13.

It only took a little while for the other mana hearts to be fed into the furnace below. When the defenses of the keep were seen to, we all gathered together back on the ground floor of the keep around the small table. The eleven of us squeezed into the room was a bit cramped, but after a round of showers and some pilfered clean clothes, the slight stench had died down. Agatha and the other older woman had cooked the rabbit and used the keep’s food making capabilities to produce a decent stew that was warm and filling.

“I should start. I’m Monica, this is Paul, Angela, Anna, Mia, Lisa, and Chrissy.” Monica, their leader and spokeswoman, pointed to each of them. Angela was the older woman who had helped Agatha cook, Mia and Lisa were the two wearing the college sweaters. Angela was early middle ages, late thirties to early forties with a round face and deep shadows underneath her blue eyes. Chrissy was closer to my age, mid twenties, lean with dark hair tied in a ponytail and hard black eyes.

“That’s Billy, Agatha, and Miguel. I’m Bobby.” Bobby said, taking the lead again. I couldn’t tell if I was annoyed by her slowly becoming the spokesperson of our group or not. She was certainly less intimidating, and the group of survivors in front of us were strung tight, nervous as they looked back and forth, their weapons not far from their hands.

“There were about two hundred of us. Never really got around to doing a census. We got attacked fairly quickly by those goblin monsters. They’re small, like a kid, green and scaly like a snake, with these horrible red eyes.” Monica shuddered as she recounted what happened. It seemed that their goblins were the equivalent to our fishmen. The library had given rough suggestions to where other forts in our region were, but no clue to different regions.

“Some military guys were in our group. They fought back, organized the men, and found some weapons in our fort. It was a massive cavern with a big square fort right in the center, looked like a castle, big walls with a pointy tower in the middle.” Monica shook her head as she took a sip of water. The rest of her team were snacking on bread or sipping their own water, not bothering Monica as she recounted what had happened.

“There were some big gray things that came after the goblins. Tall, but slow. Our fort had these weapons, they fired out like a flamethrower, and we killed them with those. Our flamethrowers took a lot to reload and emptied quickly, it was a struggle and we lost people. I don’t know how many.”

“Did you find skills at your fort?” I cut in before she could continue. I assumed there would be skills at every fort, and had hoped there would be at some of the keeps. This one has not yielded any though.

“Yes, several. Including a translation stone. We found out about mana hearts and started harvesting them. That lasted two days, and then we found the bugs. At first we thought they were like the goblins, just a mob enemy. We were wrong.” The rest of her group were shifting as if uncomfortable.

“Harper, he was the leader of the fighters, he killed them when they came into the cavern immediately. We all got an alert that we had killed members of another faction. The bugs started attacking afterward. They would hide among the normal goblin waves, striking when we were at our weakest. We didn’t even last a day. They broke through the walls and we were forced to run into the cave systems. We lost our translator, he died when a goblin hit him with a sling. Harper and the other fighters died trying to buy us time. About sixty of us made it out of the mountain.” Monica finished suddenly, her eyes tearing up as memories flashed by. We all let the silence settle on us as we thought about what had happened.

A bug race was another faction. One that hadn’t necessarily been hostile right away. Or it could have just been caught off guard. Either way, humans had been shoved out of the mountain region, which wasn’t an unmitigated disaster, but would definitely make winning the tutorial harder. Only sixty survivors too, with most of the fighters having died, the loss of the early levels and harvested mana hearts from their boss monsters was a blow.

“The gray monsters. What stat points did they give?” I asked. I was hoping it was strength, tall and slow monsters seemed to be strength.

“They were trolls. Or at least, close enough to be trolls.” It was the same girl who had said the attacking monsters had been goblins, Mia.

“Vitality then?” Miguel chimed in from his spot near the front door, where he had decided to take a guard station.

“Yeah, it took two for a stat point at first. Then four to five. That’s as far as we got though, Harper kept all of them to himself and his best fighters. They healed faster when they used the stones. Saved their points for strength and dexterity.” Lisa cut in this time. Was that a hint of bitterness in her voice? It was hard to tell, everyone was wrung out. It had been a stressful week.

“Your group has no translator or skill users left now?” I needed confirmation.

“They all died. Now we can’t even get into the buildings, and the cold is deathly. We were burning what dry wood there was in the forest by the other fort, but it wasn’t going to last long. We need help.” Monica said. There was no begging in her voice, just stating facts and eyeing us with some type of dread certainty. She was starting to understand this world. Her group had lost, they had no leverage, low levels and were now at the mercy of whomever found them. They were perfect.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Tomorrow morning we can go and meet up with them. That other fort should be occupied though. We may need to fight to take it.” I told them, taking control of the conversation from Bobby.

“We didn’t see anyone around the fort. The doors were sealed though, and there were signs of fighting all along the beach the fort overlooked. Green scaled creatures. Bigger than the goblins, but kinda similar. Lots of those fish creatures you mentioned, but none of the big crabs.” Monica informed us.

The big green creatures hadn’t been in the briefings. The fort up here was supposed to be watching the edge of the ocean, right before it gave way to the frozen wastes where the sea froze solid. The boss monsters from that region were supposed to be some type of bear monsters.

‘From the wastes they appear, solitary hunters with the strength to shatter ice or stone, bloodlust without caution. Upon four legs, with talons that shred the earth, jaws that can crush the stoutest of armor, and a heart of strength’ had been the direct quote from the library. Something similar to a polar bear was what I had taken from it. Most of these monsters at least have appeared to have ties to our own ecosystems or mythology so far. The bears were far fewer, but with the strength mana heart, maybe the mana hearts they gave were larger than that of the crabs and we would need less to level?

My current working thoughts on the tutorial was that one was supposed to use the easy leveling and the mana hearts of the boss monsters to grow a small elite group. That group would be the fighters spearheading the fight. I don’t think the intention of the tutorial was for people to go around hunting boss monsters to slowly improve their own stats without using the leveling bonuses. It was slow and tedious; my group would rapidly fall behind while not using the stats we were stashing, but I was hoping and gambling that the rewards would be worth the risk in the end. Now I had to worry about bugs in our region. I could only hope the extreme cold of the North Sea Region would be a detriment to them.

“Do you have any of those troll mana hearts left?” Bobby asked.

“We emptied our armory as we left. We had seven left, no one could decide who would get which ones, so we are just holding them right now.” Monica said.

“We will take those as our payment for opening the fort then.” I announced. Two for each of my teammates and one to wake up the fort. Until we could hunt some more of the rabbits and the bear creatures from the frozen wastes.

“I can’t decide that,” Monica protested.

“Just let your people know when we get there. Either that, or you have to harvest us the equivalent in mana hearts.” The looks Agatha and Miguel were shooting me were very judgmental. Bobby kept her face neutral.

“I can talk to our council when we get there.”

“Council?” Bobby asked before I could.

“It was already being made before we had to abandon the mountain. It was a couple of leaders from the support groups. We wanted more, to not have to give everything to Harper and his fighters. It was the first step of organizing something similar to home. After we left the mountain, they kept leading us.”

“How many people are on the council?” I asked.

“Three. There used to be five, but we lost two in our retreat. With our losses, three representatives for the sixty of us seemed fine. Nobody has said anything negative at least. They’re trying their best.”

“When we get there in the morning, we will first see if it is Agatha’s granddaughter waiting for us. After that, we will open the fort after taking the mana hearts. I will have more negotiations with your council when we get there. In the meantime, what our your levels like?” I was taking control. They were the perfect tool for me, if I could get them to follow my lead, I would have an occupying force of the fort and its adjacent keeps. No skills and low levels, wounded and cold and without food. If they saw the rewards I could bring, the safety only I could provide them. Yes, they would be willing to follow my lead.

“I’m the highest. I’m a level three. Everyone else is two or one.” Monica told us. It was hard to keep the surprise from my face. With those levels they were basically normal people, and assuming they were some of the strongest to be able to go scouting with some chance of survival, it didn’t paint a good picture of the main camp.

“Harper farmed everything in the caves. Didn’t let anyone level unless they swore to obey him and act like they were in the military.” Mia said, venom dripping from every syllable.

“There’s a scorpion on top of this tower. It’s how we first started our own leveling. Its slower than single combat, but much safer. In the next hour or so, when the sun sets, the fishmen will come. I doubt that any of the crabs will come, and if they do it’ll just be one or two. You will all take turns manning the scorpion and firing at them. Low ranks first, you should be able to get at least a level or two tonight. We need you all at a much higher level, right now you’re all way too weak,” I ordered them. Some nods, a few hard looks, especially from Mia and Lisa.

They had just been complaining about the beginning of the military dictatorship that Harper had been instituting. I was hoping that forcing them to grow would be taken in a different light. In truth they likely weren’t too far behind us in stats, Monica had six free stats that she could have used. I had only gained one from the rabbits, Miguel had gained three, Agatha had gained eight but had been the lowest of us all by a wide margin. Bobby had also only gained three, but we were all sitting on a bank of free points. Aside from Agatha using her few points to boost her vitality up to average, none of us had used any.

I was starting to worry about my own lagging stats. If I started hoarding resources to boost my stats, the wedge between me and my team would grow. If I didn’t, I would rapidly be left behind. Who would follow someone who was weaker than them in a world like this? I needed more levels and more free stats from mana hearts, which meant I would have to start hunting. Miguel would likely be happy with that at least. Bobby would likely follow along. Agatha was the only question mark. A bridge to cross tomorrow after we saw if it truly was her granddaughter at the mountain survivors camp.

The meeting broke up, the lowest level of the scout team heading upstairs to man the scorpion, Bobby and Miguel following to give advice. Agatha and I were left alone in the common room.

“If it’s her, I’ll keep going with you if you help her level and protect her.” Agatha said suddenly. My heart lightened. This would save me so much time.

“This world is different. I don’t understand it, but I know what happens to those who don’t have strength. Don’t have protection against those that do.” Agatha’s voice was cold and hard as iron. A shiver rolled up my spine.

“I won’t let anything happen to those girls,” she finished her declaration.

What I was willing to do to become powerful, she was willing to do to protect. I could respect that, even if I was already spinning plans in my mind to use it to further my own goals.

“Of course. We can start by setting aside mana hearts for her. Scorpion sessions, train her with a crossbow like you. Keep her at a distance, boost her levels…” I trailed off.

“Deal.” Agatha said with finality.