Level One God

I hoisted a big wooden post with the tip carved into a spike and helped Hector carry it out the front gate of our newest outpost. More rain drizzled down on us as dawn settled over the tournament grounds. We dragged the heavy post through the mud, leaving a long winding groove that joined dozens of others just like it.

We passed through the front gate of the fourth outpost and found Erasmus, Thorn, Ramzi, and Protus planting more defensive wooden spikes in pre-dug holes.

High above, just below the rainclouds, I could see the dark shapes of three airships still hovering high. An occasional viewing portal would zip into view, see what we were up to, and then race off silently.

"You two are slowing down," Thorn said as Hector helped me position the big wooden spike.

"Hector keeps having to take piss breaks," I said.

He glared as we lifted the big post and drove it down into the hole. "I don't even see the point in these. Nobody is going to be dumb enough to run into them."

"There are a few benefits," I said, dusting off my hands and stepping back to admire our work. "If the bone choir and their minions tried to charge, these would definitely slow down the flesh golem. And for all we know, monsters might try to attack our outposts. We can't afford to leave too many people stationed at each structure, so the more we can slow down and hinder attackers, the better."

Hector pulled a sour face, shrugged, and then walked back toward the gate. "Gotta take a piss. Give me five."

Once he was inside, Ramzi moved to my side. "You trust him?"

"I don't see what other options he has. I trust that," I said. "If he tried to approach a noble team, they'd probably eliminate him before he could get a word out. I think he knows it. So he's stuck with us, and he's a warm body. All we have to trust is that he doesn't want to die."

"Hm," Ramzi said. "This rings true."

We carried on through the downpour while Protus tried to teach Ramzi a song from his homeland. Protus was a terrible singer, so it was a great relief once Ramzi picked up the words and took over.

After half an hour, we'd planted all the spikes the crafters had been able to provide and deliver so far. Protus claimed his soup would be done soon, so we all headed into the outpost and went inside the largest structure. Like all the outposts, the structures were poorly built wooden rectangles huddled against the inner walls. The roof didn't completely keep out the rain, but it did capture some warmth from the cooking soup, which was welcome after working in the rain for hours.

Inside, I found Lyria already working on a bowl of soup as she talked with Naia. They were laughing about something, which was a bit of a surprise since I was pretty sure Lyria hated her before this.

"...thought you were dead," Naia said. "But then you just jumped over the wall."

I frowned as I sat beside them. "You jumped over a wall?" I asked. "You didn't tell me that."

"It was a relatively short one," Lyria said, looking up with a touch of embarrassment. "And I'm fine."

I reached into her with my senses and found her ankles were swollen and one of her wrists was damaged. I squeezed her mana core slightly, sending the energy to her injuries and waiting until I could tell they were better. "Now you are," I said.

She looked down at her feet, as if in surprise, and her response was barely a whisper. "Thank you."

"Of course. But does this mean taking the outpost here wasn't as easy as you made it sound earlier?" Erasmus and I had only arrived a couple hours ago after getting word from a messenger. Apparently, scouts thought they could handle attacking this place once everyone woke up this morning. Shortly after Erasmus and I took the third keep, Lyria had led the rest of the mongrel army and taken the fourth one here, earning us all an extra passive skill slot in the process.

"Nothing here is going to be easy," Lyria said. "But we managed. You don't have to do everything yourself, you know."

"It sounds like he tried, though," Naia added, her upturned eyes suddenly fixing on me. "I heard quite the story about how you and Erasmus attacked that outpost by yourselves. To hear Erasmus tell it, you were a whirlwind of death."

"He's exaggerating," I said, getting up to ladle myself some soup. Now that I smelled food, I realized I was absolutely starving. I plucked off some meat that was cooking beside the fire, too, and took a huge bite, puffing out one cheek as I chewed.

"Based on what I saw of you in the guild, I doubt he is," Naia said. "You're quite the specimen."

"Easy," Lyria said. "If you make him too confident, he's going to go charging a keep or castle by himself next." She idly pushed her soaked hair away from her face, then focused back on her soup.

More and more of our people were coming in and serving themselves soup and meat. Some took seats around the room, which only had one table but plenty of spots where people had positioned rocks or scraps of wood to sit and lean against the wall. Others took their soup outside, including several crafters who were working day and night to process all the materials we were bringing in.

Nothing they made had magical qualities, but the crafting station was letting them pump out surprisingly high quality gear. Nearly everybody had what they wanted at this point from armor to weapons. We'd even had enough spare materials to make things like spoons, bowls, and cooking tools for Protus and one of the other men who had a skill for cooking. They were currently working on pull-carts with two wheels for hauling materials between outposts.

Every time we took more outposts, we gained perks like equipment or skill slots, but we also spread out the area we needed to cover. The only catch was everybody in our group had to physically touch the altar to claim their reward. In other words, when we took new keeps, we had to rotate people around to make sure everyone got a chance to travel to the new outpost. It was a relatively small thing, but it would become a bigger problem if we continued to expand outward.

When I arrived here, I was pleasantly surprised to find the reward from our fourth outpost was finally a passive skill instead of yet another equipment unlock.

The choice to take Leeching Surge had been a pretty easy one. Not only was it a fusion skill, meaning it combined the benefits of two skills in one, it also meant I would absorb a portion of mana from attacks hitting nearby allies and increase their mana regeneration by a portion of my own when the effect triggered.

More mana for me and more mana for my allies to help me keep them alive. It was a win win.

Zahra stepped in from the downpour outside, her dark hair plastered to her face, which bore a thin cut from forehead to nose.

Without thought, I reached into her core and healed the wound, watching it slowly close up and vanish. I doubted she even noticed as she scooped up some soup Protus had made and sat down beside Lyria.

"I hear rumors of you, Brynn Stygos," Zahra said as she sat down. Her golden eyes twinkled in the dim light.

"All that matters is we have four outposts now," I said. "Four outposts in four days. I'd say we're doing pretty well for ourselves."

"Yes, and we have the human battering ram on our side," Zahra said with an upward flick of her eyebrows. "They say you ran into the fourth outpost so hard it exploded. They say all that's left is the altar and a pile of monster corpses."

I sipped the soup and gave a small shake of my head. "I broke the front gate. That's all. And the part about corpses is true, I guess. They were goblin things called ragelings. Red skin and a lot of armor. The grommets should have most of it to Old Torgen by now."

"Yeah, we know," Naia said. "Who do you think has been spreading all the rumors about your feats of strength?"

"Hairy little gossips," I laughed.

"They worship the ground you walk on," Lyria said. "No offense, but I'm tired of them and their fucking guinea pigs."

"The Coil Gromville are the ones bringing the pigs," I said. "The Thrask Gromville has been nothing but helpful."

"That Timbo fellow, though…" Naia said, one eyebrow raised.

"Okay, fair," I admitted. "But Timbo is only trying to help. We're lucky the grommets are here."

Tamrin popped his head in the building, hair dripping wet but he was smiling. "Mr. Brynn. I heard you used yourself as a battering ram and almost blew up the entire fourth outpost with one charge. The grommets said you let out a battlecry so loud and deep that your enemies exploded inside their armor."

I shook my head. "You can't trust the grommets. I just messed up the gate a little. The outpost is fine. And I killed the goblins the old-fashioned way. I hit them really hard with metal on a stick."

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Yep," Tamrin said. "They talked about that. Said you sent giant ogres flying with your weapon. Grimbo said he saw one go so high he swore he never came down."

Lyria laughed.

"Yeah, not quite," I said. "Any word from the crafters?"

Tamrin's face went serious. "No, Sir. Not yet. But I do know Old Torgen said the metal you sent in combined with the wood we got from this outpost had some unique properties. Fire resistant, he thinks. He's going to see if he can make anything from it."

"Got it. Thanks. And stop calling me 'sir,' Tamrin. We're all in this together."

"Sorry, Sir," he said, rushing back out into the rain, boots splashing in the mud.

"You can admit you asked him to call you 'Sir,'" Lyria said once he was gone. "I won't judge you for it."

"Shut up," I said, smiling slightly.

A few minutes later, Thorn and Sylara came inside the building. Sylara gave me a small nod, which felt like a beaming smile from the normally hostile woman.

"Ah, Brynn. We just spoke with some scouts who asked us to relay a message," Thorn said as he scooped a bowl of soup for Sylara from the cauldron and then took one for himself. They took a seat across from us at the wooden table, which creaked precariously as it took their weight.

"Bad news, I'm afraid," Thorn continued after taking a noisy sip from his bowl. "The nobles are spreading out. There's one more ring of unclaimed keeps between us and them, but they said it shouldn't be long before they push farther out. Once they've taken the next keeps, our outposts will be in their sights."

"And if we wait for them to take the keeps, we'll have to hope we can handle the nobles guarding them," Sylara said. "I'd rather fight more monsters."

"Right," I said. I looked around, made sure only the people nearby were paying attention. I lowered my voice. "I asked the Coil grommets to start working on something for me earlier. I think it's a better option."

That earned interested looks from everyone in the room.

"And you think you can trust them to do it?" Lyria asked. "Because I think they're probably just busy collecting more fucking guinea pigs and dumping them in our outposts."

"I asked them to dig us a tunnel. Grommets love digging, so they were excited about the opportunity." I looked around again. There were no viewing portals around for the moment except the usual one that showed a rotating cast of Thrask grommets watching from the city.

"When were you going to tell me this?" Lyria asked.

"Once I was sure the Coil grommets were actually doing what I asked. But I checked it out myself. It's coming along well."

"And where is this tunnel headed?" Sylara asked.

"The castles," I said.

"The castles?" Naia breathed.

"What about the keeps?" Sylara asked.

"Ahh," Thorn said, smiling and wiping soup from his beard. "You think the castles may be forgotten as the nobles push ever outward, don't you?"

"I do," I said. "I think we have three choices. We stay here and let them come to us. We push for the keeps before they can take them. Or we slip right underneath them and see if we can take a castle that might be practically undefended."

"Might be," Lyria said dubiously.

"Think about it," I said, leaning forward. "We've seen glimpses through the scenes they show us in the viewing portals. The nobles are all relatively small groups of five at most with a few aspirants here and there helping them out. There's no way they can keep any kind of significant garrison behind. I bet we could walk into the castles uncontested. We might even be able to convince any aspirants they leave behind to join us, and we could do it all using the tunnels. They'd never know until it was too late."

"And if you're wrong?" Lyria asked.

"Then we'll have a fight on our hands," I said. "But I think we need more active abilities. I'd bet anything we would get at least one active ability unlock if we took a castle. I'd also guess we would also be taking it away from the nobles who held the castle before us."

"I like it," Thorn said, pounding the table with his fist. "We kick them in the balls when their back is turned. This is one of my favorite combat techniques, because when you kick the balls from behind, you also kick your enemy in the dick. It is twice as unpleasant."

Sylara nodded thoughtfully. "It's a good plan, Brynn. Bold, but good."

The others seemed to consider but there were slow nods and resigned looks around the table.

"Here's what I'm thinking," I said. "Our best chance to catch them off guard is to attack after they've taken the keeps. Hopefully all the nobles do it around the same time, which would mean they'd all be pushing outward around the same time, putting them a few hours away from the castles. If we scout well and time our attack right, we could have hours to prepare for a counter attack before they have time to get to the castles. It'll give us time to take the altar, claim our rewards, and try to get in a defensive position. And maybe we'll have an even better shot of winning if we're defending from a castle instead of wooden outposts, right?"

"Do you think we can really win against a team of nobles, castle or not?" Naia asked.

"Well," I said slowly. "That is the next part of the plan. I'll admit it's the risky part of the plan, though."

"If the first part wasn't risky, I'm afraid to hear the second," Lyria said with a sigh.

"Vitus and his team have a castle," I said slowly, knowing this part would be hardest to swallow. "We know that from the viewing portals. What if we tried to make contact with them? We could coordinate with them. A temporary alliance."

Thorn and Sylara's expressions darkened. "You can't trust the nobility, Brynn," Thorn said.

"They aren't all the same," I said. "I think Vitus is a good person. But we don't need to rely on that. We'll present this as an opportunity for them to get an edge. He'll realize there's no disadvantage on his end."

"What can we offer them?" Zahra asked.

"We tell them we're going to try to steal a castle, but we let them pick which one. They'll know who will be weak and who will be rushing back to retake their castle. They can either attack the noble team while they're in the open and weak, or they can take advantage of the distraction and steal their keeps. It's good for us, because it could weaken them further at worst. At best, Vitus and his people will take them out for us and we won't have to lift a finger."

Lyria sat back in her seat, arms folded and expression thoughtful. "I can think of a few dozen ways this could go wrong. Let's say this goes great and Vitus and his people take out the nobles for us. Then what? Do you think they're just going to turn a blind eye and let us keep the castle?"

"Maybe," I said. "Maybe not. But this tournament ultimately ends with us fighting nobles. We can't avoid it forever. At least this plan means we're fighting them from a position of power within a castle. And what happens if we take a castle and use the grommet tunnels to keep spreading out and claiming more outposts? We could have a huge edge like this, especially if the castles are tough to siege."

"I still like the plan," Thorn said. "It is better than sitting on our asses claiming wooden outposts again and again while we wait for the noble sledgehammer to fall upon us, right?"
"Agreed," Ramzi said. "Better to die because we were bold and had ambition than to hide and hope we avoid notice. Brynn's plan has us striking out and claiming power for ourselves. I like it."

"It's not just that," I said. "It's taking advantage of our numbers and the grommets. Individually, we're weaker than the nobles. But from the viewing portal recaps, it looks like the noble teams are five nobles fighting together at most. There are more than thirty of us. If we're smart about it, we can make their lives hell."

"Yes," Ramzi said. "The weaker force can overwhelm a powerful enemy if they refuse to ever engage directly. This is wise."

"We also get several times the benefit when we add structures," I said. "They take a castle and get a big benefit for five people. We take it and that benefit is gained by over thirty people. If we play this right, I think we really have a chance."

"And what if we keep pushing along the perimeter to claim outposts?" Naia said. "We would be gaining that large benefit for a large group, as you say, but without as much risk."

"There are a few problems," I said. "One is it's a perimeter of outposts, like you say. Every time we claim more, we stretch ourselves into a thinner and thinner circle. It's a ring, and without control of the center, it's going to take more and more time to even send people around to touch the altars. And so far, all we've seen are equipment unlocks and one passive unlock from outposts. Most of our army is composed of slaves who unfortunately don't have equipment to even claim, no matter how many slots we unlock. We need active ability slots. And we need stronger defensive buildings.

"Think about it," I continued. "If we keep carrying on like this, the end result is a kill squad of five nobles with the benefits of a castle and two keeps crashing into us like a meteor. We could try to hold against the attack or give up the outpost and flee. Either way, we're going to have to fight them. My way just means we do it on our own terms."

Thorn leaned back, resting both hands on his shaved head. "Helmet makes good points, Naia. You must admit this."

Naia looked reluctant, but she nodded. "Alright. Yes. I agree."

"Okay," Lyria said slowly. "Let's say we all agree to this. I see one more problem you haven't talked about."

"The other teams," I said, already guessing where she was going with this.

"Yeah. Even if this works out perfectly and Vitus doesn't sell us out and tip off the nobles we're coming… You think the other nobles are going to just sit by and let us hold this castle? If we do what you're saying, there's a risk that every single noble team temporarily teams up to put us down."

"It's possible," I said. "But we'll just use the tunnels to slip away. Every time we draw them into the same place, there's a chance they turn on each other and thin out the number of nobles we have to face."
"What about Rake?" Lyria asked, her expression darkening.

"He's a problem. There's no way around that," I admitted. "But he's not a problem we can really plan for. We just have to do what makes the most sense and know that he could appear at any moment. We'll deal with him when he arrives. That's all we can do." The part I didn't say was that I was saving dark mana for Rake. If he did catch us off guard at the worst time, I had the option of using dark mana again. I didn't like it, but I knew it was there as a safety net. I'd just have to hope it was enough when I didn't have all my items and abilities at my disposal like last time.

I looked around the small group, waiting for more objections, but none came. "Good," I said. "Try to get some rest. I've got a few things to handle tonight."

Lyria followed me as I set down my bowl and headed back outside into the rain.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"I figure we have a couple days left. If I use my time wisely, I think I can get a lot stronger before we have to push in on the castle. So… I'm going out for some late night hunting for monsters and ingredients. I'll see you in the morning. And let everybody know to keep the plan quiet for now. There's a chance somebody would sell us out to the nobles in exchange for a place on their team. I trust everyone we told, but there's no reason to share it earlier than we have to with the rest of the army."

Lyria pursed her lips. "Yeah. I agree."

"Good. Do me a favor and keep doing what you've been doing. Try to rotate people so everybody gets a chance to touch the fourth outpost if they still have equipment they haven't claimed yet."

"Yes, Sir," Lyria said with a touch of sarcasm. "And Brynn? Be careful out there. You're not invincible, no matter what you might think."

"Yeah, got it." I set out toward the front gate, which Erasmus wordlessly opened for me.

I took a deep breath and stepped outside into the night. Deep down, I was mostly hoping to find another challenge area and especially more alchemical ingredients. I knew my skillset was crippled without offensive potions, so finding them was near the top of my priority list. Beyond that, I planned to kill anything I found. If I spotted another outpost, I might even see if I could take it completely solo for the experience benefits alone.

Whatever the case, I knew time was short, and I needed to maximize what I had so I was ready when shit hit the fan after we attacked a central castle. I didn't bother saying as much to the others, but I had a feeling the tournament wouldn't last long after we made our move.

Our attack would draw everyone inward. I just had to hope that meant most of the nobles would wind up eliminating each other, leaving us to clean up whatever was left.

At least that's how I hoped it would play out. Tonight, though, I didn't need to worry about that. Tonight was just about getting stronger, so I picked up my pace and summoned Pebble, eyes alert as I jogged through the darkness and the rain.