“What have you done?”

Vivena didn’t have time to explain herself to Bill. The wall of the system messages was growing longer by the minute. Some of the information had critical status.

Defend your dominion from an invasion!

There was a countdown showing 1 hour. Apparently, a new dominion had to be attacked and defended to be fully established. Vivena hadn’t been warned about this before using the orb of dominion. It might have changed her mind as she didn't have anyone to help her. And it looked like the full spectrum of buffs, debuffs and functionality of dominion wasn't going to be active before the dominion was successfully defended.

“Vivena!” Bill said with emphasis this time. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

Bill was Level 4 like her but with twice maxed-out Strength and Dexterity, which meant he wasn’t weak. He lacked the spells and items though.

He’d have to do, Vivena told herself.

She turned to him and said, “In one hour, monsters will attack this place. I need everyone who knows how to fight. The more the better.”

Bill made a step toward her.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Bill was angry and frustrated by her unresponsiveness. “If you don’t begin to explain yourself now…” A rungu appeared in his hand. She also noticed a few rings appear on his fingers. All made out of wood or bones, meaning they were crafted and only gave Bill additional attributes. Even without her poisons inside her body, Bill wasn’t a threat to her. But she liked Bill and didn’t want to harm him.

“I will explain everything to you after we defend this place. I promise.”

“No.” Bill shook his head. “You KILLED innocent people in front of me! You either tell me everything now or I am going to squeeze it out of you.”

Her first instinct was to knock him out but she suppressed it. After a short exchange with Isako, Vivena realised that she needed to sway Bill to her side if she wanted her plan to succeed. She made a choice.

“It was either this place or your village.”

“What was?”

“Establishing my dominion. It’s a long story we don’t have time for. Trust me, it was the only option I was left with.”

Bill struggled with himself, opening his mouth several times. He eventually said, “You didn’t need to kill Lumo and his guards.” Bill's eyes darted to the yard where the bodies lay. No one came to check on them. Vivena guessed that no warrior had remained in this village. “What is wrong with you?”

Once again, Vivena’s instincts almost took over. At the last moment, she stopped herself from losing her temper.

“I had no choice. To establish a dominion, the leader of a dwelling must be killed.”

There was no understanding in Bill’s eyes. He didn’t know what the orb of dominion was.

Vivena sighed internally and checked the countdown.

55 minutes left.

“Fine!” she said. “Your capital has betrayed us. Then Keynes started the dominion event and another outbreak. There was a big battle in the capital and the place was hit badly. I don’t think they will recover from it. I have to stop Keynes, that's why I must establish my dominion here.”

“Wait a second… The Capital has fallen? That’s why there has been no word from everyone… But how? And what about my parents? What about Haruka and Pandora?”

It was as if a dam broke open, questions poured out of Bill. Vivena didn’t stop him.

“I don’t know what happened to your parents or Haruka and his parents. The last time I saw them had been before the king’s people attacked me. I haven’t seen them since.”

Bill didn’t react, looking lost in thoughts. She waited a full minute before she lost her patience.

“We’re running out of time, Bill,” she said. “In about fifty minutes, hordes of monsters will invade this place and it may determine if I would be able to stop Keynes from causing more outbreaks. Are you in or out?”

Bill’s eyes focused on her and she found a lot of suspicion there.

“You have changed, Vivena. What happened to you?”

“I told you, the usual happened. I was betrayed and finally understood that I shouldn’t stay on the sideline and watch how others shape history. If Keynes isn’t stopped, he’d bring more outbreaks. Each one will be more dangerous than the previous one. He’s a threat to our civilization.”

“I thought he was your friend.” Bill countered.

“Friend or not, Bill, I won’t sacrifice the entire world for one person.”

Bill nodded.

“Just explain to me one thing; how is this dominion going to help you stop Keynes?”

“Keynes is part of one of the most powerful organisations in the world. If I went after Keynes alone, I’d find myself against them and Keynes himself isn’t weak. I saw him fight the monsters at the capital. I think he’s absorbed [Chaos Aura]. My spirit companion says it is a very dangerous spell and if he is really using it, he is a bigger threat to us all that you can imagine.

“Having a dominion, I’d be able to build my own force to counterbalance his company. Plus.” A sphere appeared in her hand. “I got top 3 in the weekly ranking and received my own rift. It is only a common Level 3 but the rift has dominion affinity already and is able to drop dominion affinity items. What’s more important, my dominion takes an affinity from my Talent and it affects every rift inside my dominion. This way, I’d be able to prepare to meet Keynes and his backers on equal grounds.”

She saw that the amount of information she dumped on Bill was hard to swallow for him and honestly, she didn’t tell him everything. There was no need to burden him with more knowledge.

“I can’t say I am convinced but…” He glanced at the dead guards then at the sky. “I don’t really have anywhere else to go. The First Tribe existed purely because of chief Bonolo’s Talent. Without him, I don’t know what is going to happen to the village. I may as well join you but promise me, no more this.” He pointed at the dead bodies.

“If they are enemies, I cannot promise anything.”

“Fair enough.”

***

With only minutes left until the onset of the invasion, Vivena, Bill and two villagers who were keen to fight with them, stood on the top of the wall. Vivena didn’t know where the monsters would come from or what Levels and affinity they were going to be. Hopefully, the wall would suffice and the monsters would storm the gate where Vivena planned to make a stand. Her [Poison Aura] enhanced by the spiritual aura was very potent against the large numbers. The monsters didn’t die right away but once they were poisoned they were doomed. She was already making a list of modifiers she needed to get to double down on the aura. First of all, she was going to acquire a proper [Poison Aura] skill. The skills from items didn’t scale with Levels and spirit stages.

“Any new offensive spells?” Vivena asked.

“No. Without the access to the hidden door, we’ve been quite unlucky with the loot from the chests. Champions dropped a few good items but they've been taken away. I still have [Arcane Bolt]. It works well against stronger mobs.”

Vivena nodded. So, the fight was going to heavily rely on her after all.

“What about you?” she asked the two tribesmen. “Any offensive skills?”

“No spells,” one of them replied. “But my Talent makes my attacks cause short internal bleeding.” Interesting. I must learn more about his Talent and possible combinations with spells and items.

“Good. What about you?” she asked the second tribesman.

“I have hunting Talent. It doesn’t work with the rift monsters.”

These weren’t rift monsters but Vivena didn’t see a reason to explain it to the man. While there were numerous differences between rift and dominion monsters, Vivena didn’t think the monsters were the issue why his Talent didn’t work with them. Like with poisons, the hunting Talent most likely relied on the System recognising an activity as hunting, by meeting the right conditions. Killing rift monsters inside the rift had nothing to do with hunting, nor did defending this village.

They spent the remaining minutes in silence.

Invasion of the House of Poison begins…

Defend your dominion from the monsters.

Hungry howls rolled over the village. Vivena took out the Amulet of Blind Protection, an exotic item she’d received for the top 3. It provided her with a shield against physical attacks. The amount of protection offered by the shield was around 1% of Vivena’s max HP and regenerated over five minutes. It also had a tiny chance to blind the attacker upon the attack as long as the shield was up and incur an exotic debuff called Voided Strength, which caused two physical attacks of the attacker to inflict no physical damage. The dominion modifier simply doubled the item's stats inside Vivena’s dominion. Unfortunately, her current dominion was disable until she successfully defended it.

The second item she received was the Band of Dominator. It was a rare item with only two modifiers. The first one was generic +2 to all attributes, while the other one was an active [Lesser Dominate] skill. It allowed Vivena to dominate a monster up to Level 3 (like the item) for ten minutes. After the time was up the monster exploded, inflicting damage to everything around. She had an option to disable the explosion. It had a cooldown of 1 hour, which wasn’t that bad.

With her other items, she wasn’t even going to inflict poisons on herself this time. She was confident that any monster up to Level 3 wasn’t a threat. However, she suspected that some kind of sub-boss might appear at the end of the invasion.

“Get ready!”

The monsters flooded the dirt road, going for the open gate. Vivena rose in the air, eliciting gasps from the three men, and checked the surroundings of the village. The monsters seemed only to come from one direction. It might change later on but for now, her plan was working.

She landed in front of the gate and activated her two auras. Drain on her spirit reminded her why advancing her spirit stage to the Elevated stage was the priority once she was done with the invasion. She was close to the limit of the items and spells she could use. That sucked.

The monsters were Level 1 and of common and uncommon rarity. None of them got past Vivena. Those that ignored her, died several steps later due to the poison from the aura. Vivena was getting better at recognising poisons’ spiritual signatures. She believed that once she got her hands on some poison class spell and advanced her spirit stage, she would be able to easily manipulate her poisons to maximise her damage against her enemies and minimalise the self-damage of the poisons inside her body. At Level 5 she was going to get a minor upgrade to her Talent, which she hoped would address some of her issues.

There were many ifs but her prospects were pretty good.

Only after Level 2 monsters appeared, Bill and the two tribesmen had to lift a finger and mostly to finish off a stray monster that got past Vivena formidable [Poison Aura]. Her spiritual energy was getting low by the time the Level 3 monsters showed up. Isako also informed her that the monsters started to spawn around the village. She didn’t know if they were going to siege the wall or simply run around and come here but the sheer number of the Level 3 was getting out of hand.

“Stay inside!” Vivena shouted to Bill and his companions. She also started to retreat toward the gate. It was obvious that the monsters’ objective wasn’t Vivena but something inside, so many of them ignored her.

The wave of the Level 3s hit her like a truck. She heard the tribesmen bellows as they swung they rungus at the monsters that lunged for the gate. They were Level 3 and Bill was halfway to Level 5. He still was in the Medium stage and didn’t bother with maxing out his attributes as there were no resources for that. Even without a proper offensive skill, he was a killing machine. Nothing got past him.