I stroll through the developing markets forming in the eastern quarter of Pando’s city. The shops and places being built and expanded are so different that even considering my familiarity with the terrain I can barely overlap the constructions now with the old map. Still, even as the lightly urban feel starts to encroach in the city, this is still the heart of Pando’s worldwide grove and his presence is not gonna be overshadowed.

Around me, building this market, are thousands of people primarily interested in other endeavors instead of combat whether melee or ranged in nature.

I find tapestry, baked goods and clothing amidst all sorts of mundane items in the shops that follow a medieval theme like the little merchant shop in the instance but resemble pre system Earth though trading most of the high tech gadgets for magical versions and reducing the amount of glass to the bare minimum. Many materials are still too expensive and hard to deal with with most people just hiring a Stonesinger or the still rarer but common enough nature mage that all but replaced masons and carpenters. Most of the ones left in such professions, work in concert with magic wielders or are actually excentric people that cling to the past producing for the small ‘handcrafted market’.

Even with our industry slowly ramping up, most of the goods cost a fraction of the price they did just six months ago as our production methods matured and the crazy expansion rate of our population slowed down to a reasonable level. Each month, larger and larger fractions of our people became available to work beyond providing the basic necessities for everyone.

Only days passed since the largest and most dangerous attack in our history. A force that without liberal use of nukes we could never have defeated before the system and I doubt the system would have stayed silent during all this.

Well, some 50 million troops from the enemy and over 80 million from our side, some of which came from the other side of the ocean.

This is not to say we didn’t have more bodies to throw at the enemy nor that they are eager younglings or unskilled fighters. But at a certain point, allowing people to join is just throwing good money after bad, if we couldn’t finish off the enemy with the forces we did have the general population with less than half the combat power of our least skilled soldiers would just get trounced for no good reason.

That only built as decent most humans even if they trained in their spare time were slowly coming back to old habits. Which was both good and bad. Living for years on end on the edge of a razor isn’t for everyone. Without taking concrete action that often did more harm than good. But we can’t let people get too comfortable. I don’t know how the other villages will handle this, but rotating a few people to run the back lines, close to the fight knowing that each second the enemy might pull something that would put them in danger sounded like it a good idea given the high standard we adopt to acquire citizenship in our city. We would need to flesh out our evacuation plans, make them even more robust, but a dose of reality might be just what the population that was too far away needed.

My mind turns over how my initiative could go awry, as such large scale changes tended to go, if history and the literature were anything to go by, but at least we should do a few trial runs to figure out if the net gain is worth the risk.

I trace the shape of the roots in my simple armor that replaced metal for a good percentage of people while the steel industry was ramping up. The main bottleneck in armor production actually came in the form of skilled craftsmen that made something superior to what most nature mages could produce in one of the stations I set up to help them harness the strength of Pando’s strongest materials. Wood plates and fibers that molded better than all but the best metal armor, with minimal need of straps, and actually none for people with even basic skills to manipulate nature.

It isn’t what the actual front lines uses, but people traveling in the wild or city guards in relatively safe places often used the cheap alternative.

If it had been before the system, there wouldn’t be any comparison between even the most basic plate or chain mail armor and something made from wood. But although I’m still not happy with the level of strength that I achieved, for something like that one I adapted to my own armor, the fibers were slightly stronger than Kevlar reinforced by the decent stockpile of tendons and leather from the Titan.

With enough people wearing full armor while inside the city, I walk around without drawing stares. Only someone that knows me well would recognize me with my helm on or rather an illusion of my helm. Usually, I don’t bother, but I wanted to observe the world without having it actively interacting back with me as all the spectrum of emotion from being one of the most famous people on the planet.

It's useful when you want people to listen to you, but it came with drawbacks, usually when you want ed people to not listen to you.

I pass by a stall that is selling small wooden toys, though even if I can sense clearly in their construction that there was little or no magic involved. The intricacy and level of attention to detail is something that no craftsman would have been able to achieve without a CNC machine before the system. I follow the weaving patterns and smooth lines of the carving knife at the hand of an older gentleman. Noticing a slightly wrinkled skin and a hint of a hunch I furrow my brows.

I get a sample of the electrical signals from his body to his muscles, his blood contents and even his brain before I figure out what is going on.

He had been in his eighties before the system.

“How long have you been a carver?” I ask glancing at his wares.

“Since I understood I was a person and could hold a knife.” He replies without a second of pause, nor taking his hand away from his work expertly smoothing over the back of a doll. I get the barest of hints from his Aether. Nowhere near conscious usage, but he has potential. Greater potential than I had seen in anyone else but the two people I already trained and possibly the children that visited me while I was only Pando’s guardian. Even if his skill are limited to carving, if he learned to wield Aether, it would be a great boon to our planet.

I should keep an eye on him. If he takes the next step, I will be back.

I take the small box. Probably something that is supposed to be a puzzle but its simplicity before my gaze is such that opening the drawer is trivial. Even in his older work, I can sense his soul. I look at him and give him a silver coin for the box before putting it into my inventory.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

He just blinks at my actions.

“Thank you, sir, I’m grateful. That box is not worth nearly this much.” He says holding Pando’s silver coin with his right hand while rifling for change but I already know he doesn’t have enough, strictly speaking.

“You sell yourself short, and I’m the one to call you, sir. You are what 80?”

“I’m 87.” He replies again without thought as his eyes by force of habit slowly drag back to his craft.

I just grin before continuing. “Maybe the actual box is not worth a silver, but I see something in you, potential that I only saw in another couple of people on the planet. That is worth more than Mithril, more than Aether. Two of the people on my shortlist reached unbelievable heights, and the others are probably just taking their time.”

“That is a game for the young.” He says and the light that I saw in him fades ever so slightly.

“Do not be so sure about that. But I will respect your decision if you chose to stay at your current skill level. I mean, 191 points of dexterity are impressive compared to what most other craftsmen achieve at such a low level, but no matter how high a mountain you climb, it doesn’t seem nearly as fun if you know you will never climb another.”

His mind turns with my words, I can feel his surprise, his firing neurons, the change in the chemicals hitting his brain and a hundred other little parameters that I don’t individually take in, but are becoming second nature when I read someone.

I have said what I needed. Now it's up to him. I can only hope my words strike at him.

As I keep walking admiring my surroundings, I sigh at the old bazaar feeling nearly perfectly recreated even after the ‘end’ of the world. Not everyone has the inclination nor the will to fight and for every fighter on the front lines, we need a dozen people to support themselves and the fighters. And that support only got more expensive and elaborate as time passed, especially given it is not limited to sharp swords.

The trading quarters are smaller in Pando's city than our population would indicate considering the development in other places given the type of people that we attract. With the wealth at our disposal, and though I don’t abuse it, control of the main form of currency on the planet, every person working full time in the front lines we only had slightly more than one person for support. That is not a level achievable anywhere else in the world as we concentrate the talent pool to such an unbelievable level. Even even if the noncombatants don’t contribute directly, most of their endeavors strengthen our martial and magical capabilities to an unbelievable level. Broadening our manufacturing base and understanding magical and natural phenomenon even more deeply.

Everywhere, I heard complaints about why we needed so many people. Simple math seemed to tell us we needed a minuscule number of people working support. And if the fighters took up those jobs themselves when they were ‘lazing around’ we could eventually reach the ‘magical’ 100 percent of people being ready for the front lines. After all a single blacksmith could arm thousands. If we are willing to settle for slightly lesser equipment and split our soldier’s time into other tasks that assumption even holds a hint of truth.

But the willingness and temperament to become a soldier along with the large chunks of time dedicated to training tell a different story.

A closer look adds even more detail. While a blacksmith could pump out dozen of swords a day, he also needed the highest quality metal for those swords. There is the coal and enchanted wood, a forge to work on, slow incremental improvements in tools, the maintenance cycles as broken swords, spears and axes came back and a hundred other things we had to ‘suddenly’ learn to take care of ourselves as the instance’s creature comforts were gone. Even the metal we mined on Earth is different. With varying impurity levels and types sometimes even in the same vein along with all kinds of other limitations.

A thousand details, just to account for a single dimension of the fighting: arming our soldiers with simple steel attacking implements.

Even the construction and maintenance of forges and smithies take up significant portions of our resources.

Each wave of upgrades, both technological and magical, created wrinkles and took time to experiment and fine tune. Replicated to hundreds of industries we are simultaneously regrowing from scratch ballooned all our efforts to unbelievably complex structures.

Then my thoughts are interrupted as a piercing gaze stares straight at me and I smile underneath my helm.

“Nash?”

“How did you know?” I ask Russel, a military commander from one of our strongest tentative allies which is built mostly from the remnants of the US military.

“That armor and the way you carry yourself.”

“And what are you doing here at the merchant quarters?”

“Just getting a few things before returning. The selection here is of significantly higher quality compared to most other places.”

I nod understanding his outlook. Sure we didn’t have the largest output or many ‘creature comforts’, but one thing is for sure, we had some of the highest leveled craftsmen on the planet across the board.

Just the type of people that we attracted. The best and the brightest.

“You really went to town on that fight!”

“You saw that?”

“NO, I was in the lower levels, but I watched most of it through the network with my HUD. How the hell did you survive? Anyone that got more than a few splashes of that thing on their skin died before you could get to them. And stats didn’t seem to help, tanks with full health lasted little more than mages.”

“I’m gonna write a proper missive soon if I don’t figure out how to work that void striker staff. As to how I survived, I’m built different and real stats not ‘given’ by the system are way more effective in protecting someone.”

“Ohh, well, nothing we can replicate easily, still it is good to know and you may figure out a better defense. Just be careful.”

We keep talking for a few minutes, as we stop by another two stalls until we come to the people in my inner world.

“I have to use my time wisely and I don’t think prying information from the elves will be very productive.”

“Do you want me to try?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but is it gonna involve torture?”

“No. We understand too little about them to be trying that on a high level resources.”

“I.. Appreciate the honesty. Not the comforting words I hoped for, but I will take the truth any day of the week over cotton padded words.”

He just shrugs his shoulder acknowledging our respective positions.

Still, underneath it all, I can sense his reluctance. The hundreds of signals that my perception field captures and even the energy coming off him puts very little weight on his desire to torture, either as a tool or as a way to inflict payback on the enemy. That cheers me up a bit.

It seems we will remain friends for another day

I hope that is always going to be the case.

“Ok. You can have a crack at whoever you want. Just talk to the warden, he will inform you of the deals that I have in place. Small privileges and stuff like that for a few of them talking about ‘unimportant’ stuff. Occasionally something slips.”

“I can work with that… Just to make things clear, I will report anything that I learn up the chain.”

“Ohh don’t worry about that. That is a given. If you turn a single one of them, you have no idea of the help that would be to me, no matter how low level.”

With a flourish of my hand I open another portal lit by a simple green ring meant that it was fully safe to enter inside and to make sure people stopped bumping against the edges. It hadn’t proved dangerous so far, but someone could always find a way to make it stop working as it should.

Stupid sees, stupid breaks.

With seven billion people, every single one of which was stupid part of the time, somebody was bound to find a way.

My mind turns from the distractions, this relaxed state that I entered after a good conversation and witnessing hundreds of other people’s works in an unstructured manner with my actual eyes.

The future seems brighter. My imagination and creativity bursting at the seams.

Higher level skills, body stat, soul exploration, learning more on the healing front and a thousand other little things that I need my journal to drag back to memory. The enemy has been temporarily driven back. Their most impressive leader was captured and we conquered a small reprieve.

Now we just have to make good use of the time we clawed from the enemy.