Trey and Eve were still awake when Devon burst back into the camp. The nerve-frayed guards initially tried to skewer him when he burst out of the prairie grass, but they quickly breathed sighs of relief when they saw he was human.

Trey stood up when Devon made his way over to the fire, "I heard the shots, what happened?"

Devon glanced at Eve, not sure if he really trusted her with the information, then remembered she had kind of funded the entire operation. "It's bad, really fucking bad," He said as he tried to catch his breath.

In a hushed voice so as to not let anyone overhear, Devon rapidly laid out everything he'd heard from the Overseers and his encounter with the scout in the woods.

"You mean they've been watching us this entire time?" Eve asked, aghast, "We have to tell everyone. We can't just let them do as they please!"

"No, Eve stop," Trey said, putting a hand out, "Think about what will happen if we do that. Most people here still haven't even adjusted to this new environment. If we throw an even bigger problem in their faces then people will break down, and then we'll be even worse off than we are right now."

Devon internally thanked his lucky stars Trey could keep a cool head under pressure. He hadn't been a star athlete for nothing, and his leadership capabilities were showing through now. Most other people would be panicking or losing their cool, much like the redhead next to them.

"So you're saying we do nothing?" Eve asked incredulously.

"Of course not," Trey responded, "I'm saying there's nothing we can do right now. We have to go with the flow, make sure nobody sticks out like a nail waiting to get hammered down. We continue on as we have been. And we wait."

"For what?"

"For anything," Devon said, "Once people calm down we'll see bigger groups popping up, I need you two to be figureheads for those people. Make them trust you so that we can lead them when things get really dicey. Wait and watch how the overseers react. How they respond to the situation will give us information on their methodology. We'll have to wait and make progress before we can get our hands on any useful datalogs too."

"What do you mean we have to be figureheads for these people? Don't tell me you're going all nihilistic on me," Trey said.

"I have no intentions of dying at the hands of those things, but I need to disappear. I'm heading toward the mountain, I think the terrain will allow me to lie low a lot better than I could in the plains or the forest."

"Wait a minute," Eve hissed, "I can't go around leading people! I-"

A thought came to Devon, "Trey, can you query your system about how long until the terminals allow us to venture off this world?"

Trey nodded, then went pale, "It says there's a 40 day minimum planetary lockdown to account for the tutorial."

Devon cursed, "I thought it seemed a little too easy to simply hop ship immediately after the tutorial ended, turns out I was right."

"So they'll box us in and hunt us down before we have a chance to escape," Trey said, a dark look on his face.

"Yeah, seems that way. Ah, dammit dammit dammit I wish I had time to sit here and rack our collective brains for a solution but I've seriously gotta go."

"Hey, I wasn't finished-" Eve tried to say.

"Listen," Devon interrupted her again, "I need to go right now before the overseers get their shit together again. Get the messaging function as soon as you can, it'll let us keep in touch."

With that, he dashed off into the tall prairie grass. Under any other circumstance he would have been happy to stay and convince them, but time was not on his side. The sooner he disappeared into the rocky terrain of the mountain the safer he would be.

He heard Eve swearing as he ran off into the night. The trip through the moonlit plains would have been extremely tranquil if he hadn't been sprinting like his life depended on it, which it did.

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Unfortunately, he started running into trouble as soon as he made it to the boundary line between the plains and the mountain. Practically nobody had made their way towards the imposing figure of the mountain when people had scattered at the start, which meant that the area he ran through now was markedly different than the fringe areas of the forest and the plains in that the monsters here hadn't been thinned out yet.

Immediately he encountered a creature that had the body of an armadillo and the head of a leech.

[Leechhead? - Level 3]

[Discovery Bonus]

Eve said she got to name the things she discovered, but it sure as shit just feels like the system is grabbing at whatever random thought comes into my head and slapping it onto the thing.

The leechhead screeched at him before charging at him with its disgusting mouth wide open. Devon didn't waste any time exploiting the obvious weak spot, and shoved his spear straight through the creature's mouth as it charged him. The creature didn't have the mobility to alter its course, so it couldn't dodge Devon's spear.

Devon's spear pierced straight into the creature's exposed insides, and the creature's own momentum carried it further down the shaft. It was only able to give one last shudder before it died and Devon got the system notification for it.

Kill - [Leechhead - Level 3] - 32 Talons

Devon gripped his spear with both hands before swinging it like a polearm, sending the corpse of the poor leechhead sailing into the distance.

At least these things are fatally weak to the spear. Agh, If I didn't have to get my ass moving this would be a prime spot to stay and farm a load of exp. At least these things don't seem to have nearly as much mobility as the mawbirds, so they won't be able to catch up to me if I simply run past.

***

Val Kazar Orndefauld, leader of the overseers, gazed down at the body of Khan Yuk Haldefan in stunned silence.

Rage coursed through his veins, a torrent of emotion like he had never known. These humans, these pathetic creatures had dared to wield cursed weaponry against them yet again. He would find the human that had done this, that had ruined everything, and make them feel the fury of one who had lost everything.

However, that only accounted for half of his rage. The other half he directed to himself.

It had undoubtedly been a mistake to allow the chief's daughter to share in the duties of the watchmen. He had known that, but he had still allowed her to do it. His weak heart had been swayed by her earnest desire to improve herself and learn the ways of other people, so as to better the clan as a whole.

And now he would pay the price for it. The tutorial had only allowed a small part of the clan to participate as overseers, and would allow only a handful more into the abandoned world before the tutorial process set the humans free. After that, he had no doubt that they would scatter and be lost to the cosmos.

He was even more sure that the first one through the terminal after the initial 30 days would be the chief himself, to check on their progress and pick the juiciest pieces of fruit from the batch himself, if they were even worth it that is. And when the chief showed up, Val Kazar would die.

There would be no saving himself from the chief's wrath, and Val Kazar knew that the only thing left for him to do was offer the worm's head on a platter when he arrived so that maybe the chief would spare the rest of the overseers.

Val Kazar looked down at the cursed weapon the human had left behind and sneered, fully understanding the intent behind the action.

Yes, I understand, pathetic human. I cannot justify wanton attacks against your people, because you have left the evidence of their innocence here. This cursed weapon shall never more be used against my people, by you or any of your puny kin.

He picked the weapon up off the ground and crushed it in his hand. Despite how much power it could exert, the material was flimsier than metal and gave way easily to his higher than average strength.

He did not know why the tile was left behind. He could only assume it was some sort of insult, a way of saying Khan Yuk had been so beneath him that her possessions weren't worth taking.

He looked up at the last message Khan Yuk would ever send, still displayed on his system's interface.

[Khan Yuk]

Help me. A human named Devon has a cursed weapon and is threatening me. I think it knows

The cut-off message indicated the poor girl hadn't even had time to finish her thought before the bastard had executed her.

The part that infuriated him the most was that he'd known that human. It was the one that had begged him for safety outside their camp just hours earlier. The one that had looked so pathetic and miserable as it had listened to their every word. He didn't know why a measly level 3 would bother spending money on the translator function, it was almost always considered an afterthought to all the warriors of the clan.

"Find him," Val Kazar hissed through gritted teeth, "Find the human named Devon and bring him here so we may parade his corpse for all these pathetic humans to see."

He looked at the human's ladders and felt his rage grow even more at the fact that the human known as Devon wasn't even on either of them. How could a being weaker than a ur-snappa from back home have thrown such a wrench in the plans?

The ladder function had been something they'd been forced to pay extra for as well. For the humans it represented a way for them to compete against each other and soar to greater heights. For his clan, it represented a way to identify which prey would be most worth hunting when the time came.