“I'm back!” Victor announced as he returned home. “And I brought presents!”
“Oooh, what'd you get?” Greg asked, jumping to his feet and walking into the entryway, Tessa following not far behind, only to pause as he found Victor standing there with four nervous looking women. “I don't think you can legally call people presents, buddy.”
Victor snorted, hefting a bag. “The presents are in the sack, dipshit. These are new recruits. After all, how can we call ourselves a proper faction without any crafters?”
Tessa narrowed her eyes. “You couldn't find any male crafters?”
Victor shook his head. “Nope. None that would come with me, at least. But you know how cults are, women always get the shaft first.”
Tessa gave him a weird look. “I see. Well then, how about we get the four of you set up somewhere. You look like you could use some rest.” The women nodded gratefully, and Tessa quickly handed them off to Brittany to get settled, before pulling Victor off to the side. “You went after a cult?!?”
Victor grinned. “Indeed I did. I also managed to raid a hefty stockpile of mana pills, because fuck ‘em. And tomorrow I'm going to hit them again to see if I can pull any more people out.”
Tessa sighed, rubbing her temple. “Why are you going after this cult in particular?”
Victor shrugged. “Because they suck. It's a bunch of greedy asshats preying on people's desperation. They make everyone turn in all their challenge points to the guys on top, ‘for the collective good’, then hand out mana pills like they're freaking gold or something. These girls were barely earning a mana pill a day! Freaking criminal. And of course, there are ‘rewards’ for doing the guys in charge ‘favors’, and penalties for resisting. Just an utter clusterfuck that I'm more than happy to fuck with until it collapses in on itself.”
“Need any help?” Greg asked, almost a little too eagerly.
Victor chuckled. “No, I got this, but don't worry, I have something for you too. Or at least, I will. The whole reason the cult even has the power it does over people is because of these bandit groups running around and terrorizing people. Without that, no one would even put up with their bullshit. Of course, I can't do anything about them, but once I manage to pin down where they camp out, well… it wouldn't be a bad idea to pay them a visit, right?”
Tessa scowled at the both of them. “Would you both stop and think for a moment?!? Do either of you think we're actually in a position where we can face these people right now?!? We are barely fifteen people strong! We don't even have a base we can defend! Yes, these are people we absolutely need to do something about, but now is not the time!”
Victor shook his head. “Tessa, our core group may be fifteen people strong, but we have almost a hundred prospective members, all of which are strong fighters. Additionally, we may not have a base here, but we can absolutely pull people over to the feral side of the ship, or even back to Earth if we need to. We're far from defenseless. Sure, there are risks, but our position is solid right now, and if we don't start putting our money where our mouth is, then we're just people who talk about helping people, not people who actually do it. I mean, I'll do a lot of horrible things, but I refuse to be that kind of hypocrite.”
Greg cocked his head. “You aren't wrong, but I think there are a few things we need to prepare before we really get into things. First, like Tessa said, we need to set up a base here, not necessarily because we need it for defense, but because we need a place people can actually go. Someplace to actually gather those hundred prospective members, you know? Second, we need to actually get those hundred members on board and figure out what our faction is going to look like, because bringing in a bunch of people to protect without having a system in place to actually protect them is kinda negligent. And third, it'd probably be a good idea to wait for my mental clone to finish, because right now I honestly just don't have the time to help with all this. But I should be done within a week, so that shouldn't be a major hold up.”
“I guess I can agree to that.” Victor muttered. “Though I'm still going back to steal all their mana pills.”
“I- guess I can live with that as well.” Tessa grumbled.
Greg grinned. “So then, how do we set up our faction?”
Tessa sighed. “Let's talk to the others. This isn't something we can decide for ourselves.”
*
Over the next week, the squad worked to figure out what their faction was actually going to look like. They decided to take inspiration from the aliens and create four divisions, focusing on the roles they'd take when they eventually reached their new planet. First were the Hunters, which would be the people in charge of dealing with things outside the faction, like hunting down dangerous creatures. Then they'd have the Security Force, which would be in charge of handling things within the faction, making sure no one was using whatever power they ended up having to abuse anyone else. They'd also be in charge of coordinating with the Hunters to defend the faction if they ever came under attack. The next division would be the Vitalists, which would be the people in charge of keeping everyone alive, making sure everyone had food, shelter, and all the basic necessities people needed to live. And finally, the Resource Bureau, which would be in charge of collecting and distributing the resources the others needed to do their jobs.
Figuring out the divisions was fairly simple, but what complicated it all was figuring out who would actually be in charge of it all. For some reason, everyone (except Greg) agreed that Greg should be the de facto leader of the faction, if only in name, purely because of the draw his ranking would have, but other than that, no one had any idea who should be in charge of anything, or even how to choose who to be in charge. A few people thought they should wait until they had enough people in each division to vote for who their leader would be, while others thought they should at least have a leader in place to start, and others (Meredith) thought they needed to make sure their group was in charge. Eventually they decided to place someone in charge just to keep things in order, then once each group reached ten members, they'd have a vote to see who'd be in charge. They'd probably have to set up something more complicated once the faction grew, but none of them particularly wanted to deal with it right now, if ever, and it was good enough for the hundred or so people they'd be managing. And so they ended up putting Henrietta in charge of the Hunters, Brittany in charge of the Security Force, Tessa in charge of the Vitalists, and Bianca in charge of the Resource Bureau.
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Other than that, they started splitting into smaller groups to attempt challenges, Henrietta and Brittany working together to design the groups for each challenge with an… interesting ideology. They purposefully designed less than ideal groupings to force everyone to try new things to make up for whatever they were missing, like putting Casey and Emily in a group with Victor, Brittany, and Gigi, so they couldn't depend on the others to keep them protected, forcing them to figure out how to stay mobile while they attacked, while also avoiding hitting their hard to keep track of teammates. It was a pain, but it did wonders for everyone's rankings. By the end of the week, everyone was in the top thousand on at least one ranking, some even two, and a few of them were even getting close to the top hundred, though no one had actually made it yet.
Speaking of rankings, the next round of rewards had come in mid-way through the week, and Greg had managed to cinch fourth place on the defense rankings, though his offense ranking had actually gone down a few places. Which wasn't to say he'd gotten weaker, it was just that he didn't have quite the same versatility in offense as he did with defense and survival, pretty much just relying on turning into the scorpocroc and tearing into whatever he was facing with heated claws, and as the newly awakened figured out their abilities, they began to surpass him. Still, he easily maintained the top spot on the rankings, granting him another thirty-four full sponsorships to hand out. Since the squad was still struggling to work through the first sponsorship he'd given them, Greg used seven to help out the crafters Victor had picked up, which had grown to seven because for some reason Victor couldn't seem to resist picking up at least one person every time he visited the cult, and an equal number to the crafters Bianca had recruited on the other side, before using the rest to lure in some more fighters for their faction.
Speaking of the crafters, Tessa and Bianca had started cycling the crafters on their side over to the changed side, running them through the development challenges there, and bringing them back with a hefty load of resources. And, since they had access to all the development challenges, they made sure to hit the full supply chain, so all their goods would be top quality. So far they were only dealing with fabrics, which were thankfully largely neglected by the changed since they still didn't see much point in clothes, but as their faction grew, they could expand into any industry they wanted, as long as they maintained a good relationship with the changed side.
Other than that, with the changed attempting challenges with the rest of the squad now, Greg's nights freed up, and he promptly filled them with searching for things to drain back on Earth. The first thing to note was that draining vitality did make his smoke stronger. However, it didn't do it particularly fast. When he started, the force he could exert through the smoke was sitting at a little under seven of the units the aliens used to measure the power of an attack, and by the end of the week, after draining over a hundred different plants and animals back on Earth, he'd only gotten it up to a little over eight. Admittedly he hadn't tried to drain anything particularly strong, so he wouldn't have to deal with the strain, but still, he'd drained a lot of vitality. Improving his smoke was going to take a while.
Thankfully, on the magic side, Greg had had a breakthrough thanks to his talk with Narita. Before then, he could barely get his force spell over point six epm, since the idea that his smoke could exert force just wasn't enough for him to fully convert his mana. However, the moment he started to think of his smoke as the essence of physics, he immediately got his epm over a point eight! After all, force was physics. It wasn't hard to fathom the idea of physics creating force. By the end of the week, he had his epm over a point nine. He still had some work to do, but it wouldn't be long before could make his first spell construct.
Unfortunately, he also realized there would eventually be a massive hurdle he'd have to overcome in order to become an archmage, because what the hell was the opposite of physicality?!? The only thing he could even think of that wasn't physicality was magic and that didn't make sense as an opposite, because the two cooperated constantly. Sure, they were different, but that didn't make them opposites anymore than apples were the opposite of oranges. So where did that leave him? What was the opposite of physics? Anti-physics? Liberal arts? Politics? Nothing? Greg didn't even know where to start. He did have the option of trying to counter the mana of one of his other forms, like the scorpocroc, but the problem with that was while he could create a counter intent for heat, he had no idea how to counter the scorpocroc’s innate self, particularly since he had no idea who the scorpocroc was. The only person he thought he might be able to pull it off with was Tessa, but even then, he didn't see much hope in it.
Then finally, a full seven days after their first challenge with the changed, the final piece of Greg's mental construct fell into place. “Whoa…” Greg blinked as he suddenly felt his mind expand, two strings of thought rolling through his mind simultaneously, both echoing each other's amazement at being able to hold two strings of thought simultaneously. He jumped to his feet, ready to rush over to tell Tessa the good news, only to pause as he remembered she was dead asleep by this point. “This is what I get for doing my mana investment at midnight.” Greg sighed, sitting back down. “Now, what to do with you four…” He muttered, glancing at the four mana pills he still had to use for the night. Now that he had a mental construct, he could start to allocate more mana pills to his mana pool, getting back to the ideal ratio of four out of the current seven he was capable of, with the rest going towards creating a second mental construct. Which would mean that three of these pills had to go towards his mana pool… both his thought streams shuddered. Two would have to do. He'd try for four tomorrow. Thankfully with two thought streams he could do two mana investments at once, completing it in half the time.
Once he finished his mana investment, Greg climbed into bed with Tessa and sent his consciousness to Earth, pausing for a moment at the weirdness of no longer having two thought streams, before shaking the feeling away and focusing on hunting down more vitality. Then he spent an hour or so expanding the underground base there, before slipping back into his body to sleep. A few hours later, he woke up to Tessa gently shaking him awake, using his smoke to force away his exhaustion. “Good morning.” He greeted her with a grin.
“And good morning.” A newly formed Greg greeted her from behind, giving her a kiss on the neck and eliciting a yelp from Tessa as she stabbed him with a sharpened elbow, causing both of them to burst out laughing.
“You-!” Tessa began angrily. “Why is it that the first thing you think to do after gaining the ability to be in multiple places at once is play a prank on me!?!”
“Because you're adorable when you get all stabby.” Greg grinned as he dissolved his other self, earning himself a glare. “And that wasn't the first thing I thought of… the first thing I thought of has to wait until tonight.” He added with a wink.
Tessa blinked, then flushed as she realized what he was talking about. “So you're going to start on the base today?” She coughed, changing the subject.
Greg nodded. “That's the plan. You already have a location picked out, right?”
“Yeah, since we don't need to actually be near anything thanks to Bianca, we're going to put the base on the far end of the mountainous zone.” Tessa replied. “Hopefully that will discourage any of the other factions from taking issue with us, but it will at least make it more difficult for them to actually get at us.”
“Hm, good idea.” Greg agreed. “I assume Bianca already has the specific location marked?”
Tessa grinned. “Of course.”
Greg stretched then hopped out of bed. “Alright then, let's get to it.”