Edge woke up in a fantastic mood.

  The Claws were gone, the settlement was safe, and his friends were alive and well. It was a shame about what had happened to Earl and everyone who had died during the war, but Puppet Town had prevailed in the end and the future looked bright. While life on Ord would never be easy, they had weathered the storm and carved out a chance to grow strong enough to survive their new lives as settlers on the planet’s frontier.

  After eating breakfast and chatting with his friends around the table, Edge decided to spend the morning tinkering with a few ideas that had come to him during the battle. Not long after, he was standing in the yard behind the lodge, testing out some new configurations for Repel Water where he didn’t have to worry about breaking anything or soaking anyone.

  Blue was playing with Rue, keeping the pup out of his hair while conducting the most lopsided game of hide-and-seek Edge had ever seen, given the lack of hiding places for creatures her size. If I narrow the repulsive cone and split the generational field into two ovals…

  His train of thought was interrupted when his Guide detached from his chest. The mote of golden light circled his head, floated in front of his face, and turned into a screen.

  He frowned when he realized it wasn’t an update from the System or a message from Sakura this time around—it was a notice from Dialla using her authority as mayor. She was conducting an emergency meeting at City Hall and requested his presence as soon as possible.

  When Edge read the last line, he sighed and walked over to where Blue was “hiding” behind a bale of hay that was only half her height. “Sorry, guys. Something came up, and I need to go. You can play more when I get back.”

  Rue whined in protest before letting out a sleepy yip and popping into his pocket dimension for a post-victory nap. Blue looked heartbroken, staring at Edge with puppy dog eyes until he promised to return with a snack, which perked her right up. He laughed at the dino’s antics. I wish all our problems were that easy to solve.

  He reflected on recent events and what the future might hold while crossing the districts, entering the town square a few minutes later. He spotted several familiar faces on the way to City Hall, but since they were all heading to the same meeting, he decided to find out what was going on before saying hello.

  He made his way through the lobby and approached a pair of deputies guarding the hallway beyond. They nodded as they waved him through, and he stepped into a spacious conference room at the end of the hall. Edge had been here several times before, but never when it was filled to the brim. The chatter of a dozen conversations broke over him as he circled the table, taking a look around before deciding where to sit.

  Earl was still unconscious, so Able was acting as the head of the peacekeepers in the sheriff’s absence. A heavily bandaged Mel was serving as his second-in-command, and Edge was glad to see her back on her feet.

  The mayor was speaking to Emily—who had been promoted to her right hand—and Tessa and Trapper were standing nearby. He could tell from their expressions that both women were deeply relieved Dialla hadn’t been injured during the conflict with the Claws. They hadn’t returned from the expedition in time to protect the mayor during the final battle, but in the end, everything had worked out.

  Moving on, the senior members of the town’s hunting associations and various industries were present, including Ann, Lilly, Bee, Ander, Melchior, and, to Edge’s surprise, Izzio the butcher. Alice and Byron were speaking in one corner, and it seemed the man had retired his alter ego as the masked shadowkiller Snake. A few people he hadn’t met were here too, including the head of the militia, the leader of the construction association, and the foreman of the aether refinery.

  Edge had been one of the last people to arrive, and a few minutes later, Dialla asked everyone to take a seat around the red stone table. Many of them had been wounded in the war, and their faces conveyed a blend of relief to have beaten the Claws, weariness from weeks of constant stress, and worry about whatever was important enough to summon the town’s senior members only a day and a half after the decisive battle.

  “Hello, everyone,” the mayor began—the dark circles under her eyes revealing that she’d been up all night.

  “Thank you for coming on such short notice. I wouldn’t have asked you to attend this meeting if it wasn’t important. I wish I had good news to share for a change, but I’m afraid we have caught wind of a threat that’s unlike anything we have seen before. It isn’t more jailbirds or the migration of powerful monsters and beasts we’ve been preparing for ever since the anomaly—or not exactly at any rate.

  “We were tipped off to a strange phenomenon that One-Eye observed in the biome the Claws were living in, and unfortunately, it’s headed our way. A stampede of beasts afflicted by a bizarre form of magic that has reanimated their corpses. At first, we thought the horde was following the refugees, but now that we’ve had time to investigate, we have a different—far more unsettling—theory. I’ll let the person who gathered this information explain the rest.”

  With that, the door opened and Sakura walked into the room. She was wearing an intricate mask of a raven, but to Edge’s surprise, she took it off before addressing the group seated around the table. Their eyes met, and he could tell from her expression that whatever she had learned, it was serious.

  “Hello. My name is Sakura. I’ve been serving as the settlement’s spymaster and magic specialist for the last few months. I’m a jailbird, not a tourist, and I was concealing my identity for that reason. Now that we’ve decided to integrate the refugees from the Gilded Heights along with One-Eye’s people, I don’t see a reason to keep it a secret any longer.”

  Some eyebrows shot up at that declaration, but no one said a word. “Since time is of the essence, I’ll provide a summary of the emerging situation, then answer any questions you may have. The short of it is that a horde of undead beasts is headed for the settlement—mostly bears led by a powerful stage-three ursine.

  “They would have been here several days ago, but they are stopping to kill every cored creature they encounter along the way, which is slowing them down considerably. While stampedes and hordes occur naturally within the frontier, I’ve never heard of anything like this. Since there are hundreds of them, including dozens of stage twos and a stage three, I believe this phenomenon is the product of a rank-seven skill, which means that for reasons I can’t even begin to comprehend, a stage-four entity has set its sights on Puppet Town.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Worried murmurs broke out as Sakura delivered her news. Until their recent advancements, even a stage-two stampede would have been sufficient to level the settlement. Working together, the town’s elites could fight on even footing with a late stage-three beast, but a stage-four enemy was a lethal threat—far more dangerous than anything anyone in the room had faced before.

  “The silver lining is that while the stampede is being directed in a general sense, the magic only seems to be guiding their path—not controlling their behavior. Better still, these reanimated beasts can only use two or three skills and seem much less intelligent than living creatures. Our anti-beast tactics, traps, and the like should be incredibly effective, and I believe that working together, we can construct a defense that will let us defeat them with minimal casualties and damage to the town.

  “There will, however, be some risk to our elites—who will have to leave the walls to tackle the most dangerous creatures so they can’t bypass the walls—but everyone in the settlement should be safe barring a catastrophic failure.

  “Unfortunately, I couldn’t determine the source of this threat or the intentions behind it, but I should be able to learn more once I use my skills on horde’s remains. While an attack by a stage-four opponent would be cataclysmic, there’s no sign of anything of the sort travelling with the stampede.”

  Sakura finished her report, then took a seat beside Edge. He clasped her shoulder as the cacophony of a dozen conversations broke out at once. After conferring with Able and Emily for a few minutes, Dialla rose to her feet and resumed control of the meeting.

  “I know this isn’t what any of you wanted to hear. We all need a break after dealing with the Claws, but it’s going to have to wait just a little longer. In short, we have less than a week to prepare for another battle, and we need to redouble our efforts to strengthen our residents and improve our defenses going forward. But we’ll tackle the latter after enduring the former. I’m devoting the rest of this meeting to an open discussion. What ideas do you have for eliminating the stampede with the time and resources at our disposal?”

  For a moment, everyone was lost in thought. Then Alice rose to her feet and addressed the assembly.

  “I can’t speak to our defenses, but I think we should send our newly cored warriors into the field with our veteran hunting crews. Let them fight stage-one beasts to cycle up their cores and rank up their skills as aggressively as possible. We were planning to do it anyway—before stage-two beasts migrate onto the plains en masse and we lose our chance—but we should accelerate our timetable. We need more materials for weapons and armor anyway, and more food in our stockpiles to restore what was depleted during the siege.”

  When Alice sat down, Melchior spoke up. “We should have them look for mana seeds while they’re out there. We should keep more in reserve going forward to deal with emergencies.”

  That idea prompted a comment from Ander. “While the northern turrets were blown to smithereens, the top-grade materials they were made of should have survived the blast. All their magitech components were destroyed beyond repair, but we can use the metal to get powerful weapons into the hands of our elites.

  “It should be possible to refurbish the overloaded generator and leave one turret above each gate going forward. It’s a shame about the Dome, but we won’t be nearly as vulnerable if we can focus our fire in both directions. Moving them is difficult but possible, and we can consider posting both on the same gate if it looks like the stampede will approach from a single direction. The crafters who didn’t go on the expedition have been building a range of defensive devices that will work on stage-one enemies, and we can have the first batch ready before the stampede arrives.”

  When Ander sat down, Bee spoke on behalf of the Crafter’s Consortium. “We can start crafting some elemental consumables, since flashbangs, poison gas, and stink bombs won’t work on unliving enemies. Fire and ice should still be effective.”

  By now, everyone was clamoring for a turn to speak, and representatives from the various hunting associations began sharing one idea after the next.

  “As soon as we conclude this meeting, we can start laying down a ton of old-fashioned traps. They might not be lethal to these undead critters, but they will break bones, bind limbs, and separate the horde to make killing them more manageable. If the magic controlling these creatures has dulled their instincts, we can get away with some slapdash constructions that wouldn’t work on regular beasts but will pack a real punch.”

  “If we can get a better sense for how mobile these bears are, we can send out some beast riders to start whittling down their numbers before they cross into the center of the biome—maybe lead them into traps or terrain that will slow them down and buy us more time to prepare. Now that I think about it, most beasts on the plains will run from a threat of that magnitude, but nobody fucks with the buffalo. Perhaps we can lead a portion of the stampede into the herd’s territory and let them deal with the problem.”

  When the hunters were done, Ander rose to his feet. “While I would have preferred some more downtime after fending off the Claws, this might be a blessing in disguise. If we play our cards right, this could be an excellent opportunity to cycle up our residents and rank up their skills in a relatively controlled environment. We can also harvest parts from the horde and use them to improve our gear. I have some ideas on how we can adapt our training regimen to prepare our people for repelling the stampede.”

  The conversation continued for a few more hours. By the end of the meeting, every person in the room had come up with several ideas to strengthen the town’s defenses and adapt their tactics to an enemy of this nature.

  Edge was proud to watch them in action. These people had been stranded on a deadly alien planet—cut off from their loved ones and everything they had known. They had just survived one crisis and were being thrown straight into the next, but instead of panicking or complaining, they were rising to the occasion with courage and resolve.

  When everything started winding down, Sakura turned to him and said, “We haven’t had a chance to talk since you returned from the expedition. Could you stop by the Pioneer in a few hours? I have some ideas I want to discuss and people I want you to meet.”

  “Of course, partner. It’s good to see you in the flesh, and thanks for those timely warnings.” She smiled and then headed for the door.

  Before he left the conference room, Dialla pulled Edge to one side and said, “I heard you are planning to donate some of the resources you found, and I wanted to thank you for that. Not to mention, securing the core manufactory against incredible odds, helping to rescue Trapper’s team, and taking out so many of the Claws’ elites. I know you have some secrets you aren’t ready to reveal, and that’s fine. I trust you and know I can rely on you going forward.

  “I can’t afford to pay you in Credits, since we’re investing every cred we have into upgrading the town, but I wanted to reward you with a generous amount of Contribution Points for everything you’ve done. We’ve refined the system since you left, and you can exchange them for everything from a house in the residential district to skill gems, mana seeds, high-grade aether, and other luxury goods. We even have a mana berry or two if you don’t have anything else you want to spend them on.”

  Edge was happy with his living arrangements, but those mana seeds would be a welcome addition to his vault, and the aether would save him some Credits when refilling his Heart-Guard and his gatling gun’s clips. I wouldn’t mind some chocolate, wine, or other tasty treats to share with the crew either.

  He accepted the mayor’s praise along with 500 CP, which showed up in his profile alongside his System currency. Then Edge left City Hall to begin his own preparations, planning to meet up with Sakura a little later in the day.