It's like we are preparing for hell. Everyone is working their hardest to make sure the village is safe, and yet… I'm lost. I don't know what to do besides yell at them to dig more holes, cultivate the farms, make more weapons, or move supplies around. Is this the extent of what I can do? If an invasion does come as Strider foretold, am I going to be enough to protect them? If I only could see what the right answer is, of what should I do… How? How can I make the things that threaten my people stop?
"Vute?! Hey, Vute! Is this deep fine?"
I look down, taking a moment to calm my nerves and certify if the trenches are at the right size.
"That's it. You can even go a bit less than that, remember to not exert yourself too much. Take breaks when you need to!"
"No worries~! I'm fiiiine, can't you see?" The dark-haired wolfkin flexes his biceps. "I worked lifting heavy weights since I was a kid, it's not going to be today that I will lazy around!"
Some of the other wolfkins around yell in affirmation.
I sigh in disbelief.
What am I going to do with these men? All I do is order them around, and even so, they go beyond my expectations to make it happen…
My hands rest on my hips as I grin at them.
"Thank you for your hard work! I'll treat all of you to some ale when all of this is done!"
The wolfkin sinks the head of his shovel into the hard dirt.
"Only if I win you in an arm-wrestling first, fair and square!"
"You are not going to let me repay you, are you?"
"Why would I? My family is in the village, I need to do my part too."
He shovels the dirt out, making the dust rest on the beaten floor above.
"All I ask of you is to lead us to the right way! And I will gladly follow!"
I'm taken aback by those words.
Lead you… huh?
My thoughts dominate my mind for a while, but someone taps my shoulder and startles me a bit.
"It looks like you're fitting just right."
An orange-haired wolfkin smirks at me, wearing his slim armor with shining silver plates spread in vital points over hardened leather.
"Dusk? What do you mean?"
He walks to my side and looks at the open field.
"It's a pretty good idea to narrow their movement with trenches. I wouldn't have thought of that, instead, I would have called to make temporary walls made of the forest's trunks."
I take some time to stare at the working men below.
"But then… they could easily burn it down if they had fire magic."
"Well, it's not possible to burn it all, it would turn into coal and make a wall of fire. But, I must admit… the smoke and wreckage would only decrease our high-ground advantage. Besides, your initiation plan wouldn't be possible, to make the logs go downhill towards our enemies, that's brilliant."
He cracks his fingers to think.
"But it will only protect us from the west side, what if it comes from the opposite way?"
"Then we use the village instead. That way even if they attacked us from both sides we have cover, we would only need to move some logs to the other side of the hill. Though if any of those came to happen, we would need to evacuate the children to somewhere in the forest with priestess Dilsu's long teleportation magic."
"If that happens, then you can count on me to protect them." He gives me a thumbs up. "They won't get hurt on my watch, I promise."
"Heh, you just want a safe pass if the invasion comes, don't you?"
"Woah, I might not be in that piece of junk of a uniform but I'm still a watchguard above anything else. My life duty is to protect the weak."
"Right…" I side-eye at him. "Thank you though, at least that's one thing less I need to worry about…"
My gaze turns to the field once more.
"But… is it going to be enough…? I wonder."
I focus on the man digging, the dark thoughts coming back to me.
Would their effort be in vain, if the enemy overwhelms us either way in the end? We have no manpower, we are spread thin as it is. The hunters are busy traveling long distances to get prey, the builders are digging a large number of trenches in such a short time, the craftsmen are using all resources they can find, and even the folk who don't fight have their hands full taking care of supplies or the sheepkin.
My grip tightens, insecurity making my heart waver. But suddenly, Dusk slaps my back a couple of times.
"You shouldn't worry! If the wolfkins can't make it, then no one could."
"Hmm… Is that what the kingdom thinks?"
He shrugs.
"Don't know. Did you forget I only send reports to them?... Sometimes I receive orders but the usual messenger didn't appear yesterday. What the hero and that sheepkin said was probably true. Not only Nepaty was attacked, but our neighboring cities were wiped out as well. Or the Shadow Army is making a big effort to cut our communications for some reason."
He sighs tiredly.
"It would be so much easier if we had a link stone, but they had to deny all my requests to place one here…"
"Enough of that, no use chewing the past, why did you come to see me? I'm sure it's not to volunteer for heavy work."
"Hey, I'm strong too! I'm just more of a fighting wolf than a builder."
He stretches his arms with a deep breath.
"I'm here to report that our little sheep girl just woke up, she's even playing around with the other pups right now."
"I see…"
"Wow, I thought you would be a little bit happier to hear that, especially when you were the one who asked to keep you informed of her status. But well, maybe I'm just not a good deliverer… Either way, that's not the only thing… it seems that the hero is making a move."
I turn and frown at him.
"He's training people. It started only with that sheepkin kid who participated in the council yesterday, but now things got... a bit broader."
"And why is that a problem? So, he's helping them, is something going wrong?"
"Is he…?"
He shrugs.
"Well, let's just say… that things got a bit out of hand and now there's a big commotion going on in the village."
"Out of hand? For Lycan's sake, just tell me what's happening. Is it too serious?"
I start walking impatiently towards the village, Dusk quickly follows behind me.
"Woah, I'm just trying to improve my delivering skills, that's half my job, you know?"
"You are not-- good at it. Spill it out, what's going on?"
"Well, how can I say it…"
Suddenly something explodes in the distance, a big and bright boom coming from beyond the hill as its sound echoes in the mountains.
After the aftershock, I glare at Dusk inquisitively.
"That. That is going on."
I pick up my pace.
As we approached the village, more and more explosions appeared to occur, it was like the god's wrath was upon us. I wondered who the hero got pissed off by this time, but I don't remember anyone having enough power to explode things like that, especially repeated times. Dusk tried to explain everything from the start but I only got more confused and my impatience grew so much stronger that I started running before I knew it. And once I arrived, my mouth couldn't muster the words to describe what I was feeling.
"What… in all the hells is this?"
"I said to you. The hero is training everyone."
But when he said everyone, I didn't expect that in its literal sense, almost all the sheepkin is here, including some wolfkins.
There are about two hundred people outside the north wall. Some sparring with each other, others aiming hands at the forest, and the rest were waiting in a line to talk with Strider, who's lazily seated over a wooden desk in the middle of an empty farm with that secretary-looking sheepwoman, who participated in the reunion yesterday, standing beside him.
"Where in the hells did you take that desk from?" I ask marching to the hero.
"Oh, Vute?" Strider said nonchalantly. "This? Ahm… I asked around and someone gave it to me."
"Okay… now that I have put aside the first strange thing on this scene. What are you doing?"
"Ah, I guess I should have asked first, I didn't imagine it would grow like this. But I'm giving some tips to the people around here."
"Tips?? Why is that Tasah boy fighting Nate's son right over there?"
I point to the side, where in another empty farm, the sheepkin was quickly stepping back while holding a big staff with a blue gem at its tip, while making yellow shields to block consecutive attacks from a wooden short sword on the hands of the young wolfkin Apaw.
"Oh, that… I'm afraid Tasah was getting used to fighting me, so I asked that emo kid to help out by being his partner. You know, take some different perspective off the same concepts you learned, kind of thing."
A white-haired little girl suddenly comes running and stops beside the hero.
"Strider! Strider! Is there some other skill I can use?"
It's that girl, the young sheepkin that the hero treated before. It seems that she is fine like Dusk said, but not only that, she's a lot healthier already. Strider really cured her illness with that holy magic.
"Huh? Did you learn your previous one?" He said with a questioning frown.
The little girl lowered her head a bit and nodded shyly.
"Okay, show me." He said turning and resting his arm over the chair.
The little girl's eyes brightened up and she turned to the forest.
"Remember, aim at the top of the mountain, the farthest the better."
"Hmm huh!"
She raised her short hands to the sky, and soon after, a red ritual circle took shape over the mountains like heated liquid being poured in an invisible cast below the clouds. And once it was fulfilled, it brightened and melted the sky with the opening of a scarlet portal, and a giant ball of dirt came from within blazing in flames. It was like a meatball was dropping from the sky in slow motion, and once it hit the snowbed, a bright explosion came to view. A few seconds later, the booming sound echoed into my eardrums.
"S-She… she is the one doing all of this??"
"That was so cool, Nawa!" A wolfkin boy pulling his younger sister said in awe. "I wish I had a skill like that!"
"Twat wuas sho cuul, Nawa. Bleh bleh bleh," the little sister mumbled with annoyance, creeping behind her brother and throwing daggers with her eyes.
Nawaga's face brightened red. "S-So? How was it?"
Strider rested his chin over his hand and hummed. "It was okay, I guess. But anyone would see it coming, maybe if you cast it a bit higher? Can you hide the magic circle above the clouds?"
"I-I can do that!" She nods and raises her hands to try again.
"You… you are teaching a child how to meteor strike?"
"Hm? She has the skill, the more she's prepared the better, don't you think?"
A whistling sound ripped the air in the distance.
"Wow, that's much better!" Strider said genuinely surprised, high-fiving the young lady. "I was expecting it to appear and even so I didn't see it!"
The second shockwave comes with the far explosion. All I could feel was the uncertainty to consider if this was right or not.
Dusk walked to me and rested his hand on my shoulder. "That's what I was talking about, it's a bit complicated to explain."
The wolfkin boy runs over and stops in front of us. "Ah! Dusk, sir. I asked my father first, so I have his permission to train with the hero! You can ask him!" He hopped while pointing at a wolfkin with pale skin like him, who was lifting a massive rock over his head and walking around the forest. "You said I could if I asked him first, right?"
"He… he's… he's carrying a boulder… like it was nothing?"
"It's called God's Vigor," Strider said calmly. "a devout-fighter's skill that increases your strength depending on how much weight you're carrying. He probably never tried to lift something that looked too heavy before in his life, so he never discovered he had that power. But it looks like he's working out to build muscle now, he's trying to surpass his new found limit."
"B-but how? I never see him do that! How did you know he could do that!?"
Strider pointed to his glowing eyes. "It's all my divine vision. Did you forget? I saw through the skill of your Guni friend yesterday. All I need to do is touch somebody to see what they have."
But even so…
"You said that skills came naturally to wolfkins before, right? I must correct you with one of my findings… How much was it, Nejeka?" he looked at the woman sheepkin standing beside him. "The knowledge average?"
The secretary-looking sheepkin leafed through the pages on her clipboard.
"The adults have about seventy-five percent average rate of knowing their own skills, while the younger ones fall to a third," she looked at me while straightening her glasses. "Just to clarify, I'm taking notes of all the people and their skills, for organizational purposes. You can see them later if you wish."
"Of course." I nodded still a bit lost.
Strider shrugs. "With those numbers, probably even you have a skill that you don't know about. But once I told them what their skills were, they did already know how to activate them, so I guess you weren't completely wrong. Though some need more motivation than others."
Even I have a skill I don't know? That's…
Strider turned and started talking something with the little girl, making gestures of how some other skill of hers worked.
I turn to glance over all the people training, some sparks coming from the sparrings over the farmlands, projectiles hitting targets made of piled stones or wood planks, blobs of water being moved with magic, people hitting tall branches with really high jumps, becoming invisible, cutting falling leaves in half, and teleporting warps coming from a tag game.
"How could this be… All of these people had powers they didn't know of?"
The secretary steps forth. "Not only that, Strider also gave tips on how to use skills they already knew but were ineffective at using. He shared strategies on where or how to use each of them, gave a different way how to utilize them, and even presented a few pairs of people who could work out together, joining their skills and making 'combos' as he calls them."
"I didn't know… that we had this many people." I look to the distant mountain with a lost gaze, many explosions coming from the line of a dozen new-made mages. "That we had this much strength. This many strong people with us."
"Next in line!" Strider yelled with indifference, completely cutting my thoughts. "Nejeka, you ready to take notes?"
The secretary nodded and went to his side, her pen over the papers.
"Give me your hand…" Strider extended his own to the one who approached from the queue. "Your name?"
While Strider and Nejeka worked, I was just left impressed.
I felt my heart burning again, my hope coming back to my eyes as if the path I needed to walk upon was being built by the people around me, and that the hero was helping us to move forward. I don't know why I thought I was alone, the only one who needed to make the right calls to protect everyone.
I even said to Strider before, that I wanted to work with the people not against them, and yet, I was carrying the burden all by myself. I wasn't relying on everyone. I was being the dog who controls the cattle, forcefully making them move together and push them in the direction I wanted them to, not someone who trusts their own family to do what needs to be done.
The diggers making the trenches, the lumberjacks cutting the trunks to use when the attack comes, the blacksmiths and tailors increasing their equipment production, the carriers moving the supplies to where they are most needed, the healers taking care of the sheepkin, the hunters and farmers gathering the most food they can… everyone was making their part on their own way.
As someone said to me earlier, all I need is to lead them to the right path, I don't need to make them go there, if I just give them directions they will follow of their own volition, because with or without me, they will do what they believe its best.
If the wolfkins can't do it, then nobody would. I understand that phrase now.
I step forth, a confident look on my face.
"Okay, Strider. You got me." I extend my hand to him with an open smile. "See my skills, I want to be stronger, and if you're the one who will help me with that. Then I'll gladly allow it."
…
"Hah?" He looks up at me with an angry eye. "Right, then go to the back of the line, who are you in the bread line? The king? Be like everybody else and follow the damn rules!" He snapped at the notice board standing on his side.
[[RULES FOR CHECKING YOUR SKILLS WITH THE HERO]
[1: No cutting in line]
[2: No trading or saving places for others]
[3: No preferential reasons or pity talking]
[BREAK ONE OF THOSE RULES ONCE AND YOU'RE OUT!!!!!!]]
I looked back, to the about forty people shrugging to me with sympathetic expressions while waiting in line; then I lowered my arm; and started walking to the end of the queue.
I patiently waited for my turn, listened to the other's abilities and their happy reactions, and recollected my thoughts to pass time.
Then, just like anyone else I saw being attended, Strider treated me equally when my turn came: he questioned me about my full name, identified race, and the skills I believed I had; then he read my skills, being one new to me; and ended up with telling me things like how I could 'cheat' somebody's mobility if I activated my shield against a wall, if the target ended up in that gap, they would become stuck and a sitting duck for projectiles or area effects, at least until my barrier lasted.
Though I doubt the information is going to be useful, I thanked him after he gave me some tips on how to test each skill of mine. Who have thought, to use a protection shield as an offensive spell? Heroes really are something else.
But before leaving, I needed to warn him another matter.
"Oh, and Strider. We'll be holding that trial a bit later today."
"That trial?" He lifted an eyebrow. "What are you talking about?"
I go closer to speak in a lower voice.
"I'm talking about Nate's, we are going to decide what punishment he'll receive. I just ask you to… be as easygoing as possible, I swear we'll try to be impartial and listen to both sides. I don't want people killing each other in there."
"Oh, that thing." He nods slowly. "Nah, I'm not going."
"What? But you're the victim in the case."
"I don't care, really." He waves his hand as if to scare a fly away. "Do anything you want with him, it's your village, you know better what to do with him. Besides, I'm busy testing everyone here, it'll take a while. Even after, I have a lot of other things to do, so I have no time."
Hmm… it's not like he's afraid of facing Nate, given their last encounters, so…
"I see." I smile at him. "Don't worry, we'll take care of it."
Nejeka suddenly steps forth. "You said Nate is going to have a trial?" Her eyes ignite with an offensive curiosity. "What did he do? I heard he's the leader of the village, but he was in shackles the last time I saw him. That's interesting, to say the least."
"Oh, dammit. I didn't want to involve the sheepkins on it."
"No, no. Please involve us. We are at your mercy right now, we need to have as much information as possible."
I sigh tiredly.
"Well, I guess it won't hurt if only you know, but… Nate did something extremely bad and now is liable to lose his leading position. That's all I can tell you."
She straightens her glasses. "Well, then, I want to participate in this event. It looks to be extremely important."
"Eh?... Hmph, what a headache. What do I do… Goddammit, alright, you can come. But don't tell anybody else, okay?"
She nods affirmatively. "Since there are no more people in line… Strider, I'll be taking my leave. I'll rest and prepare for such coming trial."
"Sure, you can go," the hero said taking the clipboard Nejeka gave him and started lazily reading through it.
And with that, she went away in quick steps.
"Well, thank you for everything Strider, what you're doing here is way bigger than you probably imagine."
"Ha, whatever. I wouldn't say I'm being generous by doing this, so, let's just call it a win-win situation."
With a nod, I turned to leave. But before I could, Strider stopped me with one more question, one he didn't do to anybody else in line before me.
"Say, Vute, since there's nobody else waiting, could I ask you something?"
"Sure, what is it?" I turn to face him again.
"What that 'jesus' word mean? Everyone keeps saying that, like, 'Thank jesus' or just 'jesus', it's really annoying. I thought I could learn something about it by seeing some skills, but no dice. The hell it means?"
"That's-- strange, don't you know? He's their God Protector."
"Heh?" he said with an even bigger frown.
"You really don't know? He's the Major God of Control, the one who could multiply food and objects, cleanse any poison, and heal any wound."
"Never heard of him. But why do they thank him, anyways? They act as if the guy was multiplying food in front of them when I'm the one teaching and they are the ones doing all the skills. Are they dumb?"
"…It's because he sacrificed himself to save the world." I lower my voice a bit. "He banished the demons from trespassing to our world fifteen years ago, by nailing his body as the eternal sealing on the divine gates."
"Huh… that's rough. I get that his reputation is high, but why do they keep thanking him? Isn't he dead already?"
"Just because he's gone, it doesn't mean the idea of what he represented vanished with him. That's how I see it at least."
"I guess I can settle on not understanding it. Hmmm… then why don't you guys say things like that, I never heard a wolfkin say his name."
"Jesus protects the sheepkin, not the wolfs. Ours is the Energy God, Lycan, the one who protects freedom, who fuels our every action, keeper of souls, and shares part of his strength and flight powers in our travels midst dreams."
"Dreams? Like when you sleep?"
"That's right."
"And you guys understand each other? Jesus looks to be a way better god than yours. I mean, he can multiply as many weapons and food as he needs to, heal every soldier he wants, right? But a dream protection… wouldn't that make them more powerful--? Oh, maybe that's why they have the big cities and your kind only the distant villages…"
"Ahm… no, that's not it. The four major gods are equal under the Mother of All, the Great Goddess Tacika."
Strider's eyes shivers.
"Our kind works better in small groups, we prefer to hunt and create bonds with every neighbor as family. The sheep feel safer in flocks working in the city. That's how things are, our gods' powers have nothing to do with it, so please don't say things like that, it can be seen as disrespectful."
He holds his lips in deep thought.
"Tacika?"
"Yeah… she's the Progenitor God. The one who created the universe, its elements, and the living, including all the other gods."
"Hmm… weird. I remember that name…" he mumbles to himself. Being the first time I have ever seen him with a worried expression and fearful eyes before. "That's the true name of God back in those history books if I'm not mistaken. But Jesus and Lycan… why in the hell would they mix real-world religion with fiction to make a game?"
"Sorry? I didn't understand."
"Tsk. Forget it, I'm just thinking about something stupid. Don't worry about it."