The sun was still high in the sky when Olivia killed her last eater. She’d once again claimed the final spot in the rotation, which meant she was the last to receive her [Achievement].

  Clay shook his head and smiled. She was practically glowing with triumph as she turned back to face him. “You’re all ready?”

  “I am!” Then her expression grew serious. “Are you sure you need to go alone? I think I could probably—”

  “Use some time and training to get used to your higher [Stats]? Also to develop those same [Stats] and be ready for facing the larger swinefolk?” Clay raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, I think you could do that.”

  Olivia glared at him. “I just… I just don’t want you running off and getting hurt. You know, the way it happened in the Tanglewood before.”

  He nodded. “Well, keep in mind that I have armor to help me avoid that. Even better, I have over a year of training and fighting experience. The monsters here are probably a little more dangerous than the middle-ranked spiders in the Tanglewood, but I’m a lot more deadly than I used to be.”

  Then he grinned. “Besides, I’m pretty well known for my caution. I’ll be home safe and sound.”

  Olivia seemed almost ready to chuck another dirt ball at him, but then her expression softened. She looked south and east, towards where Zelton had once been. “I’ll hold you to that, Clay Evergreen. Be back before dinner, and I’ll try to keep some warm for you.”

  He nodded, and they headed back to camp. Then, as the Baroness and the [Commoners] turned to head for home, Clay turned back towards the hills. There was another long stretch ahead.

  The terrain around Janburg was full of rolling hills, occasional thickets of trees, and endless grass. It was a fertile enough place that even the continual trampling of the swinefolk had failed to reduce it to a wasteland.

  Further in, however, the land began to change.

  It wasn’t like the corruption around the Dungeon near Sarlsboro. At least, he didn’t notice any unnatural plants or polluted ground. Instead, it seemed like the numbers of the swinefolk had simply grown to the point where the plants around the Lair could no longer ignore the destructive tread of their hooves. What had once been grassland and occasional trees became bare stretches of churned soil, decorated by only the most tenacious brush and weeds.

  Clay didn’t know whether it was intentional, but it made it increasingly hard to hide while he was traveling through the swinefolk’s territory. He was forced to either wait for groups to pass, or kill enough of them to make a hole in their patrols so that he could slip through. Either method cost him time, something he could ill afford as the sun continued its inexorable descent towards the horizon.

  Still, despite their numbers and the lack of cover, the swinefolk didn’t hold that much of a threat for him. He’d already faced far worse than occasional attacks from isolated groups of lower ranked monsters, after all. The worst they could do was delay him. After all, he only needed a look at the next ring of their contamination of this place.

  His opinion changed as he came to the outskirts of what had once been Zelton.

  The place had once been prosperous, maybe. There were plenty of farms around the edges, tucked into the valleys of the hills. Fields had once been cleared, and fences built to pen the cattle. It seemed like the people of Zelton had been fond of building their houses from brick, in a style that Clay hadn’t seen before. Perhaps one or two of the places had been abandoned by their owners before the village’s destruction, but Clay could tell that most had been occupied.

  It was clear, because the ones that had still had people in them had been utterly destroyed.

  Unlike in Sarlsboro, where everything had been preserved in a kind of corrupted, unchanging state, the buildings of Zelton seemed like they had been deliberately knocked down and destroyed. Every wall, every fence, every well had been turned into a pile of rubble. Some of the remains had even been carted away, leaving behind ravaged foundations surrounded by ground that had been continually torn up by the monsters themselves.

  The reason for the stolen material quickly became obvious. On each of the highest hills, the swinefolk had built a squat, ugly tower. They had piled together the stolen masonry and brickwork, propping it up with pilfered wooden beams and chopped branches. Smoke trailed from shoddy chimneys, and he thought he could see figures moving at the top of each one.

  He used Hawk’s Flight, and suddenly the distance between him and the closest structure seemed to vanish. There was a moment of disorientation as he tried to adjust to the [Chant]’s effect. When his mind cleared, he could see the nearest of the towers as if he was right next to it.

  It looked even more shoddy and haphazard than it had from a distance. His father would have rated it a short step above a shack made from tree branches, though it appeared to have been reinforced with some kind of metal poles. At the top of the tower, he saw a shrouded figure peering out at the land around the place.

  Clay frowned. The thing looked a little like a squealer, but larger. Its eyes were bigger, as was its snout, and the muscles around its neck were distended and large. He thought he could recognize it from the sketches in the notes. He was looking at a shrieker.

  As he looked down at the rest of the building, he could see a small horde of smashers, squealers, and eaters all milling around. There were other, larger shapes as well. They loomed over the others, wielding a hammer that put the smaller weapons of the smashers to shame. Their heads seemed small compared to the bulk of their bodies, and their eyes seemed especially small in their twisted faces. Armor swathed their thick-skinned forms, making them into small mountains of flesh and steel.

  Higher in the tower, he caught sight of larger eaters, passing by the windows of the crude building. Black, spiked whips were coiled in their hands, and there was something strange and sickening about the way they moved, as if their bodies were somehow twisted underneath their purple clothing. They had to be the land eaters, the ones who could call far greater power than the simple flesh eaters below.

  It was good to confirm that each tower had multiple kinds of mid-rank swinefolk, but the fact that there was more than one of each, and that they had a small army of their lessers inside with them, was not welcome news. When he attacked the place, he wouldn’t just be facing a handful of monsters, but a small army, backed by creatures whose powers he had yet to see.

  Something about the way the towers were situated made him frown. He let the [Chant] lapse, and then turned to the east, where he could see another tower on a nearby hilltop. Looking west, he could see another. The ground between him and each of the towers had been continually torn and muddled, leaving bare earth for a substantial stretch.

  Clay grimaced. The damage to the surrounding terrain meant he’d be walking across open ground if he tried to approach the tower. He’d probably be spotted nearly instantly, and if the shriekers were as effective at raising an alarm, he wouldn’t just be facing a single tower’s worth of monsters. He could easily imagine the monsters from each of the closest forts coming to their assistance. In only minutes, if he was not careful, he’d be up to his ears in swinefolk.

  For a few more moments, he debated attacking anyway. The way the things had broken down everything around them so that they could construct this line of defenses offended him on a deeper level than he wanted to admit.

  At the same time, he didn’t think it would be that easy. He needed more time to observe and study them. Once he knew more about how they would respond to an attack, he’d be able to find a way to break through them and help the rest of the [Commoners] do the same thing.

  His eyes narrow, Clay cautiously stepped forward, keeping his ears perked for a sign that he’d been seen. It felt unnatural to just be standing in the open, like he was just asking for something nasty to take notice of him. In effect, that was exactly what he wanted, but with the habits he’d gained from fighting other monsters for so long, I just felt—

  A shrill cry echoed out from the closest tower. It was swiftly echoed by the two nearest towers, and then other cries continued past that along the line of guard posts. More familiar shrieks rose from behind him and to the sides. All of a sudden, he felt groups of swinefolk closing in on his position from all directions.

  Clay grimaced. He’d been hoping he could lure out the guards from each tower individually, but it looked like they had no intention of leaving their walls just to chase after him themselves. He had just as little interest in fighting piles of lower-level monsters until he was worn out, though, so he stepped back into the grasses and fell back towards the less devastated areas.

  He slipped past the groups that were closing in on where he’d been seen and then curved back to the east. There had to be a break in the defenses somewhere, and even if there wasn’t, it would be a good idea to map out the spots where the towers had been raised. Either way, he was a long way from being done yet.

  Clay returned to Janburg as the sun was setting. He jogged across the bridge, hearing the [Guard] who’d been watching for him call out to the ones controlling the gates. The doors opened slowly for him, and he waved at the sentry in gratitude.

  When he entered the village, he saw Olivia waiting for him. She had a mildly impatient look on her face, but she at least seemed a little more relieved than irritated to see him arrive. “Welcome traveler.”

  He snorted. “Good to be back. Everyone else got back fine?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, though some of them were starting to talk about going after you, since you were a bit late. Something you might want to remember next time.”

  Clay grunted. He pictured the [Commoners] stumbling around the hills and running into the armies he’d been avoiding. “I’ll have a talk with them. Do you have any parchment I could borrow? I need to make a map.”

  Olivia tilted her head and studied him for a moment. “Of course. Though I think I’ll do the lettering for you. We’d want it to be readable, after all.”

  He rolled his eyes and followed her back towards their camp in the middle of the village. It had already been a long enough day.

  Olivia frowned down at the map. Her finger traced the marks that he had made to show the position of the swinefolk’s towers. They had borrowed a room in the Baroness’ tower, and were working at a table that her servants had set up for them. “So you’re saying that they have these places all along the perimeter?”

  “For about as far as I could see, yeah.” Clay shook his head. “It looked like there was a second ring of them just beyond those, too. If they weren’t so repulsive, I’d say they were being pretty careful about what they were doing. I don’t think I’m going to be able to sneak past them, not without getting buried in monsters.”

  Her fingers traced along the map again. “Just a little farther, and you might have seen…” She looked up at him. “You really think that they would give you that much of a problem?”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Clay sat back and sighed. “Even I’m not invincible, and I haven’t even fought one of the mid-ranked creatures yet. They could surprise me before I killed them if they came at me in enough numbers.”

  Olivia nodded slowly. She turned her attention back to the map. “And you don’t feel like you should take them on directly?”

  “Any attack would have to happen quickly, before the rest of the monsters come to help them.” Clay leaned forward again, tapping the symbol that represented the closest of the towers. “I’d be fighting uphill, and they’d have the advantage of their abilities, and of fighting from behind a wall. It would be hard for me to kill them quickly enough to get away before the rest catch up to me.”

  Her frown grew. “Even when you use your [Chants]? I’ve noticed you haven’t been using some of the more powerful ones lately.”

  He winced at the tone in her voice. “I didn’t want the rest of the [Commoners] to ask me about when they would be learning magic. At least, not yet. We need to be able to trust them first.”

  Olivia nodded again, her eyes serious. “I understand.” Then she looked back at the map. “Still, it seems like you should be able to do something against those walls. Perhaps you should develop your [Stats] as well? I’d noticed that you hadn’t reached your maximum yet.”

  Clay blinked. He studied her for a moment. “Oh really? And how did you…”

  He trailed off for a moment, and then he blinked. “Wait, did you get access to the Orison?”

  She blushed. “I did! I’m sorry I didn’t ask permission, but I thought you would be fine with me practicing on you.”

  He thought it over for a moment. Then he shrugged. “I guess I am all right with it, but I’d appreciate you mentioning it first next time. It isn’t… polite after all.”

  Olivia winced, her face still red. “Still, I do think that maybe you could use some work on your own [Stats]. After all, it might reveal some more of the [Chants] that you can’t use yet.”

  “And give you an idea of what you have to look forward to?” Her blush deepened, giving him the answer. Clay sighed. “All right, I’ll try to get back to studying the [Chants] again tonight. I’ll keep scouting the towers for a little while longer. Maybe I’ll come up with another way around or through them, even if the [Chants] don’t end up working.”

  Olivia reached out and laid a hand over his. She looked into his eyes, and he saw confidence there. “I know you will, Clay. I trust you.”

  There was a moment where it felt like Clay’s heart had tripped over itself in his chest. He felt his own cheeks grow hot as he looked away. “Thanks. It means a lot, coming from you.”

  She smiled. “If you need my help, don’t hesitate to ask.” Then she drew back. “For now, I’ll just try to make some copies of this map for everyone. I feel like it will be useful in the future. When we are all ready.”

  Clay nodded, still fighting to get his own heartbeat back under control. At the moment, it seemed more likely that he’d fight his way past the swinefolk first, but he tried to shove that thought out of his mind as he opened the door for Olivia. They had more than enough work ahead of them.

  For the next four days, Clay continued to spy on the swinefolk for at least part of his day. He made it his morning routine, racing out ahead of the others and fighting his way past a handful of swinefolk patrols so that he could reach their line of brutish towers.

  He tested them in a variety of ways. Sometimes he just stepped out into the open, challenging them to come out and fight. Other times he tried to sprint across the open ground, measuring how long it would take him to make it at least halfway to the towers themselves. Once he even tried to cause a disturbance at one tower, and then slip away to try to sneak past in a second place.

  None of it seemed to work. Each time, the swinefolk caught sight of him and called out to their allies. The higher-level monsters remained solidly entrenched inside their walls, letting the hordes of lesser creatures try to chase him down. While they were easy to kill in small groups, it was more difficult to avoid massive numbers of them crashing down on him.

  While he had a rising level of frustration with the scouting mission he’d assigned himself, Clay had quite a bit more success in his personal training. Every afternoon, when he’d come back from his attempts at breaching the tower defenses, he assigned himself some task to complete in order to attempt to raise his [Stats].

  It was a far more difficult endeavor than he’d expected. With his level already so high, it had become increasingly difficult to raise his [Stats] any higher, especially with [Fortitude]. While the Academy had its own ways—including things like matching his strength against people like Orn, or challenging Syr Katherine to contests between [Chants]—he didn’t have access to those methods here. If he tried, he’d most likely simply end up crushing the other [Commoners]. Even Lady Janburg didn’t have the ability to directly challenge him in most of his skills, since she was only at level six.

  So instead, Clay had to come up with his own training regimen. At first, he focused on things resembling what he knew. Practicing with his spear, bow, and knife was always a good idea, but outside of that, he really only remembered his farm chores. As simple as they seemed, his work on the farm had always helped him raise his [Stats] before. Now he might be able to rely on them to do the same, just with a few small… adjustments to the routine.

  The people of Janburg had been surprised when he requested a cart. They’d only gotten a bit more uneasy when he pulled it himself, dragging it out to a nearby pile of stones that he’d seen on the side of the road. Clay had spent a few minutes heaving the rocks into the back of the cart, slowly increasing the burden on top of it.

  Then he had set himself the task of dragging the heavy thing around the village. He’d offered some of the children rides on top of it, which they had enthusiastically agreed to. They had spent most of an afternoon cheering him on as he pulled them around the village, sweating and straining under the summer sun. Even some of the adults had gotten in on it; at one point, it had seemed like half the village was onboard the thing.

  Still, it was worth it. By the end of that day, he hadn’t quite managed to increase his [Fortitude]. Doing it again after a second long day of scouting had won the point of [Fortitude] however, which had been extremely gratifying.

  [Valor] had been tougher. Facing his fears was one thing, but while he was worried about the towers, he wasn’t truly afraid of what they held. He was more just… concerned. As a result, he had to rely on contests of speed to improve there. By the third day of scouting, he had arranged a contest where he had to catch rocks thrown by half the village’s children before any of them hit the ground. They had wanted something of a wager first, and he’d agreed to pull them around on the rock cart again if he lost.

  Thus motivated, they pelted at him with rocks until they won their prize. He hadn’t gotten the next point of [Valor] that easily, though, which meant he needed something more.

  On the fourth straight day of scouting, he’d organized a contest between the other [Commoners] and himself. They were able to strike him anywhere with their practice weapons, while he had to strike them only in specific spots. Trying to avoid Andrew’s hammer while hitting Mitchell on his left elbow was a difficult challenge, to say the least. It didn’t exactly stack the odds in his favor when the recruits literally threw themselves into the effort, and it only got more difficult when the Baroness joined in.

  In the end, however, he won another bit of [Valor], bringing him up to maximum.

  The most work, however, had gone into studying the [Chants] each night before bed. He’d studied long after the sun had gone down, determinedly working away at the unknown spells that he had yet to master. It was almost relaxing in a way, given the fact that he’d had to hide the things from the adventurers, which had limited his ability to learn more of them. Occasionally, he’d catch sight of Olivia pausing to watch him with an obvious intensity in her look.

  His [Memory] steadily improved, but it took hours of study, even as he felt his time growing shorter. While the Lair wasn’t going anywhere, he could only imagine the reactions from the Guild and the King over what he’d decided to do. They had to be responding somehow, and he only had a little more time before they would reach him again.

  Clay had almost given up on finding a magical solution at the end of the fourth day of scouting when he read through his spells one more time, and felt something shift in his perception.

  {Memory increased by 1!}

  {Achievement Reinforced! Paragon: All skills gain 30% effectiveness around fellow heroes.}

  A batch of spells that had been steadily defying his ability to understand them abruptly seemed to engrave themselves on his mind. His eyes widened as he ran his gaze over them.

  The names were fairly promising. All four were clearly matched pairs, the way the Ballad of Air and Drums of the Earth were matched, or the Canticle of Ice and the Flame-Tongued Song. Some of the words were similar in those [Chants] as well, making him believe they were some kind of elemental spell as well. Given what he was facing, spells called the Madrigal of Ash, the Canon of Rock, the Melody of Frost, and the Carol of Wind were very interesting indeed.

  Of course, there was only one real way to know what they did. He pushed himself away from the notes and headed for the gates. There was no time like the present.

  A few minutes later, he stood on the opposite side of the river. The [Guards] had been kind enough to let him out of the gates, despite the fact that the daylight was already fading fast. He could barely see the sun’s final rays glowing over the distant hills. Still, he only needed a little light to see what he was doing.

  Clay focused and started the first of the new [Chants]. The Madrigal of Ash was a strong [Chant]; he could feel the power of it resounding in his chest as he recited the pieces of it. He braced himself for some kind of explosion of force, something that would put the Flame-Tongued Song to shame.

  As he finished the [Chant], the world around him abruptly was shrouded in swirling, flickering smoke. Clay nearly lost hold of the [Chant] as he felt the heat swirl around him and the scent of burning air filled his nostrils. A part of him was astonished when he took his next breath and didn’t choke. The air, though acrid and bitter, was still breathable. Somehow, he doubted that the same thing would be the case for anyone around him, though.

  Eyes narrowed, Clay took a few strides forward, half-expecting to step through the smoke. Instead, the cloud of smoke followed him, still swirling and dancing around him as embers flared and died within it. When he stopped, he was still in the middle of clear air.

  He was, however, rapidly sweating through his clothes. Clay waited for a moment longer, confirming that the cloud would stay as long as he focused on it. Then he dismissed the [Chant] and watched as the still-flickering smoke faded away. In moments, it was like it had never existed. The only evidence was the lingering scent of smoke and the singed edges of some of the grass around him.

  Frowning, Clay started the reverse of the [Chant], the Melody of Frost. The arcane words seemed to shiver and crack on his tongue as he said them; the same feeling of power and meaning filled his throat as he worked. It called for him to choose a place for the spell to land, and he focused on a spot a short distance away. Trying not to allow his expectations to get away from him, he finished the [Chant] and waited for the result to take effect.

  Unlike the Madrigal, the Melody did not fill the air around him. Instead, the patch of the ground he’d chosen suddenly seemed to have been plunged into the depths of winter. Ice rimed the grass, and the air seemed to glisten with the chill. Clay tilted his head to consider the spot; it seemed a lot harder to maintain the [Chant] than it had to keep the Madrigal going. Was it due to the heat of the summer sun?

  He stepped forward until he had entered the patch of frozen terrain. To his surprise, he didn’t feel a chill in the air. The grass cracked and broke beneath his feet, his feet slipped and slid on a layer of ice, and he could feel cold air rising from where it had touched the frozen parts, but it wasn’t as if he had managed to bring winter back to this specific place.

  Clay shifted the focus of the spell and watched the frost and ice crawl across the terrain. Where it was left behind, the frost melted almost instantly, leaving behind grass that was only slightly worse for wear. It made Clay wonder what would happen to a person or monster caught inside the area.

  He released the [Chant] and watched as the final patch of frost vanished in moments. It had been an interesting effect, but he was having a hard time telling how he could use it to his advantage.

  Shaking his head over it, Clay turned to the next [Chant]. The Carol of Wind felt like it was stealing the breath from his lungs as he spoke it into being; his power howled and beat at his heart while he channeled it into the spell. His focus was drawn down to the space just in front of him, and he got the sense of a direction that he needed to choose.

  Clay narrowed his focus appropriately and finished the [Chant]. He’d expected some swirl of air, or a gathering of force, something similar to the delicate control that the Ballad of Air allowed him.

  Instead, there was a sudden, savage blast of air filled the space around him. It was over in a heartbeat, and then the [Chant] dissipated. Clay was left blinking in the aftermath, baffled at what had happened.

  He shrugged and picked up a small stone. As he performed the [Chant] a second time, he focused in the same exact way. Just as the spell completed, he tossed the stone in the air in front of him.

  The same burst of air smashed across the space. It caught the stone and sent it hurtling upwards as if Orn had thrown it.

  Just as quickly as it had come, though, the wind vanished. The rock stopped accelerating upwards and started to fall. It hit the ground a short distance away. Clay frowned, once again wondering if the spell would be worth the trouble of using it compared to the ones he’d already mastered.

  Then he turned to the Carol’s reverse. The Canon of Rock, by contrast, felt like he was trying to recite an avalanche. He got the same feeling of needing to choose a target that he had always gotten with the Canticle of Ice, something which buoyed his hopes for a moment. Clay chose a nearby stump beside the old, ruined road, and sped through the last of the [Chant].

  For a heartbeat, nothing happened as the [Chant] completed. Then a shadow fell across him, and Clay looked up.

  He saw a boulder assembling above him in the air. The dirt and stone seemed to drift up and into it, packing in tighter as it rotated. More and more of it assembled until it was about half as wide across as Clay was tall.

  Then it hurtled through the air as if launched by a massive sling. Clay had just enough time to see it speed through the air before it struck the old stump and obliterated it, shattering it into splinters of wood and disintegrating stone. A moment later, all that was left was a tangle of wood and dirt.

  The possibilities for that [Chant] seemed obvious enough to him. He pictured it slamming into the towers and smiled.

  They didn’t seem like the strongest of spells, not compared to the kind of magic that he’d seen the adventurers wielding. Still, his mind was already filling with the new possibilities. If he could use them to hit the towers hard enough…

  He turned to head back to the village, determination filling his heart. Tomorrow, he’d start his assault. One way or the other, the towers would fall. They had to.