Over the course of the morning, Nic beat down and built up every one of the fledgling squads. It was an odd mix of effortless - they couldn't scratch him - and difficult - because he had to teach them how to.

Nobody did quite as badly as the first squad. Nearly killing your own frontliner was a hard act to follow, and in the end, Nic dissolved that squad. The saber-woman, whose name was Nadine, went to the squad with only three members, while Kang-Dae joined Melville’s team to make five.

Barnel and Raughlins? They were just too unruly. They communicated well with each other, and precisely nobody else. The answer was to stick them in a two man squad and let them get on with their own business.

Nic had known the duo before they received their Shards, and even if they were clumsy with their new powers, they had known how to get in and out of scrapes without any Shards at all. Left to their own devices, he was confident they'd find a way to make themselves valuable...

Others needed more help with the fundamentals. How to weave two Shards together into one move was a sticking point for many of them. Much like how Moira had struggled before meeting Nic, they thought of the abilities as something outside of themselves, a tool they could point at an enemy and activate, rather than an intrinsic part of their new life.

To counter this he had them do exercises that subtly bent the limits of their Shards, forcing them to see both the boundaries and possibilities. Melville, the weather-shaper, was the one who took to this training most readily. He already delighted in sculpting his pet clouds into strange shapes...

By the end of the morning he'd figured out how to push a frigid cloud and a tropical one together to form a not-entirely-miniature hurricane.

Nic was so impressed he took out several aura-restoring fruits and handed them over as a prize. Melville...

The man was quite weedy and greasy, with loose brown hair that fell over a young face in greasy curls. Acne ran up one side, and his glasses were scratched with tape wrapped around the middle. He was the definition of unimpressive at first glance. But he approached cultivation with a sincere fascination. He loved the power to do 'magic' more than he feared the monsters or any of the changes happening to his world.

Nic marked him then and there as one to watch.

In the end he made his selections for the hunt.

Melville’s squad, as well as the team that had taken Nadine. The last team chosen was entirely boys from the orphanage- Tarquin’s chosen second-in-command, Shakes, among them.

Shakes was slender and a little handsome in a vague and sickly way. Not who Nic would have chosen. The fact was, Shakes was always a vicious piece of work and Nic was betting that had become worse now he had Shards.

But his squad had the best showing overall. Nic had actually needed to exert his real strength to avoid being completely fenced out by their teamwork. With each attack they unleashed, another was already on its way, covering the window of opportunity opened by the first.

Until Nic had simply broken the training platform under their feet and sent them into the water.

Honestly, he should’ve realized he’d need a sturdier foundation to put the training pavilion on. But at least he was able to teach them a lesson about using their environment.

As the morning wound down, Nic ended up accompanying the battered, bruised, and sweating trainees to breakfast. They sat under an open awning spun from spider-silk at broad tables, eating from clayware bowls of steamed rice porridge sprinkled with a mix of pickled broadleaf vegetables, a bit of fish, and a fine dice of caramelized mushroom and crisp-fried starchy roots. There was precisely one spoon at the whole table, and everyone stared at the proud owner jealously as they dipped their fingers in.

Nic just dipped his face in and didn’t come up until there was more food left on his face than in the bowl. Licking his lips clean, he sighed in contentment.

It was the good life. There wasn’t any meat, because the humans were squeamish about eating sapients.

But there was conversation. The Natives were thrumming with excitement. That one fight and the following training had opened them up to how to use their Shards, and now several were hard at work at the table.

A miniature cloud was doing battle with a tiny golem made of twisting wires.

A series of red, glowing orbs drifted above the table, the owner trying to keep six of them in orbit at once as sweat dripped down his face.

A girl with a talent for accelerating objects was prodding leaves with a single finger as they fell from the awning, making them suddenly shoot away like frightened fish darting off through the water.

Half of them were excited for the hunt, or sad they couldn’t go. Equally many just chatted with their new squadmates, sharing stories of Earth, city d23, of the monsters they’d seen and how they’d come to Winterhome. It was overwhelming, really.

Everyone had their own path that led to Winterhome, and now they were telling those stories. Lives from two worlds filled the air around him.

He turned and saw small, agile forest creatures creeping down the awning. They watched the conversation at the table with distrustful eyes as they made their way to small bowls of water and porridge set out on the ground for them.

Weasel-like creatures with a fur of living moss and vines drank alongside bright, ruby-skinned lizards with six eyes, their azure headcreasts flexing as they lapped at the water. How they were supposed to advance with bodies like those…

Breaking through from F-Class to E-Class was one thing, but starting at G-Class meant having no Shards, no abilities except your innate ones. From there, you’d have to kill to acquire your first Shard…

It was too much of a gulf. Maybe poisonous, secretive animals could manage an assassination, but these were harmless herbivores…

The frizzy-haired cook stepped into his view, bending down to put out a bowl of chopped vegetables and nuts. When she straightened up she caught sight of him, and raised an eyebrow. Nic waved.

She waved back. “Well, it’s about what you promised,” she said. Kiana, that was her name. “Safety and training.”

“I heard you turned down Nylea’s offer to train you, actually.” Inkspur translated. He was happily savaging a bit of fried carp.

“Oh, you mean Lady Nylea? She condescended to train me.”

Nic restrained a grimace. Okay. Nylea had gone and offended his trainee alchemist by being…

So very Nylea. Very posh, very fancy.

“Look, I’m being useful, aren’t I? You’ve got too few cooks and too many mouths to feed. Especially once you count all the critters who will be food if they leave your protection…”

Nic frowned. She had some points, especially regarding the plight of the smallest creatures in his domain, but this was the talk of a stubborn person sticking to stubborn ways. If she spent half that time and energy trying to be helpful…

“You know…” Inkspur said, of his own accord. “NOT ALL OF THESE PEOPLE ARE GOING TO COME BACK.”

The table froze.

Nic silently put his head in his hands and groaned.

“So, if you see faces missing at this table, THEIR BONES SHAT OUT AS FERTILIZER, won’t you WISH YOU KNEW HOW TO HEAL? How to make people stronger? Or will a REALLY GOOD SOUP save the day?”

Nic held back a hiccup of despairing laughter.

It was actually a good argument. The cook was brought to a standstill.

He just had to smooth things over with all the people Inkspur had announced as dead men walking. He turned back down the table and saw-

Fear? But also resignation, and some hints of excitement. They weren’t idiots. Maybe he didn’t need to always take the delicate route.

“Yeah…” Nic admitted bluntly, holding up his bowl for seconds. “Some of you might die out there. Honestly? You might die even if you don’t go. If you wait too long, well, the System is going to leave you behind. The enemies outside the walls will get more powerful until you can’t do anything to fight back at all…”

“That’s not much of a way to go. Relying on others to defend you, until they can’t anymore, and all the time you’re just waiting for the end.”

“But if you follow me, I promise we’ll fight as hard as we can to not let that happen. To stay ahead of the game.”

“I can’t promise I have the magic power to keep everyone alive…”

“But if you die, I can teach you to make them pay for your life on the way out.”

He let Inkspur tidy that one up a bit. The little wyvern was happy to throw in blazing banners flying high and funerals where beautiful women threw themselves on their coffins.

But it was his favorite speech he’d given yet.

---

They set out as morning ended. It was a journey that Nic estimated would take until nightfall, especially with all the stops he planned along the way.

Winterhome only kept its defensive powers while it stayed within claimed territory.

So they were going to conquer the Nodes as they went, all the way to their goal at the hunting grounds. Each squad was stocked up with food, healing pearls from their friendly spiders, and a set of talismans that Nic had made himself. One talisman was an explosive type, while the other was a flare to call for help.

And with their preparations made, they clambered down the rocky flipper-leg of Winterhome and departed.

Moving in such a large group was essentially different than stalking the forest alone. When Nic wandered alone, the darkness between the trees closed in on him, and the birdsong or the howls of beasts echoed on all sides. Despite the sky above, there was something paranoid and disconcerting about the foliage that blocked his vision, the shadows that passed overhead as tree branches crossed the sunlight…

A constant sense of being watched and measured up by unseen eyes, waiting to see if he was prey or not.

And increasingly, as he grew more powerful, the sense that those watchers were beginning to worry they might be the prey…

But with so many people, the isolation of the jungle was scattered and broken to pieces. Their stomping footsteps frightened the birds from the trees and created an island of emptiness around them. They joked, they talked, they swore as insects bit into their skin and left the backs of their neck sticky with blood.

The forest broke apart as they hacked away vines and low-hanging branches. Creatures were only visible as flashes of color escaping into the dense foliage…

Nic was always keeping a watchful eye. Now and then something would stalk them for a ways; a huge panther followed them by leaping from tree branch to tree branch; a flock of bright-feathered birds with long serrated beaks slowly massed and prepared to swarm.

The first time, Nic simply hung back for a few moments. By the time the hunters noticed he was gone, he was already on his way back, a single scratch across his face rapidly healing as he chewed some panther meat on the bone…

The second time, realizing there were too many for a clean kill, Nic unleashed his presence.

The most adept of his hunters just shivered, suddenly aware of something wrong. The beasts were far more sensitive. He locked eyes with them as the poisonous energy expanded from him, and they leapt up into the air, flying away in utter panic.

He’d said he might lose some of them…

But he wouldn’t make it easy for anyone who tried to take their lives…

As they walked, Nic was the first to notice small, glowing flowers begin to dot the earth. Much larger blossoms were common in the trees, but this was the first time he’d seen them grow along the roots and ground.

Between each flower was a thin web of slightly wet vines that connected them together, like the threads of pulsating veins within the body…

And from deeper into the forest came a deep, pulsating beat, like a heart thudding.

Nic smiled. They’d arrived at their first test. The first Dominus Node.