Five out of 42 heroes were killed in the initial assault, along with roughly a thousand soldiers. Not a bad outcome, all things considered.

The urgeks kept sending waves of fighters at them, backed up by warships and various creatively disgusting infernal creations, but they were repelled each time. More coalition ships descended from orbit to join the growing encampment, which was dubbed Point Gamma.

Two other beachheads had been successfully established on Rust, appropriately named Point Alpha and Point Beta. A fourth landing effort had been made but was repelled by the enemy, with less than a hundred survivors making it out.

Point Gamma was a bustling little staging ground, with more tents cropping up each day until it was a veritable town. Jacob and the others preferred to stay on the ship, however, since their cabins were already far more liveable than anything a tent could hope to match.

There were multiple kitchens where UEC support staff worked day and night to feed the growing army. The food was even worse than the typical Mars slop, but Jacob had at least one meal a day from the slightly less shitty selection in the Quickdraw’s food stores. So far, they were still well-stocked.

Guards were always posted inside the shield, both human soldiers in revolving shifts and combots that never left their posts.

Three bulbous kithraxi ships landed inside Point Gamma, and the little beetle folk began swarming about the camp, constructing various semi-permanent structures at a dizzying pace, the most noteworthy being a large command post at the center of the camp that the general and many of the other officers worked out of. Jacob was fascinated with seeing the six-armed humanoids work, having never gotten the chance to view one in person before.

Jacob wasn’t able to participate in any of the fighting past the initial engagement. He had worn himself down in so many ways that he had no choice but to stay confined to his bed most of the time and let Bob bring him food. The robot had sustained some damage to one arm in the fighting, but within a day he had tinkered himself back to full function using spare parts in mismatched colors, the black and yellow and silver clashing with the rest of his all-red exterior.

Jacob had not only exhausted himself physically, but had that gruesome gut wound and substantial blood loss to heal from. He had also completely blown out his Nethersight, and his body was all achy and jittery and raw—he guessed because of his first time using magic and the fact that he had pushed it with two spell casts.

With all that piled on top of him, Jacob mostly slept for two days straight. Fenris was angry with him for sending him away from the battle and refused to sleep in the bed, instead spending most of his time in the living area.

On the third day, Jacob felt well enough to resume normal function, if still a little tender. His stomach had healed up, but there was still a big ugly bruise left behind.

Later that day, KATLA’s new instance was dropped inside Point Alpha, and not long after System access was established. Jacob got a completion notification for the initial assignment, but he still hadn’t been paid his three million. He assumed that that would only happen once a relay had been set up, allowing a comm link to be established with Mars.

Once the urgeks finally realized that they weren’t going to take Point Gamma anytime soon, they stopped throwing warriors at the encampment and settled for taking pot shots at them with long-range ground artillery instead, the dull explosions serving as an annoying distraction at all hours of the day but posing no serious harm while the thune mages working in shifts were on top of their warding game.

Jacob returned to nim channeling practice as soon as he was able, but couldn’t properly recapture what had come so naturally to him in the heat of the battle, with his Nethersight firing on all cylinders. He still thought that he could occasionally feel a spark of something, but he wasn’t sure if it was just wishful thinking.

Either way, now that he knew that he could do it, he found that his appetite for learning magic had grown substantially. The Agari rune had been useful in its own right during the battle, and he was sure there were ones with far greater application for his build. Of course, learning them organically would probably be an unbearably drawn.out timesink, especially since he didn’t have any points in Mind to help him along, so if he wanted other runes he would definitely have to cheat his way there.

Barring any future good fortune like with the snake’s gods’ brew, he could think of one other method. Grim had told him that the thune System, the Path, was based around rune magic and would offer spell impressions just like the one he had already scored.

Considering that there were a whole heap of thune magic users right around the corner, Jacob figured there was no reason not to go ask them about it.

The thunes in Point Gamma mostly kept to themselves. The ones that weren’t outside to maintain the shield were mostly holed up in their long, elegantly curved ships, which gleamed like silver. He approached one of them and waited until a hatch came open and a pair of what he thought were female thunes came out—though it was always hard to tell with their universally androgynous race.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Preemptively asking the System to translate their language, he approached the two of them and said: “Hey. Sorry to bother you. Mind filling me in on something?”

One of them shook her head uncertainly, but the other one replied in decent English. “Greetings. Our time is short, but I will try to be of assistance. How can I help?”

Guess I don’t need the translation after all. Handy.

She was tall and hairless like all of her kind, her smooth blue skin criss-crossed with intricate, deep-purple tattoo work. She wore the same simple white one-piece garb with roomy sleeves and legs that most of them did. Evidently, they didn’t all have a penchant for cross-dressing, like Cullyn.

“Well, I recently learned a spell impression,” Jacob explained. “The Agari rune. I’m still learning to channel the nim stuff, but I’ve got a focus to help me along. I heard that the System you guys use, the Path, can help people learn all kinds of rune magic. Is there any way that a human like me could join up with the Path while using the human System at the same time?”

The two thunes looked at each other and conversed briefly in their own language. Then the English-speaking one turned back to him and said: “If I am understanding your wording correctly, I must clarify that the Path is not about joining or anything like this. It is available to all those who open their minds and let themselves both envelop and be enveloped by it. Should you manage this, there is no reason why it wouldn’t be possible.

“Of course, most of our kind never manage it, despite our educational and spiritual systems being heavily preparatory towards its use. I would say that the chances of a human finding success with it are fairly low.”

“If I wanted to give it a shot, what should I do?”

“You mentioned having a focus?”

“Uh, yeah.” Jacob pulled the little statuette out of his pocket and handed it over. “It was a gift, so I have no idea if it’s any good.”

The thune let her long fingers run across the smooth stone, slowly nodding. “Yes. This will do, I think. A focus can be used to help achieve a connection with the Path. You should incorporate it into your meditation once you have mastered the basics of channeling.”

“Okay, I’ll make sure to do that. If I do end up finding the Path, how does it work? How do I learn new spells from it?”

The thune had a patient look on her face, like a teacher explaining something to a particularly dim-witted child. “You gain Enlightenment points through engaging in frequent meditation and achieving greater knowledge and wisdom. The Enlightenment points can be spent to buy specific runes, or on the rune lottery, which will give you one randomly at a discounted price.”

“That’s… a very transactional way of learning magic.”

The thune said something to her friend in their language, and they both laughed. At him, he could only assume.

“All right, well, thanks for the info,” Jacob said, unable to get that annoyed about their snooty attitudes since they had, in fact, been rather helpful. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do in return.”

“Actually, if you are offering…”

Fuck me. I was being polite, lady.

Jacob spent the next several hours carrying boxes of heavy supplies back and forth across the camp. The thunes were not a physically gifted people, and tired very quickly in the heightened gravity, so they were grateful for the assistance. Jacob was less grateful for the wasting of his time, but figured it couldn’t hurt to get on their good side, regardless.

Late that night, Jacaob suddenly got informed over the radio of a rush-order assignment as he was trying to sleep. Apparently Point Beta was being besieged and had taken heavy casualties. The majority of the defensive resources had been allocated to Point Alpha to protect KATLA, leaving the other two camps more exposed.

Not long after, he received the actual assignment request.

[ASSIGNMENT: FATEFUL HOUR]

[DANGER RATING: HURRICANE]

[OBJECTIVE 1: ASSIST LOCAL FORCES IN REPELLING ENEMY URGEK ASSAULT]

Optional: Eliminate Warchief Garugor, local urgek commander; dead preferable.

[REWARDS:]

2 000 000fl

[OPTIONAL REWARDS:]

1 common Relic from reward pool

He received additional information about the warchief. Apparently Garugor was on a bit of a winning streak, and had amassed enough power from the Great Pact that several heroes at Point Beta had died in their attempts to take him out without doing significant damage to him.

Jacob liked the sound of earning himself another Relic. He could use a decent weapon.

Going around the ship and rousing people from sleep, he found that no one else was too keen to take on the assignment. He could have taken the ship anyway, seeing how it was his and all, but he wasn’t feeling quite that heartless, so he decided to let the Quickdraw stay put and wandered out into camp with Fenris to find himself a ride.

Steelfeather turned out to be that ride. He was headed out immediately in his own ship—the Dancer—to reinforce Point Beta, and was happy to offer Jacob a spot when he asked. Along with a handful of other ships, they took off and set out for Point Beta in the black of the night.

The Dancer was a nice ship. More spacious than the Quickdraw, equipped with four chainguns and two rocket pods. Steelfeather piloted it himself without AI assistance. There was only one other crew member, a mousy little woman who performed random bits of busy work at the S-Rank’s request—likely some sort of assistant or sidekick.

The woman tried to give Fenris a pet and got a growl in reply, causing her to yelp and shrink back. Jacob told the wolf off, and he stalked off with a grumpy huff.

“Want to work together on this one?” Steelfeather asked once Jacob sat down in one of the cockpit seats. Softer than the Quickdraw’s, he noted. What was the point of spending all that money if he was going to be outdone like this anyway?

“Why not?” Jacob said. “I guess you’re taking that warchief pretty seriously, then.”

“Can’t hurt to be careful.”