After parting ways with Sera, Hiral took a few minutes to center himself, then went off to find Seena. The few hours they had together went far too quickly, but the rest of the party had mercifully given them some space. He probably should’ve gone to find Gauto and talked to the guy, or maybe checked in on Caleon to see how she was doing. His head wasn’t in the right space for any of that, though. Seena was what he needed, and she helped him sort out the last tangled thoughts in his head after the confrontation.

While they spoke, all around, others worked hard to get their new camp set up, with lines of tents forming next to the barracks for the people who wouldn’t fit inside.

His raid group had decided not to take up any of the barracks’ space, since they planned on spending as little time as possible at the fortress. But, as nice as the quality time was with her, it quickly came to an end, the Trust emerging from the keep with a plan of action. It didn’t take long for the raid groups to line up in front of the seven, appointed leaders, with the support staff gathering behind them.

A pulse of solar energy from Grandmother quieted everybody, but also left something hanging in the air. It wasn’t anything visible, not exactly, but if Hiral squinted, he could almost swear he saw something like a massive tree extending its branches over the heads of the assembled crowd. Leaves shone with vibrant green – even though they were invisible? – while a gentle breeze brought the scent of a calm forest to his nostrils.

“Thank you for gathering, everybody,” Olimpas said, stepping forward from the group. “And thank you for your patience while we figured out our best plan of action.”

“You’ve got one then? A plan?” Ilrolik asked.

“Damn straight we do,” Fyre said. “A good one too!”

“Shh,” Ceelia said, patting Fyre on the shoulder. “We agreed to let Olimpas go first.”

“Ugh, but I’m already bored of standing around,” Fyre complained, though she quieted.

“Through looking at the War Table and talking with our guide,” Olimpas gestured to Al, who stood nearby. “We’ve got a good idea of not only some of the fortress rewards immediately available, but also what we can expect from trial rewards on an individual level.

“An important thing we want everybody to understand, and what we had to consider, is that upgrading an existing structure can only occur in two scenarios. Building it from scratch – which I know isn’t technically an upgrade – or after the existing structure is finished being constructed. If that doesn’t make sense, let me use an example.

“In a trial named A Lonely Isle, we know there is a schematic – a way to build – a wooden wall around our keep,” Olimpas said, letting his words sink in. Conveniently, information on how trials and schematics worked had been spread while the Trust had been deliberating, so most of this was already understood. “However,” Olimpas continued. “If we were to find a schematic for a stone wall – a more advanced version of a wall – after we’d begun the wooden wall, we would have to wait for the wooden wall to finish building before we could upgrade it to stone.”

“How long does it take to build a wall?” one of the Bonders from Burs’s group asked.

“The wooden wall would take approximately twenty hours,” Olimpas said. “The stone wall would be thirty – assuming we have secured material to build it. In other words, if we did the wooden wall and then chose to upgrade it to stone, it would be a minimum of fifty hours. If, however, we simply started with the stone wall, it would be thirty hours.”

“Can we do that?” Loan called out. “Just go from nothing to stone?”

“We can,” Olimpas said. “If we have the schematic and the resources.”

“Then why would we even bother with the wooden wall?” Loan said.

“Because we don’t know for sure where the stone wall schematic is,” Olimpas admitted. “We do know where The Quarry is, which is the source of stone, but we don’t have anything to build with it yet. Now, with this kind of process in mind – upgrading versus building from scratch – along with advice from our guide, we’ve come up with the plan.”

Hiral eyed Olimpas as the Maker spoke – seeing the face of the man who’d ordered their deaths on the surface was getting his blood up again. The excuse that it wasn’t him, but instead some magical clone made by Isope, still didn’t sit right with Hiral. But, his father was keeping an eye on Olimpas, and there was only so much trust the man would get – from either Makers or Growers, especially.

“The War Table has ten visible trials. Ten visible rewards. We have enough raid parties; we could attempt all of these almost immediately.”

“See, but we aren’t gonna do that,” Fyre said, stepping forward. “Yeah, it’s my turn to talk, so listen up.”

“Why aren’t we going to do that?” one of the D-Rank Shapers asked. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to get the rewards we know about?”

“Didn’t I just say to listen?” Fyre asked, pointing straight at the big Maker. “Sheesh. No, see, it doesn’t make sense to do that yet because it takes time to get to these places. Through territory we haven’t explored yet. And, for what? A wooden wall. Whoopy doo.

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“No, see, that ain’t worth it. Not when there are better rewards we need first,” Fyre continued. “The big one being…” she held up a hand and paused, clearly for dramatic effect. “… teleporters.”

The assembled crowd just stared at her.

Fyre groaned. “See, I just can’t. Al? Al can you explain the teleporting things?”

“Happily,” Al said, stepping forward. “Within the Cradle of Tomorrow, there is a network of teleportation circles. Magic that will allow you to instantly travel from one circle to another, so long as you’ve built the fortress’s teleportation building, and activated the teleportation circle you wish to move to.”

“Which means we need two things,” Seeyela said, clearly interested at the talk of teleportation. “A schematic to build, and then I guess we need to find each of the other circles in the valley? Makes sense.”

“Exactly,” Al said. “Unfortunately, finding the circles before you’ve built the building here won’t do you any good either. The building is needed as the foundation of the teleportation network, and once you’ve got that, simply feeding enough solar energy into any circles you find will connect them to that network.”

“Yeah, that,” Fyre said. “Which is one of the things we need first. And fast. See, getting around the valley will be much easier if we don’t have to walk all the way. Because of that, we’re not going to just send all of you to start clearing trials.”

“What we need,” Aunt said, taking her turn. “Is scouts to find trials, and to catalogue what their rewards are. This information will automatically update on the War Table as people bring this news back on what they’ve located.”

“Why?” a Grower asked. “Why don’t we just bang them out and then figure out what we want to build when we have all the schematics.”

“These trials are not like dungeons,” Aunt said. “They are not guaranteed to complete within three or four hours. According to Al, some of them may even take hundreds of hours.”

That made more than just the Grower who’d asked the question blanch. Hundreds of hours for one trial?

“Will we know how long it’ll take before we go in?” Yanily asked.

“You won’t,” Aunt said. “At least according to what we’ve been told. Only completing the trial will give us an accurate estimate on how long it takes, since you can theoretically leave at any time.”

That introduced an interesting risk versus reward to the Cradle. Hiral’s raid group could rush in and challenge the A-Rank trial, but what if it was one of the ones that took a long time, and there was an attack on the fortress while they were gone? They wouldn’t even know about it until they completed the trial and came back to check in.

“There’s more,” Aunt continued. “Despite how some people might feel about this,” the woman turned her look directly at Yanily.

The spearman looked to both sides of himself, then pointed a finger at his own face.

“Not every trial involves combat,” Aunt continued. “Some are puzzles. Some are obstacle courses. Some require crafting an item meeting Tomorrow’s standards. We believe The Lonely Isle involves fishing from some of flavor text already available. Al has even told us some trials just require listening or watching information from Tomorrow.”

“Which means raid groups focused on fighting might have a hard time with some of these other types,” Wule said.

“Exactly, which brings us to the last relevant point before we outline the plan,” Aunt said, and Uncle stepped up beside her.

“Each of the areas around the trials are the same Rank as the Trial itself,” Uncle said. “And, the lower the Rank, the more area and trials there are for that Rank. What I’m saying is, there is one A-Rank trial, and a very limited area around it that will likely contain A-Rank enemies.

“Conversely, Al believes there is close to a dozen B-Rank trials, double that again for C-Rank, then doubled again and again for D- and E-Ranks. Likewise, there is a lot more E-Rank territory than B- or A-Rank territory.”

“Which means we need more of the lower-Rank people to scout out those areas, find the trials, and figure out the rewards, so we can decide what to focus on,” Seeyela said.

“Exactly,” Uncle confirmed. “Finding the trials early so we can focus on the good ones will serve us much better than running through the first trials we find, in the long run.”

“What about the experience and rewards?” Burs asked. “Don’t we want people getting those as quickly as possible?”

“Yes and no,” Uncle said. “I’m sure you’ve all heard about the solar energy concentrations of areas that will act like poison to higher-Rank individuals. If we become too top heavy, we won’t be able to explore the larger, lower-Rank areas. On the other hand, we need people getting stronger if want to win this war game.”

“Which is why,” Elezad said. “For the beginning, we will mostly focus on finding and cataloging the trials and their rewards. We have identified six trials that we want completed right away – and we’ll announce what those are and who will be taking care of them in a moment – while everybody else will be put on scout duty for the time being.

“With that in mind, these scouting raid-groups will be accompanied by two or three individuals whose abilities are focused more on stealth or moving quickly. They will be responsible for returning with news of any trials found, while the raid group continues looking for more trials. Don’t worry, we’ll be rewarding everybody involved with contribution points to offset the time spent not gaining experience.”

So far, the explanations made sense to Hiral, and while there were a few follow-up questions from the crowd, they mostly reviewed things that’d already been said. That lasted a few minutes longer – and the Trust entertained those questions – until Grandmother thumped her cane lightly on the ground. The rolling wave of solar energy quieted the group.

“Since it’s almost time for the mists to lift,” Elezad said. “And for us to have access to the rest of the valley, we need to announce the six raid groups who will be completing specific trials. After that, we’ll announce the areas the other raid groups will be responsible for mapping.

“First and foremost – this should be no surprise,” Elezad looked straight at Hiral. “Will be the A-Rank trial. While I know your groups may prefer to tackle some of the B-Rank trials first, if you believe you can handle it, we’d like to secure that particular reward early.”

Hiral looked at Seena, Nivian, and Ilrolik. They each gave him an affirmative nod.

“We’ll take it,” Hiral said.

“Good, thank you. Next is the C-Rank area, The Quarry. The stone there…” Elezad continued, though Hiral stopped listening as his party turned to each other. An A-Rank trial would be a challenge, there was no doubt about it. It was pretty unlikely it just involved fishing.