My plan was a little risky, and I was sure Shave could figure out what I was going to do if he tried hard enough. I was pretty sure I’d get in trouble if the Commander found out, too, so I had to hope I had the right read on Shave. I couldn’t let him report me.

  The first step was to change my chores. At the moment, I was stuck helping out around camp, but if I wanted any of this to work, I needed an excuse to be out for most of the day.

  That led me to the first step of my plan: bribes. The out-of-camp jobs were the ideal chores, so I had to give something in return in order to get myself on those.

  The next morning, I walked to the ‘chore board.’ It was a list of daily tasks that we had to complete. For the most part, there wasn’t much fighting to do, so we had plenty of non-combat-related tasks to complete. At the moment, my tasks were in the General Camp Labour category. I had plenty of jobs to complete around the camp, between transporting wood and food, helping Hild, sharpening weapons, hauling water, and more.

  The better tasks were the supply chain assistance tasks. We couldn’t leave our regular wagon shipments unguarded, so, just like the mission our squad had gone on, there were regular escort missions.

  I couldn’t take those ones, because they actually required me to be close to the wagon, and all the supplies were going the wrong way—they always went deeper into Gate, and there was no freedom on the way back, not like our last escort mission. I needed something that let me go off and hunt through the labyrinths.

  The mission I wanted—the most desirable missions—were the Watchtower Report missions. The senior Dupes always got those assigned to them because they were easy, and you could always return back to camp every night.

  You just had to check the rune-beacons leading up to the watchtowers, then when you reached the watchtowers on our side of the Thelea River, you would wait a little longer. There were a few maintenance tasks at the watchtowers, of course, and you had to make sure the watchmen were still in good condition and being vigilant. Then you could return.

  The senior Dupes were all lazy bastards, but hey, the tasks were assigned by seniority. Still, if I could get on one of those missions, I could take a quick detour into the Bane-lands.

  So I checked the chore board, and when I identified the squad of Dupes assigned to Watchtower Report, I set off. They would leave early in the morning, and I had to be fast if I wanted to catch them before they left.

  I raced to the easternmost edge of the camp until I found a squad of Dupes setting out. Of all of us, they had the best armour. Most of them wore a combination of scale mail and chainmail, steel pauldrons and helmets, and all six of them carried axes as their preferred weapons.

  I was surprised to see them carrying shields on their backs, because it seemed to me like a long walk, and I didn’t want to be burdened by a shield every single day. But they would’ve had much higher attributes than me, and they could take it with ease. That, and the heavy armour they wore.

  I called out, “Singe! Bob!” Those were the two names of the Dupes I remembered from the chore board. When it came to Bob, I was pretty sure it wasn’t short for Robert. Maybe it was actually BOB, like Baby on Board, but then I saw the squad. He was the one with his hair in a bob-cut.

  The squad halted and turned back to look at me. I quickly ran up to them and said, “Sorry! Sorry, but would you be willing to swap chores?”

  They all looked at me with blank expressions, unamused and unconvinced. Then one of them laughed, and all six of them broke into laughter.

  It was exactly the response I’d been expecting. I kept a straight face and said, “I’m willing to negotiate. See, I’ve got three extra copper sceats and one silver sceat this month, and they could be yours.”

  The five Dupes looked unconvinced. At first, I wanted to lowball them to see what would happen, but it almost certainly wasn’t going to work.

  “We’ve all earned permanent increases to our pay,” one of the Dupes said. I didn’t know his name—I didn’t know any of them by name, and certainly not who Singe or Bob were. “For one month, that’s nothing to us.”

  “What about Presences?” I asked.

  “You want to give us Presences?” a different Dupe asked.

  “You wouldn’t say no to more Presences, would you? A little free power, you don’t have to work for it,” I negotiated. “What do you say to two small Presences each? You let me and my squad take the Watchtower Report for this month, and I’ll get them to each of you.”

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  “Twelve presences total? You think you can get those? How?”

  I gave a quick grin. “I have my ways.”

  “And what do we get if you don’t deliver? You’ll have us on general labour for a month, and we’ll get nothing out of it.”

  I winced. “There are plenty of people in this camp who want me dead.” I had to be vague, and I couldn’t reveal the extent that I knew about Scar’s scheme, just in case any of these guys were in on it. “I’m sure you guys know who they are. Anyway, if I don’t deliver, it’ll be easy enough to take your revenge on me. To help them kill me.” I paused. “But if it does work, think about it. You’ll get Presences. You can claim you went hunting or something, and then you can give yourself a nice rush of power. Maybe you’re close to gaining another point. Wouldn’t it be nice to gain another point? And on top of all that, you’ll look good. Charitable. You gave the Atoning a nice mission.” I stopped myself there, because even I could hear that I was starting to ramble.

  “You think we want to look charitable?” the first Dupe asked.

  “Why wouldn’t you?” I tilted my head, then paused for a moment. “Oh, I mean, I guess it could look bad for you guys if people thought you were being too nice to the soulstealer, yeah. So there’s always an excuse that you wanted to mess with the new guy. Make him trek back and forth out to the front every day, wearing heavy chainmail and such. You’ve got options, that’s what I’m saying.”

  “We want the extra pay and three Presences each,” said a Dupe with an orange painted pauldron. It had a sigil of a raven on it, but with a few extra markings, as if the raven itself was burning. I had no idea if that was considered disrespectful or sacrilegious or anything—to deface the sigils of Gate—but I was pretty sure that also meant this Dupe was Singe.

  “Singe, right? That can be arranged,” I replied. “Yeah, no problem. But I don’t have it yet. It’s coming at the end of the month.”

  “You’re in trouble if you don’t deliver, soulstealer,” a fourth Dupe said. “Remember that.”

  “You got it,” I replied. “Thanks, guys.” I cast them all another grin, then disappeared back into the camp. I found Shave, Ticks, Elf, and Romance all in the middle of a task and I told them what I’d just arranged—leaving out what I’d give them in return.

  “You?” Elf exclaimed. “You convinced them to let you take the watchtower report task? How?”

  “It’s…hard to explain,” I said. No one else in my squad seemed too invested in hunting for Presences or entering the Labyrinth last time, except maybe Shave. I didn’t need to give too much away yet, and my plan was something that could be done on my own. “But we need to get going. I can explain more along the way.”

  “You had better,” Ticks said.

  Shave stood up with a groan. “It’s certainly better than hauling logs all day. Come on, we’d best get moving. Grab your gear, and we’ll be on our way.”

  It might have been a bad idea to bring Ticks with me, this far away, but I had the rest of the squad. They wouldn’t just let him kill me.

  Five minutes later, we’d traded spots with the other squad of Dupes we’d just replaced, and we were marching out to the east. While the others got ready, I made my own preparations by pestering Lieutenant Finger for a buglight. Eventually, he agreed and let me have one.

  “I’ve never led a watchtower report before,” Shave said. “But keep on the lookout. There should be a wooden stake wherever the rune-beacons are.”

  We walked down a trail of packed mud and gravel, then crossed over the stream that ran through Slowbend. Shortly after, we found a wooden stake driven into the ground with a streamer of blue fabric tied to the top.

  “There,” I said. We walked up to it, and in the ground nearby, there was a circle of runes etched in the ground. I couldn’t read them, and the dirt made them large and messy. “What do they do?”

  “They light up,” Shave said.

  “That’s it?”

  “It’s an early warning system. If orcs cross the river nearby, there’s a Path-walker who fuels them with his maegen,” Elf said. “All of them light up in sequence, and we’ll see them glow.”

  “Maegen…?” I muttered. “Oh god, what other magic thing is that?”

  “Don’t worry about that,” said Ticks. “That’s the purview of other Path-walkers. We don’t use maegen.”

  That only made me more curious, but I let it go for the time being. I had more pressing questions to ask as we walked. I glanced at Shave and said, “So, Skill merging. You guys have to have enough skills to merge too, right? Why not make something?”

  In truth, I was fishing for advice about how to merge my own Skills. But I didn’t want to be too blatant about it.

  Shave chuckled. “You need a minimum of five Skills to complete a merge, correct. But you can’t resonate an old Skill anymore once it’s been merged. You have to resonate the new Skill. I have [Spearmanship] and [Perceptive Eyes], but I won’t be able to use them if I include them in the new merge. I only have five Skills now, and if I merge them, I won’t be able to resonate my spear or check a swath of enemies’ tiers.”

  “So if I merge, say, [Stealth] into a new Skill, am I going to forget how to be quiet?” I asked.

  “No, but you won’t be able to resonate it anymore. That’s why it’s best to merge basic knowledge Skills.”

  I nodded. That meant I couldn’t complete a Skill merge just yet, then. I needed to accumulate a few more knowledge skills, because I wasn’t just about to give up [Spearmanship] and [Archery].

  Which was all the more motivation to execute my plan quickly.

  We walked for the first half of the morning, travelling east. Each time we reached a stake in the ground, we checked the runes etched into the dirt beside it. Sometimes, a creature had walked through and messed them up—I was pretty sure I saw regular-sized wolf paw-prints—and sometimes, they had just shifted. Shave took the end of his spear and redrew the lines, copying the pattern of the first beacon we’d found.

  It wasn’t as bad as I had been expecting. We kept a good pace, and I was getting used to walking with chainmail on. Although the direct sun made me sweat, the effort had to be good for increasing my attributes.

  The longer we walked, the more my hands trembled with anticipation. Soon, I promised myself, I’d get back to the Labyrinth and keep pushing myself—no matter how hard it was to get to.