For a moment, it seemed as if the world had frozen over. The villagers on the wall watched Jen retreating in the distance, far too stunned by what had happened to even think, let alone move. Then, Pete lobbed himself over the wall, followed by Skint and Bear. They ran towards Stanis’s body: a horrific sight.

His bones were still in-tact, mana-strengthened enough to not crack under the Asteroid’s landing impact. But his flesh didn’t have that benefit, at least not to the same standard. This was why most of his flesh had been torn off their bones, leaving him a pitiful sight even when pitted against other corpses. He looked as if a messy diner had slobbered all over his bones, leaving flesh in only the hardest to reach areas.

Skint looked at Stanis’s body. The heart was ruptured and the lungs were wide-open, with various others organs in similar states. He couldn’t help but put a hand to his mouth as he realised Stanis was still, miraculously, alive. “Unbelievable,” he muttered.

Pete took a large canteen from his waist, enchanted it, and began pouring it all over Stanis, at least what was left of him. Once done, he commanded Bear to take the body into the village. Chances were that Jen wouldn’t return but even the slightest probability was already too much. Bear delicately picked up the body and threw it over his back, and then started running towards the village, fully aware of how much time they actually had. Skint followed on behind, and Pete took a deep gulp of his drink before doing the same.

It had been less than 5 minutes since they had left the village but upon arrival, they found vast crowds blocking their entrance into the village.

“OUT THE WAY!” Skint shouted, clearly agitated.

Several people responded to him with curses, while others simply watched.

“We got yer leader here. Get the fuck out of the way,” Pete clarified, although his response was much the same. Seeing that the disgruntled warriors preferred blocking their path instead of moving, Pete cast Dragon’s roar.

A deep growling sound emanated his throat, inhuman and threatening. Some of the warriors caught onto the danger from the sound alone but were already too late to escape. Thick waves of fire burst from Pete’s mouth, scorching close to 20 people. Their screams were silent compared to the fire’s crackles, and seconds later, shrivelled, coal-black bodies littered the centre of the crowd.

From the top of the wall, Serb watched the collision with the rest of the Jaguars. Inside his mind, he debated which choice to make, but outwardly, he stood cold and expressionless, the rest of the Jaguars shocked and confused by his lack of orders.

Before the crowd could react aggressively, the trio released their auras. The crowd backed away at this, finally aware of the devilish beehive they had poked. And yet, they didn’t give way. Pete squinted his eyes and motioned to Bear to drop Stanis’s body. But just before the collision devolved any further, a sharp voice cut through all the rustling.

“Open way,” Alyona said. The crowd quickly listened and parted for the trio. Pete glared at Alyona just before he entered the village, now aware of who had set up the human barricade. The trio ran towards the marketplace, followed on by the crowd. They arrived and found a building to rent, throwing Stanis inside before gathering several items from the marketplace, all under Alyona’s gaze. She eventually sighed before walking away, ordering all but a few to follow her.

Minutes later, as Pete was lathering modified medicine onto Stanis, an announcement set the village abuzz.

“All Powerhouses towards the Village Hall. An important decision will be made in a few minutes,” This message was sent through the village’s notification system and through several of Alyona’s men who shouted it out in public.

Upon hearing this, Pete looked towards Stanis. He was now in a better condition than before, his organs largely healed and flesh recovering. In about a day or two, he would be good enough to fight again. The only reason he had survived this long was due to his stats, his Endurance and Tenacity sky-high. But even with those, Stanis could only survive the next two days with Pete’s medical skills.

Sighing, Pete looked at Skint and Bear. “You two keep supplying him with mana and make sure he isn’t attacked. I’ll go and check what’s up outside,” he said. Following this, he walked towards the village hall, fully aware of the multiple people watching him along the way. In front of the hall, he took out his canteen and began drinking, emptying and throwing it to the side before entering.

Inside, several hundred people stood around. The furniture that had previously decorated the hall had been stripped away, allowing more people to fit in the hall.

Seeing that everyone worthy of mention was in the hall, Alyona started the meeting. “I’m sure you all know why we’re here instead of rebuilding our defences. Stanis,” she said before pausing. “He’s the strongest here, no doubt, but I think his actual utility, and leadership, is questionable,”

She looked around the hall, catching plenty of eyes before carrying on. “I’m not strong enough to make a choice that all of you will follow, neither are any of you. The only person capable of that is, thankfully, the person currently injured. This meeting is about whether he should live or not,” she finally revealed, not batting an eye as she said it. “Could those who will argue for him move to the left side, and those who will argue against him move to the right,”

People started moving, almost all towards the right. The two people who moved to the left stood out, their position like David against Goliath. They were Rikkey and Pete, and both were quickly scrutinised by everyone else in the hall. Serb stood with Niss on the right side. He looked at the brown, oak floorboards for a few seconds before walking across to the other side, followed by Niss who smiled at his decision.

“Ok, I think the decision is quite clear,” Alyona said with a flat tone, mostly flat anyway as she couldn’t fully hide her pride, “But I think it would even better if we can all reach the decision together,”

Pete openly smirked at this, earning him even more looks. He hadn’t been in the village for a long time but he did know about the 3 who stood beside him. Rikkey was the head-blacksmith, somebody with the ability to create remarkable equipment, someone who was irreplaceable to the village, whereas Serb and Niss headed the Jaguars, a force just a hair’s breadth short of the humans in terms of power. Alyona wanted to convince them to join her as they were both too influential to lose. As for himself, he was close to certain that she knew nothing about him.

Alyona ignored Pete and carried on, attempting to appeal to Rikkey and Serb. “He’s strong in battle, so strong in fact that he turns the tides of battle himself. But he has a similarly sized detrimental effect out of battle, taking power like a tyrant and then failing to do anything. I think you’ve all seen this,” she said while opening her arms wide to include everyone in the hall, “but his personality is volatile, extremely so. So much so that I no longer wonder when he will betray and destroy the village, leading to all of our deaths, I now just wonder when…”

Several of the people who surrounded her began applauding, the notable figures being Jayesh, Sil and Richie. Others stood silent and uncaring like Caleb, Orena and David. But the applause was spoken over by Moonshine, her tone sharp. She had her red hair tied across her back, giving her an elegant look despite the mud that covered her armour.

“I think you’re giving him too much credit, Alyona,” she said, sneering right afterwards. “He’s strong, sure, but his fighting is wild and random. In the fight against the one-eyed things, he took the spotlight but was thrown around the battlefield like a ragdoll till Caleb and Serb stepped in. As for the fight against those purple giants, we all saw how justly he fought. So justly, in fact, that he split up his kills evenly, each one of the giants for each one of our forces, his own allies,”

She directly looked at Serb and Niss. “You saw how many Jaguars he killed there; he’s a walking bomb. If you choose to keep him alive now, you’ll only regret it later when he explodes. And when that happens, I think you can already see how many of us he will take with him before he finally falls, after all, we’ve all seen how good he is at killing his own allies,”

…

A cacophony of clapping followed, people warmly gazing at Moonshine. Serb himself glared at her, although inside, he felt lost on what to do.

Pete stood at his side, feeling slightly embarrassed and guilty at what he’d done. And even after all he had done, Stanis had still failed to take Jen down. He loudly coughed, drowning out the applause and turning the attention back to him.

“That’s all nice and all, but how are you all going to survive without him? I saw it from the walls,” he said as he pointed at Caleb. “It must have been real hard to strike down an immobilised enemy, eh?” He then gave the same raised-eyebrows look at Serb. Just before Moonshine struck back at him, Pete carried on. “And the fight outside the walls, eh? You guys were doing really well without him, weren’t you? Not like they’d already broken into the village and minutes away from massacring you all, eh?”

Pete looked around the hall with a glint in his eyes, his teeth already on show. “You all saw the last fight against that Necromancer monster. None of you, even if you all joined together, could do that.” He then pointed towards Alyona, the chuckle deep in his lungs leaking into his voice. “I don’t know why you want 1000s of people to dig their own graves, but it all sounds a bit fucking sadistic to me,”

Pete didn’t receive any applause, not even a single clap for what he said. Instead, he got exactly what he’d wanted as a large number of people just leaning towards Alyona’s side began to reconsider what they were doing. Pete looked around and saw several people hesitating, self-conscious of where they stood.

“Come on, if you want to survive and live, come to the right side already,” he said with a confident tone. In response, almost 20 people moved from the right side to the left, beefing up David and shrinking the Goliath.

“Pete, is it?” said Alyona, “I don’t think that necromancer was a monster. In fact, if my vision serves me right, that looked exactly like a girl. And if my memory serves me right, she would have cleared away all the Titans without Stanis’s self-harming effects anyway,”

“Pfft, woman, you should be glad you don’t know her. She’s as good as a monster. She’s a fucking necromancer, why do you think she was heading towards this village? To eat biscuits and tea?”

It was at this that Sofia, from the Silvermoon village, came in. “Pete, don’t chat shit here. I was in the Colosseum right next to her. She didn’t kill anyone in there, despite everyone wanting her medal,” Sofia then addressed the entire hall. “I don’t know much about her but I do know that she’s one of the ten strongest humans on Earth, alongside Stanis. I don’t know what tension they have but she can serve just as a good a protector as he can, in fact better as she doesn’t kill her own allies,”

Pete kept his expression masked with a smile but couldn’t help but gulp.

…