Simple, I want you to join me

Slowly, Astur walks to the centre of the battlefield. Although not everyone's eyes are capable of focusing on her, there is no one that isn't paying attention to her at this moment.

"Hmm… I can either unfreeze the players and the Warband and let them clean up, or I can kill the Kingdom's soldiers myself. What to do…." Astur thinks.

Meanwhile, the players see a new status affliction appear on the bottom of their System Interface. Although they may not be able to move their mouths to speak aloud, the players have still access to their party chat and can still communicate with each other.

"Hey, check out your status guys, there's a new debuff on us from Astur," Nero says.

"I noticed already, the one called 'Decree of Order', I'll read off the description for my chat," Blaze says. "Order has been decreed by Astur Sera Kojuuin to stabilise the chaotic world. Within the surrounding area around her, Astur's words temporarily warp the world and become law and cannot be disobeyed. Deities with higher divinity or beings of equivalent strength can resist the effects."

While he isn't too surprised, having already known about this ability, Dahu Lu feigns a surprised reaction, "Damn! That's OP, are all high level NPCs like this?"

"Hold up guys, it looks like she's about to do something again," Blaze says.

With the player turning their focus back towards Astur, she lets out another puff of smoke as she says, "My allies may move. My enemies who stand further than one kilometre away will suffocate and die." Just like before, Astur's voice, despite being low, resounds throughout the valley for all to hear. And as she decreed, the players and the Warband regain their freedom, while Astur watches her Free EXP climb as Virpalian soldiers fall by the hundreds.

The tall horned warrior in the mechanical armour looks over to Astur, to which she simply nods. Having come to a tacit agreement, he yells out, "To battle my comrades!"

The players aren't idle either, as they run towards the soldiers and partake in the slaughter. Although Dahu Lu hesitates for a moment, knowing these are real people being killed and not just strings of 1's and 0's. But he ultimately joins in, since the soldiers are no more than free bags of experience points right now.

With all of the soldiers further away having been killed by Astur, it doesn't take more than a couple of minutes before the players and the Warband kill off all the remaining enemies, And as the last soldier falls dead, both Astur and the players get a new notification from the System, indicating the completion of the quest.

[Quest: Batte of Karthion Valley (Rank B) - Complete]

[Rewards]: +40,000 EXP, +10,000 VD, +30 Faction Points with the Warband.

[Bonus]: +20,000 EXP, +10,000 VD, +20 Faction Points with the Warband.

[Due to wiping out all opposing forces, you won't receive a wanted status.]

The players are jumping for joy, gaining massive amounts of experience points all at once. The highest level player with Astur right now is Blaze at level 4, after all, the primary way to gain EXP is through quests, and besides the ones that Astur gives out, most quests don't have high rewards. But having suddenly completed a high-level quest with practically no effort, they now have more EXP than ever before.

"I'm gonna dump this all into my Main Class right away," Blaze says into the party chat.

But before she can go through with her plan, Nero stops her, "Wait, don't use your EXP yet! Remember the items in Astur's shop, the EXP potions? We should buy those with our EXP until we can't use them anymore, it's more efficient than actually using the EXP to level up. And don't forget about Subclasses, we should save some EXP for when we get a Subclass."

"Fine, I can wait a bit, but seeing such a large number on my status bothers me, I really want to spend it," Blaze says.

Astur on the other hand briefly holds off on doing anything with her EXP and instead uses her inspection skill, Scholar's Eye of Insight, to check on the status of the giant person walking towards her, the horned man in the mechanical armour. But everything but his name comes up as question marks, meaning that he is more than 20 levels higher than Astur.

Although she is fairly certain that the man approaching her is Asterion, the Warden, Astur wants to be 100% sure of his capabilities. She wants to convince him and his group to join her, so just in case negotiations go south she needs to know what Asterion can do. So she decides to spend her newly gained EXP on levelling her Main Class. Spending 55,904 of her Free EXP, Astur brings her Alchemist level from 10 to 17, while also dropping her Free EXP from 62,574 to 6,670.

With her level raised, she tries to inspect him again. But nothing has changed, she can still only see his name, Asterion, while his level and stats remain hidden.

"Well that didn't help, and the time on my Authority ran out. Guess, I'll just have to play this out and hope for the best," Astur thinks as both Asterion and the players come up to her.

The players had previously thought that Astur was pretty tall at 1.83 metres, but standing in front of each other, they see how Asterion towers over Astur. Excluding the large bull horns on the side of his head, Asterion stands at 5.1 metres tall, nearly three times the height of the average man. He is wearing a mechanical power armour that covers his entire body, including a helmet for his head. In one hand is a giant tower shield that covers nearly his entire body, while in his other hand is a massive 2-metre war hammer. But his armour, hammer, and shield have all been worn down through the passage of time. His equipment being rusted and chipped in various places.

"I grant mine thanks to thee for thy assistance. Though there isn't such thing as a free lunch, for what reason hast thou granted thy assistance to us?" Asterion says, in a slightly mechanised voice.

"My reasoning is quite simple. I initially came here in search of you and your Warband," Astur says.

Although it's hard to tell behind the red glowing lenses of Asterion's helmet, his eyes are carefully scanning Astur in an attempt to read her body language and decipher her race.

"And what is't, thou seek from me and mine comrades, child of infinity?"

Astur is slightly taken back to have her race recognised, but she shrugs it off and says, "Even simpler, I want you and your comrades to join me."