1. Silas Wycliffe - level 47 - Duellist

2. Dominic Wood - level 45 - Black Knight

3. Natalie Svoboda - level 45 - Cryomancer

4. Mia Pascall- level 43 - Elementalist

5. Josh Thompson - level 41 - Nemesis

6. Iris Azer - level 40 - Lifetree

7. Lina Radhakrishnan - level 39 - Blazeblade

8. Diego Garcia - level 38 - Supay Summoner

9. Brigette Wagner - level 38 - Bladesinger

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14. Elise LeBeau - level 37 - Minister

15. Clio Tiafel - level 37 - Halberdier

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172. Damon Hersey - level 32- Metalworker

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234. Amara D’Aegor - level 30 - Commander

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511. Rolf Ruttering - level 26 - Tactician

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1404. Tessa Flowers - level 21 - Alchemist

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2195. Olivia Green - level 17

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2317. Ethan Wycliffe - level 11

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3351. Osip Petrov - level 2

Four days later, the aftermath of the attack on Lyfort was still felt in Riverside, especially from their marked loss of life during the attack. There were fewer officers patrolling the streets, and the hospital was thronged with the severely injured from the battle, still recovering. To make up for their drop in experienced troops, Riverside had followed New Derby’s stride in enlisting hundreds of those holding simple roles in the township, training them as to bring in fresh blood.

However, not all was gloom and doom since the war’s survivors had gained much in experience and resources, causing a swift increase in the average level in Riverside. A considerable number had also upgraded their classes from it, the most notable one being Josh who had finally bagged himself a rare class, Nemesis. From what Silas had gleaned from the blond’s words and from sparring with him, it appeared to be a class in line with Antimage Brawler where it shone when disabling enemies and countering their abilities. Josh certainly seemed pleased with this as he became more confident than before.

Aside from this, Lyfort had also been set up as a human outpost shared by Riverside and New Derby. Although the buildings were still marked with bullet holes and streets stained with blood, rebuilding had begun to reduce the size of the settlement and make it more manageable for the number who would live there. The grimmest business had been in piling all the several thousands of corpses into bloody mounds of ghastly faces and twisted limbs. Given the sheer number of bodies, it would have been brainless of them to leave them there since already waves of flies covered the mounds in dark, undulating, amorphous veils.

They buzzed incessantly, loud enough for a man to go mad when also listening to the shrieks of the carrion-eaters who harmonised with the flies and seeing the accusing glares of the dead. Since it would only get worse the longer they left it out to rot, the corpses had instead been driven into Riverside’s vicinity and dumped just out of sight. The plan was to haul them into the portals when the next horde came and rid of them then.

The absence of the Order of Tyr in Lyfort meant all their possessions suddenly became free real estate, and the humans jumped at the chance as they snatched up everything they could, in particular the rare pill bug hovercars. Engineers had already begun disassembling these and studying their inner workings to figure out how they ran on manastone. Other than this, arcane manuals from Lyfort’s libraries were also hot commodities as it turned out the Order of Tyr had step-by-step instructions for learning a number of spells from all the way back during their time on Caen. It also explained why they had consistently had far more mages than the humans.

New Derby equally capitalised on these goods, with Floyd waking on the third day after the attack. All the same, he remained woozy and in recovery, so the city was properly being run by its council for the first time since the Champion had successfully toppled the previous mayor. Despite this, New Derby’s council made no moves to remove or murder Floyd in his weakened state as it seemed they fully intended on him returning to being their overlord, a foreign and near-alien idea to Riverside’s denizens who had fought tooth and nail to rid themselves of tyrants.

Silas paid little mind to this as he instead focused on his own shortcomings, recalling over and over his duel with Krumtor. Although he had technically won, it was a pity victory at best with his enemies sweeping him to the side and striding past at the end. He knew both Dimas and Karaes had been stronger than Krumtor, and he had no clue whether he would have emerged alive, let alone victorious, if he had gone against them instead of the ogre. Even with Krumtor, he had barely lived because of his runified mana barrier which had saved his life several times then, keeping him out of reach of the void tentacles. However, it was clear he would have to upgrade his other equipment as well if he was to have a chance at similar foes in the future, not least because the ogre had threatened to return and finish the deed in good time.

If he had possessed Floyd’s strength, he could have undoubtedly cleaved through Krumtor’s limbs, but instead all his blows had rebounded off the ogre’s ironhide skin. He had faced a similar problem all the way back when facing the Swamp Troll as well, and it was safe to assume future foes would possess similar toughness too. As such, it only made sense to upgrade his weapon first and foremost since he was still using the System-given spear from the tutorial. Although Kore’s writings on manastone weapons were mostly illegible, the small parts that had been understandable had done much in furthering the blacksmiths’ progress.

Silas watched Damon as he beat a glowing length of steel, spraying droplets of sweat with each blow. The Duellist stood with other blacksmiths and healers and mages in the forge, roughly encircling the Steelworker and Cryomancer who stood in the centre near the anvil. The other clutter in the area had been cleared out in order to make this test as safe and clean as possible. The quenching station consisted of a small vat holding flaxen yellow oil.

Pleased with the shape, Damon picked the steel piece and stepped over to the oil, dunking it straight down. Flames burst from its surface and licked away at his gloves, but Damon persisted until near a minute later when he pulled the steel out and placed it on the work surface. He motioned towards another blacksmith, a young woman who swiftly opened the oven to the side and picked out another metal piece with her bare, calloused hands, the tempered steel already having cooled. She came and placed this on the work surface, meanwhile Damon worked the quenched blade on a high grit belt until its faces were metallic again.

Finally done, the Steelworker took a deep breath and nodded towards Natalie who brought a box of mana crystals. Damon placed the blade in his hands over the flame again until a hint of glow entered its edges, at which point he cast it towards the Cryomancer; he was outfitted from head to toe in protective equipment in case anything went wrong, but Silas had gone further by runifying it with a mana barrier. Natalie picked a handful of crystals, and with resolve flashing through her eyes, she pressed her hands against the edge of the burning blade.

The reaction was immediate as the mana crystals reacted explosively, but Natalie countered this with extreme cold from her palms. As such, the blade violently shook in a fine equilibrium with the Steelworker struggling to hold it still until finally the burst of energy lessened and lessened before flatlining. A thin mist had spread over the open forge during the process, but it couldn’t hide the finished product from Silas’s eyes as Damon raised the steel piece to appraise it, one of its edges a glossy blue. It glimmered like crystals as he looked deeper. They held their breath.

The mist cleared, and the sight elicited sounds of excitement and awe from the others. Through this, Damon grinned, his roughly hewn features made fiercer by the flash of teeth besides the wet clumps of his mutton chops. Natalie smiled similarly, a faint blush of colour in her pale cheeks.

“Well, you all saw that. This is only quenched and not tempered yet,” Damon said, moving slowly towards an anvil holding a solid block of metal. “And you all know I’m no master swordsman.” With this, he swung the blade down into the block, the glimmering edge leading. It plunged right through with the piercing sound of nails on chalkboard instead of clanging and bending on contact. The excitement in the forge surged to another level.

The Cryomancer and Steelworker next repeated the edging process on the tempered blade, while also putting the first blade into the oven. They did so since Kore’s writings suggested that edging before tempering provided better results than edging after it, a fact which they wished to test.

But although they had succeeded in the first step in upgrading these weapons, there was a reason why the Order of Tyr didn’t use this exact process on their weapons since it turned out the edging would flake away when using the blade, making it an incredibly wasteful use of the rare manastone which had been filtered further into rarer still mana crystals. The Avatars had weapons which bypassed this problem, but it seemed their process was also far more difficult since only a handful of proper manastone weapons had been crafted during the Order of Tyr’s history.

Not that this particularly bothered Silas, who was the first to commission a shortsword with mana crystal edging. He intended for this to replace the axe which he carried around as a backup weapon; he would continue using his spear on normal foes, and only switch to the sword when facing Krumtor-level enemies. Even if it became useless after a couple of swings, that could still be enough to butcher a foe given he made the right slashes.

It was while he waiting for the sword’s completion that he went to see Elise again. Her stormy expression somewhat cleared on his appearance, although it was still creased.

“I’m guessing this is about the scouting,” he said, taking a seat.

She nodded. “The scouts we sent have all died. Some made it deeper than others, but their last messages were all pretty much the same: a ratkin force comes upon them and then radio silence.”

“Maybe we should send a larger force then,” he suggested.

Elise was quick to shake her head. “I fear that would just result in more pointless deaths. We’ve sent them enough of a warning with our scouts, so I imagine they’ll now be on the lookout for anything making enough noise.”

Silas paused as he considered this. It wasn’t like Elise to call on him with no plan in mind. “So what do you want me to do?”

Her face scrunched up. “I’ll take your counsel on this, so it’s ultimately up to you. But you’re the strongest we have, and you’re sharp enough to avoid detection. It’s high risk, no doubt, but both you and I know what’s on the line. So what do you say on becoming a scout again?”