Just an fyi from the author, the gods/goddesses/deities/divine beings spoken of in this chapter aren’t actual Gods with a capital G, it merely denotes a level of power above, or in some cases outside, that of the nine tiers. I take my inspiration from a variety of sources and if some of what I write offends anyone, or is inaccurate, please say so.

The Sweetness were classed by the System as an Insidious Swarm type Monster. Any sentient races that had ever met them classed them as something else; Town-Killers. The creatures were amorphous beings that took on the appearance of whatever their intended victims found most harmless. Coupled with illusions and an innate mesmerizing ability the Sweetness could easily infiltrate a Town or City without raising an alarm. Once inside each individual Sweetness would track down a victim and immobilize them, the Sweetness’ bite carrying a potent venom that did little damage but had an incredible paralyzing ability.

Once immobilized, the Sweetness would inject its eggs into the body of its still living victim. The eggs would hatch in a matter of minutes, the newborn Sweetness’ burrowing their way out of the victim before maturing over a matter of hour and moving on to find the next victim. Looking at the short time between the laying of the egg and adulthood it would be normal to assume a life span of days or perhaps weeks, yet the terrible creatures could live up to a decade if left unchecked. The worst part of all of it was that the Sweetness were manavores, they fed off the ambient Mana in the air and had absolutely no need to kill anything other than for their own amusement.

The most common countermeasures against the Sweetness were either an Artillery Mage, a Mage class specialized in extra-long range Magical destruction, or a Paladin. Paladins were Holy warriors empowered by Divine beings giving them access to a range of power spells and skills along with heavy restrictions. Each Divine being covered different domains and therefore Paladins often had wildly different abilities. Despite the often anathematic nature of the various Divine Beings there were exactly twelve things they agreed on. Number eight on the list is a KOS order on Insidious Swarm type monsters like the Sweetness. To aid with this every Divine Being gave automatic Extermination Quests to all Paladins that included the temporary use of Mental Resistance Auras.

Fortunately for the Town of Bastion, Paladins weren’t in short supply. In actual fact, the Town had three Paladins, a peculiarity considering there were only five Tier 3 classes in the entire Town. The answer as to why came in the form of a Tier 3 Undead Dungeon located a few miles from the town. Since the Undead were particularly weak towards Life Magic, and Divines that dealt with Life weren’t exactly choosy, it was a lot easier to become a Paladin or a Cleric than any of the other Tier 3 classes.

Out of the three Paladins Thomas was the strongest. His family originated in Ireland and even though they didn’t really follow any of the old faiths he was aware of them which is why when he was offered the Paladin of Dagda Class he leapt at the chance. Even though Dagda wasn’t exactly the same being as was described in the legends, he was a major deity under the Magic, Life and Change domains. As one of his Paladins Thomas gained plenty of power with little in the way of restrictions, the largest being that he couldn’t hold any sort of position of power. Since Thomas hated politics with a Van Gogh level of passion this was more of a blessing than a restriction.

During the daily patrol his team ran into something … creepy. Thomas supposed the teddy bears were meant to be disarming but watching the stuffed creatures walking towards him with their arms outstretched freaked him the _____ out. Looking around he found his team seemingly enamored by the bears. Just as he was starting to freak out a quest notification popped up. Looking over the info he realized what was going on, he also realized his team was in even more trouble than he thought. Since he had previously believed they were about to be attacked by demon possessed children's toys, this was saying something.

Quickly activating the Aura skill provided by the Quest, Thomas cast all the buffs he had whilst charging at the Sweetness. His teammates would need a few seconds to get their heads in the game and he was going to give it to them.

In hindsight, it may have been a bit overkill to go in fully buffed and screaming at the top of his lungs. The majority of the Sweetness were only early Tier 2’s and couldn’t even withstand a half-hearted assault from a drunk sloth of the same level. Their strengths lie in subverting their victims minds and killing targets that put up as much fight as paraplegic coma patients; on a scale of one to ten their actual combat abilities were minus 4. As such, when Thomas bulldozed his way through their ranks, he did more damage than if he had chucked an actual bulldozer at them. When his teammates came to, they were greeted by the image of their fearless leader smashing into horrifyingly anatomically correct teddy bears. The blood, guts and various pulped up remains of the evil creatures being such a visceral shock that even the battle-hardened berserker felt queasy.

Needless to say, the brutal one-sided slaughter didn’t last long. By the time he was finished Thomas was covered head to toe in blood along with various fragments of bone, brains and an actual, in-tact, heart. The sight was too much for Sharon, their Ranger, who threw up her lunch, breakfast and just for kicks, her dinner from the previous night. James, their healer, took care of her, happy for the distraction. He didn’t become a healer for his love of unrestrained violence.

With no more enemies around Thomas finally came out of the fugue state he was in and realized his surroundings. Sighing he took a bucket of water from his inventory and started to clean up the worst of the blood. During the first month out of the Tutorial he’d run into a swarm of monsters and was forced to watch his team die one after the other even as he fought to keep the endless tide of monsters at bay. Ever since then he tended to go into a berserker like state whenever his teammates were in danger, to the point where he always kept a spare bucket or two of water; blood stank after a while.

Once he was presentable, or as close as he could get, he explained what was going on to the others. Despite the dozen Sweetness he had just pulverized his quest said there was another 50 nearby. After going through everything he asked the others if they wanted to join him or return to the Town but after the smackdown he had just laid on the Sweetness none of them were afraid of the Monsters. If anything, they felt sorry for the poor teddies.

As Michael approached the group they tensed up, readying their various weapons in preparation. Michael couldn’t blame them, even if there weren’t people out there who would attack and rob others the sight of Hazel bearing down on them spoke to the primal part of their minds like a girlfriend saying ‘we need to talk’; not necessarily bad but something they’d like to avoid if possible.

When the two of them got close a man wearing full plate armor and reeking faintly of blood came out to meet them. “Alright, that’s close enough. Who are you and why are you out here?”

Michael and Hazel stopped. “The names Michael. The fluffball is Hazel.” Michael dodged a playful swipe from Hazel. “What’s yours?”

“I’m Thomas, that’s James, Sharon, Frank and Michelle.” Thomas pointed at the Healer, Ranger, Mage and Rogue respectively. “Now why are you here?”

“Pit stop. We came from a town about a couple weeks in that direction, Bastion happened to be on the way.”

The armored man stared at him for a few seconds. “You seriously expect me to believe you travelled for over two weeks through the wildlands like some kind of tourist?”

Michael shrugged. “Why not?”

The man looked at him like he was an idiot, an impression that Michael wasn’t doing a lot to correct. “Oh, I don’t know, the monsters maybe? Those are Tier 3’s out there.”

Michal was surprised. “There’s tier 3’s around here? I thought I was still in Tier 2 country. Where are they, and what kind? I’m on the lookout for Lightning types, need the cores for my, um, for something.” Michael felt inwardly relieved, he’d almost let slip about his bow but caught himself just in time. He felt proud.

Thomas stared at the weirdo in front of him. The reaction wasn’t what he expected. Most people were at least a little cautious when they heard of Tier 3’s yet this guy looked excited at the prospect. That, along with the obvious slip about Tier 3 lightning cores, meant the guy was either crazy or he was actually telling the truth, which was even crazier. Either way the guy was probably more trouble than he was worth.

“No lightning, mostly undead. Quick question, you going to be trouble?” As much as Thomas enjoyed chatting to crazy people, he decided to get to the point.

Michael smiled. “Don’t worry, I really am just looking to rest up, maybe explore the Town a bit. I’m on my way to what used to be Michigan, got family over there.”

Thomas raised an eyebrow. “You realize they’re probably dead, right?”

Michael shrugged. “Eh, what else am I going to do, fish?”

Thomas suppressed a small shudder. “I really wouldn’t, fish ‘round here have started biting back. They’re also the size of minivans.”

“Noted. By the way, what’s up with the monster teddy bears?”

Thomas shrugged. “Ah, just some mind-numbingly horrific creatures that needed extermination, no big deal. That was actually the last of them, so no worries there. If you want, we can escort you to the town. Not sure about, uh, Hazel. People might not be all that okay with a giant bear walking around.”

Michael looked over at Hazel who didn’t raise an eyebrow. Not because she didn’t want to, but because bears don’t actually have eyebrows, despite what some cartoons say. After a few seconds of silent communication Michael turned back to the armored man.

“Let’s see how it goes. If people are really that bothered, I have a place that I can stash her.” Michael said.

Tin man shrugged. “Alright, have it your way. You sure she won’t attack people?”

Michael smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ve got her trained well.”

At which point Hazel slapped him.

Bastion was impressive, a lot more than Benneton. Mark Turks reign coupled with a lack of higher Tiered resources had made the Towns development stagnate, but the opposite had happened here. The nearby undead Dungeon had power levelled the towns healers which in turn made fighting a lot safer which had a cascading effect leading to better resources, better gear and an all-round accelerated growth. The cherry on the cake of it all was that the Undead Dungeon had a side effect of driving away the majority of the Monsters and making the Town safer.

Of course, it wasn’t all good. Living near the Dungeon cut the townspeople's Health Regen in half, reduced their disease and poison resistances by fifteen percent and any dead bodies rarely stayed that way. Several hundred people lost their lives before they realized what was happening.

Still, the Town was one flush with resources and would likely have become a city if they had more people. The area had been pretty sparsely populated before and the Manapocalypse hadn’t helped things. After a year in hell Bastion had a little less than 41,000 people with over ten thousand having come from the surrounding areas. Unfortunately, the minimum number of citizens needed for a city was 50,000, leaving Bastion just short and making its people as frustrated as an eighty-year old with an iPad.

Since they couldn’t upgrade the Town, they chose to upgrade everything else. The Town wall was fifty feet tall, lined with enchanted ballista and Mage towers. That, coupled with a triple upgraded shield generator, let Bastion truly live up to its name. As Michael and Hazel entered the town, they were met with wide open streets lined with sturdy yet stylish buildings. Walking along the streets Michael was surprised at how peaceful it all felt. In Benneton there was always this sense of urgency, as if people had the hounds of hell perpetually chasing them. To be fair, the urgent atmosphere was likely a temporary phenomenon brought on by recent events. After all, Michaels first introduction to the town had been in the form of an invader seeking to sow chaos.

After entering the Town Thomas led Michael over to the Guard Station. One of the abilities given when taking on Guard duties is Truth Detection, an invaluable ability for solving the various disputes that inevitably pop up when a bunch of people live in close proximity. Thomas wasn’t convinced by the possibly crazy man's definitely crazy stories, so he decided to get a guard to check him out. Since he nothing to hide, at least in regard to his travel plans, Michael didn’t mind. That being said, he had at least three escape plans ready in case of a double cross. Just because Michael preferred to see the best in people didn’t mean he was an idiot.

The detour to the Guard Station didn’t take long. They snatched a guard who had just returned from patrol and knocked it out quickly. The guard asked Michael where he came from, what his plans were and if he had any nefarious intentions towards the Town. The guard may not have said nefarious, but Michaels internal narrator found the guy boring.

Thomas wasn’t all that surprised, Michael was too relaxed to be a liar and acted too normal to be crazy. While they were on their way Thomas had been chatting with the man and found him to be an interesting person. He was definitely hiding something, but every person had their secrets and as long as he wasn’t planning anything bad for the Town he was fine with letting sleeping dogs lie. That being said, Thomas needed to get as far from this man as possible as quickly as possible, or vice versa. Thomas couldn’t help liking the guy but he could feel change coming off of him. As a Paladin of Dagda Thomas had a sense for change and the feeling Michael gave off was unlike anything he’d ever sensed before. Michael was either going to be an agent of change or an agent of chaos, neither being something Thomas wanted anything to do with.

Unfortunately for Thomas, fate had other plans. Fate the ephemeral phenomenon that is, not Fate the divine being. That Fate was currently preoccupied by the Beast-Kin people of Herswitz 8 who were undergoing a massive civil war that was accidentally started due to a misplaced dessert.

As Michael walked through the town Thomas was pointing out various shops and explaining the rules of the Town. Due to the nearby Dungeon people had a mandatory check-up once a week with one of the many available healers. On the bright side healthcare was free in Bastion thanks to the abundance of healers. Michael was quite interested by the Dungeon. Unlike the Vitr Heimr dungeon that took ages to finish the undead Dungeon, named Jaden Lanmò, took a maximum of 3 hours to complete.

Michael was originally planning on simply stopping by the Town to grab the location for his Portal Ability, but he might as well stick around a few days, run the dungeon a couple of times and maybe make some friends with some of the locals. Once a method of travelling between town was sorted, he had a feeling that Bastion was going to be very busy. If he could get a foot in the door, maybe even buy a house, the dividends would pay off massively. Michael may not have a lot of interest in business but even someone as clueless as him could see an opportunity this big. For now, though, he wanted to grab a room at a nearby inn and spend the night sleeping in a nice bed with no chance of being viciously attacked in the middle of the night.