When they had set out as a group to take down the cavern dog nest, Alan had not been expecting things to end this way. He had hoped for maybe a little action to test himself against another opponent, but the main point was to get some intel on the group of Corellians. Before pulling the trigger on revealing himself, Alan had wanted to get a better idea of what they were capable of.

Instead the cunning beasts they had come to eliminate had set an ambush for them, and he had been forced to reveal himself. Lyonel had been moments away from dying and the other two, Gerry and Samson, had been barely holding on, and the addition of the dogs who had been savaging Lyonel would have likely overwhelmed them. Since Alan was unwilling to abandon his plans for their assistance, he had been forced to reveal himself early.

After killing all of the dogs attacking Lyonel, and partially healing him, relieving the pressure on the two mages had been rather simple. After things had calmed down, he had been forced to give them at least some explanation. With him having to shout directions, they already realized that he had been pretending to be a mute, so they were somewhat distrustful.

Alan quickly came clean about being another recruit in the trial, but told them that he was now on his own. It hadn't been explicitly stated, but he had heavily implied that the rest of his party was dead. He had thanked them for helping him in the village and shared that he was looking for allies. By the end of his confession they were comfortable enough with him that he was able to cast Healer's Mark on all of them, and then try out his spell Healing Waters. It worked just as advertised and with one casting and a tip of his canteen, Alan had fully healed the rest of Lyonel's injuries.

After that the group dealt with the fact that Hector was still missing. The beast people assumed that he had been killed and when they walked to the burrow and could find no trace of their scout, they figured the dogs must have dragged his body inside for food. Alan, however, had been able to find some of Hector's tracks and could tell that he had run off, but the signs also pointed to him being followed by a substantial pack of the dogs, and so he didn't share what he had discovered. No point getting their hopes up only for them to find out later that he had simply died somewhere else.

No man left behind was an important ideal to Alan, but there were a few things to offset that. First, he was a squad of one at the moment, Hector wasn't truly on his team. That felt like a shallow justification, but along with the second issue it was enough to soothe his conscience. With the number of enemies that had been chasing him, Hector was almost certainly dead. It had taken them long enough to deal with their own stuff that whatever was going to happen with Hector had most likely already happened. Also, with so many dogs out of the cavern for the moment, this could be their chance to hit the nest's boss. Afterwards he could help them find their fallen party member.

Still traumatized from being literally eaten alive, Lyonel had no trouble allowing Alan to take charge. They had to enter the burrow one at a time due to the smallish opening, but then they formed up two by two with Lyonel and himself in the lead. He knew that Gerry had trouble seeing in the dark, so he cast a low powered light spell on his shield. It would attract attention from any enemies in the tunnel, but the dogs would probably be able to smell them long before they noticed the light.

The first few hundred meters were easy, nothing poked its head out. After that they had to pay for every step with blood. Luckily the dogs seemed willing to make those payments for them. It was nice having others to fight with him. Whereas Alan would have been forced to use a kind of berserker-whirlwind style to move through the dogs to prevent himself from being slowed and then piled on, the group were instead able to form a mini-shield wall and push their opponents back.

Gerry and Samson standing behind them were also able to send spells into the back ranks of the pack which took some of the pressure off as well. Alan saved his own spells for any of the larger dogs. The first few minutes were hot work, but the cavern dogs hadn't been able to put any real pressure on them. Then the beasts got desperate and started trying to jump past the frontliners or to crush them under a concerted charge.

Neither method was all that effective, but it did cause the two mages to have to get a little more hands on. Samson even took out his axe once and cleaved a dog's head in two. They continued pushing forward and Alan estimated that they killed over a hundred of the dogs. This was a vast difference in numbers from his experience with the salamanders, however, that quest had only been worth some money while this nest was supposed to reward a special weapon.

It seemed like they were nearing the main cavern because the dogs were getting more desperate, but then from a side tunnel he had seen a spear flicker out, wounding some of the dogs waiting their turn. After discovering that it was Hector and that he was alive, the rest of the group was over the moon. Alan was also relieved, because despite his internal justifications, he had not felt good about not following the ferret man's tracks to see if they could have saved him.

Once they made their way to the main cavern, they found the nest proper. The remaining guards were here as well as some of the pups. There was also a giant bloated version of the beasts in the center. Alan used identify.

Beast: Cavern Dog Broodqueen (Rare) level 13, threat: minuscule. The danger from this beast is not its teeth or claws, but its uterus. Capable of having litters of up to twenty pups at a time, as long as it is fed it can create an entire colony of cavern dogs. Not only that, but it is able to impregnate itself. This Queen truly needs no man.

That was a nice bit of flavor, but it was interesting that the threat level was so low. After a moment he realized that the thing couldn't even move properly, it truly was no threat itself. The only danger would be from the dogs that it birthed, and as their group had demonstrated, they were really not an issue, as long as they couldn't surround their prey at least.

Having practiced their coordination in the tunnels, it was a simple matter to kill all of the dogs left, including the Broodqueen. Lyonel got the final hit on her, smashing her skull in. Alan had briefly thought of trying to save one of the puppies to see if he could raise it like Two Socks, but they had all been killed before he could bring up the idea. After they had eliminated the threats, it was a simple matter of clean-up and looting. Hector and Gerry were the ones tasked with collecting the flowers from the ceiling. He wasn't sure exactly what the plants did, but Alan assumed they were similar to the fire moss he had found in the salamander nest. His herbology didn't kick in, but he also hadn't gotten a good look at them before they were stored away.

On the way out they actually filled their storage items completely with the dead dogs. Alan placed a few in his nipple ring, but after filling up his pouch he didn't want to go overboard since it would reveal that he had other devices he had been hiding from them. He was taking baby steps when it came to revealing his deceptions. Also, they had still managed to store over a hundred of the corpses so it really shouldn't be an issue that they left a few more behind.

When Lyonel spoke up about waiting to talk, Alan was thankful. This would give him more time to get his speech ready. Honestly he didn't think it would be too hard to convince them to join him, but emotions get twisted when people feel they've been lied to. And they had been lied to, there was no way around that.

The original plan was to head back to camp, but after Hector pointed out how filthy everyone was, they changed their course and made for the river that ran by the village. The scout told them about another river he had discovered, but it was near the boundary and there might still be some dogs there. They weren't threatened by them, but everyone was ready to be done fighting for the time being.

After arriving at the river, they waded into the water and started scrubbing. Alan was thankful that he wasn't covered in fur, because they were having a terrible time getting everything washed out. He eventually took pity on them and offered some of the soap he had been hoarding.

Not only would it get the job done faster, but it seemed to make a good impression on his hopefully soon-to-be allies. Alan had finished cleaning himself off with just the sand from the riverbed. He then moved on to his clothes and armor while the Corellians still scrubbed with his soap. His shirt was self-repairing and cleaning, but the rest of his clothes needed scrubbing as well. If he was ever able to custom order his gear, the self-cleaning feature was going on everything.

The others didn't have towels and Alan didn't feel comfortable trying to use heat energy to dry off another person, so he didn't even offer. Instead, they all sat on the grass next to the river and let the rising sun slowly dry them off. Lyonel had suggested waiting to have The Conversation until back at the camp, but this was a fairly safe area and they would have to spend some time here, especially Hector who had the thickest fur of the group. There was no point putting it off any longer.

After everyone had settled into a comfortable position, Alan got things started. "So, my real name isn't Pebble, and I am also competing in the tutorial."

As revelations go, this shouldn't have been too surprising. The fact that Pebble was a fake and that he was a recruit were now fairly obvious. The Corellians, however, all glared at him after his statement. Deciding to just rip the bandaid off, he kept going.

"I'm sure you feel like I betrayed you somehow, but I never said I wasn't a recruit."

Lyonel was quick to respond to that. "No, you never said anything at all. Because you were pretending to be a mute!"

Alan expected the rebuke, and it was a good way of segueing into the issue.

"Yes, I did let you think that. Please consider my point of view, I am now in tier three, there's no one else left in my party and I don't know who to trust. Is it that strange that I would want to lay low and feel out my competitors?"

Gerry seemed the most positively disposed towards Alan. "We could certainly understand how you might want to do that, but you did manipulate us into taking you in. How did you set up that incident in the tavern?"

That was a question Alan could answer with complete honesty. "I didn't set anything up. Yes, I was working in the tavern, but that was just as a way to learn about the area. Hitting that arrogant creep on the head wasn't a conscious choice. I saw him picking on the waitress and just kind of reacted. I really did appreciate you guys offering to help."

Hector was trying to press the water out of his layered fur as he listened. "Did you even need our help? From what I saw in the tunnels just now, you're pretty strong."

"You guys did break me out of my shock. When I hit those two over the head my brain kinda locked up, but you're right, I probably would have been fine once I unfroze. But after you guys took me in, I thought it was a great opportunity to scout out the competition so to speak."

At the time, Alan had been confused by his reaction to the aforementioned incident. He knew why he had smashed the man on the head, but he had done it without even thinking about it. Then he had found himself in a dissociative state. Looking back he recognized that something had triggered a past trauma, causing something similar to PTSD.

"So if your name isn't Pebble, then what is it?" Samson asked.

"That wasn't a total lie. My name is Alan, which actually means 'little rock', so it was close at least."

A lull happened after that, with no one talking for several seconds. Finally, Lyonel asked the Big Question. "So what happens now?"

Alan was ready for this one. He had gotten the sense that they were mostly over what they thought of as his 'betrayal', and were more understanding of the situation. Now it was time to bind them to his cause.

"Well, that's up to you. Obviously I want to win this tier." He made his desire plain, it was better to let them see his motivations rather than guess at them, leaving them suspicious. "But with me being all alone, that might be hard to accomplish. I was hoping to gain some allies."

He put his need out there rather plainly, but intentionally didn't specifically ask for them to join him. It might only be a matter of semantics, but it was an important one. If he asked directly for their help, then they would naturally want to know what was in it for them. By leaving the request implied they could hopefully skip over some of that.

"If you're so strong, why would you need allies?" Samson's question wasn't a great one, the answer was obvious, but it was at least coming from the direction Alan wanted. Not why they needed him, but why he needed them.

Gerry was the one to answer. "Obviously on his own he would be at a disadvantage. A single person can only be in one place at a time and would also be hard pressed against a team working against him."

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Alan finished the explanation. "Gerry is correct. If an opposing team split up and caused trouble on multiple fronts, I would have a difficult time dealing with them all at once. With others willing to work together it would be much easier."

From his talks with Hector, Gerry, and Samson, he knew that they were not all that invested in being the ones to win the tier. They were more interested in living a fulfilling life, even if their visions of what that meant were different. That was good, because by allying themselves with Alan in the subordinate role, they would be sacrificing their own world's interests. The potential sticking point was that he hadn't gotten a chance to see how Lyonel felt about the whole thing. The hamster man had also been rather quiet since Alan had made his intentions known, so he was having trouble getting a read on him.

"How would being allies work?" was Hector's question.

"If you mean how would we work together, that would depend on what challenges we face. Obviously I might need help dealing with any other teams in the area. Other than that, I would hope that you would mostly help out with the small issues that might crop up, while your party would also have time to do things that you might enjoy. Things like exploring dungeons, training, having meals in the tavern, and comfortable beds to sleep in."

While they hadn't asked what they could get out of it, he did want to show them the carrot. If they truly didn't care about winning for themselves, this arrangement could profit them immensely. Knowing the different hopes of the Corellians allowed him to try and tailor the possible benefits he offered. He had also seen how much they enjoyed the slight improvements he had made to their camp and could imagine how much the idea of comfort appealed to them.

Alan continued, "If, on the other hand, you mean how it works with the Network, that's something different. I have managed to find some information on how that works." He didn't want to let them know about Tamee, so he tried to hurry past the means of obtaining the information. "You would make a Network enforced vow or contract. The two are slightly different from each other, but have a similar impact. Your tutorial assistant manager should have told you that one of the victory conditions was to have the other teams surrender to you.

"The simplest way to do that would be for you to make a vow to surrender. There are specifics we could go into on how to let the Network know it's official, but that's the general idea. If you wanted certain things in exchange for your surrender, then we could go with a contract. It would outline exactly what both parties are agreeing to."

Alan had debated not mentioning the contract option, as it would allow them to ask for more considerations, but after his prior deception he felt that being honest and above board here would be for the best. Also it was possible, although unlikely, that they had already learned about such things. If they had and he neglected to mention the option, they might balk at his offer, thinking that he was trying to trick them again.

Gerry was the first to respond. "So you would want our help if something came up, but otherwise we could do our own thing?"

Alan nodded and Hector asked the next question. "Would we have to join your party?"

This was a trickier topic than the others. Alan didn't really want to make a party with them. If he did so, he would no longer be able to communicate with Tamee as much, since he would have to disband his party with her to make another. In the beginning she had mostly been a voice to help keep him sane, but she had slowly become more of a friend. She was a little abusive at times, but he felt like that was more her way of showing affection, rather than her trying to intentionally wound him.

Dubious ideas of friendship in a heavily unbalanced power dynamic aside, she was also a font of information. The Network wiki contained so much information that it was almost useless for learning general knowledge. Tamee, however, was able to guide his education. He probably knew more about the universe outside the tutorial than almost any other recruit. That might not help too much in these lower tiers, but as they came closer to the end of this challenge, that knowledge could assist the eventual winner to make a much more graceful entrance into the wider world at the conclusion.

Being in a party with the Corellians would make communication easier, but as they had learned when Hector disappeared, it wasn't a cure-all. Much to all of their chagrin, the beast people had initially forgotten that they could have reached out to each other through their party chat. It was a feature that they didn't actually take advantage of much, especially outside of dungeons. By the time they had thought to use it to check on each other, Hector had been too far away for the feature to work. They also hadn't upgraded their array, the one that controlled parties, to the point where they could share their information with each other. This meant that they couldn't even tell if Hector was dead or just not answering.

When Alan had first been part of an Army array, he had access to icons on his HUD that showed the status of the other members of his squad. That was possible through it being an Army array, instead of a party one, but also because of Pixel's high level with it. A party array could accomplish the same thing, Tamee had assured him, but it would take a much higher tiered one.

Now all of that was actually a reason he should party up with the group. The easiest way to level up your party array was by using it, and what he was doing with Tamee didn't count. However, he wasn't too worried about his array level since he didn't see himself being part of many parties in the traditional way during the tutorial, and Tamee's advice was usually very helpful. It would be a shame to lose easy access to that for only a minimally useful feature. He could do with less snark from her, but if he was being honest, that was the default conversation level for many of his friendships back in his old squad.

"No, we wouldn't be in a party together. You guys would be a group and I would be a team of one. The whole idea is being able to split up, and that would negate the benefits of being in a party anyway."

"What happens after you win this tier? Then what do you expect of us?" This time Samson had a good question. The others, including Lyonel, were clearly focused on his answer. To this point Lyonel had been rather stone faced, doing his best to give nothing away, but at this question he was unable to hide the naked interest.

"That's up to you. If you decide to stick with me, I could certainly use your help going forward. However, if you're content with your situations at that point, I won't ask anything else of you. Do what you want."

Alan could have made that last part a little more threatening, warning them about turning against his interests, but he just didn't see this group going that route. Also, why put that thought in their heads. Saying it would be a needless escalation and would probably just make him look like a jerk to threaten their future selves while asking for their help now.

"Are we going to have to kill for you?" It was surprising to hear the usually cheery Gerry ask that dark question.

"Maybe. I can guarantee I will need you to kill monsters and dungeon denizens, as that is simply part of defending a settlement, but I assume you were asking about people, though. I will probably need you to help out when I deal with other adventurers, but I can't say if that will mean lethal force. I won't sugar coat it though, it's a very real possibility."

All in all, Alan was pretty happy with how things were going. They weren't demanding ridiculous rewards, or outrightly denying the idea, and instead they were feeling out the edges of the potential relationship. He felt like he had done as much sales work as he should right now, and it was time to let them talk themselves into it.

"You guys are looking pretty dry, why don't we make our way back to camp and I'll cook you up breakfast. I'll take the forward position so you guys can talk about it amongst yourselves. How's that sound?"

Lyonel finally spoke up. "That sounds like a good plan. We do need to talk."

With that they pulled themselves to their feet and started the hike back to the campsite. Alan was around three hundred meters in front of them. It seemed like a ridiculous distance, but with everyone having enhanced stats it was necessary to make sure they had the privacy they wanted.

"So, what do you think?" Hector asked Lyonel.

The hamster man was quick to answer. "It sounds too good to be true. I don't know about you guys, but after watching Vesper get smashed I figured we didn't have any shot at winning anyway. I was just going through the motions because I didn't know what else to do."

"I never really cared about winning. I was just following along with everything because there was nothing else to do." Gerry admitted.

Samson and Hector both shared similar sentiments. It seemed that no one in their party had really thought they had the chance. Lyonel figured it was a cultural thing. As a guard he was one of the few members of the population who regularly ventured outside of the safe walls of their settlements. Most people simply sat inside, protected, and went about their otherwise comfortable lives.

The tutorial required a drive that most Corellians just didn't have. They would need a leader to inspire them, to break them out of their monotony, to push them to work. Vesper had momentarily assumed that role, but his death had left them like a child alone in the woods, praying that nothing bad would find them before they could stumble onto safety.

Alan was a human, the lack of fur was off putting and he would have a hard time being a leader for the Corellians as a whole. But Lyonel and his group were not the same people who had entered this tutorial. The human might not look like them, other than somehow still having two arms and legs, but there was no denying that he was driven.

When they had lost their leader they had immediately tried to run back to safety in their tier two. When that was denied, they had crawled around, trying to find a way to survive. Alan had lost his entire party, and instead of letting that crush him, he had pushed forward, persevered. The man had infiltrated the village, gathered intel, and now was trying to recruit help.

Not only did he have the temperament to move forward, he clearly had the brains and certainly the skills to win. In the initial ambush, Lyonel had not done well. He had been overwhelmed by the numbers attacking him and had been moments away from dying. That was while wearing his armor and having his weapons at the ready.

Alan had been wearing regular clothes and was empty-handed. He had not only torn apart the dogs attacking him, but scattered the group attacking Lyonel and healed him as well. Then he had taken down the remains of those attacking Gerry and Samson before leading them into the tunnels. That had been Lyonel's first chance to really see the man fight. In the ambush he was too busy trying to keep his insides from taking a trip to the outside, to pay attention to anything else.

In the cavern dogs' lair, Lyonel had been right there next to him as he eviscerated his opponents. One-on-one most of the dogs were not really a challenge for Lyonel. Between his strength and rare constitution class, he was more than capable of holding his own. But for Alan, the dogs were more of an afterthought than an opponent. No doubt without them there he would have eventually run out of stamina and then been at the pack's mercy, but until then Lyonel didn't think any number of the animals would have been able to get to him.

That was simply his martial prowess, too. If you included the spells he had shown, plus the fact that he was also a healer, then he became even more scarily competent. And this human, rather than simply wiping out potential competitors, wanted to work with them. Sure it would mean that they would be officially giving up their claim on this zone, but they had already unofficially done so.

If they took Alan up on his offer, not only would they have a very decent chance of surviving through this challenge, but he was offering them the opportunity to live in peace for the rest of the tutorial. If it was up to him, he would have already accepted the offer, but it wasn't, even if he was still their leader. He had to make sure they were all okay with this.

"So it sounds like no one will object to surrendering." He paused here as everyone gave their silent agreement. "But are we okay with doing so to this human? I get a good feeling from him, but we can't just ignore the fact that he was lying to us for days, sleeping at our camp, and pretending to be someone he wasn't."

The often glum Samson spoke up first. "I just can't get that upset over it. Sure, at first I was pissed. I felt like he tricked me, and who wants that? But, really, what did he do? He cooked for us, helped make a secure base for us to return to, and he listened as we whined."

Gerry took up where his fellow mage left off, "And then he stepped up and saved us when we were in trouble. I don't know about you Hector, but the rest of us would have been dead if he wasn't there. He didn't have to do that. So yeah, he 'lied' to us, but I don't think it was malicious."

"I wasn't there when he was saving you guys, but I saw all those corpses when we left the nest. I had gone down there on my own thinking I could finish it on my own, but if you all hadn't drawn their attention, I would have had to face that horde by myself. I don't think I would have ever come out of there again, I'd have been fuel for that broodqueen."

It was surprising how well they were all taking this. Lyonel didn't think it was just the offer of safety and even comfort they were being given. Down in the tunnel while fighting through the dogs, Lyonel had been overcome with a feeling. It was a sense of, not invincibility, but of confidence. Almost like he had known that his enemy couldn't stack up to him and that he had nothing to fear.

It hadn't made him foolhardy, but it had lent his muscles strength and allowed him to fight like he never had before in his life. He hadn't mentioned anything to the others, but he bet they had felt the same way. It hadn't escaped his notice how well the two mages had been fighting, showing an ability he had never seen from them.

He felt the need to ask now. "Did you guys feel anything while we fought alongside him?"

"What do you mean?" Gerry asked.

"I did." Samson said at the same time.

Hector answered after the other two. "I only got a little at the end, but I noticed that you all seemed more capable and settled in the battle."

Apparently Gerry had been oblivious, but that was hardly a surprise. While they had only been a group for a few weeks, the others had quickly learned that while the giraffe man was very intelligent, he was also painfully unobservant at times.

Lyonel tried to explain. "Did you find that you were better able to plan out how to use your spells? Or maybe you were more confident during the battle, less prone to panicking?"

Gerry thought a moment before answering, "Well, yeah, I guess. I figured that's just us getting better. You know, like we've trained more and reached a higher level."

Hector smiled as he rebutted that assertion. "You were all fighting significantly better than I've seen before. And how much training have we had recently? Pebble…I mean Alan, must have been doing something."

The rabbit man mage summed up their feelings pretty well. "I say we go for it. It's not like we have much choice anyway. We all knew, even if we were too scared to say it out loud, that we didn't have a chance to win here. This is as good an offer as we're gonna get, especially since we've already met the Bodarians and we know how they feel about weakness."

After agreeing to agree, they found their steps much lighter and they made the trip back to camp in record time. Once there, Lyonel told Alan that they would surrender, but the human put him off and said that they could take care of that after breakfast. He was going to cook them all a special treat first.

The party sat on their chosen rock or stump to watch as their former chef cooked them one last meal. Alan had apparently been holding back somewhat, because he broke out eggs and made them all omelets. He included small pieces of venison and several vegetables as well. It was a tasty and filling meal, but one that was over all too soon. Then it was time for business.

Looking to Lyonel, Alan asked, "Are you thinking of a vow or a contract?"

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