Venill sat with her back against a crumbling building wall, breathing hard as she waited for the rest of her wounds to heal. Not having any kind of healing potion or healing skills was really frustrating at these moments and she wasn’t holding out much hope in getting a regeneration skill any time soon.

  She was going to need to rethink her strategy going forward. There was no way she would be able to cross that much monster infested wilderness by herself without being a much higher level or without a large group of skilled fighters, maybe even an army.

  Unfortunately she knew she wouldn’t be able to level up fast enough to her liking where she could then make the trek without much issue. Hells, she might even have to wait till she hit E-grade to do it if she were to go by herself and that was time she didn’t want to commit.

  It had been beneficial to her when the system gave her a prompt to join Quills faction after the worldwide message came through about him being the first to claim a territory. This allowed her to find the location of his territory via the map so she could head over as soon as possible.

  She had even inquired with some of the locals, making sure that none of them knew anything specific, if they had gotten the same prompt to join his faction but none of them did. It was very clear the system wanted her to join up with Quill.

  She could even understand why. The man had been level 34 when he exited the tutorial. She was pretty sure not even a genius with the full backing of one of the ancient families would have been able to grow to that level in such a short amount of time. No, she wasn't pretty sure, she knew for certain.

  The fact that he managed to claim a territory so soon after the tutorial ended only went to show what kind of genius and unparalleled talent he had. What kind of man would he have to be to accomplish something so unprecedented.

  Her desire for revenge and justice seemed to become more and more plausible every day. But now she has hit a roadblock.

  Despite having been optimistic at first, with that optimism only growing when she finally knew where he was located. It had been tempered by the amount of distance she would need to cross to get to him. And now it had been nearly crushed with the amount of hostile wilderness she would have to cross.

  She knew she was being impatient but she felt like she had waited long enough and with the potential hope so close to her grasp, it made that frustration all the more unbearable.Now she was back where she started after having to retreat. Which added to more of her concern given what was here.

  Before she had set off on her first expedition into the wilderness, she had tried to inquire with some of the locals that were rallying around some religious fanatic about the beyond to get a better feel of the area. They had said that there was nothing over there and their glorious leader had divined that it was filled with dangerous monsters and should stay away.

  It was there that she found out that the religious leader they had mentioned had met Blessed Virtues within his tutorial. Needless to say she left as soon as possible. She didn't prescribe to either of the churches and had nothing against them either. However, having a Blessed Virtue or a Cursed Sin near your vicinity was troublesome. There was a reason why both the churches were careful when deploying such entities out to the public.

  She bit her lip as she contemplated her next move. No matter what, she needed to get to Quill. If she had to bow down to this religious fanatic and some of the Blessed Virtues, it would be difficult but it might be feasible. The question though became how would she convince the leader of this group and the Blessed Virtues to launch an expedition towards Quills territory. No matter how strong the monsters might be, overwhelming forces along with the power of the Blessed Virtues would make the travel much easier.

  She ran through multiple scenarios in her head but ultimately decided on trying to leverage The Blessed Virtues' need to recruit strong and talented individuals to their Church as the selling point. If she could argue that she knew where this man and his territory was, she could potentially see herself getting within their good graces.

  If they asked how she knew she would simply say it was part of a quest, not entirely a lie so it wouldn't trigger the Blessed Virtues ability for catching lies.

  When they got close she could even try and sabotage them as much as possible while banking on the fact that this Quill would be strong enough to handle the Virtue. At least that was her hope even if it did seem like a far shot. Any fresh integrated planet that had a Blessed Virtue or a Cursed Sin was almost always consumed and forced into total devotion towards whichever Church they belonged to with no Escape. It was a fate that would likely befall her if the Virtue wasn’t dealt with sooner rather than later so perhaps this situation would work out. She wouldn’t even put it past the system for having arranged this in the first place. This would also give her a chance to witness Quill first hand anyways and see what he was capable of.

  Before she could do any of that though she would need to strengthen herself up more and try to find some soul protection treasure or item. She didn't need to be strong enough to withstand Virtue's effects for hundreds of years, just until they got to the Quills territory.

  Her mind made up and a vague plan slowly being concocted in her head. She lifted herself off the ground with a small groan and gazed across the planes before her. Her resolve was firm, this was nothing more than a test by the system to ensure that she was capable of enacting her revenge. Her mind, body and especially her soul would be tested and forged with this trial and nothing would stop her. That was her oath.

  * * * * * * * * * * * *

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “Fall back and retreat damnit!” Ssevinac spat a curse before he summoned several giant ghosty green looking rat skulls and shot them towards a bunch of locals who were trying to overwhelm Ttemin as he desperately held them back.

  The ghostly heads started tearing into the locals who seemed to bear no reasoning and even allowed it to happen so long as they could try and score any kind of wound on his friend. Thankfully Ttemin managed to hold firm and even pushed them back a little as their bodies fell one by one to Ssevinacs spell.

  Ttemin was breathing heavily as he made his way back to Ssevinac with a grin on his face. “See? We didn't need to retreat.”

  “That doesn't mean you didn't take an unnecessary risk. I'm getting low on mana and we need to head back to our hideout with our prize!” some of his frustration slipped out into his voice as he spoke. It wasn't Ttemins fault that things were getting progressively worse for them but it still didn't make it any less frustrating.

  This encounter also confirmed a suspicion that the leader of this faction was using system spawned humans. It agitated him to no end that he now had to deal with this after having just dealt with his previous king and his rat spawns.

  It had been over 5 months of this planet's time since they had left the tutorial and Ssevinacs original plan of riding on the coattails of Quill shortly after they left the tutorial were quickly dashed.

  At first when he and his people got out he assumed that the human had just spawned a little further away than expected. He was thankful when the human put his name on the leaderboard and was practically elated when he saw the human at number one with the ridiculously high level of 34. It made sense considering they had been killing the cursed sins all by themselves but it was still a ridiculous number to be at in such a short amount of time.

  A few days later he got a notification that Quill had then claimed a territory. At first Ssevinac was practically dancing in joy over his absurd luck of throwing it in with the human. But all of that was quickly dashed when the human shared his location with those in his faction and Ssevinac saw just how far he and his people would need to travel in order to get to said territory.

  It was an absurd distance at their current level. He wouldn't be surprised if it was halfway across the whole planet. He had no idea how Quill was put there. Either he triggered some kind of teleportation mechanism that threw him over there the moment he got out of the tutorial or the system deemed it fit to put him there for one odd reason or another.

  Regardless, the situation had changed drastically. There was no way he could get himself and his people over there without taking heavy losses or potentially just being wiped out altogether.

  This put him on an awkward trajectory where eventually they all decided their best course of action was to create an outpost, and then build a local teleporter and defend it with all their might with the hope that Quill built his own local teleporter back in his territory before they were overrun.

  Their initial planned area was thwarted due to unfortunate luck as it had appeared their spawned area was close to Michael Anderson, the second leading person ranked on the leaderboard. The system did love its conflict after all so of course it put the strongest and second strongest faction of this planet on a Collision Course so quickly. He just wished the system had ordained on putting Quill with them so they had a better chance.

  They had then spent close to two months just fleeing away from Michael Anderson's forces until they found their planned outpost base which was hidden deep underground from the city above.

  Michael Anderson had been very quick on gathering all of the local populace and many of the tutorial guides to his faction making his forces grow substantially. All swarming under his banner as he declared himself a king among this new world

  Perhaps it would have been worth it for Ssevinac and the Rat Kin to have done the same as Michael had shown to be a strong, capable leader. However one of the requirements for joining the faction was swearing an oath of fealty. Something he just could not do, no matter the benefits that might come with it.

  So Ssevinac, the rest of the rat kin, and a few groups of tutorial guides who didn't want to throw in their lot with Michael Anderson had been running guerrilla war tactics all while trying to gather the correct supplies needed to not only build the Outpost but the teleporter as well.

  Thankfully they hadn't been tracked down to where their base of operation was. It was somewhat helpful that many of their patrols were nothing more than systems spawned humans with only the occasional regular human to act as leader and give directions/orders. It had actually been the same folly his own King had made which was probably one reason why Quill managed to eventually overthrow and kill him.

  Of course Ssevinac also knew that Michael and his forces were largely preoccupied on the threats on the surface and couldn't be bothered to deal with such a minor inconvenience that was below ground that didn’t pose too much of a threat.

  This brought them to the present where they had finally gotten the last piece of what they would need to build a somewhat shoddy but workable local teleportation platform. An F-grade Space gem.

  However due to the low grade material and quality of the gem itself. The device would be only one way and would only work once but that was all they needed to survive. From what he knew of Quill's personality, he doubted the human would care that much about losing an outpost. Or at least that was what he hoped.

  Both him and Ttemin finally made it back to their hidden base, relieved that everything was done. Upon entering, all the rat kin rushed to meet him including some of the other tutorial guides that had joined their forces. These groups included a few wood elves, not particularly happy about the underground situation. Some Stone dwarves who were perfectly content about their current living situation underground, and a group of regular humans that didn’t seem to care one way or the other.

  “Did you get it??” Rrepia rushed towards him and he held out the Space gem to her which she quickly took from him and brought it to the center of the cavern where they had all the materials ready for the teleporter they would need to build.

  “Are you sure this Quill will be capable or even willing to build a local teleporter in his territory? All to save us which he likely has no strong feelings for.” Apparoo spoke up. He was one of the wood elves that had followed them for safety but had a growing sense of discontent since they had been hiding away in these caves.

  “He will. I know it in my heart. He likely has gathered quite a number of people under him already and will have more than enough tutorial guides to help him build his teleporter” Ssevinac lied back. In truth he had many doubts plaguing his heart but he couldn’t risk the elves or anyone else trying to leave as they would certainly get captured and then their location would soon be known

  “It will likely take us a few months before the teleporter is up and working anyways. It shall give Quill more than enough time to figure out what he needs to do and build his own. Remember he won’t be working under these conditions.” Ssevinac added, gesturing to their rather unfortunate predicament which seemed to placate Apparoo and the rest for the time.

  Now all Ssevinac needed to do was create The Outpost and they could set up the teleporter. Theoretically they could build a teleporter without the Outpost but the Outpost itself would help them sync the teleporter to the teleporter of the main territory. The naming of the Outpost itself would also be used to communicate with Quill as Quill himself probably had no idea he even needed to build a teleporter.

  They had been holding off on establishing an Outpost simply because they did not know if the faction above would get a notification about their Outpost and get a system quest to wipe them out. The less time the enemy faction had to mobilize the better.

  Once he confirmed with everyone if they were ready he finally began the system prompt to establish The Outpost where they were. Now all he needed to do was to make the name for the outpost.