They were still in an ordered line. Five groups packed tight with some space between them. All waiting to confront the raging beasts.

To their disappointment, the beasts didn’t bravely charge at them. It was replaced by six calm beasts. This was an oddity.

Perhaps they were holding back their composure. But if this was the case. It was even more terrifying than an enraged and charging monstrous beast.

This was a confrontation of a different variety. This was a battle of wills. A strange one. But these creatures were definitely not simple.

They could be considered within the range of bows. But the camp members felt it would be pointless to start shooting now.

Soon the beasts gestured and let out a few roars. The beast split up, advancing in as much cover as they could.

If the whole army wasn’t already drowning in the influence of slaughter, they would have probably questioned these actions.

First’s men and a few dozen others felt cold sweat run down their backs. This wasn’t normal at all. They felt even the beasts eyes to be off.

They felt their eyes were strange because unlike before, they now tried to convey their intentions. A threatening glare. Perhaps mockery. Afterall how can these tiny things compare to them?

Hubris was perhaps the greatest weakness in battle. For beast and men alike. Complacency and hubris.

But no matter how much the beasts hid, they still had to close the distance between the army and themselves.

Before they could do this, they had to inch as close as they could. First didn’t feel like watching it happen and ordered the first volley to be fired preemptively.

First felt it was easy to predict where the beast would go to next. Their actions weren’t at random. Recognizing patterns were something people were adept at.

The first volley took out a staggering six. Wounding two others. Their whimpers shadowed by furious roars.

These roars simmered with anger but were intended to rally their troops. The beast knew to keep calm. They were hunting, this was no place for griefing.

Din and specially trained fighters were located in key locations, ready to confront a frontal assault.

He had made the decision to participate in the battle this time around. One less free beasts could mean saving tens if not up to hundred lives.

A hundred lives. This was a valuable resources that propagated. And there had already been enough sacrifices so far.

The first volley had been a success. The following volleys were meagre in comparison. One or two beasts wounded at most.

But that was already enough. One less agile beasts was a lot.

Din’s army was strong. As a whole. But whose to speak of their individual power? How were they going to defend against beasts double their size. This was what many of them thought.

The plan was to hold back the beast, to allow them rain down arrows onto anything that came at them.

When the first beast charged forward there was no way to react by shooting it. And when one beast charged. They all charged, as if choreographed.

Small battalions were ready to meet them. Their steps firm, shields ready. They only wanted a brief moment to allow their most skilled archers to strike.

They couldn’t allow the entire two thousand some troop to fire simultaneously. They’d slaughter the beasts and men alike.

Even Din wouldn’t plan something like that. Not with only two to three thousand people. It was a massive waste of resources.

When the beasts met metal shields they used abilities to strike at them. This looked like a simple swipe of a paw. A headbutting. A tusk or horn striking forth.

These attacks tore through the shields. A lot of people felt their bones tested. Few left with fractures. But no whole broken bones.

They were pushed or thrown back. But they had stood their ground. All but a few. It was only people like First and Din that had struck back instead of receiving the attack.

They could dodge it, so they dodged it. They could strike them so they struck them. This was both arrogance and vigilance.

First dodged so he could attack. Din dodged because he was forced to. Din didn’t strike because he wanted to. Din struck in self defence.

From an outside perspective they looked like great warriors. But only one of them was one. The other a puppet.

Eight beasts could not be stopped. They wanted to rush forward, cause havoc and kill these invaders.

But it wouldn’t be that easy. Behind this first line of defence was another line of defenders. Behind that was another.

Eventually they were all stopped. And they were all pierced by metal tipped arrows. This happened despite them utilizing their defensive abilities.

A volley of arrows would contain more than hundred arrows. This wasn’t easy to defend against. It was only the more passive abilities that could.

Their hide hardened to such lengths that the metal tipped arrows could only cause them discomfort. But what was a little pain in a fight like this?

These few beasts reaped lives of defenders one after another. Only to be stopped by people personally trained by First.

The fighting soon died out. The beast didn’t have much ground to stand on. There were too many people here.

Had they not had ranged weaponry in such quantity, they could have had a good fight. Something worth mentioning. But not this.

This was just another day. Killing was done. So now they tended the wounded, rested and ate rations.

Din was pleased. He thought these beasts weren’t half bad. He wanted some for his own. He imagined thousands of these. Mounted by strong fighters.

Beasts were something he felt lacking. There was a lot be said about the endurance of a beast in comparison to a person. There was no competition.

If his army had beasts, they might be able to cut down half the time they spent traveling. This was a great amount of time. Even if they were just transportation, it was a massive benefit.

Din’s territory expanded once again. His influence spread to other nodes. Unrated nodes. He still hadn’t met a tier one node.

People from these unrated nodes were given the choice to join Din or flee. They no longer had the option to stay in their little spot of land.

Not an unrated node. Tier one node would still be able to retain its territory. They could even take advantage of the spreading influence to capture adjacent nodes.

Din read over the new addition. He also saw his population rise steadily. It ranged from forty to the low hundreds.

These people were stranded as before and needed to be escorted back. Small groups numbered up to a hundred were sent to get these people. This was almost a routine now.

Perhaps others didn’t feel the need to get these people. They were foreigners in their minds. Maybe even enemies.

But it wasn’t their choice. They had to follow orders. A rebellion or an assassination might occur one day, Until then, they were Din’s subjects.

With two tier two nodes, Din was confident it would only take time to reach tier three. If there was such a thing.

This was the only thing he had as a goal. It might be better to refer to it as a path towards his goal. He was creating an country. Right now he had a village.

Once a government of any sort was established, he could call it a town. Until then this was a camp or a village.

Right now there was no need for a government, as military might was in command. Later this would change to a different managerial government.

This was a part of cultivating an illusion of free will. Without that, a sense of dystopia would be instilled into people. This is what Din was taught, so it was what he knew to be true.

But this was still some ways away. Right now they had more than three thousand people. Over six hundred additional people came from the new unrated nodes.

It wasn’t hard to maintain order with so few people. Who didn’t know everyone else in the camp? It was impossible to get away with anything nefarious.

People had their own minds. And when enough were gathered you would have all sorts. Some would not adjust to totalitarian rule. They might not abide to strict laws Din or his subjects put forth.

To manage dissatisfied people, Din needed to either create a force to subjugate them or give them a purpose.

Once enough people gathered, Din would have to give a select few more power. Allowing them to govern his settlement. This day would eventually come.

The likeliest outcome was to establish a firm government when they were no longer at war. Or when less than four fifths of the total population was required to go to war.

These were Din’s plans. Whether he’d see them to fruition was a different matter. It might be years or as short as few weeks.

Once back at camp Din returned to his routines. He’d roam about with Jao, who was in high spirits. Like many others, she didn’t like all that fighting.

Din was making wooden valves. These valves were made from tree roots that grew in metal infused soil. They were very durable.

The valves leaked and could be considered poor productions. But they were all they had. Din had tried to have them forged, to no avail.

He still didn’t like carving. His only enjoyment came from his meditation sessions. The grand wisdom of the Laq Docte kept him entertained.

Jao got more into crafting. She couldn’t spend her whole time surveying the camp. She also felt a bit overwhelmed with so many people.

There were times where people didn’t recognize her. This was very discouraging to her and she didn’t know how to address the issue.

Din unexpectedly held similar views as her. There were uses in being well known. People had to know their leaders. But he couldn't print propaganda.

The solutions were organized rallies. The camp was already split into districts to manage work rotations.

This was just Din and Jao going around acknowledging these people. Giving them a firm nod occasionally.

It was bizarre event to a lot of people. Jao was thrilled with these rallies. She even felt she had underestimated Din. He had regained a small amount of mysticism in her mind.

These events were a few days apart and it would take considerable time to go through the entire camp. But what they had now was time. A lot of time.

All weapons had to be made from hand. This meant they had to manually harvest materials carefully. Refine them and then produce something passable.

These were rushed products so they suffered in quality. Even when rushed it was an immense time sink.

Food was however something steady. They required enough to feed thousands now. But this was an easy task in comparison. Most of the effort was put into creating grass wheat crackers.

Din had bought a few applicable unrated cooking recipes. These had been unlocked after the first tier one recipe had surfaced.

This increased variety was welcomed. The amount of people that chose to spend their free time cooking multiplied.

Din had considered buying a cooking facility. It wasn’t expensive but Din felt it was. He’d much rather save up. He wanted something less frivolous.

These thoughts of his would have been cursed if they were to be leaked to the public. It was fortunate that only Din had access to the tier one and tier two shop.

It wouldn’t be until later when Din would discover he made a mistake not creating a public store. This was another building he considered a leisure structure.

What he didn’t know was that creating this building would allow his node members to begin accumulating resource points.

These points were the same as Din’s. These points were spent on multiple things. Such as forging equipment. Or any production related thing.

Din would receive a small percentage for every purchase. These points are usually adapted as general currency.

This happened because the building didn’t explain this. The main thing he took from the briefing, was that he himself wouldn’t have anything to purchase from the building.

These people didn't have resource points. Why would they need a store? He felt it was strange but so were a lot of things.

And it was as said before. A mistake not to create. This place was called a market. A vague term. And initially Din was very interested in it. Before realizing it sold nothing unique.

Nothing unique in comparison to his own buying capabilities. But Din did have an excessive amount of resource points after taking a second tier two node.

His plans were to upgrade buildings. He had upgraded the only field he could. Food production. He was satisfied with it.

If it hadn’t been for Din deciding to reach out for advice he would never have considered the market. This wasn’t even a production building after all.

‘They have to understand I listen to them.’

Din was deciding whether to actually waste considerable amount of resources on this market. It was only when he heard that quite a few people did actually have points to spend that he came around.

The build location didn’t matter. It wasn’t actually a building as much it was a statute. Din felt it looked like an antenna. If antennas were designed by modern artists.

All members of the camp were collectively informed by a private alert of the recent building. This time however, it was far more detailed.

What was miraculous is that they all had the same objective. To read the description, sell something worth at least ten points and buy something worth at least five.

Din did not receive this objective. But Jao did. And she was excited, like many others.

Din was milling around. Almost every person in camp was eerily staring into space. They were reading or trying to figure things out.

He was a bit disturbed to be honest. Did he make a mistake building this? He couldn’t organize his thoughts fast enough. Before long he had roamed off towards his shed.

The camp was however in a great upset as time went on. Everyone was zooming back and forth. The market structure was small and rather unimpressive.

But people had to get within a certain range of it to sell their items. There were quite a few things they could sell. And they sold a lot of things.

This was the biggest crisis the camp had ever experienced. Resources were being depleted. Sold to an inanimate object for resource points.

There was no way to calm this chaos. But no one was trying to. Who was supposed to? This was a free for all.

It took a few hours before things calmed down. Din had returned. He of course couldn’t see how many resources were pilfered and sold. But he was informed of some of it.

He didn’t really care. He had seen his resource points rise for every transaction, buying or selling. He had already made up the cost for the market structure itself.

To underestimate people's greed was a dangerous thing. What made Din feel puzzled was the things people bought.

People bought clothes in terrifying quantities. All sorts of luxuries like plates, glassware and other madness. Din was very confused.

Jao had bought such things as well. He wasn't sure what to do about these things. But in the end, he did nothing. He just once more judged and praised the Laq Docte’s superiority.

‘This can’t be right.’

Din felt his head swirl a bit. He took two steps backwards before steadying himself.

‘They are buying playing cards? And is that candy?’

He couldn’t be sure what he was seeing. Not everything looked exactly as it did on Earth but it wasn’t impossible to deduce some things.

After coming out of his shocked state he shook his head in disapproval. Jao was beside him, she also felt these people were wasteful.

Her thoughts would have staggered Din even further. It was his great fortune that he could not read minds.

The camp was much more lively now. Initially for the first few days, production suffered heavily. This was because people could buy a lot of things.

And they would also sell things here and there. They realized that finished products were worth far more than the base materials.

Even just a simple refinement yielded great results. Finished food products, weapons and other miscellaneous things were worth pursuing even if only to sell them.

There were some penalties. If they could be considered as such. And that was that market’s value was depended on quantities it had.

One bow might be worth hundred points but a thousand suffer diminishing returns. First ten might hold the value of one hundred points while the next ten might only be valued at ninety nine.

This was hard to feel. People sold a lot but the quantity wasn't great. Perhaps if they had over hundred thousand people buying and selling the values might fluctuate in a more violent way.

Noone purchased consumable experience boosts. Not only were they a small percentage increase, a limit to how much could be gained. But also a limited time frame.

Everyone had experienced the increasing experience bonuses. And the marginal increase in overall power. It was only on thresholds that allocated new abilities that they felt a sense of progress.

With how slow the leveling had become, despite the extravagant experience bonuses. It was hard to say when they’d reach the next threshold. Level sixty. A pivotal threshold.