Over the next two days with Olivia holed up in her new makeshift laboratory, Rowan had plenty of time to think about what he could do for the town. He didn’t have any money and a quick trip to the chamberlain confirmed that the town’s finances were more or less in shambles.

But the chance to earn came when Olivia exceeded everyone’s expectations by putting the army back on their feet in two days and Camilla sent the whole group out on a hunting expedition.

Out in the wild, any apprehension that Rowan had about the demons quickly disappeared. After the wave, most of the monsters left behind were mostly the runts. Perfect for an army looking to rebuild its confidence and for a hero who needed some real combat for his new deck.

—

“Hold the line!” Rowan roared. He sprinted forward against the wave of monsters charging at them. Lightning swirled around Rowan’s spear as he thrust forward recklessly, trusting in Marcus’ aura protection. That trust was rewarded when the monster’s counterattack slammed into Rowan’s stomach and failed to pierce through either skin or armor.

That didn’t mean the strike did nothing. Rowan’s stomach ached and his lungs fought for breath. But that was nothing compared to what the monster experienced. The spear buried itself in the monster’s flank and a discharge of electricity locked its muscles in place. As Rowan poured more mana into the attack, the lightning began to wreak havoc on the monster from the inside.

Rowan got the experience alert a few moments later and ripped his spear out of the carcass with perhaps a little too much force, almost flinging blackened monster pieces into one of his soldiers.

The man was thankfully too busy to notice, contending with his own nightmare monster. The army was facing a very specific type of monster, one that had writhing limbs resembling human hands and a stubby torso lined with maws. Luckily, appearances weren’t everything. The soldiers were holding the line.

“Push!” Rowan yelled and only some of them stepped forward for leverage. Even with Camilla’s training, the Rest’s Remorse soldiers were neither as disciplined nor as skilled as the baron’s troops had been. What kept them together was their number as well as the fact that every last one of them were in the uncommon tier.

“Press the attack!” one of the officers commanded from behind Rowan. His unit moved forward and split the monsters into two groups.

Rowan looked around to find that the rest of his party had joined him. Olivia and Milena were raining explosions and curses down upon the enemy while Marcus led the charge of the soldiers. In moments, Rowan was surrounded by soldiers with spears. They worked in concert, waves of strikes impaling and grinding down the monsters.

Thankfully, the creatures weren’t endless. After another fifteen minutes of chaos, the last one fell, and heavy gasps for air briefly reigned the battlefield.

“Everyone, rest up. We’ll be moving on in half an hour,” Rowan shouted, stalking through the throngs of soldiers and checking on their injuries. Despite the hard fighting, all the soldiers were more or less okay. Reassured that no one needed emergency treatment, Rowan found his way to the officer who had pushed his men earlier. “Thank you.”

“Happy to serve under you, Hero Rowan,” the officer bowed.

“You’re a spear class?” Rowan pointed to the spear in the officer’s hand.

“Me and my men all started as [Spearmen],” the officer replied. “All ninety-eight of us.”

Rowan remembered Camilla mentioning that the spear division of the army was the largest out of the two hundred and twelve surviving soldiers. “It was a good formation that you used to break the monsters into two groups. What’s your class?”

“[First Spear], Hero Rowan. My class revolves around commanding, leading and fighting alongside men who have placed their trust in me.”

“Rare?”

“Rare,” the officer confirmed. Although Rowan’s army was far smaller than it should have been, there was the beginning of a core cadre among those still alive. The average soldier was uncommon, while some of the officers were starting to reach rare.

“Got it. Keep up the good work and you’ll have my trust too,” Rowan joked. “But good job today.”

“Thank you.”

Rowan patted the officer on the shoulder before stomping his way to his party members and out of earshot from the soldiers.

“We can’t keep doing this,” Rowan said in lieu of a greeting, collapsing on a massive, gnarled branch of a tree that had been knocked down by Olivia’s potions. “If we go deeper into the wasteland, they’re all just going to die. Those were monsters that we would have brushed off in Felton’s Mill.”

“It’s not that bad, Rowan,” Olivia said. “Every army needs a bit of time to train.”

“I get it, I really do,” Rowan sighed. “But they’re supposed to be professional soldiers. A standing army of a frontier town. I guess I was hoping for… something more.”

“It’s why one of the strongest mercenaries on the continent was put in charge of defending Rest’s Remorse. Give the army a bit of time. They’re used to steamrolling everything as a thousand strong force, not fighting individually. They’re not like the Sutton guard, trained for group combat from day one.”

“Trained is putting it lightly,” Rowan grumbled. “You give your guard optimized decks. Together, a couple Sutton soldiers could take down an entire platoon of equal rank.”

“And you can build the Rest’s Remorse army to the same quality,” Olivia countered. “It’s not easy but it wasn’t easy for father and mother either.”

Rowan thought about that. He had no idea what cards his army had but they weren’t very standardized. Almost every soldier fought for themselves or in small groups with people that they knew. The only exception was the Spear Division, but even there, the only common denominator was their weapon.

“That’s not the thing really bothering you,” Milena said from the side. Rowan met her eyes. “I’ve never seen you this upset over other people before. Not even the villagers back at Felton’s Mill.”

Rowan froze and deflated. “You’re right, I’m being unfair and unreasonable.”

“We’re here to help.” Surprisingly, Marcus beat Olivia in making the offer.

“Thanks but it’s not something that can be helped. It’s my card. Ravaging Lightning Lance is strong. It’s one of the best cards I have. And yet…”

“You don’t like it?”

The frank question from Marcus made Rowan realize what he had been trying to avoid. “Maybe, yeah. When I use it on my spear, it’s almost like it’s forcing me to charge. Like I have to be in motion for it to work. Does that make sense?”

When neither Marcus or Milena responded, Olivia took up the conversation. “It’s more common than you might think. Starting at the rare tier, cards aren’t exactly just things anymore. They have their own quirks, their… personalities. Like a tiny bit of whatever they originated from still lives on.”

Rowan shuddered, thinking about some of the urges he sometimes got when he overused his Lavish Feasting card. Or the fact that he was still trying to deal with Keen Spear in a healthy way.

“It’s that, but it’s more. The card scorches whatever is unfortunate to be in its path.” Rowan thought back to the fight, where he had wanted to only poke at the monsters and push them back. Instead, he ended up killing one of them in a single blow. “It’s a good problem to have but it forces me to change my entire fighting style. Blood Siphon is almost entirely useless when the wound’s cauterized thanks to Ravaging Lightning Lance.”

“That’s tough,” Olivia commented. “We can try looking for a card to trade for back at the town. You don’t have to get every single card on your own. It’s fine to get it through a trade, or even as a gift. Like Inspect, if you ever bothered to use it.”

Rowan grinned. The baron had gifted him the Inspect to help keep him safe and give him an advantage outside of combat but Rowan found that it was much easier to rely on Olivia’s inspections, especially when his mana pool was so much smaller.

“Yeah I know.” Rowan stood back up. “And guys? Thanks for being here. I was letting my emotions get the better of me. The Rest’s Remorse army might not be the best, but I shouldn’t have blamed them. They have us and we have them.”

While the rest of the hero party encouraged him on with smiles, Rowan went back to rallying his beleaguered troops. As he watched them stumble about and reluctantly rise to their feet, he wished the baroness was with them. She had elected to stay back and organize the financial recovery of the town. That and also keep an eye on the other players around.

If anyone caused trouble because the army was gone, they were in for a painful lesson that Lady Sutton was an army by herself.

Rowan took a few minutes to confer with the officers of the army before deciding to risk things and dive deeper before heading back to town. The spear division officers put it best, an army was like a knife that became sharper with each grind.

On paper, Rowan agreed with those words. But in practice?

“Who came up with the name demonic wasteland?” Rowan asked Marcus as they struggled to make progress through the blighted landscape. “I was thinking a plain of barren dirt and enemies that we could see coming from a mile away.”

“And instead you got a jungle,” Marcus joked. “That’s demonic mana for you. It doesn’t kill things, just warps them into something unrecognizable.”

“Unrecognizable is putting it lightly. Those monsters earlier were nightmare fuel. And the mosquitos before that?” Rowan was referring to the disgusting, puppy-sized mosquitoes whose bodies were mostly just wings, a massive, bulging blood sack, and a wickedly sharp proboscis. When poked, they burst into a shower of diseased-looking blood.

“Welcome to the frontier.” Marcus shrugged.

Over the next few hours, the army burned down three separate copse of trees. It wasn’t because of how the trees looked, though they were withered and gnarly. It was something much worse.

When the trees spotted the army, they began to wail while their roots lashed out like spears. Even their trunks bulged and disgorged waves of short humanoids with bark for skin that attacked with no regard for their own safety.

Rowan was just a hair away from calling it quits and heading home. But the worst monster they had encountered was barely at the start of rare. It hadn’t been fun fighting so far but they hadn’t been in any real danger. And the army was getting stronger with every fight.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

It was only several minutes after the last torching when Marcus suddenly froze.

“Wait, do you hear that?” Marcus whispered, his ears twitching and shifting like a wolf would when trying to catch a sound.

Rowan shook his head, looking around in confusion. Other than the wind rustling through the leaves and the incessant sound of things slithering around, there was nothing his ears could pick up. “What is it?”

Marcus frowned, focusing harder, then pointed to the right of where they were headed. “That way. I hear water, and… a voice? It’s singing, or maybe sobbing? I can’t tell and that’s creeping me out.”

“Do we check it out?” Rowan asked.

“Honestly? No clue. I’ll one hundred percent bet you that whatever it is, it’s not a person.”

“You know what? Let’s do the smart thing here.”

Rowan waved over the girls and shared the issue with them. Predictably, Olivia rewarded him with a praise.

“We can’t ignore it,” Milena said. “If it’s somehow a person, we need to find them. And if it’s a monster or a demon, it’s probably alone, which means that we get an easy chance to take out future invaders.”

“Mother mentioned that there aren’t any demons in the area that we can’t take on as long as we’re careful. She’d know if there was an epic tier demon in the area, the last one changed the weather,” Olivia added. “Plus, if we go back with the news that we cleared out a demon, that goes a long way in convincing the rest of the town to support you.”

Rowan didn’t disagree. It was going to be a good deed or a nice chunk of experience. Either way, he had a whole army with him. After communicating his plans with the officers, they set out. This time, the entire hero party was at the front, not least because they were some of the strongest people in the entire army.

Five minutes later, Rowan heard snippets of what Marcus had. Rowan was impressed. The shield bearer had focused stats in vitality and wisdom but somehow still managed to hear the sound earlier than anyone else.

Looks like there are some things that the system doesn’t account for. 1 point in strength does not equal someone else’s point in strength.

The sound that floated through the air was the definition of eerie. It was a siren song, carrying feelings of grief and pain, especially when the creature broke its aria in favor of sobs or wails. Now that Rowan had heard it, he couldn’t unhear it. The sound crawled inside his ears and nestled in his mind.

The only hint for what they would see was the sound of water and they soon caught sight of a river. The water, like everything else in the demonic wastes, was an unclean thing.

Bobbing along on the river’s surface were corpses of fish, globs of some black matter, and unidentifiable splotches of color. The smell alone threatened to make Rowan lose his breakfast, and the twins looked even worse.

The army traced their way along the river and found the singer.

Lounging beside the river, her fishtail languidly bobbing on its surface, was a mermaid straight out of Lovecraft’s nightmares.

She had four arms, two of which were bracing her against the ground, but they were thin, anemic, spindly. Her skin was somewhere between pasty gray and purple, with large diseased patches of flesh that looked like they had maggots infesting them.

Her face was caught between a rictus of pain and a snarl. Milky white eyes spun in their sockets. She had hair, after a fashion, but it was missing in patches and it was so filthy and clumped up that it looked more like rags torn into strips.

Oddly enough for what Rowan thought was a freshwater creature, jutting out from her forehead was a lure much like those on an anglerfish, and it glowed softly in the partial darkness of the forest.

Rowan wasn’t entirely sure what the worst part about the creature would be.

Was it the fact that the creature was an approximation of a female form, fully bare and looking like it was at least ninety years old? Or was it that every single inch of its flesh writhed like there were things trying to burst out of it?

Either way, Rowan wanted to back off and call the whole thing off.

On the other hand, his troublesome card was, for once, looking promising. This was not a fight he wanted to take his time on and slowly bleed his opponent to death. This was a fight where the quicker he could scorch the mermaid from the world, the better.

With one final deep and nauseating breath to steel himself and a quick few gestures at his companions to prepare, Rowan moved.

Deciding not to spare his mana pool, he pushed nearly everything he had into Ravaging Lightning Lance. Four lances formed from pure lightning flashed into existence around him, and surged towards the creature alongside his own blazing spear.

The mermaid noticed immediately, yet didn’t pause its song. If anything, the appearance of enemies made its voice swell harder, and for just an instant, Rowan felt like he was seeing double. Then Marcus’s aura snapped around his body and he was free of whatever effect that was.

The next moment, he was close enough to strike, and the tip of his spear sank into the creature’s side with no resistance or attempts to dodge. He knew, then, that something was wrong, but it was too late to try and abort his assault.

Ironically, it was the arcs of his lightning that saved him when the creature’s skin burst where he’d punctured it and disgorged a tide of blackened blood and what looked like demonic maggots on steroids.

The mermaid seemed to carry a whole river insider her as a wave of blood washed over Rowan’s legs, carrying the tiny critters along. But the gaping maws of the maggots were too busy spasming from the combined might of five lightning strikes at once.

“Corrupted Naiad Cambion, level thirty six!” Olivia yelled.

“Get away from it! There’s something weird about the water, I’m half out of mana,” Marcus yelled as he ran forward a few steps, thought better of it, and stopped.

Rowan was already backpedaling, spewing out curses as he got a good look at the wound he dealt and seeing that the entirety of the mermaid’s body was filled with just black blood and critters.

“Hit it! Hit it with everything you’ve got!” Rowan shouted at the top of his lungs, even managing to conjure a much smaller lance of lighting and sending it spiraling into the creature.

From there, the fight devolved into chaos. The mermaid staggered and twitched as it fought to get closer to them. Her wriggly passengers began to jump into the river and use that as a way to close the distance against the army. Luckily, Marcus’ protective aura prevented any serious damage from happening.

Rowan had no idea what success would look like, and he was eternally thankful that by the time every last one of its spawn was dead, the mermaid also faded to ashes under a particularly strong fire potion from Olivia.

Exchanging a glance with the spear division officer, Rowan marched his army away from the creature and the disgusting stream of water. After fifteen minutes of near-sprint pace and finding a patch of safe ground, he practically collapsed while people did the same all around him.

Olivia snuggled into his side, ignoring the way his pants and the lower half of his chest armor stank of fish and the sea. “Whatever that thing was, I hope we never see anything like it again.”

“I solemnly promise that we’re going to stay far away from any large bodies of water if we can at all help it from now on,” Rowan agreed, hugging her a little closer and feeling immensely better with her warmth so close to him.

“Your card worked out this time though.” Somehow, Marcus found a way to find the positive.

“True.” Funnily enough, that still wasn’t enough to make Rowan feel better about it. Whether it was his own aversion or some influence from his class, he didn’t want to keep using it.

“How close are you to rare? Let’s go back when you get there?” Milena asked. A single look at the woman told Rowan that she was definitely eager to be done and on her way back to the relative safety of the town already.

He couldn’t blame her.

“Level thirty-nine, almost there,” Rowan sighed, wishing he could hurry the leveling process along.

The fact that he was the only one lagging behind the rest of them upset him. Everyone else was already rare and even some of the officers were a tier higher than him. It was true that he had climbed to near their heights in months when the others spent years to get to that level. But he still felt behind.

“Just thirty nine, he says,” Marcus teased.

Rowan took the words in stride as he reached for his pack. “Hey, guys. I have a bit of a request. Two things really. The soldiers deserve some kind of a reward. It doesn’t feel right for me to have thousands of card scraps when they’re still struggling for cards. And…”

“Go on,” Olivia said.

“And I want to try and upgrade my original class card again. I have it up to uncommon now, so it’s still worse than the Ravaging Lighting Lance.”

“You really don’t like that card, do you?” Olivia sighed, thumping her forehead against his shoulder. “Even though we worked so hard to get it from that thing’s mount?”

“Yeah, sorry, it’s just not a good fit for me. I might be spoiled, but I just can’t make it fit.”

“No, it’s fine, really. Everyone comes across a card like that eventually, at least according to our mother.” Milena’s voice grew quiet by the end, but she soldiered on. “You should do it. Both of them, I mean. I’ll contribute my scraps as well.”

“And mine,” Marcus added.

“Of course, you can use mine.” Olivia smiled.

With the go ahead, Rowan shrugged off his rugged backpack and carried half the scraps to the officer. He had originally doubted the wisdom of carrying such valuable card scraps earlier when Olivia told him to do so, but it was all coming in very handy.

“For the men,” Rowan said as he handed it over to the spear division officer. “All of the men. I promise there will be more.”

The officer saluted back. With that out of the way, Rowan began rolling for the right cards. It took more than a few tries but he eventually had a set of nine good candidates to try the fusion with.

Grim Spear x 4

Imbue your spear with the intent to cause harm, making your mana take on the properties of a minor curse. Your foes will be sapped of their strength with every successful blow you deal.

Mighty Spear x 2

The strength of your spear grows overwhelming, crushing the defense of your enemies at the cost of your mana.

Greater Mana Infusion x3

Infuse your weapon with mana, and then deal a deathly blow.

In a way, the selection reminded him of the cards he’d chosen when he got Essential Thrust, especially the greater version of Mana Infusion, which in his head meant his chances of success were better.

With just a moment of hesitation when asked if he wanted to fuse the cards, he hit yes.

The cards floated up and coalesced into a green light, coruscating and wavering for several long seconds. When the light grew unstable and almost broke apart, Rowan heart leapt into his throat. He was suddenly regretting all of his life decisions that had led up to this point.

Thankfully for his sanity, the entire thing froze, surged together, and took on a blue sheen just a moment later.

Finally, a brand new card was revealed, hovering in the air before dropping down into his hand.

[Class] Reaping Spear (Rare, Active)

This card allows you to alter and channel your mana in a way that will make your spear an implement of death. Each of your blows will enfeeble your opponents and each inflicted wound will linger, filling with death mana that will make it more difficult to heal.

Rowan’s breath left him in a relieved whoosh, and a smile slowly stretched across his lips. He didn’t even have the presence of mind to feel embarrassed when he whooped in triumph and snatched Olivia up to spin her around in celebration.

“It worked! It worked, it worked, it worked. And it’s absolutely perfect.”

Rowan was still grinning when he finally put her down, switching out this new card with the Ravaging Lightning Lance and letting out a breath of relief when he felt it settle into his deck.

It fit there perfectly, like it was always meant to be a part of him. The lighting lance card, meanwhile, had always made him feel like there was a small electric charge buzzing in his chest.

A howl ripped through the air. It was joined by another, and another, until the infernal forest was echoing with howls and the sound of trembling plants.

Rowan sighed, running a hand through his hair in resignation. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have been so loud.”

“Nah, it’s fine.” Marcus simply chuckled, hefting his shield again. “Besides, this is going to give you a chance to test out your new card!”

Rowan grinned. “Men of Rest’s Remorse. Form up on me!”

—

The fight ended just as quickly as it began. The wolf-like creatures that erupted out of the forest were strong, but they were no match for an army two-hundred strong and newly invigorated by the promise of card loot.

For the first time since the expedition, Rowan could say that he actually enjoyed the fighting. Where the lightning lance had fought him for control and practically jerked his body around to suit its preference, Reaping Spear flowed easily and effortlessly.

He could summon the effect with a mere fraction of his mana, as little as a single point, yet it made his spear as sharp as a legendary blade. Nothing could block his attacks. That wasn’t all. Rowan could feel the way his opponent’s vitality was sapped away into his spear with every blow he made. He was even vaguely aware of the patches of death mana his strikes left, allowing him to track the movement of every enemy he struck.

The effect was thanks to some combination of his class, heart card, and the new class card. And he was only capable of hanging onto the movement of the mana for up to a minute. In the middle of combat? That was practically an eternity.

As the final foe fell, Rowan felt a chime in his head. He opened the system window immediately.

Class evolution requirements met.

Classes available for selection:

Spearmaster, Dark Spear, Lighting Lancer, Sacrificial Spear, Curse Adept, Berserk Spearmaster, Acolyte Of Blood, Syphon Adept

Oh. These don’t look all that friendly.