"Not worth it?" Reidar stepped closer as the anger grew. "If you help them level up, you will increase the number of people helping you. You would get a bigger army while making everyone safer. We can help you decrease the number of high-level monsters. You can't hold this line alone, Xy'tharr. You need us."

"We can't take that chance. The risk of the Progenitor escaping while we waste time helping your people grow is just too high, and since the math doesn't add up, it's simply not a gamble we can accept."

"Didn't you say your goal was to help us get stronger too?"

"I did," Xy'tharr said. "But as things stand right now, we must make sure you don't actually get swept by the portal monsters, and that also includes searching for the progenitor, we—"

"I can give you the Progenitor," Reidar said. Destroying the Church had become a priority for him, but his family needed to be saved. Ideally, he would bring them here to Creamont, where he had people he could rely on and trust. Then he would leave to hunt down the Progenitor. "And his Church."

But of course, he didn't know if that was possible.

The Kytinn froze. The soldiers behind him shifted. That was actually a bold claim.

"What did you have in mind?" Xy'tharr asked.

Reidar paused for several seconds. In truth, there was something he did he hadn't told them to the Kytinn warrior and his entourage of alien races yet.

"I planted spies on Silas," Reidar said. "I have a particular perk, you see. It's called Unsleeping Sentinels."

He paused. "It was meant to address one of the summoning creature's weaknesses, which is that they disappear once I go to sleep. With them, I can keep certain summons for as long as I want, and that was precisely what I did during the battle."

He pointed toward the horizon, where Silas had fled.

"I used it to override the summon duration of thousands of Vorathid Foragers. They are hard to detect, and I've got proof that Silas can't find them… At least not yet. Even during the battle, he didn't realize some of them crept onto him."

Reidar looked the alien in its eyes. "They are permanent now, at least as long as I don't designate other summons as Unsleeping Sentinels, or until the skill reaches 100% proficiency. They are tracking him. Given time, I will have the coordinates of the Church's main base. I will know their numbers and where the Progenitor is hiding."

Reidar watched Xy'tharr go dead silent. The clicking stopped cold. It was written all over the bug's face, or whatever he called it. He was stunned. The Aegis Phalanx had been trying to find the Church for months, finding nothing. They were just that elusive, which Xy'tharr and the others assumed was one of the human race's traits.

Yet Reidar had just walked in and done what they had been trying to do for so long in a single brawl. The way Xy'tharr looked at him shifted right then. It wasn't just evaluation anymore; it was the kind of heavy respect you give someone who just did the impossible despite their far higher might compared to the church. But there was also apprehension in his eyes.

"You are the most singular creature I have come across in this galaxy, Reidar Miller," Xy'tharr said. "A trait like Skill Sharing is rare. To be able to weaponise a passive defensive perk this way, in that situation..."

"Skill sharing?" The Thalassari woman finally said. She had shut up until now, as she didn't realize this was THAT human she was hearing the higher-ups talk about so often.

"Is he the one…" The Thalassari woman stepped forward.

Xy'tharr nodded. "Vel'shara Bek. This is Reidar Miller."

Vel'shara stepped into Reidar's personal space. Her scanner hummed louder. "The energy signatures are consistent with that of other humans, but... Your capacity is anomalous. Besides, the neural load... How does the Skill Sharing interface with the Hive Mind Echo perk? Does the feedback loop not degrade your synaptic connections?"

Reidar blinked as his brain was processing the words. "I... what?"

"It's just not that. Even the human brain architecture… could it be that…?" Vel'shara got even closer than before, tapping her device with renewed enthusiasm.

"Mind telling me how your trait affected your fighting style? I mean, I know you use summons, but… If we could analyze the data—"

"Vel'shara," Xy'tharr cut in. His lower arm grabbed the overly enthusiastic thalassari. "The human is in the early stages of mana exhaustion. He needs to rest, not help you with whatever you have in mind."

Vel'shara lowered her scanner, though her eyes remained stuck on Reidar, and he could see a hint of disappointment in them.

"Forgive me... It's just that I heard so much talking about you that—"

Reidar watched Xy'tharr cut her off with a glance. "She gets a little carried away," the Kytinn said, turning his back to her.

"She's a researcher. Studies traits, mana, and how it interacts with biology. The hope is that she and her colleagues can figure out why mana mutates bodies so violently and why anything not protected by the System turns into a slaughtering monster."

Reidar nodded, though the movement felt stiff. It was a nice thought.

<Fixing the root cause of the apocalypse.>

For a second, he felt a pull in his chest, a genuine hope that maybe, just maybe, they could stop the rot at the source. But the cynicism in him hit harder. That kind of science took time, and knowing the Allied Worlds had been doing this for who knew how long, he doubted he'd live long enough to see them solve it.

"If your information is solid, the whole situation changes." He paused. "All right, we'll change our focus. We will actually help people level up, and we will leave the Progenitor and the Church situation to you."

"Good," Reidar said.

"We'll set up a net to catch any Level 300s trying to get into Creamont. That should give you guys the breathing room you need. We will also help people power level."

Reidar nodded. He didn't offer a hand, and he didn't say thanks, because he actually wanted to ask the Kytinn warrior something else.

"Do you perhaps have people in a city called Kingsgate?"

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