Chapter 299: Different Goals

While the human faction worked hard to get the city expanded beyond the walls, the other factions also had their tasks to accomplish.

For the sea folk, their task for the Fifth Trial was simple. Get their people ready to ascend, and clear the sea monsters from their territory. They weren’t being swarmed, and they weren’t required to kill them. So, they had resorted to simply setting wards and deterrents that would encourage the monsters to go elsewhere.

That got the job done, and it complied with the System’s requirement for them to get rid of the monsters.

Like the residents of Marimgar, they didn’t actually want all the monsters gone.

Just the dangerous ones.

The weak and tasty ones could stay, they were happy to accommodate those ones. But the system said to clear them, so they would get rid of all the ones that they were not actively farming, and assume that was enough.

Compared to their organized method, the Giants were a mass of chaos. They weren’t worried about their conditions too much. They just had to eliminate one non Giant faction before the trial ended to get full points.

Each tribe would have to do it individually, but they were much more enthusiastic about that than they were about working together.

The issue was that there weren’t all that many factions left, and they had to find them. Some were small and hidden, others were far from the Giants’ territories. But there was one that was a sore point for their entire species.

The City of Marimgar.

They were the lone human faction to survive, small and weak, an insult to the System’s power. Plus, their fancy weapons had taken first place away from the Frost Giants.

Even if no other tribe liked them, that was still unacceptable.

The Frost Giants weren’t quite sure where the humans were, but they had a good idea. They knew that it was on the coast, and in the volcanic rubble area, So, they could narrow it down to a wide strip of land.

It was a huge area to search, but there were Giant tribes in the area, and if they could find it, they might get lucky and eliminate the top challenger to their power.

The Giants didn’t count the sea folk as a real threat. Mostly because they couldn’t get to them.

So, Marimgar was the one faction that was truly threatening them.

Then, they needed to find the dogs, both versions of them. Those things were a pain to kill, and they never seemed to stay dead. So, they needed to go as well, if the Giants were going to dominate the rankings.

They all got nearly the same tasks, to eliminate someone and prove to their Gods that they were worthy of ascending.

So, naturally, they wanted to get rid of three out of four of the factions that were ranked above them. The humans had their fancy weapons, which would need a plan. But the other two were just tougher than the Giants cared to admit.

But they would also eliminate any small factions that they found, just to be sure.

They couldn’t afford to have a tribe not eliminate anyone, so they had to kill everything that they came across, or call for someone else to do it if they already had theirs. That was the Giant Clans’ way.

Blissfully unaware of what was hunting them, the residents of Marimgar were making great progress on both fronts. Not only were they getting a lot of new people to level 0 by the end of the first week of the trial, they had managed to get two new chefs, two "Technician" class repairmen, and over a dozen level 1 farmers.

The plan was working exactly as they had hoped it would.

Now, they just needed to keep it up, get the classes balanced between life skills and combat, so that the city had everyone that they needed, and that would be their target for the trial.

But they were also making progress on the power growth part of the trial. It wasn’t as easy and clear, but the top teams were clearing the Ogre dungeon every day, and slowly gaining more experience.

It dropped off with every level that you were above the dungeon itself, but you could be twice the dungeon’s level and still get experience.

The Rat King stopped giving it at level three. But the Goblins would give it to level six, and so on.

That meant that in theory, they could reach level twenty in the Ogre dungeon, but it would take ages, since every level was taking more experience, and giving less.

Not a great combination.

They did have a few who were getting close, though.

Sanchez had reached level eighteen, as had Esmeralda, and Yara. Reggie was very close to it, due to pure hard work after having died once during the earlier trials.

That was all the motivation that he needed to keep him doing everything possible to get his level up, though he still had the worst possible luck, and the repair teams knew him better than anyone else.

They even kept a spare suit of armour in his size.

Of course, he paid for it, purchased from the store. But he always had one suit broken, so there was always a fresh one waiting when he brought one in. The days that he didn’t break one, the spare just sat on a shelf, waiting for him.

Going into the second week, spirits were high, but on the morning of the ninth day, news came back that the outer scouts had seen something they had been hoping to avoid.

They had spotted the Giants.

Eighty kilometres from the city, and the scouts had retreated before the Giants spotted them, or they hoped they had. But now everyone knew that the Giants were in the area, and they were hunting.

Hunting for what was up for debate, but nobody wanted a full tribe of Giants that close to their borders.

That was close enough that the Giants could close the distance in under two days, if they saw where the scouts went, or were headed for the city.