“They’re coming!” Samantha shouted, ducking behind cover. “Casters get ready, tanks to the front!”

As they’d trained, the rest of the squadron moved at her orders, ready to stand against the incoming wave of enemies. They readied their abilities and took aim at the caves opening, waiting with bated breath.

“SCREEE!”

As a solid mass of screeching bats poured out of the cave's mouth, each with a wingspan a metre wide. The countless animals ran directly into the shield-carrying front line, ramming them in a crude attempt to attack. Their line faltered for a moment as the black wave hit, before they pushed back, holding firm. From over their shoulder a volley of projectiles was loosed, ranging from arrows to lightning bolts to vials of explosive oils, raining down on the swarm. Once the initial impact faded the bats began to spread out, seeming to realize being together was now working against them.

Prepared for this, Samantha gave the order. “Cease fire! Fighters engage, healers focus the tanks until the fighters have dispersed them, ranged units focus fire at the edges, do not shoot into the melee!”

Swordsmen that had been holding back leapt into action, throwing themselves into the thick of it, eager to get to work. Against the combined efforts of the fighters the bats stood no chance. What made for a threat against the unwary at night was simple to deal with by those who knew what they were doing.

Taking one last shot at a bat trying to escape back towards the cave, Samantha wiped her brow and looked over the battle site. People were mopping up the last enemies now, working together to lock their more nimble opponents in place to safely finish them off. As the last bat fell, people cheered.

"Good job everyone, we managed to finish the job with no injuries." Samantha said to the group.

Someone put their hand up. "Actually, Keith took a pretty hefty bite to the arm that took some healing."

"Good job everyone; we finished the job with no one important getting injured." She restated to some laughter and a rude gesture from Keith.

"So what now captain?" Luke asked.

"I've told you before I'm not a captain." She said with a frown.

"No, of course not. You're just the one who plans what we do, where we go and gives us order in battle. Not like a captain at all.” he nodded sagely.

“Oh put a sock in it. Everyone gather up the bodies of the bats as best you can. Prioritize the… Luke?”

“The most valuable parts of cave bats are intact wings, followed by the eyes and teeth.” he recited by memory.

“Right, grab the ones with full wings and intact heads, pile up and burn the rest.”

People groaned. “Can't we just leave them? Other animals will eat them in a few days.”

“That’s been done before in other places. Usually it's fine, sometimes it leads to disease or an undead outbreak. Which would you prefer, Jerry?” she asked pointedly.

“...I’ll grab a shovel.” They grumbled before walking off.

She snorted in amusement, then sighed, her thoughts becoming more serious. Ever since she realised what was coming, she’d begun training even harder, not just to go track down her brother now, but to do her best to survive. Her efforts had not gone unnoticed. Not only had her skills gone up significantly, but she’d begun to amass something of a following of the other trainees, them seeing her as both a goal and an example. Choosing to put every tool she had to use, she’d accepted them into her group, leading them to complete missions that she thought they were capable of and using their rewards to outfit them appropriately.

As word spread and people looked for strong groups to attach themselves to, her small squadron had grown to just under a hundred people from multiple combat disciplines. Along with almost twice that number of non fighters who’d agreed to support them, Samantha had ended up way out of her depth in managing the situation.

Which was where Luke had come in.

When Mr. Lincoln had noticed that she was becoming overwhelmed in trying to manage everything on her own, he’d told her she needed to learn to delegate. Forcing his grandson to go and help her had been difficult for the old man, with Luke not wanting to fight and instead being far more interested in how the system technology worked. But after a number of deals, promises and a small brawl in the backyard, Luke now served as her second in command. The seventeen year old was still a gangly nerd, having put in more effort avoiding his granddads instruction than it would have taken to do it. Having taken the scholar class they hadn’t initially been much use on the battlefield, but made organizing the movements of hundreds of people possible.

He was also the first person Samantha knew who’d manage to get a class upgrade. Scholars apparently got experience for learning and recording their discoveries, something very easy to do when you’ve just entered a brand new universe. After reaching level thirteen he’d been suddenly confronted with a screen offering him different class paths. According to Luke’s own findings, you couldn’t upgrade until you’d qualified for enough options, even if you had the level for other offers.

So now Samantha's growing army had a Quartermaster, a scholar class skilled at managing people, supplies as well as having access to a limited system store. They didn’t have the credits to buy anything worth having, but it did show them what things were worth according to the system.

With their finances and equipment all being taken care of by Luke, Samantha had been free to work on training herself and her people, under Gordon's watchful eye. She’d given up on expecting much help from Vork, the Kurtza only going so far as to get them to the minimal level of ‘good enough’. If they were going to survive, Samantha knew, then New Earth was on their own. She just had to hope it would be enough.

~

Nekratain sat in an interesting spot politically. While not a part of any group itself, the planet was right between the borders of three separate nations, giving it a certain amount of respected neutrality. And like all places in this position, it had two choices, the first being a careful meeting place where their neighbours could come together and make alliances on neutral soil.

Nekratain chose the second.

Having no real authoritative overwatch, it was home to more casinos, drug cartels and criminal enterprises than it did upright citizens. With the planets ruling council being made up primarily of the leaders of the largest criminal families, it did have laws, but they were so minimal that as long as you didn’t commit mass murder in the streets, everything was permitted. But there was still a balance, since chaos didn't lead to long term profits. Other criminal groups who tried to take a foothold on Nekratain quickly found themselves cornered, ill prepared for groups that were able to run their operations in the open.

John Smith, one of many who’d given up on dealing with their real name entirely, ran a small bar in the capital, not large enough to match the income of the drug dens and gambling halls, but did good business with the information brokers who wanted a more quiet place to work in. so they more than used to receiving calls from people who didn't want to name themselves, who they wanted to talk to or what the call was even about. Sometimes not even the stack of stolen code books under the bar helped. Today though, the call was vague for different reasons.

“John’s Bar, what can I do for you?” They said as they took the call.

“Go-od, finally--got thr--ough.” The voice came through, full of static. “I ne--ed a signal boo--st urgently. Can yo--u ask if anyone can p--ut it thro--ugh on Redsh--ot’s tab? Ti--me is a fa--ctor.”

“It always is.” John said with a sigh before covering the phone and addressing the bar. “Got a call for a communication relay here! On a tab under the name ‘Redshot’! Any takers?”

There were a few moments of silence as a number of operators quietly checked their books looking for outstanding accounts before one raised their hand and walked over, returning the bar to normal. Taking the phone, they checked their files.

“Redshot? This is Greenline, you currently owe me seven and a half thousand credits, and it’s getting close for me to call in that debt. You want to add a signal boost to that?”

“De—sperate times.”

“Ok, I’m not going to talk you out of a sale, it’ll be two thousand credits a day for the boost, three if you want it kept off the record, four if you want it kept off my records as well.” she said with a shrug, pressing a few keys on her tablet and activated the relay system.

“That’s better.” Tobin said as the call quality cleared up. “And by all means keep this on your records, I’ll only need it for a day and this is all going to be very public very soon.”

The broker paused. “What exactly are we talking about here?” they asked.

“Heh, you of all people should know that good information isn't free.”

Greenline bit their lip, getting a feeling they'd regret this if they didn't press it. “I suppose I could waive the boost cost if this information is good enough.”

“Aaaand you could get rid of my debt and owe me a dozen favours and still not cover it, but we can go from there I suppose. I don’t know what you'll do with it, but I do know the value of this information. I need to go soon, and this is going to be public in two days time. Up to you.”

“And you’re sure this information is worth something?”

“I can't think of anything that'll be a bigger deal once people find out.” He said with confidence.

“I’ll hold off on the favours until I know what you have, but fine, let’s see what you have that you think is worth some credits.”

“Well, to start with, what do you have on a planet called Datov…”

~

“I didn’t think you could make a call from here.” Marcus asked suspiciously as Tobin returned, putting away his phone.

“We’re moving at light speed towards society at the moment. It buzzed me when we moved from no reception to awful reception. “

“So we can talk to people now?”

“We can talk to Nekratain now, though it’s expensive at this distance. You got someone you want to try and talk to?”

“I need to find my family. And the rest of species I suppose.”

Tobin nodded. “I suppose I can have them look into it. Shouldn’t be that hard to find a planet of working sticks.”

“No no, they’re humans.” Marcus said, waving his hands.

Tobin raised his eyebrows. “Nice of them to adopt a stick then. Wouldn’t have thought pre-System planets had multiple races living on them.”

“I am a human! Or, I was until we got pulled into the system.” He clarified, looking down at himself.

Tobin sucked air through gritted teeth. “Race change? Those are rough, I've heard, especially big ones.”

“People change races? So I could turn back?” he asked hopefully.

The gnome shook his head. “People can sometimes evolve their race, from say... human to human superior. Or in my case Gnome to Grey Gnome. They give some general bonuses and sometimes a few specialized bits and pieces. But a full change is something else. That takes either a god level power to remake someone in their image, or the System's direct involvement. They only ever work positively though, from what I understand, so you’re supposedly stronger as a Wood Walker than you were as a human.”

“So,” he said thoughtfully. “I could theoretically turn into a better human? One that’s stronger again?”

Tobin shrugged. “Theoretically? Sure. The universe is wide enough that trillion-to-one odds do happen. Wouldn’t bet on it though, you’ll probably end up as a better wood walker, especially since you’re currently a ‘lesser’ variant.”

“Right, about that...” Marcus prompted.

He sighed. “We’re supposed to be hunting, you remember that right? But sure, last question. Dunno about you in particular, never seen your kind, but in monsters and animals it’s a way of the system balancing things. It implies you’re either a younger or weaker version of what the basic kind is. Probably means that a normal wood walker was too many steps above humans for you to reach, and why you couldn’t afford a class as well.”

“So classes are-”

“Hunting.” Tobin said sternly, cutting him off as he drew his rifle.

“You know, you were a lot easier to get answers out of when you were terrified of Datov.”

“Oh I'm still terrified of them, I just know they won’t kill me for no reason, and short of me attacking you, I don’t think they’ll have one.” He said with a smirk.

“True.” Datov admitted, something Marcus didn’t pass on.

“Fine, I did say we’d help you find something to hunt, so what are we looking for? You’re a Quad, so should we find you a stag? Those are in the category.” He offered.

“No! Are you crazy?!” Tobin yelled frantically. “Same category? Gods, I forgot that you have no idea about anything. The gap between levels grows as you go up, and there’s obviously a big difference between level one thousand and level nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine. Same category my ass. Not that I'd normally tell someone, but I'm in the low two thousands, while I know for a fact that a Datovian Great Stag is normally around the six mark. There’s footage of what happened when some dumbass tried to keep one in his private zoo. A dozen cities burned down before they managed to push it off world.”

“They do bite a bit.” Marcus agreed.

“Bite a bit he says... Look, I can take a single animal in the low thousands or anything lower than that. What else have you seen around?”

“Some of the squirrels that lived on my shoulder were in the hundreds, and I got grabbed by a goldfish that was a bit over five hundred. Would either of those do?” he said thinking back.

“...Gonna circle back to that later, but no, I'm not gonna get much for a goldfish or a squirrel. Anything else?”

“I saw a stag chase down a bear a while ago? So I guess that’s lower than the stag?”

Tobin scratched his chin and nodded. “Ok, let’s go hunt a bear.”