28.

The sun's bloody dawn illuminated the battered keep. The small tower was covered in wounds, black stone scraped and broken, the crenellations shattered. Corpses lay in broken heaps all around, fishmen and crabs were standard, but now there were bloody piles of feathers. Giant ash gray birds lay in charred mounds of burnt flesh, smoke still wafting off of them.

Men and women were walking around, looking battered and tired. Coated in gore, their armor scorched and faces ashen as they butchered the boss monsters to free the mana hearts from their fleshy prisons. I counted quickly, eleven of them walking around. How many had fallen defending this keep? I couldn’t imagine that everyone had survived this cataclysm. Bodies were heaped in piles shoulder high with a score of the crabs broken and shattered. The small keep had only a fragment of the protections that a fort offered.

Then I saw Luke. He stood in the middle of the battlefield, where the fighting looked to have been the fiercest. I spotted three different commander bodies with their guards laying slaughtered around him. Three crabs were only feet away, right on the outside of the nucleus of violence. He stood tall and proud, painted in gore, his green eyes swept around as he continued to scan the area around him. His spear was planted butt first into the soil, the spearhead gleaming in the sunlight, the only part of him that was clean.

He turned and looked at us. He radiated power. He lifted a hand and lazily waved us over before continuing to scan the surroundings. A sheepdog standing watch over his flock. Or maybe a warlord standing victorious. I felt a flash of reassurance of my plans of getting rid of Luke. This type of man would never bow to someone weaker, and I feared that nobody could reach this type of power. Something about this new world agreed with him, a fish in water.

I turned to the mountain squads that I had told to follow me this morning and gave the wave to start our way down. I had left the rest of the camp behind, leaving the elves another day to recover with Bobby, Agatha, and Olivia staying behind. Bobby to translate, Agatha to learn magic from the elves. I had decided to bring the mountain teams only so that I could possibly keep the pretense of not starting a coup for just a bit longer.

Luke never once paid attention to us as we worked our way down toward him. His eyes were always twitching, looking off across the distant horizons, scanning and evaluating. I felt a trickle of annoyance, we weren’t even a threat to him. He didn’t need to pay attention to us, unlike whatever had come for him last night. As we closed the distance he moved. A burst of speed that caused him to blur as he appeared only a few feet from us in a mere few quick breaths. His emerald eyes swept over me, ignoring the mountain squads behind me. Was that disappointment in his gaze?

“What are you doing here?” he asked, devoid of any emotion.

“I come with news. Another group of people, we found them at the other fort.”

“That’s not why you’re here. I can see it in your eyes. The gear you have. The way you look at us. Why are you here?” Luke continued with his creepy emotionless questions. I hadn’t though him dull, even from the few conversations we’d had before our journey North, I could tell he was intelligent and observant. Even so, it was irritating that he had seen right through us. Through me.

“I’m coming to gather the rest of my faction.”

“There it is. Your faction?”

“You have seen the notifications on who owns the forts and keeps, yes?”

“Oh, I have. Just thought if you came and actually confronted Dan you’d be strong.” There it was again, the instant dismissal. Luke was powerful, yes, but just what level was he at? How high was his perception? Intelligence? Would he be able to parse out my lies before I said them. Hear my heartbeat accelerate? The nervous pulse of blood rocketing through my veins?

“I’m strong enough.”

“Trash. Just like the rest of them.” He turned and walked away, not caring that he put his back to us. His arrogance was truly staggering. Yet, at the same time, the feeling of his power was chilling. I couldn’t describe it. I imagined it was how a mere mortal would have perceived Heracles. Something other. Something beyond.

We stood there in an awkward silence for a moment, just watching Luke carry on guarding the butchers as they did their gristly work. Already forgotten. I could see my path ahead. I just had to surpass a few obstacles. Luke just happened to be quite a tall one. I ordered us forward, no one speaking as we walked through the remnants of the fight.

In the glistening detritus of the battle, as the gore reflected the sun and the heavy scent of iron bore down on us, I saw mana hearts. True mana hearts, the clear crystal unblemished, sparkling in the light. None of the butchers even looked at them, busy with their work on the crabs and birds. Did they not know? Had they not figured out how to unlock the mana stat? I was glad I hadn’t brought Agatha with me. She wouldn’t fight them, but their lack of knowledge would be a useful tool.

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The keep’s gate was open with only a single warrior standing guard. Her eyes swept over us, only slightly widening when she saw me. If she realized that the mountain squads weren’t from our original spawn area, she didn’t give it away. Just watched me as we got closer. Her spear dipped a tad, as if she was contemplating barring me from entering. I met her eyes and kept walking. She straightened and backed up, allowing us to flow past her.

If Luke stood like some demigod, then the rest of the warriors here were little more than peasants. They were low leveled, my mountain squad members gave the impression of being stronger. It was hard to quantify what it was that gave that impression, something just tickled the edge of my senses. It took a moment before I realized what I was feeling. It was like water pressure. Luke was the depth of a deep pool, a pressure that bore down on me. Everyone else was shallow waters. Only Agatha gave a similar presence to Luke, though it was significantly weaker. It was stat points then that affected this change and not levels. No wonder Luke thought I was trash, I only had the collective stat points of six levels. A radical difference to a normal person, but to someone like Luke or Agatha, who were closing in or already at level twenty. I was a babe in the woods.

If Luke was roughly level twenty, which felt about right, then if I used all my accumulated stat points, I would possibly be able to match him. I had sixteen levels of points sitting in my bank, minus the one I had used prematurely to boost my endurance. He had a plethora of experience I obviously lacked. He had been fighting outside of the walls since the first week we were here and continued to do so. I had only a handful of fights under my belt with only one battle of note. The killing of the commander had taken most of the team and I still nearly died. Facing Luke head on wasn’t going to be possible. Part of me desired to do it, to meet him warrior to warrior and see who would triumph. The rest of me knew it was a stupid idea and I would die doing it.

Dan coming out of the keep was enough to derail my floating ideas of fighting the pinnacle of humanity toe to toe. He looked good. His hair and goatee were slick black, the gray washed away. The crows eyes had all but disappeared, his posture was still ramrod straight and his tan skin practically radiated vitality. He looked like a peak athlete. The pressure radiating off of him was weaker than Agatha’s and only a pale shade of Luke’s. Vastly stronger than mine, if I even radiated any type of pressure at all.

“I recognize the gear. Not the people.” Dan called out, standing still in the doorway. Behind him I could see shadows flitting around, but nothing else. Were guards armed with crossbows waiting behind him? Would he need any? His apparent strength was beyond any of the mountain squad members behind me.

“Found survivors from a different zone. We claimed the far North fort and just now started coming back.”

“So, you were doing something. I must admit, the embarrassment of finishing claiming the keeps and only then realizing you controlled our faction was annoying. That I let the one person who could fully utilize the fort and the keeps just walk away. A mistake.” Dan spoke in clipped sentences, his hard eyes never looking away from me.

“Yeah, well I wasn’t liking what you were starting to do.” It wasn’t even a lie.

“Times are hard, so we must be harder. I’m assuming that we won’t be receiving resupply then? That you have requisitioned my gear?” There was a dangerous note to his voice.

“If you mean treating people like slaves and having them labor away so you can keep leveling, then I must disagree with how you have grown hard. Community, working together, that’s how we will beat this tutorial.” I lied as well as I could while also ducking his questions.

“So very exaggerated. It’s a common trait with the younger generation. Everything is fascist this, fascist that, working is slavery. I’m glad to be away from it in a way. To see the entitled little bastards tucked safely away in their bubbles of security, tell people who have sacrificed and bled to create their bubbles that they were wrong. That they were evil.”

This was feeling very misdirected. I had a feeling we were on our way to a rant I wanted no part of. Dan continued on, anger filling his voice as his neutral expression warped.

“Now, here we are, and all I have to hear about saving us is that I forced people to work. That I don’t allow slackers and freeloaders. That they must CONTRIBUTE!” Spittle sprayed as he shouted the last word. What had been going on behind closed doors that my little taunt had pushed him off this ledge? He took a couple of deep breaths, the sudden explosion of his ire having seemed to clear his mind. He wiped his hand through his hair and cleared his wrathful expression.

“Where’s Barnes?”

“I don’t know who that is?”

“The man in charge of keeping productivity up.”

“Oh, the warden. He didn’t survive the change in management.” I was treading on dangerous ground. Dan wasn’t as stable as I thought. I might be able to beat him if he attacked me directly if I dumped my stat points right away. I couldn’t bring myself to lie about the warden though.

“And the others?”

“They’re fine.”

“You let them live?”

“I’m not some monster who goes around murdering people. The warden was in self-defense. He attacked me.” Dancing on technicalities there.

“He was a bit of a hot head. Still, we need weapons to continue this campaign against the bugs. You brought fighters who I’m going to guess are loyal only to you?”

“You’d be correct.”

“I had a feeling. It’s amazing how the bonds of loyalty can so quickly be put in place in situations where life and death are in the balance.” Oh, was he implying all the fighters were loyal to him? Or was I reading too much into it?

“Something like that.” The oath of fealty was something like that.

“Why did you come down here then?”

“To conquer.”

“Will you abide by my command?”

“Yes.” For now anyways. I was no general. No soldier. I had no idea how to persecute a war. To lead men and women into death. I had the will, but not the experience or training.

“Really?”

“Yes. I only ask to be kept with my team.” I waved a hand over the mountain squads and Miguel. No need to tell him about the elves yet. Or the rest of the fort’s residents I had brought with me. They had their own objectives.

“In that case come on in. We need to figure out how we are going to work you into the chain of command.” Dan turned and walked back into the keep. His earlier display of violent rage already forgotten. I didn’t trust him, yet at the same time, if he had wanted to beat me he could have done it right here and now. I was quite weaker than him and only brought a handful of fighters with me. They were stronger than the warriors I had seen so far, but would it be enough to keep Dan from simply throwing me in a cell?

I walked up and into the keep