The group passed nothing but abandoned farmland until they reached the border of Jurelli. A flat wall sprouted from the sandy beach, obviously the hurried work of a mage shifting and compacting the sand. Not the best material from which to build a wall, which probably wouldn't be much tougher than sandstone, but no-one in the group said a word against it. Walling off their island in such a small timespan was impressive, regardless of material, and it should buy them enough time to build something better.

Assuming they weren't attacked by anything that could fly. Or tunnel. Or was big enough to simply step over the three-metre tall construction. Or was an intangible, life-sucking fog.

A crowd of people were congregating around one section, presumably a gate, jostling to enter the protected former island. On an individual level, it was understandable. A portion of this farming island had been wiped clean by the spill-over from the Isle of Mist, and it had no combat forces remaining to defend itself, after they'd all been devoured by the hungering fog. None of the farmers wanted to be the next one eaten by monsters. Wanting to escape to safety was a sensible course of action.

Of course, if they all did it, no-one was tending their farms. Who would feed all the extra mouths in Jurelli? On a wider scale, it was a recipe for disaster.

Shigeo, of course, ignored the gate, simply leaping over the wall instead. The others followed him, with only Lana having the decency to look embarrassed over their invasion.

"Halt!" yelled a squad of guards, rushing towards their party.

"Should we really have broken in?" muttered Lana.

"We were literally the targets of an entire crusade," pointed out Damien. "What extra trouble do you think we can get into here in Jurelli?"

Expressions changed beneath the guards' helmets as they processed that, their hearing being more than acute enough to overhear. "Hands in the air," yelled their leader, now with a touch of nervousness apparent in his voice as the entire squad drew weapons.

"No?" suggested Shigeo.

"I strongly advise you to turn around, leave, and forget you saw anything," said Greenhair. "I have witnessed on several occasions what happens to those who try to force this group to do things, and it never ends well for them."

Damien peered, that advice being completely different to how he'd described elvish guards, who would throw their lives away in the line of duty even if their actions were doomed to achieve nothing. Then again, Greenhair had, at the time, talked about the guards in the abstract, as if they were nothing to do with him. Perhaps his elvish mentality was starting to wear away?

"As if we'd ignore..." started the guard, before collapsing in sync with the others.

"Don't worry; I only knocked them out," said Fleta. "And Damien, why did you escalate like that?"

"Umm... I didn't mean to. I was just answering Lana."

He realised he hadn't considered the guards important. It simply didn't matter what attitude they took. That was not a healthy mindset. Given the trouble he'd had on the Isle of Mist, the fact he wasn't immortal should have been fresh in his mind, yet the problems he'd faced were overshadowed by the fact that he'd survived the Isle of Mist. They all had. What were a few random human guards in comparison?

He'd destroyed the crusade. Or at least, Arach-achanol had. What were a few guards compared to that?

"Sorry," he said, realising that his thinking was starting to drift dangerously along the same lines of which Grant had accused the Five. Viewing other humans as lesser than himself was not a good path to tread. "Let's just get to... Grungle's high cathedral, I guess."

They continued to the north-west, having arrived at the south of the island, and the central temples not being particularly central. Each one was in a coastal city, spaced fairly equidistantly around the island, with the base of worship of Grungle the Maker on the western coast.

Once away from the wall and refugee camp on the other side of it, no-one else bothered them. No-one really could, given the speed they were travelling, and it wasn't long before they arrived in the port town. The high cathedral towered over the skyline, having a tower that was three times the height of anything else in the city, and even the hall being tall enough to be visible from outside the city walls.

"Should we queue up this time?" asked Damien. "There doesn't seem to be many people around."

"Nor many guards," pointed out Shigeo. "I'd bet they're all dealing with the other side of the city, where what used to be a port is suddenly connected to another island."

"This isn't a makeshift wall like the one on the beach. It'll be warded against things like people jumping over it," added Fleta. "Sure, Shigeo could just smash them, but that'll bring more than one squad of guards down on us, which will be a nuisance."

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Damien frowned as he realised he wasn't the only one starting to not take other people seriously. Fleta, despite being the one to chastise him earlier, described bringing down the entire guard of a city on their heads as a 'nuisance'. Yes, she was trying to avoid it, but not because she thought they'd be an actual problem.

He pondered as they stood in the queue to enter the city. As Shigeo had noticed, the queue progressed slowly, manpower being refocused to deal with the new world situation. While monsters and demons didn't seem to have immediately sprung up everywhere, the rearrangement of terrain on its own had caused more than enough problems.

The main focus of his concern was still why the Five wanted to kill him. He was level capped, and strong enough to hold his own against pretty much anyone, but he wasn't a one-man army, or a threat to the world. Fleta and Shigeo were. Maybe even Greenhair, given some of the more destructive potions he could make.

Fleta and Shigeo... Perhaps that's where the problem lay? The initial plan required a team of three, but what if that wasn't the end of it? What if they had the cooperation of more? Their enchanted items could boost anyone to the level cap instantly. If they added Ariana to their team, then people would be able to pick their classes, and they'd be able to pick perks and feats taking their enchanted items into consideration.

Could a mage with a perk to boost their area of effect cast spells that impacted the entire bowl? Or planet, now, Damien corrected himself.

Grace, at tier three, had the option to pick a feat to control people. Would a higher tier tamer have an option to control gods? Or perhaps that much wasn't needed. Grant had claimed the Five were human. Had Grace taken the feat to control people, perhaps she could already have taken control of them.

With that thought still spinning around in his brain like a blender, they reached the front of the queue and were permitted into the city without issue. Ten minutes later, they stood before the massive marble doors to Grungle's temple. In keeping with his domain, it was beautifully carved, the entire structure showing exemplary craftsmanship.

The doors were also very firmly closed, so Shigeo marched up and knocked with his usual force. In a testament to the masons who built it, they held together in one piece.

"Yes, yes, I'm coming," came a voice from inside. "Keep your pants on."

The doors swung open, lightly and silently, revealing a scruffy priest with blotches of ink all over his robe. "Well? Are you coming in, or are you just going to gawp?"

"You sound like you're expecting us, but if so, this isn't quite the reception we were expecting," pointed out Fleta.

"Why? What should I be doing? Ranting at you for causing that?" continued the priest, gesticulating in the general direction of the port. "Would be a bit heretical, wouldn't it, given that Grungle was the one that forced you into doing it? Does mean that most of the priests are out firefighting, though, so you'll have to forgive the lacklustre welcome. Normally, we'd all line up in the main hall for this sort of thing. Not that anyone would do anything. It's just to look official or something."

Damien ignored most of the babble, homing in on the important factoid he'd mentioned. "What do you mean, Grungle forced us?"

"Huh? That head of yours just for show or something? You think it was all dumb luck? A gust of wind here, a storm there, a class granted in the right place at the right time. A rumour spread in Sanctuary about a pair of dragon slayers."

Damien walked on in silence. Yes, the divine intervention to get Greenhair to Hrellflan had been obvious, and he suspected the reason for it—rather than simply giving a human already on Hrellflan the class—was to get Damien access to elven knowledge. He'd also realised that he was brilliantly placed to be involved, given his protective parents and position. He had no evidence for the first dragon, but at least had entertained the possibility it had been blown to Hrellflan. But Grungle set Brenhin-Tân on his parents?

... He knew Grant could enter Sanctuary at will. He'd thought it was strange the dragon had turned up already knowing the names of its targets. In retrospect, the connection was obvious. He clenched his fists as he realised just how much he'd been dancing on the palm of another. How much they all had.

He'd wondered why he had the class he had. Because he'd disrespected the Five? Because he'd asked for it? Because the Other had invaded the ceremony of paths? Nope. It was simply because Grungle had decided that he was in the right place at the right time to have a decent chance of success. The same Grungle who had invited the Other to the ceremony.

What if the dragon had decided not to play with its food? Or the guards took longer to assemble? It could easily have killed his parents before he summoned the Other.

What if he'd been scared off by the events of Illuganasis, and decided not to pursue this path? Grungle probably had a good enough idea of Damien's personality to know how he'd react, but even so, a thousand things could have gone a little differently, and he'd never have succeeded.

Just like those at Illuganasis. Grungle only needed to succeed once. The number of failures it took to get there didn't matter. Had Damien failed, Grungle would likely have looked for the next person to try.

The group entered the main hall of the cathedral, and Damien beheld the likeness of Grungle the Maker. A muscular, bare-chested man, crowned with gold. One hand held a hammer in the air, while the other held a needle. As much as that matched his holy symbol, it was strange to see him holding them. Under what circumstances would someone hold both at the same time? It seemed completely impractical.

"Well, now what?" he asked, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. After all, from the way Arach-achanol had described Grungle as resigned, and given his unerring gift of prophecy, Damien judged Grungle's chances of surviving this encounter as slim.

"Now the Maker opens the doorway to his realm," replied the priest as the statue started to glow.

The grand hall of the cathedral twisted, warped and shrunk in on itself. Pews became rows of anvils. Windows became mounting racks, lined with weapons. The entire frontage of the hall caught alight, brickwork wrapping itself around the flame and forming into a furnace. Damien whistled, impressed at the humongous forge.

Lana was less so. "This is completely impractical," she complained. "You can't just have a single furnace for this many anvils. By the time you've walked between them, whatever you heated up would already have cooled!"

"I know, but I have to maintain the look of the thing," replied Grungle the Maker, casually sitting on one of the anvils. "All the real smithing takes place in a much smaller room out the back."

Damien had spent some amount of time wondering what would happen should he ever meet one of the Five face to face, yet now that he was here, the answer was obvious. He stomped up to the false god and punched him in the face.