The farmer has to be an optimist, or he wouldn’t still be a farmer.

Pre-Fall quip

“My dad’s going to be smug,” Peter said as the four sat under the awning in front of his family’s house in the waning light of the afternoon.

“Well, my brother’s convinced father to wait a week to let the grain grow a bit more. Small grain is going to sell for shit in Valetta, he says. And I can agree with him somewhat. After all, just because we saw a colony of Lepus doesn’t mean the critters are pouring out of the north,” Johanna said.

Tom and Laura stayed out of the conversation, nursing the sweetened apple bubbly juice recipe from the Donnalls’ household. Neither had real skin in the game, although Tom had a first cousin married in Anasta, and Laura once said she’d got some sort of relative there. The endless mixing between all of the farming hubs surrounding Valetta didn’t automatically mean everybody was your immediate family. Just a distant one.

“I’m okay with staying here for a while. If that’s what you think you need,” Peter added.

“What? No. I’m fine. We’re all fine, right?” she replied, looking around.

Nobody contradicted her, so she settled back, sipping the drink before continuing.

“We set out because nobody wanted to work on a farm not our own. Although the mayor…”

“We’re all so far down the inheritance list, nobody’s going to bother calling on us,” Laura noted. “I heard rumors in Virtu about those new farms last year, but I know for sure nobody is going to offer me a chance on that one. Not with two older brothers chomping at the bit, and that’s with our older sister dying when I was ten.”

Johanna couldn’t fault her friend. For all her easygoing disposition, she had a sharp mind, and you couldn’t fool her. Tom, a fourth child, might get a pass on the ladder of inheritance, but that meant most of his older siblings died. No, like anyone in their position, they had to rely on making their own opportunities, carving their own niche outside of the established ones.

And that meant going back to scavenge the Ancient ruins, no matter how nice relaxing in Anasta sounded. The previous earnings stockpile wasn’t still enough for the future they’d been envisioning. Slowly getting close, but not enough.

“So. You want to stay for a week and help?” Tom asked.

“Not sure. It’s all so complicated now.”

“Staying isn’t going to change things,” Peter offered.

“Yea, I know…” she started, before the young Jake Donnall, Peter’s nephew, ran to the household like he was hunted by his sister.

“Peter! Warn dad! Trouble!”

“Wait, what trouble?” he replied, but the boy had already bolted around the house, and they heard his shouts further in.

They all looked at each other, then, as one, shook their heads, stood and rushed toward the village’s entrance.

There was nothing special going on when they reached the gate into Anasta, but Peter was quick to point at a handful of figures running toward them.

“What’s going on?” Johanna heard from behind, recognizing her father’s voice.

“No idea.”

Two farmers reached the gate, and they learned what was happening.

“Lepus!”

“Shit,” she heard from one of the other farmers coming from the Anasta enclosure.

“Looks like your warning was barely in time,” her father added.

“That was the vanguard then. We’ve got to defend the fields if the rest is coming,” she stated.

“Too much still there. If it was some predator, maybe, but those oversized rabbits are hell’s own punishment,” one of the farmers confirmed.

Then the man reached to the shed next to the gate, opening it, and pulling a crossbow and a pack of bolts. Johanna turned to her father, reflexively flexing her hand in anticipation.

“We can help.”

“What? Goddam, no.”

“Why not? You know we can…”

“I’m not having my daughter wade into beasts. Even if you can do better than me,” he said, bringing odd looks from the other farmers who were grabbing weapons.

She glowered at her father.

“You might… pick a spear, at least.”

“Why?”

“It’s safer. You’ve seen what these beasts can do.”

“But I…”

Tom reached and pulled a large mace-like hammer rather than a weapon. Bram Milton looked at him oddly, as he weighed the oversized tool.

“I think I’m better at blunt stuff more than spears.”

Then another pair of men turned around the palisade, screaming alarm, and all of them realized that what they had on their hands might be bigger than one rampaging colony of Lepus.

The four of them had ended up separated, as Johanna and Tom headed northeast to help. Peter and Laura had rushed along with the larger group toward the original pack, and Johanna had felt a little bit of fear when she realized her friend wouldn’t be there to deal with any wounds that would occur.

But then, people usually didn’t have the recourse of having a saint to heal them. You fought on, to preserve your livelihood. If you let the beasts overrun your area, you starved, and she doubted “Saint” Laura could conjure bread or multiply fishes like the Lord once did.

So, she ran. Beasts from the North were always dangerous, and people died. So when the call came, you did what you needed to.

She spotted the shapes of the beasts quickly enough. The dozen or so farmers alongside her pointed, with their spears and pikes. She exchanged a brief look with Tom and then tried to speed up.

So far, the beasts were simply rummaging, checking the opportunities they’d just discovered, looking as if they had just entered the Holy Land. She spotted one that looked like it was munching on corn stalks. While the wheat was going to be harvestable now if you wanted to, the corn wasn’t mature yet, but that didn’t seem to faze the Lepus.

One of the beasts noticed the approaching farmer and raised his horn, emitting the shrill cry that Johanna recognized from their encounter on the road. The dozen that she could see started to get agitated, but what worried her were the half dozen additional horns that suddenly poked out from the cornrows, indicating that more Lepuses were rooting around.

Then the first farmer reached the first Lepus, reaching with his pike into the side of the beast, who jumped up, jerking the long blade. The cry of pain caused all of the beasts to turn toward the village defenders.

Then, Tom raised his mace toward the closest Lepus and ran like lightning, passing the bemused farmers, hitting and bowling the beast who convulsed in shock at the hit, bone at its side caved, and the battle began in earnest as the beasts started moving against what they recognized as a threat.

The pack of Lepus that Peter was facing was still pouring out of the woods. Peter had picked a spear as well, although he was pretty sure he could get in closer range and still avoid too much damage. He was not 100% convinced, but Tom had made a good remark about him being much more adept at avoiding being mauled by whatever beast was around than just his small frame could account for.

Worst case, he had Laura at his side. With her along, the fighters of his village would do good. Anasta would have its harvests safe against the depredations of the mutated beasts. And they wouldn’t have to pay for that triumph, like five years ago, when his brother came home crying.

Three large beasts ran out of the forest, attracted by the shrill cries of the Lepus colony. Seeing this, the troop of defenders instinctively packed closer. The massive newcomers ran toward their comrades, who moved out the way by instinct. Peter shivered. Maybe he could try to avoid being hit by the beasts, but the rest of the farmers from home would not have his advantages. And besides, they were there to drive them away, not to just avoid being hit.

Two of the beasts detached themselves from the pack and joined the large ones, starting a gallop across the field toward them. Despite their resolve, the defenders flinched as the massive Lepus bounced between the stalks of grain.

“Fuck me…” Peter heard from the side, which struck him as funny, as it was not quite the normal circumstances for that one phrase from Laura.

Then the Lepus slowed their charges, seemingly hesitating. One of the farmers took advantage of it, unloading a crossbow bolt onto the forward beast. The Lepus shrilled as the shaft buried itself on its side and started to sprint toward the annoying biped, only to slow and shrink on itself as it came at them.

Peter frowned because the beast wasn’t behaving as he’d expected. The Lepus yesterday had been very disorganized, attacking without much of a focus, but none had hesitated to go after them. The group of farmers was much larger, true.

The other Lepus reached his range and he speared forward. He’d intended to hit and incapacitate the beast first, but his spear… slid, and buried itself straight into the Lepus’ neck, and the Lepus convulsed, mortally wounded. The other farmer – his uncle, actually, he just realized – speared the other beast, but with less success. The Lepus shrank away, but more beasts were coming at them.

“Stand fast,” a farmer yelled, and Peter pushed his spear forward.

Moore was watching each of his four windows as the horde of critters was showing up everywhere. If he’d found the giant horned Lepuses funny the first time – at least until they gored Milton – the sight of an even bigger army of the critters was way more frightening than any videogame sequence featuring level 1 rabbits had any right to.

That was the kind of stuff the wall was obviously made for, yet they had come out to fight. The sight of a Lepus ripping a cornstalk told him why. The grain was still in the fields, and giant predatory rabbits could be as bad a rain of locusts, he guessed.

The team had split, grabbing weapons of all kinds, and rushed to help the village defend against the hordes of level 1 Lepuses coming upon them. And that offered him yet another different perspective on the System as they all fought separately in pairs.

XP came in small bursts as each critter died and it was all kind of mixed, not rounded numbers, which probably meant that the other farmers, whose descriptors he couldn’t access at the moment, got a share of the XP based on some kind of participation. The 500XP per critter level wasn’t even a straight split even with rounding, obeying some unknown, more complex formula.

The one constant thing was that both of the team members in each spot got the same XP, and the same amount ended in the global pool. Meaning it would be easier to correct imbalances between the pairs.

The chaos of the Lepus attack was rising, and Johanna was slowly backing away. Dozens of beasts were joining the melee, and the eleven or so of farmers were desperately pushing their pikes and spears at the mass of feral critters. Tom had to retreat into the circle of protective spears, after smashing a large Lepus, with the audible crack of bone as the beast fell to the side, not dead but completely incapacitated by broken limbs.

She debated starting to pull out the fire, but she had to grab her pike with both hands as one Lepus threatened to break through the protection. If she had a lighter pike that could be used one-handed…

The big problem Moore had was Johanna Milton. Rather than use her flame blowtorch attack, she’d somehow settled on a kind of spear that her father had handed her. Meaning that, unlike Welter next to her, she didn’t play to her strengths. Of course, that was also a better defensive setup, given the sheer number of enemies, but the best defense was always initiative and offense.

Slowly the XP was adding as the farmers managed to kill a Lepus here and there at the point of their pikes, even if some moments were harrowing. And finally, it reached the threshold he needed. Time slowed again as he pushed into the interface for what he’d spotted yesterday and skipped over from lack of global XP. The total of global and her own experience was finally at 3002, meaning he could give Milton a level and something to boost her capacity, at least for this fight.

Flaming Blade

Requires: Dexterity 16/Authority 16/Level 4

Effective: 1 × Dexterity + Level (adds 20 mana)

Passive: Grant bodily immunity to fire, up to 500°F (current max 680°)

Active: Create a flame of maximum temperature surrounding a bladed weapon. The weapon remains immune to burning or melting while covered.

Active cost: 1 mana per 20 seconds

He validated the new skill immediately, and then switched back to Donnall’s perspective. He was the only one with an additional skill point and now enough personal XP for at least one stat, and maybe there would be something…

The tip of the pike bursting into flame as she tried to deflect a Lepus surprised Johanna. She almost dropped the weapon from the shock, before she realized she now had her flame again, just at the tip of her weapon. The Lepus tried to move away, and she slashed downward, the flame burning across the fur and causing the beast to emit a shrill cry of pain. She took the opportunity and stabbed, the flame burying itself into the side and the Lepus convulsed in shock, falling to the side.

She turned back toward the other and caught the wide-eyed stares of the others. The only one unfazed was Tom, who took the flame in stride and bashed a close beast, with a slightly sickening crunch as his hammer connected.

She fell on the flank of the Lepus pack that was away from the field, where her flaming pike could be used to disrupt the attacking beasts without risking the grain, and the other farmers managed to immediately take the opportunity, stabbing and spearing the beasts distracted by the swirling fire. Tom moved to the side, and together, they made a kind of pincer, while the core of the Anastan fighters pushed at the center of the horde.

Thomas Grant almost screamed again as he felt his leg shift, the weird sensation of the femur knitting itself into a single piece. He looked at the girl from Virtu, flinching and freezing in shock. Part of Thomas felt she looked like a pretty normal girl, and another part of him knew there was a terrible menace welling from behind her face. Then she turned her gaze away, and the adrenaline dropped.

He looked at the Donnall boy and wondered how he’d picked such a monster.

He has to know, right?

He reached, grabbing the pike he’d been holding when the Lepus had ripped his leg and used it to stand back, before rejoining the other farmers, and suddenly realizing he didn’t even limp, torn trousers the only trace of the injury.

Moore had managed to rope in his impulse to allocate more skills in a panic. Trying to find a skill to allocate to Peter Donnall had been a frustrating experience, even with the added time of using the interface. Unlike Vogel and Milton, whose mana-oriented focus seemed to allow for a wide variety of skills and stats, melee skills using non-physical stats were few and mostly situational. Pay Attention, which was the one that popped when searching for Empathy-focused skills for a Discreet was weird, used mana instead of stamina, and raised all kinds of red flags when it came to a consistent build. In fact, all – well all of three visible so far up – Discreet-enabled skills relying on Empathy seemed to use mana instead of stamina, unlike the rest of the skills.

He felt better when the first Lepus started fleeing from Donnall and Vogel, and he knew the battle was won. The farmers pursued the fleeing beasts still, unwilling to let the threat survive to come back later, and he approved. Only a pair of Lepus managed to slip into the forest, where the farmers finally stopped pursuing.

Welter and Milton had faced fewer beasts, but they’d done very well too. Corpses with burns and caved-in skulls demonstrated the proficiency of the pair, even if Welter had gotten his shirt and trousers ripped and blood flowed from a few scrapes with Lepus horns. Well, Vogel would fix him, once they rejoined. Right now, she was touching up the slightly battered farmers of her side, who usually flinched when experiencing her healing touch.

The experience gains had not been enormous, though, considering the massive scale of the fight. Much had been diluted by the presence of the farmers. Although, all in all, they still got over 2000 each during the battle, and almost 3k XP was still remaining in the global pool after his emergency allocation.

As the fighters slowly made their way back, he finally brought up again the interfaces. Milton still had a free skill point, and enough personal XP that he could raise her Agility to 16 and grant her Earthbind, which did not fit the fire theme he was pursuing but gave her some defenses. “Root”-type spells were always useful…

He also raised Vogel’s level and added Agility as well this time. Cleanse Toxins had a good multiplier and would be helpful in a variety of situations. Since the skill mentioned both toxins and poisons, it had to work on fatigue build-up, stress, and all kind of stuff, hopefully. And provide non-combat XP.

Almost as an afterthought, he raised Welter to level 4. He needed 3000 additional XP to raise Dexterity as well and give him a skill there, but the level was still going to increase a little bit his fighting prowess.

Donnall was going to wait for the allocation of his last point, as it was going to be a long haul until he got enough to give him 16 Strength.

Things are shaping up nicely. They already make a difference, even at level 4.