Nick and Topaz found Father Kirill healing the injured adventurers that had been protecting the base. The priest already looked drained of mana and exhausted. He initially rejected the idea of training with Nick, stating he’d rather focus on healing and taking care of the injured, but Nick’s charisma and an offer to make a donation to the church immediately changed Kirill’s mind.
“So you just needed to use your Training!! skill and guide him through three sets and give him some basic workout advice before he counted as someone you trained,” Topaz noted as she and Nick returned to the tent where the others were after training with Father Kirill.
“It appears that way,” Nick replied, thinking that he should never take his health for granted after seeing the image of the old man trying his best to squat some weight with the worst form he’d ever seen and then complaining about his back hurting after. It reminded Nick that there really were just two types of old men: those who lift and those who don’t. The ones who don’t always look awkward doing any form of exercise. Meanwhile, between Mr. Walters, Nick’s Grandfather, and the other old men he’d known that took their gym routines seriously, no matter how much they did, it always looked effortless.
Don’t ever get that bad, Nick told himself as he read off the name of Kirill on his list of potential people to copy a skill from. And maybe I need to level up fast before a donut kills him.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking, but stop,” Topaz lectured him.
“What? I didn’t say anything!” Nick protested.
“I know you didn’t, but you were thinking it,” Topaz said with certainty as the two stepped back into the tent, where they were greeted with the sight of the others just relaxing. Allen, Topaz, and Adele were joking around with Maria while Reggie was polishing his weapon and listening to Christina explain something to him at a mile a minute.
“He was definitely thinking it,” Seo-ah remarked, taking Topaz’s side.
“Hey, you’re my girl. Shouldn’t you be on my side?” Nick objected, sighing and feeling a little defeated.
“And you’re my guy. Shouldn’t you know better than to think thoughts like that?” Seo-ah shot back.
“I don’t know what you two are talking about,” Nick insisted.
“Nick, any time you’re thinking something awful, you always have this weird lopsided grin. Like, the end of your right lip pulls up as if it wants to smile but knows it shouldn’t,” Maria explained with a smirk. “If it was evident enough for Topaz to notice, you’re definitely guilty.”
“You better not play poker with them, bro,” Reggie chortled. “Anyway, you get sorted whatever you two were up to?”
“Yup. I just had to go talk to a priest,” Nick told them.
“Did you have to make a confession for working your friends to death?” Allen teased.
“Kirill doesn’t do confession. He doesn’t do the whole ‘Forgive me, Daddy, I’ve been a bad girl’ thing,” Adele answered innocently as if she didn't realize the suggestive nature of what she said.
“I don’t think confession is phrased it that way,” Nick replied after doing a double take. He looked over at Seo-ah to see her giggling while Maria blushed and looked away from Adele.
“I wish you’d phrase it that way to me sometimes,” Reggie mumbled to Christina, only to get a friendly slap in the chest as the two began to laugh too.
“Alright, enough of that. Since Nick is back, we need to plan what we’re doing next,” Seo-ah stated firmly, silencing the group.
“Well, I am uncomfortable leaving the base undefended . . .” Nick admitted, “but we do need to send aid to the city the knights came from. It’s under siege, and if they fall, that army will be free to swing toward us right after. They know another rift is here and they’ll want it too. That’s a fact that we have to accept.” Nick then went over the details of his dream. He explained in detail how many enemies they were facing, how ferocious the fight would be, and how dire the situation was going to be if they failed, based on his dream.
After he was done, he could see Allen raising his hand like they were still in class. Nick sighed. “You know we’re just talking as friends here, right? You don’t have to raise your hand.” Nick sighed and pointed at Allen. “But go ahead.”
Allen gave a sheepish smile, mildly chagrined, but said, “I’ve just been thinking, if the situation is as bad as you say it is because of the siege, then wouldn’t it be sufficient to just keep taking out their supply chains? We have the technology to scout them way in advance with drones. We can figure out where they’re coming from and starve the army to death.”
“He’s got a point. I don’t know what they eat or how much, but I do know wolves eat three to four pounds of meat a day, and that’s wolves on earth. The monsters here are much larger. Those bears might need ten to thirty pounds of meat, depending on their size. If we starve them, they’ll break before they can finish the siege,” Nick thought aloud, trying to remember how much Earth bears ate a day but struggling to recall exactly what was written on the signs at the zoo he used to take Isabelle to in his last life.
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“Yeah, but the problem with turtling up against the Zerg is that if the AI decides to just eat the loss, then you can still get swarmed into nothing. If you’re stuck behind a cannon wall, you won’t be able to maneuver or run when they start breaking the defenses and . . .” Christina started talking RTS strategy again, only for Reggie to give her a look with furrowed brows and a small shake of his head. She paused at the look and continued, “I’m saying that if we make them desperate, they may attack harder than the other humans can handle, and with the portal down, the humans being pressed by the sieging army will be trapped against the onslaught. The annoying rock-fur bears and their minions were stalling because they had time on their side and wanted to use it. If time is no longer an advantage for them, they may get desperate.”
“That’s a fair assessment,” Nick responded, frowning. “But we have no way to reach them quickly, so even if we do our best to go reinforce them, it’ll take time. I suppose all we can do is prepare an expeditionary force and hope for the best.”
“I mean, that’s true, but there is the option of using Will,” Seo-ah suggested.
“What?” Nick blinked. “Will is a driver. There’s nothing but snow and ice out there. Even with the best snow tires, how would he be able to get a vehicle to outpace the lot of us running with stat-enhanced speed—”
“His vehicle is all terrain, and he has tires specially modified to rip across ice. They’re leagues better than any snow tire. I even installed a special system for them after the last major incident put his car back in the shop,” Allen interjected.
Nick sighed. “Are you telling me there is some magic solution to making the vehicle even better?”
Allen nodded. “Yes. I am telling you there is a wheel design we put together that will dig into the ice instantly. It has a sort of corkscrew pattern, and with a push of the button we can use it. I spent over two days designing it for just this situation. I figured if we were already retrofitting it to handle broken street terrain caused by molten fire… we might as well also work on terrain covered in ice.”
Allen’s words sounded logical, but his friend’s enthusiasm for the car modifications were still hard for Nick to wrap his head around. His eyebrows rose in surprise as he considered the change in his friend.Throughout his entire last life, Allen had not once done something like this. In fact, the Allen he remembered hadn’t modified a single car, tank, motorcycle, or even ATV. He had avoided ground vehicles like the plague. But here he was, in this timeline, obsessed with drones way more than he had been the first time, and now preemptively working on cars.
“It’s so cool, right? It’s like a James Bond car . . . It’s really cool . . .” Christina’s eyes showed just how much she loved Will’s vehicle, which caused Reggie to look away, his eyes narrowing in clear irritation at her compliments about another man’s ride.
“I am proud of you, Allen. You’re going to save a lot of people with that type of thinking,” Nick said as he nodded at the concept of the super-terrain-accessible transport.
“Well, technically, I’ve already saved everyone who didn’t die in this timeline since I’m the one who built the machine that you used to come back,” Allen said proudly, his chest puffed out. “Allen Hughes, hero artificer, proving that in a world of swords and spears, the guy with the wrench wins.”
“Alright, alright, don’t let it go to your head, or I’m going to tell Elizabeth that you’ve been dodging workout sessions to fiddle with cars,” Nick responded with a laugh before he looked toward the rest of the group. “As for everyone else, we need to put together as tight a team as possible. There is only one vehicle, so we won’t have the space needed to field a lot of people.”
“If it’s to save space, then I can just sit on your lap,” Seo-ah said with a smile. “Who knows? Maybe the bumps in the terrain will add some excitement.”
“Yeah, and Christina can sit on mine,” Reggie said eagerly.
“No, you can sit on mine,” Christina corrected the big forge master.
“Oh, then . . .” Allen looked over at Topaz and Adele like he was trying to pick which fruit he wanted from the supermarket.
Topaz quickly grabbed Adele’s hand and blurted out, “Okay! Then Adele can sit on my lap!”
“That works out great then,” Nick said. “In that case, we can have Allen stay back to handle the tech from base, and that should give us enough seats to bring the Walters as well.”
“What about the mercenaries? They’re S class, and they would definitely be better at this than us,”
“Yeah. They are S-class adventurers, which is why they need to stay at the base. They can organize with the army. This trip we’re taking, we’re taking a big risk here. Even if I’m okay with taking that risk and helping out myself, that doesn’t mean I want to leave our base undefended in the meantime,” Nick replied. “We’ll take the crew I can trust, and we’ll leave the base and the reinforcement party up to Kaylee, the rest of the guild, the volunteers, and the mercenaries.”
“You think she can handle that much? She’s going to be dealing with people who are seasoned veterans and might not respect her since she hasn’t been a hardcore diver herself,” Maria said.
“You don’t have to worry,” Nick assured her. “I’m trusting my people and my intuition when I say she can handle it, the same way I trusted you all. I know she can handle it the same way I’ve always known you all could handle every task I’ve put before you,” Nick told the group, confident in his decision. Kaylee might not have been, like the others, someone he remembered from his last life, but he wasn’t about to start doubting her now—especially when the insight notes themselves had pointed out her abilities for this type of task being better than his own.
“Bro, if Kaylee is handling the base, and we’re off to go fight bears and whatnot . . . can we skip the speechmaking and dialogue and get going? I’m kind of nervous to see what we’re up against,” Reggie said. “I’d rather just peel the bandaid off and find out how bad it’s going to be for us than sit here talking about it for thirty minutes in the tent.”
Nick frowned. “We don’t sit around talking that much.”
“Bro, you’re trying to do it even now. Don’t be that guy in the gym that spends five minutes psyching himself up for the next set while three people are waiting on the machine,” Reggie fired back. “Let’s go, bro.”
The analogy caused Nick to laugh as he shook his head and sighed. “Fine, let’s go.”
“That’s what I thought you’d say. I messaged Kaylee to send someone to the other side to get Will as soon as Christina had the idea. I knew you’d agree to it,” Seo-ah stated smugly.
“You know me so well,” Nick chuckled, putting an arm around her as the two walked out the door, their group of friends following behind them.