Note: This chapter has not gone to my editors and events may change before final release. The below is also unedited and in a raw non-polished form.

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“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Toaby.” Forseti bowed his head.

Flustered, Toaby extended a blood-soaked hand. “Hello. I’m Toaby. The pleasure is all mine.” Forseti looked down at it before returning his gaze to meet Toaby’s with an eyebrow raised. “Oh. Sorry.”

Wiping the blood off on his shirt, he extended his hand again. Forseti took it hesitantly, Toaby not doing the best at cleaning himself.

“It’s fine. I’ll happily shake the hand of my Arbiter.” Forseti beamed in his deep masculine voice.

“Wait.” Shocked, Toaby continued. “Heimdall said you weren’t powerful enough to meet with me yet. Not that you’re not powerful, just that you didn’t have enough strength because of all the chaos in Midgard. I mean, I’m trying to help spread some order but…”

Forseti raised a hand to stop Toaby’s rambling. “You can thank Heimdall for that. He’s an old friend and gladly lent me some of his power so we could meet, but we must hurry. I can’t stay long.” He looked out at the arena stands. “Hopefully in the future I’ll be able to watch all your matches.”

“I’d like that. I could always use more support with the daunting task before me.” Toaby awkwardly smiled.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, actually.” Forseti pulled a scroll from his robe’s sleeve and offered it up.

Toaby grabbed the scroll and opened it, revealing an architectural blueprint.

Justicar Station Blueprint

Rarity: Unique

Condition: Exceptional (+15%)

Durability: 12/12

Description: Blueprints to build a base Justicar’s Station. This building can be future upgraded once it has been constructed.

“What’s a justicar?” Inquired Toaby.

“Its an advanced class. Specifically, it's a class specifically offered to arbiters once they meet the prerequisites.” Forseti answered.

“What are the prerequisites?”

Forseti waved a finger in the air. “I’m not allowed to offer you that information. I’m only allowed to offer limited support, and I’ve chosen to give you this item. I can say this. If you build that blueprint, a lot of your questions will be answered and perhaps some of your problems solved. I recommend you make that building’s construction a priority.”

Toaby rolled the blueprint back up and tucked it into his rope belt. “Thank you.” Forseti nodded. “Is there anything I can do for you? I mean, other than enforcing the law. Can I do something to increase your strength or standing?” And while I’m at it, increase my chances of speaking to someone back on Earth.

Shaking his head, Forseti replied. “Just keep on your path. That’s all I need. Bring order to the chaos. Bring justice.”

A beam of rainbow light surrounded Toaby as he vanished, only to reappear in the forest. Hiro was waiting for him as he came into existence.

“Get stuck or something?” Hiro questioned.

“Somebody wanted to talk to me.”

“Anything interesting?”

Toaby smirked. “You’ll have to wait and find out. But for now, let’s get back to the settlement and see if they need any more help.”

Hiro nodded and pulled his summoning whistle from his inventory. Toaby followed suit, and the pair were soon racing back toward their settlement. It didn’t take long for them to reach it, and although they saw smoke, nothing was on fire when they arrived. Their moods were a bit somber, but everyone seemed to have settled down a bit too.

Toaby dismounted, released his spider and approached Tom, who was currently speaking with a Curtis.

“So they just vanished?” Curtis asked.

“Yeah. After Toaby won the duel, only we returned.” Tom replied.

“They didn’t drop loot?” Questioned Toaby. Curtis and Tom spun to face him. “I’ll have to remember that for future challenges. I thought sending them to Helheim would mean they dropped their equipment.” He shrugged. “Live and learn.”

“What happened to you? We all reappeared, and you were just gone!?” Tom had an excitement to his eyes.

“Settle down. First, tell me what happened here. Is everyone safe?”

Tom nodded. “Yeah. No one died thankfully and there was… minimal damage. I mean, compared to a normal raid that is.”

“Minimal damage?”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“We lost a few tents but, thanks to our new armaments, we were able to scare them off.”

“That’s good, right?” Toaby questioned.

“Fantastic. We haven’t been able to scare off group before so it's a big deal.”

Toaby leaned in close. “So then why does everyone look like their dog just died?”

Tom laughed. “Because its still a raiding party and they still burned down some a few tents but they haven’t heard the good news.”

“Good news?”

“Yeah. Thanks to you, we’ll never see those guys again. If you can pull that same trick with Max and the void, we might just make it through this.”

“Woah, woah.” Toaby flailed his arms defensively. “Let’s not get carried away. One step at a time. Besides. Max can always just decline my challenge.”

“Yeaaaah but we’ll figure something out.”

Toaby grabbed the scroll from his belt and handed it to Tom. “I think this might help.” Tom unraveled the scroll, and upon seeing what it was, shared it with Curtis. “Forseti, the God of Justice, held me back to give me that scroll. He said it would help solve some of our issues.”

“Do you trust him?”

“I think so.” Toaby shrugged. “He was pretty cryptic, but he is the God of order and the person responsible for my class. He’s also friends with Heimdall, whose always treated me decently.”

Tom looked to Curtis. “What do you think?”

Curtis scrunched his brow. “Well. First of all. I’m a blacksmith, not a builder. That being said, it seems pretty self explanatory. It all just depends on when you want it built.” He pointed to the foundation and the back room in the blueprint. “This requires a lot of stone and calls for a bunch of iron bars. We’ll need to make another trip to the mine for starters and while your there, were going to need a ton of stone.”

“Anyone know how to mine stone effectively?” Everyone just shrugged. Tom sighed. “We’ll need to focus on the defenses and town hall first, then. After that, we can figure out the stone problem.” He grabbed the diagram and handed it back to Toaby.

“Fair enough. What do you need from me?” Toaby asked.

“First, tell me what happened in the cave.” Tom looked at Hiro. “I feel like I may have missed a few things.”

Toaby told Tom everything while they walked around town checking on people. He told him about the dungeon they discovered, the Dusk Elves, the guardian, magic items and Queen Anzu. It took them a while, both to check on everyone and for Toaby to finish his story. One thing about Tom amazed Toaby.

“How do you remember everyone’s name? I’m still struggling with basically everyone but you and my party members.”

Tom smiled. “There’s only thirteen people here.”

Toaby frowned. “I was really hoping there was a trick to it.”

Chuckling, Tom added, “there is. It’s a skill called investigate. Its intelligence based if you’re interested.” Pulling up his character sheet and ensuring he had a free intelligence skill slot, Toaby nodded enthusiastically. “Ok. All you need to do is look at someone, or something, and try to discern as much as you can about them. It helps if you block out the rest of your vision. Try squinting while you look at your intended target.”

“Let me give it a try.” Toaby looked at a random person.

The man was gathering some logs the raiders had knocked over from a large pile. Toaby thought he recognized the man but couldn’t recall his name to save his own life. Squinting his eyes, he tried picking up minor details. Slowly, little details began to stand out. It was only a moment later when a few system windows displayed one above another.

Name: Ed

Status: Neutral

Congratulations! You have learned the intelligence skill Investigation.

Investigation: You’re finally paying attention to others instead of yourself. Way to kick your self-centered nature. At your current skill level, you’re able to see your target's name and status.

“Ed! I knew his name was Ed.” Toaby shouted excitingly.

“Sounds like you got the skill?” Tom inquired. Toaby nodded. “That’s good. I’m going to round everyone up for some announcements. Do you mind asking Sebastian to cook up dinner while I prepare?”

“No problem.” Toaby ran off to find Sebastian. With the size of the village, and the fact that the raiders now destroyed a good percentage of it, it didn’t take long to locate the Hispanic chef.

“Hello, Toaby.” Sebastian waved him over. “I didn’t have time to thank you earlier for handling those raiders.”

“Don’t mention it. Its kinda my job.”

Sebastian chuckled. “I guess so. Anyhoo, what can I do for you?”

“Tom’s making some announcements and wants you to serve some food.” Sebastian looked uneasy. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t really have much to cook. We have some fruit left but were completely out of meat.”

“No issues. I’ll grab the gang and go farm some rabbits.”

“Right now?”

Puzzles, Tom questioned. “Yeah?”

“The forest is going to be full of wolves, remember?”

“Can we eat the wolves?” Sebastian looked disgusted. “Better than just fruit.”

“Dude, those are basically dogs.”

“Yeah but their digital wolves.” Before Sebastian could argue the ethics of digital life vs ‘real life’ again, Toaby held up his hands in defeat. “I’m not getting into this one again. Do you want the meat or not?”

Scratching his chin, Sebastian nodded slowly. “As long as your ok with fighting them.”

Toaby grinned. “I know three people who are dying to try out some new weapons.”

Convincing his party to tag along and hunt wolves was even easier than he thought it would be. They practically drooled at the chance to not only try out their new toys but avoid clean up duty. At what was already becoming a habit, all four of them blew on their summoning whistles.

“Let’s roll out.” Toaby kicked off with his party close by.

They didn’t get more than an earshots distance from the settlement before a pack of wolves descended on them. There were six in total and they were foaming at the mouth in anger.

The group all smiled at one another. After a day of fighting giant spiders, guardians and Dusk Elves, what were a few wolves. Especially since they now had magical equipment.

Their smiles quickly faded, the wolves proving to be much more difficult than they expected. They weren’t hard to kill individually, but they were dangerous as a unit. They defended one another, attacked in pairs, and used actual tactics. Their tactics were basic but proving effective.

Luckily for the group, they managed to kill off a pair of them rather quickly. Laura got a lucky dagger stab on one, and Toaby used his axes to finish the other. Hiro shot a few jets of small flames that appeared to startle the wolves. That, in combination with two of their pact dieing, sent the rest of them retreating.

“Ok. We may have gotten ahead of ourselves.” Laura commented as she pulled her dagger from the slain wolf.

“We got big heads just because we killed some spiders.” Sam added.

The entire group was now below half and suffering from minor wounds. Regardless of the outcome, they were still happy. Sam added the corpses to his inventory so he could properly butcher them when they returned. While he did that, Toaby pulled his notifications.

Congratulations! You have defeated Forest Wolf x2.

You have been rewarded 20 experience.

“Lets head back. This should be enough to make a stew for everyone.” Sam suggested.

“NO!” Everyone jumped. “Sorry.” Toaby quickly apologized. “It’s just that, I only need five experience to level. Mind if we change tactics and chase down the rest of that pact?”

“Hmmm… I wouldn’t mind trying my spell out some more.” Hiro added his two cents.

“I have another charge of my bow ready.” Sam commented.

Everyone turned to face Laura, the last one to decide. “I could use some more hides.”

They all grinned again as they mounted up to chase after the spiders.