I can barely believe, I finally managed to wield Aether. It felt like an instant, and it was gone. But Nash assures me that it was more like 5 minutes, and what I remember is only the very last moment coming out of my ‘meditative’ state.

Still, elation fills me as each step I take has a larger spring to it. I make good use of the last hour before the sunrise to hunt a few wolves. Though the terminology is probably outdated. I have not killed one of them in well over a month, and I don’ think more than a dozen people in the village still do that, but old habits die hard, and a couple of people trying to come up with other terminology were having no adoption to their way of speaking from anyone.

Either way, regardless of how brief my contact was with aether, I felt completely different afterward. I also came to realize even if I did not wield it before, my vast improvements on a few aspects was like a knockoff version of Aether.

Without telling anyone, I still had not chosen my class. I didn’t even tell Nash about this. The title I got a couple of weeks in and the fact that so far no class seemed suited to me converged into a firm belief that I should hold for now.

I had no idea of how rare something like this was, but deep down I had the feeling that it was something to be coveted by every single person amongst humanity. There may be only a dozen people with such massive advantages.

High-Tier Title unlocked. For being the first in your instance to reach level 50 in a skill you have been granted a boon. The True Spear Wielder. A title that only accompanies those that understand the spears essence and prodigies rarely seem amongst sentient beings. All spear skills are 20% easier to increase. All effects of spear skills are 10% more effective. All stats are increased by 10 % while wielding a spear.

Only a single high-tier title may be used at a time.

Do you wish to equip The True Spear Wielder at this time:

Yes No

From the outside, and for someone that did not understand the spear’s essence, I was an amateur. But which amateur could reach level 70 in a skill if their highest stat was not even 40? Level 70 is way beyond the soft cap. With Aether in the mix now, perhaps, I really deserved to be in the shadow of the Magic Man, propping him as humanity’s champion.

Although that name is too corny, we need something better, Pando’s guardian or something even better. I take a deep breath as I see the tracks from the wolves, but as I start to follow the trail, a thought comes to me. Perhaps I would be better served by going after the bigger prey instead of only learning a little bit here and there with the wolves.

I already know how to hunt them, and with this realization, my entire perspective is changed as I head miles farther away from the village.

----------------------------------------------------

Soon after the sun starts to peek over the horizon, I finish going around and talking with a few of the people in the village I used to always stop by when I was in the city. I head for the map room, and entering the town hall, different from the usual silent place, I see two people on the corridor. There are three doors open with people in two of them. I open fully my new senses and am rewarded with a headache.

It seems there are some spatial shenanigans around here, moving away from the door, within the space inside the town hall, instead of being in the transition, my senses come back to normal. I head in for the map room, where I find Charlie, Greg, Richard the commander, and a few other people around the map table.

I continue moving, now even more slowly, given I have to depend on roots grown from the outside, instead of making them grow from the ground. It is not too big a hindrance, so I continue inside at a reduced pace. I wonder at how inept this form is for anything approaching proper combat. Everyone else would feel like high-level rogues around you given their higher mobility. My only shot is hiding my main body. And protecting it with tons of roots all around me.

With a low chuckle, I let go of the thought and concentrate on listening to the ongoing meeting. I attempt to make sense of what they are talking about. With Richards back to me, he doesn’t realize I’ve entered the room and continues to speak.

“I still think it’s a mistake, if you say we need a few days to prepare, it’s fair. I’m not advocating we should rush blindly to attack lord Max, but any other alternative is untenable.”

Charlie points out:

“For now any attack is untenable. Tomorrow we will have to defend against the regular attack, and who knows how difficult that will be. It’s supposed to be fairly easy, but our strength is severely depleted. And the difficulty will be scaled to our strength from about a week or two ago. Not our current state. We don’t even know the time the attack will be yet. So until then, even preparations for attacking Lord Max’s forces would be counterproductive.”

Charlie pauses for a moment to catch his breath and then continues:

“After that, at the very least we would need double the attack force from our allies to come to our site, and that pretty much excluded any other option besides an even larger attack force given that Lord Max would have the time to prepare even more surprises. We are quite lucky that Nash’s capabilities, which I’m pretty sure don’t add to the strength of the village was here to help us. He saved a good amount of our strength in the first attack and even if his contribution was shorter in the second, it was no less significant.

“Merlin, do you believe you would have the resilience to handle enough mana for both the attacks without Nash’s interference?” Continues Charlie after throwing a stealthy grim in my direction.

“No way. Most of the village knows a little bit of magic, but to get any good at it, you need a few converging factors, and our entire force of dedicated mages was exhausted by the end, even I was starting to get tired. With Nash’s help, it was like we fight only about 70 % of the mages. Especially on the second attack, his mana disruption field was especially effective there for a few moments. It completely threw off their rhythm and allowed us to keep the upper hand the entire time. They also had more mana than we were expecting, we are not entirely sure how they were sharing mana from the entire army to the mages, but for a shorter siege, that is effectively unlimited mana. And this was just on the magic front, I doubt that his tangling roots were any less of a help to everyone else fighting.”

Richard, having turned slightly and seeing me continues with a grim.

“And I doubt he will have even half of the effect in an attack. Without time to grow his plants beforehand, their utility is severely limited. I get that it will be hard, but it needs to be done.”

As Merlin sees me and becomes aware of the little joke Charlie played on them he chuckles lightly, but keeps silent and hears as the meeting continues uninterrupted.

“This is why I say we need more time. I can begin reaching out to our allies, and seeing if they are amenable to forming a grand alliance against Max’s village. As you two know, after defeating the enemy army, we gained access to another aspect of the system. One of the main benefits is the inclusion of contracts enforced by the system to the treasury room’s functions. Along with the other room, but we will have to wait for the mayor to see what that is all about.”

I assume he said that mostly for my benefit, but it drives the point home. The commander finishes start wrapping up the meeting with:

“Fine, let's convene again later today. I will think about what you said, but do note, that if we don’t take a sizable army with us, there is no chance that he would sign any agreement. Trying to corral any kind of agreement of the other villages is going to be a tough sell.”

“Not as hard as you may think, and who said that we could only use these contracts with enemies. Now we can impose economic sanctions against any of the signatories that don’t fulfill their part of the bargain. Trade and other actions will only become more secure with proper contracts. We shouldn’t let it get out of hand, but properly leveraged, this is an amazing tool for us to use.”

Without another word said, everyone stands for a moment with their scrunched-up faces thinking, and a few moments later slowly leave. Merlin, the commander, and other people wish me a swift recovery as they pass. Moments later with only me and Charlie still standing in the room, he begins by asking me.

“Are you ok?”

“Of course I’m, better than ever. Just need to rest a bit on my comfortable bed here.”

I hear the distinct noise of his low chuckle, as I move my head in his direction after stretching like I was on a king-size bed.

“Ok, either way, your actions were a massive help. Don’t even worry about the mana that you used from the battery or the mana that your plant used after you were knocked out, we will fill everything up when we have the chance, free of charge.”

“How did you know I was pulling mana from even the main battery?”

“I have my ways. Regardless, that is a small price to pay for your help. Though you might not even need to bother with us by now, ohhhhh high-level person.”

“If I had chosen a class, sure. There hasn’t been anything yet that seemed right. Sure I could choose one of the generic classes and upgrade it later. But it just doesn’t feel right.”

“Holy cow, you did all that without even a class? You are level 10, how??”

“I have my ways, and I’m not the only one holding out at a low level, I have seemed indications of a couple of other people without a class.”

“Nevermind. So what have you come to talk about?”

“A few things, but first, another two rooms?”

“Yeah, for now, we only have access to the treasury besides the obvious, “ he says gesturing to the room around us. “We don’t know exactly what unlocked it, but it seems that a private citizen legitimately holding more than 1 gold in a ‘bank’ created by the village was one of the requirements we met.”

“Did my money grew to that already?”

“We trying to come up with a fair distribution for your efforts so far on the industries, and you managed to hit the mark a few days ago. We paid most of the cost of transporting the ore with a few small deductions. Never mind all that, you look it over the books later.”

As I look at the map in the table, I’m stunned by the sharpness of the image. I zoom in on my house, and even that far away, its resolution is better than the village last time I was here.

“How the…”

“Zoom out.” He says with a grin on his face and throwing his weight back a little as he straitens his back and stands proud of something.

In barely a second, I use the touch like controls to show all that has been explored. I’m stunned as I see that within about a 400-mile radius we have a continuous circle, and there are two scouts teams almost forming two sections of a 1000 mile sided hexagon. What takes me by surprise, though it shouldn’t, is the lack of villages to the west beyond Lord Max’s Village. There is a line I see slightly curved that the villages follow, and in only a moment the math comes to head.

“So, are the villages all arranged in a circle with a big hole in the middle?”

“From the reports we are getting, it seems so. A couple of math heads Calculated the diameter of the circle but I forgot. We didn’t notice anything too odd at the start, but with the range increasing it becomes more obvious the curvature. They have the distance we are from the center noted down somewhere, but it’s not it will be immediately useful.”

I think over his statement, and while he is mostly right, I have to disagree, and a crazy plan starts to form in my head. Other concerns can wait, I need to think for a moment.