Andrew was lost in thought as he wandered around the camp it had been four days since they had agreed to wait for the scouts to come and Andrew had spent most of it helping around the camp either hunting for birds looking for herbs or exploring some newly found caves for metals. The others were also kept busy Emily and Ashly were working with Maril and Rachal to get everyone prepared to move while Don and Lee were studying how to make bronze and improve their weapons and armour. With Than and Jace then got to check out. This left Andrew with little to do and few people to do it with he mostly spent his time hanging with David and Lance or being alone with his thoughts.

He had been considering things and had slowly come to the conclusion that he wanted to go fuck 'IT' what had it ever done for him if it was telling him no than that meant his answer would have to be yes, but all that was secondary to what he was doing to day and that was examining everything Don and Lee had managed to learn about weapons and armour they had even been kind enough to send someone to explain it to him.

"So with stone weapons its 28/14/7 with fire added its 25/13/7 attaching hardened leather as armour Increases it to 33/17/9 and using the new bronze equipment it's gone down to 23/12/6 we would have used fire on these weapons too but broze doesn't take to it that well." The boy said as he showed Andrew the weapons they had been working on " As you can see bronze shows a greater damage potential than simple wood or stone weapons the #HTK shows that wood is a ten percent increase to damage while stone is a mere twenty but bronze shows at least a fifty percent increase to damage!" he continued to excitedly explain what his group had learned while Andrew briefly wondered what his name was.

"We have been working on improving the general quality of the metal but bronze is pretty simple to mold and cast so most of our research has been on ways to improve edge quality..." Andrew interrupted the boy mid sentence.

"What value do edges have? you take damage no matter what right so what's the point." Andrews question seems to stall the guy for a short while before he smiled and continued with his speech.

"Improving edge quality allows weapons to have higher damage and can cause 'debuffs' as Jace calls them so far we have found some very interesting ones. first is the debuff fire witch you should know well since you were the one to find it, after that we found silenced, dazed, stunned, confused, poisoned, frightened, and bleeding."

"what bleeding I thought that bodies healed too fast for that to be a problem?" Andrew interrupted he had just proved that to Don so how was it something that could be labeled as a debuff.

The boy that was explaining to Andrew looked at him funnily "Well there's definitely a healing factor that makes small wounds and otherwise fatal injuries heal rapidly but there's a limit if a wound is too large or vicious it won't auto heal and causes the bleeding debuff" After waiting for a bit to see if Andrew had anymore questions he resumed talking.

"So other than that we have been working on improving our furnaces we think we have one that's hot enough to be used to smelt Iron but we need to find a source of it first, other than that we have run into some small problem with the X-elements but everythings worked out fine so far." As he finished his speech he turned to Andrew "any questions."

"Yeah X-elements thouse are the things Lee found out about right?" Andrew asked as the guy shacked his head yes

"Yeah we've found about seventeen of them by now but we don't think we'll be able to find more we don't have the equipment for it since they act like isotopes of different elements they can integrate in normal matter pretty seamlessly but they have other properties that make them hard to deal with we lost two smelters when they exploded thanks to X-13 and before you ask yes they're all named like that." as the boy finished he rolled his eyes and handed Andrew a piece of paper "This has everything we know about the X-elements so if you have questions about them then read it. Now do you have any other questions?"

The boys last question went unanswered as Andrew had already left he walked while reading the report that Lee had written and found himself examining everyone at camp everything was a mess people were sorting out supplies and others were making supplies he even saw a group of hunters coming back from the forest with some birds dragging behind them. Andrew knew that with a thousand people here it was literally impossible for them to survive they managed this time do to having a ridiculous amount of food with them when they came here and the massive war they had with the birds when they left their grove and entered the forest all in all it had been only a week since they had come here a lot of the struggles they would have to face hadn't come up yet but it would eventual and it terrified him. They walked on the edge of a knife as it is and the problem with that is even if you don't slip on the edge you'll still fall off the point, maybe that old phrase was darker than he thought it was.

Stolen novel; please report.

"Hey Andrew!!" Someone shouted out to him as he walked nose deep into Lee's notes on X-elements. He recognized that voice as belonging to Rachal and decided that it would be best to pretend he didn't hear her and walk quickly away from whatever cramp inducing work she had for him. Unfortunately that plan was shoot down before it even left the ground as Jace's voice quickly followed it up.

"Yo Andy come on Thans scouts just got back we need to get the council together to debrief them." Jace yelled over everyone's head as he waved to Andrew to follow him.

'Good god why did I ever make a council' Andrew lemented as he followed. If only he hadn't cared about being a megalomaniac and if only he wasn't so lazy and hadn't wanted other people to cover for him and his failings then he would have to be sitting in a small room listening to to guys talking about all the trees they had seen. Although if he were being far he probably would have had to do it anyway but at least then he could decide when he wanted to instead of having other people decide for him. Yes his suffering now was clearly the fault of his ... no others incompetents!

'Great how long are they going to talk don't they know how boring rambling narcissistic monologues get after five minutes there's a reason villains always get interrupted in the movies.' The conversation had been going on for at least thirty minutes now and Andrew had gotten the jist of it. 'The first thing to consider is where we are for one a forest, yes bravo you get a cookie imaginary person i'm now thinking to unfortunately for you it's a raisin cookie that looks like chocolate chip because your answer was stupid and i'm a sick bastard.'

'Are we in a forest yes obviously but where is this forest well if you had been paying attention then you would know quite well where we are, unfortunately I did not pay attention with means neither did you imaginary person I'm now naming bob. Thankfully Than has a map so we know that we are in a forest that's very close to a mountin actual on the mountain would be a better way of describing it. about five or so hours away there's a incline that leads to a mountain clearing thats were Than and his team discovered the pass that his scouts went to explore. The mountains themselves seem to surround the forest like a bowl and both Don and Lee think that it used to be a lake. With makes some seance it explains why there's so much green in a place that doesn't have any major bodies of water and only has some small streams that are fed from the mountains themselves. No what that doesn't make sense at all if that's the cass why isn't this place filled to the brim where does the water filter off to that it doesn't fill this reservoir.

'Is there an underground lake or river and if so where does it feed of into what if... Focus Andrew focus we can think about it later for now what's important to note is that there's a dip in the mountain bowl that opens up into what could best be called a floodplains a part of me want to question if it's even possible for floodplains to exist near a mounting range but what do I know. What do you think bob and no I didn't forget you I just got bored pretending that you exist that's all. What do you mean you don't care we only have three days now before we go gallivanting off through a mountain pass and you have nothing to say bob you disappoint me. Uh-oh bob I think Rachal found out that I'm not paying attention she's giving me the stink eye ok pretend that you're paying attention furrow brow and nod thoughtfully that it. It's not like I wasn't listing though just to the important parts like how long it took them to get there and what they saw and who it was totally safe and everything blah, blah, blah, I get it so can we get to The important part yet.'

"Alright if that's the cass then we can start making the move in three days we have pretty much everything accounted for and everyone's ready what do you guys think?" Ashly asked as the two scouts settled down.

"It seems safer than here I'm concerned at how long it will take us to get there but I don't have any problems with this Plan." Emily said as she gave her own agreement as things went around the table everyone ended up agreeing in the end finally it came around to Andrew.

'Finally' Andrew thought as he stood up slamming his hands on the table in front of him he leaned forward and looked to make sure everyone's eyes were on him before he spoke as commandingly as he could.

"LET'S DO THIS"