Damon was working up a heat in the forge with his fellow blacksmiths when Silas arrived and saw himself into the boiler room flavoured with clangs of metal on metal. The Steelsmith must have been waiting for him as he spotted him at once and pointed a gloved thumb to the side where sat a scabbard and a spear.

Although the System-weapons were sturdy, Silas had figured his spear had been well overdue of a shine-up and sharpening, which was why he had given it to the Steelsmith yesterday. However, his gaze now swept over his partner of weeks as it instead focused in on the scabbard. He crossed the room to the weapons with a splitting grin. The scabbard was matte and made of metal, attached to a leather sword belt. He took it in one hand and pulled out the sword by its hilt, his mouth curving o-shaped with the motion until one lay bare and the other gaped in awe.

Forged of steel, the shortsword was half a metre in length with two crystal edges, their glow bleeding across the blade’s sleek, oiled body. The hilt was wooden and leather-wrapped, and it would have made the sword look plain if not for the edges.

“I would have made it nicer if you’d given me a second to breathe,” Damon said, treading towards him with a gruff laugh that somehow cut through the surrounding noise.

“No, it’s perfect,” Silas replied, his eyes still on the sword. He ran a slow finger down its body, then along its edge and watched as his skin split on contact. Nodding to himself, he slid the sword back into its sheath and rubbed his finger of the blood. He attached his handgun’s holster to the sword belt, before tying it around his waist. Although a longsword would have had more reach, the shortsword hung more comfortably from his waist, far less likely to trip him up when sprinting and easier to crawl with.

“I guess it is a piece of beauty even without its makeup,” Damon admitted, before turning to the spear. “When the boys heard that was for you, they went a little wild with the sharpening. It’ll serve you well though where you’re going. Give them hell, son.”

“I’ll do my best,” Silas said, dipping his head in appreciation. He could feel the excited and hopeful eyes from the room boring into his back as he made for the exit.

****

Arriving back home, Silas donned his new set of New Derby armour, having runed it already in the morning. He found Ethan and Olivia in the garden, where he clasped hands with his brother before pulling him in for a hug. Now recovered and well-fed, Ethan looked like a shorter Silas, sharing the same profile of the face with brown eyes and chestnut hair. “I shouldn’t be too long, so don’t worry over me or anything. And make sure you don’t do anything stupid just because I’ve left the house.”

Hearing Olivia’s shoes shuffling on stone, Silas then turned to her and pulled her in for a hug too, patting her firmly across the back. She looked far better than she had ever done with her face cleared up of waxen skin and dark bags, and enough weight to her body that she no longer struggled against spiteful gusts. “Look after Ethan for me, would you? Don’t let him slack off just because I’m not here.”

She smiled softly, although it was strained by concern. Her eyes were wet with worry. “Are you sure you should go alone? I asked yesterday at the field, and they said all the other scouts who went died.” She croaked the last word, and Silas turned to Ethan to see his brother nodding with her.

“If I took others, it would only make this mission harder,” Silas replied, raising his hands to assure them. “I can cover far more ground by myself and react quicker to enemies, so I would only be pulled down by someone with lower agility and perception. Besides, I won’t be alone since Bandit’s watching my back.”

“But—” Ethan started, but Silas clicked his tongue and interrupted.

“Don’t worry, I won’t underestimate the ratkin or anything stupid like that. I know them too well to think I can just prance right in there.”

“But do you need to do this?” Ethan finished. “It just feels so risky to me.”

This gave Silas pause as he grimaced but only for a moment. “Maybe in a week’s time they could come with a host of thousands and slaughter through Riverside. We’ve got no idea if they will or not, though, since we’ve got no eyes on them. At least this way we can get an idea on what they’re up to, and maybe I can even find those mycelia people while I’m at it. I mean, I can’t be sure of how they’ll take to me, but hopefully an enemy of an enemy is a friend, even if it only for a time.”

Seeing Ethan wasn’t fully convinced, Silas reached out and ruffled his hair. “Come on, you two can trust in me. You know, I’ve been through far worse than this, and I came out in one piece all of those times. But if it’ll make you feel any better, I promise not to do anything stupid.” This somewhat appeased them, which was all Silas could ask for, so he made for the front door with them following. Tugging on his boots, he waved goodbye at them and exited through the entryway when he spotted Mia walking towards the house. She sported blue jeans and a burgundy blouse which went well with her auburn hair tied up in a ponytail. She had a geeky look to her with her oval glasses, plump cheeks, and high hairline.

“How was it?” he called out, walking out to meet her. He knew she had just been at the weekly Mages guild’s meeting.

She beamed at him and pulled herself against his arm. “Oh, it was great. They had so many manuals, and although the others struggled with the spells, most of it just came naturally to me.”

Silas chuckled at that and leaned in. “Sounds like you, alright.”

Mia gave a quick peck on his cheeks, then drew back and locked gazes, before diving in for a deeper kiss. “Return safe, you hear me? And remember to text often; I don’t want to hear that you’ve gone off the map the second you leave here.”

He kissed her twice more before separating. He was somewhat used to leaving Riverside now, having done it regularly over the last couple of weeks, but it never grew easy with lengthy expeditions like this. As such, his gait was slow, but at least his mind was relatively calm knowing those important to him were safe behind Riverside’s walls. He popped by Iris at her house, and Josh at the constabulary’s fields, before heading to the council building where he found Elise, Dom, Rolf, and Princess Amara, amongst others. He collected last-minute supplies and information from them, before clocking out for his scouting mission.

****

Wearing a rucksack across his back, Silas made quick ground, his bag only holding essentials like food, healing potions, and a sleeping bag. From what Elise had told him, the other scouts had on average made it about two days east before disappearing off the citizens list, so he figured it would take him about a week in all to find the ratkin’s base and return. Bandit’s silhouette was visible several hundreds of metres above him; the owl had been thrilled at the prospect of adventuring with Silas again, its excitement not at all dampened by the fact that they were treading into dangerous land.

When he had gone to the council building, Rolf and Amara had suggested that the ratkin had likely caught all the humans with a tracking spell - something that was certainly plausible given how powerful the ratkin sorcerers were. For this reason, Silas had wrapped a length of Velcro around Bandit’s legs with a runified mana barrier engraved into it, the hope being that the automatic barriers would hide him and the owl from arcane detection.

Their first day heading east was relatively peaceful with Silas only spotting a dozen or so monsters, most of which he avoided since they seemed perfectly content to let him pass by. They made rest in a concealed grove, Bandit taking the first night shift before Silas took over. They started early the next day, making good progress until slowing down near the 90-mile mark from Riverside - it was after this point that all the other scouts had fallen.

There were no concrete differences to the scenery as there were still mixes of forests and plains ahead of them, but Silas experienced a curious change of feeling here. Searching internally for a moment, he pinpointed the feeling to a minuscule trickle of mana draining from within him. If it weren’t for his perception, he wouldn’t have noticed it as even after waiting ten minutes, the leakage was so small that it failed to reduce his mana by a single point.

Silas Wycliffe

Level 47

Level 11 Duellist

Mana: 253/253 (recovery rate: 1.25 per minute)

Strength: 31 (+9)

Agility: 44 (+9)

Constitution: 24 (+9)

Arcana: 16 (+9)

Perception: 55 (+9)

Abilities: Weakness Vision, Harrying Blows, Luminous Land

Regardless, it practically confirmed Rolf’s and Amara’s suspicions that there was an insidious spell active in the background. Fortunately, since it took such little effort for his runic barrier to resist it, it meant his mana recovered faster than it drained, allowing him to remain undetected indefinitely. When he asked about the matter to Bandit, the owl answered with some cryptic answers which he had to decipher to realise it was the same case for it.

All the same, although they were undetected, Silas made a marked decrease in their pace as he took more care in his movement, ordering Bandit to lower itself too before some ratkin spotted it by chance. If it hadn’t been evident before, it quickly became clear now that this area was different since all the monsters Silas expected to see were nowhere to be found. There were no calls or cries from the distance, no squawking or screeching, only the keen blowing of the wind.

Either way, they had no choice but to forge on, so Silas notified his loves ones and soon passed the 100-mile mark, leaving the range of the communication device. Here and there, he spotted pawprints in the forest floor, causing him to raise his guard further. It wasn’t more than half an hour later that he spotted a wooden watchtower, manned by bored ratkin guards. He was too distant for them to spot, and although he thought of sneaking in and making a mess, he reconsidered once he realised it was likely these guards worked in shifts. He would only be shooting himself in the foot if the next group of guards came by and saw their fellows all dead, giving them every reason to raise the alarm.

But before heading deeper into ratkin land, he headed north for a few miles and found another watchtower as he had suspected. It seemed they had built a circle of watchtowers to protect their borders, which explained, amongst other things, why all the scouts had been caught. It was also an ominous sign as it meant the ratkin ground was positive to be teeming with the vermin, even around these borders since the guards in all the watchtowers were likely to rotate regularly. With this information, Silas backtracked and headed west until he was in range of Riverside’s communication device again, where he told Elise of what he had learnt.

With this done, they headed east again, sneaking past the watchtowers and going deep into the lands thick with the smell of ammonia. As Silas had presumed, he spotted groups of ratkin every few minutes, slowing their progress to a crawl since they were forced to hide so often. Despite this, both he and Bandit were proficient at stealth and they completed the day without detection, setting up in a damp cave and nibbling on their supplies instead of risking a fire.

As before, they started the day early, Silas hoping that this decision would give them some hours before the ratkin swarmed the forest again. Fortunately, he proved correct and bolstered by this success, he figured another risk was worth taking. He ordered Bandit to briefly soar and scan the surroundings for any structures sticking out of the forest like sore thumbs, before then diving back down. However, when the owl returned, it just shook its head.

This was worrying, but Silas supposed it just meant the ratkin base was further than he had initially hoped it to be. Several tense hours of sneaking and hiding followed, before they finally came upon a novel sight. They had been drawn in by the sounds of combat, Bandit hearing it before Silas, and as they went over to check, they glanced upon a most peculiar scene.

On one side of the sprawl fought ratkin, easily recognisable by their orderly formations and their discipline in the face of danger. They were not, however, recognisable by their distinctive ratlike appearance since the opposing side also had ratmen, as well as ogres, satyrs, nymphs, and ryfin, in addition to wiry fungal creatures which Silas could only guess at being the mycelia.