Snow crunched and bare branches broke as a small troop of goblins trudged along the mountain range. Their eyes peeled for any suspicious movements, their ears twitching at every sound as they guarded the perimeter of their Lord's stronghold.

Lord. Not a chief, horde leader, or raid captain, but lord. Morbash still couldn't believe that such a powerful goblin lived among them today. The oral histories spoke of ancestors of the Sixth Step and beyond, but that was in the distant past. Such a goblin had not lived since the Age of the Ancestors for the lesser races were too afraid of the power the People would wield should a leader rise again.

They were right to fear the People. Morbash stooped to pick up a stone, crushing it to powder as he marveled at his newfound strength. He was merely on the First Step, far from his first minor ascension, but the power and vitality coursing through him easily outshone that of the Third Step elders of his clan. Or at least, their strength before the Clan of Mountain Stones joined with the Lord of the Peaks.

When the Lord's envoys came to their village bearing gifts of good steel born by First and Second Step warriors that far outstripped their elites in strength, if not in skill, the Elders rushed into council. It only took a single evening's discussion for the Elders to bow their heads and join the Lord of the Peaks. The strength of such a unity was enough to lift the Clan out of squalor. Their eldest regained their youth and a strength exceeding that of their Primes, their elite warriors the strength to best the denizens of the Deeper Forest. Even the children ran about with a speed only seen before amongst scouts at the peak of the First Step.

Looking at the powdery dust that was all that remained of the stone, Morbash grinned to himself. Yes, the Lord of the Peaks granted all of the People that joined him immense strength. Strength that they would use to bring glory to the ancestors and show the Lessers their place.

"But sir you need to attend to Lord Jaquoff immediately! He demands the IAG honor—Hey!" The sniveling rat of a man's face as Galimund pushed him aside to get to his office would've been amusing at any other time, but right now he was just tired. Ignoring the man's squeaking protests, Galimund slammed the door to his office shut, his Platinum level strength rattling the stout door and reinforced frame of the building.

In the blessed silence of his array protected office Galimund finally started to relax. Releasing the enchanted buckles that kept his armor firmly held to his muscular frame, Galimund began to strip out of his mission gear. Piece by piece the Vice Leader put his gear away on a specially constructed armor stand that would slowly clean and repair the armor. He'd had to sacrifice the self-repair and cleaning enchantments so commonly used by most to get the level of protection he wanted from his gear, but a cleverly enchanted but expensive armor stand helped.

Freed from the weight of his armor, the man took a quick shower in his personal washroom, shedding pounds of grime from several days of fighting deep in the Forest's outskirts before he returned to his office. Refreshed, Galimund glanced at the bed tucked into the corner of his office for a few seconds. Rest had been vanishingly rare the past few days and his bed called to him, singing a siren's call that he should rest his weary bones. He nearly succumbed.

Sighing, Galimund shook the exhaustion from his mind as his eyes landed on the piles of paperwork on his desk he knew was waiting for his attention. Pulling a pill out of his storage ring, he downed it in a single smooth motion, shuddering as the alchemical stamina pill bought him just a bit more time.

The pill's energy wouldn't last him long, and he'd be paying for the decision the next day, but tackling some of the work now would at least give him some more breathing room. Sitting heavily at his desk, he began to go through the piles of reports on his desk, quickly sorting them between urgent tasks and things that could wait. There were more of the former than he wished.

Vice Leader Galimund of the Forest's Edge Chapter of the International Adventurer's Guild was not having a good week. With all of the casualties amongst both his adventurers and his students at the Academy, cancelling the remainder of the Winter Expedition seemed like a good idea at the time. But just because he ordered the Expedition to end early didn't mean the work vanished. It just meant that they needed to call in the stronger members of the Guild.

The Guild's Platinum and Gold rankers had been recalled where they could be, with low priority contracts paused or cancelled while mandatory deployment contracts were issued. Even with those steps though, he didn't have enough adventurers to complete the necessary culling of the shortened Winter Expedition. He and the other chapter officers had even taken to doing all the high priority missions they could to fill the gaps in their ranks. But it still wasn't enough. No matter how they spread things out, they were short handed.

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Making matters worse were the number of complaints they were receiving, especially from the damnable nobles. Having a high ranker or two as staff and bodyguards were a sign of wealth and status. While most noble families, cities, and kingdoms trained their own rankers, the IAG was usually the largest group of high rankers, so it wasn't uncommon for nobles to look to the Guild for experts to contract for a period of time. Those nobles hadn't taken kindly to losing their status symbols as evidenced by the mountain of low priority messages and reports he threw to the side with a scowl.

Baron Fitzgerald demanded the return of the Platinum ranked IAG mage that tutored his children in magic. Count Jurin wanted the Gold ranked team that guarded his merchant convoys. Marchioness Landry her warrior that she selected more for his looks and prowess in bed than for his prowess with a sword. Unfortunately for the Marchioness, Gunther was equally a master of both his swords, and Galimund had need of the larger one. The whole city did. Jurin's convoy of spices would have to make due without Fiore's scouting and Flavia's healing, and Fitzgerald would have to wait or find a new high mage to tutor his entitled brats.

Though he doubted Kora would return. He knew that Kora had been secretly grateful to go back into the Forest and away from the man. She'd made it no secret that she was looking for a way out of the contract with a noble who seemed to care more about ogling her ass than the quality of his childrens' education.

Adding the nobles' messages to the growing pile of issues he planned to ignore, Galimund picked up the next document in his stack. A letter from the Academy requesting a new Advisor to replace Arwen Swiftwind.

It'd never made sense to him why the Guild Leader and the Academy kept insisting he be assigned there, but his death meant he could fill the open role with anyone he wished. Maybe he'd assign Kora to replace Arwen. She was an experienced adventurer, a powerful mage, and familiar with educating children. She'd be a perfect Advisor, unlike the dead bastard Arwen. Most importantly, she was someone he could trust. No one who served in the IAG's anti-incursion teams would betray another adventurer or the Guild.

Galimund frowned as he remembered the man's reported death. As frustrating and suspicious as the artificer and array specialist had been, he'd been truly talented at what he did and the city was that much more at risk with his death. His weapons and arrays were force multipliers after all. His skills there would be missed, even if Galimund was glad the rest of him was gone.

Worse than the loss of the elf though was how he met his demise. Brava and Ghorro had reported the elf killed by a Gold ranked horde leader as some kind of sacrifice to tear open a portal that ate mana, and the pressure coming off of it had been dangerous enough that they chose to evacuate the students immediately instead of staying to fight or even trying to recover Arwen's body and the powerful blueprints and weapons he doubt had in his storage rings.

He didn't fault their decision. That portal could only be the incursion Lana found traces of when she rescued them. Incursions weren't common knowledge on this continent, but both he and Lana had seen them. Fought against abominations the very sight of which could make people insane.

The one bright spot in his week had been that the incursion was already sealed when he and Lana returned with the Guild's other elites.

But even that just added to his problems. The mysterious catkin woman Brava and Ghorro reported must have been involved in the sealing, but even if she was reportedly a Platinum ranker like those two suspected, even the lowest level incursion would be too much for a single person to handle. That the only corpses they'd found were warped goblins and voidlings meant whoever sealed it managed it without casualties, or at the very least they took their comrades' bodies with them. That meant there was at least a small group active in the area with knowledge of incursions and the ability to deal with them. And he had no idea who they were.

Were they allies… or enemies?

Shaking his head, Galimund pushed the thought to the side for the moment. Another powerful group operating in the area was a concern, but until they made a hostile move against the guild, his students, or the city, he couldn't afford to waste time chasing after ghosts. At least not powerful ones. Setting the request for a new Advisor to the side, Galimund started skimming a pair of transfer requests.

Normally such requests wouldn't ever reach his desk, but several details had his hackles rising in suspicion. A pair of beastkin women, one catkin and the other rabbitkin. Rare humanoids on this continent. A battlemage and a healer, respectively, and both at Peak Gold. Normally valuable members to have, but a second high ranking catkin woman in the area in less than a week was suspicious. His gut was telling him she wasn't a Peak Gold no matter what the paperwork said.

Reading on, his frown only deepened as he saw that he wouldn't even be able to assign them any contracts. Both had already been listed as Professors at the Academy and temporary substitutes for the vacant Advisor position. He didn't appreciate the Academy messing with Guild assignments.

Eyeing the request he'd just set aside as low priority, he pulled out a blank sheet of paper and started penning a reply to Sean's letter. As much as he needed Kora out in the field, he feared there might be a more insidious enemy already in the walls.

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