After Soze sits down The Pit becomes filled with distracted chatter as the various groups of players began planning, strategizing, and debating whether or not they wanted to join the raid expedition. Several more players came up to speak about various events around the village, but most of it was ignored.

Then Rika stood up and got everyone's attention.

The head of the Workshop, having now heard Soze's plan, and after speaking with him off to the side, decided to give everyone an idea of what to expect over the few weeks.

Ordinarily, preparing iron weapons and armor for a few dozen players within three weeks would be impossible. Melting the metal into a usable form alone would take days because of their primitive tools and facilities. Fortunately, Yang, Alexx, and Zed had brought home dozens of ants worth of broken blades and cracked carapace. Very little of it was useable in their current states, but they had already spent over a month making the tools necessary for handling iron, and while they would need more time to truly forge iron equipment, they had more than enough to start turning scraps into blades and armor.

Rika was certain they could straighten out the damaged blades in three weeks or less. No matter how many players planned on going to the raid, they would have plenty of spears, swords, knives, and axes to go with them, maybe even some arrows if the crafters were feeling particularly ambitious.

Full suits of carapace armor were probably not going to happen before the raid, but making basic leg and arm guards to prevent dismemberment would be relatively easy. Furthermore, more advanced armor sets weren't out of the question, they just didn't have any designs planned out yet. Even if there wasn't time to outfit everyone, a few players could receive better armor if one of the crafters managed to have some inspiration.

As Rika stepped down, the Pit Meeting ended and the audience dispersed. Most returned to their shelters for a restless night as ideas swam in their heads, while others remained awake to actively discuss what should be done over the coming weeks.

~~~~~

From the next day on, the village became a flurry of activity. Hunters stormed into the western woods, eager to gain the Levels needed to confront the Iron Ants. Crafters hammered away at bent and broken blades, shaping them into new weapons for anyone and everyone. A few of the players with high Strength from the builder group began making plans of their own to take part in the battle, not by fighting directly, but by stocking up on logs and boulders to lob at the hordes of Drones like artillery. Even the Kitchen was more busy than usual as all the excitement left the players feeling hungry in more ways than one.

Yang, Alexx, Zed, and eventually Loran were all incredibly busy, overseeing the hunting parties that wanted to practice against the Drone scouts. At first, the groups needed constant assistance, as many of them lacked the Agility to avoid the dismembering jaws of the giant insects, but after the first week more and more players had the stats and experience necessary to take on Drones without issue.

A few days later, excitement spread among the magic users in the village, as Maya finally mastered her [MORE MANA] Skill at the behest of Loran. With the magic users getting a substantial boost in power, more of them began hunting Drones, and with surprising effectiveness. Just as Loran expected, a single well-placed Mana Spike spell was enough to kill any Drone. The only threat the insects posed to the magic users now was if they gathered in large numbers, and this threat was diminishing as the players started developing AOE spells.

The second week of preparation saw the greatest burst of excitement throughout the village when a design for better armor using the Iron Ant Carapace was completed. The armor was somewhat difficult to make, as it required to crafter to heat the chitin and be mildly exposed to the noxious fumes, but the process was astonishingly quick and the crafting players were determined to give the hunters every advantage they could for the coming battle. Soon, the Workshop was cranking out Common grade sets of Ant Plate Armor in addition to the various weapons.

For the third week the players began their final preparations. Inventories were filled with supplies, blades were sharpened, plans were drawn up, and decisions were made. Eventually, the members of the expedition team were decided.

Loran and the others were going, of course, as was Bates and his squad. Fifteen other hunters joined as well, with the rest choosing to stay behind so the village wasn't undefended and surviving on rations. Ten members of the building team all wanted to come, putting the almost finished construction projects on hold to act as artillery units. The eighteen magic users were coming as well, wanting to put their skills to the test for the first time since the version update. Lastly, two players from the Workshop were coming to ensure that everyone's equipment would be in peak condition right before the start of the battle.

Overall, the expeditionary force was composed of sixty-five players, around half the village. The thirty-five hunters among them had all been outfitted with as many weapons and armor as the Workshop could make in three weeks, each of them bearing iron weapons and decked out in either black carapace or thick Demon Bear leather.

The players began making their way north, a fire in their eyes as they steeled their nerves for the coming raid.

~~~~~

The march to Ziege Basin was long and arduous. Moving sixty-five people through them in a quick and orderly fashion was annoying at times, but less because of the terrain and more because of the people. There were so many of them moving together that most predators that they came across decided that there wasn't a point in trying to attack them. Because of this, the march felt less like a hunting expedition and more like a friendly hiking trip, with many of the players forgoing any attempts to be cautious at all.

Unfortunately, the threats of the woods hadn't vanished, they were simply waiting, and as the players began to feel more comfortable they became sloppy. They already had an incident where a group that had gotten too far from the others was attacked by some wolves, proving that it was still dangerous, but the situation was far too calm for everyone to be constantly focused on the march. All it took to get attacked was to walk a little slower than everyone else, a situation that happened multiple times over the first three days of the journey.

If there was an upside, it was that sleeping with such large groups was surprisingly easy. They had enough people for them to have many short shifts, allowing everyone a chance to rest for longer than usual.

They had reached the western grasslands last night and were now getting ready to continue north. The grasslands were safe even for small groups thanks to the presence of the Mountain Goats, so it seemed like they had a chance to really relax without worry.

Loran yawned as he marched, absentmindedly chewing on a strip of jerky. It wasn't that early, but the constant marching was somehow more tiring than having intermittent fights was. 'Maybe I'm just bored,' he wondered. 'Normally I'm watching for threats, but since we're safe in a group I've just been stuck in my own head.'

There was only so much you could do while on a long hike like this, and even less if you didn't want to talk to people. The only thing he could think to do was practice magic, but he had already done that for the last two days and he was starting to want a break.

Wanting to look at something that wasn't an empty field or other people, Loran opened his menu to look at his stats.

[NAME]: Loran

[SPECIES]: Human

[LEVEL]: 32

[EXP]: 57940/7200

[STATUS]

{HP}: 75/75

{SP}: 200/200

{MP}: 400/400

[ARMOR]: 30

[END]: 30

[STR]: 20

[AGI]: 36

[DEX]: 26(-2.6)

[PER]: 30

[INT]: 20

[SPT]: 20

[REMAINING ABILITY POINTS]: 3

[SKILLS]

[ANALYSE] Lv.10(Master)

[CRITICAL STRIKE] Lv.10

[DANGER SENSE] Lv.10(Master)

[GOAT WHISPERER] Lv.10

[HUNTER] Lv.10

[MANA SENSE] Lv.10

[MORE MANA] Lv.10

(Passive) Decrease SP and HP by 50% while increasing MP by 100%.

[PICK FIGHTER] Lv.10

[PULL] Lv. 10(Master)

[SKILL A] Lv.10

(Passive) Increase damage against Insect-Type creatures by 30%.

[SNEAK] Lv. 10

[SP BOOSTER] Lv.10

[SPRINT] Lv.10

[STALWART] Lv.10

[TOUGH HIDE] Lv.10

(Passive) Increase Armor by 50% of END.

Loran still felt conflicted as he looked at his new HP and MP values. He had learned the [MORE MANA] Skill from Maya before they left and while he knew having so much mana at his disposal was going to be a major boost in power, seeing his HP drop back below 100 was depressing to say the least. Even if he now had [TOUGH HIDE] giving him an additional 15 points of Armor it still felt more fragile than he would have liked.

'Keeping my distance is more necessary than ever, but now it just feels like I'm wasting all the points I put into my physical stats.' Loran shook his head. 'No, I'm not wasting them, I just now have a good foundation for if something ever catches me at close range.'

It was fairly standard for games to make spell-casting builds into glass cannons. They commanded incredible offensive power but possessed weak bodies that would die from just a few attacks. Loran was still quite fragile due to [SP BOOSTER] and [MORE MANA] reducing his HP, but his other stats were enough to let him defend himself without magic.

'Since I'm not spending AP on spells I can learn as many as I want. I should probably try harder to find self-augmentation spells. Unfortunately, it seems like all of the early game spells are for long-range combat.'

So far, whenever a player tried to infuse magic into their bodies it would just be added back to their total MP with no effect. No matter what they did, there didn't seem to be a way to buff themselves with magic. Some were starting to believe that magic wasn't meant to enhance themselves directly like this, but others held out hope that such spells just had higher stat requirements.

Either option made sense to Loran. In the early stages of the game, it would be best to focus on a single playstyle instead of trying to balance melee and magic, and having the system quietly enforce that by making certain spells have higher requirements would be normal for a game. And alternatively, the magic system of New Eden Online seemed incredibly broken to many players. With how powerful they could become just by not using Ability Points on learning spells, giving them a way to cover for the greatest weakness of a spellcaster would be almost unfair to everyone who didn't want to use magic.

Regardless of what answer turned out to be the truth, the fact was that Loran needed to better understand how he was going to shape his playstyle from here on out. He had been a kind of generalized melee support build before, but after the version update, he became obsessed with learning magic and started distributing his points as if he had just started playing NEO. Unfortunately, he wasn't at Level 0 anymore, and he really couldn't be so reckless with his AP.

His fight against the Demon bear had demonstrated that he wasn't strong enough to simply cast spells from a distance, but fighting at close range with his HP was becoming riskier with every passing day.

'...I guess I'll just have to figure it out the hard way.'

The coming battle with the Iron Ant Army was going to be intense and rewarding. For most of the players, it was an opportunity to gain the Levels they needed to face the Iron Ants on their own, but for Loran, it would be a trial by fire. He didn't need to just fight, he needed to figure out what was the most effective style for him now that he had both physical and magical power.

Without any way to reset his stats and Skills like other games could, changing his build style again wouldn't be possible in the future. Whatever he decided on after this battle is what he would need to stick with for the rest of his time in New Eden Online.