The sun had set, and the fire had burned down to a low, steady bed of coals by the time I finally sat down and let myself look at my status.

  The numbers were… ridiculous.

  Willpower towered over everything else like a crooked spire. It wasn’t just higher; it was obscene, a statistical middle finger to moderation. Any sane optimiser would have called it a mistake.

  I didn’t.

  There was something about willpower that didn’t fit neatly into the system’s tidy boxes. Strength made you lift more. Agility made you faster. Intelligence gave you more mana.

  Willpower instead made me feel like I was more… real.

  I could feel it, the way I could fight back when the curse whispered; the way my aura obeyed when I pushed it; the way even people bent just a little when I spoke with intent. Arthur, the old crafter, my spells, and my own spiralling instincts. It all answered to the same thing.

  Me.

  I closed the window. Numbers were nice, but they didn’t tell the whole story.

  There were things I needed to do. Quinn, for one. The kid knew games, systems, and exploits. He would see angles I didn’t. Melissa and Rhea too. If they could actually see and understand their spells, then my headache-based approach was about to get an upgrade.

  But first came the hard part – well, not really hard, but for sure annoying.

  Footsteps approached me; it had not even been five minutes since I sat down after all the things we discussed for tomorrow; it was never enough.

  I looked up as Tom, Mary, and a couple of others drifted into the ring of flickering light. They didn’t say anything at first and just sat down on the logs, faces tired and soot smudged.

  “Is everyone healed up?” I asked Mary.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  She nodded, rubbing her eyes. “As much as I can manage. A few are going to be still sore by tomorrow. But no one is bleeding out anymore.”

  “Good”, I hesitated. “Are you okay?”

  She gave a small, tight smile. “I will be after a good sleep”,

  Besides her, an older woman, Selene, looked at me. “Your shirt is torn, dear. I was, and am, a seamstress. I can fix it if you want.”

  I glanced down. The eldir that attacked me today left the only shirt I possess with a big open gash in the side. While I wasn’t ashamed of my body, and I didn’t really feel the cold, I wasn’t going to start running around bare-chested. “I’d appreciate that. I’ll wash it and bring it by.”

  “Take your time,” she said kindly, then stepped back into the firelight’s edge.

  I turned to Tom. “Alright. Say it.”

  He let out a long breath and looked into the flames like they might answer for him. “We’ve already lost too many. And if we march everyone together like that… we’re going to lose more. A lot more.”

  Mary stiffened but didn’t interrupt.

  Tom went on. “We could’ve tried the vanguard approach longer. Let the strong clear paths. Let the rest follow once it’s safer. We barely gave it a chance.”

  “I thought it would work too,” I said quietly. “Then a monster with half a brain sent an army to butcher the people we left behind to get what it wanted.”

  He flinched.

  “If one of them was that smart,” I continued, “there will be more. They don’t have to beat us. They just have to take the weak while we’re not looking. That strategy fails the moment the enemy can plan.”

  A young man shifted besides Tom. I remember him, John. He was one of the mages, a bit of a fidgety guy. “I hate it”, he said, “but he’s right. We can’t keep pretending some of us are passengers.”

  Across the fire, Selene frowned. “That’s easy to say when you can throw magic around. Some of us make pots.”

  “And now you have to throw those pots,” I said. “You can increase endurance and strength; you can get more skills. The system doesn’t care if you were a baker or a marine back home.”

  “It’s still unfair to ask this of us,” she muttered. “We are not made for this kind of thing.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Life is unfair, but you have been given a choice before all of this started; now you have to deal with it. And if you want to survive, you’ll have to fight; the beacon isn’t coming to us.”

  Silence fell; the only sound was the cracking of the dying fire.

  Tom rubbed his face. “You’re asking people to march and risk their lives.”

  “I’m asking them to fight!” I shot back. I was losing my patience the more I had to deal with these spineless cowards, Tom included. “We didn’t even move in three days. We hid. And we got attacked anyway. If we’re going to bleed, we might as well be bleeding forward.”

  Mary nodded. “I don’t like it either, but we need to proceed; staying here is not helping us long-term. I’ll do my best to ensure that we survive; the others will too.”

  “If I can,” John started. “I didn’t volunteer for going with the vanguard because this whole place scares me, despite the magic that is fantastic, but everything else is frightening me more than I would like to admit... Still, we can’t stay cooped up here forever. We need to move.”

  Selene hesitated, then sighed. “We don’t have another choice, haven’t we?”

  Tom closed his eyes for a second. Then opened them. “Alright. Tomorrow we move. We’ll see how far we can go in a day.”

  I wanted to add some more scathing remarks, but it would be just childish at this point. I made my position clear already.

  “Good,” I said. “I thought about it, but I wanted more input.”

  I leant forward, drawing lines in the dirt with a stick. “Rotating formation. I can be in the vanguard alone. We have four people good in close combat to help manage the flanks: Alya, Jack, you, Tom, and the last fighter; I forgot his name…” I gestured with my hand, and Tom, after looking at me for a second, got it.

  “Nigel”, he provided. “Nigel, stay two on each side, providing support to the crafters. Speaking of them, they’ll rotate into combat; it doesn’t matter if they use crossbows, spears, skills or throw rocks, they need levels. I’ll debuff targets so they can get kills without getting shredded.”

  The old woman grimaced at that.

  It didn’t matter; I continued, drawing three shapes around the main group.

  “Scouts”, I continued. “Quinn, Marcus and Phil. They stay ahead and wide, so we don’t get surprised.”

  I felt Quinn lurking just outside the light, and when I looked up, he gave me a lazy salute before disappearing again.

  “Anyone with a barrier-type skill stay central,” I said, pointing at the drawing. “They can interject into anyone’s fight if it gets dangerous, especially Melissa; I’m sure she can protect most of the group by herself after today.”

  “The mages have a lot of potential but need to be protected, so they stay inside the formation.” I finished, “Everyone keeps moving. No lagging. No stopping unless we’re dying. If you have suggestions about how to improve this, I’m all ears.”

  The fire popped.

  Tom exhaled slowly. “You really thought this through, didn’t you?”

  I met his gaze. “I’m not going to die because I was too slow, and I don’t want anyone else to die too. This is necessary, and you all know it.”

  Around the fire, heads nodded.

  Tomorrow, we march. But first, there is a guy just outside of the circle of light created by the fire that has been staring at me since the others approached. And now he seemed to have found the guts to come closer. What is it now, I wonder?

  20 chapters ahead!