November 1, 2022
Day 12
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Rahul left the meeting and caught up with his team, letting them know that Daniel would likely not be joining them again today. He also told them the broad strokes of what happened in the council meeting today, especially the decision to attack a bastion tomorrow. Not that it changed much for them as of the moment, and the team continued their training as usual.
The second half of the day was focused more on skill trainings, with just one fundamental training at the end. Rahul spent his time practicing with knives, bow and arrows, and fireballs. When evening approached, everyone went and joined Anand’s meditation training to work on their intelligence stat as well as mana perception and control.
When that training ended, Rahul was completely exhausted. He had put extra effort into all his trainings after the meeting, to get in some last-minute boosts. Today had been a rather productive day overall.
Finally, the team went to the hall to have dinner together. They were forced to sit on the floor to eat, as all their furniture had turned to ashes last week. While Rahul felt quite comfortable eating while sitting with his legs crossed, most people found it very inconvenient. Indeed, there was no shortage of people pestering Mark, asking why he wouldn’t spend a few settlement points towards recovering their furniture. Mark was unmoved by their pleas, and as expected, insisted that every single settlement point must go towards getting a dungeon.
As he ate, Rahul thought about the announcement that he knew would be made anytime now. Daniel and Claudie must have made all their preparations by now, and it was time for Mark to let the rest of the settlement in on the plan. As Rahul evaluated his own preparedness for tomorrow’s battle, he looked at his stats.
Character Overview Name Rahul Sharma Race Human (F) Class N/A Level 8 HP 220/220 MP 270/270 Stamina 270/270 Strength 23 Endurance 27 Dexterity 22 Vitality 22 Intelligence 27
In the last week, Rahul had gained 6 points in strength, 7 each in dexterity and vitality, and 2 each in endurance and intelligence. As soon as Rahul had noticed how hard it had become to progress on his endurance and intelligence stats, he had decided to hold on to his 5 free stat points.
He would only use them once he hit a bottleneck with training and could no longer improve stats that way, or in an emergency. He also hadn’t forgotten the class choice that would become available at level 10. He was saving the stat points in case certain stat distributions could affect that choice.
Overall, Rahul was quite satisfied with his growth over the last week. His free stat allotment was very lopsided during the frog invasion. But now, he had finally managed to restore some amount of balance to his stats. Eventually, his wait ended as Mark called for everyone’s attention.
“Everyone, I need your attention for a few minutes, I have an important announcement to make."
After pausing a bit to make sure everyone was listening, he continued.
"Tomorrow, we are going to attack an avian bastion with which we share this island. Some of you may have already heard about this, and I’m sure many of you are apprehensive. Before we attack, it's important to me that we have a consensus on this. So, I will make my case in front of all of you. I personally don’t want to fight either, but I'm afraid we have no choice.“
Raising his hand to quiet down murmurs and shouts of disagreement, which Rahul was sure Sophie was behind, Mark continued.
“When the frogs attacked us last week, we were completely taken by surprise. Many factors let us get out of the situation without losing a life, and even if one of the factors were missing, we would have fared a lot worse. If we are forced to always react to threats and to always be on the defensive, it’s only a matter of time before we’ll slip up and someone will die.“
Taking a pause, Mark continued, “We can’t sit on our asses waiting to see what the tutorial will throw at us next. We need to get ahead of the problem. We need to act proactively. We need to strike preemptively. That's the only way to build our strength before the next trial. “
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Sophie interrupted Mark, “We absolutely do not need to strike preemptively. You are creating an imaginary cage around the settlement, pretending that the only way out is to attack our neighboring bastions - without any provocation on their part. The avian bastion you are proposing to attack likely belongs to the birds we have seen flying above the island since we came here. We have no evidence to indicate that the birds are hostile or a threat to us. For all we know, the frog attack may have been a one-time thing. There is very little evidence behind any of your assertions. “
Mark seemed to have pulled himself together after his outburst this afternoon, and calmly replied to Sophie, “You’re right, we have no evidence that there will be another attack on the settlement. We also don’t have any evidence there won’t be. But even in the absence of evidence, I think one of the two possibilities is more likely than the other. I'll let you all be the judge of that. Tell me what you think."
Mark paused, then looked across the crowd as he asked. "How many of you think that the tutorial is done and we're safe? Raise your hands if you think there will be facing no more trials for the rest of the month.”
No one raised their hand, not even Sophie.
Mark continued “How many of you think that there are going to be more trials but they won’t involve fighting for our lives.”
Sophie seemed to hesitate for a moment, but seeing the lack of support, didn’t raise her hand.
Mark continued, “How many of you think that the tutorial would not expect us to advance and get stronger over time? How many of you think that the second trial would be of the same threat level and difficulty as the first one.”
Sophie had caught on to where Mark was going with this. He was intentionally phrasing his questions in a way that anyone who raised his hands would look like an idiot. Sophie’s point wasn’t that she believed that the tutorial would not get harder over time. Her point was that they had no idea whether it would or not. That a decision to declare war and fight should be based on something more solid than hunches and possibilities. She started to voice her concerns, but Mark shut her down, rudely this time.
“Let me finish my thought, Sophie. Then you may speak. So everyone here agrees that the tutorial will continue, and the trials are likely to get tougher over time."
Not seeing any disagreement, Mark continued, "Then how many of you are willing to leave your fate to luck, hoping that the second attack won’t replace the level 1 frogs with level ten ones? How many of you are willing to bet your lives on the hope that the animals we face next time would be pacifists like us? How many of you think that these animals would spend their time practicing non-violence, refusing to advance in levels, only attacking when the system forces them to.”
People started murmuring and looking at each other, waiting to see if someone raised their hands. In the end, even Sophie decided she would only embarrass herself by raising her hands and sat back down on the floor.
Mark concluded, “So we are all in agreement. We can't handicap ourselves by clinging to our morals from a society that no longer exists. We must take every advantage we can get. To do anything less would be to sign our death warrant. Tomorrow morning, we will attack."
"Daniel and Claudie will walk you through the logistics of the attack.“
Mark said as he walked away.
Rahul was getting a bit concerned with how strongly Mark had been pushing for this attack, and he didn’t appreciate the high-handedness with which Mark carried out the whole discussion. However, Rahul wasn't sure anymore what was the best way to go about these things. The world had changed, and perhaps there was no longer a place for a democratic decision-making process, for checks and balances, for debates and discussions.
In any case, there wasn’t much Rahul could do about it. Daniel had a lot of support in the council and was popular across the settlement, so maybe he would act if Mark’s actions proved not to be in the settlement’s best interest. For now, Rahul was happy with the outcome. So, he set aside the philosophical and practical implications of Mark making important decisions unilaterally. By now, Daniel had started speaking.
“While Mark said I will walk you through the logistics of the attack, you should know that for all practical purposes, tomorrow will be another defense. We have already located the avian bastion. Our assumption is that as soon as he tries to claim the bastion, the birds overhead will attack us."
"Our task would be to hold our position around their bastion, which is a large nest on the east side of the island, halfway between the lake and the sea. As far as the actual combat is concerned, there are a few things that we need to take care of more than others. First, we can’t assume that the birds are level 1. It has been 10 days since the tutorial started, and the birds have likely grown stronger in that time. Secondly, …”
Daniel went on for fifteen minutes, laying out the high-level plan of the attack.
Then, Claudie took over and assigned everyone to one of 8 squads, each having 20 members. Claudie and Daniel individually discussed the battle plan with each squad one by one, giving special tasks to some squads, and keeping 2 squads in reserve. It was another hour until they were done.
The next two hours were occupied by mock drills, wargames, general teamwork exercises, and one final activity that Rahul and Daniel had both been working on over the last week. It wasn’t quite ready yet, but with the attack tomorrow, they couldn’t wait any longer.
For the final activity, Rahul and Daniel further divided the squads into groups of 5 each. Every group was then put into imaginary situations where one person was injured and needed rescue, one person was in a position to help, and the remaining three were threats closing in on the injured person. The mock situations that Rahul and Daniel had come up with had varying levels of threats and various possible courses of action that the person in a position to help could take. People would take turns playing each role, and decide what to do in every situation.
The idea was to cultivate the ability to think quickly on their feet and make a rational decision on whether to help the injured person or to retreat. In some situations the answer was clear, and in some situations, it was more ambiguous how much risk was involved in the rescue.
To their credit, everyone took these exercises seriously, and by the time it was over, people had an idea of how much risk they were ready to take to save someone else. Their risk profile. Hopefully, if a life-or-death situation presented itself, their fight-or-flight response would be decisive. They would choose either rescue or retreat but in no circumstance freeze. Rahul and Daniel participated in the exercises themselves too, and Rahul felt certain that the exercise would help many in the days to come, himself included.
Eventually, they had done all the preparation that they could. Tired yet excited, they all went to sleep a little late that night.
Tomorrow morning, they will go to war.