"When you catch a glimpse of your potential, that's when passion is born."

Zig Ziglar

****

"Are you feeling better?" Nero asked Jorry who was starting to move around on his shoulder.

He was currently dragging the corpse of the ratman back towards the entrance by its tail. As one would expect of something of that bulk, it was taking a significant amount of time. Thankfully he had leveled up after that fight and had placed all his points into strength, making the load significantly lighter.

"It still hurts a bit, but I am mostly healed." The cuts on the snake's back had stopped bleeding and were already scabbing over.

In Gods' Nature, you would only die if your HP reaches zero, but all injuries would still require healing. It was interesting to watch the wounds close by themselves as Jorry's HP slowly rose back to full. If Nero knew magic or had some potions, then they would close much quicker. But who would waste valuable medicines on something that would disappear in another twenty or so minutes?

"You did well back there. I was worried, but you managed to hold on tight. I couldn't have done it without you so thank you." Nero wasn't looking at his companion, but he could feel the little serpent shuffle awkwardly on his shoulder.

"No problem," he said, embarrassed at the praise and thanks. "What are we going to do when we get back? I want another shot at those mice."

"We're a bit too weak for that," Nero answered, chuckling at the apparent shift in conversation. "If these ratmen are so terrified of them then they need to at least be of the same level. That is not counting the fact that we are outnumbered. We need to be at least level ten to stand a chance at fighting the group we met. The boss, the 'Venerable one,' is at an even higher level."

"Wait a while and get stronger then? Won't somebody beat us to it if we do that?"

"Que sera, sera," Nero shrugged uncaringly but noticing that Jorry didn't know what that meant, he continued. "It basically means what will be, will be. We can only control our actions, not those of others so what is the use of worrying about it? If it makes you feel better, apart from other outlander's like me I do not think that other people will get involved."

"How come?" Jorry asked.

"Because nobody has until now. Think about it, who cares about mice and rats? Nobody notices them until they become a nuisance and even then all they do is get rid of them. This 'Venerable one' is keeping things pretty quiet and we have heard nothing about it until now. Granted we do not get out and about much but I think one of the shop owners would have mentioned rumors about a mice conspiracy."

"So nobody knows about it but us?"

"I can't say that for sure or that nobody will discover something is going on in the future but the likelihood of it happening and them doing something about it is very small. We only know about it because we coincidently met the mice while doing extermination work and I happened to get beast tongue and then by chance we encountered the rats, which I could coincidently understand, talking about this 'Venerable One.' That is a lot of coincidences."

"We were just lucky then? Then how come other outlanders might get involved?" Jorry questioned.

"It wasn't all luck, though that played a part of it. At the end of the day, everything is interconnected, every event and action has repercussions so somebody would eventually notice that the mice were doing something odd. We probably would have encountered them some time in the future even without this trip. And outlanders get more involved in anything and everything they come across. If they got a trail, then their curiosity will push them to investigate it where others might leave it along."

Left unsaid was the fact this was a game, and thus they were players seeking entertainment. As soon as they thought they had found a new quest, most players would rush to complete it. Though Nero still didn't understand the quest system of this game very well, he would have thought that this expedition would have counted as a quest. At least hunting this ratman should have generated a quest.

"We have a few things going for us though," Nero continued. "Obviously we already know about this event so that means we can prepare but other than that the important thing is that it is happening in the keep and it is really low level. I will be shocked if this 'Venerable One' is even level twenty-five. Most outlanders and everyday people for that matter do not look for adventure at home. So this mice problem is not significant enough for people to search for and is a place they would not think to watch."

"So, unless we are unlucky, we have time to get stronger? And once we do, we can kill them?" There was a noticeable amount of bloodlust in the small animal's voice, but Nero didn't put it to mind. More to the point, he just didn't care.

"Pretty much," Nero could see the light from the entrance now. "I want to finish with this training hall before we do that though. And I want to see about getting some more levels."

"How are we going to do that? More rats?"

"I don't think we can keep up the extermination business going, not without risking running into those mice and dying again. We'll have to think up some new ideas. We'll also need a way to make money."

They exited the tunnel now, the evening light wasn't too blinding after the dark, but it still caused Nero to squint as he adjusted. He saw Rob, sitting at his table, waving him over. As he approached, dumping the carcass on a pile of ratmen bodies that had developed since he had left.

"It's kind you got back now, we were about to head in and clean the place up. We thought you had died in there you were taking so long. Still, good job. I and the other two will clear out the rest of these vermin and, once you are done with all the bodies, we can take off."

Rob stood up, leaning on his cane he walked towards the entrance of the mine as Ken and Dode did the same. He waived a hand towards the pile of bodies and said; "Hurry up with these, I want to be out of here as soon as possible."

Sighing a little, Nero grabbed a body off the pile, the one he had just thrown on, and set to work. Jorry sensing that he had some downtime decided to get back to his third favorite hobby, after killing and eating things, sleeping. While he did, Nero looked around the entranceway, his hands not resting from their task. He noticed that there were fewer trainees than he thought there would be. Some might still be in the mine, but there was a good chance that more than a few were dead from today's events.

From the twenty or so that had arrived this morning Nero only counted twelve. All of them looked a little worse for wear, with dirty and torn clothes. One of which was the woman who he had briefly talked to in the mine. She gave him a small nod of acknowledgment when their eyes briefly met before returning to the conversation she was having with one of the soldiers.

With Jorry asleep and nobody to entertain him, Nero's work passed tediously, though he did get another level of disassembly for his efforts. Thankfully, and to his surprise, he did not have to wait long for the instructors to return.

Not even twenty minutes since they had entered the mine, the three men returned to the entrance with the remaining ratmen. Floating behind Rob, like some demented shopping bag was at least forty corpses, all looking the worse for wear. The instructors seemed fine, however, not a scratch on them or a hair out of place. For all, anybody knew they could be on a Sunday stroll rather than viciously extermination a species. It took them twenty minutes and no effort to do forty times what Nero had almost died doing in an hour.

As was becoming the norm on this expedition, Nero was struck once more with a sense of incongruity. Where before he had realized the complete freedom this game offered, the ability to do anything and be anyone, now he understood the importance strength played. This was no joyful revelation, no excitement bubbled up in his chest. Instead, it was a cold and clammy feeling. Never having felt it before, Nero was still self-aware enough to identify it as fear and insecurity.

It is easy for people to say might makes right, that is how the world works after all. It might be covered up and justified by morality or virtue but at the end of the day only those with the ability to enforce their beliefs really affect the world. In real life, however, what people might lack individually can be made up for in numbers. The weak can join together to overthrow the strong, that is why any ruling class must fear the people, not the other way around.

Napolean once said that quantity has a quality of its own. That same Napolean was close to conquering all of Europe. It does not matter if you have the best-trained men in the world or that one man is worth a hundred, once that hundred and first man shows up you die anyway. You can have an advantage in technology but all it takes is somebody else to get their hands on it as well, and the board is equalized again.

One needs only look at myths and legends or stories of the past to find proof of this. Whether you read the Volsung saga or the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, whether you are Achilles or Yoshitsune, when too many people are set against you, you die all the same.

Perhaps the most obvious example of this is Leonidas and his Spartans at Thermopylae. Ignoring the fact that there was three times the number of greeks as Spartans, the tale has been made famous in books and movies as the brave and skilled few stopping hundreds of thousands. Sure it is impressive that they held out for a week, only three days of which had a battle, but at the end of the day, they died all the same. The Persians just did not care, these Spartans of legend were a footnote to them who they killed and then used their bodies as warnings.

In a game though, so long as you are high enough level then no matter how many low leveled enemies you face, they will never defeat you. Most do not consciously realize this, after all when you level up you go to more difficult areas, so the challenge remains the same. But if a max level character returns to the starting area, they could stand there all day, and they would not even get a scratch. Their HP would regenerate faster than others could damage them.

In a game like Gods' Nature, where the only barriers are strength and imagination, what was to stop a high-level player or NPC from walking into a city, killing the king and marrying the queen? Only a stronger person would be able to stop them and even then they could do the same themselves.

What was to stop a high-level player, or even the instructors themselves, from deciding they merely did not like Nero's face and brutally murdering him? It wouldn't be permanent, but that did not mean it would be enjoyable. Suddenly Gods' Nature did not feel like a vacation, it felt like a prison. He had been playing for about two months in the game, a little under two weeks in real life, and he had at least twenty times as much time before he was healed enough to leave the hospital.

"Alright, as soon as we finish with these we can head home." Rob's words shook Nero from his temporary paralysis.

"R-right."

"I'll help you out, I want to finish as soon as possible."

Grabbing one of the bodies from the pile, Nero tried to continue with his work. He had trouble for a bit as his hands were shaking. Taking a deep breath to try and calm down.

It did not take long with Rob's help to disassemble all the remaining bodies and load the pelts into the carriage.

As he took a seat and the caravan started its way home, Nero realized that the instructors had fully understood that a significant number of trainees were going to die, why else would they only take three carriages instead of an extra for the hides? Thankfully(?) enough had been killed that there was no problem fitting all the trainees into the two remaining carriages.

Indeed, the expedition had really broadened Nero's horizons. He had gained information about the mice incident, gotten another level and, most importantly realized what kind of game Gods' Nature really was.

It was freedom, with all the joys and terrors that brought. While he had unlimited freedom, so to did others. If he was going to have a good time in this world, then he needed to have enough power that he could not be killed like an insect.

He stared at his hands, they were shaking once more. It was no longer from fear.

Perhaps it was good that in the dark of the evening, after a hard day's work, the other trainees were too tired to pay attention to Nero. Something was disconcerting about the smile on his face.