The group immediately armed themselves after Stanis reported to them. Considering that they were Human, there was still the hope that it would be a peaceful meeting, but it also didn't hurt to be cautionary.
Orena had already stolen Stanis's spear off him after hers had been basically broken by Anatoly.
Jayesh still had his menacing club, as well as his tower shield that looked as if it had seen much better days due to all the scratches and cracks in it.
Scowly had a foot-long length hammer and a similarly large shield to Jayesh's, which made sense as both had been in the vanguard during the battles.
Aaliyah armed herself with a sword a bit longer than a foot and a small leather shield.
And finally, Stanis equipped himself with just a sword, mainly due to the fact that he had forgotten to pack a shield after switching weapons to the double-handed spear.
The marching party in the distance stopped and armed themselves as they saw Stanis’s group
"AYYYY. We don't want any trouble mates, so how'd you mind putting those weapons down?" asked one of their party, waiting to see how Stanis and his group would respond.
It was Jayesh who responded, "Put your weapons down and we'll do the same."
The opposing party's talker shrugged his shoulder, before slightly lowering his blade. He then motioned his teammates to move closer, stopping their walk a few metres away. There was six of them, and thus they outnumbered Stanis's group by a single man. Although if it did come down to a fight, Orena was definitely worth more than a single man.
Their talker then had a thoughtful expression, before asking another question.
"You guys have come from the West right? You didn't by any chance come by a Goblin camp, did you?"
Stanis didn't see any harm in admitting to wiping the camp from the face of Earth, although he was beaten to the punch by Jayesh.
"Yeah, we killed them all. Maybe a few runners in this area, but the Camp is now gone."
Their talker added.
"So you guys destroyed the crystal?"
"Yeah"
The opposing party seemed a bit downtrodden as they heard this, but also believed it as everyone but Stanis was soaked in blood which was clearly not theirs as they weren't injured. They edged backwards a bit, whispered to each other, before once again coming closer.
"I guess you guys are the last of your Camp? Those crystals aren't easy to destroy, so I'm guessing the rest of yous died?"
It seemed their question was mid-way between a We can help you if you agree and We're checking if there are anymore of you, in case it comes down to a fight.
Now that Jayesh had basically taken the communicater spot, he responded.
"Yeah, what's it to you?"
The opposing group slightly loosened their grips as they heard this.
"You've seen the missions, right? You know the first one is all about a Village? You guys wanna come to ours?"
Stanis and his group discussed it among themselves, having realised that this party in front of them was most likely from the Village they had heard off from Ailean. Knowing that they were on the same path anyway, it wouldn't hurt to have a bit of guidance to the Village.
"Sure, we were trying to find a Village anyway" replied Jayesh, to which their talker chuckled, before motioning their weapons down. Weapons down, but still drawn.
"Come on then, I reckon we can get a bit closer knowing we aren't going to have to kill each other" joked their Talker, before finishing with, " We should get a move on. The Village is quite a distance from here."
And thus the two groups merged into a larger one; at first, everyone still had tight grips over their weapons and roving eyes that watched their surroundings, but those grips and eyes eventually loosened after a few hours on the road.
Stanis was talking to an Asian guy called Kei from the other group. He turned out to be just two years older than Stanis and going to a University in America. The two youths eventually warmed up to each other as they talked about Uni life, as well as all the shit they had gone through ever since the Apocalypse had begun. Over time, the topic of their conversations veered from these subjects to their current lives, and more to Stanis's interest, a bit about the Village.
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"I don't know how that Camp started mate," said Kei, pausing as he jumped over a large tree-root, "cuz I only came a few days after. My own group straight from the tutorial were utter shit and we were nearly wiped out during the first battle. After getting a few supplies, me and the other few survivors decided we would go search for other Camps.
We went to one, which was destroyed by infighting just one week after we arrived. And so we were on the search again, and then we found the Camp which is now called Yona Village, named after the leader there. And I'm telling you, me and the others knew straight away that we'd found a gold-mine after we got there!"
Then the man to the side of Kei spoke up, taking over from Kei.
"Damn right we knew. We get there and guess what we see?", the man who Stanis remembered was called Callum then eagerly looked at Stanis, waiting for him to make the wrong guess.
"I dunno. Tons of corpses or something?" responded Stanis, internally amazed that people could still have positive emotions like eagerness in this day and age.
"Alright that too" admitted Callum, "But the main thing was the fortifications mate. They had like proper spikes and pitfalls surrounding the Camp. That girl, Alyona, who is the leader, has a good brain as she quickly brought the whole Camp under her control shortly after the tutorial, and such a good leader meant massive progress. There were tons of corpses still lying outside when we first saw the place, far more than had attacked us at our old Camps, and yet when we went inside to, we saw that there were also more people alive than our old ones ever had!"
Kei was smiling as Callum talked, clearly reminiscing the times he had found some light after crawling through darkness for so long. Kei then carried it on,
"So it was still a Camp when we got there, about 60 people I would say. They somehow knew about the missions bar and instantly unlocked it for us after talking a bit about it. Fast forward a few days, Alyona sets the whole Camp into motion to kill a tier-one, which is fucking easy when you have about 60 people. You should have seen the fight, some of the people in her Camp are absolute mad-men when it comes to fighting. We easily broke the Crystal and PAZAM, we had a Village in our hands."
Kei took a breather as he motioned for Callum to carry on.
"Yeah Village and that. I mean as you can guess, the number of people in the Village starts to explode upwards as we start finding new people still living in Camps or running away from monsters. More people means higher fighting force, and we started clearing our area of all the teleporters. Of course not all of ‘em, like the Monsters in the Mountains were just too difficult to beat all the way back due to their terrain, but I think we destroyed 3 of ‘em already.
That's actually why we'd come all this way since we heard rumours of another weak teleporter here."
Stanis's interest was already empty, and so he tried to gently veer the conversation more to about the peculiarities of the village.
"What does the Village do? Well, first of all, y'know the amount of supplies you get is based on how many people you have? Well upgrading it to a Village actually improves the quality of the supplies as well, like we got proper food in the Village and we got plenty of meat from the monsters.
Also after upgrading it, we got a few more buildings. Like there's now a forge and tannery type of thing there, although no one's really sure what's the point of all of that when we already get all our equipment from the weekly supply.”
There is also this kinda of market thing where you can trade stuff for Stones of Wonders and other valuable things like---"
He was cut off as Kei lightly punched him.
"Why aren't you mentioning the most important thing?"
To which Callum rebutted,
"I was saving it till last. Y'know, save the best till last."
"What is it?" asked Stanis. Considering how anti-common sense this world was, the best thing from the Villages was most likely something magical or such.
"Right, so it's when you get to level 20, you are able to go to this building which apparently lets you choose a job or something. I dunno to be sure, but the few who have done it got wayyy stronger after going through the process."
Orena, who had stayed relatively quiet all this time, piqued up.
"How many are there over 20? How strong would you say they are?"
Her agenda behind asking a question was clearly to know how many more strong people she could grind under her feet, whereas Kei took it in the way that she was worried.
"Don't worry, we Humans have to stick together during this mess. Not really many fights there, nor much infighting since the leadership and structure is really strong. Anyway, there's only four people so far who have got the upgrade, at least it was when we left yesterday. Two girls who have been in the Camp from the start, and two guys who just recently came and settled down."
"Who's the strongest?" asked Orena, her tone a bit more provocative than before.
Callum seemed to get the message behind her words and said:" One of the girls is some kind of bow thingy, much better with it than Kei over ‘ere."
He got a few laughs as Kei tried to punch him again.
"As for the other girl, has some crazy good sword skills I gotta say. Wonder what she would be like under the sheets"
He got more laughs from this one, as well as a short glare from Jayesh. A few of the guys even looked at the quiet Aaliyah as they laughed.
"As for the two guys.", he crossed his arms as he talked to Orena, "not being Sexist or nothing but I reckon they're the strongest. Both are fucking massive, a few inches above 6 foot, and are wide as hell. The black one's filled to the brim with muscles, something that works well with the tats he has running down his arms, whereas the white one is a bit more on the chubby side which makes him look innocent, although he's everything but that when you see him fight."
The whole other group nodded in approval of his judgement, whereas Jayesh rubbed his messy beard.
"They wouldn't be called Caleb or David, would they?" he asked.
"Oh shit, how'd you know? Are they from your camp or something?" responded Callum.
This made sense to Stanis, he had initially wondered where the literal meat-mountains from the final trial had gone after the tutorial; he had seen them during the first battle but not afterwards. It seems they had left straight away, and just wandered for a while as they had only made it to the Village recently.
The conversations carried on, and after a few more hours of walking through the Forest, Stanis finally saw the end of it as he saw plain ground in the distance. And just a bit past that ground was a collection of buildings and tents, surrounded by spikes and other simple defences.
They had arrived!