Nicolai sent out his healthy Defender, sending it towards the rightmost neighbour. The softer target.

The man's eyes widened when he saw Nicolai's Defender trundling toward him. 'Help me!' cried the bald Cultivator to the others. 'The Barbarian is attacking me!'

'Isn't that your own business?' said the man to his right, and chuckled, his own focus fixed in front of him.

'Maybe if you'd been quicker to help me, you wouldn't be in this situation,' added Jinxiao, waspishly. 'I haven't even finished a new Defender with which to assist, so, alas… I cannot help you.' She wore a broad smile which was entirely at odds with her words.

'Go and assist him,' said Hao absently to the man on the bald Cultivator's right. 'You are all to work together.'

The man sighed and rolled his eyes, but sent his Defender. Nicolai maintained his own on course. His had left earlier, and would arrive sooner. He would be able to steal some resources before the enemy Defender arrived.

Baldie was making a new one already, however, and the bald Cultivator now had had multiple workers on the job. Fortunately, the Cultivator had been stockpiling the wrong Resources. He hadn't planned for the future but brainlessly kept his Collector harvesting the Resources needed to create Workers and Scouts. Defenders needed quite a bit of Red Grass in to construct, whereas the others needed only a little, and the man had not been collecting any. Thus even with so many Workers and so many Resources, the pace was quite slow. He was forced to send his Collector and Workers further afield, to where his Scout had explored some of the fog. Nicolai couldn't see that area, as he wasn't able to see the portions of fog that others had explored, only those he had personally explored. But he saw the Workers going into the fog and returning after some time.

As such, they weren't building it too fast, as they were forced to go and get from a distance. Even so, with so many going and fetching Red Grass it looked like the Defender would be finished soon, not long after his own arrived.

Nicolai gazed thoughtfully at the Workers going back and forth, considering sending his other Defender. Currently he was keeping it back because it would heal faster while immobile, and he didn't want to leave his Worker unguarded. Even if he sent the Worker immediately it wouldn't arrive until around slightly after the neighbour, but he'd then have two against two.

What to do? If he let them build up more Defenders, he would quickly be overwhelmed. There simply wasn't any way for him to beat five others and stay in the game if he sat around and did nothing. He needed to be aggressive, to be mobile, to capitalise on every mistake they made and make none of his own.

At that moment, the bald Cultivator let out a yell of horror. The others gave him puzzled looks.

'Shit, shit, help me out!' he cried, staring into the fog where his Workers were coming and going.

'What's the problem?' asked another.

'Look,' the bald Cultivator said, and Nicolai felt vague ripples as the man focused his spiritual will on the console. Suddenly that fog disappeared as the bald Cultivator shared his vision with the rest of them—in his panic, he even shared it with Nicolai. There was a divot in the fog, where his Workers were busy collecting Red Grass.

But now, a Symbiote had come lumbering out from the fog. It was some kind of large bug with larger claws, clearly wild and under only its own control. It looked to have come after being disturbed by the frenzied efforts of the bald Cultivator's Workers. None of the other Cultivators had pressed so far into the fog as this man.

'Help me!' shrieked the Cultivator as one of his Workers was torn apart. The other Cultivators merely mumbled with interest at the sight of the wild one.

Nicolai smiled, seeing it chasing after the next Worker in line. Baldie had been making them continuously, and had amassed three—now two—Workers and one Collector. The bald Cultivator's Symbiotes all began to flee back towards his starting area, carrying whatever they could. One of the Workers was too slow, caught and consumed.

That'll slow things down. It did. His Defender arrived before the constructed one was finished, and it tore into the thing, ripping it apart before it could be completed, to the incensed cries of its owner. Then the neighbours Defender arrived, but by then the wild Symbiote was moving towards the area and the Defender was forced to fight it off.

Nicolai made good use of the unexpected opportunity. He had his Defender loot as many resources as it could. These were conveniently packaged, as he was able to take them where they'd fallen out of the Defender which had been under construction, as well as those in the stockpiles.

His Defender scuttled back towards his own start point, loot bouncing around between its little clawed arms, while the Cultivator he was robbing snarled at him and issued promises of terrible vengeance.

Nicolai ignored the words. He had looked around at what was happening—the work to make more Defenders, the intentions of working together and stomping him out—and come to the conclusion that the best thing he could do was get moving.

His focus now was on the fog. The fact that vision wasn't shared between them had given him an idea.

He had a chance, but it would require a strategy different to the rest of them.

Back in his own area, his Worker had finished building a second Worker to help it out, and the pair were now building Scouts. His damaged Defender was also nearly recovered, he'd moved it out a little distance into the fog, where his first Scout had found some resources. Under his direction, the Scout and Defender were slowly collecting resources and moving them back to where the Workers were working.

This wasn't strictly ideal. Scouts carried very little resources. Defenders could carry a lot of resources, but they were slower than a Worker or a Collector would be at the actual harvesting, and also wasteful. Both Workers and Collectors, he knew from the book, could harvest Resources at 100% efficiency, though Workers did so at less than half the speed of a Collector. Scouts and Defender collected at perhaps 20% efficiency, wasting most of what they harvested. It also required his personal attention to make the Symbiotes do these jobs which they weren't suited for. Fortunately, with the Modules, he'd yet to find an upper limit on how many he could control and didn't feel he was even near to it.

Ultimately, the loss of efficiency was fine with him. He needed to be fast, and if that meant being wasteful then that was simply how things were. His second Defender arrived and dumped the loot next to where the Scouts were being built, and with that the Workers completed the two Scouts, and set to work on two more.

He intended to build lots of Scouts. Far more Scouts than anyone else, most likely. They were focused on Workers, and Defenders, and Collectors, and in some cases the next steps up—better Workers, better Defenders, and so on.

The Cultivators sneered and laughed when they saw what he was up to, calling out that the Scouts were no good for harvesting resources, for defending areas, for building new Symbiotes.

Nicolai ignored them as he kept working, building more and more Scouts. He also created two Collectors, to help gain resources to build the Scouts faster. Already his Scouts were showing some benefits, as he continuously sent them out to explore the fog near to him. He'd found numerous patches of resources, and he was also gradually moving his Workers, and his mass of Symbiotes in general, out into that area, away from his starting point. Heading into the fog. With his vision, he was able to avoid the wild ones that came wondering through the area he explored.

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Then, the Cultivators were coming for him.

They all had at least two Defenders, now, and so they were sending one each. That meant five Defenders were coming for him.

His Scouts charged out into the fog, and the rest of him went out after him.

"He" being his collection of Symbiotes. This game was like being a Cultivator, but with no body. Only a Soul, and Symbiotes. The Symbiotes collected and carried the Oma. They Scouted. They Worked to use the Resources to make more Symbiotes. They Attacked and Defended.

In effect, the Cultivator's body was the Symbiotes, within this game.

So, his body; that collection of two Workers, two Collectors, two Defenders, and many Scouts, moved out. The Scouts were his eyes and ears, moving ahead, eating the fog, looking for trouble.

They found it. He lost two Scouts the lines they drew through the fog abruptly ending when a wild Symbiote lunged from the mist and tore into them. It seemed that the deeper one went into the fog, the greater a density of wild Symbiotes they would encounter.

Nicolai did his best to go around them. He wasn't interested in getting into any fights, not until he'd become stronger. Unfortunately, the wild Symbiotes didn't share his view.

A symbiote suddenly wound out of the one patch of fog near to him, and attacked tore into the Scout he was sending to check that area. It was a snake-like Symbiote that kept moving, twisting around one of his Defender's faster than the slow crab could react, lunged for his Workers, seized one and tore into it.

His Defenders got there in time to stop it eating his other Worker, and the battle began. The snake spat clouds of acidic darkness, and did significant damage to both Defenders.

Meanwhile, the enemy Defenders were catching up on him. Over ten Scouts were following after him, all the Scouts the five Cultivators possessed, and it wouldn't be easy for him to hide from them all. Those Scouts had gotten after him faster due to their quicker movement, while the Defenders came on more slowly, and split up. He did his best to mislead the Scouts but through skill or luck, Hao deduced the correct route and they came directly after him, all the Cultivators following his orders.

One point to Nicolai's favour was that they were split up. First in line, pressing near to his heels, were the two from his neighbours.

The rest were only just arriving at his starting point—they'd had to go all the way around in order to reach that point before chasing after him. A wise decision, in truth. They all knew that the fog was dangerous, but the fog should be least dangerous where others had already travelled. By following after him, they would have to fight no more wild ones than they needed to.

He focused on fighting the snake, turning his whole mind and the Modules to it. He had a pair of Scouts dart in for single, quick strikes against it, while the Defenders held its focus. In the meantime his Worker was building a replacement for its fallen fellow, supplied by the Collectors and guarded by a Scout, while the rest of his Scouts continued to explore the route forward.

It requires careful focus to control each individual Symbiote so adroitly, to use the squishy Scouts for quick in-and-out attacks, especially now he had more Symbiotes to manage. But Nicolai, with the aid of the Modules, and even the Mask, managed it easily. Splitting attention to perform numerous processes in parallel was not an uncommon task for killbot Modules.

The snake was powerful, and its ability to spit clouds of acid countered one of his strategies. Occasionally, when a Scout nipped at it, it would turn and spit—and the cloud of burning darkness that was created filled quite some space. He did his best to have his Scouts dodge out of the way, but one of them died early on, caught by an edge of the acidic cloud, and he was forced to pull the other back. Fighting without the support of the Scouts, one of his Defenders had died and the other was badly injured by the time the snake was beginning to slow, its injuries showing an effect. But as the snake began to flag, he sensed a spiritual vulnerability from it, just as he'd been banking on.

Nicolai latched onto this, while his last Defender grasped it and held it still.

He knew what the vulnerability signified. The snake was ready to be broken-in. After a brief struggle, the snake became his. But both his Defender and his new Snake Symbiote were near to death, weak and in need of time to recover. He couldn't turn and fight those charging towards him. Fortunately, the Scouts had made more progress, and his Worker had finished building itself a brother. He followed down the safest looking route, continuing to flee from the chasing Defenders.

While he fled, his Collectors and Workers grasped any Red Grass they could see, healing his Defender and Black Acid Ink Snake, as it was properly called. This slowed down his progress significantly and his chasers began to catch up; but it was necessary. What if another wild Symbiote attacked? With a nearly-dead Defender and Snake, he would be toast. His Symbiotes were slowed to a crawl.

His Symbiotes were now about a quarter of the distance towards the centre of the fog. He expected that the further he went, the tougher the Symbiotes would be. So, he started to move sideways instead of straight forward.

He was watching his approaching enemies cautiously. If they found him, he would be in trouble. The Cultivators were all sharing their vision with one another now, which meant if just one found him, they all would know where to go. He'd pulled his Scouts in closer, looking to avoid their own. One advantage he held was that they were moving through the areas he had already explored, and which had yet to close up to his sight. As a result he gained a type of runners advantage—he could see them, while they didn't even know for sure that they were in an area where he had vision.

Another wild Symbiote lunged out of the fog. But this time, it wasn't after him. It tore its way through an enemy Scout, then scuttled at the two Defenders following in his wake. This was a kind of bigger-Defender, a green crab-like thing. He smiled at the sight.

The other Defenders started arriving, and they defeated the Green Crab after a few minutes. Nicolai used this time to get further away. He smiled when the Cultivators got in an argument—all of them wanted the Green Crab. Naturally, Hao was the one who took it.

Meanwhile, they started cursing and crying out as a few of them were randomly attacked by wild Symbiotes emerging from the fog. All had begun to press deeper into it, their Workers and Collectors hungry for fresh Resources, and thus were running afoul of the wild ones. Each of them had left a Defender, but one Defender wasn't enough for the more powerful wild Symbiotes.

Hao sighed. 'Let us retreat. The barbarian can stay in the fog and die. There's no point losing our Defenders out here.'

Nicolai couldn't help but smile at the man's bald-faced self-interest. He and Hao weren't too unalike. He knew that Hao had made this decision largely to ensure the others escorted his new Green Crab Symbiote back to safety.

On top of that, it was becoming clear that the game would not let them relax and spend all their time chasing him. There was too much trouble and wild Symbiotes.

'He won't last long out there anyway,' said the bald Cultivator, sneering at Nicolai. 'You're a fool, barbarian. Out in the fog is where it is most dangerous!'

'Says the man who was raided by a mere barbarian,' murmured Nicolai in reply, and smiled at the eruption of blathering insults this inspired from the man.

He ignored the incensed cries, unbothered by them and by the man's dire promises of danger in the fog. The wild Symbiotes moved around but that was fine. He was making Scouts at every opportunity, whenever he had time and found resources. With so many, he was able to learn the positions of the wild ones and avoid them. This would be his method. Now safe from the others, he would focus on avoiding the wild Symbiotes while growing his army of Scouts. Once he had as much vision as possible, he would be safe to work on other Symbiotes—and the good vision would also give him opportunity to hunt wild Symbiotes safely, as he would be able to recognise when they were far from any other Symbiotes, isolated and prime to be ambushed.

On top of that, there was also some actual terrain. Puddles of water, expanses of small plants. Puddles and plants which, unlike the Red Grass, and Dew Ponds, served no Refinement purposes but rather as food and… scenery. There were even a few area where rocks and carefully contoured soil formed rises and falls. The whole of the game was like some tiny garden, one designed to look not unlike a wild area, but sized down for Symbiotes.

His first priority was making better Scouts, which would move faster and see further, thus be able to track and avoid wild Symbiotes along with his enemies more easily, without being killed in the process. To make them, he needed to take the first proper step toward raising the level of his Symbiotes, to begin constructing a specific combination of Symbiotes the book had gone into detail on; a Refinement Centre.

Hao was already building one such, and Nicolai couldn't afford to be left behind. Though already he felt his best strategy was one that would focus on seizing the wild Symbiotes, the basic Symbiotes still formed a key part of this game and he couldn't entirely ignore them.

The book had explained that to create a Refinement Centre, he needed two Collectors and one each of a Worker, Scout, and Defender. Additionally, two Refiners, which were units he'd yet to create but were amongst the basic Symbiotes. Time to get busy, then.

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