Polearm guy ran, and Mason let him. He had an arrow lodged in his gut, which no doubt hurt tremendously and drained some courage. Mason could sympathize. His shoulder fucking hurt.

Lifting his arm proved mostly impossible, and he expected he wouldn’t be able to shoot worth a damn. Hell, just drawing the thing probably wouldn’t happen, and anyway he was nearly out of mana so who cared anyway. He’d forgotten Endless Quiver took mana outside of nature. He gestured at Haley to come scoop it up, and she snapped to reality and came running.

“Are you alright?” she looked him over with concern as the bow vanished into her invisible bag and Blake flinched in surprise.

“I’ll live.” He looked at the big chief still easily repelling the two weaklings at the hall. “To hell with this. Give me that staff.”

Haley pulled it from the air, and Mason held the smooth wood in his hands with a grimace.

“I doubt I’ve got the mana for this,” he sighed. “But it’s worth a shot.”

“Erm,” Blake looked at the girl at his side, and grinned. “Mana, you say? I think we can help with that.”

Mason looked between his brother and the plain, tiny thing at his side with a raised brow. “OK….”

Blake gestured and the girl came forward with a face growing redder by the moment. “Very sorry,” she said, “It’s best if I touch you. Do whatever you intend, and my power should do the rest.”

Mason nodded and thought no more about it, turning his attention entirely on the settlement’s chief.

Alright, he thought, convert my mana to elemental power. Easy peesy. Nothing to it.

At the last moment he remembered the nymph’s charm and withdrew it from inside his shirt, holding it in one hand as he pointed the staff with the other.

Nassau’s last few players were still shouting and dancing back and forth, none of them brave or competent or fast enough it seemed to bring the others down. Then the same infuriating support class noticed Mason and his staff, and shouted.

“Chief! Look out!”

The big man snorted and spit down the hill. “You think you can hurt me with your little stick, and what, some pathetic spell? Go ahead and try.” With that he turned away from his opponents like they were nothing and started walking down the street with shield held high.

Frankly, Mason had no idea. But since he remembered distinctly getting damn near blown to hell and probably would have if it hadn’t been for Apex Predator, he suspected even if it didn’t kill the man, it wouldn’t feel great.

He focused on the staff, and felt what he expected—his measly mana bar blinking with a dull blue light in the corner of his vision. “Here goes,” he muttered, then forced his will into the thing. It felt like pushing an imaginary red button that said ‘explode some shit.’

The staff glowed, Mason’s hand locked in its grip reflexively, and he knew instantly he couldn’t stop it now if he wanted to. It hummed and jerked with its own power like a firehose, and Mason willed every scrap of blue he could see into the damn thing, as well as the warmth he felt in the nymph charm and the strange source attached to him through the Asian girl’s hand. He pulled and pulled until he heard the girl cry out and try and release him.

The bolt of lightning damn near blinded him. It cracked and roared with thunder in a terrible flash that felt like it exploded out of his arm, racing too fast and too bright to really see what happened. Mason shielded his eyes way too late, then stepped back blinking and groaning as the same ringing from the dungeon filled his world.

“Why?” He dropped the staff and put a hand to his face, cursing his robot god with every fiber of his being. “You can reshape the world but you can’t build a damn staff with a silencer?”

When the flash finally cleared, Mason blinked and blinked until he saw his enemy’s shield lying on the ground. The man himself seemed gone, and for a moment Mason worried he’d somehow dodged the attack entirely.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Then he saw the two, trembling, charred legs sticking out from beneath it. He grinned as his vision filled with text.

[Kill awarded. Title awarded: First Blood. You have slain a town patron, and are the first in the world to do so. ‘Player Killer’ status has been permanently increased to severe, but now provides resistance to several negative conditions. Patronage of Settlement-D342 is now open. Do you wish to claim it? All associated contracts are listed. Do you wish to claim, modify, or cancel?]

The fighting stopped entirely. A dozen or so civilians emerged from the big hall, and it was clear they were getting some kind of system messages of their own. They looked at Mason like shoppers inspecting the ripeness of fruit, and he wanted all this patron crap gone as soon as possible. He looked at Blake.

“You alright?”

Blake pat his ears as if trying to knock out water. “What?” he shouted.

“I said,” Mason raised his voice. “Are you…”

“I’m kidding. I can hear you,” Blake gave a shit-eating grin.

“You prick.” Mason grabbed his brother with his remaining good arm and gave him a squeeze.

“But really,” Blake said. “What’s with that staff? That was extremely unpleasant.”

“Imagine how that guy feels,” Mason gestured with a nod.

The pretty green eyes of the Asian girl who’d been holding Mason’s hand started to flutter, and Blake quickly grabbed her in his arms as she nearly collapsed.

“Seul-ki! Are you alright?” he said in something of a panic.

Mason could hear the genuine concern in his brother’s voice and felt a little bad he’d drawn so much power. The girl blinked and smiled and regained her feet in a few moments. “Yes. Thank you. I hadn’t expected so much…hunger.”

“Sorry.” Mason shrugged in apology. “I hadn’t actually used it before, wasn’t sure how it would work. But I couldn’t have done it without you, I’m sure of that.”

The girl smiled shyly, and Blake squeezed her shoulder before looking at Mason’s.

“We should probably look after that.”

Mason was about to ask what he meant before glancing at the oozing wound. He shrugged. “It’ll be fine.”

He met Haley’s big blue eyes, and could see she stood still with a barely restrained will. He held out his good arm. “Come here.” She leapt into his embrace, and he winced slightly at the pain but pulled her in. “I missed you too.”

He exchanged a grin with Blake, then glanced around ‘Settlement-D342’. He wanted to sit down and eat something that didn’t come from a barrel, and maybe drink something with alcohol and sit with Blake.

But they had a few other annoying problems to deal with first.

“What do we do with them?” he gestured at the remaining players, who’d now all stopped fighting and mostly sat or lay down on the ground in exhaustion and injury.

“Case by case basis,” Blake said quietly. “But I think we can recruit them all.”

Mason shrugged, not really caring. He looked again at the blinking town profile and patron decision, as well as all the civilians staring like lost children waiting for a parent. He sighed. “You intend to stay here, I suppose.”

Blake raised a brow. “I do.”

“I don’t want to rule a town, Blake.”

“Well you should,” his brother said in his most annoyingly lawyery voice. “It has a variety of advantages. We need a safe place for civilians, and it gives us a whole host of boosts, including…”

“You been watching what happened to these guys?” Mason gestured at the corpses. “Staying still makes you a target. It makes you complacent, findable, and destroyable. Better to move around in the forest.”

Blake frowned. “We’ll have to agree to disagree.”

“I didn’t come all this way to save your ass just to put it at risk again,” Mason snapped.

“We’re always at risk in this new world, brother, but we need to build something.”

Mason knew he’d lost already. He sighed. “I was thinking a giant mound of the corpses of anyone who tries to fuck with us.”

“We’re in alignment, brother. Just build that mound of people who fuck with this town.”

Mason glanced at Haley, knowing very well where she’d stand.

“I know you’re on his side.”

“I’m on your side, Mason, always, but…” she chewed her lip. “I believe he’s right. Civilians need protection. And there will be many others. We’ll need lots of specialties and experts to survive this new world. They’ll provide you with all kinds of useful things for combat.”

Mason took a deep, long-suffering breath. It was like convincing Blake not to wear his Star Trek uniform in grade four all over again.

He swiped at the text and found an options menu, with all kinds of possibilities, including the one he wanted. Transfer all contracts and patronage options to Blake Nimitz, he entered into the open box. Except Haley and Kiaan.

He wasn’t sure if it would work, then the system intoned in his mind.

[Transferring.]

Blake’s eyes widened as they stared off into space. He clapped Mason on the shoulder and grinned like a damn fool from ear to ear.

“You’re such a pain in the ass,” Mason exhaled.

“I know.”

Blake steadied Seul-ki then walked towards the civilians, soon talking to them like they were old friends. Fortunately they seemed equally pleased with him, and the older man Mason had seen before even embraced him and said something like ‘good work, kid’.

Mason looked away from all the mess and corpses and felt the weight of it all lifting from his shoulders. “If you don’t mind,” he shouted, “I’m going to go lie down and try to stop bleeding to death.”

Blake turned back with a pleasant smile, his politician’s voice and mask well plastered across his face. “Go and rest brother, I’ll sort this all out.”

“God damn right you will,” Mason muttered, then wrapped his good arm around Haley, and let her help him towards a house.