Working it out

  It took about a day, but finally a young bookish looking boy came out to see Xeno. He had been reading the books Xeno had left by the gate, but he had questions. He understood essence must be the energy he felt inside him and that he felt move when he cast his spell, but how does he get to where he can see the components the book talks about and how does he manipulate it.

  “You’re on the right track boy. Keep paying attention to the essence. Cast your spell, but pause when you finish and hold it before you release it. Try to feel your way around the energy and figure out what it’s doing…”

  By the end of his week there, he felt he had talked to most of the town and had given most of them the basic understanding of essence sight and essence vision. He had also educated the townsfolk on how practice improved skills and helped them with some ways to improve stats. Overall, Xeno left feeling like he had raised their chance of survival from 0% to …well…something at least a little higher than that.

  “Why did the integration bureau end integration tutorials? These people knew nothing. How did the bureaucrats expect them to survive?” Xeno thought to himself as he flew away purposely circling back towards the natives' territory in order to find a larger city where he could set more people on the right track.

  On his third day, he found a city that looked like it housed at least 150,000. He landed a short distance from the remains of a main road heading into the city and announced his intentions, then walked a short distance away and found a comfortable spot to wait.

  Within minutes he saw wheeled vehicles pull to a stop at the edge of the town and guardsmen point projectile weapons at him. He just waved and waited. Finally, a young man in uniform came out to speak with him.

  “Hello. Mr Dragon.” He said.

  “Hello, young man. I am Xeno. Would you like some training?”

  “No sir. I was volunteered to come out here and confirm your intentions.”

  “My intentions? I have realized that without a tutorial, you natives are or will shortly be in pretty bad shape without some guidance, so I was going to offer to give you some help understanding the system.”

  “Yes, sir. That sounds mighty nice of you, but what do you want for this service.”

  “Want? Nothing. Well, maybe to be recognized as a friend and not someone to shoot your projectiles at. Flying around killing beasts is fun, but I find myself desiring conversation occasionally.”

  “Thank you sir. May I go report your answers?” the young man asked.

  “Of course, of course. I’ll wait here for a response.” Xeno watched as the young man returned to the vehicles and most of the people there seemed to relax. It looked like one of the men might be using some sort of communication device. He seemed rather annoyed and even slammed his hat onto the top of his vehicle several times. After a few minutes, the man discussed something with several of the other men who also seemed annoyed. The man then came jogging out.

  “Mr Xeno, sir. I’m Sheriff Smith.”

  “What can I help you with Sheriff?”

  “Well not to be rude, but I need to ask you to leave. Quickly if at all possible.”

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  “That is fine, but may I ask why?” Xeno asked.

  The man’s face turned red and he explained, “Because the damn politicians have decided that skill and spell training can only be received from approved sources and only by those with government approval to learn the skills. And…” the sheriff paused and apparently made a decision. “And the government has ordered the military to kill on sight all high level individuals that appear. As if we could freaking scratch #1 on the leaderboards when the highest ranked person in our military isn’t even in the top ten million.”

  “I’ll be on my way then. Might I make a suggestion, Sheriff?”

  “Sure, Xeno.”

  “Find better leaders. Find ones that care more about helping their people survive then they care about maintaining their position of power. You’re heading for the dark ages now. It is not the time for petty politics.”

  “More and more of us are thinking that way every day, Xeno. Thanks for your understanding.” the sheriff said before jogging back to his people. Xeno took off and once again headed away from the native’s territory.

  A few days back into the wild lands, Xeno spotted a small village that seemed to be expanding quite quickly based on the number of temporary buildings he saw and the construction under way. There is at least someone of power here. People flock to strength when their world is turned upside down. Let’s just hope it’s the right kind of power.

  Before he even landed, Xeno saw 5 young men come running out in a standard formation and 5 young women in stealth were trying to use the terrain to move to a position on his flank.

  “Hello.” Xeno called out then started chuckling when he identified the young men. “Your highnesses. Your kingdom seems to be developing nicely.”

  Asmin groaned and rolled his eyes. “It’s just the class we were given when we integrated. We’re not kings. We didn’t know we could hide it until after several people had already seen it.”

  “I’d suggest you go ahead and hide it now. Titles are often given for slaying kings. Wouldn’t want to tempt anyone. So, you’re not natives?”

  “No. Our planet was mined out and we were only C grades, so we figured our best option was to try an integration.”

  Xeno nodded. “Yes. That is probably wise unless you were quite affluent. Pretty impressive to be at level 25 already.” He wondered if he had found a den of thieves and cut throats that were driven off their home world.

  “Oh, we ran into John shortly before integration and he helped us out.” Roffler said.

  “The John that is #5 on the leaderboard?’ Xeno asked.

  “He’s #4 now, something killed the Red Hand earlier today. He went by John Drake on our planet, but we figure that has to be him.”

  “Oh. He’s not here? You men…” Xeno turned and acknowledged the women that had stopped and were watching from behind a nearby hill. “And women must be doing quite well to have people flocking to you.”

  “The ladies were holding the village together when we got here, and since then we helped train up the villagers and our teams spend most of our time patrolling and looking for refugees. Seems a rural area of natives got split up and scattered into this higher level area. They are good with their rifles, but they weren’t quite ready to handle level 15 monsters.”

  “So the ladies are natives?”

  “No, we integrated from a similar situation as the boys.” one of the ladies said as they came walking up.

  Xeno nodded and asked, “Do you know where John is now?”

  “No we haven’t seen or heard from him until he rose up the leaderboard. Probably in the middle of nowhere hunting. Town is lava and all that.”

  After puzzling out the meaning of that lava bit, Xeno chuckled. “Ah…one of those. Always training or planning future training.”

  “Pretty much seemed that way at least.” Kropp said and the other men agreed.

  Xeno looked around and said, “I’m a pretty decent earth mage, how about we upgrade the defenses around here?” Everybody agreed and after a look around, Xeno began raising walls, towers, and gates while the two teams went to town to explain what was going on.

  *****

  John raised his eyes from killing an orc and saw Gummy and the twins standing there watching the remaining orcs who had dropped their weapons. Looking up he saw the elder dragons landing inside a wall that ran around the valley. Everything went to plan. That’s a first. We’ll have to take time to figure out what we did right. John thought. He nodded to his companions and walked away towards where he saw Sharilla and Destiny slowly coming his way followed by a small army of level 60 slimes. Where the hell did she get those?

  Sharilla ran in front of Destiny and gave John a firm hug burying her face in his chest. John wasn’t sure what to do, so he patted Sharilla on the back before she pulled away with tears running down her face, “Thank you, John.” John nodded awkwardly and the two walked to Destiny while other Destiny’s split off with the slimes and began speaking with the orcs and sending them through portals.

  When they reached the Destiny that was waiting for them, John spoke up, “I need to get back to training, could you open a portal?” Destiny opened a portal and John paused before stepping through, “Give me a couple days and then we’ll have a meeting to discuss what happened here. Thank you for your help Destiny and thank everyone else for me.” John stepped through the portal into the wonder.

  John walked to the control crystal and created a private room for him to train. Punching the bag he repeated over and over, “Smarter John. Stronger John. No more mistakes.” as tears rolled down his face. Hours later after the tears had dried John froze when he felt a powerful being appear behind him. Carefully turning he saw a man in a robe standing there.

  “My apologies John. I know this isn’t the best of times, but I need to speak with you.”