“Nash, it's so good seeing you again.”

Turning around, I see the commander of the village’s forces.

“Good to be back Richard. Though I got to say the defenses seemed to be even more impressive this time.”

At first glance not much has changed but I have taken a look behind the curtain with my perception field and some of the ideas they put into place are marvelous. Even more surprises for when they are needed.

Charlie approaches us as well and gives his two cents.

“Yep, and we also started to learn more about the mechanics of the system’s strength judgment.”

Interested in filling the vague idea in my mind, I nod for him to continue.

“We started moving some things out of the village. We can’t go too far, but it’s confirmed, what is in other villages is not counted towards our strength, even if they are part of the same governing system. That’s why Lord Max’s village wasn't suffering any attacks. A few of the batteries are now on the outside of the village. We probably want to put the new ones in your home. We can’t do much about the defenses and a few other things, but much of our industry could also be on other places, so we are transitioning what we can out of the village.”

“I will make a couple of security tokens that will allow people to enter my home. Then you can place anything you want there.”

“That would be amazing, that way we won’t depend on your presence.”

Thinking of my little jaunt, I ask:

“How has the map room progressed?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, I moved quite far, you must have gained at least a little range and increase in resolution.”

“Ohh, nope, you are no longer considered part of the village by the system. Even your strength doesn’t count towards our military strength.”

“Damn. Too bad.”

“Don’t worry Nash,” says the commander. “I think there is a contract you could sign to solve this problem.” He looks at Charlie, the village’s closest thing to a leader, who continues:

“Yep, you have shown up as an independent village a few days ago. You can just sign a treaty with us. I can prepare everything in a couple of hours.”

“Do so, no sense in letting my efforts go to waste, not like I have a map room in my home.”

We continue talking and I discover more about the village’s mechanics. Stuff I normally wouldn’t bother with, but I am apparently the head of another village. I need to know what I am signing up for.

After finishing up, I head to the smithy and send my mana into the forge again. I missed quite a few days being outside the reach of my root network, but now I can catch up.

Working on the forge is as always a delight, and I learn much of what the smith has taught the other people in the interim as the information is condensed. Not quite as good as being there when Blackwood explained things the first time, but the next best thing.

After a while Blackwood looks at me and grumbles:

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“What?”

“Your class.”

“Ohh, yeah I finally passed the trial for it. Even got an increase in rarity. But damn if it wasn’t hard.”

“Ummmgh… Yeah, I see that.”

“What do you see?” I am curious about what he could glean with the restrictions on inspecting. I have my own ways around that, but I wish I knew his.

“Come on boy, don’t be like that.”

“Fine. I’m finally level 50. And I got access to my skills. Though I got to say, I still don’t know what all the hub hub is about. I still have to properly experiment with it, but my main class gave me a skill inferior to what I could do on my own.”

“During the initial levels for talented people, a class is not really required. The one advantage is the greater stat pool you get, but at higher levels, you will start to see the difference. Besides, though you may have guessed already, you are breaking the rules by having such strong skills right out of the gate.”

“By what level…” I begin, but his head shake tells me all I need to know. No discussion of levels. “Then, keep talking about what you can. Nah, before that. Do you remember that thing? It has capped at 100 meters with an efficiency around 50%.”

It takes him a moment to understand what I’m saying, but it clicks in his mind. I'm talking about my inner world.

“Ohh, yeah, I couldn’t say anything about that as well.”

“How do I unlock the size cap?”

“To be honest you are kinda screwed. You are very low leveled to have the understanding of space/time needed to expand your inner world very much. You will either unlock further range as you level or you will have to expand it the hard way, and that is all I can say about it. But whatever you do, don’t delay. I mean, don’t screw your entire class over it, but if you hope to reach the enormous sizes some people do, you can’t dally for long, it will just get harder as time passes.”

He stops talking and I look at him trying to make sense of what he has said. I do have the Space/time interactions skill, so that might help me a little. Frustration at the lack of information starts to bubble up, but I stomp it. I should be grateful he managed to share even this much with me.

On a whim, I ask him.

“Well, it’s always you helping me figure things out, are you curious about something?”

“I’m still trying to figure out your symbiosis with that plant. Some of the things you do are impossible…..”

We keep the conversation up for another half an hour, but there is much he has to skirt around because of the restrictions from the system, and when we stop making progress I stop.

After finishing in the Smithy and a few other places, I start to move all the batteries I placed in the village. I put them near a couple of metal ones that were taken out of the village and reinforce all the mana conduits to increase the mana throughput as much as possible. I even get help from the Earthmover mages in the city. Each of the 4 spots around the village has multiple connections back and is dug deep beneath the Earth with camouflage, defenses and a self-destruct mechanism. The shallowest a good twenty meters underground.

Even then, I still don’t like how vulnerable such critical components are. There are still plenty of mana batteries back in the village, but it is hard ignoring the fact they need to be placed out there. With sufficiently high throughput, perhaps it would be better to store them in other villages, villages with actual defenses, treaties with our village. Or rather Charlie’s village.

I fill the battery in my inner world with the mana coming from the three villages connected to the network. With the leftover mana, I start another meditation session.

Like last time, I sit atop the wall, this time moving around normally instead of relying on my roots and connecting with the root network more fully. With just a couple mana per second though with full concentration and my entire mental faculties, I focus on a couple of tendrils extending to several places.

The ones I most focus on are the two heading for Max’s village, and the one heading to the higher level zone. The constant stream of mana makes the process of connecting all the already fully extended roots much faster. Too bad they don’t have sonar or some other way of detecting where they are relative to each other. With something like that, as long as everywhere is planted, I would be able to connect the entire instance in 24 hours, 48 even if everything went wrong.

I laugh at my wishes, sure it would be easier and I may even be able to make such a seed, but it was not here now, so let’s focus on what I can do and so the miles begin to be covered as I connect each of the seeds to the next one, and the next one and the next one furthering the reach of my network.

I experiment intermittently with my new skill, nature control. I come to realize the similarities and the differences with what I had been doing up to this point. Unlike my perception field, this skill is more of a mixed bag.

In some ways, it is better, like the mana consumption, mental load, growth and movement speed, but there were drawbacks like nearly stopping my ability to use the perception field through the connection, and interfering with the connection. Though thankfully it had no effect on the Aether conection. Furthermore, there seems to be a hard distance limit of about 70 meters, which was more than my normal range for manipulating mana, but still far too short and the few meters I gained as the skill leveled were not going ot be enough to satisfy me for a long time if ever.

With all of my mental focus, having already long let go of the other tasks I focus only on the tendrils extending north along the limits of the ‘safe zone’. Technically there are beasts here as well, but their intelligence and levels aren’t a danger for even low-level people if they have even minimal knowledge of how to handle themselves.

Approaching a thousand miles, even on the now significantly wider connection was far beyond what I thought my limits were, but each time I approach the barrier it moves away and I manage to squeeze a little farther.

As the sun gets to its highest point in the clear blue sky the time arrives. The attack will begin any second now. There is quite a bustle around me but I just kept my attention on extending the tendril further. Even so far away, I can scan over the area at the strange new sense that feels just like my perception field and may actually be it. In the few spots of the high-level zone that are now within his domain, I can freely explore. Though I don’t learn anything new with my perception roaming through the small area.

A little of my attention goes to the second giant seed on the line further inside this dangerous place, but as expected, it takes much longer to succeed with each of the seeds so far away from one another.

I continue to try nonetheless until time runs out.

When all the sounds around vanish as everyone waits for the enemy, I draw back my perception, and moments later feel them stepping on the furthest roots, so I send my awareness to the space above the ground but I don’t start harassing them just yet.

They are about a mile and a half from the village. A big procession, composed of a few thousand goblins, wolves, and more. Just like on the first day.

A few moments later I notice orcs walking at the back, near the archers and shamans and the chief. I try to inspect them, but fail. It seems I can’t do so through the root network, but there is something there, perhaps in the future.

I continue to watch, and the entire procession heads in. I wait for over a minute, and as they are almost breaking through into the clearing I get a good count.

They are approaching us with about 6000 troops.

Following the expected progression, it seems we did manage to reduce the system’s evaluation of our village a little. If we had followed the previous trend we should expect at least 8k or maybe closer to 10k troops. This will give everyone a breather if the enemies only increase slightly in strength each time.

I open my eyes as I begin to coat the enemies in a numbing and slightly poisonous sap with the fields of roots spread in their path. It will take time to come into effect, but that is by design. Nearly every single one of the enemies brushes against one of the branches I grew in their path and around the village's defenses.

Hearing about the number and expected strength of the enemy from Commander Richard through the speaker system everyone relaxes. Even seeing the enemy bearing down on them, everyone is fairly calm. Not completely, but this attack is looking to be much easier than expected. The uncertainty was gone and it is clear that we have some maneuvering room. The efforts to scale back our ‘perceived strength’ in the eyes of the system are already bearing fruit.

I start to take fervent action as soon as they hit the defenses but seeing Alex jump in takes my breath away. I’m stunned and speechless as he begins to spin his spear in wait for the enemy. I can judge fairly well what someone's stats are with the perception field, something that got even better after I unlocked my class and he is powerful.

I quickly go over the math in my head, and I’m certain, he finally got a class and unlike me, it didn’t require any kind of trial. To have progressed this much he must be at level 50 or close to it.

The dexterity and strength hidden in each of his moves are telling, and as I analyze the spear in his hands, I feel a big smile come to my face.

Well-made Spear of Agility

A basic spear made by a master blacksmith. It is the first creation of its kind on the instance and has received a bonus for that.

Attack +5

Agility +5

It seems he got a gift from Greg. The agility bonus is a perfect fit for him. But if I paused my actions before, at his preparatory movements as he meets the first monsters approaching the walls, I become a statue.