Gregory stopped when he had reached an area he recognized. They had only a month and a half to prepare themselves to stop whoever it was that had caused this and find out what exactly this was. Gregory used his Arcane Warlock powers to teleport the group to the nearest human settlement, to see if there was any information they could scrounge up on what happened. Gregory aimed to put them about ten miles outside the encampment, to find that it had grown to be a moderately sized village with an active military presence. They were barely two miles outside the city walls, and Gregory could feel that some sort of mage inside the town had felt their presence from the spatial fluctuation that had occurred. While it was impossible, or so he believed, to know what race a person was from magic, their appearance was not something that could be hidden from plain sight. They needed an illusion or transmutation magic casted upon them to cover up their appearances from those who would surely be coming to greet them. Gregory used his own adaptive physiology to take on his most human appearance, only his eyes and a few jagged lines in the color of his scales remaining of his draconian appearance. The rest of his party used transformative magics, ones they hadn’t needed to use in a long time, to cover up their appearance from these humans. Jessica had to rely on others to cover up her appearance, Atlas using some of his free focus to use illusion to undo the changes she had undergone from her becoming a beast-like human.

It took only a couple minutes for a squadron to arrive, but that isn’t what surprised the party, it was the level of the squadron that gave them the biggest shock. They all used their magic to check on the squadron before them, and they found something quite odd about them. The entire squadron of knights was not only of the paladin class, a higher-ranking knight class with access to basic holy magic but were also all at level 37 or higher of advanced. It was almost unheard of for humans to reach above level 50 of the basic level, for all of these to be level advanced level 37 paladins there had to be something else going on here. Seeing the party before them, the paladins looked carefully upon the group to see if there were any that seemed to be of other races among them. One appeared to have slit eyes and a couple lines running down his body, but that just showed that there had probably been some lizard beastkin blood in him. The rest appeared to be the same, mostly human with small traces of beastkin or other traits mixed in. It seemed they were just adventurers, which is about the only profession that a person with any mixed blood could really get into. It gave them a slight edge against beasts in the wild, and kept them away from other full-blooded humans who would usually look down on them.

“Let me see all of your adventurer’s cards, I need to confirm your identities before I can let you any nearer to the city.”

The entire party moved slowly to grab their adventurer cards from the locations they were held in. As they handed them over to the city guard, or whoever this person was, they stood waiting for a response from him.

The city guardsman looked the cards over, checking on the information enclosed. The only one that didn’t have a card was one that looked entirely human, but that didn’t really bother him. One of the cards seemed peculiar though, the man named Gregory among the group seemed to have been entirely human when he had the card made. At least that is what the information would indicate, but that would be easy enough to mistake, especially if he had been wearing standard city clothing instead of the robes he is now. Also, it was common enough for a mixed-blood adventurer to use minor illusion magic to cover up their race inside a town if they appeared close enough to human. It made it easier for them to live life without discrimination from the people who felt that beastkin and the other races were no more than an abomination of nature. Anyways, there didn’t appear to be anything especially peculiar about the people present, and the guardsman decided to let his men know to head back to town. The guard handed the cards back to the group, and then let them know a short update.

“You are free to enter the city, be careful not to cause a disturbance though. We are in a state of war right now, due to the new king of the human realms. He has shown us that we humans are capable of more than we had thought possible previously, and deserve to take more of the land from the filth encroaching on it.”

As they went toward the city, the entire group was cautious with the guards around them. It wouldn’t necessarily be difficult to get rid of them, but their mission was to get information, not go on a killing spree across a human city. Once they reached the city without issue, they walked to the local adventurer’s hall. They went to the Hall’s bar, and then went to the first person they saw there. Elise decided to speak to him, trying to get answers as to how they were as strong as they were.

“Do you know how people got so high leveled so quickly? Last we saw, the military was at most leveled around 50, and they feel so much stronger now. What happened that they got so strong?”

The man looked at the group and could tell that they looked like they had just gotten back recently.

“Our new king is willing to get people stronger in exchange for their loyalty to him, He can share his classes with others, as well as raising their level to what he says is close to his own. He even took over without killing the previous king and uses the previous king as an advisor for policies. His abilities are immensely beneficial and have really improved our chances against the scum that attack our lands just because we are too close to them.”

Elise nearly killed the man for his incompetence before turning away and going back to the group. She could not believe that a human could be so ignorant as to believe that the other races attacked them without provocation, or even invaded human lands in the first place without at least a half-way decent reason. There had to be some controlling ability in place over these people that made them more ignorant of reality, and somebody that could strengthen people, but who would have abilities that could do both? It would almost have to be two people that are doing this here.

“The humans here seem very ignorant of the events happening around them and are just blindly following whoever it is their leader is. He believes that the other races are attacking the humans without reason, and I know that nobody just attacks human kingdoms aside from the Trolls and a few other less intelligent races, but they attack every border city. The people here truly seem to believe that they have done nothing to deserve the ire of other races. They even seem to look down on other races more than before, calling them scum or filth for no reason.”

Discovering that a person had been declared the new leader, and that they had done so without killing the previous king, they doubted it was a person from this planet. Finding out later that they also controlled people to go to war against the other races, they knew it was somebody quite unique, which was also most likely a person from earth. They doubted any human from this planet originally could have gained such strange powers in such a short span of time. Gregory remembered a few people with whom he had met that come to mind in being extremely powerful. The first was the person from whom he had obtained the Arcane Warlock unique class, but he didn’t seem to have any particular persuasive powers that could have placed him as king among so many.

Gregory thought back to Sean when he heard what had happened in the human capital. He seemed the one of them most capable of making something like this happen if he wanted to. That man was capable of controlling people to a degree even at much lower levels, making them trust him to uncommon levels. It would be no surprise if he were capable of controlling more people, and even gained some other abilities by now. Gregory decided to speak up about his thoughts on this matter, seeing as it would likely be of use to know who the enemy was.

“I think Sean, a human that came from Earth as well, is the one responsible for what we are seeing here. His abilities involved controlling people, and it is likely they have gotten stronger now as he has gotten stronger. He was also the only one who was silent on what their real abilities were.”

The party looked slightly skeptical at Gregory, but didn’t doubt him. For a person to have such power though, that would put them at an unheard-of level, and they would have had to use almost all their leveling on improving their charisma over anything else. Charisma was also one of the very few statuses that was much different in raising. It had less impact on certain people because of predispositions, had less impact on other races because of how they view people, was varied based on an individual, and even had varied impactfulness due to the attributes of another. It was a primary reason why few from this planet focused on raising an ability like charisma, when they could raise others that would have visible benefits in daily life.

Atlas was the first to speak up after hearing this.

“If this is really the case, we will need to head over to the capital as quickly as possible. Any delays and the entire world could be at risk again. Even if not due to war, due to the humans once again being wiped out, and all because of one man who is too selfish to let himself not be the most important.”

The entire group murmured agreement with this but decided to stay the night to allow some actual rest and recuperation after the many months spent in a wilderness. Everybody took actual baths at a bathhouse and then they split everybody between 3 rooms. One for all the men to share, and two for the women to share.

The next morning, the party made an early departure and headed toward the capital. It would be in all their best interests to obtain as much more power as possible, and the best way would be training amongst themselves in the use of their multitude of different classes. Gregory would need to grow stronger in melee combat, Jessica would need to focus heavily on magical combat, and everybody else would need overall improvement of their skills.

Gregory used this time to gain the knight class from Elise, her teaching him all of the basic skills and stances, and then the gamer class and his wisdom filling in the gaps for him to pick up the class itself. At the same time, Elise was taught by Gregory about the higher-level damaging magics capable to them, and how to properly cast them. Jessica was being taught by atlas about magic basics, while she was using sparring as a way for him to improve his physical capabilities, since hers were almost unparalleled when it came to overall level and raw combat potential and power.

Gregory also used some of his “free time” to improve his magical classes, in a week’s time gaining the class requirements for True Magic Adept by raising his existing magical classes to rank 5 through intense training and spell making, also increasing his understanding of magic very slightly. The rewards that greeted him over the course of the week were exactly what he needed in order to maintain his magical might over the person who had recently attained the highest level of intelligence out of those from Earth.

+ 250 WIS

+1000 INT

+500 PER

+700 FTH

On top of those gains, he gained a slew of new spells that enabled him to focus magic much more accurately, and also control much larger spells to more minute degrees.

Magic Weaving Passive Magic Attained

Pillars of Eternum Skill Gained

Calling of the Immortals Skill Gained

Magic weaving enabled the modification of existing spells, overcharging them without adverse consequences, or allowing them to work with the environment in ways unexpected based on the original spell. Pillars of Eternum was a spell he made that fit in the realm of a True Magic Adept and was basically a realm that gave him absolute control of all magic that he understood inside of it. The third and final skill was one that called down the immortals, the ones whom they had called gods when they first got here. Even though it seemed long ago when they first arrived, Gregory had now proven himself a match for even them having reached the legendary level. Inside of his Pillars of Eternum, even the immortal’s magic wouldn’t be dangerous, as even they were bound to what they knew, and that was really quite limited.

The immortals were very skilled combatants, they had to be in order to reach the immortal level and “ascend” as it were called. They were not necessarily the greatest in a field though, only more skilled than others when it came to overall power and abilities. They were also given unique abilities that let them “play” with the world and were given the responsibility of using those powers for transitions when necessary. What many did not know about immortals, however, was that they had a choice to make regarding this. They could either live where the immortals live, a place where they would not need to worry about the life and death struggle against monsters in order to grow stronger, or choose to continue living on the current planet and suffer through hardships in order to continue growing stronger. The tradeoff for the second option was that they did not gain the ability to “ascend,” and would instead only retain their existing abilities. The ability to assist in the merging, having the power to communicate with thousands and not have side-effects, the ability to see everything that is happening on the planet as it is happening as long as they are not being blocked, were the abilities that they gained. They were also raised to level 50 of the immortal level and had an equal distribution of those points allotted to their statuses. So, while they were on average better in most regards than the average person, those few who focused their abilities while reaching up to the legendary rank could potentially challenge or beat them in one or two areas. Gregory, one who focused entirely on leveling up his magic, and also gained more magical classes than thought possible regardless of level, was one of the few who could challenge even a group of their best magicians on equal footing. Jessica on the other hand was capable of challenging even their best in terms of martial combat and could go toe to toe against up to three of them at once.

With all these skills and information gained, Gregory felt safe for the attempt to defeat Sean and get rid of him regardless of how strong he had gotten and how powerful his underlings were.