It may have been an odd statement to make, but most of the people here were not actually part of his settlement so they either had no idea who he was or they only knew what rumours had been spread about him. Regardless, the fact they had chosen to join his side meant that they had made the right choice in this war. He fully planned to win so they had chosen the winning side.

“Rather than waste any time I am going to cut right to the chase. I am Shaun Clermont, I am at the peak of E grade and we will be winning this event.” Excitement started to build in the crowd and a good amount even cheered at his statement. “Vivenne.” He gestured to Viv to come up to stand next to him. As she moved he kept talking to the crowd. “Viv runs my settlement, she had organised our war effort, she will be in charge of running the event from our side. I will be out claiming these strategic positions and slaughtering our enemy. The only thing I want everyone here to do is their best, and that better include showing The Pantheon and everyone who chose to follow them that they chose the losing side.”

He left Viv up on the stage with many of those gathered cheering for him as he moved off to the side. Before he ran out to do what he wanted to do he knew he had to plan out his approach a bit. If he ran off now and went to claim a position he would have to stay there until these people eventually found him or risk leaving the position undefended. He refused to give up a position though, so he needed someone to follow after him.

He made his way through the crowd as Viv started speaking, focusing specifically on finding Eric. He was the only person here that could track him through the stones so he would have to be the one to follow behind him.

“Let me guess, you are going to run off and you expect me to follow?” Shaun didn’t even need to communicate his plan to Eric as he already knew. That was how well Eric knew how Shaun worked now.

“Yeah, any problems with that?” He was itching to get going but held off only till he go confirmation from Eric.

“No, it’s a good plan. I will tell Viv what we are doing as I will need to travel with a decent group of people who I can leave at the position to then follow on after you. I am guessing it will be a few hours dealing with all these people but I will keep you updated. Go have fun.”

He did not need to be told twice. There were benefits in having a few friends that knew you well enough to know what you wanted to do and that they would support you in your endeavours. He didn’t reply to Eric in words but the smile on his face said plenty.

Not bothering to move out of the crowd he shifted and pushed himself into the air. He didn’t have a direction that he wanted to go, not yet, but he knew once he found the first position that he would be on his way toward the other compound.

When he was high enough in the air he looked down on the compound and was surprised at just how large it was. From this view he could see large buildings that looked like barracks and even many different types of buildings that resembled those that would be utilised by crafters.

Looking past the compound limit the terrain was pretty average, it was flat all around them with few trees. It was like the area had been magically cleared for the very purpose of having a compound here. He saw some changes on the horizon but not enough to know what it was or if it would help them in any way.

There was no indication of which way to go so he chose at random and started speeding out of the compound limit until he hit the outer edge. He gave himself an hour of heading in this direction before he would swing around if he didn’t find anything. At the speed he travelled it would take even a middle E grade 4 hours to travel that same distance give or take an hour or so.

He didn’t know how far out these positions would be placed but he didn’t imagine that they would be longer than a full days walk from the compound. He could be wrong, but this event was catered to everyone, not just the strongest of Earth. That meant they couldn’t have thing too far apart, otherwise the only thing that the lower levels would ever be doing would be walking.

As Shaun continued to move out from the compound he didn’t see anything until about 30 minutes into his travels, what he found was not what he had been expecting. The flat ground that seemed to spread out around the compound ended suddenly. It wasn’t like a cliff that dropped down to a lower area, instead there was just a never ending nothingness that went for as far as both his perception and echo could go.

The edge continued on in both directions as far as he could see, swearing to himself he realised that he had gone the wrong way, this was the edge of the event area, the compound being located at the very limit, and if he was to guess, the enemies would be too.

Although finding out that he had gone in the wrong direction was annoying it was better he find this out than have a whole group from his side travel here on foot just to have to turn around and go in the opposite direction. Taking out the stone to contact Eric he waited patiently for a reply.

You have found a resource already? I didn’t expect it to happen so quickly. We are still organising everything here, there was more people than we expected. Eric sounded slightly flustered when he spoke to him, clearly wrangling so many people into a cohesive group was hard work.

That’s not why I am contacting you. The event area ends where I am, the compound backs onto nothingness. When people are sent out avoid this direction, it’s the wrong way. He tried not to sound bitter about it but when he heard Eric start to laugh he just stored the stone and continued to move back the way he came in a slight curve to avoid traveling back to the compound directly.

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

As he had seen when traveling behind the compound, the side he curved around showed much of the same, a flat expanse of land that had no unique features to it. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for exactly, these resources could be anything from a source of water or food to a position that would allow for outer defences of the compound.

Until he found one he would have no idea what exactly he was supposed to be looking for. For what seemed like forever but in reality was only an hour or two, he just flew through the air, the only thing that he had to distract him was his own thoughts. He shouldn’t have been shocked that the beginning of the event was going to be boring, the fighting wasn’t going to start immediately, both sides had a lot of admin work to do with the amount of people joining each side who had never worked together before.

He had hoped that it would be slightly more interesting than this though. It wasn’t until he came across a river running through the area off in the distance that Shaun became slightly less bored. It was the first thing he had found that changed up the area in all the time he had been traveling. Finally having a destination in sight he moved to the edge of the river and made a mental note of the direction the water was coming from and where it was flowing.

From what he could see the water was flowing back the way he had come, more from the direction of the compound, and it flowed at a steady speed off towards the direction he had been traveling. Water was usually a key resource in any war, and a river could indicate a number of things, including something that could be utilised as a barrier that any army would need to cross to make progress towards an enemy encampment.

With those thoughts going through his mind he made the decision to follow the river to see where it ended up. The river itself would be an inconvenience to cross, the water moved at a decent pace, which would be fine if it wasn’t for the fact that it was nearly 100 metres across. Swimming across it would be annoying and slow, making anyone that did so easy pickings if there was an enemy on the other side.

Having a whole army cross through the water would be ill advised, even for a bunch of E grades, that led him to believe that somewhere along the river, if it did surround the compound, would have to be a position where people could cross on foot.

As he followed the river it became pretty clear that it curved around, encompassing the entirety of the compound. It didn’t take too long for him to find something that was out of the norm. Through his echo he felt a weird distortion, something he had never felt before. The only way he could describe it was that there was something there yet also not. Like something as waiting to come forward into the area but almost stuck in some in between place.

Knowing he found something, potentially one of these resources, he rushed forward until he was standing right in front of where the distortion was. Just as he was about to examine it further he got a notification that made him second guess what he was doing.

Strategic position (Fortified Bridge) located.

To claim the position for Shaun Clermont you must hold this position for 24 hours without leaving.

Do you wish to claim the position?

Waiting for 24 hours was a huge waste of time, but no one else had claimed a position yet, at least not on his side. Being the first one should come with some kind of bonus, if not, he could at least say he claimed the first position.

Accepting the prompt to claim the position, he now had 24 hours where he couldn’t leave. The only up side to this was that he could use this time to continue working on the stone skin skill in relative peace.

When he was closer to finishing the process of claiming the bridge he would contact Eric and let him know, if he did it now the chancers were he would then be stuck here with other people which would lead to him wanting to leave and potentially losing out on whatever reward he got for doing it.

Sitting down on the ground Shaun entered into his meditative state and continued to dissect the skill, until he fully mapped out every inch of it he wouldn’t be able to continue on any further in the process. It was the first skill he had ever created and was made out of pure desperation, not with any true thought for how it would help him in future grades.

It took several hours longer until he had stored a replica of his body and the full mapping of the skill in a orb. He checked it several times before he was confident he hadn’t missed a thing. With that done he moved onto the next thing he needed, trying to change it. Using his creators domain skill he entered his sub space and using his creators plan at the same time started to see what would happen to the skill when making changes to it.

The first thing he wanted to do was remove the earth aspect of the skill and replace it with pure mana. The only way he could do this was with trial and error. Methodically, he started changing each part of the skill to see what the end result would be, in this place there would be no backlash to him as he wasn’t really using his own body, but crafting in a duplicate.

Sor several more hours he documented what every part of the skill did. He found the parts of the skill where mana was drawn into the skill to power it, the moment he removed these parts of the skill everything collapsed into a mess. Finding where the skill entered his skin to form the stone was also easy enough. Removing these parts of the skill was easy but once removed the skill did nothing.

Through further exploration of the skill he came to the conclusion that the forming of stone came from these threads, the ones that spread throughout his skin, the way the formed when active was linked to creating the stone but also where the mana went to activate the skill. This was where he needed to make the first change.

Instead of removing these threads altogether he started to adapt them so that they not only spread through his skin but also his organs, his bones and his mind. This was much harder than he realised and when he tested the changes he found that instead of the desired outcome of just reinforcing his entire body with mana he just simply turned into a stone statue.

Even after his adaptions he had failed to remove the earth aspect of the skill, the only up side was that he had managed to have the skill spread through every inch of his body. He continued his work on the skill until there was only 6 hours left before the bridge would be claimed, in that time he still hadn’t managed to figure out why the skill kept turning him to stone but he knew he was making good progress.

Changing a skill was no easy process, but one that, if he did right, would remove a skill that was useless to him and instead provide him with a skill that he hoped could follow him throughout the higher grades.