“Put your hands up. Slowly.” The voice was soft, but precise, the enunciation perfect to make sure the intent was clear. I complied. “Good,” the voice continued. “Now, why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”

“This is where the dungeon kicked me out, I swear.” The gun was placed against my neck, whoever was holding it had to know enough not to aim at my armor, which made them knowledgeable enough to be dangerous. “I didn’t think I’d find anyone out here at all.”

“Uh huh.” The voice sounded quite incredulous and I couldn’t blame them. The coincidence of me appearing directly in front of another person was very probability bending. The system had to have played their hand here, though to what end, I had no idea. “You’re going to have to try another one.”

“I promise you, I am telling the truth.” I tried to make the sincerity bleed into my voice, keeping my hands high above my head. “I know you don’t have any reason to, but if you give me a chance, I’m sure I can explain everything.”

“Where did Chad find you? Are you some kind of merc?” The rifle pressed in a bit tighter against my skin.

“Who the hell is Chad?” My voice squeaked, I couldn’t help it, the fear of having gone through that dungeon only to meet my end at the hands of such a mundane threat bled through my nerves.

Another voice called from off to the side, gruff but higher pitched. “He’s telling the truth.”

In a very soft voice, I murmured. “It’s not he.”

“What was that?” The rifle holder pushed forward a bit more and I leaned forward with the pressure.

“That’s enough Artemis. This person said that they don’t use ‘he.’” The pressure suddenly dropped and I fell to the ground on all fours. “Plus, they’re carrying the Vestige. Not sure what would happen if you killed someone who was holding one.”

Vestige. The only thing that could be was the weird spirit thing that was currently buried in my chest. The rifle holder spoke up, a touch of embarrassment in her, Artemis’, voice. “You can get up. I’m uhhhh sorry about that. Mistaken identity.”

I rubbed the back of my neck and rose, slowly turning to face the two. The one with the rifle was tall and scrawny, an inch or two taller than me, with a hawk-like nose and scowl. The other was short, couldn’t be more than five and a half feet, with pitch black hair shorn short and a rounder face, and body altogether. “I think that we’ve all been under a lot of stress since the system integration. How about we have a seat and talk about this like adults?” The two were also young, definitely had graduated from high school, but properly weren’t able to drink legally yet.

Artemis nodded and led the way off deeper into the forest, leaving the shorter one and me to follow along. The shorter one smiled up to me. “You’re right, there’s lots of reasons for people to be on edge these days, and you don’t even know the town that we’re from.”

“I’d like to hear about it,” I said. I meant it too, curious as to what experiences the two had been through to shape them into their current state.

“I’m Jen, by the way, my girlfriend up there is Artemis, she/her for both of us.” The shorter one, Jen, said, clearly leaving me to introduce myself next.

I made sure to speak up enough for Artemis to hear me as I did so. “I’m Placid, they/them. And to be clear, I’m not a mercenary. I’m ah… well, my Path is factory manager.”

“Haven’t heard of that one,” Artemis said. She then pulled back some branches to reveal a small clearing with a limited set of camping gear arranged around a small pit. They took seats next to each other on one log, and I found a spot on another one.

“It’s rare,” I said. Then I considered carefully for a moment, before deciding not to tell them that I was Chosen. “It’s a crafting Path.”

Artemis rose an eyebrow at that. “So that’s why you’re geared out like someone out of spec-ops?”

I laughed at that and lifted my arms to show my weapons. My spikethrower had been reloaded with its grapple-spike, making it look much more like a comic book grapple hook than a weapon of war, and my drill was simply that, despite it also being brutally effective in battle. “I made all of this myself. Well, except for the framework that it’s all attached to, I got that as a starter gift.”

“Oh!” Jen straightened up, beaming. “You must be Chosen then.”

“I’m uh not sure why you’d say that.” I felt a flush coming to my cheeks, I was never a good liar.

“Only Chosen get anything special in the beginning. Part of having an unique Path to go along with it, I guess,” Jen said.

I palmed my face for a moment, before nodding. “I wasn’t exactly planning on spilling the beans, but I suppose it was better to know now rather than later. I would have rather known about it before.”

“Well, I only know because-” Jen began before getting a sharp glance from Artemis.

I was at least socially savvy enough to put two and two together here, but I was even savvier in knowing not to bring it up. Instead, I deftly changed the subject. “So, tell me about this town. I was actually heading out because I thought there was some sign of civilization this way, but something’s telling me that it’s not as civilized as I’d like.”

“Damn right,” Artemis said. “A bunch of people flocked to the town, hoping to find some sort of shelter there, and we did. There were a bunch of monsters that needed cleaning out, and we all worked together, at least the combatants did, to take them out and make it a safe area.

“Which was when Chad decided he needed to start swinging his huge dick around.”

“The same Chad which you accused me of working for?” I said.

“The very same. He decided that since he had the most powerful Path and the highest physical attributes and the highest level, that he should be one in charge.” Artemis scowled and turned her attention to the fire pit, moving forward to get it lit up, clearly a distraction for more painful memories. “And he decided that him being in charge meant that he should get first pick of all the resources, the food, the clean water, the houses, the monsters. Everything.”

“That seems like a bad way of organizing things.” I leaned back and peeled off my helmet to gaze up at the overcast sky. “I haven’t thought of what I’d do in that situation, but I already have a dozen better ideas than a tyranny of the strong.”

“You and me both,” Jen said. She reached forward and placed a hand onto Artemis’ back, letting her focus on building the fire. “So, the other big thing that Chad did was make the non-combatants work demanding schedules in order to receive access to food. Said that everyone needed to work, but some of these combatants are old or disabled or kids, they’re not people who can keep up those hours, but Chad didn’t let them off for that.”

I scowled deeply, nodding in understanding. “So, what did you two do to piss him off specifically?”

“We told him to go fuck himself,” Artemis said. “Well, I did. Jen just agreed with me. Chad then kicked us out and said that if he saw us again that he’d make an example out of us.”

“He was already making an example,” Jen said, her expression clouding for a moment. “Telling the rest of the people in town that if they resisted his rule, that they’d be at the mercy of the forest and the things that dwelled in it.”

“So,” I said. I had taken in the words, considered the details as they were presented, and allowed my intuition to extrapolate from there. “When do we go and take down Chad?”

Jen stared at me incredulously, but Artemis just snorted. “You think we rolled over for Chad when we could have taken him down with just one crafter?”

“Okay, so I’m hearing that you’re going to need weapons, armor, maybe some additional assistance.” I fell quiet for a moment, considering for a moment. “That’s going to take time, and, frankly, I’m not going to let those non-combatants stay under Chad’s control for much longer.” I rose to my feet and turned up skyward for a long moment. “If I make a distraction, what will you need to get them out of there?”

“First, we’re going to need more of a plan than that.” Artemis leaned back and crossed her arms across her chest. “And we’re definitely going to need some of those weapons and armor that you were talking about.”

“Okay, you’re right. We can’t do this wrong or people will die.” I let out a breath and sighed softly before opening up my crafting queue and starting some things into it. “You two can store everything you need in your inventory, right?”

“Yeah,” said Jen. “But I don’t know why we’d be leaving. This place is pretty secure and it’s close enough to the town that we can scout it out.”

“Okay, so you know how I said I was a factory manager? I have a factory to go along with it.” I grinned at the stares from the other two. “It’s not very well developed yet, but with your help I’ll be able to do a lot to expand its capabilities, and maybe work on developing specific tools to help with what we’d need.”

Artemis recovered her expression faster and turned it into a scowl. “And how are we supposed to get there? You want us to march through this monster-infested forest?”

“Nah, give me like an hour and I’ll have bikes for you both.”

It really did feel good to laugh, and I got another chance seeing their expressions again.