We were making plenty of progress in our investigation, the far north of the capital was littered with suddenly abandoned villages. All knights sent to investigate the situation disappeared, naturally the higher ups ordered us to exterminate any potential monsters.

We had been travelling for three days, but we had seen no signs of monsters of any kind which was a worrying sign.

Our subjugation squad was an elite knight force composed of knights exclusively above level fifty, we had nearly two hundred men with us on our mission.

The first encounter we had was disastrous, after three days of marching our weary soldiers stood no chance against the snow covered undead.

We all tried to retreat, using an abandoned fort to hold our position against the waves of neverending undead soldiers.

Our troops were elite, powerful soldiers with the skills and the strength to subjugate any monsters! Or so I thought.

We were slaughtered, slowly but surely.

It was a battle of attrition and we weren't able to last, our defences wained and eventually even our strongest knights began to fall.

The very top troops and core of our fighting power emerged from the fort and began the counterattack, we had the power on our side to beat even ogres!

Then, I saw as a lone knight with a blade formed from the ice itself butchered our finest troops.

He was clad in similarly ice looking armour, giving off an extremely sinister feeling as he casually sliced his way through the soldiers who could beat even ogres with relative ease.

I despaired, my last hope of living to see my family or anyone ever again vanished as that nightmare appeared.

He was like a walking disaster, he had the absurd physical strength of an ogre and the ridiculous speed to pair up with it due to his weight but with the discipline and skill of an elite knight meant that he truly surpassed our troops in every aspect by an absurd margin.

I couldn't estimate his level, 80-90 seemed on the lower end but such power was still very unreasonable for a single being to reach.

All I could do was sit at the very back of the fort, preparing to sacrifice myself to hide a few of the soldiers that lay beneath the floorboards.

My commander walked up to me, handed me a sack that he told me to guard with my life and gave me a choice in a voice that barely hid his own fear.

"Stay, fight, die, or you can tell the king of what has happened here and mobilize our heroes and soldiers to wipe out those monsters without fail!"

I didn't want to be a hero and die powerlessly, I wanted to live on!

I had no choice, I wasn't a coward but I had no choice other than to climb atop my horse and ride far away from the fort whilst two of our strongest knights and even our commander ran towards the frozen knight with raised weapons and the knowledge of their impending death.

The last thing I saw of the fort before I disappeared into the trees in the distance was a large spiked collum of ice pierce directly through the centre and presumably kill all of those I had once called my friends.

As I watched the two shadowy beings prepare for a mock duel, Ark ran along after me.

He stopped right behind me and started hyperventilating, clearly having pushed himself to follow me.

I put his arm around my shoulder and lifted him up to watch the ensuing battle.

The two sides were staring each other down, Apollo may have been a hero and an extremely powerful archer but Mars was an elite knight and expert close quarters fighter. The battle would be tough for either side to completely win.

"Begin."

I gave the signal, though their focus never left each other.

Apollo struck first, he drew his bowstring and fired.

Mars was prepared, he readied his sword to swat away the incoming arrow at bewildering speed.

Apollo snapped his fingers, simultaneously the single arrow began to multiply.

Mars had to jump back, hundreds of arrows sprang forth and flew towards him.

Each arrow had the power to take down a building, this was Apollo's signature technique '1000 arrows'.

Mars weaved through the falling arrows and tried to get close, he held an absolute advantage as soon as he got within range.

Apollo drew his bow again, the arrowhead shimmering with brilliant light as he loosed it.

The speed of the arrow was enough to force Mars to make an emergency dodge, he barely ducked his head intime to avoid the absurd missile shot towards him.

The resounding sound of an explosion hit my ears as soon as the arrow contacted the ground, the dust settled to show a massive crater from the impact the size of a house.

Apollo prepared yet another arrow, forcing Mars to focus on evasion as an arrow with an irregular pattern was fired.

Mars had to utilize his bodies full strength to dodge the arrow with refined, acronatic movements.

The arrow had locked on to Mars, following Apollo's will and travelling towards him under the total control of it's owner.

Mars was hit, he suffered a hit to his armour powerful enough to make it crack slightly.

Apollo was already preparing another arrow, before he saw a blur travel close enough to always cut him in two.

Mars was using an unknown technique, at the cost of his stamina he had sent a blade of magical energy cascading from his sword towards Apollo.

The technique had lost it's trajectory after travelling a few meters and just barely missed, but it still created an opportunity for Mars to get even closer.

Apollo seemed to know that he was about to lose, because he prepared an arrow that gave off an incredible sense of power.

He loosed the arrow, which combined all of his skills into a single shot strong enough to drain his power completely.

The arrow split into one thousand glowing arrows, travelling at absurd speed as Apollo struggled to focus them all onto his target.

A few were lost due to the mental strain of manipulating them all and the overall accuracy decreased, but the sheer speed and number resulted in Mars being peppered in arrows that bore through his armour and left him kneeling on the ground.

Apollo put away his bow and drew his dagger before running towards Mars, having injured his opponent enough to dominate him physically.

Mars couldn't handle the damage inflicted on him previously and barely raised a defense as the dagger searched for the weak point of his armour, Apollo finally finding a gap that he could access with his strength.

Mars seemed defeated, but had waited until Apollo was close enough to swing his sword down to land a final hit.

The result was obvious, whilst injured Mars was still physically superior to Apollo and has the speed necessary to land the finishing blow.

He naturally gained no experience, and I resummoned Apollo after who seemed much more relaxed after his loss.

The two soldiers had seemed to form a sense of understanding between one another, shaking arms after the first of what was likely to be many, many duels.

Ark had stayed mostly silent, but soon looked towards me with bright and loyal eyes.

"My lord's power is such that even his soldiers are incredibly strong!"

He knelt down before me, which was a habit I hoped he would get rid of as I urged him to his feet.

The return to the city was far more pleasant, we weren't in much of a rush so the scenic walk was quite calming.

We saw a rather ragged looking man ride by on a horse, focused singularly on getting back to the city at all costs.

I was a little curious but the man was already too far ahead for a 'normal' human to catch up.

We continued our walk in relative peace and quiet, save for Ark's incessant praise and his attempts at discussing the possibility of getting more magic books.

Alex greeted us by the city gates, a look of excitement on his face.

"We've managed to get three people to level five! This is amazing! Those three will be able to level the others up and hunting as a group will let us grow even further!"

His excitement was understandable, E tier people wouldn't typically have been able to level up much at all due to lacking skills.

He continued, but with more worrying news.

"This place is the Hvid kingdoms capital, that means that there are D rankers in the city as we speak. They're in the castle, but if they see us here then they'll be likely to tell someone."

The news was worrying, even after a few days the S rank heroes had started becoming strong. When supported by a kingdom I knew that even D rank heroes would gain unprecedented power, including assasins more aware of their surroundings and capable of sensing our familiar presence.

The city would again have to be a very temporary home, it seemed that we were not welcome anywhere.

With everything else out of the way I decided to go on a bit of a shopping trip, clothes were out of the way but weapons were an issue aswell as buying equipment for Ark and spellbooks for the other mage types in rank E to study from.

Increasing the power of everyone was not an effort that could be forsaken just to become a bit stronger myself, if I was going to learn magic then anyone in rank E who had the capability was going to learn magic.

The bookstores came first, then anything remotely related to magic.

We got a grand total of thirty six magic books over an hour long search through the city, I left the contents for Ark to decipher and teach to us when he was fully familiarised.

The days focus for myself was monster extermination, having Mars and Apollo nearby would mean giving XP to only one of us so I sent them out to hunt individually again whilst me and Ark checked for any ruined buildings or monster nests to destroy via noticeboards and word of mouth.

We found out that a relatively small nest of undead had popped up inside of a ruined fortress just south of the capital, so the two of us decided to start preparing to take care of the problem and level up at the same time.

My goal was level thirty, that was near the level of raw power that Apollo had achieved as a hero so matching at least that much seemed like a priority.

My status window needed to look ridiculous.

In actuality I had realised that my titles provided a bonus needed to match Apollo before that, but using the bonuses from my titles felt somewhat like cheating when comparing with people who had to level up normally so matching him without them seemed fairer.