My mind, a place usually filled with the orderly hum of analysis and strategic planning, felt like it had been struck by lightning. The torrent of information Althea had just unloaded didn't just add a new variable to my equations; it shattered the entire board. A goblin city. A dark god. Hundreds of human captives.
I stood perfectly still, letting the data points cascade and settle, my external expression carefully neutral. Althea watched me, her breath held, her gaze a desperate, pleading thing. She had laid her nightmare at my feet, and now she was waiting to see if I would treat it as a treasure or a curse. She couldn't possibly know that in my world, it was both.
I didn't need to turn my head to know Elara was there, just at the edge of the clearing. Her footsteps were silent, but her presence was a weight, a pressure in the air I had become acutely attuned to. She was a Ranger. Her Observation and hearing were likely far superior to mine. She would have heard every whispered, terrified word. And she, more than anyone, knew how my mind worked. She knew that where others saw an insurmountable threat, I saw a probability matrix—a high-risk, high-reward scenario that was almost too perfect to be real.
The thought wasn't my own. It sliced through the storm of my calculations with the clean, cold precision of a razor, a familiar intrusion into my mental space. It was the unique signature of our Battlefield Telepathy, a perk born of shared trauma and System-recognized trust.
'Don't even think about it, Kale.'
The voice in my head was Elara's, stripped of all tonal inflection, a pure transmission of intent. It was the mental equivalent of a hand gripping my arm, a sharp, immediate warning. Don't. Even. Think. About it.
Of course. It was the exact response I would have predicted from her. Her entire being was geared toward threat mitigation, toward the immediate, tangible security of our people. Her strategic calculus was grounded in the here and now: the number of spears we had, the strength of our walls, the patrol routes of our guards. She saw a goblin city and her mind immediately, correctly, identified it as a threat to be avoided at all costs. An enemy force of overwhelming size and unknown capability.
But I was a Scholar. My Vocation wasn't about the here and now; it was about the then and what-if. I saw a population bottleneck that was throttling our growth, a critical resource shortage that put a hard ceiling on our ambitions. And now, Althea had just handed me the solution, wrapped in a layer of extreme danger.
Hundreds of captives.
My mind raced, the numbers scrolling past my vision in a blur of blue System text. It was a treasure trove. Not just of bodies, but of Vocations. Farmers to work the fields. Masons to help Silas build our fortress. Weavers, carpenters, scribes… maybe even another Mage, or a Cleric of a different faith. The influx of skills would be transformative. The sheer amount of EXP my settlement would gain for liberating them would be astronomical, likely leveling our core members multiple times. And the Settlement Points… the Liberator feat for saving the twenty captives from Grul's camp had netted us +150 SP. What would the System award for freeing hundreds? It would be a king's ransom. A city's ransom. Enough to fund the construction of the Grotto and Elara's future outpost ten times over.
And then there was the darker, more pragmatic calculation my mind couldn't help but make. A goblin city, full of goblins. The sheer quantity of Biomass… the thought was monstrous, but it was there. Create a whole legion of Hobgoblins? Easy. We could even create a Bugbear guard.
'I know what you're thinking', Elara's thought came again, sharper this time, laced with an exasperation that was profoundly her. 'You're seeing the reward. I'm seeing our people dying in a swamp, fighting an army we can't beat. For a chance. It's not a chance, Kale. It's suicide.'
She was right. It was, by any rational measure, suicide. A direct assault was impossible. But I had never been one for direct assaults.
I pushed my own thought back to her, keeping it calm, compartmentalized. This wasn't the time or place for a strategic debate. Not in front of the newcomer who was the source of this entire dilemma. 'We'll discuss it later. For now, we have guests. And one of them is dying.'
I severed the connection, focusing my full attention back on Althea. I allowed a flicker of empathy to show on my face, a calculated expression of concern. Her story was horrifying, but her survival, her escape, her very presence here—it was valuable. She was a leader. She was a survivor. She was an asset.
"Your story is… significant," I said, my voice low and steady. I chose the word carefully. Not 'horrifying' or 'tragic', but 'significant'. It was a word of value, of currency. "You've given me a great deal to consider. The danger you've described is real, and I won't dismiss it."
I saw a flicker of relief in her eyes. She had been heard. Validated.
"But right now," I continued, shifting into the decisive tone of a leader, "my priority is your people. Your friend Finn needs a healer, not a patch of moss for a bed. We're taking you back to the Grotto. You'll be safe there. You'll get food, shelter, and medicine."
I turned, my gaze sweeping over to where Torvin stood watch over Marcus. "Torvin, help Marcus carry Finn. We're moving out."
Torvin nodded, his expression unreadable as he moved to comply.
I looked back at Althea. "You'll walk with me. I have more questions for you."
Her shoulders, which had been slumped in exhaustion, straightened slightly. I had given her a purpose, a role. She was no longer just a refugee; she was a source of vital intelligence. It was the first step in her integration. The first step in a plan that was already forming in my mind, a plan so audacious, so impossibly complex, that even thinking about it felt like standing on the edge of a cliff, staring down into an abyss.
Elara was right. It was probably suicide.
But the view from the edge was magnificent.