21.

The original fort was exactly as we left it. Slick onyx walls with white pictograms that gave the slightest glow even during the brightest part of the day. Even from a half mile away I could see the tops of the heads of people standing watch on the walls, looking not just toward the sea but also toward the interior. A wise precaution that did us no good. It would have been better to find them lax and lazy. A distant hope from having seen, even briefly, how thorough Dan was.

“All right. We go in first, then when I give the signal, everyone else follows,” I gave the orders to the ten who had followed us from the mountain survivors. I really needed a new name for them. Olivia had naturally been attached to her grandmother's hip, but we had managed to gather two more teams of five. The rest of the survivors were spread out across the fort and its keeps, busy with harvesting mana hearts for me. Us.

Monica had agreed to lead one squad with the majority of her original team; Chrissy, Angela, Mia, and Lisa. The other group had Hayden, who had been our biggest opponent when we had taken control of their group. The only familiar face was Paul, who had decided to go with the older man rather than stay in Monica’s group. They had three older women with them, Veronica and Isabella were middle aged and spoke quietly to each other in Spanish most of the time. The last was Bailey, an African-American woman who was originally from the South. Her accent still remained when she bothered to speak, which was usually only to tell us we were being dumb. She had been a well of wisdom to draw from as we worked our way across the interior of the Region toward our original base.

She had grown up in a rather rural area and had been hunting with her father since she was a child, apparently. She taught us how to look for tracks on the ground, signs of recent passage in the woods, and how to keep quiet when stalking. She hadn’t shown anyone her levels, but I had a feeling she was one of the highest leveled from the mountain. Maybe one of the highest period. The week we had spent at the fort, gathering and consuming mana hearts, training in the courtyards, and learning had been desperately needed. It had slowed down our leveling though.

Finding out I had been correct that controlling all the forts reduced the attacks had been a welcome relief. The following days of bending the survivors to my will hadn’t been as fun, but they lacked skills and the knowledge to survive. I could also have the fort refuse to work for them, and after only one demonstration they had reluctantly taken to my leadership. I heard more than one whisper of despot, fascist, tyrant, or dictator. They obeyed when I gave orders though and that’s all I wanted.

The training regimen had been intense but now I felt comfortable with my weapons, as did the rest. We weren’t experts but the hours putting time in sparring against the magical constructs had us somewhat competent. The dozens of mana hearts we had funneled into our gullets had helped boost our respective strengths and got us comfortable with our new stats. I was fairly certain my constitution couldn’t go higher by mana heart now, getting it to twelve had taken a small mountain of crab hearts.

Lvl. 14

Perception: 6

Intelligence: 8

Strength: 10

Constitution: 12

Vitality: 7

Endurance: 5

Dexterity: 6

Mana: 1

Free Points: 27

The additions to strength, vitality, and intelligence were all easy enough to process. I could bend steel with my bare hands now, I recovered faster than even when I had been a teenager, and my though processing was noticeably faster. Finding out the octopi summoners had green mana hearts and gave intelligence points had been nice, but there had only been four of them. Bobby and I had split them fairly and both of us were pleased with the results.

Constitution was a bit harder to figure out even though it was my strongest stat now. I wasn’t volunteering to be stabbed by anyone to see if my skin could repel a blade. Bumps and bruises were common in training and it seemed it took a lot more than it used to to give me any sort of injuries. What had once been a painful long lasting bruise was now more likely to just sting for a few minutes before fading away entirely.

We had all activated our mana with the clear hearts pulled from the dead elementals. After that, Agatha had decided she was going to use her stats she had been accumulating. That had been a bit of a tiff, but she was determined to keep her granddaughter safe and was going to use every tool at her disposal to do so. Just glimpsing the older woman from the corner of my eye made me want to frown. Seeing her stat sheet before leaving had been a bit of a shock. We had decided to funnel a last push of resources to her before she used the stats and she had grown to be rather impressive.

Agatha Jones

Perception: 8

Intelligence: 7

Strength: 6

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Constitution: 7

Vitality: 7

Endurance: 6

Dexterity: 6

Mana: 37

She had decided to put every spare point she had accumulated into mana. Watching her train had been eye opening. She walked around now with only a short sword on her hip, her hands bare and open, finger flexing ever so slightly as she scanned her surroundings like a hawk. The first time I had seen her conjure up a bolt of mana and blast apart one of the training dummies in a shower of rocks, I had nearly abandoned my plans and dumped every point into mana. At level nineteen, she was without a doubt the strongest person in our party and among the mountain survivors. Possibly even among our original group.

We started out across the open ground toward the fort. Agatha was behind us all, Olivia using her old crossbow sandwiched between her and Bobby. Miguel was in the lead, walking ten feet to my left and slightly ahead of me, while Bobby stayed a few feet behind me. Our time hunting as we crossed the interior had led to the development of the quasi formation we used. Miguel’s speed and mobility wasn’t hindered being on the outside, Bobby was close enough to defend the rear or reinforce me, while I walked in front as a big target to let things break on. Or try to break me. It had so far been effective against the various monsters we had found.

I couldn’t help but feel a flush of pride as I looked at Miguel. The young man was developing nicely and our bond had only grown stronger after our beach talk. He wasn’t sycophantic, he didn’t hang on to every word I spoke, but even when the mountain folk had been calling me every name in the book he hadn’t budged in supporting me. His gains had been a pleasure to watch.

Miguel Hernandez

Perception: 5

Intelligence: 6

Strength: 6

Constitution: 6

Vitality: 7

Endurance: 7

Dexterity: 11

Mana: 1

Free Points: 32

Not as explosive of growth as Agatha, but the old woman’s kills on the storm elementals had pushed her beyond any of us. With her gained stats, her leveling would slow and we would gain on her. I was beginning to fear that our acquisition of mana hearts was going to be coming to an end sooner rather than later though. The monsters were getting stronger, harder to slay. The danger was growing by leaps everyday as the tutorial was slowly raising the monster's strength.

Bobby was the hardest to measure. She was my closest confidant. The only one not driven by others, but rather from something internal. I didn’t know if we were friends, but we understood each other to a degree. I wasn’t a threat to her in the way she feared, and as long as she supported me I would aid her. Maybe in the beginning she had joined us for the illusion of protection I could provide, but her growth over the weeks had me believing she was the one I had to go to for protection.

Roberta Mullens

Perception: 9

Intelligence: 10

Strength: 9

Constitution: 8

Vitality: 7

Endurance: 6

Dexterity: 7

Mana: 1

Free Points: 34

I knew the moment we gave up on trying to gather points through mana hearts, her strength was going to go soaring. She was already scary. It made sense for a man of my size to be able to bend a steel bar. It didn’t make sense to see a rail thin, though well muscled, woman grab the same bent bar and unbend it. She had been saving up the strength mana hearts we had been taking from the bear monsters, it wouldn’t be long till she was able to bring her strength up to mine.

Standing before the gates, the guards peered down at us. I couldn’t recognize any of them, but I had never taken too much time to integrate myself with the others to begin with. My early time at the fort had been absorbed by the library.

“Bobby?” The foremost of the guards yelled down. Their walls had been heightened and yelling was now required to call to each other. Nobody stood guard at the gate itself though. I could just walk straight in as owner of the fort, not having to bother with these rather trivial matters of decorum. We had been gone for almost two weeks now. I realized I had spent more time with the mountain group than I had with my own.

“Yeah. We’re finally back!” Bobby hollered back. There were no hostile actions being taken. I pushed open the gates. The moment my hand touched the hard wood, the gates unlocked to swing open for us. Behind me I heard the guards shouting in surprise as we walked into the courtyard. There was no one in it, the standard layer of snow undisturbed. Someone should be training up here at the minimum, even if everyone else had already left. I had a strong suspicion that Dan was too aggressive with just waiting here. He would attack, try to gain the momentum from this place. To keep leveling him and his warriors now that this area was pacified.

We made our way down the twisting path, each of the locked gates yielding to my touch. Each step added to the growing tension as we waded further and further down. The dim light of the surface had long faded as we walked into the central hall. The many tables were filled with people industriously committing heresy.

They were cracking open mana hearts and gently using the precious liquid inside to oil the multitude of spears and other weapons piled around them. Crossbow bolts were dipped inside of the cracked hearts like they were bowls, armor was polished carefully, each strip of metal and leather lovingly drenched. My soul was shuddering at the waste. There were easily enough hearts being used to give me another point to constitution!

“What the hell are they doing?” I whispered. The shock and outrage in my voice caused Miguel to snigger behind me. Nights of harvested crab hearts had to be in use at the moment.

“Doing their jobs. It’s what you’ll be doing when not giving us information, Librarian,” a voice hissed with venom. A short bulldog-like man came tramping down from the staircase at the end of the hall. His pale skin was red from the sun, eyes beady as he squinted in the sudden adjustment of the light as he glared at us. A thin wooden rod was spinning in his fingers as he marched toward us. Behind him a half dozen more men flowed behind.

I noticed those at the benches twisting away, turning from the men and their long wooden rods. They were clubs. These lackluster bastards were wasting my hearts and beating the others to get them to do it!

The pounding in my chest was a war drum of indignity. I had spent my entire life being dictated to, I refused to allow that to happen again. If this upstart thought he was going to lash me to some work line I was going to correct him of his assumptions violently. My voice was a rage filled whisper.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m in charge here. Commander Noble gave me power to keep this place in line and specific instructions for you if you ever came slinking back,” the man sprayed spittle as he spoke.

“What a foolish mistake. You see, I own this place. This is MINE!” I roared the last word. Hot anger rushed out of me in a burst. These wastrels were going to take what I had the initiative to claim? I had been the first to muster the courage to walk into the fort, the first to figure everything out. It had been my knowledge that had kept us all alive.

“That’s not going to stand. You’re going to be relinquishing ownership and giving it to the Commander, as is proper.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Well…that can be arranged too.”