“So, the enemy has finally arrived?” I ask in clear terms to the closest thing our group had to a scout. The patchwork clothes, unkept hair and especially the unwashed smell overcome even the system’s meddling. You can take the person out of homelessness, but not the homelessness out of the person.

I look down and see a reflection of him. Maybe responsibility forced me to shape up slightly, but I’m still as worthless as he presents himself, if not more.

I’m a kettle calling the pot black.

“Yes. The Elves are gathering inside the nearest system exclusion zone. I mean without counting ours.”

“You were detected?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“I assume this ‘world’s government’ is dealing with it.”

“We don’t really know the new Earth’s politics. But, unless they have way stronger troops on the way, they are having trouble.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I didn’t get close enough to find concrete evidence. It’s mostly a feeling.”

Feelings… To be guided by the gut. It had its advantages but not even a decade with my son talking about it changed my mind on how I should act.

Should I travel and seek him out…? NO. He left for a reason, I have left for a reason. It’s better this way. If the enemy is establishing a base nearby, maybe we could help in the measure that I can.

Go play in your forest.

“We are moving.”

“What? Really, where?”

“To the enemy’s base. But first, we need to kick them out.”

“But should we trust…?”

“This world’s government or whoever is in authority. No, we probably shouldn’t trust them. But as much as I want to keep our people safe, the day will come when we have to step out. And that day might be closer than I thought. If they are having trouble the ‘hidden’ village isn’t safe. Unless we want to migrate our entire group, which would be really easy to spot: we need to deal with this. Right now is the closest we can come to even footing and causing a good impression. Maybe it will buy us some goodwill.”

“The others aren’t going to be happy with you ordering us around.”

“I will try to avoid that. We will have a meeting, but this needs to happen, one way or another.”

===============

Alex’s POV

I run my fingers over the Great Sphinx of Giza while seat atop its head. I have a light connection to all pyramids, connection and potential that I helped others start to unlock, but beneath me there is more to it.

A bond that I can reach to myself towards the greatest remnant that isn't a pyramid.

The enemy was still being pushed back from one location, but that just allowed them to reinforce the other more strongly and though I doubt they will actually be able to take another pyramid, especially with the potential I unlocked. It's not over yet, nor are the thousands of attacks spreading like wildfire from the Goblin’s city.

Somehow this simple action seems more meaningful than I gave it credit for.

How? I don’t know yet, but as the barest of hint of System Aether stirs inside the Sphinx and a similar one in my chest.

This connection is beyond simple system screens, but the system screen does give the barest hint of direction.

You have bonded the Great Sphinx of Giza.

That’s where explanations end and I have the rivers of the instinctive knowledge that my new class brought me. But as the bond builds in strength and sturdiness, I know that Earth just gained another valiant defender.

Rumbling stone scrapes against the ground, as the Sphinx statue stirs. Its movements let off the eternal stillness morphing into a living creature of rock.

No, not a living creature, but close enough.

I know little about its makeup, its purpose and what is eats, but as I look in the distance, I see a rather gruesome death all that fades.

“Attack.”

With great lumbering steps, rocking the world even as I feel its body proportions changing and becoming more ‘anatomically correct’ for a lion-type being. Its frame grows heavier and more compact, its paws become engines of destruction and its strange human face morphs into a human animal hybrid.

It approaches the enemy and the look on the few that more turned in the right direction is priceless.

Death is coming upon you.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Now I can rest. I do need to rest, as even asking it to walk a couple of hundred meters and stomp the enemy drains both its internal stores and my energy like a great siphon.

“The Great Syphon of Giza.” I snicker to myself.

==========================

Pando’s village field commander POV

I stand ‘only’ 100 meters from the battle in a raised position, behind one the most powerful turrets we brought to the fight.

The battle is by no means hopeless, nor are we seeing such great losses that continuing is an exercise in futility from callous leaders, but that very thought of losing troops keeps crawling back in, as the balance is tenuous.

Then my attention is drawn to somewhere else. Moving independently from any human command, let alone my own comes a human group from the other side of the system exclusion zone. Nearly a thousand fighters and mages on their way to the enemy's rear. I take in their expected power level, from our ‘scouting’ seeds and any thought that they are simply a band of vagrants simply migrating to a new location is gone. They are strong.

Contacting a nearby human scout, I order them to warn our possible unwitting allies. “Warn them of the danger ahead.”

Seconds later my attention is back in the fight and suggestions come from on high of how to maneuver given this new development. But a reinforcing group of Elves somehow spots the group from over a dozen kilometers away and starts sprinting in their direction rather than keeping heading to reinforce their outpost.

Instantly a thousand maneuvers come to mind.

Our positioning is completely wrong to defend them from this far away. This hasn’t been a problem for any human following the normal path, but they took the very worst path for us to provide support. I order a few nature mages to mitigate the worst of the damage from a distance while sending in a contingent that will arrive a couple minutes late.

“I hope this strange group knows what they are doing.”

My gut braces to witness a blood bath as they engage over twice their numbers.

As the ‘vagabonds’ notice the larger group bearing down on them, they start to stream mana around them in preparation. With unison, I would have scarcely believed from any group this large that didn’t have Merlin’s legendary powers at its core, the leaves and brambles rise from the ground and block the enemy’s view. Eyes are no longer useful, but although our fighters on the ground will also be vulnerable, with the help of the perception field from our ‘scouting’ seeds, I still get a clear enough picture of what is happening.

The enemy tries to clear the air with fire and other types of magic to no avail. But their attempts are fruitless, only providing brief glimpses, unlike the complete collapse as the enemy managed when we tried similar techniques.

Wind, fire, lightning and raw physical power meld into carnage overwhelming the enemy. But I can’t afford to spend my day gawking, so I go back to following a hundred threads of battle to see where I need to send help.

Even a cursory overview however is clear. They wipe the floor with the enemy until the elves flee with less than half of their numbers.

Seemingly just having gotten a taste of blood, the new human group rushes in without leaving a single fighter behind from injuries too deep to keep up the march.

The enemy’s push just around their outpost, trying to trade their lives for a few of our soldiers that hadn’t been many results gets completely annihilated in minutes throughout the section that we get those strange reinforcements. In minutes they help tilt things in our favor so much, I’m left dumbstruck. The enemy is blinded in confusion, while our side, even if slightly disoriented, manages to hold out pretty well.

As mana floats between everyone in range, I notice our own side moving as if they can see. The newcomers must have shared whatever method to see past those leaves with the nearby melee troops. Then, tired of dying, the enemy retreats back into their outpost’s walls instead of keeping up channels to allow for reinforcements.

They will now have to gather elsewhere and come here in force.

The fight isn’t over. Not even close. But after their two defeats, they are ready to lick their wounds. Which I’m just fine with. It will simply allow me to build a better siege. The gross part of their reinforcements will have to pool somewhere nearby and make the assault in one go, rather than the piecemeal fighting we had seen until now.

But as the human group approaches my position, a strange feeling of dejavu overcomes me.

“You look familiar,” I say to their apparent leader, who even wearing what seems like system granted armor and even if it fit him correctly, he felt awkward in it. Like a bum with a tailor made suit. He waves his hand at my comment and I do ignore the thought. Their particular talents swang the battle in our favor. A battle that involved millions of troops.

“The enemy…” He asks. I feel there is more to his question, but I just go with what I believe is his general direction.

“They have found a Mithril mine in the middle of their encampment.”

“Mithril? Sure not ideal, but not the end of the world.”

“Not that simple. Its not a random mine with a few grams, but a renewable source similar to the mines on the instance. Now my turn, where was a group as powerful as you hiding?”

“Why?” He asks, and I feel he doesn’t want to even consider answering, but he pushes that impulse down.

“Just curious,” I say disarmingly. “No need to answer if it makes you uncomfortable.”

“Just here and there. Nowhere in particular. You?” He gives a nonanswer.

“I myself am from Pando’s village, though we are actually a minority over here, most of the fighters here are a collation from dozens of nearby powers. We even have fighters from a hundred small groups such as yours.”

“Pando you say?” And I feel there is much more beneath the surface.

“What?” I ask now becoming even more intrigued.

“Nothing, just an old memory.”

“Do you want to talk to Pando?” I prod.

“I don’t talk to trees, they have the bad habit of not answering. And I don’t want to travel thousands of miles.”

“Pando has grown in many ways since integration. I can probably get his attention over here…. if you have something important to talk about.”

I sense conflict within him.

“I better not. Some things are best left in the past, even if Pando has some kind of intelligence, enough to talk… never mind. Now that we established a little trust, to business: How are we going to move forward?”

“Pretty much however you want. We aren’t going to conscript you or anything, though if you choose to join up, you will have to give up part of your autonomy during battle. No leaving it mid way and exposing our flanks. We take issue with actions of that nature.” He narrows his eyes probably thinking about how we could abuse that but nods and I just continue: “Look I get that is a bit unbelievable and if you were faced with someone else, the deal might be different. But you are dealing with a representative of Pando's village and we hold the dominant position over a decent fraction of the world infrastructure, the paths to power and actual tangible military power. We act as protectors and mediators between most of the nations on the planet while trying to stay out of direct control as much as possible locally. We… our leader… even if he doesn’t think of himself as such made it clear: We aren’t to rule. Each group that joins up rules themselves as they see fit. We only step in when we see evil occurring. Common sense stuff really. Don’t chain humans in your basement, don’t kill humans unprovoked, don’t sell rat poison while calling it medicine. That type of stuff. Even if we find out we don’t like each other, we can live in peace.”

“I… believe you. We will help to drive the invaders out and then we will go back to our peaceful lives.”

“Then we have a tentative deal.”