For long moments, Eric just wheezed on the ground.

He could barely move under a weight that seemed ready to crush his soul, eye stinging with tears filling up his goggles as his armor baked upon the still oven-hot steel metal plate that was the floor of this vast, and now completely empty vault.

If it weren’t for the essence-infused armor he wore, he would have been cooked alive.

If it weren’t for breaking through to Journeyman rank in his ES Space, he was pretty sure the bank vault would be painted crimson with his obliterated remains.

Or gotten the mother of all headaches, having attempted to bite off far, far more than he could chew.

But his mad hunch had proven right.

His Claimance had extended to everything he could carry.

And one really could shape skill advancements in unexpectedly wondrous ways, using environmental resources and treasures. Just one more edge the wealthy and powerful had over the masses, Eric was sure. But thankfully, it was an edge he had been able to put to brilliant effect for his own sake, in this former federal reserve.

But daring to extend his claim to an entire vault filled with gold, trusting System-granted quest parameters to allow him access to the whole damn thing, access which would translate to claiming all of it, the moment he placed his hand upon a single bar of gold?

It was the absolute height of absurdity.

What Eric couldn’t quite wrap his head around, even when he found his hideously stretched mind somehow snapping back into shape after countless hours that had merely been seconds... was that it had actually worked.

He didn’t dare even look around, lest the sheer absurdity of a bare-bones vault freeze him with disbelief, when he could now sense what must be dozens of greens…

Oddly blinking greens…

Heading his way.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

He swallowed unsurprisingly parched lips after being stuck in the equivalent of a kiln, no matter his absurd protection.

And even if he were still the slightest bit dizzy, Strength in the forties made it as easy to hand-over-hand himself up the static rope as walking up a flight of stairs.

Then he was topside and clearly making out the alarmed calls of a whole platoon of elves headed his way, even if they were still out of sight.

“The Sylvan Alliance is under attack. The Sylvan Alliance is under attack!” cried a far off voice.

Eric winced, even as he raced to secure his tactical pack, complete with two quivers full of arrows, both normal and essence-infused, the latter carefully wrapped with heat-neutralizing crimson cloth, and most definitely packed not to spill, no matter how panicked his pace became as he grabbed bardiche and bow with his left hand, grappling hook and line with his right, now leaping across the shattered remains of the bank before sprinting for the far wall for all he was worth.

“Robbing you blind, maybe. But no one’s attacking you idiots. Hell, you all now have a paradise on Earth, as far as farming communities goes.” Eric couldn’t help grinning like a madman, never having felt such exhilaration as he did at that moment, racing through the city while making the absolute most of his Perception and detailed interface data-flow within a city whose troop flow Lady Valorn had happily allowed him to interface with, to spectacular success, considering how well last night went.

Fortunately for him, it was working equally well at allowing him to avoid both troops and a pair of surprisingly fast scouts, and Eric was beginning to wonder if maybe they knew exactly who the culprit of a certain little caper happened to be, and maybe they could track him as well.

If so, life was about to get very complicated.

Fortunately, it took only a single willed command for his location to be hidden from the board, so to speak. Though of course Lady Valorn would forever know the moment he stepped into her territory, and from what location, even if his movements from that point on would blend into the environment.

And for just a minute, Eric thought he might have pulled it off. Losing himself in the city well enough that no scout could possibly associate the hero with last night with the rogue of this morning.

Then Eric groaned, when every single Green signal blinked off his interface map.

Lady Valorn, or perhaps best think of her as Commander Valorn now, was on to his gambit.

Which became damn obvious when the map flared red with the message: MY INTERFACE IS GOING CRAZY. WHAT DID YOU STEAL!?!?

Eric winced and swallowed a frightened chuckle, thinking it best not to answer that question.

At least she wasn’t trying to vamp him now.

And then he saw it. The still intact 40 foot wall surrounding the entire city.

Because of course he had left it intact.

Why destroy a valuable defensive structure, complete with multiple keeps perfect for archers? Even if orcish engineering limitations or just being cheap bastards meant that their structures were far more brittle than they should be, they were intact, they were free, and they were damn useful and a great deterrent for any fresh waves of invaders, he thought, even as he whirled his grappling hook, truly grateful that absurd stats made it just as easy to hook the ledge as actors made it look on the silver screen.

Shit, is that where his mom had gotten their name?

Eric shook away the pointless thought as he scaled the wall in seconds, even with bardiche and bow slung on his back or gripped with his jaw, then leaped off the far side of the wall, claiming his war blade bardiche with his hands once more as he landed effortlessly into what had once been ankle twisting rubble even he would have been foolish jumping forty feet down onto. Yet now his fall was cushioned perfectly by soft loamy soil filled with new-growth fruit trees that he had no doubt would be delivering a luscious bounty of fruit, just a handful of years from now.

In the meantime, he was grateful that at least they provided wonderful cover from any scout scowling into the thick foliage as Eric continued darting past whipping branches and rustling leaves as fast as an Olympic sprinter, even with bow and bardiche carefully braced so they wouldn’t whip out of his hands.

Then he was suddenly past the saplings and in proper old growth forest, infravision coming to its own in the canopy-shrouded gloom, for all that the emerald dappled shafts of light gave the entire forest a surreal, almost spiritual glow. Eric smiled despite himself, taking deep breaths of air rich with the scents of pine, honeysuckle, rich forest loam, and countless wildflowers filling the woodlands with a delicious heady aroma. A paradise for any lover of the outdoors, and an earlier Eric would have loved to lose himself for hours in winding hikes as he thought about the mysteries of life, or his favorite fantasy novels.

But for the Eric who was actually living the life of a fantasy hero, even if the genre was a bit darker and grittier than those he had favored when he actually had a choice, all he cared about was that the primeval forest that he currently found himself within had a canopy so thick that very little light was permitted through, meaning that undergrowth was sparse, and now he could truly stretch his legs out and run like the wind.

So he did.

Racing at a sprint that would have left him giddy with sheerest joy to be able to hold for just a few seconds, not that long ago, echoing as it did a famous Olympian who once hit 44 miles per hour, for just a score of yards, in the hundred meter dash, over a decade ago.

A sprint he could now maintain indefinitely.

Even fully armored while holding a bardiche, recurved bow, and a backpack full of his most precious possessions and basic survival gear.

And never had he more viscerally felt the incredible wonder of his System-enhanced body as he did at that moment, finding himself sprinting at a truly monstrous pace as he blazed along the woodland trail he now found himself upon. And he felt the burn in his glutes and quads, that he did. But it was a mild burn, as much an invigorating tingle as anything else, and the deep breaths that came with the exertion made him feel alive. The equivalent of hiking uphill at a half decent pace in the life he had lived before, and no worse than that.

It was a pace he could keep up all day.

Which was a good thing, he thought, when twice over he found himself racing past Sylvan checkpoints with hard-eyed pairs of elves who might or might not have been somehow signified of Eric’s now strained status.

But either way, it didn’t matter.

Now when he could leap right over them, well out of range of their sheathed swords, and as for bows… in the split second they might have shot, Eric had darted off the path, looped around an adjoining tree, then was ripping away down the path.

And yes, he was in their sights while running away from them. But it was hard to make claims of self defense, to others, or to justify it to yourself, when your ‘aggressor’ was technically fleeing at full speed. And girding for a fight was entirely different from committing to what might be a many miles long slog of a chase after someone who might or might not even be wanted… someone they could so easily tell themselves was just looking to flee formally orc-held territory.

Because anyone who could soar over their heads with a single leap was not someone a handful of auxiliary elves left to the most auxiliary of duties while any Sylvan with an ounce of potential was forging themselves on the front lines really wanted to tangle with.

So angry curses and shouts were all Eric had to contend with, much to his relief, for all that he was always braced, as if fearing the bite of an Elvish arrow that might strike from any tree… yet never came.

And after that second checkpoint was cleared, he saw no trace of any elves whatsoever.

Not until he broke free of the forest altogether, and dense primeval forest was abruptly replaced with windswept grasslands, golden fields of wheat, the desperate screams and hoarse shouts of combat, and the coppery scent of freshly spilled blood.