When next Rafe woke up, he was a Burned blacksmith. Just one of millions of metalworkers the leadership had requisitioned to work on thousands of secret projects.

It turned out the last stand of the Earth Elemenoids had saved them. The Earth users had sent their golem, which Rafe believed had had an aura approaching the peak of the D grade, to the Ma'la kingdom. It had been an unstoppable force.

That was when the Burned had realised the Ma'la hadn't been exhausted as they had thought. The Ma'la had been hiding a reserve army even larger than the one that had been fighting the mud people.

Obviously they had planned to wash the Burned out of the way once the rest of the world was theirs. Now the Earth Elemenoids had bought time for the Burned to organise a capable counter.

It might have been done on purpose. Where had all the unaccounted Earth users and Air users gone? Primus was a gigantic world. It was an E grade planet. Was there some chance the rest of the planet's population was alive somewhere? Hiding?

Perhaps. But even his host who was just an ordinary blacksmith radiated such intense feelings of self loathing. They had made peace with their greatest enemy. Invaded the rest of their world. For what? To ensure their own safety?

Now they needed the mercy of the rest of the world to save even a fraction of their population.

The golem never made it to the Ma'la capital. It ran out of power. It had still destroyed huge swathes of the Ma'la's power.

The Ma'la did not rest. They needed a win to reassure their people. They needed to prove to their gods that they were the chosen race. And so they attacked.

But the Burned had taken their time to withdraw.

The war that resulted lasted a thousand years, even though the Ma'la were only fighting a small fraction of the Burned population. They did not know it. They thought they were fighting the full might of the Burned people.

Because the planet was made of water. So fire should have been the weakest element on this world, shouldn't it? It made sense they always seemed to be winning.

Rafe watched the war that everyone thought wouldn't end.

And then the journey started. There had been a warrior among the Burned. He had been such a warrior.

But he was injured. And who saved him, healed him, hid him from the Ma'la scouts? A young Ma'la boy.

The man returned to the forge, the Burned city where all the blacksmiths were kept. Creating more and more metallic tools to smite the water users.

Rafe's host had lived a long time. The life expectancy of someone approaching the peak of the E grade. He had somehow found himself sitting on a council watching over the kingdom.

The lost warrior told them his story. He said the people in the outskirts of the Ma'la world were as innocent as anyone else. They cared not for the war. They only wanted to survive.

The man looked familiar to Rafe. And not just his host. He looked like someone or something Rafe had seen before in this world. But he hadn't been close with any of the Burned he'd seen in the dungeon so far.

But where had he seen him? Maybe it was the smirk. Maybe it was the arrogance with which he spoke. Or that all knowing gleam in his eyes.

'Ding' People of Primus 509, do not be scared. This is the system that unites the whole multiverse.

The notification never got far. There were montages of the smirking Burned war hero. For an instant, it seemed the Burned were going to win the war when the system first arrived.

Then a man approached him. A man with aquamarine hair. The same hair the Ma'la apprentice he'd picked up had.

Rafe did not know what happened after that, but the Ma'la had won. The rest was history. How many years ago had the system arrived? The war had ended with the advent of the system.

After the hero was killed, a grand ritual was enacted. The city was flooded first. Still, the Burned weathered the wrath of the storm god. Rafe's host was there.

He was there when the hero of the Ma'la stormed into the forge. He was there when everyone who was left there, sixteen and over, was drowned. They only spared the children. The unlucky children who stayed so that the rest could live. The Ma'la were very arrogant, thinking they'd conquered the whole world.

****

Somehow, Helare won the boy over. Maybe that was why Filoria couldn't stand her so-called friend. She'd always had everything easy.

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Be born into the perfect bloodline, check. Have a legendary affinity level, check. Be naturally charming, check. Was it any wonder most of her siblings preferred she die first, even if she was the youngest?

Filoria didn't know how it happened. All she knew was that after one week, the impressive sight had become somewhat infuriating. With every pound of his hammer, she could feel a bunch of insights aligning, being perfected, growing.

It was more annoying that she could feel her insight into penetration - an offshoot of sharpness - resonating with one of the boy's insights. Why did a blacksmith even need sharpness? The swords he made were sharp. Sharper than normal, but they were nothing special.

Anyway Filoria had gotten tired of the whole watching the special blacksmith gig. So she had enlisted to join a team raiding the once again spawning monsters.

They had already defeated this dungeon instance. Subjugated the dungeon boss and everything. Why it was spawning monsters again, no one could tell. And there were way too many variations of monsters.

Deufont was a dungeon the Ma'la royal army had used for training recruits for hundreds, no, thousands of years before the system came.

And then the system came. Two champions had been selected, and the world had changed forever.

One reason the Burned had been very strong was their metals and tools. They were the most reliable to produce swords, gardening tools, jewels and a lot of important things.

There were crafters among the water. But there had been no metal workers. That was how the world worked. The water filled world needed the Ma'la to communicate with the sapients of the sea and to procure the most abundant source of food.

The Earth users would tend the land and build. The royal palace, the last Sky piercing tower, was built by members of the Earth and Burned tribes working together hundreds of years ago. Ice did not make for a perfect home, especially since tolerance to the cold reduced with reduction in water affinity. Someone like Filoria could not survive living in an igloo indefinitely.

The air duelers had to care for those natural phenomenon that were flying islands. And they protected the world from the wild Essence of the skies. They hadn't known before. They hadn't known how wild their own skies were.

Big and leathery beasts with stinking blood stained teeth and meaty. They swooped down on their cities in those initial phases after the air people had all but been chased to the darkest recesses of the world.

And it was the Burned who came to their aid once again, supplying large wall mounted crossbows.

Why had the damn king thought it a good idea to slaughter them to extinction after the duel of champions? When they sent out expeditions to mine the dungeons, including the new ones the system had come with, they only had orange haired children for the metal work.

Children who claimed they could not work metal.

Deufont was one of the oldest dungeons in the world. But it had changed. The coming of the system had changed it somehow. All the other dungeons had apparently changed, but many of the others being monitored were exclusively E grade dungeons.

Their world only had one adjustable dungeon. Apparently called a tiered dungeon according to Hestus the system merchant.

The best tiered dungeons consistently set themselves to the level of the strongest user who entered an instance. Those were either tier ten or five, depending on if they had time dilation and if they had a special challenge. Their one tiered dungeon was a tier three. It could set itself to the level of the weakest user or the strongest, or an average. It did not contain any time dilation whatsoever.

Deufont was an F grade dungeon. It was a little tiered, tier one. It could adjust itself to the strongest person in the party, but it more often than not just sent out peak F grade beasts.

Which was why the raids were important. Filoria was a little curious about the changes. But they were not happening only here. The fact that there were more changes in Deufont than in other dungeons registered like some kind of loud noise in the back of her head.

Anyway, when they returned to the camp, Filoria had gone out to find Helare. Somehow, she hadn't even asked the ministers or servants milling about. She had just showered, changed, and then walked all the way to the edge of the camp.

And she had seen them laughing together about something. It was exceedingly strange.

For one thing, the boy had always been salty. He had never engaged Helare's flirting even before she'd pissed him off. And after she'd pissed him off, it was like she didn't exist.

Filoria could not understand it. Although, when she thought about it, there had been one thing that could cause a difference these last few days.

She hadn't been there.

The boy hated her. And she wasn't his biggest fan either. But at least she'd tried to keep her distance since he'd come here. She was aware it was impossible for someone whose brain had leaked that much juice to survive. Let alone still be sane. Yet there he was. Alive. A prodigious blacksmith as well.

As she watched, he finished the blade he was working on. After he'd finished dousing and cooling it, he held it aloft and studied it. It was a the blade of a great sword. Double edged, and still unadorned but it looked beautiful somehow. Maybe it was the way it caught the light. Something told her her father would love the thing.

"Your father would love that," a crusty and very familiar voice said from beside her. She hadn't even heard the old man appear.

The blacksmith boy was frowning at the beautiful blade he'd made. Helare said something peppy to him. He scowled at her and swung the sword with a practiced efficiency Filoria had never seen. Even from her father.

The boy turned to Helare to say something.

"See, the balance is still lacking toward the tip," Collab Seawhisperer said.

Filoria startled and turned to the old man. He was an E grade near the peak. Of course he'd be able to hear something from such a distance.

"Did you notice his perfect basic swing?" her old trainer, her father's trainer, asked.

She could only nod, somehow not believing it. Maybe it was time she stopped believing the boy a weakling in need of protection.

"I sensed his impressive insights. Thought I'd come check out who it was," the old man said. "Of course no child of Ma'la could have this much metal in their soul. I thought maybe there was a talented fire user we'd missed during the tribal wars coming to take revenge on us. Alas, it was someone from outside our world."

Filoria was suspicious for some reason. Collab never took this much interest in anyone unless he was hoping for something.

"You want to train him?" she asked, not managing to filter the incredulity from her voice.

The old man stared at the boy who was getting ready to work on another sword.

"He has been heard to say he cannot use swords. He can use his hands, spears, hammers even. He can use everything but swords."

"What?!" Clearly she'd heard wrong. "He can't make anything but swords, yet they are the only weapon he cannot use? With such a perfect swing?"

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