POV Falyr Hrasnel

I was annoyed. The three nobles currently in this village were being like any other noble. I had hoped that we would be able to get them out of here, but I was denied that request. They will have to wait until spring before they will get out of here or until this place is discovered. That did not go over well with them especially when they found out we have an easy portal out of here to the capital.

Besides that, the village is quite overpopulated. It’s still livable and I’m amazed at how well the newcomers are behaving but I still liked it more when only we were here. In all honestly, their behaviour is quite unusual. Willingness to endure the cramps spaces that we have given them is commendable. I had expected them to ask for more room but that has not happened. I suspect the reasoning is their harrowing experience.

What they all went through would leave a mark on anyone but for some reason, they were not bitter about it but just accepted what had happened to them. They are a strong bunch and perhaps we might recruit some of them.

We were living quite well in this corner of the world but as I looked at my table and the reports there, I knew this wasn't the case in the rest of the former Kingdom.

Many of the city-states that have popped up are now fighting each other for resources, mainly food. In the adventuring guilds territory, everything is a lot more peaceful but if you have food expect to be stolen from or even attacked.

Our company has already proven itself as one of the only entities that can still trade and is still reliable. Our numbers are going up a lot quicker than anyone expected but that's all thanks to this village here.

I had always been taught since I joined the army that morale is often more important than any mage or thousands of troops. In my lifetime this statement has been proven true countless times. Every member of our company is doing their best, as we know if we succeed our families will be extremely well off in the future. And the fact that we know that they are safe just gives a compounding morale boost to our people.

I am extremely grateful for Rich’s help and council that made this all possible. While we all came to a decision that we need to mark Rich as being more dangerous than we first thought in other ways he is a lot less dangerous. His willingness to use his power makes him dangerous but he also seems to have rules for using it. This makes him incredibly useful to us as I expect we are to him.

I do not know how he has access to higher-tier energy than he's supposed to have but I suspect he doesn't have a lot of it. Rich would make an excellent assassin. He would be quite feared in the world if he truly decided to pursue that path. Being able to punch above your weight is something that is extremely desirable for every discipline but especially for assassins.

I pause my work as I needed to take a break. While it was quite fun trying to figure out everyone’s angles and what they were going to do it was also quite heartbreaking. In the next year, a lot will be decided in this corner of the world.

The city-state will start to battle more and eventually, a few will come on top and take large portions of land under their control. Most likely the adventuring guild will give up rulership of their current lands to the Princess that has started to make waves.

I will suspect that the Princess will want to take as much land back as possible, but it will not be that easy. If she was able to conquer the rest of the city-state she will still have huge swaths of land that are unclaimed and will take a long time to take back. But if she can’t there might be smaller wars happening constantly. Unfortunately, this kind of a situation is not unique to here.

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Similar things are happening all around the world. If the plague wasn't bad enough, then came the famine that we currently have. It will get a lot worse in the following months before it gets better.

But the world’s troubles will not end. Endless small-scale wars will start as everyone battles over what's left. The world will be a lot emptier place than it was just 10 years ago. I wonder how many secrets will never to be discovered again and how much treasure is hidden all around the world.

I would suspect a new age of exploration to begin after everything has settled down and the new kingdoms have emerged. But we will all need to live until then and one thing is for certain.

There will be no peaceful times for quite a while. I might even need to brush the cobwebs off my army uniform. I still hope that we will be able to be traders and that we won't have to get involved in any state-level wars.

POV Emma

I was quite tired of weaving. I might need to start making some clothes again otherwise I might go mad. Thankfully the trips to the dungeon and fight training have been helping keep me sane.

What has become certain is that I am not meant for real battle. I mean I was just behind the barricades shooting arrows and I still have nightmares about that battle. The zombies were so disgusting and the huge monstrosity that got so close to us. I can still remember that smell that came off it.

But the problem was when you killed a zombie it turned into a regular human corpse and some of those zombies were quite young. One of them even had a stuffed doll tied around her neck. This zombie I see almost every night.

First, she asks for help and if I get too close, she morphs into a zombie that will try to kill me. Rich told us to talk to him if we were having nightmares or any other problem. Perhaps I should take him up on it.

I was interrupted by George running in with Arthur behind him. I stopped the weaving machine, and I could finally hear Goose making noise outside. Apparently, Goose wanted us to follow him and to do it quickly.

That could only mean that something bad happened to Rich. We quickly geared up and started to follow as quickly as we could. We couldn't run on snow like Rich could although we all wish we could. It looked so awesome and so easy to get around in the winter.

It appeared that we were going towards the lake, so we used the river as the wind had blown quite a lot of snow off it leaving a manageable way towards the lake. Goose didn't give us any slack and urged us to move faster and faster. So, when we laid our eyes upon the lake, we were tired and completely dumbstruck at what had happened here.

There were spots of red all over the ice and snow. There were chunks of ice strewn all over and so many different-sized holes that had started to freeze over again. But they couldn’t support any weight, so we had to carefully move towards the huge mound of fur that we expected to be some sort of animal. As Goose landed on top of it, we knew that it was dead, but we couldn’t see where Rich was.

Not all of the ice was messed up but some spots were quite bad. I could see claw marks all over and sword marks as well. This seemed to be quite the battle. When we finally got close enough we froze in fear. Rich looked really bad. He had multiple wounds all over his body and his chest seemed to be covered in blood that he seemed to have coughed up.

Arthur was the first to reach him and checked his pulse as Rich taught us. I could see the relief on his face, so I knew that he was alive. I quickly got out the bandages and the medicine we had bought from the village.

We all worked on taking off the armour he was wearing so we could treat his wounds. All of us wished we had paid more attention to his first aid teachings but between the three of us, we thought we were able to do everything correctly.

Rich was half purple, not from cold but from bruises all over and quite the bad one near his ribs that I was certain were broken. After we bandaged him up, we force-fed him a healing potion to help with internal injuries.

We did the best we could, and we think it helped as his pulse got stronger over time. We sent George back to get the wolves and Francis to help bring everything back. We could tell that this beast might be gold rank so leaving it here would be quite a bad decision and would most likely get us in trouble with Rich when he woke up.

From our training in the village killing a gold should not be something Rich should be able to handle but we all knew he had his own tricks and his ability to manipulate energy was simply magical.

We have had the least training in energy control of the people we go to the dungeon with but this little training that Rich has given us has made us better than any of them. It feels like his insights reduce our training time by weeks if not months. As I looked at his body I hoped he will be well and will survive this becoming even stronger.