Mike shuffled through the camp, feeling both invigorated and exhausted. The faces of the hobgoblins were all contorted into their race’s variation of a smile, and it eased the tension he had been feeling since he got a quest foretelling the doom of the entire village. On the other hand, he had just undergone a major battle. Sure, he could and had patched himself up using First Aid, but his exhaustion went deeper than the flesh. He was sick of the constant violence, and he needed to center himself and find peace. When he had returned from Vietnam, many of his squadmates had turned to therapy to overcome the atrocities they had witnessed, Mike had taken to meditation and invention. There had been an overabundance of invention in his life since the System had arrived and he had been forced to invent or die, so he decided to take the rest of the day to meditate and ground himself again.

As the sun slowly sank towards the horizon, Mike sat alone, focused entirely on his breathing. With each breath, he inhaled until his chest was completely full, and then exhaled, expelling every ounce of air he could. This form of meditation required a whole new level of focused detachment with the Aeromancy skill. It was too easy to sense the air and want to move it and improve his training. But eventually he worked through this too, until he no longer thought of anything at all.

From this state of emptiness, he allowed himself to examine his new existence, and at length, he came to accept that he was willing to fight so he could survive. More importantly, he felt it his duty to fight so that the hobgoblins could survive. He didn’t understand why all of humanity had become so violent so quickly, but he suspected it had to do with the System. He didn’t think he could bring himself to attack the town again, but he would make sure that when the town next came to them, the valley would be ready. Worried that his thoughts were becoming overly focused on training, he once again emptied himself of all emotion and simply existed.

Just before the sun sank beneath the valley’s mountainous walls, Mike allowed himself to be pulled by the lure of Aeromancy. Until now, everytime he had tried to train the skill, he had done so in order to gain more stat points. But with all of his cares momentarily laid aside, a spark of curiosity ignited in him that he hadn’t felt for months. He didn’t understand how he could sense the air’s movements, but he suddenly wanted to just explore what that meant at a fundamental level.

After sensing the air for the better part of twenty minutes, he rose to his feet and allowed his body to follow the movements that the air seemed to dictate to him. He started off sluggish, not because he was unable to follow the movements–indeed, he had been trained in multiple forms of martial arts and many of the movements were similar. Rather, he had a hard time surrendering himself to actions not dictated by his instincts or an instructor. He had never been instructed by an element before, and he had a hard time accepting that an element could teach him. It felt too close to all of those cults he had heard about before the integration.

Slowly, he began to trust the movements more, and for a brief time he moved through the kata, further than he had ever gone before. He didn’t find its end, but he thought he had finally found its beginning, and in doing so, he once again felt grounded.

Leaving his isolation, he hurried back to camp. It had been too long since he had been able to mix vegetables with the meat stored in his pouch, and he was looking forward to a lovely vegetable stew. Now he just needed to find a way to make it without having to give it all away to the ravenous creatures he lived with.

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The next morning, Mike arose and ran with the scouts. He was proud to see that the newest recruits in his elite team had made progress while he was away. It spoke volumes to the level of dedication that the hobgoblins had, and made him confident that he no longer needed to train with them as often. This was good, because he continued to be pulled in many directions.

After the morning training, Mike gathered the miners and took them to the dungeon. Quicksilver was going to be a deciding factor in who ruled the Noob Zone, and he wanted to mine as much of it as possible. He was already regretting the amount he had vented in the Arena, but at the time it had seemed like the only way to survive. He had three or four ideas for exactly how it could be used to defend the valley, but he first needed to get as much of it as he could to the surface.

It took several hours for him to form a trustworthy set of stairs from the shiny metal that were sturdy enough for the hobgoblins to walk on. It took several more hours for him to set up the series of platforms that would enable a series of pulleys to haul a load out. As he formed the pulleys, he almost felt sad that he no longer needed to cast anything. Quicksilver formed as quickly as his imagination could direct it, at least as long as he was working with a small enough amount. As he made his way back to the surface and began instructing the goblins in how to make ropes from various greenery found within the valley, he decided he was ok with any advantage he could get.

After 50 or so hobgoblins were performing the task of making ropes reasonably well, he again went into the dungeon with the remaining miners and began overseeing the process of mining the Quicksilver. He had only ever collected the metal by killing creatures made of it, so he was surprised to find that it was abysmally hard for the miners to extract, even after he made them Quicksilver tools for the job. He didn’t understand why he could so easily control it and they couldn’t, but he just had to trust that the System would enable them to learn if they spent enough time on it.

Returning to the surface in the early afternoon, Mike gathered his archers and made his way to the pit. He was going to let the archers use slightly pointed arrows this time in order to increase Impervious Skin. It was definitely more useful than Hardened Skin in the long run, even if it would take a long time to gain the next level. Hopefully, the 10% reduction to penetrating damage would be enough to prevent him from losing an eye while training. Although, if he did, he could always use Hands of Healing, so the risk was minimal short of dying. The other reason for his prioritization of the pit was that it trained Damage Premonition and Tactics, which both required him to raise his Damage Mental Acuity. He was still unsure exactly how to do that, but he felt that increasing the risk by moving away from blunt arrows was a good start. On top of that, the pit also helped him train dodge, so in total, he was training 4 skills at the same time, and he was eager to start.

After five grueling hours, he had managed to dodge several thousand arrows, and also be hit by several hundred more. Luckily, the archers were still not the best shots or else it could have been much worse. The arrows had only been slightly pointed, but even so, he was going to need to find a faster way to heal the shallow wounds that covered his body if he wanted this to become one of his everyday activities.

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Bart and Gregorvich spawned at nearly the same instant, and a smile graced the larger man’s weathered face.

“So good of you to die on my account, Bart. And the 30,000 silver was, how to say, much appreciated”. Bart’s anger rose at the ingratiating tone and the stereotypical Russian accent that Gregorvich seemed to be laying on extra thick.

“But really, you did deserve this for being so tricky with your contracts. I may not have been able to become Arena Champion, but that is OK because I have the respect of others. Your reputation has been damaged and I think that only desperate fools will be coming for your services in the future.” Gregorvich continued with a triumphant look.

Too angry to reply, Bart stalked away, internally fuming that there wasn’t any way to have the System not punish him for killing the man in his sleep. Not that killing him would do any good since he would just respawn. Sometimes immortality could be a curse.

After walking for several minutes, he found himself back at his original shop, which now functioned as the base of operations for his stands. Walking inside, he ignored the attempted greeting from the clerk behind the counter and made his way to the back corner where his office was located. Bart wasn’t a fool and after hitting rock bottom once, he was determined to avoid that in the future. For that reason, all of his employees had signed soul contracts, preventing them from stealing anything from him, in addition to performing all of their duties in the event he had to go to respawn. He was even considering ways of getting them to transfer him money from Noobtown should he transition to the next Zone before he had sucked the profit dry from this area.

He took a few minutes to peruse through the money that his employees had brought in while he had been waiting to respawn. Despite Gregorvich’s claims, the business was doing just fine. Despite his absence, people flocked to the Arena and continued to sign the contracts he had left for his employees to oversee. Bart tried to find happiness in the knowledge that the Russian buffoon was wrong and that he was accruing wealth at an alarming rate, but somehow it all seemed hollow after his last encounter.

“He made me look a fool,” he mumbled to himself, even as his mind conjured a visceral demise for the man.

Somehow in the months since the integration, he had unknowingly started plotting untold terrors of violence on anyone who crossed him. While once he had been just a friendly shopkeep, the effects of the System had begun ruining his mind. He always felt angry. When he thought about it, it had all started when Mike had come into his store. That man was even more of a pain than Gregorvich and should be destroyed slowly, one inch of flesh at a time. Both of them needed to pay.

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Junior Administrator silently stole towards the vessel’s main viewing chamber. It was the first opportunity since the anomaly's victory over the dungeon boss for them to give Bart the advantage he needed. Their race rarely slept, and if Junior Administrator didn’t act now, the next time they could intercede on behalf of the struggling assimilant would be another 30 days.

Junior Administrator scoffed at the ease with which they moved about the ship. True, they were the spawn of one of the highest ranking great clans, but they should still have been challenged. Clearly, System Administrator was getting too old to run a ship the way it should be run. If they had been younger, maybe Junior Administrator wouldn’t have to skip their sleep in order to ensure the success of their mission.

A nod to both guards and a murmured excuse was all it took to find themselves alone in the main viewing chamber. Approaching the System interface, they input the previously memorized identifier for the shop owner turned soul contractor, and suddenly they could impact his fate directly.

Their interference would be interpreted as a direct undermining of System Leader’s authority, so it was crucial that their actions in this moment be both small enough to go unnoticed, but large enough to enable Bart to get rid of the anomaly. Then, and only then, would Junior Administrator reveal their actions.

It was true that Bart may not be the strongest candidate to take on the relatively overpowered anomaly, but Junior Administrator recognized a few values in him that their Gnurla had urged them never to overlook: ambition, greed, jealousy and hatred. Junior Administrator knew that Bart was the type of vindictive individual who would do anything to pay back a perceived slight, and Bart felt slighted by nearly everyone in Noobtown, but especially by the anomaly. Yes, he would be the perfect individual to orchestrate an end to this horrid anomaly, and when he did, Junior Administrator would be ready to seize control of this mission and continue to bring fame to their great clan.

A brief warble escaped their head tentacles as their eyes landed on the perfect item. Not only would it be more deadly against the anomaly than most weapons, but it would also enable Bart to amass the following necessary to pull it off. Adding the item to Bart’s personal shop inventory, Junior Administrator turned and left the main viewing chamber, softly communicating his gratitude to the guards to placate any curiosity they might have still held.