I was aimlessly walking around the camp, checking the progress of things. It was an important task that had to be done several times a day, projects were still rather short term and orders had to be issued. We couldn't have able hands doing nothing after all.

I looked up at the sunny sky.

Yep, I really had nothing better to do…

...

Who was I kidding? I ran away.

I was happy for them, really. They loved each other and that was great, any relationship that was better than what I had with Brian was good in my book. Not that it was a high bar to pass. I truly missed Brian, but even I could tell that a relationship built almost exclusively on a foundation of trauma and stress relief was not healthy.

I just wished soundproofing was a thing around here.

I pushed my mind back to more comfortable matters. Namely management.

This wasn't my first time being a warlord and building a community, but it had been a while ago. Getting back into lost habits had been harder than I expected. Especially since I had no swarm to help me survey everything that was happening this time around

I was trying to compensate by using spiritual sensing at all times, but it was still pretty iffy, it felt like trying to learn how to sense through my bugs all over again, except this time I started out with a way smaller range. It was getting bigger, but it was still a far cry from three blocks I had when I was alive.

Thankfully I didn't have to deal with accounts management this time. That particular skill was always more Lisa's thing than mine, but if I could switch my current workload with only accounting I would gladly do so. This was….a lot.

First on my list was making sure we didn't implode, and that meant keeping my people content. That particular path went through the construction and maintenance of infrastructures and installation of enforced rules. The laws part I had handled, and while it wasn't perfect, my people at the very least didn't think I was trying to fool them.

For the infrastructures, our ramparts were a given to provide safety considering the state of the outside world, and houses were still a work in progress. There were also obvious quality of life requirements like toilets and places to wash yourself, although the latter were left to each one's discretion. I already had my hands full thank you very much, I was not going to micromanage to this degree.

I also had to consider how much I was willing to make my people work. After all, we needed hands if we wanted to keep expanding our settlement, but if I overworked them we would be running into efficiency problems. I didn't want to end up dealing with strikes either.

As for the children…I didn't like it one bit, but anyone aged twelve and above had to help out. I adapted their tasks to their age of course, but we couldn't let idle hands go like that. Especially idle hands that grew up to be independent and wouldn't take well to being benched. God save us from teenagers.

It's not like I would be receiving any backlash for it anyway, no one here seemed to understand the concept of labor laws, some even complained that the younger ones weren't working at all, even Isamu thought it was weird. Medieval standards were different I supposed.

Nonetheless, I could see things were going well on that front as I passed in front of some of the construction sites, the workers building diligently. Some sneaked some glances at me, working even harder afterwards.

Another advantage of inspecting the workers, nobody wanted me to think they were slacking on the job.

I smiled when I heard childish laughter in the distance, I walked towards them.

There were currently seven kids under the age of 12, we kept them in a house next to my own so that we could deal with any emergency quickly. It was quite similar to what I did in Brockton Bay to be honest. Isamu and Naoko took turns taking care of them while one or two women that looked kind enough were trusted to help, I wasn't going to let just anyone do it after all, the concept of child protection seemed, like most others, lost among the inhabitants of this district.

When I got close enough, I sensed three young kids playing tag. These three hellions were by far the most rambunctious of the seven. Hiroki, Gaku and Juri, respectively seven, five and six years old.

Some would say they were adorable little angels that brought joy with them wherever they played.

I would say the puddle of piss they left on my bed as a prank was one of the reasons I was training my spiritual senses so much.

The amount of chores I gave them after that stunt ensured they would think far more than twice next time.

Soon enough they entered my line of sight. It seemed as of now that Gaku was 'it', and was chasing Juri while I sensed that Hiroki was hiding in some kind of hole beneath a house. Juri was quite agile for a girl her age and easily jumped over the various supplies lying around and changed directions on a dime.

Juri froze the instant she turned towards me. Gaku, who hadn't noticed my presence yet, caught her.

"Hah! You're it!" he said. He was halfway through starting to run when he noticed she hadn't reacted. "Hey I said you're it. What are you looking at? Is it-Oh shit."

They both just stood there, Hiroki crawled out of his hiding place as he knew there was no point hiding from me.

"I hope you did your laundry for today before going out to play." I said.

"Yeah, uh, totally. It's all squiky-clean." Gaku badly lied. The other two quickly nodded.

"Well then, I will go myself pick it up then. It wouldn't do for the other kids to get itchy clothes." I smiled.

"Nonono wait!" interrupted Juri, clearly panicking. "It's-uh-it's…" she continued, desperately trying to come up for an excuse.

"It's beneath you!" hurryingly said Hiroki. "It-uh-I'm sure you're busy enough as it is, we'll go take care of it. Don't worry." A nice save.

How adorable. I showed a genuine smile, somehow it made them even more anxious. It was obvious they had shoved their chores to the side in order to go play, but what child of their age wouldn't? I'd indulge them.

"Fine. Go take care of that." I said. "But it better be done before the evening, I will check on it." I warned in a stern tone. "Understood?"

"Yes ma'am" they said in unison before running off.

I shook my head amusedly, it wasn't even the right direction.

I had managed a sort-of orphanage when I had been Skitter, but I didn't directly interact with the kids as I was mostly preoccupied by cape activities while it was running, and I ended up leaving it to Charlotte anyway when I left to join the Wards. I was starting to think I missed out on something. Fortunately Isamu and Naoko didn't seem to mind the responsibility.

While Isamu tended to get walked over by the kids due to his rather subdued temperament, Naoko was very popular with them. I supposed that they related to each other, they all grew in the same environment after all.

As for me, I wasn't all that popular. They clearly were intimidated by me, and who could blame them for being wary of the scary murderous warlord lady?

Still, I liked playing the stern but caring motherly figure once in a while. I hadn't known I would enjoy something like that, but I guessed it made sense, During my last two years of life the halfway decent social bonds I made could barely be called as such, and as for my interactions with actual children…

I didn't think much of what I did to Aster. It had to be done, it was a mercy kill. But...that lack of guilt…

Fuck. What was wrong with me? Ruining my good mood by digging up old wounds for no reasons.

I would have liked to go back to my pleasant thoughts about the kids, but it would have just brought me back to that direction, so I forced myself to think of other matters.

I needed to think about the collective power of my forces. We were currently about 50 able to fight, and while food was not a concern since so few of us needed to eat, the fact that it was the case was a problem in and of itself. Ozawa explained that needing food meant that you were spending spiritual energy, which meant that your spiritual power was leaking out, which meant you had reached the capability to exert it to increase your strenght. In other words most of my men were as strong as normal human beings, and that would only change with time and experience. Time I didn't have.

Power grew under duress. It was like a muscle. When you train your muscles, they end up struggling, creating micro-tears. Your muscles are then strengthened so that they would not have trouble next time. Except that this is only the explanation on an evolutionary standpoint, that your body will only grow better muscles if they are needed, as otherwise they're pointless wastes of resources. In reality, the body doesn't have that kind of thought process. Stuff goes in, hormone goes out. Nothing more, nothing less.

The soul on the other hand, it was you, your very subconscious was a part of it and it would know that when you emptied your reservoir of energy to train it, you didn't actually need it, so it wouldn't bother growing it. To make your spiritual power grow you needed to actually put yourself in danger for your soul to give a shit.

Ozawa described my explanation as 'sort of what was happening but not really' without bothering to go any deeper on the subject, saying that it didn't really matter since the end result was the same: to get powers you had to put yourself in dangerous fights.

That explained why I grew so quickly, but it also put me in a bit of a bind. If I needed to find challenges to grow in power, I would find less and less of them that would match me. Thankfully I hadn't run into that problem yet, mobs of regular people were still enough to be threatening, but it was getting easier. Apparently spiritual power grew on it's own over time, so I would never reach a hard power cap, but it also meant that past a certain point strength was measured in centuries. Not something I had time to wait for either.

I snickered. My past self would have laughed in the face of such use of terms as 'soul' and 'spiritual energy', but after learning that honest to god magic was real I had to concede. Souls and ghosts were definitely a thing.

To be fair it wasn't too hard to accept these revelations on the nature of existence. Cape life trained me to just nod my head at explanations and their implications to only consider the practical side of things. 'Oh, this thing reverses the polarity of anti-neutrinos to pass beta-photons through subspace in order to create a localized calorific disparity? Yeah, let's just say it's a freeze-gun.'

My own feelings on the matter aside, what it all meant was that opposing warlords would have the advantage in both quantity and quality. Since I couldn't really do anything about the quality problem beyond organizing training sessions and making weapons, I had to worry about the quantity.

The best way to attract people was reputation. Spreading rumors about a new warlord that was actually fair and nice for a change.

The other solution was to send people around to spread the word of what I was trying to do. That had been what we did in the beginning, but it was dangerous and brought diminishing returns

To be honest, as of right now, there wasn't much more I could to to bring more people into my fold without making everything unstable.

Then, if I couldn't shore up my offensive power, I had to play defensively.

I passed next to the execution platform. Dried blood had permeated the wood. It wasn't something that I liked doing, but it was necessary. We didn't have any feasible way to hold that many people locked up, and just banishing them held its own kind of issues. Public executions were distasteful, but they would imprint the fear of consequences to those watching. The very least I could do was bearing that task on my own.

As for the bodies, some suggested we burn them as fuel to save wood, others that we exhibit them on the walls for intimidation. In the end I just put them in a hole in the ground outside the fortifications, the stench near to the pit was horrible and it wasn't any kind of decent burial, but at least I still had enough standards to not use their corpse as a mere resource. I kept an eye after that on the ones who made these horrid suggestions, more than a few proved a bit too violent for my community.

I wasn't going to kill anyone that was a bit too ruthless mind you, that wouldn't leave me with many followers, but I didn't hesitate to execute them if they proved too unstable. The more bloodthirsty members who didn't do anything to warrant killing, I sent to defend the gates. There wasn't exactly a shortage of blood to spill there.

Ah, there he was.

A man was tied up to the platform, bruised and battered. His arm was broken and I would have been surprised if he could still see with his right eye, but he was alive. He was the only living prisoner I had. We usually just killed anyone we captured on the spot as we simply didn't have the means to hold them, but this time I made an exception for as long as it took for me to make up my mind, and I did.

I stood over him, hesitating one last time on the course of action I was going to take. He looked up in defiance. Good, he still had enough of a fight in him. I wouldn't want him to die on his way after all.

He had been the leader of the Tamer's latest probing party. The guy had barged in with a dozen men demanding our subservience and a tax of five young girls for the Tamer to enjoy.

We killed them all of course.

Now, this wasn't a decision without consequence. Kaku the Tamer was one of the most influential warlords in this section of the district, and as such he would not be taking an affront like this lying down. Thankfully, the leader of the party had been quite strong and survived the fight, which left me with options.

The Tamer's forces would be coming either way, but I could influence what he would send. He saw me as a new girl, inexperienced, weak, not worth his time, next time he would just send enough subordinates to crush us. I was confident we could win that fight, but we wouldn't survive a second one.

The other option was reckless and foolish, but if we won it would be decisive, no strike would follow.

I cut down his restraints. He took the opportunity and lunged at me as fast as he could. A summary kick to jaw calmed him down.

I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him behind me towards the gate

Speaking of which, I could hear some fighting in that direction. I arrived at the entrance to my fort in a few minutes. It was the Eternals, I recognized them by that white swastika they painted on their bodies. Fanatics, convinced that their sacred task was to help you leave this transient existence and get you to your next life. They did it by killing you of course. After all, why worry about death when your soul itself was proven eternal?

They were widespread all throughout Zaraki, and while they didn't have any actual hierarchy or organization, the general climate of hopelessness was a perfect breeding ground for this death cult, especially since all it took to claim yourself as one of them was to carve the kanji of eternity on you body. If there's no hope in the present, you can at least look forward to your next life I supposed.

That particular characteristic made them remarkably prone to suicide attacks. Considering how outnumbered the five of these guys were, it seemed it was the case here too. When I entered the scene, the last of them was being put down.

"Everything handled here?" I asked.

"Easily Boss. But I won't complain if they stopped attacking all the time." said a gruff man whose name was escaping me. "Ichiro, how many times has it been?"

"It's the eleventh time this week." answered said Ichiro.

"We can't really do anything to stop these attacks." I said. "But don't hesitate to ask for supplies if you run out. Has there been any sightings of the Tamer's men?"

"No, not even a peep." I sighed in relief. It wasn't too late.

"Good." I threw my prisoner on the ground.

I had never been much of a defensive player, I preferred to impose my own pace to the enemy instead of dancing to their own. But I didn't have much of a choice here, we needed to survive until we were strong enough.

The first measure I put in place was of course the rampart I built. Well, it was more of a big stake-wall, big enough that no one human sized could just climb it. It had been one of the first things we built and it had been a gigantic pain in the ass. Putting it in place took the better part of a month, and that it took such a short time was a testament to how much work and effort was put into it. I wasn't expecting it to stop the stronger people from just going through the wall, but at least the majority of people would have to try passing through the gate. A well defended gate.

But that alone wouldn't be enough. The best way to be defensive, was to simply not be attacked. How would I do that? By proving I was strong enough to not be worth attacking. I needed to prove myself, and weathering small probing parties from other warlords wasn't enough. I needed something else. To become untouchable I had to prove it. I had had to beat the strongest guy around and have proof.

If I failed, I would die, but if I did nothing I would be trapped under some brute's thumb for years. To me death was preferable. I already died once anyway. Maybe it was callous of me, after all my fate will be my people's. I didn't like how similar it sounded to these religious nut-jobs spiel either, but wouldn't it all have been pointless if I let myself be bullied into submission?

No.

I was going to build a bastion of safety in a place devoid of it. If my fort lost these traits, I might as well raze it to the ground.

I wouldn't submit. I wouldn't let that bastard send waves after waves of men on our walls until we broke. I would make sure to have the opportunity to end it right then and there.

I would send him a message.

"Alright." I said as I crouched to his level. "I'm going to let you go." The man only grew more worried at that. Good on him for being smart enough to not take my words. face value. "But as you can guess, you won't be coming back empty handed."

I grabbed his hand, and took my knife. I stabbed. The knife went through two fingers as if they were butter, severing them off completely. I picked them up as the man clutched his injured hand and groaned in barely suppressed pain. I had considered cutting his whole hand off, but I was afraid he would just die of blood loss.

Once he started paying attention to me again, I pushed his own fingers in his arms and continued "You can tell him that the next time he wants something to fuck, he can just put these up his ass."

I threw him outside and watched as he shambled away with his severed appendages.

"Ichiro, watch him and make sure he doesn't die on his way." I ordered. He nodded and went after the man.

Good. Now I was certain the Tamer would come in person to try and put me in my place. He would come, and give me the opportunity to end the threat that he was right then and there.

And if he happened to bring with him that little trophy he was rumored to have, then all the better.

A.N.

I had some difficulty with this chapter, I had to be sure of what I wante d to setup here and what wouldn't fit in while keeping in mind the pacing throughout the following chapters. Unfortunately it is unlikely the next chapter will come soon, despite the confinement the pace of my studies is pretty hectic and I already feel a bit guilty for working on this instead of catching up with my quantum mechanics lessons.

Thankfully if all goes well, next year should be far more chill.