Damian woke the next morning feeling fantastic.
The exhaustion from the previous day had disappeared beneath a full night’s sleep, leaving his body light, his mind clear, and his newly strengthened magical abilities practically begging to be tested on something deserving.
Today was the day Rosewood Town would mobilize against the growing threat inside Moonveil Forest.
More importantly, Moonveil Forest supposedly contained over eighty Dark Goblin warriors.
Damian had gone to sleep dreaming about Skill Points, and he woke up still thinking about them!
"Hehehe..." The fellow laughed crookedly.
Just imagine, if thirteen Dark Goblins had already earned him nineteen Skill Points, what would an organized culling operation produce?
Naturally, Damian had no intention of charging blindly into Blackroot Den and converting himself into Goblin fertilizer for the sake of numbers.
However, with the Four Valkyries of Grayfen beside him and Rosewood Town’s Silver Rank and Gold Rank Adventurers mobilizing throughout Moonveil Forest, today promised opportunities.
Damian took a long hot bath, washed away the remnants of yesterday’s exhaustion, carefully dressed himself in his black-and-gold Journeyman Mage robe, equipped his Mage Guild Ring, checked his Bag of Holding, and stepped outside.
Right away, the morning air immediately felt wrong, and Damian stopped in place with a somber expression.
Rosewood Town was normally lively at this hour.
Merchants should be shouting slogans from roadside stalls, carriages should be rattling along the main avenues, and ordinary townspeople should be moving with the hurried rhythm of another working day.
Today, people still moved, but they simply moved far more quietly.
Several stores remained closed while groups of people stood near street corners speaking in subdued voices.
A woman passed Damian with red eyes while clutching the hand of a young girl, and two men nearby stopped talking when a carriage covered in dried mud passed them.
Damian’s earlier enthusiasm vanished as he right away realized that something had happened.
He immediately quickened his pace toward the Adventurer’s Guild, and the atmosphere became worse the closer he got.
When Damian finally pushed open the Adventurer’s Guild doors, the usual noise of the hall was gone.
There were still dozens of people inside, perhaps more than usual, yet their conversations remained hushed, broken occasionally by crying from somewhere among the crowd.
Several exhausted men sat against one wall, a few women held children, and adventurers stood around with grim expressions instead of boasting, drinking or arguing over quests.
Damian’s eyes swept across the hall until he found the Four Valkyries gathered near one corner.
Eunice was kneeling beside a seated woman and gently comforting her while the woman’s young daughter clung to her dress.
Paulina stood nearby with her arms crossed, her grey ears flattened against her head.
Julia’s expression was icy.
Even Janet had lost her usual mischievous energy.
Damian’s stomach sank, and he started walking toward them until a familiar voice called out to him.
"Master Damian..."
Damian turned to look, and for a moment, he barely recognized Kellan.
The energetic teenager who once bounced around Otter Village loudly declaring that he would become a powerful Fighter and impress Damian looked as though he had aged several years overnight.
His straw-colored hair was filthy, dried mud covered his clothes, and dark blood stained one sleeve and much of his trousers.
His eyes were red, swollen and half-lidded from exhaustion.
Kellan walked toward Damian with heavy steps.
"Kellan?"
Damian immediately reached into his Bag of Holding and withdrew a Cleansing Talisman.
The talisman activated, and a pale light swept across Kellan’s body, stripping away dirt, dried blood, ash and grime.
It made him cleaner, but fundamentally did absolutely nothing to make him look better.
"What happened to you?" Damian asked urgently.
Kellan stared at him.
Perhaps it was because Damian had been one of the few outsiders Kellan deeply admired, perhaps it was because the teenager had spent the entire night refusing to collapse, or perhaps the youngster simply could not hold himself together anymore.
Whatever the reason, Kellan’s face crumpled.
He stumbled forward and wrapped both arms around Damian Baines.
"They’re dead! They’re all dead!" Kellan screamed as tears burst from his eyes.
Damian froze, and his arms eventually came around the trembling teenager.
"Who’s dead? Kellan, slow down. Who died?" Damian asked, trying to keep his own voice steady.
"The people of Otter Village, I’m afraid." Guildmaster Roland’s voice came from behind them.
Damian looked over Kellan’s shoulder, seeing Roland who approached with none of his usual relaxed humor.
The lionman’s face was grim.
"The Dark Goblins attacked three settlements last night, Boar Village, Bison Village and Otter Village. All three were raided, plundered and burned." Roland explained.
Damian stared at him in shock as Roland continued.
"Boar Village has a handful of confirmed survivors who escaped before the encirclement closed, and Bison Village has even fewer. As for Otter Village..."
His gaze shifted toward Kellan.
"Kellan may be the only survivor we knew about when he reached Rosewood Town before dawn."
Damian felt something cold spread through his chest.
Otter Village, the peaceful little farming settlement with the lake, the chicken soup, and the lamb chops?
The one with Old Mother Brenna chasing Giant Rats with a broom, Widow Marla’s infamous ’hospitality’, the children running around the village square, and Garrick laughing at his grandson?
"What about Garrick?" Damian asked quietly.
Kellan’s fingers tightened around his robe.
That answered the question before Roland did.
"Dead."
Damian’s face blanched.
The four ladies had noticed his arrival by then and walked over together.
Roland placed one massive hand on Damian Baines’s shoulder.
"Just as well that you’re here. The original Moonveil Forest mobilization has been reorganized. Several teams have already departed to track the raiders and secure the roads."
He glanced toward Kellan.
"Damian Baines, take the Four Valkyries and assist with the cleanup and partial restoration of Otter Village. Treat it as a B Rank Copper Quest. Since Kellan trusts you, keep the boy with you as well."
Damian nodded immediately.
"I’ll handle it."
............
The carriage ride to Otter Village was painfully quiet.
Kellan had finally succumbed to exhaustion and fallen asleep against Damian Baines’s shoulder less than twenty minutes after they departed Rosewood Town.
Eunice quietly prayed while Paulina sharpened the claws of her gauntlets with slow, repetitive movements.
Julia sat with folded arms and watched the countryside pass through the window, whereas Janet turned one dagger around her fingers again and again without performing a single flourish or joke.
The entire time, Damian said nothing.
Eventually, smoke appeared on the horizon, and then, the ruins came into view.
Even knowing what had happened did not prepare them for the sight they beheld.
Otter Village was... gone.
The familiar settlement had become a blackened skeleton.
Roofs had collapsed inward, walls stood without homes around them, fields were burned into dark stretches of earth, and livestock pens had been broken apart, while ash drifted through the air whenever the wind crossed the ruins.
The smell was worse, full of smoke, burned wood, blood, and death.
The Four Valkyries were experienced Adventurers, but that did not make them equivalent to soldiers.
Adventurers hunted monsters, explored dangerous territory, escorted merchants and fought small skirmishes where death generally came one party at a time.
They were essentially free-spirited mercenaries living beside danger, not hardened military formations trained to accept villages becoming casualty statistics.
This... was something else.
This was an actual atrocity of war!
And whether anyone had formally declared it or not, the Dark Goblins had just started one.
Kellan awakened shortly before they entered the ruins, and Damian helped him down.
"Walk with me, and tell me everything you remember." Damian requested.
Kellan swallowed, then did so, from the first arrows to the eastern attack, to the Dark Goblins flooding through Otter Village, the villagers trying to organize, his grandfather ordering him to take the children and flee, and then... Varkas Blackroot.
Damian listened without interrupting as Kellan described the duel between Garrick and Varkas Blackroot.
How Garrick had revealed himself as a retired Level 7 Fighter, how the old man had nearly defeated the Dark Goblin Chieftain, and how he had been eventually defeated by the dark goblin chieftain.
He also told Damian about how Varkas Blackroot had spared him afterward.
By the time they reached the remains of The Otter’s Den, Kellan’s voice had nearly disappeared.
The bodies of the defenders had already been gathered, someone having arranged them neatly beside the ruins.
At the front lay Garrick, his old breastplate split and dented, his hands folded across his chest.
The silver spear was gone as Kellan carried it now.
Farther away were the remains of villagers who had died inside burned homes.
Many of the women and children had effectively been cremated when the Dark Goblins set Otter Village ablaze.
Kellan dropped to his knees, and his grief came silently this time.
The four ladies stood nearby, all deeply bothered by what they saw.
Paulina turned her face away, Janet clenched both fists, Julia closed her eyes, and Eunice whispered another heartful prayer.
Damian simply looked at Garrick deeply, realizing that he had known Garrick for barely any time at all.
Yet, his journey in Valoria had begun with people like him.
Ordinary people who had treated Damian kindly before he possessed money, titles or power worth exploiting.
Damian closed his eyes and observed a long moment of silence.
When they opened again, several additional carriages were arriving, of families, friends and workers dispatched by the Adventurer’s Guild.
Tools, stretchers, wagons and recovery supplies followed behind them.
Damian’s grief did not disappear, but rather gained somewhere useful to go.
"Alright, we work." Damian called firmly.
............
Damian quickly discovered that being a Journeyman Mage did not mean he could wave his staff and rebuild an entire village, especially since his magic was overwhelmingly combat-oriented.
<Fireball> was excellent for removing buildings, but was significantly less useful for restoring them.
So they did things the old-fashioned way.
Damian divided the workers into groups.
One team recovered bodies, the second cleared the main paths, the third team sorted salvageable lumber, stone and tools from useless debris, and the final team searched cellars and partially collapsed houses.
Whenever somebody became exhausted, Damian distributed Vials of Vigor while Grain Avoidance Pills ensured nobody needed to stop working for meals.
Water came freely from the supplies he had brought.
It was also here that four ladies became invaluable.
Janet was the first to discover something miraculous.
"Damian! Over here!" Janet shouted from beside a ruined house.
Damian hurried over and saw that Janet had found a concealed cellar entrance beneath fallen timber.
Paulina removed the debris with a heaving throw, and when they opened it, frightened eyes stared back at them.
Children, four of them, terrified and hungry, but alive!
The discovery changed the entire atmosphere.
Soon Janet began moving through Otter Village like a bloodhound, using her exceptional perception to locate hidden vaults, buried storage spaces and concealed cellars.
By early afternoon, seven surviving children had been found.
Kellan broke down again when the first group saw him.
"Big Brother Kellan!"
They surrounded him immediately, one little girl hugging his leg while another boy began asking where his mother was.
Kellan could not answer, merely gathering them close.
Eunice handled what followed better than anyone.
She comforted survivors, prayed with grieving relatives, empowered workers with divine blessings and repeatedly used gentle spiritual magic to ease panic as well as exhaustion.
Paulina became a one-woman construction crew.
A slab of fallen stone that six workers could barely shift using ropes was lifted by Paulina with one hand.
Another collapsed beam required a mechanical jack, but Paulina picked it up and carried it away.
By the fifth time this happened, the workers simply started pointing at inconveniently large objects whenever she walked past.
Paulina barely broke a sweat.
Julia took on the cruelest task, which was identification.
Her exceptional eyesight and memory allowed her to examine remains others could barely endure looking at.
She recorded clothing fragments, jewelry, approximate height and distinguishing marks.
When faces had been destroyed by fire, Julia used testimony from relatives and her own artistic skill to reconstruct likenesses and narrow identities.
It was miserable work, but it was also necessary.
Uncertainty could haunt a family worse than death.
Knowing allowed burial, mourning, for people to eventually move forward.
............
The first serious conflict came shortly after midday.
A carriage stopped beside the ruins, and a young woman jumped from it before the driver had properly halted, her husband following.
The woman worked as a seamstress in Rosewood Town and had married away from Otter Village several years earlier, her elderly parents having remained behind.
Unfortunately, two of her older children had been visiting their grandparents during the attack, and now, none had survived.
Only the woman, her husband and their newborn child remained.
Her inconsolable grief had nowhere to go until she saw Kellan.
"You!"
Kellan turned.
The woman’s expression twisted.
"Why are you alive?!"
Silence spread around them as Kellan became pale.
The woman staggered toward him.
"My mother is dead! My father is dead! My babies are dead! Everyone is dead, but you survived?! Why?!"
Her husband grabbed her shoulder with a look of sadness.
"Please dear, stop this."
She tore away. "Why did they let you live?! What did you do?! Did you run while everyone else fought?!"
Kellan’s lips trembled.
He knew this woman, she had often given him socks, mitts, and scarves during winter growing up.
She used to teasingly complain because he grew so quickly that every pair became too small within a year.
Now those same eyes looked at him with hatred.
Kellan lowered his head.
"I..."
Nothing came as a form of defense for one already mired deep in survivor’s guilt.
Damian frowned and stepped forward to handle this situation, but surprisingly, Eunice was faster.
She approached the grieving woman without anger.
"You loved those children very much," Eunice said gently.
The woman looked at her.
"You loved your parents too. You came here expecting to find someone to blame because if somebody is responsible, then perhaps your pain can make sense."
The woman’s face twisted at that, and before she could retort, Eunice continued softly.
"But look at Kellan, Madam. Really take a look at him."
The seamstress did, immediately noticing that Kellan stood trembling, his grandfather laying dead less than fifty meters away, and seven orphaned children clustered behind him.
"He did not survive because he valued anyone here less," Eunice explained.
"He survived because his grandfather ordered him to live with his last breath. If you punish him for obeying the final command of the man who raised him, then you are asking a grieving child to apologize for not dying beside everyone he loved."
The woman’s fury cracked and shattered, her eyes widened as the hatred clouding her mind cleared like fog swept away by a strong breeze.
She looked at Kellan once more, and all she saw was the Little Kellan of a few years ago, the obnoxious boy who once tugged her skirt asking whether his new scarf was finished.
"Ah..." She covered her mouth with horror.
Then she rushed forward and embraced him.
"I’m sorry! Kellan, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean it! I don’t know why I said that!"
Kellan’s tears finally fell. "It’s okay, Auntie."
"No, it isn’t!"
"It is." The young lad answered gently as he hugged her back.
Damian watched quietly.
Afterward, Kellan looked toward Garrick’s covered body, then toward the children.
Seven young faces looked back at him.
They did not understand politics, Ravelhorn the Reveler, nor Blackroot Den or the old Fey crossing.
All they knew was that their parents were gone.
And somewhere during the day, without anyone formally deciding it, they had begun following Kellan.
"Big Brother Kellan, where are we sleeping?"
"Big Brother Kellan, is Mama coming back?"
"Big Brother Kellan, what happens now?"
Kellan closed his eyes, and when he opened them, something had changed.
Damian noticed.
The hatred remained in the young man’s bloodshot eyes, but it was no longer alone.
Responsibility had entered beside it.
............
The preliminary cleanup ended well into the afternoon.
Otter Village was still a ruin and rebuilding would take weeks or months.
But the dead had been gathered, survivors identified, dangerous debris cleared, supplies recovered and the remaining children accounted for.
Damian found Kellan sitting beside a wagon, the seven children remaining close to him.
"What will you do now?" Damian asked.
Kellan opened his mouth, and his eyes instinctively moved toward Garrick’s body, then toward the children.
"At first... I wanted to ask you to take me with you." Kellan began quietly.
Damian waited as the young man continued.
"I wanted to beg you to teach me magic, or make me a Fighter... or anything really. I wanted enough power to find Varkas Blackroot and kill him."
His grip tightened around Garrick’s spear. "But these kids..."
Kellan looked down. "They don’t have anyone."
One of the younger boys was already asleep against his leg.
"I’m older and bigger, so I can work," Kellan continued.
"I can carry things, hunt for game, or even learn a trade. Whatever pays. If I work hard enough, maybe I can rent somewhere cheap in Rosewood Town."
His voice became steadier.
"I just want them to eat properly, have beds, and go to sleep without being scared. And maybe also grow up somewhere they don’t have to fight monsters."
Damian stared at the determined young lad who had forcibly matured over the course of a single day, and the idea that had been quietly taking shape in his mind suddenly became impossible to ignore.
Damian had spent days thinking about what kind of path he wanted to walk.
Whether it would be that of a merchant, an adventurer, an organizational leader, or even something larger.
Yet such ambitions were never born from buildings... they always began with people.
He looked at Kellan before him, who was cradling the orphaned children gently, and felt as if walking away from this moment was something he would regret later on.
"Kellan."
The teenager looked up.
"Taking care of them is honorable. But who told you that means abandoning your other goal?" Damian stated.
Kellan frowned. "What do you mean, Master Damian?"
Damian looked at the seven children, then back at Kellan.
"I mean you don’t need to choose between protecting them and becoming powerful."
Kellan slowly stood, his expression slowly changing.
Damian’s expression became serious. "Henceforth, I will take all of you under my name."
Kellan froze as Damian continued in a powerful voice.
"I will provide food, shelter and education. Nobody here will need to beg for work just to eat."
The listless children’s attention gradually shifted toward Damian.
"And if any of you have the talent and the will, I’ll give you the opportunity to obtain power greater than anything you could realistically reach alone."
Kellan stared at him in disbelief.
"Why?"
Damian considered the question, but there were only complicated answers.
After all, it involved his future plans, the organization he had imagined, the value of loyal people, and his resources in two worlds.
But more than that lay a rather simple reason.
"Because somebody should."
Silence followed.
Damian continued. "I only have two conditions. Obey me when I give you an order, and do the right thing even when I am not watching."
Kellan looked at the children again.
They were scared, confused and fully depending upon him, the only family they now knew.
His grandfather’s last word returned to him, to live.
Kellan closed his eyes as a long breath escaped him.
Then, the young man stepped forward and placed Garrick’s spear carefully beside himself before kneeling.
The seven children stared in confusion and curiosity, while Damian stood calmly.
When Kellan raised his head again, grief still filled his eyes, but something stronger had finally begun growing beneath it.
Determination and hope.
"I, Kellan of Otter Village, greet you, Lord Damian Baines."
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