++There are known to be, above the lowly Common Tier occupied by the Worker Class, a full 7 higher Tiers of Classes available to the elves alone. They are, in ascending order; Journeyman, Adept, Expert, Master, Hero, Legend and Demigod. The highest of these, the Demigod, is known to occur only once in every handful of generations. Rumours speak of yet greater still powers, though rumour alone does not confirm their existence.++

  Chapter 7

  Reggie had made a horrible fucking mistake. Not the ‘you’re going to die’ kind, though, he was just going to be miserable for…a while.

  Ludvich was struggling to keep pace, he could see that much at a glance. No wonder the Circumscribers had arrived in only a day, they could probably out-distance any horse in the world. The Witchfinder was visibly panting just to follow after them.

  And Reggie was no Witchfinder.

  But with such a large group ahead, there were things working to his favour. The Circumscribers just couldn’t help but make noise, travelling in a group of five, and so they were harassed by the grimwood’s inhabitants far more than Reggie and Ludvich had been alone. Each fight was an easy victory for them, without the slightest chance of losing, but it was also a delay. Reggie was fortunately far back enough, and quiet enough, that he could dip away from any approaching monsters and let them make a beeline for the elves without noticing him. That, and the noise they were making, allowed him to just barely keep pace by jogging most of the way. That he now had to carry his explosives in a damned potato sack was making things only slightly harder.

  And more stressful. To say the least, carrying a large volume of shock-activated explosives in a fucking canvas bag while moving at speed was…disquieting. But not as disquieting as going into a fight with guns only, so Reggie put up with it.

  Fortunately, he wasn’t putting up with it for long.

  The wolf spider just came out of nowhere. It wasn’t nearly as misty tonight as it’d been the last time Reggie ventured out, he could see a full fifty paces ahead of himself. And that didn’t make a lick of distance. It sprinted across his field of view in seconds and was on the Circumscribers before Ludvich even reacted.

  But not before the elves did.

  One of them, the leader, jumped. She jumped an impossible, downright stupid height with all the effort Reggie might have applied to lift himself up a step. Ten, twenty, almost thirty feet, then she fell faster as if gravity itself were taking an example from her Speed and eager to avoid slowing her down. The wolf spider was a blur of limbs and haired talons, shrieking out a noise Reggie didn’t know living things could make and lunging. The elf landed right as its attack came, darted to one side and left a stabbing claw to punch clean through the trunk of a thick oak. Wood exploded out like it’d been hit by a whole fusilade at once, splinters raining in all directions.

  Reggie had started moving as soon as he saw the spider. By now, he’d taken two steps.

  He kept up his sprint through molasses as the elf continued dodging and ducking, her comrades apparently content to stay back and watch the fight. However fast she was, the wolf spider’s limbs were numerous enough that every blow came closer than the last. Eventually she was cornered, just a shade too slow to evade a double-legged thrust downwards set to run her right through the chest. It never landed. Two armoured gauntlets came up and she caught the wolf spider’s legs, wrestling it strength for strength, now.

  She was faster, and apparently it didn’t even have the advantage of strength. Reggie watched the spider forced back, then dragged down. It ended up flipped onto its rear in one moment before the elf did some move executed too quickly for his eyes to follow. When she finally slowed back into visibility, there was a shortsword held in one of her hands and the creature was fountaining blood all over the place. Yellowish, acrid stuff that seemed almost like sludge. It curdled where it fell, globbing and clumping, turning to mulch underfoot, thrown out in every direction with the monster’s mad thrashing and agonized squeals.

  Reggie had taken ten paces by the time the spider died. He’d taken only three more by the time the next group of them emerged.

  If nothing else, the rest of the Circumscribers—and Ludvich himself—finally took the hint and got involved now. Reggie himself almost considered halting and letting them fight without him, but some stupid impulse he couldn’t name kept his legs moving and had him readying an explosive charge without really thinking about it.

  Throwing the first device, a brick-sized block of almost purely explosive quicksilver, made quite the entrance. Reggie’s ears popped as he felt a concussive shock run past him, shivering trees and kicking up dirt. The spider closest to the blast was blown right off its feet, lacerated and hurt but still alive. Those a shade farther were stumbled, but fine. Reggie was halfway through lifting another bomb up when one of the spiders looked at him.

  He froze, but the spider didn’t. It was a blur of hair and teeth as it came his way, interrupted only by a sudden gunshot and a burst of ichor from its side. Ludvich had shot the thing, shot it cleanly, and bought Reggie just long enough to toss his explosive right down under the thing’s legs as it stumbled.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  That stumble turned into a fall, then into more squealy thrashing as a row of wounds opened up everywhere. He gave the spider a helping hand to hell by raising up his long gun and putting a hardened lead ball right into its head. Miraculously, it still took a good few seconds to finish dying even after that. By the time it was still, the rest were dead too. Reggie looked up to see several elves and the world’s angriest Witchfinder all staring at him.

  Save for Ludvich, each of them had their weapons raised high.

  “You know this human, Witchfinder?” It was the lead elf speaking, the one Reggie had seen do that ridiculous vertical jump, and she was now staring at him with eyes that seemed to carry a silent promise to eat his lungs.

  That was, on the other hand, not even in the top three most hostile looks he’d gotten this week, so Reggie considered the situation fully salvageable.

  “A local,” Ludvich replied quickly, “not a danger, he's just…a bit mad.”

  Reggie couldn’t exactly say he was affronted by that, if all the sane people kept calling you mad then how many conclusions were there to draw there?

  The elves didn’t relax at Ludvich’s reassurances, though.

  “What did you do there?” the leader asked, “with those explosions? How did you make them?”

  Reggie saw an opportunity here, precisely what he’d been looking for, and answered with a grin. He explained the mixture, how it was made, how it blended, explained its shock-activation and extraordinary power, then went a bit farther to talk about his other plans for it—the development of new musket cartridges or firing mechanisms that could do away with conventional priming altogether and skyrocket their rate of fire as a result.

  He’d hoped, somewhere along the way, to see the elves’ moods lifting. He did not, but at the very least they seemed de-escalated from their initial threat of violence. That they kept staring at him like cats staring down a mouse, though, wasn’t lost on him.

  “Come with us,” the leader ordered Reggie, “I do not wish to be here when the mother of those wolf spider hatchlings arrived.”

  Hatchlings? Reggie looked at the corpses again and…oh God, they were tiny compared to the one he’d seen the other day. The pregnant one he’d seen. Well, that was about as good an incentive to fuck off out of there as Reggie had ever experienced in his life. He followed the group in earnest.

  Which was not easy, with his total lack of mana-boosted strength. Fortunately the night was mostly done, and Reggie actually hadn’t exerted himself as much as most of the elves. He could just about keep pace by essentially sprinting in short bursts and resting where he could.

  That they didn’t find what they were looking for, though, was a bit of a blow. Reggie had been hoping to see a fight the elves couldn’t win without him. He’d seen enough of their abilities to know that such a battle did exist, even if he only turned a six out of ten loss into a fifty-fifty equivalence. It just wasn’t to be. The sun started peeking over its horizon before any master-monster could make itself known, and the leader sighed irritably.

  “It may not even be in the woods,” Ludvich muttered, “there are shifter-type creatures, beasts that can wear the skin of humans.” Reggie felt a sudden tremble run through him at that, considering the past few days’ events, rearranging them.

  Was that outsider…He glanced at Ludvich and saw the Witchfinder’s eyes weren’t on him, nor were anyone else’s. Seemed he was alone with his thoughts and his reaction hadn’t given anything away.

  Which was good, because Reggie didn’t like the idea of giving that woman up to be burned alive. Monster or not, she’d saved his life. If nothing else it felt like there was a debt there.

  He pondered that debt as they made their way back to Norvhan. Funny, walking with this group. Reggie found himself actually relaxing, actually letting his guard down. He quickly raised it back up of course. Adult wolf spiders lurked in these woods, even if they’d be likely to start sleeping for the day soon, as well as God knew what else.

  And God would continue knowing that without Reggie sharing his knowledge, because they didn’t encounter any more nasties until Norvhan was within sight. Reggie was buzzing as they approached it. All in all, despite the slightly above-average number of near-death experiences, this had been a pretty damned good week for him.

  The elven leader turned to Reggie just as they got into the town. “You will take us to the place where you’re making your equipment.” There wasn’t a hint of request in her voice, it was pure order. Reggie wasn’t really fazed by that of course, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had any real choice in what he did, and just nodded.

  It was a nervous walk back to his home, but Reggie fought to keep himself from showing the fear. This was it. What he’d been waiting for, his chance. All those years spent worrying that he’d die in a gutter, now he could finally show his value. Now he could win himself a real life somewhere outside of fucking Norvhan.

  [They’re going to kill you.]

  Reggie didn’t answer it.

  His shack was as unimpressive as ever, almost painful to show the elves. Reggie turned to try and look at their reactions but saw no more than ever. Just this blank look in their eyes, like they were seeing him through the lens of a microscope. Like he was food on their plate.

  Well, that was fine. Reggie wasn’t here to free himself from under the elves, far as he was concerned they weren’t the ones who’d always threatened to burn him under their power. He just needed to get out of here. So he hurried up as he led them down into his basement.

  “This is where I make the explosives you saw,” Reggie explained quickly. He wanted to draw attention to the chemistry rather than the brewing, he didn’t imagine elves cared much for alcohol. “I’ve got a few ounces cooking per day, but if I had the resources to expand my facilities I could make much more. Pounds a day, maybe stones—more with enough…” he trailed off, aware that it must have sounded like he was selling them something. Which, of course, he was, but people were more likely to buy if they didn’t notice that.

  Maybe these elves didn’t notice it, they seemed to be intently staring around the room and soaking things up. For a moment Reggie was hopeful at that, seeing interest, then…he saw something more.

  “Where did you learn this?” the leader asked abruptly.

  He suddenly felt less eager to share, but did. “I…taught myself, pieced it together through experimentation and reading a few alchemy books.”

  “Does anybody else know of it?”

  “No,” Reggie lied before he could wonder why, then remembered they’d seen him use the weaponry in front of Ludvich, “I told Ludvich that it’s done with oil and slow-matches, he believed me. Wanted it to be a surprise when I got a contract to make more.”

  The elves shared a look between each other for a moment, then the leader nodded to the rest.

  “Very well then,” she said, addressing her subordinates, “kill him and destroy it all.”