Before Matt said anything, he made everyone move a good distance away. Then, he activated his digging skill and bore a tunnel into an entire hill. As an added precaution, he asked Brennan to also set up the tent. And finally, he felt safe enough. One by one, each member of the team entered the tent and heard everything. Really, honestly everything.
They all knew a little about Gaia because Derek had told them. But none of them were ready to hear that a people group had managed to drive a wedge between the system and total control of system-like abilities. They didn’t expect to hear a story of a planet that had ignored the system’s advances when it first appeared, and then was utterly destroyed when the planet refused to play the exact game the system wanted.
And none of them, not one, reacted calmly to the news that Matt had killed his planet’s system. Artemis refused to believe it at all, at first, somehow eventually becoming convinced by something in Matt’s face instead of his words. Derek immediately believed him, but seemed flabbergasted by the idea that it was possible. Brennan asked the most questions, and was the only one to catch on to how much potential trouble that meant for Matt once the veil around Gaia fell and the entire truth was laid out in front of the main system.
“How will you even survive it? The system here seems to be trying to hurt you here just because you are a little suspicious. What will you do when it finds out that you managed to kill one of its fellow instances? I didn’t think that was possible. I’m not sure what it’ll even do at that point, Matt.” Brennan looked down at the ground for a moment, as if doing some quick mental how-screwed-are-you math in his head. “Whatever it does, it’s not going to be good.”
“True. Which is why I haven’t told you all this until now. The plan probably won’t work, but if it does, it’s going to mean big, noticeable stuff,” Matt said. “The system won’t be happy. That’s why I’m telling you now.”
“I have to think about this. Talk about it with the others.”
Brennan had left the tent without saying another word. Matt had expected that kind of reaction, but it still made him worried. As far as he could figure, he was stuck on the path he was on. It was his only way forward. But it would be much, much harder without help.
The old man’s reaction had been, in some ways, the hardest to deal with of all. He held his hammer the entire time Matt spoke, rotating the handle every now and again, and flipping the head in his enormous hand. As the elements of the story got more and more unbelievable, the flipping became more and more frequent, as if it was some sort of weird poker tell. When Matt got to the part where he slipped an authority-based dagger into the system instance’s side and apparently ended it once and for all, the hammer stopped. The old man lifted his head for the first time and gazed into Matt’s eyes for four or five seconds, as if expecting him to take back what he had said, or explain that the old man had misunderstood it. When he didn’t, the old man tucked the hammer back into his belt, crawled out of the tent, and was gone without so much as a single word.
Given that the old man had been last in line to hear the story, it was time to for Matt to leave too, but he took a moment to try and calm down. Laying his deadliest secrets out in front of a group of people who could immediately reveal them to their own system instance was the fair thing to do, but that didn’t mean it was in any way easy.
“It will be okay, Matt.” Lucy said. “Just you watch.”
—
When Matt came out, the others were sitting around one of Artemis’ fires, speaking in hushed tones. What bits and pieces Matt caught seemed to indicate they were speaking in non-specifics, which he was thankful for. He had been worried the shock might make them spill the beans. The old man, as usual, was an exception to the rule, sitting there in silence and contemplating his reflection in the side of his hammer.
The group turned as Matt cleared his throat.
“Well, you all now know the specifics of the plan, and the dangers of the plan,” Matt said. His heart was jumping out of his chest. “I can see you are, you know, discussing that. If you want, I can leave for a while, so you can decide whether you want to help me.”
Artemis glanced up, some inscrutably harsh look in her eye. “Are you insane, Matt?”
“I mean, I’m… kind of? I totally get that you might not want to… probably don’t want to help me with this, now that you know…”
“Shut up, ya idiot. That’s not what she means.” The old man finally looked up from his hammer. “She means ya would be insane if ya think we are leaving. Why would what ya told us make us want to help ya less, you idiot?”
Matt looked around to the others and was shocked to seem them nodding along.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“We aren’t ditching you, you idiot.” Derek said. “We are trying to figure out how to help you better. What you told us about… the plan, I guess, makes this more important.”
“And all of you agree? Brennan? Artemis?” Matt asked.
“Yes.”
“Yup. We are helping.”
—
Derek now had fitness goals, even if they were less “finish an entire marathon” and more “chuck a gigantic heart and wagon siege-weapon distances into a heavily guarded demon fortress.” Unluckily for him and luckily for everyone else, the old man was there. When it came to helping Derek suffer enough to get as strong as possible in as short a period as they could manage, the old man had their back. Literally.
“Keep it smooth, ya fool. If I feel a bump, it means ya aren’t focusing enough,” the old man shouted at Derek while hanging off his back like a grotesque, gigantic baby chimpanzee. “I want ya to make it feel like glass. Glass, ya hear?”
“I can’t, you old weirdo! It’s hard!”
“The whole point is that it’s hard, ya weakling! If it were easy, ya wouldn’t gain any stats!”
The old man and Derek squabbled constantly, but it really did work. Derek had been picking up stat increases constantly since he had left the capital the first time, eventually becoming the physical equal of anyone on the team in almost every respect. Artemis still had higher PER, and Brennan could still put him to shame on selected strikes and movements because of class enhancements, but recently, he’d been able to keep up in most respects. But as a consequence, the stats had stopped rolling in.
Having the old man on his back remedied that, at least for a while. For a few hours, he picked up stats like clockwork as the old man barked instructions to make carrying him incrementally harder. After he burned through all the quick stats he could get from carrying the old man alone, Brennan jumped on the old man’s back. Then came carrying the wagon, then jumping while carrying the wagon, then carrying the wagon with everyone hanging off the edges.
The tricky part about all this was that even at the beginning he could have managed to lift the wagon and carry it with everyone hanging off, and even with all the stat increases it didn’t become easy. But there was a balance between effort and performance where the stats came in the easiest, and the old man had somehow developed a feel for dialing in that balance at all times. Derek experienced real growth from it, but it was limited.
The good news was that all of this was working towards an optimal situation, rather than bare minimums. In the worst-case scenario, the bomb just wouldn’t go off, and they could try to figure something else out. But by the time they reached the outskirts of the demon stronghold that the bear had pointed them too, Derek had grown. It wasn’t huge, world-shattering growth, but every little bit counted, and they were that much closer to confident.
—
“So how close do we have to get?” Artemis asked. “It does make a difference to what the plan is, and this isn’t… this isn’t a normal settlement. If the bear was telling the truth, it all makes sense because this place is armed to the teeth.”
“Ideally, we get as close as possible, and destroy as much of the city as we can.” Brennan said. “But we might not have a choice about that. We will get as close as we can. Focus on making sure you know where the heart lands, so we can fight as close to the border of its area effect as possible without being in it.”
Artemis looked at the fortress again, measuring the distances with her eyes and scouting skills. “I can see a couple different angles of attack. But remember, we have to split the difference between the best angle of approach for us, and for Matt as well.”
On the walk there, knowing that they were on board with the more dangerous system-related parts of the plan, Matt had finally given the team the entire plan. As far as he could tell, the system didn’t know his full story, but knew enough to have become suspicious. It had moved against him by empowering the church, and he assumed it might be doing the same with the demon lord. Since the demon lord was already a world conquering threat by himself for reasons nobody had ever survived getting close enough to report back on, this was really bad news.
Matt figured that superior numbers in a fight like that wouldn’t matter much. This wasn’t the Scourge, where he had an edge because his version of the Scourge was so young in many ways. Superior force wasn’t always the way to go about things. If anything was going to help, it was the flat-out weirdness of Matt’s load-out.
Artemis spent the next half-hour considering the fortress from every possible angle, finally mapping out several choices for the team, each with their own upsides and downsides. Eventually, it was decided that the distraction and demolition team would approach head on from the gate. The fact that they were planning on unleashing hellfire on a good chunk of the settlement directly in front of them meant that it was dangerous for Matt to approach from any direction except almost exactly the opposite direction.
“What Matt said about the demon lord’s residence looks to be true, as well.” Artemis pointed at a building just slightly more towards the rear of the city than the front, one that sported a spire more than twice as tall as any other structure in town. “If he’s anywhere, he’s there.”
Brennan looked at the city again. “Pretty far. Do you think you can actually get there, Matt?”
“Probably. I’m guessing the whole city will come out to defend the demon king, and if they do it fast enough, you might even get most of them with the bomb. And if not, I still have my digging.”
“Okay, then. It’s a plan. When are we doing this?” Derek said, standing and stretching. “Because I don’t think I’m going to get much more by working out right now. I’m pretty much good to go whenever.”
“There’s no point in waiting around. If ya all are ready, I’m ready.” The old man said.
Brennan drew his sword, checked the edge, and resheathed it. “I’m ready too. I gained a new skill in that last fight. Turns out, fighting an entire town does wonders for leveling.”
“Matt?” Artemis said, looking straight into his eyes. “Are you really going to be alright fighting alone? I’ll go with you, if nothing else. Arrow cover can be very helpful for a melee fighter. It could make a difference.”
Matt took a deep breath. “No, it’s okay,” he said. “I’ve got this.”
“Damn straight you do,” Lucy added.