A Survivor's Guide to Planetary Apotheosis [Postapocalyptic Survival, LitRPG, and Dungeon]

It did rain on their way back to base. Slowed by injury, the gear they'd packed in under better condition, and the spoils of war, they managed to get thoroughly soaked by the time they'd made the mile or so haul to what had turned into a pretty respectable fort, built along the star fortification archetype that had made taking European castles by arms nearly impossible without overwhelming number. The specialist Earth Mages of the Peacekeepers, along with the extra hired Adventurers had made short work of the thirty-foot-high walls, the towers commanding each point of the six-pointed star that straddled the river, and the deep moat filled with a sliver of the Mississippi channeled around those polished smooth walls. As Alexander and crew plodded home, sculpting magics were adding murder holes and crenellation to the construction.

Carpenters outside the walls had a sawmill up and running, were creating so much dust as they worked it partially obscured them as they turned the receding wood line of the nearby forest into structural timbers, furniture, pallets, and whatever other lumber based needs the defense forces had.

A few racks held staked hides skinned out from wolves, bears, giant badgers, a couple of whomp-whomps, even a single rogue male adolescent yeti kicked out from its clan's territory deep in the Ozarks to found another, and some other critters that had come to investigate the smell of so much food roaming around. They hadn't been prepared for that food to have armor or lances or to wield flame and thunder with impunity.

Sodden to the skin, the battered trio were relieved of their burdens by some Adventurer hirelings and a small fuss made over Captain Pruitt. Complaints ignored, the Marid red cloak got medic'd against his will by Healer Brenda, who happened to have been assigned to this position by lottery. Disappeared on a stretcher, the last Alexander would see of him until the Pheonix sunrise, he was certain. The man had done his duty in full and more, he was owed the rest, whether he wanted it or not.

Mason and Siddiqua were the other two Peacekeeper officers in charge of holding this crossing, they received the report with impassive gazes and few questions. Their plate was full, they'd also just gotten back from a hard push on their north and south sectors respectively, one that had suddenly turned to chaos when the dungeon spawn fodder simultaneously berserked, turning on the Eximius that had crawled out in an attempted ambush. The wear on their armor was substantial, ragged edges of their cloaks and the mud, blood, and sweat of a battlefield covered both. They had casualties from their teams, but no fatalities.

The only human death today was thanks to Alexander.

He did note that Siddiqua had come to the same conclusion as Marvin had, assault of a superior officer was a capital offense in war times, a field execution wasn't the norm, but it was justified. Alexander had followed the law and that was that.

An inventory came in after that annotation to the record. The Corporal who passed off the scroll of vellum on which he'd written the final tally from what had been in the packs strapped to the sled to his superiors had given Alexander and Grace a thumbs up before he ran out to field another of the endless tasks for the Guildy troopers. Mason rolled out the scroll to a length that raised his eyebrows that gave the count of monsters slain to be put into the ledgers for dispersal to the other encampments; intelligence was shared between the five crossings, the strongpoints for stopping the Eximius invasion.

"Jesus Tapdancing Christ! So that's what happened!" The Ifrit officer cried, and showed his Marid fellow officer, "Look here, that's why the dungeon spawn turned feral."

She read over the scroll and looked at the pair of battle worn warriors, angry, but not hostile, "I don't like it. That was reckless. It's lucky all three of you weren't killed."

Alexander accepted that injunction, it was deserved.

Grace didn't take the criticism laying down though, "You don't have to like it, we have discretion in the field. If I understand what I saw out of your reports, your teams were getting swamped, four troopers damned near as bad off as Marvin or I ever were, and a half dozen mercenaries to go with them to the medics. Taking out those Puppeteers pulled your bacon out of the fire."

Mason looked to his comrade and shrugged, "That's fair. We were winning, but it got closer than I'm ever going to tell anybody outside this tent. I know two Sergeants that are alive because one of those sonofabitching lamia turned around and petrified a Slayer before it got hacked down by its spider pals."

A hand rubbing over her face, rubbing her eyes, spoke volumes about the stress the Marid woman was under, before she looked up at her fellow officers.

"Yeah. Okay. You're right, it ended up working out," Siddiqua conceded, mellowing out, "I still don't like it though, you guys got away with murder, you and Marvin both. And don't let me forget to detail somebody to retrieve those horror show bulbs our friend here used to ice the guards at the puppet master camp in Perryville. We don't need those evil fucking things going wild, for Christ's sake."

The Ifrit Red cloak, turned his attention to his fellow officer, and the pinch hitter from Falcon's Rest that he was suddenly very glad had tagged along.

"Tough calls are why we make the big bucks. I might not have done the same thing, but I wasn't there. I think, all together though, we might have broken a major assault before it came together." Mason concluded, pointing at the big chalkboard map in the tent that had red chalked circles tracking the engagements and intercepted scouts from the last week.

"The spiders knew roughly where the crossing was, based on where they kept losing fodder. They probably even knew we didn't have it completely fortified yet, wanted to breakthrough. They got the shit kicked out of them for it, it'll be a minute before they try that again. Let's take the win. You two fuck off, I've got gas in the tank, I'll keep the lights on. You too, Siddiqua, I saw you getting Brenda'd when you got in." Captain Mason ordered, confident that he was the least used up commander in Fort Fifty-One Crossing.

Siddiqua seemed surprised to be included in that, but was clearly grateful to be relieved.

"I'll take over tomorrow, Mason. We'll alternate leaves until Marvin gets back on his feet." She replied.

Grace volunteered herself, "I'm healthy as a horse. A bite to eat, a good night's sleep, I can run whatever."

Mason flipped her the bird, "Hell no! You're gone until Marvin's back, you three rode the edge today, take the R&R. I got this."

No more argument forthcoming, Alexand and Grace left command post and headed toward the mess tent for a violent attack on the supplies. He should have known something was up when the giantess lady packed another two large meal's worth of rations, saying, cryptically, "Going to need this, I'm soaked to the skin nobody else gets to see my knockers today that hasn't already."

All became clear when he made to turn to the roomy, if humble waxed canvas pioneer shelter he called home, only to have his arm taken in an iron grip and guided across the fort's interior to the one that had a wooden sign labeled with a burned in "Cpt. Miller".

"Last chance to run, Alexander, because this is happening." Grace Miller told him, looking down at the Outsider man that had saved her life today, the incongruous mix of killer and dork.

"Just remember," He replied, thinking back to the letters folded in his pocket that had predicted this outcome, from a bush witch's cauldron side prognostication, probably, "I'm not trapped in here with you, you're trapped in here with me."

A hard shove launched him through the flap inside, and he'd just caught himself stumbling into a washtub before eight feet of female laid hands on him without mercy.

Something about getting ridden to near unconsciousness took the harder edges off life. Alexander was able to muster this philosophy fresh from the throes of as earnest an attempt at what was widely considered an exaggerative brag as he'd experienced in a long, long time. Grace Miller shuddered through a little death, a quiet moan that spurred the lizard in his brain to consider its task fulfilled. Absence of that primordial reptile is why it was purely Alexander behind the decision-making process to grab the woman's haunches and squeeze. His reward for good decisions was a grinding motion of hips that, while futile, was nevertheless exceedingly pleasant.

After another minute of passionate humping, he felt obligated to mention that there would be no production for a little while yet. Lack of supply, so to speak.

"Well's dry Madam." He breathlessly informed the happily rocking Grace, who had not stopped her attempts at extracting his soul.

"Don't care. I'm wet enough for both of us." She gasped, and he was being made well aware that she told no lies.

"Then ride on Valkyrie, and take us both to Odin's Halls!" Alexander cried, which broke his partner's lustful concentration, her studious fucking turning into giggles, then laughter.

He didn't know why he waxed comedic after an orgasm, but it probably had something to do with oxytocin. The joking prompt achieved its end: Grace Miller was laughing too hard to coordinate her hips and core. Still guffawing, she slapped him on the chest, hard, which hurt not a little and prompted a grunt at the blow.

"You can't say things like that! Not right in the middle." The Oread lady warned, restraining her mirth, the rearing back doing some interesting things to the connection between them.

"My bad." Alexander apologized, "But I saw the light, it was the only way."

A sideways shifting of thighs and other things and he thought he might lose supercritical blood pressure.

"Is that so?" Came the distant question from on high, pleased at the admission of defeat.

She'd been wondering how long it would take to conquer the Outsider, and had grown concerned with his reluctance to concede the battle. Soak didn't apply to some things.

"Ayuh." He admitted, "It's been, like, six hours. I'm boned. There's no more bones. You won them all."

Grace, warrior, leader of men, preserver of the peace, with no mercy in her heart, flexed her core, "Then what am I squeezing?"

Alexander Gerifalte had suspicions that the blue-eyed devil was a sadist. He hadn't appreciated that fully, because he hadn't had any plans of being anything more than a brother in arms. Had, actually, gone out of his way to sidestep any potential for this current scenario. Fool, he. Everyone knew the fairer sex outran the other when it came to the great chase. They were caught when they wished to allow it, he was caught if they chose to close the pursuit with intent. His heart was a fool, but his head worked, when properly perfused with blood, and he'd covered his bases. That was a talk for another time though, the rocking had started again, sweet agony for its slowness.

"Hwhoooah. That's cheating. Super cheating. I'll be very disappointed in you if you keep doing that." He lied.

"Uh-Huh." His assailant made her doubt clear, "Alright there Very Disappointed, then what are your hands squeezing?" She asked, wiggling the answer.

"Meep."

"That's what I thought." Grace Miller declared, and she leaned forward to continue her crimes against his person, until they both collapsed into a contented sleep.

He woke up totally relaxed. Soft heat against his skin, a silken expanse sprawled over him creating a rather cozy weight. It had been hard to get used to, the fact that Oread's were so friggin big. He had come to manhood as a rather tall specimen. Then, within a year of people commonly reaching tier three, he'd suddenly been significantly shorter than about a fifth of the population. On the other hand, a fifth of the population suddenly found themselves physically far larger than most of their former partners, unless those too had carried the Oread bloodline. It could be difficult coming to terms with such a drastic change, just as having new limbs or freakish eyes, or a flame that burned along your body when you became excited.

Once he'd adjusted to Brig's growth spurt, he'd found there to be several advantages to the arrangement. Granny had also enjoyed getting a super snuggle. That was a shared quality with the sleeping giant on top of him now. Not so sleeping any longer, she was stirring awake, even as he did.

A few half-hearted attempts at rolling over aborted, and Grace settled for sliding to lay on her side, head propped up by her arm, contented stare taking him in.

"Hallooo nurse!" She crooned, smiling the secret smile.

It was an older meme, but it checked out. He didn't blush, but he did appreciate a compliment.

"Back at you. What year is it?" He returned, channeling his best Jumanji Robin Williams impression.

A slight red tint to her cheeks proclaimed that his own compliment was well taken.

She flopped over onto her back, a few shy glances, now that her sexed out mind was functional.

"I know, right? It's one thing to have a quick fling, that was a little unusual. I have no idea what came over me." She admitted.

Images of the various near-death experiences, many for so few years of life flickered behind his eyes.

"I do. You found the edge. The big nothing. I got that Elixir into you about the same time you took your last breath," Alexander told the young woman, who'd been unconscious but had some instinctual awareness of her proximity with dying, "It's not unusual to love life a little more after that, or to live in the moment a little harder. Remember Marv not so long ago?"

That wasn't the only reason, but she should figure the rest out, unless she asked.

"Sounds like you've been there, the way you talk." She noted, taking in the impact of the previous day, which had been skirting around but driven off by the immediacy of life afterward.

"Three times I'm sure of." Alexander said, raising the appropriate number of fingers, while lying on his side, "Every time takes a little something out of you, like you get farther away from people who haven't experienced it, or that's what it felt like for me. But every time makes you love what's left more."

"And that's why I wanted to take you to pound town?" She asked, almost hopeful.

He shook his head, a little surprised she asked him, "No way. You've been edging on me most of the time since I met you, only I've kind of tried not to encourage anything. Getting your ticket punched makes the useless stuff fall away though, the heart wants what it wants."

Blue eyes concentrated, her face screwed up in concentration, "It's not supposed to be like this. You're weird. You've got screws loose. I'm supposed to be the one pulling the strings here, watching my worshippers dance, not getting butterflies over a…a…" She floundered.

"Freak?" He offered, helpfully

"Thank you." She blurted, relieved.

Alexander shrugged. He'd had time to think about this, since he'd been trying to avoid it to some degree for the first few weeks he'd been around and detected a tension between them. It'd made him reflect on his relationships with his wives, and the ones that had come before, and the differences between those that faded and those that blossomed. What he'd come up with was nonsensical, but profound.

"So why? A pretty face is a dime a dozen. So is a nice ass, and just because you have both, that didn't make grade with me before, so don't get cocky. It can't be the dumb jokes, only Marvin thinks that shit is funny." Grace demanded of him.

She was taking this pretty hard, he decided. Poor girl.

"The heart wants what it wants. There are no rules." He shared what he knew with the distracted woman.

"Thanks, Obi-won, real fucking useful." She complained, but it was mostly a deflection.

Fingers picked delicately at the sheets, despite their size.

"It was good though, right? I'm not imagining things?" Grace Miller asked, not happy with vulnerability.

"Profound fucking. We might have traded bodies at some point." Alexander Gerifalte confirmed, happy to be vulnerable with exactly as many humans as he had permitted within the boundary of his regard, and not a single one more.

That was unusual but not unheard of. In fact, it had happened twice before. They were living in his house right now, and they even had a darling boy together.

A goofy tilt to the pale woman's lips, "Yeah." She said fondly reminiscing. Deciding to haul the Outsider to her tent was one thing, the extent of the experience was another. Especially when it was her doing the chasing, a novelty, perhaps.

Then she grew somber, dare he say, perhaps even abashed, an indrawn breath whining, "Ohh noo, I jumped a married man. I'm a big fat A for adultress. You let me adult you!"

As amusing as it was to mess with her, this wasn't the time. She had Granny and Brig to thank for that understanding, in fact. He had lacked such delicacy three years ago. They worked hard to train him and he didn't want to shame their efforts.

"Don't worry about that, it got cleared by the powers that be. Actually, funny thing, they were the ones that brought it up. Brig and Annita deferred final judgment until they meet you, but they approved in principle. Good job, by the way, I didn't think anybody would pass the bar they set. They're on their way, as a matter of fact, should be here in a few weeks." Alexander revealed, easing Grace's concerns.

Blue eyes shot open wide, her voice rose an octave, "What? When? How?

Alexander patted her hip comfortingly, "I sent letters as soon as the Loremaster read that Infiltrator's blood, no chance I'd be making it home anytime soon after that. Besides, they'd be worried sick, last time I sent them a correspondence by beast master air courier was when I left Concorde, I never go so long without letting them know what's going on, normally. Things were so hectic there in New Chicago that first few days though. Falcon's Rest sent two parties to answer the All Call, Brig is in one of them. Granny refused to stay behind, so she came too, with the support train. You'll get to meet the whole crew. My Durian too, it's going to be good to see the little guy."

Strangely enough, that seemed to further impel the Oread woman to a near panic.

"But, how would they know about…this? This just happened!" She reasoned.

He nodded, "Yeah, I know, I thought it was crazy talk too, at the time. Especially when you finally got some time off and found a bed warmer to knock the rust off. But I wrote about you and Marvin, in between rotations, on account of, you know, we were working together and you two were pretty alright for Flatlanders. Their next letter asked for details, so I told them about all the neat stuff we got into. They replied, and I quote, 'She better not think she gets a room in the house until she's trained', that from Granny, and 'I'll be ashamed as your boning coach if she can walk', Brig, of course."

The telepathic powers of his consorts was impressive indeed. Nothing made a man feel loved like your mates understanding you from a thousand miles away. Where he found comfort, his lover was shaken. She jolted up from her reclining now sitting knees to chest, hands on her head.

"Oh no, I'm not ready!" Grace moaned, "Their Woman-fu is far beyond my own. They taught a total lunatic to sit, stay, and fetch, I won't measure up! My power level isn't high enough, I can't even keep from getting cucked by some douche, do you understand what I am telling you?!" Ranted the previously hard-bitten woman.

Alexander smiled and shook his head no. He was completely lost. Was there something he'd missed? What did his wives have to do with the guy he'd had to whack yesterday? There had to be a connection, but, other than Grace herself, he didn't see what it might be.

"I don't get it." He admitted, trusting in honesty to be the best policy.

"Hugest surprise." The leg hugging woman said, from her crater of despair, but not shocked, since she didn't really get it either.

Pale skin, an expanse of smoothness unfolded as she laid on her back to accept doom.

"I don't have many friends." Grace admitted, "Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm well liked, the men respect me, we're close as brothers and sisters, me and the troopers, but that's not the same thing. At the end of the day, I'm Captain Grace. Marv is different, and a dozen or so others, but that's about it."

He didn't see anything wrong with that. Being discerning with who you let in was good sense. It was normal. Call everybody friend and it was safe to say you had none in truth. His circle was small, but it was made of people who would die for him, and he them. She'd continued her refrain, whose connection to his wives he still didn't see, but women had their own problems sometimes. Far be it from him to pretend he understood, so he would listen and try to.

"Dancing is one thing. Grabbing brewskis is fine. So's fucking. But, privately, it seems like I've managed to find a couple two, three Christophs and I don't know how that keeps happening. Like I have a blind spot for dickheads or something. Not that I'm looking for anything long term, but I'd appreciate it if the men I bed weren't doing it with some kind of agenda."

The young man wasn't sure if he was supposed to help her with her problem, because he had a few ideas, or to shut up and listen. When in doubt, he defaulted to Granny's injunction to keep his mouth shut and give head pats. So, he sidled up next to the freaked out Oread and laid her on his lap for some quality pats. Grace startled a bit at the handling, but soon melted under the soft stroking of her hair. She wasn't prepared to be consoled, but she relaxed visibly into the mattress after few pets. Granny Nguyen wins again, Alexander crowed in place of the wise old witch woman, though he could not reproduce her cackle.

From the depths of the calming attention, Grace suspected that this was another trained response, evidence of the grandmaster dragon tamers whose attention she'd drawn down on herself, in a moment of weakness. That made this his fault, really, she decided. But he probably didn't realize it, so she was going to make damned certain he knew who was responsible for her circumstances.

"Here's what gets me," She growled, airing her grievances, "You roll into town like the lone ranger out of some kind of western, kicking peoples' asses with not a fuck to give how much trouble it causes. Bastian writes a letter telling us a hitman is snooping and we shouldn't get in his way, so we puts you under watch. Especially after Gibbons told anybody who'd listen he got done by an assassin and he couldn't tell anybody anything because he didn't see what hit him, I figure me and Marv, we can keep the nutter under wraps. Then we watch you clean a pack of slimes like its berry picking season, and then the spider almost cashes Marv, tries you, loses an arm and gets opened up for it, and it turns out that, for a cocky bastard, you had the skills, and no line to feed anybody. You were what you said you were, and Marvin takes to you straight away. Then I do, and don't think my better judgment didn't have reservations Mister! I don't know how you do it, you just kind of pull everybody into your web, like you belonged here all along in a couple of days. And nobody even seems to notice. To make it all worse, you gotta go and play hero yesterday morning, and fucking Punisher that fuck face the next minute. Why do I gotta get the fizz over some anachronism from King Arthur's court?"

"I thought we were supposed to make the world a better place?" Alexander apologized.

She frowned at him, "Yeah, but how many people actually do?"

"Literally all of you Peacekeepers, and that's so strange it makes my feet itch. Every one of you are making things better, every single day. You more than most, and not just for the dead dungeon spawn. You're a beacon to follow for a lot of people, a lighthouse on stormy seas." He answered, with conviction, taking some pleasure in her blush at that praise.

It always amazed him how much trouble people made for themselves by trying to play a role, instead of just being who they were and letting the rest of the world figure out how it wanted to move around that. Or overthinking things that didn't need to be complicated. His house was pure glass on that score so, he wasn't judging, just lamenting the human condition. Maybe he was also starting to see how this related to his wives, just a bit.

"Are you upset that you had sex with me?" He asked.

"No! Yes, or well, no, not the sex, because that was some seismic orgasm fucking, but the first genuinely good thing I've had in my life that wasn't being a Peacekeeper was already taken. I got to borrow you for a night, and I want more. It sucks. I can smell those two on you, though, from a thousand miles away, and I want in on it, but I don't think I can step into that without it being serious. There's no half ways with you Alexander, and even I know there wouldn't be for anybody that could marry you. I figured that much out myself. It's real or it isn't. I don't know what's wrong with me, but I don't want to not be real. Only, if those two smell any fear they'll pounce. You'll side with them though, so I don't know how to win, because I don't know what to do here."

Hmm…that was a pickle. Such was always the case for those who couldn't figure out that the only way to live that made any sense was to let passion find the path for your feet to follow. What you wanted most, you had to go after it, no matter what else.

"Nobody can make that decision but you, Grace. I got married because being alone is easy, but it hurts too. It isn't worth it. And because I learned that I wasn't really alone, just denser than lead for not being aware of the people that already walked by my side who weren't going anywhere, and didn't want to be anywhere else. It took longer than it should have, but I figured out I didn't want to be anywhere else either, so we decided not to be. That's all. Once that was out of the way, I jumped in, both feet."

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"Who are you, and what did you do with Rain-man Dances With Monsters?"

"Post nut clarity, times four." Alexander confided, which soothed her wounded pride a bit.

He didn't know what this Woman-fu was, but the gilded Oread took it seriously. She seemed to believe she was outclassed with regards to Brig and Granny in some fundamental way. She was, but that didn't have to be forever, his girls were best girls was all. He felt like asking about it would be a rabbit hole that led to wonderland though, so he said nothing and continued his duty with pats.

"So, I'm not a bad person for wanting to chase, even when you were taken. Or, being so damn wishy washy about it?" She asked.

He laughed at that notion. Taken? Like he was property? Or they were? They were together because they wanted to be, there was nothing else to it. That's all marriage was, you said you wanted to spend your lives together, only you meant it.

"The heart wants what it wants, I accepted you because I want you too, it wasn't unilateral. Maybe you did err in coming after me, just a smidge, but dying puts an emphasis on living now and letting later fuck off for a bit. It's fine, the contract with my wives has been abided, they gave their blessing, for reasons of their own, which I and you will learn soon. We broke no faith, did them no harm, I would not have done that, not for anyone. As for the rest, you're like I was a few years ago. People like us gotta have some things spelled out for them, real clear like, so they can see where they want to go. It's a perspective thing, probably. Emotional intelligence or some shit. Anyway, that's problems for future Grace, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Granny and Brig will straighten you out, or not. I'll be your friend no matter what else."

She did perk up at that, dissertation, looking up from where he'd cradled the giantess to stroke the long golden hair, so rarely freed from its confinement.

"You mean that?" Grace asked, having trouble coming to grips with how much that last statement comforted her.

"Ayuh, count on it. Now, you settled down? Because I'm starving, but if you think it'd help, I could totally go down on you to put the calming on ye."

She scowled at him, narrowing those slightly reddened blue eyes, tears averted, "That's ridiculous. Why would that help any…You know what? Why not? Gimme what you got, buster, but I don't see how you think that'll MEEP!"

That last because he'd bitten a nipple on his way down down to the promised land. Grace Miller, by his estimation, could still walk, and Alexander was Under Orders with regards to rectifying that condition.

Under strict injunctions to return with food, Alexander did leave Grace behind in her tent, napping off his ministrations. Bliss sleep counted as unable to walk in his book, so he considered his job done. As well it was, the tier strain induced hunger was a biting thing, and his body suffered greatly for it. Subtle tremors in hands and less than full coordination was a sign that going so long between meals just wasn't an option until this situation was resolved. He passed by people he tangentially knew, Peacekeepers mostly, going about the newly built fort with orders, hauling goods, ammunition, or crates of supplies for the defense of the bridge, or heading out for patrol. A nod, a small wave, that was all he spared them because his mission now was in the kitchens. His life literally depended on it.

The stew pot was his first destination, and a rack of freshly baked bread, empty slots replaced every hour or so from the brick ovens that had stayed lit for the entire five days since their construction. Twenty cooks, bakers, and other support classes suited for supplementing food and drink with magic enhancements to those that consumed it were pulling twelve-hour shifts to see the fort kept its people refreshed. The ridge on which Alexander had been assigned was one of three sectors, the others had been just as hotly contested, or nearly, as indicated by briefing reports received before his unceremoniously being hauled off to Grace's high canopied canvas wall tent within the fort.

Upon a wooden stool he sat, the rough-hewn planks of the quickly assembled table beneath his forearms as he chewed, ladled, chewed, soaked bread, and repeated this mechanical action until his hateful stomach bulged.

Now he did understand Grace's obsession with food. Her Rapid metabolism was a trait that came as a consequence for her elevated physical parameters. Hers was a body that functioned as a particularly high output engine, but it needed fuel to operate, efficiency was out the window. Many of Gaias blessings had strings attached to them, consequences. Just as his Soak defeating magic prevented his own Soak from being substantial. Yin for Yang, you had to play with the cards dealt.

By hitting the very edge of his body's potential at tier three, he'd been dealt a joker. Now he had to try to play around the handicap, until he could find an opportunity to make it work for him. That required a dungeon core. Or another nearly complete Realm Shard. One of which one had been found in the encampment they'd raided, but it was inert, had not been fed with human lives. Fortunately.

That item was in the hands of the R&D people now, for study. Gem cutters in particular would want to examine the geometries of the crystal to figure out how it held mana so well, how it created its aetheric spiral to concentrate that mana to achieve a spatial gate to another realm. Alexander and Saki had done a lot of research trying to figure out how mana forms and Gaian jewel minerals or metallic conductors of magic functioned. They had mostly experimental data, very little theory to understand the mechanisms of magic. Basic research by super geeks was what they needed.

After he took a deep, sated breath to appreciate the easing of the little beast inside his guts, he retrieved some smartly crafted storage bowls with expertly cut lids that sealed with a latch to obtain stew sustenance for Grace as well. And then a whole loaf of bread. And about five pounds of the sliced ham. Three apples. A head of lettuce and a little jar of mayonnaise, because he'd watched her slather a whole head and eat it once that way.

A cloth retrieved from supply and he placed all the items atop it and tied the corners to make a bundle for easy carry.

"Nourishment duty, huh?" A familiar voice said.

He turned around from tightening the bundle knot to see it was Captain Mason, the Ifrit man who was one of the four Peacekeeper red cloaks assigned to the fort. He held the north sector, with his squad, a party of six three Platinum Sergeants, three Gold Sergeants, everybody with less than three knots of rank on their brooch was on house duty. A few early losses had taught the Human resistance not to underestimate the Eximius Horde, or its captured dungeon spawn fodder. The red-haired man wearing his freckles proud on a grinning face, was in good spirits. He was on duty, but the scouts were reporting nothing moving. It was a day off today, for all intents and purposes.

Alexander nodded, "Yup. Strict orders. I think that'll cover it for this morning, but I foresee a midafternoon raid in the forecast."

An understanding nod, Captain Mason was well aware of the supply chain issues associated with his fellow officer. She was a fixture of the Guild Hall kitchens.

"Just so we're clear, you don't plan on making Grace sad, now, do you?" Mason asked, not threatening overtly.

"Nope! Sore maybe, but not sad." Alexander revealed his plans, and the Guildie trying to stick up for his friend snorted and sucked a tooth with a wondering look at the Outsider.

"You just say whatever, don't you?" He asked.

Alexander gave him a thumbs up, and added, "It saves time to just tell people what you think, instead of making them guess what you mean from what you said. I'm gonna introduce her to the wives, let them give her a sniff test, but I think she's got the inside corner, they'll think as much of her as I do."

"Okay, just checking soldier, carry on." Said Mason, satisfied, that no ill intentions were had.

In a way, the Ifrit man figured there was some justice that the perennial bachelorette berserker had gotten a case of the fuzzies over somebody as batshit as she was. Crazy called to crazy, he mused and went on to idle around the training men constructing sparring rings. A couple of spars to unwind was just what he needed.

Alexander watched the Officer meander over to those new stalls for trainees to practice fighting and figured he'd dodged some sort of bullet. These Midwesterners could be kind of abrupt sometimes, but he was getting used to it. Ben was going to enjoy converting Mason to the gospel, Alexander thought the Ifrit was a pure spirit, a warrior's warrior.

He realized he was letting brunch cool and put a spring in his step, a cheerful tune whistled while he returned to the den of a monster recently beaten, but not slain.

One of the upsides to shacking up with Grace was he didn't have to duck into the tent, her custom job was accommodating for the full eight-foot four-inch span of her. It had driven the carpenters of Falcon's Rest batty when they learned they had to reframe most of the doors in town to allow for the suddenly towering members of their population. While they were at it, they widened most entryways to allow for extra wide shoulders, wings, the occasional tail, things of that nature. It kept the Ifrits from singing the frame when they crossed a threshold in a state of exuberance, as did happen from time to time, as a bonus.

At his entry, the lady herself looked up from a large down pillow and smiled, both for him and for his offerings. She was laying face down on the big mattress bearing cot, on top of the down comforters, so he was granted the privilege of studying those fine, trim haunches. It really was a fantastic rump.

"Oh no you don't." Warned the owner of that rocking hiney, "I'm starved. Besides, my goodies are both tenderized and humming. Who the fuck taught you how to use your mouth like th-, oh, never mind, think I've learned enough to know the answer to that one."

The bundle he set on the small foldout table and untied, arranging the meal into a presentation befitting the Peacekeeper brass. He even prepped the overbuilt stool that was to hold her almost three hundred pounds, easily approaching four hundred in full plate.

No move did Alexander make toward her clothes though.

When she saw him sit down on the smaller stool at the table and grow strangely still, she knew the price for running errands. Men, she snorted. Some things never change.

"Fine, look all you want. They're just tits though, not like you haven't seen these up close, too." She told him before raising herself up, the sway of a pert b cup tracked with the precision of a telescope array.

"It's always special." Alexander returned, "I can't explain it. Like sunrises, every viewing is a new joy."

As a reward for the compliment Grace Miller, who was finding herself more pleased by her conquest all the time, shook herself slightly, preening at the laser focus tracking.

"Okay, show's over, I need to put on clothes." She announced, after another few lingering moments of ogling.

Alexander smiled.

"Excellent. I can watch that too, and play it in reverse in my head, that's almost better than full nude, the thrill of the reveal." He informed his lover, and she giggled at the admission.

"So weird." But she dressed in a slow, exaggerated manner.

Tension there'd been before that was gone now between the two. Instead, they were nursing coals for a conflagration later.

"Anything new outside?" She asked, coming up for air a few minutes later from a deep swallow of the milk poured from a keg already dwelling in her field quarters.

Those were refilled daily from the cows on the opposite side of the river, boated over to restock the forward half of the expanding fortress, along with fresh meats, wild game, flour, and whatever else the forward position demanded.

He thought about the construction he'd seen on his brief excursion.

"Not so much. Architects guiding the builders, training platforms about finished, a flotilla was looking about done, so if needs be everybody can cross the river at once, should we need to abandon this side of the river. I met Mason, he needed to threaten me a little to make sure I wasn't playing with you." Alexander narrated.

Blue eyes rolled, "He's overprotective because of the jerkass, that's sweet of him. Maybe because he's worried you might be a serial killer. I hope you were nice."

"Ayuh, told him I was going to introduce you to the Bosses." Alexander answered.

She smirked at that, challenging, "So you just admit you're their whipping boy."

Alexander nodded, "It's best to be honest about these things. The Goddesses command, I, their servant, obey. I will die for them, or kill others in their name."

Grace sighed, "Woman-fu over nine thousand, this is going to be rough. How'd he take that? Mason, I mean."

The Patriarch of Clan Gerifalte thought it over for a second, reading the memorized features of the man's face from their discussion, "I think he was happy for you."

It was her turn to nod, "Yeah, we go way back. Older brother kind of deal, we joined up about the same time. He got his red cloak about eight months before I did."

He'd thought about the Peacekeeper system, the whole twenty officers situation. Normally, you'd allow the number of commanding officers grow, as the number of soldiers and divisions to be organized did.

"Why are there only twenty? What's the thought process?" Alexander asked.

Grace swallowed down the entire ham slice she'd been chewing before she answered, "Competition. We want only the best at the top, you slip up, you can't hack it, you lose your spot, get busted down to Sergeant. It means there's always room to advance in the guild, but you have to prove you're better than whose already there, because it takes four red cloaks to support your bid to replace someone else. Defrocked Officers can win their spots back, but, in the meantime, we have highly competent Sergeants leading teams that don't have to be micromanaged. More flexible, responsive field teams that way." She explained, knowing it sounded a little strange to outsiders.

He frowned, thinning his lips as that processed, "How do you stop nepotism, or factions that might prevent a worthy person from promoting for personal gain?"

Grace smiled, in a not so nice way, "If you come up for a vote twice for a red cloak with your sponsor, and you don't get four votes, then you can try to kill one of the other Officers. Promotion through combat isn't done often, but it's happened in the past. Samantha warns you when you put the red cloak on that if you try to play stupid games, eventually, you're going to win stupid prizes when some badass come up through the ranks. Better to be an alive Sergeant than a dead Officer."'

"Hard core." Commented Alexander, respecting that kind of commitment.

An upward turn of once delicate hands, turned swordswoman hands, proclaimed, "What're you gonna do?"

"Welcome to the Peacekeepers. We're a volunteer outfit, you want to do your own thing, you're free to find the door. We don't have very many who make that choice though, nonhackers don't make it through journeyman school often. Space is limited in the Guild Hall, that too is an earned position."

It was an aggressive solution to how to control the allotment of resources for maintaining so many men at arms. They decimated their ranks through ruthless competition.

"Where do I sit in that mess then?" He asked, since he was sort of an honorary member.

Grace smirked, "Somewhere between Sergeant and Officer. Me and Marv talked it over, we figure you could kill half of the red cloaks one on one if you really wanted too. Maybe most, but that's reaching. There's a couple, two, three, they'd probably paste you. Paste me too, don't feel bad, everybody has bad matchups. Marv talks about this guy named Ecklund, total terror by the way people talk about him, he died during the big break doing some real hero shit, he'd probably have been out of reach too. And, way, way above them, there's Two Sabers. Anybody wants to play fuck around and find out with her, it's a wrap."

Alexander thought about the core feeling he got from the woman, the latent power that almost boiled around her.

"What's the deal with her? She's made of something else." He admitted.

Grace shook her head, "Don't know. Doesn't talk about it. All we know is, she walked around one day back before New Chicago was organized, two years before the Big Break, and went to every Adventurer party or jumped-up half thought out guild. Beat the ass off everybody who wanted to answer her challenge. When it was all said and done, she had a hundred fifty or so Adventurers who followed her and they started wiping out all the dungeons they could find. Drove out anybody that wouldn't adopt the Contract when that came through too, pretty much imposed martial law. After that, the Peacekeepers became more of a defense force when the city governments took over civic duties, including normal policing. Now she's one of the twenty and most people think that's all she is."

He nodded along. The ace in the hole. He could respect that. What a badass, now that was a lady who Walked the Path.

"Awesome." He noted.

Speaking core feelings, he needed to go blow off some steam, oversaturation of magic was getting uncomfortable. Since he didn't want to evaporate any of Grace's belongings, he figured he'd go try something that had been kicking around in his head for a couple weeks. Playing with his magic was something he didn't do enough, it was a tool, he needed to practice more with it. Who knows? Maybe, like learning he could super charge his Greater Entropic Field by pulling it into a skinsuit, if he was willing to burn his mana reserves like no tomorrow, there were other secrets to his abilities.

Chaos Strike in particular, he was certain he'd been nibbling around the edges of an advancement there.

"I'm gonna go out to the asteroid and see if I can't make Entropy mana do unnatural things to stuff, you wanna come?" Alexander asked, since her meal was finished and they were done trying to put each other into a fuck coma.

For now.

"Sure, why not?" Grace answered, "I can go swing by the sparring courts after and work on my technique. I think Wicked Slice is about to progress, I was seriously in the zone against those fucking spiders yesterday. Felt like I was getting through their carapace and slash resistance better than I should have."

With that, the couple walked toward the asteroid, a section of field used for practice of destructive arts by the combat classes that were too volatile to be tried inside the fort's premises, neither noticing the reduced distance between them that told anyone paying attention exactly which direction that wind blew. Grace Miller would later be surprised at the brevity of her dance partner list in the evening's festivities, shocking her at how few people there were who truly appreciated dance as a performative art.

"Hookay," Alexander stretched, fingers interlaced before him, popping elbows, while muttering to himself, "There's some kind of relationship between the number of times a Chaos Strike hits something and how fast it degrades matter. That means, multiple successive attacks are better than a single big bolt, I figured that out a long time ago. Area still matters though, the more coverage, the better."

"Sure, whatever you say." The Oread melee fighter chimed in.

None of her powers had the mage aspect of Entropic Venator. She was a pure close combat class.

He pointed a shaking finger at the looming dancer and said, "Quiet you! I'm wizarding over here."

That finger pointed downrange of the cratered mud of the asteroid and a single sizzling bolt of chaos flame sprang to life at its tip. Yesterday, he'd done six at once, more than the typical three, mostly because he'd been slightly panicked regarding the predicament and there had been six targets. What if there had been twelve?

Twelve imagined outlines of puppet master demon spiders appeared to his minds eye twenty yards distant, over an empty field of magic churned clay and broken, burned sod.

Instead of adding twelve pieces of identical mana that, somehow his core produced to order, he concentrated on the singular piece of his magic at his finger. He didn't want more magic, he wanted this magic to become more pieces, separate but- damn! It broke apart, evaporating away to grey-black flames that dissipated without focus.

"Performance problems?" Snarked the lady at his side, unwilling to let that pass for free.

"Talk like that gets you banned from that lick and thumb thing you liked so much. Guess I'll have to strike that off the list." Alexander lamented, because the eroticism of the act was as much reward as the payoff for the recipient of Brig's tutelage.

"Hey, woah, I didn't mean it like that! I'll be good, I promise." Retreated the warrior woman, not wanting to poison that well.

It was a damned good well.

Another bolt. Another try to reform it into twelve bits. Another failure. He didn't feel like there was any budge there, not even a slight indication to believe he was making progress. Maybe once the spell was formed it was locked into place. Freely adjusting mana didn't seem to be possible, your spells did a single thing, it was up to the caster to figure out how and when best to use that thing. Adjusting how much you put into them was certainly possible, but he'd already determined that more mana wasn't better here.

How did it work when he made simultaneous Chaos Strikes? Now that he was paying attention to the process, he realized that there was an initial image involved. Chaos bolt had probably taken its original form because Alexander had been fighting monsters with guns, had been an experienced user of firearms. Then his Venator Class had coopted that experience on its formation, taking that into its functionality, somehow. He was guessing, Alexander didn't have the first clue how Gaia's magical nonsense actually functioned.

What if the image was different?

Instead of imagining a Chaos Strike forming and splitting, he imagined twelve needles forming in the shape of a single Chaos Strike, like flechette darts in a formation. He was pretty certain flechette rounds were banned in warfare for being "inhumane", as if there was a humane way to shoot someone to death. The act was cruelty from its inception, everything after that was trying to hide from what you were doing to your fellow man.

In his concentration on the barbarism of twelve tiny shards of metal being flung, his core answered, a double hexagon of tiny shards of chaos flame spun into existence, black-grey needles that tried to dissipate.

A will sent the modified Chaos Strike racing at crossbow speed to fizzle away fifty feet away. Less range than his usual Chaos Strikes, which could carry to a hundred yards if he was really focusing.

Focusing! Damn I'm dumb, Alexander critiqued, before calling the aid of the concentration Skill, which tuned out everything around him, bringing his attention to the flows of magic, the shape, the feel, into sharp contrast. With a high-resolution attention to the details of the casting he tried again. The feeling was different this time.

A dozen shimmering darts arced a hundred feet, burying themselves into the dirt, a flare of chaos flame's dizzying blacks and greys as the mud boiled apart. Gravity effected the spell weirdly, like it took a minute for the pull of Gaia's core to remember it should pull them downward, the flat then sharply curving trajectory was odd, but two more casts at different ranges let him memorize it.

Mental pressure, insistent urging from inside, a feeling he recognized as a transformation in the structure of his class or its abilities, Gaia signaling through his core some critical difference. He didn't bother fighting the impulse and looked at his Scroll.

After six years, he'd changed in his abilities, mostly through domination of cores, but occasionally, with familiarity and intentional effort, he'd evolved some outside that Gaian assistance. This was another one of those, clearly. If not for the near instinctive familiarity with using his Arcana he wouldn't have known to look at the construction of the magic, how to interpret the feel of its flows to separate it. Entropic Fusillade was evolution through mastery. But it wasn't what he was after, there was another layer to his discovery, a corollary to the alteration in how this projection of Entropic mana functioned. If he could form one Chaos Strike into a volley of shards, and he could simultaneously form six Chaos Strikes, then, if his conception of the exertion of his magic was sharp enough, if he visualized its outcome with enough clarity, was there a limit to how many of these shards of magic rending shards he could actually produce, so long as he had capacity to form them?

"Ohh, okay, that's sort of neat! Spooky finger gun has shotgun style now!" Gushed the female presence that had started hovering over his shoulder, unconsciously looming in excitement.

She smelled good. Concentrate. Advanced visualization for fragments of aetheric oblivion, remember? Now, could he scale it up? Would a tighter image help? Not a bullet, or arrows, but needles. Entropic magic had no real penetration to it, it destroyed what it touched, momentum wasn't important. He'd proven that concept, over and over. Coverage and redundancy were key; again, that was proven fact. Which led him back to the previous question, was he limited by number, or by his core's capacity to shape and hold Gaia's energies? Because the field of needles forming in his mind's eye was growing, Outsider Perception proving itself again bizarrely powerful at spatial processing, his brain was definitely not human anymore, primates were good at spatial cognition, but not this good. This was bird of prey level spatial mapping, maybe better. What's the limit?

He hadn't considered it before. He'd just sort of assumed that things were fixed. But he was starting to realize little more that was false. Just like his body responded to tier strain, his abilities grew with his experience. Only, he'd been complacent with stretching those. For no real reason other than it hadn't occurred to him that you could try to break the rules. This test confirmed that, if you couldn't break them, maybe, if you were really, really well practiced, if you'd used your powers so often that they were second nature, you could bend the rules a little. Or, were there even hard rules at all? Are there limits? A fascinating research question, which he hypothesized to be, no, no innate limit existed, because Gaia wanted her children to push boundaries, to break through them, because that's what it was to Walk the Path. No hypothesis was without its test. His was simple: what happens when you use a near perfect three-dimensional mental imaging and visual system to project the formation of thousands of slivers of chaos magic, with enough magical power in your super juiced tier strain boosted core to make that true?

Beyond an outstretched hand, one, ten, a thousand, ten thousand needles of concentrated entropy emptied his core almost of their own accord Arcana guided by Trait, paired systems of his Class guiding them. The field of entropic projectiles took form and, because the strain on his mind was immense, blasted at random vectors away from him, showering the asteroid with a black-grey rain of fiery needles.

The surface of the asteroid deformed, the upper layers of sod, pooled water, mud, grass, and anything else turned to vapor as bonds dissolved and volatile gases formed in response to their sudden liberation. Thermodynamic rules took over, bonds forming stable connections from the sudden chaos released enthalpic heat, and many of those gases that resulted were flammable, happily combusting in the soup of a thousand-degree gas. The asteroid detonated in a fireball that threw Alexander to the ground an instant before it shoved the onlooking Oread back a few steps before she caught herself, slack jawed horror writ on her face as she took in the rising flames. She'd never seen a football field boiled off before.

Another insistent pulsing behind his eyes, hammering at him, as if to demand his attention as a matter of survival, so he ignored his prone position and indulged it. The Scroll bloomed instantly, a matter of life and death.

Upon reflection on the piece of Scroll hovering in his senses, a matter of life and death was exactly what it was. He might have broken something that he shouldn't have by playing with this, he started to realize. Now was probably the time to be worried.

"JEEZ!" Grace boomed, "Look at that shit! You can see where there's bits of ground missing, that little rock sticking out was, like, an inch higher at least, what the fuck?"

The Oread turned to lock him with her sapphire gaze, predatory, "That's hot. You're in danger."

It would appear, in addition to being a weapons junky, Grace's fetish was more generally applied to anything that would, with extreme prejudice, fuck things up. Alexander had just discovered how to unmake large bits of terrain, with explosive consequence. Saki was going to be so jealous. Damned if his head didn't hurt.

A delicate, if mighty hand reached down and hauled the mana exhausted Outsider to his feet by his collar, where he staggered a bit before she stabilized him, patting him down to remove the bits of muddy clay on his rump and back.

"Ooooops." Was all he could muster in lilting reply, still processing the scope of the destruction, and the second magic induced migraine in as many weeks.

"Do it again!" Grace Miller ordered, giggling at the traces of steam on the re-blasted asteroid.

"Can't." Alexander informed the childishly happy warrior, "Outta juice. Might have torn some kind of internal magic safeguards that keep you from killing yourself with your own magic, too."

"That's so fucking cool!" Grace ejaculated, maybe in multiple usages of the word, more excited than he'd seen her in a long time, "C'mon then, you beautiful bastard, you can sit and watch me figure out how to make my sword carve up things that shouldn't be able to be carved up. Then you're coming back to my tent. It's going to be bad. Whhoooo, fuck, that's the stuff, I think my ovaries just lit up!"

"Meep." Alexander finally said.

"Bet your ass, meep." Grace gloated, "Now, do I need to carry you over to the blunt dummies or can you walk it?"

Alexander was forced to imagine the social damage of being carried across the field before the entire warrior detachment of Fort Fifty-One Crossing, and it was severe. Probably permanent, there was simply no way to recover from being packed like a child in front of all these Adventurers and career combat classed men and women at arms.

"I'll walk, thanks." Alexander deadpanned, with the image of five hundred warriors laughing their asses off to lend strength to his shaky, mana deprived stride.

Grace the Graceless, apparently without any remote conception of how incredibly unthinkable her suggestion was, marched joyfully arm in arm with the little assassin who'd learned to melt down an entire field. Her spirits soaring, motivation at its peak, she was going to absolutely flatten those dummies, and show off her stuff. At the edges of her mind, like her core was whispering sweet violence, she could almost taste the oneness flow state that had let her destroy those armored demon spiders. Wrath was her power, and there was a pristine simplicity to the world in within a killing rage. Lust. Blood lust. They weren't too far apart.

Within the growing, evolving walls of the star shaped fort becoming fortress, Alexander found himself deposited on a wooden crate. Grace was getting a scary look on her face. Where his growth had felt like a problem to solve, a black smithing task to be resolved by understanding its steps, the Oread appeared to be treating hers as a matter of focus.

A wooden great sword from the racks of weapons she took up, giving the handle a squeeze that made the wood squeak. She made a ready stance, raising the hilt overhead in her favored high guard.

Then a murderous snarl and the wood shattered on the stone dummy. As if that had been the outcome she'd expected, she retrieved a second training sword. Set her feet. Smashed her sword in a shower of splinters. Three more piles of training sword kindling she made while Alexander watched a subtle shift in the movements of the strike between each attempt. A building sharpness. Through the black outlines that raced ahead of the movements of her body, Alexander saw the stone dummy sheared by an arcing blow that appeared effortless, and reality mirrored that sight a moment later.

Joyous laughter bubbled up from the blue-eyed giantess, golden hair flying in its pony tail, and she turned from the destroyed dummy with an unmarked wood sword raised high, "DAMN I'M GOOD!" she roared, blasting the nearby trainees into a flinch. Alexander already had his fingers in his ears, anticipating the loss of reserve.

He clapped appreciatively from his seat. It wasn't every day you watched somebody cut a yard of solid rock with a blunt piece of wood. The murmured words of the Oread woman echoed in his head "Maybe we actually are monsters.". Maybe. But they were necessary monsters. They were the future. His reflection was ended when the thrilled woman snatched him up.

"Tent time Alexander." She growled, heated.

"I have a headache." He tried to argue, because he really did.

She shook her head, remorselessly grinning at him as she did, "Nope. That line doesn't work on me; Gonna make you forget all about that pretty head, you trust 'ol Grace."

A woman of her word, was Grace Miller.