The Forest of The Grey Wolves, a river whose water stirred before a serious confrontation.

“What’s this monkey business?” the Miracleworker thrust an accusatory finger, unable to believe a noob would dare to hold up The Empire.

On the river, Henry was sailing around on an Egyptian-style reed boat, doing spins.

“Instructor Apari and I will be staying here," he replied, warmly, "you loyal hunk. For the inconvenience this has caused you, I apologise sincerely. I am sorry."

"Who are you to question the authority—“ the Miracleworker stopped abruptly when noticed the monkey-masked figure holding up one of his Tier 5-2 Spelltomes, an item that only members of Flaming Sun and The Company could own. "Fair enough."

The Miracleworker's tone immediately shifted. To pick a fight with a member of The Company would be to get blacklisted from their services, making Saana borderline unplayable. It was never worth it.

"I'll bring him over?" he asked.

“No need,” said Henry, sailing back to shore, where he jumped off the boat and transferred it to his inventory. “Let’s walk together!”

Revealing his guild affiliation in this way had a tiny chance of exposing Henry's identity. However, his need to maintain his anonymity had decreased from when he'd first arrived in Suchi. Back in the bunker, after learning that the Earthfriend curse would take multiple real-life hours to fix, he’d restructured his day plans to, maybe, perhaps, test his monster army idea right after this tutorial while the Slum Empire and his minions solved the other issue.

Back in the fort, they waited for the others to assemble.

The Miracleworker nudged in overly-close. "Can you put in a word for me with the entertainment recruiters? My friends and me have got a moosestep-jazz fusion band."

Moosestep-jazz Fusion was the most popular music genre in 2050.

"Sure thing," Henry replied. "Message me a link to your Noisecloud."

The Miracleworker clicked his tongue with annoyance, the sound causing Henry to flinch. "If you didn’t want to, dude, you just had to say no.”

Little did he know, however, Henry's offer hadn't been sarcastic. Agreeing to listen to some random guy’s terrible garage band was the exact kind of out of character decision that might throw off a prophetic shadow demon.

When everyone was back, Henry explained the situation in gratuitous detail.

Amongst those listening, Instructor Apari, noticing the Miracleworker not refute any of Henry’s claims, had to grab a support beam to stabilise himself.

For the trainer, the people out there whose demise was a disguised footnote in the explanation were not strangers to him but his colleagues and friends.

“...In conclusion," said Henry, walking up to the bald trainer and patting his shoulder, before facing back to the trainees, “for most of you, if we’re talking pure pragmatism, the optimal choice is to rejoin the battalion. While your chance of surviving is low, the standard penalty for death, losing a level, has been made negligible by the circumstances, as you will have ample time while waiting for a follow-up expedition to farm the boars and recoup your loss. Thus, the inconvenience of losing a level should be outweighed by the excitement and satisfaction most here will derive from engaging in large-scale combat. In short, you’ll have more fun, which is the primary purpose of a videogame and the only factor any of you should ever prioritise.”

To be more exact, the penalty a player suffered for dying in Saana differed based on the circumstances. In the open world, killed by an NPC or a monster or environmental factors, one would have a choice to either sit at the spawn point as a ghost for 24-real life hours or respawn instantly but lose a level. If one was killed instead by a humanoid, they would in addition to the former penalty also drop their most valuable item, unless they had committed a crime recently, in which case they’d drop several.

In light of this, Henry had to admit that The Slum Empire’s plan to have the trainees rush into an ambush wasn't entirely incorrect, since the effect of the players dying was minimal.

And even the NPC trainers dying seemed beneficial when he imagined it from the perspective of 'King' Ramiro, The Empire's mastermind. While the trainers were, on paper, members of The Empire, who'd encouraged them to form a union as a PR gesture. In practice, the Instructor's Union, functioning as a union should, pushed their members' interests against the competing interests of their bosses, bringing them into regular conflict. Ramiro, using this incident as an excuse, could kill the problematic union members and replace them with more loyal ones, thereby further cementing The Empire's stranglehold on anyone spawning into the zone.

After Henry's talk, most of the trainees decided to depart with the Miracleworker. All that remained were himself, Instructor Apari in his grief, and 20-something meatheads.

“Why are you guys still here?” Henry asked, genuinely curious.

By his estimation, they should have valued the thrill of battle above all else.

The team's captain, the Battleaxe Meathead, puffed out his bare chest. "Bros do not abandon bros."

"That doesn't make logical sense," Henry replied. "I'm staying here, specifically, to be able to abandon this forest. Fighting the wolves would be nobler by conventional moral systems - although not mine."

The captain couldn't refute that. "Well, also, Gareth—he's the team's strategy guru—he figured...what was it, again, Gareth?"

A meathead came forward wearing square-framed glasses despite the fact Saana's game system corrected real-life physical defects. “I noticed, Big Brother, a small detail in your outline of the forthcoming crisis which may present an opportunity for us to display an act of heroism. You proposed a possibility, upon the battalion being ambushed, that heretofore unidentified factors may result in them being overwhelmed, and that their response to this would be to retreat here to await naval evacuation."

"Correct," said Henry. "Your listening skills are on fleek."

"Thank you, Big Brother. As I was saying, following on from that, you hinted that, due to inefficiencies in The Empire’s logistics department, the navy might not arrive before the wolves can breach the defences.”

"I did, but I also mentioned that that scenario was improbable, making the expected fun return of remaining here lower."

Standard logic would dictate that the high-level Villagers should be able to dispose of the Level 3 wolves without problem, regardless of numbers.

"True. HOWEVER!" The meathead stopped and pushed the glasses up his nose-bridge. "Your tone was incongruent with that assertion! By your real estimation, the battalion will CERTAINLY be overwhelmed!"

Henry didn't deny it, this Glasses Meathead being correct. Of course, he couldn't explain the missing factors, that King Ramiro might delay the navy to ensure they die and, more crucially, a shadow demon with precognition was acting behind the scenes to make life more troublesome.

Henry felt he understood the meathead's point. “So, following your line of reasoning to its end, you guys want to help the others by making boats or reinforcing this place.”

“INDEED!”

Henry, thinking of what he'd normally do here, didn't do that. "OK. Sure. Maybe we'll save a few."

The team captain yelled to his companions. “You heard him, boys, get to collecting lumber!”

At once, the meatheads, including the one with fake glasses, began to charge out of the fortress.

A strange look appeared on Henry's face, as his gaze shifted between the incongruent sights of the meatheads about to try chop wood with their thin, light battlefield weapons and the wretchedly unhappy Instructor.

After assessing that it shouldn't compromise his plans, he shouted. "Freeze!"