Sean had been leveling strong with his group, especially since he used his “persuasiveness” to somewhat control the small army he led. The unique class he had gave him huge advantages, the best being that almost everybody he had met listened to him without question. Not only that, it allowed him to get the best deals on purchasing armor and weapons from vendors. He had basically robbed the town that had stolen the armor and weapons from the others that were transported here. To make things even better, he took control of the city so that humans from Earth could go freely between worlds if they wished to.

This weakened his power on this planet, but it also gave him an advantage. People being able to come and go freely gave them a feeling of safety and normalcy. They trusted Sean more freely, and believed that he would do what was right for them. This made it easier for him to control the people, as they would put less effort into resisting him if they trusted him more. It would normally take focus to control people, but now Sean could do it while hardly thinking because of the trust they put in him.

Despite his army growing larger, Sean could not help but think back to the one person that got away. It was obvious he didn’t trust Sean, but to ignore his control like that must’ve required something special of him. Of course, it also seemed that Gregory was hiding something. Something that may have been the reason as to why he could resist his control. He seemed to regenerate mana at a ridiculous pace, so he must have had high WIS. That could have been how he so easily ignored the suggestions. The other possibility is that he also had a unique class, one that allowed him to resist the powers that Sean attempted to use on him. Either way, Gregory would be a liability with his ability to resist his control. If he ever turned up again, Sean would need to do what he could do lock him up until he could control him.

Many of the people from Earth were growing in power very quickly, most being at around level 35 to 40. Some had even managed to get to level 50, one of which were Sean himself. The only downside, was that level 50 came with a serious drop in experience gained, and there was nothing they could fight that would give them enough experience to level up quickly. Even some of the creatures they fought required multiple people, and still gave hardly any experience once level 50 was reached. They would need to begin expeditions to find stronger creatures to beat and grow stronger, but deciding how many people to bring on these expeditions was the hardest part. One thing that was painfully obvious was that as level went up, monsters seemed to get exponentially stronger. It was nearly impossible to defeat even a level 40 monster with only 3 people at level 50. It made leveling extremely difficult, even with stats optimized to kill monsters. The one advantage was that level to 50 had given them second classes, which Sean invested in the Paladin class. Not only did he gain access to the FTH attribute, but he also gained a suit of heavier blessed armor. The weapon selection was lackluster, but overall the class really complimented the knight class.

Sean saw the need to grow stronger, but it seemed he had gotten as strong as he could. That was when Sean had decided to try something different. There were people who were at level 50 in the town, they worked as the high level guards and some were knights. Sean’s plan was to use the higher level townspeople to gain levels himself, but he first wanted to test the actual reality of it that night. Sean spent the day out hunting, but got back to the city in the evening hours. He took very elaborate steps to prevent suspicion to himself. He went to an inn first, and then sat down to drink a bit. Eventually, one of the higher leveled city guards started to get drunk. Sean used his suggestive powers to keep him drinking, getting him to the point where he was basically ready to pass out. He brought the guard to a church cemetery, before getting him to sleep there. When the guard finally fell asleep, Sean grabbed a knife from belt and dug it into the man’s neck. With the way this world worked, the man survived longer than Sean had expected him to. When he did die, Sean saw that he gained a level and some extra experience for killing the man.

‘So, killing evenly leveled enemies by myself gets this much more experience. Unfortunately, there are not enough people to get me up any significant levels, and the experience will likely drop off again once I start going up some more levels. I need to perhaps go out and find higher level monsters instead, but what can I do to fight stronger monsters when they are all so much stronger than me? I would need to go out with at least ten or fifteen people to take down monsters in the same level range. Perhaps, if we get stronger by taking out those monsters, it will be possible to continue leveling up at a faster pace.’

Sean had decided against killing any more people; not because they’d do what he told them to, but because it just wasn’t worth the small bit of power he could gain off of them. It made more sense in the long run to have them assist him in growing stronger, and then he’d have an army of even stronger people to use. It wouldn’t be until the next day that he could start doing this, but he would need to grow stronger quickly if he wanted to prepare the people of Earth for this strange place. There were threats everywhere, and he needed to find ways to get them stronger safely. It wouldn’t be easy, but he really wanted to just protect people. Even if that “protecting people” was really controlling their actions through suggestion, and really just fulfilling his wish of being the most important man alive. On Earth, Sean had aspirations to become president; here, Sean could become ruler of the planet if he grew strong enough.

It had already been almost two weeks since Gregory left, and he could tell that the original group was wondering what had become of him. They were not fearful of him like Sean, but genuinely concerned about his well being. They also all asked why he would have left; Sean had no good answer for them, except the answer that he could not give them. He knew that telling them of his ability would also give them the power to resist it, especially considering this was even mentioned in part of the description for the skill that he knew was controlling them. Politician’s Leadership, a skill that allowed basic mind control, and high level suggestion. However, it let the user know that if the target knew of the suggestion and control, they could more easily break free from its effects.