Krin is looking at the few fishes in his bucket. His fishing wasn’t good this day. That would not stop him from bringing back home enough fish to feed his family.

It’s at the moment he’s launching the line in the water again that he sees the first ship. A big ship, a three-master. At first, he thinks it’s a good sign, merchants rarely come on the island but they always bring news of the continent and some trinket to trade with his people.

It’s only when the second ship passes the pier, closely following the first, that Krin sees the black flags on the masts. Black flags with white skulls on it, to far away to make more details on what kind of skulls. He’d never saw them before, but he heard of this flags, they’re pirates.

Krin jumps to his feet and runs to alert the villagers of the incoming attack. He lets behind his fishing rod and fish bucket. He doesn’t see the other ships.

---

Lo is feeling good. His small fleet is about to raid the untroubled village. His unique flag is fluttering high in the wind. His pirate flag represents a ram’s skull charging. The flags of his ships have only a white skull on a black background, but the one on the main ship has red dots in the eyes sockets.

“Tis goin’ t’be a good raid cap’.” Says the man at his side. He’s just a pawn, a fucking Goblin that doesn’t know when to stay silent.

“Shut up and go prepare yourself.” Replies Lo. If he could he would only hire Ramors, like him. But they’re not enough of them working in his field to fill his ships’ crews, and Orcs and Goblins are cheap workers and good fighters, like the majority of his crewmen. At least, he has some Seconds in his ranks.

---

After setting the basic orders for my queens, I go back to claim what’s in my new area. I already did the plants, so I claim the air up to one meter above the trees. As expected, the air above the trees is blown away, fortunately, the air flowing underneath the canopy and between the trees’ trunks is refreshed slowly enough for me to passively claim it. It means all the creature living in this part of the forest will eat and breath my mana, to make sure they will also drink it I arrange for a small water stream to flow from the mountain. The local creatures will naturally grow stronger and be passively claimed, but I will still claim some myself.

I was in the process of claiming some rats and rabbits when my birds brought me a strange information. A big cloud of black smoke had appeared in the direction of the hikers’ village. I’ve never sent any creature to directly spy on the village, I was afraid of them being spotted. But now is the time.

---

Morn grabs his axe. It’s a simple axe he uses to cut wood, but it’s the best weapon-like object he owns. He then runs in the streets of the village, he’s heading to the beach, where all the people who can fight are gathering.

He and his brethren won’t let the pirates come closer. Certainly not since they know which pirates they are. They’re the Blood Ram’s pirates, some of the worst and more brutal men on the sea. They have a reputation of rapists, killers, and slavers and tend to let the least amount of survivor possible. The rumor’s telling there captain, the Blood Ram, is closing on becoming a Third.

The Marms may be small, but they can put up a bit of a fight. And even if they know they can’t win the fight, they plan to hold the raiders long enough for the elders, the children, the crippled and their caretakers to hide in the forest.

---

Gromkar jumps out of the rowing boat and starts running on the beach. He’s one of the first to reach the sand. He’ll be the first to reach the defenders, that’s important for him. To be the first to enter into battle, to claim the first kill.

He swings his war-hammer up on the air. The small islander in front of him sees that and raise the big knife he’s holding, preparing to block the hit. Gromkar smiles, this one doesn’t know how to differentiate a feint from a true hit. The Orc quickly moves his arms on the side of his body and make an elliptic move passing his hammer behind his shoulder and striking at the Marm from beneath.

The sheer strength of the strike makes the little furry being off the ground and flying behind the defense line, ribs shattered and puncturing the lungs and the heart.

---

I sent all my birds to the village to look at what is happening and wait for their reports. I also post some of them on lookout duty at the edge of my domain allowing me to monitor the smoke progression.

The smoke cloud is growing bigger every minute and I can see - through the sentinel birds’ eyes - that there is some red light illuminating the cloud from beneath. And there is even some of the orange and hot dancing light growing up just under the smoke. I now recalled it’s called ‘fire’, and so much fire is a bad sign. Did the hikers lose the control of the fire?

When the first birds come back to report I learn that the fire is not the fault of the hikers. There are other people in the village, killing and capturing the hikers, they are the ones that set the village in fire while raiding it.

The raiders seem to come from the five big boats that dropped anchor near the village. It’s a really big boat, with three big and high masts while the hikers’ boats only have a small and thin one. The raiders also have better equipment than the hikers, swords, and crossbows against daggers and simple bows. The invaders are from a lot of different species, some have fur, other scales, lots bare skin and even a few with feathers.

Some of the hikers are fighting back but they have no chance. They can only buy time for the hikers that run into the forest to keep running away from the fire.

Speaking of hikers running away in the forest, where are they running? Do they have a hideout in the forest? Because I don’t think the raiders will leave soon. They are capturing all the hikers they can find and putting them to chain near the sea. I think those raiders are slavers.

---

In the forest, some voices can be heard. People are shooting high and angrily at each other.

“You can’t go back! You’re going to be slaughtered!”

“They need our help! If we go back, we can save them!”

“No, we can’t! We’re no fighters and they are pirates!”

“You’re just a coward!”

“Listen, please! Calm down! Whatever we’re deciding, we can’t do it without thinking first.”

“You’re right. we must think of our survival and hide in the forest.”

“They’re dying for us! We must go back to save them!”

“Yes! They’re dying for us! If we go back they’ll die for nothing!” That last sentence seems to calm the arguing people.

“And what are you proposing?”

“We can go to the old temple and pray the Goddess to send us help.”

“The Goddess left us a long time ago. But there is a new force of nature in the forest. I’ve sensed it. It’s in a small clearing with a fountain in it, it has the purest water I’ve ever tasted flowing in it. We could try to make a stand there if the pirates are following us this deep in the forest.”

“You fool, the pirates won’t let us escape. They’re going to chase and kill us, we can’t survive.”

“Stop being so defeatist, the Goddess is still there! We must pray to her for salvation.”

The voices continue to resound for a while in the forest.

---

The day is ending and the night is starting, so I order my bats to take the place of the birds in the surveillance of the raiders. They’re also to look for the hikers in the forest.

When the bats come back to report I get news that aren’t so good. A big group of approximately sixty hikers is actually arguing in the forest. I can’t make out what they're saying, but they seem to disagree on what to do. A group is pointing at the village, a second one pointing directly at my mountain and a third one pointing in the direction of the clearing. After a bit of time, the three groups move in three different directions.

The first is going back to the village, it’s mainly constituted of young men that seem hotheaded. I think they want to try and rescue some of the villagers or take revenge on the raiders. They’re only going to get kill or join the captured ones.

The second group is lead by an old woman and regroups most of the elder hikers and some children. They’re walking slowly between the trees and in a straight line to the mountain.

The third group is the bigger one, with people of all ages. It’s lead by the hiker that I suspect to be a Second. This group is heading in the direction of the clearing.

I leave the bats on guarding duty and call for all my other creatures to be ready for an intrusion. I think I screwed up there, I don’t have any real monster that could push back an invasion of my domain. But maybe I can make some, I quickly pour mana in my two first crabs in the hope of making them evolve before the arrival of any real danger. For the rest, I’ll have to rely on sheer number, after all, I have several hundreds of normal crabs and dozens of evolved ones. When comparing my evolved creatures with the difference of power between the evolution process in my memories I doubt they went through real evolution.

During the night I found that I was right. The group of hikers that went back to the village was easily taken down by the raiders. The slavers even sent scouts to locate the runaways, of course, they have found the other groups tracks and have started following them. It means the hikers are leading the raiders to the clearing and to me.

I’m certain that if some people with a not bad mana sense enter my domain they’ll notice the different quality of mana here, and everyone can see the constantly blooming trees. I would have liked more time to prepare myself before the first intruders arrived, and for them to be something else than refugees or scumbags.

I keep monitoring the hikers' advancement during the night, they have a big head start on their pursuer, but the raiders will progress faster. When they’ll stop partying in the village’s ruins.

At dawn, the third group reach the clearing and drop the few things they own on the ground and rest. They’re exhausted and drinking the water from the fountain should help them to regain their forces faster.

The other group had to stop earlier to rest, as they have mostly old people and children amongst them. They have stopped near a small hill covered by bushes. Now that it’s morning they’re resuming they’re walk in direction of the mountain. A few hundred meters before the border of my domain they stop in a clearing with a big hill. I’ve noticed this hill in the bats' memories before but never paid real attention to it, and now that I’m taking a closer look at it - through the eyes of my creatures, of course - I notice its form is a bit too perfect to be natural.

The hill is forming a perfect circle and there is some sort of recess in the side directly opposed to me. The artificial shape is reminding me of the cave where I found the mana crystals. I look at the partially crumbled tunnel going from the bottom cave to an unknown location and make the math, the tunnel looks like it’s going straight under the hill. I’m curious about this so I claim the tunnel all along it and I was right. The tunnel is indeed going under the hill, there is a spiral staircase linking it to the recess on the hillside. Did the hikers use to come down this path to pray to the statue in the cave? In that case, why did they stop doing so? Was it because the tunnel collapsed and they couldn’t dig it again? They should have been able to do it.

Ooooh… I have an idea. I rebuild the tunnel under the hill and set the hilltop to be easily open by me if I want to allow the hikers to come inside and save them.

As the other hikers, they’re setting some kind of fence around the fountain’s clearing. Are they intending to fight the raiders here? If the invaders come there, they have no chance of victory.

Speaking of the slavers, they are finally starting to move from their slumber. Some of them are taking care of the captives, others are still looking for things to plunder and a lot of them are making preparations to enter the forest.

The raiders are following orders from a big bald man with lots of scars on his body, he has a lot of muscles and a really big black beard. I would bet he has accomplished an evolution, he may be a Third. I don’t think I could beat a Third, I’m even sure I could beat a Second right now. Some Firsts? Yes, I could, as long as there is not too many of them, and the raiders are too numerous for me.

There are some hikers that run alone in the forest, I think they have better chances to escape their pursuers than the two groups.

I’ve made my decision. I’m going to rescue the hikers. If the raiders take or kill too many of them, I’ll lose all possibilities of observing them, the remaining few that would survive would not be able to rebuild the village. If I want to use them for whatever dungeons do with sapient beings, I must save them. And if I maneuver right, they could even consider me a blessing and decide to protect me.

The first thing to do is to move back in the bottom cave the smallest of my mana crystals, the one I had found near the water crystal. Next, I make some of my stars in the ceiling of the tunnel to lead the hikers to the cave and arrange some of them into constellation in the cave. I also enlarge the room and put down there a big star that shines almost as bright as the sun on a cloudy day. I force some rock to turn into dust and make some trees grow and produce fruits. I install a big area of comfy moss around the already present lake. Finally, I turn the eyes of the statue into reflecting stones, they’ll reflect the light that comes to them and give people the impression the statue is looking at them.

I could send some creatures to guide the clearing’s group to the hill and try to save them too, but I need them to gather the attention away from the group I decided to save. I will at least send some birds to try and lead the hikers still hiding in the forest to the hill.

When all my preparations are done the raiders are only two hours from the hill. I open the entrance on the hill and look at the hikers' jaws drop.