuls of the stuff and start covering my hair with it. My dark skin blends in naturally with the night, but the same can’t be said of my hair, white as it is. Daubing it with mud not only covers it up, but it also keeps it out of my eyes and helps to mask my scent, although that won’t be much of a factor here. “Alright, this is close enough.” Aaron whispers, halting. “We’ll watch from here. Good luck, Xiltroth.” I nod. “Wait here a short while. I’ll distract the lookout, and then you’ll have an opportunity to slip in. Look for the big tent, near the middle of the camp.” The centaur trots towards the camp. “If this be a trap… They’ll attack as soon as yeh get in to camp and turn yer back.” Jakin says warningly. “Be wary.” I nod again and turn my head to watch the centaur. He has started talking to the lookout, slowly walking into the camp so that the lookout has to turn around to keep him in view. There aren’t any other lookouts, not in view at least. Now is my chance. Running towards the camp and noting an almost complete lack of cover across the area, I sincerely hope he can distract the lookout for long enough. But the lookout doesn’t turn back around, and within a few seconds I’m within a stone’s throw of the camp. Slowing my movement, I choose my steps more carefully to make as little sound as possible. Just as the lookout starts to shift his body back towards the open, I dart behind the fabric of a tent, a few tents to the side. They’re much larger than they looked from afar, and easily shield my entire body from view. I’m in. Listening carefully, I move among the tents, following the footfalls of hooves. After a short distance, they slow to a halt. Peeking around the edge of the tent, I take a look at the centaur that brought us here, this time in the light of a camp fire. His lip is heavily swollen, and the area around it looks discoloured and purple. There are several other bruises on her cheeks and even neck that I can barely see, half healed abrasions. No… Not him, her. This must be the same centaur that tried to stop their chief from attacking us. Her motivation feels even more genuine, now. My eyes roam around the camp fire area, noting another centaur poking idly at the fire and inspecting the tents to determine my target. I see one significantly larger than the rest. Moving in between the tents, I quickly make my way to the rear of the tent and feel at the fabric. Animal hides. Shouldn’t make any sound. I draw my dagger and carefully make a slit large enough for me to slip through. Pulling it slightly open, I look through. By a sliver of light coming through the entrance of the tent from the fire, I can see the large form of a sleeping centaur. After a second, I can just barely see enough of the face to recognise that it is indeed the centaur chief, sleeping soundly on a bed of furs. Pulling the slit fully open, I step quietly though and move carefully around to his human upper body. Taking a silent breath, I crouch down and swiftly but surely slit his throat. His eyes shoot open and he tries to take a breath, only to choke in his own blood. I slip back out of the tent as he struggles to his feet, placing a hand on his throat in a fruitless attempt to staunch the bleeding. Desperately darting around, his eyes lock onto the moonlight coming in from my slit in the tent and he staggers towards it, coughing and hacking up blood as he goes. I move behind another tent out of caution, but he just trips over the fabric and tumbles to the ground, bringing down the next tent over in the process. The collapsed tent bulges from the inside, violent expletives spitting forth from within as its resident struggles to escape its confines. This looks like my cue to exit. I can already tell that he’s a dead man standing: he’ll drown in his own blood or run out of it, whichever happens first. Bandages won’t do a thing, and even if they happen to have a holy magi, they’ll still have to get all the blood out of his lungs, and they don’t have that much time. Actually, this should be a good for me. The commotion should attract the lookouts, and I can make my escape while they’re dealing with what I left back there. Making my way through the gaps between the tents – a fine path for me, but much too narrow for beings as large as centaurs – I head to the edge of the camp I came from where, sure enough, the lookout is now heading towards the sounds of shouts behind me. As easy as that, I run out of camp and back towards where I remember the others being. I spot them seconds later, obviously having spotted the commotion and come in to reinforce me. Smiling wryly to myself, I wave them over. “You alright?” Aaron asks, squinting in the moonlight in attempt to see if I have any injuries. “Fine.” I say. “He didn’t even manage to touch me.” “No ambush, then?” Jakin asks. I shake my head. “No ambush. I caught a look at the centaur that brought us here by the fire – it was the one from yesterday that tried to stop their chief attacking us and got beaten for it. By the bruises she had, it wasn’t the first time, either.” “That would explain why she was too afraid to do it herself.” Aaron nods contemplatively. “I sort of wish it was always so simple to solve our problems.” “I don’t.” I reply quietly, remembering the way he coughed up blood, desperately struggling to live despite knowing there was no way for him to survive. “It wasn’t even a fight. Just an execution.” “An assassination, technically. But no, this isn’t how I’d rather do things, even if it is easier. If you’re going to kill a man, you should at least give him the courtesy of looking him in the face as you do so.” Aaron agrees sadly. “The alternative was a large, bloody battle where we’d be outnumbered at least six to one. We’re all in one piece and our enemies won’t attack us again. It wasn’t a good solution, but it was the best we had.” Boaz looks towards the commotion erupting in the centaur camp. “Unless she was wrong.” Jakin says darkly. “And they attack anyway.” “That’s a question that’ll be answered in the morning, whatever happens.” Aaron replies. “Now let’s head back, get what sleep we can before the sun comes up.” Sleep… Despite the darkness surrounding us, it seems almost like a foreign concept to me right now. I feel completely awake, and not at all tired. I suppose it’s because of all those times I slipped out at night back at my father’s house. I almost feel more tired during the day. But if Jakin’s right, we might need all the sleep we can get.

Chapter 47: Goblins! It isn’t actually difficult for us to find our way to the village, despite the vague directions. There’s a fairly clear path of dirt trodden down through the grass leading there that we follow. As we approach the outskirts of the village, we spot an elderly orc working in a field, his bare back rippling with muscle as he hacks at the ground with a hoe. He turns and squints at us suspiciously when we near the fence bordering his field. “Hello there.” I greet. “We’ve come from the hall of warriors in Ra’tlub about the goblin problem. We heard that someone came a while before us, but nothing’s been heard of him. Any idea what happened?” “Aye.” The old orc dusts the dirt off his hands. “He’s dead. Went into the forest days ago, full of bluster. Never came back.” I nod, having mostly expected that. “I see. What can you tell us about what’s been happening with the goblins?” “Buggers getting cocky lately. Used to see ‘em every now and again, annoying but no real trouble. One good sock to the face and that’s that.” He clenches a thick fist for emphasis. “Now they’re everywhere. Can’t go much into the forest before you bump into a batch of them. Steal crops, tools, anything small enough for their scrawny thieving arms.” “You think they’re somewhere in the forest, then?” I ask. “Gotta be.” He shrugs. “Ain’t nowhere else for them to be ‘round here. Prolly found a cave near the hills. Hell, prolly found a few from how many we been seeing.” “Right.” I nod. “Thanks for the help.” He grunts, raising his hoe again. We inquire with a few of the other villagers, have a brief altercation with a guard who we thankfully manage to convince that we have come from the hall of warriors and don’t need to be taken to Ra’tlub again. Everyone says much the same things – lots more goblins than usual, stealing things, although there hasn’t been actual harm done to anyone as far as we can tell. With nothing to gain from questioning the locals more, we head into the forest. “This forest isn’t small, and we don’t have any real clues as to which direction they might be in, so keep your eyes open.” I note. We start our search on a forest trail, probably something used infrequently by the orcs to get to good hunting spots or gather herbs. The underbrush on either side of the path is thick enough that we can’t see more than a few meters away, and even on the path we have to push aside branches and leaves more often than not. The sunlight filters down through the treetops in a dappled blanket, making it even harder to pick things out, and the constant sounds of brushing leaves, birdcalls and insects create a soft backdrop that, while relaxing, does make it difficult to pinpoint any particular sound. As we walk, we see the occasional flash of animals’ hides, and the sounds of scattering leaves as they skitter away from our approach. Before long, we begin to notice the sounds of flowing water, and we shortly find ourselves at a babbling brook. Across the water, a large black bear stops lapping and raises its head, roaring at us. Rolling my eyes at the beast’s attempt to appear intimidating, I issue a large but thin sheet of fire from my left hand, creating something that looks dangerous, but is actually only capable of singeing the bear’s fur. I push it forwards and the beast panics, turning its large body around and quickly lumbering away through the foliage. The fire fades and we cross the brook, continuing deeper into the forest. Xiltroth begins to speak, “I think I-” I hear a rustle above me, too loud and close to be a bird, and whip my head in its direction to see a green body falling towards me. “Ambush!” I warn loudly as I shift my feet to give me a more stable stance and smack the goblin away from me with my left arm. A series of thuds and cracks ring out as more goblins hit the ground, either repelled or dodged by their targets. “Ah!” Heather gasps as a goblin manages to latch onto her shoulders. It starts trying to choke her, but before anyone can react to help her, she easily pries the goblin’s hands off of her neck and throws it to the ground, looking almost surprised herself. I look back towards the goblin I knocked away, but it had taken advantage of my distraction and is already gone. Looking around, I see the other goblins either scrambling away or vanished. In fact, the only one still around is the one that had attacked Heather, which is lying stunned on the ground. Shaking my head, I step over to the fallen goblin and pick it up with a single hand. I’m surprised by how light it is as I take a small knife from the sheathe hanging from its flimsy clothing. It’s flint, roughly done but still sharp. Chances are it would break easily, but it’s enough for a single lethal stab or cut. I toss the knife to the side and the tip chips off when it hits a rock. The goblin is scratching and pulling at my fingers, trying to escape however it can, but it can’t do any damage to my gauntlet. Honestly, it’s even weaker than I had expected. “Where’s your home?” I attempt to interrogate the thing. “Gah! Keh…” The goblin spouts incomprehensible sounds and finishes by blowing a raspberry at me. “Worth a try.” I twist the thing’s neck with a sigh and drop it to the floor, lifeless. “These goblins are smarter than the orcs give ‘em credit for.” Jakin muses. “Tactics-wise, at least. Recognised that they couldn’t beat us head on, so they staged an ambush. When that didn’t work out, they fled immediately.” I nod in agreement. “They’re not just dumb beasts, that’s for sure. Rudimentary weapons, too. It’s possible that simple traps might not be beyond them - pitfalls, snares, nets… We better watch where we step from here on. Still, their attack might mean we’re getting closer.” “I hope not. It would be much too easy to hide something among all these plants and leaves.” Xiltroth notes. “Anyway, Heather, you alright? Did that goblin manage to cut you?” “No, I managed to throw it off before it could do anything.” Heather shakes her head slightly. Xiltroth nods. “It might be good for you to get a knife or sword you can use in case something like this happens again, or if you run out of arrows.” “I’ll look into it when we get back.” Heather agrees, but continues quieter, “I don’t have much to trade with, though…” “We’ll figure something out. Can’t leave you vulnerable if a surprise attack happens again.” I reassure. Heather lowers her head in thanks, and we continue deeper into the forest. At this point there isn’t much of a path left to follow, so we just head in the same direction, marking trees occasionally as we go to prevent us from losing our way on the way back. My prediction turns out to be accurate, as we end up having to go around several traps, some intended to catch and kill small wildlife and others clearly intended to be lethal to people or larger creatures. “Looks like the forest clears up ahead.” Xiltroth notes. We can see more and more light pouring towards us from ahead. I grimace to myself; I hadn’t realised that this part of the forest was so narrow, and had hoped that we were lucky enough to be heading towards the goblin camp. Chances are we’ll have to sweep through the forest for days on end to find what we’re looking for. Then we reach the edge of the trees. “Shit. Cave of goblins my ass.” Jakin swears quietly. This isn’t the other side of the forest. To either side and in front of us are hundreds of stumps, all cut down in the goblins’ expansion. Further ahead, we see what they needed it for: a huge city-fortress, by no means smaller than Ra’tlub itself, surrounded by tall walls and towers, patrolled by over a dozen just on the side visible to us. “Reckon you could set it ablaze?” Boaz asks me. “Not sure. I don’t know if I could sustain enough fire over this sort of distance, I’ve never tried it before. And if I were to get closer, chances are at least some of those sentries have some manner of ranged weapon. Maybe if I even could…” I shake my head, crouching down and picking through some of the sticks and leaves littering the ground. “I don’t think I could prevent the whole forest from getting lit up along with it.” “Aight, well that’s enough for me. Who’s ready to head back?” Jakin motions with his thumb. “Mm.” Xiltroth hums in agreement. “Don’t know that there’s much we can do here. Too many to fight, even if we ignore the defences. Best we just get back-” The sound of an axe from our left chops the rest of Xiltroth’s sentence off. We look over to see half a dozen goblins maybe ten, fifteen metres away starting to whack at a tree. One without an axe is looking around idly, perhaps some kind of overseer, but begins turning his head with more purpose shortly after we notice them, and within seconds sees us and screeches out a warning. After a moment of hesitation, I say, “That’s our cue to get out of here, I think.” And so, we turn around and step back into the forest before they can call for reinforcements. We make our way back through the forest, but they don’t heed our warnings. Their trust in us is tenuous at best, so I don’t blame them. Still, as we walk along the road to Ra’tlub I wish they had, for their own sakes. It occurs to me that the goblins, made aware of our presence by the woodcutters, may assume that the orcs are now aware of their presence and take military action to ensure their survival. My hope in having left them alive is that they think that we are unrelated to the orcs, thus lowering the chance of them doing so. But it’s impossible for me to know what will happen until it does. As we make our way, we hunt some monsters, both for food and to trade for another night at the inn. With the sun setting as it is, we won’t be able to make it to camp before nightfall. The guards at the gate keep an eye on us as we pass through. With a bit of discussion and co-ordination between us, we manage to find our way back to the hall of warriors. We make our way through the room, though not without a bit of jostling from the orcs, and stop in front of the bar. “So?” Greyguts asks. “Well, the last guy that went is probably dead, first of all. Villagers hadn’t seen him since he went into the forest days ago.” I start, Greyguts nodding at the news without much surprise. “And we found the goblins. Wasn’t a cave of them, or even a tribe. More like a city.” “When you say city, how big d’you mean?” Greygut’s eyes narrow. “We only saw one side, so it’s hard to be sure exactly,” I preface, “But if all the walls are the same length, about as big as this one.” “Huh. From the sounds of it, you didn’t take them out, am I right?” Greyguts grunts, to which I nod in reply. “You know I can’t pay you for the information, right?” Our discussion is interrupted by an orc shouting with raucous glee, “Couldn’t even kill puny goblins? They are no warriors!” Shrugging, I turn and reply, “Even rats can eat a man alive if there are enough of them, let alone goblins. I don’t take my team into fights we have no chance of winning, so yes, I decided not to attack the fortified enemy position likely defended by overwhelming numbers. If you think we are no warriors for that, then you can go there yourself and die a fool’s death, having accomplished nothing in your life.” “Maybe I will! Show you how a real man fights.” He retorts, but while the younger orcs are cheering behind him, a few of the more grizzled orcs present have turned away, ignoring him. I shake my head and turn back to Greyguts. “Anyway. Yeah, we know. Still, we only just got here yesterday. Would be a bit depressing if the next time we visit a village was gone, or something. Doesn’t cost us anything to let you know, apart from the goodwill of idiots, it would seem.” “Well, if what you say is true, things might get hairy indeed.” Greyguts sighs. “For what it’s worth, I believe you. You don’t strike me as the type of person to lie. But the chief – he didn’t get to his position by acting on every rumour or tale the warriors spout a couple drinks away from blacking out. For better or worse, he’ll want to confirm what you say before he takes action. Probably want to talk to you again, too. Where you staying tonight?” “Greta’s inn, so long as she accepts our goods.” I reply. “I know the place.” Greyguts nods. “Tell me we don’t have werewolves to worry about as well.” Jakin pleads to Greg. “No, it turned out that it was just a small pack of dark wolves. They’d gorged themselves fat, and it was simple to wipe them out. Why, what happened on your end?” Greg asks curiously. “Well, the village up north had spotted some goblins around the place, and wanted them dealt with.” I explain. “Turns out it wasn’t just a small cave or tribe of the buggers, it’s an entire city. Big as Ra’tlub big. Village ignored our warnings, so chances are they’re done for if the goblins start taking action.” “Damn, seriously?” Greg sighs. “Never a dull day. Any chance they’re friendly?” “Hard to say. We got ambushed by a group on our way there, and they didn’t seem open to talking. Place that big must have some sort of intelligent leadership, though, and it could be that the average goblins are attacking without their approval, but somehow I doubt it.” I shrug. Greg shakes his head in dismay. “Wasn’t there basically peace just a while ago? Wish I was around maybe just fifty years ago, and I didn’t have to worry about a war here, a monster invasion there… What’s next, disease and natural disasters?” “Careful what you wish for.” I chuckle uneasily. “True, true.” Greg concedes. “There’s enough on our plate as it is.” Taking a draught of his drink, Greg grimaces. “They make this stuff stronger than I’m used to. Must be that orcish constitution.” “Mm.” I agree. “Not much of a drinker myself.” “How did we get here, Phil?” Greg asks offhandedly, and I have to struggle to hide my shock. “Feels like only yesterday I was pushing papers, and now… This madness.” He gestures, seemingly to the world as a whole. “Uh, my name’s Aaron.” I try to sound nonchalant as I correct him. “Hm? Oh, yeah, sorry.” He smiles wryly in apology. “Phil was a good friend of mine. Odd man, but a good guy. He… Well, I guess you must remind me of him or something.” “No worries.” I take a gulp of beer to hide my face. “And who can say why any of us are here? Fate, an act of God, or just the consequence of our own actions… In the end we just have to play with the hand we’re given.” “To think that I am seeing you again so soon.” The big chief sighs. “Although whether it is because you people are trouble or if it is just a sign of the times I could not say. Regardless, it occurs to me that while you introduced some of your companions, you never mentioned your own name.” “Sorry about that. I was a bit distracted and didn’t think of it at the time. My name’s Aaron.” I introduce myself. “I see. Well, Aaron, Greyguts tells me that you brought him news of a goblin city nearby the northern village. I would like you to elaborate on that.” The big chief says seriously. “Of course. Yesterday morning we went to the hall of warriors, and Greyguts told us of goblin sightings near the village. We decided to investigate, and headed that way shortly after.” I explain, starting at the beginning for clarity. “After we arrived we asked around, trying to find out if anyone had any clues where they were coming from. Other than somewhere in the forest, nobody had any idea, so we headed into the forest.” He nods along and I continue. “We were initially following a trail, probably used by hunters or similar folk. Didn’t see much. Then we crossed a stream, and a bit after that we were ambushed by some goblins and started finding traps around the place. A bit further and we came out into a massive clearing.” “And the city was in this clearing?” The big chief questions. “Yes, but it wasn’t a natural clearing. There were tree stumps everywhere. We only saw one side of the city, but that side was about as long as Ra’tlub’s.” I clarify. “Unfortunately we didn’t get very long to look around, as we were soon discovered by a group of goblin woodcutters.” “Surely there weren’t enough of them to endanger your group?” He raises a bushy eyebrow. I shake my head. “Not at all. My concern was more that they would call for reinforcements. Ten, twenty goblins we might be able to handle, but a hundred could overwhelm us. That, and I worried that if we killed them whatever leadership they have would assume it was your people who did it and start more direct hostilities.” “I thank you for your consideration.” The big chief closes his eyes, and when he opens again, they burn with purpose. “However, you may have only bought some time. If they are as close as you say, it is inevitable that it will come to conflict. I will send a scouting group immediately to confirm what you say and learn more about this goblin city.” “There’ll be at least one guy in the hall of warriors eager to join, I’m sure.” I say wryly. “There usually is.” The big chief raises an eyebrow. “Regardless. If what you say is true, then I may be in your debt. However, understand that if it is not, you will no longer be welcome here at Ra’tlub.” “I know.” I reply with a steady gaze. “I may jest sometimes, but not with lives on the line.” “We will see. You may go – even without this, I would have much to do.” The big chief rests his eyes as we nod respectfully and leave, collecting our weapons on the way out. “So, what now?” Jakin asks. I know what he means – do we stay, or go? “We’ve been away from camp for a while.” I decide. “We should get back, maybe head over to the halfling town and let them know how things went. Things shouldn’t kick off here for a few days at least, if they do at all.” “If it does come to war, will we help them?” Heather looks at me. I sigh. “I don’t know. Ideally they don’t need our help – I don’t see how our small group could sway the course of a battle that large a scale. Though when it comes down to it, we’re only a bit further from the goblins than Ra’tlub is. One way or another we might end up having to fight or move, again.” “If it comes teh a fight, I’d rather have an army at my back.” Jakin notes. Boaz shakes his head. “It took us long enough teh build our camp in the first place. I ain’t keen on doing it all again.” “Ditto to that.” I groan. “Digging that moat was not an enjoyable process.” “I like where we are now.” Xiltroth shrugs. “Then again, I am particularly adverse to being dead.” “I guess we’ll discuss it when we get back. And hey, worst comes to worst we can at least outrun them, right?” I chuckle.

Adventurers. Warriors, free spirits, travellers, explorers. The title ‘adventurer’ covers many such roles, but the adventurer’s guild utilises their unique combination of battle strength, love of battle and general hardiness for the betterment of their surroundings. What do adventurers hate the most? It’s not losing a fight, it’s not having to run away from a monster, it’s not failing a request. It’s war. You see, adventurers are, by nature, travellers. They don’t usually stay in one city forever, or even in the same kingdom. And what that means, of course, is that everyone suspects them of being everyone else’s spies. -An unknown scholar We head over to the guild early the next morning, feeling quite refreshed from the undisturbed sleep. I looked around, but Xiltroth doesn’t seem to be around. Already gone or not here yet? We don’t know, so we decided to hang around for a short while. People filter in and out, almost all of them wearing copper or iron guild tokens around their necks like we are. Some even have steel tokens, their bright gleam standing out amongst the crowd of dull tones and proving that their sharp eyes and tough bearing aren’t just for show. Many of the copper ranks - and some iron ranks - are wearing chitinous armour instead of metal, doubtlessly because insect armour plates are so easy to get here, and therefore cheaper than conventional alternatives. Quite a few people look curiously at us, a pair of dwarves and a human sitting at a table in the adventurer’s guild in a demon city. Unusual, to say the least. Not all of the gazes are friendly, but nobody starts anything. The guild quickly fills to the point where there are queues to talk to staff, and the area in front of the request board has a semicircle of people looking at it with people hovering around behind, eager to fill the gap when someone finishes looking. A short while later, the hubbub starts quieting down to whispered conversations. I look around to see what caused it, and notice a conspicuous group coming through the doorway. The leading demon is large, wearing a suit of plate armour. A long sword hilt is visible over his shoulder, easily large enough to accommodate a two-handed grip. Despite the hilt being over his shoulder, the tip of the sheath is near the back of his knee, evidently a massive weapon. A thick, straight horn protrudes from the top of his completely bald head. I wince at the thought of him headbutting someone. Slinking behind in his shadow is a second demon, wearing some sort of close-fitting, flexible black armour. Two long daggers are sheathed by his sides, and his eyes are darting about the room rapidly. Whatever horns he may have are hidden by a long patch of mossy green hair. The third person in the group is very unusual indeed. Wavy blonde hair cascades down to his neck, and his eyes are a piercing green. With the addition of pale skin, pointed ears and a tall, thin stature, it became instantly clear that this was an elf. He is an archer too, if the massive longbow on his back is anything to go by. His armour is also light and flexible, but with a more regular brownish tone. Bringing up the rear is a demon wearing a brown, white trimmed robe. I doubt he has no protective gear on under it, though. At his waist a book shaped holster is attached, obviously holding his grimoire. All of them have a bluish-silver token hanging around their necks. Mithril ranked adventurers, huh? I’ve not seen a proper bunch of them yet. Or an elf, for that matter. …A bit underwhelming, actually. Seeing an elf, I mean, not the mithril ranked adventurers. I mean, dwarves are really short and drink a lot, demons have purple skin, whacky hair and horns, but elves? Whoo, they’re tall and have pointy ears. Not to diss the race or anything, but… yeah. People move out of their way as they stride towards the counter, register for a request, and again as they leave. After a short while, the place returns to its usual rowdy ways, and we go back to drinking. Just as I finish my tankard and am about to propose we call it quits, Xiltroth comes in through the door. I start to get up and call out to him, but Jakin stops me with a single word, “Initiation”. I nod slowly, settling back down into my chair. The initiation fight is standard for any newbie adventurer. Through it, we should be able to see his close combat fighting skills. Predictably, when he is only halfway across the room, a hulking mass of a demon with horns sprouting on either side of his head stands up from a table near him, and stands in front of him with drink still in hand. Splashing some booze into his mouth, he leers down at Xiltroth. “What’re you doing here, kid? This place is for warriors, not wimps. Why don’t you go run home to your momma?” He crouches down so that his head is only slightly above Xiltroth’s eye level. “Hey, whassamatter? Ain’t got no balls? Hit me! Or you too scared, wimp?” He says, practically spitting in Xiltroth’s face. Xiltroth shifts, and the next moment the man is falling backwards. He hits the ground heavily, the floor shaking under his considerable weight. Grunting painfully, he starts to get up, but is stopped by Xiltroth’s staff pressing onto his throat. “Who’s the wimp now?” He growls angrily. “Alright, that’s enough!” A staff member came along to break up the fight, and Xiltroth is moved along to the end of the short line. “Not bad. Not bad at all.” Says Boaz. Jakin, however, is still sceptical. “Yeah, he’s got some skill, but can he kill anything with that staff of his?” “Only one way to find out.” I say, smiling. To wait a few more minutes for him to register is nothing after waiting over half an hour. After he has strung his copper token around his neck, we get up and walk over to him. Once he notices us, he stops moving towards the exit and instead turns to us, his expression a little surprised. “Morning Xiltroth.” I say. “Good morning Aaron… Jakin, Boaz.” He says. The dwarves say good morning in return, and Xiltroth says, “I would have… thought that, you would be hunting, by now.” I shrug. “We wondered if you might want company on your first proper hunt.” “That would be great, thanks.” He nods. We head out of the city towards the south-east, and into the woods of Zel. Or, as it’s more commonly known among adventurers here, the woods of big bugs. Me and the twins watch in silence, weapons in hand and ready to intervene at any second as Xiltroth fights a giant beetle. It charges at him, mandibles wide and ready to crush whatever it can grasp between them. Xiltroth sidesteps, swinging his staff at one of the insect’s legs. The blow shifts the beetle’s leg slightly, drawing a short line in the leafy dirt, but has no effect beyond that. Turning, the beetle again tries to bite him, but Xiltroth jumps backwards, and again when he lands, quickly making distance. The insect extends its elytra, the wings behind them buzzing into motion as it makes a flying leap at Xiltroth. But instead of dodging to either side, he moves towards it, ducking below it and thrusting his staff up at its rear as it passes overhead. As a result, the beetle flips and lands on its back, and starts rocking and wildly waving its legs in an attempt to right itself. Xiltroth jumps over the flailing limbs and thrusts his staff into the beetle’s neck – the exoskeleton there is weaker than the armour on the back of the beetle, and is crushed under the strike. “So, how did I do?” Xiltroth asks, wiping his staff on the grass to remove any gore that had clung to it. “Pretty good, but you might want to finish that off.” I say, pointing at the beetle that is still gently waving its legs. “Insects are notoriously tenacious.” He looks at the still-moving insect in surprise, and thrusts his staff in again, finally causing its legs to still. Boaz walks over and slips his fingers underneath the beetle. With a heave, he flips it back onto its stomach. It still doesn’t move, so it’s definitely dead. “There be no damage on any of these armour plates, we should be able to extract all of them.” He turns to Xiltroth. “Not bad. Not bad at all.” Jakin looks pensive. “Yeh can pick locks, can’t yeh Xiltroth? Can yeh disarm traps as well?” “I- maybe? I’ve never… done it before, but as long as, it isn’t something too… complicated, I should be able to take a trap apart, without activating it.” Xiltroth stutters. “Right then, do yeh want to join our party?” Jakin says bluntly. Xiltroth is flabbergasted. “I- can I- um… Yes?” Deep in the woods, a human man stands alone, surrounded by trees and the sound of chittering and buzzing of oversized arthropods. The rough, bulky iron armour that he wears over most of his body has many thin scratches and gouges running along its surface, and is smeared in places with mud and grass stains. Loosely held in one gauntleted hand is a mace, the gleaming steel that its flanges are made of covered partially by disgusting yellow and green lumpy fluids; the remains of earlier encounters. His other hand is not covered in a gauntlet, and instead wears only a comfortable leather glove, the palm cut away in an unusual modification. This hand hangs idly by his side. He is apparently unconcerned by the rhino-sized beetle scuttling down the side of a tree towards him, its chitinous legs bending branches out of its way as it descends from the canopy. It isn’t until the insect is almost upon him that he strikes at it, its head pulverised into a mess of shattered exoskeleton, blood and brains by the single blow. Moving his mace up and down in one swift movement, he flicks a few of the larger pieces of gore off it. During this whole event, the man doesn’t send more than a glance at the beetle. It is simply that the giant beetles in these woods aren’t a suitable opponent for him; they aren’t even worth his time. Moving deeper and deeper into the woods, the man’s lightly sun-darkened face grows less casual and more focused as he ventures into the territory of stronger monsters, the pale scars running down one side of his face rippling as the muscles below them shift. Alert as he is, his ears pick up the sound of armoured legs drumming into wood. This sound repeats nearly a hundred times in a mere second, and it represented the approach of a much more dangerous foe than mere beetles. It crawled towards him, a long, almost snakelike segmented body trailing behind it for over ten meters. Swift, strong and poisonous on top of it all, the giant centipede lingers in the nightmares of those who survive meeting it. In barely a second, it is almost upon him. Perhaps he can achieve the same feat as the beetle, crushing its head with a single blow? But no, he jumps to one side, perhaps cautious of its poisonous mandibles. Running alongside it, he breaks several of its many legs as he passes, before jumping over it and repeating the process on the other side as it curls back on itself, trying to catch him. However, despite his heavy armour and pack, he outruns and outmanoeuvres it at every turn, and it starts to squirm wildly as it loses more and more of a dwindling supply of legs. Eventually, it is left with two rows of broken sticks, wriggling about like a worm as it desperately tries to entrap the man. Wielding his mace, he slams it down repeatedly on a segment just behind the head, until there are only a few tenuous connections between it and the head. Grabbing the head, he rips it off and stuffs it in a sack from his bag, slinging it over his shoulder and walking away as the rest of it still flails pointlessly behind him, not realising that it is already dead. Taking a few slow breaths to steady his breathing, he continues on his way. Steadily moving forward, he carefully searches the ground, and eventually finds what he came for: a few clumps of herbs that have almost the exact same appearance as dead leaves. The only difference is their texture, which feels like you’re rolling dirt between your fingers. The aptly named Earthleaf herbs are prolific throughout the inner regions of the woods of Zel, however, with the strength of the monsters present there, as well as the difficulty of differentiating the herbs from the many dead leaves littering the ground, the reward for collecting them is still substantial. He breaks off the herbs at the stem, placing them carefully in a box that is already over half full of them, one by one. Only the leaves are useful for alchemy, and if the roots are left the herbs have a chance of regrowing there, eventually. The box he puts in his pack, arranging the things inside it so that the box won’t jostle about as he moves, and risk damaging the herbs. Looking about for a while more, he finds some more herbs before starting to head back woods. After all, the request they accepted isn’t limited to a specific quantity. The more they bring, the more they will be paid. Which is also why they decided to split up for this request. As long as they aren’t going within the innermost regions of the woods, they are confidant that they can defeat any monster they come across, even alone. Still, unforeseen circumstances are always possible, which is why they meet up every day at a pre-appointed place and decide beforehand on the directions they will search that day. That way, if someone doesn’t come back at the end of the day, they know where to look. Otherwise… well, the woods of Zel occupy massive tracts of land, such that the four cities that lay on its borders require three or four days to travel between them on foot. Finding someone within such a vast area is nigh impossible. He follows marks he’d previously made while searching through the woods, and after an hour or so, makes it to a small area that has been swept clear of leaves and twigs. An unlit campfire is in the middle, ringed by stones. Glancing around, there doesn’t seem to be anyone there, but he continues looking, even checking the tree branches that are outstretched above him. Finally, he smiles at a particular spot in the canopy that looks just like any other. “I see you, Xiltroth. You can come down now.” The leaves ripple, and a strange demon lightly drops to the ground. His clothes have a mottled pattern not unlike that of leafy foliage, and even his face is painted in similar colours. He flips down his hood to reveal hair as white as snow. “How did you spot me this time, Aaron?” Xiltroth asks. “I thought I covered everything!” “You did, and I almost didn’t see you.” Aaron says. “But you were looking at me, and I managed to spot your red eyes.” “How am I supposed to cover up my eyes? I need them to see!” Xiltroth says, frustrated. Aaron shrugs. “Maybe… and maybe not. With senses enhanced by mana reinforcement, you might not even need to have your eyes open to know where people are. Just listen for the sounds they make, and that should tell you where they are.” Xiltroth’s eyes widen. “Why didn’t I think of that?” He says, mostly to himself. “I should try training to do that as well, I think. If you rely on your sight, you can be easily disabled by a simple cloud of dust.” Aaron says contemplatively, thinking back to a time when he himself had used a cloud of earth magic to blind attacking archers. “By the way, how did you go this time?” “Not bad, I found quite a few patches of it today. How about you?” Xiltroth asks. Aaron takes out his box, and Xiltroth whistles appreciatively. “I’m nearly full.” Says Aaron. Another voice speaks. “Aye, and I’ve about had it looking for these plants! Dwarves aren’t made for this, we’re about fighting, striding down tunnels, striking at iron!” Aaron and Xiltroth turn to see Jakin striding into the clearing, wearing a suit of steel armour. He’d had one made a short while ago, and while he still says its quality isn’t up to dwarven standards, he did admit that it wasn’t bad for the work of a demon smith. “Why didn’t you become a blacksmith, then?” Asks Xiltroth. Then, perhaps realising that his question might have been a bit inappropriate, he apologises. “I didn’t mean, um, sorry?” Jakin takes a deep breath. “Don’t be. It’s no big secret… Well, me and Boaz were all set to be blacksmiths. Our Pa got us an apprenticeship to a local blacksmith. He was no master, but… well, it was a start.” He shrugs. Taking another breath, he continues. “It was going well, then the first time he let me forge a blade… Just a knife, but I was excited, and a bit nervous, too. My hand slipped, the hammer strike went awry, and, well…” He gestures to the scar on his face. “I got kicked out of the forge. My brother, bless him, gave up his own chance at being what we’d always dreamed of, just to follow me.” Jakin looks sorrowful, and takes a quick draught from a flask that I know contains a light beer. “Right shame it was, too. Boaz was always better at forging than me.” He sighs regretfully. They sit in the clearing for a while. More as something to do than something that needs to be done, Aaron gathers wood for the fire, and sets it ablaze with a spark of magic. A thin trail of smoke soon drifts gently skywards, creating a pillar that connects the heavens and earth. Watching the clouds float slowly by, he considers what it might be like standing atop the clouds, looking down and seeing that same pillar from the other side. His imagination soon provides him with an image; a twisting column, moving ever towards him but ever the same length, pools around his feet, dying the white floor an ashen grey. Looking up, a sea of greens and brown drifts by, taking the column with it as it drags across the floor and final breaks free into the great abyss below. Aaron appreciates the image, but slowly he frowns at the vividness of the image… Something like that, could his imagination really create it? It felt more like, almost like… a memory? But no, that… Boaz walks into the clearing, seating himself with a groan on the ground, and the matter fades from Aaron’s mind, forgotten. “Please tell me that we be going back to the city now.” Boaz says, stretching his feet towards the fire, still in his own armour. Naturally, it is the same as his twin brother’s. “Sorry, we all decided that we’d be staying another day.” Jokes Aaron. Boaz’s face falls. “I’m just joking, we’re going back.” Aaron admits, chuckling. They exchange banter for a few minutes, then do what few things they need to do before leaving. Xiltroth dumps some dirt on the fire to put it out, everyone picks up their packs, and they all head out. (POV Aaron) After reaching town again, we head to the guild and turn in our request, earning almost a full gold in the process. High risk, high reward; that’s how it works, generally. Split between four, it’s less, but still enough to supply food and pay for the room at the inn for well over a month. Thus, we sit at a table at the guild, celebrating in the way many adventurers have before us; booze and food. The steel tokens hanging around our necks make our moods all the merrier, since we will now be able to take more dangerous and lucrative requests, as well as greater respect from our fellow adventurers in the guild. Here’s how it goes in terms of fame by rank: copper, nobody knows you, and it’s doubtful that anyone will notice if you stop coming to the guild. Iron, the staff members will know your face, and sometimes your name. Other iron ranks might know you, but nobody else will care: copper ranks are too disorderly and concerned about themselves, while everyone at steel or above treats you as just another adventurer. Steel, the staff members will know you by name. If they didn’t before, they will make it a point to remember now. Pretty much every steel rank in the guild knows each other, and some of the iron and coppers might know you as well. Even mithril ranks will pay you some attention, since besides each other, you’re among the best fighters they know. Your character is mostly guaranteed as well, since at steel rank you can get demoted from only a few failed missions. Mithril, it’s more unusual for someone not to know you. Even some people outside the guild, just average people in the city, may know you. Mithril ranks know about each other, and often they even know about the mithril rank parties in nearby cities as well. So, yeah, reaching Steel is a pretty high milestone. “I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since we got here…” Says Jakin, sipping contentedly at his beer. “It has?” I say in surprise, then check my memory. “So it has. That’s something.” Xiltroth smiles. “I, I just wanna say… thanks guys, for all you’ve done for me. You’re, great friends.” His voice is a little slurred, he never was able to hold much liquor. “Don’t worry about it. Not like you haven’t saved us a few times either.” I say. He nods, and starts to say something else, when a loud voice breaks through the ever-present noise in the guild. “EVERYONE, SHUT IT!” We look over. Normally, everyone would ignore it if someone said this, but today, it’s one of the staff. There is a nervous looking demon standing in front of him, practically drenched in sweat. “Alright, go ahead. Tell them what you told me.” The staff member tells him. Everyone in the room looks at him, some with curiosity, some with irritation, others not caring at all, but so many hardened warriors staring at him seems to make him nervous. “Vaaslav city has been destroyed. We… we’ve confirmed that it was humans who did it…” He takes a deep breath. “The King has spoken… It’s war.” While there was some murmuring before, the guild hall is now dead silent.

There are five countries in this world. The human kingdom Stalia, dwarven kingdom Morrock, Elven kingdom Enlux, beastmen kingdom Binod and demon kingdom Xin. For some reason, members of these races often have the subconscious notion that they are somehow superior to other races without a centralised leadership. …They do realise that if the other races did establish their own kingdoms, their militaries would be just as powerful as those in the current kingdoms, don’t they? Putting that aside, the only other ‘civilised’ race (that is, one that has constructed cities and is at a modern or almost modern level of technology) are the gnomes. Their race has no leaders, but each of their cities has a council which oversees its development and protection. Said cities are notoriously difficult to find, often deep in the mountains or the wilderness, but the residents are very welcoming to other races. The wide range of other races: Halflings, fairies, centaurs, giants, satyrs etc, live in small communities or on their own, and are most commonly seen roaming the land… -An unknown scholar “Yer holdin’ it the wrong way up, brother! Those mountains be south of us, not north. We passed by them las’ night, don’t yeh remember?” Boaz is trying to demonstrate the proper way of reading a map to Jakin, who is turning it this way and that as he tries to find some prominent features of landscape to use as reference. Meanwhile, Greg and I are just watching. I’m sure they’ve got it covered. Looking at me, Greg notices my empty sheath. “You don’t have a sword?” He asks. “It broke in all the fighting yesterday…” I say sadly. I liked that sword. Not that it was a very good one, but it got the job done. And I’d gotten used to the feeling of its weight in my hand. “Oh…” He unstraps the smaller sheath on his left side and offers it to me. “I have a knife I could spare until we get to town, if you like?” I take it and strap it to my own belt. “Thanks. Should come in handy.” I smile at him, but he just gives a small nod and looks away. Huh. He’s changed quite a bit since I last saw him. “Alright, looks like the nearest town is to the east of here. It’s across the river and the closest bridge is a bit to the south, so we have a way to walk today by the looks of it.” Says Boaz, finished ascertaining our location on the map. We start off at a light jog. Right now, we are moving through a nice soft grassland, dotted with the occasional trees and bushes. On any other day this would be a relaxing trip, but with the column of smoke still rising from the city off to our right serving as a constant reminder of yesterday’s events, we can’t help but be on a constant lookout for any wolves or werewolves that could be wondering around. Usually, werewolves would only be deep in the forest, but now… we can’t be sure. The soft sounds of running water and treetops rustling in the wind are interspersed by the sharp clopping of hooves and the quiet scraping of shoes against the ground as refugees trickle across the bridge in front of us. It is wide, constructed of sturdy rock and barely touched by age. The people crossing it have a motley variety of clothing and apparel. Some of them are in nightgowns, clearly unable to pause to get dressed during the panic caused by the tolling of the emergency bell. Some are wearing everyday clothing, others still wear various pieces of armour. Barely anybody is carrying a significant amount of luggage with them. As we walk across the bridge, I notice Antonio working his way towards us through the groups of people, earning him dirty looks and not a few curses as he nudges his way forwards. I don’t need a crystal ball to predict this will be unpleasant. Finally reaching us, he calls out, “Greg! Are you alright? Have you seen the others?” He sounds considerably distraught, and his face looks haggard, eyes resting on Greg for a moment before darting around frantically, Greg again… Well I’ll be darned. Registering his appearance, shock flickers across Greg’s face for a moment before he replies. “No, I haven’t seen anyone since I split up. And rather than me, are you alright? You look… terrible.” But he isn’t listening. As soon as he hears the first part, he just collapses against the side of the bridge, sitting and cradling his head in his arms. I can just barely hear him sobbing. The rest of the people ignore him. They have their own sorrows to deal with without adding anyone else’s on top of it all. Greg moves to crouch down beside him, then turns his head to say to us, “You guys go ahead, I’ll catch up in a bit.” I shrug, and we moved on. After maybe ten minutes, we see Greg jogging towards us, trailed by Antonio. “We can barely keep an eye on one. Two is too much… besides, they should be able to protect themselves with two of them. ‘Specially considering what they managed to do to those werewolves…” Cautions Jakin. Boaz nods along, and I can hardly deny their logic, so I agree as well. This world isn’t such an easy one that you can trust strangers. And even if I know them… well, nobody knows that, so what does it matter in a situation like this? Greg reaches us, and introduces Antonio to us. “This is Antonio, he’s a… Friend, of mine. Is it alright if he travels with us?” “I’m afraid not,” Says Jakin. “Apologies, but we just can’t trust you so easily. We’ll be splitting ways with you here.” Greg looks shocked for a moment, then calms down and nods slightly in understanding. Suddenly remembering the knife that I borrowed from him, I unbuckle it and proffer it to him. He refuses it, saying “You need it more than I do.” “Hardly.” I say, lifting my other hand and emitting a small flame from it. “You’ll just get killed if you assume people’s professions by their appearance. Especially in this business.” His expression freezes, then splits into a small smile as he takes his knife back. I wave, and then we are jogging off into the distance again. Behind us, Greg is slowly drawing away from us, walking alongside a despondent Antonio. (POV Greg) Absentmindedly, I watch them vanishing into the horizon, feeling a faint sense of sadness that I can’t account for. Hardly knew them a day, but it felt like I’d known them a long time… Ah well. In the end, they were just strangers to me. I’ll probably see them again one day. The world has a strange way of working out like that… An old friend from university you haven’t seen in decades shows up across the aisle when shopping, the school delinquent passing by in the train station, a new friend happens to know an old friend of yours and invites him out to the pub without ever knowing you knew each other… On a different note, I never thought Antonio had that side to him. He completely broke down, kept on repeating ‘he’s dead, they’re all dead’ in-between sobs. And that’s all I could get out of him for a while, until he suddenly got up and started following me. I still have no clue what’s up with him, but hopefully I should be able to figure something out with a little prodding. Every now and again while we walk along the road, I try asking a few simple questions. The first few times I don’t get anything, but eventually he starts being more responsive, and I manage to piece together a bit of what happened to him. From what I can tell, back when the red werewolves came after us, one of them headed towards his group of friends. Antonio was getting ready to fight it off with them, but most of them just bolted. By the time he noticed, the last of his friends was shouting at him to run, which he did. Then he looks behind him, expecting to see either the werewolf or his friend bolting in another direction, but instead he sees his friend holding it off on his own. He somehow gets out of the city, keeps running for a while, then stops to fight some wolves, then cook one out of necessity. Unfortunately, he must’ve cooked it wrong, because a bit later he became sick, vomiting it all up. Then he couldn’t sleep all night, since he didn’t have anyone else to keep watch and he was still in a state of panic… Poor chap. He seems to be convinced that we’re the only ones alive. But obviously, that’s ridiculous… I hope so, at least… We should be seeing most of them trickling into this town over the next couple of days, provided they just followed the rest of the refugees. Then again, some of them might not have had the presence of mind for that… We can only wait, and hope. (POV Aaron) When we get to the town, we find all the inns and spare rooms are already filled to bursting, unfortunately for the many civilians flooding into the town. When we take a look, even the adventurer’s guild is packed, with scores brooding over a pint. And this is just the beginning. With the time we made – The sun isn’t quite overhead yet – we are certainly among the earlier ones here, although I imagine some may have travelled through the night. We aren’t quite as held back by luggage or exhaustion as many of the others here, so after a bit of a rest and – for once – a proper meal, we ask for some local knowledge on nearby towns and cities. As it turns out, we are right near the corner of a three-way border. Anywhere south or west was human territory, travel a bit east and you venture into elven lands, and north… is the demon kingdom. “So… Where are we thinking?” I ask the twins as we sit on some grass, a bit outside the western gates to town, where we came in. “Honestly, we’ve just been wondering around ourselves, but I be hesitant about going anywhere close to that cursed place again. And the last time we went to the elven kingdom, they laughed at our beards. I can’t imagine why…” Jakin trails off with a confused expression. I don’t know enough about elves to comment here… “The demon kingdom, then?” I ask. He scratches his chin through his copious beard. “I’ve heard much about them, but there was never a reason to go there before now… Alright then, let’s go to the demon kingdom, Xin.” After filling up our water bottles, we set off to the north. Back near Ginerbe city, deep within the forest, so deep that it has been undisturbed by outsiders for decades on end. Where the trees remember, and the grass sway in concert irrespective of wind or rain. The wide assortment of strange plants here would cause even the alchemist of a king to drool. Flowers wreathed in fire that don’t burn, vines hidden by a cool mist, grasses that spark as they wave against each other and more, much more. Within this ancient place, deeper, and deeper still, is a large clearing. In the middle of this clearing, there is a lake. The lake is incredibly flat, and even the heaviest of winds doesn’t cause the slightest ripple. It is as if it is filled not with water, but glass. Reflected upon the surface, perfectly in the centre, is the moon. Indeed, despite the sun being high in the sky and the moon nowhere to be seen… there it is, plain as day. A jagged spire of stone juts from the earth near the lake, the flat top producing a platform overlooking the entire clearing. Its usual occupant is currently absent, but a grey werewolf covered in scars is sitting in front of it, gazing at the image on the lake. Other, weaker, werewolves lope about the edges of the clearing, carrying carcasses of animals… and humans. They go to feed their families, and themselves. The elder werewolf looks at the lake and thinks of times long past. His youth, back before the pack, before his fur had started paling, before… him. Back then, it was every werewolf for himself. They were hunted throughout the forest, even to the innermost depths of the forest. It was rare enough to meet another of the same species, let alone a female to start a pack with. It changed somewhat when he found this place. Strangely, not a single monster, werewolf or otherwise, were here when he found it. It was as if there had never been anything worthy of being born here. Unlike other places in the forest, where you could always hear howls, shouting, wildlife… there was none of that here. Silence, complete silence, the likes of which he had never heard before. And peace. For the first time in his troubled life. It wasn’t only peace and quiet that this place gave him, either. The longer he looked into the lake, the stronger he seemed to get. It faded away as he left, but he used that power to protect his new home from adventurers and werewolves seeking to usurp him. Battle after bloody battle, he defended his turf. He was the lone defender against a seemingly endless stream of invaders. As the years passed, he accumulated wound after wound, and as they healed, scars. Others joined him, and his pack slowly grew larger and stronger. His fur turned grey, and his strength and wisdom were far beyond any of his brethren. Through his many hunts, he learnt their language, although he could not speak it. Adventurers stopped coming. Werewolves flocked to the haven. He was the alpha, and he raised his strongest child to be the alpha after him.   One night, there was a full moon. The image on the lake shone brightly, as it did every time the moon was full. He appeared on top of the lake, walking across the surface like a spirit. As he reached the shore, his crimson guards rose from the water to stand by him. He challenged him to become the alpha of the pack. One move was all it took him.   The elder werewolf raises his gaze tiredly from the lake. He is standing in front of him. “I did not instruct you to retreat,” He snarls. “I instructed you to kill them.” Baring his throat in subservience, the grizzled old werewolf speaks in the tongue of wolves. His black fur shifts as he reaches out an immaculate claw, ripping out the throat of the elder werewolf in one casual motion. As the old one’s lifeblood ebbed away into the dirt, he says quietly, “You are not the only one who answers to a higher power. Pray that your life is sufficient to pay for your failure.” With a single sinuous leap, he crests the spire. Settling down in his usual manner, he gazes at the ever-present moon on the lake.   Watching. Waiting. (POV Aaron) Walking for so long is painful. Honestly, I’ve got blisters in between my toes, the soles of my feet… I just hope it doesn’t get infected. I’ll have to make sure I wash them with clean water and dry them thoroughly after all this, I suppose. And can you believe it took me this long to notice the swathes of bandages on my face? I’m just so used to having a bit of weight there, from my glasses and all. But this is ridiculous. I’d noticed the stuff on my arms and legs, but by the time I woke up, I didn’t need them anymore. The wounds on my limbs were shallow, and had already stopped bleeding. Another few days and they’ll be right as rain. The ones on my face will take a bit longer, sadly. I can only be glad the claws didn’t get my eyes. Excuse me from becoming blind so soon after recovering full optic capabilities, thank you very much. We’ve been travelling for a few hours now, and we have slowed to a walk. The dirt road seems to stretch on forever, the landscape barely shifting, even as the sun tracks across the sky, glaring down at us. Thank the heavens for an undamaged ozone layer, otherwise my skin would be crisping. A breeze blows by, cooling sweat-sodden limbs refreshingly and sending waves rippling across the grassy earth in all directions, off into the distance. As puffs of white cloud provide a brief respite from the heat, I see an overturned cart up ahead, between grassy hillocks on either side of the road, blocking the view beyond. My first thought is about the well-being of involved parties. My second thought is that this smells like trouble. A cart has collapsed… but where are the animals pulling it? What caused it? I can’t see anything indicating natural causes, so that only leaves man as the cause. Bandits or highwaymen, then. Interestingly, there isn’t much of a difference in definition between a bandit and a highwayman. Typically, highwayman is the term used for a mounted robber or thief, whereas ‘bandit’ is the term used for groups of the same, but on foot.   In the meantime, we have drawn close to the overturned cart, and there appears to be a woman pinned beneath it. She calls out loudly to us for help. Yes, a cart just coincidentally overturned onto a woman, presumably minutes before we got here, since otherwise she would have become unable to speak so loudly and clearly due to lack of food… Call me a cynic, but I’ll not bet on those odds. “Is it just me, or does this look like a trap?” “Indeed, a trap.” “It be a trap.” We are in agreement, so we get out our weapons. Or, rather, they do. I don’t have a weapon right now… Instead, I surreptitiously ready several compact spikes of earth, holding them along my arms. We keep walking towards the cart, stopping far enough away that we aren’t at risk of being pincered between two groups of enemies coming from behind the hillocks. A dozen humans pop up along the crests of the hillocks, the majority of them holding drawn bows. Now, if I were on my own, this is be about where I’d be saying, ‘Oh… crap’. Luckily, my companions have massive shields. And massive shields are a fairly good counter for archers. Just a bit behind massive forcefields and massive walls. So, I just hunker down behind the small shield wall, listening to arrows ping off them… I don’t have a terribly good view from here… At all… Can’t really counterattack without a line of sight, guys. You know what? Don’t need to. I’ll just wait until they run out of arrows.   A feminine face pops up around the right side of the shields holding a knife. She brandishes it towards Boaz, falling over backwards suddenly after I shoot a few spikes at her, which embed themselves with a nauseating crunch. “Are you sure you can’t do anything about the ones up there, Aaron?” Asks Boaz casually over his shoulder as yet another arrow rebounds pointlessly off his shield. “I can’t see them; how can I direct magic at them?” I shrug helplessly. “Well then,” Says Jakin. “Time to take the fight to them!” “Wai-” “YEEEAAAAAARGH!!!” I can’t do anything but run up behind them in a strange crouch to keep my cover as they charge up the left hill, angling their shields slightly towards the other hill to protect against fire from the side. A brief, quite terrifying sprint uphill later, we are within spitting distance of the five men at the top. They are wearing random pieces of armour – even more mismatched than your average adventurer. There is one guy with a leather chest piece, iron gauntlet – singular, what looks like a self-made bow, and a slightly chipped iron sword at his side, which he is currently pulling out. But now we are in close range with nary a nick in our hides, I can do a lot more. Now, all of them have armour protecting their torsos. Limbs are a bit hit and miss in terms of protection. But headgear? Nah. I see a single guy wearing a helmet. He’s off on the other hilltop. Whipping out the projectiles I have hidden along my arms, I send them out with deadly accuracy. They don’t stand much longer with my spikes in their faces.   Oddly enough, despite it being my first time killing other people, I don’t feel anything. I’d often heard about how traumatic the first kill could be, but… Oh well, not like I wanted to be traumatised. And just like that, I forget about it. There are still the half-dozen people at the crest of the other hill, who have resumed firing at us now that their own people aren’t in the firing line. It isn’t exactly like we can charge down the hill again and up the next… well, we can. But it would be exhausting. I think about what I can do in this situation and realise that I’ve gotten much too caught up in using earth magic in the form of spikes.   There are some attacks that didn’t need to be aimed.   Now, most of the time with my attacks, I want to compress them as much as possible, resulting in a small projectile with a good amount of power. This time, I reverse that. I spread out the earth mana into a cloud above our heads, and blindly throw it at the opposite hill. “My eyes!” “Damn it, I can’t see!” Such shouts and more vehement curses echo across from the hilltop. You don’t need power to blind someone. You just need one small bit of dirt to hit their eyes. Without arrows pinning me down, I’m able to calmly stand and aim the rest of my earthen spikes, thudding them home one by one by one by – oop, missed. Let me just curve that back around, there we are, and… hit.   “I thought yeh said yeh couldn’t aim at them?” Said Jakin with a smile. “I couldn’t. But I figured out that I didn’t need to. Cloud like that, you don’t need pinpoint accuracy, just a direction.” Jakin nods appreciatively. “Well,” He says, looking around. “We should see what we can find on their bodies.” He takes off a man’s gauntlet and compares it to the length of his own arm. “Real shame we can never find armour in our own size.” He holds it out to me. “How about you?” I take it, checking the fit on my own hand. It’s mighty uncomfortable, but it fits well enough. Jakin raises an eyebrow at me. “You’ll want to be wearing a glove underneath that for some padding. Yeh don’t want to find out how much metal chafes, trust me.” “You know what? I think I’ll find myself a glove.” I decide. I don’t have to go too far to find one; the man he got the gauntlet from had one himself. Tilting my head, I ask, “Why don’t you two wear armour, anyway?” The two are just wearing normal clothing of a coarse fabric, giving them hardly any protection against… well, anything. Sighing lightly, he says, “We used to be in the dwarven army, and had armour of tempered steel.” His eyes gleam as they look back into his past. “When we left the army, we had to give it back. Even we have limited numbers of armour that fine.” Shaking his head, he says, “It’s only because our ranks were high that we could keep our weapons. After we left dwarven lands, there wasn’t anybody who had armour for dwarves. Getting it made would cost extra, and besides,” He grins. “With how shoddy some of the smiths round these parts are, it’s barely worth it.” Smiling, we continue searching the bodies.

What came first, the chicken or the egg? The question has divided the religious and non-religious peoples for perhaps centuries. The true answer is simple, as it must be: the chicken. But the reason is not something as simple as the church thinks… -An unknown scholar The smoke had all but disappeared by the time we reached Ren’s house, but what little lingers still burns our nostrils and brings tears to our eyes as I knock on the door. “Just a minute!” A voice calls from within. We waited. And waited. If I had a watch, I would be glancing at it impatiently right now. Finally, the door opens and Ren peers out at us. The front of his har is tinged faintly orange, clearly from that same explosion earlier. “You’re back early.” He notes. I shrug. “We’ve seen the sights. Thought we’d come back and rest for a while.” “Well, come in then.” Ren motions us inside, and we sit down at the table. As if he has suddenly thought of something, Ren jumps back up and moves off into another room. He returns with some paper, an inkwell and a quill. As he starts to write, Ren says, “Our meeting with Tuig was a rare event. So rare that it’s worth recording the conversation, while I still remember it.” “I reckon.” Jakin agrees. “Thing was bloody fast, made some sort of explosion when it ran. What under or on earth was it?” Ren taps the quill free of excess ink after refilling it from the inkwell. “Our records don’t say, as far as I know. But then again, I never made a particular study of it. All I know for sure is that it’s very old and very fast. If I were to wager a guess, however, I would say that it’s some type of plant monster that happened to be blessed with intelligence. It has been recorded that some plants can live hundreds of years, and with the strength of a monster and the even greater benefit given to monsters if they gain intelligence, who’s to say they couldn’t live for at least a few thousand years?” Ren frowns. “Then again, I don’t believe there’s ever been a study done on the longevity of monsters, so who can say for sure?” “Hm.” Jakin grunts. “In other words yeh have no clue. Whatever it is, I hope we don’t end up having to fight it. Don’t think I could keep track of it if it goes that fast.” “I shouldn’t think so.” Ren hardly looks up as he scratches away at the paper. “I’ve never read or heard of it being hostile.” Jakin grunts again, then lapses into silence. “You harvested quite a lot of different herbs earlier. Do you know all of the herbs that grow around here?” Boaz asks. “That, and then some.” Ren glances at Boaz. “Every herb that has ever passed through this village is detailed in the records. Even those that have only been seen or were simply hearsay have been noted.” He looks back down to the paper. “I have read them.” “That sounds like quite an extensive set of records.” I say. “Our people have been writing the records for millennia. We record everything worth remembering. Some might even argue that a few of the things we record aren’t worth remembering at all.” Ren shrugs. “If you want to have a look, you’ll have to ask Len. He is the keeper of the records.” I shake my head. “Just curious.” Finishing his writing, Ren lays his quill down and stands, leaving the page to dry. “I will be returning to my experimentation now. I would rather you not disturb me.” The next day. As we venture into the darkness, our only light is the soft purple glow of our torches, not from flame but from a luminescent paste we have slathered on their ends. I would have preferred to simply use fire magic to light the way, but Ren insists upon using the paste. He says that there are small pockets of flammable gasses at various places throughout the cave system, and although he knows where they are, he would rather not risk utilising a naked flame for light. It is a reasonable precaution, even if I could probably control my magic so that it wouldn’t burn anything. We make slow progress as Ren checks every nook and cranny in every cave we pass through for magical herbs. Somewhat helping the gathering is the fact that the alchemical torches give off a constant light, unlike that of fire which flickers constantly. Our footsteps echo throughout the caves, the only sounds in the slow silence. Even so, we are at ease: the silence is nowhere near as oppressive as it was in the forest of befuddlement. This cave system has so many twists and branches that it may as well be a maze. We make our way methodically through each branch, reassured by the marks left on the walls by past explorers, marks which Ren says he can read to find our way back. I feel inclined to believe him, but all of us are trying to keep track of the way out, just in case. As we move into another cave, our torches reveal dozens of small forms hanging from the ceiling. When the light shines upon them, the bats immediately take flight. I drop my torch and ready my warhammer, but they simply scatter into other caves and disappear without attacking us. Breathing a sigh of relief, I reholster my warhammer. Small flying enemies are difficult to deal with in the best of times, let alone when we have so little light and it’s not safe for me to use fire magic. If they were boomer bats… It’s a scary thought. Could I even do anything in a situation like that? I ponder the question as we continue exploring. If something as bad as that happens, I need to have a plan ready. Jakin, Boaz and Xiltroth likely wouldn’t be able to do any damage unless the bats got close, in which case it would be unwise to prompt an explosion in the first place. Xiltroth has his wrist mounted crossbow, but in the dark, with his targets moving about so erratically? I doubt he’d be able to get a hit. Jakin and Boaz might be able to defend themselves in the case of a close-range explosion, but it could be lethal for anyone else, including me. In which case, our only significant offensive measure would be my magic, annoying though it is. Fire magic is out, and lava magic would be even worse, so earth magic would be my only option. Simple earth spikes would have the same limitations as Xiltroth’s crossbow… As I contemplate, we walk through a cave entrance. Beyond it is darkness – our torchlight doesn’t reach the walls in any direction. Taking a few steps inwards, we stop. In front of us is a dark chasm, and a path to our right slopes down into the darkness. “This looks safe.” Xiltroth remarks sarcastically, peering downwards. “We best watch our step and stay away from that edge…” Jakin warns. ...Perhaps if I created a cloud of earth, it would force them to land. If they were on the ground, their mobility would be greatly reduced, and our options would expand. Cautiously, we start making our way down the path. Every now and again, we find small caves off the side of the path, but there isn’t anything inside them. We come across yet another cave and, just in case, the others go inside to check. I don’t bother and just wait outside for the twenty seconds or so that they search the cave for. As soon as I see them coming back out, I start walking down the path. “Wait! I think there’s a –” The ground crumbles beneath my feet. “Trap there!” Xiltroth finishes belatedly. Falling into the abyss, I whip out my dagger with my free hand and slam it into the wall, immediately arresting my descent, only a few meters down. …This brings back memories. “Can you let down a rope?” I call up. “Just a moment.” One of the twins calls back down. A few seconds later a rope dangles down beside me. “Grab it.” He says. Easier said than done when both of my hands are occupied. Slotting the torch into my mouth, I grab the rope, give it a bit of a yank to signal that I’ve got it, pull my knife free from the wall and sheathe it. There is a very brief feeling of weightlessness until the rope grows taut, and they start hauling me upwards. It doesn’t take long for them to pull me back up to the edge of the path, and I grab their reaching hands as they pull me back up onto solid ground. “Thanks for that.” I say, rolling my strained shoulder. “I might’ve been able to make it down, but who knows what’s at the bottom… Might not have even been a way back up.” Jakin nods. “Should be a bit more careful. Next time there might not be a wall for you to latch onto.” “That part of the path wasn’t naturally weak…” Xiltroth muses. “It looked like it was just a thin layer of rock with a cover of dirt.” Boaz walks over to the hole in the path and kneels down, bringing his torch close to the ground. “It’s artificial all right. Tool marks. But it’s very rough. This wasn’t professionally done. Thing probably would have collapsed on its own before too long.” “We’ll have to explore a different part of the caves now, I suppose.” Ren sighs. I measure the length of the gap with my eyes. “Can’t be longer than a meter, meter and a half? No problem, we can just jump it. Xiltroth, you see anything on the other side we need to watch out for? I don’t want to jump just to fall through the ground again.” Xiltroth peers over at the other side. “Looks fine.” He picks up a rock and throws it at the ground at the other side of the gap. It bounces off. “Should be fine.” “I’m not entirely sure this is a wise course of action.” Splutters Ren. “What if one of you falls?” Shrugging, I say, “Same thing I did.” “What if I fall?” He clarifies. “I don’t think I am capable of jumping such a gap.” “No problem.” I say. “You’re light, right?” Ren looks taken aback. “I suppose I am – wait, what?” “I think it’s best if you lead the way this time, Xiltroth.” I say. “Will do.” Taking only a short run-up, Xiltroth jumps over the gap and lands safely on the other side with room to spare. He looks around himself carefully. “Ground is clear.” “Catch.” Grabbing Ren around his waist, I pick him up – he really is quite light – take quite a few steps back and start to run towards the gap. “Wait, wait, wait a minute!” Ren stutters. “No need to go to -” Heaving my arms, I toss him over the gap. “Extreeeeeeemes!” He shrieks, the sound echoing loudly throughout the cave. Xiltroth catches Ren and sets him down onto the earth, where he promptly collapses into a sitting position. “Well, if there was something down there that didn’t know we are here, it does now.” Jakin remarks dryly. “Alright, make way on the other side, the rest of us need to come over now.” I say. Ren shuffles back towards the wall and Xiltroth takes a few steps backwards, apparently ready to assist anyone else if need be. All of us make the jump without much difficulty, despite our heavy armour and weaponry; the gap isn’t particularly large, after all. “I wish you could at least have let me have a few moments to resolve myself.” Ren sighs heavily. I shrug. “Doubt it would have helped much.” I motion to Xiltroth to take the lead. We continue down the path. Even now, the side caves are completely empty, but I still wait for Xiltroth to check ahead before moving on. Jakin was right, next time I might not be so lucky. When we reach the bottom, it almost comes as a surprise. By now, we must be quite deep underground. The ground here is lit very, very dimly by some sort of luminous moss. More important, however, are the multitudes of short, bipedal reptilians heading towards us. What little clothing they have is tattered and worn, but all of them are wielding makeshift weaponry made from bones, stone and animal hides. “Kobolds?” Ren remarks, confused. “There should be mostly armoured moles down here, not kobolds. Something must have happened to switch the relationships between the races or eliminate the moles entirely. It is probable that these kobolds are more dangerous than they appear.” I grunt and swing my warhammer heavily, sending a few kobolds crashing to the ground with their scales broken and their chests crushed. “They don’t feel dangerous. There’s just a lot of them.” I swing my hammer again. “There’s a group coming from behind us!” Xiltroth exclaims. “You and Jakin defend the rear, the path’s only wide enough for two people to fight anyway!” I reply, swinging my hammer in another wide arc. Because of the kobolds in front of me, I can’t turn to check on the situation, but a moment later I hear the sounds of fighting from behind me. Despite their numbers, the kobolds seem to be at a severe disadvantage: their scales aren’t thick enough to offer significant protection against my or Boaz’s blows, and their weapons and strength are insufficient to make much more than a dent on our armour. It doesn’t take long for about a dozen bodies to pile up at the foot of the path, but despite that they don’t seem to have any intentions of letting up and continue to charge towards us all the same. This continues for a while, the pile of bodies only growing in size. The kobolds are much smaller than me, enough that I can easily see over the heads of the ones in front of me to the ones behind them, and to the ones behind the ones behind them. Which is why I was able to see when a group of kobolds move off to my left… towards the edge of the path. “Some coming from the side!” I warn. “I’ve got it!” Xiltroth replies from behind me. Despite the attack on three fronts, the battle is relatively stable. After another minute or so of fighting, they begin to retreat, as if their earlier dogged determination to throw themselves at us was a lie. Breathing somewhat heavily, I watch cautiously as the kobolds disappear into tunnels in the walls. Seeing that the kobolds have gone, Ren quickly trots down the path, steps gingerly around all the scaled corpses and starts to pry some of the luminescent moss free of the soil and stone. Eyeing the dimly glowing tunnels warily, I step down myself, still holding my warhammer at the ready. “We best stick to the edges. There are tunnels in almost every direction here… too easy to get surrounded.” The others nod, and we make our way around the side of the cave until we reach the first tunnel. The entrance is empty, and so we venture down the pathway. Every ten to twenty meters, Xiltroth spots some sort of trap. Some are blindingly obvious, such as simple bear traps that are just set on the ground – and likely wouldn’t do any damage even if we did step on them – while others are more well-hidden, such as the pitfall traps. Xiltroth seems to be somewhat annoyed at the traps. They’re so crude that rather than disarming them, all he really has to do is poke them with his staff or give them a kick to break them apart. After a short while, we reach the end of the tunnel, which comes out above the path we were on earlier. This must be how they ambushed us earlier. We retrace our steps and move along to the second tunnel. This one looks more promising: the tunnel is lined with smaller caves strewn with various bones, hides and the occasional piece of cloth. Evidently, this is their residential area, although none of them appear to be here now. But again, there is nothing at the end of the tunnel, so we turn back to try yet another tunnel. As we exit the tunnel, I feel something hit my helmet, hard enough for it to be somewhat painful. I look around and see a kobold next to me, standing up as if from a crouch. Where had it come from? Well, either way it was dead. It’s too close for me to swing my hammer, so I punch it in the face instead, my gauntleted fist knocking it to the ground before I crush its chest with my boot. Then I get hit on the head again. Punching this kobold even harder, I look up. “They’re climbing down the damn walls!” Indeed, the kobolds are climbing down from the path above in attempt to ambush us. But it’s useless: they just can’t make it through our armour. Perhaps they could hurt Xiltroth, but his hearing and sight is the best out of all of us, and he’s the least likely to fall prey to a surprise attack. “Alright, back into the tunnel.” I growl. “Let’s see how these flanking obsessed morons like it when they only have a single avenue of attack.” We retreated a few meters into the tunnel. Now they could only attack from the front, and they clearly didn’t like it, because they immediately cleared out again. “For goodness sake…” I sigh. “Can their leader just come on out so we can clean his clock and be done with it?” “Wish it were always that simple.” Jakin agrees. “They went into that tunnel.” Xiltroth says, pointing. “Let’s follow them and get this over with.” So we do, venturing into the tunnel Xiltroth indicated. We aren’t used to this back and forward kind of fight, and it’s just annoying seeing our enemies run away constantly. This tunnel is unlike the other two in that there is another cave at the end of it. “Back!” Xiltroth shouts. Without question, I immediately leap backwards, narrowly avoiding a cascade of large rocks that slammed down in front of the entrance. …That one would’ve caused more than a slight bump. We shift the rocks out of the way and enter once again, this time without the trap. Waiting for us are maybe twenty kobolds, plus something sitting in a roughly hewn stone chair at the rear that looks similarly reptilian, but human sized, perhaps even larger. They attack us on sight, so we reciprocate the action and begin to decimate what remains of their population. Boaz and Jakin are easily able to pierce through the kobolds’ scales with their picks and defend themselves at the same time, while Xiltroth is expertly thrusting and spinning his staff into the more vulnerable points, crushing throats and breaking limbs with similar ease. I, of course, am ignoring all finesse by simply smashing them really hard with my warhammer, using wide, sweeping swings to keep the area around me clear. As for Ren? He’s standing nervously by the tunnel entrance, sincerely hoping that no kobolds are going to come up behind him. It doesn’t take us long to clean the floor with them, with the sole exception of the large one. When we approach, he stands from his chair, allowing us to have a better view of him. In general terms his features are similar to the kobolds, but while their scales are thin and dull, this one has thick, bright golden scales that look almost like armour plating. Two sharp horns protrude from the back of his head, making him look almost draconic. He opens his mouth, but no words come forth, only a low growl. “Lizard!” Xiltroth shouted. That confuses me. He is reptilian, but it’s a bit odd to call him a lizard. I glance sidewards at Xiltroth, only to see him rolling out of the way of a massive lizard, perhaps about as tall as a kobold and twice as long as a human is high. Its neck appears oddly wrinkled, even with the scales. “Jakin, Boaz, you take the lizard man, I’ll help Xiltroth with the lizard.” I say, already dashing towards the massive reptilian beast. Swinging my hammer, I twist my feet and torso so as to push the force of my charge into my hammer as I drive it towards the big lizard. I feel the impact crack one or two of its bones and plenty of scales, but I can tell that it’s willing and able to fight on as it whips around to face me. I swing my hammer at it again, bashing its head to one side, but by the feel of it not doing much more than superficial damage. It lunges at me with its mouth wide open, and I slip my left hand up the haft of my warhammer to use it to block the attack, but just before its attack reaches me it rears back, growling in pain. Xiltroth has jumped onto its back and stabbed it in the eye with his dagger, half blinding it. Utilising its distractedness, I raise my hammer overhead and pull it back down, hitting the lizard on the head, pulling it down with my hammer head and smashing it against the ground. Something breaks in its head, and it doesn’t move again. Breathing heavily from the exertion of that last blow, I momentarily rest my hammer against the ground and look over to the twins. The lizard man looks to be in bad shape, with blood oozing from several smashed portions of scales all over his torso, while the twins look perfectly fine. Even as I watch, the lizard man darts in one direction and slashes his claws towards Boaz, who just adjusts his shield slightly. There is an odd screeching sound as his claws rake against the shield, but no damage is done and a moment later he stumbles as Jakin hits him with his pick. As I and Xiltroth step over to surround him even further, his eyes grow desperate and he starts clawing with reckless abandon. But to no avail. He fell quickly under our combined efforts. Jakin slips his shield off his arm, turns it around and winces. The lizard man’s attacks have left several deep scratches on its surface. Although none of them have torn holes in it, it is still significant damage. Boaz’s shield has fared no better. Still, the kobolds have been defeated. We continued exploring for a few hours more, finding little of note and no dangerous monsters, before heading back up to the surface once more.

The strongest monsters, in any location, will always be found in the centre. Whether that be the middle of a wide plain, a clearing deep in a forest, or a cave system low in the mountains doesn’t matter. Pure mana, which comes from deep underground, plays a large part in the strength of the monsters appearing in an area, but so too do the various other types of mana. And those other types are found more often above ground than under it, save perhaps earth and lava. In, for example, a forest, the most common elements would be earth, wind, water, darkness, and to a lesser extent, decay. Although it may seem strange to some, the most troublesome of these elements is darkness. Monsters of darkness are crafty and sly, though it does not inherently guarantee aggressive traits. Along with light, darkness is one of the two elements which can grant a monster intelligence. - An unknown scholar Aaron feels a sense of relief as his blade cuts a bloody track across the palm of the werewolf. He hadn’t shown it, but he had become very worried after being unable to pierce the tough fur of the ironback alpha. Worried that his weapon is insufficient, that his strength isn’t enough. That he doesn’t have enough time. The prime of his life has long passed Aaron by, and his age is starting to creep towards the point where the physique begins to decline. He is starting to become unsure whether he will truly be able to become strong before that deadline. The ironback alpha is an iron difficulty rank monster, only one up from copper, practically the lowest possible rating for a monster. But above iron there is still steel, mithril, orichalcum, adamantine… A mere iron rank is nothing. Will he really have to rely on magic to break past the defences of higher rank creatures? But it appears that it is not so. Even among higher ranked monsters, there can be monsters with lower defences than that of lower ranked ones, depending on which monster you are using as comparison. Some monsters have strengths in other areas than defence… Like strength. Metal screeches as a clawed hand rakes across a tower shield, leaving only shallow scratches on the tough metal but striking with such strength that it forces Jakin back a pace. “He be a tough one, alright! Watch out for those claws, Aaron, I don’t think yeh could take a hit from that!” The werewolf is a steel ranked monster, and beyond what Aaron can defeat on his own, probably even if he uses magic. Jakin pushes forward, attempting to knock the werewolf back. The werewolf braces itself and stands unfazed, too heavy for him to push back on his own. But perhaps with two people, something can be done. Boaz charges in, slamming his shield against the beast with great momentum and knocking it backwards. Unfortunately, before they can use the opening to attack, the werewolf is back on his feet and considerably angry. Focusing on Boaz who knocked it down, it rushes at him and collides with the shield, engaging in a frenzied barrage of swipes. Meanwhile, Aaron is slowly edging around the clearing, desperately attempting to stay unnoticed by the werewolf. Ending up behind it, he raises his sword – And dives to one side as it sends a powerful kick his way. The close call leaves Aaron breathless. If he hadn’t considered that it might have heightened hearing and smell, or if he’d been a second slower… He might be unconscious with several ribs broken right now. Nevertheless, even a monster at steel rank can’t fend off attacks from three directions without taking damage. Perhaps stronger monsters can, but this isn’t a stronger monster. A deep hole appears in its shoulder, then another, and another, unable to react as it reels in pain. Before long the werewolf is almost dead. Almost breathing its last, it lets out a long howl which sounds throughout the forest before being cut short by a heavy blow to the head. Dead. Confirming the kill, they breathe a sigh of relief and relax, holstering weapons and preparing to strip the werewolf of materials. It doesn’t take long for them to get battle-ready once again, as red eyes shine out of the darkness all around them. Wolves, dozens of them. And that isn’t all. Among them are several with the same distinctive metallic shine on their backs as the one earlier. Ironback alphas. ‘This… might get a little difficult’ Thinks Aaron. ‘What would be the most effective use of my magic right now?’ Now is not the time to be holding back. For a moment, he furiously thinks. Then, happening on an idea, he calls out to the twins. “Everyone get close! I’ll make some fortifications!” He is already hurrying towards them as he says this, and while they are somewhat sceptical, a situation such as this doesn’t allow for hesitation. They move towards him as the wolves run at them, howling. Meeting up, they stand back to back, preparing for the incoming tide. The twins haven’t seen more than a short demonstration of Aaron’s magical abilities and had previously assumed that he either has very low talent or a small mana pool, as he has only ever used the sword in combat. At this moment, that assumption completely disappears from their minds. In a surge of mana beyond the sum of both their mana pools, they are surrounded by a sea of glowing magic. A moment later, that glow is replaced by earth. But Aaron isn’t planning a simple wall. No, what good will that do? The pack of wolves is sprinting full tilt at the trio when the earthen mana condenses into a circle of long spikes projecting from the ground. Unable to stop their momentum, and not intelligent enough to notice the danger in time, several wolves run into the spikes. The lucky ones come out with broken limbs. The unlucky ones… become part of the barrier. Jakin and Boaz stare in shock, but snap out of it within moments, and begin to repel the wolves that are slinking in-between the spikes. It will be a long battle. Panting, I ready my sword for the next attack. Wearily looking ahead, I see that the next opponent is a ironback wolf. Close combat will be dangerous, but if my life is at risk, why in two earths should I do that? One of the spikes, the size of a jousting lance, breaks from the ground. In but a moment, a crunch comes from the spike, and in its place is a small arrow of earth. Soaring forwards, it is sadly deflected by the flashing claws of the beast. Undiscouraged, the arrow loops around for a second try and nails it in the eye from above. It would have been much more satisfying if I could do it with a sword, but this is good enough. Corpses of wolves are strewn around the trio in a knee-high barrier, but also extending far enough to make the spike barrier almost useless. Still, limp corpses aren’t good footing for anyone, and they hamper the wolves significantly. But we have been fighting for a long while, and I’m nearly out of mana. It seems unlikely that I will be able to continue fighting for much longer. …So, may as well use the rest of my mana while I still can. The spikes uproot themselves from the ground, pulling free of the restrictive corpses draped over them. Wolf corpses fall to the blood sodden ground with a thump, and a series of cracks and grinding sounds emanates from the spears of earth as they constrict and compact into smaller and significantly more solid arrows. Shooting out one by one, I turn in a slow circle to aim each missile appropriately at the circling wolves, giving the majority heavy wounds and outright killing some. Then, an angry pain pulsing in my head, I fall to the ground, unconscious. I awaken with a tent above my head and a crackling fire warming my feet. And a headache pounding in my head like a bloody snare drum.   Groggily, I shuffle my way out of the entrance, sincerely hoping there is something warm to eat, and trying to remember how full my water skins are. My throat is dry, completely devoid of all things moisture, and my stomach seems to think it’s an angry dog, growling constantly. “Ah, you’re awake. Took yeh long enough. Did yeh know, after yeh flopped to the ground like some fish outta water, we had to take the rest of them out ourselves? There were still eight of the bloody things, fer god’s sake. A blasted nightmare, that was.” And sitting next to the fire is Boaz, launching into an extensive tirade at the first twitch of a foot. Groaning, I sit down at the fire, stretching out my cold hands to warm them. “Then, still tired as my aunt’s copper kettle, we had to skin all forty-nine of them, find a clearing away from that mess of blood and guts, lug all the skins all the way over here, gut one of the beasts, start a fire, lug YOU back here, set up tents, cook the wolf, and take turns doing the watch fer half the night, which, of course, is when yeh decide is the best time to wake up!” Did he rehearse that? If not, that’s impressive. “I must say I pride myself on my precise timing. If I hadn’t slept so long, I might have had to do some real work! Glad I decided to take a nap when I did.” I can’t tell if he’s sputtering in anger or laughter. I decide to press on regardless. “Now, how about we quiet down? I have a shocker of a headache, and we might wake up Jakin.” A voice comes from one of the other two tents surrounding the campfire. “Too late fer that, yeh’ve already woken me up. Can’t a dwarf get some sleep after a hard day of fighting?” Oops. “Well, don’t suppose you saved some food for me? I’m starving!” Boaz holds out a piece of cooked wolf meat on a stick to me. Directly over the fire. If he was human, his hands would be developing burns right now. “Here. Might be a bit burnt.” “Thanks.” I take a bite out of it and begin to chew. Damn, that’s tough. This might take longer than the battle did! “Anyway, what’s with that absurd magic power? Why are you a warrior if you have more than enough mana?” Good questions. Shame for him I’m still chewing. I hold up a hand and point at my mouth, moving my jaw in exaggerated motions in the universal gesture for ‘can’t talk, I’m eating’. When my saliva and incessant chewing have finally done their jobs, I swallow the piece of meat. My word, now my jaw is as exhausted as the rest of me. I Take a swig from my water skin, swirling it around in my mouth before swallowing, now ready to answer questions. “Well, I was just born with this massive mana pool, I suppose. Not much to say about that. As for why I’m a warrior, that’s partially because I don’t have the cash to learn magic, but it’s mostly because I don’t want to be a magus.” Their jaws just drop. Not a surprise, really. Magi are useful in a wide range of areas, and are very powerful. For someone to discard that opportunity? And someone with great talent, at that? It must be incomprehensible to them, no doubt. “Now stay with me here. Imagine you grew up with everyone praising your magical ability, saying ‘you’re going to be a powerful magus one day’ and things like that. Most people would be happy with that. Me, I just got pissed off by it. They’re all just assuming I’ll learn magic because I’m good at it? Obviously, not one of them had considered I might have other ideas. So, I became a warrior.” Incredible. Are all dwarves able to open their mouths to this extent? Any more and their jaws will become unhinged. A fly wanders into Boaz’s open mouth, causing him to start coughing violently. Moments later, a spittle covered black projectile comes shooting out of his mouth and into the fire with a brief hiss. “I’m not so stubborn that I won’t use it if someone’s life is in danger, at least. Now, I need to refill my completely empty mana pool, so I’ll keep watch till morning, if that’s fine with you two.” Coming out of their shock, the twins just look at me in disbelief. “You’re crazy.” Jakin says, shaking his head at me. “But I suppose having a trump card like that isn’t bad either. Now, I think I’ll take you up on that offer. See you at dawn.” “Night.” Boaz too retreats into the relative comfort of his tent. Silence. Now I’m alone, if one doesn’t count all the insects scurrying around. And this splitting headache. Here’s hoping this night will be boring. Tearing another piece of meat off with my teeth, I settle down to watch and listen the night away. It wasn’t an exciting night. Hooray. On one hand, no monsters, on the other, nothing much to do. Except train. There are always ways to train, if you have magic. I spent most of the night trying NOT to burn a stick with fire magic. It’s easy enough for it to not burn me, but that’s mostly instinctive. Like sticking your hand on something hot and reflexively taking it off before even feeling pain, fire mana that goes near you doesn’t hurt you unless you want it to. Not so much for other things. Which is why I’m not: Wreathing myself in fire as I charge at my enemies. Forming slowly contracting rings of fire around enemies, burning them to a crisp. FIREBALL! FIREBALL! The first would burn my clothing. Not a cool sight, and costly for me. Second and third would set grass or trees ablaze. Hey presto, forest fire. I wonder how many fires are cause by thoughtless fire magi every year? So, I’m trying to train my control. Honestly, it’s seriously annoying to only be able to use my dangerously effective fire magic to start a campfire. I mean seriously, where can you safely use fire magic? Forest? Burned down. Plain? Grass fire. Caves? Goodbye, oxygen! Rocky mountain? Yeah, could work. I hear you say, what about in a snowy region? Steam explosions. The frigging ocean? Wooden boat! How about a desert, nothing to burn there, right? And you want to make that environment hotter with some fire, do you. Real clever of you. So yeah, bleak mountain tops, beaches, rocky regions… Not really common places. I’ve made some progress, at least. This stick hasn’t burnt, and it’s been over my flame for a good twenty minutes now. While I’m doing this, I’m also properly keeping watch. That helps with the practice too, in a way. You don’t have much focus to spare in a battle on concentrating on not burning something. This makes me envious of… every element except fire. Even though I have them! Adding a few more sticks onto the fire, I take one for my own use. Now, onto not burning two separate sticks. (POV Greg) As I skim across my self-created ice rink, I appreciate just how easy it was to create it. Contrary to what I’d originally thought, I didn’t even need skates made. I just needed to design a spell that made them myself. It wasn’t hard at all. I did have some earth affinity, after all, and thus I just needed to create a formation that made the earth go in the correct shape around my boots. Took me a couple hours to figure out in the library, but it sure worked. Well, after that I had to learn how to skate. That turned out to be the harder part. I wince as I remember those particular memories. I had fallen. A lot. At high speeds. I broke a few bones. Not an entertaining experience, but at least I didn’t break my neck. Holy magic can’t do much for that, unlike other injuries. Or rather, it can, but you’ll already be dead if your neck is broken. Not much point fixing up a corpse. Then I made some formations to create an icy ground on which to skate on. Again, extremely simple. A metre wide, a few metres long, a few centimetres thick, and you have a straight stretch. Couple that with a quarter-pipe type formation and the ability to move said sections of ice around mentally after creation, and you can easily create a path to skate on. Didn’t have as much luck with wind magic, I’m afraid. I can do a bit of a breeze, but much more than that and I start feeling queasy. Well, it’s something. Then the mana reinforcement. Potent stuff. Feeding a trickle of mana into my heart, I watch the world slow down around me. Thousands of dust particles in a ponderous dance. The profile of a guard, reflected in the curve of the ice, turning slowly monstrous as it is distorted. Clouds like statues in the sky, unmoving puffs of marble and granite. And me, moving at an almost normal pace within it all. The feeling is so surreal, it’s almost how I image getting high is. Without the blurriness, visual distortion, slow reactions and other negative side effects… That’s what I imagine it to be like, at least. It has improved in mana efficiency and effect drastically since I first used it. It’s so effective that I bet all magi would use it in combat, if they had the mana to spare. It is a constant drain on my mana pool, however, and mine isn’t as ridiculous as… Anyway, that’s why I’m focusing on making my other spells more cost-effective. The minimum possible thickness of ice, the narrowest I can make it without flying off it, and training so I can safely navigate thinner paths, all to reduce mana consumption. On other news…   I… killed a man.   Part of the training was a bandit subjugation, you see. It was supposed to make us come to terms with taking the lives of other people, I’m sure, but… It really didn’t. I don’t think there was anyone who wasn’t vomiting after that. Most people refused to come to training for a few days afterwards. Some refused to eat.   I don’t blame them. Not that I was any different. Most of us here follow one religion or another, and if there’s one thing that’s common in most religions, it’s that killing people is a bad thing. Not to mention the laws against it and the common values of our previous society making out murder to be one of the most morally wrong things you can do. Not that that’s a bad thing. It’s great, and murders are now a rare tragedy, compared to what you hear about ancient times. But that was back on Earth. Other Earth, that is. And here, it can be kill or be killed. Bandits, rebels, thieves… There’s all manner of people who will try to kill you, even if you’re just a common merchant or farmer. Let alone ‘heroes’, who people will no doubt expect to try and fix any wrongdoing they see, like some fairy tale. It would be good if we could, but I’m only human, after all. There’s only so much I can do, so many things I can know about, and I can only be in one place at once. Unfortunately, this system of magic does not support clones. And it’s not like we are invincible.   In the end, killing is bad. It felt terrible, looked terrible, smelt terrible. I’ll forever remember how it felt as I, in a panic, unleashed a bolt of lightning, his face turned from glee to horror in an instant. That face… that face. It haunted my dreams since the day I killed him. The fear in his eyes. His mouth stretched wide in terror. The trembling… Get out of my head, would you? His screaming voice. The convulsions that came upon him as the lightning coursed through his body. Steam rising from his body, the stench of charred human flesh… the tang of bile rising in my throat. I was trying not to remember that, overactive imagination. But no, it’s fine, go ahead and ruin my mood. Well… Antonio? He fell into depression after Phil… Must have shocked him back to reality. Poor guy. He’s a real douche, but he’s still one of us. He hasn’t been talking so boisterously as before, which has been different. Not even sure if it’s a good different. I had gotten so used to his voice loudly praising himself, somewhere. But now the meals, the training, free time… silent. Either way, I hope this has a positive effect on him, rather than a negative one. But change he must. And so must we all.   It’s been decided.   We’re leaving.

Potatoes? Yes, we have potatoes here. There’s quite a few people who don’t know how to cook them, and thus avoid them, but they’re quite popular among the poor who are in the know. After all, they’re easy to grow, easy to cook, and they don’t taste half bad either. In fact, I’ve got some growing out back if you want a bite to eat? -An unknown scholar “I don’t suppose we can settle this amicably?” Several of them grin nastily, and one of them calls out, “You wish! We ain’t letting you leave here alive!” A few of them laugh maliciously. Righteo, I no longer have any qualms with fighting them. But there must be more than twenty of them. I’d be confident with five, maybe even ten. Time for drastic measures. Turning my head slightly, I say to the three people behind me, “Go back upstairs, find a window and jump out of it. I’ll be with you in a minute.” Xiltroth is hesitant, but Jakin grabs his arm and pulls him backwards. Evidently, they have already guessed what I was about to do. “You think we’ll let you, idiot?” One of them shouts, and they all shove chairs and tables aside, instantly clearing the floor, but at the same time shattering numerous bottles which douse parts of the floor in fluid. They start running at me, weapons raised. “A shame about the building, isn’t it?” I say, slightly nervous, slightly excited. I open my mouth again, and a torrent of flame blasts out, moving as if it has a mind of its own to block doors, windows… and a large swathe of the floor in front of me. Then I let it loose, and the building starts to burn, with all of them trapped in the middle of it. The many bottles of alcohol only make the situation worse, the flames spreading along the pools of liquid faster than a man can run. Cautious of anyone leaping through the fire to attack me, I quickly climb the staircase and leap deftly through the window, bending my knees as I land heavily on the soft ground outside. Xiltroth and the twins are standing a few meters away, the light from the fire causing twisting shadows to dance across their faces as they observe my handiwork. Xiltroth’s mouth is agape. “What… How, did it - so quick…” He stutters in disbelief. “Magic. It can often overturn even the grimmest situations.” I say, wincing in sympathy as I hear shouts and screams of pain echoing from the burning building. Amidst the sheets of billowing smoke and roaring flames, I see the door to the building suddenly erupt in a cloud of white. My eyebrows furrow. There shouldn’t be that much smoke coming from the door, should there? There’s a smashing sound, and several people rush out of the cloud, burns visible on their exposed flesh. The man in front is holding a slim book, covered with a familiar leather. I connect the dots – that wasn’t smoke, it was steam! He must be a water magus. “Case in point, that water mage helped them escape the fire.” I said grimly, readying myself for combat again. I hear a soft, metallic twang behind me, and the magus falls over under my uncomprehending gaze. I look back, and I see Xiltroth reloading a wrist mounted crossbow. I’d never noticed it before now, so he must have either had it in some sort of collapsed, compact state or not have been wearing it while we were travelling. “Good shot!” I say as I run to engage the heavily coughing men. Smashing in the chest of one, I quickly crush the skull of another before they’re able to recuperate. The twins are barely half a step behind me, already having dispatched another two of the remaining three and in the process of eliminating the last. I swing my mace down at the last remaining man, and he appears to have recuperated sufficiently to deflect it with his sword. But then he collapses into a fit of coughing again. “Please… Cough, cough… don’t kill COUGH… me…” He’s barely able to make out a few words. “Sorry.” I say. And I really am. “But I’m out of ro- damn, my rope!” Twisting my head to look at one of the windows on the second story of the burning inn, I hear a pair of bloodcurdling shrieks as the fire creeps ever upwards. Nope, completely gone. I look back, and see him painstakingly raising his sword again. Disarming him by smacking his wrist with my mace, I look him square in the eyes as his face twists in pain. “You started this fight, so don’t go looking to me for pity.” I say softly, the crackling of fire, splitting wood and dancing shadow playing a backdrop of destruction amidst the night. Sadly, I continue speaking to the doomed man. “…I’m not strong enough to be able to afford that luxury yet.” Nobody emerges from any of the other houses after that, so that must have been all of them. That only leaves the question of why they attacked us in the first place… and what on two earths we do now. “We should search the other houses… Perhaps we’ll find something.” Jakin speaks while the rest of us aare still looking around in a semi dazed state, breaking us out of our stupors. Furrowing his brows, Boaz says, “Something is definitely wrong here. How could normal farmers have so many swords? And what about that magus? There’s no way someone with that kind of talent would stay in a place like this.” Slowly, I nod in agreement. “Normal farmers wouldn’t all stay up far past dark just to have a few drinks, either.” My ears, still enhanced by mana reinforcement, pick up Xiltroth’s voice speaking softly beside me. “How, are you all so, calm?” I turn to him. “This was probably your first time killing someone, right? Feel free to sit down and think things over for a while. Or I can sit with you, if that’d help.” “Not that…” He said shakily. “How are you all so calm when we almost just DIED!?” I glance at the dwarves. Jakin shrugs. “Just used to it, I guess. Barely helps when yeh be in the thick of it, the rush of battle, the fear… But after - well, it’s over, isn’t it?” Looking back at Xiltroth, he’s still standing there, looking like he still doesn’t quite understand. “We’re adventurers.” I explain. “You don’t get anywhere being one unless you go through a few deadly situations. If you can’t make your peace with the possibility of death, it’s better if you don’t become one in the first place.” Seeing him looking so down, I sigh briefly and continue. “I’m not trying to be hard on you, or say that you aren’t cut out to be an adventurer. Just think it over. Adventuring is a life centred mostly around blood and money. Only thing that makes us different from mercenaries is that we are usually fighting monsters, rather than people. But even if we prefer to fight monsters, there will always be times – like today – when we simply have no choice.” He nods pensively. Jakin speaks cheerfully to brighten the atmosphere. “Alright then, we’re off to explore the place, feel free to give us a holler if you be needing us!” He turns around and walks towards one of the buildings, Boaz walking beside him. I give the guy a pat on the back and walk off myself. I look through a few buildings without finding anything unusual, although I do manage to nab myself a new coil of rope. Why do I want rope so much? I dunno, it’s just useful stuff, you know? Better to have it than not. Other than that, I manage to avoid the temptation of grabbing anything else. If we end up not finding anything… then I might take a few things. As I’m searching through the fifth house in a row with zilch to show for it, I hear Jakin yelling. “OI, AARON! OVER HERE!” Naturally, I hurry over to where his voice came from. I found he and his brother standing at the door to a large barn, the sort you would expect to house some ten, twenty animals in comfortably warm and dry pens. “You found something?” I ask hopefully. This isn’t exactly how I prefer to spend my nights, after all. “Yes.” He says. “We think we found the real villagers.” “Oh?” He gestures to the barn doors, which are slightly open. I look through the gap. It’s almost pitch black inside, but it’s barely any brighter outside, so I can see well enough to make out forms, if not colours. The pens that would usually line either side of the interior are gone, replaced instead by a row of large cages that each hold several people. Some of the people are standing and looking towards the entrances, others are sitting, and the rest are curled up in a corner of their cage. I catch a whiff of the air drifting out of the entrance – it isn’t pleasant, a fetid mixture of must, sweat, urine, mud… “So, what’s the problem?” Surely, we could be inside letting them out right now rather than standing outside. “The cages have heavy locks on them. And in all likelihood, the keys…” His voice trails off. Right. Probably on a charred corpse somewhere back in the tavern. Could easily have been damaged by the heat as well, now that I think about it. “What do we do, then? We can’t just leave them here.” “Well,” Boaz starts. “We could try smashing the locks…” “Or I could, pick the locks.” Said Xiltroth, walking towards us. …That will make things a lot easier. “Let’s go greet the villagers, then?” I ask. Jakin shrugs and pushes the doors wide open. “Apologies for the intrusion, but I assume you people are the real villagers?” Jakin says conversationally, causing most of the people to shrink back against the opposite side of the cages. One of the men works up the courage to speak. “You’re not with them, are you?” Jakin shakes his head, and he sighs in relief. “Thank God. Yes, we live in this village. Rather, we did, until that bandit group came and took over.” He says bitterly. “Well, they’re all dead now.” Jakin states. Quite a few heads perk up at that, and the man says excitedly, “Really!? You have the keys then, right?” “Unfortunately, we had to use a rather… unconventional method to defeat them all, so we don’t have the keys.” Jakin says, causing him to moan in despair. “But our friend here says he should be able to pick the locks.” Jakin continues cheerfully. “Really!?” Xiltroth steps up to the first cage, holding a few oddly-shaped metallic tools. He begins to fiddle with the lock under the intense gaze of everyone in the room. After about half a minute, he says awkwardly, “Um, can you please… look away? I’m… not used to all, this attention.” Most of the villagers turn to face away, but a few of the younger ones peek around their mother’s arms. He continues his work, and within another half minute the lock pops free and the door swings open. The people inside the cage rush out and start crying and hugging each other as Xiltroth starts working on the second cage. Before too long, he has all the cages unlocked, and the villagers are out, thanking us profusely. “So you know in advance, I had to set fire to the tavern to take them down.” I say, causing a few smiles to falter. “As long as we’re all alive, we can rebuild.” Reassures the same man who talked to us before. We go outside, where the building in question is clearly visible in the darkness, casting light over the village as a testament to its ongoing destruction. The buildings in the village are well spaced out, and the air tonight is calm, so there is little danger of the fire spreading to other buildings. Otherwise I would have to do some exhausting damage control. Remembering the reason why we were so eager to get to a village in the first place, we buy some supplies: oats and some fresh vegetables from the neglected, but thankfully intact farms. Our water bottles we refill at the well, and we are good to go. We leave the village soon after, eager to get away from the place we almost died, even if there isn’t any danger there anymore. We set up camp to one side of the road a fair distance from the village, and try to get what little sleep we can in what remains of the night. I wake up the next morning, tired and smelling like smoke from yesterday’s ordeals. …Time to pack up and keep trekking, I guess. After a refreshingly warm breakfast of porridge, we get on the road again. With any luck, we should reach Xantor before the day is out. The breeze is soft and cool, which distracts somewhat from the ever-present sun hanging overhead, sending down its admittedly life-giving, but still quite annoying heat. Xiltroth flips up the hood of his cloak as a carriage surrounded by a group of mounted soldiers travels towards us, the driver barely glancing at us as we pass by each other. He turns his head for a moment to watch as it moves into the distance, sighing lightly as he continues walking. Later that day… A carriage, escorted by a group of mounted soldiers, makes good time as it travels down the road between Vaaslav and Xantor. The carriage is a good one, not fancy but clean, sturdy and reasonably fast. Still, the presence of an entourage indicated that whoever is seated within has a good amount of money… and probably some enemies. The carriage slows to a stop, a couple of soldiers directing their steeds to continue moving forward as they look ahead. A stern voice comes from within the carriage. “Driver, why have we stopped?” The driver twists in his seat, calling back nervously. “Sir, ah, there appears to be a large hole in the road.” “Then go around it!” The voice says irritably. “Yes sir, right away. Ah, it may a bit bumpy for a short while, sir, but we’ll leave it behind in just a moment.” He says, taking out a handkerchief and dabbing at a trickle of sweat trailing down the length of his nose. After achieving this, he again folds it neatly into a pocket and flicks the reigns, directing it to one side and moving around the uncovered pit trap. Inside the carriage is a well-dressed demon man. Not a fold of his clothing is out of place, and he holds himself with a faint air of elegance as he reclines casually on the cushioned seat. His eyes narrow slightly as he gazes out the window and beholds the massive hole. “Why in the world?” He says with a hint of incredulity, to no one in particular. Shifting his head away, he raises a slim hand to brush his crimson hair to either side of his long pair of horns. After the brief stop, the carriage continues travel relatively unhindered, and soon reaches its destination. (POV Aaron) Xantor is a large city, at least in comparison to Vaaslav, and from what little I’ve seen so far, it should suit our needs perfectly. We arrived here early in the afternoon, and Xiltroth split off with us (a bit reluctantly, if my eyes don’t deceive me… and I don’t need glasses anymore) at the gate, while the rest of us ask and look for some suitable place to stay. After we organise accommodation for the three of us, I start exploring to my heart’s content. So far, I’ve seen three blacksmith shops, a market much more expansive than the ones in previous cities… and the adventurer’s guild even has an area out back for training, complete with weights and mats. After I have my fill for the time being, I meet back up with the twins, and we decide to get ourselves a proper dinner, after everything that has happened lately. And so, we chat over bowls of warm, flavoursome meat stew and tankards of frothy beer. “What do you think about Xiltroth?” I ask, depositing another forkful of stew into my mouth, savouring the soft meat and herbs as I chew slowly. Jakin took a long drink, wiping froth out of his beard before answering. “He’s a strange one, that’s fer sure. Quiet, and he’s clearly never seen a battle before yesterday, but he seemed skilled enough. Did yeh see that shot he made? Straight in the neck.” “That crossbow was custom, too. Must have some money behind him.” Said Boaz, who then raises his tankard to his lips and drinks deeply. When he puts it back down, the tankard is empty. I lean back in my chair, enjoying the calmness and relaxing atmosphere of the place. “He might. Heck, he probably was. Guy didn’t even know how to cook. Still, it looks as if he’s left that behind him.” Jakin’s eyebrows raise slightly. “Oh? Why do you think so?” “Rich people generally don’t come stumbling out of a forest. At least, they won’t look as composed as he did after it.” I put another forkful of stew into my mouth. I continue talking after swallowing it. “He can pick locks. I wonder what other skills he has hidden away?” Jakin puts down his drink. “He’s inexperienced in combat, and he hesitates too much.” He says, but something in his voice tells me that he isn’t completely against what I’m implying. “Lack of experience is hardly difficult to deal with. And he didn’t hesitate when it really counted – that crossbow bolt was very timely.” I gesture with my fork for emphasis, then noting the fragrant sauce still on it, I lick it off. I look at them seriously. “I’m not asking that we bring him in immediately. I’m asking that we take a closer look. If he doesn’t turn out to be that good at fighting, or that good a person, then that’s that.” Jakin glances to Boaz, who nods. He turns back to me. “We can give him a go, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of training or hunting that much.” We chat for a while longer about less consequential things, then as the candles burn low and the sky darkens to black, we retire to our respective rooms. Lying in bed, I think back over the events of the past couple weeks. With the werewolf invasion and attacks from two separate bandit groups, it has been hectic. I smile at the thought. But then again, that’s why I enjoy being an adventurer, isn’t it? The thrill of combat, discovering the unknown… I really can’t wait for the days when I – or rather, we – will be strong enough to venture into the wilderness for weeks on end without difficulty. But that will take time and money, I suppose. I can’t fight very well without weapons or armour, after all. Even magic has its limitations, I can’t defend myself unless I can see the attack. But armour is always there. …I really need to take a bath.

The next morning, I wake up falling. I’m at such a height that below me is a carpet of whiteness, and I can see the stars above me, even though it’s day. Oh. It’s one of those days. Sure, I’ll enjoy myself for a bit. Feeling the wind lashing against my face and hands as my altitude plummets, I twist my body, sending me into an uncontrollable tumble through the air. Were another being looking upon me, they would feel that the sight was wholly ridiculous. But I am in the upper regions of the planet’s atmosphere, so there isn’t even a bird flying by to witness me. Despite plummeting at terminal velocity with zero safety equipment and the gale force winds buffeting me, I am quite enjoying myself. Perhaps this would be strange to normal people. While they would be struggling with their impending death, I spread my arms and laugh as earth and sky spin, end over end, endlessly. The pain… ah, the pain. Normal people might be screaming as their body heats up from the air resistance, developing friction burns on exposed skin as they desperately go spread-eagled to reduce their speed. My smile, couldn’t be wider as I tuck in my arms and legs, shooting towards the ground at the fastest possible speed as fire burns on and around me. It’s because of who I am; or perhaps some would say, what I am, that I am this way. Pain, to others, is a thing to be avoided. To be feared. It means that something is terribly wrong. It means that you are wounded. That you are sick. Someone close has passed away. A realisation that your life will be somewhat inhibited until the pain is gone again. It is the mark of a mistake, an accident, something wholly and utterly beyond your control. And thus, they fear. Some, I know, fight through the pain. Some use it to propel themselves further. They would say to themselves, ‘the pain is proof that I have become stronger, embrace it’, or ‘the pain will not overcome me, for I am stronger than the pain’. It speaks much of their courage that they think this way. But, in the end, pain represents weakness to mankind. It is because they are weak that they endure the pain, to become strong. They endure the pain, to maintain their strength. They endure the pain, to recover their lost strength. I, never felt that. I never felt pain, unless I so chose. And even if I chose to hurt myself, the pain was a curious distraction. I remember ripping off my finger when I was young. Staring at the bloody stump, I felt the throbbing pain pulsing. But rather than alarming me, it confused me. ‘What was this strange feeling?’, I thought to myself. It took me a few moments to realise that my subconscious was stupid. What did a finger matter? Or ANY part of my body, for that matter. In the end, I am not my flesh. Just because I inhabit it, why does my mind assume that it is essential to me? My body is a tool that I wield, and the loss of a tool is a mere inconvenience. Healing my finger, I ripped it off again, and my confusion deepened as my mind had the same reaction. Could my subconscious not tell it meant nothing to me? Repeating this for a while, the floor become scattered with indexes and blood. I cleared it all up, of course. After a while, pain became a joke to me. I laugh at it, smile when it comes, as if it is an old friend. What is most amusing, is that it isn’t only me. It’s not like I am the only one who merely inhabits a body. As an astral projection, I am in essence a disembodied soul; and as such I could see the souls of others. They are popping out all over the place, believe you me. And then they’ll pop off into some unborn child to start the fun again. No memories, of course, but still awfully attached to their so called ‘mortality’ when every one of them is functionally immortal. Well, technically. They do lose their memories, so they aren’t precisely the same person, but they pretty much are. Anyway, pain doesn’t bother me. Whether I am in pain or not, I don’t mind, not an ounce. I wish you could say ‘not a gram’, but it doesn’t seem to work the same way. Oh, and this time, all this thinking was done with my main mind, meaning… I was about to hit the ground. Here comes the fun part. Breaking out of my pin drop, I do a few front flips before stylishly landing nonchalantly with straight legs and crossed arms. Upon touch-down, my feet cleave through the rocky ground, the impact radiating through the earth around me and forming a crater. The sound created by the impact is louder than artillery shells exploding, and about as devastating. A shockwave expands, with me at the epicentre. Were there trees nearby, they would be stripped of their leaves and smaller branches. As it is, small pebbles blast outwards like grapeshot, creating countless smaller impacts.   Meanwhile, I am still standing there, knees unbent, calm and collected. Then the rock beneath me vanishes.   And I begin plummeting again. Looking down at the dull glow below me causes a realisation that I had landed on the lip of an active volcano. Oh well, I needed a bath.   …Or so I said, but you can’t really bathe in lava. Unless it’s at a crazy high temperature, the stuff is pretty slow flowing, so you would just slowly form a depression in it. Sure, you would eventually sink into it, but it would be like bathing in fresh concrete. Which means, even if you have some sort of fire immunity, bathing in lava is a no-go. Only if being fully encased in heavy molten stone hinders you as little as flowing water can you bathe in it. Or, in other words, be me. But I don’t really have time for this. But I do. But I was enjoying myself back there, so I disconnect from this clone, which promptly vanishes into thin air. I get up from my bed, although I’m using that term very loosely here, back at the inn. Well, that was a strange dream. Perhaps the strangest part about it was how casual I was. Well, you always act differently in a dream. Getting my gear together, I board up the window, lock the door and head out again. …In this manner, two months pass by before I know it. “What do you mean everyone knows how to do it?” The man gesticulates wildly to indicate his displeasure to a man nearly half his size. If not for the neatly braided beard descending from the rough cheeks of this diminutive fellow, as well as his thick, stocky limbs, one might mistake a being of his particular stature for a child. As it is, these features visibly marked him for what he was – A dwarf, strong and proud. “I mean,” the dwarf explains, exasperated, “Every kid and his little sister knows how to do mana reinforcement. For you not to know that, were you living under a rock?” He grins up at the man to let the irony of that statement sink in. While dwarven cities are rarely completely underground, it is widely known that large portions of their cities are situated below the earth, and many dwarves spend most of their time in workshops, dwellings and mines underground. The man hangs his head in shame, no excuse forthcoming. The dwarf sighs in resignation, then begins to talk very slowly, as if teaching a child. “Yeh get some mana, aye? Yeh done that? Yes? Now move it to yeh heart – yeh other heart, Aaron. Now yeh just let it go. And that’s it. Aye, that’s it.” Aaron’s face falls, visibly depressed, for the first time feeling terribly inadequate. From within the trees surrounding them a third voice comes, interrupting their dialogue. “Oi! Can I get some help over here!? Dealing with these wolves on my own, yeh know!” In a panic, they both rush back into the combat. The simple question, ‘how are you moving so fast with such short legs’, had caused a very distracting conversation, but their other companion is fending off a small pack of wolves by himself. He is understandably dissatisfied with this arrangement. Unfortunately for them, the wolves had attacked as they moved through the forest. What’s worse is that there is even an ironback alpha leading the pack. An ironback alpha is more intelligent than its more common relatives, even if it can’t compare to species such as humans, dwarves or elves. But with its limited intelligence, the ironback alpha leads the other wolves in coordinated attacks against the party of three, weaving in and out of the trees in the dim light. It’s a wonder that Aaron and the dwarf had managed to pause for their conversation without being attacked. Perhaps the beasts had felt that focusing on one person would be a better tactic, but they won’t be able to tell you. It is beyond rare to encounter a monster capable of speech. As the wolves come into view of the strange pair, the reason the third member of the party was able to hold out becomes clear. Stationed in front of a short silhouette is a rectangular barrier taller than himself. Curved around the left and right sides and made entirely of metal, one could say that its size is smaller than a normal one, but it is nevertheless a bonafide tower shield. At that moment, two wolves dart at him from either side of the tower shield in a classic pincer manoeuvre. Aaron and the other dwarf aren’t close enough to block them, and even Aaron’s magic isn’t nearly fast enough to intercept the wolves, less than half a meter from biting into the second dwarf. “RRAAAAAAAARGH!!” Shifting his feet into a firm stance, the dwarf lets out a powerful bellow. Sweeping his shield arm to one side, the shield’s edge cleaves into the neck of one of the wolves, killing it instantly. Simultaneously, his other arm whips downwards, hand grasping the haft of his weapon with an iron grip. With a sickening crunch of breaking bones, the other wolf is nailed to the ground, the handle end of a gleaming metal spike protruding from its skull. With a grunt, he unsheathes his weapon from the wolf’s skull, revealing his weapon in all its bloody glory: Thick shaft extending for a good half meter, the end of which has a narrow hammerhead affixed to one side of it. The other side is a wickedly sharp, slightly curved spike. While his movement had defeated the two attacking wolves in a stunning display of physical prowess, it has left him entirely open to frontal attacks. Capitalising on this opportunity, another wolf charges at the gap in his defences. It is sent suddenly flying to one side as another dwarf charges through the space it was previously occupying, holding a tower shield before him as he personifies a moving wall - albeit a short one. He moves much faster than one expects from one carrying a heavy tower shield, especially a person with such short legs, muscled though they are. His speed is courtesy of mana coursing through his veins, increasing his strength. With two wolves dead and one knocked unconscious from the impact, a portion of the wolf pack is obliterated. At this point, Aaron finally wades into the fight. Unlike his combats in the past, he doesn’t utilise his potent magic at all. Relying solely on his sturdy blade, he slashes and stabs at necks, legs or anything else that happens to be an easy target. The two months passed also means two more months of training. While Aaron’s muscles aren’t ‘bulging’ by anyone’s definition, they are now well defined and clearly visible – presuming you are looking at him without his shirt on. Furthermore, it means two more months of experience fighting wolves. To clarify, wolves aren’t very tough opponents in the first place. All they have going for them is some speed, a form that’s low to the ground, and a pack mentality. Their attacks aren’t complicated; they fight with no plans or strategies. Coordination is simple, if not non-existent. While it isn’t to the extent that a child could beat one if they had a weapon, a fit adult with some fighting experience could probably defeat one or two, even unarmed. Especially considering the mana reinforcement that Aaron has only just learnt. But still, they attack with ferocity, and if one hasn’t fought with beasts before, their different shape and size, in comparison to a human opponent, can throw off even a well-trained fighter. But, having hunted them almost every day for the past two months, Aaron has gotten completely used to their attack patterns and habits. Soon enough, it is just the ironback alpha remaining. Its appearance is distinctive from the common wolves. While the fur of a normal wolf are varying shades of greys and black, the fur of the ironback alpha is silver, and the fur on its back has a metallic shine. Aaron hacks down at it, but the wolf is true to its name, and the blade only makes a shallow cut in the tough hide. The beast doesn’t even flinch as it leaps up to claw his chest. It isn’t only the back that’s hard on this beast; its claws and fangs are harder than normal, as well as having better jaw strength, so Aaron is in serious danger from this attack. And having just attacked something at a much lower height than himself, his balance is disturbed; it will be difficult for him to dodge or retreat in this position. Luckily for him, he doesn’t have to. Such is the value of parties. One of the dwarves’ tower shields shifts in front of him, a firm nudge pushing him to the side as the dwarf in question takes the full force of the attack. The claws of the wolf screech against the metal, seeking to tear through it and into the being behind it. But the shield was forged by dwarven blacksmiths, and it can take harder hits with nary a scratch. As the alpha wolf clashes with the shield, the dwarf holding it barely budges, his firm stance doing him wonders. Meanwhile, the other dwarf isn’t standing idle. A shadow looms behind the wolf sporting a fearsome grin and swings his weapon across at the wolf as it lands, hammer head first. With a yelp, the wolf is sent staggering sideways, and can do nothing but watch the instrument of its demise come piercing down at its head. Having greater weight, a smaller point of contact and greater momentum in the form of the military pick, the descending spike pierces through the skull of the wolf. The life in its eyes fade, dead instantly from the attack. The trio relaxes. The battle is over, and they are the victors. All that is left now is to collect the spoils. As such, they start skinning the wolves. Without looking away from his work, Aaron speaks. “Thanks for the save back there. I would’ve taken some serious damage from that if you hadn’t blocked it.” One of the dwarves looks up from his work and flashes him a toothy grin. “Don’t worry yourself over it. It’s what we do.” Aaron pauses as he considered his next sentence. “Actually… I’m terribly sorry if this offends you, but how do I tell you two apart?” This time, both turn and give him toothy grins. Identical, toothy grins. Sported on rough, identical faces. With grey and braided, identical beards. Now, either everyone in the dwarven race is identical, or these guys are identical twins. Luckily for merchants and diplomats everywhere, it’s the latter. The face of one of the dwarves falls in mock hurt. “Yeh mean yeh can’t tell? After all the time we’ve known each other?” He wipes a tear from the corner of a perfectly dry – barring the normal, healthy moisture – eye. The other twin interrupts his melodrama. “Don’t worry, we get asked that all the time. There’s a couple ways, but easiest,” He points at his cheek, where there was a prominent line a few shades lighter than the rest of his skin. “Would be this scar. If the dwarf yeh see, scarred on cheek, Jakin he be.” Cutting in, his brother continues. “And if the cheek yeh see, unblemished and clean, Boaz is he.” They chortle briefly. Simple though it is, it’s easy to tell that it isn’t the first time the twins have said those lines. “Besides that, m’ brother is right handed, and I be left handed, so we carry the shield with different hands.” continues Jakin. And indeed, as Aaron thinks back to the last few times he had worked with them, he realises that it is true, he just hadn’t picked up on it. This had made it somewhat awkward talking to them, as he hadn’t known whom he was addressing. Aaron had met the twins a couple weeks back. Amusingly, they had wandered into his training cave, to see if there were any veins of ore to mine and sell for some quick cash. Instead, they found a man doing squats while holding a large rock. Aaron, as interested in the dwarven race as any other in his position would be, struck up a conversation with the dwarves. His habit of constantly training with no regard for his own well-being seemed to somehow resonate with the inherent stubbornness of the dwarves, and they became good friends very quickly. Later, the twins were astonished to discover that he had dual affinities of fire and earth. Their opinions of him instantly rose a few notches. To fully understand this, it must be known that dwarves, as a race, have higher regard for some affinities than others. There are six in particularly that they particularly appreciate. Holy, of course, is useful whoever you are and whatever you do. As a race that spends much of their time underground, they have a deep respect for earth. In dwarven society, those gifted with earth affinity often become famous architects, miners, stonemasons and the like. No dwarf would dare waste such a blessing. And obviously, having such renowned blacksmiths, their love of the fire affinity is no less than their love of earth. Control over fire and flame is a great contribution to any blacksmith. Almost without fail, a dwarf with fire affinity becomes a blacksmith. Along the same train of thought, lava affinity is also well received among blacksmiths. More heat means they could forge more metals, after all, although more heat is not always the best heat. Finally, the last two, water and ice. One might think this strange, given the nature of the other affinities dwarves love. However, one must remember that after forging a blade, it must be quenched. And temperature control is important for blacksmiths as well. In fact, the greatest dwarven blacksmith in recorded history had both lava and ice affinities. Thus, it didn’t take long for the twins, also adventurers, to propose forming a party with Aaron, which he gladly accepted. Back in the present, they have finished skinning the wolves without incident. The hide of the ironback alpha is the prize of this hunt. The combination of its toughness and flexibility makes it a highly sought-after material for armour and cloaks for archers and… others… who favour agility over protection. But this isn’t the end of their day, not at all. While twelve wolf hides would have been a cumbersome load for Aaron alone, forcing him to return to town, with the hides distributed evenly between the three they are able to continue, relatively unhindered by the weight. It’s for times like this that Aaron trains wearing a full knapsack in the first place. The party heads deeper into the forest in search for harder enemies – and epic loot. Well, maybe not epic. But something worth a bit of cash, perhaps.

‘Beastmen’. Rather than a single race, it would be more accurate to consider the term as referring to a collection of races with similar features. Namely, being a bipedal, human-sized version of a land-dwelling animal that is capable of speech. However, they have humanoid hands and feet, regardless of the peculiarities of their more animalistic counterparts. Interestingly, despite the huge range of different types of beastmen – it is almost impossible to find two beastmen who look similar – it seems that any two beastmen (of opposite gender, of course) can successfully have children without any difficulty. In this event the child, or children, will not become a hybrid of the two parent beastmen, but rather will be of the same type as one of their parents. Strangely, despite the beastmen seemingly subscribing to the idea of ‘survival of the fittest’, there is very little discrimination between say, the powerful bear beastmen and the relatively weak cat beastmen. Perhaps it is because they instinctively realise that despite some beastmen having an early advantage, any beastman can become strong through training and mana. Honestly, some of the people from the other races could take a leaf out of their book in that regard. -An unknown scholar A rough hand reaches out, brushing aside the thin veil of a long-abandoned spider’s web. He steps through, a ball of light above his head following smoothly, illuminating the area around him. Something shuffles out of the darkness into the circle of light provided by it, and a bolt of lightning flies from his palm, and it stops moving. When he ventures closer however, all he sees is a small patch of damp soil. “You shouldn’t waste mana on something as weak as a slime, Greg.” Says one of the people behind him reproachfully. Raising an eyebrow, Greg turns and addresses him. “I don’t want to hear than from spam-fireballs-at-a-goblin Antonio. Besides, didn’t we already agree to keep chitchat to a minimum down here?” Antonio frowns, but unable to find anything to dispute, shuts his mouth. A thin smile creeps across Greg’s face for a moment as he turns back around, replaced almost instantly by his usual grim, focused look. Just over a year ago, the two of them had thought that they might be the last remnants of the summoned heroes. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case, and they were able to find almost everyone. ‘Hero’. Greg detests the word. He doesn’t feel like a hero, and he sure as hell doesn’t act like one. He makes mistakes, mistakes that have caused injuries among several of his team-mates, and even the death of one. He can’t save everyone, he can barely save himself from the nightmares that plague his sleep nightly. And yet, that was what people were calling them now. They killed the Goblin King and his elite squad of generals and shamans, defended the town across the river from Ginerbe city from an invasion of werewolves, and in more recent times single-handedly defeated a small group of demon spies. But, they were all coincidences. They happened to find the Goblin King’s stronghold while wandering lost on the plains, and mistaking it for a human town, went towards it. One thing led to another, and the next thing they knew, they were exchanging blows and magic with the goblin king himself. They happened to be sleeping in the town when it was attacked by werewolves. Greg just happened to look up when a group of people clad in black clothing were creeping across the rooftops. And the request this time is only going to increase their reputation, Greg muses, groaning internally. It is said that a population of monsters can grow in strength by almost two ranks, depending on how long they are left on their own. Without people, monsters fight each other for food. Through years of natural selection, what will eventually be left is a small pack of elite monsters. As for how this is relevant to the request, this is an old mine that had been forgotten during the last war – almost sixty years ago. According to the old records which had been found recently, it should contain some deposits of mithril. There is never enough mithril – it is found deep underground, and strong people have to be around to protect the miners from monsters that will spawn at such depths. But it will be difficult to do that here without first clearing out whatever monsters have built up over the years, hence… Sighing, Greg continues deeper into the tunnels. In the kingdom of Stalia, there is a city called Lhoy. It is a very large and majestic city, with walls of pure white stone and guards garbed in similarly brilliant armour. The streets are clean of much of the filth common in other cities, and people go about their daily business with a smile, as if the massive conflict still ongoing doesn’t affect their lives in the slightest. This city is not the capitol of Stalia, nor is it in some prime location that allows its citizens to have no fear of assault. But Lhoy is the holy city of the holy light religion, easily the largest and most wide-spread religion over all the five kingdoms. As such, it is practically immune to the disputes between the kingdoms. Who could attack a city when it was so holy and important in the minds of most of their commanders and soldiers? It would be more likely for the army to defect and defend the city instead. Still, for all its illustrious reputation, every city has its good parts and its bad parts, and Lhoy is no exception. Starkly different to the cleanliness and purity of the main sections of the city are the slums, with shallow pools of putrid refuse lingering below every closed window and in every alleyway. Frowns and tears are as common here as smiles are elsewhere in the city, and a long history of hardship and pain has made its residents cynical and untrusting. The people here believe the saying, ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’ more than anyone, causing them to distrust and even fear the people of Holy Light and their gifts. ‘They say the food is free, but what if one day they start telling me to pray for it? Could I really say no? As much as I hate it, I partly rely on the food they bring to survive. And after prayer, next thing you know you’re converted.’ Is the collective opinion of the slum-dwellers, much to the sadness of the church. Of course, there are still some believers amongst the slum-dwellers, but most of them don’t believe. On these very same dirty streets, an old man in white robes is walking, not knowing or not caring that the hem of his robes is steadily being stained a muddy brown. People lurk just out of sight: peeking out from the tiniest crack of a window, peepholes in doors, from the shadows of an alleyway, peering down from a rooftop… The old man frowns, but not out of anger or hurt. He frowns because he is sad that they still don’t trust him, even after all these years of helping them. Still, he has gained some positive reputation, so when he stops at a crossroads and shouts, “free healing!” in a slightly hoarse voice, people slowly start to trickle out of the woodworks. An old woman walks forward and wordlessly holds out an arm. Upon it is a long wound, the skin around it discoloured and emanating a peculiar smell. Gently, he places one hand underneath her arm to support her, and another hovers just above the wound, beginning to emit a radiant glow. As he works, he speaks in soothing tones. “I will have this healed in just a moment. Tut tut, this doesn’t look new, Harriette. You should have come to me last week, and spared yourself all the pain.” Harriette doesn’t say anything, just watching as her wound closes, ejecting a few worms and other parasites. A moment later, the skin is returned to a healthy state, and she nods in gratitude. She walks swiftly away, stretching her arm and checking that it has indeed returned to full functionality. Just after she leaves, another man slinks into sight, making a half-dozen other people step back into the cover they were in the process of leaving. There is no line, but the healer knows there are people in wait, and there will only be more coming. His shout wasn’t loud, but the slums has its own information network, of sorts. The news will get around. He talks as he works, not often getting a reply but continuing nonetheless. Almost every person he heals he knows by name, the meagre results of a long period of helping them. Many people come and go, with all manner of injuries and disease. Each one he handles calmly and kindly, restoring them with rarely more than a word of thanks in return. But even that is its own reward to the old healer. Finally, one person leaves and nobody else comes. Looking around, he lets out a tired breath and starts to leave but stops when a thin boy nervously limps towards him and pulls up one leg of his daggy leggings, revealing a thin but deep knife wound. It is leaking a steady stream of blood, no doubt aggravated by the boy walking. Although serious, the wound is straightforward, without much grime contaminating the wound. It takes only seconds to heal completely under the ministrations of the old healer. As soon as the boy  confirms that his wound has indeed healed, he darts off without so much as a nod of thanks. The healer calls out after him. “The church is always in need of knights, young man. If ever you feel interested in turning your life around, you need only ask. Food, shelter, education and training, and it won’t cost you a copper!” He practically shouts the last line, the boy already out of sight. Undisturbed by the outright refusal, the old healer turns and begins back the way he came, whistling a jovial tune. Inside the throne room of the palace in the capitol city of the kingdom of Stalia, King Duarte IX reclines regally upon his throne. Garbed richly as ever, he idly twirls a blonde lock of hair with one finger, occasionally sampling a slice of fruit from a silver platter beside him as the dwarven man before him speaks. The dwarf king, Nemoc, has returned to his kingdom to organise his armies, and the elf king Galen is at the battlefront. He would be there himself, but a few matters have required his attention back at home. Hopefully, he will be traveling back on the morrow. To his right stands another lavishly dressed man – although not nearly as lavish as the king himself -  who appears to be listening intently to the dwarf, occasionally taking notes through the use of paper, quill and inkwell precariously balanced on one arm. The scratching of his quill across paper provides a constant undertone to the room, not unlike that of a classroom, albeit with more respectful listeners. Glancing down as the dwarf pauses momentarily, the King takes the opportunity to speak a few words of his own. “The armies of Morrock have almost reached the battlefront, yes?” To his credit, the dwarf barely bats an eye at his dialogue being completely derailed and replies calmly and confidently. “Barely a day away, sire. Our troops will be ready to reinforce and integrate with the present armies of the Kingdoms of Stalia and Enlux upon arrival.” “Very good.” The words are almost a reflex for the King, spoken without any particular inflection or meaning; a pleasantry, if you will. “Is there anything else?” Hesitating for a fleeting moment, the dwarf says straightforwardly, “Nothing that I couldn’t write up for your highness to peruse at his leisure.” “Very well. I appreciate your work here, ambassador.” King Duarte waves a hand, and the doors start to open. “You may go now.” Bowing deeply, the dwarf politely withdraws from the room without any further words. Plucking the last slice of fruit from the plate, King Duarte places it delicately into his mouth. Gently tugging a scarlet handkerchief from a chest pocket, he wipes his sticky fingers upon it and refolding it, places it back within the pocket. Turning his head, he asks the person beside him, “Did anything interesting happen while he was talking?” Blowing gently on his page to dry the ink, his advisor produces a sealed letter from somewhere and hands it to the king. With a raised eyebrow, the King breaks the seal with a finger and unfolds the letter from within. His eyes rapidly scan across the lines, and his face moves into a subtle frown that deepens the further he reads. Done reading, he hands it back, instructing his advisor to read it. He does so impassively, but when he finishes, there is a barely noticeable hint of confusion hidden deep within his eyes. “Intriguing.” He says calmly. “Not just one, but every prisoner taken had the same answer when asked, and adamantly insisted it was true. A few could be a plant or coincidence, but not so many.” The king lets out a rare sigh. “Indeed, but I do not know that it will make a difference, even if it is true. An arrow, once fired, cannot be taken back. War is war, regardless of the cause. Perhaps the die has long since been cast…” Adjusting his jacket, the paper, ink and quill are nowhere to be seen on the advisor’s person. “And yet, knowing is better than fumbling in the dark. We should investigate.” “Indeed. Dispatch a group of spies to the area.” Says King Duarte. Bowing, the advisor departs to carry out his will. Now alone save the guards, the King can’t help but wonder… Will this turn out to be some corrupt noble trying to make gold off the war… Perhaps a demon hater… Or mayhap some dark conspiracy? He doesn’t particularly dislike the demons himself. In fact, he respects their recent innovations in technology, military and otherwise. Sometimes he can’t help but wish magic was as helpful outside of war as these… mechanisms… seem to be. Alas, perhaps only holy magic is truly good. Fire burns, earth crushes, water drowns, wind suffocates, light… blinds, darkness enshrouds… And the secondary elements are worse, if anything. Lava melts anything it touches, lightning can kill with a touch, decay devours, ice… The barest glimmer appears as he rolls a crystal-clear sphere between his fingers. Ice is as terrible or as comforting as its wielder dictates. Something to cool your drink or a blade to decapitate your foes, it’s all the same to ice… Built entirely of a hard, black material. Tall spires dotted here and there, with special openings designed for magi. Arrow slits and murder holes everywhere, with secret tunnels running throughout the entire structure. Enchantments on the very stones, ready at any moment to activate and repel invaders. A no cost spared, no holds barred structure designed for the sole purpose of being impenetrable. That, is the demon King’s castle, built in days when battles were waged in the streets, and there was no distinction between citizen and soldier. Intended to be both a last line of defence and a place in which the most elite warriors were trained. …Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem as if the current demon King has gotten the memo. Wearing the long black cape and stylish red and gold clothing passed down for generations, he sits in his throne, watching as the advisor talking to him slowly drifts to one side. Before long, the advisor has almost reached the wall, and the demon King presses a button on the armrest of his throne. The advisor’s sidewards movement halts, and with a muffled clank, starts to drift in the opposite direction as the conveyor belt beneath his feet reverses its rotation. The corner of the demon King’s mouth lifts in amusement as the advisor continues talking, used to the antics of the unusual king. Strictly speaking, the mechanism can also be used as a defence system by breaking apart enemy formations, but it is clear as day to anyone present that that is not the reason why the current demon king had it installed. Seeing no reaction forthcoming from his advisor, the demon king pushes another button, halting the movement of the conveyor. Despite his playful nature, the demon King is by no means frivolous, and he takes his responsibilities very seriously. Later, when the advisor has gone and the King is dining upon a sumptuous spread of foods, a messenger enters. Upon hearing the contents of the message, the demon King directly abandons his meal and personally heads down to the city gates. Not five minutes later, a silhouette appears on the road heading towards him. As it quickly draws closer, its appearance becomes clear. With the general features of a cheetah, the animal is perhaps one and a half times larger than its relatives, and has creamy fur dotted with black spots, with a few black stripes running from its long tail to its neck. As it sprints down the road, what appears to be a monkey can be seen sitting upon its back, wearing simple clothing. With closer observation one might note that it is, in fact, larger and more upright than a normal monkey: it’s a monkey beastman. In less than a minute, the equally strange mount and rider arrived at the gate, slowing to a halt as they did so. Dismounting, the monkey beastman lightly greets the demon King. “Alex. How are you?” Indeed, the demon king’s name is Alex. Actually, it used to be Tuzruru’xothtalar, but he felt that it was cumbersomely long, and changed it. No kingdom has a legal process for changing name… but he IS the demon king – who would contradict him? And besides, a name is just a name – unless he decides to do something like change the name of a city or the entire kingdom, the demon nobility won’t raise much of a fuss. Of course, his advisor talked himself hoarse that day trying to convince him otherwise, but eventually gave up before the stubborn king, exhausted. “My people are dying en masse, some of the nobility are starting to question my competency and sound sleep is now a pleasant fantasy.” Alex says bluntly. “How about you, Hashke?” The king of Binod, Hashke, shrugs comfortably. “Eating, the occasional duel, having fun with my wives… the usual. So, we going to your place? You know I enjoy the shivers it sends down my spine. Barely anything does these days.” He says, eyes lingering on the black castle at the centre of the city, surrounded by a large open area. King Alex looks dubiously at the leopard, which bears its formidable teeth at him. With a slight shudder, he turns his gaze back to king Hashke. “Of course, but… what will we do with your… steed?” With barely a glance in its direction, king Hashke kicks it. Giving out a startled yelp, the leopard bolts away. “It’ll come back. And if it doesn’t, I’ll just have to hunt it down again.” He says in explanation, seeing the shocked look upon king Alex’s face. They move through the streets towards the castle, people getting out of their way voluntarily. Although very few recognise the plainly dressed beastman king, the demon king’s unusual garb makes him instantly recognisable, even to those who don’t know his face. Once in the castle, the two kings sit down on opposite sides of a table in a small, enclosed room. Nobody else is present. “So. You need some help with this war, huh?” Says king Hashke. “I can do that. But you’re going to have to give me something in exchange.” King Alex frowns. It’s not as if he was expecting help to come free, but he rarely hears someone say it outright. “What do you want? Gold? Metal? Weapons?” “Nah, nothing like that.” King Hashke waves a hand in dismissal. “It’s gonna have to be something that can only come from the demons, if we’re gonna be cleaning up your mess. Something good.” Letting out a brief sigh, king Alex relaxes back into his chair. He was asking for inventions, new technology, and that was something they have plenty of in comparison to the other kingdoms. But what should he offer that would interest the other party? Weapons, perhaps? “Crossbows?” he inquires. King Hashke frowns, and for a second Alex starts to worry. If even the crossbow doesn’t interest him, what will? But then Hashke speaks, and Alex worry turns to relief. “You gotta know that I’ll have no clue what you’re talking about, here. Explain them to me.” “The crossbow is a sort of mechanical bow. It is simpler to teach someone to use a crossbow in comparison to a normal bow as the string is held in place after being pulled, making aiming, as well as the initial drawing, much easier.” King Alex proffers. King Hashke mulls it over for a second. “It’s not gonna go so well in my place, I would think. See, we got this saying, ‘If you don’t have the strength to wield a weapon, you don’t deserve a weapon in the first place.’ People who use it would be laughed at as weaklings, and it would probably only get them in more trouble than they hoped to prevent.” King Alex’s heart sinks. “We have a few modified arrowheads. Armour-piercing, ones designed to be harder to pull out of wounds, ones that can fly further…” “Yeah, that’d go down well. We don’t often use bows in combat, but hunters would love that stuff. Anything else?” Thinking hard, he goes through a mental list of products. There are plenty, but many of them were experimental in nature, or aren’t completely perfected yet. And many of the ones that are wouldn’t interest him… Then king Alex stops being stupid and realises that despite their warrior-centric society, there are (of course) still other needs for the kingdom apart from the weaponry. “We recently developed a device that can draw water from the ground by moving a lever up and down. It’s much faster and more efficient than drawing from a well.” “Faster than a well, huh? How much faster?” He seems vaguely interested. “It depends on how fast you crank the lever… But I suppose with your people, it could be ten times faster, or more. In fact, I would be worrying that your people crank the lever too fast and wear it out too fast.” King Alex says hopefully. “Alright, then since we probably couldn’t produce those types of things even if we knew how, how about you produce them and sell them to us at a low price?” King Hashke says. King Alex grins, and they start to haggle prices.

“Lord magus!” Exclaimed the man in red and blue armour, quickly getting to his feet. “You have recovered!” “Somewhat, thank you, captain.” Nodded the elderly magus. “These people are the fruits of our efforts, then? They don’t look like much… But the records do say that the past heroes were also normal people before the summoning. Curious, curious...” He trailed off, gazing absently at the cave wall for a moment before he turned to face the man among us who asked the pointed, if not unjustified, question. “In regard to your question, yes and no. While we did indeed forcibly summon you, there were conditions in the spell pertaining as to who would be summoned. Among others, there is a condition that targets only people who are unsatisfied with their current lives and wish for excitement, in some way or form. Or, in other words, you all already wanted to leave where you were.” “Naturally…” He said, raising a hand to forestall the same man’s question, “It could still be said that we kidnapped you. However, I ask you to think on this: we did everything we could to ensure that the people we summoned would not be torn from lives of contentment and happiness.” As he finished speaking the last word, he broke out into hacking coughs. Waving off the captain’s concern, the old magi straightened himself. “No need for concern… But it might be best if I return to the healer’s tent for a while. Captain, heroes.” He nodded at us before turning and walking back into camp, supported by a cane I hadn’t noticed him carrying. In his absence, another person spoke up. “What about mana? You forgot to explain that.” “So I did.” The captain realises. “My apologies. Mana… To be honest, I’m a soldier; I don’t use much magic. You’d be likely to get a better answer from a magus.” Seeing our dissatisfied faces, he continued, “But I can give you a rough idea. Mana is… This sort of power. You take it in from the world around you, hold it within yourself and use it to fuel spells, enchantments and formations.” While some of us looked at him uncomprehendingly, others were leaning forward slightly as they listened with rapt attention. “Everyone is born able to hold different amounts of mana, and use different types of it, according to what I know. Those types are… Fire, water, earth, wind, light and darkness, not to mention the fusion elements of ice, lava, lightning, illusion, holy and decay. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses… But if I were to sit here and explain it all to you, we would be here all night.” The captain finished. “Not to mention I would likely get something muddled up and confuse the lot of you.” He paused for a moment, perhaps expecting someone to ask another question. Nobody did. “If that’s all the questions, we’d best get you fed and bunked before the sun comes over the horizon. I’ll call someone over to lead you to the cooks in a minute.” “What will happen after that?” Someone asked. “Tomorrow, you mean?” The captain replied rhetorically. “We will be heading back to the fort, where you will be trained. But let us leave tomorrow for tomorrow.” He gestured to one of the soldiers waiting nearby. “Follow this man to the cooks. The food here may not be fit for kings, but it is warm and filling, and just that is a blessing after a day like this…” Turning around, he walked off into the camp, leaving us to follow the soldier he left behind. We got up, stretching our sore limbs and dusting ourselves off, and followed him to a large fire. A heavy-looking cauldron was seated upon it, emanating the scent of cooked meat and herbs. Tending to it was a thickset man who slowly stirred the contents with a large ladle. “35 portions, please.” The soldier requested. The cook’s expression didn’t change an iota as he continued to stir. “Mhm. Newbies eh? Line up. One bowl of soup, one hunk of bread, one cup of water. Line up twice and I’ll stir some laxative mushrooms into your bowl.” He patted a pouch at his waist. “I always keep some. Just in case.” Right… Well, I for one am not going to risk it. I was among the first in line, so I didn’t have to wait long to collect my meal. The cook handed me a bowl of soup and nodded to a table behind him, laden with utensils, cups and bread. Thanking him, I set my bowl down on the table and, with some difficulty, ripped a small chunk from the loaf. Those things were tough. After that, I picked up my bowl again, collected a spoon and cup, filled the cup from a barrel and found an out-of-the-way piece of dirt to sit down on. I looked at the bread and hesitantly broke a piece off, putting it in my mouth. Logic told me softening the bread in the soup would be the best idea, but I had wanted to see just how it was. I was still chewing a good minute later when Greg sat down beside me. “Tough?” He asked. Finally grinding it into small enough pieces, I swallowed them. “Tough.” I confirmed. “It’s best to dunk it after all. We’ll be here all night, otherwise.” “That may be a slight exaggeration.” Greg noted, dunking the corner of his bread into the soup and taking a bite. I feign a shocked look. “Exaggeration? Me? What are you talking about?” Greg smiled through a mouthful of bread, but it faded as he looked around. “We really are in another world, aren’t we?” “Yep.” I agreed. He sighed. “I wonder what will happen to us next…” “Obligatory training arc?” I shrugged. “Likely followed by the standard adventuring arc, final battle of good vs evil arc… The only real question is whether it ends with a crushing defeat, us returning to earth or us staying here forever.” He looked at me in wonder. “How can you be so relaxed? You’ve never been the serious type, but I thought with all…” He gestured at the general surroundings, “This, you would be less sarcastic.” “Nah, it only escalates.” I replied, poking out my tongue at him. “It’s a coping mechanism. Hard to be afraid of something if you’re laughing at it. Besides,” I pointed my spoon at him. “You’re too wound up. Relax a little. Take some deep breaths. Slowly count to platypus.” “What?” He said, bewildered. I furrowed my eyebrows. “You don’t know how to take deep breaths? Well, you just-” “No, the count to platypus part. You can’t count to platypus.” He interrupted exasperatedly. I shook my head. “Sure you can. You just need a bit of imagination. Take the individual letters, convert them to numbers, multiply them together as if it were some sort of algebraic function… Actually, that’s a bit too large… Add them together, and count to that number. It’s… 130. Platypus equals 130.” “Right…” We chatted idly for a while as we chipped away at our bread and drained our bowls. It wasn’t especially tasty, but it wasn’t bad, either. And it was filling. Finishing, I groaned and stood up. “I’m going to ask someone where the loo is.” He nodded, and I walked off to find a soldier. Before long, I’m sitting atop a pit toilet, trying my darndest not to inhale the pungent fumes ascending from below. For those who don’t know what a pit toilet is… The name is description enough. After relieving myself and making use of one of the cleaner rags I could find in the pile, I returned back to the cook’s fire. After some more time had passed, we were escorted to a huge tent containing rows of straw mattresses. …This will not be a comfortable night. And indeed, the straw did poke and my clothes were far from my preferred choice of sleepwear. There were no sheets, either, so I spent a long while shivering. But, eventually, I drifted off to sleep. The next morning, I was woken up by the sounds of yelling and clashing metal. While that may sound alarming, it was actually just a soldier banging a pot and yelling ‘wake up’. Over a dozen people groaned blearily, and some didn’t move at all. I, on the other hand, got up immediately and put on my socks, shoes, glasses and watch. I checked my watch in the dim light, noting with some amusement that it stated the time was 6 PM. There was clearly some sort of time difference between our two worlds, or perhaps the days were longer? After dressing myself, I stepped over to the bed next to mine, picked up one of the shoes lying by its foot and dropped it on the soundly sleeping figure upon it. Upon impact, the bed’s occupant performed a series of sudden movements that would have thoroughly entangled him, had there been any sheets. After a few moments, he collected himself and looked at the shoe in stupefaction. “Morning, Greg.” I said. He looked up at me blearily and yawned. “Wha time issit?” Shrugging, I replied, “Another world, remember? Our watches don’t tell the time here.” He blinked. “It wasn’t a dream?” “Nope.” I confirmed. “I’ll get my shoes on…” After getting him up, I headed to the entrance of the tent, walking down the aisles of people and trying not to tread on anyone’s shoes. A soldier noticed me leaving the entrance. “Morning. Breakfast is at the same place as last night. Do you remember the way?” “Yes, thanks.” I’m normally not very good with directions, but this camp was set out in a very orderly manner, so it wasn’t very hard to find my way around. By the time I reached the cook’s fire, there was already a long line of soldiers queuing for some grub. There was nothing for it but to just join the line and wait my turn. At the front, the cook was pumping out bowls of porridge like a machine, and the line was moving along at a fair pace, so it didn’t look like it would be a massive wait. By the time I reached halfway, a significant portion of the line behind me was made up by my co-workers, yawning and rubbing their eyes and still extraordinarily formally dressed for a military encampment. A little while later I was glad to see the cook in front of me, slapping a ladle of porridge into a bowl and thrusting it at me with barely a glance in my direction. I took the bowl and passed him by with a word of thanks, taking a spoon and wooden mug from the table and filled the mug from the barrel of water nearby. Seating was much more of an issue this morning, given all the soldiers around this time, but many of them were wolfing down their breakfast in a mere few mouthfuls, downing their water and placing all their dishes in a pile with nary a break in their stride. So there was still some room to spare. A short meal and a pit stop later – the term is surprisingly literal now, isn’t it? – I found myself leading a still somewhat bleary Greg towards a convoy of carriages, along with our other well-dressed (although our clothing was a mite crumpled) compatriots. The captain greeted us there, glancing over all of us and doing a quick head count. “Everyone is here. Good. We are going to travel back to the fort. Unfortunately, that is quite a distance – a few days travel – and if you all sit in the carriages the entire way, you will come out at the other end weak and sore.” He smiled ominously. “Fortunately, we do not have enough carriages for all of you, so you will have to take it in turns walking instead.” I got a vague notion that this would be exhausting. “Split into three groups, and we will be on our way in no time.” He finished. A few people looked like they were about to complain, but the captain turned and headed for the front of the convoy before anyone was able to voice a word, leaving them with nobody to complain to. So, with no other option, we split into three groups. Our group was herded into a couple of carriages while the other groups followed us with longing gazes. The carriage started rolling, and we were finally off. The seats were made of wood and had but a single layer of coarse fabric atop it that served as padding. I could feel every stick and stone the carriage rolled over with painful accuracy. After half an hour of that, we were glad to be out of the carriage and stretching our muscles. We set off again at a decent pace, and thinking about what we were doing brought to mind just how little proper exercise I had gotten over the last two decades or so. “Hey Greg,” I asked, “when’s the last time you exercised?” “Yesterday.” Greg replied with a hint of pride. I facepalmed. “Before we got transported here.” He paused in though for a few moments. “What’s exercise?” He asks finally. “Ah.” I nodded. “So, how badly do you reckon we’re screwed here?” “It can’t be that bad.” He mused “We may not have the toned musculature of our youth-” “That may be stretching it a bit.” I interrupted. “-But with our age comes great experience, intellect and wisdom.” He continued undaunted. I sighed. “Experience and intellect aside, we aren’t exactly wise, Greg.” “Not exactly mature, maybe.” Greg joked. “But since we were chosen to be summoned, there must be some advantage we have that will let us survive here.” “Wonder if this world has a system, or full fantasy with proper rules to the magic?” I mused. “Well, there’s a simple way to find out.” Greg replied, before belting out a string of words. “Status, observe, inspect, help, options… state? Open status? Nope. Not a blue rectangle in sight.” “There could still be status plates.” I noted. “True.” He conceded. Our conversation lapsed into discussions about magic in various fantasy worlds. Time passed, we went back into the carriage, back out, back in – a never-ending cycle of sore legs and lungs to sore backside to sore legs… We stopped briefly for a meal around midday, but other than that it was just walking, walking, walking. At least the air there was clean, free from all the pollutants of the modern world. That made it noticeably easier to breath, and it smelled much better, which in turn made the walk somewhat more bearable than it usually would be. As this planet’s star set, we came up to a village. We camped the night outside; they couldn’t possibly accommodate all of the soldiers and people we have with us. We did, however, get fresher food that night, as the soldiers bought some surplus crop from the villagers. There was even some freshly baked bread, although its softness still couldn’t compare to modern loaves. Considering the amount of pain my nerves were registering in my legs that night, it was astounding that I fell asleep so quickly. But in the morning I was greeted with stiff, sore limbs that made me half wish I’d made a ‘that’s gonna hurt in the morning’ joke the day before. I nudged Greg with my foot to kick-start his waking process and headed outside to face the new day. Unfortunately, the new day did not like me, as I walked straight into a soldier as I left the tent. A brief apology, a short walk and a decent wait later, I sat down with my bowl of porridge. Shortly after I finished my breakfast, Greg sat down next to me, frowning. “Did you have to kick me in the face to wake me up?” He asked. “Was that your face?” I replied in mock horror. “It looked like your rear in the dark.” Greg’s frown twitched upwards, amused despite himself. “Walked right into that one, didn’t I?” “More of a roll, really.” I shrugged. Not long afterwards, camp is packed up and we continue on past the village. Over the past couple of days, what with all the travel and most of it behind carriages, we had become absolutely filthy. Our clothes were caked in dust and grime, and my poor shoes desperately needed polishing. Unfortunately, a shower – or even a bath, for that matter – looked further away from me than wherever we were going. In a land bereft of modern technology as we are, it was doubtful that we would ever have the simple comfort of a hot shower ever again. Still, there was nothing we could do but hunch our backs and bear it, so we continued onwards. Our path led us past plains, around hills and into the woods. We plodded ever onwards, only growing sorer as the hours passed by, and our breath too short to engage in any conversation. It was almost a pleasant break when the convoy was attacked by wild leopards. Almost. It happened in a flash, a black form leaping out of the trees and extended its claws towards one of the soldiers nearby. Without a moment of hesitation, the soldier thrusted his spear through the neck of the beast, causing it to instantly go limp. But it didn’t end with a single leopard, and more and more dashed out of the forest. In a panic, all of us otherworlders who were on foot at the time dashed for the carriages and crammed ourselves into them as fast as we could. Meanwhile, the leopards were being decimated by the brutal efficiency of the well-trained soldiers, who quickly dispatched and dismantled them to add to the supplies. Despite the initial panic, it was all over in less than a minute, with a few of the slower leopards quickly turning tail and fleeing upon seeing the fates of their faster forebears. Heart still pounding, I stepped back outside the carriage. That was the first time I saw a fight in real life. Of course, I had seen things like it in movies and games; things filled with masses of blood and gore. But that’s only half the picture – not even half. The sounds of animals growling, being pierced by spear and sword, dying… No modern representation could convey that. And the smell… You could just smell the blood in the air, the stench of the many innards exposed for all to see. No type of media could properly capture that. But maybe that was a good thing. It didn’t take long for them to clean up, and soon we were on our way again. This time, we were constantly glancing into the trees, for fear that something else would pounce out at us. And maybe this time, the soldiers wouldn’t be as quick to react. But despite our worries, nothing happened for the rest of the rest of the day. Nor during the next, when I, with trembling legs and searing lungs, lifted my gaze and saw upon the top of a mountain: a fort. And I rejoiced. Internally. To be technical, the term ‘fort’ can refer to most any fortified structure – this was a keep, a heavily fortified inner structure surrounded by a smaller but still relatively high wall. It was still a way off, and it looked somewhat underwhelming. From what I had read, medieval walls don’t get much higher than 12 meters, a paltry height in comparison to modern skyscrapers that could be over 100 meters tall; with some iconic structures being over a kilometre. But the old stone and mortar structures have their own charm, I suppose. You certainly don’t see many medieval structures in this good nick back on Earth. We stopped at the foot of the mountain. A small blessing, but one nonetheless welcomed. Even more welcomed was the news that all of us were to ride in the carriages up to the top, the reason being, to quote the captain, ‘So you don’t collapse into the moat as you cross.’ He means well, I’m sure. Wait… Does that mean he had enough carriages for all of us the entire time? He did, didn’t he. That little… Strong, armoured and armed man who leads a troop of over a hundred soldiers. Never mind.

The mana heart has a certain capacity, which is set naturally at birth. Naturally, magi need a lot of mana. Does that mean that people who have high magical affinities but low mana capacity will be surpassed by those with lower affinities but greater mana capacity? Initially, perhaps. But there is a technique to increase mana capacity. The amount is minute, but over years, decades of doing it every day, the increase is greater than even the largest natural mana capacities. Because of this, affinity is still the single largest determining factor of whether one will be capable of becoming a powerful mage. There is a catch to this technique, however. Slip up, and you could get the opposite of the intended result, shrinking your mana capacity… Or, in the most extreme cases, destroying it completely, leaving you unable to use magic ever again. Which is why arch magi Jamison didn’t let us do it ourselves, and instead went through us one by one and guided us through the process individually. The process itself was relatively simple: drawn in mana slightly over one’s capacity and hold it in for a moment before letting it out again. Doing so would stretch the mana heart slightly, and once it healed, it would be just a little bit larger. Draw in too much, or hold it in for too long… Well, one has to be careful and precise. Also, because the mana heart has to heal from the stretching every time, one can only do it a few times a day – otherwise, magi wouldn’t bother with spell formations: they’d just sit around all day meditating to increase their mana capacity. Naturally, Jamison was very careful to make sure none of us injured ourselves in the process. Helping everyone took up the rest of the lesson. Once that was done, I somehow managed to slave my way through another training session despite having the approximate limb mobility of the average manikin. It really didn’t seem to be getting any easier over time, but then again, that was only day three. The first interesting fact from that day’s general knowledge class was that time was measured differently there. 35 days a month, ten months in a year – 350 days total. It made it much easier to keep track of dates, once we got used to it, although I wasn’t quite sure how it worked relative to this planet’s rotation speed, time to orbit the local star, et cetera. The second, and last, was the difference between an animal and a monster. The difference is more nebulous than you might think, and for things like simple wolves, could be impossible to tell from appearance alone. A monster was something that was spawned, naturally, from mana. Animals were the result of a birth. But, he said, many monster species were capable of reproduction. The only thing stopping them from becoming as common as sheep and cows was constant, daily killing of spawned monsters. You almost feel sorry for them. They were only born yesterday, after all. After another four days of strenuous training, I thought that I might have been getting stronger from the training, and maybe even have been in a little less pain… Or it might have been a fatigue-induced hallucination, I’m still not entirely sure. Either way, the captain seemed to think we were improving, because he gave us sets of boiled leather armour to wear while training. Of course, that only made everything harder, moving around with the extra weight and stiffness. So that was a joy. On the topic of magic, which was progressing much more smoothly than our physical training, I discovered to my sadness that you can’t just cheat the system and put a bunch of miniaturised magic formations on a single page with itty bitty labels, so that it’s super easy and quick to find everything. No, that causes the page to burn up quick as blinking, even ignoring the power reduction reducing the size of the formation causes. Interesting fact: the covers of grimoires are generally made from a higher quality of monster hide than the rest of the pages and are embedded with a mana crystal. What this means is that if you put a magic formation on the cover, you are able to cast it more often than your other spells, and by filling up the mana crystal beforehand, you can use it to instantly cast the spell once or twice… Depending on the consumption of the spell and the capacity of the crystal itself. Grimoires are also really expensive. Our grimoires are only basic, the pages within them made from the hides of weak monsters, with a single small, low-quality mana crystal in the cover. Even then, what with some fifty pages and the difficulty of processing, we were told each costed around thirty silver. Higher quality grimoires had prices venturing into the tens of gold coins, and Jamison said his own cost him nearly five platinum, even with part of it being funded by the kingdom. It didn’t look like we would be getting an upgrade any time soon. That night, Nelson held another meeting, clearly realising by then that we would always be tired so long as the captain insisted on our physical training. It was mostly a rehash of the last meeting, although the people who actually listened in general knowledge class recounted some of what they thought were the more important points in the lessons. There wasn’t really much to say. Every day was fairly similar, and everyone went to the same lessons, so there wasn’t much that any one individual knew that another didn’t. It was more a social meeting than anything else. In the next morning’s magic lesson, we learnt more about magic formations. I was quite disappointed when I discovered that the base was indeed a simple circle and hexagram. We spent most of that lesson practicing drawing circles and triangles, free-hand and with a compass – precision positively affects mana efficiency. Captain Pierce’s training was as per usual, hard and exhausting, but when it came to the general knowledge class, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that he had finished teaching us the basics of etiquette. He actually started to teach us useful things: common animal species, plants, herbs metals, weapons, armour, so on and so forth. Of course, he wasn’t teaching us everything about them, just general appearances, what was dangerous and what could be helpful. Because that lesson had finally become interesting, it felt like the days had become shorter all of a sudden, and the next week passed by quickly; our second week in this world. After those two weeks of training, the captain saw fit to arm us with real weapons. The swords given to us were unadorned straight-edged iron blades of a length perhaps some twenty or twenty-five centimetres under a meter, with leather-wrapped wooden hilts and a leather sheath. Also given to us were wooden round shields with diameters of around half a meter, rimmed with iron and featuring an iron boss in the center. Even more weight for us to carry while training, in other words. He also made us spar against his own soldiers, after we do the physical training. ‘Because your enemies won’t always allow you the luxury of waiting until you’re ready’, he said. That doesn’t mean we always have to spar while exhausted, does it? Spars were done with practice weapons. Apparently, although the captain considered us strong enough to carry weapons, he didn’t consider us skilled enough to use them. A fair assessment, if I’m being honest. We had about as much success as you can imagine: 0% win rate across the board. And they don’t even retaliate seriously. I didn’t notice until a few days of sparring had passed, but all their swings wouldn’t reach our bodies, even if we were to stand still. Still, they were good trainers. Under their tutelage, I started to feel like I could defend myself. Getting stronger and faster was one thing, but knowing how to fight was something else entirely. We were also taught how to maintain our gear. At that point we weren’t going into actual combat so there was very little to do on a daily basis, but when it needed to be done, we knew how to do it. At around that point arch-magi Jamison was finally getting past the foundational aspects and into teaching us how to create our own magic circles. Within the hexagram itself one wrote the symbols to designate which type, or types, of mana were to be used in the spell. The actual form of the spell was determined by what one writes in-between the inner and outer circles. Why that worked, precisely, was beyond me. It could have been some sort of placebo effect, with the magic working because people believed it did… Otherwise, it was strange. After all, it was just English we were writing. And English wasn’t magical. English was, perhaps, the strangest and most contradictory language in common use in old Earth, but it was certainly not magical. But regardless of why, the fact remained that it did work. We each created a standard elemental arrow spell according to the instructions, and soon the room was full of multi-coloured arrows as we each tested them out. One dangerous pyro decided to test out his lava affinity and made a lava arrow, melting a small hole into the wall we were testing them on, but beside that there weren’t any incidents. After another two weeks, I finally got used to swinging my sword around. I wasn’t exactly proficient at using it, but I was at least confident that I wouldn’t end up chopping my own arm off in combat. I did wonder about the training sometimes. We always sparred against the soldiers, who were a mix of humans, elves and dwarves. Wouldn’t that make it difficult for us to adapt to combat against monsters, who were very rarely humanoid? That question I had had was resolved that day, when captain Pierce announced that instead of the usual training, we would be heading down the mountain and into the forest at its base to perform an actual monster subjugation. We checked our gear, and the captain checked that we checked it properly. Then we headed outwards and downwards. There were no carriages that time, only a few carts to carry supplies. We walked on foot down the mountain. The walk gave me an opportunity to simply look out over the landscape, an opportunity which - surrounded by the stone walls of the keep - I hadn’t been able to enjoy over the past four weeks. Unlike old Earth, the landscape here was completely natural, devoid of power lines, skyscrapers and highways. Given that even the atmosphere had been negatively impacted on a global scale on old Earth, I think that such a landscape was somewhat superior to what you might find deep in the country, in those few places relatively untouched by man. Even the colours of the sun rising in the distance and the forest far below feel more vibrant than what I remembered. A rock shot out from under my boot to clatter off the edge of the path. I listened to the sound, suddenly feeling more relaxed than I had been since before we came here. When was the last time I went outside and simply appreciated nature? Perhaps the metropolitan expansion of the modern world meant that I never truly had. Still, we were about to go into actual combat, the first actual combat we had ever been in. I took a deep breath and regained my focus, keeping my eyes and ears open to any changes in the surroundings. It didn’t take us long to descend the mountain. At its foot were two roads. One was the road we took to get here; it pointed to the south, and a little west. The other ventured almost straight north, through the forest. We took neither, and ventured east, straight into the forest. I was somewhat relieved to be under the shade of the trees, after climbing down a mountain in the sun. At least, until I heard the faint buzzing of insects around us. I sincerely hoped there were no mosquitos just waiting to transmit whatever local diseases they were carrying. Diseases which, I needn’t remind you, we would have no resistance to whatsoever. Or would we? I don’t remember anyone getting sick, now that I think about it… Regardless, the worst I saw were flies and gnats. We walked through the forest – thankfully not so dense that the carts were unable to navigate through it, narrow though they were – for about half an hour before the soldiers had us stop in a small clearing. They then unloaded the primary contents of the carts: barrels full of the blood of whatever the soldiers had hunted over the last few weeks. Breaking open the barrels, the soldiers poured the blood over the ground in a disgustingly smelly red pool. Swarms of insects immediately flocked to it, even as the minor wind magic the soldiers were employing to spread the scent killed them in droves; the mana within it, while not concentrated enough to harm a human, was more than enough to overwhelm insects. We had been advised beforehand that doing this would usually be incredibly dangerous: One would almost always attract more and stronger monsters than one was intending. This area, however, was regularly cleared by the soldiers; the numbers and strength of the local monsters were well-known to them, and was much less than in most other areas in the kingdoms. Within seconds, the quiet forest sounds of rustling leaves and chirping birds were disrupted by howls and roars that came from several different directions. I cleared my throat. Just a month before, I would have been running at the sound. Now… Well, we’d see. The soldiers quickly vanished from the clearing, leaving us to fend for ourselves. We weren’t used to fighting as a group. We weren’t really used to fighting at all. But someone had the good sense to call out, “Get in a circle formation! Magi in the middle, warriors on the outside!” And so we did, the significant portion of us who were more proficient in magical arts than physical arts – myself and Greg included – stood huddled together with hands held over the open pages of our grimoires, ready to cast those one to three spells we had created. Outside, wielding swords and shields, were the warriors who, honestly speaking, would be doing the lion’s share of the work today. Despite being in a relatively safer position, many of the magi were panicked, their eyes darting back and forth in every direction. The howls continued, and fear bared its fangs over my heart as well. I took a deep breath and kept my eyes forwards. The enemies behind me were for my allies to deal with. I would have been doing them a grave disservice if I were to assume that I would somehow be so much more capable than them that I would be able to defeat all the enemies in front of me with space to spare, and they would not. By that point, I have to assume that even Antonio had discarded some of his hubris. Barely seconds after we stood at the ready, they came upon us, darting at us from the trees with hungry jaws and glaring eyes. There is a moment of shocked inaction before the front lines are forced to defend themselves or die. Another few moments after their desperate defence and subsequent retaliation, us magi remembered what we were supposed to be doing and started doing it. Arrows of various colours streaked out as people fired any and every spell they had that wouldn’t risk burning the forest down. My own earthen bolt flew over the head of one of our defenders to knock back a beast leaping at them, although more by coincidence than by design. Unfortunately, nobody had enough of their wits about them or the skill to take advantage of the opening, and the wolf regains its feet unmolested. My second hit, however, was entirely intentional. Sending an arrow of ice into a stationary target wasn’t that difficult with magic, even without much practice. The wolf was struck in the head by my icy bolt and collapsed back onto the ground. I wasn’t sure if it was dead or not, so I used my third and final spell: another arrow, this time of decay. It hit home mercilessly, the fur and flesh in the area of impact rotting away and falling off to expose bare bone. A moment later it was kicked out of the way by one of the defenders. Shutting my grimoire, I put it back in its holster. I wouldn’t have been able to use my spells again for another ten seconds or so, so I would do more good if I were to simply take out my sword and shield, perhaps sling a few freestyle spells into the action. Drawing my sword and grabbing the handle of my shield, I wormed my way in between the people in front of me to join the front line. Outside our group was a cacophony of wolves, boars and blood. I sent a rising slash towards a boar that sought to take advantage of the gap in the line caused by the others moving apart for me. The boar turned its head slightly, and my sword only hit its tusks, causing only a glancing wound. Enraged, it charged at me. Using my longer reach, I was able to smash it on the head with my shield, stunning it and giving me time to slash at it again. Perhaps I hesitated slightly, or perhaps I underestimated the amount of strength I needed to put into my strike, but my slash wasn’t quite lethal. Now thoroughly incensed, it tried to gore my legs with its tusks, but was thankfully distracted by an arrow of water that hit it in one eye. I blinded its other eye with a flare of light magic, stepped to one side and slashed down at its neck. This time, it died. Still, it wasn’t nearly the end. There were still dozens of monsters attacking us. Before long, the front lines started to get overwhelmed. It probably would have been the end of us, then and there, had the soldiers not come back. Unbeknownst to us, they had completely encircled the clearing while we had been fighting, and burst into action when they noticed we were taking injuries. Within half a minute, all the wolves and boars were lying on the forest floor in pools of their own blood. As the adrenaline faded from my system, I quickly noticed the smell – the smell of the blood, guts and waste of the monsters spilt on the ground. Then I noticed I was standing in it. I tried to step back, to avoid staining my boots in blood, but there was nowhere that I could stand where there wasn’t blood, a corpse or someone else already standing. Many of the front liners were ignoring the blood and sitting on the ground, nursing claw or bite wounds. One poor fellow had a broken leg with a significant chunk of flesh missing; the results of a boar charge, I later found out. The magi group fared much better. Most of them were barely out of breath, since most of them did little more than cast a few spells the entire combat. At that point, we as magi were so amateur that we had difficulty causing our mana pool to empty. We knew things would change in the future, that we as magi would become more useful, but at the time it felt terrible, being able to do little more than stand and watch. The soldiers allowed us very little time to rest. After they were done bandaging everyone’s wounds, they instructed us in dismantling the beasts. It was a grisly, gristly thing, to skin the pelt off a wolf or cut the hide from a boar. Then they taught us which parts were safe to eat, and how to remove the parts that weren’t. Even a small mistake could rupture the organs as they were removed, causing their contents to spill, more often than not, over the hand and clothing of the person removing them. We… made many mistakes. The stench in the clearing became considerably worse by the time we were finished. All of the pelts, hides and meat we produced we dumped into the carts, and we started heading back to the keep. I rendezvoused with Greg and Boris as we walked. Greg was in the magi division, like me. He was fine. Boris had been one of the front liners, thankfully only receiving a slight scratch on his wrist. Over the past few weeks, Boris had been dedicated to training. He was already losing significant amounts of weight, although it seemed that he was actually naturally big boned and was still a considerably large man, even without it. He wasn’t particularly talented at swordplay, from what I saw. Couldn’t make the soldiers even breath hard when he sparred. But if he dedicated himself solely to defence, he could last longer than most of us, so long as the soldier didn’t get serious. Because of the weight he’s lost, and that he’s managed to not only keep up with everyone else but overtake many of them, Boris is looking happier and more self-confidant than ever, instead of his usual chronically depressed look. Hunting day, as we called it, became a regular aspect of our training. Once a week, we would go into a different place in the forest, pour blood everywhere, fight a horde of beasts and monsters – usually ending in us getting rescued by the soldiers – dismantle the corpses then head back. It became business as usual. Until it wasn’t.

Slavery. Without a doubt, it is one of the most disgusting practices in the current world. Despite this, most of the ‘civilised’ races use slaves, and even a couple of other races. Amusingly, the only civilised race that doesn’t selectively treat its citizens as animals are the beastmen. Perhaps they received enough scorn around the topic of ‘beasts’ that engaging in the practice would draw an uncomfortable parallel? But that is a topic for a different study. Because of the expense of developing restraints for individuals of great strength, execution is often preferred – if possible. More common slaves simply have manacles on an arm or a leg, and are often ‘trained’ before being sold to their new owners… -An unknown scholar From the bandits, we have managed to scavenge various pieces of equipment. I find another gauntlet, a pair of iron boots, leather arm guards, a leather helmet and a leather breastplate. And a single iron greave. The other of the pair isn’t on any of the bodies, so we can only shrug and give up on it. They are all scratched up and dirty, but Boaz whips out a few cloths and stones and has them all cleaned up in a jiffy. A few of the joints are still slightly stiff, but less so than before. There are also a variety of bows and arrows, but they’re all shoddy, homemade. They probably aren’t worth much, and we’re carrying enough as it is, so we leave them there. As for melee weapons, clubs are more common than swords. They never got to use them. We leave them where they lay. The swords are in various states of disrepair. Rusty, nicked with dull edges… They are mostly useless as weapons, but they should still sell for a bit, so we grab them as well. However, I do manage to find myself a knife that’s in reasonable shape. Apart from that, we scrounge up several silver coins, as well as a small pouchful of coppers. After we scavenge everything of use, we continue towards the town. Dong… Dong… Dong… A bell tolls as we wait in the line to enter the city. A clock tower is visible above the walls, the hour hand on the number four. It has a different arrangement from Terra’s 12-hour ones, with fifteen numbers arranged evenly around the perimeter, since the days here are 30 hours. I scratch idly at my bandaged face as I shift my gaze downwards. The walls themselves are made of large grey blocks of - presumably – stone, standing about ten metres tall with soldiers patrolling around the top of them. The soldiers, like many of the others lining up to enter the city, are demons. Demons are of the same shape and size as humans, but their skin is a dark purple – were it a bit darker, it would be black. Some of them have horns, some of them don’t. Their hair – for those of them who have it – isn’t restricted to the mundane colours of us humans. Blue, green… pink, there are all sorts in the line. Their eye colour doesn’t have as much of a range, generally being red or white. In other words, they have protagonist hair. After some time, we enter the city. Lining the neatly paved streets at regular intervals are things you can only see in old movies nowadays: gas lights. Since it’s day, they are unlit. Another interesting thing is that many of the signs on the buildings have words on them, whereas in other cities, it was mostly just images. Seems the literacy rate is a bit higher here. Our first order of business in this town is to find a blacksmith where we can sell all this junk. Just as I’m about to ask some passer-by where we can find one, Boaz points at a thick column of black smoke coming from another part of town. “That smoke be from a forge.” He says simply. Alrighty then, let’s try there. As we walk along the side of the street, a cart bearing a cage passes us. Within it are men clothed in rags and chained to the bars. They have slavery in this world? How… disgusting. We leave the blacksmith a while later with heavier purses than when we entered. At least, the twins do. Mine is a bit lighter. I had to get myself a new weapon, and I got another greave while I was at it. The design doesn’t quite match, but whatever. Walking feels a bit awkward, now. I’d never worn heavy armour before, and the weight is making itself known. Even if I am only wearing a few parts of it. Next is accommodation, then we’ll probably visit the adventurer’s guild, check out the requests. Perhaps even do one for once, who knows? (POV ???) Strewn across the table in front of me are scraps of metal in all shapes and sizes, carefully stoppered containers of acids, poisons, regular old oil, various mechanical parts, wires… the list goes on. Stretching, I relieve myself slightly of the tedium that is my latest project and look around the room. A crossbow that can be cocked with a crank, mechanisms that trigger at the slightest touch, a small clock and many more that I don’t care to mention. More than I can even remember, and I’m the one who made them. Out of sheer boredom, I act against my better nature and pull a lever on the wall beside me. With a metallic ‘twang’, a crossbow fires a bolt across the room and into the dummy placed there for that specific purpose. Which bolt is it that I’m testing this time? With a groan, I get out of the chair and go towards the target dummy, picking up a knife on the way. It just had to be the bolt I specifically designed to be hard to remove, didn’t it? I start picking apart the soft material of the dummy around the short length of the bolt that isn’t lodged inside of it with the knife, slowly removing more and more clumps of it. I try yanking on the bolt, and after a moment effort, it comes out… along with a large ball of the material stuck on the head of the bolt. Well, I suppose I can call that one a success… I look back at the dummy, missing a huge chunk directly where its heart would be. And I’ll need a new dummy… again. Sighing, I toss the bolt and dagger aside onto another bench, and look through the neat row of bolts I have lined up beside the crossbow. Now, which one won’t be a huge pain to remove next time? My eyes pass straight over another model of the earlier bolt, several variations which I’m expecting to be inferior versions, and stop to rest on the last two bolts. One is designed for accuracy and flight speed, while the other… Well, I’ve been trying to get that one to work for a while without success. Ugh… may as well see the failure earlier rather than later. Gingerly picking it up and placing it into the slot on the crossbow, I crank it until the string clicks into place. …I’ll need to wait until I get a new dummy, right? I slump back into my chair, sighing again. Day in, day out, nothing but this blasted monotony. I’ll get back to this, then, I suppose. I look down at the half-assembled piece of strangeness in front of me. I have been trying something different for once. A modified grappling device with hooks that screw into the ground after hitting it. I made a working prototype, but… I glance at the corner where I put it. It’s still a hulking piece of oversized junk. I’ll need to build a specialised bow for this thing once it’s done, but there’s no way I can launch something of that size reliably… Ah, who am I kidding? Who’d need something of that size, anyway? The little one, though, I might be able to use. The door to the room opens, and a tall man with red hair parted by a pair of long horns sprouting from his forehead walks in. “How’s the latest project going?” I brace myself internally. This isn’t going to be enjoyable. “The usual. Getting there.” He strolls over and peers at the mess on the desk. He points at a random assemblage of parts that I’d been playing with while I thought. It doesn’t do anything. “What’s this thing?” He asks. “Nothing. I’m working on this right now.” I point to the half-finished grappling hook. He looks at me impatiently. “And what is that, then?” “A modified grappling hook, designed to-” He cuts me off, coldly saying, “And who’s going to buy something like that?” “Adventurers, explore-” I protest, before he cuts me off, again. “Adventurers don’t have money, Xiltroth!” He shouts, knocking it off the table and onto the floor, some of its less secured parts spilling out. He knuckles his forehead, then runs his hand up one of his horns in an attempt to calm down. “What about that new bolt design? The military will always buy new weapons.” I wordlessly point at the demolished dummy. For the barest moment, a smile flits across his face as he looks at it. Then he returns to the same old cold look. “See if you can make some less effective versions.” He orders, before turning around and walking out again. As he goes, my eyes flick to the row of bolts that should fit that bill precisely, but I don’t say anything. He closes the door behind him with nary a glance. Some father he is. (POV Aaron) We, that is, me, Jakin and Boaz, are currently headed west from Vaaslav city. Also with us is a staff member from the local adventurer’s guild. You see, we have decided to take a request at the guild – Eliminate or capture a local bandit group. And while we can probably kill bandits, knocking them out and tying them up as we go along may be outside of our capabilities. Thus, we chose elimination. And, well, it’s not exactly like we can drag their corpses into the guild building as poof, is it? Therefore, a staff member has to go out and check for times like these. And if they’re going to send out a staff member, they may as well send them with the adventurers doing the request. Safer and quicker for everyone. Of course, he won’t be helping us, other than guiding us to their location. He’ll be hanging well back from the battle, or so he tells us. “They should be in that cave over there,” He says, gesturing at an innocuous-looking hole in the side of a hill. “I’ll stay back here, call me when you’re done.” Nodding, we set off towards the entrance. Right now, my gaming instincts are screaming at me to stealth the heck out of this, but my real body isn’t so capable of quietly creeping around. Especially since I’m wearing a few pieces of iron armour, which are by no means stealthy equipment. As we approach, I hear the soft peals of a bell echoing out of the cave. Well, looks like they’ve noticed us. Jakin and Boaz go through the narrow entrance first, shields forward and alert for any sudden ambushes that may be awaiting us. When I follow, I see Jakin at the front pushing back a very awkward looking sentry with his shield, which takes up a majority of the corridor and is making attacking a difficult prospect. Lanterns hang from hooks in the walls every now and again, providing much needed light. I can only hope the cave will widen out further in. Otherwise, we’ll just end up backing them into a corner and bashing them against the wall. …Which wouldn’t be such a bad conclusion, actually. However, that eventuality does not come to pass as the passage gives way to a small room, within which are another couple of demons, who look at us angrily with weapons in hand. We guardedly stepped out of the corridor before lining up in front of them. “Fuck off and we’ll let you keep your lives!” One of them growls. Boaz snorts in response while I keep my silence. Jakin is chuckling for some reason, making me raise an eyebrow involuntarily. Jakin says amusedly, “Right, right, yeh’ll be letting us live. Pull the other leg, Pinky.” The demon who spoke earlier curses angrily at Jakin, his vibrant pink hair making his enraged face look strangely comical. Then the fight is on. The aptly dubbed Pinky roared and rushes Jakin with his sword, which clashes ineffectively into his shield. Jakin bashes at Pinky’s stomach region – arm height for Jakin - with his shield, causing Pinky to lose his balance and stumble backwards. With a sharp motion, Jakin sends his pick piercing through the air after his enemy. It hits the demon’s leather armour, and with a crunch, punctures through and into the flesh behind. A spurt of blood remains in the air for a moment, before it too falls after its former vessel. Meanwhile, Boaz is dispatching his enemy with a similar ease and efficiency to his brother. On the other hand, I am currently in the process of dodging my opponent’s wild sword swings. He has no technique, and it is at this moment I truly appreciate how skilled the soldiers back at the keep were. We were taught how to use a sword for at least a month there, and they were still able to deflect or dodge our blows with minimal effort. I imagine that they would have felt then as I do now – this guy is entirely out of his league. He slashes down at me with all of his might – I’ve already taken a step to the left. He stops his sword with some difficulty, and lifts it towards me again in a swift cut – I lean backwards. Jakin and Boaz are now looking on in amusement. Frustrated, he charges at me, thrusting his sword. Taking a deep breath, I accurately whack the side of his sword with my weapon with a loud clash of metal. His arm can’t help but follow the sudden change in direction, flinging outwards, while he is still moving towards me. With both hands on the haft of my weapon, I wrench it upwards and into the swiftly approaching jaw of the demon. The bones in his jaw audibly snap and cave in when I make contact, crushing through it and demolishing his throat with a nauseating sensation. Several bloody teeth are sent flying from the impact. His eyes bulge outward in a short instant of intense pain before they loose focus for all eternity, his body arching backwards and crumpling onto the ground lifelessly. …That felt disgusting. I took one hand off my weapon, rubbing the wrist of my other hand. Both were tingling from the impact. I look at my weapon. A handle of middling length – much longer than a sword’s, but much shorter than a spear’s – leads down to a heavy head featuring several thick flanges of pointed steel. A flanged mace, and made of steel, no less. Particularly effective against armour, and relatively easy to use, the method of which can be described through the use of a single word – smash. Or crush. Or… anything of that nature, really. When using a sword previously, I had frequently felt frustrated at my inability to breach my enemy’s defences. My sword wasn’t sharp enough, it wasn’t hard enough, and I wasn’t skilled enough to use it to its full potential. The only way I had to defeat some enemies was to hack down hard enough that the impact itself would deal damage, rather than the sharpness of my blade. And if that was what I was going to do, then why not use a weapon specifically designed for that purpose to do so? Anyway, it’s about time we move on. I step gingerly past the mess I created, and we advance further in. There is another corridor opposite the one we came in, which we start moving down, again single file. As we go along, there are a few tunnels, and just as we turn the last one and see the entrance to another room, a soft click comes from beneath Jakin’s foot. My heart lurches as a metallic twanging is shortly followed by the chink of metal hitting stone. Boaz urgently says, “Are yeh hit, brother!?” Jakin turns around, scowling, and points to the metal bolt in the wall… above his head. “I feel insulted. Relieved, yes, but insulted.” He growls. Jakin then peers at the opposite wall, putting his eye up against a tiny hole in the rock. I inwardly cringe. Nothing good ever comes of looking in a hole like that. “Hidden crossbow trap.” He grunts, “Best avoid the bolt, may be poisoned.” He moves upright again, ignoring the bolt and moving forwards again. Boaz follows him, and I gingerly inch my way around it after them. After that incident, our exploration of the caves is strangely easy. We find the room where that crossbow was hooked up, a room with several makeshift beds, but still not a sign of any bandits.  Eventually, we have searched through the entire place with nary a peep from anyone. We find a small stash of coins, food, a small well… but no bandits. Boaz speaks tentatively. “Maybe… they might be from the same group as the bandits we killed on the way to the city. That would explain why there be only three of them here.” In the midst of confused caution, his words finally explains the eerie weirdness of an empty base. Of course they were from the same group as the ones earlier! “I think you might be right.” I say, almost laughing from the sudden loss of tension. We make our way back out of the caves and are met with some of the last rays of a setting sun. We’ll need to get back soon. A brief walk later, and we reach where we left the guild staff member. He stands up as we approached. “I almost thought I’d have to leave you behind. Is it done?” He asks, stretching. Ordering my thoughts, I explain. “We’ve cleared the cave, but there were only three people inside. We encountered some bandits earlier today and killed them, so we were thinking they may be of the same group.” He sighs. “Something like that is hard to ascertain, but regardless, if you have indeed cleared the cave this request will be deemed to have been completed. Now, if there’s nothing else, lead the way.” We go back into the cave. This time, without expecting an enemy around every corner, we are able to go through much faster. Seeing the corpses and the otherwise empty cave system, he nodded. “Everything seems to be in order. Anything you don’t take back with you now will be considered property of the adventurer’s guild.” On the way out, we check the bodies for anything useful. There’s a bit of cash, some more pieces of armour… and an iron greave. Damn. We head back to the city in near darkness. I wish I’d waited a single day longer to buy that greave… (POV Xiltroth) I put down my tools and stretch. The candles around the room smoulder dimly as the clock on the wall of my workshop ticks evenly. Walking over to it, I take the key, winding it up so it will run for another day. Half past nine. A smile flits briefly across my face. He won’t complain if I ‘go to bed’ if it’s at this time. Picking up the candle snuffer, I proceed to put out the candles, one by one. As I put out the last one, the room is engulfed in darkness. My workshop is underground, to prevent any prying eyes. I place the snuffer down gently beside the candle. Closing my eyes, I make my way to the door with measured steps. I’d done this many times before, and the darkness doesn’t hinder me. Opening the door, I nod to the guard outside of it and walk upstairs to my room. Closing and locking the door behind me, I change into baggy, comfortable clothing and fall into bed. Half an hour later, the same room… The lock quietly clicks, and the door swings soundlessly open. The same red-haired demon from before steps inside. He looks at his son for a moment, then leaves without saying a word, closing the door behind him. As the lock clicks shut again, the eyes of the one in the bed slide open. He waits a few moments longer, then noiselessly slips out from under the covers. Slipping on a pair of soft furred shoes, he opens a hidden compartment in his desk, taking out a small bottle and a few slim lengths of metal. Creeping over to the window, he applies a few drops of oil from the bottle to ensure a silent opening. He then utilises the metal pieces to disengage the lock on the window, and places them both in a small pocket in his garments. ‘Did he really think putting a lock on the window would stop me getting out of it?’ He thinks bemusedly as he slowly lifts the sliding pane to its full extent, looking out cautiously for any guards that may be nearby. Dextrously hoisting himself through the small gap, he lowers himself to the ground, his shoes making only a small sound, unheard by any but he himself. Closing the widow behind him, he stays low to the ground as he moves to the edge of the building. He peeks carefully around the corner. ‘Guards… I’ll have to wait for them to move again.’ Motionless, he waits until the pair of guards split apart, moving in opposite directions – both away from Xiltroth. Quickly he moves out, in-between them and out into the open area beyond. ’10…9…8…’ he counts out the seconds as he goes, and when he reaches two, he lays flat on the ground. Behind him, the guards turn again, putting him directly in their line of sight. But they don’t see him, wearing dark clothes and still as he his, and continue their patrol unaware. Soon, he gets up and resumes his escape, reaching the edge of the woods. Heaving a sigh of relief, he gets his bearings and moves further into the forest. It only takes a short while before he reaches a moonlit clearing, with a small pond near one edge. Breathing deeply, he starts stretching. After completing them, he starts performing a complicated set of movements, shifting from stance to stance at a speed as if in slow motion. Before long, sweat begins to drip down from his brow. Another ten minutes, and his entire body is drenched in sweat. After the final movement, he relaxes into a normal standing position, and walks over to the pond, splashing it on his face and hands. Pausing, he takes a look at his reflection. A slim face with red eyes, a single small horn and white hair stares back at him from the water. Not an unusual appearance... for a demon, at least. Shaking the water off his hands, he picks up a wooden staff lying on the ground beside him. He uses it to begin another set of movements, sweating away under the light of the moon. Later, a dark figure slips back between patrolling guards, slips through an open window and locks it, slipping once more into bed – this time with a smile on his face as he truly drifts into sleep.

In the middle of a clearing deep in a forest by the foot of a mountain, a cat licks the blood off of its paws as veteran soldiers in shining armour flee for their lives. On the ground lie two corpses – one with a massive hole punched through the left side of its torso, and the other missing everything from the waist up. A man in a simple looking robe sighs, looking at hands that are slightly transparent to his own eyes and invisible to everyone else’s. “So… This is how I ended up dying. To some crazily strong monster on what was supposed to be a completely safe mission. What are the chances?” “Higher than you’d think.” I reply, sidling over to him in my own ghostly garments – a t-shirt and shorts, comfortably me. “You’re here, too?” He asks, turning around. “Sorry about this. This wasn’t supposed to happen. None of you were meant to be in any real danger.” “You took the words right out of my mouth.” I smile wryly, before asking, “Hey, would you rather be alive right now?” “What sort of question is that?” He asks sadly. “Of course. Wouldn’t you?” “Well, given that this whole fiasco is a result of me trying to surreptitiously commit suicide, the answer to that is questionable.” I say. His expression twists in confusion, but I cut off the forthcoming question with a snap of my fingers. “Since your death is on me, I’ll do you a solid.” The confused expression on his face lasts for just a moment longer. Then things start to go backwards. People start to filter through the trees back into the clearing, running in reverse. The cat stands up, and the two corpses rise to their feet as if infected with the Z virus. The cat vanishes, only to reappear at the edge of the clearing a moment later, the two corpses regaining their missing halves as they do so, along with the arm of another. The scene is almost as if time is flowing in reverse. Because that is, in fact, what is happening. Finally, the clearing returns to what it was before the cat attack – people calmly dismantling the spoils of a successful hunt, including the two former corpses: One of them a solider, the other, me. I gently push with my mind at the soil beneath that particular soldier’s feet, as well as the soil beneath the feet of one of my co-workers, the one who lost his arm last time. Losing stable footing, they both trip, causing them to tumble to either side. Thus, leaving me the only one in the path of the cat when it pounced. In the middle of a clearing deep in a forest by the foot of a mountain, a cat licks the blood off of its paws as veteran soldiers in shining armour flee for their lives. On the ground lies a corpse, missing everything from the waist up. That’s me. This time around, I’m the only one that died. The only one that retains the memories of the last time around too, of course. But I digress. I think it’s about time this cat leaves. Just like before, I create an appetising smell deep in the forest and waft it towards here. Almost immediately, the cat perks up and vanishes into the forest. …Truly incredible. The scent’s concentration here was only at 12 parts per quadrillion when it noticed it. Shaking my head in wonder, I pick up my legs and start to regrow the body. Bones first, growing like skeletal trees from the pelvis, then the cartilage, oozing out to bond my skeleton together once again. Muscles. Nerves. Blood vessels, organs, grey matter, all manner of complex compounds and trace elements, coming together to form that strange thing that is a human being. A pair of blue eyes, a head of brown hair, and it is complete. I nod to myself in satisfaction. Still, I’m not done yet. I subtly shift my bone structure, muscles and skin, resulting in an appearance starkly different to the original, although it isn’t any younger. I shift another few things around – hair length and pigmentation, eye colour – and I end up with someone with uneven blond hair, a short beard and a more greenish tint to their eyes. Unrecognisable. But it’s the new me. With a wave of my hand, clothing forms on the body – a rough tunic and leggings, along with a simple leather belt and worn boots. A scabbard forms by its side, complete with sword: iron with some trace impurities, comparable in quality to the swords made in this world. Looking at the still lifeless body with satisfaction, I step forwards into it. Thump. My heart starts again, and I open my eyes, now unable to see the world of spirits and souls. Who am I? I am… Was, Phil. Perhaps a more apt question would be ‘What am I?’ The answer is simple: I am the man who has it all. Power beyond imagining, power such that life, death, space and time have no hold upon me. …But at the same time, the man who has nothing. No goal. No reason to be. Just emptiness. I know there are things I can do to give myself meaning, and one day I will do them, and those days shall be good days. But until then… Well, they say that before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes. Humans are a wonderful and terrible people, but for all their faults, they always keep walking. I wanted to experience life as an ordinary human, truly live a life and not just look through the cumulative memories of the world through psychometry. Sealing away my powers and my memories, I forged myself a new identity. I lived a life as any other might, going through school, university, trials and adversity to eventually end up in a dead-end office job. How then, did I end up committing suicide through monstrous cat in a forest on the face of a foreign planet so different to our own that the difference could be likened to water and wine? Now, that is a story…

Getting up, I walked over to Boris and held out my hand. “Are you up to walking, Boris?” He looked at me with some surprise but took my hand. With a grunt of effort, I helped him pull himself to his feet. “Thanks.” Boris said. “It was about time I got off my ass. I always knew eating all that fatty food would come back to bite me, but I never thought it would happen like this.” “Who in their right mind would expect this?” I sighed as we started to walk. He nodded sadly. “It was all so sudden. And so much walking… I feel like I’ve lost weight already. In a way, this place is going to be good for me, but I just don’t think I’ll be able to keep up with everyone else.” Shaking his head, he continued. “Look at me. Not even three laps and it’s all I can do to keep walking. I don’t have much magical talent compared to everyone else, and the lessons, they’ve only just begun and already I feel like I’m out of my depth.” We walked in silence for a few moments while I tried to think of a proper response. “You’re certainly in a tough place.” I said finally. “But not as bad as you think. As much as they would like to think of us as heroes, we’re just a bunch of tired people who worked in dead-end jobs. We aren’t fighters. Chances are we’ll all start up some sort of trading company. After all, if there’s one thing we all know we can do, it’s paperwork.” “But what if we don’t? What if, if we do end up fighting in this war? I don’t want to go to war.” Boris breathed. “I’ve heard the stories. I don’t want to go to war. And I’d just be dead weight. Literally.” Waving a fly away from my face with little success, I reasoned, “Even if that does end up happening, no reason you can’t split off from the rest. I’m sure there would be some others that would be more than happy to have an excuse to get away from combat.” “You’re right.” Boris nodded. “But still… Even if it’s just while we’re here, I’ll be stuck behind the pack. They’ll call me ‘the useless hero’. Do you know what that’s like, being deemed useless?” “No. Not really.” I admitted honestly. “It’s horrible.” Boris muttered. “Makes your thoughts go dark places. Makes you wonder if they’re right. Makes you wonder if there’s anything you can do, that you can ever do, that’s really worth doing.” “Then you can just tell them to piss off.” I frowned. “Or better yet, prove them wrong. You’re disadvantaged, yes, but that doesn’t make it impossible. If you give up, I can guarantee you things will get worse, but if you keep trying, harder than the others, things might get better.” Boris was silent for a moment before he spoke again. “I don’t know if I can. I always end up giving up.” “The stakes are higher this time. Sink or swim. You’d be surprised how much motivation that can give you.” I shrugged. “You should do extra training. Laps before breakfast and after dinner, that sort of thing. I’ll be doing the same, I really need to get more fit myself. I can probably rope Greg into it as well. Not like we have anything else to do anymore, right?” “Alright. I’ll do it.” Boris said. Boris’ breathing started to get heavy again after that, so we stopped talking and just kept walking. I knew running or even jogging the rest of the way was beyond me, and Boris as well, so we just kept walking. I thought that we could at least do that. But by halfway through the next lap, Boris and I were once again staggering along like drunkards. When we finally managed to reach the end – where the captain and quite a few others were standing – Boris fell over in a dead faint. Captain Pierce checked Boris over, and was apparently satisfied that he would be fine. I hoped the captain would pardon the fact that he didn’t do that last lap given he was unconscious. I myself was scarcely in better shape than Boris, and I sat down to wait for my skin to return to normal from its currently vibrantly red hue. My legs… I’ll feel that in the next week of mornings. But worst was my clothing. I sincerely hope they have replacement clothing for us, because this is not what this type of attire was designed for. Everyone was just sitting or standing around, resting and waiting for everyone to finish. People trickle in slowly over the next few minutes as I recuperated. After a while, I felt like I was well enough to stand, so I hobbled over to the water barrel. The water inside it was at a noticeably lower level than earlier; it was clear that the exercise had taken its toll on all of us. Greg was already there when I had reached the end, of course. He too was completely burnt out and did little more than a slight wave in greeting. We waited for almost ten minutes. I half thought that everyone was already there, and I was too tired to be bothered to count and prove myself wrong. That’s when she walked up. Her name was Rebecca, if I recall correctly. She worked up the other end of the office, so I didn’t know as much about her as I did about, for instance, Boris, who worked on the opposite side of Greg. Rebecca made the mistake of trying to join the rest of us, but the captain would have none of that, and told her straight to her face to start running again: she had another lap to go. She threw a bit of a fit but wilted when it seemed like he was about to throw her, and reluctantly started to run again. It was at this point that Antonio walked up. Unfortunately, I did know him, because his cubicle was on the other side of mine, and he liked to make himself known. He was quite a prideful man before all this, so one can imagine how it affected his already over-inflated ego when he found out he had all element affinity. Knowing him, he was probably too busy exalting himself to realise the difficulties of being able to use every type of magic. Captain Pierce immediately confronted Antonio. “How is it that you have only now finished your third lap, when everyone else has done five? Did you stop to take a piss halfway?” To his credit, Antonio didn’t even try to deny what the captain said, but he still tried to vindicate himself. “I already know that I’m going to be a mage, so what’s the point of me doing physical training anyway?” Maybe he was still incensed from his clash with Rebecca, but by the time I noticed that the captain had moved, he was already behind Antonio, holding a knife to his throat. “The point,” He said, “Is that you’ll be able to react when someone gets up close or takes you by surprise.” Captain Pierce removed the knife. “Now get running. I have a schedule to keep, and you’re threatening to throw it off.” He spoke with a note of finality, but it appeared that Antonio couldn’t let sleeping dogs lie. “Come on! Over a hundred swings of a sword and five laps right off the bat? What sort of crazy training is this?” Military training. And the military had this funny thing called discipline, which meant that the people in command took it badly when recruits – us – stepped out of line. “See that man over there?” Spat the captain, pointing at Boris. “He did four laps in half the time you did three, then fainted from exhaustion. Yet here you are without a drop of sweat on your face and still you complain. I would take a fat recruit with a spine rather than a skinny recruit without one, any day. Now run.” At this point, Antonio didn’t dare to argue further. He immediately started to run… And tripped before he made it past a few meters. After he got up again and left, I wandered over to where he’d tripped. The ground was fairly flat and devoid of any rocks, so I was curious as to what he’d tripped over. There was a depression in the dirt, about as wide and deep as the first two joints of my forefinger. The dirt visible within the depression was darker than the dirt on the surface, so it was freshly dug. I seemed to remember that captain Pierce had been standing there, before he made that move on Antonio. What that meant, exactly, I didn’t know. Soon after, the captain made us do push ups. Then sit ups. Squats. Weight lifting large rocks… By the end, everyone had practically collapsed. “Alright, that concludes the warm up.” Captain Pierce said. He laughed when we looked at him in despair. “I’m joking, I’m joking! That’s all for today. But we’ll be doing this every day from now on.” Everyone sighed in relief. “Now, let’s get you some proper clothes. Follow me.” Captain Pierce said, turning and walking towards the doors. We followed him to a small room filled with crates of clothes. Each of us picked out two sets of loosely fitting brown tunics and pants, a pair of leather boots, some cotton stockings and a plain leather belt in sizes that fit us. After that, we were led to the baths, gender separated communal ones filled, or so we were told, with water produced from water magic. We were also informed that ingesting the water would cause us to become poisoned but were assured that the water was otherwise perfectly clean and safe. I’m not entirely sure that I enjoyed the thought of bathing in what was essentially poison, but I did regardless. I certainly needed it. Once we finished, we changed into our new set of clothes. They were quite itchy and course, but they were at least significantly more flexible and easy to move in than our previous attire. “Your next class is general knowledge. They’ll teach you everything you need to know to live in this world – money, etiquette, some of the larger businesses and specifics about the five kingdoms.” Captain Pierce said, leading us again through the stone corridors. The magus who taught that class was called Norek. He did teach us some interesting things, such as the rankings of magi: apprentice, intermediate, high and arch. They wore robes of different colours: brown with black trim, a colour denoting their dominant affinity with white trim, silver trim and golden trim respectively. Of course, just because that was the norm didn’t mean that everyone did so. While the magi who were in the army or worked directly for the monarchies would, adventurers, mercenaries and wanderers were more likely to wear whatever was practical. This meant, of course, that you could never be entirely sure whether your opponent was just a simple soldier, or whether they were secretly hiding their ability to cast magic. We were at apprentice rank, having just started training. Intermediate ranks, apparently, were simply magus who had gotten a firm grasp on creating magic formations, were able to cast a good range of spells, and had a good quantity of mana. High magi were the real deal; capable of decimating groups of enemies at a time, causing minor changes in terrain such as localised earthquakes or swamps and having control enough to… Apparently immerse trees in fire without burning them. However that worked. Arch magi, being the highest rank, have much larger variations in skills and power, not even counting magi who were specialised in non-combative professions such as healing, enchanting or alchemy. They were strategic assets, and how they were used could effectively win or lose a large-scale conflict. The money in the five kingdoms were coins: copper, silver, gold and platinum, with each being a hundred times more valuable than the last. They had inlaid magical formations that accepted pure mana to form a small hologram, the intricate detail of which could prove the authenticity of the coin, as well as the kingdom of origin. In regards to the five kingdoms themselves, the human kingdom Stalia, which was where we were then, just on the eastern border, has the most citizens and the most magi. The dwarven kingdom Morrock, to the far north-west, produced the highest quality weapons, armour, as well as any other metalwork or architecture. Enlux, the elven kingdom, is the world leader in agriculture, and exports large quantities of produce to the other kingdoms. The kingdom of beastmen, Binod, is famed for its powerful warriors, and the demon kingdom of Xin has the most advanced technology. Other than the five kingdoms, there were also other races such as gnomes, halflings and orcs, but they are apparently roaming communities or reclusive, without rulers. He also mentioned the adventurers’ guild, mercantile conglomerate, mercenary association and a few other things. We basically sat there for four hours listening to him gabble on, but for the most part, those were the more important and interesting things he talked about. Once that was finally finished, we were told that we had some free time before dinner, so I roused myself from my stupor, woke Greg up and pulled him along with Boris to do some laps. Our whole bodies were still aching from our earlier torment, but what with the bath and four hours of rest, one or two laps wasn’t a problem. We stop when Boris looks like he can walk no further, experimenting with the manipulation of mana until dinner. After eating dinner and heading to our room, we were surprised to see everyone who had finished before us sitting in a circle. Someone gestured for us to sit, so we did. We waited for a while for everyone to get there, and then Nelson started to talk. “Me and a few of my friends have been thinking for the past few days that we should have a meeting, talk about everything that’s been happening lately. What with all the travelling, it hasn’t really been possible until now.” Some people’s eyelids were drifting closed, tired by the earlier training. Nobody said anything, so Nelson coughed and continued. “I’ll start by reiterating the events that occurred. We were all in the office, that… Magic formation appeared, and then we were in that cave. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that it was only the people who were in our office block at that moment that were transported.” Nelson looked around, but nobody spoke up. A few people nodded. “Then the soldiers found us, transported us here, and now we’re training to be some sort of heroes to save the world from the demons and some evil god.” Nelson paused. “I think, at this point, we can say that this isn’t just some elaborate hoax. The villages, their weapons… I would say they were equivalent to roughly medieval era technology, if not for the magic.” Everyone nodded again. “We have been told that we’re free to leave or stay.” Nelson said seriously. “In my opinion, whatever we choose to do, we should stay together. That should give us the greatest chances of success.” Seeing that nobody denied his statement, Nelson continued, a little more hesitantly this time. “I think… The worst possible choice at the moment would be to leave. We simply don’t know enough about the world, and if what they’ve told us about monsters is true, we may not be able to survive unless we get stronger. Then, the real question is when should we leave, if at all? And a factor to that would be what we think about this supposed imminent invasion of the demon race.” On that note, I spoke up. “It’s not just a matter of whether or not they invade, but if they do, why. If the alliance started the war and are just trying to use us to further their agenda, I want no part of it.” “I agree.” Said Nelson. “But it’s impossible to tell something like that from here. In the event that that is true, any information they give us could be biased. So the only real information we have is that single prophecy, which frankly I don’t think is at all reliable. Assuming for the sake of argument that god or gods exist in this world, and that they issue prophecies. The person could be lying, and even if he thinks he’s telling the truth, a single piece of evidence isn’t enough to condemn an entire nation.” “That’s right!” Someone said. “It’s ridiculous that a war may start based on the words of a single person, no matter how respected he is.” Nelson looked around and saw most of us nodding in agreement. “Then we will train here until a time comes that we believe we are strong and knowledgeable enough to survive in this world.” It was at this point that Antonio decided to pipe in, for whatever reason. “That shouldn’t take more than a month, right? After all, we are extremely talented.” The sheer arrogance of his statement gave me an urge to cave his irritating face in, but I refrained and limited myself to a more verbal response. “Right, because talent can let us catch up to people who have been training their whole lives in a mere month. I’ll bet you a hundred bucks that it took Usain Bolt more than a month of training to get to the Olympics.” “It’s different.” Antonio said dismissively. “We are the summoned heroes, destined to be legendary!” “As if this so-called destiny would have protected you today if captain Pierce decided to move his knife the other way.” I stated. “Just because this happened to us doesn’t mean we’re special. We aren’t invincible. And if this world is as dangerous as they tell us, odds are that some of us are going to get killed.” “I-” Antonio started to continue, but he was cut off by Nelson. “That’s enough!” Nelson rubbed his forehead. “Your argument isn’t getting us anywhere… I for one think that we’ve talked about everything that bears mentioning. I’m going to get some sleep, and you two should do the same. Tomorrow is going to be just as hard as today, if not worse.” I took a deep breath, and my anger was exhaled along with it. Nodding to Nelson, I headed for my bed. Antonio didn’t say anything else, either, and everyone dispersed to their own mattresses. The second day began with a stretch and a grunt of pain as my muscles each rebuked my abuse of them the previous day. Magic lessons were, again, theory.  That day Jamison taught us about the strengths and weaknesses of each element. Most elements mutually opposed each other. Light and darkness, water and fire, holy and decay, lava and ice. Others have specific counters: water counters earth, earth counters lightning, lightning counters water. Air and illusion don’t really have a counter, but on the other hand, they don’t have much direct power, either. Apart from that, Jamison just had us practicing controlling mana again, walking around as we did so, occasionally giving tips. Turns out that mana control is important, no surprise there. From what he tells us, while training mana control this early on won’t show many results, when one is a high magi or arch magi, the speed at which one can cast spells and the fluidity with which one can direct them is incredibly important – and training mana control is the only way to improve that. That took up the rest of the lesson, so it was then on to training with the captain. After another bout of torturing our bodies, it was again onto general knowledge class. After going into the ranks of nobility, which might have been interesting if we didn’t already have historical evidence of the many flaws inherited positions can bring about, Norek then went on to lecture about many different aspects of etiquette. Approximately 99.99% was such utter bollocks that I didn’t bother to waste my brain capacity on remembering it. Why in the devil do you need some five each of forks, knives and spoons? Look, you just need one fork and one knife, perhaps with a single spoon. Teaspoon if you happen to be having tea. Maybe a tea fork, too, if you think there may be cake. Add a good ol’ spork and you’re set for any eventuality. Well, you could have a steak knife too. But that’s only if you need it. Realistically, you shouldn’t need more than two utensils for any single meal. By the time he finished, I was almost catatonic, something that seemed to be becoming a trend in Norek’s classes. That wasn’t to say there wasn’t anything interesting that he had to say… Just that the interesting things were in the minority. Greg, Boris and I went for another couple of laps in our free time afterwards, practicing moving balls of mana alongside us as we gasped along. I don’t know what it said about me that I was able to sustain magic, which I awakened literally the day before, longer than I was able to run, which I’ve been able to do practically my whole life. Since the alternatives are a terrible neglect of my body and a great talent with magic, I decided that the latter was a more palatable option. Before going to bed, Nelson tried to pull us into another meeting. It was quickly decided to put it off for another day, as everyone was too tired. …It’s as if they expected that we wouldn’t be as tired the following days. I admire their optimism, even if it was misplaced.

In general, the further you get from civilisation, the stranger the landscape and wildlife get. Floating islands, illusory forests, half-formed chimera beasts… Of course, there are always exceptions. A particularly good example is the forest spanning over almost half the kingdom of Stalia, which has never been fully explored despite numerous efforts over the centuries. Maps made in previous expeditions would be shockingly incorrect on the next one, and even navigation by the stars or compass prove ineffective once one ventures deep enough. Of course, the real reason for this is exceedingly simple, as… -The page ends there. (POV Aaron) Before answering his call for food, I check for signs of dehydration, as that can be a more immediate problem than hunger. There are none, so I shrug off my pack and fished out some pieces of dried meat – something you can never go without when travelling is long-lasting food – and slowly feed him a few pieces. After exhausting almost half my supply of the stuff, he finally recovers enough to push himself up into a seated position. He looked around at us, embarrassment clouding his features. “Um, thank you for, for saving me…” He says awkwardly, scratching his head. Then he seems to think of something, and his face brightens. “Are you dwarves?” He says, pointing at Jakin and Boaz. “And a human?” He looks at me. “How strange…” Then, as if realising something, he suddenly starts stuttering apologies, “Uh, not a bad strange! I just meant, you look interesting – ugh, I mean, just, I’ve never seen anyone, who isn’t a demon before. Sorry.” He slightly bows his head in apology under our bemused gazes. “So, how did yeh end up at the edge of a forest with no food?” Boaz asks him. His face flushes slightly in shame. “I… I have food but, I… can’t cook.” He almost mutters the last part. Boaz raises his eyebrows incredulously. “And yeh didn’t think of that before you be going into the woods?” “No…” He scratches his head. “Can… can I travel with you, just, to the next city?” He asks hesitantly. I look to Jakin and Boaz for confirmation. Shrugging slightly, they nod at me. “Sure. Are you alright to walk?” In response, he puts one hand on the ground and pushes himself to his feet. We set off again down the road, this time with an additional member. As we walk, I occasionally glance around to scan the landscape, a habit picked up from our few run-ins with tigers. On one of these instances, I happen to spot our new demonic friend looking intently at the dwarves’ huge shields. After a while, he turns around and catches my inquisitive gaze, but he just awkwardly turns to face ahead again. After a few seconds, he surreptitiously glances back towards me, then seeing me still looking at him, he turns his head away again. Finally, I just clear my throat and say, “So, what are you planning to do once you get to the city?” His tense face visibly relaxes. “I’m going to become an adventurer!” He says confidently. Slightly taken aback, I take another look at him, trying to see if he’s physically capable of... well, fighting. I can’t see much due to his loose sleeves, but it doesn’t look like he’s buff. Not that that’s the only thing that determines fighting ability, but it certainly helps. In fact, although I couldn’t say for certain because he’s a different species to me, but he looks quite young. Couldn’t be older than twenty. “Do you know how to fight?” I ask uncertainly. He shrugs. “I got taught how to fight for a few years, then practiced on my own for a few years after that, so I think I’ll be okay.” “Do you know how to fight monsters?” I clarify. “I… I’ve never fought one before. But if I start with weaker monsters and work my way up, it shouldn’t be too hard…” He says, sounding a little unsure. It finally hits me that I’ve never asked him for his name, or even introduced ourselves. “I almost forgot. I’m Aaron, and those two are Jakin and Boaz. Jakin is the one with the scar on his cheek.” I explain. He pauses a moment and shrugs. “Xiltroth.” Huh. Demons have interesting names. “Are you three adventurers? Have you ever fought really powerful monsters?” He asks curiously. “We’re adventurers alright. As for powerful monsters… Now that I think about it, we do have a great story we can tell him, don’t we?” I say half in surprise as I looked towards the twins, at which they nod appreciatively. Jakin says, “How about yeh tell him, yeh seem excited enough about it.” I grin widely. “Well, I’ve just never had any interesting stories to tell before. At least, not ones that were about me. Okay Xiltroth, do you want to know how I got these scars?” I begin. After that ends, we continue in silence for a while, before Boaz throws his arm to stop us. “There be something strange about the ground ahead…” He says, stooping down to take a closer look. Jakin stoops down next to him. “Earth here be freshly turned… the rest of the road is dry and hard. What was your name… Xiltroth, try whacking it with your stick.” “It’s not a stick, it’s a staff!” Xiltroth scowled, but he reaches out his staff over the patch of slightly discoloured earth and gives it a firm poke. The ground deforms slightly inwards where the staff touches the earth. Confused, he gives it a stronger push, and the ground caves inwards, revealing a huge hole. It encompasses almost the whole breadth of the road. I look over the edge, scratching my head as I look down the hole. It must be almost twenty meters deep… aaaaand there’s spikes at the bottom. Who the heck would have the time and resources to dig something like this? I can’t come up with anything, so I try asking the others. “Who would have the time and resources to dig this?” Boaz shrugs. “Whoever it is, they be more powerful than us. Let’s just get out of here.” “No point in hanging around looking at it, anyway.” I say, making my way around the perimeter of the hole. Still confused about the whole situation, we continue on our way. Throughout the day we pass through a few small villages, and the road branches off many more times to other villages, presumably. When we stop for a meal, we find that the meat in Xiltroth’s pack has a weird odour… It has gone off, so we chuck it. Oddly, Xiltroth professes his astonishment that food can go bad. How sheltered a life had he lived?  But then when we settle down some ways from the road to camp for the night, he seems perfectly okay with it, even though he doesn’t appear to have a tent with him. He just gets a few pieces of clothing out and hunkers down to sleep on them. Eh? I’m confused. Is he a sheltered kid or not? We take it in turns to keep watch, apart from Xiltroth of course. It’s one thing to walk alongside someone during the day, but I don’t trust a stranger to guard me at night. Nothing happens during my shift, just the quiet, constant sounds of insects and things shifting in the breeze, but I am roused from my slumber some time later by the sounds of fighting. It’s very brief, dying down scarcely a dozen seconds later, so I just shrug internally and drift back to sleep. When we wake up I see the corpse of a man-sized beetle resting on the ground a few meters away from camp, its shield-like wings crumpled and twisted to one side, and its armoured head bearing a deep hole. Stretching, I yawn and vaguely wondered if it was capable of flight prior to its wings’ destruction. I say good morning to the dwarves and start packing up my tent. We don’t have any fresh meat to cook, so we resign ourselves to nibbling at dried meat and biscuits around the last flickering embers of the fire. Makes you miss cereal, but golly is that breeze refreshing. And the view is so lush… Forget those concrete jungles, I’ll take this any day. Half way through breakfast I finally remember Xiltroth. Still gnawing on the chewy meat, I crouch down and shake his shoulder. His eyes shoot open, blink a few times, then focus on me. “Good morning.” I say to him. “More dried meat for breakfast, I’m afraid.” He gets up, packing his bedding – such as it is – back into his bag before moving over to the fire. Boaz hands him a portion of our food. Our supplies are starting to dwindle because of our extra member, so we’ll have to stock up in the next village we pass. After a second, Xiltroth points at the bug corpse, exclaiming, “What on earth is that!?” Jakin chuckles. “That, is the reason we keep guard at night. Monsters. ‘Course, this one had the bad luck of thinking of me as its supper. Its slick armour may have helped it against a sword or arrows, but my pick be another thing entirely.” “I don’t suppose it would be worth taking along?” I ask. “I can’t imagine anyone would be interested in the meat, and it looks like you did quite some damage on the largest armour plates.” Boaz goes over and takes a closer look. Musingly, he says, “There be a few of the smaller sections that are left undamaged… nothing else of worth that I can see.” “That thing is worth something?” Xiltroth asks, still looking in disgust at it. Shrugging my shoulders, I say, “Of course. Everything is worth something to someone. It just depends if you can find that someone. I can imagine these plates being used to cheaply produce armour, and there’s always plenty of people who want armour. So, it has value.” On that note, we head off again. It’ll be great if, in addition to non-perishables like dried meat and perhaps a few pieces of fresh meat for that night, we can also get some other things, like oats and some more fresh vegetables. My vegetable supply is running dangerously low… And maybe we can make some porridge if we have oats. I remember one of the twins has a pot… From then on, we see the occasional monster. They are all the same giant beetle as before. Although they are unable to fly, they are able to perform extended leaps with the assistance of their wings, and their mandibles look considerably powerful – not that we are ever slow enough to let them use them on us. As for their hard exoskeletons, A single strike from my mace can heavily damage it, and my second on the same spot can crush through to the flesh below. And if you are able to disable their fragile wings early, they become fairly slow moving, leaving them open to heavy, accurate strikes. All in all, a difficult opponent for a beginner, but not much of a challenge for an iron rank adventurer. Plus, if you had fire magic, disabling their wings becomes as easy as directing a single plume of flame their way. Consequently, Xiltroth doesn’t attempt to fight one. Most of the day passes in a flash, and it’s soon evening, so when we see a village in the distance we eagerly hurried towards it. To us, it means warm food, supplies to last us the rest of the way to Xantor – which we have nearly reached, if the map we have was any indication of reality – and possibly even a bed to rest the night in. As we near, I see that the wall surrounding the village is visibly taller than that of other villages. Perhaps due to the large jumps of the giant beetles? But the gates are open, as they oft are in villages during the day, and we pass through them without incident. Inside the village, people in plain clothing walk around carrying baskets, bundles of sticks… We head for one of the largest buildings in town: the tavern. In small places like these, you’re lucky if they even have one, but this place does. I suppose that on days where there’s nobody from out of town staying in, they make ends meet by acting more like a bar and restaurant for the local folk. After having a deliciously warm meal containing actual freshly cooked meat and vegetables, I asked the tavernkeeper about available rooms while Boaz and Jakin enjoy a round of drinks and Xiltroth contentedly pats his full stomach. They have a simple communal room, which has five beds but is still cheaper than four individual rooms, so we pay for the night. To our dismay the lock on the door is broken, but as there is very little we could do, we just lean the single, rickety chair in the room against the handle. Or, we try to, but the chair is too short and the handle too high for it to work properly, so we just leave it in front of the door. Thoroughly disgruntled about the lack of security, we get into the beds. In comparison to modern mattresses, these beds are the epitome of discomfort, but they are still a far cry from bare earth and canvas tents. I drift off into sleep a short while later. I awaken to a hand jostling my shoulder, and my eyes snap open, struggling to see who it is in the darkness. The white hair and red eyes gives the person away as Xiltroth, and I relax somewhat. I glance out of the window, also devoid of latch or lock, and see that it’s still pitch-black out. I look questioningly at him. He starts whispering to me. “I couldn’t sleep, so I was just listening to the wind, but then I overheard people talking downstairs.” He gulps. “They were discussing how best to kill us in our sleep and divide the gold.” My mind grinds to a halt for a moment, then sputters back to life and starts to race. “They referred to us, specifically?” I ask, equally quiet. He nods grimly, his face oddly pale. I consider his face for an instant, trying to tell whether he’s lying. He looks too scared for it to be a lie, so he’s probably telling the truth. Still, that doesn’t exactly mean we can go down there, guns blazing. They could just be talking about it, and never actually be planning to go through with it, and even if they were planning to kill us, we’d have no proof if we went down there and killed them. Either way, best to inform the dwarves first. I walk over to Jakin and tap him on the shoulder, waking him up. He looks at me questioningly, but I just put my finger on my lips in a motion for silence and repeat the process for Boaz. I motion them closer and start whispering. “Xiltroth says he heard people planning to kill us downstairs.” They look understandably taken aback, then begin to furrow their brows. Boaz speaks quietly, “For now, how about we try and listen in as well. The more we know, the better.” Everyone nods in agreement, and we all stop talking, moving, we even try to breathe quieter. I activate mana reinforcement, since it increases not only physical strength but also the five senses. After concentrating for a few moments, I hear a soft voice from below the floorboards. We are on the second floor, so it’s likely it is coming from the bar area. “-e boss will be wanting most of the cut, no doubt. A right shame, but that’s how it is.” A second voice spoke. “Can we get around to it already? If I’m almost falling asleep, they must be sleeping like logs.” The first voice replies to him, “A few more minutes, then we’ll go up and kill them. And keep quiet, will you? This gets much harder if they’re awake.” The voices stop speaking entirely. “Let’s get our gear on, then.” I keep my sentences short to avoid unnecessary noise. I put on my armour slowly and carefully. “Will, will we be able to beat them?” Xiltroth asks, clutching his staff tightly in both hands. Putting my pack on my back, I roll my shoulders in an unsuccessful attempt to get it to settle properly. I turn my eyes to him. “Relax. You won’t be able to fight if you burn out your muscles gripping your staff.” His hands relax a bit, but his face is still fearful. Sighing, I say, “Look, we’ve escaped from a horde of werewolves before. A couple people won’t be any problem for us. Just try to keep track of your surroundings, and we should all be fine.” He nodded, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. When he opens them again, they are calm and determined. We sit down on our beds, waiting in silence for our assailants to approach. In the dark. With the chirps of crickets beating constantly upon our eardrums. It doesn’t take too long before my attentive ears catch the sound of a creaking stair. And not long after, slow footsteps coming down the corridor towards our door. The door handle quietly turned, and the door starts to open… then it hits the chair, loudly dragging it across the wooden floorboards. They pause for a moment, then slam the door open. During this, the chair gets caught on a wonky floorboard, tipping sideways behind the door. The violently opening door takes off the chair leg with a loud CRUNCH. Two men stand in the opening of the door, looking quite awkward. “Stealthy.” Comments Jakin dryly, glaring at them. They grimace, taking out long daggers and charging at the person now standing opposite the door – me. But we’ve already been ready for them for a while now, and the twins aren’t exactly about to let me face them alone. Each dwarf slams into one of them with their shield, pinning them against the wall. They are barely able to move their limbs under the pressure. “So,” said Jakin threateningly. “Why don’t you tell us all about why you decided to kill us?” They stay silent. I decided to try a different tactic. “Look, we don’t have to kill you. If you talk, we’ll just hand you over to the guards.” The first man doesn’t say anything, but the second one started laughing. “Yeah, hand us over to the guards!” That doesn’t bode well. After that, neither of them says a word, apart from occasional chuckles and exchanged glances. So, with a brief struggle we tie them up, leaving them in the room as we go downstairs to see what’s what. After descending the staircase and entering the bar, we are shocked by the scene before us. I think every single villager we saw today is sitting there, still in plain clothing, most of them quietly nursing drinks. All of them turned towards us in a single, almost concerted movement. For a moment, we just looked at each other. Then they all pull out weapons. …Well, damn.

I wake up to an unfamiliar… floor. I sleep on my stomach, you got a problem with that? Getting up, I stretch my stiff limbs. It hadn’t been a particularly comfortable sleep. As I stand, my pants fall. Clarity quickly returning to me, I check my coin pouch, which still has coins in it. Great! Pulling my pants up and fastening my belt around my waist, I stretch more vigorously. One arm is half numb, and my shoulders… Crack! Ah, that’s better. Stepping past the line of ants parading across the floor, I pick up my stockings and sit on the chair. A prolonged creak makes my ears twitch. I stretch them too. Moving your ears always feels slightly strange. Waving the socks around wildly to detach any dust or bugs that had nested there over the course of the night, I start putting them on. It isn’t easy. I miss having elastic material in socks. After I put on my boots and sword, I’m ready to start the day. Removing the plank, I open the window. Light streams into the room, dispersing the lingering darkness. The sun is just coming up, a sleeping habit acquired courtesy of all the early mornings I’ve had in the last month or so. I have a lot to do today. I have to get some general supplies, do some fitness training, earn some cash, get some food… Swallowing, I notice my mouth and throat are completely dry. Had I really forgotten to drink liquids all of yesterday? What on earth was I thinking? I pause. Can I still use that saying? Doesn’t matter. So how do people in this day and age get water? Let’s see, freshwater lakes and streams, wells… I count them off in my head. …Is that all? Well, let’s find a well. A city of this size should have a good few. I lock the door behind me as I go out. I’d only paid for the one night, so I hand the key back to the innkeeper as I leave. I’ll need to get a water skin before I can drink some water, and I can buy some other things at the same time. There aren’t many people on the streets this early in the morning, so the journey is quick. Walking into the local general store, I begin perusing their wares. They have quite the variety here. Everything from cutlery to needle and thread to backpacks. Again, everything is on shelves behind the counter. Without modern security cameras, shopkeepers here won’t be so bold as to leave merchandise where they can’t see it. “I need a knapsack, two water skins, a whetstone, a fork, a spoon, a coil of rope, a container of soap and a stretch of canvas.” I dictate the list of products I want to the shop keep. He begins to pull items off the shelves, reciting their prices as he goes. “Fifteen coppers for the knapsack, three each for the water skins, two for the whetstone, five for the soap itself and another three for the container. The canvas will depend on size.” There is a small assortment of goods neatly placed on the counter after he finished. As I start to speak again, he uses an abacus to calculate the total price. “Big enough to pitch a one-man tent. Maybe two metres each way?” Nodding, he takes down a folded square of fabric. “That’s ten coppers, and that adds to…” He pauses a short moment as he moves a couple counters on the abacus. “Forty-one coppers. Will that be all?” I nod and count out the coins from my rapidly thinning pouch. “Pleasure doing business with you.” I pack all the goods into the knapsack and sling it over my back. It’s an uncomfortable thing, with its non-adjustable straps and uneven weight distribution, but it’s the best I can get for now. Almost bought a tinderbox there, then I remembered that I can use fire magic. I’m an idiot sometimes… But that saves me some money, and a lot of fire-making effort in the future. I wasn’t looking forward to figuring out how to use a flint and steel. Before I leave the city, I suppose there’s one more place I need to go… The adventurer’s guild. I suppose it was obvious that I would go there pretty soon, though. Registering at the adventurer’s guild makes it easier to sell the carcasses of monsters you killed, as well as being a convenient hub of monster-related information and to find suitable people to team up with. While I don’t expect to create or join an adventuring group anytime soon, the information and way to sell materials will be very useful to me. Later that same year… about five minutes later, to be exact… A man, of average build and looks, wearing such an average set of clothing that it is almost abnormal, stands in front of the adventurer’s guild front door. The only sign that he is anything more than the average city dweller is the scabbard at his side and the knapsack on his back, which don’t count for much in a place such as this. He opens the door and steps inside. A few of the numerous men sitting around bar tables off to one side in the building briefly look over, before returning to their drinks, disinterested in the new visitor. Gazing around at the well-lit surroundings for a moment, he walks along the outer region of the bar towards the clean reception desk. As he is about to pass by, one of the patrons on the outer tables sticks out his leg, in a clear attempt to trip him. In a surprising display, the man stops just short of the outstretched limb, and looks across at the grinning man. The grin on his face fades a bit, before coming back full force. His lips are still spread wide as he speaks, loudly. “What’s up gramps? Why’d you stop?” He simply shrugs, smiles at him and steps around his still extended leg, walking away. The man loses his smile. Pushing back his stool and standing up, he calls out to the other man. “Why’re you walking away? I was talking to you, y’know!” He stops. Turning around, he speaks calmly to the spluttering man. “And why are you talking to me?” That seems to stump him, his eyebrows furrowing for a second as he thinks. Eyebrows returning to their normal positions, his smile broadens as he retorts. “Well, that’s obviously because I’m worried about you, old man! Stopping in the middle of the room all of a sudden, you looked like you might be sick.” The man, smaller in stature and attire than the leather armour clad adventurer, visibly raises an eyebrow as he replies. “You needn’t worry, as I am perfectly healthy.” The adventurer seemed to have readied his reply in advance, as he barely pauses a moment before saying, “You’re looking a little pale old man, you really should see a healer.” Still standing in the middle of the room, mostly expressionless, he nods to himself as he says a line to the man, then again moves towards the reception. That line was simply, “I see. Apologies, but I am not interested in men.” The adventurer’s face pales as some of the other drinkers erupted with guffaws. Enraged, he leaped forwards, swinging his fist towards the man’s back. Perhaps reacting to the sound of pounding footfalls, the man turns around and attempts to duck under the approaching blow. Without enough time to react, however, he is unable to fully avoid the hit, resulting in a glancing blow to one shoulder. Balance completely broken by the simultaneous turn, duck and impact, he falls to one side. Rolling awkwardly away to avoid a kick, his arms reach out and snag the leg, pulling it towards him. The angry man loses balance due to the overextended limb, falling to the ground. Using the opportunity to get up, he moves away from the large, grasping palms of the angry red-faced man. A shout from one of the staff interrupts the combat. “No brawls in the guild hall!” Breathing heavily, he gets off the ground and walks out of the building. The man, similarly breathing heavily from the combat, takes a moment to calm himself, then again moves to the counter, this time reaching it without incident. The staff member there apologises for his unpleasant first experience at the adventurer’s guild, and reassures him that that those at the bar usually restrict themselves to sparring with words. “So, did I pass?” Obviously, it’s me. But man, does my back ache after that! No, arthritis is NOT setting in. When I did that rolling, my knapsack was still on my back! It was NOT designed for rolling, and I could feel every little thing I had packed in there. I hope they aren’t broken… The guy looks at me in confusion. I’m not surprised, my question had no context. I love doing that. The faces you get out of people can be priceless sometimes, if you say the right thing. Of course, I wasn’t asking just for fun. He responds a mere moment later. “Pass? Pass what?” “You expect me to believe that it’s a coincidence that someone provokes a fight with me the minute I came in?” I say in response. He gives a smile at that. “Sir, that is a bar. Drunkards do have a tendency to start fights.” I smile back at him, but it doesn’t reflect in my gaze. I stare him straight in the eyes. “He left immediately and there was no drink on the table. And the staff only called out when things were about to get serious between us, even though it would’ve been simple to call out earlier.” His smile doesn’t waver, but I think I see the corner of his mouth twitch. That, or a fly flew past. “Between me and you, it’s boring for us staff without the fights, so we let them go on for a bit. Obviously, we still stop it before it gets serious, or we would get in trouble as well.” That draws a chuckle out of me. Customer service jobs have their ups and downs in both worlds, huh? “I can believe that. What I can’t believe, is that you’d ignore the rule saying that the consequence for starting a brawl is a temporary ban from the premises. And for an iron plate adventurer, at that. The only thing I could think of that explained it all was that you had hired him to do it, to test prospective adventurers.” His smile grows wider, and yet somehow, more genuine. He lets out a short laugh. “I could go on and try to convince you, but I won’t waste any more of your time. Yes, we did hire him to do that. And answering your earlier question, yes, you passed. So. Would you like to join the adventurers’ guild?” Nah, I think I’ll turn around and leave now. Was just here to take a squiz at the place. “Yes, thanks.” He nods and takes out a complicated legal docume- Seriously? Medieval, people. Do you have any idea how low the literacy rates were back then? Like, so low that it was pretty much only nobles that could read and write. And some other people, scribes and the like, but not many. He calls out to one of the other men manning the counter. “Hey Sean, we got a new register, so could you take over from here?” Another man, presumably the aforementioned Sean, nods at him and switches places with the man in front of me. “Wait there, would you? I’ll just be a moment.” Despite just having got here, he’s gone again into the door behind the counter. He comes back with a large leather-bound book. Unlike the leather my grimoire had, this was normal looking leather. Placing it on the counter in front of me with a hefty thud, he ducks under the counter. He comes back up holding a quill and small metal container in one hand and a knife in the other. And this knife, by the way, we aren’t talking the dagger sort of knife, the bread sort of knife or the butcher sort of knife. It was a tiny blade with a sharp edge. Placing the implements on the counter and arranging them, he now turns to me. “Okay, that’ll be five coppers, please.” That’s almost all the coppers I have left, but I hand them over. He counts them, nods, unscrews the lid of the container, dips the quill into the ink, stirring it around a bit before wiping off excess ink onto the edge of the jar. “Name and specialties, please.” I had thought one up on the way here, since I already knew that you needed to present one to sign up. “I’m Aaron. I can use a sword well enough, and I can do some basic fire and earth magic.” His head jerked up from the book, spilling a drop of onto the page due to the sudden motion. “Seriously? Your family had that kind of money?” I laugh at that, and smile wryly. “I wish. A magus adventurer came through my village when I was young, and I insisted in my ignorance that he teach me magic. He was very surprised when he discovered I actually had the aptitude, and taught me a little bit before he left.” He lets out a low whistle. “Lucky guy. I don’t suppose you have a grimoire? Free magic then. A demonstration, if you would? For magic I have to confirm you aren’t just lying. Something small, please.” “Sure”, I say. I summon up two tiny balls of mana on top of my upturned palm. One turns into a tiny little candlelight and the other turns into a tiny little piece of dirt. After a second I let them dissipate into the atmosphere, or wherever it goes, the light winking out. “Well I’ll be, you actually do have magic.” He gives me an apologetic look. “Sorry, but nine times out of ten it’s just somebody looking to boost their reputation. Now… Aaron, was it? How do you spell that?” Ooh, a subtle probe. “How should I know?” He nods in resignation as he scrapes the stray drop of ink off the page with the little knife. He scratches away at the page with his quill, going back and forth between inkwell and page a few times. I read it upside-down, which as an avid reader, I can do without much difficulty. That is, if the other person isn’t writing in a half mix of cursive and normal writing. Puzzling it out, it looks like he’s written the spelling I wanted. Not that it matters. That done, he rummages around under the desk again, pulling out a coin, which he hands to me. It’s made of copper, but unlike normal coins it has a hole in the center, and the design on one side is different. One side still has the symbol (and magic circle) representing the country it was issued in, but the other has the crest of the adventurer’s guild: a crossed sword and staff with a mountain in the background. Sean explains the thing, “That’s the symbol representing that you’re a copper rank adventurer, so don’t lose it. If you do, you’ll have to pay for a new one. Do you need to know the rules?” I already know all the rules, courtesy of general knowledge classes. They’re pretty much common sense: No conflict in the guild building, don’t interfere with other’s fights unless you think they’re in trouble, parties must be registered beforehand at the guild if you want to share the points reward, etc. Thus, I reply with “No, but where should I go if I want to sell monster materials?” He jerks his head in the opposite direction of the bar. “Around that side of the building, there’s a separate entrance for it. Now, if that’s all?” I nod and start to walk out. “Thanks for the help.” So, that’s that done. I can go hunting now. There’s some more things I’d like to get, such as another set of clothes, a bedroll, a pot, maybe some wooden pegs for hanging clothes up to dry, but I don’t have the cash right now. Or rather, I do, but I don’t want to use up my only cash. It’s still early morning. Aaaaand I’ve forgotten to have a drink again. This is really not something you should forget. But somehow, I manage it quite well! To the well! There’s always some traffic around wells, but well, it’s early morning so not as many are up and out. It is only a couple minute wait before it was my turn to use the thing. Winding the handle, I draw the bucket of water slowly up the shaft of the well. I’m in a bit of a hurry, so I go a bit fast, and I hear the sound of water splashing echoing up. But it gets to the top, and it’s full enough. I immerse my water skins in the water, one after the other, drink one dry, then fill it up again. My thirst now quenched, I drop the bucket down the well, listening to the windlass rapidly unwinding as it spun around, before there is an echoing splash. A hand pump would probably be more efficient, but I have no clue how to make one. I know it has a handle which goes up and down, but how the heck does the water get up? Now I need to go. Like, to the toilet. Where to find one? I can just go outside the city and go somewhere in a forest, but I can’t just go outside the city every time I need to go. Is there a public toilet? “Is there a public toilet somewhere?” Tapping a random guy passing by, I ask him. He looks at me weirdly, but informs me there is one a few streets over. Of course, they don’t name their streets. Nobody has thought of that yet. A bit of walking later, I’m busting and still haven’t found the dratted place. A bit more walking, and I’m at the end of a short line to use the place, desperately holding it in. A minute later and I’m sighing in relief as I relieve myself. Hey, it’s not a pit toilet! No wonder there wasn’t a vomit-inducing stench hanging around. I suppose that cave was just too far away from merchant channels to install one of these magic ones? Presuming they are magic. But, they probably are. Now, hunting! I’ll cook some boar meat for breakfast, if I can get some, and then we’ll be toasty. The meat will be, at least. Mmm… pork. I exit the city walls, and stop for a moment to get a long piece of string out of my knapsack to thread through the hole in the copper token. Tying a knot, it’s secured around my neck. Now… I’m coming for you, delicious pork! I jog off towards the nearby forest to find me some munchies. THERE! A boar! Come to me, delicious morsels! Sprinting towards it with sword raised, I cut down at it with a maniacal grin. Raising a high-pitched squeal, it takes one look at me and turns around. Ah! Don’t run away! NOOoooo… These aren’t tears, that boar kicked dust into my eyes, dust I tell you… Sniffle… Why did he run away… Am I that scary? Next time, I’ll kill it in one strike! Softly, softly stepping through the forest in search of some grub, I attempt to find some wildlife to massa – Ahem, dispatch in order to sustain my lifeforce. I stare at the palm of my hand, which is at eye level. Settled on top of my palm are a few small berries. I poke at them with one finger, and they roll around on my palm. Should I? I shouldn’t, right? They’re almost definitely poisonous… But… they look so tasty! And all I’ve eaten in the past… one, two, wait, what? My stomach lets out a howl of protest as it finally notices that it has only been fed anything significant once in the past seventy-two hours. A crippling pain hits me, and I fall to my knees. The berries which may or may not be but probably are poisonous suddenly look mightily appetising. Against my will, my tongue- I hear a low-pitched grunt, sounding eerily similar to the sounds emanating from my stomach, a bit to the left of me. My head whips around and I leap at the unsuspecting boar, slashing at its unprotected neck. MEAT! Quickly wiping my bloody sword on a clump of dirt, I sheath the blade and unsheathe my knife, cutting off the leathery skin and getting to the fat, juicy interior. Slow down, have to clear a space for the fire first… A nice warm fire crackles and pops in front of me as I slowly turn the sturdy stick between my hands, resisting the pain in my stomach as I wait for the meat hanging over the fire to cook. There is a quiet sizzle coming from the meat as the fats and oils in the meat heat up. The smell wafting off of it is so amazingly tantalising that it’s almost all I can do to stop myself from tearing into it. Unceasingly staring, forever asking the eternal question, ‘is it ready yet?’, my senses stagnant, save for the meat, upon which all my attention was fixated. I, I… I have to speed this up somehow… Fire magic! Pulling a bit of mana out of my mana heart, I stretch it into a hemisphere around the bottom of the meat and turn the thing into fire. I desperately believe and imagine that the stick won’t burn. It can’t! Not now, not now that I’ve come this far! I have reached a state of zen, coming to terms with my hunger, and realising that it is my flesh that wants, not me. Thus separating myself from the needs of the flesh, I gaze around calmly at the wondrous nature around me. I listen to the birds chirping in the trees, listen to the winds rustling the leaves, and slowly breathe in the fresh scents of wildlife. Exhaling slowly, I quietly stand and draw my sword, letting it hang at one side. My gaze piercing through the forest, I explode into activity. My first strike leaves my sword embedded in the ground. Placing my foot on the corpse, I swiftly withdraw it, turning and slashing through the neck of another in the same motion. I take a running leap over the fire, my booted foot contacting a skull in mid-air and stomping it to the ground, breaking it. With a motion of my hand, a spear of mana forms, turning an earthen brown. Unsatisfied with its non-lethality, I compress its form to a tenth of its size with an exertion of imagination, and send the twig sized projectile speeding towards another, piercing through its eye into its brain; killing it instantly. The others haven’t waited for me to keep up, and are almost upon me, sprinting at full tilt with wide mouths. I give one the boot, sending it yelping to one side. Out of options due to my awkward posture, I fall forwards onto it. My legs flying backwards evade its flailing claws, and my full weight crushes down upon the back of the beast a moment later, snapping the spine. I get up, rubbing my shoulder; it was the prime point of impact. Around the small clearing lay the fallen corpses of half a dozen boars and wolves. I thrust my sword at a whimpering form. Well, now it’s a half-dozen. Kicking a corpse away from the fire, I sit back down and take up the stick that I had stuck into the ground. The bowl of fire had dissipated at the start of combat, my attention on more pressing matters. How dare they try and steal my breakfast. The surface of the meat is a light black. No worries, that just means it’s cooked the whole way through. I bite into it. Tearing off a chunk, I give it a quick chew and swallow it down. A minute later, I have devoured the entire thing. It was a good chunk of meat, quite big. That’s why I needed a big stick to spear it on. And I’m now full, for the first time in a few days. Geeze, am I reckless or what? Appetite and thirst now sated, I begin to skin the wolves. Folding the skins into a sack (I had quite a few of those), I deposit it into my knapsack. Most of the room in it is now occupied by that. I get out another sack and fit the much stiffer boar hides into it. Buttoning up and strapping on the knapsack, I sling the sack over my shoulder. It’s only been a couple hours out here, and I’m already going back. Is this good or bad? I don’t know. But hey, I got some food, some stuff to sell, that’s pretty good. And so, setting off once again, I start jogging back the way I came. …Which way did I come from?     Oh, that way. Cool.

Chapter 37: Unexpected Visitor It takes a while. I have to transport the dirt back over from where we dumped the dirt from the moat. Wouldn’t want to be digging holes in the camp, after all. …Excepting the loo. This would be much easier with a wheelbarrow, but unfortunately, we don’t have one. It occurs to me that it wouldn’t be prohibitively difficult to craft one out of wood. It wouldn’t be as good as the modern ones I’m used to, but surely it would be better than using a shovel. I resolve to bring the matter up with Boaz later. For now, though, I dig that dirt. I carry that dirt. I put that dirt down. Rinse and repeat. Finally, after a few hours of work, I have constructed a compacted mound of dirt nearly as tall as I am. I wasn’t sure how high it needed to be, so I just kept building it higher until I was sure beyond doubt that it was tall enough. Perhaps seeing that I am finished, Heather comes over and looks at the mound of dirt. “What is this for?” She asks, confused. “Well, it’s not much,” I say, patting the mound and causing a small cascade down the side, “but it’s still a better target than a wall.” Heather stares at me in shock. “You aren’t stopping me?” “Why would I?” I raise an eyebrow. “But…” She starts hesitantly. “Archery is for men.” I snort in ridicule. “Like that matters to us. If we refused to do ‘women’s’ jobs,” I say, using air quotes to accentuate how stupid the concept is, “we would have starved a couple years back. You do what needs to be done. In your case, archery is an excellent way to defend yourself.” “I… I…” Heather draws a shuddering breath and turns around abruptly, dashing off towards her tent. ...Did I do that wrong, or was that a good reaction? I can’t really tell. That was supposed to reassure her that we aren’t going to oppress her, but if she sees those cultural norms as reassuring, I may have made quite the blunder. Or said exactly the right thing. Dagnabbit, relationships. ...It doesn’t look like she’s coming out again any time soon. Well, I’m overdue for my run. Better get onto that, although I doubt I’ll be able to for as long as usual… My back is a bit sore after all that. Heather hasn’t started talking any more than she did before, but she has stopped perpetually lurking within her tent, at least. She has stopped bolting down meals, and while she doesn’t join in on any conversation, she sometimes sits and listens for a while before going back to practising archery or whittling arrows. All in all, it’s starting to look like I did do something right, and that she might slowly start to open up again. I don’t know. Right now I’m just afraid of what might happen if I try to rush too much, push too hard to try and get her to put herself back together again. I think, for now, the best thing to do might simply be to give her time, and keep being open and supportive. Two days pass in relative peace. The calm before the storm. A rough hand jerks me awake. My eyes shoot open, my hands already grasping the haft of my warhammer before I stop. It’s Jakin. In the slightest glimmer of light from the moon outside, I can see his grim demeanour. “It’s Dex.” He says shortly, reaching over to wake the others. Dex? Dex the gnome? The last lingering vestiges of sleepiness slip from me in an instant. How is he here? More importantly, why? As the others rise from their beds, I hear quick, gasping breaths coming from outside the cabin. A tiny hand grasps the edge of the doorway, and a small form practically tumbles through the doorway. Jakin clearly decided to let Dex inside the camp - good thing, too. Poor kid is an absolute mess. His normally wild hair is plastered to the top of his head with sweat and he’s practically coughing as he tries to catch his breath. On second inspection, the knees of his pants are torn and bloody, and his face is pale as a ghost. “The town - the town was attacked.” Dex gasps, speaking quickly despite his obvious lack of breath. “Th- they came so sudden. Couldn’t do anything. Help.” He starts to sway, but I manage to dash over and catch him before he hits the ground. “Are you alright!? Is everyone alright!?” “I - most.” He chokes, gasping. “The ones who fought, they…” He stops himself and changes the subject. “They took everything… Even went in Ren’s stinky house.” My whole body tenses and goes cold. “Ren’s house? Dex, did they take anything from Ren’s house!?” Dex’s eyes are fluttering slightly, almost drifting closed. I shake him roughly to keep him awake. “Dex! Did they take anything from Ren’s house!?” I practically bellow in his face. “Books.” He gasps, before fainting. “Shit.” I curse. “Xiltroth, tend to Dex.” I say, gently handing him over. “Everyone else get ready to go. I’m going to tell Heather what’s going on.” I run out the door before anyone has time to reply. It’s practically pitch black, with just a hint of light starting to peek over the horizon - a few hours after midnight, perhaps. It’s difficult to navigate in this light, but I know the camp well enough that I manage to make my way over to Heather’s tent, wearing nothing on my feet but a pair of grimy stockings. “Heather?” I call out, not willing to just burst into her tent. “Aaron? What?” A voice calls back, sounding groggy and not the least bit amused. “Sorry Heather, it’s an emergency. Some friends of ours are in trouble and we have to go. I don’t know how long it’ll take, but you should be fine, there should be enough food in the storage building to last you for a while.” I say, already starting to move back to the cabin. “I’m coming.” She replies, stopping me in my tracks. “What?” I ask dumbly, my brain momentarily not comprehending her words. “I am coming.” Heather repeats firmly, lifting the flap of her tent and walking out, bow in hand. “I’m not safe here on my own. Besides, I can’t fit into the storage building.” I stop to think for a moment and realise that it’s true. “Alright. But it’s going to be dangerous.” “That’s why I built this bow.” Heather states. “Fine. Get ready. We’re going soon.” I head back towards the cabin. “How is he?” I ask. Xiltroth looks up briefly before continuing to wrap Dex with bandages. “Not good. He’s alive, but he’s got some deep wounds across his back. He’s lost a lot of blood.” “Hopefully they can help him if we get him back to town.” I say, starting to put on pieces of clothing and armour. “Is everyone ready?” “Pretty much.” Jakin nods. “But why do yeh seem so upset about Ren’s research being stolen? I know it’s important to him, but I didn’t think you two were that close.” “We aren’t.” I say, struggling with a greave. “Think about it: his parents were alchemists. They probably weren’t trying to make something so dangerous, but they ended up dead. Now imagine if someone was trying to make something dangerous. Ren’s research would practically tell them exactly what they needed.” “And now it’s in the hands of some unknown aggressive party.” Jakin nods, understanding. “Not a good situation.” And that’s just the half of it. If it managed to get back to the kingdoms… Well, historically speaking, the advent of gunpowder weapons rendered medieval defences mostly redundant. If similar explosives came into play and the kingdom with that technology managed to keep the knowledge contained, they would have a rather significant advantage over the other kingdoms. Chances are that, whichever side it was, they would keep going and attempt to conquer the other four kingdoms. Not a good state of affairs all round, especially when there is a history of racial tensions. Four kingdoms might end up as slaves to the dominant one. Obviously, this is just a worst-case scenario, but dangerous knowledge needs to be kept in hands intelligent enough to understand it and wise enough to know how and when to use it. Ren, at least, has no interest in weaponizing his research, and that’s good enough for me. Once I get on all my armour, I ask, “Have you got him stable?” “As best I can, yes.” Xiltroth says. “Alright then. Let’s go.” I slip on my pack and carefully slide my arms underneath Dex to pick him up. He’s small enough that I can just cradle him in my arms to carry him. Meeting up with Heather outside, we set off. It’s still dark, and almost impossible to follow an already faint trail. However, we have gone this way quite a few times before, and can find our way well enough even without it just by keeping track of our bearing and certain landmarks: a peculiar tree, a mossy boulder… We make a fast pace, although perhaps not by Heather’s standards, and I carry Dex the entire way. He’s small and light enough to not be a significant burden. We get attacked by monsters a few times along the way, the smell of blood from Dex no doubt attracting them. Naturally, although Dex isn’t much of a burden to carry, it’s still quite difficult for me to fight while carrying him, so Jakin, Boaz and Xiltroth take care of everything we come across. Heather keeps her bow at the ready, but every time a monster comes close, the twins close to melee range too quickly or Xiltroth crosses her line of fire, and she seems understandably hesitant to fire into a melee. By the time we reach the mountains, the sun is rising, bathing the land in light. “You didn’t mention we are going into the mountains.” Heather says hesitantly. “I can’t climb.” I glance at her horse lower body. That makes quite a bit of sense. “Don’t worry, there’s a path. You should be fine.” We travel up the familiar path, Heather carefully watching her steps as she goes. Before long, we reach the end… And there’s no cave entrance to be seen. “What?” I exclaim, taken aback. We hadn’t taken the wrong path, I’m certain of it. But the cave entrance isn’t there. Boaz steps towards the rock face and runs his fingers along the surface. He pauses. “Wait. It’s here. Just disguised.” He knocks lightly on the rock. “It’s a fairly thin surface of rock. This level of precision and craftsmanship… It feels dwarven.” “Alright, stand back.” I say, carefully handing Dex to Xiltroth. There is a worrying film of blood on my gauntlets, but I ignore it for now and grab my warhammer in both hands. “Probably best to cover your ears, too.” Everyone does so except Xiltroth, who now has his hands occupied. Squaring my feet, I tighten my grip and swing my warhammer into the rock face, smashing through it with a loud cracking noise. “Well, I think they know we’re here now.” Jakin comments. “They were bound to notice us sooner or later.” I shrug. “Now it’s just sooner.” Breaking off the last few stray pieces of rock still hanging in place, I peer into the tunnel entrance. I don’t see anything in particular, but after a moment I start to hear the crashing of metal boots against stone echoing towards us. Because of the echoing, I can’t tell how far away they are, but before long I see a trio of short, stout men in heavy armour trotting out of the darkness - dwarves indeed. Then the lead dwarf, evidently spotting me, drops his torch and pulls a crossbow off his back, a glint of light from its front telling me that it is already loaded. “Back from the entrance!” I shout, already getting out of the way. “They have crossbows!” A screaming quarrel punctuates my warning as everyone dashes out of the line of fire. “Demons?” Jakin asks gruffly, cautiously peeking into the entrance himself, before quickly pulling his head back. “Dwarves with crossbows? Must be recovered from the battlefield. But those should be military resources - the army would never let mercenaries or the like get them. We must be dealing with deserters. They’re likely to be highly trained, and their armour is high quality.” At least we have time to think. They have an advantage at range, and no information on their enemy - it’s unlikely they will choose to advance on us and give up on that advantage. “Hm.” My brows furrow. “Did you manage to catch whether they all had crossbows, or just the one?” “All of them.” Jakin replies shortly. “Damn.” I curse, then lower my voice. “I’ll blind them, then you two go in, shields up just in case. I’ll come in behind you.” Jakin and Boaz nod. I nod back and put my un-gauntleted hand near the cave entrance, employing an old and simple, yet quite effective piece of magic. A cloud of dust emanates from my hand, drifting into the tunnel in the general direction of the dwarves inside. I can’t aim accurately without line of sight, but there’s no need to aim a dust cloud. After a couple of seconds, I hear them swearing. The twins and I nod to each other, and they rush into the cave, hiding the majority of their bodies behind their shields on the off chance that one of the dwarves decide to fire a blind shot and get lucky. I dash in behind, ducking low as usual in an attempt to hide my much taller body behind their shields, and pull out my mithril knife. There is enough room to swing my warhammer in this tunnel, but only just, and I don’t want to be left open if I go for a swing and there isn’t quite enough space. As I see their silhouettes outlined in the torchlight among the cloud of dust, I wave the dust to either side. I can see them blinking furiously, but they have dropped their crossbows and have halberds at the ready and pointed in our direction. The twins are upon them a moment later, angling their shields slightly to either side such that the dwarves’ halberds were pushed away. Their stances are firm, but they are still knocked over by the sheer weight and momentum of the twins’ charge. Jakin and Boaz each set upon one of the dwarves, employing their military picks to great effect in piercing the dwarves’ armour. I tackle the last dwarf just as he is attempting to get up, pinning one of his arms down with a knee and setting my knife to his throat in an instant. Just as I am about to slice his throat, I reconsider. Perhaps he could be a useful source of information, and not just about what we are facing. We have been gone from the kingdoms a long while, and he was a fresh source of information. “Drop it.” I growl. Hearing the dying cries of his companions beside him and perhaps sensing that he might get out of this alive, the dwarf lets his halberd, previously held in a vice-like grip even after being knocked to the ground twice, drop to the floor of the cave. Still pinning him to the ground, I strip the dagger from his belt and yank the helmet off his head, revealing a grimy face. “I’m going to ask you some questions, and you’re going to answer them. Do you understand?” He attempts to nod, but only manages to nick himself on my dagger. “Yes. Just don’t kill me, please. I’ll leave, yeh’ll never see me again, I swear.” “If you answer my questions well enough.” I decide. “How many of you are there?” “Twenty-fi…” His eyes flick to the side, where his dead companions are. “Twenty-three, now. We have the whole place fortified.” “What sort of fortifications?” I ask forcefully. “This place, it has a lot of different corridors and rooms. Must’ve been some sort of inn or way station a long time back.” He explains fearfully. “We sectioned everything off with walls. There’s doors in them, but holes we can shoot through as well.” I nod. “How many crossbows?” “Eight, including these three.” I narrow my eyes. “You attacked the village in the valley just past this. Why?” “I…” He stutters fearfully. “We were running out of supplies, they didn’t accept our money.” “Then why didn’t you work to make that money?” I growl. “I, I don’t know.” He cries fretfully. “We were - I was - it was the leader’s decision. I was just, just following orders.” Jakin glares at him. “Just following orders, eh? Isn’t the reason yeh deserted in the first place because yeh didn’t want to follow damn orders?” “It… Wasn’t that. Everyone was dying. We didn’t want to die.” The dwarf frantically attempts to explain himself. I take a deep breath to calm myself and change the topic. “How goes the war?” “People were dropping like flies on both sides when we left, even trained soldiers like us. We’re all that’s left of our company.” The dwarf grimaces. “Both sides have gained and lost cities and are hiring every mercenary they can find. Morale is rock bottom.” I nod to myself. One last thing. “You took some books from the village. Where are they?” “They-” A loud explosion from somewhere in the cave interrupts what he is trying to say, and I can hear the sound of crashing rock echoing distantly. There they are. I slice the man’s neck - he clearly had little remorse for his actions. “Is the place going to collapse?” I ask the twins, already edging towards the exit.” “Should be fine.” Jakin replies leisurely. “It doesn’t look like much, but the people digging this place knew what they were doing.” Jakin is right. After a minute or so, the rumbling stops, and things return to quiet. “Alright, it’s safe here.” I call back to Xiltroth and Heather. They come in, and Xiltroth hands Dex back to me. He looks down and sees the crossbows. “Do you mind if I...?” “Sure.” I say. “We should probably bring them all back with us. Should be useful.” He picks up the weapon slowly, almost hesitantly. “Do you know how to use that?” I ask. I’ve seen him use some sort of wrist-mounted contraption before, but this was just a regular crossbow, nothing fancy. He holds the crossbow firmly but comfortably and casually checks it over, tests the tension of the string, puts his foot through the stirrup, cocks it and rifles through the belt pouches of the corpses until he finds a bolt to slot in. “I suppose you could say that.” He nods calmly. I look down at Dex. He really doesn’t look good. “I think this is their base, but we really need to get Dex some help. We should ignore the side passages and just get to town as fast as we can.” The others nod, and we get going. We soon encounter one of those fortifications the dwarf mentioned. The twins slowly advance on it with shields raised but face no retaliation. “I don’t think anyone’s here.” Jakin calls back. “They must’ve gone to where the explosion happened.” I go up to the wall and see that it’s true. There’s nobody there. I test the door, but it’s locked or latched shut. Still, it’s only made of wood. A firm kick fixes that. I duck my head to go through - it’s a bit small. “I can’t fit through that.” Heather states from behind me. “Ah.” Heading back through the doorway, I inspect the wall. It’s made from blocks of stone, but I can’t see any sort of mortar binding them together. Hm. When in doubt, whack it with a hammer. Carefully setting Dex down out of the way, I give it a good slam, and a few blocks fall out. After the second hit, the wall collapses. “There we go.” We head onwards. The second fortification is similarly abandoned, but when we reach the third, a bolt whistles forth from one of the gaps and embeds itself in Boaz’s shield. Before I have time to do anything but duck behind the twins, I hear the characteristic twang of a bow, and I briefly see an arrow speed towards the fortification. I hear it scrape against the stone for a moment, then there is an audible snap, followed immediately by cursing in a gruff voice. Even after half a minute of waiting, no more bolts sally forth to assault us. “I think that arrow broke their crossbow, and they only have one there.” I say softly. “If so, that was an incredible shot, Heather.” “I was lucky. It was just a reflex shot.” She looks surprised at the results, herself. We advance cautiously on the wall, but there is still no retaliation. So I get Xiltroth to hold Dex again and smash down the wall on top of the dwarf behind it. An impressively long string of expletives issues forth from the battered dwarf until I smash his chest in. When we near the final barrier, we find a few dwarves on our side of it, who immediately fire their crossbows towards us. The twins catch the bolts on their shields, resulting in a total of two bolts being embedded in each of their shields. Heather immediately returns fire multiple times with arrows that penetrate the dwarves’ armour, but not deeply enough to injure significantly. Quickly laying Dex down, Xiltroth fires his already loaded crossbow, accurately hitting one of the dwarves in the chest. The bolt pierces deeply into the dwarf’s armour, causing him to clutch at his chest in great pain. Before the dwarves have a chance to re-cock their crossbows, the twins and I rush across the stretch of tunnel spanning between us, causing them to drop their crossbows and brandish halberds. From there, it goes similarly to our first encounter with these dwarves, except it ends even more quickly, as one of the dwarves is wounded and the other two are hampered by the arrows sticking out of their armour. We take their crossbows, bolts and any other small items of worth on their person, demolish the wall and head down into the valley. From here, it should be smooth sailing until we get to town.

The horses snorted heavily as they laboured up the narrow path, pulling their carriages behind them. Gravel crackled under hoof and wheel as they strained themselves, but we were too busy recuperating to feel sorry for them. I felt utterly exhausted. My face felt like a blazing furnace, and my chest was heaving even though I had been seated for quite a while. My limbs trembled and were utterly devoid of strength. I raised my eyes to look at Greg; he looked just as tired as me. Seeing that, I decided against speaking. I doubted that I could have, had I even tried. We all sat in silence. Slowly - ever so slowly - my breathing calmed, and I began to feel how refreshing the breeze was. Eventually, it came to be that we were approaching the drawbridge. I distantly registered the sound of the captain hailing the gates, and then the drawbridge was gradually lowered to earth. It took me a second, looking at the area beyond the drawbridge, to remember what it was called: the gatehouse. Or, as it was known to invaders, the killing field. Despite my surety that the captain had no intentions to kill us, for now at least, I drew back into my seat. Not that it would have helped if they did want to kill us. The holes in the walls and ceiling of the gatehouse allowed defenders to fire arrows, drop stones or even pour boiling oil onto invaders. This carriage was many things, but watertight was not one of them. To my relief, we passed through without incident. The others were blissfully unaware that we had just passed through a death trap and looked at me strangely as I breathed a sigh of relief. We passed into the keep proper. There were a few buildings; stables and the like, but most of it was kept clear, so it would offer little cover to invaders if they managed to breach the outer wall. In one part of this open area was another troop of soldiers, swinging their swords in perfect unison in a remarkable display of discipline and skill. Now that I think about it, they were a bit taller, on average, than the soldiers we were with. Our convoy of carriages stopped in this area, and soldiers started to unpack various supplies, lead the horses towards the stables, hurry the still-recuperating magi towards the keep proper… Meanwhile, the captain lead us into the keep and down its twisting corridors to the room we would be staying in, a large, communal area that was nonetheless a step up from straw mattresses in a large tent. “This is where you shall bunk while you are here.” Explained the captain. “It is already late, and I can see you are exhausted. There will be dinner, and then I recommend you sleep for as long as you can. Tomorrow I will begin your training in earnest.” The implication that he didn’t define walking for almost a full day as training wasn’t lost on me or anyone else, but I shelved that thought. For now, food and rest were the important things. We were led to the mess hall, where we ate a meal somewhat better than when we had been on the road. After finishing, I availed myself of the toilets, which to my delight had a proper flushing mechanism, although I couldn’t tell how it worked. Greg and I navigated back to the room, picking beds next to each other. The next day might well have been harder than that one, but all we could think of at the time was sleep. I woke up the next morning feeling nearly as tired and sore as the previous night. Getting up was a chore that pained my back and tortured my thighs, but I still got up. I had to. We all did. We knew that was the day that would decide our fates. Slipping on my watch that was thankfully sufficiently waterproof to survive the torrents of sweat that had washed over it the past few days, a pair of socks that were so damp they felt like they were fresh out of the washing machine but no doubt smelt like gorgonzola, a pair of black leather shoes disguised as a pair of brown leather shoes and a pair of glasses that were… All things considered, not doing too badly. After that was done, I roused Greg and walked through the rows of beds and out the door, closing it behind me. In the corridor, I looked around, confused – I had completely forgotten the way to the mess hall. Fortunately, I still vaguely remembered the way outside, so I headed in that direction instead. After making it outside, a minute or two standing around looking deliberately confused was enough to attract a passing soldier, who I asked for directions. Thanking the man, I turned around and walked back inside, following his directions to finally make it back to the mess hall, where I snagged myself some breakfast and sat down at one of the long tables. Greg seemed to remember the way a bit better than me, as he was only a minute behind me. Tasting the bland foods made me long for the foods of the modern world. Not things like pizza or donuts, I never ate them much anyway. Simple but delicious foods, like the humble sandwich. Peanut butter and honey. Vegemite. Well, not that it was among my favourite spreads, but it excelled as a prank food. People always seemed to think it would taste like Nutella and took a spoonful of it. No. Just no. Only veteran Australians and Chuck Norris can eat it like that. You get a thin layer on a nice slice of toast, chuck a slice of cheese on top, and then you have yourself a nice, true blue vegemite sandwich. In the midst of my daydreams of the proper construction of sandwiches, I ate breakfast on autopilot and the captain soon came over to round us all up. He guided us to another room, empty but for a small table, on top of which was an inkwell, a quill and a metal, rectangular plate. The captain stood next to this table. “Before your audience with the kings, I will measure your magical aptitudes. Line up and put our hands on the plate, one by one. It will display your aptitudes.” Did he just… Mention that we would be meeting with kings? “It won’t… explode, will it?” Someone asked hesitantly. The captain slightly raised an eyebrow. “Only if you deliberately load it with mana. There won’t be any trouble.” And with that, everyone hurried to be the first in line. “Please state your name and age as you reach the front, and then the results of the test.” The captain restated. Greg and I were close to the front of the line, so we could see what happened when the person in from reached out and touched the plate. A few lines of text appeared, the contents of which I couldn’t discern from that distance. Still, when it came to Greg’s turn, I was able to peek over his shoulder and see the full of it. When he took his hand away, the plate read: Primary: fire – medium, water – low, wind – medium, earth – low, darkness – none, light – medium, Secondary: lightning – high, illusion – none, lava – low, holy – low, decay – none, ice – low. “Greg, forty-three years.” Greg reported as the captain noted down the results on a sheet of parchment. “Next.” The captain nodded, after a moment. Greg stood to one side to watch as I stepped up and put my hand on the plate. My heart fluttered in anticipation as I lifted my hand again, revealing a single, short line of text: All – medium. I was very excited, of course. And annoyed. I understood that while it meant I could use a variety of abilities, it also meant that choosing something to specialise in would also be made much harder. “Phil, forty-two.” I said before asking, “Is this unusual?” The captain kept concentrating on his writing, speaking without looking up. “It would be, were you not a summoned hero. Most summoned heroes have potential much greater than that of the common man.” It didn’t take all that long to finish the process. Some people were visibly disappointed by their result, while others were quite ecstatic. There was even another person who had gotten the all attribute affinity like me. Placing the quill back on the table, the captain addressed us. “Some of you may be disappointed by your affinities. Know this: among the people of this world, there are many who have no affinities whatsoever. Every one of you has at least a medium affinity to one type of magic, which would be considered quite the talent for a normal person.” A few people perked up at that, but not many. It wasn’t really an issue of whether they were talented or not, it was an issue of whether they were talented compared to their peers – nobody likes to feel inferior to those around them. Of course, everyone is inferior to everyone else, in some aspect or another, butt with something as interesting and potentially life-changing as magic, it meant a lot more. “Being unable to use as many elements as others is not necessarily a bad thing.” The captain continued. “You may be gifted physically. There are many warriors in this world that are stronger in single combat than the best of magi.” Some eyes glinted at the mention of warriors, mostly men who already somewhat well developed in the muscles department. I checked my watch. It looks like we would soon be scheduled in for a good old-fashioned training montage. Before that, however, we’ll have to meet some kings. What fun. The thirty-five of us, plus the captain, stood in front of a metallic door intricately engraved with depictions of dragons, unicorns, griffons and all manner of mythical creatures, delicately painted. All in all, it was a nice door. You don’t see many nice doors, nowadays. They don’t make them like they used to. Somewhat guiltily, I turned my head back towards the captain, who was giving us a quick lecture on how to act around kings. Or, more accurately, how not to act. “Don’t speak unless one of them asks you a question. Don’t whisper, don’t yell, don’t make any sudden movements,” He listed, “don’t frown, don’t go near their thrones, don’t go near the stairs leading up to the thrones, don’t spit, don’t scratch your nose – it might be best if you just don’t move at all.” He sounds somewhat nervous. “You should pick a representative to do the talking, so you don’t all speak at once.” This, of course, lead to a flurry of people succinctly explaining why they are not qualified to be the representative. “I have anger management issues.” “I have issues with authorities.” “My childcare degree did NOT prepare me for this!” “I curse at people in videogames.” “我喜欢奶酪” “You speak perfect English, Zou Yang!” “我的鸟生病了” Meanwhile, I just stood back and watched. It’s not like they would have chosen me; Most people barely remember that I exist, due in part to me having so few interactions with people other than Greg. In the end, Nelson, a rather bookish person who once did a law degree, was chosen to be our representative. The law degree wasn’t strictly related, but it was a good enough excuse for the rest of us. After we informed the captain of our choice, we resumed waiting. And waiting. For about fifteen minutes we stood in awkward silence, before the doors started to open soundlessly. Those are nice hinges. As we walked through the open doors, a man to the side announced our names, one by one. There was a lush red carpet on the floor, one of those ones that you aren’t sure whether you should be walking on or not. But since it covered nearly half the floor, we walked on it. Seated upon three ornate wooden thrones were three lavishly dressed men. Probably Kings, yes, but they also could have been body doubles for all I knew. The man seated on the center chair stood, spreading his arms in what would have been a grand gesture – were he not half our height. He started to speak in aloud voice, but his beard was even louder to me, black twirly dreadlocks, twined with gold thread and gemstones in a way that surprisingly looked quite nice. “Welcome, heroes, to the keep!” He boomed. “I am Nemoc Opalbeard, king of the dwarven kingdom, Morrock!” Now that he mentioned it, there was a rather large opal hanging from the center of his beard. In the left chair was a large, stocky fellow with blond hair, blue eyes, a neatly trimmed beard and this look about him that made him appear more like a hero than all of us put together. I could easily imagine him astride a war horse, wielding a massive sword and galloping into battle. Standing, he too introduced himself. “I am King Allen Duarte the ninth, king of the human kingdom, Stalia!” The last king sighed at their theatrics and stood. He was tall, thin and quite pale, with shoulder-length brown hair. I assumed he had long, pointy ears as well, but I couldn’t see them through his hair. “King Galen Dumedar of the elven kingdom, Enlux.” He said. The three kings sat once again. The center king, Nemoc the dwarf, began to pronounce our fate. “The captain has informed you of why you are here, but perhaps you do not realise the bigger picture.” He paused for a moment before continuing gravely. “There are five main races in this world: Dwarves, Humans, Elves, Beastmen and Demons. In the past, there were many wars between our races, but for the last few decades, for the first time in recorded history, there has been peace between all five nations.” Despite this, King Nemoc grimaced slightly. “A month ago, a high priest of the church in the kingdom of Stalia prophesied that the demon kingdom had secretly been gathering strength and colluding with the evil god to conquer the world. King Allen was informed of this, and contacted the other kingdoms, resulting in this alliance – the beastmen king declined, for reasons we know not.” Galen, the elven king, interrupted King Nemoc with an exasperated wave of his hand. “Skipping the unimportant details, the arch-magi of our 3 kingdoms did extensive research, rediscovered the hero summoning formation and thus summoned you. Captain Pierce, what were the results of their aptitude tests?” Captain Pierce, as we now knew his name to be, stood at attention and reported clearly, “I have a full report here, your highness.” He held out the paper, which was taken by someone who appeared from a side alcove. The man inspected it carefully, running long fingers over its surface and even sniffing it lightly before he nodded, ascended the stairs and proffered it to King Galen. As he read it, his eyebrows slowly ascended. “Astounding.” He exclaimed quietly as he finished, passing it on to King Nemoc. “There is little doubt that all of you have the potential to be excellent magi.” King Allen spoke, “There are no means to testing physical talent beyond observing how you fare in the training regime. Thus, you shall do both martial and magical training for the time being.” He glanced towards the other kings for a moment before saying, “Do you, heroes from another world, have any questions about what has been said?” Shoulders tense, Nelson hesitantly took a step forward. “I humbly apologise for my lack of decorum, and I’m sorry if this sounds rude, but how trustworthy is this prophecy?” King Allen nodded down at him. “Captain Pierce has already informed us of your lack of experience in this area, you need not worry. As for the prophecy, the priest in question is of upstanding character, and his past prophecies have been impeccably accurate. There is no doubt that what he speaks is the truth.” Gulping, Nelson moved onto the next question on his list. “Is there any way for us to return to our previous world?” King Allen pondered for a moment before speaking. “Theoretically, yes. But it would not be easy. Part of the reason the hero summoning formation was not even more costly was that the target was not a specific person or place. The formation itself would simply be the inverse of the original, but the cost would be astronomical. It would, perhaps, require at least tenfold the quantity of mana used to summon you in the first place, perhaps as much as thirtyfold. And even that required the strongest of our magi working in concert, all the while harnessing the power of the largest known mana line.” He shook his head. “We simply do not have that magnitude of resources to spare.” Nelson nodded with a tinge of sadness, but not much surprise. Even if they did have the resources to spare, why would they be so kind as to spend it on us? That would mean they would have spend a load of resources getting us here, and then a whole load sending us back – massive expenditure for zero gains. “Can we refuse to be heroes?” Nelson asked. King Allen was unable to keep his calm at this, and King Galen’s eyes suddenly snapped back onto us, focusing on the conversation once again. Only King Nemoc seemed unflinching at the prospect of losing us and spoke his piece. “It is your choice. We cannot – will not – force you to fight for us. But this is a dangerous world, and it is doubtful that you would survive unaided and untrained.” He warned. “It is best that you train here first, at least until you grow strong enough to protect yourself. If, after this, you still wish to leave, we will provide you with supplies and directions enough to get you to the nearest city.” King Galen wasn’t so calm, and tried to persuade us otherwise. “Do remember, however, that if we are unable to defeat the demons without you, then you will have no choice but to face them alone – they will spare no one.” “So, say we do decide to be heroes, we won’t be fighting alone?” Asked Nelson. “Of course not.” King Galen denied. “You would be fighting alongside our armies for the majority of the war, I expect.” Nodding, Nelson shrank back slightly from the intense gazes of the three kings staring at him. In an attempt to defuse the tension, Nelson said what must have been the first thing to come into his mind: “Wouldn’t there be some tension in the alliance based on who sits on the central throne?” The sudden change in subject catches the kings slightly off-guard, drawing a short laugh from King Nemoc. “Ha! One might think so, but we just roll dice for it. Makes it fair and keeps the nobles guessing.” Exhausted, but glad that he had successfully drained the tension, Nelson sought to end the meeting. “I think that’s all the questions we have.” King Nemoc waved his hand, and the men by the doors swung them open. “Very well, you are dismissed. And with that, our audience with kings was over.

It was just another day at the office, or so it seemed at the start. I, of course, was dressed suitably in a buttoned-up shirt complete with tie, suit pants and glossy belt, along with a pair of black leather shoes polished to a dull shine. It happened just after I returned from a quick pit stop. While I waited for the computer to log me back in, I was conversing with Greg, a friend of mine who works in the neighbouring cubicle. We were exchanging gossip – boring stuff, but anything was exciting compared to the job we were doing. There were quite a few people in that particular office block that day, thirty-five including myself. They came from all walks of life, ending up in that job in one way or another, whether it was their own fault or unfortunate happenstance. There was perhaps one similarity between us all: We were waiting, hoping for something to change. Our hopes and dreams had born no fruit. Families had grown distant over the many years, as the monotony of the job drained the life from our bodies more efficiently than any vampire. We wanted to go. Where? We didn’t care. One way or another, that wish came to pass, just not in the way we expected. The formation, when it came, was centred on me, whether by coincidence or intent I haven’t bothered to find out. It glowed, revolving and pulsating as it stretched across the floor of the entire room. A strange script flowed just inside the outer edge of the circle, unending and unbroken, a sentence with no beginning and no end. Beyond it, a hexagram, decorated with representations of the elements – Twisting flame, sturdy mountain, abstruse shadow, ubiquitous wind, flowing water, blinding light. Then, the images grew stranger. Webbing lightning, oozing lava, crystalline ice were rare enough on their own, but then there was illusion, its very existence paradoxical, decay, fetid and dark, and a radiant aura that felt somehow divine. In the middle of it all, a final image, which I couldn’t quite catch sight of by virtue of the fact I was standing on top of it. At that point, the unusual situation triggered one of the contingencies I (as in, the actual me) had put in place in the off chance that anything that might truly threaten me occurred, unsealing all my powers and memories. Still, when the formation began pulling us through space, I didn’t resist. I wanted to see what was on the other side, after all. I did, however, freeze time once we got there an instant later, conducting a simple scan to determine what type of place we were at, and if there was any danger. Satisfied that there wasn’t and excited at the prospect of a unique new experience, I resumed time and sank into a state of semi-dormancy, splitting off the portion of myself that was the human Phil and let him control the body while I simply watched. I looked around, getting my bearings. I – We, by the amount of people crying out in shock – were in a cave. Thanks to some torches in sconces along the wall, there was enough light to see by, although it was still dim enough that it took my eyes a moment to adjust after being abruptly transported from the office. Seeing Greg on the ground next to me, I gave him a hand and hoisted him to his feet. “How many times do I have to tell you, Greg?” I shook my head in mock disappointment. “Don’t lean back in your chair so much, or you’ll be flat on your back when you get teleported somewhere.” Greg scowls at me as he rubbed his back. “I don’t remember that being in the ergonomics lecture.” His breath caught as he looked around. “Where on earth are we?” He asked quietly. I scratched my head and looked around, myself. “Your guess is as good as mine, but given that we just got teleported…” I trailed off, knowing full well that he already understood the enormity of our situation. “Another world, huh?” Greg sighed heavily, then frowned. “I recognise most of the people here, but…” He pointed at some old men in gold-trimmed robes lying unconscious just outside the circle of familiar office workers. “Who are they?” “If I were to hazard a guess, the people who brought us here.” I replied. “If not, then I have no clue.” Cleaning his glasses with a cloth he took from his pocket, Greg looked at the old men. “They almost look dead. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing for us, but we should at least check.” “Agreed.” We stepped over to the bodies, and I reached into my pocket and retrieved a small umbrella, one of those ones with a telescopic shaft. “Better safe than sorry,” I muttered, extending the umbrella and poking at one of the bodies. There was no reaction. I retracted the umbrella and placed it back in my pocket, then stepped forwards and knelt beside the man. “Let’s see here…” I murmured to myself absentmindedly. While I was not a doctor by any stretch of the imagination, I at least knew enough to check a pulse. “Well, he’s alive as far as I can tell.” I reported with a short groan as I stood back up. “Just unconscious, as far as I can tell.” “Why have so many old men fainted simultaneously?” Greg mused, confused. “And why here, in this cave?” “I don’t know.” I shook my head. “But at least we know that this sort of thing doesn’t just happen to Japanese students.” Greg chuckled, but his mirth was short-lived. “We should probably start looking for a way out of here.” “Agreed.” We glanced around the cave and managed to spot a tunnel on the opposite side of the group. Some of the others were already starting to drift towards it, but were attempting to gather the rest of us before leaving – the fear of the unknown was great, and strength in numbers, while only a small comfort, was the only comfort we had. As we walked over, I glanced downwards and noticed patterns and symbols etched in the dirt not dissimilar, by my reckoning, to that of the formation that appeared in the office not minutes before. “Have you noticed these markings on the floor?” I remarked to Greg, pointing at them. “Looks like the ones that appeared before we were teleported over here.” He glanced down and after a brief inspection, nodded. “Could be. Seems like it’s inactive now, given that it’s not glowing. That does mean it’s inactive, right?” “According to games, movies, anime, novels and other sources of fantasy fiction?” I asked rhetorically. “Yes. Whether that translates into this reality…” I trailed off, unsure. Looking back up, I saw that most everyone had gathered up into their own little groups that were heading towards the exit, with the notable exception of the group that was closest to the exit – they were quickly heading away from it and wildly motioning for others to do the same. “Greg?” I said slowly, motioning to that group. “Maybe we should hang back a bit.” Moments later, I heard the source of their agitation as I strained my senses in the dimly-lit environment – Simultaneous footfalls, quite a number of them, echoing slightly down the tunnel. Soldiers. I gulped. “This could be very bad, or very good, or very, very bad.” “Why are there two bad situations and only one good?” Greg asked with dread. “Well, generally in situations like this – in fiction at least – they’re either coming here to kill us,” Greg gulped as I mentioned the possibility, “to help us, or possibly to enslave us, which is arguably worse than the first option.” I finished, feeling my own heart flutter with fear at the thought. “Ah.” Greg breathed. “Okay.” Feeling more than a hint tremulous, I asked Greg, “How does a nice strategic retreat to the back of the pack sound?” “Strategic retreat?” He looked at me askance. “You mean run away? Not that I’m criticising it, I’m fine with running away, really.” “Ah, yes, but as the other party concerned is military, military terms should be used when discussing plans. Thus, it’s not ‘running away’, but ‘strategic retreat’.” I explained. “Jolly good, but let’s stop bickering about the price of butter and actually do it, shall we?” Greg retorted fretfully as he eyed the exit. So without further ado we retreated (strategically) towards the rear of the group, a position that soon became vied for as more and more of our co-workers realised the gravity of the situation. The sounds grew louder by the second, the soldiers marching towards us getting ever closer, and discussions quickly turned to self-protection in the event that worst does come to worst. A consensus was quickly reached that forming one large group would be our best bet, so we all huddled up together. Realising a rather large flaw in this plan moments after we all grouped up, I whispered to Greg, “If there is magic here… Wouldn’t grouping up make it incredibly easy for us all to be killed by a single AOE spell?” He paled an amount that was noticeable even under the dim lighting. “Yes. But, it sounds like they’re wearing armour, not robes, right?” He asked, grasping at straws. “If there are people wearing robes, we wouldn’t be able to hear them.” I reasoned quietly. “Ah. Yes, you might be right.” Greg agreed sadly as a battalion of soldiers – thankfully minus any people wearing robes – became visible through the entrance of the cave. Each of them was dressed in full suits of plate armour with their face plates down, so it appeared almost as if they were a legion of steel men. They did appear as if they had seen better days, with many sporting dents on their armour, as well as splattered dirt and blood. Nevertheless, it did nothing to dampen their formidable appearance. Still marching in unison, they soon entered the cave and formed up into a simple box formation; the cave was quite sizeable, and we had backed up to the other end of it, so there was still some space between the two groups. I sighed in relief: their weapons were not drawn, with the exception of those facing the tunnel entrance. They shouldn’t have harmful intentions. After the entire troop had settled into formation inside the cave, the front lines parted and a man wearing expertly crafted blue plate armour with thick red trim walked out from in-between them, removing his helmet as he did so. Our group of office workers, still dressed in semi-formal and formal attire, shuffled uncomfortably, feeling entirely out of place and out of their depth. “Greetings!” The man in blue and red armour called out to us. “I understand that you must be confused, but questions and their answers must wait for a better time. The cave system we are in is home to myriad powerful monsters and beasts, and I do not wish to spend another second in this place if I do not have to.” He swept an appraising eye over our group, in the process of which noticing the men lying unconscious. His brows furrowed slightly, and he twisted to address the group behind him. “Medics! Turns out we will be needing the stretchers after all. Get the lord magi loaded up and looked after, on the double! And be careful!” As a couple dozen men stepped out to tend to the magi lying on the ground, the man in blue and red armour turned to address us once more. “We had hoped that the lord magi would be able to explain the situation while we returned… But it appears that, as they warned us, it took all they had just to summoning you all here. Now, unless you wish to face the terrors of these caves yourselves, I ask that you come with us.” After taking one last glance at us, he turned and walked back into the formation, fitting his helmet back on to his head. The crowd of office workers hesitated for a few seconds. Nobody wanted to make the first move in a situation like this, even though everyone knew that someone had to. At that point, it didn’t matter whether the soldiers were hostile or not – we had to go with them. One man stepped forward awkwardly, looking with some fear at the soldiers as he walked towards them. After that man took the leap of faith, it was like the dam was broken; everyone started walking towards them. Within minutes they had us integrated with the center of the formation, just behind the people carrying the stretchers for the magi. The whole battalion starts marching again, back out, with all of us in the middle trying to keep a similar tempo – nobody wanted to get their feet stepped on by an armoured boot by mistake. Our shoes crunched disorderly against the soil and stone in the cave, creating a dissonance with the soldiers’ steady marching. None of us knew where we were or where we are going, and just followed numbly as we trooped through intersections and branching paths without pause. As we walked, I couldn’t help but notice an interesting detail of our environment: the soldiers held no torches, and I saw no torches in sconces on the walls like earlier, which meant that there was some other source of light. Looking around carefully, I noticed that the roof was speckled with innumerable spots of light that roved and jumped about. Unfortunately, their light was too faint and far for me to be able to discern exactly what they were; the roof was too high and our travel too swift to allow my gaze to stay on a single spot for longer than a few moments. As we travelled, the tunnels varied in size and shape. At times the soldiers were unable to maintain the breadth of their formation and had to travel in thinner ranks, and at other times there would be space to spare on either side. Our travel was done mostly in silence, and we walked with bated breath, praying that the monsters they mentioned would not find us. …Those prayers were not answered. The call to prepare from battle resounded at the front, and for a time there were sounds of stomping feet, clanging shields, and… Picks on stone? Whatever the case, the combat didn’t affect our group in any way, and the battle was soon over. As we travelled past the point of battle, I couldn’t help but notice black scorch marks forming lines in the floor. I wondered what caused them, but they soon fell behind, or rather we passed them by. We travelled for a fair while, perhaps an hour and a half. During that time, the soldiers faced a few more monsters, again out of view and without having to involve us at all, which most of us quite liked. One of the ladies got introduced to slimes in a startling fashion as it dropped from the roof, latching onto her foot. Nearby soldiers assured her that particular variety was completely harmless, but it still caused an increase in tensions among our group for a time. Greg and I, seeing this, started a whispered conversation. “I wonder… Is this one of those worlds where there are nigh-infinite varieties of slimes, or one where there are a limited few? One where they evolve, or one where their species are limited from birth? Division, or stranger means still?” I mused thoughtfully to Greg. Greg frowned slightly. “I don’t know that studying their biology would really be a good idea. Scientifically speaking, they are intriguing… But even the least of them could potentially kill us.” “True, true…” I admitted. “But maybe one day we’ll have the opportunity. Who knows, we’ve been summoned to another world, right? Usually, there’s some sort of power given… perhaps we can use magic?” “Who knows. I’m not about to run into a group of monsters on the off chance that lightning will sprout from my fingertips.” Greg replied. “True, true…” I trailed off, and we lapsed into silence again. Eventually, we reached the true exit, a set of thick metal doors stretching across the width of the tunnel, which wasn’t nearly as wide as many we’ve been through before – barely wide enough for two men abreast. The column of soldiers and office workers stretched quite a way back as we slowly filtered through. They soon opened, revealing a shaft of silvery moonlight. People started to filter through. Either we were in there much longer than I thought, or there’s a time difference between our worlds; which isn’t such a strange concept, now that I think about it. After all, why would our worlds have the same day/night cycle? We continued to move our tired legs, and after another little while, I too crossed the threshold. Beyond it was still a cave, but this one had a large opening on the far wall, one that was open to the sky, dark though it was. Within the cave were straight lines of tents, and there was even a large fire near the entrance, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten anything for a couple hours. After walking for that long, I was hungry, tired and quite winded. I was not young, after all, at around forty-two years of age, bordering on forty-three. The soldiers were rushing around, getting the stretchers into some large tents nearer to the center of the camp, moving off to bolster the guards at the entrance or maintain their equipment. In the meantime, we were led to an empty space to the side of the camp, which by the looks of it was being used as a mini exercise ground. Before long, some soldiers came along and deposited some logs on the ground for us to sit on, which we did, tired as most of us were. Sitting down himself, that same man in the red and blue armour looked at us. “I am sure you all have many questions. Why are you here, how are you here, so on and so forth.” He sighed, rolling armoured shoulders. “I will ask, however, that you wait to ask them until I finish my explanation.” Hearing no voice of dissent, he began to explain our situation. “You have been summoned here to this world, Earth-” Someone immediately interrupted. Was it Daryl? It was Daryl, wasn’t it. “Earth? But that’s what our world is called!?” Looking sternly at Daryl, the man in red and blue armour rebutted, “Questions after. As I was saying, you were summoned here by the combined arch-magi of the kingdoms of Stalia, Enlux and Morrock. Due to mana exhaustion, they unfortunately fainted upon accomplishing this.” It would be stranger if it wasn’t prohibitively difficult. Super long-distance teleportation, possible crossing of dimensions and/or parallel realities… It’s quite a feat. “Knowing of the difficulty of the spell, to prevent their own deaths and risk the spell failing, we had to venture into the deepest point of these caves, where the largest known mana line is located, and defend the magi while they cast the spell.” He continued gravely. “As for why you were summoned… We recently received a prophecy from the church, revealing that the demon race is colluding with the evil god, and will attack with overwhelming power. The demon race alone we could handle, but the evil god is an unknown factor, one that could overturn everything if we were not properly prepared.” The majority of us were unsurprised. With the sheer propagation of fiction these days, whether the medium is novels, manga, anime or movies, the concept of heroes fighting against the forces of evil was a commonly known story. And let’s be honest, it’s usually demons. He mentioned mana-lines, and spells. Magic… I wondered how it works in this world, so I was about to ask about it, but someone beat me to the punch. “What is mana?” They asked. Looking in astonishment at the person who voiced the question, he replied, “You don’t have mana in your world? How did your people survive monster attacks without magic enhancement, healing or enchantments?” “Well, we don’t have monsters. Just wild animals. Only thing we’ve had to worry about killing us for the past few millennia is ourselves.” They replied wryly. “Yourselves?” He asked in confusion. “Yes, ourselves.” They replied, shrugging. “We have many countries in our world, and sometimes they fight. Our technology, from what we’ve seen, far outclasses your own, so in the last big war – a world war – tens of millions of people died.” Hearing that statistic, he lost his composure for a second, gasping in shock. After regathering himself, he spoke again. “This technology, can you recreate it?” They frowned. “We are office workers, not scientists or engineers… I doubt any of us have much more than a basic understanding of how our weaponry worked, let alone how to recreate it.” Actually, between us all, we might be able to figure it out… But I don’t think that would be a good idea. World war 2 was terrible by all reports, and if this world is heading in the same direction I don’t want them holding the means to create firearms, gasses and whatever else we might be able to concoct. “Perhaps it was foolish of me to hope for an easy solution…” He sighs. “Are there any other questions?” Another man speaks out. “So, you basically kidnapped us all to solve your problems for you, is that it?” “I believe that is a question more suited for me to answer.” Another voice spoke out just as the man in red and blue armour was about to reply, belonging to a man in a blue robe with gold trim and snowy white hair.

Upon returning to the keep, we were guided to the resident holy arch magi, Krewyn to be healed. Before moving straight to care for the man with the broken leg, she cast an area of effect holy spell to quickly fix up any light wounds we may have had. We quickly noticed something was strange, as many of us were having difficulty seeing. It didn’t take us long to find out that the magic had healed not only our cuts and bruises, but our eyes as well – a considerable relief, when you consider that this world didn’t have the technology to replicate our glasses, should they be broken. Our glasses, which then brought our vision out of focus instead of fixing it, were summarily discarded, and everyone was excited to be able to see the fullness of the world once again. A few weeks passed, and we were on another hunt. The last one had gone well, so well that the captain decided to make everything harder for us by forcing the magi and warrior teams to switch places. The result was that we magi were taking minor injuries left and right and a few of the warriors were fainting from mana exhaustion. Blocking the claws of a pouncing wolf with my shield, I pushed it back and, almost without thinking, slashed at the face of another wolf that was haring for my legs. It reeled back in pain as its sensitive nose took a deep cut, and fell over a second later when I stabbed it in the throat. By then, the first wolf had already recovered and bit deep into my leg. I collapsed to the ground, my leg suddenly unable to carry weight. Grimacing against the pain, I pulled my sword free from the corpse of the other wolf and cut the neck of the wolf biting me. Thankfully, I was wearing leather armour, or it might have taken a piece off of me. Even in death its jaw was still shut tight, and my attempts to wrench it open were in vain. Shuffling backwards with the wolf still attached to me, I made room for others to replace me while I dealt with the problem. Gritting my teeth, I smashed the pommel of my sword against the jaw of the wolf, hissing as the impact shifted the teeth in my wounds. Despite the pain it caused, it did as intended, breaking the jawbone of the wolf and allowing me to pull its teeth out of my leg. I reached for my grimoire, intending to act as support for the rest of the battle, before remembering that I have holy affinity. Putting my hand to the bleeding holes in my calf, a soft white glow emanated from my palm and moved into my leg. Within seconds the bleeding stopped, and the wounds shrank slightly. Gingerly standing up, I tested the leg. It twinged with pain as I moved, but not nearly as much as before. It would do. I returned to the front line and sliced at some wolves and boars for a while longer. Within another few minutes, the soldiers decided we’d had enough and came in to slaughter all furry creatures in the vicinity. It wasn’t long after that that I enacted my elaborate suicide plan. And that brings us back to the present: New body, new me. Well, technically it’s the same body, just modified a bit. I didn’t want to create one from the ground up, just in case it wouldn’t have mana. I could fix that, of course, but that would require me to take shortcuts on paths I’d rather walk the long way. Why, you ask? Why did I decide suicide was the only option? I must admit my reasons are hardly typical. After all, I had it all. People generally quote the big three: Money, Fame, Power. Me, well, I have so much power that money and fame are meaningless. I could create gold and diamonds from thin air, or start an entire religion in my name. Since I could create miracles, it wouldn’t be hard. But then again, why would I? As I said, money and fame have no meaning to me. The bigger question is, what does? Simply living would have been enough for me, at least for a few millennia, I would think… Had I not used an ability that imprinted the collective memory of the earth and everything that was or ever had been on it into my brain. After that, much of life lost its lustre. Building a career, finding love… Much of what people viewed as the core parts of life, I had done a million times over. A billion times, and even more. I was born, much like everyone else, but my own curiosity had ruined my enjoyment of life. There were a few things that were still worthwhile. Things that were new, at least to some extent. Fortunately for me, society at the time was gaining increasing amounts of free time, time that many people spent on consuming, or more importantly creating, entertainment of all kinds. Books! Movies! Comics! Animations! Games! Of all shapes and sizes! At the rate humanity was expanding, physically and socially, they might have created enough forms of entertainment to last me… Maybe a couple of centuries… Before they would most likely reach their demise at their own hands. Still, that was assuming I didn’t use any of my abilities to speed up the process of enjoying that entertainment. And as for obtaining them, I could use my powers to make a perfect replica of anything, so it wouldn’t have been difficult for me to get any of those forms of entertainment. But that’s just the thing – it wouldn’t be difficult. Nothing ever was. There is a saying, ‘Nothing good is ever easy’. The reverse is true, as well. Nothing easy is truly satisfying. Using my abilities, I could become the top expert in any and all fields. But while such a thing is truly beyond imagination for an ordinary human, something worthy of going down in the history books to remember forever… For me, it would just be a matter of course. A foregone conclusion. Of course I could. After all, what couldn’t I do? I knew that to truly enjoy myself, everything would have to be gained with difficulty. With real effort. Easier said than done when you’re the most powerful being on the planet, perhaps the entire universe, but I found a way. I sealed my powers and my memories and made a life for myself as a normal human. Things weren’t quite the same, it wasn’t quite as… vibrant, as it was for everything else. My high times were lower, and my low times, higher. I never felt despair, but I never experienced euphoria, either. There was school. There was work. I even made some friends along the way. It… wasn’t a bad time for me, but that part of me that was sealed away knew it wasn’t as good as it should be. Then came this. New rules, new people, new world, new powers, new animals, everything was new. ‘Great!’ I thought. ‘This should finally make my life good.’ But it wasn’t, not quite. The wonder of a new world was still there, but it was going all too fast. I was getting stronger too fast. Taught by some of the strongest people in the world, as far as I could tell, practically the best magical affinity you could possibly get and a batch of similarly talented allies. Before long, I would be back where I started. And then what? It would be a waste. I decided that, again, the solution was to make things harder for myself. Without the teachers, the overpowered allies and the resources of the kingdoms behind me, it would be much harder. But to simply leave… I knew that the kings would have people keep an eye on me. If I just went, I’m sure Greg would insist on coming with me. And Boris. And if all three of us were leaving, then there would be others that would come as well. The simplest way to avoid all that trouble was to convince them I was dead, and the simplest way to do that was to actually die. Irreversible though that may be for others, for me it is just a state of being, one which I can move to and return from with ease. Still, the form of death was important. A suicide would discourage the others, and inciting my own murder would be in terrible taste. I wanted the others to continue as they were – competition is something I’d like to experience, as well. Having a monster kill me would make them realise just how dangerous this world was, and thus fight harder to survive… Or fall into despair and give up, but I’m confident they’ll be able to fight through it. And now here I am, alone again. I have a plan, of course. In the last week, I had a look at some maps, and there’s a nearby river that will lead me to a nearby town. Looking to the edge of the clearing, I see that the carts are still there. Evidently, everyone was in too much of a rush to get away to bring along the unwieldy carts, but that’s good news for me. Inside the carts should be some light rations that I can grab, enough to last me until I reach town. Salted jerky, huh? It’ll do. As I begin heading east, towards the river, I think about what I’m going to do from now on. I’ll be an adventurer, of course. I want to go places I’ve never been, do things I’ve never done, and adventurer is the best profession for that. I have a weapon. No armour, but so long as the wolves and boars aren’t swarming me like they did in the hunts, I should be fine to face one or two without it. …Speak of the devil, and he shall appear. Four wolves stalk out of the trees, perhaps too many for me. I miss my shield. On that thought, I try making one out of earth mana, but the result is a disc of dirt, not hard enough to block anything. As one of the wolves leaps at me, I slam it into the wolf’s face. The impact itself has practically no effect, but some dirt does get into its eyes, which gives me enough space to cut its neck. Noticing the others attempting to circle around behind me, I put my back up against a tree. The last thing I want is to get attacked from both sides. …Hold that thought. Summoning forth a large portion of mana, I change it into earth and form two walls on either side of me, artificially creating a corridor. Now they can only come at me from the front, one at a time. And I can deal with one wolf easily, even if I have to do it three times. It would be even easier if I didn’t have to worry about starting a forest fire, but it is what it is. The first two wolves I cut down as they came at me. The last one ran. Letting out a deep breath, I let the mana disperse. Kneeling down, I wipe my sword with some grass – cant have it getting rusty. Putting my hand to the pouch of jerky at my waist, I retrieve one and chew on it as I continue on my way, leaving the corpses of the wolves where they lay. Even if I skinned them and cut them up somehow with my sword alone – more difficult than it sounds – I wouldn’t have a way to carry any of it. I find the river just as the sun starts to set, blobs of slime bobbing here and there on the surface of the water. I’ll need to find some shelter soon, or I won’t be safe enough to sleep tonight. Luckily, I happen across an overturned cart before it gets seriously dark. It may not be conventional, but shelter is shelter. Ignoring the various items strewn over the ground, I lift up the edge of the cart enough that I can slip underneath it. The result is an enclosed, if a bit claustrophobic, shelter for me to spend the night in. And with that, I simply closed my eyes and fell to sleep.

If adventurers specialise in hunting monsters, then mercenaries specialise in hunting humans. They often have lower moral standards than adventurers, and there are more than a few who are willing to do anything – so long as the price is right. Similarly to adventurers, mercenaries are classified in ranks – copper, iron, steel, et cetera. Mercenaries place great importance on their reputation - even more so than adventurers - because unlike adventurers than can pick and choose their quests, mercenaries can be denied contracts if the contractor finds them unsuitable. Of course, this doesn’t mean that they put on a pleasant face and help old ladies across the street – no, they focus more on appearing imposing and maintaining as perfect a contract record as possible. Mercenaries rarely place their home country over a heavy purse, so while it does seem strange, it isn’t uncommon for, for example, humans to be hired by another country to fight against Stalia in wars. …Now that I mention it, I think human mercenaries have the lowest sense of patriotism of the lot. Hm. - An unknown scholar “Back already?” Glade says from behind me, making me stop and whip my head around in surprise. How long has he been walking behind us? Lute on his back, the satyr takes a large bite from an apple and chews it with relish before swallowing. “You sounded all too eager to leave just yesterday.” “Sure were.” I sigh. “But we had to come out in front of a whole bunch of soldiers, didn’t we? No choice but to go back in.” Already finished the apple, Glade tosses it to one side and proceeds to lick the juice off his fingers. “Soldiers? Is there a war?” He asks nonchalantly. “Aye, there is.” Jakin answers sullenly. “And just when people were starting to think we might be getting towards peace.” Glade laughs, the loud sounds piercing through the forest’s characteristic silence. Jakin looks at him uncomfortably. “That wasn’t funny.” Glade shrugs, clearly not paying much attention to his words. “Who is it this time?” He asks instead. “Almost everyone.” I say grimly. “What, the monsters too? Halflings and giants?” Glade asks lightly. I frown. “You know what I mean. Four of the five kingdoms, last I heard.” He shrugs again, then his head darts to one side. “Ooh, butterfly!” He immediately starts chasing after it. Before he can vanish again, I call after him, “Can we leave again? Preferably the area to the north-west outside of anyone’s territory.” “Yes and no!” He calls back just as I lose sight of him. Xiltroth did mention that nobody manages to leave the forest in the direction they want… I suppose we aren’t exceptions. Unlike last time, we don’t find the exit quickly. In fact, several days pass by with us just wandering around. Well, food and water are provided to us for the most part, so it’s not as if we’re feeling particularly rushed to leave. Speaking of food… I spot a scattering of small shapes in the grass. Motioning to the others, I crouch down to pick them up. “What’re these things?” Jakin asks in confusion, pinching a tiny pod between his thick forefinger and thumb. “Are they even edible? Seems a bit too hard to me.” “They’re peanuts.” I say. “Break open the shell, the inside is edible.” Jain easily crushes the shell in his gauntleted hand and picks out the nuts – although peanuts are technically a legume – within. He throws it into his mouth and chews. “They’re better roasted and salted, but neither of those are really options right now.” I say regretfully. “Hm.” Jakin grunts. “This would go well with beer.” “Yeh’re right!” Exclaims Boaz. The two start rapidly picking them all up, and I only manage to grab a few and secret them away securely in a small pouch before they’re all gone. One day, I’m going to get my peanut butter. Even if I have to grow these peanuts myself. “OI! Shoo! Shoo!” I hear Glade shouting somewhere nearby. “Get out of here you mangy cat! Go eat everything somewhere else!” We soon see Glade come running through the trees, brandishing his lute and chasing a cat. They both disappear a moment later, only his occasional shouts lingering behind. “…What?” Says Xiltroth, voicing what everyone is thinking. Why would he… It couldn’t have been, right? In one of those peaceful periods between eating and being attacked by rogue monsters, we are simply walking through the forest. As we go, I hear the faint sound of shouting from up ahead. We share a glance, but shrug and walk on regardless. We know all too well how ineffective following sounds can be in this forest. May as well keep the same direction. By some twist of luck, we end up reaching the source of the sound, a demon soldier panickedly fighting off a pair of wolves. Drawing my warhammer, I leap in and slam it in a downwards arc, crushing through one of the wolves’ skulls. The other takes one look at the mass of gore that used to be it’s ally and beats a hasty retreat. “Hey, are you alright?” I ask the man. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!” He screams, running away immediately. I turn around. “My scars aren’t that scary, are they?” “Nah.” Says Jakin, stone-faced. “You’re just that ugly.” “Damn, walked straight into that.” I curse. Looking off in the direction the man ran, I shrug. Doubt we’ll ever see him again. A week later, we pop out of the forest again. This time, without anyone around. Thank God. We quickly find a flat area, and Boaz sits down with all the maps to try and figure out where on earth we are. “Alright.” He says after half an hour of intently poring over the maps. “I can’t be sure without a better vantage point, but we be in one of three locations – two in Stalia and one in Morrock.” “So, where do we go?” I get straight to the point. “Not sure.” He says uncertainly. “See, if we’re in Stalia, it should be quicker to cut through their territory to the outside.” “What with the war going on, that would be much too dangerous for us, wouldn’t it?” I ask. “True.” Boaz nods. “Then we’ll follow the edge of the forest west. Everyone stays away from it, so we should be able to pass through without much trouble.” Xiltroth frowns. “We came across those soldiers just outside the forest last time.” “True, but it’s less risky than moving through the countryside.” I remind him. “Alright, follow the edge of the forest it is.” Boaz agrees. I hear growling. “Let’s hunt something. I haven’t eaten meat in weeks!” Jakin says hungrily. Everyone nods in agreement. We have a look around, but there aren’t any obvious signs of wild animals nearby, so we shake our heads in disappointment and get ourselves moving. We’ll find something eventually, I’m sure. And a couple hours later, so we do. Quickly killing the deer, we dismantle it, disposing of the offal. A short branch collection and a spot of fire magic later, we have the meat sizzling over the flames. After it’s finished cooking, Jakin bites eagerly into it. “Now that’s food.” He grunts. “Not berries and nuts.” Everyone nods in agreement. Berries and nuts are all well and good, but they aren’t exactly a square meal, are they? After eating, we set up our tents and organise the watch rotation – it’s getting dark out. The next morning, we set off at a jog. Being able to see where you are and where you’re going is a large help to motivation. And a hearty meal. Over the next two weeks, we travel over hills and plains, sticking closely to the edge of the forest as we go. Boaz was able to confirm where we were after the first day of travelling – we were indeed in Stalia, although thankfully the more western of the two points. As we’d guessed, we don’t encounter any other people, although we do come across a few monsters. Nothing we can’t handle, but a few interesting ones. Honestly, we don’t know what others call them, so we just gave them somewhat fitting names. Bloody bison, incredibly strong and incredibly aggressive. Appearance-wise, it’s similar to its normal counterpart but has permanently bloodshot eyes, long and viciously pointy red horns and a red pattern along its hide similar to blood splatters. Happily, it wasn’t very intelligent or quick on its feet, so simply splitting up and attacking from its sides while Jakin weathered its frontal attacks was sufficient to defeat it. The second one we called boomer bats. We thought they were just normal bats and ignored them, until one exploded and singed Boaz’s eyebrows off. After that we quickly got out of the swarm. They were somewhat aggressive, and we tried to fend them off with weapons, but it barely made a dent on the swarm. They exploded when they got hit, so we quickly grew worried about the state of our weapons. I tried a bit of fire magic… I’m still trying to clear out my ears from the noise that chain explosion created. Rocky stallions. Horses that look like they’re made of stone. Well, they were grazing, so it might just be a rocky carapace? These ones weren’t actually aggressive, so we gave taming them a try… to no success. The herd just galloped away when we got close. Oh well. And yes, I was the one to name them all. The others weren’t too interested. I was going to name them stony stallions, but it felt like there was already too much alliteration. Anyhow, it was all in all a very interesting journey. We almost forgot that we had to start searching for supplies again, now that the forest wasn’t providing for us. But we managed. With the help of mana reinforcement enhancing our visual and aural acuity as well as speed, finding animals to hunt and springs and streams to draw water from is a much easier task. As we are now, living off the land has grown to be second nature, although we aren’t quite confidant enough to try testing out whether some of the wild plants and berries are edible. One encounter with poison is enough for me. And with magical plants in the picture, plain sickness might be the least of my worries. Perhaps that plant over there with the tiny pink flowers contains laxatives powerful enough to kill a bear. Perhaps it’s a powerful aphrodisiac. A sedative, or nothing at all. Who knows, I’m not about to experiment. Our diet, such as it is, mainly consists of meat and water. Occasionally we’ll find some berry or fruit tree that one of us recognises, and are able to supplement our diet with those, or some wild vegetables. As for where we are now? To the north-west of the forest of befuddlement: unoccupied territory. Finally, we are free from the constant tension that we’ll come across soldiers. …Or so we thought, but it appears the war is raging here, too. “Looks like we’ll have to sneak through, after all.” Xiltroth remarks. “It does look that way, doesn’t it?” I say, watching the constantly moving crowds in the far distance. “We’ll have to cover you up somehow – your skin and hair are quite prominent. Anyone have a cloak or something?” “Here.” Jakin holds out a garment. “Might be a little short on you, but you’re already covered waist down, so it shouldn’t matter much.” “Thanks.” Xiltroth pulls on the cloak, the hem of which barely dips below his waist. We start moving again, this time cautiously advancing. The army – mostly dwarves, by what we can see from here – is quite a ways away, but I don’t doubt that they have scouts roaming around everywhere, not to mention the convoys ferrying supplies back and forth, and troops marching to reinforce the main army. Where there used to be just grass and weeds, there is now a dirt path stretching from far in the horizon to the army camp, the thousands of feet that travelled over it trampling any greenery into the earth. Right now, we are looking with concern at that very road. We have to cross over it to truly be outside the line of fire, but there is a constant trickle of people travelling both ways upon it, any of which will be very interested in why there is a small group of people coming from a strange direction and going in a strange direction. So, in the hopes that there won’t be as many people travelling in the darkness, we wait until it’s night. At our strength, and especially if we have mana reinforcement enhancing our bodily functions, it isn’t difficult to stay awake for even a few days at a time. However, as doing so results in increasing exhaustion and loss of focus as time wears on, as well as requiring a longer than normal period of rest, we rarely do so. But staying up a single night and going to sleep in the morning, for example, will have little to no effect on us. To our delight, there is indeed a large decrease in traffic along the road now that it’s dark. Channelling a steady stream of mana into mana reinforcement to improve my vision and see a bit more of the landscape in the dark, we wait until there’s a large gap between travellers and dash across and to freedom. We don’t stop, keeping a running pace until the lights of the army camp are barely visible in the distance, then slowing to a less draining jog. For another hour we keep up this speed – we want to make entirely sure that we’re completely safe. We just ignore any monsters we come across, giving them a bit of a berth. The aggressive ones we quickly stop to dispatch and then continue jogging. Then we stop. Panting heavily, we slump to the ground, sitting loosely on the grass. We look at each other and see the same silly grins on all our faces. We break out into laughter. Freedom! Freedom at last. Away from worries of being discovered and attacked by one side or the other, from the war, from… Everything, really. “How are we doing for water?” I ask once everyone finishes expressing their relief. The last time we refilled our bottles was two days ago at a spring, and we’ve already gone through a few of the spare bottles. Before this, we were able to use the maps to navigate from water source to water source. But now we’re in uncharted territory, and that isn’t possible anymore. Xiltroth grabs his water bottle and gives it a light shake. “I’m at about half.” “Not far from full.” Replies Jakin. Boaz nods. “Same as Jakin.” “That’ll be our main priority, then: finding a source of water. Then I suppose we’ll set up camp nearby?” I say uncertainly. “Sounds good to me.” Grunts Jakin. Boaz and Xiltroth nod. “Before that, who’s going to be first watch? We should sleep while we still can.” Says Boaz. “Me.” Volunteers Xiltroth. I shrug. “I’ll be second.” “Doubt we’ll need a third. Night’s already half gone. Still, if we do…” Jakin raises his hand. As we jog, we all keep our eyes peeled for the glimmer of sunlight off of water, and attentively listen for the sounds of a trickling stream or rushing waterfall. We keep heading roughly north-west, even further away from known civilisation. It’s entirely possible that we passed something last night in the darkness without noticing – probable, even. But we’re not about to go back and check. Unfortunately, by the time the sun is sitting steadily above our heads, we still haven’t found anything. It’s only when our shadows are starting to become dangerously long that Xiltroth motions for us to stop. “Let me just look at something for a moment…” He says, stooping down to examine the ground. “There’s quite a few animal tracks here, all heading in the same direction. Could be water nearby.” Xiltroth explains. “Couldn’t it just be a group of animals heading in the same direction?” Boaz asks sceptically. Xiltroth shakes his head. “The tracks are too varied. Too many different types of tracks for it to be much else.” Shrugging, I say, “Not like we have any other leads. Let’s go check it out.” We start following the tracks, which soon lead us into a sparsely wooded region. After another minute, we see water sparkling through the gaps in the trees. It’s a somewhat large pond but fairly shallow, probably only a couple meters deep at most from what I can see through the mostly clear water. The area around the pond is mostly clear of trees, making it look like a very appealing camp site. At our approach, a bunch of animals sprint off into the trees, leaving behind only a small group of rabbits. I gaze at the area. “This spot should be good to set up camp. Let’s get a f- Woah!” Dodging to one side, I narrowly avoid the bouncing ball of white that almost slammed point first into my face. “Bunny attack! Watch out for the horns!” I start to reach for my warhammer before realising just how stupid it would be to try and hit these tiny things with a massive warhammer. Taking out my mace, I swing towards another of the aggressive little blighters currently rocketing towards my face, missing by bare inches and again barely managing to avoid being skewered. “They’re fast!” Exclaims Jakin. Damn right they are, zipping around and jumping between the trees like tiny white monkeys on a sugar high. I’ve got no hope of catching up with them. Only chance I’ve got is when they’re trying to jump at me and stab with their horns. They’re going so fast, in fact, that I don’t seem to be able to react fast enough to hit them with my mace. So, I put it back on my belt. They don’t look like they have a very strong defence, so my gauntleted fist should be enough to knock ‘em down. …Not straight on, though. I don’t think that’s a good idea. It takes me a few tries before my eyes start to catch up and I manage to uppercut one of the horned rabbits out of the air, sending it flying with a short ‘eep!’ When it hits the ground, it doesn’t get up. With the pressure on me relieved a bit I’m able to focus less on dodging and more on punching. Soon enough a second rabbit joins the first one on the ground, and then the third. “I’m good over here, how are you guys… doing…” I trail off as the other three are already cleaning off their weapons. “Right. Good job, everyone. Let’s… get camp going, I guess.” “Well, bright side is, dinner’s taken care of.” Jakin holds up a limp bunny, a wickedly sharp conical horn protruding some ten centimetres from its forehead. “Do we have a use for these horns?” I think for a moment. “Not that I can think of, but who knows, we might find something later. Not like they’ll weigh us down much.” Jakin shrugs indifferently and breaks the horn off with the hammer head of his pick. We set up our tents near the banks of the pond. Firewood isn’t a problem today, so we quickly get a fire burning. There is still some water left in our bottles, so we leave that for later – not like the pond’s going anywhere. Instead, we set the rabbits cooking. They don’t have a lot of meat on them, but there are quite a few, so we’re all set for dinner. The rabbits taste quite a lot better than some of the other things we’ve eaten, in fact. But enough of that – this isn’t a Japanese novel. By the time we finish our meal, the sun is dipping dangerously low on the horizon. It wouldn’t do to wake up in the morning, find that we don’t have much water and have to wait some ten minutes to boil the water, so we do it now. And of course we boil it. Pond like this, still water, who knows what kinds of creepy crawlies live in the water, microscopic and macroscopic. And nobody wants to find out that their inexplicable appetite is because there are worms in their stomach. Let’s get rid of that mental image, shall we? Did you know that clovers are edible? True fact. As opposed... to false facts? But hey, maybe you can start a new food trend with that stuff. Don’t even need to buy it, you can probably find some growing in your backyard. Leafy greens aside, after straining the water through a simple cloth and boiling it in a pot, we wait for it to cool and fill up a couple of our bottles. Then we repeat the process. Three more times. Really makes you appreciate modern water filtration technology, doesn’t it? Feeling exceptionally relaxed, I fall asleep faster than usual tonight.

Anyone ever felt like they were lost even while knowing where you are going?  How about being overwhelmed by the sheer length of the journey? Or threatened to be overrun by the vast crowds of people you run into on the way? Yeah, that’s exactly what’s happening to me.  Two hours of walking through Helen City, and I’ve yet to actually get to where I’m going.  The city is just that damned huge. And now packed with people as well. That started about an hour ago, when the Sol Light reached its brightest point.  Pretty sure that shows that it is noon, but I’m not absolutely sure. But it was like a dam had been burst, because suddenly the streets were absolutely crowded with all sorts of people. Not just people either, because there are also carts and carriages out on the streets as well.  Ranging from simple pull-carts made of bleached white or silver bones to great extended length carriages of paneled wood, gilded in gold and silver.  The beasts of burden are also as mixed and varied as the vehicles they pull too. Giant hump-backed lizards with dull claws and triangular scales.  Large skeletal horses with ghostly green or purple flames in their eye sockets and spectral flames around their hooves.  A two-headed ogre, collared and chained to a carriage, pulling it even while arguing with itself in loud booming voices that made no sense.  Or at least not to my ears. The coachman for that one just looked rather bored, to be honest. The weirdest one I came across was most definitely the work of a necromancer however.  Instead of a carriage, it was a large sarcophagus so big that it required twenty armored and armed zombies to carry.  Except these zombies were not like me, awakened. Instead they were dead, blunt things; moaning in groans of instinctive effort as they marched straight and true without even looking around. The sight had definitely given me the creeps, and I wasn’t the only one to turn aside to let it pass.  Many people in the crowd had fearful, but also somewhat disgusted looks on their faces as that sarcophagus passed by.  But no one said anything aloud about it. It was definitely an interesting thing for me, but after it was gone I was still jostled and pushed forward along with the crowds.  And I swear, I’m all but certain that I’ve seen more people here than the entire bloody time I was alive previously. It was just the absolute feeling of being harried and the building up of anxiety in my guts that told me so. Which is why I was really really happy to finally escape the crowd by ducking down the side street that’d lead me right to where I’m going.  Perhaps the distance off the main roads wouldn’t inspire confidence in this Society, but I for one am happy for the peace and quiet a secluded location would provide.  Which isn’t to say that there isn’t traffic on this side street, it just wasn’t as crazy as the main roads. At least finding the Silver Key Magic Society was easy.  It was probably a medium-sized compound of several buildings built around a 8 or 9 story tall tower all enclosed inside of a tall black stone wall.  With a real, honest to the pits gatehouse. The sort with towers, solid gates, grates and portcullises. And a big ass piece of heraldry in the form of a giant silver eye with a black key where the pupil should have been hanging amongst the stonework. All of which matches the information Tresk had given me, so I know it’s the right place.  I still take my time in approaching though, taking in as many details as I can. Like, the surroundings are strangely quiet, as everyone seems rather intimidated by the massive edifice.  Also that the gates are guarded, both in what I’d assume are warriors wearing silver uniforms as well as magic users in silver robes. Many of them are holding staves or wands, as well. More than that though, the closer I get to the gate the more of a buzzing, fuzzy feeling I get.  Like the entire gate and the walls are charged with a whole lot of magical energy. Probably enchanted, although I cannot tell.  And I’m not about to risk burning my eyes using my magical sight either. All told I’m not sure if I should be impressed or dejected by the sight of it all. Steeling myself, I make my way toward the gate.  Yet once I get within a range of about a hundred feet I start to slow down, each step becoming more laborious than the last.  Twenty feet closer, and I start to pant for breath with each step I take. Yet looking around, there isn’t anything out of the ordinary.  No one else walking the street, as sparse as it is, seems to be affected. Or even mindful that I’m struggling. All of which just ticks things off the ‘Weird as Hell’ list for me.  Yet there isn’t anything to do but continue on, even as I feel as if my body is being bound in chains.  Not really though. It was like the gravity had increased just in the area around me, making everything harder to move. Each step makes it even harder, and once I reach the fifty feet mark I feel as if my limbs are screaming at me, muscles and bones taxed to the max.  It makes me pause and grit my teeth. I’d never be able to make it to the gate just relaying on this body. Which is probably the point, although I definitely miss that bit of information at the moment. So instead I reach for my soul energy, which likewise has become sluggish inside of my body.  Like someone had applied a layer of soap or grease to it, making it hard to grasp and hard to move.  I have to literally grunt out in concentration to grab it and move it the way I desire, even stoking up the faint feeling of anger at this ridiculous crap to keep my mind on the task. That said, I really didn’t have a good thought in mind for what I was intending outside of forcing my soul energy to reinforce my body.  I had to get to that big gate, I had to move, but my body is too weak to resist the pressure. Not just my body though. I could feel the pressure messing with my energy, and my control.  It was like it was affecting all of my stats. The thought just made me even more angry though.  I know, in a sort of disjointed way, that I wasn’t thinking straight or anything.  But I also couldn’t do anything about it. Even though my emotions are suppressed as a newly awakened undead, I just didn’t have any real control over my mental or emotional state.  My stats themselves can attest to this, cause I have about as many points as an ant would in the living world. Only the weird Voice makes it so that I’m a thinking being in this state.  Or a moving one, for that matter. Thus it’s no real surprise that my first attempt at forcing my soul energy through my body doesn’t do much.  It simply dissipates outside of my body in a rather showy bit of silver-grey light and waste. The second and third time does the same, making me grit my teeth even more in frustration. I was missing something.  An idea, or a concept that’d keep my soul energy either trapped or bound to my body.  As a complete novice in magic in general, I simply have no idea what it could be. But I did have a starting point, I only realized after wasting another five points of my soul energy.  That left me with 8 points of soul energy to use.   [Abilities: Charge - Rank II. (3/50)]   I’d gained that ability during my terror-driven flight against the Scourge only the day before.  It was like an automated action, created when I’d forced soul energy wildly into my legs while running.  Yet unlike these failed tries of mine, the soul energy had stuck within my body and worked. Thus there had to be at trick to it.  Which left me only to try to figure it out the hard way.  I don’t have the time, concentration, or energy to test things in a controlled manner.  Or the patience, with how clouded my mind has become. So I simply dump a whole soul point into activating the ability and use my body to feel what changes it causes.  And while the effect is really weak, I still end up being moved several feet forward as the ability kicks in automatically just like it’s namesake.  Which only serves to put me even more into a bind, because pressure only gets stronger and stronger the closer I get to the gates. If I hadn’t been so wrapped up in my struggles I might have realized that the Silver Key guys guarding the gates are pointing and staring at me as if I were some kind of freak.  I might have even realized that this was some sort of test or the like. Or that it was simply a misunderstanding on my part. But I miss it completely. All of that, to simply find that a weak sort of barrier forms just inside my skin to keep the soul energy contained.  It likewise was made of soul energy, but of a sort that reflects the ‘used’ soul energy back into the body. It was easy to feel once you started looking for it. And it gave me just what I needed, an idea to grasp onto in my nearly wild state.  Pulling on my soul energy again, this time I try to mimic that barrier, starting with my chest and working through the rest of my body in as slow and methodical manner as possible.  It costs me another point of soul energy when I accidently loosen my grip on it, but overall it just takes some five minutes of me standing there on the street looking like an idiot to get it right.  Or so I’d assume. Thankfully using soul energy like this doesn’t seem to have a cost to it.  It isn’t actively making an effect or causing a change to the world. Inside my body, the soul energy was simply being held under my will.  And stretching my concentration to the limit. Hells, I could barely see the gates now through my clouded eyes. But one step closer was one step closer, and I wasn’t about to stop now.  Which is why I drain myself dry by forcing the last of my stored energy into my body, focusing it to reinforce my body and keep me upright.  In comparison to holding that barrier, getting the soul energy to work as intended was a piece of cake. And the effect was definitely immediate.  The pressure just seemed to weaken upon me all of a sudden, and I could walk again.  Not that it wasn’t still an act of labor, but in that disjointed and quiet place in my mind I could all but see myself moving robotically forward.  I wasn’t focusing on anything but what I had to do. And leaving sweat-sodden footsteps in my wake. And then I make it, stepping within just ten feet of the gate.  The pressure just came to a sudden end, and without that external stimuli I lose all concentration.  This causes all the soul energy I’d been holding, the barrier and that inside my body, to explode outward all at once.  This expulsion of silver-grey light startles the gate guards, and the passersby, but I really wasn’t paying attention. I was too damned exhausted to do so. In fact I end up on the ground, having collapsed in a heap right there in front of the gates.  My body feels like an empty sack of meat, and my mind was ringing. I barely keep myself conscious, but I do end up with some foolish goofy grin on my face. “I… hah.. Made it.”  Yeah, real smooth me.  Trying to talk through my panted breathing was a bit much though.  Don’t even know why I’m panting, given I’m supposed to be dead anyway. “Heh heh hehe.  It seems you did indeed.”  A loud and somewhat arrogant voice suddenly calls even before the guards could get to me, and for a moment it was like the entire world went still.  One of the gate guards, a mage in a silver robe with the black key symbol on it had suddenly stiffened up before jerking around in a salute, right fist to chest and bowing in the direction of the gate.  I can only assume the others had done the same, but I’m just too tired to look. “It seems that an interesting one had been sent my way.  You are the newly awakened one our Kriti friend warned me about, yes?  Hmm, indeed, I can tell that you are just as crazy as he said. Hmm hmm hmm…”  The voice hums to himself, but all I can do is roll my eyes a bit. Just listening to the guy made me seem like I was some crazy bastard or something. “Well, this is the second time you’ve done something impressive without blowing yourself or others up, so I guess that’s a good thing.  No matter. You, go pick the newbie up and take him to one of the cultivation chambers. He should regain himself quickly there.” Yeah, I couldn’t see who the guy had pointed out, but I could definitely feel being hefted up like a sack of grain or potatoes though.  Not entirely nice, and already becoming way too common for my taste. “Right away, Sir Silver Lord.”  Male, deep voice, strong guy.  Those were the thoughts in my head after the guard had picked me up.  I sort of just zoned out after that though, even though my eyes were still open.  That, and a vague thought of ‘Wasn’t this the guy I was supposed to meet?’. Yeah, brain on a frying pan doesn’t really work well in keeping your thoughts in proper order. The trip into the Silver Key Society was just a blur to my senses then, at least until we got to where we are going.  If only because the sudden onrush of soul energy had me groaning in some sense of satisfaction. It was so thick and so pure that I didn’t even have to start cultivating for me to feel it start filling me up. “You new guys are always like that here in the cultivation chambers.  Hah.” The guard laughs to himself as he sets me down on the ground on my back.  This gives me the first chance to actually see the fellow, which doesn’t lead to any big surprise or anything. Obviously a zombie, the guy was taller and way more buff than I am.  His skin tone is also traced with a bit of metallic silver coloring instead of just dead grey as well.  Wearing a uniform of a tunic and matching trousers, it comes off as kind of dashing. Except for the big sword hanging from his back, which is no doubt very real and very dangerous. “Cultivation… chamber?”  I manage to ask, although my voice is still really croaked.  At this point I’m just going to have to get used to being really wore out all the time.  Even with a max of 18 points of soul energy, it seems that it is only a pittance of what others can use.  I cannot even imagine the cost of what that pressure field outside the gate takes just to going like that. “Hm?  Oh, a cultivation chamber is a room specifically enchanted to help gather and purify soul energy.  These are for Silver Key members only, but we’d already gotten word that a surprising newbie was supposed to stop by.  Haha.” Okay, so that explained a bit, although the way the guy was laughing was starting to tick me off a little. “I’m Holdt, by the way.  And no, the suppression enchantment on the gate wasn’t targeting you.  It’s a general defensive enchantment against those targeting the Silver Key in general.  If you had been just walking down the street, nothing would have happened. Or if you had been wanting to come to one of us guards.  The enchantment is very specific.” Oh well, shit.  That bit of news just makes me grunt in frustration, and I cannot help but glare up at the fellow whom is grinning like it was a good joke or something.  Which I suppose it was, and my own misunderstanding. “That said, it does work as a good test all the same.  Never thought I’d see a new guy work out a physical enhancement ability like that.  So good work! Hahaha. I’ll leave you to rest up here now. I’ll be outside the door when you are done.  You still have to see the Silver Lord.” The big guy just waves merrily and walks out, causing the big stone door to slide shut behind him.  That left me and my frustrations all alone, but I can already feel the emotions fading fast. It was like I couldn’t hold onto the anger or anything for very long. Just as well, because I had more important things to do.  Like actually cultivate and regain my lost energy. Oh, and check my messages, given the flashing V icon flickering in my vision again.   [-Message Log-] [You have been Suppressed!  Resist failed! (x200+)] [Concentration has leveled up! (x3)] [Soul Energy Manipulation has leveled up! (x2)] [Body Reinforcement ability learned!] [Body Reinforcement has leveled up!] [You are exhausted! (x8)] [Exhaustion Resistance has leveled up!] [+1 maximum Soul Energy for repeated exhaustion. (x2)] [Feat performed: Under Pressure!] [+1 maximum Body, Mind, and Soul stats.] [New Title gained: Unpressured, Rank I.] [You are recuperating.]   [Unpressured, Rank I. - Title] [10% reduction in stresses caused by outside influences.] [10% increase in Concentration while under outside influences.] [10% increase in Manipulation skills while under outside influences.] [5% increase in learning Abilities and Skills while under outside influences.] [+5 maximum Soul Energy.] [This Title can be evolved.]   … and I stare.  And stare. And stare some more.  For a moment it was like my brain had froze up, because I really couldn’t understand what I was seeing.  It was like my expectations had been turned upside down, then body-slammed into the ground. Then out from the resulting crater crawled some sort of abomination that shined in some ho… Oh, can’t go saying that word.  Ugh. Anyway, you get the gist.  I just simply couldn’t understand it for what felt like hours and hours, but was closer to only a few minutes.  Especially that title, which is just freakin’ weird. Then I laugh, because why not?  I laugh and laugh myself ragged, curling up while clutching my sides.  And the subject of my laugh wasn’t even the title, which while cool, was totally put against the fact that I’d somehow managed to raise the MAXIMUM limit of my stats.  Which may not seem like much in the long run, until you realize that I’ve yet to start leveling up my rank or evolving. Going from 3 points of stats to 4 points may not seem like much, but it was the same as paying at least 100 Soul Energy points to level up to Rank D.  If I was understanding the conversion properly, because I could be wrong there. My guide Tod never did get into the math of what the actual cost was, only that I had to cultivate and increase my maximum energy to level up. I suppose I could have asked at the Guide’s Guild while I was there, thinking on it now.  I never did take advantage of any of their free services, either. Hmm~ Something I’ll have to try and keep in mind for later. Still, I work myself down from my nearly insane, even to my own ears, laughter before I reach out to the purified Soul Energy in this cultivation chamber.  It was far more dense than what I’d played with at the Guide’s Guild, and it responded easily to my pull. And again I’m left sighing out in pleasure as the energy soaks into my body, just not able to stop myself.  It really was like soaking in a warm bath. At the same time I feel that my ‘Newly Dead’ perk doesn’t have to kick in so strongly here either, as there is already a great filter keeping out all the other forms of energy I cannot use.  Yet. This allows me to split my focus on checking on my status while cultivating.   [-Personal Statistics-] [Name: -Locked-][Titles: Unpressured, Rank I.][Status: Civilian] [Racial Type: Dead | Zombie][Rank: F | Level: 1] [Soul Energy (SE): 3/25 (+)][Soul Points (SP): 5 (-Locked-)] [Body: 1/4 | +1 (10 SE)][Mind: 1/4 | +1 (10 SE)][Soul: 1/4 | +1 (10 SE)] [Feats: Over-Sight - Rank III. (14/40); Terror Resistance - Rank I. (23/25); Exhaustion Resistance - Rank VI. (9/150)(UP!)] [Abilities: Energy Sight - Rank VI. (63/150); Inspect - Rank II. (5/50); Charge - Rank II. (3/50); Body Reinforcement - Rank II. (35/100)(NEW!)] [Skills: Soul Energy Manipulation - Rank V. (12/125)(UP!); Energy Manipulation - Rank II. (4/50); Concentration - Rank V. (78/125)(UP!); Cultivation - Rank I. (52/100)] [Perks: Newly Dead][Detriments: Newly Dead]   Everything looks good on that side of things for the moment, although the new abilities and rank ups are a nice bonus.  Especially the increase in my stat and soul energy limits. Which are probably not being done in the proper way, but whatever.  This is working for me, although I feel like I’m stumbling onto shit rather than doing it in a good way. Eh, I blame my insect-like stats.  And probably more than a little luck, although I cannot count myself lucky. After dismissing my blue status screen I focus myself on really recouping my energy, reaching out for more and more of the soul energy around me.  Things pick up there, and I even close my eyes while concentrating, just allowing everything else to go so I can luxuriate in this great feeling. Hmmm, I really wanna stay this way for a while. But eventually I start to feel bloated and full, but unlike before I don’t lose concentration just because of the jarring feeling.  Instead I slowly let go of the surrounding free soul energy, and it quickly relaxes back into its natural state before I open my eyes and stand up.  Aaah, I really do feel much better now.   [Concentration has leveled up!] [Cultivation has leveled up!]   I have things to do though and people to see, happy with my efforts here.  Not to mention that bit of a bone to pick for making an ass of myself out in front of the gates.  Yeah, okay, so I’m still a bit annoyed at that. A little forewarning from anyone would have been nice, ya know? Making my way to the thick stone door to the cultivation chamber, it takes me a moment to find the slightly raised switch to open it up.  When I do I’m left standing nearly face to face with Holdt, who clearly has a surprised look. Which instantly makes me suspicious. “Done so soon?  Some of the newbies can take hours to fill up.”  Okay, so that explains that, allowing me to relax a bit before shrugging at him. “Soul Energy Manipulation, Concentration, and Cultivating skills.”  My own reply is rather telling, because Holdt’s eyes go really wide before he grins and then starts to laugh. “Oh boy, okay, so I can tell why you were sent this way.  Haha! It isn’t enough for you to perform those skills or abilities just once or twice in order to be granted them, you have to be able to figure out the trick and keep doing it to gain ranks!  And you’ve only been awakened what, two or three days? Shit man, that’s really impressive!” Holdt laughs and grins and then looks me up and down as if he’d found a treasure or something.  Far more intrusive than I am used to, I have to fight down the urge to cross my arms in front of my stomach for some odd reason.  Eeeh. Still, I do feel myself arching an eyebrow at the big grinning guard, unable to keep the somewhat-scowl off my face.  It really did feel like I was a child at this point, wandering around without understanding what I’m doing or why. All while everyone else watches on in apt amusement and a sort of cat-like curiosity.  Like playing with their food or something. “Holdt, two days.  I’ve been awake two days, and most of that was spent unconscious due to the Scourge attack.  I’ve gotten almost no explanations of what is going on, what I’m supposed to do, or even if these strange skills and abilities I’ve been getting actually mean anything. “I’ve been tossed around this place, here in Limbo, since the start.  And everyone seems highly amused at the fact. I’m a dead guy in a dead body that just happens to be thinking and walking around under his own power, with the stats that even a human baby couldn’t survive with.  So. I. Would. Really. Like. It. If. You. Could. Stop. Laughing. In. My. FACE!” Whaoh, it just all came out all at once.  I didn’t mean to rant or yell at the guy, but it did give me some real satisfaction to see that grin come off his face really quickly.  That and the look of fear that came into his eyes for a moment as he steps back two spaces or so. Then it was over, and I felt a lot better.  Holdt, on the other hand, actually looks somewhat sheepish as a hand comes up to rub the back of his head.  It seems my outburst had gone further than I’d expected. “Yeah, okay.  Sorry about that.”  Holdt says after a moment, holding up his hands.  Which was probably as much as a direct apology as I could expect to get out of the zombie.  “Look, everything is odd here in Limbo to begin with. I’m only a couple years awakened myself, and all of us go through the hazing period.  Newly awakened deaders don’t really have the intelligence or wisdom to be counted as ‘alive’. “It’s the ‘Newly Dead’ perk that’s keeping you going.  It suppresses your emotions in order to make sure you don’t go crazy due to your instincts.  Because of this newbies only have a few things they have to do before their 30 days are up. They have to cultivate, rank up, and invest in their stat points.  At least until they have 8 points in order to be counted as real thinking beings. Any less than that and they degrade to become frenzied undead, relegated to being corralled and controlled by necromancers.” Okay, so that really did explain a few things.  Which I’m thankful for. That and the fact that I now have a very real time limits.  It really doesn’t feel so good, now that I’ve really been told about it. At least I have some concrete answers to my questions now. “Thank you for explaining it to me.  So I really should be focusing on upping my stats right?”  I thank Holdt, who starts smiling again before nodding his head. “Exactly.  Or more specifically upping your stats at as low a rank as possible.  Preferably to the max of 10 points, not one higher or lower.” Holdt says then, although that leaves me scratching my head as to why.  Thankfully I’m not stuck waiting for long. “Anything below 10 points gives you a serious detriment depending upon the stat.  ‘Feeble’ for Body, ‘Dumb’ for Mind, and ‘Deadened’ for Soul. All three of which are really nasty to deal with and overcome.  And that’s only if you have 9 points. The ones for 8 points are even worse, and can take a really long time to get over. That’s because without the boosting nature of cultivating with the ‘Newly Dead’ perk, it takes far more effort to cultivate at those lowered levels.  Or doing much of anything really.” Holdt stops there, and starts mumbling to himself for a moment.  I don’t get what he’s saying, but he is also suddenly staring off into space above my head for some reason.  Ugh, is the guy crazy or something? Then he snaps back to me and lets out a big sigh all of a sudden. “It seems I’ll have to cut our conversation short here.  The Silver Lord is still waiting to meet you and made it abundantly clear that he’ll finish up the explanations.”  Holdt is now seeming much more serious, and I cannot help but feel that I got him into some trouble. I had no idea that Silver Lord had been watching us from wherever he was though. “Okay, thank you, Holdt.”  I say simply, shrugging my shoulders at the man.  Nothing to do about it for the moment. “Lead on.” Leading on Holdt does, and this time I’m actually able to take a good look about the place.  The building we are currently in is still made of black stone, which seems to be the local speciality.  Only this time the surfaces have been smoothed into a mirror shine, and every now and again I can vaguely make out flashes of light flowing along the stonework. This specifically seems to draw my attention, so while we are walking I activate my Energy Sight ability, letting me get a far better look.  And a look it is indeed, because my vision is suddenly shrouded in otherwise imperceptible light. Every stone is smooth and sleek on the outside, but their insides are all engraved and filled in with a something that is highly conductive to the soul energy running through them.  Even the mortar is speckled with that conductive substance, allowing the soul energy the ability to freely flow from one stone to all of its neighbors without hardly any resistance. Then moving my gaze, I can see the same sorts of engraved patterns everywhere.  It’s in the floors, the walls, and the ceiling. Even the windows, which have what seems to be normal glass, is marked in the same way.  The glass itself is conductive all its own, making me think that it might actually be the same sort of soul glass Tod had yesterday. The patterns though, that flow of soul energy… I’ve never seen anything like it.  It brought to mind descriptions of wiring and ‘electricity’, but I’m missing any sort of context on those faint memories.  All I know is that this building houses a colossal amount of power, and it is all being used for something or another. “Hells’ man, Energy Sight too?”  Holdt’s voice suddenly brings me back to the here and now, and I turn my gaze to the older zombie.  Doing so shows that his entire body is shrouded in soul energy, far more dense than I’d seen before.  Only it’s spread out evenly across his body, instead of being clumped up like the other zombies I’d seen at the Guide’s Guild. “How can you tell?”  I ask curiously, even as I scan him with my gaze.  It must have been a common enough thing though, because Holdt doesn’t even blink while looking over his shoulder at me. “Your eyes start glowing when you use the ability.  All of you magic types do, actually. As a rule of thumb, if you encounter someone with glowing eyes then it means they are using an ability that has to do with their eyes.”  Holdt says then, to which I nod and try to memorize. It is without doubt another piece of information that’s good to know. “Now I know why Silver Lord is so impatient to actually meet you.  Four abilities or skills, in not even two full days of awakening. That’s some insane learning speed there.”  Holdt sounds a bit dejected at that, and his broad shoulders actually fall. All I can do is laugh dryly though. “All I’ve been doing since awakening is trying things, Holdt.  Trying to move my soul energy around, trying to see the odd things I’ve been feeling.  Trying to grasp onto the energy all around me. Trying to run for my life or trying to reach the gates outside… I really try at everything.” There’s no easy way for me to describe it, but that’s really all I’ve been doing here for myself.  I’ve either been following directions of others or trying things out for myself. Two full days of doing just those two things really.  Yet I also feel that I want to try more. To do more things. I just don’t know why I feel that way. “Hmm.  Well, something to keep in mind.”  Holdt says after a moment of what I’d assume was thought on his part.  That just makes me chuckle, drawing his gaze back at me again. “Sorry, it’s just seems a little funny.  Here I am, the newbie, and yet you are asking about how or why I’ve been doing these things.  Tod, my awakening Guide, told me that sorcery is a type of magic based upon feeling and desire.  Yet I feel that all of my skills and abilities are the same. I want to go forward with them, using them, and desire an outcome with them… “It was like outside the gates, while being pressured.  I wasn’t really thinking, because I couldn’t. But I used what I had to do what I could to just take another step forward.  I’d actually used my ‘Charge’ ability while being suppressed to get an idea of what to do, and just went with it. Gained the ‘Body Reinforcement’ ability for my efforts, as well as bunch of other stuff.” I still do try to explain myself to Holdt, if only to actually explain it to myself.  In truth I still don’t know what Soul Energy is, or how or why it works the way it does.  Or this system the Voice has set up for everyone. Just too many questions and not nearly enough answers.  The feeling I have though is that it will all make sense later, and that there is more to it than what I’m seeing. “I just feel that the desire of wanting to do something counts very much toward actually being able to accomplish it.  Or maybe it’s just me.” I end with a bit of self-depreciation there, because who am I talking to? I’m just a newbie here in Limbo. But while we were talking I didn’t realize that we’d entered what appears to be a central hall.  Tall pillars reach toward the arched and domed ceiling high above, while the previous black stone has been replaced with colors of grey and red and purple, all in swirling patterns that draw the eye.  Even those colors are accented with gold and silver, the actual metals, which glint in the grey light produced by sconces mounted on the walls. I’d missed those on the walk earlier. The hall itself is just as engraved and coursing with power as the rest of the building seems to be.  To my Energy Sight, it was like the brightest and most colorful day a person could ever have. Almost too bright, to be honest. “Ho ho, it really seems that I’ve been given a gift this time.”  The sudden loud voice breaks me out of both the sightseeing and the conversation I was having with Holdt, both for two totally different reasons. First off, Holdt himself has dropped to one knee, bowing his head to the old man who’d just appeared.  Secondly because just a glance at the man was more than enough to make my eyes snap shut in pain, making me grimace and all but stumble back a step or two in recoil.  It was like a handful of needles had just been shoved into my damned eyeballs! Or they’d been ripped out of my skull and doused in acid while still connected to my brain.  Something painful like that. Just that single glance though answered my lingering questions though, because the old man was very much the Silver Lord of the Silver Key Magic Society.  If only because even as a zombie, the man was entire silver in color. Like he’d dipped his entire body in liquid silver metal and then let it soak all the way into his bones. Except it wasn’t metal.  It was Soul Energy, so highly refined and compressed that it’s very nearly a solid substance inside of his body.  And it all radiates power like a damned sun in my Energy Sight. Far too much, in fact. That makes the backlash from my Energy Sight none too pleasant at all.   [Over-Sight has leveled up!] [Energy Sight has leveled up!]   I honestly can’t even see the floating text messages that hang in front of my eyes when I finally do open them again a few moments later, as everything in my vision is just too blurry.  What I can make out though is a silver colored old man who is suddenly way too close for comfort. Staring at me like I was some sort of exotic critter, to boot. Not creepy at all, right?  Especially with those glowing eyes, that really stand out as my vision starts to clear. “Hmm hmm… Yes indeed.  Energy Sight, Soul Energy and Energy Manipulation, Concentration, and Exhaustion Resistance.  Good. Really good!” The old man starts talking again, although rather it is to himself or to others I can’t tell.  He seems way too excited though, especially because it seems like he is reading my own damned status! When I take another step back though he takes one forward, still staring and leaving me getting gradually less creeped out and more freaked out instead.  So much so that I hold up my hands to try to widen the distance. Yet I’d barely even opened my mouth as well when his eyes suddenly widden and I could swear that I saw a flicker of blue in his otherwise silver gaze. “Unpressured?!  A Title!” Glad I’m not the only one who had to pick their jaw almost literally off the ground, because Holdt had about fallen over himself as he jerked around at the Silver Lord’s yell.  Which means I now have two guys staring at me in amazement. “Cut that out already!  Hell, if you wanted to know my status I could have just told you!”  I end up yelling at the old man, snapping a bit. Eccentricities are something I am definitely not able or willing to deal with right now, damn it all. My yell does the trick though, because the Silver Lord jerks back and Holdt has a slightly forlorn look on his face while watching the two of us.  Shit, it’s like everyone is a spectator to this damned sport here. Ugh. “Ah, my apologies.  It isn’t often that I get to Gaze at such a promising newbie.”  The old man says then, straightening himself up and reaching up as if to stroke a beard that isn’t there.  In fact his fingers are already spread and in the motion before he suddenly stops, chagrin at the fact. Heh.  Seems I’m not the only one with embarrassing issues. I just manage to hide my snicker though. “I’ve been getting that a lot apparently.  Doing things others are either told not to do or just fumbling my way around.  And yes, I got the title after walking through that enchantment on the front gate.”  My voice comes out a bit colder than I would have wanted, but I’m rather already tired of all of this.  Maybe it’s time for a nap, even though I don’t feel physically tired at all. Still, the old man, this Silver Lord just laughs it off and waves the issue away.  At the same time he turns to Holdt and motions for the man to get up. No use in standing on ceremony or the like at this point, I guess. “It’s fine, it’s fine.  You could say that hazing the newbies is the national pastime of Limbo in general.  You are rather close of having a frenzie though, so I’ll spread the word to let the others know to back off.”  Silver Lord says then, as if utterly unperturbed. Except I’m not, especially when he mentions ‘having a frenzie’, which doesn’t sound good.  It showed too, because my glance to Holdt is intercepted rather quickly by the old man. It was probably written all over my face or something at this point. “Don’t worry too much about it.  A frenzie happens when your emotional limit is reached while under the effect of the ‘Newly Dead’ perk.  Suppressing your emotional state isn’t the same as getting rid of it, after all. You’d just go crazy for a little while.  Happens to most newbies.” Okay, that’s a bit of a relief.  Like, I really don’t want to go feral or anything.  I’d much rather be thinking and dead emotionally than otherwise, you know?  Becoming a shambler zombie simply because I couldn’t stay in control would suck quite badly. “Thank you, Silver Lord.”  I finally say, giving a rather sloppy bow to the man whom is once more trying to stroke a beard that isn’t there.  This time he doesn’t catch the action though. “I also performed a feat, ‘Under Pressure’, which boosted my maximum stat point limit from 3 to 4 to go along with that title.  I currently have a maximum of 25 soul energy points as well. None of them bought with cultivation.” That last bit comes out a little bitter on my end, given the sheer exhaustion I’ve had to go through to gain those points. “Oooh?  That’s something I cannot see with my Gaze.  Much like your Energy Sight, it only shows what’s on the surface, as it were.  Abilities and Skills are fairly easy, as are Titles; but Feats and stat details are not.  We need a Person Scrying Stone to get your full status recorded.” Silver Lord says then. “Alright.  First though, do we have some place where we can sit and speak?  I’ve either been bedridden, carried around, or on my feet since I was awakened yesterday.  I’d really like to be able to sit down and go over what I should have been told before.” Okay, so maybe that came out more of a plea than anything, but I don’t really care.  Today has just been crazy from the get-go. “Sure, sure.  You come along too, Holdt.  I’m assigning you as this one's’ proctor for now.”  The old man says then, before turning and all but gliding away across the great halls’ floor.  I have to hurry to catch up with the evolved Silver Zombie, and Holdt himself is only a step or two behind me.  I have no idea what a proctor is, but Holdt is all but grinning ear to ear when I glance back at him. Still, it seems we are in for another bit of a walk, and I take the time to quiet my thoughts and emotions.  This rollercoaster ride was really starting to get to me. Although I have no idea what a rollercoaster is. Ugh.  Just another thing to add to my list of annoyances. Starting from the beginning, I died.  No clue how, or why. No clue of what sort of life I lived before, except it was a mortal one and that of a human.  Limbo seems to be a place solely for the human dead, after all. I awakened as a zombie, which is the most balanced of the options possible.  With a real meat-and-bone body, I have a balanced set of stats in comparison to the others.  Both Skeletons and Ghost types have a harder time reaching their max. Which is a good thing for me.  On the other hand nothing has gone the way it was supposed to. Running into the Scourge really seemed to throw everything off.  Tod and George, the devils’ from the Guide’s Guild were taking us to Helen City in order to talk and explain more before it all went to shit.  In fact I really should have asked Tresk, the Kriti I’d met, where I could find one of the two. But thoughts like that are fleeting for me right now, no doubt a side effect of my low stats. Then there was all this trouble here at the Silver Key.  That suppression enchantment was a nasty piece of work, although I get the feeling it only felt that way because of how weak I am.  It’s probably meant more as a deterrent than a solid defense itself. Against what, I have no idea though. At least Holdt seems like a good enough guy.  Silver Lord though… I’m really not sure. He’s way too eccentric for me right now.  Tresk seemed to trust him, so I’ll just have to deal with it for now. So long as I can keep myself in check, in any case. All the same, the growing sense of frustration and stagnation is really starting to grind on me.  It was like I really wanted more. To do more and explore more and go out and experience more. Yet I don’t know why.  Why the feeling is slowly building up or why it is so important to me. Just thinking about it brings on one of those nasty memory headaches, which I grimace through silently.  It isn’t hard, as Silver Lord himself is quite happy to hum as he walks along and Holdt doesn’t seem the sort to be overly talkative in higher company. Thus with my thoughts swirling around in this manner we are finally brought to a room closed off by a pair of double doors.  Made of some sort of ebony wood, they almost match the surrounding black stone. Except for the intricate carvings etched into them.  Circles and geodesic patterns that feel strong to the point of being overbearing, obviously enchanted. I don’t even need to use my sight to figure out that much. Silver Lord simply waves his hand in front of the doors to cause them to open though, revealing a room that is lavishly decorated and arranged as a sitting room for guests or company.  All the furniture is craft of rich woods and stuffed leather, while the light comes from a sparkling crystal chandelier hanging from the vaulted ceiling. The light is soft and golden, in comparison to the usual silver I’ve seen thus far. “Here we go.  This is my personal sitting room, so take a seat.”  Silver Lord says then even as he moves into the room, walking over to a large cabinet placed against the back wall.  Glancing at it, I find that it’s filled with bottles. Wine or other sorts of alcohol, perhaps. I do move to take a seat though, a bit gingerly as I test the cushions.  They are soft and surprisingly comfortable, and I almost sigh as I sink into the damned things.  Holdt on the other hand barely contains himself and bounces onto the cushion beside me, causing the sofa to shift a bit. “Hmm, where to start…”  Silver Lord says then as he returns with a bottle and a set of glasses.  He isn’t holding them though, as they just sort of float around in front of him as he moves to take a seat across from us. “How about where Holdt left off earlier?  He was telling me about the detriments of not having my stat points up to 10 before my 30 days of ‘Newly Dead’ are up.”  I ask, pointing out the first of the things I really wanted to know about. “Yes, Holdt was doing a good job with that.”  The old man agrees with a nod. “Okay, so getting stats below 10 are bad, but getting stats above 10 can be just as frustrating.  Us scholars call the issue ‘Soul Flux’. Soul Flux happens during the true awakening because most deaders were humans of average ability and intellect.  Their stats while alive were only 10 points or so, and suddenly being empowered beyond that limit can cause a variety of issues once those memories are unlocked in your current form. “It is like a child suddenly gaining the strength of an adult.  Only it isn’t just limited to physical strength. Magical prowess is directly tied to the mind and soul, after all, and is something most living humans have never experienced before.  It can be toxicating, frightening, and any number of other emotions all at once. “There is all of that.  Then there’s the issue that your current body is not YOUR body.  In fact, all the random bodies, skeletons, and gore you’ll find out in Limbo aren’t and never were living bodies to begin with.  They are manifestations of Soul Energy given form by Limbo itself. And your soul has spent its entire existence being inside just your own body.  That shapes your soul just as much as your memories do. So there is a disjoint at that point. All of which lead to Soul Flux.” Wow, so the old man really knows how to talk and explain such things.  I can see why he’s a magical researcher. Or at least tries to. If I remember correctly, Tresk said the Silver Lord was more apt at administration though.  So maybe he’s just good at talking. “So the issue isn’t that being stronger is bad when the memories are unsealed, but that going from average and alive to being stronger and very much dead has a strong effect on the soul.”  I try to boil it down, and get a nod and a smile for my efforts. That’s good then. “Just about, yes.  Every undead alive in Limbo has to deal with some form of Soul Flux after their 30 days are up.  Crying uncontrollably tends to be a rather common occurrence.” Silver Lord says then, giving a sly look to Holdt beside me.  Holdt, for all his previous excitement, suddenly flushes in obvious embarrassment, making both myself and Silver Lord laugh a bit at his expense. “Still, the reactions get progressively worse the more powerful your stats are when it happens.  Mental breakdowns are rather common, as are hysterics. No one wants to believe they have died, after all, even if they were granted this new form of living.  The worse case however is that the soul rejects their body outright, which can cast them out as a ghost.” That last part sounds bad, and Holdt is solemnly nodding his own head at that. “I saw a newbie do just that just this past year.  Training here in the Silver Key as a magic user, just like you.  When his 30 days were up, his Soul and Mind stats had already surpassed 10.5, spawning several new attributes.  He didn’t just become a ghost though, but a Banshee. We had to put him down before he, -she-, caused too much harm.”  Holdt breaks in there, which causes Silver Lord to grimace a bit at the memory. Oh, damn.  That sounds bad.  But what really gets my attention is the ‘she’ part in Holdt’s words.  That makes me blink at the guy. “Wait, that newbie was a woman?”  Okay, so maybe it could have been put more delicately, but both Holdt and Silver Lord just break out laughing at the surprise in my voice. “Haha.  Yes. You see, only Ghost have a definitive gender when they are newly awakened.  Mostly because it reflects their true soul form. Zombies and Skeletons are both considered without gender until your ‘Newly Dead’ perk ends.”  Silver Lord explains then, a bit of mirth still etched on his lips. “You see, this is part of the process.  Your body right now is generic, in every sense of the word.  You look like a man, but without any striking features or muscle definition.  I’m not sure if your Guide’s ever mentioned it, but your body right now is rather mutable.  You could become a skeleton or a ghost, or even regain another zombie body should things go that direction.   “That mutability changes into a fixed form when the perk ends, and your soul is seated properly into your body.  You are responding well as a male though, so I assume that you were a guy in your previous life.” Silver Lord says then, actually grinning a bit. All I could do is shrink my neck, because that really explained a few things.  Like why all the newbie zombies I’d seen at the Guide’s Guild all looked the same.  Not exactly the same, but every one of them was grey skinned and without any striking or definitive features.  In comparison both Silver Lord and Holdt had much more individuality. “So being too strong at that point can be a bad thing, just as much as being too weak.”  Silver Lord brings the conversation back around, and I just shake my head to get my thoughts back into order while listening to him. “On the other hand, Holdt also mentioned the fact that you want to be as low Ranked as possible when you do hit those limits.  The reason for that is mainly two fold. The first is that your body will change with each rank up, becoming more and more different from this base generic form.  This just makes it harder for your soul to seat properly, thus causing Soul Flux. The second is because you will be missing out on a whole lot of evolution options that unlock at lower Ranks.” Now that is something I really want to know more about.  Tod had mentioned evolutions and the like before, but there is a very real lack of detail in his description.  Which is why I sit up straighter on the sofa and wait somewhat expectantly, bringing even more amusement to Silver Lord. “Yes yes, an exciting topic without a doubt.”  He starts slowly, then laughs out loud when I actually flip him the finger.  “Okay, I’ll get on with it, hold your galva lizards.” Silver Lord clears his throat then.  No clue what galva lizards are, either. “Evolutions are a natural progression that happens when a person fulfills specific requirements.  Those of us native to Limbo all start on the same level, as a part of a dead race and Rank F. Starting at Rank D, you get the option to evolve, assuming you meet the requirements.  The most basic example for you would be going from a regular Zombie to an Elite Zombie. “Elite Zombies require 4 points in your three starting stats, and a defining skill or ability you excel in.  A skill or ability at least Rank V, as the case may be. Which is pretty easy to achieve, given that you don’t have to evolve as soon as you Rank up.  You can put it off until any point before you Rank up again. Evolving in that case resets both your Race and your Rank to their base. You’d become an Elite Zombie, of Rank F level 1.” Silver Lord stops there, and I start bobbing my head in a nod showing that I’ve been listening.  I really can’t say anything about it though, because I simply don’t know what to think about the whole thing.  Ranking up and evolving seems simple, but I know for a fact that it is anything but. Still, my studious listening seems to please Silver Lord, who smiles and continues on. “By evolving into an Elite Zombie, your maximum stat limit is increased by two points and you’ll gain a one time boost to your defining skill or ability.  So from 4 points to 6. At the same time though you will have to spend twice the cost to level up your rank, and you will be unable to evolve again at Rank D.  Your next step will only be available at Rank C, including its much more harsh requirements. That, and besides being a bit stronger, there are no other perks to evolving into an Elite Zombie.” Once more Silver Lord stops there, only because he’s suddenly interrupted.  When he’d sat down, he’d seemingly forgotten about the bottle and glasses he’d brought along, which had been floating around his seat this entire time.  Until now, that is, because the bottle had bumped into the back of his head with enough force to cause a slightly metallic ‘dong’ sound. Which catches Holdt totally off guard, making him burst out laughing at the scowling expression Silver Lord shoots the misbehaving bottle. It really did seem as whatever magic he was using has its own sense of humor though, cause when Silver Lord tried to grab the bottle, it flew away from him and was bobbing up and down as if laughing itself.  It was just so unexpected and amusing that even I chuckle at the sight. “Blasted spirit magic…”  Silver Lord spits out as he shakes his head and motions to the coffee table set between our seats, seeming to force the offending bottle and glasses to float over and sit themselves down.  “Really convenient, but with a Hell’s mind of its own.” Oooh, it does seem that Silver Lord can grumble with the best of them! “Here, have a drink.  Just a sip at a time though, this stuff is potent.”  Silver Lord says then, bringing us around to the drink he deftly pours into the glasses.  Only about a quarter full for each of us though. The liquid itself is such a deep red that it is very nearly black, but I can’t smell anything about it even when I take the glass offered. In fact the glass is much more interesting to me at this point, because just touching it allows me to feel the gentle currents of soul energy inside of it.  Thus the drinking glass itself is made of a single piece of Soul Glass, and probably very very expensive all its own. Which leaves me to wonder just how much it really costs.  A small vial seemed to be quite the expense for Tod yesterday after all. Still, there is little point in dallying.  Raising the glass to my lips, I gently sip the contents.  And am instantly reminded that my sense of taste has been dulled this entire time since my awakening, because what hits my tongue suddenly sets a damned fire to the whole of my mouth.  Almost literally, because what I’m forced to swallow isn’t liquid by the time it reaches the back of my throat. Instead it is a very rich and pure form of distilled Soul Energy that wastes no time at all in drilling into my stomach and then through the rest of my body. Thankfully Holdt sitting beside me is just the same, cause his face goes as red as mine feels it is.  That and the smoke leaking from between his lips and out his nose and ears. I have little doubt it’s the same for me too.  Silver Lord by comparison simply seems to be enjoying his glassful as it were some fine wine or something.   [Distilled Soul Energy ingested!] [+1 maximum Soul Energy.]   Wooooooo!  That’s really a rush, as that fiery feeling just runs right through my body, agitating my own reserves of Soul Energy until they all but boil over inside of my body.  Then there’s a sort of feeling of ‘expansion’, and my maximum goes up. That leaves me a bit wild eyed, while Holdt seems a little chest fallen. Silver Lord on the other hand is amused and chuckling to himself, still holding his glass and drinking it far more easily than either of us in front of him. “This drink is called Red Soul, and it is a liquor produced from Demon Grain that’s distilled by a high ranked alchemist using energy from soul stones.  Highly refined, it can actually be taken as a tonic or potion to quickly replenish your soul energy reserves. Or enjoyed as a good liquor that it is.” Yeah, probably more information than I needed right now.  But it doesn’t stop me from taking another sip. This makes me endure the burning sensation all over again.   [Distilled Soul Energy ingested!] [+1 maximum Soul Energy.]   Shit, at this point I’m wondering where I can get some of my own.  Red Soul is all but spoiling me at this point, even though I am worried a bit about the cost.  Just about everything in Silver Key screams of wealth and resources. Far more than the Guide’s Guild did, at any rate. “Ah, good stuff.” Silver Lord finally finishes up his glass, but I cannot even take another sip just yet.  My insides are still burning at this point. “Now then, back onto the topic at hand.  You want to reach 10 points in your stats, as low a Rank as possible.  Without evolving. Most newbies never get that far, due to limits of time or resources.  The Guide’s Guild does good work for what it does, but they are rather limited all the same. “But you, my dear newbie, have already learned the real secret of reaching that point.  Through training and performing feats recognized by the Voice, you can gain increases in your maximum stat limits without ever ranking up at all.”  At that point Silver Lord is actually pointing at me with his free hand, a wide grin on his face and a somewhat crazed look in his eyes. “Pushing your limits is the only way to do it.  And this works not just with physical feats either.  Intellectual feats or feats of skill work just as well.  Until you reach the 10 point limit and your stats start spawning, any feat you perform will give you a maximum boost in all three!  This is a secret revealed only to the smartest, most skilled, or luckiest of newbies! “It is also why the Silver Key Magic Society is still so small compared to others, because it costs real resources and money to be trained in this manner.  Yet I do not recruit anyone but those who can do what you did very much by accident. Holdt, tell him.” Silver Lord’s sudden aggressive words really shock me there, as well as the secret itself.  That was huge information all its own, and for a moment I feel kind of rueful and pitying to everyone who never learned of it until later.  If only for a moment. I have too much focus and perhaps even ambition in my soul to regale others so highly for long. “Yes, Silver Lord.”  Holdt joins the conversation at that point, turning to look at me.  “I was newly awakened three years ago, and like you I was brought to Helen City by a Guide from the Guide’s Guild.  Their introduction was proper, but I was hot blooded and didn’t like the crowds that constantly swarm inside the Guild itself.  So after learning a few fighting skills with the great sword I left the Guide’s Guild to explore Helen City itself. “I wandered the whole of the city for days, cultivating in dark alleys and meeting all sorts of people.  I eventually made my way to the neighborhood here outside of the Silver Key. At the same time though I’d angered several of the small criminal groups around the city, stepping into messes I had nothing to do with, trying to help or settle disputes, things like that.” At this point Holdt stops and takes a breath, before looking toward Silver Lord who in turn nods in approval.  It seems that something was more than what was being said, but I get the gist of it thus far anyway. It isn’t my place to pry, one way or another. “The Silver Key has always been a small to medium Society here in the city.  It has almost no reputation in the city at large outside of a few magical circles.  Even the Wizard’s Tower ignores the Silver Key, if only because Sir Silver Lord himself is rather powerful.”  Okay, that’s all good to know, and I nod in understanding toward Holdt. “Anyway, I’d wandered down the street here outside the front gate pretty much by accident.  About two hundred feet away from the gate though I was ambushed by several of the groups I’d angered during my days of roaming.  They proceeded to beat me, right out there in the open.” At this point Holdt has a somewhat distant, slightly sad, and frustrated look on his face.  The emotions mix back and forth, before he shrugs his shoulders and sets them aside. What replaces them is a somewhat happy smile of fondness or the like.  I cannot tell. “A random passerby tried to break up the fight, and was knocked down and hurt in the attempt.  I ended up standing over her prone form and fought back. I’d yet to reach Rank D, but I’d maxed out all of my stats and had a decent enough skill in the great sword to hold most of them at bay for a while.  Until one of the goons shot me with a crossbow bolt center mass.” Holdt stops there, and instead pulls up his tunic, revealing a rather ghastly wound nearly centered in his chest.  Only instead of scar tissue, the wound had been filled in with the nearly same silver metal that appears to make up Lord Silver’s body.  And the expanded veins of silver that run into Holdt’s own body. “The shot almost threw me to the ground, but I held my stance and kept fighting.  Eventually all the yelling and skulduggery attracted attention, and the Silver Key guards arrived and put down the fight in short order.  The woman who I’d been defending spoke up for me, given that she lives just down the street so the Silver Key guys brought me in to treat my wounds. “It was at that point that Sir Silver Lord himself showed up to ask what all the fuss was about.  He used his Gaze ability to check my condition and realized that I’d performed two different feats very much by accident.  ‘Defender’ and ‘Last Stand’, which netted me two more stat points. I was recruited into the Silver Key after they patched me up, and have remained here ever since my true awakening.” Oh boy, it really seems that Holdt had gone through quite a bit himself.  Still, those two feats sound interesting. Silver Lord on the other hand has a smile that’s like a kid having a favorite toy in his grasp.  A bit unnerving, truth be told. Which is why I promptly ignore it. “Yep.  That’s basically how I recruit everyone for the Silver Key.  The kids either bring themselves to my attention or they get sent my way by those who are in the know.  Tresk himself promised that you were quite promising, and that praise seems rather apt.” Silver Lord himself takes over again here, giving Holdt a grin before turning back to me. “But Tresk had originally said that he suspected you had already performed such a feat.  That’s why he sent you this way to begin with. Yet you’d only gained ‘Under Pressure’ at the gate.”  Silver Lord points this out, and I blink before a light bulb goes off in my head. “Ah!  Yeah, before I left the Guide’s Guild, still in the medical ward.  I was cultivating for the first time and started kind of playing around with the energies the ‘Newly Dead’ perk was keeping away from me.  The Voice said I’d performed a ‘Partial Feat: Accidental Purification’.” I explain to Silver Lord, who perks up and listens before nodding his head.  At the same time his hand comes up to stroke that imaginary beard, and I cannot help but wonder if he’d once had a long beard in his past life or something.  Or if he had just recently gotten rid of the thing. “That explains it then.  Partial Feats are simply incomplete.  Either by not having enough knowledge or were brought out of the state before it was accomplished.  It’s held in reserve though, so you can complete it at any time afterwards. ‘Accidental Purification’ though, huh?  Already looking into cultivating without the ‘Newly Dead’ perk then?” Heh, it was like Silver Lord could see right through what was on my mind at the time.  Or rather, what the result would be. I had just been playing with the power during that time, after all.  I had wanted more Soul Energy, and thus stripped it from all the other energies already being held outside of my body.  Explosive, and dangerous, to be sure. It was effective though. “Ah, well, we can deal with that later then.”  Silver Lord says then, and for a moment I’m all but petrified by the grin he’s suddenly showing.  Part maniacal, part cruel, and part very much sadistic. Even Holdt scoots back in the seat beside me at the sight of it. “Now you should go ahead and finish your drink, my boy.  Afterwards we will discuss the training I’m going to put you through.  And you already have a very good basis, with that Exhaustion Resistance and the fact that you’ve yet to buy a single point in Soul Energy capacity yourself.  Hahaha, hehehe…” Okay, that laugh is really, really creepy and a quick glance at Holdt tells me that it is only going to get worse. The guy is basically pale as a ghost and is actually sweating while watching Silver Lord. “Hehe… You even have the Title of Unpressured.  That just makes it more exciting! I’ll jack up the gravity and energy suppression enchantments and see how far you can go… Yes, that’ll work just perfectly.  Hmm… Need something for Energy Sight too, and Concentration of course… Oh, all the options!” Oh shit.  Did I really just come to the home of a crazy guy?  Tresk, I swear, I may just strangle you if these fears prove true!  And I don’t think I’ll ever get that crazy laughter out of my head.  Damn it all.   Announcement Here it is, Chapter 03~  I hope you guys enjoy it! As always feel free to leave messages, comments, and critiques!  Also ratings and reviews, for those of you with constructive thoughts on my story here.  Lol. Chapter 04 will be out sometime tomorrow or the day after.  I'm all caught up now and am several pages into writing the next chapter, so it'll be posted when it gets done and not a moment before.  Haha. Have a good day!

The stage was set, and the cameras were already rolling.  In fact the entire was being broadcasted live, from start to finish.  Which didn’t seem to mean much to the well dressed, handsome middle-aged man whom is shamelessly flirting with the lovely young journalist sitting across from him. Which, surprisingly, is to the vast amusement of both the live studio crowd and those watching.  Temika Astruff is a rather new journalist on the news scene, but even with only a year or so under her belt she’s already very popular.  Her good looks are only part of the reason, to boot. With deep ebony skin so flawless and smooth it almost looks oiled, her sharp features just match dreamily with those upturned green eyes and soft pink-painted lips, which seem just so slightly pouty even when she’s smiling.  Probably due to the fact that her lips are fuller than they had any honest right to be. To a far older audience, her appearance would just scream that she’s of native African descent, being nearly absolutely perfect in both curves and stature.  The pinnacle of what a human woman could be. Especially dressed in that professional woman’s hot suit in a fabulous grey and beige coloring that just contrasts nicely with her skin.  In truth she far outlooks the man sitting across from her. And yet for all of Temika’s charm and popularity, everyone’s attention is most definitely on her guest.  The reason for that is really two fold. The first is because of the man’s identity, and the second is because of this news program itself. “Mr. Johanne, do I need to remind you that we are streaming live right now?”  Temika giggles, going so far as to flash a wink at the camera in good jest. Although no one can really tell if she’s really into the flirting or not.  Her professional image is just too perfect. “Please, Temika, just call me Lucas.  I work in the game industry, after all.  No need to be all stiff and formal.” The man says, a slight grin gracing his features before he also turns to look at one of the nearby cameras.  “And if the public wants to watch, then why shouldn’t I give them a show? It isn’t any different from the paid programming found in the 700 channels of the Gal-Net.” That comment gets a roe out of both the crowd and Temika herself, given that everyone understands the very thinly veiled reference to the ‘Adult Entertainment’ channels found on public broadcasts these days.  Pay-per-View is definitely a thing of the past, although you do still have to pay for the privilege. And be of age. But that’s just to show how much things have changed since humanity began its mass exodus from Earth several centuries ago.  The rapid growth in population, advances in sciences and technology, and the nearly complete Irreligiousness that came as a response to harsh times founding colony worlds far from home all worked to change the way society and morals used to be.  In fact, the only place where religion still has any sway is on Earth itself. “Hehe.  I had heard that you were quite the womanizer, Lucas, but I admit that I didn’t expect you to be this incogrital.  Thankfully there is already plenty of debate on rather or not it is all a facade. Being one of the most wealthy, and arguably powerful men on the corporate scene in all the United Planets; you yet have no spouse.  Neither registered in marriage, or as a mistress. Not even a lover has ever been hinted at.” Temika was smooth in bringing the subject back around, touching lightly upon probably the most engaging topic.  Or at least the gossip of it. Lucas himself just smiles though, not even bothering to respond to the questions hidden within. “In any case, let’s get down to brass tacks, as they use to say.”  Lucas says then, straightening up in his seat and taking on a much more professional look.  The change was quite jarring, and almost everyone watching unconsciously sat up straighter as well.  It just goes to show how much ‘presence’ Lucas Johanne has. “Of course, Lucas.”  Temika also steps it up, smiling at the camera again.  “As you all know, I’m sitting here with Lucas Johanne, CEO and co-Founder of Astarte Entertainment, Inc.  Astarte is the current forerunner of the commercial gaming industry, specializing in both equipment research and game development. “Starting with the hit classic game ‘Voyager’s Age’ in the 2070’s using the then-recently developed Virtual Immersion Helmet, Astarte Entertainment has pushed the boundaries of technical innovation, virtual reality and immersion technology, and game design.  All while stepping clear of the complex political situation predating the Exodus in the early 2100’s. “And today Lucas Johanne is here to finally release the first details of their newest project.  Obviously code-named ‘Project Titan’, this is the first time Astarte has released any information for public consumption.  Even more so than usual, there has been very little gossip or hearsay. You’ve really kept the lid on tight with this one, Lucas.” Temika’s introduction is very smooth yet rich with detail, all of which is spoken softly yet confidently by the popular journalist.  Even Lucas himself nods slightly in appreciation to the woman’s skill. And perhaps a bit of worry that she may actually take his flirting to heart. “Thank you, Temika.  Project Titan was started some seventeen years ago as a test bed for the latest Dive Pod and Virtual Integration technologies.  It later ballooned into what it is today. Which, I am happy to announce, is the first public information release on our latest IP.”  Lucas starts from that point, before pointing to the previously unused ‘back wall’ of the studio. Which suddenly blossoms to life in a mosaic of color and forms, until eventually words make their way to the fore.  Reading ‘TARTARUS ONLINE’, the background resolves itself into an inky blackness punctuated with several planet-like landscapes floating both near and far from each other.  The details are intentionally fuzzy however, leaving each world floating only in their primary colors. “Tartarus Online, the biggest VRMMOG ever created.”  Lucas says then, his voice almost whisper soft as he stares up at the big words glowing a verdant orange against the black background.   “It isn’t just a roleplaying game, because there aren’t any roles.  No classes, no archetypes, no limits. It is a true virtual reality, spanning worlds just as vast as any of the planets humanity has colonized in the past two hundred years.”  His words are spoken in a quiet cadence, almost in self-awe of what he helped to create. A true glimpse of emotion behind his usual professional facade. For a moment even Temika seems taken by Lucas’ current demeanor, staring with somewhat wide eyes.  The current man was far different from the flirt, or even the professional businessman of only moments before.  It quite literally made a blush appear on her cheeks, which her dark skin tone only just helps to conceal. Then she gives a soft cough after swallowing the lump in her throat, and it was like the spell was broken, bringing Lucas back to the present.  At least he seems honestly bashful about his graff in front of a live audience, although he does just laugh it off with a chuckle. “Ah, yes, excuse me.  Tartarus Online is a massive virtual reality game built around the basis of old Earth’s religions and mythologies.  Where civilizations are built upon the bones of those that came before them, so to are myths and religions the same.  And Tartarus Online will allow players to experience it all for themselves, although naturally the strictly religious tones have been reduced as not to antagonize any group or person.” Lucas has finally gotten around to the real topic of today’s broadcast, and thus the uncountable number of fans from dozens of different planets, moons, and space stations are watching and hanging on his every word.  That said, quite a few are put off by the talk of religion, but Lucas’ smooth manner soothes those ruffled feathers quite easily. For the moment at least. “That, of course, is in what is considered either a ‘mythology’ or a ‘religion’.  Religions have always been a touchy subject, because belief and faith are powerful human motivators.  But mythology is what religions used to be before they died. Yet even today we still see aspects of those previous creations.  I believe the virtual movie ‘Star Vikings’ was just nominated for several Earth Premier Rewards, actually.” The crowd laughs along with Lucas at that slightly snide remark.  You could almost cut the sarcasm with a knife as well. ‘Star Vikings’ is a movie released by a competing company of Astarte’s, and the movie itself was actually lambasted as being a total bastard child.  Like that old red-headed step-child that people like to step on. Thus the ‘Worst Movie Production’ Reward for the solar year was likely in the bag for ‘Star Vikings’. “In any case, Tartarus Online is a totally new take on the traditional VR-RPG formula.  In fact, the first month of beta testing was just wrapping up yesterday, so there will likely be more information released to the public shortly.”  Lucas finishes up there, smiling at both Temika and to the cameras. Yet his sudden stop really throws everyone for a loop.  There isn’t any gameplay video being shown, no information on the world itself, no details of races or classes or anything.  It was like Lucas Johanne just put a break on the previously moving freight train; resulting in instant bedlam. The live studio audience gets so loud that the viewers of the program can actually hear them yelling at each other over the studio cameras.  All while Lucas smiles and shoots a wink at Temika, reverting back to his previous easy-going way. Thankfully Temika is able to keep he own smile, although she does give Lucas a slightly aggrieved look before shrugging a shoulder.  No one could force Lucas to reveal anything he didn’t want to, after all. Even if it left her to pick up the pieces as the audience has its own version of a nuclear meltdown. “Thank you for that, Lucas.  It does seem that Tartarus Online will be a great thing going forward.  That said, actually putting out some real information on the game itself would have been nice.  No doubt the audiences at home are foaming at the mouth and no doubt wishing to rip you a new one for being so nonchalant about it.” Okay, so maybe Temika Astruff wasn’t against some petty revenge.  Although she does it with a smile, which just makes Lucas himself grin at her.  A look that is surprisingly boyish, like he’d just pulled off a good bit of mischief himself.  Which is saying something for a man of his true age. “Not a problem, Temika.  As everyone knows, we at Astarte Entertainment aim to please above all else.  And I have, in fact, spoken quite a bit about what the game will be about. In what form that takes though is for me to know and the rest of you to find out later.  The first month of beta testing is just coming to an end, and the next two-month segment will begin in a week. After that game information will start coming out in real detail.  But not a moment before.” That seemed to appease the viewers, although it left Temika to give Lucas a hot look.  Which looks rather nice all its own, and thus screenshots of her staring at him will likely be splashed across other news screens and online chat boards within minutes.  Lucas could almost imagine it, with a title like ‘Temika’s Cute Angry Glare’ or some such. Hehe. Quite amusing, to say the least. “Fine, fine.  We here at Gaming Direct News can take a hint.  Astarte has always been a bit crazy about their releases, so I’ll just chalk this one up to another one of your crazy schemes.”  Temika actually lets out a little sigh there, which makes Lucas laugh again. “Don’t feel that bad about it, hun.  There is one more announcement I’ll be making here before we wrap up for the day.”  Lucas says in a placating manner, although it doesn’t stop the twinkling of amusement from flashing in his dark eyes. “The current round of beta testers aren’t just testing the game for us.  We at Astarte have developed a long-term immersion pod and matching headset just for Tartarus Online, which the beta testers are also using.  Each and every beta tester currently in Tartarus Online are those with medical disabilities of the incurable or the prohibitively expensive kind.  A key aspect to this development however is that Astarte Entertainment has finally broken the 12-to-1 time dilation issue.” An audible gasp goes out across the live crowd, and even Temika herself is obviously surprised.  Honestly so. Which is of little surprise, given that the issue in question has been one of the most complexing of all problems with virtual reality technology.  Regardless of rather it’s in a game world, or Augmented Reality, time dilation has always been a decisive factor. When virtual reality tech first came out, a game could get maybe 2:1 or 3:1 time ratio.  Meaning that for every real-world hour, a person could experience 2 hours or 3 hours of expanded time.  That number steadily increased over the years as the technology was advanced and refined, until it peaked over a hundred years ago.  Twelve hours to one hour was the peak. The insurmountable limit. The human brain simply couldn’t handle anything beyond that point. Yet here it was, a rule, very nearly a law of nature itself being broken.  Which was just crazy and all sorts of exciting. It was like someone had come out and said that they’d blown up Luna, the Earth’s moon!  And Lucas was definitely looking snug there, watching everyone’s reactions. “That’s right.  The new immersion pods, which we are calling Point Sleep Pods, or PSPs allow for a time dilation of a maximum of 24 to 1.  An entire solar day’s worth of time in only an hour.” Lucas let’s the news percolate through the crowd, and even Temika is left breathing somewhat heavily at the announcement. An entire day for only an hours worth of sleep.  If there was anything that was a game changer, that’d be it right there.  Already virtual immersion technology allows people do to far more work in a day than ever before.  Augmented Reality glasses or cyberjack-style implants are already a common household item for the same reason.  No one could ever give up the convenience and productivity that comes from such things. “Well, I think that’s enough of wetting everyone’s appetites.  The official press release detailing some more information will be out within the hour.  In the meantime, I think I’ll leave you guys alone to finish drooling all over the place, haha!” Standing up, Lucas Johanne, one of the richest and most powerful men alive gives a grin to the cameras before his form wavers oddly before dissipating in a burst of colored particles.  Only Temika isn’t surprised at knowing that Lucas was only there as a virtual avatar, although everyone else just couldn’t get their heads around it. The hologram had been so perfect that it was impossible to tell with the naked eyes or ears that it wasn’t real. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, was Lucas Johanne, CEO of Astarte Entertainment, INC.  It really does seem that the upcoming year is likely to be quite spectacular, isn’t it? Even I’m nearly speechless… and really am wishing for time to fast forward so we could finally see it all.” Temika speaks out after Lucas’ unexpected exit, drawing the viewers’ attention back toward her and what was really important.  For them at least. For Temika herself, her real thoughts are actually rather far away. Because she already knew some things about Tartarus Online. Which is only reasonable, given that her nominal fiancee is currently one of the Beta Testers in the game.  Yet she didn’t speak out about it, because Astarte had far more going on than just breaking time dilation records or releasing a new game.  And one of them may actually give her back her own happiness. “I am Temika Astruff, here at Gaming Direct News.  Next up is the MOBA Four-Way Championships, hosted by Tyler Kelimer.  I hope to see you all again later…”   Announcement Hi there!  I'm Viken, and this is my opening gambit here on the Hub.  Some of you may know me from Royal Road, as I'm an author from there of 'Universe Online' and 'Master of Dungeons' fame.  This however is my newest creation, and I'm quite excited about it. Keep in mind that my posts are -LONG- in terms of length and word count, although I doubt I'll get many complaints about that.  And if anyone does, I expect a beat-down to occur in short order.  Hahaha.  Anyway!  I hope you guys enjoy my story! Feel free to leave comments, feedback, and all that other good stuff.  I like to read it for the most part.  Lol.  And have a Happy New Years!

[You have survived: 07 days in Limbo! Have a nice day!] A week. I’ve been alive and in Limbo for an entire week. A week that has gone from crazy to very much insane. And not always in the good way either. You see, the craziness all started after I was sent to the Silver Key Magic Society by a merchant and information broker by the name of Tresk. A Kriti, the humanoid evolution form of the species of rat monsters living in Helen City, Tresk was very helpful and friendly when I showed no disgust for his being. I personally don’t think talking anthropomorphic rats are all that strange anyway. Now, you might ask how things have gone insane when I was sent to this place in order to learn and grow stronger, right? The answer to that is in the reception and the ‘training’ I’ve received since joining the Silver Key. For nearly an entire week that’s all I’ve been doing. Training and training and more Hell’s damned training! I’ve been crushed, burned, electrocuted, frozen, bashed, speared, slashed, melted, and very much blown up. I’ve been blinded, suffered hearing loss, and had my nose blown off. Even my limbs were not spared, forcing me to crawl around for a while like the zombies my race is named after. All while being forced to study from texts transcribed into plates of iron in order to withstand all the cruel shit I’ve been put through. ‘Myaker’s Geography of Limbo’, ‘A Beginner’s History of Limbo’, ‘Sorcery for Dummies’, ‘Bee-Pi’s Guide to Monsterology’, ‘Limbo, Hell, and the other Dark Planes; a Testimony’, ‘Thaumaturgy 101’; and a whole bunch of other books, scrolls, and studies. All of them crammed into my head in one form or another. And none of them by simply sitting and reading. All under the direct supervision of Silver Lord, the leader of the Silver Key Magic Society. A seemingly old man, he’s several centuries awakened and is a rather advanced evolution of zombie called a Silver Zombie. I’d come to find out that ‘metallic’ evolutions are both hard to get and rather rare as well. Yet this old man is utterly sadistic. Not in the pure abusive sense, but in the fact that his own magical research focuses upon newly awakened undead, their development, and their potential to amass power and reach rare evolutions early in their ranks. So Silver Lord takes great enjoyment in designing training programs for the specially selected recruits in the Silver Key. And here I am, his favorite new test subject. Which is an apt description, even if it really doesn’t do what I’ve been subjected to proper justice. It really is too damned bad, because otherwise I’d be shouting it out at the rooftops just to get over my own pain and frustrations. All of which leads to my latest bit of craziness, as I’ve once more gone into a frenzy on account of all the stress I’d been dealing with. Thankfully after the first time the ones after it don’t really come off in a bad way. To compare it with a situation for the living, it would be like going out and getting drunk after a long day of work. Or bad week, as the case may be. For us newly awakened though, a frenzy occurs when our emotional limits are surpassed. Usually the ever-helpful perk ‘Newly Dead’ suppresses our emotions to a great extent, but the perk itself doesn’t remove the emotions that build up. And build up, and build up even more while under stress and pressure. Thus a frenzy happens, in which case the emotions all come boiling out and there’s quite a bit of punching and crying and yelling at the top of our lungs involved. Then it’s over with and we go on with our day. Or in this case, my day. Which are 24 hours, 7 days a week. Not having to sleep is really great from a time management standpoint, you know. For all of that and my own infernal complaining, I really can’t argue against the results. Even Silver Lord, this old bastard, is very happy with my progress. In fact he’d just spent the last night digging through the Silver Key records to find if any new recruit has done so much in so short a time. He suspects that I am breaking records in all sorts of ways. I for one am not interested in all of that though. All I care about is getting stronger and learning more. And not just in the fields of magical study, either. Which thankfully the Silver Key can provide, because while they are classified as a Magic Society, they don’t reject martial or craft skills training either. Silver Lord will use anything and everything to advance his own studies, after all. Well, I really should be saying ‘we’, because I am a part of Silver Key now. Finally calming down from my latest frenzy, I drop gasping to the floor of my own personal cultivation chamber. I’d received it two days after I’d joined the Silver Key as a welcome gift from Silver Lord himself. He’d specifically enchanted it too, reinforcing it for some of my more crazy experiments and my frenzies. And allowing its use as a true training room, to boot. Especially with a really strong version of what is known as a ‘Suppression Field’ enchantment. A combination of gravity manipulation and a soul energy field magics, the Suppression Field has been in constant usage since I’d been dropped in here. In fact Silver Lord has had to come and increase the enchantments strength twice since I began training in here, much to his own chagrin. Not even he expected to have to do so much in so short a time. It leaves me weak and gasping for breath though, because just moving around takes a whole lot of effort and energy on my part. The frenzy state doesn’t help that any, because it will use up all of my strength and resources during the rampage. So not only am I physically wore out, my soul energy reserves are depleted as well. The state of exhaustion has become so regular though that I barely feel it anymore. I really don’t feel it when I relax my body and then start yanking myself from it. A ghostly double of my head, chest, and arms starts to emerge from my physical body, and I cannot help but breath a sigh of relief as the physical exhaustion and pressure falls away. It feels rather liberating, truth be told, although it would no doubt freak quite a few people out if they really saw me this way. In fact only Silver Lord and Holdt, my assigned Proctor, have ever seen this ability of mine. I’d discovered it quite by accident while studying the all but unhealable damage the Scourge had caused me during one of my self-training segments a couple of days ago. The Scourge had ended up ripping several fingers off of my left hand, leaving me otherwise whole. But I’d been noticing an odd feeling from those fingers, thus leading to this discovery. That odd feeling, it turns out, was actually my soul form not being able to recognize the fact that I no longer had those fingers. It would have stayed that way too until my true awakening in three weeks time if I hadn’t started playing around with the feeling. And eventually ended up pulling myself from my own body. Normally counted as an extreme case of disjunction between the soul form and the body that causes a reject to take place, I was willingly able to pull myself out and exist in that state until I go back. The first time was really freaky actually, and it is still a little disconcerting. Like now, I’m sitting ‘half out’ while my zombie body rests on the floor. Yet because I’m still connected to my body I can see, feel, hear and everything from my physical body. Yet I can also see and feel through my ghostly soul form at the same time. I can still feel the constant pressure of the Suppression Field too, although it is much less pronounced than before. It’s like the senses from my physical body have taken a back seat to the senses received in my soul form. Yet for all of the separation, both of my forms carry the same limits of stats, resources, and abilities or skills. Their application is different depending upon which state I’m in, but everything else works just the same. It’s crazy and weird and all sorts of awesome at the same time. Silver Lord himself has never seen anyone do what I’ve been doing. To his knowledge no one in the whole of Limbo has willingly separated their spirit from their body before, and yet still be able to go right back in as if nothing had happened at all. I can though, which is just great. If only because my current zombie body isn’t my original. In fact it’s my third, and I’m already about ready for my fourth. Switching out bodies that have become too damaged to heal has become the greatest boon ever when paired with Silver Lord’s crazy training schemes. And he has taken complete and utter advantage of that fact. Which probably makes him the happiest man in all of Helen City at this point. So when I said earlier that I’d been blown up and have taken all sorts of damage, I mean it literally. Now, the perks of having gained this ability are great, but the downsides are just as bad. First, because this spirit/soul form is not my natural state in Limbo, using it requires the use of Soul Energy when I’m completely separated from my physical body. This means there is a very real time limit, and it restricts what abilities and skills I can use. The first and only time I ever tested running out of Soul Energy was not a pleasant experience. Even Silver Lord was frightened by my nearly broken soul that made its way screaming back into my zombie body. He’d had to use his own power to help stabilize my condition before I was out of danger. So no pushing the clock, EVER. Secondly, I have to have a designated anchor. A body as it were. It doesn’t matter rather that body be a zombie, a skeleton, or a ghost form. It has to be a form I’ve inhabited at least for three hours, in order to ‘brand it’ with my soul energy. This allows me to come and go as I please, otherwise I cannot disconnect myself completely from the body. We’ve yet to start experimenting with living bodies though, and even the ghost form is a little weird. A ghost form is naturally the body of a ghost type of dead beings here in Limbo. Spectral and all of that, they have the weakest physical manifestation of any of the types commonly available. In my spirit form, yeah, I think I’ll stick to calling it my spirit form from now on, I can naturally generate a Ghost form all by myself. It basically just congeals around my spirit and allows it to stabilize. That said it leaves me weakened, costing both Soul Energy to make and to maintain. Which is a very rapid drain. At this point though I’m simply using this ability to rest a bit. And to check on my pending messages and status. I haven’t done so in several days, so there’s no doubt a long backlog waiting for my attention. [-Message Log-][Study ability learned!][Study has leveled up! (x6)][Scholar skill learned! -Locked-][Sorcery skill learned!][Sorcery has leveled up! (x8)][Thaumaturgy skill learned! -Locked-][Rituals skill learned! -Locked-][Magic Chanting skill learned!][Magic Chanting has leveled up! (x4)][Chantless Casting skill learned! -Locked-][Dismantling skill learned!][Dismantling has leveled up! (x10)][Dismantling has evolved into Material Processing skill!][Material Processing has leveled up! (x2)][Herbalogy skill learned! -Locked-][Alchemy skill learned! -Locked-][Soul Energy Manipulation has leveled up! (x6)][Energy Manipulation has leveled up! (x9)][Soul Energy Manipulation has been subsumed by Energy Manipulation.][Energy Manipulation has evolved into Energy Manipulation II!][Concentration has leveled up! (x6)][Concentration has evolved into Concentration II.][Active Meditation ability learned! -Locked-][Inspect has leveled up! (x9)][Energy Sight, Demon Sight, Spirit Sight, and Inspect have been subsumed by Over-Sight!][Over-Sight has evolved into All-Seeing Gaze!][Cultivation has leveled up! (x4)][You have been exhausted! (900+)][Exhaustion Resistance has leveled up! (x5)][Exhaustion Resistance has evolved into Exhaustion Resistance II!] [Feat performed: Under Pressure II -> IV!][+3 maximum Body, Mind, and Soul stats.][Feat performed: (Extreme) Magic Training!][+1 maximum Body, Mind, and Soul stats.][Feat performed: (Partial) Accidental Purification -> Energy Purification!][+1 maximum Body, Mind, and Soul stats.][Feat performed: Spirit Separation!][+1 maximum Body, Mind, and Soul stats.][Feat limit reached! Please evolve for more.] [New Title gained: Magus, Rank I. -Locked-][New Title gained: Purifier, Rank I.][New Title gained: Maximizer, Rank I.][New Title gained: Separated, Rank I. -Unique-][Unpressured Title has leveled up! (x2)] [Unpressured, Rank III. - Title][13% reduction in stresses caused by outside influences.][13% increase in Concentration while under outside influences.][13% increase in Manipulation skills while under outside influences.][8% increase in learning Abilities and Skills while under outside influences.][+15 maximum Soul Energy.][This Title can be evolved.] [Magus, Rank I. (-Locked-) - Title][5% increase in learning magic based Abilities and Skills.][5% increase in spell power.][5% increase in spell control.][+5 maximum Soul Energy.][This Title can be evolved.][Advanced Title locked.] [Purifier, Rank I. - Title][5% increase in energy purification speed during cultivation.][5% increase in energy perception during cultivation.][+5 maximum Soul Energy.][This Title can be evolved.] [Maximizer, Rank I. - Title][+1 maximum Stat limit per Rank up.][+1 maximum Stat limit per evolution.][This Title can be evolved.] [Separated, Rank I. (Unique) - Title][Able to separate their spirit form from the physical body.][Gain the Spirit Separation Ability.][Gain the Soul Study Skill.][10% increase in Spirit Separation duration.][Only one of this Title may exist.][This Title can be evolved.] [Spirit Separation Ability learned!][Spirit Separation has leveled up! (x2)][Soul Study Skill learned! -Locked-][+120 maximum Soul Energy for repeated Exhaustion!][You are recuperating.] There you have it, an absolutely massive list that scrolls before my eyes. I find it a bit crazy that I could gain so many levels and skills and whatnot, but Silver Lord had said it was actually pretty normal for the newly awakened. Starting out is way easier than trying to move forward down the road, according to him. I’d spent less than a week earning what it could have taken others the whole month to achieve. That in itself was a sobering thing, yet for everything I was really having a blast. Especially now, because I’ve finally achieved my starting objective and can finally reap the rewards. As in finally putting some damned points into my stats. This entire week has pushed me past all sorts of limits in order to build up feats as recognized by the ever mysterious Voice, simply to up the limits to a standard of 10 points. Until then, Silver Lord wouldn’t let me put a single point anywhere, because then the difficulty would be raised for the training. Now that is no longer an issue, and I can finally go from being the weakest of the weakest to being average for a human adult. A great boost from a bug-like existence, without a doubt. Heh. There’s that, and also the fact that I can finally get into combat training once my stats are properly up to snuff. It is something that is not done for anyone that hasn’t raised their stats, period, due to the dangers involved. Unlike studying magic, which is primarily a mental exercise, combat is far more physically demanding and brutal. Even if I can jump from one body to another, it’s still a non-starter. The risks are just too high that I could ‘die’ before ever being able to do so. Part of the reason, as described by Silver Lord and later collaborated by Holdt, is that the various combat Abilities and Skills affect not just the physical body, but also the soul of the target. It’s a quirk of how things work here in Limbo, and in the Realms of Hell as well, because otherwise no one would truly be able to die. The soul damaging aspect is also reflected in magical attacks as well, but only against the target and not the user unless they are doing something very stupid or desperate. So I haven’t so much as touched a weapon since awakening a week ago. In fact my only ‘combat’ ability is Charge, and I gained it through utter accident while running for my life. It isn’t an attack ability though, but is instead considered a support ability. One I haven’t really used all that much, either. Now, let me check my status here real quick before I start cultivating in order to actually start doing the real stuff. Hehe. I’m just so excited now! [-Personal Statistics-][Name: -Locked-][Status: Civilian][Titles: Unpressured, Rank III; Magus, Rank I. (Locked); Purifier, Rank I; Maximizer, Rank I; Separated, Rank I. (Unique).][Racial Type: Dead | Zombie][Rank: F | Level: 1][Soul Energy (SE): 1/200 (+)][Soul Points (SP): 5 (-Locked-)][Body: 1/10 | +1 (10 SE)][Mind: 1/10 | +1 (10 SE)][Soul: 1/10 | +1 (10 SE)][Feats: All-Seeing Gaze - Rank I. (3/250)(UP!); Terror Resistance - Rank I. (23/25); Exhaustion Resistance II - Rank I. (90/100)(UP!)][Abilities: Charge - Rank II. (3/50); Body Reinforcement - Rank II. (35/100); Study - Rank VII. (78/175)(NEW!); Active Meditation - (Locked)(NEW!); Spirit Separation - Rank II. (45/100)(NEW!)][Skills: Energy Manipulation II - Rank I (40/100)(UP!); Concentration II - Rank I. (8/50)(UP!); Cultivation - Rank V. (273/500)(UP!); Scholar - (Locked)(NEW!); Sorcery - Rank IX. (377/450)(NEW!); Thaumaturgy - (Locked)(NEW!); Magic Chanting - Rank V. (12/125)(NEW!); Chantless Casting - (Locked)(NEW!); Material Processing - Rank III. (34/150)(NEW!); Herbalogy - (Locked)(NEW!); Alchemy - (Locked)(NEW!); Soul Study - (Locked)(NEW!)][Perks: Newly Dead][Detriments: Newly Dead] Oh yeah, my status is starting to look good even if I say so myself. Getting a bit cramped though, but whatever. That said, even I cannot help but start fretting while looking at my stats. With a limit of 10 points, I not only have to spend 450 soul energy points to get them maxed, I actually have to raise my rank level to 10 in order to do so. That’s also something I’ve yet to really understand, as well. Why do I have to raise my rank level in order to actually be able to purchase stat points? No one I’ve asked really knows, it’s just the way it is. On the other hand, I did learn that I can pay for just about anything in increments too, which is handy. That means I don’t have to have the total cost in soul energy all in one lump sum. Especially since I actually have a rather small reserve of soul energy. I hadn’t been spending any of my points on expanding my maximum limit, so I’ve only gotten what I’ve gained from being constantly exhausted and the bonuses from my titles or the like. Holdt even admitted that he’d had over 500 points himself when he finally maxed out his stat points to 10. That’s a little frustrating, but I’ll deal with it later. Now that things have gotten to this point, I’ll have much more time to really work on it. And hopefully stay out of Silver Lord’s clutches for a while yet. Ugh. I know the man means well, but his own desire for new ‘data’ as he puts it is just as crazy as crazy can get. Now though I need to set my thoughts and emotions aside and start concentrating on cultivating. Which is way easier than it used to be in my spirit form. My spirit form is just way more attuned to soul energy than any physical body could be. “Brrkashi.” I say, speaking both through my spirit form and my body. It’s the key word to shutting off the Suppression Field enchantment, and I could almost hear the dense and engraved stone of my cultivation chamber sighing in relief as the pressure finally goes away. For that matter I do too a bit, allowing myself to really relax now without feeling like I’m being crushed. “Atti.” Another word, and this time the true Soul Energy Gathering Array activates. This complex enchantment, set out in a series of array patterns, is the true heart of any real cultivation chamber. Thus I can instantly feel the influx of soul energy being drawn in and purified inside the room, boosting the levels up to very high levels. High enough that I could see dense clouds of soul energy starting to form. It is a much higher amount than the previous cultivation chamber I’d used before. Which is just to be expected, because I’ve been cultivating like a madman while training. Even if that cultivation hasn’t gone to actually increasing my power. Reaching out to that soul energy however is like drinking water now, and the pleasurable feeling it causes is just as great as any time before. Actually that feeling of pleasure has only intensified as my sensitivity has increased. Thankfully I can’t become addicted to it. Heh. That’d likely be bad. Setting myself into concentrating, I start pulling all of that soul energy into myself and let it wash away all of my exhaustion and weariness. Aaah! A hot shower really has nothing on this… Less than ten minutes later and I’m already topped up to my maximum of 200 soul energy points. It feels great having so much energy at my literal and figurative fingertips. Sadly I’m just going to have to spend it all as quickly as I gain it now however. [Spend 150 Soul Energy Points for Rank Level Up?] This time a totally new type of message enters my gaze once I make a mental query, and I only have to think ‘yes’ before I feel a sudden rush of soul energy leaving my body. Where it is going, I cannot tell, because it seemingly vanishes into empty space once it leaves my skin. The feeling is not entirely comfortable, and I cannot help but groan a little. [You are now Rank F - Level 6!][You may now purchase 5 stat points per attribute.][Rank F - Level 7 will cost you 60 Soul Energy Points.] I quickly check my status to confirm what the Voice has said, and don’t see any difference from what I’d been told. That’s great. As they say, ‘trust but verify’, right? Haha. Now then, I’m down to 50 soul energy points, so I have to go back to cultivating in order to get this over with quickly. Thankfully these first levels don’t cost too much, although I’ve heard that each Rank up costs double the previous amount. And that itself doubles again if you’ve already evolved. For the next few hours I repeat the process, filling up my Soul Energy points then depleting them as quickly as possible. My rank level skyrockets, until I finally reach a complete level 10. Adding another level would immediately jump me to Rank E, which I do not want to do. Yet what comes next is going to take even longer. Body, Mind, and Soul; these three stats have been nearly the sole focus of my efforts and my own damned bane this entire time. Finally getting out from under them is going to be great for me. Even if gathering all the required points is going to take three times as long as it took me to raise my rank level. The costs are all the same, but there are three times as many. Heh. Thus just like that I spend most of the day cultivating and spending points, jerking my body, mind, and spirit up to the standard. Even though I’m adding the points, I don’t feel any different until the very end because it requires an integration period. This was something that Silver Lord informed me of just yesterday in fact. Living beings achieve their upgraded statuses after having boosted their attribute stats while they sleep. Well, us dead peeps don’t sleep. Instead we end up unconscious for a time period that is roughly counted as fifteen minutes for every attribute point added. Which for me will be roughly 405 minutes of unconsciousness. Almost seven hours of being unconscious. Ugh. Thank the Pits that today was set aside just for me to do this, because otherwise I’d be dreading ‘sleeping’ for so long. The waste of time itself was bad enough, although it seems that most here in Limbo don’t really feel that way. Intellectually I know that I am already dead, and this body of mine doesn’t have a lifespan or time limit. I could exist practically forever here in Limbo. Yet my instincts are telling me that hurrying up is still the best option. That taking time off would be a detriment. I just don’t know why. Hmm. Well, no matter. I cannot continue that line of thought without suffering another damned headache anyway. Just another reason why I’ll be happy to have the next three weeks come and go quickly. The time is useful, but not having my memories really grates on me every time I’m reminded of something seemingly important. [Attribute Integration available. Please lay down in a restive and secure environment.] And with that message I slip my spirit form back into my zombie body and stretch out as comfortably as I can. Silver Lord never did say how the process works, but Holdt had let slip that it wasn’t entirely a comfortable thing. At least when I wake up. But I’ll just cross that point when I get there. For now it’s time to sleep. Or as close as I can come to it now. ~{+}~ | ~{+}~ | ~{+}~ Oh shit oh shit oh shit. Waking up was just as if a switch had been flipped and my eyes snapped open. Yet it wasn’t just my eyes that opened. All four limbs of mine are jerking around uncontrollably. Actually, make that eight limbs. Even my spirit form is having spasms, jerking in and out of my physical body at random. At the same time it’s like all the pain and pleasure receptors in my body are going haywire at the same time. Burning, stabbing, pulsing… the pain and everything else I’m feeling just arcs through my body in totally uncontrollable ways. Yet at the same time my mind is racing with thoughts and feelings and ideas and too much other shit to keep track of. Then there’s the sensation that the world around me is completely different from before too. Like I could see more, sense more, feel more. Colors are different, more vibrant, and even the taste of the air is a far cry different from before. “Aaargh!” I cry out, utterly unable to control my tongue into making my thoughts make intelligible sounds. That’s along with the thumping of my limbs on the stone floor, acting like some mad drummer having the time of his life in with some crazy music only he understands. My yell does however bring other attention to my plight, because my cultivation chambers’ door opens up and Holdt rushes in. Followed soon after by the old bastard, Silver Lord himself. He’s even grinning, damn it. Holdt though just rolls his eyes and gives me a shrug. It seems that both of them knew that this was going to happen to me, but kept quiet about it all. Perhaps another part of their hazing, or just for a personal laugh or something. I don’t know, and I don’t care. I just want it to stop! “Gaaahraa!” I yell out again, even as I try to force my eyes into glaring at the other two men. It doesn’t work very well, because Silver Lord just starts laughing while Holdt’s shoulders slump as he lets out a sigh. “Sorry man, orders.” Holdt says in way of apology, motioning to his boss. “It’ll pass soon though.” “Indeed it will, lad. The integration process strengthens your stats, but you still have to suffer through actually being able to use them. Haha.” Silver Lord steps forward then and talks while leaning down to get a good look at me. Sadly he’s still too far away to get hit by my flailing limbs though. I really want to punch him right now. Ugh. I feel like a damned flopping fish stuck out of water. Of all the sadistic torture and training shit I’ve done, this really takes the cake. If only because of the absolute lack of sense of control. Like, who doesn’t have control of their own body? The sudden loss of it… ‘~Feeling nothing, empty and hollow. A deep coldness from the neck down, where even the act of breathing cannot be felt. Endless bitterness and anger and despair, staring at a large hologram projected against the wall. A man in a white coat, talking about great damage to the body and the practical miracle of being alive at all. And the cost, that absolutely massive cost for any sort of relief or treatment…~’ “AAAH!” This yell rips out of me much more powerfully than any of the others. The sudden pain in my head, and my current lack of control conspiring to push me into a frenzy where all I can do is lash out. Lash out I do, if not with my body, than with my magic. Two hundred Soul Energy points spent in a single moment, igniting the surrounding free soul energy and the very air itself around my flailing body. All while I watch in some distant way, as apathetic as some distant spectator. The explosion of magic and power catches both Holdt and Silver Lord by surprise. Holdt, who thankfully is further away, is only slammed backwards by the blast wave and is banged against the black stone wall beside the open doorway. Silver Lord though takes the brunt of the attack nearly point blank in his face. Yet as the explosion washes over Silver Lord a force field of his own silver-grey tinted magic springs into being around his body. It still forces him a few steps back, but there isn’t anything worse for wear that I can tell. Well, besides the surprise on his face and the shine in his eyes. Then it is all over, and I’m back to being utterly exhausted and this time physically tired too. There’s no good feeling at this point, and I simply allow my eyes to drift up to the ceiling of the room while I pant for breath. Yet my mind is an utter painful mess, causing my face to scrunch up in pain and fear. “Snap out of it, lad!” Silver Lord yells at me then, his booming voice jerking my thoughts out of spiral they were in. That… memory, it just hurt so damned much. Yet I didn’t want to let it go. It was important, and I knew it. But my eyes do finally turn to focus back on Silver Lord, who seems to have a somewhat exasperated look on his face. That’s when I knew that he knew what was going on with me. I knew it the same way I knew the back of my own hand. That his every movement and even his habitual grasping at a beard that’s no longer there was a tick that expressed his own inner thoughts. That sudden understanding was the first sign that I had that things really were different for me now. Because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to pick up such unconscious cues. Things I’d been missing before, or forgetting, actually start to come back to me and I simply understood them. It was like the difference between an animal reacting to the world compared to a person who can actually think things through. “Well, it seems we’ve found your bane.” Silver Lord drily speaks then, dismissing his barrier. Holdt behind him is just now picking himself off the floor, although the cracks in the stone wall behind him attest to just how strongly he’d been slammed into it. “Not sure if it was how you died or just a really strong emotion from when you were alive, but you really do not want to lose control of your body again.” The old man is now talking to himself, his gaze a little distance. “Hmmm, I’ll have to take some things off the training schedule now. Can’t risk you blowing up because of more memory fragments. Although… yes, yes, that might work quite nicely…” Oh great, there he goes again. His crazy ideas for more training are no doubt going to be quite rueful for me later. I just tune him out though and change my gaze to Holdt. “You okay there?” I croak out, again reminded that I’m utterly empty of energy again. The feeling of exhaustion is already fading though, as my resistance to the effects kick in. Exhaustion Resistance isn’t rare, as far as abilities go, but it is hard to achieve good results in it even for magic users. No one wants to be helpless and defenseless after all. “I’m fine. Think a rib snapped though.” Holdt sounds fine to me, although he’s poking at his side as if it were just an odd thing instead of a very real injury. At least until he closes his eyes and his body starts to glow silver for a moment. I can feel the soul energy running through his body from here, even without using my Gaze to actually see it. “There, fixed up nicely.” Holdt smiles once the light fades and he opens his eyes again. That was a neat trick of self-healing there, which I haven’t gotten around to learning yet. And done without a chant or formula, so it was probably some sort of sorcery spell, as well. “Ah! Sorry, my thoughts were wandering again.” Silver Lord finally stops mumbling to himself and brings his focus back to the present. He’s still grinning though, so I can only fret for what he has in store now. He doesn’t say, and instead pulls out a large white crystal. It’s jagged and looks like it was mined out in one single piece, like quartz. “This here is the Person Scrying Stone. It has the unique ability to show a person's status information to others. At least to a degree. This one is very basic and unrefined, so it’ll just show your core stats and some other things.” He explains, before stepping over me only to drop the stone onto my chest. It comes to rest with a ‘thump’ that I barely feel, given how oddly light the stone itself is. That said, I can feel it drawing on my meagerly restored soul energy points. It takes about a minute for it to gather enough, before it lights up and projects a big blue screen above my prone body. [-Personal Statistics-][Name: -Locked-][Status: Civilian][Titles: Unpressured, Rank III; Magus, Rank I. (Locked); Purifier, Rank I; Maximizer, Rank I; Separated, Rank I. (Unique).][Racial Type: Dead | Zombie][Rank: F | Level: 10 (MAX/UP)][Soul Energy (SE): 1/200 (+)][Soul Points (SP): 5 (-Locked-)][Body: 10/10 | (MAX)][Mind: 10/10 | (MAX)][Soul: 10/10 | (MAX)] And there it is, the entire reason I went through all this trouble. Three sets of maxed out stats. It’s been a veritable grind to get to this point, but I know it is only the beginning. I’ve graduated from being as weak as a bug to simply being ‘living’ average. That said, everything is still weird. My senses have blossomed in a way that’s hard to explain. Like I’m picking up on more information from my environment, causing everything to seem really crisp and clean to my eyes, ears, and nose. Then there are my magical senses. Or rather the nebulous sense of the energies hanging around doing jack all. Previously I’d had to concentrate and reach out for the soul energy, for instance, and yet now it’s right there just on the edges of my regular senses. A feeling that it is so much closer than before. It’s really odd, and I doubt I’m explaining it properly. That’s just how it seems to me. Not just the energy in the atmosphere either. I can more clearly feel it coursing through the stonework underneath and around me too. All of those lines of power, guided by the engravings inside the reflective black stone blocks that make up the vast majority of the central tower of the Silver Key Society… It really isn’t natural, yet at the same time it feels as if it is. And there’s a whole lot of power I can feel even without gazing at it. More than that though I can feel my mind becoming more and more clear as things settle down. Like a haze has been lifted from my brain. Or that disjointed feeling when you’ve gotten drunk or inebriated from medication. I’m already able to focus more easily and remember small details that I’d totally missed before. I also have no doubt that my body itself has gone through a fundamental change as well. Even exhausted, I feel stronger and more limber than ever before. There’s also no doubt that I’m also not quite so clumsy as I used to be either, although I don’t know what the difference is at this point. Strength, flexibility, endurance, manual dexterity… Yeah, really going to need to test those. And see if it carries over when I switch out this body for a new one. “Well, it’s all looking good there, lad.” Silver Lord says while smiling happily, staring at my limited status that is still being projected into the air above me. I give a grunt of agreement before reaching up to take hold of the crystal, holding it out to the old man. “Yeah, feels weird though. And I’m exhausted again.” I cannot help but let slip a bit of a complaint while looking up at the far older zombie. “Care to explain what a bane is? I really don’t like the idea of having any weaknesses, and that… memory fragment was bad.” “Banes are weaknesses that manifest as a Detriment during the true awakening. They are totally random, but are based upon your previous life. Or death, as the case may be.” He explains while taking back the Person Scrying Stone. “They can be anything as well. Taking extra damage from fire or fire-based magics. Or water. Or being unable to generate lightning based magics. The loss of functionality in a limb. Or a frenzy condition like you just experienced. It is entirely dependant upon the person, and very rarely is there someone without a bane.” Even while explaining it to me, that smile on his face just gets wider and wider until it’s turned into a full blown grin. The sort of shit-eating grin that is common enough whenever Silver Lord has gotten another ‘crazy idea’. Ugh. I have a bad feeling, again. “It’s very rare that we get a look at a possible bane before the true awakening, you know. That said, there is in fact two different ways of getting rid of the bane. The first is to spend your five Soul Points to erase it from your Detriment list.” Oh yeah, Silver Lord really does have something in mind because his hand has come up to stroke his imaginary beard again. “The second is to learn abilities or skills that directly oppose it. Which is hard when the bane is in effect, as you can imagine. Who wants to be doused in fire or be held under water when they take extra damage from it, right? Hahaha. But this is a chance to exploit the ‘Newly Dead’ perk! “Your bane won’t take effect until your true awakening, and I already have a good idea what it is. You don’t want to be ‘Constricted’ or ‘Trapped’! To have no control over your body! Hehehe. So I’m going to teach you both mundane and magical means of escaping confinement. Hahaha!” Okay, so maybe that won’t be so bad. Just listening to Silver Lord leads me to thinking of things like lockpicking and escape artist tricks. Slipping handcuffs and ropes and the like. Magic just means there are more options there, which could come in handy. Actually, thinking more about it leaves me to believe that such skills could really be useful. Clearly the first thing that comes to mind are criminal enterprises, where being able to slip away in all manner of ways would be useful. But there’s also things like magically binding contracts and magic-diffusing enchantments that are used to secure cooperation too. Being able to bypass those would be a good option to have. All of which are advanced skills, but I’ve already gotten several of those anyway. They are all locked to me right now, but that doesn't mean I cannot use them. I just have to do it all manually, without any assistance from the Voice. The experience will still carry over though, so it isn’t as if I’m losing anything. “Okay, that doesn’t sound bad at all.” I definitely agree at this point, although I just know that Silver Lord is going to go crazy with it anyway. He always does. “Yes, but more than that! Your weird Spirit Separation thing brings it to a whole new level! Why just slip physical bonds when you can slip magical or spiritual bonds as well?! Just imagine it! Hehehe… “Shadelings, an evolution of Ghosts, have the ability to slip into shadows and traverse through the Shadow Realm for short distances. It appears as if they are teleporting. Could you do something similar with your loose form? Or how about piggybacking in the bodies of others without their knowing?! Oooh, the ideas! I swear, you are the most surprising pupil I ever could have wished for!” Damn, the old man really has gone nuts, and even Holdt is backing up slowly. He’s smart enough to want nothing to do with Silver Lord’s current madness. Neither do I, for that matter. But I’m barely able to leverage myself into a sitting position while the old zombie continues to rant. “Banshees, another evolution of Ghosts, at least for females, also have the ability to possess others weaker than themselves. It’s a dangerous ability that can cause damage both to the possessed and to the soul of the banshee herself though… Yes, we can test that right now! Holdt, get over here!” Shit, there it goes. These spontaneous experiments are probably the worst Silver Lord ever does. And I’m glad I’m not the only one who blanches, because Holdt has gone white as a sheet of paper while shaking his head almost to the point of cracking his own neck. “Wait, hold on! I’m still exhausted here. I need to cultivate before I can separate. It takes a constant upkeep of Soul Energy to maintain. And I don’t want to fragment again.” I yell out at the old bastard, which brings him back to the present, thankfully. The first and only time we tested that Silver Lord himself had to intervene to keep me from practically dying. Again anyway. Unsupported by my soul energy reserves, my spirit form literally started breaking apart into little pieces while I was rushing back into my body. Thankfully the old coot has some skill in necromancy and studying souls, so he was able to trap and gather my ‘broken bits’ and put them back in when it was all said and done. The experience still gives me nightmares. Or would, if I slept and actually dreamed. Feeling myself break apart and all that pain is something I never, EVER, want to go through again. EVER. “Aargh, fine. You cultivate then and test your current limits. Come on Holdt. While he’s doing that, we’re going to go grab another body for him to play with while I arrange for the proper trainers to come around.” Silver Lord starts to grumble, but I really dodged that one. Holdt did too, even though he gives me a wane smile. “Yes, Sir Silver Lord.” My Proctor says, falling in behind the old man as they make their way out of my cultivation chamber. Hell, Silver Lord didn’t even bother to look at me once he made up his mind. Same as always there. Left alone once the thick stone door is closed, I let out a sigh. I’d gotten what I felt is a stay of execution, but I know Silver Lord will want to test it as soon as possible. Well, it is a curious idea all the same. What if I could do those things? Or something different? Just the thought is extremely exciting. Still, there’s little point of thinking about it right now. Instead i need to focus on the here and now and recoup my strength. I’m so tired of being bloody exhausted all the time. Thus I reach out to the surrounding soul energy, intent on getting on with my cultivation. Except that it responds way too quickly and fiercely. The sudden onrush, an absolute deluge, rushes into my body like a sledgehammer! I groan and end up collapsing backwards onto the floor again, stunned by the force and ferocity I’d just experienced. Always before I had to reach out and grasp hold of the soul energy as tightly as possible to draw it to me. The effort and concentration required me to focus everything I had on it. Yet this… this was totally not the same. It was like I almost crushed my damned fool self with the weight of all the soul energy I’d grabbed onto. And it responded far more quickly and smoothly than before. Ugh. It seems that my boosted Soul stat is the culprit. I already knew that upping my soul stat would give me increased sensitivity to magic in general, and help provide a boost in cultivating. I just didn’t know that it would force me to learn how to control it too. Thankfully I already have the fundamentals in controlling soul energy down. Both Energy Manipulation and Sorcery skills depend upon minute control, after all. So this time I change my tactic after sitting up again. Instead of grabbing all the soul energy in my chamber, I instead spread my senses out to fill the whole of the room. Then instead of pulling on the free soul energy, I focus my will on gently guiding it to me. Aaaaahhhh. Much better! It’s only a trickle of soul energy at this point, but it still feels far better than being hammered by it. And it gives me a good baseline to start increasing my pulling speed. Except I’m not able to increase the strength by much. Instead, I end up capping out to my maximum after only a few minutes instead of the ten or so it used to take me. That’s some insane cultivation speed! Damn. Shit. It just goes to show how limited my maximum really is at this point. Two hundred points may sound like a lot, but it’s barely a drop in the bucket for others. Holdt probably has a couple thousand himself. Silver Lord then could have upwards to a hundred thousand points! Which probably is even smaller than what others who are far older have. Hmmm… I’m really tempted to start buying more for my maximum, but at the same time I’m a little resistant to the idea. Like it’s a cheap way out. Useful, no doubt, but I’m not entirely sure that it doesn’t have any drawbacks of its own. Gah. I’ll have to ask Silver Lord about it later. He probably knows. I just don’t want to end up exhausted all the damned time anymore. Anyway, since I’m done with cultivating at the moment, I stand up and check out my body. Without feeling like my body is being tied down with lead weights, I’m finally able to experience the truth growth of my strength. I feel light, can move easily, and am able to bend in all sorts of ways I could only struggle to do before. Clenching my fists in front of me, I can finally really feel the strength of my hands. The change really is like night and day, and leaves me feeling exhilarated. It’s great. Hahaha! Thus I spend more time than I probably should have doing jumps, tumbles, handstands and all sorts of gymnastic flips. Things I doubt I ever did while alive, and definitely haven’t done since awakening here in Limbo. Like all things though, these fast and precise movements start to tire me out. It takes me only a moment to realize that these advanced movements are draining me of my soul energy points slowly but surely. It’s like instead of stamina every motion above a certain limit requires the use of soul energy. Which sucks, damn it all. I really want to keep playing. That said, the drain is slow and costs per motion seems to be somewhat predictable. An all-out run around my circular cultivation chamber costs roughly a point for twenty feet, for example. Three rapid backflips cost a point as well. Doing a drop and roll, regardless of direction costs a point as well. Suddenly stopping in the middle of an action ends up not costing anything, too. Yet changing from a forward roll to a handstand then a backflip ends up costing three whole points instead. It really does seem that the more complex the motion, or having several chained together ends up costing more. I end up testing this theory, by switching from backflips to rolls to handstands and a number of other movements I’d never done or even seen before. Some, like a one-legged jump off the wall, don’t have a cost. Yet if I build up speed to a run then jump off the wall with both feet the cost increases. The same for a a two-legged jump from a dead stop on the floor. All of which seems just really weird to me. It gets even weirder when I start using my few physical abilities. Charge and Body Reinforcement. Both of them have both a set ‘start-up’ cost in soul energy and also a sustained cost to continue using them. But these costs are controllable. I could use up as little as a single soul energy point, or dump my entire soul energy reserves into them. And they work, for the most part, with any other motion I desire. Charge, for instance, works just as well as doing front flips as it does just flat out running. So long as I’m moving in a mostly straight line, Charge works. Body Reinforcement is much more involved though. It’s an all around enhancement to my physical body. It enhances my bodies durability, strength, and flexibility. This in turn increases my speed and motor control, allowing me to perform angled dives and even a limited bit of wall-running. Hehe. That part was cool, and totally unexpected. Yet the costs involved start getting just as crazy as my actions. Not even a minutes’ worth of constant motion drain my reserves dry, leaving me once more sitting on the ground while I cultivate to recoup my lost energy. But I didn’t do all of that for nothing! [Athletics skill learned!][Athletics has leveled up!][Overdrive feat learned!] Hahahaha. I cannot help but laugh as I check out my two new abilities. Athletics, as it turns out, is an overall skill reflecting my ability to use my body. It provides a minor boost in all aspects of my body, while also slightly lowering the costs of complex physical actions. Which is yummy, right? Overdrive though… Yeah, that’s just as crazy as everything else I’ve been doing. Overdrive is a body enhancement feat in the same vein as Body Reinforcement, and yet the boost it provides is massive in comparison. And so are the costs. It costs an entire 50 Soul Energy points to activate, and for every minute of usage it costs another 10 points. After Overdrive is done with though, it lowers my Body stat points by 1 for every minute I’d used it. Not permanently, but as a cool down cost. I regain the usage of those points at a rate of 1 point per 10 minutes of rest. So Overdrive is very much a weapon of last resort. I actually hope I never have to actually use it outside of training. That said, I do test it for about two minutes. Running, jumping, all the good stuff leaves me bouncing off the walls. Almost literally. The boost Overdrive provides is ridiculous. I can actually touch the 12-foot high ceilings from a dead jump in the middle of the chamber with it activated. The loss of those two stat points really sucks though. I could literally feel myself weaken, which is not a fun experience at all. Thankfully I didn’t have to experience it for too long, because I cheated a bit. I pulled my spirit form partially out of my resting body and was very much glad to see that the stat drain didn’t seem to affect my spirit body. That and the sensation of weakness didn’t follow me out either. So double plus. On the other hand, my spirit form was very much weaker than my physical body even with the same amount of stat points. It wasn’t something I’d had to deal with before, when all of my stats were so low, but I can instant tell the difference now. In a way it’s similar to how ghost type undead work, so it isn’t too odd. Just different. On the other hand, my spirit form is very compatible with my Mind and Soul stats. Insanely so. Previously it had been easier to cultivate and use magic in my spirit form, but now it is even more. Just a thought brings the soul energy right to me for cultivating, without expanding my senses at all. Another thought, although with more focus and concentration, is all that is required to ignite the soul energy into a fireball. Which I promptly throw at the wall furthest from me because it grew way too big for me to control! Damn! I really have to learn how to control myself like this now. On the other hand the cost to cast that magic also went up, so while there are plusses there are also negatives to this newfound ability. Which seems to be the constant for everything I’ve been experimenting with. Everything has a downside in one way or another. Still freaking cool though. Haha. Done wasting time at this point, I work to refill my soul energy points before standing up again. Moving to open the door, I find Holdt and Silver Lord waiting outside already, leaving me feeling a bit sheepish for leaving them waiting for so long. Silver Lord doesn’t seem to mind though, staring at me in that ravenous manner of his. “That was a big explosion we heard even out here. You testing out your new limits?” Holdt was the one to actually speak up here, more curious than crazy thankfully. “Yeah. Casting magic in my spirit form is way easier, and harder to control.” I explain, barely glancing at the limp zombie body that he’s holding. “And I learned the Athletics skill while testing out my body… also got the ‘Overdrive’ feat.” “Both of those are fairly common, although Overdrive is very expensive. It’s higher ranks are very powerful though.” Silver Lord cuts in at that point, before walking in past me. I can tell from his face that he’s way too impatient to wait any longer. That just makes me roll my eyes and motion for Holdt to enter as well. He lets out only a slight sigh and a smile before once more all three of us are closed off from the outside world. Along with a new body for me. These bodies are all unawakened zombie bodies from the Plains of Corpses, which are treated like a common resource here in Helen City. They are cheap and plentiful, but also useful in various ways. Necromancers use them to practice their magics, while alchemists can use them to render out various materials. Others, like the small population of Ghouls in the city, actually eat them as their primary food stock. I’d gotten the full run-down the first time I’d had to switch to a new body. It had been a rushed job, because Silver Lord had literally blown my original zombie body to bits while experimenting with my then newly discovered ability. He wanted to see if I could control my body remotely while in my spirit form. That didn’t work so well, sadly. That said, no harm done. Heh. “Alright, I’ve waited long enough now! Holdt, put that body down and stand in the center. I’m going to set up a warding just in case anything goes wrong… this time.” Yeah, so even the old man can learn a thing or two when dealing with newly discovered abilities. As for me, I simply move to sit down and wait. Watching Silver Lord use different types of magic is probably the best time I’ve ever had while here in Silver Key. And goes to show just how much of a magical scholar the old zombie is. Based on his current evolved race, you’d think that Silver Lord specializes in magic focused on metals. Silver, mithril, and the like. He does, but that isn’t all he is skilled in. Instead he’s skilled in a wide range of Thaumaturgy, Sorcery, Necromancy and other more specialized fields. I’ve seen him use elemental sorcery, wards, barriers, and engraving enchantments. And Alchemy, too. Even some things I still don’t have names for. Those skills though are what almost single handedly raised up the Silver Key Magic Society to what it is today. Even now his works are still what bring in the most profit to the Silver Key as well. From what Holdt has said, Silver Lord is one of the top enchanters in Helen City, but he only charges half of what the Wizard’s Tower does for the same work. It makes him very popular in those circles. This time I get to watch him set up a series of wards around the chamber. Compared to enchanting, wards have a time limit to their effects. They also don’t have the same cost in material or energy, thus making them useful in situations where permanency isn’t required. All the same, I still stare in a bit of wonder as I watch the old zombie draw the runic words in thin air in long chains or sentences. Each rune represents a concept of magic, and chained together they create an effect that’ll last as long as their supplied energy holds out or it is canceled by their creator. In this case I can make out the runes for ‘soul’, ‘retain’, ‘field’ and ‘shield’. The rest I have no clue about, given my limited knowledge on the subject. But the runes are being repeated several times, which means this ward will be quite strong in these aspects. “This is a soul cage ward, a bit of advanced necromancy. It’s used to both capture and hold raw souls for later use or to safeguard them against damage. Healers often train to use this ward just in case their patient cannot be healed in time, while necromancers tend to use it to house souls for later use as raw materials.” Okay, that explains a lot. Not sure how I feel about the way the magic is used though. Not that I can say anything. Bodies and souls tend to be material components with a great number of uses here in Limbo. And souls are a form of currency in the Realms of Hell, as well. For all of his stoicism, Holdt is looking decidedly nervous at this point. He’d been subjected to such experiments before, as have I, but I cannot fault my zombie senior for this one. No one likes the idea of being possessed or controlled after all. “Okay boys. This ward is set up to contain both of your souls, and should be powerful enough to resist just about anything you two can throw at it. Now get to it, we don’t have all day! Hahaha!” There goes Silver Lord with that damned laughter of his. “I’m ready.” Holdt finally says, although he looks far less confident than he probably should. His stats are way beyond mind, after all. As for myself, slipping out of my body was simple and easy. My spirit form responded to my thoughts far more smoothly than I’d ever experienced, although the feeling of constantly sucking up my soul energy reserves is more than a little annoying. As is passing through the wards, because they actually resist my entrance for a short moment and then felt as if I were being squeezed on when I finally did. “My spirit form doesn’t seem to be my soul in raw form, Silver Lord. The ward resisted my entry.” I point out as I ghost myself toward Holdt. “It’s your soul energy, I believe. Raw souls do not have any soul energy points, although some are strong willed enough to use the ambient soul energy around them to create magical effects, but not spells… Hmmm. Definitely interesting.” Listening to Silver Lord put forward his thoughts actually manages to relax me, while Holdt just shrugs. Holdt for his part is generally quiet and stoic in a way that made me appreciate the big man. Since our first meeting days ago I’ve gotten quite close to him, but he isn’t one for frivolous talk. He still holds to his own training daily as well, and unlike us ‘magic types’ his focus is on fighting skills. In fact his current race is a ‘Stalwart Zombie (Silver)’, which is surprisingly fitting. “Let’s get this over with.” Holdt finally says, giving me a wane smile before closing his eyes. “Yes yes, just try not to resist, Holdt. I highly doubt this possession will be the same as others, but at the same time it might have other effects. So easy does it, lads. Just be quick about it.” Talk about getting in the last word there, Silver Lord. Still, there’s no reason to dally anyway. So I simply rush up to Holdt’s body and reach out to touch him with one of my ghostly hands. The instant I do I can feel his resistance to my entrance, although it is weak. That in itself just feels weird though. All of the bodies I’ve taken control of thus far have had no resistance at all. They readily accepted my spirit form, allowing me to brand them easily. But they were also all empty vessels, without souls or egos of their own. Holdt on the other hand has both, and is stronger than I am. I could feel his unconscious repulsion, thus I simply hold on hand on his arm until my presence becomes more comfortable to the older zombie. Then I slip inside as his resistance decreases. “Oh wow…” My voice and Holdt’s voice comes out of his mouth comes out at the same time, and he snaps his eyes open while I sit inside of him and watch. Yet at the same time I can ‘hear’ his thoughts, and he can hear mine too. Or at least those on the surface, which is more than enough to know that he feels just as funky as I do. “This is weird. We are both in here.” Holdt says then, still in the primary position before smoothly switching with me. “We are. Holdt has to resist resisting me though. He naturally wants to push me out.” I say then, before lifting his left arm and clenching the fist. The feeling of strength isn’t any higher than my own though, which is the first clue to realizing that my stats are affecting his body. “My own stats take precedence when in control as well.” I say then, before checking the rest of the details quickly. Being inside Holdt’s body is just weird as fuck, and not just because we are sharing his head together. Surprisingly Holdt is actually having fun with this whole thing, although he never shows or says it on the outside. Training with and watching me train has been a joy for him, which he equates to having a younger sibling. Something of a fondness he’d had as a living human, it turns out. Those thoughts come quickly and leave just as quickly, as Holdt flexes his own mental muscles to hide more such bits of information from me. On the other hand I feel that I have nothing to hide, which is why I share a memory of me flipping off Silver Lord behind his back. The mental amusement is well worth the discomfort of sharing Holdt’s body for the moment. “Okay, this possession is also sucking up my soul energy points. And it fluctuates. I think that the more Holdt resists or doesn’t has a direct correlation to the costs involved. That and moving his body…” Even as I’m speaking I start taking more direct control of Holdt’s body. I walk around the interior of the ward, jump a bit, and even do a frontflip then a backflip. Both cost more than doing them in my own body, and way more than if Holdt himself were doing them. His higher skills result in far more efficiency. “Good, good! Hehe. Now test using your magic, lad. Then I want you to do that partial separation trick and try to cultivate.” Silver Lord instructs then, rubbing his hands together while watching everything with that keen Gaze of his. No doubt he’s receiving far more information than my own experiences can provide. Silver Lord’s Gaze is way more advanced than mine is. Magic, as it turns out, was a bit harder to accomplish. Which is a direct response to the difference in wills between myself and Holdt. Holdt knows all the theory for various types of magic, but he’s never had the patience to really train up those skills. Or to be a bookworm. Thus we have to do a bit of back-and-forth with our thoughts to sort out how this would work. Being on a time limit doesn’t help, so we decide on something simple. A single flame cupped in the hand. At least sharing the mental image is far easier this way than trying to explain it. Plus we are talking to Silver Lord about what is going on all at the same time. Finally though we get the magic to go, but what surprises all three of us is that it turns out to be a raging inferno that causes us to drop the magic rather quickly. The spell had taken soul energy from both myself and Holdt, thus doubling or even tripling the resulting power. Which is all sorts of cool, but rather distressing for me. Holdt has way more soul energy than I do. “Amazing! Joint Casting is often used in Ritualistic magic, but the effeciency is rather bad regardless. It basically adds a percentage of the casters power to the joint effort. Yet this possession directly added the two parts together, resulting in far more power!” Of course the old man had to basically dance in his place outside the warding, very much pleased with this discovery. “I’m starting to run low on soul energy here. Let’s me try to cultivate and get this over with. I don’t think I like being a roommate in Holdt’s head. Great guy and all, but hearing his thoughts is starting to grind already.” I speak up then, ready to get this done and over with. Which is why I let Holdt take back control of his body so he can sit down. You can cultivate standing up, but any lapse in concentration would end up with you on your ass and the cultivation session broken. So people either sit down or lay down to do so. Pulling myself partially out of Holdt’s body then proves to be an interesting exercise all its own. His body didn’t like having just part of me inside of it, and that sudden resistance pushed me out all at once a couple of times before Holdt was able to suppress it. Silver Lord actually laughs at that, because the direction I get flung out of us totally random. Having my head come out of Holdt’s crotch was not very amusing to me. Bah. Once settled I gently reach out to the soul energy still condensed inside my cultivation chamber. I rarely turn off the gathering array, leaving the room constant full with a much higher density than the outside. Thus just a gentle nudge of my intentions is enough to start the process. Then my world turns into blinding pain and screaming for just an instant before I black out.   Announcement Hi guys, this is chapter 04!  I hope you enjoy the read. Now then, I'm testing to see what you guys think of the current formatting instead of having all the tables centered.  Does it look better this way?  I find it a lot less annoying myself.  Heh. As always feel free to leave comments, critiques, reviews and all the other good jazz!

Announcement Testing various functions here people, move along!  Copying tables from Google Drive is weird, ugh. So I'll be editing this one and trying out new things and whatnot.     ABILITIES Study Rank VII Charge Rank II Active Meditation Locked Spirit Separation Rank II                                       ABILITIES Name Rank Name Rank Study VII Charge II Active Meditation Locked Spirit Separation II                                

[Thank you for dying!  Have a nice day!]   That was the first thing that appeared in front of me when my eyes snapped open.  Staring blankly, I let out a short groan that comes out somewhat incomprehensible and muffled.  Probably because my mouth has been sewn shut. “Hah, we got another moaner here!”  A voice suddenly calls out, far too cheerful for me to really make sense of just yet.  Especially since I’m laying on my back, feeling oddly stiff while staring at a floating blue screen in front of my face.  Beyond it should be a sky, but all there is to see is swirling grey mist. At least until some big, red skinned and horned guy walks into my field of vision.  His features are square and blunt, but there’s actually a wide-mouthed smile on his face that at least makes him seem somewhat good natured.  Especially when matched with those pitch black eyes he has. “Take it easy for a moment, dude.  You stiffer guys always require time to get used to this whole thing.”  Yeah, cheerful is definitely the way to describe this red guy, even more so when he takes a knee and holds out a wickedly sharp blade.  It reminds me of obsidian, gleaming in the poor grey light of what likely constitutes daytime here. That said, it doesn’t stop me from making another muffled moan while trying to move my body.  Which is as stiff as a board. Ugh. Just like the red guy said, a ‘stiffer’, right? “Ah, don’t be that way.  It’s for the stitches, promise.”  That cheerful voice doesn’t change, but when the red guy says ‘promise’ something weird happens.  A vaguely golden string comes out of his chest and connects to mine, filling me with the knowledge and absolute certainty that he isn’t going to hurt me with that blade. “Heh.  It seems you are awake enough for my special -gift- to work on ya. Well, good for you!  A devil takes his word and bond seriously, after all!” The red guy actually laughs at that, but his eyes suddenly become serious as he holds that blade over my face.  “Now, don’t move and this will be over quickly. It’ll be odd, but that’s just the way things are, alright?” I’m barely able to nod my head, but the red guy only grunts and suddenly the blade is passing by my lips.  I can barely feel it, like an odd pressure, before it’s gone in a flash. But when my lips come apart is when things do get weird.  And I say that lightly. First off there’s a sudden scream that rips out of my throat; a sound of primal fear and terror I’ve personally never experienced.  Followed by a gagged groaning and puffing as something black and nasty comes up my throat. The red guy grabs me by the shoulder and tips me over so I chuck it across the ground beside me instead of all over myself or him. Once all of that is gone, I’m flipped back over and take a deep breath.  That deep breath though is where things go from odd to weird. Because the swirling mist in the ‘sky’ suddenly starts to funnel down toward me, turning whiter and cleaner until only a string of it reaches my mouth and is swallowed into my body.  And I feel every moment of it burning into my stiff body, almost as if I’d dumped boiling water into my stomach or something. Or acid, perhaps. It also goes on and on, seemingly forever; although I’m sure it’s just that my focus is totally consumed by it.  Or would be, except I see out of the corner of my eye the big red guy holding out a small blue bottle and is drawing some of the mist into it.  For some reason that triggers something inside of me, almost like a blinding rage. Overcome by the feeling, my arm jerks upward stiffly and with far more force than I should have been able to exert.  The red guy, not paying attention, ends up taking the blunt blow across his hand holding the bottle, which causes it to shatter in an impressive spray of white mist and what seems like glass shards.  All of which gets sucked right back toward me, joining the continuous daluge pouring into my wide open mouth. Except those blue shards are definitely not glass, because as they enter my mouth they dissolve into something far more potent than the white mist itself.  The feeling of power that comes over me is almost as blinding as that previous rage had been, but at the same time I could feel something else from it too. Like a piece of myself had come back, leaving me feel far more whole than before. “Damn dude!  Shit, that was my last soul glass too.”  For the first time the red guy actually curses, and for a moment his smile slips into something like anger before it fades and he’s left shaking his head.  “Should have asked first. These new guys are a touchy bunch.” I could hear him mumble. Then it all ends as the swirling mist/clouds/whatever above me start to disperse.  Taking in my last mouthful of white mist, I feel something inside of my body uncoil and loosen, and my muscles all seem to unlock all at once.  It leaves me panting and flat on the ground still, but I soon raise a hand up to my face and watch as I clench an oddly grey-toned fist. Through the blue box that still hasn’t gone away yet. “What was all that?”  My voice comes out far more rough than I’d imagined, but then again the inside of my mouth feels like sandpaper anyway.  Like I hadn’t had a drink of water in forever. “Ah, first you’ll want to dismiss your message.  Just think of it going away. It can be really distracting seeing the blue mirror of it on the black eyes, ya know.”  The red guy has gone back to being overly cheerful, which is just as well, and helpful indeed as only a thought sends the blue screen popping out of existence. “Good.  Now then, as your official welcoming party, I welcome you to Limbo!  The land of the lamentable dead, home of wandering souls and all that jazz.  Congratulations, you are dead! Or not so much.” The red guy actually starts to laugh, although I assume gallow humor is par for the coarse around here.  Especially if this really is Limbo. “I’m Tobias, by the way.  But I go by Tod for the most part.  Way better than Toby, right? Haha.” The red guy finally has a name!  And I actually nod, because Tod is generally a better name than Toby. At least to me. “Sounds good to me, Tod.  So I’m dead, this is Limbo, and my name is…”  And that stops me cold, because I don’t remember my name.  Not one bit of it. Or most of my life, or previous life for that matter.  Except I know I know it. Yet I don’t. Just thinking about it about makes my head explode in pain. “Ack!  Don’t go thinking about it just yet!  Newbies always try to do that and it never ends well.  Last guy I saw ended up killing himself again when his head popped like a damned leech-infested pimple.  The chunks were gooey, to say the least!” Tod interrupts me, and I blink and take a deep breath as I draw my focus away from what would probably have been a very bad ending. “Ooohkay…”  I breath out, before finally putting strength into my limbs and rising up in a sitting position.  I was tired of laying on the hard ground. Which I find out is black rock as far as the eye can see.  And mounds of grey dead bodies piled up in hills and mountains. Some of the bodies actually squirming.  The sight doesn’t bother me as much as it should have though. Guess being dead is being dead, right? “At least you can already move, that’s great.  Anyway! The grey mist above us is the sky here in Limbo, and is commonly referred to as Soul Energy.  It’s what makes all of you deaders’ live. Harvesting the stuff is good for making money too, which is what I was doing until you broke my soul glass.  Ugh.” Okay, explanations are good.  As is the fact that I now know what keeps me alive.  Got it. And Tod, a self-identified ‘devil’, seems more than happy to talk about it. “Soul Energy, got it.  And sorry about that. When I caught sight of the glass out of the corner of my eye I just couldn’t help myself.  It was…” I struggle to find a way to describe it, at which point I realize that things are actually really weird for me right now. Like, I’m dead, you know?  And I should feel something about it.  Like piss scared or maybe screaming mad.  Or both. Or something else. Yet everything is muted, to use a term.  I don’t feel hot or cold, I don’t feel tired, or hungry. I don’t feel out of breath, although checking myself I’m breathing just very slowly.  And I’m not even sure my heart is beating at all. “Ah, I get you.  You dead guys always start this way.  Your emotions and stuff are muted, so don’t worry too much about it.  Also, ‘zombie’ would be the term you are looking for to describe your current situation.  A dead body revived via magical means. Thank the Lords of the Pits that you guys don’t rot or stink, otherwise Limbo would be a nasty place to be instead of just being bleak, ya know?” Okay, that explains a bit.  And oddly enough I’m okay with that.  Like part of me already realized it and acceptance was easy or something.  Just weird. Weird is better than being truly dead though, right? So I nod to Tod to continue his explanation. “Okay, so Soul Energy is what keeps you living.  It replaces food and drink and all that jazz. You also have a natural reservoir of the stuff inside of you, which the ‘Awakening’ opens up the first time you get unzipped.”  At this Tod wiggles his big red fingers over his mouth, where I’d previously been sewn up. “Now, the part of you get that is zipped up the first time is nearly totally random from what I can tell.  For you, it was your mouth. For others, it might have been their eyes. Or their nose. Or their ears. Or their fingers or toes.  It represents the sealing of a sense, and although I’ve unzipped your mouth, I bet you can’t taste anything. And you won’t for about thirty days or so.”  Tod starts to explain this clinically, and even manages to pick at this black fingernails at the same time. “First timers speech really that dull?”  I cannot help but ask, which causes the red guy to laugh and slap his knees. “Yeah, I go through it almost daily.  Along with the two thousand or so others out here doing the job with me.”  Tod says, before he turns around and looks off into the distance where he nods to another red guy leaning over a body as well.  Only this one is thrashing around and won’t sit still enough for the devil to use his blade on ‘em. “We all work for Helen City, welcoming the new recruits, as it were.  In any case, let’s finish this up. The ‘Awakening’ process is automatic, drawing in the Soul Energy and purifying it for first timers.  We generally collect a ‘drop’ of Soul Energy using soul glass to make a bit of money on the side. It isn’t harmful or anything, but Limbo doesn’t like interference.  Which is why you wracked the glass quite good. “Soul glass, on the other hand, is processed out of ‘Soul Stone’.  Which is a type of stone in which Soul Energy naturally collects and condenses.  Somewhat rare though. And fragile, as you could see. Lots of people use soul stone to quickly replenish their soul energy or to gather more, so it’s a rather useful consumable by itself.  Questions?” Tod starts going off about a mile a minute, but I listen as well as I can and nod as I keep up with him.  So far so good, and I shake my head in the negative about having any questions. “Okay, good.  Now then, Helen City is the nearest point of reference around here.  It’s also known to have the most zombies as well. Other places in Limbo deal with ghost types, skeletons, and very rarely vampire types.  That is one thing I have to explain to you though. Because undead sorts in general are all mutable. You could be a zombie today but get stripped of all your meat and you’ll become a skeleton.  Get blasted into bits and you could become a ghost. With me thus far?” I take a moment to think that over, and actually purse my lips.  They feel thick and heavy, but then again my mouth itself has been odd ever since the ‘awakening’ anyway.  It was like it was half numb. “So deaders, was it?  Deaders stay dead throughout whatever form they are?  And they can both become less… hu… human or more?” For some reason I stumble over the word, as if my mind really didn’t want to touch upon the subject.  Or whatever humans are. Another headache spikes across my mind, but it fades just as fast. But Tod catches my grimace and nods to himself. “Yeah, for the most part.  And humans are what the living are called.  Or most of ‘em. Plenty of other races in the Above World, but most of them have their own places for their dead to go.  Limbo is almost solely for humans. That said, there are more than just humanoid deaders down here. An example would be us Devils.  We actually come from one of the realms of Hell and often work as scribes or contract employees for others. A Devil’s words are his bond, after all!” Tod goes off laughing to himself again, but it definitely gives me something to think about.  For example the knowledge that there may be other Limbos out there for other races or the like.  And the realms of Hell. No clue about those, but the information sounds important. Yet thinking about it actually sparks something in my head, like a long forgotten memory. “Never make a deal with a Devil without a contract…”  The words come unbidden to my lips, which causes Tod to stare and laugh again while nodding. “Exactly!  That golden thread thing earlier?  That was my contract. But contracts can be both simple or complex!  Just keep it in mind, yeah? Not all devils are as honest as I am, after all! Haha.”  Tod nods to himself, grinning to himself. “Moving on, and this is possibly the most important part, so listen up!  That blue screen from earlier is called originally enough ‘The Voice of the World’.  Or simply the Voice. It’s kinda like an automated system used to keep the various planes of reality going about their business.  Humans love to call it the ‘rules of reality’ or some shit.” Tod actually starts grumbling about that, frowning for the first time I’d known him. “Anyway, enough about pointless human shit.  The Voice controls nearly everything outside of free will.  And anything free will touches. Which is your person, and others.  And anything you are holding or working on. It’s really powerful, if you didn’t catch my drift.  At the same time, it does have an effect upon everything. Including yourself. It won’t care if you curse at it, but it will respond if you try to break something you shouldn’t.  Now, I want you to think ‘Status’ to yourself. It’s the easiest way to see what’s what.” Okay, that’s interesting.  An all-powerful automated system?  Sounds almost like… Ack! Damned headache again.  I can’t even think of that, can I? Shit. Yet for everything I can’t remember it just starts to bug me more. I put it aside though, and turn my thoughts to the task Tod had set for me.  Easy enough, right? Just think ‘Status’.   [-Personal Statistics-] [Name: -Locked-][Titles: None][Status: Civilian] [Racial Type: Dead | Zombie][Rank: F | Level: 1] [Soul Energy (SE): 10/10][Soul Points (SP): 5 (-Locked-)] [Body: 1/3 | +1 (10 SE)][Mind: 1/3 | +1 (10 SE)][Soul: 1/3 | +1 (10 SE)] [Feats: None][Abilities: None][Skills: None] [Perks: Newly Dead][Detriments: Newly Dead]   “Good, I see you brought it up.  Now I’ll run through your status real quick.  You don’t have a name, because your memories are still sealed.  Shouldn’t have any titles or anything either. Your soul energy should be full up, and you’ll have some ‘soul points’ that are currently locked too.  Soul points are something you gain every time you raise your rank. You spend on them feats, abilities, skills, and perks. Or removing detriments. That said, you can gain just about all of those without spending your points. “You should have three starting attributes, although it’s been known for others to have more.  Just not very common though. Body represents your physical self. Your strength, endurance, dexterity and the like.  Mind represents your innate intelligence, wisdom, and cunning. Soul represents your ability to control soul energy and esoteric stuff like charisma, and luck.” It’s kind of hard to look at Tod through the blue screen hovering in front of my eyes, but I nod as I listen to him while reading over my status a couple of times.  Much of it is to remember it all, and another is to actually pick up on anything Tod may have missed out on. Which isn’t much. There’s no help file or anything to go along with it… although why that memory just came to mind, I have no clue. “Now, and this is IMPORTANT, all in Capital Letters!  Your attributes can change. And not just go up or down in number.  We call it ‘spawning attributes’, but once you reach the limit of what your overarching stats can hold, they will split into individual progressions.  Strength, Endurance, Agility or Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, ect. Each of these spawned attributes inherit the total of the previous primary attribute and thus represent a baseline.  Each point added to those new attributes will be represented as a decibel added onto it. So if you have 10 Strength and you add a point to it, it’ll become 10.1 (ten point one). “This is done because every RACE has a standard for all attributes.  For living humans, that standard is 10 points. Anything above that is considered ‘superhuman’.  And that leads us into the next subject, your Rank, which is paired with your Race. As a regular zombie, your standard is 3 points.  Which, as you can guess, is really weak.” I break in there though, unable to keep it from blurting out. “Three points? 3.0?  Holy…” Yeah, not very intelligent of me, but I cannot help it.  Which is why there’s suddenly a hot burning sensation running through my body that makes me cry out in pain. “Ack!  Don’t go saying the ‘H’ word here!”  Tod yells, scrambling back across the black rocky ground as he does so.  At the same time there’s a distant pearl of laughter, and I realize it’s coming from the other devil off in the distance that’s looking this way.  Not that it helps, cause I literally just burned myself. It’s gone in an instant though, but my insides feel rather toasted and I groan in discomfort as my hands pat my somewhat smoldering body.  Thankfully besides from feeling a bit charred, I can’t see any damage. “Jeeze, warn a guy first!  That could get nasty if there was any real intent behind it.”  Tod grumbles before shaking his head with something like a rueful laugh.  “Saying the ‘H’ word down here will invoke ‘punishment’. Thankfully the intent behind using the word matters much more than the word itself, so there’s no damage done in this case.  But if you started cursing blatantly you could get blasted to bits. And anyone around you for that matter. So just don’t say it, got it?” I listen and nod, but at the same time that really scared me.  Just saying a word could cause very real damage, which sucks. Everyone curses, after all.  And it just sort of slipped out of me, which is nasty in its own way. Probably a lingering memory or something. “Thankfully saying the ‘H’ word here isn’t likely to kill you in one go.  Saying it in the Hells would invite lightning from the sky on the other hand.  Although to be fair, I hear the heavens get blasted with black flame if they invoke ‘Hell’, so there is that, haha!” “Okay, got it.  Don’t say the ‘H’ words in either places.  Good to know.” I mutter dryly, although when I open my mouth a bit of hot hair and ash escape past my lips.  Ugh. It really did try to burn up my insides apparently. Which is why it hurt so much, no doubt. “Yep!  Now then, back to what I was talking about… Oh, right.  Races and Ranks. Ranks have ten levels, 1 to 10. Each bump up in rank level allows you to place 1 more point into your attributes, to the rank limit.  As a Rank F zombie, your limit is 3 points. That’s a hard limit. But when your rank level goes up past 10, it resets to level 1 and your Rank goes up to D.  At Rank D, your hard limit raises. For Zombies, that increases to 5 points. "For that reason you DO NOT want to spawn attributes at low ranks.  Because it’d take a whole lot more ranks to raise them up later. Not to mention a whole lot more soul energy to do so.  However, attached to this is your Race. Zombies are run-of-the-mill in these parts, and are way better than either ghosts or skeleton types.  Skeletons can only get to 3 points in Body, but are stuck at 1 point in Mind and Soul. Ghosts can only get to 3 points in Soul, but only 1 point in Body and Mind.  With me so far?” Yeah, I’m listening, and both dread and am thankful for being reborn as a zombie.  But it is at least better than being a skeleton or a ghost, right? Heh. Boneheads and Spooks.  Yeah, I’ll save that bit of humor for later and instead settle for nodding for Tod to continue. I’ve been doing a lot more listening than talking anyway. “Alrighty!  This is where it gets real interesting, because you can change your Race!  This is done a few ways. The first is to collect or be granted a Race Token.  These are special little baubles either granted by the Voice or gifted from others.  Usually for work well done and that sort of jazz. Race Tokens will reset your Rank and level back to F, but you’ll receive bonuses for any attributes and the like over the limit.  This can be good for quickly becoming stronger. Although expensive if you intend to actually try to buy Race Tokens. “The other way is through Evolution!  Reaching the prerequisite rank and level for any race grants special evolution options that reset everything just like Race Tokens, without costing you more time and effort.  The flip side of the coin however is that your new race is always based upon your previous one. A zombie can become a zombie knight, for instance. Or a lich. Or a ghoul. The choices are varied and vast.  Especially at higher ranks. A zombie knight requires you to reach Rank D level 10 and have both the [Sword Mastery] and either [Shield Use] or [Armor Use] skills, for a full example…” Tod trails off there, as a nearby crunching of stone brings both of our attentions to a newcomer.  Only it’s actually the other devil and his newbie. They’d wandered over, and while the zombie guy gives a wave there is a scowl on his partners’ face.  Which is soon mirrored on Tod’s face as he stands up and pats his black trousers clear of dust. A totally unneeded gesture, given the red guy doesn’t have a speck of dust on him.  Neither of the devils’ do, when I look to compare them. Huh, interesting. “Still talking your newbie into an early grave, Tod?”  The other devil asks with a sneer as they wander close enough to be heard without talking.  The sarcastic words actually make Tod huff a bit, red flames coming out of his nose in the process. “What’s it to you, George?  Your unfriendly attitude is why you always have such trouble calming down the newbies.  That or the fact your black thread always ends up burning you. A devil is his word.” Tod retorts, and I’ve never thought I’d see a guy with red skin go green in the face.  That’s actually rather amusing. Thankfully I keep the laugh from passing my lips, and instead make to stand up while returning a short wave to the other zombie guy.  He probably looks just like me though, with grey lifeless skin, black eyes, and bone-white short hair. The only difference I can see is that his nose is bleeding a bit.  Rather it be from George’s carelessness or his own thrashing, I can’t tell though. Also the stitches are completely gone, which remind me that I haven’t checked my own. Probably similar though. “Bah, whatever.  I’m done for the day and taking my newbie to Helen City.  Got a nice drop of soul energy to turn in and a drink waiting for me at the pub.”  George is smirking again as soon as he opens his mouth, and I catch the eye-roll the other zombie gives behind his back.  Probably not the first time he’d heard the same thing repeated. “Yah yah, get on with it then.  At least this newbie is actually listening and asking questions.” Todd retorts, although that only makes me feel a bit bad for breaking his soul glass.  Extra income seems like it’s pretty hard to come by around here. “Yeah, and burning himself too.  We saw the poof of holy… fuck!” George just had to have the last word, and ended up getting burned himself for it.  And none of us, not even his newbie, stop ourselves from laughing at his expense. Except where it had been like a flash in the pan for me, for George it was like a white torrent of light suddenly speared down from the heavens. It was done in only a moment or two, but what it left was a man-shaped charred roast.  A moaning, groaning charred roast. That soon flakes off into ash in the rather non-existent wind and reveals a somewhat burned red skinned devil beneath.  One that is now missing half a horn from atop his head, actually. “Hahahahahaha!  That’s what you get, George!  Going from a muscle-brained Hellion to a Devil via evolution didn’t do anything to add any brain cells to that head of yours.  Hahahaha!” Todd bursts out laughing, while George was panting and trembling. He’d taken far more damage than I had with that slip, probably because of the sadistic glee he’d put behind it.  As Todd had said earlier, the intent matters. Making fun of others with it obviously counts on the heavy side. At the same time though, I was watching George.  He’s shaking, rather in pain, anger, or rage I cannot tell.  But what I can tell is that his clothing is slowly becoming crisp and clean, and the burn marks across his body are fading quickly.  At the same time though I notice that his already broken horn is becoming smaller and smoother. There is something else there as well, a feeling that tugs at me. I reach out toward it, not with my hands but with my thoughts and mind, and as I concentrate the feeling becomes stronger and easier to hold onto.  No doubt furrowing my brows, I reach out to the feeling even more, straining to hold onto what I’m feeling until something in my head seems to ‘snap!’ and suddenly the world changes in front of my eyes. Where previously the world was dim and somewhat misty, with swirling clouds above and black stone below, now there’s like an extra layer over all of it.  A layer of silver-white, mottled grey-black, and a few sparks and dashes of color. For a moment it was like some painter had just sprayed his entire collection of dull paints over everything, but blinking my eyes it all soon comes into focus.   [Energy Sight ability learned!] [Soul Energy Manipulation skill learned!] [Over-Sight feat gained!]   Three messages then appear within my vision, and the world goes back to being dull and generally lifeless.  It’s only then that though I realize that I’m panting, and everyone is looking my way. I feel utterly drained though, and huff quite a bit as I lean over to rest my arms on my knees.  Amazingly enough even a bit of sweat drips off my nose and onto the rocky ground at my feet. “Well ain’t that somethin’.  Never seen a newbie grasp something like that so quickly.”  Todd ends up saying, half mumbling to himself while George stares in almost a daze.  The other guy looks a bit lost and somewhat fearful. He probably has no idea what’s going on, which I can relate to. “Oooh,” I breath out before straightening up.  “Gained an ability, skill, and feat all at once.  What the Hell?” I cannot help but say and question all at the same time.  I really can’t tell what happened. “Hah!  No wonder you look like the dead warmed over then.”  George was the first to respond, going back to his asshole-ish smirk.  The guy really made me want to punch him. Thankfully Tod is far more helpful. “Gaining skills, abilities, and feats take effort, man.  And effort requires you to spend soul energy. No freebies around here, ya know.  Now what’d you do and what’d you get?” Tod finishes his short but to the point explanation with a question of his own. “Ah, I was watching George there heal up after his punishment.”  I say, motioning to the devil whom is likewise listening in. “His clothing cleaned up, his burns disappeared, and his broken horn got smaller but smoother.  At the same time I ‘felt’ something, like a heat wave or the like coming off of him. But I wanted to see it more clearly, so I focused on it…” I end up falling off there, thinking about the feeling again.  Only this time it comes to me far more easily than before, and without even thinking about it my eyes blink and suddenly the word is full of color again.  This time though I can actually make out what I’m looking at. The red and silver light running around Tod’s body.  The red and black in George’s. The silver-white mist buried inside the other zombie guys’ chest.  And off in the distance other marks of red and the occasional dash of other colors that are too blurred to make out properly. And then the vision fades, and my insides suddenly feel very much empty, leaving me gasping for breath again.  This time though the exhaustion is too much, and I actually stumble and droop to my knees. It was like the wind had gone out of my lungs and I’d finished a 50 mile marathon.  Wait, marathon? Where’d that come from… Ugh. “Easy there, my man.  Using skills and abilities use up soul energy, of which you have a very limited supply right now.  Thankfully you can’t overdraft yourself, so there’s no harm, but you’ll be winded for about half an hour until you generate some.”  Tod steps forward and grabs me by an arm, hefting me up with almost ridiculous ease while explaining. “That said, Energy Sight is a fairly rare ability all its own.  It’s also non-attributed, so you can see all sorts of energy with it.  No doubt there’s red and silver around here, from a devils’ demon energy and the soul energy all about.”  Tod then gives a little run-down of what I had been seeing, to which I nod in thanks for while catching my breath. At the same time the other zombie guy is staring at George, whom is ignoring him.  It seems that George hasn’t explained anymore than the bare basics in comparison. I almost feel sorry for the guy.  Almost. “Alright… I got the Energy Sight ability, Soul Energy Manipulation skill, and the Over-Sight feat.  Which does what?” I ask after a few more breaths, and I could almost swear that I could see the ears of the others perk up after my question. Thankfully Tod was also paying attention, causing him to snort with another bout of flames coming out of his nose.  It reminds me of… a raging bull, yeah. A red skinned, horned, flaming bull. For some reason that mental image just makes me want to chuckle. “Not now, dude.  You never want to discuss your skills and the like with others unless you really trust them.  Or have a contract with ‘em. Information is power down here, and while us Guides are down here to get you started, we are bound by contract to keep you alive for a while.  So save the questions for later, yeah?” Tod responds after giving George a stare, which makes the other devil put a stop to his grin. It seems the contract they have with Helen City is quite the big deal for the ‘Guides’. “Okay, got it.”  I say simply, starting to stretch and get feeling back into my body.  Being low or almost out of soul energy doesn’t seem to be a good thing, given how stiff and dull it’s made me feel.  Then again Tod did say that it was literally what’s keeping me alive, so keeping a reserve is something I’ll really have to think about later. “Now that this fiasco is done and over with, why don’t we head to town?  The Plains of Corpses is relatively safe during the day time, but I don’t want to be out here after dark.  That and a pint sounds just great.” Tod finally changes the subject, and I personally don’t have any reason not to follow along. The same could be said for the other two, although there is far less boasting or talking going on between the pair.  George must really be a dick, and I wonder how he even managed to get this far as a Devil. Then again there are all sorts, right? The trek to Helen City on the other hand was somewhat enlightening.  If only because we were quite far from the place. That and there is literally nothing out this way.  The Plains of Corpses is aptly named though, because other than black stone and jagged ridges that’s all there is.  Mounds and hills and mountains of corpses. Dead, grey, lifeless. Not a hint of vegetation, or anything.  On closer look however it seems that not all the corpses here are whole.  Or even dressed, for that matter. Which when asked, Tod actually explains in his previous jolly mood. “Corpses that are whole and wearing clothing tend to be un-awakened zombies.  They are all the same, either male or female though. For us Guides from Helen City, we dig through the mounds and pull out the ones that match and see if we can get them to awaken.  It can be quite the game, truth be told, haha!” “Yeah, until one of the shamblers try to bite you.  Then you have to give ‘em a beating to get them to back off.”  George actually puts in his two cents there, which actually puts me into something of a juggling match in my head. First off, what the hell are cents?  Why would George have two of them? And what are shamblers?  The answer to the first two questions allude me, but the third is easy enough to answer because I soon see it for myself. A zombie missing an arm and with his head on lopsided squirms off of a nearby corpse pile and groans in our direction.  Eyes of yellowish white stare at nothing, but even I flinch a bit. The whole front of the zombies chest is ripped open.  And what I thought was a guy is actually a woman. Or the body of one. “That’s a shambler.  Un-awakened zombies that become feral and manage to rip open their stitches.  Not always in that order. They can be quite the nuisance, especially when digging through the piles.  But they tend to stay away from those stronger than themselves or their awakened counterparts. Around here they are like the rats you’d find in town.  Hoarders and eaters.” Tod points and tells, smiling again as he does so. I’m not the only one listening though, as the other zombie guy makes his way over.  I give a nod in greeting as we walk on by the shambler, although it is rapidly becoming annoying at not having a name to give or the like. At the same time I realize that the shamblers are probably what I saw moving on the other piles earlier.  That thought brings up another question, which I’m quick to ask. “What happens if a shambler gets ahold of the body of another un-awakened?” “Then they become a shambler too.  The awakening is considered a ceremony, requiring ya to have both your stitches and a whole body.  Lose either of those before you are awake and you lose your chance at a new life. That’s why us Guides dig the piles daily, to pull you poor sods out of harm's’ way and set you up to go about your new life.  Often a thankless task, but most of you new guys are far more talkative than usual. Haha.” Okay, that’s enlightening to say the least.  It seems that being granted this un-life has restrictions and meaning.  At the same time, many of the newbies like myself and the guy listening in seem to be subtly different from the ones that have come before us.  That thought brings on another feeling that something isn’t right, or that I’m missing something. But I just can’t remember, and trying to force myself only brings about another splitting headache. “I thank you, at least.”  I finally say after a moment, the headache fading as quickly as it had come.  Tod must have noticed the grimace on my face, because his own suddenly lights up as if he’d just remembered something. “Oh, right!  Forgot to tell you about that.  Pull up your status again real quick.”  He instructs, to which I nod and follow through by doing so.   [-Personal Statistics-] [Name: -Locked-][Titles: None][Status: Civilian] [Racial Type: Dead | Zombie][Rank: F | Level: 1] [Soul Energy (SE): 2/10][Soul Points (SP): 5 (-Locked-)] [Body: 1/3 | +1 (10 SE)][Mind: 1/3 | +1 (10 SE)][Soul: 1.3 | +1 (10 SE)] [Feats: Over-Sight - Rank I (2/10).] [Abilities: Energy Sight - Rank I. (2/25)] [Skills: Soul Energy manipulation - Rank I. (1/25)] [Perks: Newly Dead][Detriments: Newly Dead]   “Okay, so besides the other changes to your status, including your new goodies, you should have a perk and a detriment listed by the same name.  ‘Newly Dead’, yes?” Tod begins and questions, to which both me and the other guy nod. I don’t think the other zombie has opened his mouth the entire time though. “Good.  ‘Newly Dead’ is counted as both because it has both pros and cons to it.  Now I’m going to teach you two something, an ability called Inspect.” Tod says then, stopping in his tracks only to reach out to both of us. His hand is oddly warm against my forehead, which actually feels kind of nice.  The other guy sort of freezes up though, and I can see his fists clench up as if he were about to make a run for it.  Thankfully he doesn’t though. “Teach: Inspect.”  Tod intones gently, which causes his body to faintly glow in a red light before something is forced into my head.  It’s uncomfortable, but after a moment it finds whatever it was looking for and settles into place as if it had always been there.   [Learned the Inspect ability!  Rank II gained from Mentor Skill!]   Then Tods’ hands are gone from my head, and he even as somewhat of a sheepish smile on his face.  It looks really weird on a red skinned, somewhat bulky, and horned devil though. After a moment he clears his throat, no doubt from the rather curious stares we are giving him. “Ah, yeah.  Right. You two are newbies.  Anyway, the Inspect ability allows you to discover additional information on an object.  Including parts of your status. The Mentor skill is one I’ve been training up. It allows me to teach you one of my own abilities at a lower rank than my Mentor skill itself.”  Tod explains, going back to his friendly grin. Nearby though George actually snorts, finally turning his head to look at us. “A devil actually teaching people.  Lords of the Pits help us.” George retorts, only to be startled when both myself and Tod actually flip him the bird.  In union. Which is pretty cool. “Hahaha!  A man after my own heart!”  Tod laughs when he realizes I did the same thing he did, and I kind of get this goofy grin on my own face.  No clue what I look like though, although I’m thankful my hands work as intended. Beside us the other newbie also chuckles a bit, although he turns his head quickly when George shoots him a hateful look.  Not that any of us seem to mind it though. I wonder if anyone actually likes George. “Yeah though, it’s actually pretty hard to get the Mentor skill, but it is something I thought would be helpful.  I’ve been a Guide for longer than George has been alive, so I’ve seen plenty of people come and go. Some go up, others go down, but it’s always the same.”  Tod finally explains once he finishes laughing, and I nod as we start moving again. “Now then, you’ll want to open your statuses again and then say ‘Inspect Newly Dead’ while staring at that line.  Or in your mind, whichever one works for you.”   [-Personal Statistics-] [Name: -Locked-][Titles: None][Status: Civilian] [Racial Type: Dead | Zombie][Rank: F | Level: 1] [Soul Energy (SE): 2/10][Soul Points (SP): 5 (-Locked-)] [Body: 1/3 | +1 (10 SE)][Mind: 1/3 | +1 (10 SE)][Soul: 1.3 | +1 (10 SE)] [Feats: Over-Sight - Rank I (2/10).] [Abilities: Energy Sight - Rank I. (2/25); Inspect - Rank II. (1/50)] [Skills: Soul Energy manipulation - Rank I. (1/25)] [Perks: Newly Dead][Detriments: Newly Dead]   I do as instructed, which seems to be all I’ve been doing lately.  For some reason that ticks me off a little, but I shrug the rather muted feeling away and concentrate.  ‘Inspect Newly Dead’ I speak up in my mind, causing a new blue screen to appear.   [Newly Dead - Perk/Detriment] [You are newly dead!  Your soul is mutable for 30 (29ds, 8hs, 24min) days.] [Newly dead can only be slain by soul dispersion.] [Newly dead can inhabit any body or form containing Soul Energy.] [Newly dead have enhanced soul energy absorption rate.] [Memories locked until soul is properly mounted in a body or form.] [Advanced Titles, Feats, Abilities and Skills cannot be learned.] [Newly dead can be revoked early.]   Whoah, there’s quite a few things there.  And I can obviously see why it’s considered both a Perk and a Detriment.  For one, it allows for almost true immortality, for 30 days. For another it gives enhanced soul energy absorption, which I don’t think we’ve gotten to in the discussions with Tod yet. At the same time it locks our memories, and disables our ability to learn advanced abilities.  Which may be a real downside, depending upon what constitutes ‘advanced’ abilities. Because those may be important, if Limbo is dangerous in any way, shape, or form.  Actually, it may be bad even if Limbo is rather peaceful. If only for the inability to move up the social ladder. “Good, it seems the both of you found it.  The ‘Newly Dead’ perk is a great thing when you are starting out, that’s for sure.  Always been kind of jealous of it, in fact. But it’s only a safety net. The detriments though are the real kicker though.  Advanced skills are also called ‘Professional Skills’. Skills like Alchemy, Blacksmithing, and Scribing are all Advanced Skills.  They require knowledge as well as training, usually through an apprenticeship.” This time both myself and the other guy are listening to Tod seriously, because this is really important.  It seems that the downside is a real kicker, especially when wanting to go with non-combat professions. That sucks a bit, but thirty days isn’t really that long of time. “That also means that most forms of magic that require active training are out too.  Summoning, Thaumaturgy, Healing, and Enchanting are big examples. That said, there is more leeway with magic.  Sorcery, magic based upon emotion and experience is just fine. That’s basically run through Energy Manipulation, borrowing power from nature and the like.  So if you wanna go tossing around fireballs, go ahead. Just don’t do that here in the Plains, okay?” Tod actually starts to joke about it, but the talk about magic really catches my attention.  I’ve already gotten part of that, after all. In fact, the other zombie is looking quite put off at that.  But the bastard still hasn’t said a word the entire time. “I think we get the idea, Tod.  So we are stuck being grunts or laborers until we choose a body, right?”  I end up asking the question that came to mind, and Tod naturally turns to flash a grin at me. “Got it, boyo.  That said, you can technically ‘learn’ all those Advanced titles, skills, and whatnot.  You just can’t get access to them. Which is really annoying if you try to do everything manually.  A Blacksmith with a rank of 5 (Rank: V), would normally spend about an hour or so on a common grade steel sword, for instance.  Doing it manually could take you twelve hours or more. “That said, you can choose not to activate the skill and go about it, which gives a great boost to the skill should you succeed.  The Voice records it as effort without assistance, so there’s a big bonus once done. It’s seen as something any professional will do in order to really get their skill ranks up there.  It’s even rumored that the Blacksmith Ocre crafted the Overlords Armor in the Hells while doing it all manually too. And that’s a Legendary grade armor!” Heh.  A little off topic there, but I don’t mind letting Tod go off because it is informative.  Probably more than it needs to be, but hey information is information. Even if it’s just rumor. "Sounds pretty neat.  So it is possible to do actions without the skills required.  Bet it get expensive though, like through trial and error.” My response gets Tod nodding up and down as if his head were all on swivel, which makes me chuckle a little. “Exactly!  Back onto the subject though. The reason why you want to hang onto ‘Newly Dead’ as long as possible is for the boost in absorbing soul energy.  For most of us, soul energy is hard to pull in. We have to worry about purity and all that jazz. You don’t, so you get to skip that entire process.  Which is important, because it’s the only way to grow how much soul energy your body can hold. “Which, by the way, is quite simple.  Starting out, you have 10 points of Soul Energy.  By spending 9 points of it, you can gain one extra point of maximum capacity.  Then for the second point you have to spend 10 points of energy on it. And so on and so forth.  Really simple, yah? It gets really insane when you start having hundreds or thousands of points though.  Which is why people really dig soul stones, because it can rapidly replenish your spent points.” Okay, yeah, that makes sense.  And sounds like a boring and time consuming task.  At the same time, it makes me feel as if I’d heard that bit of information before.  I just can’t place when or where. Thankfully I’m able to jerk my thoughts onto other matters before another headache strikes. Which, by the way, happens to be the end of the Plains of Corpses.  Or rather, a glimpse at the first green I’ve seen in the place since I woke up.  Lots of green, in fact. Tod must have caught my distracted gaze, because he turns his head to look as well and hums to himself in a somewhat happy tone. “Ah, we are reaching the farmlands outside of Helen City.  Can already see the fields outside the mounds there.” He says, pointing it out for the other newbie.  Whom is just as quick to look as I had been. It really is quite the sight as we make our way past the last few large hill-sized mounds of dead bodies.  The black rock of the Plains smoothly transitions to thick black soil, upon which fields have been plowed and planted.  There’s also water, although it is milky white in appearance running through irrigation ditches dug between the fields. “This here is Demon’s Grain.”  Tod starts to point out what is being grown, pointing a thick red finger at the different fields.  “Dead Flax, Soul Flowers, Ghost Vine.” Okay, so there’s quite a few things that grow in these fields.  My attention wanders a bit as we step onto a well-traveled road built into the space between fields that stretch as far as my eyes can see.  The road itself is paved in black stone, likely mined from the Plains of Corpses. Almost like… cobblestone, yeah, cobblestone from the Above World. “Demon’s Grain is basically wheat.  Used to make bread and the like. Dead Flax is a fibrous plant used to spin yarn and make cloth out of.  Soul Flowers are used in alchemy, a base for a variety of potions because it has a small amount of Soul Energy in it.  Ghost Vine is roughly chopped and can be smoked.” The explanations keep coming, as Tod doesn’t seem to be able to keep his mouth shut.  Not that I mind, as listening to him go on like this actually is a bit relaxing to me.  Odd, I know. But it’s just how I feel. At least until he speaks up about the Ghost Vine and mentions smoking. That has an interesting effect on me, because suddenly I have a very real craving to have something held between my lips.  Like I really need a smoke. Or a cigarette. That thought though brings about another spike of headache, and I reach up to rub my temples with one grey hand.  Only this one is quite longer lasting than the previous ones. I really want a smoke. “Uh.  Tod, what is the cost of these things?”  I finally force out between gritted teeth, trying to change the subject and actually stop my head from exploding.  I haven’t forgotten about Tod’s earlier warning, but the damned craving is just way too strong. Like I’d been starved of nicotine for far too long.  Nico...tine. “Huh?  Oh, right.  You see, money down here in Limbo is a little weird.  There’s coinage, used in trade between the various cities or in large orders.  But most people trade in soul stones. Or rather, pieces of ‘em. Shards, we call them.  If you break a soul stone, you’ll get ten regularly sized shards out of it. It’s something the Voice regulates, so it’s a standard used everywhere. “A loaf of bread in Helen City costs a single shard.  Or three copper coins. A full meal without meat, three shards; or nine copper coins.  Almost a silver. A full meal with meat ranges from five shards to seven or so. Which is right at a silver or a little more.  Like I said, the money thing is a bit weird. That rates between shards and coinage changes daily. But everyone wants soul stones, so that’s what most people trade in, ya see.” Thankfully Tod is quick up on the update, and starts actually explaining something useful.  For which I’m grateful for as the headache finally leaves me alone. Really, having my memory sealed really sucks.  The headaches are likely to be the death of me. “You’ve been grimacing quite a while there, dude.  I hazard a guess that you are far more sensitive to the memory sealing than others are.  Just be careful with that, okay?” Okay, so Tod may actually be a bit too observant as well.  But then again he seems to be rather old as a devil, and experience is a big thing. “Yeah.  I keep getting flashes of thoughts and pieces of memories.  Things that leave me wanting to know more or remember better.”  I explain as I glimpse the other newbie glancing my way with what looks like worry on his face. “Using your head too much there, brat.  Dropping some points into Mind will take the edge off later.”  Sadly it wasn’t Tod that speaks up first, and instead George actually decides to rejoin the conversation.  Only his tone is more pensive than smug, and I throw a look at the red guy. “George is just worried about losing his pay for the day.  Guides get paid daily per bringing in at least one newbie. But part of the contract is that allowing you guys to die before you get to Helen City means docked pay.  And George isn’t known for saving his income.” Tod actually grins again as he tells it as it is, making George scowl and look away while walking in front of the group. “Truthfully though he has it right.  The Mind attribute does lessen the impact of the memory headaches a bit.  Soul helps too, although mostly on the emotional side of things. Emotions are weird for you dead guys though, because usually they are really muted.  But when they come out, they tend to be really strong and overbearing. Maxing your Soul attribute helps with controlling those impulses.” It makes sense, so I nod again.  At the same time though I look at George’s broad back thoughtfully.  And take the time to actually look at his clothing. Which consists of a pair of black trousers, almost like slacks; boots of leather of some sort; and a long-sleeved tunic shirt that almost looks like a short robe belted closed with what seems to be a silk sash.  His black blade is nowhere to be seen. Weird clothing for weird people, I guess. “Thanks for the advise, George.”  I finally say after a moment, which seems to startle the devil before he huffs and raises a hand.  Big guy definitely doesn’t take thanks well, but it seems he’s more than his asshole attitude would suggest.  His newbie actually looks surprised though, shaking his head abit. “Heh.  Don’t worry about George.  He used to be a Hellion, which is a race that’s all about smashing shit and being as big and mean as possible.  Grunts, soldiers, and the like. Being big, mean, and stronger than the other guys is what Hellions are all about.  Which is a bit of a conflict with Devils though. So just take it as George having some rough patches. “But no Devils come out here to be Guides without a good reason or the desire to actually help. Devils as a whole tend to be lawful neutral or evil, as such things go.  Contracts, bonds, and personal ties matter a whole lot. A Devil is his word.” Tod explains in a much quieter voice, although there’s something like a pride in his little smile. “A Devil is his word.”  George’s voice echoes back to us, although he doesn’t look back at us at all.  Still, it makes me smile a bit. It seems both Tod and George are far more complex than I’d originally assumed.  And really, Tod is the biggest mystery right now. He seems almost too nice, too helpful. However, I’m not in any mood to ask because over the horizon a far brighter light starts to peak.  At first I actually thought it was the sun coming up over the misted sky, but it doesn’t seem to be at all.  Instead, it’s a ball of light perched on top of a very, very tall black tower. A tower that actually pierces past the soul energy mist that is the sky of Limbo. The nearly absurd sight of it stops me in my tracks, and I stare transfixed.  I can only see the top of the tower from this point, but that ball of light really gets to me.  For one thing, I can actually feel it’s warmth from here. As if it really were the sun. But at the same time something screams at me that it’s completely artificial.  Possibly because of all the soul energy I can feel radiating from the thing. I’m not the only one to stop though, as the other zombie guy also stares upwards at the sight just a step or two ahead of me.  It was almost dumbfounding, and really there wasn’t anything else in my mind at all. At least until I hear both Tod and George start to chuckle. The sound seems to break me out of whatever funk I was in, because my eyes snap downward fast enough to make my head spin a bit.  The other guy is just the same, although he turns to look back at me, his black eyes open wide. I could all but feel the awe and fear coming from him. “Haha.  It’s always nice to see the newbies respond like that!”  Tod is still laughing, and George is nodding his head as well.  Which is kind of weird, given that they are both agreeing about something instead of bickering like an old married couple. “The Sol Light is how we measure time in the vicinity of Helen City, heh.  There’s no sun or moon or stars here in Limbo, so the only light is what we make ourselves.  Further from the cities the deeper the twilight becomes.” Tod starts yet another explanation, but I actually glance back up at the ball of light.  Or Sol Light, as Tod put it. “The Sol Light is a magical construct built atop the Keeper’s Tower.  It’s the literal heart of Helen City, along with the other Keeper’s Towers in the other cities.  And it radiates enough Soul Energy to be felt from vast distances, once you know what you are looking for.  That, and is what allows all these fields to grow and whatnot.” Tod looked like he was going to continue, but George grunts and interrupts him. “Enough of that. We still have a ways to go before we get to the city, so we should get a move on.”  Yeah, that sounds just like George, but I think all of us can agree at this point. I especially want to see the city and what it has to offer.  So far there’s just been an awful lot of walking and nothing else going on. That, and I haven’t seen anyone else out here but us four the entire time.  It is almost disconcerting. The fields look well cared for, for instance, but there isn’t a single farmer or worker for as far as my eyes can see.  Which says something, because even as a zombie I’m quite a bit taller than even the fully grown Demon’s Grain stalks. There are also no animals of any kind that I can spot.  Just plants, the road, and the black soil. All of which just strikes me as really odd.  Which is a feeling that’s getting really old and annoying really fast. “Where is everyone?  Are there no animals, monsters, or beasts around?”  I finally cannot hold it in anymore and start spouting questions.  To my side the other zombie guy nods his head, and I could almost see a big question mark floating above it too. “Hm?  They are there, you know.”  Tod seems a bit put off with his reply, even as he idly motions to one side of the road.  Looking though I cannot see anything though. Before I can say anything though Tod’s eyes go wide and he stops in mid-step, almost falling over in the process. “Wait, you can’t see anyone?” The words come quite fast this time, and in far more seriousness than I’m used to from Tod.  At the same time George has stopped again, his back straightening to the point where it almost looks like he was about to bend backwards.  Almost like someone had stepped on his imaginary tail. Tod doesn’t even wait for me to reply though, his black eyes rolling around almost frantically before he suddenly shouts.  I almost couldn’t make out the words, it’s so loud and fast, but I do make out “[Mana Surge]” before all hell breaks loose. Which is saying something, because we are in Limbo, right?  The Realms of Hell are only a short distance, figuratively, away.  But the vast surge of ‘power’ that suddenly surges out of Tod’s big red body almost knocks me off my feet.  My fellow newbie is actually blown off his feet and onto his back. At the same time the sound of glass shattering reaches my ears, and everything suddenly changes before my eyes. The clean and well kept fields are gone.  Burning and smoking ruins are all that’s left of them.  The smell is astringent to my nose, bitter and smelling acidic.  The smoke is so heavy in the air I could almost taste it. Sadly that’s the least of my worries, because what appears out of the gloom is a scene out of a nightmare.  Grey skinned zombie bodies are scattered all over the place, in bits and pieces; as if broken toys. Time whitened bones of skeletons are the same, although many of them are crashed.  And the bodies of little red men have been torn asunder, having splattered dark red blood all over everything in their surroundings. Above them all are the silently screaming souls of the dead and slain.  Each of them has been pierced through via great black chains, connecting one to the next in an endless macabre parade.  Black chains that spark with purple lights that causes the nearby translucent souls to howl in silent agony and flicker as if they were about to be snuffed out of existence at any moment. Even me, stunned by the sudden assault of sights and sounds and smells, can tell that those chains are bad news.  In fact, it were as if those chains were draining the souls dry, ready to consign them all to oblivion at the drop of a hat.  The sudden fear that clenches up in my chest only makes it all the worse. My saving grace however is the fact that I wasn’t the first target.  Instead it was my silent companion, who isn’t so silent once one end of those black chains whips out at him and grabs him around the throat.  At the same time, his sudden outburst of ‘Holy fucking shit!’ actually manages to save his life. Yeah, the punishment burn seems to hurt the black chain even more than it did him, allowing him to wiggle out of it’s loosened grip and stand back up.  At the same time Tod finally steps forward and pulls the guy back, while shouting at me. “Move!”  That one word is all I needed to hear as I break out into the fastest sprint of my short undead life.  In fact my suddenly motion is so terror-driven that I even reach inside myself and force my limited soul energy into focusing into my legs, giving me a sudden speed boost that sees me driving even past George, who’d gone pale in the face while glancing around frantically. But I must have had the best idea, because soon enough both George and Tod are yelling for us to run, and to run as fast and as long as possible.  I barely make out the words, but I can hear the heavy stamping of running feet on the shattered black rock road. The scattered bodies and floating souls and the black chains make it a somewhat difficult thing, like running through an obstacle course.  None of us are complaining though. And then my energy flags, my already reduced soul energy running out after only a couple dozen feet.  It leaves me huffing and panting for breath, clutching at my aching chest as sweat pours down my face.  But I keep my legs moving, shambling or jogging, whichever way you want to say it. “Fucking Scourge!  Fuck fuck fuck!” George is bellowing somewhere behind me, but they are all catching up as I try to force strength back into my legs to keep going.  I really don’t want to look around or see what may be following us. And I definitely don’t want to end up like those poor bastards already chained up by those eerie black chains. “Shut up and keep running, George!  The main body isn’t here!” Tod yells at the other devil, although I can hear the tightly controlled fear in his tone.  I take a moment to glance over my shoulder just as George comes bulling up behind me. Thankfully he doesn’t brush me aside, and instead his large hands grab me around my chest only to hoist me over one of his shoulders like a sack of potatoes or something.  I can hear his bellowing breath beside my waist somewhere, but I’m really so exhausted that once the weight are off my legs they are left dangling almost uselessly. “Damned slow newbies!”  George curses as he continues to run.  Carrying me doesn’t seem to slow him down one bit though.  Taking the chance to glance around, I find Tod only a few feet behind George, carrying the other guy too. Only the other zombie isn’t looking so good.  The area around his throat where the chain had whipped him is an odd black-brown color and he seems to be wheezing for breath.  Only to suddenly cough up black bile that reminds me of what had happened when I first woke up. “Shit, your guy has Scourge Poisoning, George!  I’ll try to slow it down, but we need to get back to the city fast before he croaks.  Again!” Tod bellows between his own panted breath. He obviously isn’t as strong as George is.  But I get the distinct feeling that Tod is still far more powerful than George. That especially becomes evident when his body starts to glow with red energy, which I take is his normal ‘demon energy’ he spoke about before.  It wraps around him, coiling and bunching up almost like a snake or a serpent, before drilling into the zombie guys body with a faint sizzling sound.  This makes the guy scream out in pain and another mouthful of that black bile, but soon afterwards that black-brown bruising around his throat starts to fade, although it never disappears completely. George for his part only grunts again, shifting me on his shoulder as he picks up a bit more speed.  Almost too much speed, because the world around me starts to blur. My eyes or my mind just can’t keep up with everything passing below my head.  And in all honesty I’m not sure I want to keep track of everything. I’m just far too exhausted. Which is why I don’t even notice it when I doze off and fall asleep.  Or unconsciousness, as the case may be. I simply black out while ignoring the yelling, crying, smell of blood and shit all around me.     Announcement And here is Chapter 1!  Let me know what you guys think.  I may post Chapter 2 either later today or tomorrow.  Really depends upon what you guys have to say.  Heh. Thanks for reading!

[You have survived: 01 days in Limbo!  Have a nice day!]   Well, that really seems like deja vu.  Didn’t I wake up to a similar message not too long ago?  Ugh. My head hurts, making all of this hard to think about.  In fact my everything hurts, which is probably why it takes me a little while to think the Voice message away.  Still, it’s nice that it provides a usable measure of time. That said, saying I’ve been down here a whole day is kind of pushing it.  I mean, the last I remember was being carried by an overly grumpy devil while running from black chains and some shit.  Scourge, I think Tod called it. Nasty shit, regardless of what it was called. Still, it’s far too noisy in here for me to slip back into the blissfulness of sleep, so I force myself to focus my eyes and turn my head.  Or at least try to. It’s like my whole body is being weighed down. Or that I don’t have any strength. The slight movements I make though make me realize that something is wrong though.  For one thing, my left hand is on fire. Not literally, but it definitely feels that way.  Burning, shooting pain radiates from that part of my body. The second issue is that I’m not tied up or tied down or anything.  Instead my whole body feels like I’d run a damned hours-long marathon. Stiff and loose and all that shit, all at the same time. If I were still human or whatever I’d think I’d torn my muscles to shreds.  Severely overworked, in any case. Which as a zombie very much seems like an impossibility.  Who’d ever heard of a zombie suffering from muscle fatigue? Not this guy. If there is one bright side though, it’s that the pains and aches definitely helps in clearing up my head.  Pain is great in that way, although I get the distinct feeling that the lack of brain chemicals like adrenaline and endorphins are part of the reason why I feel so weird.  It’s like having all the feelings of being alive without a body able to actually produce the things that make one alive. Really fucking weird. Thankfully I’m not given any time to dwell on the unfamiliar words that pop into my head by the arrival of someone to my bedside.  I don’t have to tilt my head far to see them, thankfully, although the task is harder than it sounds. My body really does feel like it’s been chained down, ugh. “Glad to see you’re awake.  I’ve read over your case, so I know that things seem a bit weird for you right now, but I want you to try to remain calm while I talk, okay?”  The interloper is a young woman, or at least I assume she is. She has light green hair that kind of sparkles like gems as she moves in the soft white light of the room. Wearing a white robe with a red silk sash, her skin is somewhat of a bronze tan and her eyes are a vibrant red on a black background.  Which just looks rather fetching, truth be told. That and she has those curves in just all the -right- places, like some damned Greek statue come to life.  All of which means she definitely isn’t one of us Deaders’. Possibly another transplant from the Hells. “Good.  My name is Siliphes.  I am a succubus, and much like your devil Guide friend I am from the Realms of Hell.  I am also a healer working at the Guide’s Guild here in Helen City. One of about two dozen, actually.”  She starts an introduction, to which I listen and nod at the opportune time. I don’t even think I can talk right now, much less in this strange place.  All I can see are stone walls and a wooden ceiling above, in any case. “You are a patient currently in the care of the Guide’s Guild.  From what we’ve been informed, your troop comprised of two devil Guides’ and two newly awakened zombies were caught up by the attack by the Scourge on your way to the city.  You should be gladdened to know that all four of you made it to Helen City alive, if not entirely whole. “Your zombie friend took a major hit from the Scourge chains, and is still unconscious.  He will survive though, if not in one piece. The same could be said for you as well, although with much less damage.  From what we were told you suffered an Overload and fell unconscious before being hurt, so at least be thankful for not having to remember the Scourge poisoning.” Okay, so maybe this succubus, Siliphes, likes to listen to her own voice or something because she’s really talking.  And talking. And talking. At least it is all informative, although it seems she has some sort of sadistic glee in being able to talk to a captive audience, because her smile is only getting bigger and bigger as her mouth flaps.  Ugh. Maybe it’s a Hell thing, although I cannot be sure. “Now that I’ve gotten you up to speed, I need to draw your attention to your pending messages log.  That will explain things in far more detail than I can provide, and is a good experience to have if you ever expect to survive alone out in the wilds of Limbo or elsewhere.  So mentally ask for your pending messages just like you’d ask for your status.” Finally given instructions on what to do, I do just that.  It seems there are quite a few hidden abilities that come with the Voice than what were originally explained to me.  In this case, it gives me something to read other than staring at the succubus’ pretty face.   [-Message Log-] [You have been struck with Terror!  Mental resist failed! (x109)] [Charge ability learned!] [Soul Energy Manipulation has leveled up! (x2)] [You are exhausted! (x5)] [Charge has leveled up!] [You are severely exhausted! (x2)] [Terror has been resisted.] [Terror Resistance feat learned!] [+1 maximum Soul Energy for repeated exhaustion.] [Exhaustion Resistance feat learned!] [You have been stricken with Mild Scourge Poisoning!] [Soul Energy has been consumed! (x23)] [You are exhausted! (x23)] [+1 maximum Soul Energy for repeated exhaustion. (x6)] [Exhaustion Resistance has leveled up! (x4)] [Scourge Poisoning has been purged.] [You are severely exhausted.] [You are recuperating.]   The list just seems to go on forever, but I scroll through it all and cannot help but grimace.  It really does seem that my frantic dash has something to do with being under the effects of Terror.  But I’ve learned a few things from it, and gotten quite a few new abilities and whatnot under my belt.  Probably not the best way to go about things, but really eye opening. Especially all those maximum Soul Energy points.  I thought you had to buy those, but it seems there are other ways to gain such things as well.  Useful knowledge, there. The real kicker though is that Scourge Poisoning. Which seems to consume Soul Energy at set time intervals. How I was injured though is the question, but if anything I can just blame George for being an ass.  Although I doubt it was his fault. And if what Piliphes says is true, the other zombie guy got it far worse.  Thankfully I’m not the one that has to deal with that. Heh. “Looks like you are done, great.  You are currently recuperating here in the medical ward of the Guide’s Guild, which is a service we provide free of charge to all newly awakened.  Scourge Poisoning however is something we don’t often deal with, and neither is a direct attack by the Scourge itself. It was beaten back however, so there is no danger for the time being. “And now that you are awake, you can heal up even faster.  Your status has indicated that you’ve been soul exhausted several times, which is what we call Overload.  It happens to those training in magical or combat arts readily enough, but Scourge Poisoning takes that to a whole new level.  It literally rips the Soul Energy out of your body to feed itself, and is one of the few ways that can cause a soul to disperse if you are drained completely dry. “Thankfully you have the Newly Dead perk, which helped offset the loss somewhat.  It’s automatic while you are unconscious, as a safety measure, but it isn’t very efficient.  Now that you are awake though, you can control it in order to more quickly get over the exhaustion.  So what I want you to do is reach out to the Soul Energy in the atmosphere and will it to be drawn to you.  It can take a bit to get the feel of it for those just starting, but once it enters your body it’ll trigger the perk and it’ll take over from there.  Just make sure you are concentrating on it otherwise it’ll stop.” Okay, so listening to Siliphes makes me want to roll my eyes a bit.  She really is talkative in a way that Tod and George were not. And that grin on her face kind of gives me the willies.  Ugh. That said, I now know how to get over this exhaustion, which is great.  It was one of the things Tod hadn’t covered though. I’m not sure if it’s because he hadn’t gotten that far, or if it isn’t something normally given to the new guys.  I’ll have to ask him about that later, although I suspect the former more than the later. Well, whatever.  I now have something to do, so I allow my eyelids to droop a bit as I reach out with my mind to the area around me.  It’s surprisingly easy, given what I’ve done before. Almost instantly I’m able to feel the soul energy as well, and cannot help but smile to myself as I start tugging as much of it toward myself as I can. The feeling of soul energy entering my body is something of a surprise.  Burning hot yet relaxing cool all at the same time. It’s definitely a little different from the feeling I had during my awakening.  Yet as soon as the soul energy passes through my muscles and bones I feel something else take over, and I cannot help but gasp out loud when the burning hot sensation is suddenly forced out of my body.  That leaves just the nice cool sensation. “Hehe, sorry, but you have to experience that for yourself.”  Siliphes suddenly giggles, causing me to open my eyes and look at her.  Doing so while concentrating on drawing in the soul energy is somewhat difficult, but I manage. “Your ‘Newly Dead’ perk automatically filters the soul energy you are cultivating, dear.  Cleaning it up, as it were. It can be something of a shock for the newbies, but it is a feeling you need to get used to.  You will have to be able to purify it later yourself. Right now it’s an automatic process, but later you’ll have to do it yourself.”  Siliphes explains, obviously knowing what I’m going through right now. At the same time, I remember that Tod mentioned that himself before.  How he was jealous of the ability to purify the energy. I could see why as well.  With the process being automated, I can wholeheartedly concentrate on pulling the soul energy to me, instead of having to split my concentration on doing multiple things at once. Still, that makes me wonder if upping my Mind or Soul stat would help the process.  As it is, what I’m actually managing to pull in could be called a small string of energy.  It feels nice, like soaking in a bath, but it definitely couldn’t be counted as a lot. At least to me.  But then again I can already tell that my physical soreness and legarthy is because my body is literally starved of energy.  I really have nothing left in my gas tank, which feels really bad. “... thanks.”  I finally manage to croak out to Siliphes, before allowing my eyes to close all the way as I concentrate as much as I can on the soul energy.  The more I do so, the better and clearer the feeling becomes, and the more of the energy I’m able to pull toward me. It soon becomes a small bubbling spring instead of a single line, and I almost groan out in pleasure as my body starts to relax.  That cool feeling of the soul energy passing through my body just feels way too nice, while by the time it reaches my chest it is seamlessly absorbed into my reservoir.  It’s just like mediating to regain mana… although I have no idea what mana is. That unbidden thought and new fragment of memory jolts something inside of me though, and thus I reach out toward my soul energy.  It comes easily, pulled like a gently unwrapped string from a spool of thread as I gently direct it toward my head and into my eyes.  It’s the same process that activates my Energy Sight, only this time I’m directly throttling how much soul energy I bring to bare. But the difference as soon as the soul energy enters my eyes is immediate.  Even through my closed eyelids, the entire world changes and becomes far more vivid and otherworldly.  Especially directly around me. Where before I had to search for the soul energy with my mind, now I can literally see it floating about.  It’s dim, dull, and nowhere near as thick as the great mists of it in the sky, but once I can see it my grasp of it becomes far stronger.  This allows my absorption rate shoots way up as I’m able to draw it in from almost all the way across the room. In fact, I could almost hear the soul energy cry out as it’s pulled toward me.  The sound is otherworldly and makes me open my augmented eyes, and I’m just in time to see Siliphes looking around manically, as if she never expected something like this to happen.  Neither did I, in fact. But it is really great all the same. I mean, the soul energy is being pulled in like toward a black hole, swirling and twisting into several large streams that get swallowed up into my body at an impressive speed.  The sight of it in my magical sight is really cool to watch, so I hungrily pull in every speck I can see. Then I see something weird.  As those streams of soul energy enter my body, a part of it is dispersed into the air around me.  Only it isn’t the light white or soft grey energy I’m absorbing. Instead it’s mottled in darker grey, black, red, and a myriad of other colors.  It’s like there’s a film surrounding my skin that prevents the different colors from entering my body. It’s the impurities I was told about.  Only now I can really see them, and I realize that what count as ‘impurities’ are anything that isn’t pure soul energy.  The red energy, for instance, I recognize as the same ‘Demon Energy’ Tod and George have used before. The feeling of it is burning hot and raging, almost out of control. The other forms of energy though I have no clue about.  Green, blue, yellow… almost every color of the rainbow is there, each feeling and reacting different from the next.  Except for black. Instinctively I know what that is, probably because it was the thing that really and truly granted me this unlife.  Death Energy. For a moment I idly wonder if necromancers would love that stuff, but the thought fades as quickly as it comes while I continue to concentrate on pulling in the soul energy of nearly the entire room toward me.  Already I feel far better than I had before, but my insides still feel somewhat hollow, thus I don’t want to stop. In fact the feeling is somewhat addicting. Then I wonder if I can split the various energies before they reach me.  The thought comes uninvited, but unlike my previous ponderings something about it just seems to light a lightbulb in my head.  No clue what a lightbulb is, but it doesn’t matter right now. Instead, I really want to see if I can do it. Splitting my focus even more is a struggle though, to the point where my head starts to hurt again.  I ignore the feeling and the pain while reaching out to all of the soul energy I can before, before -willing- the various energies to split apart from one another.  That’s the only way I can describe it. Which results in something of a localized explosion.  I don’t have enough concentration left over to direct my thoughts to the whole of the room, but in about a two foot area around my body everything just kind of dissolves.  All of that energy goes wild, as every other form of energy outside of the pure soul energy is forced out of the overall mixture. A billowing cloud of dozens of different colors is spawned almost instantly, which responds in a very unexpected way.  Some of them fuse together, while others clash in a sudden ‘BOOM’! Which just aggravates the other energies. The bed I’m laying on literally breaks apart, shattered into very small pieces, while Siliphes gives a very girlish scream as she’s literally blown backward. For all of that though I’m left untouched by it, floating there in mid-air as one explosion of energy after another echo around me.  Yet at the same time I feel a far greater influx of soul energy than before as I manage to hold my concentration through it all. I almost groan in satisfaction as I stretch out my limbs, feeling oddly unbound and powerful. Then it’s done, my body unable to hold any more.  In that instant my concentration is severed, and everything blanks out as I fall to the floor.  The sudden jerk and painful landing makes me grunt, but the exhilarating feeling of absorbing soul energy actually makes me laugh.  It was just so great. Well, except for the splinters of wood and shit I land on.  But hey, if that’s the price I have to pain for not being in pain or feeling like a dead body warmed over, what’s the harm?  Except Siliphes is staring at me in something akin to fear from where she’d landed on the floor a couple of feet away. In fact just about everyone who’s awake in the entire room is staring at me as if I’m some sort of freak, and for a moment I feel rather embarrassed.  Just for a moment though, because soon enough I’m lifting myself up and standing, stretching out my body that’s finally feels good and strong for the first time since I started using all the abilities I’ve gained since waking up. “Sorry, that was a rush.”  I say with a grin, stretching my arms above my head and feeling a satisfying crack as my back pops.  Aaah, so much better! “That certainly was… a rush.”  Siliphes finally says as she stands herself, although she’s soon straightening her clothing absently while staring at me.  Finally on my own feet, I realize that she’s at least a head taller than I am as well. “Most newbies definitely are overcome with the enjoyment of cultivating soul energy for the first time, but I doubt any of them were as… enthusiastic as you were.  Or even able to do what you did. Pulling the soul energy from all around the room, and then separating it around your body? I’m not sure if I should call that crazy or brilliant.”  Siliphes starts to talk again, but I’m only able to give a shrug as I look around the rest of the room. The medical ward is a long rectangular room, lined on both walls with beds.  The various people, and I use that term lightly, are laying about and resting.  It’s a mix of zombies, skeletons, and others I cannot even identify. Many are missing limbs or other body parts. The previous sounds I heard must have been them talking to each other, because now the room is almost dead quiet.  Mostly because they are all staring at me. Some of them even have their mouths open in stupefaction. “Still, you were able to cultivate in a very, very short amount of time.  Even with the ‘Newly Dead’ perk, newbies take about half an hour to gain ten points of soul energy.  You have more capacity than that, and yet you were able to fill up in only minutes. Hells…” Siliphes finally brings the subject back again, and even curses a bit. It really makes me want to grin and perhaps even gloat a little, but I push the urge down and instead arch a brow at the succubus while shrugging a shoulder. “I can’t help you there.  It just sort of came naturally to me, although I did use Energy Sight and Soul Energy Manipulation.”  I tell her honestly, which causes some muttering from the rest of the peanut gallery, whatever that is.  “Especially the Energy Sight, which made it really easy to reach out and grasp all the soul energy in the room.” “Well, that certainly explains some of it.  But how you are able to use those abilities like that is something I have no idea about.  That said, you have a bit of a mess to clean up.” Siliphes has a thoughtful look on her face, before she points out the fact that I’d literally caused a bit of damage.  My bed, specifically, is a total loss. It was like a giant had taken a big ass club to it. In fact there are splinters of wood all over the place. “Uh, got a broom or something?”  Yeah, real smooth on my part there. Thus is how I spend the next half hour or so cleaning up the medical ward.  A bit of a humbling experience, but I laugh it off after Siliphes got me that broom I requested.  Along with a set of wooden bins to toss all the trash into, of which there is quite a bit. Wooden bits from the bedframe aside, there’s also the mattress which was simply fodder stuffed inside a woven mat.  Getting up all the chaff and shit took forever. Especially with some of it being sprayed across the beds of the other patients. That said, I did get to speak to some of the others in the meantime.  Many of them are slightly older newbies who were injured during the Scourge attack.  Others were in for injuries caused by training. Almost all of them asked questions about what I’d done, and some of them even volunteered to show off some of their own abilities. One guy, a skeleton missing his lower left arm, showed off summoning fire that flew around above his body like a flying snake.  That was cool all on its own, and I spent a couple of minutes asking questions about that sort of magic. It was Sorcery, the use of natural energy through the exertion of will.   And apparently his missing arm had come about when a fireball blew up too close for comfort.  He was just waiting for someone to come with a set of replacement bones. Heh. The bonehead really had it nice. Speaking of injuries though, it seems I have a bit of my own.  My left hand, which really was hurting when I first woke up, is now missing both the pinky and ring fingers.  It looked like they were torn off, although someone had been kind enough to stitch the injuries closed after smoothing them out.  It was kind of weird while looking at them though, because I could feel a phantom sensation from them. But that was something to think about later.  Siliphes returned a couple of minutes after I finished cleaning up, looking much happier than when she’d left.  In fact she seems to glow a bit, but outside of some perked interest I don’t feel anything else at what should be an outstandingly beautiful woman.  Hmm. Looks like I don’t have any sex drive as a dead guy. “Glad to see that you are a hard worker.”  She says as she walks up to me, and I just shrug.  Work is work, but at least it wasn’t heavy manual labor.  Could have been worse. “Stoic, huh?  No matter. Since you are already up and about, we’ve decided to go ahead and discharge you.  This leads us back to why you are here at the Guide’s Guild. For the next 30 days, you have free access to all of our commonly available resources.  This includes basic skill and ability training, access to the Guild’s library, and what amounts to free room and board. Which isn’t much of a hassle with you dead guys.”  Siliphes starts to explain, to which I nod. “The Guide’s Guild’s sole mission is the rescuing and recruiting newly awakened undead in Limbo for their respective city.  We have branches in all nine major cities in Limbo, and offer the same services in all of them. Once your 30 days are up, you can sign up to work as a Guide yourself or go your own way.  Any questions?” Siliphes finally finishes her talk, and I purse my lips as several thoughts cross my mind. I skip all of that though. “Yeah, why go through all the hassle?  I mean, why did the Guild start at all?  It seems odd that the city pays for all of this.”  I ask, trying to explain the big question that came to mind.  And for a moment it looks like Siliphes is stumped, before she bursts out laughing. “Aah, I forgot you got interrupted during your way to the city.  You see, the undead like you aren’t able to reproduce so unlike a living city there’s no way to increase the population or keep it up at all unless we go out and initiate the awakening process for new deaders.  It’s very rare for it to happen naturally.” Ooooh, that makes a lot more sense.  For a moment I wonder why I didn’t realize it sooner, before I remember my ridiculously low stats.  Ugh. It seems that I’m more apt to now realize what’s in front of my eyes if I stay this way much longer.  Which may be why the Guild was set up, too. “Okay, that makes much more sense now.  Thanks. Any idea where I could find Tod, my Guide?”  I thank the succubus before asking what’s really on my mind.  I kind of miss the old red bloke, and I bet he has way more information than what Siliphes can offer. “You are welcome, and you’re talking about that Devil?  I can’t really say. I try to stay away from others from the Hells.”  She readily takes my thanks, but then her expression somewhat sours. Which leaves me stumped, cause I have no idea why.  Thankfully she doesn’t leave me in a lurch for long, seeing the expression on my face. “Ah, succubi are ‘rare commodities’ in the Hells.  So most of us try to escape at the earliest opportunity.  Devil’s tend to be civil, but are just as likely to try to trap us in convoluted and complex contracts all the same.  Hellions are much easier to deal with, cause they are far less intelligent. Gargoyles are stoneheads, and care little for what succubi can offer, thankfully.”  Siliphes gives an explanation that turns into another running rant, but I listen and try to remember all the bits all the same. Information is important. “Which is why I love working here in Limbo, you know?  You dead guys don’t even bat an eye at me. It is so refreshing!  I don’t have to worry about my looks or go out of my way to charm the guys into leaving me alone.  Hell, you’ve barely looked at my curves since you woke up! Ha ha…” Yeah, I get it now.  Siliphes definitely has her own issues to work on, but it seems she’s happy.  Almost a bit too happy, with her face having gone red and a little bit of panting thrown in at the end there.  She soon clears her throat and settles down though, as if nothing had happened. Weird woman, to say the least. “Anyway, you are free to go.  Just stop by the front desk to get registered and receive your starting package.  And try not to get blasted to bits, ‘kay? Even I can’t put a body back together like that!” And just like that I’m all but kicked out of the medical ward.  Then only a few minutes later I’m passing out of the wide open doors of the Guide’s Guild and out onto the streets of Helen City.  Given my previous unconscious state, I had yet to actually see the city itself, so I’m left looking around wide-eyed like a tourist when I finally do get my eyes on it. And what I see is both surprising and yet somewhat expected.  Helen City is built out of the same black stone as found in the Plains of Corpses, for the most part, but there’s also what seems like wood and clay tiles and mortar as well.  All the colors though are in browns, greys, and black. Except for surprisingly colorful lanterns hung all over the place. Every building I can see is at least two or three stories tall, and liberally festooned with those lanterns which are in all sorts of shapes and patterns.  Many of them look like the paper lanterns you’d find in… eastern countries? Is that right? Damn my memory. Anyway, they are colored paper wrapped around some sort of light source that doesn’t flicker like a flame would.  Others are crafted of bronze or stone, and many look like beasts or mythical creatures. It leaves me standing there open-mouthed for a little while, but I’m soon brought out of it by a sour grunt from a large devil making his way to the door.  I quickly step to the side and give a little wave. The devil doesn’t even say anything, rushing into the Guild. Rude. Still, my attention is brought back to the city, but honestly I have no idea where I am or where I am going.  The things I was given inside are less than helpful in that way, as well. A change of clothing, a big leather sack, and a small bag of 50 shards and some coinage.  Twenty copper coins and a single silver coin. It seems pretty generous, but I remember what Todd was telling me about how the currency actually works around here. All over the place, that is. That was all though.  I could have stuck around and asked for training or the like, but really after all the ‘excitement’ I’m quite ready for something more normal.  Spending my time in a library right now just doesn’t sound good. Neither does being put through a ringer with a bunch of skill trainers either. Which is why I’m looking around like some tourist while basically scratching my head.  Except now a blinking V symbol in my vision finally catches my attention. It’s vague and very nearly transparent, but it finally manages to catch my attention.   [-Personal Statistics-] [Name: -Locked-][Titles: None][Status: Civilian] [Racial Type: Dead | Zombie][Rank: F | Level: 1] [Soul Energy (SE): 18/18 (+)][Soul Points (SP): 5 (-Locked-)] [Body: 1/3 | +1 (10 SE)][Mind: 1/3 | +1 (10 SE)][Soul: 1.3 | +1 (10 SE)] [Feats: Over-Sight - Rank III. (14/40)(UP!); Terror Resistance - Rank I. (23/25)(NEW!); Exhaustion Resistance - Rank V. (110/125)(NEW!)] [Abilities: Energy Sight - Rank VI. (63/150)(UP!); Inspect - Rank II. (1/50); Charge - Rank II. (3/50)(NEW!)] [Skills: Soul Energy Manipulation - Rank III. (58/75)(UP!); Energy Manipulation - Rank II. (4/50)(NEW!); Concentration - Rank II. (14/50)(NEW!); Cultivation - Rank I. (43/100)(NEW!)] [Perks: Newly Dead][Detriments: Newly Dead]   [-Message Log-] [Newly Dead Perk activated.] [You are no longer exhausted.] [Cultivation skill learned!] [Concentration skill learned!] [Energy Manipulation skill learned!] [Partial Feat performed: Accidental Purification!] [+1 maximum Soul Energy.] [Over-Sight feat has leveled up! (x2)] [Energy Manipulation has leveled up!] [Concentration has leveled up!] [Newly Dead Perk deactivated!] [You are no longer recuperating.] [Concentration: Log Saved.]   Whoah!  Damn the Pits, it looks like everything has changed as my status pops up followed by my message log.  I’d totally forgotten about those, to be honest. But it looks like the Voice has noticed, because I could almost feel the sarcasm from here.  Especially at the very end, with the ‘log saved’ thing. Ugh. That said, I am glad that things are a bit more full on my status.  The new skills, abilities, and feats all look good. Sadly that means I’m going to have to check them all out later, cause I have only a vague idea of which does what.  Especially the difference between ‘Soul Energy Manipulation’ and ‘Energy Manipulation’. My quick and dirty hypothesis on that one is the difference from when I separated out all those other energies when I was cultivating earlier.  Which is easily to say, given all the explosions it caused. Heh. That makes it rather memorable, even by my standards. “Excusssse me, but aresss yousss interested in a guidesss to the city?”  A sudden voice breaks me out of my mental tangles, and I quickly end up having my eyes drawn down to where the voice is coming from. What I find there, standing barely two feet or so off the ground is a giant rat.  A rat standing on hind legs, at that. With matted black furr, and a very slim but skin-scale covered tail that’s probably two or three times longer than he is long.  With big buck teeth. Normally this is where I’d likely scream in horror or some such, generally, but all I feel is some mild curiosity to the furried man.  Which thankfully is a far better form of introduction than any number of the ‘freak out’ intention others may have. That said, the rat guy really looks like he’s seen better days than what he’s been going through.  He’s rather… dirty, to put it gently. “Actually yeah, I could.  I was carted into the city unconscious during the Scourge attack, so I know absolutely nothing about the city itself.”  I tell the small fellow, whom is actually kind of twitchy. Likely afraid of being kicked away or something, if I had to take a guess.  “I’m also a newly awakened, so I know nothing about the other races around here either.” That bit of honesty on my part seems to breath a sigh of relief from the rat guy, as his whiskers visibly perk up.  It’s almost cute, in a twisted little dog sort of way. Only it’s a walking, talking rat. Yeah, I’ll leave the mental image there as he starts to bounce a little from foot to foot. “Yessss, I sussspected as much.  Youssss new guysss alwaysss have that blank looksss after leaving the Guild.”  The rat guy says, motioning behind me with one of his clawed paws. His claws are yellowed and chipped though. “I be’sss Tresk, and be’sss a Kriti, an evolution of the commonsss city ratsss, yesss.”  He finally introduces himself, and gives something of a bobbing nod that may have been a bow, but I cannot really tell.  The fact that he’s an evolution of species of rat makes sense, but at the same time it really leaves me a bit stumped. Even rats can evolve here?  That’s almost crazy. “Ah, a pleasure to meet you, Tresk.”  I say after a moment, having to jerk my attention back to the matter at hand, again.  My mind really likes to wander, ugh. “I haven’t unlocked my name yet, so call me whatever you’d like.  Also, what would it cost to get a tour of Helen City?” I move the subject along, because I really don’t want cause any issues by putting my foot in my mouth.  George covered that rather nicely before, but I don’t want to turn into comedian or the like. Social graffs aren’t a subject I’m interested in, thank you very much.  I’m also getting better at ignoring those strange thoughts, as well. Trying to keep my head from exploding like an overfull tick really adds some determination there. “Ah, yessss.  I will just call yousss ‘customer’, yesss.”  Tresk seems somewhat surprised, although I don’t know why, but he quickly picks back up.  “And I’ssss will take whatever yousss are willing to offer, yesss. Being a Kriti leavesss onesss without optionsss for paying worksss.” Okay, I get the feeling that Tresk is trying to explain something there, but those really long ‘s’ sounds he makes through his toothy maw require me a few moments to process.  It’s like… hell, I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just weird. Like talking to a foreigner who hasn’t gotten the local language down yet. Still, if Tresk is that hard up for paying work then I imagine that things are quite bad for the Kriti in general.  Which isn’t a stretch, since they are evolved rats. I imagine they are like goblins… which for the life of me I cannot help but remember.  Ugh. Green skinned bastards, right? Well, whatever. All that said, I could use the help and connections are never a bad thing. Which is why I pull my little coin purse out of where I’d stuffed it in my shirt, and pull out a whole ten Shards.  Probably a bit much, maybe, but this could be a good thing. I know literally nothing about Helen City, Limbo in general, or the wider world at all.  And this is a chance to build a working relationship with what is no doubt the seedy underground of this city. Which is already underground, but that’s beside the point. “Here, Tresk.  I’d like for you to guide me around the city and it’s major landmarks.”  I say with a smile, holding out the shards in my hand. The Kriti stares at the shards with wide eyes, and even I can recognize the disbelief on his face.  Heh. It looks quite amusing, truth be told. “I’m not sure if this counts as a lot of pay, but I don’t have a whole lot of coin or shards right now.  That said, I may have more work for you later, so think of this as a retainer for your services. The one thing I do know is that I’m going to need a lot of information about Helen City, important people, cultivating and probably everything else.” I don’t bother to hide my intent, which seems to wake the Kriti up.  He nearly jumps up to snatch the shards from my hand, while jerking his head around as if worried about being seen or observed.  I probably should be more careful too, but there isn’t anyone around at the moment. In fact the streets are oddly empty right now. “Yesss, of courssse.  Tresk thankssss yousss much.”  Tresk slips the shards away before all but bowing to the ground, but I wave him off such platitudes.  Or at least I would have, if the little guy hadn’t grabbed my hand suddenly before pulling me toward the nearest dark alley across the street from the Guide’s Guild. In fact, his grip is far stronger than I would have suspected, and I almost lose my feet as he tugs me into almost a run into the darkness between two fairly large multistory buildings.  For how small the little guy is, he’s rather fast as well as strong. Maybe it’s a racial thing, or just that his stats are stronger than I would have thought. Thankfully the light jog I’m forced into doesn’t bother me at all, although the fugitive way Tresk continues to look around worries me just a bit. At least until we are well into the alley, which is surprisingly clean but dark.  Probably only a couple feet from wall to wall, the ground is still paved in black stone, but there isn’t any debris or muck like I would have suspected.  In fact it just seems like a bit of unused space between two different properties, closed up at the far end with another wall. The far wall, which Tresk pulls me all the way toward.  And then he lets go of my hand, and suddenly he’s standing upright to his full height.  I hadn’t realized he’d been bent over or anything before, but the straight-backed stance really does give him a different air, even if he’s still just as dirty as before. “Tresk thanks you, customer.”  Okay, and he talks way better now, too.  That surprise must have been seen on my face, because Tresk actually starts to laugh a little in a rumbling way. “I apologize for the deception, but Kriti are not very welcome within Helen City.  We are… tolerated, so to say, but generally disdained because of our relationship with our lesser kin.”  Tresk explains after his laughter has come to an end, although that smooth way of speaking now still somewhat gets to me.  It’s like he’s become a totally different person, and I have no idea what to think of it. “Okay, I get that bigots are found everywhere, but why the secrecy?”  I finally manage to ask after a moment of gathering my thoughts. I’m really not sure if my random act of kindness or the job offer is a good thing now or not.  That, and I’m now in the end of a dark alleyway with a guy who is far stronger than I am. “Well, that’s a bit involved.  We Kriti often offer our services to new guys, as well as other enterprises around the city.  Part of that is just to make money, of course, but we Kriti are also about making connections.  Rats are rather social creatures, and it is a trait that continues in the Kriti even after the evolution.”  That’s something I can follow, so I nod to show that I’m keeping up. “Kriti as a whole are not a combat suitable race.  This leaves many others dissatisfied with us as a whole.  But where we are disadvantaged in that sphere of influence, we make excellent merchants, information brokers, spies, and thieves.  This leaves Kriti as a whole with an even more poor reputation, and thus we are forced to be very careful when we move about in public.  Thus my poor performance earlier, for which I do apologize.” Tresk actually gives a real, smooth bow then, complete with a clawed hand over his chest; although even I can tell there’s a bit of a smile on his whiskered and furred face.  I’m not sure if it’s a racial thing there, but the guy really does seem to be a great actor. Or a spy, thief, or something else all together. I simply am unable to tell. “Now, we specifically greet the newly awakened in order to take measure of them.  This is both to keep records, similar to what the Guide’s Guild does, but also to check out their personality traits as it may apply to the Kriti.  Being kicked away for being a ‘dirty rat man’ is no fun, I can assure you.” Yeah, I could totally get why Tresk’s voice would be dry about that. “Those that are aggressive or disdainful are put on our blacklists, and thus no other Kriti will willingly approach them.  If they later find their way to us for one matter or another, we will welcome them as customers but charge a premium for our services.”  Tresk stops there, glancing around again before stepping over to the wall. Then he rubs his hand against a stone that I can barely tell is sticking out a little. A bit of dust is scraped off the stone, revealing a rather deeply engraved circular mark in the otherwise smooth black stone.  If I didn’t know any better, I could have sworn it was a Thieves’ Mark, although why that term came to mind I have no idea about.  Another loose memory, no doubt. Sadly that’s all that bubbles up to the surface, which makes me grimace a little. “This is our mark, denoting a safe place for business.  As you are already a paying customer, then this is a show of our appreciation.”  Tresk says then, giving a rather toothy grin as he looks back at me. On the other hand I was actually taking the time to remember the mark engraved in the stone, and even reach up to touch it.  It’s completely smooth to the touch, without any rough edges or grit at all. In fact I could faintly feel the energy that had made it, as if it had been done by magic. “Inspect…”  I mutter gently under my breath, not sure if it would work or not, and thus a little surprised when another blue box opens up in front of my eyes.   [Kriti Shadow Mark - Merchant] [One of several types of Shadow Mark’s developed by the Kriti, this one denotes a place where trades, barters, and deals are made.  Safety is guaranteed around the area of the Shadow Mark.]   Wow, okay so that’s kind of cool.  And it seems that this is only one type of mark the Kriti deploy.  I’m actually a bit curious about the others, but that’ll have to wait for later. “Oh, a bit of a surprise there, although it shouldn’t have been, I guess.  Tobias is a rather odd devil after all.” Tresk probably was able to hear my word, but I simply smile a little when he talks about Tod.  Good to know the man has a reputation. I can probably track him down with that. “True enough, and thanks for showing me this.” I say then, pleased with having already learned something that is probably quite valuable. “Most welcome.  Now, onto business.  You are a ‘newbie’, as others like to put it, and thus have no experience here in Limbo.  You also don’t have any stats yet, which from what I saw with the Scourge attack yesterday is easily explained.”  Tesk starts to say, even as one of his hands comes up so he can tap a claw against his short muzzle. It was like the thinking posture others would take, no doubt. “You wish to hire the Kriti for information, and information is valuable.  Your show of kindness though is rather appreciated, and it would definitely be nice to have another ‘friend’ of the Kriti around.  So I’ll be upfront and give you something of value here.” Tresk says then, and while I can definitely hear the humor in his voice, his tone is strict and to the point.  Just like what you’d expect from a merchant. One that could swindle me rather badly, at that. Still, his ‘offer’ is enticing, even more so when he pulls to be a simple stone ring out of seemingly thin air.  It was like a magic trick, given the Kriti is wearing what is basically soiled rags on his body. There’s like nowhere for anything to go, from what I can see.  Which makes me realize that I hadn’t seen what he’d done with the shards I’d handed him earlier. “This little lovely is a Ring of Inventory, although of the poorest rank.  It has a five-by-five cubed feet space inside of it, used to store objects and items of any size that’ll fit.  All except living things anyway. Storage for living alchemical substances and herbs cannot be placed inside of it.”  Tresk says, before tossing it to me. I actually fumble a bit in catching it, chagrined at my lack of agility in doing so.  But at least I do snatch it out of the air before it hits the ground. Which is likely a good thing, given what Tresk was just saying about the ring.  I can imagine that it is rather expensive, even for being the lowest rank. Once the ring is in my hand though I can feel the magical charge on it, and a slightly cool sensation against the skin of my hand.  It actually feels a little comforting, oddly enough. Especially when I slip it onto one of my fingers, granting me access into the space inside the ring with just a thought. The inside is empty and dark, except for a single sheet of thick folded parchment.  A single thought pulls the parchment out of the ring and into my hand, almost feeling like the flip of a switch.  Except it’s just a feeling, and there’s no sound or light about it. “Good.  Now, that is the real thing you have purchased, dear customer.”  Tresk says then, still smiling while nodding his head. He really does seem to be in a good mood. “That is a full map of Helen City and its immediate surroundings.  It is lightly enchanted, granting it several useful features, although in truth they are only a poor imitation of the much more expensive ‘Travelers’ Map’.  It is, however, the perfect thing for what you are looking for at this time.” Okay, so I was barely listening to Tresk at that point after he said ‘map of Helen City’.  In fact I was almost afraid to rip the damned thing when I pulled it open, causing it to unfold and unfold and unfold some more.  It was a full map indeed, and big enough that I had to spread my arms to hold it all up. The detail was great, even in the dim light here in the alleyway.  Helen City itself is a giant circle in the middle of a vast empty plain, constructed in concentric circles toward the Keeper’s Tower in the dead center.  Almost like a bullseye, actually. But outside of just the physical appearance of the city spread across the parchment of the map, there is also the information.  Small blue boxes denoting the names of buildings, institutions, and features of the city. I’m quickly able to find the Guide’s Guild amongst it all, and focusing on it’s name opens up a slightly bigger box with a short description of the Guild itself. “Wow.”  Is all I can basically say, because this map is freakin’ awesome.  Besides being really big, it’s jammed packed with all sorts of information.  Almost mind boggling. “Haha!  Yes, most people have the same response.  Even those whom have lived in Helen City for a while.  The city is big, and that’s saying something. I think the last census placed the population at around four million residents and nearly half again regular visitors a century ago or so.”  Tresk really seemed to get a kick out of my reaction, but I’m not complaining. It’s good to know that others have a sense of humor around here. Dull, grey, and boring is the usual motto for the dead, after all. “Okay, we are just outside of the Guide’s Guild, which isn’t too far from the Keeper’s Tower.  Nearby you also have the Warrior’s Conclave, the Wizard’s Tower, and the Merchant’s Association.  Those are the three big guilds in the city. But there are many more smaller specialized groups as well.  Many of them are authorized guilds of their own, like the Adventurer’s Guild and the Smithing Guild.” Tresk starts giving me a quick run-down of the important groups and places, even going so far as to have me hold the big map up against the alley wall so as to point them out to me.  And there’s a lot of stuff to point at. Too bad I don’t an extra hand, or a dozen. Hah. What it all boils down to though is that just about every profession, group of skilled individuals, and big family clans have their own guild, association, or society.  The Kriti Merchant Collective, for instance, is the sole sovereign entity for the race of Kriti in Helen City. And they fall outside of the Merchant’s Association. Tresk had to explain that bit to me, but it seems that the all formally established groups carry influence in various ways.  And they use that influence to strengthen themselves, make deals with others, or claim resources from outside the city’s walls.  Thus the groups, big and small, often fight with each either. The competition can be quite bad. That said, there are only two big groups that do not fight for influence.  The first is the Guide’s Guild, which is solely owned by the city itself. It is completely non-political, and thus is one of the best liked factions in Helen City.  The other is the city itself, run out of a city hall complex called the Helen Throne. It’s the main political and administrative heart of the entire domain, and no one in their right mind would challenge it.  Publically, at least. When it comes to the Patrolmen and the Helen City Army, things get a bit weird.  Neither are established guilds or groups, and yet they hold both great power and political sway.  Especially the Patrolmen, who deal solely with keep security and crime within the city to a manageable level.  They deal with crime, and hold the sole court for the city under their jurisdiction. Only the Throne, the current ruler of Helen City, can gainsay the court. The Helen City Army on the other hand deals with territorial matters, including defense and patrolling the many small villages and groups within the territory Helen City has claimed.  It really was like a medieval society in that manner. That said, criminals dealt with by the Army have to be handed over to the city’s Patrolmen to face judgement. The Army does not have a court of its own. By this point though my head is already spinning.  It’s just too much information to keep track of right now.  Thankfully Tresk is thoughtful on that matter, offering up a grin of apology and once more mentioning my low stats.  This is only my second day of being un-alive, after all. “Well, enough of the political stuff then.  I’m sure you’d like to get settled here soon, and start working toward becoming something other than a regular zombie, yes?”  Tresk finally brings the topic back around, to which I nod a couple of times to. “Yes, please.  I really have no idea where to go or what to do now.   The Wizard’s Tower sounds like it’d be something I’d be interested in, given my energy manipulation skills, but from the sound of it it is not a good starting point.”  I explain my thoughts on the matter, to which Tresk nods and tugs on his own whiskers in thought. “That is definitely true.  I highly doubt you’d want to be stuck in a binding contract for two centuries while being worked like slave labor to a bunch of liches.”  Yeah, even I can hear the repulsion in Tresk’s words. It seems to be a big gripe with the Tower, which I can totally agree with. “Hmm, hmm…  Ah, I know!”  Tresk almost yells after seeming to finally think of something.  I get the feeling he isn’t used to having to put too much thought into matters, given his blatant intelligence.  But then again the social structure of Helen City is just that complicated. “Here.” Tresk then points to the map, showing a small place near the western edge of the city wall.  The name pops up as well on the map, saying it’s the ‘Silver Key Magic Society’. “The Silver Key is a small magic-based society outside of the Wizard’s Tower control.  They don’t specialize in any specific magical practice, and are always looking for new members.  Their society leader is a Silver Lord, a type of zombie who specializes in magical research. Sadly he’s more apt at administration than magical theory and study, but is rather open-minded and welcoming to those starting out.  He’s also rather friendly to the Kriti, so the Silver Key would make a good place for you.” Okay, so I have no idea what a Silver Lord is, but the rest of that sounds like a good idea.  That and being a group on good terms with the Kriti sounds like a good thing to me. Heh. So far Tresk has been nothing but helpful, although I’m partially sure it’s just part of his penchant for being a merchant. “Also, I do believe he’d be quite willing to take you in after your accident in the Guide’s Guild medical ward.”  Then Tresk throws me a curve ball, and I’m left standing there blinking at him like an idiot. Just… “... how do you even know of that?!”  Okay, I really don’t mean to yell, but the surprise is just that much.  Like, it hadn’t even happened an hour ago or so! “Hahahahaha!  A total newbie, during his first time cultivating, nearly blows himself up because he was playing with forces and energy he didn’t understand!  Hahaha. It was real fun to watch, by the way.” Tresk laughs at me, almost holding his belly as he does so before he points to the top of the back wall of the alleyway. I follow his pointing claw, and notice a large black rat sitting on top of the wall.  For a moment I don’t notice anything, before I find myself staring at the rats’ two large eyes.  Eyes that are a very vivid, and seemingly glowing green. You almost wouldn’t spot it unless it was looking right at you though. “Aaah, excuse me.”  Tresk finally gets his amusement under control after a few moments.  “Aah, that is one of the city rats currently under a spirit contract with a Kriti.  You can tell with the green eyes. They act similar to a summoned familiar of a wizard or the like, allowing us to see and hear through their senses.  It is one of the main tools of the Kriti trade, so I would kindly ask you not to go sharing that information.” Tresk has calmed down, but I end up nodding and agreeing to keep that information to myself.  Especially when I point out that I could ask such a rat to meet with the Kriti if I ever needed to.  Tresk definitely agreed, and seemed happy to offer such a service as required, although he did point out that I may not be able to get in contact with Tresk himself. I was quite fine with that myself, as I doubt Tresk himself specializes in all the things the other Kriti could offer.  They did however seem to share a very communal sort of life, so being in the good books of one means that all the others will know sooner or later.  Which is a good thing, at least for me. “Now, the rats here in Helen City typically have red eyes.  Green eyes like that little ones’ show the mark of being bound.  If you ever run into a rat with black eyes though, run. Run as fast as you can to the nearest patrolman or army soldier you can find.”  Tresk then says, in a far more serious voice. “Black eyes on a rat often means it is Scourge Infected, which makes them bigger, meaner, and stronger than other rats.  And infectious all on its own. The Kriti constantly hunt for such blighted rats, a service we perform for the city. But finding one anywhere needs to be reported quickly.  Especially after the Scourge attack yesterday.” Okay, yeah.  I could definitely get behind that policy.  Especially after remembering the attack myself.  Just thinking of those black chains makes me shudder a bit while my left hand pulses with a bit of phantom pain. “The Scourge…  I’m not able to say much about it, sadly.  But what I can tell you is that the Scourge effects the living and the dead in different ways.  Those that are dead end up having their Soul Energy stripped from them, which is called Scourge Poisoning.  The living however end up Scourge Blighted, which can cause uncontrollable mutations and spread like a disease.  A disease that grows stronger with every living being it infects.” Yeah, I definitely shudder at the thought that Tresk just put into my head.  The Scourge itself sounds like a bad deal, and what it does is even worse. I’m happy that my body isn’t living, because I may have lost my lunch otherwise.  Ugh. In fact, the mental disgust I have for the Scourge is way stronger than should be possible given my state of un-living.  Not even the blood and gore I witnessed during the Scourge attack got a rise out of me of such strength. It was like… Hm.  How to explain? Like everybody in Limbo wanted the Scourge erased. It is that strong of a compulsion. I shake the feeling from my head though while fighting down the dread, horror, and disgust in my guts.  Once more I’m happy that I don’t have a gag reflex, although I am left somewhat gasping for breath. Tresk seems concerned, but just waits for me to catch myself, to which I’m thankfully. “It’s okay lad.  Everyone has a different reaction when meeting the Scourge for the first time.  Sadly the memory is slow to fade, but it’ll get better with time.” Tresk says then, which explains a few things.  And somewhat ticks me off, because no one else mentioned the -other- side effects. Just great. “Okay, thanks, Tresk.”  I finally say, straightening up before putting a somewhat wane smile on my lips.  Strong front and all of that, although it leaves me keenly aware of the fact that I am really a newbie here.  A newbie in power, and a newbie in life. Or as much life as possible in Limbo. “Now, on to easier topics.  When you get to the Silver Key Magic Society, ask for Archmagus Silver.  That’s the societies’ leaders ‘public name’. If asked, just say that Merchant Tresk sent you his way.  I’ll send one of my rats to inform him that you are coming.” Tresk manages to keep a straight face while listing out his instructions, but when he says that he’s going to ‘inform him’ that I was coming I get an odd feeling in the pit of my stomach.  Which, in turn, lead me to glare at the smaller Kriti. “And inform the Silver Lord about my magical debacle?”  Okay, so maybe there’s a bit too much spite in my words there, but everyone seems highly amused about my incident.  It was like I’d become an idiot celebrity or something. Not a good reputation to have, I assure you. “Why of course!  It is amusing, after all.  Haha.” Tresk comes right out and says it, leaving me to sigh somewhat forlornly.  Ugh. “Well, that and to let Silver know that you have quite a bit of skill in the area of energy manipulation.  Which is the core of all but the most ritualistic magical practices, by the way. Being able to expertly and precisely control energy will allow you to cast magic faster and have stronger effects.  It’ll also let you carve runes, create long-lasting and powerful enchantments, and any number of other things. “The fact that you actually didn’t blow yourself up in the meantime really shows off what you could potentially do.  Researching new spells and skills typically are done in warded chambers that restrict the amount of energy inside of them, allowing for experimentation with a far lower risk of things exploding when they go wrong, you understand.  Once your thirty days of Newly Dead are up, you could become quite powerful that way since you could rapidly gain a number of professional level skills. Even I’m a bit excited to see what you could do.” Wow, I didn’t expect Tresk to be the sort to become so talkative, but it’s good to know that I have a fan.  Especially since he does seem to have way more experience in discerning the potential of others than anyone I’d met yet.  Well, except for maybe Tod, but the devil didn’t mention anything in that direction. “Okay, okay, I get it.  I’ll live with being the brunt of everyone's jokes for a while.  Then I’ll blow something important up and no one will laugh again.”  Yes, maybe a little surly of me, but for some reason that sort of attention just really seems to tick me off.  Probably a bit of my past life coming back to haunt me. “That’s the spirit.  Anyway, off you go. Just make sure you memorize the route, so you don’t have to pull out that map.  Many people would want to get their hands on it. And it was a pleasure to serve you, customer.” Tresk starts to shoo me off with that, but I wave it off with a chuckle and a farewell.  This definitely isn’t the last time I’m going to end up meeting Tresk of the Kriti, that’s for sure. But now I have a direction and a potential future home.  Or at least a place to stay for a while. Helen City is already huge, with far more people than I would have expected.  The lands of Limbo are likely far bigger, and yet there are still the Realms of Hell right next door, figuratively speaking.  This un-life of mine is just starting, and at least for the moment I’m quietly looking forward to it.       Testing testing test test test   Wow, okay.  So maybe it will work~   Just Have to Keep Experimenting. Test again~         Hmmm.       Not Going to Work. Ugh. Announcement And here it is, Chapter 02!  Hope you guys enjoy it. On another note, I'm totally going to ignore the 1 star and 3 star ratings I got.  Just totally going to ignore them.  Whoever put those up didn't even bother to leave a comment or a review, so whatever they think I did wrong in my writing doesn't really matter at this point. Informative and progressive critiques are just fine though.  Got a problem or I've misspelled something, leave a comment and I'll fix it!  Otherwise don't be a bug, okay~? PS: I'm also testing the table settings here, so just ignore it, thanks.

Silver Lord is an old and experienced zombie.  His own convoluted path through his evolutions and cultivation has seen many up and downs.  He has missed opportunities, but have gained just as many. After centuries of diligent work, he’s finally at the stage where he can do almost anything he wants. Power is all that matters in this world.  Rather that power be in the strength of arms, the roar of magical arts, or in pure and unknowable information.  With power you could do whatever you want in Limbo and beyond. Without it you can only suffer. Silver Lord in this case is powerful.  He has worked for decades to leverage his unique evolution and magical skills in order to build up his Silver Key Magic Society.  Devoting large parts of his efforts and personal wealth on raising up those far younger than himself. To teach them the proper steps in order to avoid the pitfalls he himself fell for. While also advancing his own area of study.  Or his crazy experiments, whichever one fits better.  Hahahaha. That said, the current situation has left Silver Lord is somewhat of a slump.  Holdt, a nearly three-year member of the Silver Key and a pupil with a decent enough talent, is currently smoking quite badly while laying on his back, very much unconscious.  Thankfully there doesn’t appear to be anything actually wrong with Holdt, besides some minor internal damage that is already well on its way to healing up. On the other hand, the first class newbie is in a far worse state.  A brand new recruit sent to him via a courtesy call from a Kriti of rather high standing, the lad was every bit as crazy as Silver Lord himself is.  Just in different ways. Utterly unafraid to try new things and learn skills far above his means. Which is why the newbie is now a nearly broken soul trapped inside of the magical glow of an active ward.  A bit of foresight that Silver Lord is very happy to have had, as the Soul Cage ward had caught the poor boys soul before it could scatter.  That said, even Silver Lord cannot help but shudder at the memory of that hellaciously painful scream the newbie had issued just before exploding.  Or imploding, really. Hells, it not only looked painful, but sounded painful as well.  Which is just too much for Silver Lord’s poor heart. Or would be if his heart was beating and all that jazz.  Being an undead has its advantages. Still, the damage is done and thankfully contained.  Although there is a little bit of guilt involved, Silver Lord himself is actually quite happy with the outcome.  His ‘All-Seeing Gaze’ had captured quite the show, which will no doubt push forward his research by a great amount! Hmmm, what should he name the study?  ‘Interpersonal Cultivation of disparate Skill Levels causing Soul Energy Deviation’?  No, too unwieldy. How about: ‘Separated Spirit Form Backlash - A Cultivation Study’? Hmm, no, that doesn’t work either.  Naming things had never really been Silver Lord’s strong suit. “Blast it all…”  The old zombie finally mutters, his attention coming back to the present.  Especially where his glowing silver eyes focus upon the swirling soul held within that magical cage of his. “Not sure if I should be happy the failsafe worked or be sad that he had to experience that.”  Yeah, okay, so maybe there was a bit of compassion under that maniacally crazy exterior. If only a little. Especially when the old zombie pulls the captured soul into his hand and starts to toy with it like a squishy ball.  Thankfully the ward is quite powerful, and doesn’t even break when Silver Lord starts to tug on it, pulling on it to stretch it like a piece of putty.  If the newbie were awake in that state, he’d have never had let it happen. If only. “Well, one more experiment won’t hurt.  Hehe. He might even thank me later!” Oh yeah, if only. ~{+}~ | ~{+}~ | ~{+}~ [You have survived: 09 days in Limbo!  Have a nice day!] The usual welcome message was there when I finally opened my eyes.  I could tell because of the glaring blue against my vision, yet for the moment I cannot concentrate on it enough to actually read the words.  I just hurt too damned much. And by hurting I mean HURTING.  My everything hurts. My body hurts.  My mind hurts. And I’m pretty sure I can faintly hear my soul crying somewhere in the background.  Which is really annoying, because it faintly sounds like some woman who was ravished then casted aside.  Not exactly a cheerful feeling to wake up to in the morning. Not that I should be waking up anyway.  I’m already supposed to be dead, and the dead don’t sleep.  Ugh. It doesn’t help that my memories are fuzzy on exactly why I was asleep anyway.  If you can count unconsciousness as sleeping. “Looks like you are alive, that’s good!”   A far too cheerful voice suddenly booms in my ears, making me wince at the sudden pain that shoots through my head.  Freaking Hells. “Oops, sorry.”  The voice says then in a far softer tone, which I’m thankful for.  At least until a blurred silver figure appears above me. I just can’t seem to focus my eyes properly right now. “The disorientation should pass here soon.  I, uh, may have kept your soul outside your body for longer than I should have…” Silver Lord.  Old, silver, and crazy as a bat.  Yeah, that’s the one. I’m not sure why it’s taking so much effort to actually think, but whatever.  At least I know who to blame. “Tsk!  Don’t glare at me like that.  I may have played,” cough, “experimented,” cough, “with your soul while I had it in my grasp, but I’m sure you’ll thank me soon enough!” Oh shit.  Those words really snap me awake, and I sit up with a jerk that just about makes me double over with a groan of pain.  But this time the pain starts helping to clear my head and my vision comes into focus. Which is when I realize that I’m no longer in the same body I was in before. Even for generic run-of-the-mill zombie bodies, there are slight differences between them.  Height, weight, general looks, and even the lengths of the fingers and toes are all different.  And my hands right now are way too big compared to before. That and the distinct stitches of black thread are dead giveaways.  Which is odd, because I’d never seen a zombie stitched up before. They are all generated with perfectly whole bodies unless they were munched on by a shambler or ghoul or something. “This body…”  I start to say. “Ah, yes, another experiment.  It was the perfect opportunity to see if you’d set properly into an altered body!  Hahaha. And it seems to have worked. Feel anything wrong?” “Besides hurting far more than I should, no… Now what in the damned Hells happened?” Okay, so the pain is making me more snappish than usual.  Which should be understandable, given I really hadn’t had to deal with true pain all that much since awakening a little over a week ago.  Being dead doesn’t lend itself to physical feelings like pain or pleasure all that well. Discomfort, sure. But not right out pain. Silver Lord, on the other hand, is grinning like an idiot when I finally work my head up to actually look at him.  That just leaves a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. As does the fact that I finally notice that I’m no longer in my cultivation chamber. In fact I’m in what could be called a torture cellar.  Nicely. At worst it might be called a madman’s laboratory.  Which really does not inspire confidence. If it weren’t the vast and myriad number of wickedly sharp tools, hammers, chisels, and weapons hanging from the walls, then it is definitely the number of restraining racks sitting in all sorts of positions around the room.  Or the number of large workbenches, each of which have a number of contraptions and gadgets and gizmos that I cannot even recognize sitting upon them. Oh, and that ghastly green-white light that covers everything from a set of glowing orbs hanging from the ceiling. “Oh that.  You suffered severe backlash while cultivating because Holdt inadvertently sucked all your soul energy from you.  My Soul Cage ward caught you though, so that’s great! On the other hand I’d never had the chance to toy,” cough, “experiment with an awakened soul before!” Thus Silver Lord starts going off on the various experiments he’d conducted on my soul.  Mainly with how mutable it was. Or how it could fragment and be regrouped in controlled conditions.  Also rather it could be ‘implanted’ into other things outside of (un)living bodies. From all of that I only got one thing: the old bastard tested just about anything he could personally think of outside of outright destroying me.  Which is good, cause I really don’t want to die again. Then the bad, because he’d kept at it for over an entire day. Thus the whole ‘kept you out for so long’ bit. By this point though I’m just in too much pain to really care.  Or I’ve just gone numb to the craziness. Perhaps a bit of both. That doesn’t stop me from raising my arm up and back only to slam my fist into his proud, gloating face though.  It really was fitting that my first act of violence would be to this old bastard as well. I really do feel violated at this point.  Ugh. Sadly my punch does nothing much.  In fact it was like I’d slammed my fist into a metal plate, complete with a soft ‘dong’ sound.  Which does absolutely nothing to help the pain I felt coming from the hit. That said, my hand is really large at the moment.  Big enough to close Silver Lord’s mouth and leave him looking somewhat stunned.  At least until he starts laughing again! “Hahahaha!  You’ll have to try harder than that to hurt me, brat!”  He cannot help but brag, looking even more smug now than before. “I get it though.  I may have gone overboard… In fact Holdt has been waiting this entire time too…” No sooner had Silver Lord spoke up that someone starts banging on the door.  Which is impressive, given that it’s another stone thing, and the sound of it is like someone slamming against it with a battering ram.  Or several somethings, from the multiple booms echoing into the chamber here. “Oh dear… Stop, stop!”  Silver Lord suddenly starts to fret, running off toward the door with a speed I’m hardly able to follow with my eyes.  Old bastard can really be fast when he wants to be. “Stop banging on the enchantments before you break something!” He’s yelling even as he hits the switch to open the door, only to backpedal several steps as not just Holdt but several other people storm into the chamber as well.  I recognize a few of them, although at the moment I cannot really remember their names. My head hurts just too much. Yet there are others I haven’t met at all at this point.  A group of sixteen, all of them wearing the garments of the Silver Key Magic Society.  And all of them looking quite peeved and angry. Each of them hold their prefered weapons and look ready to actually use them as they stare at Silver Lord and me and the room in general.  Too many eyes to keep track of at this point. Yet for all of that they slowly relax once Holdt waves them down. “What in the Hells’ have you been doing, Sir Silver Lord?  You know that messing with Awakened Souls’ is seriously Taboo!”  Holdt starts yelling at Silver Lord, the first time I’d ever seen the zombie yelling at his leader.  Or yelling at all, in fact. “Not even the Fallen Gods would approve of it!  Much less Agamemnon should he hear of it! We do not need the City Throne investigating even for hearsay here!  We have enough problems with the Wizard’s Tower!” That finally seems to tire Holdt out, although several of the others with him are nodding or adding words themselves.  Ugh. It’s hard to keep track of it all, but it really does seem there’s more going on with the Silver Key than I had known before. “Alright, you all can stop now.  I’m not -that- crazy.” The old man finally speaks up there, holding up his hands before motioning to me. “I didn’t directly cause any damage to his soul, so no harm done,”  Silver Lord says then, only to point at me with another proud, gloating look on his face, “In fact I gave him the Fragment!  Hahaha!” Those words wipe off the angry and aggressive looks on the crowds faces in an instant.  What replaces those looks are equally vivid ones of surprise and horror. Neither of which mean anything to me, because I have no idea what this ‘Fragment’ is. “By the Pits, Aremis!”  One of the others yells then, a magic user by the name of Tretis that I’ve trained with before.  He’s actually one of the oldest Silver Key members, and likely one of the few that’d ever use Silver Lord’s real name. “Insane, utterly insane… You gave the newbie the Fragment of Divinity?!  How?! We’ve had that thing for over a century but have never been able to use it!” Woah.  Did he really just say ‘Fragment of Divinity’?  Like, what in all the Hells is that? The fact that it sounds really impressive and all sorts of important doesn’t help my scrambled thoughts at this point. “Haha!  That’s the point!  It’d only work on raw souls, but not just any raw soul.  It required an Awakened Soul. Hehehe.” It doesn’t stop Silver Lord from dancing a little jig, even while being watched by a various assortment of eyes. “Trying to use the Fragment on raw souls just caused them all to collapse and absorb the bits into itself.  We knew that while trying to use it before.” The old man starts to explain then, having stopped his crazy dancing, thankfully.  Not sure if I want to even keep that memory, it was just too absurd. “But when I brought his Awakened Soul in here in the Soul Cage the Fragment actually responded!  Nearly broke out of the containment enchantment we’d set up. Hehe.” Those words just cause a whole bunch of groans from the crowd, while Holdt has actually sneaked out of the mass of people and made his way over to me.  He looks pensive yet relieved, and is only partially listening to Silver Lord or the others. “Glad to see you are okay, boy.  Silver Lord really could have gotten us all in deep trouble this time.” “Yeah, I can see that.  Don’t remember any of it though.  But I hurt right now, which isn’t normal.  This body is also weird.” I say just as quietly back to Holdt, holding up my hands to show off the stitches and whatnot.  And the fact that they are way too big for this bodies’ arms. “We’ll take a look in a bit, lad.  You should listen to this though, it’s important.”  Holdt says, motioning to the crowd and Silver Lord again.  This just makes me perk up my ears while I watch. “I reinforced the enchantment to keep the Fragment contained before starting my experiments with the raw soul.  Fairly standard stuff, you know. Any Necromancer or Spiritualist would have done the same…” Like anyone really believed him at that point and I cannot help but grimace.  The old man had already told me what he’d done, but it seems he’s really hiding some details from the others.  Rather that’s out of his own sense of shame or guilt I cannot say though. I just think he didn’t want to get into any more trouble than he’s already caused. “I finally had to go back to the Fragment afterwards and decided to put it to use.  We never would have gotten another chance… Hehe. And I’m so glad I did! I got so much data in the process!” Then suddenly Silver Lord is right in front of me again, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me up.  He motions to me with his free hand almost wildly, still grinning like a madman. “He’s just fine!  I kept him together with several Soul Cage wards and energy from soul stones,”  Silver Lord says then, almost fast enough to cause spittle to fly. “Go ahead and check your message log, boy!  Let us know what it says!” Yet even before I could say or do so I pick up Silver Lord muttering to himself: “Please, please be worth it…”  Yeah, really a lot of confidence there. He’s just good at hiding his faults, apparently. [-Message Log-] [You have been exhausted! (x*****)] [Your Soul has dispersed!] [You have died.] [You have been resuscitated!] [Your Soul has been forcibly stabilized. (x*****)] [Your Soul has been refined with precious materials!] [Integration of ‘Fragment of Divinity’ proceeding.] [‘Fragment of Divinity’ has been consumed.] [Exhaustion Resistance II has leveled up! (x6)]   [New Perk gained: Expanded Soul!] [New Perk gained: Strengthened Soul!] [New Detriment gained: Solid Soul!]   [Expanded Soul - Perk.] [Your soul has been expanded through the refinement of precious materials!] [Your soul can now hold Soul Energy inside of itself as a reserve.] [10% increase to Soul Energy absorption rate.] [10% increase to Soul Energy refinement rate.] [+100 maximum Soul Energy.] [+10 maximum Soul Reserve.] [0/10 Soul Reserve.]   [Strengthened Soul - Perk.] [Your soul has been strengthened through the refinement of precious materials!] [You can now maintain your Spirit Form with no Soul Energy cost.] [Your soul is more resistant to destruction through damage or dispersion!] [+100 maximum Soul Energy.] [+10 maximum Soul Reserve.] [0/20 Soul Reserve.]   [Solid Soul - Detriment.] [Your soul has been solidified through the refinement of precious materials!] [Your Spirit Form is now your true body.] [Physical bodies now require additional cultivation in order to reflect your true stats.] [+100 maximum Soul Reserve.] [0/120 Soul Reserve.]   [Feat performed: Soul Refinement!] [Feat Limit reached.  Pending!]   [New Title gained: Crystal Soul, Rank I.]   [Crystal Soul, Rank I. - Title.] [5% increase in Soul Study effects.] [5% increase in learning Soul based Abilities and Skills.] [+1 Soul Points per Rank up.] [+1 Soul Points per evolution.] [This Title can be evolved.]   [+250 maximum Soul Energy for repeated Exhaustion! (MAX)] [Your physical body has base stats of 10 points.] [You are recuperating.]   It takes me several minutes to read through the log, reading it aloud for everyone to hear.  It isn’t a common thing, because no one wants to reveal so much about themselves. But in this case I don’t really care about revealing these things. In truth I need help, because I barely understand what my message log is telling me.  I’d gained perks, a detriment, and even a new title. Yet they really don’t make much sense to me right now. Part of that is from how crappy I feel, but I don’t understand what it means about ‘refinement’ or even ‘Soul Reserve’.  These are things that I’ve never touched upon before, and I really don’t think most of the others have either. They all look as confused as I am. Even Silver Lord himself looks a little pensive, his hand coming up to stroke that beard he doesn’t have.  At least if his thoughts are on this issue then I don’t have to worry about not figuring it out. For all of the old man’s craziness, he at least is knowledgeable enough to come up with a theory. Of course it doesn’t help that the others outside of Silver Lord and Holdt had yet to see my Spirit Form before.  That in itself is already a brand new ability, unique to me. That and raw souls are supposed to be unable to contain Soul Energy anyway, which makes my new Soul Reserve just all sorts of crazy in and of itself. “Well, it looks like we have more experimenting to do!”  Silver Lord yells then, making me grimace in pain while the others give a series of lackluster chuckles. Yeah, way to ruin the mood there old man. ~{+}~ | ~{+}~ | ~{+}~ [You have survived: 17 days in Limbo!  Have a nice day!]   More than a week has passed since the ‘Soul Incident’ and the entire Silver Key Magic Society has become a madhouse.  All the Society members, except those in critical positions or posts, have been recalled to the headquarters. This swelling of the ranks have filled up the entire place and nearly every day I’ve been introduced to one or two members I hadn’t yet gotten the chance to meet yet. It’s actually pretty amazing, because even though the Silver Key is considered a small to medium sized Society as far as Helen City’s various groups go, it still has some 200-odd members at last count.  Many of them already over a century of age as well. At that age they are naturally powerful enough to wander the outside world on their own and pursue their own subjects of interest. Those interests are very wide in scope as well.  Cooking, alchemy, blacksmithing… Even a guy who happily works as a lumberjack in a place called the Black Forest.  From what he told me, the Black Forest is almost smack dab in the middle of the distance between Helen City and the city of Zeus’ Rest far to the east.  It’s quite the distance, which took him a while to get back here when the summons went out. The reason for this recall of Silver Key members, surprisingly enough, is me.  If mostly for Silver Lord to show off his new brightest pupil. Ugh. On the other hand the various skills and abilities the members take it upon themselves to teach me is a major bonus.  Not that I can use most of them yet, but that’s beside the point. In fact, the training offered has gone from the useful to the crazy and back around again.  Like seriously, why would I ever need a skill like ‘Chess (Game) Strategy’? Sure, the game is fun, but outside of amusement I don’t think I’ll ever play it in a serious way.  That’s just one example of a nearly useless skill that I’ve been taught recently. By this point though it feels more like the whole of the Society has turned out in order to spoil their little brother.  It is heartwarming, as far as it goes, but it is getting into embarrassing territory here. Sure, I’m willing to let them show off then try to learn what they have to offer, but bloody Hells’ are these guys as crazy as Silver Lord in their own ways. Part of that is probably because of the fact that Silver Key doesn’t have many rules.  Most of those are centered around ‘Do Not Harm Your Fellow Members’ and ‘Do Not Cause Trouble for the Society’.  This lax set of rules has bred a family feel to the whole Society, while the hands-off style of administration means that everyone can go do their own thing so long as they respond to a call from the Silver Hand in times of need. Or just getting together to have a damned party.  Really, I didn’t know that the dead could hold such a bash.  With all sorts of foods and drink and a 21-piece band of Society members playing a wild and rhythmic set of songs.  Shit, I didn’t know the dead could get drunk either! Thankfully I stayed away from the alcohol, although I tried a bit of everything else.  I didn’t need to eat or drink in order to live, but really some of the options are really delectable.  The in-house produced ‘Fizzy Orange Soda’ was really good, for example, and was made by a female zombie who used to make it back in the living world above.  She’d missed the taste so had worked to reproduced it down here, although it has taken her quite a while. The current batch was #359. Haha. Outside of the party-like feel though, everyone is really serious when it came to my unusual status within the Society.  This all stems from the unusualness of my own personal ability and the fact that I received the Fragment. Of which I finally got the full story out of Holdt after several days renewed testing Silver Lord and others had put me through. So I came to find out ‘Fragments of Divinity’ is a literal name for shattered pieces of an Old Gods’ soul.  The sort of shattering that happens upon their death and destruction. Which is a really big deal, as far as Gods go. That said, the Fragments can be found all over Limbo and even beyond.  They are rare, but not really useful in most cases, and can be found in Dungeons or out in the wilds.  Unawakened creatures here in Limbo seem to like to collect them due to their powerful auras, so groups can gather them with some regularity. To most people though they are just shiny baubles.  Expensive shiny baubles at that. The Silver Key had gotten theirs while exploring an old ruin in the search of something else, but they hadn’t been able to use it in over a century.  It just remains completely inert to most stimuli. Now though the Silver Key knows how to put the Fragments to use, but only under extreme circumstances.  The oldest members and Silver Lord actually went out and bought another Fragment to experiment with, only to find that none of them could absorb it either.  And this was done after conveniently extracting several of their Awakened Souls to try. The reason for this is the Perks I’d received when I absorbed that first Fragment.  Perks are hard to get, either through the Voice or through buying them with Soul Points.  The relative increase in strength caused by gaining them though is worth far more than what a Fragment actually costs on the open market. All of which has left Silver Lord and the other stumped.  Silver Lord’s original hypothesis that it required an Awakened Soul didn’t work, thus they are all now focused upon me.  That said, even I cannot absorb the second Fragment. It gave a weak response in my presence, but it was nowhere near as strong as Silver Lord had seen the first time.  No one can figure out why that is, either. My own personal thought is that I’d need to either Rank Up or Evolve before I can take in another Fragment. That theory though cannot be tested yet, since I’m still in my Newly Dead period.  So instead of waiting around and doing nothing, all the members decided that I should be their training buddy instead.  Or their captive test subject, as the case may be. Gah. At least I cannot complain about the results.  Especially where my ‘Bane’ is concerned. Hehehe.  I’ve learned far more about being able to slip out of all sorts of restraints, which is surprising fun, truth be told.   [-Personal Statistics-] [Name: -Locked-] [Status: Civilian] [Displayed Title: Unpressured, Rank IV] [Racial Type: Dead | Zombie/Spirit Form] [Rank: F | Level: 10 (MAX/UP)]   [-Spirit Form Stats-] [Soul Energy (SE): 750/750 (+)] [Soul Reserve (SR): 150/150] [Soul Points (SP): 5 (Locked)] [Body: 10/10 | (MAX)]   [Mind: 10/10 | (MAX)]   [Soul: 10/10 | (MAX)]   [-Physical Body Stats-] [Soul Energy (SE): 750/750 (+)] [Body: 10/10 | (MAX)]   [Mind: 10/10 | (MAX)]   [Soul: 10/10 | (MAX)]   [-TITLES-] [Unpressured, Rank IV (UP!) | Magus, Rank I. (Locked) | Purifier, Rank II (UP!)] [Maximizer, Rank I | Separated, Rank II. (Unique). (UP!)]   [-FEATS-] [All-Seeing Gaze - Rank II (UP!) | Terror Resistance - Rank II (UP!)] [Exhaustion Resistance II - Rank IX (UP!) | Overdrive - Rank III (UP!)] [Magic Overload - Rank IV (NEW!) | Getaway - Rank III (NEW!)]   [-ABILITIES-] [Charge - Rank III (UP!) | Body Reinforcement - Rank V (UP!)] [Study II - Rank IV (UP) | Active Meditation - (Locked)] [Spirit Separation II - Rank VII (UP!) | Spirit Touch - Rank IX (NEW!)] [Shield Bash - Rank II (NEW!) | Power Throw - Rank I (NEW!)] [Aimed Shot - Rank I (NEW!) | Power Slash - Rank I (NEW!)] [Dispel - (Locked) | Hide - Rank IV (NEW!) | Sense Trap - Rank I (NEW!)]   [-ACTIVE SKILLS-] [Energy Manipulation III - Rank IV (UP!) | Concentration II - Rank IX (UP!)] [Cultivation II - Rank VI (UP!) | Magic Chanting - Rank IX (UP!)] [Chantless Casting - (Locked) | Material Processing II - Rank VII (UP!)] [Alchemy - (Locked) | Athletics III - Rank I (UP!)] [Lockpicking - (Locked) | Blacksmithing - (Locked) | Locksmithing - (Locked)] [Contortion II - Rank III (NEW!) | Knot Slip - Rank IX (NEW!)] [Ward Breaking - (Locked) | Cypher Decrypting - (Locked) | Disenchanting - (Locked)] [Cooking - (Locked) | Gambling - Rank II (NEW!) | Negotiation - (Locked)] [Mapping - (Locked) | Light Armor Use - Rank IV (NEW!)] [Light Weapon Use - Rank V (NEW!) | Throwing Weapon Use - Rank III (NEW!)] [Shield Use - Rank II (NEW!) | Magic Weapon Use - VI (NEW!)] [Enchanting - (Locked) | Wards - (Locked) | Runecrafting - (Locked)] [Carving - Rank I (NEW!) | Writing - Rank II (NEW!) | Mathematics - Rank I (NEW!)] [Drawing - Rank I (NEW!) | Painting - Rank I (NEW!) | Stealth - Rank VII (NEW!)] [Trap Making - Rank II (NEW!) | Trap Placement - Rank I (NEW!)]   [-KNOWLEDGE SKILLS-] [Scholar - (Locked) | Sorcery III - Rank II.(UP!)] [Thaumaturgy - (Locked) | Herbalogy - (Locked) |  Soul Study - (Locked)] [Knots III - Rank I (NEW!) | Mechanics - (Locked) | Spatial Study - (Locked)] [Rune Study - (Locked) | Material Sciences - (Locked)] [Necromancy Study - (Locked) | Chess (Game) Strategy - Rank I (NEW!)] [Combat Stances II - Rank III (NEW!) | Martial Study - (Locked)] [Geography - Rank II (NEW!) | Written Languages - (Locked) | History II - Rank III (NEW!)] [Artistic Mediums - Rank I (NEW!) | Artistic Techniques - (Locked)] [Stealth Techniques - (Locked) | Trap Techniques - (Locked)]   [-PERKS-] [Newly Dead]  [Expanded Soul]  [Strengthened Soul]   [-DETRIMENTS-] [Newly Dead]  [Solid Soul]   There you go.  All of it requiring me to scroll up and down on that damned blue screen that shows up in front of my eyes.  It’s a far cry from the simple set of text it used to be, and while it leaves me feeling accomplished, I’m really getting annoyed with the length of it. Sadly there isn’t anything I can do about the full status.  It’s only going to get longer in the future too. Ugh. At least I’ve learned the trick on pulling up just the information I want though.   [-Physical Body Stats-] [Soul Energy (SE): 750/750 (+)] [Body: 10/10 | (MAX)]   [Mind: 10/10 | (MAX)]   [Soul: 10/10 | (MAX)]   That, for example.  Which by itself just speaks volumes of how different things are at this point.  Like the fact that my -body- has its own set of stats in comparison to my real ones.  And how I had to purchase those stats instead of inheriting them from my Spirit Form. Thankfully it seems I get a discount on purchasing the stat points though.  They only costed 50% of what they otherwise would have. Which in itself is an exciting bit of information, when coupled with my recent studies into the magic of Necromancy. Necromancy itself is both looked down upon and yet highly useful here in Limbo all at the same time.  For one thing, there are all sorts of bodies around. Rather they be full corpses, skeletons, or even wandering ghosts.  It’s a Necromancer’s paradise when it comes to materials. Then there’s putting all those bodies to use.  In the Living World above, it takes a good bit of magical power to raise a corpse into a simple zombie or skeleton.  That and magical materials holding Soul Energy, which tend to be fairly rare and expensive. Yet here those things aren’t uncommon at all.  Hells, every single person in Limbo cultivates Soul Energy, so there’s no need to buy those magical materials anyway. Thus all that is required is a body and a bit of know-how.  Which even I learned manually, the ‘hard way’. Which wasn’t all that hard in comparison to the other magics I’ve been learning. Inject Soul Energy into a readied body, cast the control spell you want to use, and BAM!  A newly risen undead worker completely under your control. Hahaha. Okay, so it’s a bit more involved than that.  For one thing most manifest bodies here in Limbo are weak.  Like, between 1 and 3 stat points weak. Which is the difference between a bug and a newborn baby.  And without the boosting that [Newly Dead] gain to offset it. Controlled undead produced in such a manner aren’t hardly able to stand or walk under their own power.  They just flop around like a fish out of water. Amusing to watch, but definitely not very useful. So the whole other research branch of Necromancy is the strengthening of such bodies in preparation for granting them their un-life.  Far more complicated, it often requires pumping great loads of Soul Energy into the body as precisely as possible in order to ‘forge’ them and increase their stats.  Different techniques produce different results with different efficiencies as well. It can take thousands of Soul Energy points in order to raise a body up to the 10 point limit for a Rank F undead.  In the Body stat, at least. Getting Mind up to 10 points is even harder and more costly, while actually upping the Soul stat is nearly impossible.  Heh. True undead don’t have souls anyway. That, it turns out, is why us Awakened are simply called ‘Dead’ races instead of ‘Undead’ by the way.  All undead are under the control of Necromancers, because they are produced instead of being birthed by Limbo.  Well, outside of ‘frenzied’ awakened, but that’s a whole different thing. Producing usable bodies to create undead is the hardest part of the whole process.  It’s the most time consuming and arguably the most expensive too. Necromancers will actually fight over pristine, high-spec bodies just to cost some time and effort off the entire process.  That or actually sell the ones they’ve been working on. Now this is where my new odd ability comes in.  Because I can slip into the body, and up it’s stats fairly easily by buying them directly with my Soul Energy points.  As you might have guessed, it is a total cheat, because the time required and the efficiency are both great. Hahaha. Then I just leave the body and it goes back to being inert and powered up.  The stats the body gains do not go away once I’ve left it. They remain and thus can be augmented again later. In fact it is such a handy ability that other members of the Silver Key that dabble in Necromancy or study it as their primary occupation have started paying me to actually power-up bodies for them.  Which is naturally a nice windfall for me, even with me only getting about 50% of what they’d pay at other traditional ‘Body Parlors’. Which comes out to about 500 soul stones a body. That’s a whole lot of money, in fact.  That’s 5,000 soul shards a pop. In truth I don’t even know what to do with all that money yet.  It doesn’t stop them from paying me though, although the large sack of soul stones in my cultivation chamber is getting rather heavy at this point. I have been using the soul stones, as well.  Containing so much soul energy inside of them, I naturally use them to replenish my own soul energy points while ‘working’ in this way or training.  Hells, I haven’t been in an Exhausted state since I started carrying some around with me. Which is exactly why they are used as currency to begin with.  They are just endlessly useful. On the other hand, what really gets me is another aspect of Necromancy.  Simply called ‘Sculpting’, it’s the science of changing the physical appearance of the undead in question.  Like, the mish-mashed body that Silver Lord had put me in several days ago was a test of his Sculpting of the body, if in an extreme way. Using the same techniques as improving the bodies stats, a Necromancer can change the look, gender, and size of the undead.  This is actually where I have a problem, because I’m wearing the body already and cannot affect it in the same way. Thus I have to study this side of Necromancy myself.  That said it is all up to personal preference for the Necromancer. For all of that though, the other members of the Silver Key are very supportive.  Some of them even want me to open up a business using this ability, although I’m naturally weary of doing so.  I’m nowhere near naive enough to believe that I’d be left alone if I started stepping on others toes, after all. On the flip side, I’ve also recently started actual combat training.  Outside of my obvious skill for magic, I was put through several tests to see what sort of fighting style I’d naturally be inclined to.  Turns out I’d be good as a ‘magical rogue’ as my trainers put it. Light armor, light weapons or ranged attacks. Short, fast, and penetrating attacks. Assassinations are the next step up, but I haven’t gotten there yet.  That sort of training requires advanced skills and more abilities than I can gain at the moment.  Plus I’m not even sure if I want to go through all the effort just yet anyway. I really enjoy learning magic far more.  Heh. All said my time here at the Silver Key has been very rewarding and prosperous.  I’ve gained far more than I ever could at the Guide’s Guild or by joining one of the major groups in the city.  I’m especially happy to not have to spend centuries being a lowly peon at the Wizard’s Tower. Haha. It does seem however that my time is coming to a close here though.  While most of the members of the Silver Key have been called in due to my presence here, it seems the outside world has continued moving along.  A spot of trouble has actually come up in an area controlled by the Silver Key outside of Helen City in fact. Which is why myself, Holdt, a ranger by the name of Lusov, and a woman ‘Healer’ named Agatha are on our way out of the main gate of the Silver Key Magic Society.  The three others are all armored up and carrying large packs strapped to the back. Not to mention the assortment of weapons, both visible and not. As for myself, I’m carrying my sack of soul stones and a simple wooden staff.  Besides the decent enough clothing and a pair of heavy but comfortable leather boots, I don’t have any other equipment or supplies.  We’ll be picking them up before we leave the city, actually. “Okay lad, we are going to make a run to the bank before we hit up the various stores on the way out of Helen City.”  Holdt speaks up, even as I glance up at the huge gate above our heads. “It’ll be good not to have to carry around all of these stones, that’s for sure.” “No doubt lad.  Carrying that much wealth on your person is a very bad idea in most cases.  Normally I’d say just to stuff them all into that ring of yours, but it’s already full.” That was definitely true.  My Ring of Inventory was full of a wide assortment of stuff.  Most of it is equipment or materials used in magic or alchemy.  Hells, even stacked on top of each other there’s a literal tonne of stuff in the ring. For all of that though, Holdt and the others also have their own Rings’ of Inventory.  All of them far bigger than my own. It holds all their personal or prized possessions.  Naturally they could carry their loaded packs in them too, but for the moment it’s more ‘natural’ for them to carry them around. “I’m surprised though.  I mean, who’d let Goblins actually run a bank?  Aren’t they supposed to be nasty, greedy creatures?” That was one bit of information I learned just before we left, and I’m still scratching my head over it.  Goblins are the pests of the monster world, after all. Rather it be here in Limbo or the upper living worlds.  Tribal, weak… you really wouldn’t associate them with a bank. “Hahaha!”  This time it’s Lusov that starts laughing, although he’s also nodding his head. “I was the same way the first time, lad.  Sadly Limbo doesn’t have gnomes or dwarves in the traditional sense.  And I definitely would not trust my money to Dark Elves. Or my life, for that matter.” The others grunt in agreement as we start walking down the street, heading toward one of the main roads in order to get to the center of the city.  Just getting through and then out of Helen City is expected to take all day, so we aren’t in any hurry to rush. “These Goblins are Contract-bound by Devil’s, so there’s no worry there.  Since they are suppressed via their Contracts, their greedy natures actually work quite well.  They keep impeccable records… although only they can read them. Goblin script is damned wiggly-worms for all I can tell.” Huh, well, you learn something new every day.  I’m naturally not really the biased type anyway, so I’ll just shrug and go with ‘Eh, it’s Limbo’.  Just another weird thing, one of many I deal with on a daily basis. Once out on the main road heading east-to-west, I’m once more reminded of just how crowded Helen City is.  It’s the same sort of crowds that I experienced getting to the Silver Key in the first place. Only this time I’m not being carried along, as the steady presence of the other three in our group opens up a path all its own. Part of that is because we are all wearing the mark of the Silver Key plainly for all to see.  The civilian population doesn’t want anything to do with organized groups like us, if only out of fear.  Many societies and organizations aren’t as friendly as the Silver Key is; especially the big ones. Arrogance is the natural byproduct of having power. So the actual travel down this main street is a far more relaxing experience than it was the last time.  In fact, it got rather boring after a while. Not only am I stronger than I was before, I’m also much calmer and more confident.  The heavy pressure from the first time just isn’t around to keep me satisfied, I guess. “Why don’t you guys tell me about Helen City and the shops or whatnot?  All this walking in silence stuff is getting to me.” Okay, so I finally break down and start asking about which shops are good, who owns what, and which streets to avoid.  Subjects that any streetwise kid would know growing up, much less a (figuratively) adult that’s just new to the city in general.  And I wasn’t disappointed. “Helen City has countless organizations within it.  Many are craftsmen groups, banded together in search of profit and protection.  Not every craftsman is a good merchant, after all. Just about no one without support can survive either.” To my surprise it was actually Agatha that speaks up, introducing the details I’d either missed before or just simply were told.  Like how medium-sized groups like the Silver Key actually tend to own the entire street they are based upon. Or that the criminal underworld is just as flourishing here in Limbo as it is anywhere else.  It really does seem that any place that has laws naturally has those that break them on a regular basis. “Large freight wagons are only permitted on the main streets during the early morning and late evenings, as well.  This gives the street sweepers, usually undead under the control of necromancers the chance to clean up before the civilians start their day. “You see that zombie wearing the black and red tunic?  That’s the colors of the city, marking him as an official working for the Thrones’ administration.  A low ranked one though. Higher ranks are outlined in silver and then gold. “That side street right there is known as Cobbler’s Cob.  The entire street is owned by an association of cobblers that produce some of the best footwear in the city.  You’ll really appreciate those boots while out in the wilderness. “Daisy’s Inn there may not have the best rooms in the city, but they definitely have the best deserts.  Be ready for pay for them though, as importing refined sugar and other ingredients is expensive!” On and on Agatha talks, pointing out just about everything in the direction we are walking.  An oblique glance reveals wry looks on the faces of Holdt and Lusov, which tells me they hadn’t been talking just for this very reason.  No doubt Agatha is all sorts of competent as a healer, but she is definitely a chatterbox. Wish someone had told me beforehand though. “... and over there is…” “That’s enough, Agatha.  We are almost at the bank.”  Holdt finally interrupts, which I am thankful for.  I’ve met some chatty people since awakening in Limbo, but good Gods.  That woman can talk. Heh. Thankfully though I don’t have to wait and see the bank in question.  It’s big enough to be spotted well down the street. For good reason too.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much gold and crystal in one place before. Gaudy would definitely be the word, because the bank is a massive six story tall edifice of chiseled and smoothed black stone that’s then clad in gold and vibrant blue-green crystal.  Even in the grey light of the Limbo day, the building reflects a nearly blinding array of colors. It even makes my damned eyes sting looking at it. “Seriously?  Goblin-run be damned.  Who raided the dwarven mountains?” Yeah, okay, so maybe I should be more creative in my cursing, but Hells.  I was expecting something much more austere. Maybe a fortress, or a hole in the ground.  Not the shiniest damned building in all of Helen City! “Haha!  Thankfully the inside is nowhere near as bad.”  Holdt gets a good laugh out of my reaction, while I shake my head. “It wasn’t the goblins who designed it though.  It was the banks’ backing, although I cannot tell you exactly who.  Probably a collection of Fallen Gods’ of Wealth or the like. In that way it’s as much a temple as it is a place of business.” Okay, that makes much more sense, but still annoys me something awful.  I’ve grown accustomed to the black stone and sharp edges of the usual Helen City constructions.  Sleek looking and functional, I’d call it. Actually getting into the bank proved to be both simple and annoying at the same time, if only because of the vast crowd moving in and out of the several set of doors.  The crowds are constantly moving, which is good, but the lines are just too bloody long to make it a quick process. It was like, like… Hm. I cannot think of anything to compare it to, although what I want to think is right on the tip of my tongue. In fact I’d noticed that I haven’t been having so many memory slips anymore, either.  Strengthening my Soul stat had really helped solve that problem, although I cannot help but wonder if that’s really a good thing or not.  At least the bits and pieces from before left me with a concrete connection to my past life. Well, except for that last big one.  I never want to feel such pain or dispair again.  Once was enough, thank you very much. With such thoughts bouncing in my head we finally get through the doors, and I am glad to say that the interior is far easier on the eyes than the exterior was!  In place of the usual shiny black stone is instead grey tinted granite, lactured over in some sort of wax that kept it spotless and shiny even with an endless parade of feet walking upon it.  Slim and elegant pillars hold up the vaulted ceiling above. The walls though are lined with dozens of chest-high booths of stone and topped with a wooden flat top.  Above them hang enchanted chain meshes, which can be dropped at a moments notice to protect the bank tellers and everything behind them.  Tall stools are required though, given just who and what those bank tellers are. At that point I get my first real surprise, because the goblins working at the booths are not what I would have expected.  Instead of green or brown skinned, these goblins are almost as white as weathered bone, and appear far more elfin than usual.  Not quite beautiful or even pretty, but far from the ugly monstrosities their race usually brings to mind. Their ears though are very slim and pointed and very tall, pointing into the air over their generally bald heads. Thankfully they aren’t wearing suits or the like, or I may have really had pitched a fit right then and there.  Instead they are all wearing clean robes of grey, brown, and yellow. None of them have any sort of markings, but each of the goblins wear a stone and bone piece necklace, probably denoting their tribes or something.  Each necklace is different. “Come on lad, no use in staring.”  Holdt finally breaks me out of my surprise, and I sigh as I follow the lines to one of the nearest tellers. The goblin behind the booth barely even glances up from where he’s scribbling on a very, very long scroll.  The total disinterest actually amuses me for some reason, and I have to keep from grinning a bit. Holdt though just seems used to it. “Name?”  The goblin finally speaks, in a surprisingly mellow tone. "Holdt Kyfer, Silver Key Magic Society.  Here to sponsor a newly awakened for a Limbo Access account.”  At least Holdt seems to know what he’s doing, although I still cannot help grumbling a bit to myself at not having a name.  It is rather inconvenient, to say the least. “A newbie?”  This time the goblin actually looks up for longer than a second, glancing at me before nodding his large head. “Registration will be 1,000 shards.  This fee is non-refundable.” The goblin starts saying then, obviously by rote.  No doubt he says it every time someone registers here at the bank. “The Limbo Access account is our premier account type for all sorts who may wander the lands of Limbo.  Both your wealth and your goods may be stored at any bank branch in the entirety of Limbo, free of charge.  Withdrawals over 500 shards has a 5 shard fee, while any over 10,000 shards is a 10 shard fee. “Conversion of soul shards to soul stones or to coinage is free of charge for the Limbo Access account holder.  We also offer financial consultation, low interest loans, and stock options for this associated account type. We also provide the best security of any banking institution in all of Limbo. “Any questions?” Wow, okay, a total spew there of banking jargon.  Thankfully I’m not that dim-witted, and thus am able to nod along with the goblin.  In fact the account sounds really good, if a bit expensive. However if Holdt has decided that this is what I need, then I’m not going to gainsay him. “Sounds good.”  I finally say after a moment's’ thought. Even before the goblin could ask me to pay the fee or anything else I’m already lugging the large sack up onto the tabletop in front of him.  The bag spills a bit, but I’m not too bothered by the rolling stones falling out of it. “2,500 soul stones to be deposited.  Just take the fee from it.” I say in as grand a way as possible, grinning as it raises an amused series of chuckles from Holdt and the other two behind me. The goblin though just stares for a moment, before clearing his throat in an entirely too rough a manner.  That, and the stare of wonder and greed on his slightly wrinkled face is a bit cute when he picks up a few of those spilled soul stones.  Heh. “Ah, yes, right away!”  The goblin actually jumps down from his high stool then and rushes off to who knows where in the back.  At that point Holdt finally lets full his own grin of amusement and a laugh. “These goblins are all the same.  They see such large amounts of wealth on a regular basis, yet they still cannot help but become excited.  It’s fun to watch if nothing else.” That I can agree with.  Thankfully it doesn’t take long for the Goblin to return, carrying a few objects piled up high in his thin arms.  Shoving them up onto the tabletop was even more amusing, before he finally regains his seat that puts him at roughly chest level with the rest of us. Then the goblin starts pulling bits of what he’d carried over apart and sets them down neatly beside my bag of soul stones.  The objects include a small silver-metal colored chest, two gold cards, and a spindle-looking device on a stand tipped with a wickedly sharp needle.  Also a diamond-like tipped engraving pen, which the goblin picks up last and holds onto. “Thank you for waiting,” the goblin says then, “Now I just need a drop of your blood.  The Blood Dias here is a magical tool used to bind your bank card to your person and your account, and will be absolutely painless.” It’s at that point that Holdt gives a grunt and interjects into the conversion. “Excuse me, but a blood binding won’t work on the lad here.  He was awakened as a weird variant of the ghost type, so the body he has currently is not true one.” Holdt’s words both confuse me and yet make sense, although I do have to wonder if variants like he described really exist.  I’ve yet to see anyone outside of the norm myself, at least as newly dead are concerned. All the same though the goblin ends up blinking at Holdt with his large black eyes, before looking at me. To the silent question I simply shrug and hold up my hand, willing my spirit form to separate from this body.  My ghostly hand rises up out of my arm at the elbow, although when I go to wiggle my fingers both hands respond all the same.  A neat trick, if nothing else right? “I see…  Let me go grab the proper tool then.”  The goblin teller didn’t seem all that impressed, but that isn’t a problem for me anyway. Waiting a few more minutes leaves me tapping my foot on the hard stone floor however.  I was quite impatient at this point, and the others could tell and thus try to regale me with bits of conversation.  I wasn’t really biting, but I appreciated their efforts all the same. “Here we are, a Soul Extractor.” The goblin finally makes it back, only this time he’s with four others that are hauling a large contraption along on their shoulders.  Just looking at the heavy, boxy thing makes one of my eyes twitch, although a glance at Holdt shows him being as stoic as ever. Ugh. “The Soul Extractor will take a small piece of your essence in order to use it to bind your Bank card and account properly.  Just lay your ghost hand in the slot for a moment.” Finally we can move along!  I follow the instructions after willing an arm to come out and lay my spirit form hand into the contraption.  Almost as soon as my palms and fingers rest inside of it the box buzzes with power, and I can feel a sort of tingling sensation assault my fingertips. The noise and the feeling becomes progressively stronger though, and even my goblin bank teller and the others who’d hauled the device start to stare at the thing.  Especially when it starts to light up in a bright silver color. The noise and the light also attracts all sorts of attention our way. Then I feel a sharp jab into the palm of my hand, making me grit my teeth before the device suddenly stops.  I yank my hand out of the damned thing, staring at the neat ‘hole’ it had punctured in my palm. Thankfully there is no blood or anything, but it still stings and is only slowly healing over. “Interesting… Your soul must be very tough there, brat.”  A voice suddenly calls out from behind the goblin teller.  That voice is odd however, distant and whisper-thin yet loud in the ears all at the same time. “Lord Bank Manager!”  My goblin teller shudders at that voice, and jumps down from his seat only to hit the floor with his knees and his forehead at almost the same time.  The other goblins are the same, bowing to the figure who slowly steps out of the shadows behind the booths. On the first look, this ‘Lord Bank Manager’ appears like an old man, whip-thin and nearly infirm.  His hair is silver and cut short, while his long silver beard is tucked into the simple leather belt at his waist.  Yet his clothing is luxurious in comparison, trimmed in gold and glittering jewels of all sizes and colors. Yet when I blink my eyes again, what I see is totally different.  I see a glowing golden silhouette, shadowed in a swirling black outline.  Golden skin, silver robes, and eyes that flash swiftly through all the worldly forms that precious gems or jewels may take.  Emerald green one moment, then sapphire blue the next, and so on. When I blink again though the golden visage is gone, replaced by the old man once more.  Yet that single glance has left me with a piercing headache, and I cannot help but reach up to massage my temples.  With four hands, as I uncontrollably use my ability. “Ho ho, I see.  It seems that that Silver Lord really found an interesting brat this time.”  The old man, whom I’m pretty sure is one of the Fallen Gods, says then with a slim smile.  “No matter.  Your secrets do not matter to me.  Only your wealth. And I feel that your wealth will be great indeed in time.  Ho ho.” The headache fades quickly at this point, and I finally raise my eyes to look at the old man again.  At the same time though I glance around at the others with me, only to find them stock still and completely silent.  Staring at nothing in front of them. Like they’d been frozen in time. In fact the whole of the bank has gone silent and still, and I’m reminded of Holdt’s previous words.  That the bank is as much a temple as it is a place of business. It sure rings true at this point. “Fret not, boy,”  The old man chuckles at seeing my wild glances, “I am Plutus, a God of Wealth.  I run the bank here in Helen City, though I rarely have cause to show myself.  Your unusual soul strength caught my attention.” Okay, that explains a bit.  I let out a sigh of relief before bowing to the literal god before me.  No reason not to be respectful, given he doesn’t have any harmful intentions toward me. “I see, and thank you, Lord Plutus.”  Yeah, real smooth there, me. “Ha ha.  Don’t worry about it boy.  It is just an idle curiosity.  You aren’t the first -otherworlder- to walk the hall of my bank, and I do not expect you to be the last.  But you have a very interesting fortune, which really is interesting. Hmm…” For a moment there I could swear that I felt the god peering into my soul.  His gaze was just that sharp and strong, and I’m unable to resist it at all.  Well, except for something buried in the very center of my being, which responds with a slight buzzing feeling.  That in itself wouldn’t have mattered, except for the sudden FORCE that comes slamming down on the interior of the bank, centered around Plutus himself. That breaks whatever gaze the god was using, and I find myself standing there sweating buckets.  As for Plutus himself, he’s actually kneeling on the floor, his head bowed to the point I’m just barely able to see his grey hair.  Whatever that force was, it was definitely targeting the fallen god way more than it was interested in me. “Aaaah…  The Voice really doesn’t want to give up its secrets that easily it seems.”  Plutus only says after he stands up again, although now he looks far more tired and a bit fretful than before. “I apologize, boy.  I hadn’t expected to see that you’d already absorbed a Fragment.  Or that the Voice of the World would care so much about my probing.  None of the others had the same reaction.” At this point I’m entirely confused, and I’m not above trying to dig out some answers while I have the chance.  Sadly it must have shown on my face, because I’m interrupted before I was even able to open my mouth. Damn it. “I cannot say more at this moment.  Your Newly Dead status would only interfere anyway.  Once your month is up you will understand. All of you will.”  At this point the god glances around before nodding his head, as if having come to a decision. “I wish to keep an eye on you, because you will have great fortune along your journey.  To that end I wish for you to accept a boon from me.” I’m really not able to keep up with this god now, but that doesn’t seem to matter as he walks up to the booth between us and gently touches the Soul Extractor.  This causes a silver-white wisp to rise up from it, which he cups gently in one hand while pulling out a very shiny yet dark silver card from his robe with his other hand.  Seeing the card I cannot help but twitch, because I recognize what the card is made of. “I see you have gotten quite knowledgeable already.  Yes, this is the fabled ‘mithril’, which is hard to come by here in Limbo.”  The god says then, a smile on his lips as he places the wisp of my soul onto the card.  It’s sucked in as if the card is a thirsty traveler finding water in a desert, and starts to glow faintly before it disappears. “This is the banks’ Mithril-ranked Bank Card.  Holders of this type of card are waived all fees and are able to access all of the banks’ features at any bank location in Limbo.  Ho ho. At the same time this card is imbued with a bit of my divine magic, so I can keep an eye on you.” The god explains what it is, before he holds the card out to me.  I hesitate for only a moment before reaching out to take the offered boon.  It really would be far more useful than anything else at this point. “Thank you, Lord Plutus.  I’m not sure about this ‘fortune’ you keep mentioning, but this will really be helpful.” “Don’t worry about it boy.  I’ll take care of the details here, but we really should wrap up quickly.  Time doesn’t like to be messed with so much, you know.” And then everything is back to normal, as the sounds and motions of the world come back into focus in all a single moment.  The goblins on the floor look up in wild-eyed wonder while Holdt, Lusov, and Agatha all stare at the old man who’d suddenly appeared and taken the goblins place at the teller booth.  Only I am left staring at the light weight silver hard in my hand. “There you go, registered as Silver Key member #515.  Your account is now active and ready for your first deposit.”  Given that it is an actual god doing the work at this point, I cannot help but chuckle a little as Plutus voice draws me back to him. Yet for all of his godliness, he’s easily able to do the work the goblins had been doing.  Actually he’s quite a lot faster at it, as my entire wealth is soon dumped into that tiny little chest that the goblin had brought along before.  At the same time the card in my hand buzzes, and a number is shown on the top right corner depicting how many shards are available in my account. That’s a nifty feature all it’s own, and leaves me happy as everything finishes up.  Well, except for the goblins who are still bowing toward the old man. Even I can get the hint though. “Thank you, Lord Bank Manager.  My apologies for causing such a disruption.”  I say smoothly, not about to blurt out who the old man really is.  He’d frozen time to keep the others from knowing, and I’m not about to break that secret right here and now. “A small matter, a small matter.  Just be sure to let Silver Lord know that I send my greetings, alright?” “Oh, absolutely.” Yeah, I’m really going to have a long, long talk with Silver Lord when I get back to the headquarters.  I’m pretty sure running into a real living god was not part of the job description when I joined the Silver Key.  Nor the fact that said god actually seemed to know more than he was able to let on. Being called an -otherworlder- is definitely something I’m going to be digging into if I can.  I don’t like surprises like this, and not getting answers until my true awakening just doesn’t sit right with me.  Since I cannot dig into my own memories on the subject, then I’m going to go digging in other ways. Plutus, as if seeing through my sudden determination, simply grins.  A grin every bit as mischievous as a childs’ that has pulled a good prank.  Even if it meant getting his bottom spanked by the all-powerful Voice of the World in the process. And it all smells of trouble to me.  Ugh.   Announcement And here it is, Chapter 5!  In all it's horror and all it's glory!  Mwhahaha. This one was actually something of a wild ride, because it went way overlong and I didn't get into what I'd planned.  Lol.  So now you guys can expect more chapters before Arc 1 is finished up!  Enjoy the read! As always feel free to leave comments, critiques, and whatever else you guys wan to spout out at me.  Hahaha.

Hey there! Yeah. I know I shouldn't have disappeared for so long without a prior notice, and I realize my folly. I am sorry for that. My exams have started, which means my schedule has become pretty hectic. Truth be told, I don't even get enough time to sleep now, much less type a single alphabet. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but you get the gist of it.  Anyway, I will be going on a quasi-hiatus till the mid of May, and resume the novel with hopefully one or two chapters a week. And by quasi-hiatus, I mean that I might post a chapter or two in between this period. That said, I hope that you stick around for more adventures of Malazan and Cloven. Cheers :D PS: Also, I will resume my other novel after coming back, so look forward to it as well. It's sort of a sequel to this one and takes place in the same world.

The group of adventurers treaded east with refreshing ease. A good night sleep had certainly worked its magic, as their previous alertness had vanished into thin air. Their new half-orc comrade also walked alongside them.    The member of Silvar Cavalry now seemed much more open after being entertained by the half-orc's funny banter. In fact, none of them, particularly Shihle, seemed to have any knowledge of what had transpired last night, because if they did, Globrom wouldn't be slapping the half-orc's shoulder and laughing boisterously.      "Right, isn't that infuriating? Bwahaha, I regret not kicking that man's face!"   "Bah! I say ya should have farted in that bastard's face!"   "…how did I not think of this?!" Globrom looked like his life had lost its meaning.    Seeing this, everyone, except for Cloven, laughed. The tale behind Globrom's nine fingers was something he'd tell every time he'd hit off well with someone. It was already famous amongst the adventurers how Globrom had gotten into a fight with one of two Great Dukes' guards and managed to kill all of them at the loss of his forefinger. It was not until his comrades paid blood money to the guards' families that the Duke dropped the matter.     After three hours of hard travel saw them an area missing the thick underbrushes of the landscape they had left behind. Less trees impeded their vision, and no entangled mass of shurbs hindered them from advancing forward.     The gusts of winds were cool and wet of morning dew, like breaths of air from a cold waterfall, even though the blazing sun above them threatened sunlight.    Malazan realised that they were almost about to reach their destination. Also realizing this, eager smiles crept on the faces of Silvar Cavalry. Driven by his excitement, Globrom quikened his pace, yet, before he could move any closer, the ground beneath his feat caved in. All they heard was a scream before arrows came gliding towards them.    The members of Silvar Cavalry responsed swiftly. Zaron unsheathed his sword, slashing all the arrow coming his way. Shihle, the Spell-Caster, chanted a conjuration spell, 'Flame Arrow.' Fiery bolts—that appeared out of nowhere—were hurled, knocking out all the arrows within the spell's ten meters range.     On the other hand, Cloven simply ducked low as two arrows passed over him. The rest of the arrows were easily dealt by Malazan; griping his sword's hilt, Malazan swept it in a single fluid arc that ended with all the arrows being deflected.     From his peripheral vision, he noticed a slight movement from the trees. Within a moment Malazan caught a glimpse of someone's silhouette as he crossed from the shadow of one tree to the next.    "Is this how you greet your comrades, Alcot?" Malazan bellowed, a faint smile appearing on his face. "Look, l might have even gotten injured thanks to this trap of yours, don't you think?"    "Hahaha, I doubt this little trick would have been enough to scratch that bigger-than-life body of yours, to nothing of injuring you." A man emerged out of the woods. A long sleeved, animal skin jacket covered him to well above his waist and was half buttoned up at the bottom right side. The sleeves of his jacket were a little wide and reached down to below his hands, they were decorated with a single thread lining and a decorative band.    He wielded a longbow and calmly made his way towards them. After seeing the appearance of their ambusher, flickers of surprise passed over the Silvar Cavalry eyes before they heaved out a sigh of relief.    "Sorry, everyone. I thought it was an enemy after sensing that someone has fallen prey to the pit that I laid," he apologized with a bow.    "That dumb pig! Getting caught by surprise like that, even though he is the ranger of our team!" Shihle hurumphed in anger.    Alcot grinned. "Yeah, he is the last person I'd expect to not detect my trap," he said in a laughing manner.    Alcot was not wrong to say as such. Rangers were proficient in moving stealthily through the wilds and hiding themselves in brush and rubble. They focused their combat training on techniques that were particularly useful in stealth and detection, hence for a high rank ranger like Globrom to be unable to detect the trap must either mean he didn't have his guard up, or that he had gotten rusty. Or maybe a mix of the two scenarios.    "Anyway, what took you guys so long, Malazan?" Alcot turned to look at him.    The two parties had chased the remnants of the demihumans who had launched an attack on them. Eliminating a few orcs and ogres was not a difficult task for people of their strength to carry out, however, for them to take so long caused others to be worried.    "Well, it's a long story. I will explain it you on the way." Everyone smiled wryly at his response.    "Alright, then," Alcot nodded, curiosity clearly visible in his eyes.    However, as they were about to leave, a scream resounded from the pit,"Hey--don't just leave us here, ya guys!!"   "What? When did you fall in there, Dench?" Blen asked in shock.    An embarassed coughing sound came from the pit. "I…got frightened when those arrows came flying…and accidentally stepped on this hole in panic…" The half-orc's voice carried a wisp of helplessness.    Sensing it, Malazan smiled. It's better for you to taste defeat once in a while, he thought.    Ropes were thrown inside the pit and the two victims helped themselves, safely reaching the surface. Globrom got an earful about his recent poor performance by the party captain, Zaron. While on the other hand, Alcot was surprised to see the half-orc amid their ranks. He questioned them until his curiosity was sated, and kept glancing at the half-orc with interest from time to time.    The group soon worked their way forward through the woods, drawn by the light gleaming past the thickets. Shortly after, an open space of land became visible to their eyes.     Malazan spotted three men standing near a strongly sprung carriage, drawn by four grey geldings. The carriage seemed luxurious enough to be considered the vehicle of a wealthy noble or a merchant. The men looked equally fine, their equipment far better than what most low-ranking adventurer might glean from lifetime of hardwork. It was clear they took care of their weapons.     One wore a well-made, overshirt of linked chain, while the other next to him wore a fancy robe with extravagant carvings on top of it. Malazan assayed their party's leader; the man stood out in comparison to the other men. He donned a full body armor, which had been fashioned out of steel.    Although steel was a fairly common metal unlike mithril and adamantine, but a full body armor made out of it still surpassed the pockets of many high-ranking adventurers. That said, such extravagance was to be expected from the Moonlight Squad's, another four-star adventurer party from the capital.     Spotting them from afar, the leader waved at them. As they neared them, the leader came forward to greet, "You know, we were about to come looking for you guys," a muffled voice rang out from his helm.    "Yeah, it took us longer than expected."    "Is that so? Mr. Sablester has been waiting for you guys inside the carriage for quite some time, so let's get going. Oh? Who might this fella be?" Asked the leader, taking off his helm. A determined-looking face with dark hair and eyes appeared before them. He eyed Dench with keen suspicion.    "Someone we met on our way here, Alcot will explain the details to you, Darkeye, " Malazan said, addressing the man by his nickname.    "I see. Let us get going, then." He studied Malazan's expression for a moment before commanding his party memebers to place all the luggage onto the carriage.     The carriage steadily followed the road to Kraasea. The road, pitted and overgrown, was not far from a river, which provided a constant source of water and food for them.    Holding onto the horses' reins, Malazan leisurely sat in the box seat, along with two captains of the other teams. The elevated seat was sizable enough to accommodate all of them.    The rest of the adventurers sat inside the carriage, guarding the merchant and his luggage.    "Say, Malazan. What do you think of all this?" Darkeye interrupted the silence with a question.    "What do you mean?" He asked, pretending to be oblivious.    "You know what I mean." They glared at each other and the first one to look away was Darkeye. This contest of wills, however, went completely unnoticed by the eyes of Zaron who was sitting beside them.    Taking a deep breath, Darkeye slowly continued, "Why did our client request such a powerful line-up just to be his bodyguards?"   You're too inquisitive for your own good, Darkeye. And this will surely hamper you from tapping into your full potential, Malazan thought to himself with a sigh.    Certainly, the request was quite absurd this time around. Their client, Sablester, a wealthy merchant of Kraasea, had filled in a request three days ago, asking for the services of three four-star adventurer parties. This had caused quite a stir amongst the other adventurers. If one didn't know any better, they'd have thought that the man was plotting a rebellion.    In addition, to hire the services of three four-star parties didn't come cheap. The contents of the request stated that they were to guard the merchant and his luggage safely all the way to Kraasea. Though, for him to hire their services for such a simple task arosed naught but suspicion.    "Oh, yeah. I did smell something fishy back then. I don't think the luggage he is carrying is something as simple as a few valuable jewels," Zaron chipped in, offering his own two cents.    "Indeed. I have a premonition that our client is hiding something from us," Darkeye scratched his chin, brooding deep into the matter.    "How about investigati—"    "That is enough, you two. Our mission is solely to guard. Prying any further into our client's motives will be tantamount to breaking the Guild's code," he stopped them with a sharp glare. He had a faint inkling as to what the merchant would might be carrying. And considering the possibility of him hitting the bullseye, he figured it was better for the others to not get involved. The less people knew, the better.    "…yeah, sorry about that. I guess I got a bit too hyped up over this."   "Same here."   The conversation abruptly ended and silence prevailed. As Malazan thought back to the image of a slender, fidgety merchant, he couldn't help but look forward to the rest of the journey.   I wonder how someone like him got his hands on such an interesting toy.   3 Days Prior to the Party's Departure, 5:45pm     Weasel desperately run through the slums. At the moment, the sun was setting, putting a veil of red over the horizon.    He had been running almost the entire way since leaving the Adventurers Guild, so his breath was ragged and sweat beaded his face. Exhaustion made him want to rest, asked him if he wouldn't like to catch his breath, but time did not permit him such a moment of respite.    And then when he turned tight around a corner—“Watch out!” Someone who happened to be on the corner groaned.   However, it all happened so fast that it took Weasel by surprise, and he collided against the stranger. All it took was a heartbeat before he felt his face slamming into someone's sturdy chest. Honestly, the concussion from collision was so hard that it felt like he had banged his face into a wall instead. He staggered back a few steps.    Weasel forced his mind to concentrate despite the fatigue and the waves of pain that dogged him with every halting step. He now looked at the stranger. The man had a face covered with scars. And because of the dark clothes he was wearing, he melted into darkness.    Irritation overcame Weasel and he yelled. "That's what I should say! Look where you're--eh? Crook? What are you doing here?"    "Boss wants to know why you haven't been reporting to him lately." Crook gestured for Weasel to follow him.    The mention of his boss caused Weasel to freeze. All the fatigue and pain he felt evaporated into air. It felt like someone had poured cold water over him. "I-I was coming to report to him, anyway," he grumbled before following Crook to a run-down shack. They stood before a certain door. Crook knocked twice, followed by a short pause, before knocking again.    The reaction to the sign came instantaneously. Weasel heard the creak of wood from behind the door, and the wooden plank covering the peephole moved. Green eyes peered out from the gap. They scrutinized Weasel and Crook. "Oh, so it's you guys. The boss has been waiting." Without waiting for their reply, he replaced the plank. Weasel heard the sound of a key being inserted in the doorknob, and shortly afterwards the door slowly opened.    As Weasel was about to enter, Crook pushed him aside and stepped in first. Weasel huffed in anger. It wasn't an overstatement to say the man could knock him unconscious with a single punch. Hence, there was nothing he could do, except take it lying down.    "C'mon in." Crook ushered him in. After entering, Weasel's nose caught a whiff of a nauseating stench. Expecting himself to get used to it, he slipped in a room to his right.    Someone closed the door promptly after he entered. The room was so cramped that only a single table could be placed inside. A dozen candles standing on it lighted the room with a dim gleam.   A man giving off the vibe of those who took violence as their profession and murder as their creed moved a chair and flumped down in it. He had a robust, mascular built, and a few scars occupied his face. He studied Weasel for a short while, causing the latter to tremble in response. "Why haven't you been reporting to me?"   "Boss, our prey had made a big move, so that's why I wanted to observe the situation a bit more before reporting to you."   "Oh? What did he do?"    "That fucking merchant borrowed the services of three four-star adventurer parties to guard him!"    "What?!" The boss replied in a surprised tone. Indeed. He also did not expect for the man to be capable of affording such a powerful line-up. The chair beneath him squeaked. "When do they set off?"    "Tomorrow morning from what I have heard."   "I see, we don't have much time left, then."    "B-boss, don't tell me we are still going after him?" Weasel stuttered. No one in their right mind would want to fight a congregation of so many powerful adventurer parties.    "What? Do you have anything else to say?"   Seeing the boss' murderous glare, he shivered and shook his head.   "Good. Tell the others to get ready. We will intercept them on the way. All we have to do is capture that man and seize his possessions. We will just have to figure a way to keep those adventurers busy till we have accomplished our mission. It's not like we are going to fight them to death."    Although his boss said so, Weasel still felt his neck tingle. Something told him their mission wasn't going to be so simple.    

Capital City — Flerith, Kingdom of Ceirth,Outer region, Blackwood PubEarly Summer, Fue'oi, 1402 Year Cycle "One more glass, please," the man said as he threw the empty wine glass onto the wooden floor. The glass shattered, causing those in the pub to look towards the sound's origin. Though after seeing who it was, they quickly turned away their faces in fright. 'Damn cowards, the lot of them…' the man disappointingly muttered under his breath as though he had expected this unusual reaction. He hoped that one of them was courageous to come looking for trouble with him, so that he could vent out all the bottled up resentment inside him, but alas, it does not seem possible. "So…did she defeat you again, Master Geve?" The bartender inquired, unperturbed by the man's rude behavior, as he placed another glass of Mistborn wine on the table. He wore a dark tunic with complimenting black leggings. His appearance and body language radiated an air of good upbringing. Picking up the glass placed in front of him, Geve brought it close to his face, staring at it as if searching for answers to comfort himself. The bartender remained silent at the side, letting the man be. "More like she beat the shit out of me. Aahhh, what a miserable life I have," the man despondently answered, breaking the long awkward silence. "Surely, you jest, milord. Many people would want to bang their heads into walls after hearing you, one of the Twin Knights, say that," The bartender said with a wry smile on his face. The Twin Knights, the mere mention of this duo would invoke feelings of reverence, fear and admiration in the hearts of public. They were recognized as the strongest force of the Kingdom of Ceirth, employeed by the King as the two Highest-General of the Royal Knights. It was because of their reputation as rank-five knights that the King and the royal family was able to maintain their position. Not to mention, they also served as a deterrence to the surrounding states that might otherwise harbor wicked plans. —Yet, here was one of the Twin Knights, Geve the Guardian, sulking in defeat. "Ugh…what Twin Knights? It should be more like the Single Knight...or maybe The Knight…wait, but that doesn't sound nice. Ughhh, I don't give a fuck anymore!!" Geve drank all glass empty in one fell swoop. Just thinking about her smug smile when she pointed her sword against his throat—during their last duel—infuriated him to no bounds. "Forgive me for not knowing my place, General Geve, but why don't you give up on trying to defeat General Adelena? It is not like both of you are enemies, anyway," the bartender inquired, his voice coated in curiosity. "It's because of my pride as a man, Edelor! How could you even not know of something as important as this?! Wait, don't tell me you're a eunuch?! Hmm, no wonder your voice sounds a bit feminine!" Geve nodded to himself, seemingly proud of himself as though he had unravelled a great mystery. "T-that's not the case…hah, nevermind," Edelor gave up after seeing Geve lost in his reverie. It was a well-known fact that General Geve was not himself when he got drunk. Suddenly, the door to pub creaked open and a young boy entered. His skin was pale, to the point where it seemed as if the boy the never seen the light of day. Wearing a bright blue robe, he griped a small staff in his hand. His emerald eyes glistened in the darknesss of the pub. With an arrogant glide, he made his way towards where Geve was sitting."Geve, why are you loitering in a place like this? I have been searching for you everywhere!" The boy yelled. "When will you start calling me General Geve, you brat?!" Geve directed a sharp glare his way. "When you stop calling me a brat," the boy sneered. "Oh, if it isn't young lord Silvar." "Hello, Mister Edelor. Sorry to disturb you while you are at work," the boy named Silvar bowed his head in response to the bartender's greeting. "Hohoho, don't worry, young lord. As you can see, I am just accompanying Master Geve in his drinking bout," Edelor said with a generous wave of his hand, dismissing the boy's apology. "I see," Silvar flashed a happy smile in response. "By the way, brat, how did that master of yours allow you to come outside of the palace?" Geve asked, sounding interested. Spellmaster Malus, the court magician, was known for being strict towards his disciples, never letting them go out of the palace. So seeing one of his disciples—a brilliant one at that—rooming outside like this was not a sight one got to see everyday. "Humph, glad you asked! I broke-through to rank-one arcane spellcaster a month ago. Master Malus praised me, saying that I was a rare prodigy to become a rank-one spellcaster at such a young age, so as a reward for my hardwork, he gave me permission to leave the palace once in every six days, " Silvar answered heatedly, his voice loud enough to reach every corner of the pub. Shocked gasps and sighs of admiration resounded throughout the place, which further stroked Silvar's ego. "So what of it? It's not like you became a rank-one spellmaster like him," Geve harrumphed in annoyance. "Y-you…do you even know how difficult it is to became a rank-one spellcaster, much less a rank-one spellmaster?!" Silvar retorted in fury. It felt like someone had poured cold water on his newfound thunder. "Humph," Geve turned his face away. He indeed knew the difficulty of becoming a spellmaster, but due to his irritant mood, he wasn't willing to admit it out loud. "Y-you…!" Silvar stomped his feet in anger. "If don't mind, young lord Silvar, could please enlighten this old man about the mysteries of magic?" Edelor inquired. "Of course, Mister Edelor. What you do want to know?" "Anything. For example, like how many tiers are there?" "Oh, from what I have heard from my master, magic spells are divided into eleven-tiers. Though their existence is still up for debate, as no one has witnessed a tier-eight spell, to say nothing of an eleven-tier spell. The highest spell a spellcaster can cast is a three-tier spell. And hence, they are called rank-three spellcaster due to each realm being divided into a total of three ranks. This is the highest level a normal human with magic potential is capable of achieving," saying that, Silvar looked at the bartender's pondering face and then continued, "after that come the spellmasters. After becoming a spellmaster, a human is able to surpass his limits and can summon winds and command oceans to a certain extent. Though this is only possible for rank-three spellmasters, those are able to use six-tier spells." Silvar now had a reverent look on this face. It was a dream of every spellcaster to have the honor of being able to glimpse at the peak of the magic, and Silvar was no exception. "Oh? Entering into the ranks of legends, so to say?" Edelor asked, remembering those tales that he heard in his childhood. "Indeed. It's said that after becoming a legend, one may be able to contend against those ancient beings who were under the command of deities and once ruled the whole world," Silvar replied fearfully, even he did not know much about those beings, except for what he had heard from his master. In fact, his master, the one he adored deeply, said that the likes of him weren't worthy to know about those beings. So it was impossible to know where the limits of their powers lay. Their tales were so absurd that he even suspected the validity of their existence. "I see. Thank you for enlightening me, young lord Silvar," the bartender gratefully bowed towards him. "You're welcome, Mister," Silvar nodded his head at the man's gesture. "Hah…now why don't you tell me as to why you were searching for me?" Geve asked, intrigued. "Ohh! Right, I almost forgot about it! His Majesty ordered me to summon you, Geve, saying that you are to come as soon as possible!" Remembering what he was here for, Silvar suddenly became flustered. "Aahhh? Why didn't you tell me that earlier?!" Geve hurriedly stood up, striking his gauntleted hand against the table. The force behind the impact was so powerful that the table broke into two. His previous melancholic state was all but gone, replaced by an expression of solemnity. "T-that's…that's because the conversation got derailed…" Even the previous arrogant Silvar was now fearful and had his head hung low. Others might not know, but he knew all too well what Geve was capable of when he got angry. "Ugh…Blessed Mother! What shitty day this is! I will be going now, Edelor. And don't worry, I will send someone later to pay up for the drinks and that table. And you brat, play time's over, you are coming with me," Geve voice resounded in the pub after he made his exit while dragging an unwilling Silvar with him, leaving behind a wryly smiling bartender, and several stunned customers. Geve now stood before double ironbound doors that lead to the throne hall. The doors reached a height of nine feet; tall and wide to the point that it seemed they would devour anyone that were to pass through. The walkaway was dimly lit, and he sensed humidity in the air as mositure settled on his exposed skin. Two royal knights in glittering mail and an articulated breastplate wore on top of it stood to either side of the giant double doors. They regarded him respectfully with a royal salute from the side. Geve took a deep breath, remembering that it was a private summon this time, which meant that no one was going to listen in the conversation between him and the King. It must be a pretty important matter. The knights' gauntleted hands rested easily on the pommels of unsheathed great swords, but they made no move to hinder Geve as he pushed the doors wide open, and walked right past the knights into the throne hall like a rising wind. "General Geve of the Royal Guards greets His Majesty Wimarc Phie-lettron!" He kneeled before the throne. "You may stand, my loyal General," a dignified voice rumbled through the hall, bearing witness to the passing of time. Being granted the permission to look up, he finally laid eyes on his king, the man he had sworn fealty to. King Wimarc, a man in his fifties, had an appearance what people might call ordinary but regal. An ovular face that possessed a pair of deep brown eyes, eyebrows that only had a few black hairs left unlike his completely white-coloured beard that reached till his collarbone. Draped in a fine black robe, the King wore a few rings on fingers of both his hands. Geve had once heard the Royal Magician Malus say that the King had ordered Anzadel Oqiohr, the most famous smith in the capital, to forge these rings out of Lin Putride. So only the gods knew how expensive these rings actaully were. "I apologise for coming so late, Your Majesty!" He once again kneeled, albeit the intentions behind it differed from before. "There's no need to be so uptight, General Geve. Be at ease. It is not that urgent of an matter that We'd punish a loyal subject such as yourself over," the King replied with a laugh. Feeling of gratitude welled up inside of him, once again reminding him of the generous nature of his King. It was because of this man's wisdom and vision that the Kingdom of Ceirth was able to prosper in such a short amount of time. Therefore, it is worth it for me to serve this man with all my might. Thinking this to himself, he renewed his conviction. As if sensing his thoughts, the king smiled before replacing it with a grim expression: "Do you know why We have summoned here?" "No, Your Majesty. I do not." Considering by the King's dignified countenance, it ought to be a grave matter. Did the Republic's adventurers started trespassing into the Kingdom's ancient ruins again? Or maybe a rebellion broke out in one of the two dukes' land? "It has come to Our attention that our scouts stationed at the border of Linburn Plains were killed by demihumans, except for one who returned yesterday," Saying that, the King looked at Geve. "Oh, if I may, Your Majesty, do you know how the said scout survived?" Geve asked with a puzzled look on his face. "You want to know why he was left alive?" The king smiled, knowing the thoughts of his subject. Geve nodded. It was certain that the enemy was capable of killing all of their scouts, so one of them returning with his life arosed nothing but suspicion. It was more like they intentionally let him keep his life. "The scout says that the leader of the demihumans who attacked them happened to be a War Troll. The Troll didn't kill the scout because he wanted him to inform us that an army of their kind has already departed for the City of Bellmare. According to the troll, our kingdom only has three months before they invade us." "WHAT?!" Geve shouted. Very few situations forced him to lose all his composure, and an invasion by demihumans was one of those situations. Although it was true that their relations with the demihumans had been strained for years, yet they haven't deteriorated to the point where the demihumans would wage war against them. Unshaken by his shout, the King continued: "Although we don't know the motive behind this invasion of theirs, but there are indeed rumors of a large demihuman army raiding various villages outside of our Kingdom. It won't be long before they invade our Kingdom through Bellmare." Hearing this, Geve's heart sank. They didn't have enough time to make preparations for such a large-scale war. Their soldiers were already busy defending the kingdom's borders, so asking them to fight off a demihumans invasion was the same as ordering them to leave their borders' undefended. Though Kingdom had a reserved force of 20,000 soldiers, yet it wasn't enough to fight a large-scale war with the demihumans. "The only choice we have is to conscript peasants into the army," Geve groaned. "Indeed. We have no other choice than to shed the blood of the poor, Our loyal General. Although this greatly pains Us, but I will have to order you and General Adelena to train and lead the military conscripts this time," the King said with a heavy heart. It seemed as if he had suddenly aged ten years after arriving to this decision. "Don't worry, Your Majesty! We will definitely not let our people die in vain!" Geve solemnly said while kneeling. "We have already informed General Adelana about the invasion. She has left to discuss the situation with the military commanders. Go now! We shall pray for your triumph return!"

The Kingdom of Ceirth's city of Bellmare was situated at the border between the Republic of Altertis and the Kingdom of Djafu. It was protected by three layers of walls. The zones between each layer had their own unique characteristics. The outermost walls were used by the merchants of the Kingdom and it's neighbouring nations, so that's where the storehouses were. The innermost wall housed the administrative zone. This zone has its own warehouses for food, and was heavily protected by the kingdom's soldiers. The zone in between these two areas was the residential area for civilians. When you hear the word city, this was the zone that matched it. Of the several plazas within this zone, the biggest one was called the central plaza. In the center square, the area's largest, vendors at open-air stalls offered a wide range of goods, including everything from fresh vegetables to prepared foods. In the crowd of people, shopkeepers earnestly peppered passersby with lively sales pitches; elderly shoppers looking for the freshest produce haggled with merchants; lured by the grilling aromas, young men purchased kebabs dripping with juices. The city was bursting with midday liveliness and it seemed that the din in the square would continue on into the evening. However, the peace was disturbed by the emergence of a certain pair from an adjacent building.  One of the pair was a handsome man and had something about himself that stole the people's attention. It was not just due to his handsomeness, there was something about the manner in which he walked. His movements were slow and deliberate, which seemed to betray his immense confidence. The golden sword dangling on his hips seemed to somehow compliment his walk, further boasting his calm aura. The warm look in his blue eyes got quite a few women in the center swooning. The man's partner was wearing a silky, black, long-sleeved shirt and baggy pants. The belt around the pants waist was a simple, black band. If judged by facial features alone, he had a face that'd get lost in a crowd. Yet, he still attracted attention. And it was all because of his crimson eyes, which seemed to suck the very souls of those who made eye contact with him. The two of them looked out over the square, and the handsome man set off walking first. Witnesses followed the departing figures with their eyes, murmuring rumors among themselves. It wasn’t that they were frightened or put on guard by the weirdness of the pair, but that they had seen a curious sight. The reason they weren’t more unnerved was because the building from which the pair had emerged was a place where people who specialized in monster extermination looked for work, the Adventurers Guild. It wasn’t at all rare to see strange people coming and going from there. Those with sharp eyes had been able to spot the one-star tattoo around each of the pair’s necks. It was clear, then, that the only reason they were getting attention was because of the man's appearance and his partner's crimson eyes. The pair walked silently down the not very wide street. Puddles in wagon wheel ruts reflected the sunlight. It wasn’t a proper paved road but a mix of dirt and mud that made it hard to walk. One wrong step and there was nothing to do but trip, but perhaps due to their superior senses of balance, these two walked with the same gait they would have used on cobblestones. Moving with a light step, the crimson-eyed man checked to make sure no one was around and then spoke to the handsome man. “Why were they staring at me like that?" "Well, maybe it's because of your boundless charm," Malazan tried his best to stifle his laughter, but a slight pfft still made its way out of his mouth. "It was a dry joke." Cloven said disdainfully. "Being a bit sensitive won't hurt you, you know?" Malazan coughed. "By the way, what do you think of this place?" He changed the topic with an abrupt question. "It's nauseating. The people here reek of rotting stench" Cloven said with a frown.  "I see. Still, there's nothing you can do about it. Just don't go stiring up trouble," Malazan said merrily.   Cloven nodded, signaling his understanding. Seeing this, Malazan decided to put the matter at rest. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could sense a lot of stares directed his way, mostly from women charmed by his looks. The fact he was receiving this kind of attention was not enough to cause the slightest bit of ripple in his heart. Throughout his life, he has been constantly reminded of how special his looks were. He had felt smug at first, but the novelty worn off too quickly to completely savor it. Suddenly, he saw that Cloven had slowed down, almost to the point of halting his walk, a drastic change compared to his previous pace. "What?" He asked. "Err..why did you not register as a Spell-Lord? You'd have been immediately promoted to seven-star ranking with your status alone." With innocent curiosity painted on his face, Cloven turned back to look at him. This guy…is a masterpiece. "Don't be foolish! There are no true Spell-Masters in this kingdom, much less a Spell-Lord! If my status were to be exposed, we'd have an army at our doorsteps the next morning." The young man named Cloven, who had the bloodlust of a thousand demons, was a lost cause when it came thinking straight. If he were asked to assassinate someone, I'd doubt any could do a job better than him. The boy has a natural talent for killing people, it is in his blood. However, there was still a lot he needed to be taught about the world. Understanding the gravity of the situation, Cloven nodded. "Besides, I had already decided to register as a warrior the moment I defeated the man at the inn. I had demonstrated a bit of my physical prowess in front of the adventurers present there. And it does not need to be said out loud that spellcasters who are good at melee combat are almost non-existent." After all, if one had time to train one’s body, one could easily spend that time on learning magic.  That was simple common sense that applied to everyone but him. He continued, "Not to mention, there are no six-star adventurers in this kingdom, so I don't need to tell you what would happen if a seven-star adventurer suddenly appeared out of thin air?" The Adventurer Guild categorizes its members with a star ranking system. The system is divided into a total of seven ranks. Each adventurer has a star tattoo magically imprinted on their necks, which increases in number in accordance with their ranks. It goes like this: One-star, two-star, three-star, four-star, five-star, six-star, and seven-star. These tattoos are used to rank adventurers, with one-star being the lowest and seven-star the highest ranking tattoo. And they can be only removed by the spellcaster who imprinted them, or by someone whose magic is overwhelming powerful in comparison to the said spellcaster. Higher ranking adventurers can choose harder jobs which offer greater rewards. This system was established to prevent adventurers from losing their lives in vain. Since he recently registered as an adventurer, Malazan only has a one-star tattoo that is assigned to beginners. People like him can be classified as newbie adventurers who are just hoping to earn money and fame, and some of them probably would. But the casualties are a lot more in comparison to the successful ones. The life of an adventurer was quite dangerous and for the most part — boring. It was a practical and dull career. In short, adventurers were 'mercenaries who deal with monsters'. Although they do explore the ruins of countries destroyed by the ancient beings, and do seek unknown treasures in secret realms; but they are basically monster hunters. All monsters had unique abilities, so there was a need for people with a wide variety of skills to handle them. Different from the heroes mentioned in the legends, the governing organizations disliked the existence of armed groups outside their control. Even setting financial concerns aside, the social status of adventurers was still low. There were other reasons why countries didn't take in adventurers en masse. Instead of hiring permanent staff with high salaries, it was better to outsource the work to local adventurer guilds, which made more sense as a business. For companies that can operate without the adventurers guild or a nation that can clear monsters with their military, the status of adventurers was even lower. "What about our quest, then?" Cloven asked, dragging Malazan out of his reverie. "We will see to it right now." Accepting quests from the guild was one of the ways to get promoted, so they'd gone ahead and chosen a one-star mission. They were to kill a group of half dozen goblins, roaming near the outskirts of the city, who were creating trouble for the caravans on their way to the city. It is said that most rookie adventurers lose their lives to these creatures. But exterminating such low ranking beasts did not pose any danger for them. In fact, it could even be said that it was a disgrace for them to dirty their hands to deal with such creatures. But what did Master Julian use to say, when in Uspetan, do as the Uspetanians do? Honestly, he didn't really pay attention to the master's lectures most of the times. Heck, he even used to sleep through some of them. "Let us be on our way, then."   Arriving at the outskirts of the city, he found out how wrecked the forest was. Malazan was greeted by destroyed and fallen trees, the aftermath of a fight between adventurers and beasts, possibly trolls or ogres from the size of the grooves on a few trees. It seemed like rabbits, birds, squirrels, and mice had taken over this area and declared it to be their territory. Underbrush were scattered a few miles away. Though one thing that remained unchanged was the crispy grass under their feet. "A devasted forest," Cloven said. Malazan nodded. "I'd have to concur." "Come on, let's search for those gob-" "Ugh…Alina…hurry up, heal Giraud!"  And I was interrupted. Sounds like a fight is going on.