Because of the extensive testing by the ratkin on the prisoners, there was an abundance of information regarding their experiments hoarded in the fort. The tests themselves were just as fascinating as the results, besides being alarming and grim. Many had been performed to understand the different types of bodies, inside and out, several more on the mana permanence of the races. From this, it was discovered that humans were actually at the top when it came to innate arcane ability, alongside other races like nymphs and stingtails.

However, the reason there were far fewer human arcanists than otherwise was because the other races had all been developing techniques to communicate with the ambient mana of their home planets for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, a privilege Earth had not granted. Consequently, this meant the Sorcerers Temple quickly became one of the most active parts of Ratterinks as cartloads of tomes and artifacts were hauled off for further study.

In all, 300 of the original 2000 ratkin were taken prisoners. They were methodically interrogated and largely discarded of afterwards, allowing the humans to learn that it was now highly unlikely that the System would allow the 2000 ratkin reinforcements, led by Talis’s uncle, to come here anymore now that they had lost their base. In fact, it became known that the ratkin operated under a different System to all the other races on Idroa. Unfortunately, none of the captured were anyone of import, mostly just career soldiers and civilians of other professions called in to help with the war effort. After asking, Silas learnt that Tawny was not amongst the prisoners, although some of the Smallfoots were. Not that he was interested in visiting them.

Either way, this victory meant that the humans were now uncontested in the region. The Order of Tyr had been slaughtered; the shaerds had been assimilated and were now vastly outnumbered; and the ratkin had been thoroughly broken. There was only Riverside and New Derby left in the immediate area, and both were only growing in power with every day that passed.

1. Silas Wycliffe - level 53 - Duellist

2. Dominic Wood - level 51 - Black Knight

3. Natalie Svoboda - level 49 - Cryomancer

4. Mia Pascall- level 48 - Elementalist

5. Josh Thompson - level 47 - Nemesis

6. Iris Azer - level 47 - Lifetree

7. Lina Radhakrishnan - level 46 - Blazeblade

8. Diego Garcia - level 46 - Supay Summoner

9. Clio Tiafel - level 45 - Halberdier

10. Brigette Wagner - level 45 - Bladesinger

…

26. Elise LeBeau - level 43 - Minister

…

201. Damon Hersey - level 36- Metalworker

202. Amara D’Aegor - level 36 - Commander

…

521. Rolf Ruttering - level 34 - Tactician

…

1003. Zita Miniati - level 29 - Beautician

…

1607. Tessa Flowers - level 25 - Alchemist

…

1911. Olivia Green - level 23 - Squire

…

2129. Ethan Wycliffe - level 20 - Druid

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4381. Gert Taube - level 1

Apart from the general increase of levels, it was also notable that Ethan and Olivia had finally taken on classes, although in truth Olivia had picked hers a week before when Silas had been journeying to Ratterinks. She had become a Squire, following Dom’s footsteps, and Silas could easily see why the System had offered her such. She was going through a transformational stage from being a nobody into someone of power and capability, only he hoped nothing tragic would happen to her on her path to make her into a Black Knight.

As for Ethan, Silas understood his selection even better as he had known his brother for years. Ethan was alarmingly kind and gentle, so it made sense why he had been offered Druid. The class itself was rare and somewhat like Beastmaster, only where Beastmasters were forceful and domineering, Druids took a far more gentle approach to taming monsters and also had abilities that spread into general stewardship of the earth according to other Druids in Riverside. The first ability increased communication with all life, so recently the younger Wycliffe had been spending a lot of time with Bandit.

Riverside’s population had also jumped almost a thousand in the past few days since the prisoners from Ratterinks had joined the township. Elise had set quarters for them to be constructed and chosen people to take care of them, at least to help them adapt to modern life. However, it was to be noted that the treatment of these ex-prisoners largely depended on their race as while humans and shaerds were given quick passes, the races that made up the Order of Tyr were slaughtered without hesitation, and the other few were kept around but on close watch.

These were mainly individuals of the drakkar and stingtails races, the former being lizardmen with scaled bodies and the latter being human-sized scorpions with only two legs and giant indexed arms instead of claws. Curiously enough, they could also fly by blasting out air from the small holes in their torsos. Information about their respective races was wrung out from both groups and compiled into dossiers for public viewing.

In addition to all of this, the prophet - or more specifically, his clone here- had relocated to Riverside, earning himself quite a grand abode for his contribution to the war. Not that he seemingly required one as he never rested, instead constantly spreading his influence over the township while being careful not to offend any of the key players. Since most of his creations and zombies had died in the war, he was alone here except for the zombified pygmy troll who followed him around everywhere. The other two notable zombies had been sent away to work in other areas.

He had yet to call up on Silas for the mission to deal with Kuraim, although Silas wasn’t illusioned enough to think that the fungal satyr had simply forgotten. Rather, the preparation was proceeding in the background across all corners of Idroa as the prophet scouted out more recruits for the strike team he was assembling.

Level

1. Dahlia Howe - 69

2. Kuraim Jaffer - 66

3. Lucian Grimes - 63

4. Ajit Ghost - 63

5. Freddie Littlewood - 62

6. Katerina Ivanov - 59

7. Vivienne Durant - 59

8. Zafeera Bazzi - 58

9. Aengus Abercrombie - 58

10. Lavanya Sanghvi - 57

…

14. Zhang Bao - 56

15. Sandip Mand - 56

…

35. Matteo Rivera - 54

…

42. Silas Wycliffe - 53

43. Sophie Chandler - 53

…

61. Dominic Wood - 51

…

82. Floyd Godson - 50

83. Taika Ngata - 50

84. Volkan Burch - 50

…

100. Waseem Bukhari - 49

Although there were the usual shifts in the levels leaderboard, the biggest change was that Jeung Seoyeon, a former top tenner in both levels and notable kills had vanished from the lists. There was no doubt over why this was, and it reminded Silas of his own morality, that no matter how strong he got, he could still disappear from Idroa the second he messed up.

Aside from that, he recalled how the prophet had said there were beasts in the mid-70s already. Assuming the prophet had been speaking the truth, it meant there were several monsters who outstripped the highest-levelled human by quite a margin, which was, by and large, a discomforting thought. But then again, this didn’t mean that these monsters were stronger than Dahlia as evidenced by the notable kills leaderboard.

Notable kills

1. Dahlia Howe - 2 E-3

2. Lucian Grimes - 3 E-4

3. Ajit Ghost - 2 E-4

4. Katerina Ivanova - 2 E-4

5. Freddie Littlewood - 1 E-4

6. Zafeera Bazzi - 1 E-4

7. Aengus Abercrombie - 1 E-4

8. Lavanya Sanghvi - 4 E-5

9. Vivienne Durant - 3 E-5

…

14. Silas Wycliffe - 1 E-5

15. Zhang Bao - 1 E-5

16. Sandip Mand - 1 E-5

…

37. Matteo Rivera - 4 F-1

…

100. Volkan Burch - 2 F-1

Despite being only level 69, Dahlia had already killed two enemies rated above level 70, so it seemed levels didn’t overly concern her in the first place. More close to home, Silas had almost made the top ten following his solo kill on Xe’Hekon. It made sense why he had jumped so high considering the strict requirements that were required to facilitate a solo kill, which he supposed also explained why Kuraim no longer made this list. Likely the Necromancer preferred to vanquish his high-levelled foes with overwhelming numbers from his horde, as the prophet had suggested, or perhaps he took care of them some other way.

Class

1. Elisha Luna - Primal Healer level 26

2. Kuraim Jaffer - Necromancer level 21

3. Hou Yu - Artificer level 20

4. Emmanuel Baasch - Alchemist level 20

5. Sophie Chandler - Demolitionist level 19

6. Katerina Ivanova - Hidden Blade level 18

7. Dahlia Howe - Abomination level 17

8. Conan Hughes - Druid level 17

9. Laila Samra - Mirage level 16

10. Aiyasha Okilo - Shaman level 16

…

41. Stefan Sommer - Chronicler level 15

…

85. Reynard Holden - Runesmith level 15

…

100. Roxanne Martin - Oracle level 15

And as usual, the classes list had most of its rankers maintain their positions despite the stiff competition they faced. In fact, Silas himself wasn’t far from entering the list, at least based on levels, since he had become a level 13 Duellist following his completion of Xe’Hekon’s quest. He had heard theories that the higher your class level got, the less relative experience completing a class activity would give, which meant all the focus was on achieving your class quests if you wanted to level up further.

This made sense of why most rankers on the list had only made small increases in their level in the last few weeks. At the same time, it placed a different light on the top five who had each levelled their classes five times in the period despite being so high already, particularly Elisha and Kuraim again.

Silas Wycliffe

Level 53

Level 13 Duellist

Mana: 253/253 (recovery rate: 1.25 per minute)

Strength: 33 (+9)

Agility: 46 (+9)

Constitution: 26 (+9)

Arcana: 16 (+9)

Perception: 55 (+9)

Abilities: Weakness Vision, Harrying Blows, Luminous Land

Apart from all these global events, Riverside had also been making steady progress as the blacksmiths continued to improve their manastone edging process, making the coating more durable, and the alchemist continued to increase the effectiveness of their potions. One particularly notable breakthrough had been in the first hovercar operating on manastone being created locally in Riverside. It wasn’t near as sleek as the ones stolen from Lyfort yet, but then again it was only a matter of time before the engineers achieved that.

Additionally, New Derby had amped up their manufacturing further and were experimenting with bullets traced with manastone to shred through foes like Talis and Krumtor who could take full barrages with just scratches to their hides. They were also testing with stuffing manastone in armour and looking at making that work, and Silas had heard directly from Skully that the council had tried to mechanise the runified mana barrier, before quickly realising it was totally out of their depths.

Not that this mattered much anymore since the ratkin had many documents instructing on how to create mana barriers, how to alter them, and how to lower their mana cost per second to maintain them for longer periods. In essence, this would allow the whole population, not just the mages, to form mana barriers around themselves, a breakthrough which would massively decrease the general life cost of combat.