*Day 095*

  “There’s a what?” Celys asked incredulously as her face blanched.

  “Yeah, you heard that right,” Joram said, frowning. “It seems as though the existence of the Dungeon has leaked,” he said, unconsciously using the slight inflection everyone used when referring to a monster dungeon. “Well, they could also be seeking revenge for my part in their friends and relatives being executed for kidnapping and killing children from another world,” he finished with a frown, referring to the illegal [Summon: Hero] experiments.

  “Ah,” Celys replied, loading that one sound with much meaning.

  “I’ll take care of them,” he said with a wave of the hand, making it seem as though an army over five thousand strong was merely an annoying rat in the cellar. “But, with what we know,” he said, motioning to the missive he’d brought to her office. “I would recommend moving everyone to the new town,” he finished, causing yet another headache to start creeping up on her.

  “And you’re sure that the queen was the one who sent this?” she asked, motioning once more to the carefully penned missive.

  “Yeah, Brittany dropped it off herself this morning,” Joram said, shaking his head. “I’m already preparing everyone in Myrmeze to evacuate to my little town. Buildings can be rebuilt, you see.”

  “True…” she said, thinking about just how difficult it would be to evacuate everyone in time. Sure, they had the better part of two days to do so, but it would also take time for the various farmers and ranchers to gather up everything they’d want to take with them.

  “At the very least, we can get everyone inside Kirkwall first. I’m sure they’ll want to try intimidating us with their numbers first. It’s certainly cheaper than having to replace their soldiers if they can get us to surrender without a fight,” Joram said with an odd twist of his lips that she’d learned to read as slightly amused, but also disdainful.

  “They will certainly move faster if they notice unusual movements,” she warned, hoping that she could minimize the casualties in the coming conflict.

  “Yeah, that’s true. But. I’m sure they’ll also be cautious.”

  “How so?” she asked, not quite understanding where he was coming from.

  “Well, they know that I have a Dungeon. They might also know what grades of Monster Cores are coming out of the Dungeon. Which would allow them to infer the strength of those delving the Dungeon. And so, even with their superior numbers, they would likely be cautious of any elite teams that we might have,” Joram explained his reasoning, making her wonder why he hadn’t bothered putting a contingency plan in place if he could think so far ahead.

  So, she asked.

  “Well,” Joram said, drawing the word out slightly as he actually looked embarrassed. “I’ve been a bit distracted with my other projects. Still, that’s no excuse for having overlooked something like this happening.”

  Celys just nodded, content to let him think things through. She was certainly doing the same. She was also seriously considering petitioning the Crown to have Kirkwall and its environs join Joram’s dutchy. Given just how much Joram cared for his people, she was sure that Kirkwall would enjoy much better treatment under his rule than under Lord Nord’s.

  Though, given the fact that the army was considered a rebellion, she was sure that Joram could just deal with Lord Nord and claim his lands as spoils of war. And given that Joram was a duke in good standing with the Crown, she was sure that the queen would easily give her blessing.

  Joram suddenly sat up straight, then promptly said something in his native language that seemed to be a curse.

  “I need to go,” he said, then promptly vanished from her office.

  “Well, I guess I should get to work,” Celys said before getting up and opening her office door. “Kal! Get messages out to the outlying farms to immediately evacuate to Kirkwall,” she said, startling her right-hand man. “Also, cut any communications going out from Kirkwall,” she finished and was about to turn around again when Kal spoke up.

  “What’s going on?”

  “War,” she replied grimly.

  * * *

  Aegis frowned, then got Dax to [Teleport] over to give him a hand. He would need to get a few more satellites up in the sky before they would be ready to properly defend Kirkwall should the army get that far.

  While he repositioned a few orbital platforms, Dax started using [Summon: All] to get the new satellites they’d soon need. Which, if he was being honest with himself, wasn’t necessary. It was just that he wanted to be sure that any surprises would be quickly dealt with by either [Dispel]ling them, or annihilating them with [Return to Creation].

  It would certainly be a good way to test if his preparations were sufficient to the tasks at hand.

  * * *

  Cyd grinned, happy that he’d taken the time to investigate the frigid ice planes. From his vantage in the dragonfly astral construct, it had been difficult to spot the slight bump in the terrain that was actually the entrance to the Dungeon.

  The thing that had tipped him off had been when he’d seen one of the ice elves seemingly step out of the ground. Upon further inspection, and after having dispatched the Dungeon Monster, he’d found that the entrance was a stairway down into the ground, hidden by a large overhang of drifted snow.

  If it had been back on Earth, such a long overhang of drifted snow would have long-since collapsed under its own weight. Here? He was sure that the Dungeon had affected things somehow. Magic. Shrug.

  At any rate, Cyd was certainly pleased to once more deal with an icy foe. Ice was nice. Fire? Fire sucked. It burnt your clothing, made it hard to breath, and was generally annoying. Well, ice could cause its own myriad of issues, but they were generally less annoying for him to deal with.

  Now, looking at the info screen that came with approaching a Dungeon’s entrance, he wondered if he’d be strong enough to deal with what was inside.

  Cyd wondered at that last warning before spotting movement further down the stairway.

  Sure enough, another [Ice Elf] was making its way up. It paused when it noticed him, then immediately flew into action, sending those ridiculously massive icicles his way as it ran the rest of the way up the stairs.

  Cyd easily dodged the projectiles, danced to the side, then used a fully-amped [Psychic Crush] on the [Ice Elf] as it emerged from the Dungeon entrance. He felt a brief resistance before its psyche was crushed by his overwhelming mental might, causing the [Ice Elf] to collapse like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

  He stepped back to the entrance and tapped the now inert ice with a toe to Loot it. He ignored the notifications he’d gotten, content to save them up until he was finished with the [Winter Court] Dungeon. He felt a slight discontent originating from the System, but that was it. He just hoped that it wouldn’t get mad at him again for not immediately checking his Notifications. He had more important matters to attend to.

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  Like exploring an icy Dungeon that he anticipated would cause a certain Ice Queen to marvel at.

  Now grinning, Cyd stepped into the [Winter Court] Dungeon, more than happy to accumulate some experience points before Joram finally got around to choosing a new Class.

  * * *

  Joram nearly facepalmed at that thought, wondering just how much work Cyd planned to send his way. He hadn’t yet had time to even start looking into the new Skills he wanted to accumulate in the hopes of gaining a more normal Class selection before getting blindsided by Bryana’s message that morning.

  Though, given that he only needed to make mental contact with someone to copy a Skill into a Skill Book, maybe that part of his schedule would open up? He’d just need to go around using [Mind Link] or something, then shake their hand to satisfy the physical contact part of creating a Skill Book that way. But, it would likely cause more than a few questions to pop up.

  Maybe he could just ask the first group of younglings. They would certainly be happy to help him in any way they could, especially if it was such an easy task. If so, then maybe he should just add the lot of them to his Network. It would certainly help in any number of ways, especially when he anticipated how much help they’d be in organizing the anticipated refugees.

  Well, maybe he should view them as immigrants rather than refugees. He shrugged, as it really didn’t matter what he labelled them as. They might need a new home, and that was enough for him to help. Well, mostly. He wouldn’t do that for just anyone.

  Shaking his head, Joram produced a batch of ten thousand Tetra-III rings with [True Creation], then used [Reality Revision] to quickly enchant them all at the same time, burning through a pile of Dust Crystals in the process.

  The enchantments were the same as those for the rings he’d been making up to that point, but with a slight alteration. Instead of being attuned to an individual from the get-go, he’d added a feature to do that on its own. Just put the ring on, and it would attune to the person automatically, making it worthless to anyone else who tried to put it on after that.

  “Bind on equip,” as it was called. He grinned, not caring that he’d stolen the idea from MMOs. It was an annoying mechanic in video games because you couldn’t sell an item you’d outgrown to other players. But in real life, it would save a person from being killed for an item that was effectively useless to anyone else.

  And now that he’d made it once- well, ten thousand times- he could just use [Summon: All] afterwards to create any more that he might need in the future. And, given just how many people seemed to be flocking to him, he was sure that he would need more than just ten thousand rings.

  

  Joram looked at the latest Notification and smiled.

  Joram blinked at that, then blinked again.

  He was sure that he’d passed the one thousand mark quite a while ago, so having [Bastion of Civilization] increase from four to six was unexpected. Though, given how many Notifications he’d- to put it lightly- glossed over, maybe he’d missed it…?

  Shrugging, he wondered how high the Achievement would go, especially given that its requirements seemed to be increasing by factors of ten. Would one hundred thousand citizens get him [Bastion of Civilization VII]? If so, what benefits would that bring? The fifth and sixth level benefits were more than crazy enough.

  Like, he was beyond thrilled that his people would be healthier, happier, and would even get along better with one another. But the faster learning, let alone the whole “like-minded” thing, was just… awesome. If he ignored the System messing with peoples’ heads, that is.

  He was still more than ambivalent about the System affecting peoples’ heads. But. Was he just kicking the pricks, as it were? He’d agonized about the very same things in the past, unable to really accept it. But. Should he just “give up”, as it were? The System was . He wasn’t going to be able to change it, nor was he likely going to be able to change how it did things beyond how it showed System Notifications, or how it paid out the currency he got from Looting his foes.

  So, should he just let go of his thoughts on autonomy? Heck, would he even know if he was currently being influenced by the System? It was, quite frankly, a godly creation, able to influence everything in the world, possibly in all of creation.

  Shaking his head, Joram let it go. It wasn’t worth worrying about if it wasn’t something that he could change. Maybe one day, if his thoughts on what the System was planning for him were indeed true. But not now.

  For now, he’d wholeheartedly accept the sixth level of [Bastion of Civilization]’s buff. The part about “foreign agents”, that is. If there were indeed spies gathering intelligence on him and everything in his territory, then he would happily “convert” them, as it were. Even if they were “friendly” spies, they were still spies.

  So, now a bit curious about how the influence worked, he pulled up the [Help] tab and searched [Bastion of Civilization] for more details.

  After a few minutes, Joram was grinning in a way that Erys would have approved of. That the Achievement was mostly based off his Charisma Attribute, and to a lesser extent his Intellect and Spirit Attributes, he now had a reason to actively increase his Charisma. Especially since that was what influenced how quickly a foreign agent would be converted.

  Nodding, he quickly sorted out a stack of Dust Crystals he would need to increase his Charisma. It took ten full Dust Crystals to increase an Attribute by one point so, given that he wanted to increase his Charisma by twenty points, he’d only need two hundred Dust Crystals to get there. Which, really, was still crazy.

  Not that he’d need two hundred Dust Crystals to raise his Charisma by twenty points, but that he needed two hundred to do that!

  Then he shook his head, remembering just how “rich” he was. And how broken he was. That was effectively two hundred Monster Cores. Well, Purified Monster Cores, known as Crystal Cores. Which was basically unheard of for two reasons. One: Crystal Cores were rare due to how few people there were that could make them. Two: he had been told that SSS Rank Dungeons were basically mythological existences since there were no credible records of one having existed. People just assumed that they could given that Elder Dragons, a SSS Rank being, existed.

  So, given just how difficult it would be to gather enough S Rank Crystal Cores, he was reasonably sure that only the elite of the elite could afford to increase their Attributes. And that would only be by a few points, given just how expensive even an S Rank Crystal Core was. If he recalled correctly, they each ran somewhere around five hundred platinum coins, or five platinum bars. A ridiculous sum of money that only the richest of merchants or The Bank, could afford. Well, outside of the ruler of a country, that is.

  So, feeling a bit relieved that he wouldn’t likely find other beings as broken as he was, he gladly spent the two hundred Dust Crystals and raised his Charisma by twenty points. Which then came with the weirdest headrush that he could ever remember having. It was a bit… light-headed and a lot… confidence boosting? He certainly felt more confident about himself, that was for sure. More certain in his decisions. Well, the decisions he’d been making, anyway.

  But it also came with an increase to his Mana Regeneration. Not a huge amount, but still something. But the most important thing, the whole reason he’d increased his Charisma in the first place, was that the modifiers for how quickly a foreign agent would be converted had increased. Not a crazy amount, but still a respectable amount. Anything helped.

  Now thinking about his Tower, he wondered if he’d max out the [Bastion of Civilization] Achievement. It would certainly have enough room to house millions… . Which would mean that he’d eventually have

  of people under his aegis, possibly . And that was just to start, and with just how crazy the buffs from the Achievement already were, what could he expect when it eventually hit “X”?

  Grinning, Joram continued walking on the road east of Kirkwall, heading east. Well, “walking” was a relative term, especially when one had the [Running] Skill. It didn’t just increase your movement speed while actually running, but also increased of your movement speeds, funny enough. Which meant that he was walking . Probably as fast as a galloping horse, actually. Well, maybe he was power walking.

  It didn’t really matter a whole lot, because he could just start actually running if he wanted to. The whole point of going as slowly as he was, was to give himself a bit more time to plan. Plan what he’d say, what he’d do given any number of variables that could occur. Though, most revolved around the rebels attacking him no matter what he said.

  The biggest question in his mind was: should he just kill them all? They were effectively dead people walking since they’d chosen to rebel against the Crown. But, could he swallow killing five thousand some-odd people? He knew that if he’d brought Erys with him, that she wouldn’t bat an eyelash at needing to do such a thing. But he’d purposely brought her along because of that. He wouldn’t, couldn’t, leave something like that to another person, no matter how willing they were.

  So, what to do?

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