Luke and Allison arrived at the second fortress, traveling by the quickest route, the river. The moment they stepped ashore, it became painfully clear why Allison preferred staying with him in the cavern. Within minutes, people were approaching from every direction, offering gifts, food, or words of gratitude. To them, she was practically a celebrity.

While she handled the crowd with her usual calm composure, Luke slipped away, only to see someone cutting through the sea of people, waving at him. Mason.

"Hey, Luke! Been looking for you for days," Mason called out. "I need your opinion on something. It's about your new bow."

Luke followed him toward the open field. Nearby, the rhythmic clang of hammer against steel echoed in the air. Ronan, hard at work forging a sword.

"Well, look who decided to show up," a familiar female voice teased.

Eleanor sat at a nearby table, a monocle perched on her eye as she examined several arrowheads. The sharp glint of metal caught the light with every turn of her hand.

"I've been in the same place as always. You guys are the ones who've been busy," Luke replied.

"Someone's got to keep things running," she said with a small laugh, adjusting her monocle. Or rather, her hair adjusted it, thin strands shifting on their own, pushing it back into place.

"Interesting trick," Luke noted.

"It helps," she said, brushing a stray lock behind her ear. "When I'm working on delicate fletching or carving an arrowhead, the strands act like extra hands. I can grip, twist, or hold small tools without putting anything down."

Mason appeared again, pulling something from a storage ring, a blur of weapons and materials spilling out as he organized them.

"Here, Luke," Eleanor said, handing him a set of arrows.

[Minotaur Tooth Arrow (Uncommon)]: An arrow with a reinforced shaft and a tip carved from the tooth of a slain minotaur. The dense, jagged material retains traces of the creature's raw strength, delivering crushing impact and savage precision against armored foes.

Then another.

[Reinforced Iron Arrow (Uncommon)]: A shaft of durable wood tipped with reinforced iron, built to pierce armor and endure heavy impacts. Reliable, balanced, and brutally effective against enemies with strong defenses.

From her own storage item, Eleanor pulled out dozens more, neatly stacked and gleaming.

"I've been working like a madwoman making arrows all day," she said, exhaling. "And on top of that, I've got to train half the camp on how to actually shoot them."

"You made all these?" Luke asked, genuinely impressed.

"Almost," she said with a proud grin. "I need blacksmiths to forge the special tips, iron, enchanted cores, things like that. Then I need artisans to shape materials like monster teeth. And artificers to handle enchantments. I just pull it all together at the end. Otherwise, the best I could do would be wood or stone-tipped arrows."

It was remarkable how smoothly they were all working in sync now.

Across the way, Ronan activated his Epic blacksmithing skill, his skin taking on a metallic sheen. He pulled something red-hot from the forge with bare hands and dunked it into a barrel of water. Steam hissed violently.

"A cannonball?" Luke asked.

"One of many," Ronan replied with a grin. "The cannonball was made using the power of a fire salamander's core."

He gestured toward a wooden barrel filled with water, several glowing cannonballs resting inside.

"He's been at it day and night," Eleanor added.

"And thanks to you," Ronan said, glancing up from his work. "The map of the capital's caves led us to a ton of ore deposits."

Mason returned, wiping sweat from his forehead. "And the monsters too. It's been a perfect cycle. Treasurers harvest the corpses for materials and earn profession points. Artisans refine hides and furs, artificers enchant them, and blacksmiths turn it all into weapons. Everyone earns experience in their own craft. We're building a real production chain here, maximizing every bit of progress we can."

"Alright, system nerd, that's enough," Eleanor said, rubbing her temple. "Just hearing about all that gives me a headache."

Everything had to be handled with precision. No one could simply cut open a monster and take whatever they wanted. Every step needed to be calculated so that as many people as possible could gain profession experience from it.

Mason handed Luke two bows. They were slightly larger than his old one, sturdier too, solid but with a smooth, controlled flex. One was a deep forest green, the other jet black.

Luke used Identify.

[Orc Forest Bow (Rare)]: Crafted from the sturdy wood of trees torn from the Orc Lord's territory. The material is remarkably resilient, able to withstand and channel magical energy with greater stability. Its deep green hue serves as a constant reminder of the forest it came from, and the monsters that once roamed beneath its canopy.

[Lightweight (Common)]: Though forged from dense and rugged wood, a special enchantment makes the bow significantly lighter and easier to handle.

[Heavyweight (Uncommon)]: Arrows fired from this bow gain increased mass, striking with greater impact and delivering heavier damage.

Luke let out a low whistle. It was clear this wasn't just craftsmanship, it was alchemy through collaboration. They had taken the raw essence of the material itself and shaped it into something that channeled magic through design, just as Luke did when brewing potions.

He inspected the second bow.

[Midnight Forest Bow (Rare)]:

This bow was crafted from a rare wood taken from the dark trees that grow within the forest surrounding the Capital of the Midnight Kingdom. These ancient trees stood for millennia, and now, at last, they find purpose in the hands of a skilled archer.

[Midnight's Blessing (Rare)]: Midnight marks the peak of the night, and arrows fired from this bow grow stronger under its darkness.

[Guiding Breeze (Common)]: Arrows released from this bow travel farther than normal, as if carried by a breeze of their own making.

All three of them waited, watching Luke as he examined both weapons in silence.

"You sure I can't take both?" he asked, half-joking.

"If only," Mason replied. "These took a ridiculous amount of resources. We burned through multiple beast cores just to get these two right. We made others of the same model, but only these came out with that perfect combination of enchantments. Most of the rest just have the base Rare-tier bonus and nothing else."

Luke understood. These were the best of the batch, too valuable to hoard. It would make more sense for another archer to wield the spare during the war.

"I'll take the Midnight Bow," he said.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"I knew it," Eleanor said, smirking. "I win the bet."

Ronan sighed. "I figured he'd go with the orc one."

"Please," Eleanor scoffed. "Black has style."

Luke handed the green bow back to Mason. "Actually, it's symbolic. I plan to use this one to kill the Midnight King."

The three of them exchanged glances.

"In that case," Mason said, grinning, "I win the other bet."

Luke frowned. "And what exactly did you win?"

"Gold, obviously."

They all burst into laughter, except Luke, who was still lost.

"When it happens, you'll get it," Eleanor said.

Luke slung the new bow across his back, feeling its weight settle comfortably. He hadn't even stored it yet, it just felt right there.

"The bowstring's reinforced too," Mason added. "Won't snap, even under full charge."

As they walked, Luke noticed Mason storing the orc bow inside the pocket dimension of his ring.

"Any chance you could, you know, give me a few more bows?" Luke asked. "Just in case of an emergency."

"Making a rare-tier bow isn't exactly easy," Mason replied. "The more we can distribute, the better. Still, you're our ace in the hole, leaving you with only one weapon would be stupid. But that raises another question: do we really let you hoard gear in your storage that could save someone's life out there?"

Luke arched a brow. "And what solution did you geniuses come up with?"

Eleanor stepped in beside him as they walked. "Simple. You use that bow only when it's time to kill the Midnight King. You already fight primarily with your kukris. We're not expecting you to use the bow in any other battle, our goal is to keep you out of most of them anyway."

Luke held the bow again, running his fingers along its smooth, dark frame. It felt heavier now, not in weight but in meaning. Part of him wished he could finish the fight with Angelica's bow instead, but if that weapon broke, it would be gone forever. And that bow carried too many memories to risk losing.

As they approached the fortress, his mind was already turning over the coming battle, how he would kill the Midnight King. A high-damage bow, enhanced with the full force of Demonic Predator's Hands and his strongest Mana Infusion. There was just one final piece missing.

"If I give you the Beast Lord's fang, can you make an arrow out of it?" he asked.

"Of course," Eleanor said instantly. "I was going to ask for it anyway. Leave it to me, I'll find the best wood available."

"This'll be our next big project," Mason added, grinning. "Right, Ronan?"

"As long as the fang doesn't try to kill us when we touch it," Ronan muttered.

"It's completely inert. No venom left," Luke assured them.

They crossed through the gate and entered the inner walls of the fortress.

"We'll need a full team," Ronan said. "The best of every trade. If we want that arrow to be as strong and as enchanted as possible."

As the three of them launched into an excited debate about materials, forging temperatures, and enchantment patterns, Luke realized something. They weren't just crafters or engineers anymore. They were artists lost in their own world, one built from steel, wood, and dreams of impossible weapons.

***

Luke wandered through the fortress, leaving the trio of craftsmen still arguing over the best way to forge the arrow. When he reached the door to the meeting hall, he found someone familiar waiting there.

"Well, if it isn't Cinderella," Evangeline said, looking thoroughly exhausted. "I was actually considering signing up for duty in your little cave retreat. Sounds like a vacation compared to this."

Her arms were full of papers, reports, letters, maps. No one in the fortress worked harder than she did, mostly thanks to her crow familiar. Through it, she could send messages across all three fortresses and to other key figures scattered throughout the tutorial. There were teams logging timber from the orc forests, others fortifying the war site, leaders managing supplies from the mines, and even a group digging through the old ant tunnels, where Marshall had once found the Queen Ant's nest.

Evangeline spent nearly every waking hour in the second fortress, reading, sorting, and dictating letters for Jerry to deliver.

A flutter of wings drew his attention, two crows landed beside her.

"Jerry!" they both croaked in perfect unison.

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. More work," Evangeline muttered, rolling her eyes.

The two birds shimmered faintly, their forms merging back into one. Jerry had evolved recently, advancing from Rank F to Rank E after gorging himself on the monster cores Luke and his group had collected.

"Great," Luke said dryly. "Now there are two of that idiot bird."

"I owe that to you," Evangeline shot back with a smirk. "Your little leveling vacation paid off. Jerry's stomach thanks you."

Unlike the rest of them, whose evolutions required meeting complex conditions, Jerry only needed to devour enough Rank E monster cores. Before the capital, that had been nearly impossible, everything in the first area of the tutorial was Rank F at best, aside from the Warden Captain. But in the capital, monsters above level 50 were everywhere. The same cores used for forging gear also served as fuel for Jerry's gluttony.

She also said it could reach Rank D if it devoured more monster cores of that level, but that wasn't possible, since there were no monsters above level 99 in the tutorial, which, in a way, was a good thing.

Now, at Rank E, Jerry was larger, his feathers darker, and apparently capable of splitting into two bodies.

"Looks like we were the last ones to arrive," Eleanor said as Quinn opened the door for them.

Inside, the meeting hall buzzed with conversation. Commanders, strategists, and specialists filled the room, their discussions overlapping like the hum of machinery. The walls were lined with sketches of weapons, supply routes, and tactical formations. Coordinating a war effort for eighteen hundred people required an army of planners, and even the healers had their own logistical diagrams pinned up.

At the center of the room stood a massive round table, its surface dominated by a detailed map of the battlefield. Small handcrafted models represented fortresses, terrain, and troop positions, even a miniature stone replica of the enemy's castle.

"Well, well, if it isn't my favorite investment," came a familiar voice.

Erza Grimhart approached, draped in a crimson dress that was every bit as lethal as her smile. She had always dressed like that, a predator who knew exactly the effect she had.

"Erza," Luke greeted, taking a seat.

She slid into the chair beside him, crossing one leg over the other with casual elegance, a faint gleam of amusement in her eyes.

"Anne's been really enjoying spending time with Charlie. I knew they'd make great friends. Wouldn't it be fun if you happened to join my faction and let them become best friends?" Erza said.

Allison appeared and stepped closer. "No recruitment attempts, remember? We agreed the tutorial is neutral ground. Besides, you already have your own little troop of attendants."

"Said the woman who parades around with a small army wearing her kingdom's sigil," Erza returned.

"They volunteered and made the gear themselves. You know I would never do something like that," Allison replied, eyes cool.

Erza rested a hand on her chin. "I know, but how did the fools in modern society manage to copy your house's emblem so precisely? That's odd. Tell me, besides the two of us, is any other noble here doing something that looks dangerously close to taking sides in this tutorial?"

Her gaze swung toward Mason. For a heartbeat he looked uneasy.

"Look, I'm neutral here," Mason said quickly. "They wanted the emblem on their armor; I just supplied the design. It would have been disrespectful to let it be done poorly."

Erza looked up as if pretending to ponder. "Maybe I should punish your family for this insolence when we return. Some light torture seems like a fitting sentence."

"L-lady Erza?" Mason stammered.

Eleanor, Ronan and Evangeline turned toward him, faces tight with tension.

"It's a joke," Erza said, opening a fan and fanning herself. "You lot need to learn to laugh."

The room had livened, then gradually quieted. The door closed and conversations dwindled into murmurs that eventually stopped altogether.

"You're about to see something interesting, assassin," Erza whispered to Luke.

A knock sounded at the door. Another group filed in and Luke blinked, puzzled; he had thought they were the last arrivals. This new group was not military, as far as he could tell. Ordinary people entered, people he recognized—Eddie, Layla's father and the foreman at the lumberyard among them.

The door shut again. Luke felt the silence settle: someone had cast a barrier spell to muffle sound. Nothing spoken within that room would be heard outside.

Allison halted in the center by the great round wooden table. Erza rose from her chair and took her place beside her. The place fell utterly silent, every eye fixed on the two women.

"You are gathered here because you are among the most influential figures in the tutorial," Erza Grimhart began. "We have military commanders, merchants, guild leaders, tavern owners, neighborhood heads, small faction leaders, former allies, and enemies."

"Does everyone here have the main-quest notification open?" she asked.

It was the notification tied to the king's statue.

Luke understood the plan: they were going to reveal the final mission to everyone, including the six-hour deadline to end the war. Until now, only those who had approached the mechanism knew. Even though many had access to the fortress, the site of the third mechanism had been restricted. His question, until that moment, had been how they intended to tell everyone that triggering the third mechanism would mean a single inexorable rule: once the war began, six hours later anyone still in the tutorial would die—win or lose.

"I'll be blunt," Erza said. "The moment the war starts, if we do not reach the castle within six hours, everyone still in the tutorial will be dead."

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