Note: This chapter has not gone to my editors and events may change before final release. The below is also unedited and in a raw non-polished form.

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“So what do we do now?” Tom asked as he stepped forward.

“I think we’re supposed to fight, but I can just give up.” Toaby suggested.

Tom shook his head. “Nah. I’ll give up. You’ve done enough to prove you are who you say you are. I surrender!”

As soon as Tom made the announcement, an enormous banner in the sky appeared above Toaby’s head. Each side of the banner had a trumpet playing fanfare. The banner itself read ‘Victor’ in over stylistic cursive. It hung in the hair for a few moments, allowing everyone present to see before the two were transported back to the forest. They appeared right where they had vanished from.

“Tom! What did he do to you? You both vanished for a few minutes.” Chris pointed his spear toward Toaby.

Tom waved a hand. “Nothing. He proved that he is indeed the arbiter.”

The rabbit corpse Tom was holding before the trail by combat was gone from his hand. Looking around, he spotted it back under Toaby’s belt.

“That worked out much better than I thought. Now I just have to remember that I used it late morning so I know when I can use it tomorrow.” Toaby adjusted the items on his belt to make them more comfortable.

“Huh? Why don’t you just check your character sheet? It will list all your active cooldowns. You can also display them on your screen if you will them there.” Sam suggested.

“Will them there?”

“Yeah. You can activate your skills or bring up your menus by just thinking about the actions. Like if you want to bring up your character sheet, just think about it and it will come up.” Sam added.

Toaby mentally slapped himself. I’ve been shouting everything out like an idiot. He thought about his character sheet and it displayed in-front of him. Sure enough, there was a timer next to his trail by combat skill that read twenty-three hours and fifty-seven minutes. Mentally willing that to appear in his general vision, a small box of a gavel and sword crossing appeared outside of his sheet. He mentally moved it so it was placed near his notifications. There was a label over the icon that read ‘23HR’ to indicate the time remaining.

“Thats a really neat trick. Does it work when you loot corpses?” Toaby asked.

Sam nodded. “Of course. How else would you get the items?”

By grabbing them out of a floating menu box like a fool. “No idea. Sooo, where do we go from here?”

“We would love to have you come look at our community. We’ve had a bunch of issues with raiders and monster attacks. We have to practically rebuild the entire settlement every week.” Tom gestured toward the tents.

“Tom. I don’t want to undermine you, but are you sure that's a good idea?” Curtis added. “You remember what happened last time we let someone knew in.”

“It’s fine, Curtis. I agree that we have to be a bit more selective, but the system is backing his story up. Besides, we’re never going to grow and survive if we don’t let more people in.”

Curtis grunted, turned and headed back toward the settlement. Sam smiled and followed after him.

“Shall we?” Tom gestured for Toaby to walk with him.

“Sure.” As they started walking, Toaby started asking the question that was burning in his mind. “Do you mind if I ask what you did to get here? You seem… nice, I guess is the right word.”

“There it is. The one taboo question.” Tom stopped walking. Turning to face Toaby, he had a serious expression on his face. “We don’t have a ton of rules in our little community. Help contribute, don’t be a prick and you’ll find a place among us. One of the few things we ask is that no one talk about what they did to get here. Thats in the past and it doesn’t matter anymore. Were here now and…” Tom looked down for a moment but quickly returned his gaze to Toaby. “You’ve died before, so you should know. We get the pleasure of reliving everything in Helheim. A lot of us, myself included, would like to forget the past.”

“I’m sorry for bringing it up.”

“Its fine. Probably better that we spoke about it now before meeting up with everyone.” They started walking again.

“You said meet everyone. How many of you are there?”

“In our little community? Twelve. Thirteen if you join us.” Tom smiled.

“So far, so good. As long as you guys follow the law, that is.” Toaby chuckled and Tom joined in.

“Do you mind if I ask you something?” Toaby shrugged and Tom pointed to his waist. “Whats with all that meat and fruit on your belt? You’re going to ruin that meat.”

Toaby looked down. There were hairs of his rope belt sitting on the raw flanks of meat. They also didn’t smell too great after walking around for hours. “I don’t really have a better place to put them.”

“Why don’t you just put them in your inventory?”

“My what? Inventory?” As soon as Toaby finished saying the word, a grid crashed into view. It was a copy of the loot screen, a five by five empty box display but with the word ‘Inventory’ at the top instead of ‘loot’.

He grabbed a piece of meat and was about to place it into an empty slot when he remembered mental commands. He thought about all the meat and fruit going to his inventory, and it all vanished with a small burst of light to reappear inside his inventory. Two of his boxes now contained items. The first had the rabbit meat with a small number two in one of its corners, and another had his fruit with the number three. He tried again with the bunny corpses and smiled when a third box filled.

“That’s incredibly useful and would have been good to know sooner.” Toaby commented.

“You didn’t read the pamphlet?”

“What pamphlet?”

“The one that shows you all about the common commands and information about the system. I thought they gave it out to everyone who signed up.” Toaby shook his head. “Hmm. That sucks. I’ll fill you in on anything that comes to mind.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem. Looks like here were so you’ll have to save the rest of your questions for later.”

The two walked into the center of the tents. There was a large fire pit with several logs and stones placed around it for seating. Now that he was in the settlement, he counted eight tents, all roughly the same size. They looked big enough to fit two people sleeping comfortably or three if they squeezed. Each tent had a small flap that didn’t appear to have any form of locking mechanism.

One thing he couldn’t see from afar was the small forge area that was set-up. There was a large, thick boulder with small cracks in it and a makeshift stone forge. It wasn’t impressive to look at from Earth’s standards, but for a civilization living in tents, it was perfect.

“Come on out, everyone. I want to introduce you all to our newest citizen.” Tom called out.

People started hesitantly leaving their tents and collecting in the central area. They all appeared to be in their early to mid-twenties and mostly male with a few females. What shocked Toaby was the limited ethnicities. Curtis and one of the females had dark skin, there was a male Asian and a single Hispanic man. Other than that, everyone seemed to be Caucasian.

I wonder if they placed the various ethnicities together, or maybe they put similar crimes together? I hope that's not the case because that means everyone’s a murderer.

“If everyone remembers the global message from yesterday and the message you received a few moments ago, this is the arbiter. The first peacekeeper to come to Midgard. His name is Toaby. Everyone make sure to introduce yourselves and make him feel at home.” Someone actually raised their hand. “What is Ed?”

“Is he going to help us against the raids? I’m sick of dieing and having to walk all the way back here when I respawn.” A shorter gentleman, Ed, questioned.

“Raids?” Toaby inquired.

The people started whispering amongst themselves, so Tom raised his hands for silence. “Calm down, everyone. Calm down. I’m sure Toaby would be willing to help out with the raids. For now, let’s make him feel welcome. We’ll have plenty of time to discuss all of that. It’s lunchtime anyway. Sebastian!” A Hispanic man stepped forward. “Why don’t you start lunch and we can all get something to eat.”

“I would love too, but we don’t have much left in reserves after the attack the other day. It’s going to be half portions again.”

“I have some odalon fruit and rabbit meat if that helps. I also have some rabbit corpses if you need more hides.” Toaby opened his inventory with his mind and emptied it onto the floor.

“This is great!” Sebastian grinned. “I can get another helping of meat from each of these corpses, and then I’ll let Sam salvage the hides.”

“Sorry, I already looted the meat from them.”

Sebastian held up a plump dead rabbit and shook his head in confusion. “You did?” Then his eyes lit up with understanding. “Ohhh, you meant the loot table. I have the butcher skill so I can play a mini-game to get more meat from the corpse. Same thing with Sam, but he has a skinning skill.”

“I knew carrying around dead bodies had to have a benefit.”

Sebastian chucked as he grabbed the ingredients and disappeared into a tent. Most of the people waved and said hello before returning to whatever task they were doing before Tom introduced Toaby. There were a few who stopped by to speak with him in more detail. One of them was a female by the name of Laura. She was the only other one, besides Tom, who was wearing any leather.

“Hello. I’m Laura, the local leather craftsman. I’m also pretty handy with a dagger.”

“Pleasure to meet you.”

“I see you have some nice gear on. After lunch come find me and I’ll clean it up for you. I also have a skill where I can enhance armor slightly using spare leather. We have some rabbit leather that wasn’t stolen in the last raid that I can use.”

Toaby waived his arms. “That’s ok. Don’t you think it's a better idea to use it to craft armor for someone who doesn’t already have some?”

“You brought some hides with you so I’ll replace the ones I use with your fresh ones once they tan. And to answer your question, probably but a few rabbit hides aren’t going to be nearly enough for me to craft a single piece of anything but they will be enough to enhance your gear.”

“I’m not going to put up too much of a fight if you want to upgrade my stuff.”

She nodded and walked away. A bald man who had a bit of muscle on his frame quickly replaced her.

“The names Nathen, but you can call me Nate. I’m a miner.” He looked at Toaby’s weapons. “Are you any good with those?”

“I wouldn’t say I’m great, but I know where the sharp end goes.”

“Ha. That’s funny. I’m going to the mine tomorrow morning, I’m hoping you can tag along and help take care of some monsters who have been bothering us.”

“Monsters?”

“Ya, there’s some nasty…” Nate tried to explain, but Tom cut him off.

“We can discuss more official business tonight at the town hall meeting. For now, lets just relax and enjoy some lunch.”

“Relax? That’s why the raiding parties are wiping us out. We keep relaxing!”

Curtis appeared behind Nate. “Do we have a problem here, Nate?” He crossed his arms to intimidate the miner.

Nate shook his head, but his expression was serious as he spat out, “No. We don’t have a problem.” He turned to face Toaby again. “Come see me later about those monsters.”

Toaby got the strange feeling in the pit of his stomach that he associated with his truth seeker skill when Nate said there was no problem. He was just glad Curtis intervened so he could dodge making a scene on his first day.

“Sure thing.” Toaby answered in his own serious tone.

After Nate walked off, Tom released a held breath before addressing Toaby. “Sorry about that. Tensions have been a bit high ever since the last couple of raids. Things aren’t great here. Are you sure you want to come police us?” Tom fained a laugh.

“I’m sure. I have my own reasons for what I do, but maybe you should tell me about these raids?”

Tom took a seat at one of the logs and tapped the spot next to him. “Take a seat and I’ll do my best to fill you in.”