A group of guards and workers were on their way back to Alarna after a long day of work. Like every day, they were tired and couldn’t wait to get home, but while they would usually use this time to talk about what they were going to do that evening, today, many of them were deep in thought. At the head of the procession a worker and a guard were one of the few people talking.

“What do you think about all this?” Fae asked Bren.

“I think Brie is right, this is the same stuff the others are constantly promising. Whenever there’s a dip in beast activity in town, they start shouting that it’s all thanks to their leadership or us following the gods, but nothing ever changed what it’s like out here. That Lilly will come back tomorrow, saying there wasn’t a beast yet because of her powers, and then expect us to praise her. And she’s still a criminal... I shouldn’t have let her go. I will definitely take her in tomorrow.”

“Ugh, can you forget about that for one moment? What if she said the truth about what happened to her? Do you really think she should’ve stayed in town if they were going to kill her for no reason?”

“No, I can’t forget about that. You saw what she can do! She’s really dangerous! Even if they did imprison her, it might’ve been for a good reason!”

“Hm... You’re right.”

“... I am? I think that’s the first time you've ever said that.”

“Oh, don’t worry, your conclusion is all wrong.”

“There we go,” Bren said with a sigh. “Let me hear it. The one, true truth.”

“Why would they imprison her?”

“Ugh, a guessing game? Fine. Because she’s dangerous.”

“Why is she dangerous?”

“Seriously? Because she can overpower a cat six and fall trees with the flick of a finger!”

“Hmhm, good. And how is she doing that?”

“She— Well...”

“How is she doing that if not with the power of the gods?”

“... I don’t—”

“And from there, you loop back around to the start. They imprisoned her because she got powers from the gods! But if it was the gods who gave them to her, she’s probably not evil, right?”

“... I really have no idea.”

“That’s fine. Just don’t report her yet. Let’s see what happens.”

“What!? I have to report her! Otherwise my head is on the line!”

“Don’t be so dramatic. At worst you’ll have to stay in prison for a day, right?”

“... You know, you always complain about this arrangement, but I feel like I’m the one getting the short end of the stick here...”

“Whatever are you talking about?” Fae said with a smile.

“Ugh...”

***

Reurig and I had returned to our camp hours after the sun had gone down. Starting north of the worker camp, we slowly made our way all the way around to the south, through the forest, in a half-circle. In regular intervals, we climbed onto trees and wrote mana output modification scripts on them, to keep beasts away from the area. Tomar and the others had done a few tests on their way back to Alarna, and they confirmed our theory about these modified trees affecting beasts similarly to how we would. Creating them all around the camp would then effectively create a safe zone. Climbing the trees had been pretty bothersome, but this would ensure that nobody would stumble upon our scripts by accident.

The one potential issue that was still left were the stronger beasts. A category six was supposed to be incredibly rare in these parts, so it would’ve been a weird coincidence for one to appear today of all days. There was probably a reason for it. Thinking back to when we had first fled Alarna, and how our pursuers had apparently been swarmed by category five beasts, I realized that our presence might potentially be causing changes in the local wildlife. If the beasts were scared of us, and actively avoided us, we might be causing them to migrate somewhere else if we stayed in the same place for several days. That’s why nobody ever saw weaker beasts while we were in the vicinity. Stronger beasts on the other hand might not approach us, but they were not nearly as scared, and they would stay in the area, or even move here, because hunting is a lot easier if you don’t have to fight over the prey with other, weaker beasts.

Unfortunately, we didn’t know what all of this meant in terms of protecting the worker camp yet. We were several kilometers away from it, where, as long as we didn’t go there every day, our mana shouldn’t affect the beasts anymore. Instead, the “beast repelling trees” would do that job. Since we surrounded the entire area, however, we created the illusion that the camp was filled with beasts. It wasn’t just one or two awakened humans. Ideally, every beast would feel the mana and decide that the area is too saturated already to be worth hunting there. Since we couldn’t be sure about this, and to be on the safe side, without disturbing the experiment with our presence, Reurig would patrol the area every day, and we would head over if a strong beast broke through. All the rest of us could do for the moment was wait for the results of this experiment.

“Can I ask you guys something?” Lilana said while we were sitting around the campfire, after I gave control over to her for the evening. “Why were they all so young?”

“What do you mean?” Berla asked.

“The guards and the workers, they didn’t look much older than me. The way the priests talk about them, I always thought the lumberjacks would be a bunch of burly, old men.”

“Oh... Well, I don’t know where they get that image from, but it’s pretty rare to see lumberjacks who reach their thirties,” Berla said.

“What? Why?”

“Lilana, think about it. They’re out here every day. And apparently they also get attacked almost every day. What do you think their life expectancy is?”

“But that’s what the guards are for, right?”

“They do their best, of course. But take today for example. That cat six would have killed everybody. With just one squad, they wouldn’t have stood a chance. Such a strong beast might only appear every couple of years, but if they wipe out an entire team every time, and new Workers take their place, you’ll essentially only ever see younger people out here.”

“That’s horrible...” Lilana said.

“I was surprised when Berla told me about this as well,” Tomar said. “I used to hear that Workers rarely got injured, so I thought it was relatively safe for them. But nobody ever told me that strong beasts kill all of them from time to time.”

“Why don’t they send more guards to protect them then!?”

“The town is too big, there’s too many locations where guards are needed,” Berla said. “And the young Workers don’t have a very high priority... All they do is get the town’s wood. That’s important, but not nearly as important as keeping the fields and the construction workers safe. It’s easier and cheaper to completely replace them every now and then.”

“I’m starting to understand why you think you can convince people to follow you...”

‘It’s even worse. Or better, depending on the perspective,’ I said to Lilana in her head. ‘Since nobody in their right mind would choose this job, the people who are able to do something within the town walls do that. And since they’re safe, they usually get to keep doing their jobs until they’re old, which often leaves the new Fighters and Workers with nothing but this. Though that also means they’re the ones most fed up with this system, which is good for us.’

“I get what you mean... but it sounds heartless...”

“Hm? Did Miles say this is good for us?” Berla asked.

“He did...”

“Heh, yea, he would. But he doesn’t mean it like that,” Tomar said with a chuckle.

Don’t I? I’m starting to think these guys have a better opinion about me than they should, I thought. We were certainly going to take advantage of their lot in life, to use them to get a foothold in town. A dozen people wasn't much, but rumors about us would spread like wildfire if we could deliver on our promises, and this was only the first group of people we were planning to approach. Once the citizens knew what life could be like, even the king and the High Priest would have a hard time demonizing us, when we were the ones bringing peace to this world. They could try to stand against us, but then they might have a fullfleged revolution on their hands. If we could reach that point, we would be golden.

‘In a way, we’re being unfair to them. I don’t appreciate them trying to kill us, and maybe they could do a better job, but they aren’t doing that horribly under the circumstances.’

Lilana forwarded my words to the others and they agreed with me for the most part. The temple certainly could do more with Aelene, but they didn’t know how. The king and the High Priest could also stop their kindergarten rivalry and work together, but really, even that wouldn’t change the life of the common people all that much.

“Although, I don’t want to know what they would do if they had to negotiate with a cat ten about regular sacrifices...” Reurig said.

“Sacrifices...?” Lilana asked, and Reurig told her what life was like in other parts of the world.

Whatever made the area around Alarna as safe as it was, it wasn’t like this everywhere else. When you lived in an area that was controlled by a category ten, no wall would help you, and no amount of Fighters would be able to protect you. All you could hope for, was for the beast to be reasonable enough to let you live as a source for food. Like cattle. Or so the stories went, since not even Reurig and Berla had actually seen such a town yet. All they knew was what they had heard.

The obvious solution to circumstances like these might seem to be to move to Alarna or Cerus, which were free from such beasts, but these two towns could only accommodate so many people, and they had already reached sizes where it would become a challenge to source enough resources for even the citizens that they had, which forced Alarna’s authorities to expand the town past the walls before the walls could be extended. And while this solved the food issue for the moment, it also took a toll on the guards, who now had to protect a bunch of open fields. The whole thing was a balancing act.

One might think that it was pretty stupid for the king to also send out dozens of soldiers to hunt us under these circumstances, spreading his men even thinner, but then again, had he actually caught us and gotten us to cooperate, one way or another, he would’ve had quite a valuable resource on his hands. To him, this had probably been a calculated risk. A few days with minimal protection for a potential solution to all of his problems.

Had he known that we would be able to escape, he might’ve treated us differently back then, but he probably thought he had the upper hand and could take full advantage of us after we were sitting in a cell. Tough luck, now we’re coming for your job, I thought in amusement.

“I guess if I become the head of the temple I won’t have to worry about things like that anymore,” Lilana said in contemplation. “Assuming your plan works.”

“That’s true, you’ll have it easy,” Berla said with a chuckle.

“And who’s gonna be king?” Riala suddenly blurted out while looking between us.

More often than not, it seemed like she wasn’t even listening while she was studying or trying new scripts, but she was pretty much always by our side, and from time to time you realized that she did soak everything up like a sponge.

“I guess we still haven’t really decided,” Tomar said.

“Huh? I figured you and Miles would do it,” Lilana said in surprise.

“So did I at first,” Reurig said, “but apparently these two only want to put the world on its head, without taking responsibility.”

‘Don’t worry, it will be fine. There are a few options.’

Though these options don’t know about it yet.