After the fight with the goblins the men from the village gathered all of the corpses they could find, and burned them outside the cave. The sun was setting by the time they had finished. It had been a very long day for everyone. They decided to head back to the village, even though they would have to travel through the dark before they got back.

On the way back Tanzeeb had many more questions for Kegan, and this time he seemed to believe everything Kegan said. Kegan also had some of his own questions, he asked about Don, the man who he had met in his last life. Tanzeeb didn’t know anyone who fit Don’s description that lived in their village but he said there was a man named Don in the village of Valleyforge.

The trip back is uneventful and Kegan takes up an offer to sleep in Tanzeeb’s home.

Kegan spent the next few days in the village, and he felt like his mind was bursting with new information. He learned how to use a bow and arrows, as well as how to make them. He learned many new ways of cooking food. He was particularly fascinated with the process of salting and drying out meat to last longer. He never would have guessed that grinding up the right rock would make things taste better and last longer.

Kegan learned that what he had thought of as “shiny rocks” that they used for their weapons was actually called metal. Woodhaven didn’t make any metal, but they traded leathers and lumber with Valleyforge for metal items.

When Kegan learned about how this trade worked he became excited. His old cabin had lots of extra furs. He convinced Tanzeeb and some others to travel to his cabin to help him carry everything back to the village.

On the way over their group came upon the shrine and the spirit. The spirit told Kegan that he had completed level 2, Goblin Remnants. It also said Kegan was now in something called “free roam mode”, and that Kegan would get credit for completing additional levels next time he engaged in deadly combat.

The men that came with him couldn’t understand the spirit, it sounded to them like the spirit was whispering in another language. The spirit was also far less visible to them. For Kegan the spirit was a watery blue color, opaque in the center, with wisps of color trailing off almost like smoke spilling out of a log in a fire. The men just saw small wisps of colorless smoke coming from a single spot in the air. They all seemed a bit unnerved by the situation, it was clear they had never seen anything like this.

Kegan had eleven deer pelts, four wolf pelts, a bunch of botched attempts at squirrel pelts, and a few rather disgusting goblin skins that Tanzeeb told him to burn. Bringing everything valuable back he was able to trade with some others in the village for two small bronze blades. One of the blades he attached to a bone handle to use as a dagger and skinning knife. The other he would attach to either his spear or his javelins depending on what he was hunting.

Kegan had gotten annoyed at spending so much time sleeping, and having to eat so much food. He built a small cabin in the village so that he could set it as his new home and start getting his homeowner perks again.

He spent a lot of time just listening to the other villagers. Many of the older villagers were happy to talk at Kegan for hours. It was these one way conversations that made Kegan really feel like he was learning so many new things. The survival skills were all very useful, but they were improvement to an area of knowledge he already had.

The villagers talked about things that Kegan had never even thought of before. He learned a lot about the different families of the village. So many of the social interactions that people had were hard for Kegan to follow. There were small feuds and alliances between different families in different villages. He learned that bodies grow weaker after thirty or forty winters. He learned about wells and buckets. He learned that the stars could on the night of a baby’s birth could tell things about the future of that baby, the rules for this were exceedingly complex, and Kegan had to eventually give up on learning about it. Children and babies were also new concepts, but Kegan had always assumed they existed based on how other species in the forest lived.

Kegan’s new cabin was constructed much faster than his last one. He was able to borrow one of the two bronze axes that the village shared for felling trees. A man named Krawn helped Kegan build the cabin. Krawn taught Kegan a few new tricks, including a way to use clay from the stream to seal parts of the cabin. Kegan had tried this a few times before, but the clay would usually only last a season before it cracked from the cold and became useless. Krawn assured Kegan that the mixture they used this time would last five to ten winters.

Once the cabin was constructed Kegan started hunting a lot more to collect pelts. He was better than most of the other villagers at hunting the deer. After a week of bringing back one or two kills a day, Tanzeeb had asked him to stop. Tanzeeb was afraid that Kegan would kill off too many of the deer in the valley. Kegan felt ashamed at his own carelessness. Kegan and Tanzeeb were able to work out a deal of how often Kegan could kill a deer. Kegan would be allowed to hunt every ten days, and kill one buck if he could find one.

For a few days after the change in the hunting schedule Kegan was having trouble finding something to do. It was Tanzeeb’s son that found a solution. He had nervously asked Kegan to spar with him and teach him how to better wield a spear. This was another new concept for Kegan, and it took some extra explaining to get across, but Kegan was delighted to help.

The first week was very painful for the boys that had joined Kegan’s lessons, because it took that long before Kegan learned to adjust his fighting style to hold back a little. He hadn’t realized it was a problem until Tanzeeb’s wife had yelled at him for beating up her son so badly. After that some of the men joined in once they realized they wouldn’t be mercilessly beaten.

After about a month and a half Kegan’s homeowner perks kicked in again. He was already able to do more than most of the other villagers in any given day. But the homeowner perks widened that gap much further. He was now doing in one day what would take most other villagers two or three days to accomplish. Kegan became a little confused by this and tried to ask Tanzeeb what perks everyone else had.

It took a while to explain, but Kegan finally learned that no one else had perks like he had, and the concept of dying and coming back alive was something no one else ever experienced. Tanzeeb and the other villagers had started to suspect Kegan was some kind of demi-god. Which lead to a whole new conversation about the gods, and how sometimes they would have offspring with mortal creatures and create demi-gods in the process. Kegan accepted that he was probably a demi-god and thanked Tanzeeb for figuring it out.

Two months of easy village life passed quickly for Kegan. Around that time five men on horses rode into the village. Kegan had never seen horses before, and thought they were some kind of tame giant deer. The men on the horses were talking with Tanzeeb and some of the other villagers, Kegan went up to listen.

“...moving West, then what happened to the Northern Orc Tribes?”

“They have been dealing with a drought and famine for the last few years, and haven’t been harassing the Empire’s northern border forts as they used to.”

“What do you think is the Empire’s intention? Is it conquest or assimilation?”

“I’m afraid it is conquest. A new emperor sits on the throne, and he will try and solidify his control over the legions by offering them loot and slaves.”

“Damn him! We are former citizens, it was the emperor that abandoned us and left us to our own devices. He is going to send his dogs after us and treat us no better than the barbaric Orcs. You’ll have your volunteers, and you can count me among them.”

Kegan had never seen Tanzeeb get so worked up. The horsemen seemed satisfied by Tanzeeb’s response, they said their goodbyes and rode off. Tanzeeb stormed off to his home before Kegan could ask him any questions.

Over the next few days the village was a hive of activity. About half of the men were gathering up to head to the village of Valleyforge. They were taking most of the best weapons, wearing most of the best armor, preparing to take a bunch of dried rations, and having loud arguments with each other about who was going. Kegan found it hard to follow who was and who wasn’t going. It seemed all the women didn’t want any of the men in their family to go. All of the young men were eager to go. All of the middle aged men were reluctant but insistent on going. The children were excited, and the elderly all seemed sad.

During this time Kegan slowly pieced together what was happening. The men of the village were going to gather with a bunch of men from several other villages in Valleyforge. From there they were going to head east, and meet up with men from other villages. Then they were all going to fight some other men from “the empire.” If they won this fight the empire would leave them alone. If they lost this fight the empire would burn and plunder all of the villages and enslave all the women and children.

Kegan wasn’t initially sure if he was supposed to go, everyone else seemed to be arguing about who was supposed to go, but no one was arguing with Kegan. It took a day for Kegan to figure out that everyone just assumed he was going and that was why no one had argued with him.

Kegan followed the other’s example and packed as much as he could carry. Ten javelins, both of his bronze blades, his new bow, 20 arrows, his spear, his club, his newly repaired bone armor, a waterskin, a sleep sack made of deer fur, and about a pound of dried meat. He felt almost silly carrying everything there was no way he would be able to fight while carrying so much. When he saw Tanzeeb and the others struggling to carry just as much as him, and sometimes more, he felt a little better.

Kegan and about two dozen men left Woodhaven on a foggy morning. The mood in the village was somber as all the men left. Many of the women were quietly crying. Kegan felt out of place, no women were crying for him, and unlike most of the men he felt pretty excited. He’d never been in a war before, and it sounded very different than fighting goblins. Kegan was also pretty sure they were all worried about dying, but he didn’t share this worry. After all, death was just an unpleasant temporary setback for Kegan, not the end of his life.