Chap 5

  It has been two weeks since we first arrived, and we have all made personal improvements. And my own example of improvement would be

  Stats average for a newborn human: 1

  “The power still takes some getting used to. But ain’t I already overpowered?” I realized I spoke out loud and knew what was coming. “Only for a human host, stats for a mere tier one are 1 million. And that's entry level. . . you bum,”. I rolled my eyes unbecoming of my age, but I couldn't care less. “ A negative Nancy you are, always draining your elders' enthusiasm. Damn vampire.” He ignored me as I went back to cultivating in the captain's quarters. Over the past two weeks, the whole crew had seen rapid improvements.

  Engineers and computer specialists began augmenting the ship, and some sailors began dueling to further their skills. Others went hunting for fish despite the full freezers, so the Gallery staff decided to make magic dishes, potions, pills, and poisons. But honestly, we were just sailing circles with no goal in mind. And we had finally set out to start our exploration. I made my way to the bridge as the big girl turned herself and began moving on her own accord. Well, not technically, as we had already told her days in advance the plan.

  Two weeks ago:

  “WHATTTT!!!!”

  I exclaimed, snapping everyone and their systems from their conversations. I felt my regal-wise-elder persona I’ve cultivated for years slipping. “Curse your mother!! Damn Enkidu! I know this is your plot!”. While I was boiling internally, almost hearing the bastards' laughter, externally, I just coughed awkwardly as all eyes fell on me. “What has all your attention? Is there a show I’m missing?”. I said with a smile that looked amiable but had nothing but malice.

  They all went back to their systems quickly, and in the same manner, I chose the obvious choice of skills {1 ship 64 palms, [active]}. Soon after, we were running updates up the chain of command, Skill choices, extra information, etc. And once again, I was at the front of the room, ready to oversee and give orders. All twenty engineers received Construct classes, no surprises there. The twenty medical staff members of the department received healing and poison-related classes. The ten Galley members either received hunting or alchemy-related classes. Housekeeping’s twenty-five all got stealth and scout classes. The ten hosts and ten entertainers all received unique classes. But the strangest of them all were the computer specialists who all received base building Classes.

  Classes came from mixing the things you enjoyed the most, the things you desired the most, and the things you did the most. “So that's what y'all sat around doing all day? Crack of Clans all day? That game is almost as old as me!”. I knew they were doing it because I was doing the same on the super-fancy control panel. “Cap’n, I think your offense is way worse,” chimed my 1st officer. Either way, I began to give my own report on my class before the mysterious reveal. “Nice try, you good-for-nothing system. But my sham prevails!” After the shock had died down, I went over her ludicrous system sheet once more.

  Stats average for a newborn True Behemoth: 3,000

  “Hey system, what does Tier1 mean?”. He came and replied in a tone that lacked his usual annoying voice, which meant he was going to explain something important. “Host, it's the threshold for Tier1. I’ll use this as an opportunity to just explain a few things. First, at the top of the stat sheet, it shows the average stats of a newborn of your individual race. Then it shows your own personal stats; some of these stats have a Tier1 in front of them. This means the stat has passed the stat threshold of Tier1, which is 1 million points, so for every point you gain after reaching Tier1 is equal to 1 million Tier0 points.”. Nodding, I said, “So the big girl has 2.3 million in endurance rather than 2.3 flat. Also, I’m assuming we share skills. But of opposite types, so when I get the passive version of the skill, she gets the active version except for skills that need an active component, for example, {1 ship 64 palms, [active]}. Also, I’m gonna assume these are our ‘baby stats' as the system is treating us like newborns.” I could feel a mental nod before he sent vocal confirmation. “Correct, correct, and correct.”

  All this was to say… The big girl was an absolute monster! She was Tier0 and had three stats that could rival the oldies from Tier1! The same old fogies that shattered mountains and carved canyons and all that good stuff. And the best part? All those tier one stats were defensive or empowering! Endurance(2.3) was basically H.P, Will (1.5)l was basically M.P, and Charisma(1.2) was basically Aura. These were all stats that deterred threats or empowered the big girl. Which is what brings us to now.

  Present Day.

  Two weeks ago, we had asked the big girl to scan the area, and when she did, she scanned the entire planet. The planet we were on was the size of Jupiter, and we were in a small sea far from civilization. With the knowledge of the surrounding area and the strength of the natives' auras and whatnot scouted by the big girl, we made an educated decision to head toward the weakest country after two weeks of adapting to the system, our skills, and stats. Today was the end of those two weeks.

  We, the officers, gathered on the bridge while the rest of the squids sat lounging on the lido deck. The Twin-Knots cruised at a speed of 100 knots towards a nearby country. Name unknown, governing system unknown, population a few million. With a size larger than Greenland, and the landform being a peninsula. That mostly unknown place was our destination.

  Peninsula Kingdom, Magnus Aurora, 11 Days Earlier

  I wake before the bells.

  That, in itself, is a small rebellion. The bells were forged centuries ago, when our peninsula first crowned itself a kingdom, and they were meant to remind the ruler that even a king answers to time. At dawn, they ring from the Sea Tower, their sound carried over water and stone and forest alike. Tradition insists they wake the king.

  But tradition does not keep a weak kingdom alive.

  I wake while the sky is still bruised purple, when the sea below my balcony breathes like a great sleeping animal. The peninsula curves away from the palace in a long, narrowing arc of land, cliffs on the eastern side, and gentler shores to the west. Forests stretch inland—tall, straight pines and broad-leafed green walls shaped by careful magic generations ago. Our mages taught the trees to grow fast, not wild. Their roots do not crack roads. Their canopies allow sunlight to reach the undergrowth. Order, not awe.

  Fog clings to the lowlands, silver and patient. Somewhere beyond the horizon lie kingdoms whose mages raise mountains in an afternoon, whose rivers glow with spellfire, whose healers pluck death from a body as easily as one removes a thorn.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Compared to them, we are small.

  Compared to them, we are weak.

  The name of our kingdom is Magnus Aurora, and outsiders often laugh quietly when they learn it. Great Dawn, they translate, glancing at our modest fleets and careful magic. They assume it is arrogance or irony. It is neither.

  The name predates the crown, the palace, even the bells. Long before this land was unified, sailors used the peninsula as a navigational starpoint. At certain times of year, the dawn light struck the sea fog just right, igniting the entire coast in pale gold and violet. From miles away, ships would see it first—an enormous, impossible glow rising from the edge of the world.

  They called it the Great Dawn, not because it was powerful, but because it was reliable. When the first councils formed and later bent themselves into a monarchy, they kept the name as a promise rather than a boast. Magnus Aurora was never meant to mean greatest. It meant enduring. A light that arrived every morning, no matter how small the flame behind it.

  “The Founders never intended it. Another rebellion, but I am not one of the founders.”

  I wash, dress, and fasten my own buttons. The servants offered to do this, once. I refused. Silk shirt, soft but unadorned. Wool coat dyed in the deep blue of the surrounding sea. No gems, no embroidery that would snag or shine. The crown waits on its cushion—a thin circlet of white-gold, etched with maps rather than symbols. My grandfather commissioned it that way.

  “If it’s heavy,” he told me when I was a boy, placing it on my head with hands roughened by ink and travel, “you’ll start thinking strength comes from weight.”

  The bells begin as I lift the crown into place. Their sound rolls through the city, and I step onto the balcony as they ring. Below me, the capital stirs: market fires lighting, docks creaking awake, communal bakeries venting steam into the morning air. No cheering. No kneeling crowds. Just life continuing. That, too, is a rebellion—one I encourage.

  Breakfast is served in the Hall of Accounts, as it always is. It is a long, narrow chamber with tall windows facing the harbor. The walls are lined not with tapestries but with shelves of ledgers: centuries of taxes, wages, harvests, and trade tallied in careful hands. The smell is bread and ink and old wood. The ministers arrive in pairs, as protocol demands. On one side of the table sit the noble houses—merchant princes, shipping magnates, owners of foundries and spell-refining mills. Their clothes are expensive, their smiles practiced. On the other side sit the representatives of the communes and labor circles, elected from dock guilds, farming collectives, healers’ unions, and city wards. Their clothes are plainer, their expressions less predictable. Outsiders struggle to understand our system. They try to name it and fail.

  We allow private ownership of industry, but cap profit margins on essentials. We mandate worker councils inside every major enterprise, but permit competition between firms. We tax heavily to fund public magic—healing halls, river maintenance, forest growth—yet leave enough wealth in private hands to encourage invention and trade.

  Some call it socialist rot wrapped in a crown.

  Others call it capitalism with a guilty conscience.

  I call it survival.

  Reports begin as bread is passed. The western grain cooperatives exceeded quota again. Good soil, improved irrigation channels carved last year by apprentice mages. The surplus was sold through royal markets at fixed prices. Half the profit is returned directly to the workers. Half is taxed into the central fund. The merchants object. The price ceiling cuts into margins.

  The farmers object. They argue they should set prices themselves. Both sides look to me. I ask questions instead of giving answers. How much did transportation cost this season? How many wagons broke? How many hands were injured? When numbers replace rhetoric, voices soften. I assign a joint review—two merchant auditors, two cooperative delegates, one crown official—to adjust the ceiling before the next harvest.

  A courier interrupts with news from the south. A marsh fever outbreak. Terminal in most cases. Our healers contained it overnight. Three mages working in shifts, their power braided carefully to avoid collapse. The last patient woke at dawn. In the eastern empires, one archmage would have cured them all before supper and demanded a statue. I authorize hazard pay, extended rest, and a public commendation. The courier bows, surprised by the last part. Praise costs nothing. Fatigue costs everything.

  Midmorning brings audiences. The petitioners come in ones and twos, standing on the stone marker before the throne. I dislike the throne—it sits too high—but tradition clings stubbornly here. A dockworker speaks first. His name is Arven. He has lost two fingers to a faulty crane. He asks for safer equipment, mandatory inspections, and shared liability between owners and operators. A shipowner follows. Lady Merrowin, whose fleet feeds half the capital. She argues inspections would slow trade. She offers to compensate injured workers privately instead.

  I listen. I always listen. Then I ask Arven how many accidents occurred last season. I ask Merrowin how much each delay costs per ship. Numbers again. Real ones. I assign a temporary mandate: inspections funded jointly by shipowners and the dock commune, reviewed after three months. Neither is pleased. Both accept.

  By noon, my head aches pleasantly—the ache of use, not strain.

  I walk around the city after lunch. No escort glamours, no illusions to make streets seem cleaner or crowds thinner. Just guards at a respectful distance and my own boots on stone. The capital is built in layers, rising from the docks to the palace hill. Shared bakeries sit beside private patisseries. Communal kitchens serve stews subsidized by grain taxes. Across the street, a jeweler sells spell-set rings to merchants’ daughters. Public healing halls—white stone, blue banners—stand within a block of private clinics that charge for comfort rather than cure. Children play in the fountains fed by mage-carved aqueducts. Some wave when they recognize me. Some bow, taught by parents who remember harsher kings. Most keep playing. That is my favorite sign.

  In the afternoon, the Mage Council convenes. They are not cloaked mystics. They are engineers of reality, and they look the part—ink-stained sleeves, tired eyes, hair tied back for practicality. Our strongest mage could barely earn notice abroad. Together, they keep the kingdom alive. We review river maintenance first. The northern channel is silting faster than expected. Likely strain from last winter’s storms. Forest expansion follows—controlled growth along the eastern cliffs to prevent erosion. Healing allocations come last.

  Magic is abundant in the world, but mages are not. Power costs bodies. Burn them out, and you have nothing left when war comes. Strong kingdoms forget this. They throw magic at hunger, sickness, vanity, and spectacle until their foundations hollow out. We cannot afford that mistake. As dusk falls, I return to the palace. Ships pass on the horizon—great vessels from empires that do not slow for us. They do not fear us. That is acceptable. Dinner is quiet. I eat alone, by choice. Afterwards, I write in the royal ledger. Not laws. Not decrees. Observations. Where compromise was held. Where resentment lingered. Names of people who spoke honestly. Names of those who did not. My father used to decide these things by decree. He died young. I intend not to.

  Before sleep, I pause at the window once more. From this height, the coast glows faintly as the last light of day bleeds into night. The old sailors’ dawn has long passed, but the name remains. Magnus Aurora is not the brightest kingdom on this world—but tomorrow, like every day before it, light will return to this peninsula first.

  The bells ring again, marking the end of the day. I remove the crown and place it by the window, where moonlight traces the etched map along its rim.

  We are weak in magic. Modest in wealth. Divided in theory. United in practice.

  On a world of giants, we endure not by hoarding strength, but by sharing it carefully, deliberately, every single day.

  Tomorrow, I will wake before the bells again.

  They tell me Dawn always comes first to Magnus Aurora. That is the story we teach our children, and the one our diplomats repeat abroad with careful pride. Light touches our peninsula before it reaches the wider world. We are the Great Dawn. Reliable. Enduring. What the stories leave out is that dawn is not just light. It is also a shadow, stretched long and thin across the land. I discovered the first sign of trouble three days after the routine day I wrote into the ledger. It comes not as an alarm, nor a prophecy, nor a mage’s dream. It comes as a discrepancy.

  The northern river channel—yes, the same one discussed in council—has lost water overnight. Not diverted. Not evaporated. Missing. The measurements are small, almost ignorable. Any stronger kingdom would throw magic at it and move on. We do not. By afternoon, the Mage Council confirms what I feared: the river was not carved away by spell or hand. The flow itself was reassigned, as if reality had been persuaded—gently, expertly—to choose a different path. That kind of work is not beyond our understanding. It is beyond our ability. The mages argue quietly, voices tight. No spell residue. No signature. Whoever did this did not force the world to obey. They negotiated with it.

  “Formations.”

  That night, ships were slow on the horizon. Not warships. Merchant vessels. They linger just long enough to watch the coast at sunset, as if waiting for something. Or measuring it. A week later, healers report a strange pattern. Patients are cured—fully, cleanly—but the magic cost is lower than it should be. As if the effort were being subsidized from somewhere else. As if something unseen were helping carry the weight.

  The healers are grateful.

  The mages are uneasy.

  I am afraid.

  Magnus Aurora was built on the assumption that power is scarce and must be shared carefully. Our laws, our economy, even our crown are shaped around that truth. But what happens when power becomes cheap? What happens when another kingdom—stronger, patient, watching—decides to offer abundance without asking consent? The answer comes at dawn. Not our dawn. A second light appears on the far western sea, pale and steady, mirroring the old sailors’ legend almost perfectly. It is not fire. Not spellflare. It does not burn the fog away—it replaces it. A Great Dawn of someone else’s making. By midday, an envoy arrives. No banners. No threats. Just a simple message, delivered with a polite bow:

  Your systems are elegant. Your restraint is admirable.

  But the world is changing. Let us help you keep up.

  I stand at the window that night, crown resting on the sill, and watch two dawns reflected faintly in the water below. Magnus Aurora has endured by waking early, by sharing strength, by accepting weakness as the price of survival. Now something stronger has noticed us.

  Tomorrow, I will still wake before the bells.

  But for the first time, I do not know whether the light will belong to us alone.

  Near The Coast Of The Magnus Aurora Kingdom The Ironclad Titan Appeared

  It was early morning when we first saw the outline on the peninsula; it was covered in sea fog that almost seemed regular, but our newly acquired senses told us otherwise. The fog was jammed dense with mana, which would make this a heaven for mages and knights. Soon, upon the observation that multiple ships with dense auras were circling us, while even stronger auras were flying out from the core of the city. Tensions onboard escalated as the semicircular fleet of ships reached a 10 km distance from us. And from the center of the encirclement, a voice came out.

  “Mighty Beings! Why Is It That You Visit Us?!”

  Sensing an opportunity, I decided to copy the tactics of a certain nondescript Duggy B Clown. Using the speakers of the Twin-Knots, I projected my voice out to the surrounding fleet, “Worry Not, Mortals! We Will Do You No Harm!” And so I started another sham. This time, however, I was unaware of how real a threat we actually were.