The Game Where I Was Rank One Became Reality-Chapter 68: Third Village

Greymoss was not Thornfield.

Krug understood this within ten seconds of arriving. The Beastmen who met him at the settlement’s outer ring — a perimeter of sharpened logs driven into the earth at thirty-degree angles, forming a barrier that discouraged approach without fully blocking it — were not hungry. They were not desperate. They were not waiting for a god to save them.

They were armed.

Three of them. Two males and a female. The males carried axes — crude iron, poorly balanced, but maintained with the attentiveness of people who knew their weapons were the difference between living and not. The female had a short bow with three arrows nocked loosely in her draw hand. All three wore hides. All three had the lean, scarred look of people who fought regularly and expected to fight again soon.

"Turn around," the tallest male said. No greeting. No question. A directive.

Krug stood his ground. Behind him, four Ashenveil guards held position — Lizardman veterans who’d drilled with minotaurs and cleared a dungeon and understood that the first rule of diplomacy was looking like you could win the fight you were trying to avoid.

"My name is Krug," he said. "I’m from Ashenveil. We came to talk." 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

"We don’t talk to strangers."

"You’re talking to me now."

The tallest male’s jaw tightened. The Beastman beside him — shorter, broader, with a scar that ran from his left ear to his chin — shifted his grip on the axe. Not a threat display. An adjustment. The kind of micro-movement that people made when they were deciding between options and wanted their weapon ready for whichever one they chose.

"I brought tools," Krug continued. "And a healer. No soldiers beyond the four you see. If you want us gone, we leave. If you want to hear an offer, we stay."

The female lowered her bow a fraction. Not all the way. "What offer?"

"The same one we made to Thornfield and Millhaven. Stonesteel tools. Medical support. Trade access. In exchange, we ask for nothing except your attention."

"And after attention?" the tallest male asked.

"That’s up to you."

A silence stretched. Greymoss sprawled behind the palisade — a rough settlement of hide tents and timber longhouses arranged around a central fighting pit. Krug could see it from where he stood — a circular depression in the ground, packed earth stained with old blood, surrounded by log seating. The Beastmen settled disputes in that pit. Leadership was determined in that pit. Status, respect, mating rights — all decided by combat.

Krug knew this because he’d read Harsk’s intelligence report. But he also knew it because it was obvious. A culture built around a fighting pit didn’t negotiate with words.

"I challenge your strongest warrior," Krug said.

The three Beastmen looked at each other. The female’s bow came up slightly, then lowered again.

"Why?" the tallest male asked.

"Because you don’t respect traders. You respect fighters. If I win, you listen to my offer. If I lose, we leave and never come back."

The tallest male studied Krug — the scarred Lizardman with the dark-metal weapon at his hip and the posture of someone who’d fought things bigger than Beastmen. Not with suspicion. With appraisal. The look of a fighter evaluating another fighter.

"Renn," the tall one called over his shoulder. "Visitor wants the pit."

***

Renn was the largest Beastman Krug had ever seen.

Not the largest creature — Gorren was taller, heavier, wider. But Renn was the largest thing that moved the way Renn moved. He was built like a wall of muscle and scar tissue, a head taller than Krug, his body covered in the short, coarse fur that marked the Beastmen of the northern grasslands. His weapon was a stone maul — a block of granite bound to a hardwood shaft with leather strips. Old-world weaponry. The kind of weapon that a civilization with no forge technology produced through necessity and brute engineering.

The fighting pit filled. A hundred and eighty Beastmen ringed the depression, sitting on the log seats or standing along the edge. Children perched on shoulders. The elderly watched from lean-to shelters at the perimeter. The entire village, gathered to see a Lizardman stranger fight their champion.

Krug descended into the pit. He drew his stonesteel blade — short, heavy, balanced for close-quarters work. The metal caught the afternoon light with the dark gleam that no other alloy in this part of the world could replicate.

Renn descended from the opposite side. He planted the maul’s head in the dirt and looked at Krug the way a predator looks at something that hasn’t decided if it’s food yet.

No rules were stated. Krug assumed there were none.

Renn moved first.

The maul came in a lateral sweep — not overhead, not the telegraphed downward smash that an amateur would try. A horizontal stroke aimed at Krug’s ribs, fast enough that the air compressed ahead of it with an audible hiss. Renn was fast. Faster than his size suggested. The kind of speed that came from a lifetime of pit fights against opponents who learned the same lesson Krug was learning now: the first swing wasn’t the setup. It was the kill shot.

Krug stepped inside.

Not back. Inside. Toward the swing, under the arc, closing the distance between them to the point where the maul’s length became a liability instead of an advantage. The stonesteel blade came up — not as a strike, but as a guard. He caught the maul’s shaft on the flat of his blade and felt the impact through his arm, his shoulder, his spine.

Reinforce.

The skill activated through muscle memory. The Acolyte of the Forge class skill — imbuing an object with durability and weight proportional to conviction. The blade hardened in his grip. The weight shifted, the metal becoming denser, the edge becoming something that existed between a physical tool and an expression of will. Krug had been Fanatic since the first month. His conviction, in this moment, was not complicated. He believed that his god watched. He believed that his blade was more than metal. He believed those things without doubt or qualification.

The blade held.

Renn grunted. He pulled back, reset, swung again — this time overhead, a power stroke that would have driven Krug into the earth if it connected. Krug sidestepped. The maul hit the ground where he’d been standing and embedded three inches into packed earth.

Before Renn could pull it free, Krug closed.

The stonesteel blade pressed against Renn’s throat. Not cutting. Touching. The edge resting against the pulse point below the jaw, held with the careful control of a fighter who could have pushed harder and chose not to.

Renn froze. His hands were on the maul’s shaft. His eyes were on the blade at his neck.

The pit was silent. A hundred and eighty Beastmen watched a Lizardman outsider hold a blade to their champion’s throat and not use it.

"I win," Krug said. "Now you listen."

He removed the blade. Stepped back. Sheathed it.

Renn pulled the maul from the earth. For a long moment, the Beastman champion stood in the center of the fighting pit looking at the Lizardman who’d just beaten him with a weapon made of metal that shouldn’t exist.

Then he sat down in the dirt. Not a surrender. An invitation. The Beastmen gesture for speak — I’m listening.

Renn’s mouth twitched. Not a smile. Something closer to a recognition. The look of one fighter acknowledging another.

***

Krug taught them the Iron Devotion.

Not all of them. The children didn’t participate — they watched from the pit’s edge with wide eyes. The elderly sat in their shelters and observed. Some of the warriors refused outright, standing at the perimeter with folded arms and closed expressions. That was fine. Krug had been told to expect resistance. Beastmen didn’t convert to foreign gods on the strength of a single fight.

But sixty of them knelt. The ones who’d seen the blade at Renn’s throat. The ones who’d felt the weight of Krug’s weapon and understood, instinctively, that the metal was different. That the strength behind it was different.

"Right knee," Krug said, demonstrating. He knelt in the packed earth of the fighting pit, the dried blood of a hundred previous fights beneath his knee. It felt appropriate. "Left fist over your heart."

They copied him. Awkwardly. Beastmen had different proportions — longer arms, broader shoulders, legs that bent at slightly different angles. The posture that felt natural for a Lizardman required adjustment for a Beastman. Some of them placed the wrong knee down. Some of them put their fist on the wrong side. It didn’t matter. The form could be corrected. The intent was what counted.

"Repeat after me," Krug said. "By iron and fire, I stand before the Design."

Sixty voices, rough and uncertain, echoed the words. Some in Common. Some in the Beastmen’s own tongue, translating on the fly, stumbling over concepts that didn’t map cleanly between languages. The word Design was particularly difficult — the Beastman language had no equivalent for intentional architecture. They used the closest word they had, which was something like *the pattern the sky makes before a storm.*

It was close enough.

"My hands are the hammer. My will is the forge. I am shaped and I shape in return."

The second line was easier. Hammers and forges were physical objects. Will was a concept every warrior understood. *I am shaped and I shape in return* required no explanation for people who’d spent their lives being shaped by violence and shaping it in return.

"Order above. Order within. Until the last flame dies, I am Yours."

The last line settled over the pit like ash after a fire. Not all of them said it. Some mouthed the words without sound. Some stopped halfway through and went quiet.

But some of them felt it.

Krug could tell because of the warmth. Not his — theirs. When a mortal’s faith connected for the first time, there was a sensation that even non-priests could detect if they were close enough. A warmth in the chest, behind the fist, where the prayer directed attention. Not dramatic. Not a miracle. Just the faint, unmistakable sense that something had heard.

Three of them laughed — nervous, surprised laughter, the kind that came from people who’d felt something they didn’t expect. One of them — a female warrior with a notched ear and a face built for suspicion — went dead still. She stared at her own fist over her heart with an expression that Krug recognized from his own conversion: the look of a person who’d just discovered, against their will, that they believed.

Renn didn’t kneel. He sat at the pit’s edge, stone maul across his knees, watching. Calculating. Not hostile. Not converted. Waiting. The warrior’s version of faith: I’ve seen what you can do, now show me what your god can do.

Zephyr would oblige. The blessings would come — physical enhancement through the Forge domain, enhanced senses through Thyrak’s Beast domain. The Beastmen would feel their bodies improve over the coming days. The skeptics would notice that the converts were faster, stronger, sharper. Some would kneel then. Others would hold out longer.

It didn’t matter. The door was open.

Above, Zephyr updated the count. The system registered the new faith bonds:

[FAITH CONVERSION — Mass Event]

[Settlement: Greymoss]

[New believers: 60]

[Starting tier: Casual (all)]

[Conversion catalyst: Combat demonstration + Iron Devotion ceremony]

[Unconverted population: 120 (observing)]

[TERRITORY UPDATE]

[Total Believers: 2,830]

[Thornfield: 194 | Millhaven: 146 | Greymoss: 60]

[Ashenveil Core: 2,100 | Ironhold: 330]

[FP Generation: 3,980/day]

[Rank 4 Progress: 62,000 / 80,000 FP]

[Estimated Time to Rank 4: ~4 months (current trajectory)]

Four months to Rank 4. Maybe three, if Greymoss converted faster than baseline.

And after Rank 4... a kingdom needs a king. But that conversation is for later.