And (N)one Shall Remain

“All right, everybody ready? Remember, stay together at all times, okay?” asked Esperanza as she looked at the rag-tag gaggle of children and youngsters in front of her. They had just finished eating breakfast, the older kids helping feed the younger ones who were unable to feed themselves yet. Now the group of children had gathered together in two distinct groups, almost like a formation of sorts.

 

Within the formation were the youngest children and the rest of the younger ones, which formed the majority of their numbers. The oldest of the children there helped carry the small toddlers who aren;t capable of walking on their own yet, though fortunately there were enough kids that they could alternate the task when one grew too tired.

 

Surrounding them on the outside were Eda-Zil, Kvar-Litu, and the half-dozen oldest and biggest of the children, each of which carried a weapon in hand, standing guard over the rest and prepared to defend them in emergencies. At first Esperanza quailed at the thought of arming little children – some of the armed children were no older than twelve or so – but given their situation, they could not afford to be picky.

 

In this case, the assortment of weapons she had scavenged from the dead invaders came in handy. Each of the younger children carried a spear, which was a simple enough weapon for them to use, and not too heavy either. Kvar-Litu and Eda-Zil carried a blade alongside their spears, with Eda-Zil carrying the machete formerly used by the [Champion] on her waist.

 

Originally Esperanza would have liked to hand out that [Champion]’s bow as well, but neither Eda-Zil nor Kvar-Litu were strong enough to even draw it properly, so she shelved that idea. Instead, it was little Ilavakide who volunteered to try using a bow – the villagers had not used bows so none of them had any experience with them – and was given one of the lighter bows by Esperanza. She stayed together with the younger children, however.

 

In a way, she was glad that the race Ilavakide was part of was much stronger than humans were, that she could use a bow even as a child of six years. Granted, the bow was the lightest Esperanza could find, belonging to one of the lower leveled sentries, but still. 

 

Naturally, she and her dogs were the real guards for the group, as she doubted that the youngsters and children could do much other than handle some first-tier creatures at best. For that reason, she sent Dali and Gordy ranging out ahead of the group, each somewhat to the side, while Esperanza herself stayed by the group, moving above them in the forest canopy where she was afforded a better field of view of their surroundings.

 

After some discussion with Eda-Zil, Kvar-Litu, and some of the older kids, they all agreed that Esperanza should allow some of the more harmless inhabitants of the forest to pass close enough to the group that they could try hunt them down, both for food – they had some from the village, which Esperanza carried in her [Storage Dimension] for convenience, but it wouldn’t last them for the entire trip, which was estimated to take months – and for experience.

 

While Eda-Zil and Kvar-Litu had little hopes of improving themselves, the same could not be said about the young children who were all still in their first tiers, and they chose to place a gamble on those same children maturing before their time under the conditions they were subjected to. They knew they needed all the help they could get to make it through the journey, after all.

 

Esperanza had not liked the idea of making the children fight much at all, though she understood the rationale behind it. She would not always be with them, and if the survivors of Navef wanted to be able to stand on their own feet later on, this was pretty much the last option available to them.

 

As such she did as they requested and funneled in relatively harmless creatures in the 10s towards the group, having told Dali and Gordy to let those pass while driving away or slaughtering the more dangerous creatures in their way. Fortunately they were still relatively near the village, in the outskirts of the forest, and creatures in the 20-30 level range were relatively rare.

 

That evening she brought a couple [Blue-striped Sheep] towards the group, at levels 15 and 18. The creature was a docile herbivore that made for good eating, and most importantly, was well within the ability of the youngsters to handle on their own. Eda-Zil and Kvar-Litu kept the beasts in place while the youngsters killed them with their spears and arrows, before they slaughtered the carcasses and used the meat for dinner that night.

 

The exercise also netted most of the young children a level or two, which proved that they could forcefully speed up the leveling of children still in their first tiers. None of them knew if doing so would come with side effects or consequences later on, however, yet at the same time they had no leeway to bother about those at the time either. As such, Esperanza kept up the practice over the following week. 

 

For their first week of the journey, the group focused on covering as much distance as they could, headed deeper and deeper into the forest, for fear that there might be pursuers. It was only after they traversed a good distance without any sign of pursuers – and Esperanza made sure by sending Dali to scout the path they had taken from time to time while they rested at night – that they started to relax the pace a bit more to allow the children more time to rest.

 

Throughout the journey, Esperanza kept allowing beasts of a passable level to pass through for the kids to handle. As they went deeper into the forest, however, the number of lower leveled beasts started to decrease, to the point that by the time they were a week in, the kids had already spent two days idling because she could not find harmless creatures of a suitable level for them to practice on.

 

That was when the kids asked her to let some of the lower level dangerous beasts to pass their way.

 

Once again she was torn between her more modern sensibilities that cried out over the idea of endangering the children under her care with the harsh reality of the situation said children had been placed into. She debated against herself for a while, but only came to a decision after a talk with Oldies, after which she agreed to give the children what they asked for, but only under her supervision.

 

Esperanza had learned from Oldies by then that if she were to weaken the beasts to the point that even the children could kill it on their own without issue, then most of the experience would have gone to her, and given her much higher level, gone to waste. For that reason, she limited herself to only non-damaging moves.

 

Like restraining the beast when Eda-Zil and Kvar-Litu failed to contain them.

 

Such an incident took place with the very first beast she allowed them to handle on their own, a [Shadowfang Nightcrawler Lvl22], and she had to help keep the beast restrained before the children managed to kill it after some serious effort on their part. The hide of a second-tier beast was a lot tougher than the first tiers, it seemed, and the little children with their lack of stats had to whale on the creature for a good ten minutes, their stabs creating only little pinpricks that they slowly widened and deepened with a coordinated effort before they finally killed the beast.

 

Contrary to what Eda-Zil and Kvar-Litu expected, Esperanza had not blamed them. If anything, she sympathized with the two youths, who had run themselves ragged to take care of the gaggle children as best they could. The older children helped them to an extent, but the two were still the ones who primarily helped care for the younger ones, in some ways taking the place of their lost parents as best they could. 

 

It was a weighty role that Esperanza most definitely had not envied them for undertaking.

 

They moved slower as they went deeper into the forest, the higher of the beasts in their vicinity being the primary reason. Esperanza and her two companions managed to scare off or slay the vast majority of the beasts that were in their way, but as the number increased, the three started to feel the pressure mount on them. 

 

As such, they worked together to “feed” more beasts to the older children. If the older children leveled to the second tier, they would be able to provide more help to the group, and as such Esperanza helped them deal with more and more low second tier beasts as they delved further into the forest. It was a slow undertaking, though, as even her holding the beasts still like she did funneled a good chunk of the experience towards her rather than the children.

 

They attempted to fight that issue with quantity. By the tenth night of their journey, the children were killing a dozen such beasts throughout the day, as Esperanza kept one held in place whenever she encountered any that the children could harm and kill. By the end of the second week, no less than thirty beasts lost their lives at the hands of the children during their journey.

 

While the first-tier classes only provided very little in terms of improvement, every little bit counted for those children, and while they would still be helpless against the beasts they killed had Esperanza not held them in place, their ability to hurt those beasts improved as their stats increased. As such, they kept up the practice, while at the same time taking extreme care not to accidentally draw in a beast that would be far too dangerous for the children.

 

By that point of time, the group as far too worried about their continued survival – they were barely a quarter of the way through their planned route, and the forest would become much more dangerous as they delved deeper into it – to think about the fact that they were having young children still in their first tier being trained by the very messenger of their own gods of old.

 

It had escaped their busy minds that such an act had quite a bit of significance in the world. Any storyteller worth their salt would have been able to tell them as much, but their group lacked such a figure, and kept going as they had without putting much thought into things other than how to live and stay alive into the next day.

 

As such, it came as quite a bit of a surprise when one night, on the fifteenth day of their journey, Val-Kas’j, one of the oldest and highest leveled children who was almost a full-blooded Ma’Varok, hit his twentieth level and received his class choices, only for him to report that he saw a very unusual choice amongst his options.

 

The child had [Novice Farmer], which was expected as he was a [Farmer’s Child], and he gained options such as [Novice Ranger], [Young Hunter], and [Quick-Minded Survivalist], all of which was not unexpected given what they had done in the past two weeks. All the living on the run and the killing had given the child quite a few feats he would have normally missed out on, after all.

 

What none of them had expected was to hear that his last class option was as a [Progeny of Yore: The Hunter who Provides], a class that none of them had even ever heard about. For that matter, not even Eda-Zil or Kvar-Litu ever heard of anything like that from their elders. Val-Kas’j quickly made his choice, though, saying that the last class just felt right to him, and picked it as his second tier class.

 

To say that the improvements he received from the class was drastic was an understatement, and Esperanza knew that she needed to have a good chat with Oldies, as soon as she could.