“Ah, Sentinel Grace, excellent! You were my first choice to handle this, at least among those of us in Remus currently, but I wasn’t sure if we would find you in time.” Sentinel… Something called out as soon as she rounded the corner.

  That was probably a bad sign.

  The actual problem was appropriately dire. Sardonia—a.k.a., the little city that had been more of a hometown to her than Perinthus ever was—had been attacked and was under siege by the war goblins, the same kind that Ranthia had tangled with back when she was an Adventurer. Of course, the information was days—more likely weeks—out of date by the time couriers had brought word to the Sentinels. The word they carried was that the city’s walls still held but the defenders were hard pressed. Which, worst case, meant that the city could have already fallen—especially if the couriers hadn’t managed to locate another Ranger team in the vicinity—assuming Rangers would even be enough. There was no time to spare.

  Ranthia returned to her room to gear up while Sentinel Song (not even close) had several days of provisions prepped for her. One shift later, she was in her (largely untested) armor and standing in front of the quartermaster’s office while Sentinel Stillthesameguy and the quartermaster stuffed travel rations and waterskins into her backpack and Ranthia struggled to amend her still new image of her Sentinel armor with the bulky backpack.

  “I know you’re like stupidly high level and way beyond my league but be careful. Apparently, way back when the war goblins first showed up everyone underestimated them and sent one rookie Adventurer after the first force of ‘em. Near death experience and all.” Sentinel… she was thinking something to do with bugs, for some reason, warned her, as he read from a scroll that she was rather certain he hadn’t had a moment ago.

  Ranthia couldn’t help it, she laughed while the quartermaster closed her backpack.

  “Yeah, I know better than most. That rookie Adventurer was me.” Ranthia confessed wryly.

  With the silence that reveal left in her wake, Ranthia moved. She couldn’t use her full speed inside Ranger Headquarters—she was quite a bit too fast to unleash everything indoors in a crowded environment in Remus, things would break—but she still danced through the halls as a blur. Frustratingly, the streets through Ariminum were only a tiny bit better. She flowed through the courier lane and weaved among the considerably slower obstacles in her path as quickly as she dared—Tertia’s warning was still fresh in her mind, which meant she couldn’t let herself grow frustrated.

  She skipped the city gates entirely instead of trying to get the guards to open one for her. She just got a line of sight with the road beyond and shifted. Lives were at stake; the city guard would understand.

  It wasn’t like they could catch her anyway.

  Ranthia’s trip from Sardonia to Ariminum fifteen years ago had taken nearly a full season of travel. Those intervening years had changed her considerably.

  She made the trip in a matter of days.

  There was no rest. Ranthia continued her elaborate running dance across the comparatively lightly travelled roads between towns. In theory she could have cut more time off if she eschewed the roads and moved in a straight line, but without any skills dedicated to wilderness travel or direction finding—except whatever minor effects were integrated into [Sentinel’s War Supremacy]—there was a major risk that she would have gotten lost and wasted even more time. The roads were the better option, no matter how the delay grated on her.

  Food and drink were consumed straight from her pack while she moved and empty waterskins were discarded along the roadside—grabbing things out of her pack on the move was easy, but trying to store things without looking was… less easy. Ranthia could only hope that other travellers would find and make use of them. The quartermaster hadn’t been happy about the plan for her to discard them to save time, but he did finally assent with the slightly ominous complaint that they were cheaper than what Sentinels frequently wasted.

  Ranthia was close enough to smell the smoke. There was a large cluster of panicked civilians on the road as they fled Sardonia too. An agonizing moment passed while Ranthia weighed her duties and obligations, but, in the end, she took to the wilderness to avoid the cluster of evacuees.

  She could do far more for them if she reached Sardonia. There was no reality where she only needed to spare a few words had she interacted with them, they would have brought her to a halt—while their city and those that they abandoned burned. She was far too close to Sardonia to allow herself to be stopped there.

  She just reassured herself that she could catch them after she was done in Sardonia. It was better to wait until she could tell them that their homes were safe, and they could return.

  She still felt guilty.

  But she could carry that much guilt along with the rest, jammed in next to her doubts and worries that Tertia’s well-meaning—and important—words had brought. After all, what were those concerns and burdens when weighed against the lives she alone could save?

  Sardonia burned.

  Yes, she had known that since a fair distance away—but the sight still piled more guilt and uncertainty deep within her. The flames were easily seen past the too-short walls of the mining town with delusions of relevance.

  She should have moved faster. Her mind churned with ways she could have shaved a bit more time off of her journey. But there was no time to indulge those thoughts. There had to be a limit to her guilt, otherwise the weight of her soul threatened to slow her feet. Instead, she funneled her guilt into her anger. It wasn’t the first time that she had burnt guilt to fuel her rage.

  At the gate, Adventurers—combat classers wearing nostalgic mismatched armor was forever unmistakable—had formed a line where they were engaged in a fighting retreat. Most of their number were wounded to some degree or another, some so badly that it was a credit to their profession that they still fought on. Yet even as Ranthia drew close enough to see them more clearly, a few broke and fled while the others cursed after them. The line wavered with the new holes in it. A gruff Adventurer, a man aged just past his prime, tried to buy time while the others closed ranks. The large iron sword that he wielded was already broken, but the half of the blade that remained was still sharp beneath its broad crimson stain. Yet as he struggled, a goblin arrow struck his shoulder and staggered him. In another heartbeat, a war goblin would have ended him with a crude weapon made out of some sort of large fang.

  Instead, the war goblin’s head was severed from its shoulders by the knife that Ranthia threw.

  [*ding!* You have slain a goblin [Goblin War Fang] (Poison, level 232), [Goblin War Killer] (Poison, level 221)!]

  Ranthia vaulted past the Adventurers at speeds that even the classers likely struggled to properly perceive, even as [Adamant Commander] called her blade back to her hand. As a blur, she swept through the war goblins that pressed the Adventurers’ line. A kill notification came with each step of her chaotic dance. And then it was done. Sixteen dead goblins—high level by Remus’ lax standards—collapsed to the ground shortly after the first body had fallen.

  They died as easily as the shimagu’s worthless rank and file. …Though, in hindsight, she hadn’t needed to target necks. There weren’t any parasites in these—well, at least she had proven that much.

  “Sentinel Ra—Grace! Are there any other holdouts I need to prioritize reaching?!” Ranthia called out to the Adventurers.

  Ranthia hoped that her near mistake on her introduction would go unnoticed. Eventually, she would get used to her new moniker.

  “Senti—oh holy… Ahem, Sentinel, yes! If there’s any big groups left in town, they’re probably dead! Probably scattered people in hiding! The slimy bastards claimed to have hostages, but they’d be deep in goblin territory if they do.” The gruff man called back as he leaned against the remnants of his sword and stoically ignored the arrow lodged in his shoulder.

  Ranthia strongly suspected that his alarmed pause came the moment he checked her level; the man was trying to act unshakable, but levels of such a bright shade of red were all but unheard of—especially on people. She didn’t blame him for reacting.

  “Reform your line here at the exit; I’ll send any survivors I find your way. I’ll cull the goblins, but if your line gets into a bad spot, call out. I’ll hear.” Ranthia ordered.

  There were more than a few awed whispers—so long as she chose to take comments like “Thank the gods that’s on our side” as awed—about her level. Still, the Adventurers were plainly relieved to have support when they needed it most. Even the group that had fled right before she arrived were returning, heads down, while their fellows sneered. Reunited, the group reformed their line across the exit from the city and readied their weapons.

  Confident in her former peers (not that she recognized a single person), Ranthia proceeded into Sardonia—she had delayed too long already. The smoke seemed to billow from every direction, not that it bothered her [Vision of the Void]-enhanced sight. She had to trust her vitality to endure the foul air; she was disinclined to waste precious time making a mask. The air was thick with the aromas of smoke, charred meat, blood, the unique experience that was goblin stink, and the acrid scents of terror. Goblin aside, they were all scents that she was far too used to.

  But that mattered little at the moment. She pushed past the distraction and focused on her high-level senses. She wasn’t bothering to try to find survivors unless they were in active distress; she needed to find the goblins that roved about with impunity. With any survivors scattered, it was better for her to focus on eradication. Once the goblins were nothing but a pile of foul meat ready to be burnt en masse, the people could be saved. Until then, they were likely safer in hiding.

  The nearest goblins were isolated individuals or small, wandering clusters. She methodically ended them as she proceeded deeper into the city. A goblin that was in the midst of defiling a corpse—[Void Edge]-kissed knife through the back of the skull.

  [*ding!* You have slain a goblin [Goblin War Pillager] (Wind, level 167)!]

  Six drunken goblins that had smashed their way into a tavern’s stocks—drunk enough to be all but oblivious to her presence until her knife found them. Two goblins that were hacking at a cellar door had their foul hearts erased by [Void Edge]—the cellar door was in bad shape, so Ranthia delayed to order the father and child within to run for the Adventurers for safety. More goblins were alone or in small groups while they looted the town, but Ranthia was efficient and brutal—she never gave them any opportunity to call out.

  [*ding!* You have slain a goblin [Goblin War Scout] (Earth, level 241), [Goblin War Caller] (Sound, level 186)!]

  [*ding!* You have slain a goblin [Goblin War Fist] (Mantle, level 263), [Goblin War Berserker] (Inferno, level 189)!]

  [*ding!* You have slain a goblin [Goblin War Weapon-Maker] (Dark, level 200), [Goblin War Hide-Mender] (Water, level 133)!]

  Familiar buildings and districts she had never seen burned alike. Bodies leaked in the streets. One of the dead guards that she saw was one of the men that had protected the town when she was a child—his face was still intact enough for her to recognize him, but little else wasn’t brutalized.

  It reminded her uncomfortably of picking through the battlefield after a clash with the shimagu; it was the kind of sight that should never be found within a town.

  A woman in immediate distress forced Ranthia to speed up. There she found a bloodied woman trying desperately to shield her son—an adult only by Remus’ terrible standards—from a small gathering of goblins. The boy was crying in terror, even as the goblins drew more blood from his mother.

  One of the goblins grew bored and raised the pointed stick it used as a spear, readying to finish the woman off.

  Ranthia threw her knives at that goblin and the other beast nearest the mother and child. She had to restrain the force behind her throws though, with how scrawny goblins were… well, she didn’t want her blades to meet the people that she was trying to save. Her blades sank into the backs of both monsters as she charged in. [Adamant Commander] wrenched her blades free and called the blades back to her hands. One of the goblins died immediately from the spray of blood, but both were falling.

  [*ding!* You have slain a goblin [Goblin War Caster] (Metal, level 195)!]

  The other war goblins tried to react. None of them were fast enough to make their efforts matter; they couldn’t even prolong the final moments of their lives.

  [*ding!* You have slain a goblin [Goblin War Sticker] (Wood, level 236), [Bone Eater] (Wood, level 281)!]

  They were too far beneath her.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  [*ding!* You have slain a goblin [Goblin War Hateful Wrath] (Ash, level 249), [Goblin War Salve-Maker] (Water, level 208)!]

  [*ding!* You have slain a goblin [Goblin War Survivor] (Earth, level 259), [Purge-Watcher] (Metal, level 125)!]

  [*ding!* You have slain a goblin [Goblin War Sack-Bearer] (Decay, level 211)!]

  Ranthia hesitated for a moment once that bit of carnage was complete. At a glance, the woman was probably going to live, but Ranthia also knew that her experience with gauging wound severity was tainted by a lifetime among classers. She had no idea if a level 97 [Artisan] could withstand something that would barely slow down even a level 128 [Warrior].

  “Kid, look at me.” Ranthia tried to get the attention of the panicking boy. In the end she had to go up to him and physically turn him to face her.

  “Get her moving in that direction, there’s a group of Adventurers there. They can help her. But you have to be strong for her. You have to help her get there.” Ranthia tried to bridge ‘gentle’ and ‘firm’ as she gave the boy instructions.

  In a better world she would have provided first aid for the woman herself. She didn’t carry blood clotting potions anymore, but she did still have clean bandages in her belt. But she wasn’t a [Healer], providing first aid took time and she was only barely equipped for it. She had to hope she wasn’t consigning the woman to bleed out, as she sent them to where they could—hopefully—get better aid.

  While the boy tried to get his mother moving (not that Ranthia wasted time confirming their relationship), Ranthia resumed her own hunt. It was the best thing she could do for Sardonia and its surviving people.

  The first large group of war goblins that Ranthia had found was just over twenty-four strong. They were milling around the center of town, as if they were waiting for something or someone. Ranthia somehow doubted that they were waiting for a Sentinel that was almost thrice their average level to appear in their midst and dance through their ranks, but that was what she inflicted upon them. They barely even started to put up a pathetic bit of resistance before they were annihilated—war goblins had once been a deadly threat to her, but that day was long past. She was far greater than the filthy beasts could hope to ever match.

  Somehow, she doubted that she would ever have nightmares about being at their mercy again.

  Another more scattered pack was inside the Adventurer’s Guild—a place that still meant much to Ranthia. The accursed pests had separated to collect the scattered weaponry and training weapons that had been left there. None of them even saw her before their end came—they were focused on their tasks and Ranthia was especially swift and thorough in her own.

  The scum were not welcome in a place that important!

  Unfortunately, when she finished off the last goblin inside the Adventurer’s guild, her cooling head allowed her to reach an obvious conclusion. There had to be some force—likely a stronger, smarter goblin—that was capable of assigning the notoriously deranged creatures tasks and seeing them followed through. Discipline was almost a foreign concept to goblins, yet it was in evidence—well, when adjusted for goblin ‘standards’, at least. It was another complication, and Ranthia was determined to cut it down along with the rest.

  More scattered goblins. By ones and twos and fives they fell. More rarely, civilians that hid or were trapped were sent to the gates, if their current positions were at risk. Far more Ranthia ignored—she was confident enough in their immediate security. Unfortunately, the fires that burned throughout the city threatened some locations more than others.

  As she progressed, it was hard for her to not judge the Adventurers and the dead town guards for their failure to hold the line against such a minor threat. Which was stupid—logically she knew that many of these goblins were equivalent to an A-Ranked Adventurer by level, even if their class quality, equipment, and intelligence were comparatively poor. But it was surprisingly difficult to bear the difference between her perspective and those of the guards and Adventurers in mind while she culled the beasts with ease. She hadn’t even used [Void Edge] more than once, and that was only because the goblin had a crude iron helmet—fashioned out of a pot—and she hadn’t wanted to waste time circling around for a better angle to kill the beast.

  [*ding!* You have slain a goblin [Goblin War Marshland Ambusher] (Coral, level 293), [Homeland Seeker] (Wood, level 279)!]

  With what she had learned of Pallos at large, the most likely explanation for the levels was that the war goblins came from outside of Remus—from beyond the Dead Zone. Which meant that their entire tribe—or however the beasts organized themselves—was remarkably weak. Levels like these were nothing beyond the Dead Zone; they were the levels of civilians. Ranthia suspected that the ‘war’ goblins had been pushed out of their territory and into the Dead Zone, where they found even weaker prey.

  She knew well that the beasts had lived symbiotically with humans for a time, but either they got greedy or Sardonia’s people got tired of them. Either way, the beasts would die for their foolishness.

  If they were truly from beyond Remus’ borders, then they should have known the truth of the world. They were weak. There were always stronger powers. And she was one of them, at least for the scale they were at.

  These war goblins were—mostly—at a higher level than the group Ranthia had gambled her life to challenge back when she was recklessly trying to prove her worth as an Adventurer. Some of those she had already slain were near level 300. Most of them had two classes. But, unfortunately for the infestation that had visited Sardonia, Ranthia had changed so much since then.

  Once this would have been an unwinnable fight.

  As she had become, she doubted that she’d even level from such weak adversaries.

  As she proceeded through Sardonia, Ranthia systematically cleansed the town of every single goblin. There was no hesitance or hedging involved in that statement—between her [Vision of the Void]-enhanced sight and her other senses backed by over seventy thousand vitality, she had total confidence that not a single goblin had escaped her notice.

  Yet, even when she reached the far side of the town, she plainly wasn’t done. Guttural, snarling ‘voices’ could be heard on the opposite side of the town’s breached walls. Just beyond the broken gates that had once protected Sardonia’s exit that was used only by miners, ore transports, and Adventurers—the road to nowhere, as Ranthia had thought of it—the bulk of the war goblin force was gathered.

  A larger, stronger goblin—[Leader – Ash] level 387 and [Warrior – Decay] level 279—was giving what she assumed to be the goblins’ idea of a speech to almost two hundred war goblins. Even counting those Ranthia had already culled, the entire group was still well under three hundred members. She didn’t understand their ‘language’ (seriously, and she had thought the shimagu’s tongue was repellent), nor did she bother to try to memorize anything that she heard.

  It wouldn’t matter momentarily.

  “You never should have crawled out of your holes, you vile beasts.” Ranthia called out as she approached.

  It was, admittedly, a stupid move. Tactically, it would have made far more sense had she taken them off-guard. Odds are she could have slain the [Leader] and the four not-quite-high-level goblins near it before any of them realized what had happened.

  On the other hand, it was hard to look at even two hundred low-tier goblins and see a threat. She had been surrounded by far more shimagu warriors practically daily for almost six years. The average levels of the shimagu tended to be much higher than most of these goblins.

  But for all of her retroactive justification, the true reason that she abandoned sound tactics was far simpler: she was pissed. Her guilt and anger had flared into a metaphorical grand inferno of pure hatred for the monsters that had defiled the closest thing she had to a home. She had grown in Sardonia, she had trained, and she had so many precious memories with people that were lost. She wanted nothing more than for the goblin [Leader] to know just how badly it had screwed up before it died, assuming even that damned beast had enough sense to realize just how outclassed it was.

  The bigger war goblin howled at her in its crude tongue. The would-be army readied their arms.

  Ranthia formed nine mirror images and handed them off to [Submind]. The goblins were weak enough that even her mirror images might be enough to get some kills.

  Just before the battle was joined, Ranthia and her images fell into their dance.

  The goblins managed to halt the advancement of her images—for a single instant. Then Ranthia herself tore straight through their ranks. She was done holding back. The full breadth of her Skills touched her blades and guided her dance of butchery. The goblins weren’t only lower level than many of the shimagu-infested slaves that she had delivered into Black Crow’s talons, they were also easier to kill. She didn’t have to try to prioritize blows that would reach the back of their necks. She didn’t have to awkwardly assail larger opponents. If a goblin briefly survived being cut, her images could finish it off as they followed in her wake.

  Ranthia reached the [Leader], but she kicked the beast aside instead of killing it. She made sure it watched as she culled the four guards that had stood alongside it. The first had a dented, rusting iron sword that was no doubt stolen from someone. Ranthia severed the blade into three pieces before she removed the top half of the goblin’s head.

  [*ding!* You have slain a goblin [Goblin War Champion] (Metal, level 316), [Goblin War Cutter] (Gale, level 301]!]

  The second came at her with Dark energy coursing over its fists. Ranthia’s own Void tore straight through the Dark as she crippled the goblin. From there it was simple to pass her knife through where the beast’s black heart should be.

  [*ding!* You have slain a goblin [Goblin War Bruiser] (Earth, level 303), [Meat Gouger] (Dark, level 287)!]

  The other two had the sense to get back-to-back. Which, ironically, made Ranthia’s job even easier. She danced past the sharpened bone the first wielded, then passed her knife through the heads of both monsters with the same pirouette.

  [*ding!* You have slain a goblin [Goblin Warlord] (Sound, level 352), [Goblin War Killer] (Poison, level 338)!]

  [*ding!* You have slain a goblin [Goblin War Mage] (Earth, level 333), [Goblin War Defender] (Earth, level 256)!]

  By the time Ranthia swept through a large swath of the goblins and reached the [Leader] again, the beast didn’t even try to put up a fight before she took its head.

  [*ding!* You have slain a goblin [Goblin War Master] (Ash, level 387), [Fight, Fester, Kill] (Decay, level 279)!]

  Huh, so the creatures could learn.

  Not that Ranthia was going to spare a single one of them. They made their choice; she was just the inevitable conclusion.

  The Adventurers that Ranthia had left defending the other gate showed up right as she killed the last war goblin—seriously, how had the beasts managed to get a Lava [Mage], so annoying—in greater numbers than she had last seen. The gruff Adventurer that she had interacted with still had the arrow sticking out of his shoulder, but all of the Adventurers had kind of slowed to a halt as they found her, covered in goblin viscera, dancing amidst the corpses of the vast majority of the goblins.

  That or they were reacting to the fact that there were briefly ten of her—even if she’d dismissed her images almost the same moment as she noticed their arrival. It wasn’t like her capabilities could ever be a secret anymore, but she had better things to do than let them get immortalized in song. …Again.

  Instead, Ranthia gracefully flitted through the dead goblins until she found the one specific bit she was looking for. Soon after, she wordlessly offered the head of the goblin [Leader] to the gruff Adventurer, who accepted it with a satisfied nod.

  “You mentioned hostages earlier. Where were these monsters nesting?” Ranthia asked.

  Thankfully, every Adventurer present knew exactly where the nest was and swiftly armed her with both direction and a recommended route. They could hold the ruined gate against any goblin survivors that might try to enter the city; she had more people to rescue.

  The goblins that had been left behind were few in number and most were unsuited to combat. The nastiest among them was a level 198 [Goblin War Curse-Caller – Miasma]/level 161 [Goblin War Food-Binder – Earth], but Ranthia seemed to shrug off every curse the goblin called and tore right through the foul bindings the beast tried to use. But there were no hostages to be found—just chewed up human bones left scattered around the goblins’ lairs like the remnants of a godsdamned feast. The so-called hostages that the goblins had held over the city had plainly been butchered long ago, well before the attack even began.

  Ranthia hated the savage, bestial creatures more than ever. Unfortunately, she was left with nothing but the cold solace that came from knowing she had eradicated another threat.

  If only she hadn’t been too late.

  Cleanup after a town’s defenses failed was always a morbid task. The deceased were gathered and laid out for the grim work of identifying those that perished and creating tallies of how many were lost. The survivors grieved, labored to restore some measure of sanity to the beleaguered town, or worked to prepare for an exodus—many planned to journey to a new city that they hoped would prove safer.

  Beyond the people, the city itself needed constant effort. There were still fires to be extinguished. Between the fires, the blood, and the defilement of the goblins, relatively few buildings were ready to be used. Worse, most of the town’s supplies had been destroyed or tainted.

  But there was enough.

  The community came together and supported one another. Humans were many things, but ultimately, they were adaptive. When truly backed into a corner, people naturally came together. For the sake of their home, they could be a community.

  Ranthia wanted—possibly needed—to help, but frustratingly few people were willing to accept any measure of assistance from her.

  “Let me help you with that.” Ranthia offered an elderly man that was struggling to drag a singed—but mostly intact—beam through the sodden ashes of what was once somebody’s home.

  “Oh, thank—oh. No, no, I’ve got this. You have done enough for us.” The man’s demeanor snapped from affable and grateful to the all-too-common chilly politeness she kept receiving. It was the same sort of treatment she had gotten from the woman that was trying to gather supplies for the town’s surviving babies. And it echoed the polite refusal she had received from the team that was breaking down several trees to rebuild the gates.

  It made no sense!

  When she was an Adventurer, people were thrilled on the occasions that she remained to help clean up after a job. Even when she was a Ranger, people were glad to have any assistance that they could offer. She had once been a part of the community too—not that she recognized many people.

  So what was different?

  Absent anything better to do, Ranthia spent a few days burning the goblins’ dens, so they could be sealed off safely. Others would have to handle actually sealing the tunnels—she didn’t have the Skills or classes needed to do it properly—but she was more than capable of hauling in things to burn and shoving the goblins’ junk and filth into piles. A little dry brush to make sure the piles would ignite and then she just needed to toss a few torches and make her escape before the smoke filled the old mines the goblins had made into their foul den.

  Between her efforts to do that—the goblins had spread out a lot—Ranthia made earnest efforts to try to locate Bex or her kid. None of the Adventurers in town knew her—Bex had plainly been retired for too long; few Adventurers stayed in one city for more than a few years. But when she tried to ask around town, she ran into the same cold behavior—few people were willing to speak to her beyond feigning some polite excuse for why they couldn’t speak to her.

  The whispers had already explained that mystery though.

  “Nothing human can be that level.”

  “She’s more of a monster than the goblins were.”

  “Gods, why won’t that Sentinel just leave?”

  They were afraid of her. The whispers stopped any time anyone knew she was in the vicinity, but her hearing was good. The whispers echoed across the town.

  It was hard to blame them though. The monsters may have destroyed their home, but she was the greater monster that annihilated them. At her level, she was closer to a force of nature—or perhaps an act of divinity—than a heroic human. And—no matter how much she hated to admit it—the fact that there were exactly zero [Bards] in town was working against her. Without some strung together ballad telling them that she was a savior, it was all too easy for the town to unite out of paranoid fear of the too-powerful outsider in their midst.

  After the last of the goblins’ taint had been set aflame, Ranthia decided to write a message to Bex. She left the scroll with the gruff Adventurer—as far as she was concerned, he was the de facto head of the Adventurer’s Guild—just in case her old comrade ever surfaced. There just wasn’t much else she could do.

  She was tired in a way that touched her mind, body, and soul. But her job was finished. With the survivors obviously uncomfortable with her continued presence, it was best to just move on. Especially since a Ranger team was rolling into town—finally.

  It was time for her to leave Sardonia behind. Most likely for good.

  She had no place there anymore. It wasn’t her home any longer.

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  Nozomi Matsuoka.

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