I awoke to find the tent empty. How long had I been asleep? There was really only one way to find out. I would have to get up.

I didn't.

Part of me just wasn't interested. What was the point? Get up, fight for demons, get people killed for the entertainment of the Narrators and some Audience? That idea was a nightmare. Until now I had been pushing on in the hopes of getting enough power to hurt the Narrators. Maybe break the system somehow. That may still be on the table, but what was the point in focusing on that? Nadia was a ticking time bomb building to the death of everyone. I needed to figure out how to stop that and … ascend to being a second titan? That wasn't all that appealing. Leave this world behind. Go beyond the veil and spend forever just me and the Titan?

That sounded like hell.

I sat up.

The Titan was right. I wasn't going to let the world end. If push came to shove, I doubted most people would do nothing in the face of global catastrophe. What got most people was the enormity of the task at hand. It was weighing me down. Oppose Nadia? That was a titanic undertaking. It almost seemed impossible.

This was like everything else. I needed to take it one step at a time. Any task no matter how grand in scope can be rendered more manageable by breaking it up into smaller goals. First the tower, then talking with Nadia. That will probably happen when I hit level eleven. Try and talk them down from omnicide.

Then I needed to find Kate.

If I got that far what the hell would I say to her? Hey you don't know me, and technically I don't know you… wanna be family? Yeah that wasn't quite right. She would probably tell me to fuck off. In those exact words now that I think about it. She was starting to swear as a form of rebellion, the joys of having a middle schooler child. Now that she was centuries older than me, she probably knew curse words I didn't. Maybe fancy ones, like in French or something.

I was looking too far ahead.

Right now I needed to see what time it was. Then find Angelica. I was beginning to worry that my question had upset her. I shouldn't be too surprised. Angelica clearly didn't like talking about her past. She was cagey about personal details in general. That was relatable. The future seemed a little simpler on the surface. Thinking about it now it was a lot like asking someone about their hopes and dreams, in a world full of malevolent reality warping assholes. The Narrators would absolutely use what you said against you.

It had been a loaded question.

I sighed. I was stalling. I needed to get up and do what I knew I was going to do. Richard and the demons at the tower need to be stopped, and their captives freed. That meant I had to finish setting up the army. That meant I needed to get up.

I stood up

After a brief moment's hesitation I walked out into the morning. My efforts to stoically face the day were immediately thwarted. I crashed head first into Pinky's metal backside. I was a big boy, but Pinky had the laws of gross tonnage on his side. With a metallic thunk, I bounce back a few steps.

"He is awake," Grimset declared.

Pinky stuck his head in the tent.

I was rubbing my forehead, "Were you blocking my tent?"

Pinky nodded.

"I take it Angelica wanted me to sleep?" I asked.

Pinky nodded again.

"Am I allowed to leave?" I asked.

Pinky nodded and pulled his head back.

I took a step out and then tripped over Toad. He and Grimset were both shoving to be the first to enter the tent and presumably talk to me.

"I am the general and rank has it-oof!" Toad proclaimed right until my knee hit him.

I decided to roll over top of him and Grimset rather than punt them or fall on them and crush them. I rolled and found myself toe to toe with Nanny Shank.

The old lady didn't bat and eye, "Morning Doug. Gotta minute?"

"Sure, what's up?" I asked. Taking in my surroundings. Brand and Aiko were sheltering in the wind. Behind Pinky. Helen and Philp were standing behind Spine who was a step behind Nanny Shank. Brunhilda and Sunit were both performing maintenance on their gear. Toad and Grimset were switching between glaring at each other and glancing at Nanny Shank and me.

No Angelica … Shit. Best not to over-analyze that. On the other hand I could hyperfixate on it. Yeah that was a bad idea. I was still doing that though. Was Celeste upset with me?

"I think we should take today to rest and prepare to split the groups up tomorrow," Nanny Shank said. She was leaning harder on the cane than when we first met.

"That's fair," I agreed. All said and done that would mean that Grond's attack had set us back two days. That was probably unavoidable. Splitting up also concerned me. It was necessary, but shipping kids across these wilds caused a terror to settle into my stomach.

"Rob Shiv wants to talk to you as well. He wants your thoughts about loot distribution." Nanny Shank took a swig of her medicine.

"That is something we should all talk about." I pulled a bale of Snowlion cloaks out of my inventory. "I have about ten thousand of these in my inventory. I can craft more but I need more pelts

Grimset stepped past me. He examined the material, "Epic Scale, bonus to stealth related skills in snow, armor five."

"It also gives you resistance to cold," Angelica said. She threw something to me, "Doug, think fast."

I caught it. It was a deep fried thing. It smelled like food, "What is this?"

"Sasquatch surprise," Angelica said. She pulled another steamed spider leg out of her inventory and took a bite. She could have those. I didn't really like them, and it was too early to try and drink flavor into them.

I craft a knife fork, or knork. It's not dumb it worked. I cut a chunk off the top of the Sasquatch surprise. The surprise was it was full of the stew from the pot. The goblins had taken a hunk of bigfoot meat. Hammered it flat, molded it into a bowl. then breaded and fried it. After that they filled it with stew and capped it with another hunk of meat and fried it again.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

For the record bigfoot tasted like pork. There was something to unpack there, but I wasn't going to do that then and there.

"War council then?" I asked the group at large.

"Yes," Toad declared before Grimset could insist the same thing. He then rushed past Grimset so he could follow me into the tent first.

We all stepped back into the tent. Philip was very circumspect at the tent flap. I pulled a big table out of my inventory. I tossed out a bunch of chairs too, before sitting down on the couch and taking a swig of stew. This didn't quite work and my beard was now full of mess. I had no napkin, dammit. Best just to pivot, "Alright, Grimset have at it."

Grimset pulled a chair up to the table across from me and then announced, "We must check the spawns power!"

He clearly wanted to let that hang in the air for a moment dramatically.

Toad had other ideas, "No." He sat next to me. Toad didn't like how he could barely see above the table so he stood in the chair.

"You can't just say no," Grimset snapped.

"But you can just say yes?" Helen said, sitting next to him. "Well not yes, but you know what I mean." She stalled out because she didn't necessarily disagree with him in spirit.

"Someone has to," Grimset insisted.

"Do they though?" Philip asked.

He sat next to Toad.

I stayed quiet. I crafted a spork to get the chunky bits of stew out of the meat bowl. When I thought no one was looking I wiped my chin with my sleeve.

Angelica snorted. She sat on the couch next to me and shook her head. "Rude," she whispered before spitting a chunk of spider shell -chitin?- on the floor. I was pretty sure she was fucking with me… but not certain.

"Yes!" Grimset pounded the table. He stopped himself. When he spoke his voice was forced calm, "Things are moving fast. It is my job to worry about the concealed threats. Doug is setting off every alarm. We all remember the early days. A Patron shackled thousands of us. They lived as slaves under the God of Tyranny. He offered safety at first. Then guidance on where to attack. In the end after our ancestors were isolated and at war, he used them as cannon fodder."

His words weren't dismissed immediately. Philip didn't give a damn, but he stayed quiet. Toad wasn't swayed either, but did seem troubled by Grimset's words. Helen was scared shitless. The situations weren't observably different if you squinted hard.

Nanny Shank shook her head, "This is different. That Tyranny jerk was fully transactional from the start. He also fed into our prejudices to ensure goblins ended up at war with others."

"God of Tyranny?" Angelica asked.

That gave me pause. It wasn't often that Angelica didn't know something about this world.

"That's what he told us he was," Nanny Shank said. "It wasn't his real name. In the early days of the system he had goblins harass and attack others. We thought you were the mobs. He got a lot of us killed."

"Were you there?" I asked. Nanny Shank was old, and she was talking like she had been there.

Nanny Shank blinked at me. She then glared at me as he reached in her pocket. She found some random empty bottle and chucked it at me, "I'm old, not ancient!"

I caught the bottle, "So… no?" I wasn't trying to be a prick. I had met nearly a dozen people who were from the world that was. Then there were all the folks at least a century old. I also met a disturbing amount of people who were technically clones of me… or I was the clone of them.

My point is it wasn't out of the realm of possibilities.

"No, Goblins can remember anything another goblin new with goblin mode." Spine explained. To emphasize the point, "it is how we can go full Mad Max in the snow, but it is kinda dangerous to mess with too much. You get… weird."

"And for the record, I am only 87 years old," Nanny Shank added. She crossed her arms and mumbled, 'I'm not a weird, soul-stealin' elf."

"Seriously, what was this person's name?" Angelica asked. Ignoring the unhelpful fantasy racism.

"He said his name was Tyranis Rex," Nanny Shank said with a shrug.

"He didn't fully understand our language and most in the end called him Piss Baby," Spine added.

"What happened to him?" I asked, pretty sure I knew the answer.

"The All-Death, I mean Nadia killed him," Nanny Shank said. She shook her head, "It is still wild to me that that thing has a name, and it means hope."

Everyone looked at me.

I shrugged, "I wasn't there. I have no idea where Nadia came from."

"The person or the name?" Philip asked.

"Yes," I said.

"We need to get back on track!" Grimset insisted.

This led into a long circular argument. Grimset didn't trust me, and wanted to make sure the army, and by extension all of the goblins, weren't totally under my control. The others specifically Toad and Philip didn't see the problem he did. I actually agreed with Grimset. Not because I thought I was going to go full Dark Overlord, but having everything run through me -Me, the guy who doesn't know how food works- was a bad idea. Grimset was then uncertain that I was the one backing him.

This argument went on for so long I was attacked by a snow lion. It had snuck under the table and bit me on the… that's not important. I handled it. I killed the snow lion with an appropriate amount of violence. I hate snow lions. I scraped my shoe on the rug. The goo made from the snow lion I had just killed stained the rug made from a different snow lion I had killed days earlier. "Okay where are we landing on this?"

"The issue is you are the Warlord," Helen said. "That gives you so much authority over everyone."

"Should I hand control over to-" I started.

"No!" everyone, Grimset included, shouted back.

"You need to adjust the options in your warlord tab so that others can't lose rank for disobeying your orders," Grimset explained.

I pulled up the menu and found the option, "Sure, but is there anything stopping me from changing this later?"

"No," Toad said. "Just give us your subordinates the ability to adjust settings for the people below us."

I delegated authority," What normally happens if someone disobeys orders."

"Removal from the army is the most common punishment, " Toad replied. His eyes were unfocused as he navigated prompts.

"That doesn't seem that bad," I said.

"Losing all your buffs in a warzone?" Toad asked.

I saw his point.

There was a lot of other logistics talk. Like a lot of it. I am glossing over it but it mattered. The vehicles running was what kept the heat on for most people, so running out of gas ten miles from the goal was potentially devastating. Rob Shiv's team had brought me a mountain of skins and I gave them the thousands of cloaks I had made to distribute.

I was staying mostly quiet and crafting as I listened to the others.

Frankly they knew better. Plus after figuring out food and fuel, the conversation had shifted to the division of the resource that was soldiers. This is where things got heated. Toad wanted to take every able bodied combatant. That would mean the kids would be left with basically just the Nanny's and the Pappies and everyone else that for one reason or another wasn't a fighter. Helen was in near full revolt. She wasn't going to leave her kids defenseless. Grimset also thought this was a dumb idea and basically point blank said he wouldn't listen to anything Philip or Toad said on the matter.

Oddly enough Spine was the voice of reason, "They wouldn't be defenseless. All of the people my age leveled at least five times yesterday. The average level is twenty-four. They can fight, especially if it is holding the entrance to the Dark. We're not kids any more."

"Spine's got a point," Nanny Shank added.

Agreed," Toad said with a nod to Nanny Shank. He turned to Helen, "Spine and Nanny Shank will lead the children to safety. We will take the soldier and cut out the heart of the demon infestation."

"Wait, what?" Spine asked.

"I guess that's as good as I am going to get," Helen said. She clearly wasn't happy. She sighed, 'I am going to check on the mechanics. Make sure the trucks are good."

Grimset simply got up and followed her out.

Spine was glancing between Toad and Philip. "I am not a soldier?"

""You are not going to the tower," Toad told him bluntly.

Spine's fist clenched.

Philip tried to intervene but he said the exact wrong thing, "Son, It is too dangerous for you."

"Fuck you!" Spine snapped. He then stormed out of the tent.

Philip stood to follow, but Nanny Shank stopped him, "No, not now. Let me talk to him first." Nanny Shank knew how to head any argument from him off at the pass. She smacked him with her cane as she got out of her chair and followed after Spine.

Angelica drummed her fingers on the table, she then turned to me, "So, uh, wanna hear my back story?"

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