“What's going on?” Ralph asked, grabbing one of the empty lawn chairs next to us and plopping down into it with a stereotypical groan, one I would associate more with someone who was actually elderly, not a man who was only playing at it.

  “Ash had two more options which were hidden until she reached a sufficient level: one for focus and one for a class,” I replied.

  “Interesting. Just what were they, all of the other options that both of you got for each category?” Ralph followed up with.

  I quickly gave him a rundown. His eyebrow became subtly more raised with each new option. I couldn't entirely read him yet, but I got the feeling he had a pretty good idea of what was going on now.

  “I'm pretty sure your eyebrows can't get much higher on your head, so how about you just spill? What's happening here?” I asked as I gave my own discerning look.

  “Well, I already told you what kind of mana signature I was getting from the previous one. And keep in mind, what I'm about to say is completely a supposition. I don't have any real proof of anything, but this is generally how these things go…”

  Ash cut in, annoyed. “Just say it already, please.”

  “So, that glyph, the one you copied onto her from your sword. Is there any chance you know the name of it?” Ralph asked.

  “Stalplaht.”

  “Well, that makes this all the stranger. I'm not actually sure if that could be the answer. I'm pretty sure Stalplaht’s portfolio only generally covers creations of the Green Forge. And Ash certainly isn’t one. I'm actually surprised you were even able to copy the glyph to her properly, but it's doing something,” Ralph replied.

  “Why only pretty sure?” I asked.

  “Because the only reason I know he exists at all, is from other people referencing him and his forge. Personally, I have never actually seen the god, or any avatar, or any being channeling his mana signature.”

  “Which explains why you can't tell whose signature Ash has,” I said to Ralph, before turning back to Ash. “That strange dream you had, is there anything at all you can remember about it? Maybe a feeling, a connection? I'll take anything at all.”

  “Uh, I don't know. It's kind of hard to put into words. You know that feeling you get, when you're just at peace in a beautiful area of nature? Like, just this pristine, perfect place that you found? I think that's the only way I could explain it,” she answered with a small, confused shrug.

  “I'm not familiar with Stalplaht in the slightest, or the Green Forge. What exactly do you know here?” I asked, turning back to the observer. We shouldn't have drawn the eyes of any gods already. This could be a problem, or it could also be the solution to saving Ash. It all depended on just what type of god Stalplaht was.

  “Very, very little. As far as I know, he hasn't been involved directly with the System or anyone in System-space in an exceedingly long time. Obviously, there's probably some ancient beings out there perfectly aware of everything he can do, but I’m not one of them. I believe the Green Forge has to do with the binding of nature and weapons together. As far as what that means, exactly, your guess is as good as mine.”

  “So what does this all mean for me?” Ash asked, looking at both of us.

  “It means that at your next level, we see what that special class actually is. I suspect that's when it's going to be unlocked, because that's the last standard level given for class choice advancement. It may also reveal what your title is. Then I'm guessing that focus is going to show back up at level thirty,” I explained, finally, thinking I was putting this all together.

  Somehow, that glyph had forged a connection between Ash and a God. If what Ralph said was accurate, I suspected they were one of the more obscure nature gods. And when you factored in the fact that I had never heard of them, despite knowing the name of the glyph, that had to mean they hadn't been active in an incredibly long time.

  “Or to put it more succinctly, this is probably a good thing for your future. A god who’s invested in you is going to prefer you stay alive,” I added. Ralph gave a half-shrug, half-nod next to me.

  “Mr. Ralph, sorry to interrupt, but my parents have a question,” Lukiss said as he neared us.

  “Only one?” Ralph replied with a smile.

  “Well, just one for now. They're worried about trying to find our home. It's possible one of the mountains around here is where we're from, but everything looks so different. They were hoping they could stay here with the rest of the rock trolls for now.” The desperation he had shown when first asking for our help had returned. He was obviously just as concerned as his parents were about where they would stay.

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  “Yes, you can stay with us. It does seem like we're going to be here for the time being, as we try to figure out the changes to the world ourselves. Just be warned, there is a dungeon that has formed underneath several of the houses, and until we take care of it, you need to stay very far away from them,” I replied during the conversation.

  “What's a dungeon?” the small Rock Troll asked,

  “It’s a self-contained little pocket dimension created by the system, full of monsters and other challenges, in order to help push inhabitants to new heights,” Ralph answered. It was a pretty good explanation.

  “How long do you think that will take? Not to push you or anything, but I'm not sure how long all of us can fit in this small building,” Lukiss asked, after relaying our answer to the other Rock Trolls.

  “That's actually a good question. This is all going much faster than I expected. That stronghold pushed both Ash and me far further today than I had gambled on. At the very least, we aren't going to attempt it until both of us have hit level twenty-five. Have any of your people gained any levels yet, Lukiss?” I knew he had, but I wasn't sure about the rest of his family. Nor was I sure exactly how many levels he had managed to eke out.

  “My family are all level five, and the other group are all level two,” he answered. That likely meant they hadn’t been together before the spiders captured them.

  The system generally only assumed a party for direct family members or close friends at the start of the integration. And those people had to be very close together when it began. Which meant that while Ash and Floof were leveling at the same rate I was, Heather and Rich were not. Or at least they weren't doing so by getting experience from my efforts. With the journal I'd written for Heather, it was entirely possible they were powering through this on their own.

  I debated forming a party with everyone here, but once you cleared five members, the experience you received was reduced, and we couldn’t afford that right now. It was something I planned to revisit later, because there were some extreme benefits to leveling a lot of people fast, if you could handle the experience loss. But until Ash and I were where I wanted us to be, and until we had more of this region mapped out, I didn't think the positives would outweigh the negatives.

  “Before it gets dark, let's see if we can move some of this stuff outside. While the power doesn't work anymore, we should be able to lift the garage door ourselves,” I said to both Lukiss and Ralph as I walked towards the rolling door at the front of the building.

  I spotted the emergency release cord near the track and pulled that to release the hold on the door. From there, it was simple enough to open the door. I was likely strong enough that I could have forced it open, released or not, but this way I didn't break anything. Who knew what would be useful later?

  Lukiss said some words to his family that I didn't understand, but the gist of them became immediately clear. All of the rock trolls began to quickly get to work, moving a lot of the less useful items onto the driveway. I made sure we kept most of the tools and food stored inside, just in case. I didn't want any scavengers stealing what we might need.

  While the space was still crowded once we were done, there was now enough room that everyone would be able to lie down for the night reasonably comfortably, and that had been my only actual goal with this. I had already known long-term that we couldn't all stay here, even before Lukiss had brought it up. But it had hit on an unanswered question that I still wasn't sure how I wanted to handle.

  Did I really want to form my own faction on Earth? I wasn't sure that I had a choice. Once that grew big enough, all eyes would be on me again. Old enemies would soon learn I was back, and that could create all new problems.

  It could also help me figure out exactly what had happened in my absence. With the time difference being what it was, I couldn't even be sure how much time had passed in System-space versus Earth. Even more so because one of the first things the system did when it integrated new territory into its space was to streamline time.

  What they called ‘time relativity’ here on Earth was a very different beast when it came to the System. But I was not remotely learned enough to explain either of the concepts well. I honestly wasn't sure anyone was capable of fully exploiting time within System space.

  “What do you think happens, when the rest of the spiders find out what happened?” Lukiss asked me as we closed the garage door while the sun was starting to set.

  “I suspect the queen's going to try to hunt me down, not realizing the danger she places herself in. Though, to be entirely honest, I can't say how that fight will go. I don't know how powerful she is, nor am I familiar at all with her empire. That said, I promise I will put up a very strong fight,” I said, trying to reassure the kid that everything would be okay.

  “From what I've seen, I think Adam can handle a single angry spider queen,” Ralph added. “But with the events of today, I think perhaps it's time we all get some food in us, as well as a good night's rest.”

  “I agree. That spider venom made me super hungry,” Ash called from the other side of the garage. Floof gave a loud bark of agreement.

  “So why did we want credits? What are credits anyway?” Adam asked once they had departed from the other Goblin.

  “Because it's much harder to steal credits. Look, kids, I like you, and when I told you that my faction is here primarily as a marketing guild, I wasn't lying. But that doesn't mean all of us are quite so honest. Do not take any sort of payment in anything but credits. There are plenty of people who will buy what you have, then send out some mercenaries to kill you and take that money back. They can't do that if it's just credits in your account,” Grimbleflork explained.

  “Okay, but how do credits work? How do we access our account? What does that even mean?” Aleck continued the questions that I'd started.

  “Credits are just a universal system of money. You can access them through the system menu, just like you would your status. You'll get a pop-up from the system when you attempt to spend them, confirming you want to do so. Come on, I'll take you to a stall and show you how it works.”

  Memories of Adam Miller before he found Earth