"Where am I supposed to keep all these?" Ben whined, pushing his way through the herd.

"Well it shouldn't be too hard to clear some land and create a pasture in the agriculture sector." Jared scratched his chin. "Layton, can you remind me again why you had to drop a herd of cows in the middle of our town?"

"It's Nick's fault." I said pointing an accusatory finger in his direction.

"Uhhh—hardly!" He clutched his chest as if injured.

"Maybe I can help here." Durkil said, raising his hand. "It all started when Nick became jealous of Layton's cow. Claiming his three goats were superior to this one cow."

He rested his hand on the black angus heifer he'd lugged through the mountains. "As ridiculous as the claims were, Layton took the bait and produced three more cows from his storage, prompting Nick to call Layton a bastard and vow to find twenty more goats. That was about when Layton started pulling cow after cow from his storage telling Nick 'bring all the goats in the world, I can keep going all day'."

"I mean, I'm not sure that's exactly—" I tried to defend myself.

"You said your cows would blot out the sun." Nick said, resting his hands on his hips.

With the cows wandering the busy streets I guess I could admit that maybe I'd gotten a tad carried away. But it wasn't like I could let Nick think goats could hold a candle to my cows. My role as faction leader wouldn't allow it!

There was a loud crash and we all looked to see one of the cows rummaging through a ruined hanging garden.

I grinned sheepishly.

Jared ran a hand over his face. "Ben, get some people and clean this up. Jessie should be able to help you plot out where the pasture will go."

Ben glared at me, and I wordlessly mouthed "I'm sorry."

Jared's attention settled on me. "Maybe we should bring our guests somewhere a little less crowded?"

***

Damon's smithy was occupied, he and the other dozen or so armorers were hard at work taking full advantage of the new armor molds provided through the system rewards. So Jared led us to his home instead.

The single room cabin that felt so impressive a month ago now seemed cramped and outdated. We sat around the cluttered table full of nails and string outlining the zoning plans for the growing town.

Gorff and Harold soaked it all in, politely observing each detail. Introductions were made and pleasantries exchanged before Jared ushered the previous faction leaders to take a seat.

It would be so easy for Jared to indulge in his title, use his advantages to live a much more luxurious life. Certainly he could've at least upgraded his home like so many others had in faction LM.

But to my extreme satisfaction, he spent all his time and effort providing for the needs of others first. It was qualities like this that reminded me just how lucky I was that wandered into my faction.

"So, what do you think?" He asked, waving a hand over the intricate web of string and impressively crafted scale buildings.

Harold leaned over while Gorff, who was every bit the stature of what you'd expect from a gnome, stood on his chair and rested his palms on the table. Jared immediately noticed the inconvenience his human sized table posed for the four foot tall Gnome.

"I hope you'll forgive us for now, Gorff, for not being more accommodating."

Gorff's lips curled revealing uniform square teeth that would give veneers a run for their money, beneath a long slightly droopy nose. His robe swayed as he dismissed the apology with a wave. The small gnome was some kind of spell user, as were many of the members in his faction of elder gnomes.

He spoke with a deep nasally voice. "It's no trouble, you've built to the needs of your faction so far."

Jared smiled approvingly.

"Hmmm" Harold eyed the table, propping his head up with his fist, elbow in hand.

"Something catch your eye, Harold?" I asked, following his gaze.

He jumped slightly. "Oh, yes, I uhh. Well I hope I'm not overstepping of course."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Jared laughed. "We brought you here for a reason. We intend to be clear about all our projects, what is it?"

Harold didn't seem very old. Maybe close to his thirties or forties like Jared, and he reminded me of him. I got the impression that Harold didn't miss much. Which was evident by how he'd followed events through the faction maps and leaderboards. It wasn't so much that he seemed like a schemer, but he was thoughtful.

"Well these plots, here." He pointed at the table where the interfaction teleporter was zoned, next to the training facilities. "Are these large buildings something from your old world?"

My eyes narrowed, was it just me, or Harold was fishing for something? I got the feeling that he might know that they weren't, but for whatever reason, didn't want to ask if they were a system reward.

Might as well get the information out there. "As a matter of fact. Those are system rewarded buildings we earned the blueprints for."

I watched him closely and for the briefest of moments, I caught a slight raise of the eyebrows. It wasn't much, but it was there.

"An interfaction teleporter, and a training facility to be exact."

Gorff's mouth dropped wide open, and this time Harold completely failed to hide his shock.

"Impossible." Gorff wheezed.

I shot Jared a questions glance.

He shrugged. "Apparently, not quite impossible. I can show you the blueprints in the system interface if that would help?"

He poked at the five by ten screen and in seconds the two blueprints appeared side by side.

"Impossible." Gorff repeated.

"Alright, we're going to need a little more, what's impossible?"

"There is no way your faction should have access to structures like these." Harold spoke slowly, choosing his words with care.

"Or, I mean, well…."

Harold struggled to force the words out.

"Come on, out with it." Jared urged.

"Well, our world is young, barely older than yours really." Harold's forehead creased. "Or, you know, in mana terms only just over two years."

He had a slow, meandering pace of speaking. It tested every ounce of my willpower not to interrupt and ask him to get a move on.

"As far as I know, and I could be wrong of course, only two factions have access to blueprints for such a teleporter, and I think, and again, I might be wrong, that happened very recently. So it is very surprising to me that a small, well not to be offensive of course, but a fledgling faction such as yours, has such blueprints."

I turned to Gorff, and he pointed at Harold. "Precisely."

That's why they were so surprised? They were stumped at the rate which we accessed a couple of random blueprints?

"I don't get it, what's the problem?"

The two looked at each other, baffled.

"It seems that we are ahead of our time." Jared suggested, with a shrug. "Maybe we can discuss this in more detail another time?"

"Ahead of your…you don't…well…fine. Yes, but I would very much like to discuss this more in detail later, with your permission of course."

Harold deflated, sinking into his chair.

"Hold on. I'm just a little confused, why is it such a big deal? It feels like there's something you're not saying."

Gorff shifted in his seat. "Well, let's just say, you might not want to run faster than your feet in this world."

I pursed my lips and exhaled slowly. "Gorff, Let's just say more. I'm really not great at reading between the lines."

"I meant no offense." He opened his hands. "Harold, what would you say the average level of beings on your planet was?"

"Well, there was a wide range of course. There were many fools like me who never leveled past ten, but then of course there were many over fifty and even the strongest who'd eclipsed level one hundred."

Only a few passed one hundred levels in two years? I know that wasn't his point, it's just that it seemed pretty low considering in just over two months, there were already people nearing level fifty.

"And yet your planet was just arriving at earning such knowledge as we've discussed? Layton, could you imagine your—our—faction competing with an army of people all over level seventy, led by someone over level one hundred?"

The pieces were starting to fall into place. I'd already seen how the system behaved so far, using levels and progress to determine what type of threats it would allow to challenge our faction. How would it view our progress if we began building structures that were reserved for factions like those on Harold's planet?

But how was that fair? It wasn't like we chose the blueprints it offered in system rewards.

"So wait. Are you saying that by having these blueprints the system already considers us at such a level? Or would we need to construct the buildings?" Jared asked a good question, and I waited for Gorff to clarify.

He looked between us and then to Harold. "That—is a good question. To be honest, I'm not really sure. It could be either, or a mixture of both."

"Well that's just great."

If what Gorff and Harold were saying was true—and in my opinion that was a big if—it wasn't just the levels and size of our faction that determined our potential threats. It was also how well our city progressed. But I was still skeptical.

With all due respect to our new members, they hardly seemed like they were privy to the best information available on their planet. What seemed more likely, was that Harold and Gorff pieced together rumors and events as they occurred and then disseminated the information accordingly.

"Basically, what I'm hearing is—by building our system awarded blueprints, we might just be opening our faction up to even greater threats than we've already faced?"

Jared shook his head. "Or…that by simply having them we already are open to those threats…"

"Right." I said pointing a finger gun at Jared.

"It's possible we're wrong." Harold shrugged. "All my knowledge is secondhand observation, and that's being generous."

I shared a look with Jared. "So, basically, if we decide to go through with our plans of building the big teleporter, we could basically be digging our own graves?"

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