The tier six monsters were still a mile away. Normally he wouldn’t be able to see them from this distance, but they were enormous. They looked like two moving mountains before Hugo realized what he was looking at. Stone gray dreadnoughts were quickly slithering this way. Their pincers looked large enough to cut halfway through the train with one slice. He guessed that they were thirty feet tall and a hundred feet long. They couldn’t let the monsters get close, or a derailing would be a best case scenario.

Hugo realized he couldn’t take the window the nox were using, so he moved to the one nearby. The young couple sitting there quickly made room for him. Hugo had brought his quiver with him with almost a hundred bolts within easy reach. He didn’t know if they would do any good. It was like he was up against a riese armed with sewing needles. His bolts might irritate the dreadnoughts, but he didn’t see how he could help kill them.

“Earth aspected, both of them. Adjust accordingly,” the older nox said.

Hugo looked over to see the nox taking off his runed glasses. He said, “What element is good against earth monsters?”

The nox frowned, but answered anyway. “Water or ice, preferably both. We will need to remove the outer armor first then inject the wound,” he said, probably only being helpful because everyone’s life was on the line. “I know you have the range, but don’t bother trying to go for the eye. The conductor will handle that. If you can, try to hit its shoulder joint.”

Hugo nodded and reorganized his quiver. It was more like a set of pouches really, and easily lent itself to sorting in sets of six. As the monsters got within a thousand yards, he could see them better. Covered in stone armor and spouting hundred of horns, the dreadnoughts looked fierce. They had a single large eye in the middle of their forehead. Below that eye was a huge craggy maw. Despite how big their mouths were, their crab-like pincers were bigger still.

As they got within eight hundred yards, the conductor sent a beam of light into the closest one’s eye. It roared with the sound of an avalanche. The calamity put its right claw up to block the light beam and continued forward. The same thing happened with the second dreadnought. Both monsters continued forward, but slower now that they had to protect their vision.

Hugo sent out a standard bolt to verify his range and aim. It hit the right shoulder joint, on target. Hugo loaded in a full six optimized exploding bolts, half of what he had prepared. He took a deep breath and fired it downrange. He quickly worked the lever on the top of the crossbow to load and recock the crossbow. The next bolt was fired less than a half second later. The first optimized bolts hit the same spot on its left shoulder. The brilliant white explosions were powerful enough that the dreadnought flinched away and the final bolt missed.

The bolts had done their job though. Ten feet of stoneskin had been obliterated and a small five foot wound was opened up on its right shoulder. Hugo loaded up six more bolts, this time three water and three ice bolts, interspersed. He loosed these ones slower, making sure that the monster didn’t flinch before he fired the next one. The bolts disappeared into the monster’s flesh, and he could only hope that they were working as intended. Hugo was just impressed with himself that he had been able to get all six bolts in the same five foot wound from six hundred yards out.

As soon as the monsters got five hundred yards out, several more passengers opened up fire. Arrows and beams of energy flew out from several different spots along the train. Hugo sent the rest of his water and ice bolts towards the same shoulder. More and more passengers joined the defense as it got closer. The nox near him focused their ice and water beams at the wound Hugo had created.

Four hundred yards out, the lead dreadnought dropped its claw. The arm hung useless as the crowd roared. The conductor renewed his attack on its eye and the brain behind it. The beast didn’t have the chance to put its left arm up before its eye popped. It roared in pain and flailed around. It wasn’t enough to avoid the aim of the conductor. Thirty seconds later, it was dead.

Congratulations

You have been ranked up to rank forty-one. You have been granted two free points.

Congratulations

You have been ranked up to rank forty-two. You have been granted two free points.

Congratulations

You have been ranked up to rank forty-three. You have been granted two free points.

The train cheered as the beast fell face forward to the ground. Hugo cheered along with them. He had gotten three ranks just for injuring an arm!

“Human! There is one more! Open up that shoulder!” the older nox yelled at him.

Hugo nodded and quickly loaded up his last six optimized exploding bolts. The last dreadnought was three hundred yards away now. Everyone with a ranged weapon was attacking now. Most of them did nothing. The monster’s skin was just too tough.

With how close the monster was, Hugo’s shots hit right were he was aiming. It did flinch away, but the close distance meant that all six vaporizing bolts hit their target. This time a ten foot wide crater was opened up in its flesh. Hugo continued to attack, using standard exploding bolts. They didn’t do much.

The rest of the train must have caught on to its weakness, and several other attacks hit the same spot. The nox couple nearby weren’t the only ones to have elemental attacks and the arm soon fell. The conductor sent a thick beam of light into its eye, intent on burning it down as quickly as possible.

They weren’t fast enough.

With a gravely roar, the dreadnought reached the train and brought its remaining claw down on the train, aiming for the train car right in front of Hugo. He flinched and closed his eyes in anticipation of the impact. It never came.

A barrier mage had thrown up a dozen thick shields just in time to deflect the enormous claw. It slipped off the train and thudded to the ground. The dreadnought’s eye popped moments later and a potion bottle flew into the cavity. Hugo couldn’t see what happened next, the train having traveled past where he could see.

Congratulations

You have been ranked up to rank forty-four. You have been granted two free points.

Hugo smiled, that answered that. The train slowed down right away, stopping after a mile or so. He looked up and said to no one in particular, “Why are we stopping?”

The older nox walked closer and said, “So they can harvest the mana cores. Normally the barrier attendant collects the mana crystals while we are on the go, but not this time. The thick stone hides will take a bit to cut through. And I am sure you can agree that two mana cores are worth a small delay.”

Hugo nodded, “Good point. Speaking of which, do we get a cut of that? Mana cores are worth a lot.”

The nox clapped all four hands, “That would be nice. Sadly, it is not to be. Their stance is that they pay for a rank one hundred and twenty-eight mage every single journey, even the uneventful ones. They will not pay passengers for incidental kills like this.”

Hugo frowned. He had spent very valuable ammunition just now. He appreciated the fact that he was still alive, but he would prefer monetary compensation as well. Something to keep in mind if he traveled by train again. The lack of payment reminded him that he had gotten several useful bits of advice from the nox. He needed to pay him back. He quickly fabricated a titanium pot with four handles. It was the same dimensions of the runed weapons the two nox used. He wordlessly handed it over and they gave him a short bow in return.

Twenty minutes later, the train started moving again. Hugo sighed and started fabricating bolts again. He needed to build up his reserves once more. When he finished his third exploding bolt, he looked up to see the conductor standing above him. Hugo said, “Oh, hello there.”

“Are you the young man that opened up the dreadnought with the bomb darts?” the conductor said gruffly.

“Yes, that’s me. I start with these guys here and then enhance them with a ritual,” Hugo said and held up the bolt he had just fabricated.

“That sounds expensive, I appreciate you using them in defense of the train. I wanted to ...” the conductor trailed off for a moment and then said, “What is going on with your domain list? What are you?”

Hugo smiled wryly and said, “I’m an ersatz. Have you ever heard of them?”

“No.”

“That’s too bad, I have been trying to learn more about myself. Anyway, you said you wanted something?” Hugo said.

The conductor took out a grandcryst and handed it over, “The company doesn’t like it when I do this, but I wanted you to know I appreciate it when someone goes above and beyond to help save the train. Even if they are an ... ersatz.”

“Thank you very much,” Hugo said. His prejudice against the unknown was annoying, but a grandcryst was worth a lot. Just one step below a mana core in the rankings.

The remaining day and a half of their journey was largely uneventful. Hugo suspected the dreadnaughts had killed all of the larger monsters around for miles and miles. Monsters would always attack sentients and usually would kill other monsters as well, always trying to tier up by eating other monsters. Hugo wondered if he could rank up by eating monsters now.

Hugo was confused when he saw Soweto in the distance. It had the standard four story wall surrounding the city, but that was the only thing standard about it. First off, it was huge. Easily triple the size of Tallinn. There was also a strange set of cracks and canyons on the ground in front of the walls. The train slowed down as they got closer and Hugo could see that there were dozens of small slot canyons that funneled down to a few set paths to the wall. That must make it easy to kill weaker monsters. The dumb ones anyway.

The train drove straight into the wall, a small door having opened at the base. As Hugo’s train car drove into the darkness, he started counting. The bright light of the city returned when a hundred feet of wall had passed. That was impressively thick.

The inside of the city was similar to the outside. Familiar mixed with the bizarre. The streets were cobblestone just like home. The majority of buildings in town were at least three stories high, many were four and five stories. This was impressive since the main building material was wood from the nearby forests. Hugo was even more impressed with the collection of buildings in the center of town. There were ten and twelve story buildings there. Round stone towers were mixed with crystal octagons. One building looked like an enormous tree trunk had simply been carved out. It was twice the size of the grove trees he had known in Ettel. He couldn’t imagine how big that tree had been before they cut off the crown.

Another shock to the system was the smell. It stank. The section of town the train was slowly passing through must be the poor part of town. The smell of waste and offal was overpowering. Hugo looked around the train to see if anyone else was overwhelmed. No one else even batted an eye. Either they were just used to this, or his new body came with some enhanced senses. He made a mental note to test that later.

He wasn’t quite sure what to do in town once he got there, he didn’t know which part of town this golem maker lived in. Thankfully, the train station had storage he could rent, and they ensured the safety of his trunk while he explored the city.

He did his best not to gawk at everything like a bumkin farmer. It was hard. Everything was so all so new and fascinating. Magic was everywhere here. Glowing signs, floating sunshades, and bright flowing music, just to name a few.

Another strange thing was how they handled the neighborhoods here. There were literal walls between different parts of town, with guards posted at the wide gates. Hugo realized that their society was much more segregated than his own. The nicer parts of town had magic and wonder, literally smelling like roses. The poorer parts of town stank bad enough that he suspected they didn’t have indoor plumbing.

What shocked him the most were the people. The two-copper novels he grew up with hadn’t been pure fantasy. Only about half of the people were nox, a fifth were humans, and the rest were different species he had only read about before now. Tokoloshe were real, small people with clawed hands. Hugo made sure he didn’t bump into any of them as he walked, their anger was supposedly quick and fierce.

Impundulu looked like tall humans until he noticed the feathers in their hair. The shapeshifting lightning birds were said to be refined and noble. Hugo shivered when he remembered they were said to drink blood when they wanted to lay eggs. He looked up and realized that the large birds flying above the city were probably impundulu too.

The njuzu were easy to pick out of a crowd. Their scaly skin shimmered and sparkled as they ran through the crowds. He wondered if they always ran everywhere, or if the njuzu he saw were just acting as messengers. The books he had read rarely mentioned them, only that they passed messages securely and they didn’t have access to the Acomarian system.

It was all so new and fascinating. Now that he saw all of this, he bet that if he visited the country of Pretoria, he would find real life kaftar too. He kept expecting to see a riese walk around the corner, but he knew there wouldn’t be any around here. Since there were no nearby grove trees, riese wouldn’t be able to visit without losing their connection to The Mother. He did see plenty of golems though. Each one seemed to be a unique design, some utilitarian, some ornate and fantastical. Hugo was even more excited to talk to the golem maker Dean Artjom had sent him to meet. If these golems were the everyday versions, how awesome would the advanced versions be?

He found himself becoming more and more optimistic as he explored the town. With everything so fantastical here, he wouldn’t stick out much. Even with his unique body and many domains, he wouldn’t be that strange. If everything was strange, nothing was.

Eventually he decided it was time to track down the golem maker. He asked for directions and was sent to the city center. The address he had led him to one of the tall towers there. It was the round tower, a dozen stories tall. The upper six stories all had wide balconies, making the tower look slightly like a stone tree.

Walking though the ground floor entrance did nothing to disabuse him of that notion. There were tendrils of stone snaking up the walls, like vines on a tree. An attendant sitting behind a counter cleared his throat.

Hugo walked over to the nox and said, “Hello, I am trying to get ahold of the Grand Automatonist Vika.”

“Do you have an appointment?” the nox said and opened up a log book.

“No, nothing set for today. She sent Dean Artjom a letter and asked me to come talk to her,” Hugo said.

“A letter? Do you have it with you today?” the attendant said.

“No,” Hugo said, not bothering to reiterate that the letter wasn’t sent to him.

The nox huffed and said, “The best and brightest of the city work in the gray tower. It’s part of my job to make sure their precious time isn’t wasted. If you wanted to see any of the other five greats, I would have to refuse you. You are in luck though. Grand Automatonist Vika has her own screening process. Take the chute all the way to the top and talk to the beings there. They will either let you in or toss you out the window.”

Hugo gave the little man an incredulous look, but he seemed to be serious. Eventually, Hugo walked to the back of the round room. If he did get thrown out the window, he could just airwalk back down. He walked up to the alcove and stepped on the circular stone there. He was expecting an elevator like the one the sentinels had. Instead, Hugo just started to float up the tube. He almost squawked as he was lifted away.