Surprisingly, Taralia was quite a good listener. When she listened to Aurus’s plan, she didn’t interrupt once, she waited until he finished, asked a couple of questions and raised a few concerns, and simply nodded to show she understood what he meant.
It was… refreshing to be taken so seriously. Thus far, he was always somewhat looked down upon. He wasn’t physically strong nor was he good at martial arts. He had fair skin and green eyes that made him look feminine. Even though Aurus himself would normally find nothing wrong with that, he still got bullied because of it.
At first, it wasn’t quite so often, the problem was that Aurus was clever as well. He got out of beatings often, in the beginning, using a wide variety of ways, even causing two groups of bullies to fight each other at some point. But, eventually, they caught on and soon he became the main target of any bully within the area.
‘Not that any of that matters now.’ Aurus told himself as he was reminded of his current situation.
Still, faced with the current situation, he put his chin up and focus on the game, who knows if he did his best he’d somehow manage to scrounge up enough money for housing and the expenses that came with it.
“This is the time,” Aurus told Taralia as he took notice of the current situation again. A few minutes had passed and slightly over half of the total number of players had gathered here now, everyone that would come came and the smart ones were even planning to leave since no good plans had been brought up yet.
One particularly horrible idea that suggested climbing up the trees and moving over the treetops was just suggested when Aurus gave Taralia the signal and she spoke up.
“The hell kind of nonsense are you spouting?!” she exclaimed fiercely. “We don’t gotta go fight those lizardmen now! Hell, we shouldn’t even be thinking about the fight. We need to find a place where we have shelter, warmth, and resources!”
One of the male warriors whose idea had been shot down a few minutes prior quickly interfered “How do you mean we don’t have to go fight the lizardmen! It’s the quest!” he yelled loudly, getting a couple of affirmative grunts from the simple-minded fools around him.
But unlike most of the previous people that came up with an idea, Taralia didn’t shut up quite yet. “In a month! We have to destroy the lizardmen in a month. Hell, not even that! We have to destroy a lizardmen ‘VILLAGE’. This means they’re smart, they can build houses and may even have a wall, or a moat, their village may even be underwater!”
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Faced with these new possibilities, a few of those that had been planning to leave began paying attention again, and the idiots were still thinking about it when she continued.
“We will need to fight those beasts, and we will need to defeat them! But how much experience do we have? Sure, many here seem strong but what do your stats say? Maybe you get five attribute points a level and the lizardmen are level five each! Or maybe there are hundreds of them!”
This time, she slipped up ever-so-slightly giving one of the doubters a foothold to stand on “If there are hundreds then we’re helpless anyways! What’s the use in considering that?”
This time, instead of Taralia who had a number of negative gazes set on her, Aurus spoke up. “Maybe we could send out scout parties! We have some of our strongest and smartest take small teams to figure out how many lizardmen there are and where while the rest sets up camp! Maybe if we take some time to check out the island, we can all find weapons! This is a game after all! Then we’ll arrive in the second tutorial with better stuff than the other groups!”
When Aurus gave his feedback, the situation got a little strange. Some of the smart ones around seemed to notice what they were doing and looked at how they reacted, they seemed ready to join in. It seemed unnecessary though. In order to cater to idiots you needed to do two things, offer them power and money.
Thus far, the only route to power seemed to be to take charge and attack the lizardmen village, but now they were offered an alternative.
“Since the lizardmen have a village and are probably going to try and kill our leader when they find it, we will need some great fighters to protect the commander, I would like to be among the selected if you’ll have me.” Aurus now said loudly.
Most didn’t realize he was in cahoots with Taralia and hearing someone else accept a leader made it much easier to jump on a bandwagon.
The last push came when two other people repeated Aurus’s words, both of these were also mages that seemed to be smart compared to the average, extremely low, IQ in the group.
Taralia nodded at them and accepted it before quickly saying, “All right then, let’s not waste any more time. First of all, we should get into the forest and out of this open beach, we can look for somewhere to organize and then make teams!”
Then, without saying another word, she walked towards the forest, followed by the group. A number followed on purpose while the others shuffled along.
This was also suggested by Aurus, it was best not to give them time to refute as soon as she took command. While they walked they would have an easier time getting used to the idea and even if some would leave, it would already be impressive if they could get a group of thirty semi-organized people.