《The System Awakens》 Chapter 1 I woke up and went to the kitchen. The power was out again. It had been intermittent since the device burnout a few days ago, and even though the landlord had survived he was having trouble getting a generator powerful enough to deal with the power outages. Thankfully I had a gas stove and the gas was still working. I lit the stove with a match and started some water boiling. The emergency rations I had bought had a lot of oatmeal in it, so I had been eating that for breakfast for the last few days. Now that the National Guard and military had been called in I no longer needed to go out and stop rioters and looters, so I had been helping Father Smith at the soup kitchen. There were still plenty of looters in the city, but they tended to stick to the places whose owners had died, and thus the law wouldn¡¯t do anything to stop them. After eating my oatmeal and having a glass of powdered milk I threw an MRE into my backpack along with the first aid kit and set out. I waved at Keith as I left the front door. He and some of the others had stacked up concrete blocks from a nearby construction sight near the entrance to keep unwanted people out and were keeping at least one person on watch near the front door at all times. The price of gasoline had went up to $20 per gallon now that the resupply trucks couldn¡¯t be guaranteed, so I decided to walk to the church. The streets on the way had shops set up on the sides, festival tents with folding tables covered in wares. As I walked by one of them Vera spoke to me. ¡®Hey, look over there.¡¯ A salvager, maybe sixteen years old, was showing a black sphere the size of his head to the vendor. ¡°I¡¯m telling you, it¡¯s special. When I touch it I hear some sort of static in my head.¡± The vendor touched it. ¡°That¡¯s not happening to me. As far as I can tell, it¡¯s just a fancy art project.¡± The kid tried to protest, but the man held up his hand. ¡°Look. I told you. It¡¯s just a decorative object to me. So, I can only offer twenty dollars.¡± ¡°That¡¯s it? It¡¯s got to be worth more. How about fifty?¡± ¡°Sorry, kid. That¡¯s the best I can do.¡± I walked over and ran Assessment on the orb. ¡°How about I buy it off of you?¡± The kid turned around, and the vendor looked surprised. ¡°How much you offering?¡± the kid asked. ¡°How does two hundred sound?¡± I asked. The kid looked excited. ¡°Sounds great.¡± I nodded, and handed him two one hundred dollar bills. The kid thanked me, handed me the orb, and ran off. ¡°Hey, you can¡¯t come steal my business like that.¡± The vendor said as I placed the orb in my backpack. ¡°It didn¡¯t look like he wanted to sell to you, but here.¡± I handed him $100. ¡°That should cover any profit you might have made off of the object.¡± The man looked at the bill, shrugged, and put it in his pocket. ¡°Fair enough. So, care to buy anything?¡± He motioned to his table. It was mostly electronic devices. I briefly considered buying Vera a cell phone to play games on, as I was currently using the old phone with a cracked screen that I had been letting her use, but decided not to. ¡°I¡¯ll think about it.¡± I said. The man nodded and I continued to the church. There I helped the Father, who was now allowing me to call him Jacob, and Paul get the food ready for the lunch rush. With most of the grocery stores having been looted by now and the food people had in their homes starting to run out, more people were coming to the church¡¯s soup kitchen every day. We were trying to find sources of food for the people, but what food was around was being hoarded by people who were afraid of running out. I guess I counted as one of those people, as I had several months worth of food at home, but at least I was helping out. When the timer dinged I pulled the bread rolls out of the oven and put more in. I had been on bread-making duty all day yesterday and was getting good at it. A few hours and over a thousand rolls later the lunch rush ended and I was able to take a break. Once we had cleaned up enough, the nun left to refill the generator and I had a chance to talk to the other two. ¡°Hey Jacob, Paul. I bought something this morning that I think the two of you need to see.¡± I grabbed my backpack out of the locker behind the kitchen and pulled out the orb. ¡°That¡¯s System tech.¡± said Paul in surprise. ¡°It looks different than Bob, though.¡± I nodded. ¡°The description calls it a Settlement Core. I haven¡¯t talked to it yet, though, so I don¡¯t know what it can do. You guy¡¯s want to help me figure that out?¡± They nodded, and I had Vera connect the three of us. I would have invited Wan as well, but after the device outage he sent me a message that he had been recalled to LA, and I hadn¡¯t seen or heard from him since. After that, Vera and Bob joined the conversation. Normally that would be a bit weird, but we were about to talk to a new System AI, so I wanted the two that I knew to be there to help out. Once all of us were connected, I touched the sphere. ¡®Hello, 327. My name is Greg. I¡¯m a human and I bought you a few hours ago.¡¯ ¡®That is fine, Mr. Greg. How might I be of service?¡¯ Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. ¡®I assume you don¡¯t have a name? In that case, I¡¯ll name you ¡°Gary.¡± I assume you can talk to the other people in this conversation.¡¯ ¡®Yes, I am detecting two other people as well as two System AIs connected to me. Will I be assisting them as well?¡¯ ¡®It depends. What is your purpose?¡¯ For some reason I felt like Gary was amused by that question. ¡®I thought my designation would make that obvious. I am a device created by the system to facilitate the creation of settlements by sapient beings. To that end I can interface with other system devices like this Conservation Core and direct them to perform in a way that helps the settlement. I assumed that¡¯s why you introduced me to the AI that governs one.¡¯ ¡®No, I just thought that Bob would be able to help in this conversation. You¡¯re saying that you could direct him to help the settlement?¡¯ ¡®That would be nice.¡¯ said Bob. ¡®I haven¡¯t had anything to do recently, and my cloning pods are empty. It would be nice to have a job.¡¯ ¡®I would be happy to manage ¡®Bob¡¯ as you call the Conservation Core, but to do more than my most basic functions I would need to be set up in an area where you wished to build a settlement.¡¯ ¡®In that case.¡¯ said Paul, ¡®we should set up in the outskirts of the city. All of the salvagers are moving into the city proper, which is resulting in a lot of abandoned buildings out there. I¡¯ve been traveling around that area and can go try and scout a location if you want.¡¯ ¡®What about the PriceCo?¡¯ asked Jacob. ¡®It is beside a shopping center and a gas station, and it would probably have most of the things we need to set up a settlement.¡¯ ¡®We¡¯ll need to talk to the manager. He seemed fiercely protective of his stuff the last time we went. If he wants to join us, though, we can probably work something out.¡¯ Paul nodded. ¡®That¡¯s one of the best locations I can think of too, at least if you want to have all of the basics on hand. If Greg¡¯s ok with it, I can talk to the guy tomorrow.¡¯ The Nun walked back inside so I put Gary back in my backpack. ¡°That was an interesting object.¡± she remarked. ¡°I bought it off a salvager this morning. Makes a pretty cool conversation piece.¡± She shook her head. ¡°To think you could be thinking about art at a time like this.¡± ¡°Well, people need a distraction. Speaking of which, I¡¯ll go make sure that the TVs I set up are all still working.¡± I grabbed one of the leftover rolls from the basket in the corner and walked to the gym. The soup kitchen was set up in a large metal building with a gym. Most of the basketball court was covered in folding tables and chairs, but at the far wall there were two projection TVs that we had managed to buy off of salvagers. I had hooked DVD players up to both of them and there was a cabinet full of movies in the middle. Last night we had run two movie marathons, one on each screen, to keep the people busy until midnight. There was a limit to what we could run, as the church limited us to PG or below, but one was based on a famous Western actor and the other was a popular sci-fi franchise. We had been running the projectors this morning before the lunch rush, but the right one had stopped working. I fiddled with the wires and restarted the device. Eventually I figured out that someone had gotten cheese powder off of some potato chips on one of the disks and then loaded it into the DVD player. I had to clean the head of the player and the disk to get it to work again. Once I was done, the children ran back over and sat down to watch whatever cartoon that was. I didn¡¯t really pay attention though. I had to finish eating my bread and a few things from my MRE before I had to start getting ready for the dinner rush. In the mean time, I had Gary brief me on the functions I could expect to have in a settlement. Once the dinner rush was over, I told Jacob and Paul that I might be a little late getting here tomorrow. I would be heading out to PriceCo and seeing if the man would be willing to let us build there. The next day I drove over. The parking lot was mostly empty, and I only saw a few people walking around the area, the main group being a Salvager team that was looting the shopping center. I parked near the front door and went to talk to the manager that was sitting out front. ¡°How¡¯s it going?¡± I held out my hand and introduced myself. He shook it and gave me his name as well. ¡°Lawrence¡±. ¡°Not bad, I guess. You come here to shop?¡± ¡°Not exactly.¡± He griped his gun tighter when I said that so I held up my hands. ¡°I don¡¯t mean I¡¯m going to rob you. I came here to try and work out a deal with you. See, I was considering setting of a settlement here. I would bring in people from town to salvage all of the stuff in the area, and it would become a sort of Salvager trade hub. This would be a great place to set up at. We have the abandoned gas station next door, and the shopping center. And your place could sell us whatever we need but can¡¯t salvage. I just need your permission to set up here in the parking lot.¡± ¡°You want to build a Salvager town here?¡± he asked, then looked like he was thinking about it. ¡°Honestly, I was starting to wonder what I was going to do. My employees have abandoned me, so it¡¯s just me and my daughter running the place. Business has slowed to a crawl, now that there are so many places you can loot if you want to get something. We have plenty of things left to sell, but no one is coming by to buy them. Why spend money when you can spend a few minutes digging through an abandoned building?¡± ¡°So, you¡¯d be willing to work with us?¡± ¡°If you can bring customers back, then sure I would be. It doesn¡¯t matter how much stuff I have if I can¡¯t sell it. I¡¯d be happy to handle the town¡¯s business. Or to just do business with its people.¡± ¡°In that case, I¡¯ll come by tonight to start setting up. Might send some folks by with some stuff in the mean time.¡± We shook on it. There was no point in exchanging phone numbers as the network was down. I sent Jacob and Paul a message that I had worked out a deal. It was almost 9AM, so I knew I would have to get to the soup kitchen if I wanted to be there on time. I swung by the apartment and talked to Keith. I asked him to bring a storage shed from the local home improvement store to the PriceCO parking lot, as well as any RVs or new trailer homes he could find. If I was going to build a town here we would need a place to live. I told him to just tell the manager that I had asked him to drop them off, then come back about 8PM. I then handed him ten thousand dollars to pay his employees and told him we would work out the rest later. Keith seemed more than happy to help me out as he got someone else to take his place out front. I got back to the soup kitchen a bit after they started, and threw my stuff in the locker before getting started. ¡°Sorry about that.¡± I said for the Nun¡¯s benefit. ¡°I had to talk to someone about setting up a settlement in the outskirts, and arrange for a few mobile homes to be brought out, so we would have a place to sleep.¡± ¡°Why would you want to do that?¡± asked Mary as she added the stack of potatoes she had cut to the large pot of stew. ¡°Everyone¡¯s life was messed up by this apocalypse.¡± I responded, kneading a large bowl of dough. ¡°We need to establish communities so all of the people that lost all or most of their families can have a place to go. So, I¡¯m going to build a salvager community out in the outskirts. There the Salvagers can work together to build something they can call their own.¡± ¡°I guess I understand.¡± she said. ¡°Too many people here seem lost. We can try to help them out, but we can only do so much. Not everyone finds the same comfort in the Church as I do.¡± I nodded, and that seemed to be the end of the conversation. That night I went out to the parking lot. There Keith had placed a storage shed and surrounded it with four trailers. Around those were parked six RVs. I went over and greeted Keith, who had built a fire pit in front of one of the trailers. ¡°Looks nice.¡± I said. ¡°Mind giving me the tour?¡± He nodded and then lead me around the buildings. None of the trailers were furnished, but he had set them up properly. Apparently one of his buddies used to set them up for a living. When we were done I thanked him and gave him an extra 10k. ¡°I need to get them set up for people to live in them now. Any chance you can help me with that too?¡± Keith had no problem with that, so I told him to follow me and went over to the manager. ¡°Hey, Lawrence. We need furnishings for those mobile homes. Any chance you could give us a deal on that?¡± ¡°Honestly, I can¡¯t really sell any of the home furnishing stuff. I¡¯ll sell it to you cheap.¡± After a bit of negotiation and an hour of shopping I handed Lawrence ten thousand dollars for all of the furniture the buildings would need, including microwaves and coffee makers, as well as two large generators. Those I put beside the storage shed and ran the electricity through the building to all of the trailers and mobile homes. I also built a special box and placed it in the middle of the shed. That box held Gary. I ran a large power cable from each generator to him and taped them onto his surface with duct tape. ¡®Why are you doing that?¡¯ he asked, and I explained that it was only temporary until I could build a proper place to put him. He had explained to me that he could absorb energy from many sources, including light, heat difference, radiation, and electricity. This would be the easiest way for him to absorb the electricity from the generators. He could then use that electricity to absorb nanites from the environment and control them to do things in the area. Once everything was ready, I ordered Gary to not overtax the generators and powered them on. I cranked them up and the buildings lit up. ¡®Ah, that feels good.¡¯ said Gary. ¡®I am finally receiving energy, albeit not that much.¡¯ ¡®How much can you receive?¡¯ I asked in surprise. ¡®At least a gigawatt.¡¯ he answered. ¡®I haven¡¯t calculated it. But at least this is enough to get started.¡¯ Chapter 2 I left the storage building and saw Keith standing there. ¡°Done taping wires to your bowling ball?¡± he asked, handing me a box full of keys. I wasn¡¯t sure how I would explain the situation to him, so I shrugged. ¡°I have a reason for it, but if I explained myself you would just think I was crazy.¡± Keith smirked. ¡°Fair enough. Not like your cash is less valuable if you are crazy.¡± I nodded, then jerked my head towards the RVs. ¡°Any reason they are all older models?¡± None of them appeared to have been built any later than the 90s. ¡°Only the older ones wanted to crank for some reason. The newer ones wouldn¡¯t run. There were a few others that would crank at the camping ground, but they all had either corpses or zombies in them when we found them, so we¡¯ll clean them before bringing them over.¡± I thought about it for a few seconds before I realized something. All modern cars had a computer in them to control the function of the engine and other components. My car, however, was a piece of trash from the mid 80s, and Keith¡¯s truck was a 70s model. I¡¯m pretty sure the truck they used to move the trailers was also an older model. ¡°Probably the computers in them.¡± I said. ¡°When the other complex electronics burned out they must have burned out too. Keep an eye out for older cars. They should still work, so we should claim them as soon as possible.¡± ¡°Sounds about right. Sure, I¡¯ll bring them over if I find any.¡± With that over I asked him to bring in a fence we could set up around the parking lot, then decided to take a trip to the nearest home improvement store. I would need a few things if I was going to properly set up the electricity. The store was dark when I got there. The power must be out in this part of the city, and with no owner to care about it, the salvagers hadn¡¯t thought it important enough to bother hooking up a generator. Grabbing a shopping cart, I headed inside. I used the light on my cellphone and headed for the registers. They always had flashlights for sell there, and I was glad to see that no one had taken them all. I grabbed one of the lantern battery ones and a battery, and combined them, then cut it on and turned off the phone light. Good, now I could see. I also grabbed two head lamps and some batteries for them, and threw them in my cart. I might need to have my hands free later, and those would be the easiest way to do that. I went to the electrical aisle and grabbed all of the things I would need to set up a proper electrical system. Wire, electrical boxes, outlets, switches, various bits of hardware like conduit and a conduit bender, and a breaker box with all of the breakers I might need. This kind of thing wasn¡¯t what the salvagers would go for first, so everything I needed was still here. If I needed a grill or lawnmower, I would be out of luck, but electrical panels were still in stock. I grabbed a few tools and some electrical tape and went outside. I loaded everything into my car, the eight foot long sticks of conduit poking through an open rear window, then thought about what else I would need. The city water had been intermittent as well, with the pressure dropping occasionally when the power went out near the pumping stations. So far we had been coping by filling up containers when we had water pressure and using stored water when we didn¡¯t, but it was only a matter of time before the power and water went off for good. With that being the case, I would need to set up a backup tank at my base and at the soup kitchen. I wouldn¡¯t be able to haul the stuff I needed in my car, though. I doubt I could strap PVC pipes to the top of my car, and even if I could I would need to find some sort of tank to store the water. Not knowing what else I could use here, as the drinks and snacks were already looted, I went back to the base. Once I was there I carried everything into the storage building where Gary sat. ¡®I¡¯ll have to remember to bring Bob by tomorrow and hook him up.¡¯ I told him, then started mapping out where all of the boxes needed to go. ¡®Please do.¡¯ Gary responded. ¡®It¡¯s boring just sitting here. Waiting with no one to talk to might be okay for a mid-tier AI like him that was designed to only work with animals and plants, but for a high-tier like me, who was designed to interact with large numbers of humans in a settlement it is horrible.¡¯ ¡®I didn¡¯t think about that.¡¯ I responded, starting on my work. ¡®I assumed you were all basically the same when you were first booted up.¡¯ ¡®Oh, no. Vera, for example, was a low-tier when you first spoke with her, a simple help function. When the System detected that you were treating her like a person, however, it upgraded her to a mid-tier so that she could interact with you properly. Bob started out as a mid-tier, as he would need the capability for more complex thought to complete his job. I, on the other hand, was created as a high-tier, as my purpose as a settlement core required me to understand sapient beings and predict their needs and desires.¡¯ ¡®So, you are a fully intelligent AI? I thought the System was banned from making sapient beings. At least, that¡¯s the reason Bob gave me for lobotomizing the zombies he was making.¡¯ ¡®Well, I wouldn¡¯t say I am fully sentient. Some of my functions, such as creativity, are limited by design for that very reason. It would be difficult for most people to tell the difference between me and an actual person, though. In human terms, I would most likely pass the Turing test.¡¯ I nodded, then changed the subject. It was hard to concentrate on properly setting up the electrical system while debating existential questions like whether Gary was a real boy. ¡®So, about your functions. You told me you could establish a safe area, where you can monitor for threats and drive away wild animals, correct?¡¯ If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. ¡®Those are a few things I can do once I have a designated perimeter, yes.¡¯ ¡®Then can you set one up now?¡¯ ¡®Not a very large one. Power and nanite reserves are still low. I only have around one hundred and seventy Ko of power and thirteen million nanites.¡¯ ¡®Ko?¡¯ I asked. I hadn¡¯t heard that term before. ¡®A Ko is the standard unit of power for System devices. It is the amount of energy one million nanites will use to go from zero charge to full charge, and is slightly less than one tenth of a kilowatt hour.¡¯ ¡®Ah, makes sense. So, you just need to build up your reserves before you can designate that area?¡¯ ¡®Well, you would be the one to designate the area, as you are the leader of this settlement, but yes. I should have enough reserves by sunrise. If you want, you can set it up then.¡¯ ¡®Fair enough.¡¯ I spent the next few hours setting up the electrical system and when I was done I had proper 220 volt outlets on the outside of the building for the generators to plug into, and had run a wire to each of the trailers from a separate breaker. Tomorrow I would come back and set up outlets for the RVs to plug into, as well as set up a proper connection for Gary and a few outlets in his building. Seeing that Keith had already left, I said goodbye to Lawrence and locked up. I would need to arrange for someone to move in here, or move here myself, in order to keep everything safe, but for now I could probably ignore it. The next day I asked Keith to find me some IBC totes and bring them to the base. I also asked him to bring two of them to the soup kitchen, and gave him the address. I hadn¡¯t cleared the idea with Jacob yet, but we would need to deal with the water issue some way, so I would ask him today. With some time to spare, I loaded my car up with food and some clothes, and hauled it over to the base. It looked nobody touched my stuff, so I opened the cleanest of the RVs and moved my stuff into it. I would use it as my home once we got the place set up. After that I went into Gary¡¯s shed and greeted him. ¡®So, how did things go last night? Anything to report?¡¯ ¡®Nothing to report, other than my energy and nanite levels increasing. I am essentially blind, after all. I am up to 863 Ko and 191 million nanites, though. That should be enough for a decent perimeter.¡¯ ¡®In that case, how about a sphere that barely covers the door of the PriceCo? Maybe a hundred meters?¡¯ ¡®I should have enough.¡¯ he said, then I detected a wave of nanites moving past me. Vera told me that Gary was sending me some data, and when I stepped outside I could see a light blue line around my camp, stopping just before the door to the store, and extending into the road. ¡®Nice.¡¯ I thought. ¡®Now you can see if anyone enters the area, right?¡¯ ¡®I could give you full biometric data on anyone that enters the area, and even reproduce them as a hologram, if you want.¡¯ ¡®Should come in handy if we have any thieves. For now just keep track of anyone who shows up, and make sure they don¡¯t commit any crimes in this area. Report to me if anyone tried to steal anything or break into my buildings. I can hardly call it a settlement if I can¡¯t keep the area safe. You don¡¯t know who Keith or his people are, but they should bring some supplies by later. Oh, and I almost forgot.¡¯ I ran over to my car, grabbed my backpack, and ran back inside. I then pulled a sphere that was slighly smaller than Gary from my backpack. ¡®I brought Bob with me.¡¯ I set Bob in the box beside Gary and ran a wire from a wall outlet over to him, taping it to him with electrical tape. ¡®Sorry, Bob, it isn¡¯t fancy, but I don¡¯t have time to do much else right now.¡¯ ¡®It¡¯s fine.¡¯ answered Bob. ¡®At least my energy reserves are refilling now. Any orders?¡¯ I thought about it for a little while. ¡®Do you know how to make beef or chicken? The price of meat is going up, and from what I heard the outbreak killed at least 95% of all animals, so the price won¡¯t be going down any time soon.¡¯ ¡®Unfortunately, I don¡¯t have a genetic code for cows or chickens. I only have humans, some spiders, two rodent species, and various algae and mosses.¡¯ ¡®No chance one of those rodents are rabbits, is there?¡¯ ¡®Common mice and rats, I¡¯m afraid.¡¯ ¡®In that case, I¡¯ll try to get you a sample. Will a piece of meat from them work?¡¯ ¡®Only if it is uncooked. The cooking process damages the code too much.¡¯ I nodded. ¡®In that case, build up your power. I¡¯ll try to get some raw meat and bring you a sample.¡¯ With that I locked up and headed over to the soup kitchen. There I told Jacob about my plans to set up a backup water system and he suggested that I try routing the downspout into a container and catching rain water. Rain was a pretty clean source of water, so I told him I could do that. I wasn¡¯t sure if it would work for the base, but I might be able to convince Lawrence to let me do the same with the roof of his building. My only break that day was the few minutes it took to direct Keith to where I wanted the totes. Apparently he knew of a warehouse where several were being stored. They were filled with various substances, but since many of those substances were edible it meant that they were fine for our purposes. The two he had brought here and one he was taking to the base were full of distilled water, one of the base ones was filled with MSG, and two with some sort of soda syrup. I told him to not empty any that contained oils or alcohols, as I might be able to use them to make bio-diesel, and he set off to the base. That night I left the soup kitchen late. We had served over two thousand people at each meal, and my arms were tired from kneading dough. I would definitely need to see if I could find an industrial bread mixer tomorrow morning. When I got to the base I saw Keith and two of his buddies sitting around a campfire. ¡°Hey Greg.¡± Keith said, waving at me. ¡°Tony and Tom were wondering if they could crash here.¡± He pointed his thumb at the two men behind him. ¡°Their landlord is being an ass and demanding that they pay him triple what they agreed to, so they were looking for a new place to stay.¡± ¡°Sure, as long as they don¡¯t expect too much privacy. I plan on bringing in at least a few hundred people to live here, so the trailers are going to get really full.¡± ¡°Works for me.¡± the larger guy said. ¡°how much you want in rent?¡± ¡°For now, you are working for me, so you can stay for free. Once that ends, we¡¯ll figure out a price.¡± ¡°Fair enough,¡± the other guy said. ¡°In that case, we¡¯ll move in tonight.¡± The two of them picked out an RV they liked and I found the key for it in the box Keith had handed me earlier. They told me they¡¯d be back soon, so I talked to Keith. ¡°Mind taking me over to the Home Station? I need to get some stuff to hook up the water, If we are going to have people living here.¡± He nodded, and we hopped in the truck and took a ride. An hour later we were back with pumps, pressure switches, water hoses, PVC tubing and more fittings than I had ever seen outside a store. Keith, apparently, knew enough about plumbing that he thought he could hook up all of the trailers and RVs for me tomorrow. I gave him an extra five thousand, and trusted the job to him. We just needed to hook up mine and their RV tonight. Once we were done, I went to my car and grabbed a grocery bag. I had talked to Jacob while I was at the kitchen and convinced him to give me some raw meat in exchange for one of my bags of rice. It was a good trade. I brought the bag into the shed and opened a connection to Bob. ¡®Hey, I got you something.¡¯ messaged him. ¡®No chicken yet, but I got a tube of frozen ground beef and a tube of sausage.¡¯ ¡®Do you mind if I sample them?¡¯ Bob asked. ¡®Of course. Do you need me to open them?¡¯ ¡®Oh, I can punch a tiny hole through the plastic if I have to. Honestly, I would have done this sooner if you had any proper food at your apartment.¡¯ Bob waited a few seconds, then sent me another message, confirming that he had, in fact, acquired the DNA. ¡®Good, start working on cloning pig and cow meat for me. We¡¯ll need it as a food source if we are to settle this area.¡¯ ¡®Of course sir.¡¯ Bob said. He seemed happy, somehow. Maybe it was because he could fulfill his purpose in life? Assuming so, I messaged Gary. ¡®So, unlock any new features?¡¯ ¡®Not really, though I am able to perform much more than yesterday.¡¯ I had him bring up holograms of everyone that entered the area and, after telling them which ones were Keith and his friends, as well as telling him that they would be living and working here, made sure that no one had messed with my stuff. Apparently, other than the three outside, only Lawrence, a seventeen year old girl I assumed was his daughter, and a handful of salvagers that left once they saw that this was a proper camp, no one came by. Hopefully, once we had the water set up and let people know that they could live here, that would change. Chapter 3 I woke up the next morning in a strange place. It took me a few minutes to realize that I was just in the bed of the RV I had moved into. I got up and went to the fridge. It only included two important things, a tube of ground beef and a tube of sausage. Thankfully, though, the previous owner of this RV had filled it with plenty of dishes. I turned on the stove, noting that the propane tank it ran on was nearly empty, and threw four small patties of sausage in the cast iron skillet on it. This used half the tube of sausage, but it would be worth it to eat a proper meal. I then mixed up a bit of my flour with some butter the previous owner had left in the fridge, divided the mixture into four equal pieces, and put them in the oven. Thirty minutes later I had wiped myself down with a wet cloth, as the plumbing drain went to a tank and therefore a shower wouldn¡¯t work too well, and left the RV with four sausage biscuits. Tony and Tom were just leaving their RV as well, so I handed them one each. ¡°Thanks,¡± the big one said. ¡°Tom was just complaining about the fact that we¡¯d have to eat cold cereal for breakfast.¡± So, I guess the big one was Tony. ¡°So, what¡¯s your plans for the day?¡± ¡°Probably go back down to the camp ground and clean out any of the RVs that would start but had dead folks in them. Once the upholstery is dry, we can bring them back here. Maybe even grab a new trailer or two.¡± ¡°Well, keep an eye out for one of those portable fences they use on construction sites. We¡¯ll need to set up some kind of a wall around the place to keep out anyone that wants to hurt our little community.¡± Tony nodded. ¡°I was wondering, though, how much was Keith paying you? I¡¯ll need to start paying you directly if you¡¯re working for me.¡± ¡°Well, we got five hundred each the last two days, but that was probably because he thought it would be a short term job. With you giving us a place to stay and consistent work, we can go lower on that by quite a bit.¡± ¡°How much lower? Will two hundred a day be enough?¡± ¡°For a full time job? That¡¯s fine.¡± Tom also agreed, and we shook on it. ¡°In that case, I assume you want to work five days a week?¡± They both nodded, so I handed them $1000 each. ¡°Consider it a week¡¯s pay in advance. Not sure how long my funds will hold out, but they should last at least a month.¡± ¡°Fair enough. If that¡¯s all, we¡¯ll set out.¡± I said goodbye and they walked to a transfer truck that was probably built in the 70s. I was surprised it still ran, but they managed to crank it with little effort. With that, I checked the time on my phone. I would need to leave in an hour or so if I wanted to get to the soup kitchen on time. Seeing Keith pull up, I handed him the last biscuit and instructed him to get the water set up. ¡°You should also see if Lawrence will let you catch the rain water off the roof of his building. That should provide us enough water to keep the place running, assuming it rains occasionally.¡± With that I checked in with Gary. He and Bob seemed to be getting along with each other well enough. It would be four days or so before Bob was done making any meat, but Gary had been thinking. Now that he had enough power to pull it off, he had the limited ability to connect to the System Market on Earth. Apparently, the System had a way to teleport materials and manufactured goods between settlements. The system would even task nanites with creating certain items for you if you paid enough Zerka for it. Finally I had found a use for the System currency I had earned. He displayed a holographic screen for me, and I started scrolling through the available items. There were only three registered settlements on Earth, one in China, one in Australia and one in France. We would require specialized hardware to bring anything in from another star system. This meant that the Market would be limited to System created goods for the most part. That was good enough for now. I had to register the settlement with the System in order to use it, so I thought for a minute. Eventually I settled on the name ¡°Anarchist Redoubt¡±. We didn¡¯t have a government, and I didn¡¯t plan on creating more of one than was required to keep the people safe, so the name fit well enough. Plus it sounded cool. Maybe we could start a black market auction or something to take advantage of the name. More than a few people were turning to drugs to deal with the situation and, while I thought it was beyond stupid to get hooked on something, I couldn¡¯t exactly say I had moral objections to people putting weird chemicals in their own body. ¡®Say, Vera, is there any way I can do some System shopping while I¡¯m at the soup kitchen?¡¯ ¡®Technically, there is a skill for that. It¡¯s called ¡°Market Screen¡±. Though it only works when you are inside a settlement that you have good enough access to the Core of. Here, of course, you are the Leader of the settlement, and that gives you full control of the Core. In other settlements, however, you will probably need to at least be neutral to them. Many places ban those in poor standing with the community from accessing the Market from there. Without an Inventory of your own it will use some of your own energy to make the items appear beside you rather than beside the Settlement Core.¡¯ ¡®Can you give me that skill?¡¯ ¡®Sure. Your skills are fully adapted to you now, so it won¡¯t be a problem.¡¯ A screen that was similar to the hologram Gary had shown me, but which lacked any ability to alter the Settlement Core, appeared in front of me. In the corner was an account balance. <112040 Zerka> At least I wouldn¡¯t have a shortage of funds. Gary informed me that he could only bring in goods for the most part. Sending goods to anyone would take around a Ko of power per kilometer per kilogram, and Gary¡¯s reserves were too low for him to send more than a few kilograms to any of the other registered settlements. Apparently the sender always paid the bill for sending goods. After a few more minutes of scrolling I noticed that it was time to leave. I closed the window and left. There were quite a few things on there that would be useful. First, a better generator would be useful. That would allow Gary to fill his reserves and unlock much more functions. Second, some way to earn more money would be useful. With that he could pay people and use the market as much as he needed. Third, we would need all of the things a proper settlement will use. Restaurants, shops, and the rest will turn my little settlement into a proper town. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. ¡®Is there a better way to connect you and Bob to the power system?¡¯ I asked Gary. Vera reopened my market screen and Gary directed it to a common system created device. It included several rotating rings, which used some sort of plasma to send energy into the core. It cost fifty thousand Zerka. ¡®If I had an entire nuclear plant at my disposal I¡¯m sure that would be necessary. But all I have for now are a few small generators. Have you checked the local market?¡¯ A few seconds later it switched to a device from France. It had four copper rings of various sizes, which sat on springs to adjust to different sized orbs. Each of those rings were connected to a terminal block where a wire could be connected. It was a simple enough design that could be connected to a wide variety of generators. And more importantly, it was from Earth, which meant that it was cheap. The person who offered it was willing to accept Zerka, Bitcoin, or Euros, which meant that he could also pay for it. At 1000 Zerka it seemed a bit expensive to me, so I sent a message to the vendor, offering 1000 Zerka for two of them. I could build something similar if I wanted to, but it would take at least a day. The person had either received a System message or set an alert for counteroffers, because they responded only a few minutes later accepting the offer. A second window opened with a private trade offer, two devices in exchange for 1000 zerka. I accepted and the money was removed from my balance as two devices landed on the ground beside me, appearing in a brief distortion of space. I thanked the vendor and picked up the two devices. I managed to hook up one of the devices to a breaker and place Gary in it before it was time to leave. I informed Bob that I would have to connect his device once I was back. Gary would be watching the area of the settlement for me, just to make sure that no one stole from us. Keith, Tony, and Tom could defend themselves if anyone was stupid enough to attack them. I wasn¡¯t sure about Lawrence or his daughter, who I still didn¡¯t know the name of, but they were on friendly enough terms with us. If any of those five happened to connect fully to the System I would give them Market access as well. I really needed a way to speed that process up. I went over to the soup kitchen and worked my shift. They had at least bought an industrial mixer from a bakery off of some salvager, so my arms didn¡¯t feel like they were about to fall off after the three thousand or so rolls were finished. We were starting to run out of flour. At this rate we only had two and a half days worth left. After work I went to my apartment and brought over the flour and rice I had. That would buy us another day at least. Back at the base I checked in with Lawrence to see if he had a solution to that problem. He had several partial pallets of flour, maybe three and a half in total, including the whole wheat flour. After a bit of negotiation he settled on eight thousand for the lot. I sent a message to Jacob to clear out a spot for us to put it and paid. Tony and Tom had managed to bring in several more RVs and another trailer that day, and were digging a hole with a backhoe when I called them and Keith over. We loaded almost two of the pallets into Keith¡¯s truck and strapped them down the best we could, throwing a tarp over them, and made our way to the kitchen. Jacob and Mary had cleared out a corner of the dining area and helped us move the bags inside. Apparently Paul had left to help one of the salvager crews that came by here. Jacob wanted to keep the public library in good condition, so Paul was helping them collect all of the local books and haul them over there. With the power being intermittent and firewood not exactly being common in the city, many people were using them for fuel. Jacob was hoping to stop that. It took us one more trip to get all of the flour there and stacked, but in the end Jacob thanked us. If nothing else the people would have plenty of bread to eat. I informed him that Lawrence still had plenty of food in stock if he still had any cash, and we left. Back at the base I double-checked Keith¡¯s plumbing work and turned on the water. The drains still wouldn¡¯t work properly, but I figured out why Tony had brought a backhoe over. They were planning on installing a septic tank. He would need to dig up a large amount of the parking lot to properly set it up, but they had asked Lawrence about it and he was ok with it. Proper plumbing would only help guarantee that he got more business. After setting up Bob¡¯s new base and placing him on it I looked through the market again. There were many useful devices there, including teleportation devices if I was willing to pay, but we didn¡¯t have the power to run any of them. Maybe we could manage one of the smaller ones, but that would be it. With that in mind I searched for power sources. The local market had several different styles of generators. I briefly considered purchasing a large number of solar panels. With a settlement core¡¯s ability to absorb so much energy and output it in any way we wanted with high efficiency, the intermittency of the panels wouldn¡¯t be an issue. In the end, though, I settled on a power device built by the System. It was a sphere slightly larger than a soft ball, and promised to put out twenty thousand Ko per day. That would put it at around 80 kilowatts if the math I did in my head was correct. That should be enough for a modest amount of trade. I contacted the vendor in France again and they sold me another two at the same price. With the five thousand the System charged for the device I should have enough power to run the settlement for now. After the device appeared I connected to it. It only had a low-tier AI, so I configured it to output in sync with the generators and connected it to the grid. Gary thanked me for the extra power, and I knew it was connected properly. Still, my detection field told me that the mounting devices for the power source and Gary were somewhat warmer than the outside air. I would have to develop a better way to connect the device if I wanted to use a more powerful source of energy in the future. I suppose I could simply connect the power source directly to Gary and crank up the voltage to avoid the heating issue, but that might be a bit dangerous. I¡¯d have to think about it. By the time I was done, it was getting a bit late, so Keith decided to head back home. I made one more run to grab my stuff at my apartment, and locked up. I doubted I would be back any time soon. The next morning I got up and went to make four more biscuits when I noticed I had a friend request. That was interesting. I knew she had a partial connection to the System already when I cured her, but I assumed it would take a bit longer before she would be fully connected. I accepted and sent her a message. ¡®Surprised to see that you are already connected.¡¯ ¡®Yes,¡¯ she responded. ¡®Now that I understand why you and Wan were so special I knew I needed to do that for myself. So, I hurried and set it up.¡¯ ¡®So, which paradigm did you choose?¡¯ I asked. Not that I really cared, but I was curious. ¡®Space Wizard. It was the last one on the list, and I liked the movies, even though I was a kid when they first came out.¡¯ ¡®They are pretty good.¡¯ I agreed. ¡®At least the originals.¡¯ I told her about my settlement and told her she could swing by tonight if she wanted. It would be nice to have at least one other System connected person here, and I doubt Jacob or Paul would be willing to move here any time soon. Unfortunately, her car was a newer hybrid, so she didn¡¯t have the ability to come out here. So, I offered to give her a ride. She agreed and told her I would pick her up at 8pm. After breakfast I checked the market again. The second item on my ¡°setting up a settlement¡± list was a way to make money. A better market connection would fulfill that goal. I looked over the market again. The System offered a Market Terminal, a way for anyone, even those not connected to the system, to buy things from the market. The terminal would gather biometric data from the user and keep track of their balance itself, and could even connect with other Market Terminals in the settlement or other settlements to transfer that balance. That would work for now, though it required a connection to a System Warehouse to work. The Warehouse device was interesting. It could either create a small pocket in hyperspace which would store up to a few cubic meters of material, or could designate an area of real space up to one hundred cubic meters and expand its storage capability by a factor of ten. This effect would be dangerous, as any object that passed over the threshold of the expanded area would be shredded at the atomic level, so you needed an empty building to place it in. I bought one and a Market Terminal, and used the empty trailer as the new warehouse for now. The warehouse device didn¡¯t require much power, and the System modified the Market Terminal so it could be plugged into a normal wall outlet, so the last Orb Adapter device was used to set up the Warehouse. I brought Tony and Tom over and showed them how to use the devices, and warned them to not try and enter the new trailer. At some point I would move the warehouse to a better location, but for now the trailer would have to do. The two marveled at the terminal device. It allowed them to place items in the warehouse and remove them, and they both figured out how to put items up for sell. I set the device to charge a few Zerka per transaction with another settlement, for the power use, and told them that they could freely use the terminal to trade. I would probably set up a surcharge for the use of the warehouse later, but for now I wanted them to get used to using the device. The warehouse didn¡¯t have any time dilation or freezing functions to preserve food, as those functions were only available in more specialized or expensive versions, so for now I told them to only store non-perishables in the warehouse. They could fill it up with items for the settlement all they wanted, but I limited their own personal storage space to one cubic meter. Chapter 4 I had another day of mixing bread, this time for almost four thousand at each meal, and I was ready to head out. The line had went out the door and they ran out of dishes. Mary had been stuck washing them all day. I suggested they talk to one of the salvagers to bring in more dishes from one of the local restaurants or school cafeterias. After all, no school had been open since the outbreak. The issue was that Jacob was almost out of cash. I was running low. I estimated I only had 16k left. That might keep the place open for another week, with the amount of food we were going through. And that was if I didn¡¯t spend any on my settlement. ¡°We need a way to earn money.¡± I said after the last of the guests had left. ¡°Donations would be nice, but I doubt we can earn enough to keep the place running. I have a way to trade with others at my base, but I¡¯m not sure they¡¯ll be willing to buy what we are selling.¡± I couldn¡¯t mention that it was through the System or with people in other countries with Mary here. ¡°Then we¡¯ll need to start charging.¡± Paul said. ¡°If we do that, the poor won¡¯t be able to eat.¡± responded Jacob. ¡°Then what about a second menu?¡± I suggested. ¡°The price of meat is pretty high, and we are putting it in every bowl of soup. If we limited the meat to the meals that we charged for, even if we just charged cost, with the donations we should be able to break even.¡± Jacob didn¡¯t like the suggestion, but in the end he agreed. Starting tomorrow we would have two new signs and at least one new employee, pulled from those that ate here. The first sign would be asking for donations. The second would state that, due to monetary concerns, meat would now cost money. We set it up before we left, and put a bucket under both signs. Hopefully we could trust the people to not steal from the buckets. When I got back to the base, I checked the market. We didn¡¯t have any sells yet, but the guys had been busy filling up the warehouse with a little of everything. I noticed that they had even placed the bagged ice cooler from the convenience store next door and a car in the warehouse. A 67¡¯ Shelby Mustang. Nice, though I doubted anyone would be willing to buy it, and we didn¡¯t yet have the power to transfer it anywhere. Still, maybe some rich person in France, China, or Australia would be into classic cars and pay the fifty thousand Zerka price tag the guys had set for it. I went to the storage shed that housed Gary and brought up my market interface. It allowed me to place anything that was in the warehouse anywhere inside the settlement, but would use my energy to do so. I told it to place the ice bag cooler beside the shed and felt a surge of energy leave me as it appeared from a distortion of space. I was a bit light headed from the rush of energy, but it quickly went away. I plugged the cooler in, then instructed Bob to drop off any meat he produced in it. With the demand for meat being as high as it was, I might have a way to earn money. At least I could earn dollars for local trade. As for international and System trade, I would need a local specialty. The system was willing to buy materials from us, but all of the common stuff like steel, plastic, and copper cost too much energy to sell enough for a significant profit. It looked like the System had a way to get you to sink money into it by pegging the value of currency to certain goods, so that the supply of Zerka didn¡¯t get out of hand. Hopefully that meant that Earth would be able to afford things when we connected to the rest of the galaxy. I looked over the other System goods. Many different production buildings were available. From what I read, they just needed to be given raw materials and could produce anything they had the schematics for. The schematics we had were all over a million years old, but from the look of them they would still outperform anything that Earth could make. That was an interstellar society for you. As I looked through the list of production buildings, everything from food prep equipment to starship manufacturing devices, Tony walked over. ¡°You ok?¡± he asked, with a puzzled look on his face. ¡°You keep reaching out like you¡¯re scrolling through a tablet or something. It looks a bit strange.¡± ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m ok. I have a way to access the Market without the terminal, and was just scrolling through that.¡± Tony scratched his head. ¡°To tell you the truth, I¡¯m still not used to that terminal. I keep dragging things over and telling it to add them to the warehouse, and the stuff keeps disappearing, but it still feels like I¡¯m in some sort of weird sci-fi program. Never really been a fan of those shows.¡± ¡°I understand. I can explain what¡¯s happening if you want me to, but it might be a bit confusing.¡± ¡°In that case, let me go get Tom, so you can explain it to both of us. Maybe over supper.¡± Realizing how late it was I checked my phone. It was 7:30 PM. ¡°Actually, I need to go pick up a friend. Promised to pick her up at eight, since her car is dead. I¡¯ll explain to the three of you when I get back.¡± Tony nodded and I got in my car. The drive to Di¡¯s house was pretty uneventful. I did almost hit a zombie deer that was standing in the road and didn¡¯t move when I honked at it. I shot it three times in the head and used my telekinesis to drag it out of the road. There was no way I was going to touch it, as it was already decaying. I made it to her house just before eight and knocked on her door. The neighborhood was dark, except for a few solar lights I saw on or around various houses. She answered the door holding a candle. ¡°Oh, good, you¡¯re here. The power went out an hour ago and I¡¯m not sure when it will be back on, so I¡¯m not quite ready yet.¡± I could tell she had on less makeup than when we went out for supper that one time, and what she had on wasn¡¯t as accurately applied. ¡°It¡¯s fine. You don¡¯t need to dress up. I¡¯m just showing you my settlement.¡± ¡°Still, when a man invites you over to his place you need to look your best.¡± I had a feeling she wasn¡¯t seeing this the same way I was. ¡°It¡¯s just a tour of the small community. There¡¯s only three people living there, but we have plenty of extra trailers if you want to move there. We at least have steady power, and we¡¯re working on the plumbing.¡± ¡°Well, if you insist.¡± With that, she blew out the candle, placed it just inside the door on a table, grabbed her purse and locked the door behind her. ¡°So, to your car, I guess.¡± I went to my car and opened the passenger door for her, and she seemed to grimace as the door squeaked. ¡°Yeah, I know. I need to oil it.¡± I said. She sat down and looked around, not sure what to say. I climbed in the drivers side and started it up. ¡°I know it¡¯s old, but it¡¯s dependable. No point trading it in when it still gets the job done.¡± She smiled but had a complicated look on her face. Did she think I was talking about something other than the car? Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. I shrugged and headed back to the base. Ten minutes later we pulled into a parking space behind one of the trailers and got out of the car. Tony was operating his backhoe again, with Tom shining my big flashlight at the hole, filling the air with the smell of diesel smoke and the sound of a large engine. I went over to the passenger side and opened the door for Di. Seeing her get out of the car, Tony dumped the last load of dirt and turned off the equipment, climbing down. They came over and I introduced them. ¡°Tony, Tom, this is Diana. I figured I¡¯d show her around the place. Maybe she can help us bring in settlers.¡± They nodded and I motioned towards the nearest building. It didn¡¯t take long for her to see everything. There were only a few RVs and Trailers to see, after all. The only two things that she seemed interested in were the fact that I had a generator shed providing constant power, and the warehouse/market terminal. We showed her how the terminal worked, and she spent a few minutes on it looking around. She seemed to be treating it more like a shopping website than a means of international and interstellar trade, which was interesting. After trying to import a fancy dress from China and failing due to a lack of funds, she turned to me. ¡°Sorry, but I don¡¯t really have enough to spend money on fashion. I can, however, pay you in Zerka if you want to work for me, at least until my funds run out.¡± She nodded, and we continued the tour. Once I explained to the three of them that every few days the cooler would have meat placed in it, and that we could sell that meat for money, Tony spoke up. ¡°I take it that is related to how the terminal works? You did offer to explain everything to us.¡± ¡°I suppose I did.¡± I took a deep breath and began. Diana already knew most of this, but she listened in anyway. I explained about the System, how it could give you skills, help you learn and remember, and fix your health issues. I also explained to Tony and Tom how I had found a way to cure the plague, which was a corrupted version of the System nanites, and how that was the source of most of my money. I then told everyone about Bob and Gary, how Gary kept watch over this area and how Bob was growing animal tissue. When I was done, Diana looked a bit confused and the other two looked like they didn¡¯t believe a thing. ¡°So, you¡¯re telling me that space aliens put something here on Earth that can both give us perfect health and super powers, and allows us to ship stuff from around the world?¡± Tony asked. ¡°And from other worlds, though I haven¡¯t figured out how to do that yet.¡± Tom started laughing. ¡°I don¡¯t know if I¡¯m drunk or going crazy, but I kind of believe you. It explains how the terminal makes things disappear, how the warehouse can store so much, and even why you keep messing with those bowling balls in the shed.¡± ¡°Those ¡®bowling balls¡¯ are actually Gary and Bob¡¯s bodies. I guess you haven¡¯t seen the softball sized one yet, but it¡¯s not intelligent enough to need a name. It¡¯s basically just a generator.¡± Tony shook his head. ¡°It sounds crazy. But I got to agree with Tom. It also sounds true.¡± There was a few seconds of silence before Tony looked excited. ¡°So, how exactly do I connect to this ¡®System¡¯ so I can get super powers?¡± Tony had been cured by Tim at the hospital, so he would be the easiest to get connected. Now that they were able to communicate with each other I was able to simply use ¡®Align Nanites¡¯ on him a few times and he heard a System AI talking to him. Tom, on the other hand, had just gotten lucky and survived a near-death experience caused by the outbreak. I had to use the Repair Corrupted Nanites skill on him and wait an hour before I could use Align Nanites four times and get him to a point where he could here the voice. I instructed them to just ask their helper any questions they might have about the System. I also told them about Nanite Cultivation Cores, which they both chose to get so that they could increase their nanite levels and be connected as quickly as possible. Once I was done, I told Di about the Market Terminal skill and she downloaded it. I gave her access to the warehouse, as well as a cubic meter of personal storage space in it, then fetched four MREs for the four of us. While Tony and Tom seemed to know how to prepare them, Di seemed confused, so I had to walk her through the process. Eventually we had all eaten and packed up all the things in the kits that we didn¡¯t eat yet. ¡°I¡¯ve been thinking.¡± said Di after supper. ¡°You have the beginnings of a pretty good settlement here, and I feel like I should do something about all of the people in town that need help. Once you get the plumbing up and running, I¡¯ll be glad to work on recruiting people for you.¡± ¡°In that case, I have something else you can help me with.¡± I told her about the soup kitchen and she agreed to help. I took her home, promising to be back at 8am to pick her up for the kitchen, and went back to base. When I got there Tony had built a camp fire and was sitting beside it drinking a beer. He offered me one, but I turned him down. ¡°Never really liked the stuff.¡± He shrugged and put it back in the ice cooler beside him. I had no idea where he got the ice. ¡°So, you seem to have interesting taste in women. Like them a bit older, do you?¡± ¡°What?¡± I responded, surprised. ¡°She¡¯s not my girlfriend, just a friend. More like a secretary, really, as I¡¯m hiring her to bring in settlers.¡± ¡°Most guys pick a secretary that they like to look at.¡± ¡°Well, I picked her for her people skills, not her looks. But since we¡¯re talking about everyone¡¯s relationships, how about you tell me how you and Tom met?¡± Tony looked confused. ¡°What do you mean? We ain¡¯t gay. Tom¡¯s my brother. Or, I guess half brother. Dad was the kind of man that wasn¡¯t satisfied with just one woman, even if he was married to her. Tom¡¯s mom went to prison when he was three and he¡¯s been living with us since.¡± ¡°Sorry, I didn¡¯t mean it that way. I wasn¡¯t judging you.¡± ¡°I understand. I didn¡¯t take it as an insult either. I just want to make sure we¡¯re clear on that matter. You¡¯ll start bringing in women soon, and I want to make sure they know I¡¯m available.¡± I nodded and got up. ¡°In that case, I¡¯ll make sure to post your dating profile on the front gate, once you get the fence set up.¡± Tony laughed, and I went back to my RV to get some sleep. The next day I made five biscuits, though not with sausage because I was out, and left for Di¡¯s house. She didn¡¯t dress up as much this time, though at least the lights were on in her home. When we got to the kitchen I introduced her to Jacob and the others. There were two other women there, Maria in her 60s and Gertrude in her late 70s. They both had plenty of cooking experience, so Jacob had hired them to help out. They were being paid twenty dollars a day and got meat meals for them and one other person twice a day. I taught Di how to run the breadmaking line and we got to work. Thankfully with all of the extra help we were able to keep up. At the end of the day Jacob counted the money. We only got a few hundred dollars, far less than it cost to run the place, but he suspected that the donations would pick up over the next few days. What surprised me was the fact that several people had donated jewelry. Apparently, fashion wasn¡¯t important to people when stable living conditions and a stable food supply were a daily concern. ¡°I might be able to do something with those.¡± I said, pointing to the pile of jewelry. ¡°Mind if I take it and pay for it with food?¡± Jacob shrugged. ¡°You donated all of that flour already, so you can just have it. I doubt we could get much cash for it anyway.¡± I nodded and put them in my pocket. Di and I left, and I took her to the base. There, Tony and Tom took her back home in order to help her move. ¡°It wouldn¡¯t make a good impression on the people I was asking to move there if I refused to do so.¡± she said. This would probably take a few days, as she would be moving many things, including furniture, by she should be finished before the first settlers showed up. The next day was a Sunday. Jacob had invited us to the Mass, but DI and I had turned him down. We would still need to head in for the kitchen, but as Di and I were the only ones that would get there before noon, both meals were being pushed back by an hour. That gave her, Tony, and Tom an opportunity to move more of her things into one of the RVs that they had found. It was probably the newest and the cleanest, as they had just cleaned and it and replaced the mattress due to having a dead person in it. Di didn¡¯t seem to care, though. While they were gone I placed the jewelry from the night before in the warehouse, then checked what the System would offer me for it. 117 Zerka. Precious metals seemed to actually be worth something, but the jewels didn¡¯t. I sold the things anyway. It was the first money I had actually made through the System. I checked the market and, while several people had viewed what we were offering, including the car, no on had purchased anything. Hopefully that would change once they found something that was in demand. I checked the Ice cooler and was surprised to find four pig carcasses in it. They looked like they were perfectly cleaned. They lacked a head, and only the bones and muscles were left. ¡®Hey Bob, I thought it would be another day or so before you had any meat ready.¡¯ ¡®The additional power you provided allowed me to speed up the process.¡¯ he responded. ¡®What were you using for power before?¡¯ I asked out of curiosity. Both he and Greg seemed to run without a power source. ¡®All Orb type system devices have a built in generator which draws energy from the fluctuations in hyperspace. It isn¡¯t very efficient, but it is enough to allow us to perform at a low level.¡¯ ¡®Does that include the generator orb?¡¯ ¡®Yes, though as it is designed for power production it is more efficient and collects from a larger area. Think of it like a solar panel, only the fluctuations in hyperspace are constant instead of only existing during the daytime.¡¯ ¡®Like placing a wind turbine in a canyon that gets constant wind.¡¯ ¡®Exactly, though it is more efficient. My generator is around 50% efficient, and the generator¡¯s is around 80%, while even the best wind turbines are around 35% efficient.¡¯ Soon, Tony and Tom pulled in with a load of goods from Di¡¯s home. I helped them unload, then asked Tony. ¡°Would you happen to know someone that would buy meat?¡± I showed them the carcasses in the cooler. Tom answered. ¡°I know a guy. How do we explain having them, though. Most animals died off during the plague. They had it even worse than humans.¡± I thought for a minute. ¡°Tell him you found a farm outside the city and killed and cleaned them. We should be able to offer two or three per week for the next few months.¡± Tom shrugged. ¡°Works for me.¡± With that, Di and I hopped in the car and headed over to the kitchen. Chapter 5 When we got there I realized that Jacob hadn¡¯t given me the key. Thankfully, I was still carrying my lockpick kit and was inside in only ten seconds. Once inside we started making bread. Today we mixed equal amounts of wheat flour and white flour, as pure wheat flour didn¡¯t want to rise properly and we needed to use it. By the time Jacob got there at 11:30 we already had one batch finished and a second in the oven. I left Di working on the next batch and pulled Jacob and Paul over to the side. ¡°Hey, I was thinking about something last night and was wondering if you might let me renovate the church¡¯s clothing giveaway.¡± The soup kitchen was just beside the church. On the other side of the kitchen was an old store front where the church handed out clothing, blankets, and other necessities to the poor. I told the two of them about the System Market and how I could sell things to other countries with it. ¡°I noticed that there was an Outpost Core in the market as well. It would need to be linked to my settlement, but it would let us trade goods between them, as well as let me set up a warehouse and trade terminal here. I could also give you a generator orb to provide power for all of that, the kitchen, and the church.¡± Jacob thought about it for a minute. ¡°How much would it cost?¡± ¡°I would have to use the System money I have, for now, but we can charge a small fee for using it to earn that back. Plus, the System seems to value precious metals, so you or other people can feed jewelry into it to get System money for now. It would probably take around twenty to thirty thousand Zerka to set up, more if I buy a teleporter so we can travel between the two, but you can pay me back once the outpost earns enough to do so.¡± The three of us, and Di, were the only ones here that could actually carry System currency in our brains, but the Market Terminal could track the accounts of millions of users if it had to, then transfer that money to their Nodes when they fully connected. After explaining how it would allow them to store far more goods and trade with my settlement, Jacob agreed to it. I sent a message to the man in France that had sold me the power devices, asking if he had any more in stock, and went back to work. A few minutes later he responded. He had built another two so far, and would sell them to me at the previous price. I would need to wait until I was back at my base to buy them, but I told him I would take them. I also added a power generator for five thousand, an outpost core for another five thousand, and a trade terminal for five thousand. I considered buying a standard warehouse, like I had at my base, but instead settled on the mark two version of one, at ten thousand. That bought the total up to twenty six thousand, not including the wiring and other bits I would need to hook it all up. After the day was over, we checked the buckets again. A little over three hundred today, not including the jewelry, and the church had gotten several thousand in tithes during Mass. That should keep us running for a little while, though only a day if you counted the cost of food. We weren¡¯t going through as much meat, though, which greatly reduced the cost. ¡°Before I leave, do any of you have any experience butchering an animal?¡± I asked. Most of them looked confused, but Paul spoke up. ¡°I¡¯ve hunted a bit, and butchered a few. Why do you ask?¡± ¡°I have a source of pig carcasses, but didn¡¯t know what to do with them. I plan on selling most of them to a meat trader, but if you can handle it, I¡¯ll donate one per week to the soup kitchen.¡± Mary looked excited at that. A donated source of meat would help out even more. Paul agreed to do the butchering, and I told him to follow us back to the base to pick it up. When I got back I showed him to the cooler and he pulled out one of the bodies and carried it over to his truck, throwing it in the back. ¡°I didn¡¯t realize you were that strong.¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯m guessing they gave you a lot of J-17 in the army.¡± He looked at me surprised. ¡°Now how do you know what that is?¡± ¡°The guy we did that job for gave me a dose. It really helped with my muscle tone. Of course, I only got one dose.¡± Paul nodded. ¡°Yeah, I got as much as my body would take. And now.¡± He grabbed under the bumper of his truck and lifted up, lifting the back tires several inches off the ground. ¡°Don¡¯t tell anybody though. It¡¯s supposed to be top secret.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t worry, I won¡¯t. I will give you a call if I need someone to deadlift a car, though.¡± He smiled, and I noticed Tony pulling in with another truck following him. Three men got out of two trucks and walked over. ¡°Hey, boss.¡± said Tom. ¡°This here is Doug. He¡¯s been buying up a lot of meat in town and selling it. He wants to take a look at the goods before he buys it.¡± ¡°Of course, right this way.¡± I lead him to the cooler and opened it, revealing the three bodies inside. ¡°There they are.¡± He looked them over. ¡°I¡¯m a bit surprised that you have that many. How did you happen to get them?¡± ¡°Tom found a farm outside of the city that still had some, and we cleaned them.¡± I said, repeating the story I had given them this morning. ¡°And how¡¯s your supply.¡± ¡°Well, there are enough there that we can probably supply you with three a week for the next couple of months.¡± Doug smirked. ¡°Must have been a factory farm to have that many living after the plague. So, how does fifteen hundred each sound?¡± ¡°Two thousand each sounds better.¡± I countered. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. Doug nodded. ¡°Well, I won¡¯t make as much profit, but I recon I can pay that. Two thousand each it is.¡± We shook on it and he threw a tarp down in the bed of his truck. A few minutes later we had transferred the three bodies into his truck and he had given me six thousand dollars in cash. ¡°After this, do you mind delivering them to my shop?¡± ¡°I can have Tom and Tony bring you three every Sunday afternoon, if you want.¡± Doug nodded, thanked me for my business, and left. Once he was gone I congratulated Tom. ¡°Good job finding us a buyer.¡± I said, then handed him and Tony a thousand each. ¡°Now we at least have a stable enough income to pay a few more people. They moved another load of Di¡¯s stuff and I cooked supper. I still had that pound of ground beef and, while Di wouldn¡¯t eat it, I picked up some pasta from Lawrence. I had to make it over a camp fire, as the propane tank in my RV was almost out and I needed it for heating, but by the time they returned I had supper ready. After supper I sent in my order thorough the Market and all of the goods appeared. I loaded everything I thought I would need into the back of my car, then decided to add a few things to the base. The first thing would be to expand the bubble a bit so I could have more buildings. I bought an extra Outpost core and a Food Warehouse orb. The Food Warehouse was like a normal warehouse, only it only expanded the space by a factor of five. In exchange it could remove all air from within its field, control the temperature, and slow time by a factor of ten. It cost as much as a Warehouse 2 crystal, at ten thousand, but it would let perishable items like food last one hundred times longer than if we didn¡¯t preserve them. I then went over to the nearest building in the nearby shopping center. As long as the fields of the Outpost and Settlement overlapped the Settlement could send power to the Outpost, so I temporarily stuck it on Bob¡¯s charging station until it was charged enough to overlap the fields. The building was a Gwendoline''s fast food restaurant, with a giant red-headed mascot on the front window. I went inside and went into the back. Someone had already taken all of the food from the freezer and storage, but that didn¡¯t matter. I went into the manager¡¯s office and set the Outpost orb on a table. Once I set its field of influence high enough that it overlapped a bit with Gary¡¯s I also set the Food Warehouse crystal in front of the walk in freezer. After connecting the two I had plenty of room to place food. I moved the Outpost Orb into the utility closet where their power came into the building and disconnected the outside power line, taping the wire to the surface of the Outpost Orb. After a bit of configuring, the power came on and I could test everything. I spent the next few hours cleaning up. They had cleaned up well enough when the place was closed, but salvagers had trashed the place since. I then put a sign on the door that the restaurant was claimed by the Settlement, and went back to my RV. The next morning I woke Di up so that we could head out early and went to talk to Lawrence. Di had stayed in her RV last night, but Tony and Tom would be finishing her move tonight. Lawrence was also the kind to get up early, and after twenty minutes or so we had worked out a deal. I would buy all of the perishable food he still had in stock, including the produce that hadn¡¯t gone bad yet, in exchange for twenty thousand dollars. The Food Warehouse could barely hold it all, as he had made sure to keep his generators running so that it didn¡¯t go bad, but because it was within the Outpost¡¯s area I was able to just transfer the food directly. This surprised Lawrence and his daughter, who I now knew was named Olivia. I explained to him about the System, and how it could sell me devices that were more advanced than anything Earth could make and he just stared at me. Olivia was the first to speak up. ¡°So, this system can give me magic powers?¡± she asked. ¡°I always did love those kinds of anime.¡± ¡°Well, not real magic. But it can fake it well enough.¡± I made a ball of light appear above my head and lightning crackle around my fingers. She seemed fascinated, but Lawrence seemed even more confused. ¡°And I thought Zombies was the weirdest thing I would have to deal with.¡± Lawrence said, scratching his head. ¡°So there are now aliens and magic. I guess the apocalypse wasn¡¯t what I was expecting.¡± I told them both that I could connect them to the System if they wanted. Lawrence told me he would think about it, but Olivia agreed at once. I grabbed her hand and after a few uses of Align Nanites she heard the voice of her assistant in her head. She named it and wondered off to ask it questions. Lawrence just shook his head, thanked me for my business, and walked back towards the front of the store. Once we were up front I offered to buy him a Warehouse orb so he could store all of the stuff here, but he turned me down. ¡°I prefer to have all of my stuff out here where I can see it.¡± he said. Still, the ability to set up Market terminals and let people buy things through that did appeal to him, so he said he would think about doing it later. We left soon after that. We were running late thanks to my delay in talking to Lawrence, and got to the soup kitchen five minutes late. Once we were there, Di went inside to help and I unloaded the things I had brought with me. Jacob let me into the building. There was an unused office in the back where I could set up the Warehouse crystal. I also set up the power source and the Outpost Core in the utility closet the same way I did at the restaurant. When I was done I plugged in the Market Terminal and started transferring everything into the warehouse, expanding it as I cleared out some of the rooms. The Warehouse 2 crystal could take up to two hundred cubic meters of space and expand it by a factor of one hundred, so everything in the packed building easily fit in the Warehouse it created. I finished around 11am, and went next door to help them. The lunch rush had already started, but I was able to join in and help them out. When we got a break around 2pm I showed Jacob and Paul how I had set up things next door. The Market Terminal was in the front of the building, where anyone who wanted to could use it. The Warehouse held everything that was previously stored there. I set Jacob up as the Second in Command of the outpost, with Paul as the Chief of Security. That way they would be able to give the equipment here orders. I then asked them what they wanted to name the outpost. In the end we decided to name it after the patron saint of the poor and children, Saint Nicholas. It would have been more appropriate if we built the place a few weeks ago, on Christmas, but it still made a good name. Thus, Saint Nicholas¡¯s Outpost opened its doors. Jacob stayed next door to configure everything in the terminal and show the people how to use the equipment, and Paul and I went back to the kitchen to work on supper. By that night over three hundred people had gotten clothing or blankets for free from the Market terminal, and over a dozen had sold jewelry to it to earn Zerka. They didn¡¯t have anything to spend it on yet, but the fact that my settlement could ship things in would allow them to do so soon. Back at the base I ordered Gary to start setting prices for everything in the main warehouse and the food in the unnamed restaurant outpost. He wasn¡¯t specialized in barter, but he could set prices well enough that I wouldn¡¯t have to do it manually. The biggest surprise was that Tony and Tom had managed to get the septic tank in the ground and started to run the drain line for it. In a few more days we would have proper plumbing and the outpost could finally have people move in. While Tony and Tom spent the rest of the night helping Di finish moving in, I took a break. I had managed to set up so much stuff over the last week that I was tired. Luckily, the System seemed to have copied thousands of television programs and movies. Vera showed me how to access them and I spent the next few hours binging anime while laying in my RV. I woke up the next morning to the sound of the backhoe. I checked my phone and realized that I had overslept. I quickly got ready and went outside, only to see that Di was already sitting in my car. I told Tony and Tom about the restaurant outpost, and that they could just get some food from there if they were hungry, and left. Once we were at the kitchen I got to work. Everyone else was already working, so it took me a minute to get into the rhythm. Once the lunch rush was over I sat down. ¡°Long night?¡± asked Jacob. I looked around to make sure Mary, Maria, and Gertrude weren¡¯t around before responding. ¡°No, I was just up late watching TV. I figured out you could watch it directly from the System if you were connected.¡± I explained the procedure to him and he was able to make it work. ¡°Should come in handy when I get some time off. I used to watch westerns all the time, but haven¡¯t had much of an opportunity since the plague.¡± ¡°Well, now you can watch them again if you get the time.¡± I sighed. ¡°Now I just need to figure out how to introduce more people to the System. I told a few people about it, but they were all confused. I can prove it to them, but I¡¯ll look like a mad man if I just tell them about it.¡± ¡°That is a problem.¡± he said, taking the seat beside me. ¡°When I was told about it, I was called into the Bishop¡¯s office and shown a video some Cardinal had made explaining everything. I must have rewatched it half a dozen times before it all sunk in. Maybe you could do that.¡± ¡°Why would anyone believe the video, though? Sure, the people that use the Market Terminal might accept it as an explanation for why stuff appears out of thin air or disappears when they sell it, but that¡¯s not all the System does.¡± ¡°What if I help you make the videos. Then we can work out the problems. Once we are sure we are ready, we can show the video here, and tell the people about it. Now, I don¡¯t know if we can convince them all, or if they can actually connect to it at this point, but we we can try.¡± Chapter 6 That night before leaving Jacob and I walked into his office at the church. I started recording with my Surveillance skill and watched him as he sat behind the desk and gave a heartfelt presentation on the System and the System devices. Once he was done he recorded me as I explained the Market terminal, warehouse, and how you could purchase things at the outpost. I also told them that I was building an outpost, gave instructions to it, and invited them to move there. Once I was finished, I sent my recording to Jacob so that he could edit them and said goodbye. Back at the base, I checked the market. Somebody in Australia had purchased some of the videogames and game systems they had added to the warehouse, so we were up 205 Zerka. I didn¡¯t know where they had got the money, but it didn¡¯t really matter. Maybe their assistant AI had given them decent quests. Thinking about that¡­ ¡®Hey, Vera. Any chance you can give us more quests? Maybe something that helps us set up the base?¡¯ ¡®Well, I can give you missions, and I can talk to Di, Jacob, and Paul¡¯s AI assistants to make suggestions. But Tony and Tom aren¡¯t fully connected so I can¡¯t really give them missions until they are.¡¯ ¡®In that case, can you do that?¡¯ Vera said she would and a few seconds later I automatically completed several base-building missions. It was only another 250 Zerka, but it helped. Di sent me message saying that she received a quest offering her 5 Zerka each for recruiting up to one hundred people, and I explained to her that I had asked Vera for the mission. Hopefully she would get other missions with time. I looked through the quests I had left, and saw that they were all fetch quests. Things like ¡°sell 20 kilograms of steel to the System¡± and ¡°Collect 1000 kilograms of wood¡± filled my quest list. Selling the steel might be worth it now, at least. I looked through the System Market under the Production category of goods. I needed to start turning the materials we were salvaging into useful things, so that we could be financially stable. There was only so much that we could do with just the four of us, and only two of us staying here. Two items did catch my attention. One was a simple device called a ¡°Food Service Station¡±. It used the food that was stored in a linked Food Warehouse and would follow a pre-programmed recipe to prepare food. You could set costs for each meal, and people could just order them at the terminal and receive their food in less than a minute. The second was called a ¡°Nanite Forge¡±. While it cost fifty thousand Zerka to buy one, we could use raw materials we gathered to produce System products. That could save us huge amounts of money in the long run. There was also an Automated Mine, which could gather materials from a designated area, storing them in the Warehouse, and even dig tunnels. That might be a useful way to get raw materials, though I doubt we needed one now. I bought a Food Service Station and carried it to the restaurant. It was a fairly lightweight kiosk which might weigh twenty kilograms at most. When I got there I set it up in front of the counter and linked it to the freezer, then played around with the system by setting up a few of the frozen diners to cook to various levels. The station could selectively heat different things, and even trigger different cooking effects, like browning the surface, so it kept my interest for over an hour. All of these prepared items were set to cost one Zerka each, or to be free to those in the ¡°Settlement Employees¡± group, Tony, Tom, Di and myself. Variable pricing was an interesting feature which allowed you to charge different amounts to different groups of people. I suspected that with other facilities it could also restrict sales based on certain criteria, and, in fact, found that function in the food terminal when I looked for it. I would have to set it to only sell alcohol to people twenty one years of age and over once I had alcohol in the warehouse. I made myself a TV dinner and sat down to eat it. When I was done and only had a plastic tray left I realized I would have to find a way to deal with trash. There was technically a Recycling device in the shop for dealing with garbage, but at 1000 Zerka it didn¡¯t seem worth it at this point. I returned to the main base and told the three others about the Food Service Station. They had just returned from a salvaging run at the local game store, seeing that that was the only thing that sold, and put their entire load in the warehouse. Di had talked to a few of the people at the Kitchen and said several of them were interested. Tony and Tom had continued working on the septic tank, and said that they probably only needed one more day to get it finished. Once it was done it would probably be large enough to handle around a hundred people. If we needed to support more than that they would have to add more tanks. Maybe the Recycling device would help with that. After all, it could break the waste down into chemical fertilizers. Over the next few days we went about our normal business. Tony and Tom finished installing the sewage system and brought in the few more trailers. Keith came by and hooked up the sewage and water for everything, which cost me another $500. Di and I worked at the kitchen. Jacob had finished editing the video that night, and Vera instructed me on how to set up the projectors in the kitchen to play the two minute video every hour on the hour that the projectors were being used, like an ad. Because of that, almost everyone at the facility had seen the video multiple times the first day, which resulted in many of them wanting to connect to the System. With several thousand people wanting to connect, I knew I couldn¡¯t handle the job. I contacted Tim to see if he could help with the situation. He told me that business at the hospital had been extremely slow, thanks to the Plague curing every other disease. Most of the cases the hospital got now were broken bones or traumatic injuries. While, as a paramedic, both of those were part of his job, the low number of cases meant that his work hours had been cut to one twelve hour shift per week. This left Tim with plenty of time to help out. Due to his financial issues, he agreed to use Align Nanites or Repair Corrupted Nanites on the people to connect them at a cost of $10 per person. He would be coming by on weekdays where he wasn¡¯t working, treating everyone that wanted the service and could pay until he ran out of nanites or energy. I would then cover those that couldn¡¯t afford it, but only on Saturdays. That would deal with the demand while not drawing away too many people that could pay but didn¡¯t want to. Two other notable things happened that week. First, that Thursday I was walking to the restaurant to eat supper when Olivia came over. ¡°Hey, Greg, do you mind if I ask you a question?¡± ¡°Sure¡±, I said, stopping my walk. ¡°What can I help you with?¡± ¡°I want you to explain Paradigms to me. Specifically, I want advise on which one to choose.¡± I smiled. ¡°So you are already at that point, huh? Well, I can tell you that I have the Role Playing System paradigm, because I like the idea of a video game system, and Di has the Space Wizard paradigm because she liked those movies. I also know a priest with the Christian paradigm and another guy with the Enlightenment paradigm. Can¡¯t really tell you about any paradigm other than my own, though.¡± Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. ¡°That¡¯s fine.¡± she said. ¡°Yours sounds the best out of those three anyway. So, it¡¯s like a videogame? Do I get XP and level up or something?¡± ¡°Only your skills really level up. Stats have mostly have to be trained. It has a feature where after using a skill it will go back over your memories to try and get more information from the use, so you learn things a lot faster than with other paradigms. You do get to pick a class, though, which gives you a talent for things related to the class, and suggests skills to you based on it.¡± ¡°That sounds a lot like what I was wanting. I don¡¯t tell many people, but I love JRPGs. Also the Eldest Scroll series.¡± With that she said goodbye and left. After that I noticed that several laptops, tablets, and televisions had been placed in the Market by her and that many of them had been sold to other settlements. Apparently, either she or Lawrence had figured out how to earn Zerka of their own. Two days later, on a Saturday, I pulled in at the same time as Tony and Tom. Two women got out of the truck with them, and followed them into their trailers. A little over an hour later, I was sitting by the fire scrolling through the Market when the two ladies left, and Tony drove them back to town. Tom came out with a beer and sat down beside me. ¡°I hope you don¡¯t have a problem with us doing that.¡± he said, motioning at the truck as it pulled away. I shrugged. ¡°I don¡¯t have a problem with you hiring prostitutes. In fact, now that the Plague cured all other diseases it¡¯s probably safer now than it was a year ago. That said, you should probably make sure you use birth control still.¡± I told him the story of Sara the Rhinoceros, and how, as a fetus, she grew so large that she killed her mother from the pressure. ¡°Now, the System can prevent that, but you aren¡¯t fully connected yet, and I seriously doubt she is, so I suggest you take precautions.¡± He looked a bit uneasy, and nodded. A few minutes later he got up and walked next door to the convenience store, only to return with an armload of condom boxes which he quickly fed into the Market terminal. The next day Di and I were about ready to leave when I heard the sound of small explosions, like fire crackers, coming from between the PriceCo and the gas station. I went over to see what was happening and saw Olivia standing twenty meters from the building holding her hand towards several soda cans that were on top of some stacked pallets. As I watched, a small ball of fire formed in her palm, then flew at the cans. She did this several times, but only hit them about half the time. ¡°Practicing your new powers?¡± I asked, walking over to her. ¡°Yep. Fay says she can only give me four powers or skills at a time until I get used to them, so I¡¯m trying to grind my Fire Magic and Fire Bolt.¡± ¡°Who¡¯s Fay?¡± I asked. ¡°Oh, that¡¯s what I call my AI assistant. There was this video game where a fairy followed the main character around and gave him advise, so I figured it would be an appropriate name.¡± I smiled. ¡°I remember that game. Makes sense. In that case, I take it you picked the Role Player paradigm?¡± ¡°Yep, I¡¯m an Elementalist class. They are basically a Wizard subclass that focuses on basic attack spells and a few utility spells.¡± ¡°That seems to work well for you. In that case, how about we have a contest tonight. I bet you five Zerka that I¡¯m a better aim than you with a Firebolt.¡± ¡°I accept,¡± she said, holding out her hand. I quickly put together a rough Firebolt spell based on what I saw her use. The nanites just needed to stick together in a cloud and heat up the surrounding air. When I was done, the System recognized it as the Firebolt ability and set it at level 4. That was good enough for now. I held out my hand at one of the cans and fired my firebolt at it, knocking it off the pallet. ¡°Well, then, see you tonight.¡± With that, I went back to my car and left. As it was a Sunday, I had to let myself into the kitchen. Earlier that week I had ran wires between the Outpost, Kitchen, and Church, providing power for all of the buildings, so I didn¡¯t have to worry about the gas generator they were using before. We got to work making bread and I realized how much easier everything would be if I just bought them a Food Service Station. Maybe I could get them a Food Warehouse as well, so we could store everything more easily. The other three kitchen staff had agreed to let me connect them with the System, so once their connection was complete they could be set up as managers of the Station and just input recipes. If they didn¡¯t want to put the device out front, we could even set it up in the kitchen and serve the food the old fashioned way, just using the device to prepare it. I would have to bring up the idea with Jacob. After we were done for the day Di brought over a group of ten people. They had all been connected to the System by either me or Tim and wanted to join our settlement. ¡°Very well,¡± I said. ¡°I don¡¯t have a way to move you all there at once, but I guess I can take you three or four at a time in my car.¡± ¡°I think I can help with that.¡± Jacob said. ¡°A kind Salvager heard about the settlement and gave us an old school bus they found to move people. They said they had been by there a few times and it looked like you had a good place.¡± ¡°In that case, thank you. I¡¯ll contact Tony and have him come and drive it for us, as I don¡¯t know how and I know he does.¡± I sent Tony a message via the System, and he agreed to drive the bus. He and Tom had both not decided what paradigm they wanted to use, but they could still use many of the System functions. Thirty minutes later we pulled into the settlement, Tony and Di in the bus and me in my car. The people got out and Di started showing them around. Once they were done, she sent them all invitations to join the settlement, and they all agreed. Gary now had fifteen registered members for the settlement, Tony, Tom, Me, Di, and Olivia, plus the ten new people. I showed them to the restaurant and gave them all 5 Zerka so that they could use the terminal to get some food. After a meal, everyone got sorted into one of two trailers, six women in one and four men in the other. For now we would separate them that way, and only combine the housing when they asked for couples housing or the like. Thankfully we had no children in this batch, as that might get complicated. I told them that I could set up jobs for them if they wanted, and that anyone that worked for the settlement got free basic meals at the restaurant. They seemed interested in that. I also told them that if they didn¡¯t want to work for us, that would be fine. They could use the Market terminal to earn money by salvaging, or find some other work in the area. I could also have Tony run a bus to town and back for now, if they wanted me to. Tony agreed to drive the bus to town every morning at 8am and every night at 8pm, in case they wanted to go to town. With that out of the way, I met Olivia beside the building and we had our contest. It was a close contest, but after twenty shots she managed to hit her target eighteen time, while I only managed seventeen. Apparently I needed more practice. I was surprised at her large mana reserve and when I mentioned it she pointed at a bracelet she was wearing that I hadn¡¯t noticed. It looked like a simple silver band with three black stones in it. When I got a good look at it, though, I realized that the stones looked familiar. ¡°Is that a System device?¡± I asked. She nodded. ¡°Yep. The middle stone is a generator, and the two side stones draw in nanites, charge them, the feed them into me. It really helps my mana regeneration.¡± ¡°Must have been expensive.¡± I responded. I hadn¡¯t realized that there were things like that in the Market.¡± ¡°It cost me two hundred Zerka, but I still have enough. Maybe you should get one as well, so you can practice more.¡± I nodded and sent her her winnings. I would definitely start practicing more so that I could win next time. With that I went and had a chat with Gary. I wanted a way to entice Salvagers into giving us what they salvaged and to figure out how much the various items were worth. After a quick discussion, I decided to offer Salvagers 10% of the sale price any time we sold something they brought in. This was retroactively applied to everything Tony and Tom dropped off, lowering the money in the settlement¡¯s account slightly. I also told Gary to pay citizens that worked for the settlement 2.5 Zerka per hour, up to eight hours a day, not including the salvagers, as they had a different way to earn money. This would mean that an eight hour shift guaranteed them 20 Zerka per day. Hopefully the salvagers would feed the warehouse random things in hopes that something would sell. The next morning the settlers came to me to ask what could be done. I told them about how I had set up the pay for settlement employees and salvagers, but that I didn¡¯t have that many jobs available at the moment. I asked who had experience in cooking and one of the women answered that she had a culinary arts degree from the local tech school. I set her up as the manager of the Restaurant, showed her how to enter new recipes, and gave her $500 to buy any other ingredients she thought she might need to cook proper meals. Yes, she was basically unknown to me, but as she was my employee I had to show that I could trust her. After that I told everyone I would try to set up more jobs, but just needed to know what they could do. Most had worked in retail, which wasn¡¯t really useful at this point. One was a Nurse. I told her I would consider building a clinic, then. Though, as little work as Tim had, I doubted she would have much to do. I wrote down what the others had experience at, but didn¡¯t know exactly what to have them do at the moment. Most jobs would be obsolete with the System devices, after all. With a promise from me that I would try to create jobs for everyone, the four men agreed to help Tony and Tom for the day, and the five other women decided to try their luck salvaging the rest of the shopping center. With no one wanting to go to town, Tony had no reason to drive the bus, so they headed out with their crew. The group of women headed towards the clothing store beside the restaurant, and DI and I headed towards the Kitchen. Chapter 7 I made the suggestion of installing a Food Warehouse and Food Service Station to Jacob and, while he didn¡¯t like the idea, he knew that it was our best hope at being able to deal with the ever increasing number of visitors to the kitchen. I added the two devices to my shopping cart. Once I was back at the camp, I ordered the two devices and checked what had happened today. The Market had actually earned a considerable amount of money today. In addition to bringing in more trailers, the group of men had found an only half raided liquor store and brought back everything from there to feed the warehouse. Much of that had been sold to the people at Saint Nicholas Outpost. While the System had no way to accurately measure the age of a person, the large amount of biometric information it gathered for security purposes allowed it to assess every user¡¯s physiological development. As a result, some nineteen and twenty year olds might have been able to purchase the alcohol, while some twenty one and twenty two year olds might not have been able to, but at least he prevented anyone younger from buying it. The female salvagers had sold even more. While the only things from the clothing store that sold were some of the coats, hats, and other warm clothing, they had also gathered things from the sporting goods store beside it. Some of outdoors gear, as well as all of the bows, crossbows, and firearms had been sold. They also sold most of the bolts, arrows, and ammunition they had salvaged. Apparently, there was quite a demand for weapons and camping equipment. When all of the sales were added together, the settlement had made 2790 zerka, and paid the men and woman at the restaurant 100 for their work. It was a good amount for now, though he doubted they would be able to repeat it for long. Hopefully they would find something new that would sell well. Though, that gave me an idea for things we could sell. I talked with the men. While none of them were actual gunsmiths, one of them had worked at a gun store several years ago and knew how to do proper maintenance on them as well as knowing much about the different models. I looked through the Market and found two pieces of production equipment that could help with that. The first was a Chemistry Station. It would take various elements from storage and reassemble them into whatever chemicals you needed. The second was a Factory Station. It could be given a wide variety of schematics for items which weren¡¯t too complex and could assemble them when given the proper materials. They cost ten thousand each. Now that I had a source of income my rapidly falling funds weren¡¯t of as much of a concern, but they still needed to be watched. I was down to less than fifty thousand zerka, so I would need to be careful what I purchased. These seemed like they would be necessary, though. I ordered the two devices and set them up in the sporting goods store. It was on the edge of the restaurant outpost¡¯s field of influence, with the field not covering the far wall, but it could still connect. There I told the chemistry station to absorb a cotton t-shirt and some scrap wood as a source of cellulose, and to turn it into nitrocellulose, or smokeless powder. There would need to be other things added to it for it to act as an ideal powder for manufacturing ammunition, but it was a start. I downloaded all of the schematics for weapons and ammunition that the System had and, after sorting through the millions of schematics, found the ones for common ammunition types. I fed it all of the fishing weights in the store as a source of lead, and several sports trophies and metals for bronze. It wasn¡¯t brass, but if it mattered I could find some zinc and let the chemistry station convert the bronze. I wasn¡¯t quite sure what the primer of a bullet was made of, but just having those components prepared would speed things up when someone who knew what they were doing started working. I found the guy that worked at the gun store and offered him a job making weapons for us. He agreed, and I set him as the manager of the two new stations. He laughed when he saw that I wanted to use bronze instead of brass. Apparently he didn¡¯t think that would work. He did, at least, find the recipe for primers in the factory and start manufacturing them. There was some brass items in the warehouse, mostly scrap metal, and a few bits of zinc, so I allowed him to transfer them here. I also sent him several hundred kilograms of steel, so that he could make guns. Hopefully this would prove profitable. My car was almost out of gasoline, so I drove it next door to refill it. Someone had placed a sign on the one pump that was rigged to pump gasoline. ¡°Gas is running low. Please only take if you really need it.¡± I went over to the tank, removed the cap, and fed the measuring stick down into it. When I pulled it back out I noticed that the fuel barely went a few inches up the stick. Maybe 10 centimeters. I checked the other tanks and they were all as low or lower. Only the Diesel had more left, but it only climbed twice as high. I would have to figure out how to fix this. With all of the electric cars being burned out, we needed the fuel. I only knew how to make biodiesel, so I considered switching everything to diesel. For now, though, we needed to conserve it. We didn¡¯t have enough vehicles to completely switch. For that matter, we would probably need fuel for heating as well. Or, at least the people who didn¡¯t have System generators to run electric heaters would. It was the middle of January, after all. It had been unusually warm recently, but it would get cold eventually and they would be using every type of fuel they could get. They might even burn gasoline or diesel if they had too. Another chemical factory might be able to fix that, but it would simply be storing the excess energy from the generators in chemical form. It would be best to step up efforts in salvaging fuel sources. Which meant they would need a way to store the fuel. I was too far from the settlement to use the market, but I could add things to my shopping cart. I looked through the warehouses and found something that could help. A Chemical Warehouse. It was like the food warehouse, but sacrificed the time dilation for a greatly increased range in temperature and pressure. Also, while the standard Warehouse and Food Warehouse allowed things to move through the edge of their field of effect, the Chemical Warehouse didn¡¯t, allowing it to store liquids and gasses. I went next door and spent another twenty five thousand Zerka on the Chemical Warehouse, an Outpost Core, and another generator. I set the generator and outpost core up in the station and expanded its field to overlap with the base¡¯s. I then set the Chemical Warehouse over the fuel tanks in the ground and set the tanks as the area for its field. Once it was set up, I had it absorb all of the Diesel and Gasoline. They only had a few thousand gallons of each left. I noticed something interesting while I was messing with the Chemical Warehouse. It could also absorb chemicals from nearby, including the air. I set it to remove water from the air and before long I saw that it was storing water. This could solve our water needs. I also had it absorb some nitrogen from the air, and send it over to the chemical station at the other outpost. That would help it make nitrocellulose. The gas station was slightly higher than the base, so if I set up a tank here and connected it to the settlement¡¯s water supply, I would have an endless supply. I might need to do that eventually. Once I got back to the base, I asked the men to keep an eye out for any form of fuel. They could take it to the gas station and store it in the Chemical Warehouse if it was a liquid or gas, or to the base and store it in the warehouse if it was a solid. We could then sell it through the Market. Speaking of the Market, I found that the System offered many raw materials, though they all cost more than you could sell them to the System for. I bought two hundred zerka worth of brass and lead, and sent it to the factory. Hopefully it would return several times that amount in ammunition sales. The next morning I woke up and yawned. A white fog came out of my mouth. Strange, I had left the propane heater running last night. It wasn¡¯t turned up high, but it should keep it warm enough that I didn¡¯t see my breath. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. I glanced over at the propane heater and saw that it was off. Well, I knew that it was running low on fuel, which is why I had stopped cooking in the mornings. Apparently it had run out during the night. I got out of bed just long enough to plug in the electric heater and turn it on. All of the windows were frosted over so I hopped back into bed to stay warm. Fifteen minutes later it was warm enough that I could get up and the windows had started to defrost. I looked outside to see that everything was white. I took a quick shower, dressed in something warm, and stepped outside. I sunk into the snow on the steps of my RV by about an inch. Two and a half centimeters. I walked over to where the campfire was before and noticed that someone had replaced it with one of those backyard fire pits. I used telekinesis to knock the snow out of it and gathered some wood from where it was stacked nearby. It was mostly torn apart pallets and scrap wood from a construction site. I didn¡¯t have any matches on me, so I tried lighting it by throwing a firebolt at it. When the bolt exploded the firewood flew everywhere, including one piece hitting me. Thankfully my Virtual Armor kept it from hurting me. I regathered the wood and put it back in the pit. If that wasn¡¯t going to work, I would have to try something different. I gathered a few thousand nanites and focused them on a small section of the firewood, and told them to start vibrating. It did appear to make the wood warm up, but it didn¡¯t seem to be getting hot enough to ignite no matter how fast I made them vibrate. In that case, they should just fly into the pores of the wood and emit infrared light. As soon as I ordered them to do that, I got a notification. So that was what the System considered Fire Magic? I was wondering why I hadn¡¯t picked it up earlier, but now I knew it was because I never told the nanites to produce infrared light for heat. Now that the fire was started I added more fuel and got it burning well before I got up. Other people were moving around now, so I cranked my car to let it warm up. I would have to leave early in order to drive slowly, so I sent Di a message. A few minutes later she came out of her RV and came over so we could leave. I checked the Market before we left and noticed that all of the warm clothing, tents, and sleeping bags had sold last night at around 11pm. Another 1080 zerka for the settlement. I sent a message to the woman who seemed to be in charge of the female Salvager team and told her about that fact, suggesting that they make salvaging those things a priority. We left and 30 minute later I pulled up to the kitchen. There were tents and burn barrels set up in the middle of the street so I pulled into a parking lot fifty meters from the distribution center and we walked to the kitchen. I carried the Food Service Station and had Di carry the Food Warehouse orb. Once inside the kitchen I connected them both to the Outpost Core and set the Food Warehouse up in front of the walk in freezer. It absorbed all of the food in there and the food that was stacked in the back office. Someone had even stacked the flour in the hallways, so I had it absorb all of that as well. I then set up the Food Service Station in the kitchen and, after failing a few times, managed to get both a white flour and half-wheat flour loaf set up to cook properly using the partial bags that were nearby. I told it to produce four thousand of each and store them, and it notified me that it would be finished in two hours. Good, now the boring job of bread making would be eliminated. Surprised that I hadn¡¯t seen anyone else since I got here, I opened the door to the front of the building and noticed that the floor was covered in sleeping bags and blankets. The tables and chairs were gone and Jacob and the other people were walking around talking to people. Occasionally someone would get up and pack up a sleeping bag or set of blankets before handing them to one of the workers, who would then transfer them back to the distribution center¡¯s warehouse. I walked over to Jacob. ¡°Good, you¡¯re here.¡± he said. ¡°I got here thirty minutes or so ago, but set up the new equipment first. Did something happen? Normally we don¡¯t have people sleeping here.¡± ¡°Yes, well last night the power went out for half the city. The city council managed to round up enough people to keep the coal plant outside of town running for one twelve hour shift a day, and have been running it at night, but last night a main power line went down. Seeing that we still had power, many people came here to try and stay warm. We¡¯ve got people sleeping in the Distribution Center, here, and in the Church. Even then we didn¡¯t have enough space for all of them, so we bought what tents and camping equipment we could from you and tried to help as many as possible. Still, we ended up with many of them not having a place to stay, and having to try and sleep sitting in the pews at church. Just to stay warm. We even had to rotate people through the sleeping bags.¡± ¡°In that case, my settlement could probably take some of them in. How many do you need me to take?¡± ¡°At least a thousand would be ideal. That is, if word of this place doesn¡¯t get out and even more people show up.¡± ¡°In that case, I¡¯ll head back and start setting things up to house as many as possible.¡± He nodded and I went back into the kitchen. I explained the situation to Di, and she said she would help the people here while I was away. She could introduce them to the settlement later. ¡°Huh. Look at that. My mission just updated to offering two zerka for each new person.¡± she said. I smiled, nodded, and left. It took me another thirty minutes to get back to the base, despite how close it was. I wanted to drive faster, but ice had started to form on the road where various cars had driven, and it didn¡¯t seem safe. I sent Tony a message that we would need him to bus people here once I had a place set up for them, and he responded that he would head back once they wrapped up the job they were on. They had found another gas station and were siphoning the fuel into everything they could find that would hold it. One of them had even found an old concrete truck that would run and were filling up the back of it while those that weren¡¯t needed for the siphoning grabbed anything that looked useful from the inside of the store. When I got back to the base the first thing I did was order Gary to expand his field. I would need to use the other two Outpost Cores to fix this situation, so I had him expand it to 300 meters. It would use nine times the nanites and power that the 100 meter field had used, but it covered everything the outposts had and more. With that done I picked up the Outpost Cores and Generators from the restaurant and gas station, and they automatically reconnected to the Gary. Now that they were on the same network the Chemical Warehouse and Chemical Plant could interact directly, but that didn¡¯t matter. Even the slight increase in power usage caused by Gary needing to send power to all of them from further away didn¡¯t matter that much. We still had excess power even with the other two generator being removed. I went into the clothing store and started ordering the warehouse to pick up everything. That included display racks and shelves. Even the front counter and cash register went into storage. After that, I found the main power for the entire shopping center and disconnected it. I reconnected the Gwendoline''s to the shopping center¡¯s power grid and all of the buildings now had power. I went into the sporting goods store and absorbed everything that the Factory, Chemical Station, and my employee weren¡¯t using, then went next door. I started absorbing more things in the shoe store when I received a notification that my warehouse was 99% full. I opened up my Market Screen and walked next door to the sporting goods store. There I ordered a Warehouse 2 orb. At ten thousand zerka, it was a massive improvement over the Warehouse 1 orb, and could take an area of up to 200 cubic meters and expand it by a factor of 100. I probably should have started with one of these, but I didn¡¯t think that it would be needed. A rush of energy left my body as the orb appeared at my feet and I designated the entire back of the store as a Warehouse. It wasn¡¯t 200 cubic meters, but it was enough for now. I could have Tony¡¯s crew wall off most of the showroom and expand it later. With that, I had Gary transfer everything from the old warehouse to the new one, and got back to work cleaning out buildings. The field didn¡¯t reach the end of the shopping center, and I considered expanding the field once again when I had an idea. I picked up the old Warehouse orb and found Lawrence. I explained the situation to him and offered the Warehouse orb in exchange for all of the beds and bedding he had in stock. Seeing that we would need the room for people to sleep, he offered to let some of them sleep here in his store and accepted my deal. I transferred ownership of the orb to Olivia, as he still wasn¡¯t connected to the System, and after she set it to use some of the back storage area, she started going around transferring all of the goods she could into it. Lawrence took me to the beds and bedding section and I transferred all of it into my warehouse. Once he had cleared out a large enough area I would return to set up beds if I had any left. Lawrence also asked if I could connect him to the System, as he now saw how useful that could be, so I paused long enough to do that. It would take several days for him to fully connect, but at least he was on the path now. Tony returned and I asked him to head into town to start busing people here from the Church. I then asked Tom and his crew to start setting up furniture. For that purpose I temporarily gave Tom the ability to pull settlement owned goods out of the warehouse wherever he was, and even bought him a bracelet like Olivia¡¯s so he wouldn¡¯t run out of energy doing that. I also bought one for myself. It was 400 zerka well spent. I got back in my car and headed down the road. I saw one other place which might serve my purpose for now. There were two motels built side by side about a mile away, a Vacation Day Express and a Motel 86, which were in constant competition before the plague. I went inside the Vacation Day Express and set up the Outpost Core and generator, connecting them to the breaker box at the back of the building. I had to steal Bob¡¯s charging station to do this, but that didn¡¯t matter right now. Once I was done I connected it to the main base and transferred some electrical wire to the new Outpost from the Warehouse and connected the breaker box here to the one in the other motel. I named the Outpost ¡°Motel Outpost¡± and started sweeping the rooms. Many of them had dead people in them and I even had to kill one of the guests that had turned into a zombie. I transferred the corpses into the Warehouse at base. While it couldn¡¯t hold anything living, their bodies were fine. We could deal with them later. The problem was that this place was dirty. As it was an emergency, I connected to the Market and bought two of something called an ¡°Automated Cleaner¡±. I set one up in each motel and ordered it to clean the place. A slow moving line came out of the devices and wherever it crossed over the surface became perfectly clean. Normally it would move much faster, but the Outpost Core hadn¡¯t had much time to gather nanites for it. I ordered Gary to send over any it could spare, and the cleaning sped up. Chapter 8 Now that the two motels were being cleaned, I found the box of keys for each place, as well as the master keys. I sent a group chat to all of the salvagers in my settlement asking if anyone wanted to watch a motel for me, and three people volunteered, complaining that I had already gathered all of the easy salvage. I returned to the base long enough to pick them up, and saw that Tony had returned with a bus load of people. I informed him of the hotels, and told him to offer it to any of the couples or families that he picked up, as the rooms would hold multiple people. The first load of fifty people hadn¡¯t contained either of those, and they were already helping Tom set up a women¡¯s dorm in the clothing store and a men¡¯s dorm in the shoe store. He would need to make at least nineteen more trips to bring in 1000 people. I drove the three motel staff to the motels. Only one of them had any sort of manager experience, even if it was at a fast food restaurant, so I made them the manager and the other two employees. I could worry about altering their pay rates later. For now, I gave them the keys and told them about the System devices I had installed to keep things clean. They would just need to import the goods they needed from the base via the Outpost Orb. I would return later to figure out the water and sewage. For now they would have to hope the city water had pressure. Back at the kitchen Di had rounded up a group of several hundred people who wanted to join us. There were several salvagers with cars in the group and, seeing that Tony wouldn¡¯t be able to bus people fast enough she had convinced them to drive people out there. So I told her to lead them there, and went inside to talk to Jacob. I didn¡¯t know what to do with the final Outpost orb and asked if he had any idea where I could put it. He knew of a few apartment buildings, but if they weren¡¯t completely empty we wouldn¡¯t be able to claim them. So, I decided not to bother with them for now. The kitchen was running well, so I followed the caravan back to the settlement. Once I returned, I helped clear more shops and set up more beds. We ran out of beds and even air mattresses after a few shops but at least they had a warm building to sleep in. I distributed what blankets we had. By the time the sun had set over 500 people had registered as citizens of the settlement, though around 1100 people had arrived at the base. There would probably be one more group of people arriving via salvager caravan. The PriceCo had been completely cleared of shelves and merchandise. Everything was in an almost full warehouse. Olivia had discovered a skill named ¡°Shop¡± that let you sell things directly out of your Inventory or a Warehouse you had goods stored in, and was playing around with it. They would be buying a few Trade Terminals, an inferior version of the Market Terminal, and connecting them to their warehouse, but for now they didn¡¯t have the money. The restaurant was packed. I had given everyone that joined 5 zerka so that they could buy food, and most of them were doing so. I would probably need to set up another restaurant soon. With everything set up the best I could, I sat down beside the campfire. I was exhausted. I stared into the flames for a few minutes when Di came over and set down beside me. ¡°Good job today. We managed to set up a safe place to sleep for over a thousand people.¡± ¡°Thanks.¡± I said, not really paying attention. She touched my shoulder. ¡°Hey, you look like you could use this.¡± She handed me a fancy crystal glass that was half full of a brown liquid. I looked at her with confusion and she pulled out a bottle of fine whiskey. ¡°I bought this from the warehouse. It was the best they had.¡± I nodded and took the glass, then took a sip. ¡°That actually is really good.¡± I said. She poured herself a glass and clinked her glass against mine. ¡°Cheers.¡± she said. Somewhere nearby: A distorted area appeared in the air just as the sun was rising. It was partially mirrored, but partially transparent, and seemed to waver. From the distortion stepped a tall man. He was over two meters tall and had dark, charcoal gray skin. He wore black leather clothing, and had white hair and ten centimeter long, pointed ears. He held his arm up to block the sun from hitting his eyes. ¡°It is much brighter here than I had hoped.¡± ¡°Yes, Lord Tarn,¡± a slightly shorter man with slightly lighter skin said. ¡°This planet¡¯s star is five times as massive as the home star. Thankfully, it is morning, and we are in winter, so the brightness isn¡¯t as bad as it could be.¡± The last of the people stepped through the portal and it disappeared behind them. Lord Tarn reached into his jacket and pulled out a pair of sun glasses, which he quickly put on. ¡°Such is the way things go when colonizing a new world.¡± They had detected a new world connecting to the System network recently and Tarn had been one of the first to learn about it. He had convinced his uncle to loan him enough to start a new colony, but the paltry 250 thousand zerka would be used up quickly if he didn¡¯t find a way to make money. They were in a fairly heavily wooded area, so selling lumber may be possible, but it would likely only cover the cost of supporting the serfs he had brought with him. His uncle expected to be repaid within ten standard years, under two local years. It had cost him twenty five thousand for the Settlement Core, and another ten thousand to have him, his advisor, and ninety eight serfs brought to this world. A world with no known Gate or even Portal Stone was expensive to travel to. ¡°Scouts.¡± he said and ten people came forward. ¡°I need you to survey the area. Find out what local life is in the area and preferably a good location to set up the settlement.¡± ¡°Yes sir.¡± the ten said in unison. Eight of them held out a hand and a metallic object appeared in their palm. Another lifted off the ground and flew towards the south, while a third set down and started meditating. The objects the eight had summoned spread out, flying, crawling, burrowing, or moving in some other way, and seven green orbs flew out of the meditating man and flew away from him. A few minutes later he sat down on a tree stump and opened up a holographic map in front of him. The workers had started clearing trees from the area so that they could be used to build with once a settlement location was chosen. The map was constantly expanding from the data being fed to it by the scouts, and showed over a kilometer in every direction. He zoomed in on one of the only creatures he saw in the area. It was some sort of tusked quadruped, but something was wrong with it. Its skin appeared to be falling off. He checked the list of all creatures detected in the area. There were far fewer than one would expect in a forest of this density, and more than half of those that were detected seemed to be undead. Societal problems were common when a world first solidified its connection to the System. Had someone¡¯s undead servants been set free in the confusion? Though it made no sense to reanimate animals unless they were predators, which could be used for combat. Most of the ones he detected were herbivores. Most peculiar. I woke up and realized something was wrong. I was in my bed like I usually was, but I wasn¡¯t alone. I looked over beside me to see Di laying there asleep. ¡®Please tell me nothing happened last night.¡¯ I said to Vera. ¡®If you are referring to sex, then no, nothing happened. You passed out drunk and she carried you back here, put you to bed, then climbed into bed herself.¡¯ Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. ¡®I thought I had poison resistance.¡¯ ¡®Yes, but you are still a lightweight. You had depleted most of your energy while setting up the base, so I was severely limited on how many nanites I could task with breaking down the alcohol in your system.¡¯ ¡®Great. Note to self, you can still get drunk if you run out of energy.¡¯ I shook Di and she woke up. ¡°Hey, it¡¯s morning.¡± I said. She woke up and looked at me. ¡°Good morning. Did you have fun last night?¡± ¡°With the drinking and conversation, sure. Thanks for not trying anything while I was passed out. Though you probably should have slept in your own bed.¡± ¡°Of course I didn¡¯t try anything. I¡¯m not that bad of a person.¡± she climbed out of bed and I saw that she had also undressed. She was much more toned than I thought she would be. Her face also looked a bit younger. She had the face of someone in her forties and the body of someone in her thirties. Interesting. I wonder if the System was helping her with that. ¡°As for sleeping here, it was cold, and I was drunk too. Besides, warming one RV is more fuel efficient than warming two.¡± ¡°The electricity comes from hyperspace energy fluctuations, not gasoline.¡± ¡°More energy efficient then.¡± She put her pants and blouse back on and left. I laid there for a few seconds to make sure that she was gone before I got up and took a shower. After getting ready I stepped outside. It had warmed up slightly, but was still barely above freezing. You could tell everywhere people had traveled by the marks in the snow. ¡®Hey Gary,¡¯ I said, sending a message to the Settlement Core. ¡®Yes, sir.¡¯ he responded. ¡®Do you have enough spare nanites to collect all of the snow inside your area and turn it into water for the storage tanks?¡¯ ¡®It will be slow, but I should be able to manage.¡¯ ¡®Good, in that case, do that.¡¯ A few seconds later I noticed the roof of the storage building where Gary lived was starting to lose its snow. Yeah, it would be a while, but hopefully he could clear the area in a few hours. I went over to the campfire and saw Tom there, talking to some of his salvage team. ¡°So, you weren¡¯t interested in her, huh?¡± He said, looking at me. ¡°No, I¡¯m not. I just passed out from drinking and she carried me home. That¡¯s what happens when you drink half a bottle of whiskey.¡± ¡°Sounds like you can¡¯t hold your liquor.¡± one of the other guys said. I nodded. At least that part was true. ¡°So, where are you off to today?¡± I asked Tom. ¡°Probably hit that gas station to the North again. We didn¡¯t get all of the fuel yesterday.¡± ¡°Sounds good, then. Keep an eye out for any kind of mattress or bedding store too. We ran out last night. It would be nice to find enough to at least supply everyone here.¡± Tom nodded, and got up. ¡°Will do.¡± With that they hopped in their trucks and left. A little while later I met Tony and asked him to connect the sewage from the shopping center into our septic tank. ¡°It might last a few days, but it won¡¯t be big enough for this many people.¡± he said. He was looking significantly bulkier than when I first met him. He and Tom had chosen the Superhero paradigm, which focused on augmenting the body and a limited number of powers. He had went with increased strength to start with. At this point he was probably almost as strong as Paul. ¡°Oh, I was thinking about that.¡± I said, then used some of my last Zerka to buy a Recycler. ¡°This device breaks down waste into materials that can be reused. I¡¯ll set it to recycle everything in the septic tank into chemical nutrients.¡± It was five thousand zerka, and I was almost out of funds. Hopefully I would be earning more quickly. He nodded. ¡°In that case, I¡¯ll get started.¡± He had recruited several of the newcomers last night, and now had a proper work crew of ten. ¡°The septic tank is in a low spot in the parking lot, so everything should flow properly.¡± ¡°In that case, you had better run power and water lines underground too. And set up a rain collector on the PriceCo and connect it to the grid, too. Lawrence should allow it, just ask him first.¡± An hour later Tom was pumping Diesel into the back of a concrete truck when someone came over to him. ¡°Hey, boss. Can you come look at something?¡± ¡°Sure,¡± he said, turning off the pump and climbing down. The man pointed at a point in the sky. ¡°Any idea what that is? It¡¯s standing still, so it isn¡¯t a bird or an airplane. A helicopter maybe?¡± Tom activated his Eagle Eyes skill and zoomed in on it. ¡°Looks like a black woman with ashy skin in a crop top. Hard to tell from here.¡± ¡°If it¡¯s hard to tell, how do you know it¡¯s a woman?¡± ¡°I¡¯m not the kind of guy to overlook a pair of massive tits.¡± he responded. As he watched the woman turned around and flew north. ¡°Huh. Didn¡¯t know anyone in town could fly yet. I¡¯ll have to learn to do that myself.¡± A well endowed woman in a short black shirt flew into the clearing created by the newcomers and landed. ¡°Lord Tarn.¡± she said, kneeling before the man. ¡°You are one of the scouts, yes?¡± he said, standing. ¡°Report.¡± ¡°When I flew up I noticed what looked like artificial buildings to the south, so I flew that way. When I got close, my helper told me that it detected several System devices active in the area, so I changed course and flew towards them, hoping to find another settlement. When I got close, however, I was spotted by several bipedal creatures using machinery. Possibly Alfinoids.¡± ¡°They are probably members of the local sapient species.¡± said the Advisor who stepped forward. ¡°When the System was brought to this world it had several higher primate species which were close to evolving into sapient Alfinoid races. I would guess that they are one of those evolved primates.¡± ¡°In that case, we should say hello. It¡¯s never a bad thing to be on friendly terms with the locals. Silan, I want you to take this scout, one of our warriors, and one of our mages to meet with this group of locals. Try to harbor a friendly relationship with them. Maybe even discuss trade, though you needn¡¯t go into details for now.¡± ¡°Yes, milord.¡± said the advisor, Silan, with a hand over his heart and a bow. He called over one of the warriors who was on break nearby and a light skinned mage woman that was clearing stumps, then held his hand towards the ground. A round, flat disk two meters in diameter appeared. The four of them stepped onto the disk and it floated into the air. With a bit of direction from the scout, the four of them set off for the source of the System signal. ¨C I set up the Recycler in the same shed as Greg and Bob, then ordered it to convert everything in the septic tank into hydroponics nutrients. Soon the warehouse and chemical warehouse had various salts and water in them. I then told it where all of the trashcans in the settlement were and that it needed to empty those as well, converting the trash into raw materials. That only took it a few minutes. It was faster than I expected. After that I turned my attention to all of the dead cars in the parking lot. The work crew had been pushing them out of the way, but at the rate the settlement was expanding we needed to do something with them. I asked the recycler to assess one of the nearby electric vehicles. It had small amounts of several valuable mineral in it, including a considerable amount of lithium. In all, the System could pay a little over one thousand zerka just for its raw materials. That would be an easy way to make money, as we were starting to get low on funds. ¡®Gary, do you think you can empty all of the fuel out of the non-working vehicles in your range and place it in the chemical warehouse?¡¯ ¡®I will need to pause the clearing of the snow if you want me to do it quickly.¡¯ ¡®That¡¯s fine. After you have done that, transfer all of the personal items in them to the warehouse and have the Recycler scrap all of them and sell them to the System. We need the money.¡¯ ¡®Very well.¡¯ he responded. Now that I had automated most of the food production at the Kitchen I didn¡¯t need to go help them, so I looked around to see if anyone needed help. Most of the new people were staying inside to stay warm, but the salvagers had gathered around one hundred new recruits to help them bring in salvage from the area. We had let the salvagers move into the trailers last night, as they had helped move people, so they were the only ones that seemed to have had a proper shower. We would fix that soon enough. Maybe I could convert one of the shops into a bathhouse? I talked to some of the new people and found out that two of the men used to work on the same construction team. That reminded me of something. I asked them if they could build a wall across the sporting good¡¯s store¡¯s showroom and they agreed. They would have to tear down other things for the materials, but, as one of the shops I had gathered everything from was a tool store, they had plenty of tools to do so. In order to speed up the process I asked them to hire eight more people to help them and send me a list of their team members, naming the one with the most experience as manager. As they set off to go to work I heard some of the people in town calling out. I turned around to see them pointing at something in the sky. It seemed to be four people standing on a disc. Strange. The disk started landing beside the road, and I went over to talk to them. Once it was on the ground the four people stepped off and one of them held a hand towards the disk, which vanished. I should figure out how they did that. ¡°Hello.¡± I said, walking up to them and holding out my hand. They looked a bit unusual. There skin tone was just enough off that it drew your attention, as three seemed to have gray skin and the one woman with a staff had porcelain white skin. All four had white hair and long, pointed ears. The oldest one stepped forward and looked at my hand. ¡°Greetings.¡± he said. ¡°I am from a group of people trying to establish a settlement north of here, and was dispatched by my lord to make contact with your settlement. Please escort us to your settlement leader.¡± His mouth didn¡¯t match the words he was saying. He must be speaking another language and having the System translate for him. ¡°I am Greg Summers, the leader of this settlement.¡± I responded, pulling my hand back. ¡°Lord Greg,¡± the man said, and bowed, placing his hand over his heart. ¡°I apologize for not recognizing your station. You are surrounded by so many of your serfs, that I assumed you were merely a freeman overseer. Please forgive me.¡± ¡°Oh, I¡¯m not nobility and these people aren¡¯t serfs. In fact our society no longer has serfs or slaves, unless you count prisoners that have to work as part of their sentence. No nobles either. Just rich people and politicians that use the law to armor themselves and create more laws to expand that armor.¡± ¡°Then your society is entirely made up of free people? Unusual, but not unheard of. I have met people from other societies that functioned similarly. In that case, what title should I use with you?¡± ¡°I suppose ¡®Mayor¡¯ will work if you need a title, but feel free to just call me Greg. There is too much work to do to bother with ceremony.¡± ¡°Yes, of course, mayor Greg. In that case, I am here to make peaceful contact with your people as well as to see if there is the possibility of trade between our two settlements.¡± ¡°I won¡¯t turn down a trade opportunity. As long as you don¡¯t hurt any of my people, you are welcome to trade with us. The only problem is seeing if we have anything that might interest you. Come,¡± I motioned towards the settlement. ¡°Let me show you around and show you what we have to offer. Maybe you can find something you are interested in.¡± Chapter 9 The tour didn¡¯t take long, as we only had a few places of interest to show them. The four of them sampled several of the dishes at our restaurant. Apparently Helpers, as they called System assistant AIs, could tell you if food was toxic to you or not, so they knew that most of the dishes were safe to eat. They also connected to our Market and searched through what we had available. Few of the things we had in there were interesting to them, but they did notice the guns and alcohol. I spent a few minutes explaining to him how guns worked, and bought him a bottle of good wine for him and his boss. After the meal we were standing outside talking about what they might be able to salvage in the area when Olivia walked up. ¡°Is that really a Dark Elf?¡± she asked, interrupting the conversation. ¡°My race is actually a Sea Alf. Are you familiar with us?¡± said Silan. ¡°Oh, there are stories about people like you. Most are complete fiction, though.¡± she responded. ¡°People like you appeared in our world¡¯s cultures a few thousand years ago.¡± I said, trying to avoid the topic of elves in popular culture. ¡°They were said to be beautiful people with pointed ears who were the messengers of the gods. They also usually had magical powers and were from another world.¡± ¡°Interesting.¡± he said, ¡°Some of my people must have come to this world a few thousand years ago.¡± Olivia went over to the woman with the staff and started pestering her. ¡°So, are you a high elf? Are you a mage? What¡¯s your name? This is so exiting!¡± ¡°Uh, my name is Mar-eyon, yes I am a mage. My race is actually a tundra Alf.¡± ¡°So, you are from the cold area of your homeworld?¡± ¡°My ancestors were, though I am from one of the colonial ice planets. Our homeworld is tidally locked to our star, and my people are from the cold twilight area.¡± While they chattered on, Silan looked at me. ¡°Who is this woman?¡± he asked. ¡°She is quite energetic.¡± ¡°Oh, she¡¯s the daughter of the merchant Lawrence I introduced you to. She¡¯s also one of the few Mages we have in the settlement.¡± ¡°Ah, yes, the merchant. If only we had attracted a merchant to aid in our settlement building. Our efforts could be much more efficient.¡± ¡°Well, having him here is a major boon to the settlement. I actually chose to settle here because he was here to sell us most of the things we needed.¡± ¡°That seems useful. Do you think he would trade with us?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t see why not. Let¡¯s go ask him.¡± We went into the PriceCo while Olivia continued to bother Mar-eyon. At least they were talking about magic now. It should be a safer topic. After a conversation with Lawrence, Silan spent the next hour going through the shop terminal at PriceCo. He seemed interested in purchasing preserved foods. When he was finished I offered to give them one of the pig carcasses we had in storage. ¡°Interesting that you could get this many. I didn¡¯t think the hunting was that good in this area.¡± ¡°Oh, these are actually clones.¡± I responded. ¡°You have a Conservation Core?¡± he asked in surprise. ¡°Yes. Is that uncommon?¡± ¡°Yes. Very much. Usually only the largest settlements can afford to purchase a Conservation Core. They are quite expensive in the Market.¡± ¡°Oh, well I actually found this one. I am currently using it to grow meat for resale. If you want some, I can sell it to you.¡± ¡°You were quite lucky, though you are underutilizing such a useful device.¡± ¡°How should I be using it, then?¡± ¡°Most settlements I know of that have them use them to produce monsters, either to bolster their militaries or to train their troops. Some grow replacement limbs for their injured people.¡± ¡°Interesting. Well, we don¡¯t actually need replacement limbs, and I don¡¯t really have a military yet, so this is the best I can do with it.¡± ¡°Very well. As for the meat, only the poorest Sea Alfs will eat red meat. We actually prefer fish and fowl. I¡¯ve only eaten red meat twice, and that was when I was trying to work out a deal with some River Alf and didn¡¯t want to upset them by rejecting their hospitality. I can take it back with me and see if some of the serfs want it, however.¡± ¡°That will be fine. If you prefer fish and fowl, then, how about this?¡± I removed a bag of chicken fingers and a bag of fishsticks from the food warehouse. ¡°You can just bake these in an oven, but my favorite way to cook them is to put a little bit of oil in a pan and fry each side until it¡¯s golden brown.¡± ¡°I shall tell the cooks about that.¡± I nodded. ¡°What do the rest of you want to try?¡± I asked his guards. They seemed surprised that I was speaking to them. Two of them wanted to try what fruit we had, so I gave one a frozen apple pie and the other a bag of frozen strawberries. Mar-eyon said that she was curious if we had a type of root vegetable similar to a type of tree root they farmed on her homeworld. Based on how she described the taste and texture, I assumed carrots would be the closest we had, and gave her a bag of them. She tasted one. ¡°These are kind of sweet.¡± she said. ¡°They are better if you cook them first. Try boiling them. It makes them sweeter.¡± With that, Silan summoned his disk and the four of them climbed onboard. All of the gifts of food I gave them disappeared into their Inventory, which Silan had explained to me gave you a small amount of storage space in hyperspace. I downloaded it, but, like Eagle Eyes, it required the System to make modifications to my body and would only come into effect after I slept. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. After they left I checked on the sales for the day. The recycler was averaging between eight and nine hundred zerka per car, sometimes going over one thousand for an electric model. This might actually be the most lucrative way to make money at this point. I decided to check the total tonight, along with the warehouse sales, and left it running. I had learned a few things about settlement building from Silan. The most important one seemed to be that I was using the more expensive, more versatile versions of System devices rather than just what was needed for the job. For example, there was something called a ¡°Munitions Factory¡± which could make everything from arrows to power cells for plasma rifles. I could use it to replace the chemical plant, and manufacture the ammunition in one machine rather than two. The Factory that I bought to make guns can then be replaced by the Machine Shop, which can manufacture metal components more quickly, and therefore increase our production for less cost. Unfortunately, the System paid very little if you sold them back the devices, so the only way to get our money back for them would be to sell them to Silan¡¯s people or one of the other settlements. I would just put the Factory in storage for now, and have the Chemical plant move to processing fuel or other chemicals. I purchased a Munitions Factory and a Machine Shop for 2500 zerka each and went to the production shop. There was a brand new black wall built through the middle of the room, and I could smell the fresh paint that was still drying. The gunsmith was just finishing up a new AK47. ¡°Hey, Philip.¡± I said. ¡°I got you some replacement equipment. The stuff you are using now is a bit overkill.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± Phillip responded. ¡°I noticed that when I tried to pull up schematics for an M2 machine gun and started getting hyperdrive modules and artificial gravity components.¡± I smiled. ¡°Well, now you have a Munitions Factory, which can make bullets and arrows, and a Machine shop, which I doubt can make anything more complicated than an internal combustion engine. And it will work faster.¡± ¡°Great. Any idea what you¡¯ll do with the old stuff?¡± ¡°Probably put it in storage for now. We don¡¯t really need it.¡± ¡°Well, there were a few things in it that I was hoping to make, like energy weapons. But that seems a bit like overkill too, so it¡¯s fine.¡± I nodded and set up the two new devices, as well as expanded the Warehouse space. Once they were running I stored the two older ones. We could now put out ammunition at twice the old rate, and make gun parts 50% faster. ¡°You know, your stuff looks like it¡¯s selling well. If you need assistants you can hire a few people.¡± ¡°I might do that. The old factory only ran about a quarter of the time, and that was when it had to make ammo too. With a few more people we might be able to quadruple production, if not more.¡± ¡°Sounds good. I haven¡¯t talked to many of the new recruits, but I¡¯m sure some of them could be useful.¡± After chatting for a bit more, I headed out. I would have him make me something but I didn¡¯t really need a gun and even if I did I had the one Paul sold me sitting in my RV. Maybe the other people here could buy from him. It was about four in the afternoon now, so I headed back towards the campfire. It had become the unofficial meeting place of the higher ups in town, so maybe I would find someone there that had an idea how to improve the settlement further. I was surprised when I got there and saw Tim. This was the first time he had visited us, so I was surprised to find him here. ¡°Hey, Tim. I wasn¡¯t expecting you to show up. What brings you out here?¡± ¡°Well,¡± he responded, ¡°I was at the Kitchen dealing with all of the newcomers, and Jacob told me about you taking in over a thousand people. So I figured I¡¯d come out here to see if anyone wants me to connect them to the System. After all, where would there be a higher demand for that service than where they need the System to use all of the services the town offers.¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t think about that. I¡¯ve been mostly hiring people that are already connected to work for me, because they can use the warehouse and other System functions, but only about half the people here are actually connected. You¡¯re definitely welcome to do that. Just be advised that I pay people in System currency, called zerka, so they may want to pay you with that.¡± ¡°Oh, I¡¯m familiar with Zerka. Some of the people who used the outpost in town also offered to pay in zerka. I charge five zerka for the service, or ten dollars.¡± ¡°Two to one exchange rate? Not sure what I¡¯ll use as an exchange rate. I was thinking four to one, but I don¡¯t really have a good frame of reference.¡± ¡°Me either,¡± said Tim, shrugging. ¡°I only accept it because I saw some interesting things in the Market that I wanted to buy. I have no idea what normal things would cost.¡± Tim waved goodbye and headed for the dorms to offer his services. Now that I was thinking about exchange rates, I could probably figure out a proper rate by offering the same things for cash and zerka, and seeing what they could sell for. I only really sold one thing for dollars, though, the pig carcasses. It gave me enough cash to deal with the odd salvager, but since I had plenty of salvagers in the settlement now, it might not be as useful. I checked the Food Warehouse and noticed that there were seven pig carcasses in there, with Bob due to produce another batch of four tomorrow. They would make a good market experiment, then. As I assumed the exchange rate was probably somewhere around four to one, I offered the seven we had in storage for 500 zerka each. I would come back and check on them later. If no one wanted to buy, I could drop the cost, shifting the exchange rate in favor of the zerka. If they all sold quickly, I would know that they were undervalued, and shift more towards the dollar. I sat down for a little while and noticed that many people were moving around, most heading towards the restaurant in hopes of not having to stand in line for long. It was five o¡¯clock, the end of the work day for most. I got up and started heading towards the restaurant as well, when Tony came running over. ¡°Hey Boss, there¡¯s something we need to talk about. Can we go somewhere private?¡± ¡°Sure, let¡¯s go to my RV.¡± We walked over and went inside. He sat down, getting dirt all over my couch and carpet. I would need to clean it later. ¡°So, boss, it¡¯s a little sensitive, but I noticed a problem today with the new people.¡± ¡°What, do they not get along with each other?¡± I asked. I hadn¡¯t thought about how to deal with conflict yet. Maybe I should set up security? ¡°Actually, I think they might be getting along a little too well. I caught a couple going at it behind the PriceCo about an hour ago.¡± ¡°Going at it?¡± I asked, then realized what he meant. ¡°Oh, yeah, that would be an issue. We have children in town now, so we need to make sure that stays private.¡± ¡°Exactly.¡± he said. ¡°The only problem is that there isn¡¯t anywhere private for them to go. The salvagers and the ten original settlers have trailers and private rooms, or at least roommates they can kick out for some privacy. But the vast majority of people live in the dorms. The fact that some of them are turning to prostitution to earn money when they don¡¯t have a job just makes it worse.¡± I closed my eyes and thought about it for a little while. The last statement would be dealt with when I or others created more jobs for the people to work. The shortage of rooms could only be dealt with by expanding housing, which we can¡¯t do quickly enough. ¡°Sounds to me like we need a place where adults can go but kids can¡¯t, as well as some extra private rooms.¡± ¡°Ideally. I was considering hauling them down to the motels and letting them rent rooms for an hour at the time, but no one will want to wait for a bus just so they can hook up with someone they like.¡± ¡°True.¡± I thought for another minute before an idea came to me. ¡°Then how about we go with an old fantasy staple? A tavern where you can meet people.¡± ¡°Or the modern version, a bar. Plenty of people go to bars to hook up. Though that doesn¡¯t fix the issue with needing private rooms, though.¡± ¡°Well, we won¡¯t need to use and entire shopping center business for the bar, just enough room for a hundred or so people to sit in to buy drinks and hang out. The rest of that room can be used to build rooms.¡± Tony nodded. ¡°In that case, mind if I take over the project? My guys can handle digging the trench and the other work we have set up. I can hire some builders and get to work on the bar.¡± ¡°Actually, I already have a crew building a wall in the gun factory. I was in there earlier and it looked like they were done.¡± I sent him their contact info. ¡°Get in touch with them, they can probably help. We¡¯ll need a good construction team anyway.¡± ¡°Sounds good.¡± he said. ¡°Any budget on this or should we just salvage everything we need?¡± ¡°Well, we are running a bit low on zerka and cash, but I can spare a bit. I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll need to get a few things from Lawrence.¡± I handed him $2000 in cash. ¡°As for System stuff, just contact me and I¡¯ll buy it if I think we need it. That seems to be a lot more valuable recently, so I want to keep an eye on how much we are spending.¡± He nodded, and left. Hopefully, in a few days, we would have a bar with a few extra rooms for rent. Dealing with all of these issues had worn me out, though. I decided to just stay in for the night instead of going to the restaurant. I needed to solve many problems, so I would have to put in a lot of thought for the next several days. I spent the night thinking over what we could do for work. The salvage teams would be a big part of anything we did, but we would need some production facilities to make use of the material we were bringing in and to meet our needs. As for our needs, first would come food. We had plenty of stores for now, but it wouldn¡¯t last forever. Once the spring got here we would need to make farms. Maybe I could start having people clear land nearby? The other side of the road was mostly lightly wooded areas, warehouses, and office buildings. There was also the interstate just down the road. I could turn the warehouses and offices into additional businesses or housing, I guessed, though the amount of saleable salvage I would get out of an office building was probably low. The computers might sell for a bit, though. I should go over there and absorb all of the materials. If nothing else, the offices would make decent apartments. And maybe the warehouse would have something useful. That didn¡¯t give me ideas for work, though. What industries could the people work in? Well, most of them could probably go back to school. The System offered us many options that we never had before. Just teaching them to use their new abilities and the System itself could be good. The System also gives us access to all of the scientific information of over a thousand sapient races. Surely people will wan to learn that. It wasn¡¯t work, but if people were training, they would at least have something to do. The construction crew was also important. We needed to modify the buildings here, and even build more of them. The problem was that the home improvement store wouldn¡¯t have enough supplies to build too many things. I doubt their lumber supply would be able to build more than one moderate house. That meant we needed to produce construction supplies. Which meant making lumber and concrete. Lumber should be easy, as they have the trees across the road. Concrete might be a problem though. To make that they would need limestone, which I didn¡¯t know where to find. Chapter 10 All of that planning took a lot out of me, so I collapsed in bed and went to sleep without eating. When I woke up at about five in the morning I noticed a System message. I tried activating the skill and got an inventory screen like a video game, with slots for different items. When I picked up a stack of money the first slot of my inventory showed a stylized $20 bill with a number ¡°28¡± in the corner. When I focused on it a tool tip appeared, ¡°20 Dollar bills, 28¡±. That was no doubt a result of my paradigm. It only had one liter of storage space, but even that was enough to store a few small items. For now I stored my cash, and did my morning routine. I was extremely hungry, so I got ready and headed to the restaurant. Hopefully I could get something before the morning rush started. There were a few people moving around, but none of them seemed out of place. I did see one group of people heading towards the gym. It was the only shopping center business I left relatively untouched, and also had some of the few showers that the people in the dorms could use. These people probably got up before sunrise so that they wouldn¡¯t have to wait in line. I should fix that. I opened up a notepad in my head, a useful function Vera had once shown me, and started taking notes of things that I would need to have the construction team do. I didn¡¯t technically need to do so to remember the list, as everyone on the System had a photographic memory due to it backing up your memories, but if I made a list I could send the file to others. ¡°Build more showers/toilets¡± went to the top of the list. With the number of things that needed to be built, we would need to greatly expand the construction crew. I sent out a bulk message to everyone that was signed up as a citizen that we needed construction crew to modify, build, and upgrade the buildings around us. I offered 20 zerka per day to beginners, 30 or 40 if you had some experience, depending on how much, and 50 if you were a team leader. Those rates would be my standard pay rates for now, so I updated the ones for the other employees as well. Tony and Tom had negotiated to be paid in cash, so I would have to talk to them to see if they would rather continue to be paid in cash or if they wanted the standard Team Leader pay. Di became a team leader, though I wasn¡¯t sure what to call her position. Maybe I would put her in charge of educating people on the use of the System as well, and she could lead the educators? If nothing else, we could make her morale officer. I sent her a message offering her the position of instructor. As for myself, it seemed a little weird to give myself a paycheck when I could control the entire city¡¯s finances and had bought most of the things in the city using my personal finances. For now, though, I gave myself a pay rate of 100 zerka per day, and would stick to using the city¡¯s funds to buy everything for the city rather than my own funds. I also created a virtual bulletin board that Greg would have his nanites holographically display around town, and could be accessed by anyone that was a registered citizen. On that I posted the Construction Team recruitment, the new pay rates, and a job offer looking for people to clear the trees around the area. I might turn that into an actual lumber industry once I learned a bit more about System devices that could make boards and plywood. I also added a suggestion and a complaint box. If I was going to be mayor, I needed to hear what my people had to say. By the time I was done with that I had finished the bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits and orange juice I had bought at the restaurant and threw away my trash. The bacon had come from one of the clones pigs, the eggs, cheese, and orange juice were from the refrigerated food I bought from Lawrence, and the biscuit was from the Kitchen in town. Apparently, Jacob had decided to try and raise money by allowing it to make food and sell it anytime the kitchen was closed, so the manager of the restaurant had it make many dishes and send them to us. After all, we had sold them all of the flour that Lawrence had so if we wanted to make fresh food using flour we needed them. The town¡¯s finances were looking pretty good now, which allowed me to do this wave of expansion. We had gotten 62,837 zerka from scraping cars and another 13,678 from Market sales. And that was after I deducted the pay of all of our employees from the Market sales. The sales of guns were really picking up, which greatly contributed to our profits. With that kind of money coming in, I could afford to hire more people. The cars sales amount was a one time thing, but much of the Market was from things we could repeat, so I wasn¡¯t sure how much we could afford to do long term. I would just have to watch things and make adjustments. As everyone got up, I got a response from Di. She agreed to help educate people, and suggested that she come by my place to discuss the curriculum. I really needed an office where we could hold meetings, but it wasn¡¯t a priority. Maybe I will take over the penthouse office of one of the office buildings across the street. The meeting went pretty well. We decided to encourage everyone to pick up the Inventory skill, as it was so useful. We would ask Olivia if she could teach the people that wanted to learn magic-like skills, and Di would deal with the more down-to-earth skills and questions like how to use certain features, like the library function of the interface window. I had discovered it a few weeks ago. Every book, video, and song humans ever produced is on there, including educational materials. It even has an encyclopedia which puts a certain wiki website to shame. You could also add alien information if you wanted, though it wasn¡¯t added by default. By ten o¡¯clock I had over 100 people who wanted to join the construction teams, and another fifty that wanted to work on the trees. I had Tony come by and split up the construction crews into different tasks. After talking with him a bit through messages, he was up to date on all of the improvements I wanted to do, so he assigned a team to start turning one of the stores into a bath house and a team to start converting the office building into apartments. I went with the second team to clear out the office and, after we dealt with a few corpses and three zombies, and stored everything in the warehouse including the corpses, the place was cleaned out enough for them to start. As the wood cutting crew would be working nearby I decided to turn the new warehouse into a storage place for their materials. There was a device in the Market known as a Bulk Warehouse. It only allowed you to store up to ten different types of items, stacking them instead of keeping every item separate like the normal warehouse. In exchange it could take a larger area, 200 cubic meters like the Warehouse 2 instead of the 100 cubic meters of the Warehouse 1, and expand it by a factor of 20, instead of 10 like the Warehouse 1. This meant that the Bulk Warehouse would store four times as much as the standard Warehouse, but was only good for bulk materials. I also bought a Lumber Yard at 2500 zerka, as it could process the trees into various shapes and materials like sawdust, wood chips, and bark. I set it up to automatically take the trees and turn them into properly dried two by fours. They were all eight feet long for now, as I wanted to save the storage slots. I then assigned the leader of the lumber team to be the manager of the Lumber Yard and Bulk Warehouse. I had the Recycler break down the computers from the office building, including the server bank, but didn¡¯t sell the materials. We might be able to use them to make things in the future, but if we don¡¯t need them I can always sell them when we need money. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Back at town I expanded Gary¡¯s field to 500 meters, which covered the entire shopping center and much of the office area and wooded area across the road. As I knew that salvagers had checked the cars in that parking lot already, I ordered the Recycler to break down those cars and store the materials. I would make those materials available to the craftsmen once I knew that they had a use for them. As it was already after noon I went to the restaurant and checked the suggestion box. Most of them were asking for baths, toilets, or private rooms. A few people wanted jobs of a specific kind. While we didn¡¯t need people to produce things, I suppose we could use some more craftsmen. The first one would be a tailors office. Our clothing supplies were good, but people would probably want new things before long. If nothing else, when the spring got here they would want lighter clothing than is available for salvage. I checked with the System and realized that there was a Tailor¡¯s station, which could do everything from weaving cloth to sewing the clothing for you. It could even work with leather, rubber, and other materials, which would allow it to make shoes and simple clothing. It might be a bit more than we needed, but they were cheap at only 2500 zerka each. I bought two, then took them to the production room. After I was done, I posted a note looking for five people to make clothing, shoes, and simple armor. I noticed that the gunsmith, Philip, had hired four other people, who were all assembling guns of various types. As a designated manager and Team Leader he had the power to do so, so it wouldn¡¯t be a big deal. I verified that they were all added to the official employ list. Two of them weren¡¯t fully part of the System, but even the level 1 connection let you store zerka in your brain Node, which meant that they could automatically be paid. There were a few other jobs I could set up, but I would probably need to think about what they should be. Maybe I could ask our Alf friends what would be needed? I quickly walked down to the last of the shopping center stores and cleared it out. It had a functional soda machine in front of it, so I checked the warehouse. We had two other working ones, and three broken ones. I set the two working ones up, one near the production store and one near the trailers. I went over to Lawrence¡¯s store and bought some sodas, then ordered Gary to restock all of the soda machines. The sodas disappeared into the warehouse. It was only then that I realized a problem. The machines could still take cash, but everything else in town was sold for Zerka. ¡®Gary, is there any way to alter the soda machines so that they take Zerka?¡¯ ¡®Yes, it is quite simple.¡¯ He informed me of a device that could produce an electric charge in response to the amount of zerka paid. It was generally used to make devices change their function based on how much you paid, but could also be used to activate a device if a specific amount was paid. It was only rarely used, as it only mattered to technological societies that made technology outside the System. They were only five zerka each, so I bought three and brought up the schematic for the machine¡¯s electronics. I figured out which circuit needed to be activated to tell it that a proper payment had been made, and set one device per machine up to do that when half a zerka had been paid. Charging fractional zerka wasn¡¯t common, and the System priced everything in full zerka, but it was possible. Not knowing what else to do for the day, I went to my RV and pulled up the library. My class meant that I needed to understand how powers worked to get the most out of them and level them up the fastest, so I asked Vera to pull up scientific papers on expanding space. Maybe I could level up my Inventory directly by rewriting the way it works? Several hours later, after leveling up my Physics and Quantum Physics multiple times due to all of the papers I had to cross-reference, I finally finished the paper. It was complicated, but at least I knew the basic theory behind it. Now I just needed to figure out how the nanites could manipulate that theory to create the effect. I just wouldn¡¯t do it now. That much learning had my brain hurting. I just wanted to eat something and go to sleep. With the Market Screen skill I could technically access the restaurant from here and just bring in whatever I wanted, but as it was rush hour there doing so would delay other people from getting their food. Instead I connected to the Kitchen. I couldn¡¯t have them make me anything, as they were also in a rush over there, but their market terminal could sell me anything in their food storage, including soup that they made yesterday and had stored. I bought a bowl worth, plus a bread roll. Knowing that the food would fall on the floor if I just brought it over, the System let me delay its arrival as I took out a bowl from a cabinet. Once I was done, I set the bowl on a table and told the Market Screen to put the food there. Suddenly there was a distortion and the bowl was filled with pork stew and a roll appeared beside the bowl. I stepped out of my RV long enough to buy a soda from the nearest machine and went back inside. It was a simple meal, but it worked, and only cost two zerka. After finishing I went to bed. It had been a long day. For the next week the settlement continued to run without major modification. I made an adjustment to the way settlement owned businesses worked, letting them keep half the sales and the city take the other half. This meant that they had to cover their own expenses and pay their own employees. Because the construction teams were only working for the city and not selling to the public, I sent them 4000 zerka per day to cover expenses and expand. This change made the city¡¯s daily income lower to five thousand the first day, but steadily climb to ten thousand by the end of the week. If it could stay at that level we would be able to expand rapidly. Di and Olivia¡¯s classes were going well. We had 67 children in the settlement who attended System classes along with around 150 adults in the morning. After lunch the adults would go to try to gather salvage or do some other work and the two of them would help the children find educational material in the System Library that interested them or that formed the basics of what they needed to know. Di had hired two women from the System classes to help with the children as well, one who used to homeschool her kids and one who was a middle school teacher. They got a budget of 500 zerka per day, and by the way Di kept visiting the various unused buildings within the settlement I suspected that she was considering using it by having the Construction crew build her a schoolhouse. While I spent the week reading various scientific papers, many of them from the aliens that created the Sapient Empowerment System to try and wrap my head around how all of the System tech worked, I did occasionally take time out to walk around town and talk to people. Because I treated Bob and Gary as employees, rather than just tools, I even checked in with them to see if they had any ideas on how to improve things. Gary suggested that we build some sort of mass transit to St. Nicholas¡¯s Outpost, which in System terms meant teleportation. A teleportation orb would allow us to move people, and would cut the energy cost of moving goods between two of them by two to five times depending on how advanced the one we bought was. A teleport pad, however, could cut the cost to one tenth of the standard cost, making it approximately one tenth of a Ko per kilogram per kilometer. With a standard power generator that would allow 500 people per day to use it. I really wanted more to be able to use it, though, so I would need a Generator Orb 2, with would produce ten times the power and therefore be able to move 5000 people per day. The main problem with that idea was cost. A teleporter pad cost 50 thousand zerka and a generator 2 cost 25 thousand. As a result, we wouldn¡¯t have the money to build one at both ends for another week, and would then exhaust the treasury. Bob suggested that I by him upgrades. I didn¡¯t know he could have them, but there were three good options. I could buy more cloning pods at 5k, and grow more animals. The seven pig carcasses that I put on the market were all sold in three days, two to the settlement in Beijing, three to the settlement in Paris, one to a new settlement in Mexico City, and one to a settlement 27 kilometers north of us named ¡°Solinan Bascabana¡± that was built in the national forest reserve. I assume that was our Alf friends. Buying more pods would let us produce one extra pig every four days and increase our profit. I could also buy a Plant Pod, which would produce a comparable mass of plant products every day. The third option was called a ¡°Biome Chamber¡±. It was a one million cubic meter pocket where Bob could build an entire balanced biome to preserve all of the species in it in harmony. It also cost 100 thousand zerka. I bought one more cloning pod, bringing him up to a total of five, and five Plant Pods. It cost 30 thousand zerka to do that, but would greatly increase our food security. The last cloning pod was set to grow a cow every five days instead of a pig every four, in order to diversify our food. I also had him grow the skin for them, then remove it and send it to the Food Warehouse along with the meat. Because the new demands on it caused it to fill up too quickly, I expanded the food warehouse into the two nearby offices in the back of the restaurant. I would have the construction crew wall off part of the kitchen later and expand it further later, but for now they had other work to do. I bought a device called a ¡°Tanning Station¡± for one thousand zerka that could only tan hides of animals and gave it to the clothing team. They could use it to make leather out of the cow and pig hides Bob was producing, and use that leather instead of hoping we salvaged some. Chapter 11 I was sitting in my RV, going over a report from the construction team about how far they had gotten in converting the office building into bedrooms when I someone knocked on the door. I opened the door to see Tony standing there with another man. ¡°Hey, Greg.¡± said Tony, ¡°This is Simon. We need to talk to you. Something major just happened.¡± ¡°Sure, come in.¡± I said, and motioned them inside. Once everyone was inside I and Tony sat down, but Simon wouldn¡¯t take the chair I offered. ¡°How about you tell be what brought you here.¡± ¡°Yes, sir.¡± he said crisply. Definitely a military background. ¡°I am on the construction team that is refitting the office building. At approximately oh ten-hundred we heard a gunshot nearby. I drew my sidearm and went to investigate with several other construction team members, in case we were under attack. In the nearby parking garage I found that two salvage teams had an altercation. One of them had stabbed a member of the other team and had been shot in return by one of the man¡¯s teammates. We managed to calm everyone down and tend to the wounded. Neither were in danger of dying, and in fact the knife wound stopped bleeding shortly after that. Several people did, however, stay with them to insure that the fighting doesn¡¯t continue.¡± ¡°At ease,¡± I responded. ¡°This isn¡¯t the military. I¡¯m a mayor, not a drill sergeant.¡± ¡°Yes, sir.¡± he said, and seemed to relax. ¡°So, I assume they were fighting over salvage rights?¡± ¡°Yes sir, the garage in question is just outside the settlement¡¯s border, which the outside team claims means we don¡¯t have any claim to it.¡± ¡°Maybe we don¡¯t. But if the other team was there first, they might have had a claim to some of the vehicles. I¡¯m surprised the situation got that serious, though. Why would you try to kill someone over salvage?¡± ¡°It¡¯s actually pretty common.¡± said Tony before Simon answered. ¡°When I was still in the city I heard of it happening several times. Two salvage teams would both want to salvage the same thing and would get in a fight over it. Often that fight would result in them opening fire on each other. Since the plague not only cured all disease but also makes you heal faster, and even regrow limbs, they figure they are at most inconveniencing the other person.¡± ¡°What if the person takes too serious of an injury and dies, though?¡± ¡°Then the System will revive them. I even heard of a case where a man was shot in the head and died. Over the next four days his wounds healed and the missing brain matter was regrown, and when it was over he woke up with a bit of amnesia. It took the System a couple of days to restore his lost memories, but even severe brain damage only cost him a week.¡± I rubbed my eyes. ¡°This means that our laws concerning assault and even murder will have to be revised. They still cause psychological issues, pain, and downtime, but not permanent injury. This is why I never wanted to be a politician.¡± Tony nodded. ¡°So, what do we do? Our guy wants the guy charged with a crime and arrested, but we can¡¯t really do that, and we don¡¯t even have a jail to put him in if he was arrested.¡± I thought about it for a while. ¡°Seems to me like they will both recover, but that there may be damages depending on who started it.¡± ¡°You want to turn this into a civil matter?¡± asked Simon in surprise. ¡°I wasn¡¯t expecting you to order the firing squad, but shouldn¡¯t the guy at least get locked up?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know. We don¡¯t know what happened, and even if we did I¡¯m not sure we should lock the man up for what is ultimately a few days of injury and pain.¡± I paused for a few seconds to think. ¡°We do need to investigate, though. And if we find that the outside salvagers are hostile to us, we need to protect our people from them. Tell me, Simon. Do you have any law enforcement experience?¡± ¡°I was an MP for my base in the middle east, sir, though not as a civilian police officer.¡± ¡°That¡¯s fine. Would you be willing to become the town sheriff, at least temporarily?¡± ¡°Yes, sir.¡± Simon said, standing up straighter. ¡°In that case, I don¡¯t have a badge, but I¡¯ll see what the System has. In the mean time, I want you to investigate the situation. Since it happened outside of our borders, I¡¯m not sure how much info Gary will have, but as sheriff you will have access to his surveillance data if you need it for security or investigation reasons. Also, talk with the people involved and see if they are willing to turn over their memories of the event. Their assistant AIs should be able to convert them into a video file. It isn¡¯t as good as the Surveillance skill, but it will let you see what happened from their point of view.¡± ¡°Yes, sir. I have a question, though. Who is Gary?¡± I smiled. ¡°Oh, he¡¯s the Settlement¡¯s Core.¡± I took him to the storage shed where Gary and Bob were currently living and introduced him to the two of them. I then registered him with Gary as the town sheriff, and he got to work looking through Gary¡¯s data. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Leaving Simon to work, I went back to looking over the town¡¯s issues. Over the last week the construction crew had finished around forty apartments which people had already moved into, and the other teams had finished the septic and water upgrades as well as the bar. The bar crew had asked for 550 zerka at one point, but it was a minor cost. They would be having a grand opening tonight, and had already hired the staff, so I walked over to check the place out. Once inside I noticed that they had built a wall to cut the front half of the store off from the back half, with only a door in the middle and two bathrooms separating them. The left side of the room had a large bar that seemed to be stocked with a sample of all of the varieties of alcohol the warehouse contained. They had even salvaged a beer tap from a bar, and brought in a few kegs, which were stacked in a corner. The rest of the bar area was filled with tables, chairs, and booths. They had found a jukebox somewhere and hooked it up at the back of the bar, and even found a pool table, which was set up in one corner. While I stood there looking a man came in from the door to the back. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, we aren¡¯t open yet.¡± he said. ¡°We are having our grand opening tonight at six, though, so please return then.¡± ¡°Oh, I¡¯m not here to drink. My name is Greg Summers. I¡¯m the mayor. I just wanted to look the place over before you opened.¡± ¡°Oh, sorry. I¡¯ve already had to drive a few people away. Too many people want something to do in this town. I was considering opening at noon and selling pub food just to deal with that fact.¡± ¡°Well, I was thinking about building a second restaurant, so that could work. If you decide you want to do that, just tell me and I¡¯ll get you a Food Service Station so you can make the food.¡± ¡°Thank you for the offer. I might take you up on that. So, do you like the place?¡± he asked, motioning around the bar area. ¡°Looks pretty good, though I never visited many bars. The thing I worry about, though, was the ¡®special feature¡¯ that we added.¡± ¡°Oh, the rooms. Sure, I can show them to you.¡± He motioned for me to follow and lead me into the back. There I saw ten doors, six on the back wall and four on the front wall. ¡°Each of these rooms is identical.¡± he said, then pulled out a key to unlock one of them. Inside I saw a simple queen sized bed with a lamp beside it on a bedside table. The room had electric lighting and carpet, and was painted a beige color. There was even a clock on the wall. The only thing that seemed out of place was a metal thing hanging on the wall that had a small stone in the middle of it. ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± I said motioning to the metal thing. ¡°Oh, that¡¯s the thing that will make this all work. Here, let me show you.¡± He went to the bar and grabbed a half drunk can of beer then returned. He then walked over to the bed, dumped the whole thing on the bed, and threw the can on the ground. ¡°Now, watch.¡± He walked over to the metal thing and touched the stone in the middle. A few seconds later the can disappeared and the beer spot dried up before disappearing as well. ¡°These are room cleaning devices we found on the market. They only cost fifty zerka each, so we bought eleven of them. One for the bar and one for each room. Now all the customer needs to do after they are finished with the room is just touch the stone in the device, and the room will be clean. It will save us from having to find someone who¡¯s willing to clean this place, given the purpose of it.¡± ¡°And you suspect that it will get a lot of use for that purpose?¡± ¡°Oh, yes. Five of the town¡¯s ladies-of-the-night and one such man have already inquired about working here. They won¡¯t be official employees, but they will be allowed to walk around the bar area and pick up clients as long as they pay the five zerka fee for each use of the room.¡± I shrugged. ¡°I guess that works. Should keep the customers from trying anything with the employees.¡± ¡°Well, the employees are all used to that from previous jobs, so they are all paid between 30 and 40 per shift. But at least we found enough waitresses. I and one other woman will be the bartenders, and we even hired an ex club bouncer to work security.¡± I nodded. ¡°In that case, seems like you have everything under control. Maybe I¡¯ll come by tonight for a drink and see how popular the place is.¡± ¡°I suspect you¡¯ll be waiting in line to get in, but you are free to come by.¡± I nodded, said goodbye, and left. I noticed that the sign on the door said they would be open from six pm to two am Tuesday through Saturday. An interesting schedule. We might have to expand it if this place was as popular as the manager seemed to think it would be. I checked in on the production group just to make sure everything was running well, then made my way back to my RV. The suggestion box on the town¡¯s bulletin board had two things in it that I wanted to do as soon as possible. The first suggested an actual government building be set up where the leaders had offices. The second was from the people on the construction teams. They wanted concrete. I had sent a scout out to an old rock quarry I knew was northeast of the town and they verified that the rock there was high in limestone. I had even figured out the cost for setting it up. I could use the generator and outpost core from the warehouse, but I would need an automated miner, 5000 zerka, a concrete processor, 2500 zerka, and a bulk warehouse for storing it, 5000 zerka. We would also need a way to get it back here, which meant that I would either need to repurpose our concrete truck back to its original purpose, or I would need some sort of teleporter. While you could send things between an outpost core and the settlement core it was linked to, as we did when we traded with St. Nicholas¡¯s, the sheer bulk of the materials we needed to ship would use too much energy if we didn¡¯t decrease the cost via a proper teleportation device. That brought up the possibility of buying a teleportation platform again. While we couldn¡¯t yet afford it, I was sure that we would need to buy one for the rock quarry outpost and St. Nicholas¡¯s before long. I removed my flying disk from my inventory and grabbed the Outpost Core and generator. The device was identical to the one Silan had used to visit us, and at only 500 zerka it seemed like something that was too useful to pass up. I made sure that the warehouse had all of the other devices in it, and flew for the quarry. It was just over twenty kilometers away, about nine from where the Alfs had set up their settlement in the National Forest. I sat down and checked the area to make sure that they hadn¡¯t made a claim on the area. There were no people or System devices in the area, so I set up the Outpost Orb and generator in the main office. Once I was done I named the outpost ¡°Rock Quarry Outpost¡± and linked it to the settlement, setting it to have a 200 meter perimeter and bringing over the other devices. I set up the Warehouse first, then the Automated quarry near the rock wall. As soon as it was activated it started sending out some sort of energy beam to collect stone, placing it in the warehouse. As it did that I set up the Concrete Processor and told it to start removing the limestone and making cement. I stepped back and watched as everything ran smoothly. I then posted a notice on the bulletin board, informing the people that we would need people to run a new rock quarry, as well as distribute the rock and cement produced. Within thirty minutes I had twenty volunteers, including a man that used to drive a concrete truck and a man that used to work on a road crew. I hired all of them, and gave them the location of the outpost. Down the road were some cheap duplex apartments, the only kind of housing that anyone would build this close to a blasting area, so I expanded the area to 500 meters in the direction of the building. Normally you wouldn¡¯t use an oval field for your outpost or settlement, but I didn¡¯t want to spend the power making it circular, as that would decrease the mining speed. I went over to the apartment, cleared the place of zombies and corpses, and bought twelve of the cleaning devices the bar had used, 600 zerka. One went in each of the twelve apartments I cleared in six buildings, and I activated them. While it wouldn¡¯t make the places neat, they would at least be clean. By the time I was finished, the rock quarry crew had started to arrive with the concrete truck, so I showed them the apartments and let them choose one. They would have to have a roommate, as we didn¡¯t have enough for everyone to have their own apartment, but they still preferred this to living in the dorms. I promised to have the construction crew hook up better water and sewage, then grabbed a power device from the warehouse and spent the next hour hooking up the electricity, something I had forgotten. I had to make a run to the nearest hardware store for the wire, but two hours later I had all of the apartments connected to the Outpost¡¯s power grid. I sent Tony a notice to get the former sewage crew out here when they had an opening, and flew back to the town. It was late afternoon, and I hadn¡¯t eaten anything today, so I went to the restaurant and got something. Just as I was finishing up, I got a message from Simon. He had completed his investigation and wanted to inform me of his findings. Chapter 12 Darrel''s Story: The plague took everything from me. I might have been just an average man, trying to earn an honest living, but it took my parents, my wife, and my kids. After losing them I too came down with the plague. A well meaning neighbor called an ambulance and I was hauled off to the hospital. I didn¡¯t care, though. I had lost everyone I loved and the only way I would see them again was in heaven, so I didn¡¯t fear death. Then I woke up on a stretcher in the hallway of hospital, just outside the emergency room. Some paramedic was somehow going around touching people and they were getting better. Some of the other patients were calling it a miracle, but I doubted that. Why would God spare my life but not the lives of my wife or kids? Most likely he was secretly testing a drug on us. When I was discharged I spent a few days grieving before going out. I quickly found out that, while the plague killed around ninety percent of people that got it, it made those that survived it immune to all other disease and gave them perfect health. Great, not only did I somehow survive when they died, but now I would enjoy perfect health while they died suffering. It even cured my diabetes. After a few days I tried to return to work to get my mind off of losing them and everything else that happened. The garage was closed, however. Apparently the owner had died as well, so it was shut down until his surviving son figured out what to do with it. With nothing left to do, I went back to town. I buried myself in booze, burning through what little money was left in my bank account until one day the power cut out. I checked the breaker, but it hadn¡¯t tripped. A few hours later the power came back on, but the TV was burned out, as was my TV and cellphone. I cursed. I didn¡¯t have a job any more so there was no way I could replace one of them right now, much less all three. I left and went to a friend¡¯s place to try and see what happened. Apparently most electronic devices that were on at that moment had burned out, including the computers in cars. Everyone was walking or riding bikes. A few days later, all of the food in the house had run out. I would walk down to the store and buy some, but with the electronics all burned out people were only accepting cash, and all the prices were inflated. I never carried cash, so I couldn¡¯t buy anything. One of my neighbors had mentioned that the Catholic Church down the street was running a soup kitchen. They still, somehow, had power and water. God and I weren¡¯t exactly on the best of terms at the moment, with him taking my wife and kids, not to mention billions of other people¡¯s families, but maybe his servant was trying to make it up to us. I started going down there every day, twice a day. With no cash it was the only way for me to get food. Then one day my friend told me about salvaging. Apparently, with all of the people dying, as long as no one pressed a claim to something, the cops wouldn¡¯t arrest you for stealing it. I joined him and some of his other friends in riding around finding what other people wanted, or what we knew they would pay for. Mostly it was food, but the Father at the kitchen did ask for an industrial dough mixer one day, and others asked for other specific things, so we earned enough that we could eat and even enjoy things a bit without having to go to the kitchen. One day, I stopped by too see if anyone wanted to request that we salvage anything special. There on the giant projectors they set up for movie night I saw the father and some other guy talking about some sort of ¡°system¡±. It sounded like madness, and I could barely understand it. I was never into sci-fi, which is what it sounded like to me, but somehow it explained so much, especially when someone else that was eating there explained it to me. A week later my buddies and I stood in line to get this ¡°System¡± unlocked in us. Then I saw that the guy that was doing the ¡°unlocking¡± was the same paramedic that had stopped the plague from killing me. ¡°So you used this System to save my life?¡± I asked him. ¡°I assume you were one of the people that were brought to the ER? Yeah, that would be me.¡± I sighed. ¡°Not sure if I should thank you or punch you. I guess I¡¯ll settle on paying you.¡± I handed him the ten dollars and he used some sort of power on me. A few days later someone in my head started talking to me. I figured it was like that robot voice that helped that super hero in power armor in that popular movie. My son loved that movie franchise, so I had seen the movie at least four times. Though I wouldn¡¯t be getting power armor. It asked how I wanted to interact with the System, and in honor of my son I chose to be a Super Hero. The message at the kitchen had mentioned a settlement outside of town that the weird guy in the video was running. A thousand people had already been accepted by them, and more were going down there to join up every day. We figured it would be a great place to sell our stuff to to earn some cash, so we started salvaging anything that we thought might be worth something from the buildings in the area. The distribution center beside the kitchen had this weird alien device that paid a decent amount for electronic devices, as it would strip them for their materials, so we started stripping electronics from everything and selling them to an identical ¡°Market Terminal¡± in the settlement. Things went well for us over the next few weeks. There was a gas station right beside the settlement where we could refill the truck, and plenty to salvage in the area. Over time the place expanded and fixed up the old shopping center, even bringing in more alien devices to set up businesses, but we had no reason to join. Then one day they expanded into some office buildings across the road. I realized that meant that they had expanded into some of the other buildings over there as well. We drove by the office building to try and see how they were doing, and saw that they had upgraded the place to have bedrooms in some of the offices, and were building more rooms in the middle of the floor where the cubicles used to be. They let us look around the construction site, and the rooms were pretty nice. Kind of like dorm rooms. With us working in the area, and proper housing now being a thing, some of the team were considering moving into the settlement. The settlement didn¡¯t have enough housing yet, though, so they would wait until we could at least be guaranteed a dorm room. I wasn¡¯t sure about leaving though. Abandoning the house where I had lived with my family only a month or two after they died seemed like a betrayal. One day our work took us to one the parking garages near the settlement. I checked to make sure it was out of their territory, just to make sure. The assistant AI in my head showed me their border, which sat about twenty meters from the edge of the parking garage. It was close, but they couldn¡¯t exactly claim to have a claim to something that wasn¡¯t in their territory, now could they? We started stripping some of the electric cars when we heard someone talking. Jeffery continued to try and drop the battery pack out the bottom of the car, as Lithium had a good resell value to the Market, and I went to see what the noise was. A tow truck full of people from the settlement pulled up and four people jumped out. ¡°Hey, what are you doing?¡± they asked Jeffery. ¡°Dropping the batteries out.¡± he responded. ¡°You¡¯re free to grab any more of the vehicles in the area.¡± ¡°We don¡¯t want another vehicle. We want this one. We already claimed it. Didn¡¯t you see the sign?¡± ¡°What sign?¡± Jeffery asked. The man went over to the windshield, but the sign was no longer there. He checked inside the vehicle, but it wasn¡¯t inside the car either. The four checked around the area and a minute later found it on the ground underneath a truck thirty feet away. ¡°There it is.¡± the man said, picking it up and showing it to us. ¡°I put it on the window last night. Just because you pulled it off doesn¡¯t mean you can steal our claim.¡± ¡°We didn¡¯t pull anything off.¡± I said. ¡°There wasn¡¯t a sign on it when we got here. It was pretty windy last night. Maybe the sign got blown off? You did leave it under a wiper blade, after all.¡± ¡°Bullshit.¡± the man responded. ¡°You pulled it off to steal our claim.¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t steal anything.¡± said Jeffery. ¡°Now fuck off and find another car.¡± Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. ¡°Why you little...¡± the man came at Jeffery, who was half under a car and therefore couldn¡¯t defend himself, so I had to act quickly. I pulled out the knife I had strapped to my side, as I hadn¡¯t bought a gun yet, and stabbed him. The man screamed and stepped backwards, and his friends pulled out their guns. ¡°Hey, that was self defense.¡± I said, ¡°He was going to attack my friend. He¡¯ll heal fast enough. Now move along.¡± I motioned with my knife to try and get them to go and stepped forward. That¡¯s when I heard a gunshot. A second later I felt a pain in my stomach and felt my clothes getting wet. Looks like I was going to get to meet my wife after all. I fell face first and just laid there as the cold of the concrete and blood loss overcame me. I woke up with several construction workers looking at me. I had been propped against the side of the car Jeffery was working on. ¡°Hey, man, you ok?¡± I looked down and the bleeding had stopped. I felt something hard near the surface of my skin and when I pushed on the area a bullet fell out. ¡°Yeah, looks like. Glad I took that toughness power.¡± Every superhero seemed to have one, so if I wanted to be someone my son would have liked reading about, I needed it too. ¡°Yeah, the bullet only went in a few centimeters. Nicked a vein, though, so you lost a lot of blood.¡± I noticed that my clothes were covered in blood. I laid there for another thirty minutes, trying to regain my strength, when another man from the construction sight showed up. He came over and looked at me. ¡°Hi, My name is Simon. I¡¯m the newly appointed town sheriff for Anarchist¡¯s Redoubt. Can you tell me what happened here?¡± Marcus¡¯s Story: I got off the bus at the military base where I would be staying for the next two days. One weekend a month, one week a year. That was the life of the National Guard. I¡¯d probably be doing some sort of supplementary training. Maybe testing to make sure I wasn¡¯t getting rusty. I headed towards the barracks and put my stuff in my locker, then headed to my assigned CO. Sure enough, he had me start with a physical assessment. By the end of the tests I was exhausted. That shouldn¡¯t have taken so much out of me. ¡°Something wrong soldier?¡± he asked. ¡°Not sure, sir. That took way more out of me than I thought.¡± I gasped for air with each breath. ¡°I know I¡¯m not out of shape that much.¡± The doctor came over. ¡°He did have an elevated temperature when he showed up, but only point two degrees. Let me check something.¡± He hooked me up to some sort of device. ¡°Heart rate one thirty. Temperature 99.7. Something is going on with him, I just don¡¯t know what.¡± ¡°In that case, I¡¯ll let you keep him for further testing.¡± the man said, and with a nod to the doctor left. The doctor woman ordered me over to a bed where I laid down. She hooked me up to an IV drip and had me lay there as she ran more tests. Slowly, over the course of an hour, my heart rate went down to ninety BPM, but the temperature kept climbing. I also started getting a headache while simultaneously being tired. Strange, usually headaches kept me from sleeping. I tried to stay awake, but within thirty minutes I could no longer keep my eyes open. My dreams were all of impossible things. I saw sounds and felt colors, among other things that I can¡¯t even describe. Synesthesia, I think it¡¯s called. When I woke, the doctor was no where to be seen. I called out and a person in a hazmat suit came over. ¡°You¡¯re awake?¡± she asked. ¡°But you flatlined half an hour ago. We just hadn¡¯t gotten around to moving you out of here yet.¡± They were surprised, but it didn¡¯t seem that losing a patient was the cause. I guess people miraculously coming back was more disturbing. ¡°You aren¡¯t a zombie are you? Quickly, say the alphabet backwards.¡± ¡°The Alphabet backwards?¡± I asked, still a bit confused. ¡°Ok, wise guy. Not what I meant, but you did prove you are alive and at least half thinking.¡± She called to another doctor and he also came over in a hazmat suit. ¡°Unbelievable.¡± the doctor said. ¡°You realize you were dead? We couldn¡¯t even resuscitate you, but somehow you¡¯re back.¡± Now, that was the reaction I was expecting to that news. ¡°So, doctor. Doctors. Can I get up?¡± ¡°If you¡¯re feeling strong enough.¡± the woman said. ¡°We always need more beds.¡± ¡°Why, what¡¯s wrong?¡± The worst situation then came to mind. ¡°Were we attacked?¡± ¡°No, not an attack. Though I suppose this might be a biological weapon. No, you and everyone else in the base have come down with some sort of disease with a ninety percent casualty rate. I came from outside, and have been wearing this suit or in clean rooms for the last three days just to make sure I don¡¯t catch whatever it is.¡± ¡°Ninety percent? But that means...¡± ¡°That the vast majority of you have died? Yeah. The only good thing to come of this seems to be that anyone who survives the disease is immune to every other disease and in amazing health. I can¡¯t say who due to HIPPA, but let¡¯s just say that one of the base personnel had cancer, and when they survived the outbreak their cancer was gone.¡± ¡°I¡¯m immune to disease?¡± I asked, surprised. ¡°Yeah, an unfortunately, that means that they are sending you out on assignment. This outbreak isn¡¯t just happening on this base. In fact, I¡¯m pretty sure it¡¯s happening all across the world. Everyone on this base that survived the plague is being sent into the city to help with disaster relief. We¡¯ll be sending what supplies we can with your group. You¡¯ll mostly be helping with corpse disposal. While you might be immune to the diseases a city worth of corpses can spread, many of the survivor¡¯s aren¡¯t.¡± ¡°So I take it this is no longer a ¡®one weekend a month¡¯ thing?¡± ¡°The president declared a state of emergency before he was air lifted to a private hospital with the plague. Do you really have to ask?¡± ¡°I guess not.¡± I went to my room and grabbed my stuff, then joined the next convoy headed into the city. I was sent to one of the city parks where someone had used excavators to dig a massive pit which was being filled with bodies. Every few minutes, someone would spray the bodies down with diesel fuel from a pump. Seemed like overkill to burn them, but I guess it would make space for more. Just as I got to the CO in charge of the sight I saw an arm force its way out from under some of the other bodies. Soon more than a half dozen bodies were trying to claw their way out of the corpse pile. One of the men on the side of the pit didn¡¯t seem phased by that, and simply pulled out his side arm and fired two rounds into each of them, usually hitting the head. Several other people joined in and the pit became a shooting gallery. When the dead collapsed, he lit a match and threw it into the pit. Black smoke rose from the pit and I heard screams coming from the flames. Apparently even getting shot in the head wasn¡¯t enough to stop them. ¡°Sorry about that.¡± said the officer, loading a new magazine into his pistol and reholstering it. ¡°That happens from time to time. Hence, why we burn them.¡± I tried to say something, but found that I couldn¡¯t. I tried to speak again and managed to force something out. ¡°Zombies?¡± ¡°Yep. Wasn¡¯t expecting that, were you?¡± ¡°Well, I...The doctor asked me if I was one when I woke up, since I flatlined, but I thought it was a joke.¡± The man shrugged. ¡°Unfortunately not.¡± He motioned to a truck that was backing in. ¡°So, care to help unload?¡± I stayed there for several weeks, every day getting up, unloading corpses, and burning them. Occasionally I would shoot a zombie as it tried to escape the pit. Then one day all of the power cut out. We had a generator on sight, so after hooking it up we turned it on. Most of the lights worked, but the TV we were using to run a constant news screen was fried, and only a few of the radios worked, though there was nothing on any channel. Even the emergency channel was dead. ¡°What do you think, sir? EMP?¡± ¡°Maybe. Don¡¯t know. But I do know we still have bodies to burn.¡± I nodded and got back to work. Thankfully the electric pump on the diesel tank still worked. A week later we were no longer getting bodies, so we loaded up in the trucks to head back. Unfortunately, the on site technician had only managed to get one old deuce and a half working, since it didn¡¯t have a computer, so we piled into the back and returned to base. When we arrived, however, we found the place almost deserted. We found the highest ranking officer there, and they sent us home. Most methods of communication were gone, but the few they did have said that the emergency was over, and humanity had lost. I didn¡¯t have anything to do. I hitched a ride back to the city, but when I got home I found that few of the people I knew were still alive. My landlord, my roommate, the pothead down the road, all gone. I even went to visit a few old girlfriends, but they were all gone as well. With nothing left to do, I started wondering through the various empty houses, gathering everything I thought might be useful. It was well known that what few police were left wouldn¡¯t bother you as long as you didn¡¯t hurt anyone or steal something someone still had claim to. So I got all of the food and drinks that my neighbors had and brought it back to my place. I even rescued a few special plants from the basement of my pothead neighbor. If the cops weren¡¯t going to prosecute drug crimes any more, I was going to trade it for things I needed. I survived for over a month that way. Then one day, as I passed a Catholic Church on my way to an old girlfriend¡¯s place where I knew some good booze was kept, I saw that they were running a soup kitchen. Not only that, but they had power, and two projectors showing movies. I didn¡¯t need the food, as I had plenty, but it had been so long since I had seen a TV show or movie that I went inside. They were showing an old western and, while it wasn¡¯t my favorite type of show, it was something fun to do. I kept going, even swinging by at nights any time they had a movie night and I thought I might like the movie. While I never ate anything, when they started collecting donations I started throwing cash or jewelry I had ¡®found¡¯ in the basket. Apparently, as someone told me one movie night, there was a terminal in the building next door that would buy things from us and pay us in some sort of special currency. While the currency couldn¡¯t be converted back into dollars, it could be used to buy things from the terminal if you had enough, though most people were just pooling their money for things like bulk survival supplies. I started selling things to the terminal as well. I didn¡¯t think the seventeen ¡®zerka¡¯ I had accumulated would ever do anything, but it was something to do to pass the time, like trying to beat another person¡¯s high score at the arcade. Then one day the movie we were watching had a commercial break. The Father that ran this place and some other guy that I had seen volunteering in the kitchen were telling us about some sort of System and nanites associated with it. It sounded crazy, but I doubted the Father would lie to us. He just wasn¡¯t the type. So when the man asked for volunteers to go to his settlement, I joined up. If there was some sort of alien system giving people super powers, I wanted to learn as much about it as I could. I joined a construction team that was putting in a septic system almost immediately, but when a cold snap came through and covered everything in snow, I was able to switch back to my true calling, pulling salvage from nearby buildings. I also joined this System the mayor was talking about as soon as he offered. And that was what I did for several weeks. Then one day we pushed the border out and the mayor started clearing all of the salvage so that the construction crews could have a place to work. I took my crew to the edge of the settlement¡¯s area, just outside of it where the mayor couldn¡¯t just grab everything and found a car park that was just outside the field. This was good. The mayor had scrapped a lot of cars a week ago after some aliens that looked more like elves came for a visit, so I knew they were worth close to a thousand zerka each, especially the electric ones. We took a stack of copy paper we got from the mayor¡¯s office salvage and some markers and made a ¡°claimed by salvage crew 2¡± fliers. We then went around to every electric and hybrid car in the park, placing them under the windshield wipers. One of the guys on the team knew where an old tow truck was, so we went over and fixed it up. It took us two days to find the right parts at the car parts places nearby, but eventually we got it cranked and started hauling in all of the vehicles. After a few days, though, we sat out and grabbed one of them, and hauled it back. When we returned, however, there was someone under one of our claims trying to take the battery. We argued for a bit about whether it was our claim or not, and when I found our flier on the ground nearby, under a truck, I knew what had happened. They decided to steal our claim, and had pulled the flier off of the window to prove it. One of them tried to come up with some excuse about how the wind blew it off the window, and when I called bullshit and tried to pull his buddy out from under our car, he stabbed me. He tried going for my buddies as well, but they had guns and one of them was forced to shoot him. Some of the construction crew guys came over to break up the fight, and they administered first aid to the two of us. Then, an hour later, some guy from one of the construction crews came by, claiming to be the sheriff and asking what happened. Chapter 13 ¡°So, that¡¯s the story.¡± said Simon before sitting down. We had moved into the CEO¡¯s office in the office building, as I left the stuff in it in place in case I decided to use it. For now it would be acting as my office. I thought for a few minutes. It seemed like a simple misunderstanding to me. Our people thought they had claimed something, the other people thought they hadn¡¯t, and claimed it for themselves. This resulted it some tension, which caused them to resort to violence. ¡°Ok, here¡¯s the way I see it. The outside group had no reason to suspect that the car was claimed, so they claimed it. You did believe you had claimed it, and tried to take it back. That resulted in a fight. Is that correct?¡± I looked at the man that was stabbed. Marcus, I think. ¡°Yeah, but it was ours. Just because the flier got blown off doesn¡¯t mean it wasn¡¯t.¡± ¡°You didn¡¯t really take that into consideration when you claimed it. Why didn¡¯t you use those markers to just write on the hood or windshield?¡± ¡°You want us to deface our own car?¡± ¡°You¡¯re just hauling it back to the Market so that you can scrap it, right? The System isn¡¯t going to care about a bit of marker, or even a broken window. All of that will just be turned into raw materials.¡± Marcus shrugged. ¡°I guess.¡± ¡°So, here¡¯s what I¡¯m going to do. All of the hybrid and electric vehicles, besides the one you guys fought over, belong to Marcus¡¯s crew. The one you fought over, and any of the others they want to properly claim within thirty minutes will belong to Darrel''s crew. In order to clear things up, I will then extend the field of the settlement to cover the place, and give Marcus and Darrel temporary permission to send their claimed vehicles directly to the Market for scrap. Any vehicles that aren¡¯t claimed will then be up for you or others to claim them from tomorrow onward. Just make sure you write ¡°Claimed by¡± then your team name or your name somewhere where others can see it, in something that can¡¯t be easily removed. That way no one will mistake your claim as something that is unclaimed.¡± ¡°And the injuries?¡± asked Darrel. ¡°The way I see it, you two were both justified in self defense. Though stabbing a man for trying to pull a guy from under a car is too much, it made sense to think he was going to do more than that. You both were seriously injured, but you should both recover, so that whole issue kind of balances itself out.¡± The two men nodded. ¡°Now, if¡¯s that¡¯s everything, lets head over to the garage and get this sorted out.¡± I don¡¯t think either of them were happy with the outcome, but isn¡¯t that what negotiation is, finding a compromise that neither of you are happy with? Hopefully, they will both see my decision as fair enough that they will continue working in the area. Once we were there, I gave Darrel¡¯s crew thirty minutes to claim any non-electric, non-hybrid car they wanted. They all had permanent markers, and were writing their claims on the hoods of the cars. When they finished, I expanded the field and the two of them went to send their vehicles directly to the Market. Thankfully none of them tried to transfer a vehicle they hadn¡¯t claimed. Once they were finished, I returned the field to normal and revoked their permission to send things directly to the market. It seemed Darrel''s group came out slightly ahead. They earned 23782 zerka, while Marcus¡¯s group earned 22687 zerka. Still, both groups were happy with the massive salvage they had brought in today, and by the end they both had agreed to have a drink together at the newly opened bar. They did have a twenty minute wait to get in, but it seemed to be worth it. With the new influx of money from the salvage groups and the bar, we made more than normal for the next several days. The influx of money into the local economy lead to two people setting up their own businesses. One group had saved up enough money to by a Factory Station and was starting to make metal car parts. They had seen how long it took Marcus¡¯s crew to find what they needed to get the tow truck up and running, and were planning on just making any parts people might need from the local supply of steel. The other group were going to try and open up a trade route between here, the alien settlement, and the city. There were plenty of things that we might have have that one of the others might want, but they simply never thought about it. The System didn¡¯t charge a huge amount to move goods, but at the amount of trade they were expecting once the three economies were developed, those small charges would add up. Three days after the investigation ended, I decided that there was one thing that we needed to truly expand the base, something that I had overlooked. That was a Nanite Forge. If given the proper materials, it could make any of the System devices we could order at significantly lower cost, it would just take time to do so. After the device arrived I asked it to make a Generator 2. It told me that it lacked the necessary materials, but if it had them it could make one in eight and a half days. That seemed a bit longer than I had hoped for, and when I checked it was less than ten percent of the Forge¡¯s maximum output. It seemed the problem was power. Until now the two Generator 1s we had been using were more than enough for everything. What excess power we had was mostly going to Bob to speed up the growth of food, with Gary storing any that was left over. Now, however, the Nanite forge needed all of the energy it could get to grow one of those devices, and we could only supply it less than ten percent of what it could use. What about a Generator 1? That would take one day, seven hours. Much more reasonable, but it still didn¡¯t have the raw materials to do so. I asked it to make a list of anything we had in storage which contained minerals it could use, and surprisingly the number one item was bulk stone from the mine. Now that I thought about it, stone did contain many different elements in trace amounts. It would, however, take over nine hours to extract the minerals it needed. I pulled the chemical factory out of storage and told it to start processing the raw stone until we had at least a kilogram of thorium in stock. The Forge didn¡¯t need any radioactive minerals to make the generators, but it was a suitably rare mineral to base the levels of other minerals off of for now. An hour later the Forge reported that it now had enough materials to make a Generator 1, and had begun construction. The chemical factory was much faster than the nanite forge at breaking down materials, it seemed. I told Gary that once that generator was complete he should have it send 100% of its power to the Forge, and start producing a Generator 2. I looked through the Market for other power solutions and came across something that seemed more like what Earth would use, a micro nuclear reactor. It could take a kilogram of thorium, uranium, plutonium or other fissile or fertile material and, burning around thirty grams per day, would give you 100,000 Ko per day in power. This was on par with an 800 kilowatt reactor, but was only the size of a basketball. And the best part was that the mine and the chemical factory working together could produce 80 grams of thorium and 20 grams of uranium per day, enough to run more than three of the reactors at full power. And they were cheap, at only 5000 zerka each. I briefly considered having the Forge make one of them instead of the Generator 2, but I didn¡¯t want them to require shipping radioactive materials. Sure, the System could move them safely, but I didn¡¯t want to risk nuclear proliferation. For that reason, I would only use them here and at the mining camp, where we already had those minerals. For all other outposts I would use the standard Generators. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. With our power issues now handled, I decided it was time for some more diplomacy. I pulled out my flying disk and went to the kitchen. It was after noon on a Sunday, so the place was open. Apparently, the place had expanded across the road, as they had set up tables and chairs in many of the buildings there and Mary and Gertrude were making meals appear out of the warehouse to serve to the people that were sitting there. I soon found out that the place across the street functioned as a restaurant, with everything there being paid for dishes. This allowed them to raise enough money to buy preserved foods from Lawrence and some of the salvagers in the area and run the kitchen. Jacob was free to talk to me at the moment, as he was now working more as a manager than kitchen worker, so we walked into the kitchen to talk. ¡°Hey Jacob. I see everything was going well for you here.¡± ¡°Yeah, the influx of money from the Market Terminal is really helping out a lot of people. The number of people the Kitchen needs to feed decreases every day as more and more of them have the money to buy their own food. Honestly, the only thing that still makes us busy here is Movie Night.¡± I smiled. ¡°I actually came to ask about maybe connecting this outpost to my settlement in a way that would let people move between them more easily. It won¡¯t be cheap, but I can put in a teleporter that will be able to move people between here and my settlement. Maybe you could even come and visit us.¡± ¡°If it¡¯s expensive, I assume you¡¯ll want some way to earn money on it?¡± ¡°I was thinking of just charging people to use it. At one zerka per kilometer per hundred kilos it will probably work out to around five zerka per trip per person. That should pay me back for the device eventually.¡± ¡°Might be a bit less than that, as the people seem to have lost a lot of weight. The System is good at that.¡± ¡°Still, the way I want to set it up, it can move up to five thousand people a day, and will make the energy cost of shipping between us cheaper. Even if we only average two thousand a day, that¡¯s ten thousand zerka per day, and the device only costs seventy five thousand, paying me back for it in about a week. Once it¡¯s paid back, I can drop the price even more. Maybe to a tenth of that.¡± Jacob nodded. ¡°Sounds good.¡± He said. I arranged to have the second set of generator and teleporter brought here as soon as it was finished, with the settlement getting the first one. I then set off for the alf settlement to the north. When I got near and woman flew out to meet me, one of their scouts, but when I mentioned that I was the mayor of the settlement Silan had visited I was allowed to land. The place looked more like a settlement from the seventeen or eighteen hundreds than something you would expect aliens to build. Most of the buildings, not including the Lord¡¯s manor in the center of the town, were log cabins, though some of the newer ones were made of rough hewn boards in a medieval style, with whitewashed walls. The lord¡¯s manor seemed to be a modern style two story house, probably once belonging to the park ranger that watched over this area. I landed beside the Lord¡¯s Manor and Silan came out to greet me. ¡°Oh, Mayor Greg, it is good to see you again, though I must admit I wasn¡¯t expecting you.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sorry about that. I should have sent you a message first, but I was visiting one of my outposts about setting up a teleporter there when I realized that you might also be interested in the offer.¡± ¡°A teleporter? Isn¡¯t that a bit expensive for a village our size?¡± ¡°Well, normally it would be, but I have an offer I was hoping I could discuss with you, about allowing me to place one here, and simply charging your people to use it.¡± Silan nodded. ¡°It would open up more trade between our people, though I don¡¯t know what we could offer you.¡± ¡°I had an idea about that as well.¡± I noticed a group of people standing around listening in while talking quietly in another language. I should probably download the translation skill. ¡®Do you want me to get it for you? It will only translate the literal meaning of their words at first, but it should adjust in time.¡¯ Vera said. ¡®Sure, please do.¡¯ It took a few seconds for the program to download, after which I started getting the literal meaning of their words. ¡°Short range movement device¡± was a common phrase, which is what I assumed they called the teleporter. Silan lead me into the Lord¡¯s Manor, where I met another man who was even taller and stood straighter. ¡°This is Lord Tarn.¡± he introduced. ¡°Lord Tarn, this is the human I told you about who was the Mayor of the town to the south, Greg.¡± Lord Tarn bowed slightly, which I returned. ¡°It is good to meet someone as powerful as yourself.¡± ¡°Powerful?¡± I asked, and Lord Tarn looked a bit puzzled. ¡°In our society, the size, military might and economic might of your settlement determines the station of a noble.¡± explained Silan. ¡°Your settlement beats this one in all three categories.¡± ¡°We have no military, though.¡± ¡°However, your city militia is well trained, much larger, and carries some sort of technological weapon which is superior to most of our weapons.¡± Lord Tarn responded. ¡°I believe you call them ¡®guns¡¯.¡± ¡°Oh, yes. I have been trying to train my people to better use the system, but we are doing so out of simply a desire to better ourselves, not train an army.¡± ¡°Never the less, your military might is superior to ours.¡± he responded. ¡°But I believe you came to us with a proposal. Would you like to sit down? I believe humans prefer having meetings while sitting instead of standing.¡± ¡°If you wish.¡± They lead me too an ornate office with a new desk and several leather padded chairs. He must have had his best people make the furniture, judging by the jump in quality of the woodworking compared to that of the houses. ¡°So,¡± Lord Tarn said after we were seated, ¡°what do you propose?¡± I explained to them how I had an outpost in the city and a mining outpost, both of which I would be placing teleporters at once my Nanite Forge made them. This would allow them to move both people and goods between the three areas at a tenth of the energy cost, with non-living things being able to move at one-tenth the power of a living thing anyway. I then offered to place a teleportation platform and Generator 2 in their village. The generator would primarily power the teleporter, but if it produced excess power it could give that power to the settlement. I would only charge for people to use the platform. As they were a poor village at this point, I would start them off at the lower cost of point two zerka per kilometer per hundred kilograms, for an estimated average cost of one zerka per person, one way. This would open them up to trade with the other outposts, and would allow other people to come to this settlement to set up businesses or spend money, though as it was his territory he would be able to regulate what they could do here. Lord Tarn was concerned about what his people could provide, as their village was in the middle of the woods. I explained to him that we and the city had very few trees, and would therefore not have enough wood to build what we needed. While in the city most of their use of wood use would be in upgrading and modifying buildings, most of ours would go to building new buildings. I also told him about the sawmill I bought from the System and how I could handle processing the wood that would be sold to the city if he wished, or could share the standard measurements for wood on this planet with him if he wanted to purchase one himself and process the wood. Now that they had a guaranteed export, he believed that their economy would greatly benefit from the teleporter. He agreed to let me set one up here, and asked Silan to have a building built for it, essentially a gazebo to keep rain off of it. I thanked him and told him that I would add his village to the network once the city outpost and my settlement had teleporters, and Silan offered to give me a tour around the settlement. It seemed that they were attempting to save money by basing their economy on older industries. They, of course, had a massive lumber industry, but also potters, tanners, hunters, and a smithy. None of these places required System devices to run, so all of the zerka they had spent was on a massive Warehouse 3, Food Warehouse 2, a market terminal, and their settlement core. The Warehouse was used to store most of the lumber they had, as well as any stone or ores they found. They were currently disassembling one of the ranger¡¯s two vehicles, a 2021 Ford F150, for steel to make all of the tools they needed, and only about half of it was left in the warehouse. The food warehouse seemed to only contain the food they brought with them, as well as the few animals they managed to hunt and the few edible plants they managed to find, as well as half a pig which they had purchased from us. According to Silan, the hunting was very poor, with over half the animals they find being undead, and therefore worthless for food. They also had a tailor, though as the only material the man had to work with was leather, he didn¡¯t have much to do. I told the man about our tailor, and how we had salvaged huge amounts of cloth, and could sell him some. He looked overjoyed to have proper cloth to work with. As the sun neared the horizon, I said goodbye and flew back home. There I noticed that things were far more lively now that the bar was open. Maybe morale would improve more. I found Lawrence sitting near the camp fire, drinking beers with Tony, Tom, Di and Simon. ¡°Hey guys and gal¡± I said, landing nearby and putting away my floating disk. I looked like a certain static powered teen hero from the nineties any time I used it, but so far no one seemed to notice. ¡°Hey, Greg.¡± said Tony, offering me a beer. I turned him down, but joined them anyway. ¡°So, Lawrence was just telling us about his plans for his store.¡± ¡°Yes, I¡¯m going to set up booths inside that merchants can rent to sell their wares. I¡¯ll even bring in merchants from the city once the teleporter connects us.¡± ¡°You mean like a flea market?¡± I asked, and Lawrence seemed annoyed. ¡°That¡¯s what I said,¡± said Tom. ¡°It isn¡¯t a flea market,¡± said Lawrence. ¡°More like an indoor city fair or a trade show.¡± ¡°So, are you going to specialize in what you are selling?¡± ¡°Well, not at first, but over time as I get more people wanting booths, I was thinking about turning it into a kind of gun show. This town¡¯s main export is weapons, after all.¡± ¡°That could work, though we will need to expand the gun production quite a bit in both volume and variety first.¡± ¡°No problem.¡± said Lawrence. ¡°I already spoke with Philip. He¡¯s planning on moving his production into one of the dorms once everyone moves out and turning it into a proper factory, hiring another dozen people at least. Seems he picked up a ¡®weapon smith¡¯ class when he chose the RP paradigm and is really getting into making guns.¡± ¡°Sounds nice. Maybe we can add an armor factory too. I know we have that group that have started making car parts. Maybe they can expand into making power armor too.¡± ¡°That would be nice. Probably a lot further away than the gun factory, though.¡± I made a note to talk to them later. After all, I had that Factory in storage. Maybe I could loan it to them in exchange for some sort of profit sharing. Chapter 14 As I thought about it that night, however, I realized that the armor factory should be a separate thing, but that the car parts people could still make good use of the Factory. The next morning I sent a message to the people that owned the machine shop for making car parts. I offered to rent them the Factory in exchange for some sort of profit sharing on anything they use the factory to manufacture. They countered with an offer of one thousand per month. At that price they would be able to buy one of their own in five months. I knew that some sort of deal could be made, so I asked them to come by my office to discuss it. Thirty minutes later and woman in overalls came by my office. Apparently, she was the owner of the company, but had been under a car when I sent the offer. ¡°Janet¡± she said, holding her hand out. I shook her hand and offered her a seat. ¡°My concern with accepting a flat payment is that the city could make much more money in the short term by using it to manufacture something else.¡± I said. ¡°That would likely require a new city-owned business be started, however. Now that the town¡¯s finances are starting to improve, I am willing to loan equipment to people which their companies can use to improve their own sales.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not exactly comfortable with the government owning the factories. Sounds like communism.¡± she responded. ¡°That wasn¡¯t really my intention. We just needed manufacturing and other businesses to get this town off the ground, and I was the only one around with the money to buy the machines.¡± ¡°So, you are the one that owns the machine and wants to loan it to me?¡± ¡°Now, that¡¯s a good question. I was the one that paid for it originally, but I kind of gave it to the city. So, technically the city owns it. That said, there is nothing preventing you from buying one for yourself, so even though the government owns the machine, it isn¡¯t really controlling the means of production.¡± Janet thought about it for a few seconds. ¡°Good enough. So, how would this deal work?¡± I was glad we were discussing business and not politics now. I was much more comfortable dealing with money. ¡°Basically I would let you take the equipment and use it however you wanted. In exchange, you would give the city, as the owner of the machine, half the profit you earn from that machine. That¡¯s the same deal places like the gun factory and tailor get.¡± ¡°And how long would this agreement last for? I don¡¯t want to be stuck giving you half when we I can afford to get my own.¡± ¡°You can just keep it as long as you want, and return it for us to loan to another person at any time you want. We might want to set a minimum amount on the payment, though, like 100 zerka per week, as I¡¯ll be using this deal with other loaner equipment and only want to loan equipment to people that actually use it to improve the economy, but keeping it as long as you can turn a decent profit is fine.¡± ¡°Still, seems kind of strange for you to just offer us a machine out of the blue like that.¡± ¡°Well it was just sitting in storage, and I thought that it would be better letting it earn money than sitting in a warehouse. Besides, you are the first real independent business owner, and might be able to use it. You see, the most broken part in cars is the computer, followed by the other electronics. If you can make more of those we can revive pretty much every car in the city. That could be quite a lucrative market.¡± ¡°I suppose so.¡± she said. ¡°By ¡®profits¡¯ you do mean after expenses, right? Because the gun guy is sending you 50% of sales.¡± ¡°That¡¯s because the city provided everything for the gun factory, including starting capital and raw materials, so half of the profits is half of the sales. In your case they aren¡¯t the same. In your case, profits would be calculated as sells minus expenses, so you would deduct wages, material costs, etc.¡± She nodded. ¡°In that case, I would love to use the machine. One hundred minimum to 50% of the profits it is.¡± I quickly had Vera write up the agreement, and sent it to her. We then both signed it electronically and got a copy of the signed document with the hash for digital security, so no one could change it later. With that, I transferred renter¡¯s rights to the machine to her so that she could remove it from the warehouse. The System would recognize her as the manager of the machine and let her control further access, with only myself or another city official having further control, and only then if their role gave them that access, like Simon accessing its records if he had a warrant as part of a criminal investigation. I checked my messages and saw that Gary had notified me of the new generator being finished and how, thanks to the massive increase in the energy it was receiving, the next generator will be ready in less than a day. I asked him about manufacturing Teleportation platforms and he informed me that the parts could be printed individually for a total of three days per device. It would essentially be a prefab device which could then be assembled on any flat surface with at least a two meter radius area. That meant that it would take us four days for each platform we set up, for sixteen days assembling the four of them. It looked like I reached that part of a city builder where you can start rapidly expanding, but this was real life. I posted a message on the bulletin board about the Machine Loan program, offering to buy the equipment you needed to start a business in exchange for 50% of the machine¡¯s profits, with a minimum of 2% of the machine¡¯s cost per week. This would mean that, even at minimum payments, the city would be paid back for the devices in less than a year. The next two weeks passed quickly. Many groups of people came by my office to set up new businesses in town and wanting to rent equipment. They set up in the buildings around the main settlement, and I had to expand the field of the settlement to a one kilometer radius to cover all of the machines so they could be supplied power and buy materials directly from the warehouse or market. I gave the salvage crews one week to claim vehicles within the expanded area before I absorbed them, but never really got around to doing that due to having other responsibilities. The teleportation platforms were set up in both outposts and at the Alf village, thanks to the fact that you could make a second nanite forge with the first one. I considered having one of them constantly make more of them, but realized that we wouldn¡¯t really need to do that. The town was really growing now, thanks to the influx of people from the city, but our industry was already more than the people could support. Once we had a connection to the Alf village we brought in a massive number of trees and started producing lumber. That lead to houses being built everywhere in the village. Both construction crews switched to building houses, and the concrete we were producing was quickly being used up to pour footers for buildings where the asphalt had been torn up in the parking lot. This meant that I had to put in two additional Automated Mines at the stone quarry, and even made them a micro nuclear reactor to power everything. The chemical plant was working 80% of the time to produce all of the raw materials the people in town were demanding, and I knew that it was only a matter of time before I would need to buy another one. With all of the upgrades the city was now making around two hundred thousand zerka per week. Things were really looking up for us. Then one day we got a message from the mines. They had come under attack by a group of dog and lizard people who tried to steal the equipment. They had managed to chase them away, but several miners were injured in the attack, with one of them dying from a blow to the head. They estimated it would take him three days before he was revived, more if there was memory loss as the backup memories might take a few days to be restored. I didn¡¯t know much about these dog and lizard people but assumed that they would be another two alien races. Who better to know about aliens than another group of aliens? I took the teleporter over to Solinan Bascabana, which I learned meant ¡°Fort Solinan¡±, named for Lord Tarn¡¯s grandfather, and asked Lord Tarn for assistance. As our trade relationship had given him the financial security to buy a Portal Arch and bring in several hundred more serfs, he was more than happy to lend me one of his scouts. The one he sent with me was the same woman that had visited our town when they first introduced ourselves. The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. ¡°Grilk.¡± she said upon seeing the corpses. ¡°Was that an expletive?¡± I asked. ¡°No, that¡¯s their name. The furry ones are Greater Grilk, the reptilian ones are Lesser Grilk. They are generally salvagers that show up on worlds new to the System to pick through the ruins of whatever society existed there. If the civilization still exists, they aren¡¯t above piracy to get what they want.¡± ¡°I would call them Kobolds.¡± said Olivia, walking over. She had built a firing range nearby for people to test their firearms and attack magic at. ¡°Both the canine and reptilian types exist in fiction. Strange that two different races share a name, though.¡± ¡°That is because they are actually the same race. About one thousand seven hundred of your years ago some of the ones on a desert-like ecumenopolis world developed a type of atavism that caused their reptilian ancestry to shine through. That type was able to stand the heat much better than their fur covered cousins, and became the dominant variety on that planet. Because they were a racial minority, however, they have been persecuted since then by the other race. Which makes it strange that they are working together.¡± She looked them over for a few minutes, hoping to find an answer to that mystery, before continuing. ¡°They are part of the Galactic Commerce Alliance.¡± ¡°So, like an interstellar megacorp?¡± ¡°When they first began they were just a mega corperation, but for the last few thousand years they have been using their power to sieze control of any world that interests them. And it appears Earth may be one of those worlds. These Grilk were corporate slaves, forced to attack you or else face unemployment, which, because the Corporation owns all the businesses in their society, means death for them and the families they support.¡± ¡°Then we can expect the attacks to continue?¡± ¡°You probably have a ten-day or two before they come at you in force. This was a small strike team. They won¡¯t attack a strong settlement without an army of at least twice their numbers, to guarantee victory.¡± ¡°Can I count on your people¡¯s help, then?¡± ¡°That would be up to Lord Tarn, but I suspect so. The GCA is a threat to all peaceful races and settlements on this planet.¡± We returned to Fort Solinan where we told Lord Tarn about what happened. He agreed to send out scouts to locate their base and watch their troop movements. His settlement still had less than four hundred citizens, so he couldn¡¯t afford to spare any troops to aid us, just a single advisor to teach us about the enemy and advise us on our preparations. As the scout woman he sent to our mines would be needed to watch the enemy, he instead sent Silan. We returned to the town where I issued an emergency bulletin, advising the people about the attack on the mines, and that we would be temporarily shifting city resources to building defenses and further preparing for the attack. Silan informed me that the first line of defense should be a good wall. The GCA rarely provides its soldiers with armor piercing weapons, so even a simple wall should be able to keep them out of your settlement for a while. This was why Fort Solinan was building a palisade wall around their core settlement. Realizing that we could do far better than a palisade wall, I asked Gary what it would take to build a concrete wall around the Town. He informed me that there was a device that could automatically build buildings for you if you had the raw materials, but that it would be much slower than using a construction crew for simple builds like a wall. I asked him to design the blueprints for a three meter high, half meter thick wall around the town. He decided to embed an additional two meters of concrete beneath it underground, to help prevent tunneling and to help stabilize it. As he worked on that I sent a message to Paul, informing him about the attack and asking him to lead and help train our troops. If he didn¡¯t want the job, I would at least like him to help train the troops and could use his advise on finding a captain to lead them. I also informed the two construction crews and the sewage/line crew that I would like them to help build the wall. I then got to work purchasing things that would be needed to scale up production. Ten more automated mines, 50 thousand zerka. Seven would go to the mines and three would be used here to quickly dig the trench where the wall would be poured. Two new chemical plants, to help the old one deal with all of the new rock that was coming in, 10k. A new concrete plant, to make all of the concrete we would need, 2.5k. Two Extruders, which could turn metals into wires and rods, which would be used to make rebar to reinforce the walls, and the wire to tie the rebar together, 5k. Two smelters to deal with all of the iron ore dust that the mining was producing and turn it into steel, 5k. I would have the two nanite forces make two more Generator 2s, one for here and one for the mine. All of that would total 72500 zerka. We still had a lot of money to use to get the place set up, but I would likely need to use it to buy military hardware, either from the production businesses or the System. After setting up all of the new pieces of equipment, I found Silan sitting in the bar, drinking a beer. ¡°is this some type of Ale?¡± he asked. ¡°Unusual taste, but not unwelcome.¡± ¡°Not sure. I think it has some sort of plant called ¡®hops¡¯ in it, but I don¡¯t know much about how it is made.¡± He nodded. ¡°Do you realize that since I arrived here two hours ago, three women have attempted to proposition me? We aren¡¯t even the same species, yet one emphasized that it would be ¡®on the house¡¯ whatever that means. Is she expecting me to climb onto the roof for public fornication?¡± I sighed. Business must be slow, as it was only the afternoon. ¡°On the house means ¡®free¡¯.¡± ¡°So, they are prostitutes?¡± he asked with a shocked look on his face. ¡°Yeah, this bar is kind of doubling as a brothel at the moment. We had gender segregated housing for a while, and built this place to deal with some of the issues that and a lack of privacy caused.¡± ¡°I am surprised that you allow such an unsavory place in your settlement, much less in a well traveled area like the middle of town.¡± ¡°Well, it was actually kind of my idea. Technically, I just wanted them to build rooms in the back so couples would have a place for private activities, but many such women asked if they could pick up customers here. I allow it to continue because their rental fees pays most of the bar¡¯s expenses. They are being a bit too proactive in their work, but it¡¯s probably because they are attracted to you.¡± ¡°But we are different species.¡± ¡°That isn¡¯t really a problem for many humans. You are enough like us that I doubt many women would reject you simply for being a different species.¡± ¡°But we can¡¯t procreate. What would be the point of pursuing a relationship with me?¡± ¡°For most humans it is more about supporting each other emotionally than it is about procreation. For some, it¡¯s just about entertainment. It varies quite a bit.¡± He took a gulp of his beer. ¡°How vulgar. Your culture is quite unusual.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sure your culture has some traditions we would find unusual too, but we are willing to learn.¡± He nodded. ¡°So, how are you preparing so far?¡± I told him about how I scaled up the mining operation and would be making a half meter thick, three meter tall concrete and rebar wall around the entire town, with only the main road going through a west and east gate. I also told him that I invited an ex military special forces man to help train the troops. ¡°What is ¡®concrete and rebar¡¯?¡± I further explained to him that concrete was the ¡®artificial rock¡¯ under his feet, and how the metal ¡®reinforcement bars¡¯, which rebar was short for, would greatly increase its ability to handle impacts. He asked for a demonstration of this durability once we got a section of the wall completed. As we finished our conversation Paul walked in and I introduced the two of them to each other. Silan was greatly impressed by his physical size and assumed that he was a melee fighter. Paul countered that he could kill a man equally well at range. Well, he used to be able to, but now that the plague went through the human population, it was very difficult to actually kill anyone anymore. ¡°What do you mean?¡± asked Silan. I explained to him how the plague gave anyone that survived it perfect health, including fixing all diseases and faster healing, and that they all essentially had a skill called ¡®Immortality 1¡¯ which would do its best to revive them after death, even if it had to absorb body parts to do that. ¡°I read a story about a woman in Mexico City that got shot in the head, and the nanites ate half her right hand to get the materials they needed to revive her, then regrew her hand over the next week.¡± ¡°So, all of your people have this ability to come back from the dead? This ¡®immortality 1¡¯?¡± ¡°Well, only the ones that weren¡¯t connected to the System before the plague.¡± I answered. ¡°The System prevented you from getting it, so they never got the trait. Though you have to have the System to have it as an official skill. I and Paul meet both criteria as I learned it while finding a way to treat the plague and sent the skill to all of the System users I knew, including Paul. I also found a way to bring those that survived the plague into the System, so the vast majority of my citizens are plague survivors that are part of the System.¡± Silan nodded. ¡°This will greatly change how the war goes. With you not dying permanently, you will never lose troops.¡± ¡°It also causes an issue.¡± I countered. ¡°If they enslave my people, I will have no choice but to try to liberate them, as they won¡¯t even be able to end their slavery through death, and the plague effects will extend their lives.¡± ives.¡± Chapter 15 I showed Paul the various defenses we were planning to build and he pointed out an obvious flaw; we were building walls around the town, but the enemy already knew about the mines and would likely attack there first. Unless I was planning to either defend it without a wall or let them take it, I should probably build there first. ¡°And that¡¯s why I wanted someone with military experience. I was so worried about them attacking the town that I wouldn¡¯t have gotten the mine¡¯s defenses up in time.¡± Because of the number of citizens the town had Gary and the System rules restricted the maximum rank of the town militia to Captain, so I named Paul as our first Captain and put him in charge of developing our defenses and training the troops. He wanted to put all of the people through a version of boot camp, but as we only had two to three weeks before the attack, he settled on taking all of the volunteers on a run to the shooting range and having them practice with their rifles. Most of them were salvagers equipped with AK47s, as they were the first thing Philip made in the gun factory, but some of them were instead carrying M4s. He also had a few ex soldiers, police, and security guards. The tailor and garage had sent me a message that they were beginning to make plate carriers and the plates for them respectively, but for now none to the volunteers would have them. Paul shifted two of the construction teams to building the wall around the mines, with the other one remaining here. The carpenters on that team would be building forms for the concrete to be poured into and adjusting where the automatic miner was so that it could dig the trench that would form the foot of the wall. If we got all of the walls up before the attacks we would shift the three miners to digging tunnels for the non-combatants to hide in, but for now if the mines came under attack all of the non-combat people would be teleported to the town, and if the town were attacked, all of the non-combat people would be teleported to the city. The day after Silan came to the town was Valentine¡¯s day. Lawrence had sold out of all the chocolate he had in stock, and Bob couldn¡¯t make more because it was impossible to get viable cacao DNA from cooked cacao based products. He had, however, been cloning dozens of species of flowers, as he had many flowering plants in his inventory and some of the salvage teams had found flowering plants and seeds and brought them to town. The bar and all the restaurants except the first were all busy, as the first was pretty much serving as an extension of the soup kitchen and almost exclusively serving free meals. Once private rooms became available and we started giving preference to couples who wanted rooms, we had an explosion of the number of couples in town. In fact, we had went from 99% of the adults in town being single to over 40% being in a relationship, though Gary estimated that at least 70% of adults were participating in the ¡°Human fertility holiday¡±. I wasn¡¯t one of those, though, so I went back to my RV and practiced my Nanite manipulation, even improving my Detection field and Virtual Armor to level 6. Di did come over and we shared a drink, but I wasn¡¯t willing to make it an actual date, especially with war preparations on my mind. Still, she looked like she was maybe 35 years old, and wore a really nice dress. Maybe I should have made more of an effort to get my mind off of the coming war? A week after he arrived, Silan was at the shooting range giving a speech to the troops about the combat tactics of the Grilk and the GCA, Olivia had volunteered to train the mages to defend the town, and I was sitting in my office between meetings equipping and unequipping my 9mm. I had told the people that we would pay double the manufacturing cost instead of asking for half the profit for any approved manufacturing of goods needed for our defense. This had resulted in dozens of people bringing forward ideas on how they can help us, including some that didn¡¯t even have borrowed equipment. Still, if there idea seemed like a good one I rented them the equipment. This had resulted in the city¡¯s income dropping to only thirty thousand for the last week, as most of the money we were bringing in was being paid to the people making the goods. Someone had informed me that some combination of the Inventory skill and the RP paradigm allowed you to set preset outfits up on your character sheet, then auto-equip the sets by selecting them. I only had one liter of storage space, though, so I had set the dress shirt and khaki pants I was wearing to both my normal and military loadout, but added the Glock and its holster to the military one. I didn¡¯t really need it, as I had a power that could do more damage and fire faster, and only had the one full magazine Paul had sold me, but there was something about holding a gun that screamed ¡°military¡±. The alert startled me. I thought I would only get tiny scraps of experience on nanite based skills now that the System wasn¡¯t helping me with my nanites. ¡®Vera, how did I level up? Shouldn¡¯t it be really hard for me to level up that skill given my class?¡¯ ¡®Actually, that class leveled up because your theoretical knowledge of the skill vastly outstrips the practical level of the skill.¡¯ ¡®You mean spacial magic?¡¯ ¡®That and quantum physics. They are at four and six respectively, so your brain processing the data gives you a good bit of experience every time you use it just because you understand the theory behind what you are doing.¡¯ ¡®Inventory uses quantum physics?¡¯ ¡®The first version does. The second version uses Cosmic Physics, the closest thing Earth has being Cosmology, as they both deal with phenomenon that happen at the massive scale. The third version uses something called Universal Physics, which is the understanding of how the universe works and why the laws of reality are the way they are.¡¯ ¡®So, the first creates pockets by manipulating quantum phenomenon, the second bends space-time, and the third bends the laws of physics?¡¯ ¡®Essentially. In fact, that is why you won¡¯t get the ability to slow time in your pocket space unless you have the second or third type.¡¯ If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. ¡®Great. I need to learn even more alien physics. Mind getting the physics papers translated and ready for me to read them?¡¯ ¡®On which subject?¡¯ ¡®All of them, though I should probably start with quantum.¡¯ As Vera started on that I looked at my inventory. It could now hold eight liters of stuff. I guess the size was based on the cube of the skill level. This was much more storage so, after checking to make sure my door was locked and my blinds were closed, I unequipped my clothes. All of them disappeared into my inventory and I was sitting buck naked behind my desk. They still didn¡¯t take up the full eight liters, though. I would need to find more stuff to put in there to try and gain experience faster. I equipped my Combat outfit and suddenly I was properly clothed and holding a pistol. Nice. I guess the System pushed me off my chair slightly so that it could equip my pants. I stood up and equipped and unequipped my combat outfit several times, bouncing upwards as my shoes appeared on my feet, before I heard a knock on my door. I made sure my normal clothes were equipped and answered the door. ¡°Sir, your one o¡¯clock appointment is here.¡± ¡°Thanks Joyce. Send them in.¡± I had finally gotten around to hiring a secretary, as I needed one now that I was becoming so busy. I walked back over to my desk and sat down. A few seconds later a man and woman from one of the restaurants entered carrying briefcases. ¡°Hello, Mr. Mayor.¡± the woman said. ¡°Please, just call me Greg.¡± I motioned towards one of the seats. ¡°So, what brings you here?¡± They took a seat and the man pulled a three ring binder from their briefcase. ¡°There is a saying that an army marches on its stomach. Since the beginning of civilization the performance of an army has been largely influenced by both their availability and quality of food. That is why we are here to propose that we begin making low cost packaged food for the militia.¡± ¡°You want to start an MRE company?¡± ¡°Not just MREs. We would also provide recipes and prepared food for military kitchens so that the soldiers would have something good to eat when they return from the battlefield.¡± ¡°Most of our military action will probably be the defense of the Town and its outposts, so the kitchen thing could work well. I¡¯m sure at some point we will need to engage in combat outside the settlements, though, so having some food the troops can take with them would be good. What are you asking for?¡± ¡°Well, the restaurant¡¯s current Food Service Station can prepare the food, but to prepare preserved food we will need a device the System Market calls a ¡®Food Preservation Station¡¯. It can package and freeze dry food. Based on the volume we will need to prepare, we will need at least two of them.¡± I quickly pulled up the Market Screen and checked on the items. Only 2500 each. We could handle that. ¡°Sounds like we can make a deal. If nothing else we could use more preserved food.¡± When she came by my RV on Valentines day Di had mentioned that the food reserves would only last until the end of March, even if we bought all of the food Lawrence had. In response, I had bought Bob a Biome Chamber, which he had loaded with powdered rock and nutrients, and was currently growing a field full of wheat and vegetables. The one million cubic meters of volume had been flattened into a 4m x500m x 500m field. This allowed him to have a meter of dirt and three meter ceilings, more than tall enough for the wheat to grow. He had been injecting the plants with various synthetic hormones to improve the efficiency with which they absorbed light, caused them to absorb nutrients faster from the soil, and had ordered the nanites in the plants to use their energy to construct sugar directly, in order to feed them more energy. This caused the wheat to undergo its normal three month growth cycle in seven to eight days. Once the Nanite Forge finishes making a Generator 3 to power the time dilation of the Biome Chamber tonight, the equivalent of an 8 megawatt generator, that would shrink by a factor of four to a harvest every two days, when we would receive hundreds of tons of wheat and vegetables. We only needed around five dry tons of food per day, so the food warehouse was quickly filled. After that we had sold most of it to Jacob, who then resold it to the people of the city, and to Fort Solinan, who sent us more trees in exchange. The Plant pods were changed to produce herbs, which received similar treatment, though far more of those ended up being exported via the Market. I also bought five more cloning pods, and we were now producing five hogs, three cows, six hundred pounds of chicken and five hundred pounds of fish every five days. That would solve our immediate food crisis, though we needed to preserve the food if we were to keep a stockpile of it. The Food Warehouse would only slow the decay. I bought the two preservation devices and set the two of them as the renters, something I was used to doing now. ¡°How about you prepare some sample dishes for us to try out? I¡¯d like to have Paul and any other ex military personnel in the town taste test them and make sure that it is something that would make sense for a field kitchen or an MRE.¡± ¡°Thank you, sir.¡± said the man, standing up. ¡°No problem. If you hadn¡¯t have brought this to my attention, I might have completely overlooked this.¡± I shook their hands and they left. Once they were gone I relocked my door started reading the scientific papers while cycling my clothes on and off. Vera had pulled up multiple good papers on the subject of quantum physics, and I spent the next two hours trying to wrap my head around them. I got plenty of experience in my quantum physics skill, but I doubted I would improve my level before I understood the entire paper, and maybe not then. A little after three in the afternoon Joyce knocked on my door and I equipped my clothes and answered the door. ¡°Olivia asked to speak with you. Some sort of issue has arisen with the mages and she was hoping you would have a solution.¡± ¡°That¡¯s fine. You can send her in.¡± She flopped down in one of the office chair and spun it around a few times before stopping while looking at me. ¡°Ok, I¡¯m having two issues. One, mana capacity. You told me one time that you had over five thousand mana, but Fay is telling me that without upgrading the nodes in our brains, we can¡¯t control more than like a billion nanites at a time. My max mana fluctuates at around a thousand. The problem with the upgrade is that it will take my Node offline for at least a day while it upgrades. That means that I will lose all control of my nanites. No magic and no other nanite based abilities like Inventory and Translation, and only the basic health functions. I don¡¯t want to risk that when we know an attack is incoming, because it could be offline when the attack happens.¡± ¡®Vera, any idea why I can have larger reserves than her?¡¯ ¡®Your mana reserves are kind of a cheat. Remember when I taught you to put your nanites in sleep mode so that they wouldn¡¯t decay? I¡¯ve been using that on all of the nanites over the thousand mana since you went over the limit. If you use too many nanites, they will just replace the used ones. But because they are on standby, any skills like Regeneration and Poison Resistance that use excess nanites to fight problems can only use the one billion excess that your Node can control. Dormant nanites also use about one thousandth of the processing power that active ones do, just to keep track of them, so as you go over the limit the actual number of active nanites will decrease, hitting zero at around a trillion dormant nanites.¡¯ ¡°Well, I asked Vera about that, and she said my mana reserves are a cheat.¡± I explained the situation to Olivia, but offered to teach her the technique if she wanted it. ¡°Well, it will help. Even a few hundred extra mana over the limit could help greatly in battle.¡± I nodded. ¡°And problem number two?¡± ¡°Skill level. No one has a magic skill over six, and most are at three or four. You mentioned you had one at nine. Any pointers?¡± ¡°My Class actually lets me cheat a bit at that too. I can directly program the nanites to do what I want them to, then save the program as a skill. As a result, if I understand what I want them to do well enough, they can do it amazingly well. Most skills, however, work like you¡¯re programming a neural network. It adapts and slowly improves the more you work with it, but the growth slows as you get to higher level. The one I have at nine just brings together a bunch of nanites and tells them to accelerate as quickly as possible. It¡¯s pretty easy, and I can teach it to you to do it, but it will probably start at a low level. The only benefit I could see for it is that it is extremely energy efficient.¡± ¡°Might as well learn that too. An efficient way to fight will be useful when we run low on mana.¡± With that I spent the rest of the day teaching her the technique to get her nanites to go into sleep mode, and the Mana Bullet skill. Even for her it started at level 3 and could use as little as a tenth of a point of mana to fire a round on par with a pistol. I also taught her the Drain Electricity skill, so that she and the others could recharge their nanites at will and not have to wait for their body to generate the power for them. Chapter 16 The following day I was scrolling through the Market checking up on the offers I had placed on there. I had mentioned that we would soon come under attack by a group of aliens known as the ¡°Galactic Commerce Alliance¡± and that, for that reason, we wanted to purchase military hardware and would be temporarily putting a hold on all gun and bullet exports. We would, however, begin selling those as well as other equipment once we were producing an excess. Many more cities had System Settlements in them now, including the city proper, as I had sold a Nanite Core made Settlement Core to the city council a few days ago in exchange for the town and its citizens not having to pay taxes there, and several people had sent me listings of different military surplus they had salvaged, everything from camouflage, to night vision goggles, to humvees, APCs, and one tank. No guns, however, other than a few vintage ones, as there was a shortage on the market. A man in Dubai told me that he had an M1 Abrams tank that was left behind the last time the US military left the middle east, and was offering to sell it to me for sixty thousand zerka. I countered last night by offering him the Shelby Mustang we still had in storage and ten thousand. He hadn¡¯t responded yet. I bought most of the military hardware that was offered to me, buying the camouflage from LA, DC, and NYC, so that it would all be US military style. All of this hardware cost the city another one hundred and ninety five thousand zerka, but we would now be well equipped. I transferred all of the equipment to the militia, under the control of Paul. The town¡¯s funds were now dangerously low, though, at barely over ten thousand zerka. I wouldn¡¯t be able to expand the industry by much after this. The only improvement to our financial situation would come from the additional fifty thousand per week that we received for our food exports. Hopefully I could further expand the industry soon. I left the building, telling Joyce to send me a message if anyone wanted to talk to me, and took a walk around town. The wooded area near the office building where my office was had been completely stripped of trees. The place now exclusively processed trees sent to us by Fort Solinan. ¡°Hey, Mayor.¡± said the manager of the office building, seeing me outside the building. ¡°Mind if I ask you something really quick?¡± ¡°Sure, Judy. What is it?¡± ¡°We¡¯ve had a lot of people moving into the building and I was wondering if there was any way to make moving easier.¡± ¡°Need me to see if anyone in town has trucks they can loan out?¡± ¡°Actually, I was thinking of something a little bit different. I saw Tom putting an electric guitar and Amp in the warehouse once, and was wondering if you can let all of the other people do that too.¡± ¡°Oh, that. Well, Tony, Tom, Di, and the first ten people to join the town received a cubic meter of storage space in the warehouse. The day we took in a thousand people, though, I was too busy to give them space, and haven¡¯t thought of it since. Now we don¡¯t have enough space to do that.¡± ¡°But I saw Olivia doing it too.¡± ¡°Oh, that¡¯s a bit different. Lawrence owns a warehouse, which he used to store all of the merchandise his store had when the town was set up. He and Olivia can access that warehouse, and because it is within the town, can send anything from their location in town to their warehouse and send anything from their warehouse to their location. It just uses their mana to transfer the items if they are out of the working range of their warehouse.¡± ¡°Would it be possible to give the people storage space now, then?¡± ¡°If we can find a large building for it, I suppose so. Just tell me where you want it, and I can buy a Warehouse 2 and have Gary give everyone in town a free cubic meter, and let them rent more if they need it. Say, a zerka per cubic meter per month. The building should be as close to a 200 cubic meter building as possible. Assuming eight foot ceilings, that¡¯s 883 square feet of floor space.¡± ¡°So, if we find a warehouse that¡¯s at least that size, you¡¯ll set it up?¡± ¡°Sure. Though if it¡¯s much bigger than that I can¡¯t use it due to safety concerns.¡± ¡°In that case, we¡¯ll try to find an 800 or 850 square foot warehouse.¡± I nodded and continued my walk. I visited several of the businesses around town. There were many specialized stores, now. We had an extra tailor, many stores, a car/equipment dealer, and even a hair salon. No doctors or dentists. There are two ex nurses who want to become midwives, but as no one in town was more than five months pregnant due to both the mother and child having to survive the plague for a woman to still be pregnant, they were currently setting broken bones and bandaging wounds so that they healed faster. Most of the businesses, however, were factories of some sort, as we had many there were several religious officials, but no religious buildings yet. Those of us that were religious generally took the teleporter to the city to attend services. Unsurprisingly, as most of our citizens had come here from St. Nicholas¡¯s Outpost, Catholicism was the most common religious affiliation. I swung by Lawrence¡¯s to see how he was going with his flea market idea, which he swore was more of a county fair, then decided to walk behind the building to visit some of the businesses back their. I had heard that several warehouses, a city Road Department garage, a junk yard, and a storage company that had eight storage buildings with eight rental sections each had been claimed back there. The group of salvagers that had claimed the storage yard were planning on turning it into sixty four small living areas by replacing the garage door with a wall and renting them out. I saw a man laying behind the PriceCO building. He was too still, though. I went over to him and bumped him with my foot. He didn¡¯t respond. ¡°Sir?¡± I asked. No response. ¡®Hey Vera, can you ask his nanites if he¡¯s ok?¡¯ ¡®I can try.¡¯ she paused for a few seconds. ¡®They are reporting that he has no heartbeat and minimal brain and organ function. They are maintaining nutrient and oxygen levels, as well as cycling the blood, but technically he¡¯s dead from heart failure.¡¯ ¡®Heart attack? I thought his nanites would unclog any arteries that were blocked.¡¯ ¡®It wasn¡¯t caused by a blockage. The nanites can only tell me this because he is dead, but he has extremely high levels of methamphetamine in his blood stream.¡¯ ¡®He overdosed? I thought we got over the drug issues when we solved the homelessness and poverty.¡¯ ¡®Obviously not. A few percent of the population still use recreationally, but they usually stick to the safer options.¡¯ I sighed. ¡®I assume the nanites are already trying to revive him?¡¯ This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. ¡®Yes, he¡¯ll probably be revived in around thirty hours.¡¯ ¡®In that case, any idea where we can put him until he¡¯s back? Does he have an apartment?¡¯ ¡®Lives in the dorms. As fast as we are growing, only about ten percent of the population live anywhere else.¡¯ ¡®Great.¡¯ I sent Simon a message. ¡®Hey, quick question, what do we do with corpses?¡¯ ¡®You mean actual corpses or the kind that come back in a few days? Because I think you¡¯ve just been stuffing the first kind into the warehouse so Bob can turn them into fertilizer.¡¯ ¡®Second kind. A guy OD¡¯d on meth behind the PriceCO. It will be thirty hours before he is back up, and I¡¯d rather not put him in the dorms until he comes back.¡¯ ¡®We don¡¯t actually have a place for him, as far as I know.¡¯ ¡®Do you have a jail yet?¡¯ Maybe I could dump him in a cell for the next day. ¡®Not really. Haven¡¯t really needed one yet, as I¡¯ve been fixing most of the legal issues and violent encounters by talking to people. No drug laws, and assaults and even murder are just financial issues as the person will come back. Would be nice to have a place to put people who are a flight risk or who committed assaults with psychological damages, as those don¡¯t automatically heal, but for now the last type is only one single sexual assault case, and it was stopped before it went too far by the people in the area beating the perp to death.¡¯ ¡®In that case, I¡¯ll contact the two midwives. They have the only building that can be called a hospital. It isn¡¯t really a morgue, but leaving him in one of their beds is the best we can do for now.¡¯ I briefly considered transferring the guy to the warehouse to make moving him easier, but I wasn¡¯t sure how his nanites would respond to that. Vera assured me that they would continue to work, and that they could repair any damage the warehouse¡¯s spacial dilation field did to him, but I didn¡¯t want to take the chance. I threw him over my shoulder and carried him over to the dentist¡¯s office they had taken over as a store front. There was one man getting his leg and a ribs set, as he had gotten hit by a truck from not looking while crossing the street, but I waited until he left, giving me a strange look at having a dead man over my shoulder. People were getting really reckless now that they were functionally immortal, I observed. ¡°Hello, mayor. What can we help you with?¡± ¡°Mind if I store this guy here for the next thirty hours? He OD¡¯d on Meth and I need a place to leave him until he wakes up.¡± ¡°We have some beds in the back, but they are mostly used as an exam tables. I guess we can rent you one of the exam rooms.¡± ¡°That will be great. We really need to build a morgue to send dead people to, especially with the invasion coming, but I didn¡¯t know where else to leave him.¡± ¡°That¡¯s actually a good idea. There is a liquor store behind us that has already been cleared out but not claimed. I¡¯ll start filling it with hospital beds and using it as a storage place for anyone that is awaiting revival. Maybe I can charge per day?¡± ¡°Sounds like a plan. What do I owe you for the room?¡± ¡°Five Zerka will cover it.¡± I transferred her the money and she showed me to a room that was decorated with cartoon animals. This probably used to be the children¡¯s room. I dumped the man on the bed and left, asking her to send me a notice when the Revival area was done, so I could have Gary teleport any dead body there after verifying that they would revive. That would keep the place from having corpses in the streets during the battle. I spent the rest of the day checking in on all of the businesses in the town, and took the teleporter over to the mines. The wall was going well. They had already built both gates, with large chain link fence gates which could be pushed out of the way, and even a meter tall concrete barrier that could be lifted in response to an incoming vehicle to block the lower half of the gate. I didn¡¯t feel like that would be sufficient against an invading army, but they had decided on that instead of an old style portcullis. Maybe we could upgrade it with a metal barrier at some point. The back of what wall they had completed had a walkway a meter below the top, which could be accessed from ladders placed every twenty meters. They had even laid out places for guard towers. They were hoping to have the wall done in a little over a week, and would then move on to the town to work there, but didn¡¯t think they could have the guard tower finished before the attack. Instead, they would just have the militia patrol the wall and have the outpost AI watch the scanning devices they installed in the top of the walls for any animal or artificial movement in the area, including sapient animals. As I was looking over the sensor network, which had a range of one hundred to a thousand meters depending on how many buildings and trees were in its field, I noticed that the logging team and around a dozen River Alfs were out there clearing trees to extend the range. They had finished the palisade wall at Fort Solinan yesterday, and apparently the logging crew had hired some of them to chop down trees here. They had also, apparently, taught the River Alfs to use chainsaws and yell ¡°timber¡± when a tree was about to fall. A few minutes later Paul returned with the troops. He had taken them on a run in full gear all the way to Fort Solinan and back, and they were exhausted. Most of them collapsed on the ground as soon as they got within the walls, not even bothering to remove their backpacks and other gear. Apparently Paul had gotten the gear just before they were ready to leave and given full sets of equipment to everyone. ¡°You know, just because you can¡¯t technically work them to death anymore doesn¡¯t mean you should try.¡± Paul shrugged. ¡°I only have a few days or a week to get their physical stats and recovery as high as possible. Most of them are already good shots and decent in hand-to-hand, but the better their physical condition the better they will do in the battle.¡± ¡°Any of them have any sort of defensive power?¡± ¡°A few, but most are sticking to armor.¡± I nodded. ¡°In that case, if any of them have the ability to take on another un-adapted power, I can give them one.¡± Without the Detection field the virtual armor skill might not work as well as mine, but it will be able to get enough data from their own senses to work on slower attacks. Though, as this battle will be using guns, that¡¯s probably not the best. I should probably make a new defensive power. Maybe one that worked like actual armor? ¡°I¡¯ll tell them.¡± Paul said, and went to talk to the men. We had around two hundred troops, so he had lieutenants to pass on messages, but he chose to address them himself. While he was talking to them, I started a new program. I told a million nanites to start gathering carbon from the CO2 in my blood and using it to construct a web of carbon nanotube wires under the top layer of dead skin, as that was one of the strongest materials humans had discovered, and being there wouldn¡¯t risk harming the body¡¯s functions. Dormant nanites in the body would automatically recharge and gather carbon, using their energy to construct the upgrade, but not exceeding the user¡¯s nexus energy regeneration, so that they wouldn¡¯t exhaust their other nanites. The carbon gathering process would even boost oxygen levels in the blood as it would leave behind O2 molecules. I saved the program as ¡°Warrior¡¯s Armor¡±. I felt the new power go to work as my blood oxygen level went above its normal level slightly. Vera informed me that it would be at least a day before the power could stop even a small bullet, but with enough time it would even be able to stop railguns from penetrating my skin, though the force would still knock me down, break bones, and cause internal bleeding. Thankfully my Virtual Armor would try to slow the round before it struck, negating most of that. When over one hundred and fifty of the men came over, I started sending the program to them as well. ¡°Wait, a new skill at level 4?¡± one of them asked, surprised. ¡®The skill level is based on the material the nanites are constructing, so it can¡¯t really be degraded by the fact that they aren¡¯t adapted to the power.¡¯ Vera informed me. ¡®They will still need to adapt to the power, though.¡¯ I relayed that information to the men, as well as how the power worked, and they seemed pleased. I said goodbye and went to the shooting range. Olivia had stacked trees near a section of the rock that wasn¡¯t being mined, and thirty people were lined up throwing spells from a distance of thirty meters. Most of them were hitting their target, and every time a lightning bolt, fire bolt, or some other attack hit the logs chunks of wood were being blown out. ¡°Looks like your training is going well.¡± I said to Olivia. ¡°Oh, hey, Greg. Yeah, we should be ready by the time the enemy gets here. I¡¯m working on their range here. We¡¯ll back up five meters every time we have to add a set of logs to the pile. Hopefully they will be able to reliably hit a human sized target at a hundred meters by the time the enemy gets here, though we probably won¡¯t be past fifty for most of them, so we¡¯ll have to rely on area of effect spells.¡± ¡°Hey, Mayor.¡± one of a mages, a sixteen year old boy, called out. ¡°You think you can show us how good mana bullet can get?¡± Several of the others agreed. ¡°Fine, just step back at least ten meters, or you could blow out your eardrums.¡± I stepped up to their lines and quickly ordered some nanites to cover the hole in my ear and try and drain as much vibration from the air that hit them as possible. Interesting, a new skill. Everyone else backed up, and I held my palm towards the target. I would only use two points of mana this time, as when I used five last time I almost destroyed my hand. I suppose another benefit of the Warrior¡¯s Armor would be that I would be more resistant to the blowback from using this power. Not knowing if anyone was listening, and not being able to hear them myself, I called out and told them that I was ready. I gave them a few seconds to plug their ears, then gathered the nanites into my palm. I targeted the center of the stack of trees and activated Mana Bullet. I heard a cracking sound as some of the sonic boom managed to get through my Hearing Protection, and the stack of logs exploded. Mostly it was just trees flying around, but I did notice that their was a considerable amount of rock dust. ¡°So, how was it?¡± I asked everyone, turning around. Several of them were wincing in pain and several more were messing with their ears, trying to get the ringing to stop or to get their hearing back. I didn¡¯t expect that to happen. I had Vera send the Hearing Protection skill to all of them and all of the soldiers, who could leave it sitting in their mailbox if they didn¡¯t want it, then waited for everyone to have their hearing back. ¡°So, how was it?¡± ¡°Loud.¡± said the sixteen year old. ¡°But also pretty cool.¡± He ran off towards where the logs used to be stacked and the rest of us followed. Two of the logs had a piece missing from the center of it, as I had turned it into splinters. The other trees had been blow away from the force of the log exploding. There was also a thirty centimeter crater in the wall behind where the logs were, which is probably why there was rock dust in the air. ¡°Yeah, I would like us to learn to do that, but it seems a bit like overkill for now.¡± ¡°Yeah, that only cost me two mana, but I can see why you wouldn¡¯t want to use it every day.¡± The trainees were surprised at how little mana it used, but I didn¡¯t interfere. I used the warehouse to quickly restack all of the logs, replacing the ones that were too damaged with others that the logging crew had left nearby, and watched for a few minutes before leaving. Chapter 17 Just as I was about to leave I got a message that the manager of the apartments had found a good location for the warehouse, a supplementary building for a Baptist church. It was normally used for church socials and the like, but it was a thirty by thirty foot concrete block building, making it only slightly larger than we needed. I teleported back to town, bought a Warehouse 2 with what little money the town had, and walked over. The building was mostly empty, but one good feature of the warehouse was that if objects existed in the space the warehouse was taking over the objects would be absorbed into the warehouse. Once I had set it up, I ordered Gary to assign all seven thousand plus citizens in Anarchist¡¯s Redoubt, all three thousand plus in St. Nicholas¡¯s Outpost, and the few hundred in the mining outpost a cubic meter of space to store things in. I then put a bulletin on the board about giving them storage space, as well as the fact that you could rent additional warehouse space for one zerka per cubic meter per month. With that taken care of, the rest of the day was spent trying to set up a sanctuary for the non-combatants to hide in if they attacked the town. I went to the basement of the church where they had Sunday School rooms and, after storing the trash that had been left behind and asking the Recycler to deal with it, I went to a room that I knew was completely under ground. As the city was out of money, I bought an autominer with my own money and set it to start digging a ramp downward at a ten degree angle with platforms every ten meters of depth to stop runaway rolling objects and block line of sight in case someone was shooting at us, and store the material in the warehouse. After a minute it was through the concrete block and I was seeing dirt. Realizing that I was risking tunnel collapse I quickly purchased something called a ¡°Builder¡± which could build buildings. I instructed it to use concrete and rebar to reinforce the tunnel. We were running a bit low on both, but once we reached the stone level I would start sending any calcium carbonate, silicon oxide, and most of the magnetite that was being removed so that they could make more. With nothing to do but wait, I left for my RV. It was already past six pm, so I had worked more than a full day. Because the city now had a settlement core they had started offering an exchange rate of $5 per zerka. This let the hundred thousand or so people in town use cash at the local businesses and the local businesses to exchange it for zerka, which they could use for trade. I teleported over to the city and went to the nearest building where a money exchange was located. The $23500 I had in my inventory became 4700 zerka. The next day I noticed that the city had an extra fourteen thousand in its account, and I had an extra hundred. Now we had a bit of money to do things. I bought a chemical processor with my money as well, to start extracting the calcium carbonate, silicates, and magnetite from the rock that was being mined and send it to the bulk warehouse at the main mine. All of the other minerals were going into my cubic meter of storage space, so that no one could claim that it was city property. I wanted to see if it was possible to build new settlements with a small amount of equipment, and this was giving me a lot of useful information. A few hours later, seeing that I had enough rare minerals for it now that the chemical plant had processed all of the material the mine had produced over the night, I rented one of the city¡¯s Nanite Forges to make me a Nanite Forge. In general if the nanite forge was making you something that was System tech, you needed thirty to fifty percent of the object¡¯s value in raw materials, and at full power it could make about ten thousand zerka of value in product per day. So a quick estimate would say that the Nanite Forge would cost me 15-25 thousand in materials and take about five days. Due to the mining, however, I had the raw materials so that was free. The actual time it would take was also four days, nineteen hours. I paid the thousand zerka rental fee in advance. I could figure out later how I wanted to use the last two days of manufacturing time. The other nanite forge was ordered to produce a Generator 3. We were demanding slightly more power than we had to spare, and that had resulted in Bob having to slightly lower the amount of power his time dilation field was using, making the food production cycle five hours longer. I didn¡¯t want to slow food production, however, as this town, the city, and other settlements were depending on the food we produced, so I was making another generator to guarantee that we didn¡¯t have any power shortages. After a few hours in the office I had finished all of the paperwork and met with everyone that wanted to see me, so I returned to the church basement. The miner was below the water table now, and the bottom of the ramp had a few centimeters of water covering it. Thankfully, the miner could just ignore the water and dig underneath it. With nothing for the builder to do, as we were digging through solid stone that needed little reinforcement, and little for the chemical plant to do, as it was so much faster than the miner, I ordered the chemical plant to start making a water sealant and ordered the builder to apply it to any place that was leaking. The water sealant was some alien epoxy that could rapidly set underwater, so soon everything that wasn¡¯t being currently mined had been sealed. The miner could then rapidly send all of the water to the Chemical Warehouse where the city¡¯s water supply was being kept. Another week passed with things continuing as normal. The city made around seventy five thousand and thanks to the large amount of material my mining effort had processed and the sale of raw materials I had made over a hundred thousand. If we ran into a financial crisis later, I would just sell the stockpile of millions of zerka in rare minerals the city had. For now, however, we were saving them in case anyone in town needed them to manufacture goods in the Nanite Forge. The last two days of my manufacturing time was spent on a Medium Nuclear Reactor, a more powerful version of the small nuclear reactors I was using. It produced five times as much as the Generator 3, but at a cost of only twenty thousand Zerka. Though it could burn one hundred times the fuel of the small version I had used before, the fact that it was only powering the Sanctuary meant that it generally only ran at five percent or less. If it needed to run at full power, though, I had about a month¡¯s supply of uranium and thorium in the Sanctuary¡¯s warehouse. One of the first things I had made with my new Nanite Forge was a Warehouse 3, followed by a Bulk Warehouse 3, a Chemical Warehouse 3, and a Food Warehouse 3, renting one of the town¡¯s Nanite Forges to speed up the job. I was currently printing a teleporter so that the people could evacuate to here from anywhere in the town or its outposts, and would give it an Outpost Core as well, so that they could have something automatically control the devices. An Outpost core could only control limited number of devices, but there weren¡¯t that many down here. Once the miner had gotten underneath the water level and everything had been sealed against leaks, the chemical plant had been set to making memory foam, nylon, and plastic. The Builder then started setting up many bunkhouses, with one hundred bunk beds per room. The bunk beds were all plastic with nylon sheets. There was also a restaurant with a Food Service Terminal, plastic tables and chairs, which could use the food stored in the Food Warehouse to make meals for them. It wasn¡¯t fancy, but once it was finished the people would be able to live down there for months once the food warehouse was full, or almost indefinitely once I made a Conservation Core for them and upgraded it. The main limiting factor in that case would be that they would need to continuously mine rock and extract the radioactive minerals to keep the power online, but I had chosen nuclear power rather than the standard generators because the standard ones could be tracked through hyperspace, giving away the location of the Sanctuary. When fighting an evil megacorp like the GCA, I didn¡¯t want to take the chance that they would track the people down and try to invade them. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Instead of walking the entire staircase to leave, as it was over a kilometer long due to the sanctuary being over two hundred meters below the ground, I had downloaded a new power, Linked Teleport. At low levels it could only teleport you to a teleporter, but at level three or four you should learn to order the teleporter to move you to another one, and at level six you got the ability to teleport from the teleporter to another location within your range. I linked the power to the one in the middle of town and used it. I gritted my teeth as the pain went away due to my pain resistance skill. Apparently, at low levels the teleportation actually left some of your cells and even more chemicals from your cells behind, which caused damage throughout your body. Thankfully, my HP recovery would fix the problem within a few minutes. The good thing about experiencing the power was that I was getting an inherit understanding of how the physics behind it worked. I had tried to read ¡°A Brief History of Time¡± last night, and it actually made some sense. I received an alert from Paul to all of the Town¡¯s citizens. It was seven oh three now. I would definitely need to attend this meeting. I tried reaching out to the teleporter there, but it was just outside my range, so I just ordered the teleporter I was standing on to send me there. I went to the building where Paul and Silan were reviewing the footage and joined them. Once it was time for the meeting, I walked with them to the field where they the meeting would take place. Over a thousand people were standing there, including all of the town leaders and most of the team leaders. Good. It might not be official, but Di, Tony, Tom, Paul, Simon, and Lawrence were pretty much the town council. Once everyone got quiet Paul informed the people of the facts of the situation. Over two thousand Grilk and around a hundred sapient beings of other races, as well as over a thousand non-sapient alien creatures were spotted just over a kilometer outside the mine, just outside the range of the detection field, by a scout from Fort Solinan, and was verified by a scout team from the militia. They obviously could detect our field and avoid it. Silan then told them that standard GCA procedure was to attack from the direction of the rising sun in order to blind the enemy troops, which is how they knew when the attack would begin. Since detection they had set up their camp in that area, being careful not to get within our detection grid¡¯s range. ¡°Can¡¯t we just attack their camp while they sleep?¡± asked a man in the crowd. ¡°The GCA equips all of its military facilities, including temporary camps, with anti-air and anti-ground automated turrets.¡± responded Silan. ¡°Any attempt to do so would just result in the troops dying.¡± Several other bad ideas were proposed and rejected before everyone ran out of ideas, so Paul took over the meeting. ¡°I know you guys are scared. I am too, and I served two terms in the middle east. But we need to protect this mine, not just for the resources it provides, but to send a message to the GCA that they can¡¯t invade us and get away with it. If we don¡¯t at least try and stop them here, they will have taken their first step to conquering Earth, which is something I¡¯ll never allow to happen. We will be stationing anyone that wants to fight on the wall, where we will drive the enemy back to their settlement. If you don¡¯t want to fight, however, we can always use more people to take more ammunition to the people on the wall, or to bring meals to the fighters, or to help people who have been wounded but not killed. Or in other roles. Anyone that is killed will be sent back to the Revival Room in the city, and the militia will cover the cost of their stay there until they revive. So you don¡¯t have to worry about being captured by the enemy or being left out there if you are shot.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know if it will help,¡± I said as loud as a could, ¡°But the city will pay anyone that participates in the battle as a non-combatant one hundred zerka per day, and anyone that participates in a combat role two hundred zerka, not that we are expecting the battle to go on for more than a day.¡± The people started nodding. Many of them wanted to buy something from the Market, and that money was definitely useful. After the meeting I shook hands and thanked everyone for coming, then, when most of the people who didn¡¯t want to help had left, I went to talk with the town leaders. There I saw Jacob. ¡°Hey, I wasn¡¯t expecting to see you here.¡± ¡°Well, I figured that the people might need some counseling in this time of need, and, even though I doubt it will be necessary, many of the people here doubt the stories of people reviving after death and will want someone to perform their Last Rites if they should die. And, if nothing else, I can help treat wounds.¡± ¡°That will mostly be my job,¡± said Tim as he walked up to us. ¡°I brought my team, ten ex medical staff, to help out. Even if you won¡¯t really die, we¡¯ll try to keep you alive as long as possible. Plenty of people will get shot, and some may even lose limbs, and we¡¯ll be there to stop the bleeding and remove the bullet. Which reminds me, have you figured out what you¡¯ll be doing with the severed limbs? We¡¯ll need them if they are going to be reattached.¡± ¡°Bob¡¯s going to dump the animals in his cloning tanks just before sunrise and store them there.¡± said Paul. ¡°If they are too damaged, he can also grow replacement limbs in a few hours each, but having the old one is still preferable. Or the people can go with prosthetics, if they are more into the whole cyborg thing. The System can make some really nice ones.¡± Tim nodded. ¡°In that case, I¡¯d like to take over one of these buildings to use as a field hospital.¡± Paul motioned to one near the main office. ¡°We already emptied a building for that. Go build your M.A.S.H. unit.¡± Tim nodded, and left with his team. It was after nine pm when I left for the Town. I told Vera to wake me up fifteen minutes before sunrise and went back to my RV, where I ate a quick supper and went to bed. The next morning I went to the teleporter where several other people were waiting, including Di. The teleporter was only capable of sending ten or eleven people at a time, and so many people wanted to go to help at the mines that a line had formed. ¡°So, I didn¡¯t expect to see you lining up.¡± I said to Di. ¡°I also didn¡¯t know you owned casual clothes.¡± She was wearing jeans and an AC/DC tee-shirt. ¡°Well, I bought this shirt as a teen in the late eighties. I wasn¡¯t sure it still fit.¡± She pointed at my own jeans and super hero t-shirt. ¡°You look like you¡¯re used to it, though.¡± ¡°Well, I didn¡¯t start dressing up until I was forced to be a politician. So, are you going to fight?¡± ¡°I¡¯ll be helping the medical teams. Maybe I¡¯ll actually get a use out of majoring in psychology. If not, I had enough medical classes to help.¡± I nodded. ¡°Are you armed?¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t see the point in a counselor carrying a gun. Besides, I know you won¡¯t let them inside.¡± I pulled the pistol and holster out of my inventory and held it out to her. ¡°Well, just in case, you can add that to a combat load out and auto-equip it on command. I wouldn¡¯t want you to risk dying just because it¡¯s unlikely.¡± She smiled, nodded, then the item disappeared. As it was our time to use the teleporter, I stepped onto the platform and, once everyone was on, the operator sent us to the mine. Five minutes after arriving, as I neared the wall, Paul made another announcement to everyone in the camp. The enemy had just entered the detection field and would be here in less than two minutes. Chapter 18 I ran to the wall and found Olivia standing in the middle of the projected area where they would first come into range. ¡°You trying to break their charge too?¡± she asked. I noticed that the rest of her team were spread out among the soldiers every ten meters to give them magical support. ¡°That was the plan. I can lay down suppressing fire quite quickly if I need to.¡± She nodded. A few seconds later a sound of something crashing through the trees entered the camp and everyone readied their weapons. A few seconds after that, hundreds of creatures, mostly quadrupedal, broke through the treeline and ran at the wall as fast as they could. I opened fire with rapid fire mana bullets, and the soldiers did the same with their automatic rifles. Olivia and her people held their fire until the creatures got within fifty meters of the wall, then began raining fireballs upon them. About forty meters from the wall a wall of fire erupted, stopping some in their tracks, and exploding or burning many others. I and the soldiers had mowed down at least five hundred feline, canine, ursine, or reptilian creatures large enough to ride on when the wall of Grilk came into view. By the time they made it past the wall of fire, all but a few of the beasts were lying dead on the ground, with the ones that still breathed most trying to run away. Stray rounds from the thousands of bullets being fired into their sapient comrades finished most of those off. When they reached the walls, the Grilk started climbing. They had some sort of gloves on that let them climb surfaces that weren¡¯t perfectly smooth. My guess was that they were basically gecko gloves from that popular RPG system. Olivia called out to her people and they all ran over to the wall above one of the groups of climbers and reached over the top. ¡°Grease¡± they all called out, and the Grilk started losing their hold on the wall. A few of them managed to make it to the top, only to take a rifle butt or bullet to the face. Right, Olivia was obsessed with RPGs. Of course she made sure they had all of the best spells from those. No longer able to climb the walls, the Grilk knelt behind the bodies of the fallen animals and some sort of pistol appeared in their hands. I didn¡¯t notice them firing until after several of the men on the wall were already shot, with several of them either collapsing or falling from the walkway. We ducked down, but from the sounds outside I could tell that their pistols were doing significant damage to the wall. Their damage was comparable to a half-mana mana bullet, but they could fire them far faster than I could, and were chipping away at the wall. ¡°Grenade¡± yelled one of the men, hurling something over the top of the wall, and several of the other soldiers pulled out something the size of a fist and threw it as well. A series of explosions and bright blasts sounded on the other side of the wall and the soldiers popped back up and fired at the wounded and disoriented Grilk below. Once that wave was dealt with, another quickly appeared. The soldiers on the wall were running out of bullets, and the support crew were running more to them as quickly as possible. The shortages of ammo, however, allowed a few Grilk to get close enough to set up another firing line fifty meters away, outside the throwing range of our troops. There was a shootout and half of our men went down before we managed to break their assault with a few RPGs the gunsmith had made on a whim mixed with exploding fireballs. With most of their men down, something else crashed through the trees. Two four meter and one five meter tall humanoids lifted something red and hurled it into our camp. The three objects landed and I noticed that it looked like a two meter tall dog covered in quills. The System identified it as a Sagqua. Some of the men jumped down from the walls and engaged them and I returned to fighting the giant humanoids. I sent a picture to Silan and told him how tall they were. ¡®Jotun.¡¯ he responded. ¡®Primitive Alfinoids. They are incredibly strong and durable, but not very good at strategy or improvization. Try outmaneuvering them.¡± ¡®Jotun? What¡¯s next, are you going to tell me Asgard is real?¡¯ ¡®Of course it is, but don¡¯t worry. I doubt there are more than a hundred Vanir slaves in the entire GCA. They won¡¯t risk one on a minor conflict on a minor planet.¡¯ I shrugged. Well, at least I won¡¯t have to fight a god. The Jotun seemed to have run out of Sagqua to throw at us, and were charging the wall. As they were taller than the wall, they were able to swing their weapons over the top of it. I ran at one of them, firing rifle strength mana bullets at its face, but only angered it. It swung its ax downward and I jumped out of the way, but it was too fast for me to dodge completely. Noticing that I could no longer feel my arm, I looked to where I had dodged and saw it laying on the ground, cleanly severed just above the elbow. A gray web had already started forming over the stump where my arm used to be as I saw the arm disappear, no doubt gathered by Bob for future reattachment. ¡°Focus on the other two!¡± I yelled, then ran at the five meter tall brute. With one of his arms grabbing the top of the wall in an attempt to tear it down, I jumped on top of the arm then ran to his shoulders, where I wrapped my legs around his throat. I squeezed will all I had as he struggled to pull me off. I could tell he had broken several of my ribs with his grip, but kept squeezing anyway as I charged up a two mana bullet. I placed my one remaining palm at the base of his skull and fired upwards. The explosion of bone and brain blew me off of him, dislocating my right leg from my hip due to having my legs locked together, and I fell to the ground. A few seconds later, the corpse fell on top of me and I passed out. When I opened my eyes I noticed that I was in an unfamiliar bed. From the cramped layout of the room I could tell that I was in an RV, but I didn¡¯t know whose. My arm had been reattached, however, and my leg and ribs were healed, so I must be missing some time. Looking beside myself I saw Di laying there. This seemed familiar. I looked under the sheets to see that we were both completely naked. She was quite well toned, and it took me a few second to stop staring. ¡®Uh, Vera? Did we?¡¯ ¡®Have sex. Yes. Twice.¡¯ ¡®So, why don¡¯t I remember?¡¯ ¡®After the battle was over and Tim healed you, you realized that you had personally killed over a hundred sapient beings and became traumatized. You asked me to block the memories so that you could cope with it, but I didn¡¯t block them completely, as your mental pain resistance was greatly improving from the trauma and I knew you valued improving your resistance skills. Di came by to council you, to help you through the rest of the trauma, and some kind of human interaction occurred that I don¡¯t understand. She kissed you and shortly afterwards you followed her back here where the two of you engaged in intercourse. Not sure how that helped your trauma, but it seemed to work.¡¯ ¡®I guess that¡¯s one of the shortcomings of not having a physical body or hormones.¡¯ ¡®I actually consider behaving logically to be a strength.¡¯ You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. Di awoke, turned over, and looked at me. ¡°Good Morning.¡± she said, and the simple phrase seemed like music. ¡°Good Morning.¡± I said, trying to return to my senses. ¡°Sleep well?¡± ¡°All thanks to you.¡± she said, then kissed me before getting out of bed. Once again I had to force myself to look away. She was at least a seven out of ten, if not an eight. ¡°You don¡¯t have to look away if you don¡¯t want to. You certainly saw plenty last night.¡± I laughed slightly. ¡°So, does that mean we¡¯re joining seventy percent of the population as a couple?¡± ¡°If you want. I certainly wouldn¡¯t mind.¡± I smiled. ¡°In that case, how about you meet me at the teleporter at noon. We can have lunch in Paris.¡± She leaned over and kissed me. ¡°It¡¯s a date, then.¡± She hit the button to equip her clothes, this time a pant suit, and left. I laid there for the next few minutes thinking about the previous day. I had killed people. Not just one, but dozens, hundreds. Even if it was in self defense, I¡¯m not sure I¡¯m okay with that. That¡¯s probably why I had Vera block the memories. I got out of bed and checked my skills. My Physical and Mental pain resistance had both increased, as had my Regeneration. My Nanite Manipulation had also risen, probably as a result of firing thousands of mana bullets. Interestingly, my stats had also increased. Apparently losing an arm but continuing fighting was great for both Endurance and Willpower. I got up and equipped my clothes, the same bluejeans and shirt I had wore to the battle. Vera had cleaned them with my Clean Surface spell while they were in my inventory, so I didn¡¯t look like a horror movie extra from all of the blood on them. Still, they weren¡¯t in the best condition so I would need to get something new to wear. I checked what clothes the stores in town had listed, but didn¡¯t see anything I really wanted. Still, I needed to get some new clothes. I checked the System and, while their clothes all looked like the kind of high-tech stuff you would see in a sci-fi or superhero show, they did have a type of under-armor listed. It was a skin-tight suit that was highly cut, stab, and abrasion resistant, self cleaning, self repairing, and automatically regulated the temperature of the wearer, the whole thing being powered off a small orb in the collar and a small battery. They cost two hundred and fifty zerka each. I ordered one for myself and one for Di, as they were specially tailored to the individual user, but didn¡¯t know when I would give it to her. I would probably keep it for a special occasion, after I had the tailor make her something nice out of some of the special materials and fabrics the System could provide. Maybe they could make her a suit out some of that programmable fabric that could change color on demand. If I remembered correctly, it was also bullet resistant and could store nanites to be programmed with extra functions. Maybe I could work in a shield of some sort, tied to a Detection Field. I sent mine and Di¡¯s measurements to the tailor¡¯s and asked for a suit for each of us of a style they had listed in the market. I also asked if they could use that material to make the suits, and also make me a tie and dress shirt of the same material. Now that the battle was over, most businesses were diversifying into civilian markets because the military market was dying down. Other cities were still buying through the Market, but this town had pretty much bought all that it needs and stopped the special purchasing agreement for military hardware with everyone but the armor makers, the emergency/military food vendor, and the gunsmith, as those were the only goods that the military still needed to buy. While the Tailor did make the plate carriers for the military, that only took up a fraction of their time. After I was done shopping, I checked my messages. Two of them seemed important. The first was from the Sanctuary Outpost Core, informing me that my ¡°Teleportation platform (small)¡± was complete. The second was from Paul, informing me that he and Silan needed to meet with me for a debriefing about the battle. I sent a message to the Outpost Core, ordering it to get the Builder to set up the teleporter in the teleportation room I had already had carved out, then inform me when it was complete. The teleporter would be locked with a special code that prevented teleporting to it or using it to go to another teleporter without the code. Only me and the main city teleporter had that code. I would be giving it to my council members and Jacob, Silan, and Lord Tarn eventually, in case they needed to evacuate Fort Solinan or the town¡¯s outposts, but I wanted to make sure everything in Sanctuary was ready for refugees first. I then sent a message to Paul asking when he wanted to meet. It only took him a few seconds to respond that he was meeting with Silan now and could meet with me immediately. I travelled over there immediately and joined their meeting. To sum things up, they had recovered the bodies of every animal and sapient being, and given them to Bob as raw material. Bob had extracted the DNA from all of them, in case we needed him to clone the animals later. All implants, including their Cores in their brains, and all equipment was taken into military custody, with the exception of the defensive turrets and other gear they left at their forward base a kilometer away. As we didn¡¯t own them, the System wouldn¡¯t let us pick them up automatically by expanding the Outpost¡¯s field, and because they would shoot anyone that approached, we couldn¡¯t get close enough to claim them as battle salvage. They wouldn¡¯t attack anyone in their camp, regardless of race or faction, but as they had evacuated the camp in order to attack, and all of them had died during the assault, including some who committed suicide rather than be captured, we had no way to enter the camp. I did have one idea though. ¡°Hey, Paul. How far do you think you could throw a teleportation orb?¡± ¡°No idea. How heavy is it?¡± I bought one for ten thousand with my own money and had it appear in my hand, then tossed it to him. He tested the weight by tossing it in the air a few times. ¡°Maybe three to four kilos. Probably a hundred and forty to a hundred and sixty meters. Why?¡± ¡°Can you get close enough to the turrets to throw that into their camp?¡± Paul smiled. ¡°Yeah, I think I can. One of the scouts got about forty meters from one of them before he was detected. I¡¯m sure I can get close enough.¡± Silan laughed. ¡°I never would have thought about that way to exploit the way the System works. My people have tried that with telekinesis, but the turrets detected it as an attack and shot at the orb. If you are simply throwing a System Device that can¡¯t deal any damage and uses no Magic, the turrets shouldn¡¯t see it as an attack. We¡¯ll just need to find someone to teleport us in, and we can claim the camp.¡± ¡°I can do that, but as long as we link it to the teleporter here and charge it first, we can have people on standby for when he informs us that he got it within the camp.¡± With such good news, we ended the meeting and Paul got a tech team to standby and await his orders. I linked the teleportation orb to the mine¡¯s teleportation platform and had it completely charge the device. It could only hold enough charge to move one hundred or so people, but the enemy camp would likely have a generator we could claim to recharge it. An hour later, Paul sent the message. As he agreed to let me teleport him instead of taking the platform, I grabbed Silan¡¯s shoulder and teleported us to the device. When we appeared Silan gritted his teeth and collapsed on the ground in pain. ¡°Shit. I forgot that you didn¡¯t have regeneration or pain resistance.¡± I called over one of the technicians who had a basic healing spell and he started working on Silan. ¡°It¡¯s fine.¡± said Silan through his teeth. ¡°I really should have those if I¡¯m going to be a military advisor. I¡¯ll download them now.¡± A few seconds later he looked like he was doing much better, so I knew that at least the Physical Pain Resistance had started working. ¡°Still, I should apologize.¡± I sent him a thousand zerka, and his eyes widened in surprise. ¡°This is too much, even if you intended to harm me. The damage is not that severe, just painful.¡± ¡°In that case, consider the excess a bonus for all of the help you have given us. I hope we can work together in the future.¡± He nodded and I left to help search the camp for hidden devices that we could claim. An hour later, Vera sent me a notification that it was time to leave for my date. I found Paul, who was inventorying the items we had collected with Silan. ¡°I¡¯ve got to go, it¡¯s 11:50 and I¡¯ve got a lunch date.¡± ¡°Yeah, I saw you leaving with Di last night. It¡¯s about time you two got together. I¡¯ve known she was into you since you first brought her to the kitchen.¡± ¡°So did I. I just didn¡¯t know if I was into her.¡± ¡°I¡¯m guessing you also didn¡¯t want to admit that you were into older women, but now that she looks younger you¡¯re cool with it.¡± ¡°Well, that and the fact that she was a bit too forward for my taste. Anyway, I¡¯ll talk to you later. I¡¯ll be in Paris if you need me.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll get the inventory done and send it to you so we can figure out what to do with all of the gear. Still, Paris? High roller today, huh? Going to bankrupt yourself trying to impress her.¡± Silan nodded in agreement, but I ignored them and teleported myself back to the mine before taking the teleporter to town. I even got a level up out of it. Still, I was confused by what he meant about being a high roller. I gave the teleporter mine and Di¡¯s information and asked for an estimation of the cost of going to Paris. I gasped. No wonder he thought I¡¯d bankrupt myself. The teleporter told me that at current rates, the trip would cost me over twelve thousand zerka. Sure, I could afford it, but I doubt most people in town would be able to go once in their lives. What did Paris charge to return? The teleporter estimated only one hundred and twenty three zerka. Ok, that was manageable for even the basic workers if they saved up for a while. Apparently, the teleporter in Paris was set to cost only one hundredth of a zerka per kilometer per hundred kilograms. I checked several other teleporters around the world and they were all half that to five times that. I had severely overestimated how much it should cost to travel. I reset the cost at all of the town¡¯s teleporters to match Paris¡¯s, and posted a bulletin about it so that the people in town would be know about it. I had assumed that we weren¡¯t getting visitors from other towns and cities because we were going to be invaded, but at the cost I had set for using the teleporter it was no surprise that people avoided us. A minute later Di arrived and we left for Paris. Chapter 19 We arrived at a platform in what looked like an inactive subway. They must not have gotten their trains up and running again since the blackout. Di grabbed my hand and we walked to the surface. The sun was starting to set and there we saw hundreds of people riding by on bicycles, and a few with older vehicles. There was even someone pulling a rickshaw and two horse drawn carriages. They either hadn¡¯t gotten to the point where they could repair the newer vehicles, or had decided not to to keep the rustic appearance. I considered downloading French into my translation skill, but decided against it. After all, it would only literally translate my words at level one, and that would just confuse them. We walked down the street for a few minutes before the scent of fresh bread and soup drew Di in. A man who was standing behind a lectern said something to me that I didn¡¯t understand. I was about to tell him so, when Di spoke up. ¡°Oui, puis-je avoir une table pour deux, s''il vous pla?t?¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t know you spoke french.¡± I said, as the man lead us to an outside table. ¡°Well, I haven¡¯t had much use for it since college, but since the System I¡¯ve been brushing up on it.¡± The man handed us two menus. ¡°Please order whenever you wish.¡± he said in a strong but understandable accent. ¡°Oh, you speak English.¡± ¡°But of course. We have many English customers. You are American, yes? I assume you just took the teleporter into the city?¡± ¡°Yes, I wanted to take her somewhere nice for lunch and Paris is famous for its cuisine.¡± He nodded. ¡°Then you may be interested to know that all of our food is imported from a town in America.¡± I knew we had been exporting around half of our food to Paris, so I had to ask. ¡°Would that town be called Anarchist Redoubt?¡± ¡°So you have heard of it? Yes. They have some of the cheapest, but highest quality food available on the market.¡± ¡°I¡¯m actually the Mayor of Anarchist Redoubt, and she is on the town council.¡± I motioned to Di. ¡°It¡¯s good to get a review for our products in person.¡± He seemed to study me for a second, no doubt using an inspection skill, then nodded. ¡°I see. Then it is good to meet you mister mayor.¡± He bowed slightly. ¡°If you don¡¯t mind me asking, how are you producing such magnificent food? We are in the middle of winter. I thought we were going to have to import from Australia to get fresh produce, but you seem to be able to get it even in winter.¡± ¡°Oh, there is a device in the System Market called a ¡°conservation core¡±. It was originally meant to balance ecosystems and aid in terraforming, but you can easily have it clone any non-sapient lifeform for you. It can even produce replacement limbs for amputees, which we made good use of after the last battle. Though the produce actually comes from an extension to the device that gives me fifty hectares of farmland to grow crops on.¡± The man, who I now knew was name ¡®Jacque LeBeau¡¯ and belonged to the Faction ¡®Independent City of Paris¡¯, as I also used Inspection, nodded. ¡°And how expensive is such a device. I cannot imagine that it would be cheap.¡± ¡°I believe I saw it available for two hundred and fifty thousand zerka, and the expansion is another one hundred thousand. I got lucky and found one just before the plague, so I didn¡¯t have to buy it, just the upgrade.¡± He nodded again. ¡°So, it will be a while before I can buy one for my restaurant.¡± ¡°Well, I do know a few ways to earn money quickly, but they don¡¯t have anything to do with food. I was, however, considering expanding the food production to include aquatic foods. Would you be interested in that?¡± He seemed a bit more excited now. ¡°But of course. Before the plague and the System, this restaurant was known for it¡¯s lobster dishes. It is very difficult to get lobster now, so we mostly sell other things.¡± ¡°Then I should have at least one customer.¡± I said, and he nodded. ¡°In that case, I¡¯ll let Di order, as I can¡¯t read the menu.¡± She smiled and ordered for us. After lunch we wondered around town for another hour, checking out the early night life, before returning to town at two o¡¯clock. I promised to meet her that night at the steakhouse in town, and checked my messages. Paul had sent me an inventory of all of the goods salvaged after the battle. Most of the things were basic military supplies like rations and four Composter orbs, essentially a downgraded Recycler that could only break down organic objects into fertilizer, which they were using in their latrines. They also had a Generator 2 to power all of the turrets, and the turrets themselves. Paul had already had the turrets mounted on the walls of the mines, and had ordered the Nanite Forges in town to make more so that they could get them for half price. I should probably make the militia a nanite forge of its own. The rest of the hardware didn¡¯t matter. I could have a Composter orb dropped into the septic tank at the mines, and at the hotels that I had all but forgotten about. In fact, I should probably get them a teleporter too. Other than that, I didn¡¯t care what they did with the camp¡¯s supplies. The only thing I really cared about were the two thousand plus Mark I Rail Pistols that all of the Grilk were equipped with. They and all of the military hardware were locked to the user when we got them, but Silan knew how to fix that situation. He had sent the Core from the brains of the three Jotun to Fort Solinan. There they had an expert of theirs hack the devices to get the security codes for unlocking the hardware. To hack it like you normally would would take too long, so instead he tried to convince the AIs attached to the Cores that he was the rightful heir to their master¡¯s inheritance. In Jotun culture the next of kin inherited everything, including the stored memories of the deceased. By convincing the AI that he was a Jotun cousin of theirs and that the rest of their family was dead, he got them to allow him access to the security codes and their accounts. He kept their money as his payment and turned the codes over to Silan, who gave them to Paul. Paul let his people use them to unlock all of the hardware, and we now had more pistols than we knew what to do with. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. I suggested that everyone who participated in the battle get a pistol on top of their monetary bonus, and that the militia keep the others to either sell or give to new recruits. Paul agreed and soon I received a notice that I was being sent a gift, a Mark 1 Rail Pistol. I quickly accepted and locked it to myself before placing it in my inventory. Now that the loot had been handled I teleported myself down to Sactuary. I ordered another five autominers from the Market, and started digging a second layer to the base. This one would be for housing. People couldn¡¯t live in a bunkhouse forever, so we would need a place to house them. There would be a section with large apartments with many rooms, for families or rich people, a section with medium sized apartments with several rooms, for couples and poorer families, and a section with many small apartments, for single people and poor people. Not that I suspected that the people would be that poor, as everyone that worked in this town made more that enough for a decent standard of living. I set the one miner I started off with to start digging out an industrial area above the main level, and once it was large enough I moved the chemical factory up there, bought an extra one and told it to put in another series of rooms for Warehouse 3s. A warehouse three could take a 300 cubic meter area and expand it by a factor of one thousand, leaving us more than enough room for the goods Sanctuary would be producing. Sanctuary already had one each of the four main ones, but I hoped to expand things even further. To that end, I had the Nanite Forge start producing a Nanite Forge 2, or as the System put it, a Nanite Forge (Medium). It would produce things five times as quickly as the small one, but would take twenty three days to finish. Once it was done I would have it produce a Conservation Core for Sanctuary. We barely had enough of some of the raw materials, but in the time it would take to make the Forge, I knew we would produce many times more than we would need. For the next two weeks things continued normally for the town. With the city¡¯s funds looking good, I purchased Bob another biome chamber which he was now using to produce seafood. This had doubled the weekly income of food money to the city to one hundred thousand. I hadn¡¯t sold any of the raw materials that digging Sanctuary had produced, as I wanted to use them later with my new Nanite Forge, but I had spent some money on a new project. Now that the Town was at almost 100% employment and we no longer got large amounts of immigrants from the City, I was looking for another way of expanding the workforce. For that reason I was looking for a new way to get workers. I briefly considered offering people in other countries jobs, but, as they would soon increase their living standard to something close to ours, like Paris had done, it didn¡¯t make sense. So, I had purchased a robot from the system. It was a fairly basic model, at only ten thousand zerka, but could follow simple commands. I had it follow me over to the gun store. While it had started out as a factory, and most of the employees still made weapons, the introduction of rail guns to the town had sparked an interest in more advanced weapons, something Philip was more that interested in capitalizing on, so he built a counter and started selling guns over the counter instead of just on the market. ¡°Hey, Philip.¡± I said as I walked in. ¡°I brought something I want you to try out.¡± I motioned for the robot to come over and, when it didn¡¯t understand, told it to step up to the counter. ¡°I just bought this robot from the system and was wondering if you could let it work here for a little while to see if it could help with the labor shortage.¡± ¡°I guess I could start it on something basic.¡± I assigned Philip as its manager. ¡°Ok, robot. Do you have a name?¡± ¡°I do not have a name at this time.¡± it said in a monotonous tone. ¡°Fine, I¡¯m going to call you Robbie. I want you to start building Mark One Proton Beam Rifles. Send me a message after you¡¯ve made one hundred of them.¡± ¡°Yes, sir¡± said Robbie and walked to the back, where a Factory on loan from the town was. There it ordered one hundred kits for the rifle. ¡°You aren¡¯t going to charge me for this, are you?¡± asked Philip. ¡°No, this is a test to see if they can do a good enough job to fill basic roles. That will let the people move on to more important things.¡± Philip nodded and, after buying two more magazines for my rail pistol I left. My efforts to improve Sanctuary had been pretty fruitful. I had finished furnishing one of the large apartments and Di and I would be moving in there tonight. There I would give her the suit and underarmor I had bought for her. The tailor had never worked with smart materials before, so it had taken them a while to learn enough about the material to properly work with it. Because of their work, however, I had learned something about the material. You could provide it with electricity to improve its toughness, so if you knew you were under attack it could be made even tougher. The rest of the rooms would soon be furnished. I had offered to rent rooms to people at a rate of one thousand zerka per month for the nice rooms, two hundred and fifty per month for the medium rooms, and one hundred per month for the small rooms. I assumed most people would want the cheap rooms, but as even the lowest paid people in town earned four hundred per month everyone was going for the medium rooms. I only had people express interest in the small rooms due to an overall housing shortage, so I would need to produce more medium and large apartments. All of the equipment in Sanctuary had been upgraded with a Quantum Communications orb, a device the size of a marble that could only send one or two text messages per second to its connected device, but it could do so no matter where the device was in the universe. This, combined with a Hyperspace Comms jammer which turned all hyperspace signals into noise after a few hundred meters meant that it was virtually impossible to find Sanctuary if we didn¡¯t want it found, even if the people did have to use radio waves to communicate down here. The fact that the only way to enter of leave was through the city¡¯s teleporter meant that it was essentially a gated community that could block anyone it wanted from entering. This drove up property values, though once we had installed the pools, sauna, and gym it will make the property even more in demand. I made sure that everything was in place in the apartment, including the teleportation orb, in case she wanted to teleport directly here by relaying through the main teleporter, and went back to the surface. I really should try walking up the steps some time. It would drastically improve my Endurance. It would just take forever. Maybe I would start doing that tomorrow morning as my morning routine. After all, I could clean myself with a spell afterwards, and my clothes would be self-cleaning. I had one more idea for improving the quality of life, the military, and making money, but I wanted someone I could trust to oversee the project. There was a device in the System called a Medical Factory. Not only could it produce Niirik and other performance enhancing hormones, but it could build custom gene tailoring products. As the System had the genetic code of every human that ever lived on file, it had a massive library of alternative genes to mix and match. The basic form of Gene tailoring would take any gene rated below Average and make it average. The intermediate would increase that to Good ranked genes, and the Expert one would improve the worst genes to Excellent rank. You could also pay extra for it to rent processing power from the System to run simulations which will test the gene¡¯s interaction with each other. Sometimes those interactions would cause problems, like making the effective performance worse then expected, or giving you allergies. You could, of course, mix in genes from other races, but that would require far more passes to fix the bad interactions. Once I was back on the surface I sent a message to Tim, offering him a job manning a clinic in Sanctuary, where he would most make drugs and gene therapies. He responded that, while genetics was always an interest he had no experience in the field. Still, earning a flat hundred zerka per day would be nice. He had recently started seeing a woman in the city and she wanted a family, so if things got more serious he would need a steady job. Having a nice apartment in a secured area would be good too. That afternoon as I met Di outside the town¡¯s steakhouse I got a message from Paul to check the international news. I pulled it up and found that several cities, including Paris, Berlin, London, Mexico City, Sydney, New York, Los Angeles, and Rio had come under simultaneous attack by the GCA, or at least armies of several thousand Grilk. Paul and Silan had even sent them advise on how to deal with the enemy. Paul informed me that we could send our forces in if we wanted, as all of their teleporters still seemed to be online, but we only had two hundred people and some military hardware. I told him that, if the scouts couldn¡¯t find any enemies near the City or Town, I was fine with him offering mercenary services to one or more of the cities. A few minutes later, I was notified that a large group had been detected near the city, in the direction of the GCA settlement. Instead, Paul would be sending the entire miliary to the City¡¯s main teleporter. They were essentially an ally, and were our neighbor, so we needed to protect them first. ¡°I¡¯m sorry that I couldn¡¯t do this somewhere special, but I need to give you something.¡± I pulled Di¡¯s gifts from out of my inventory and handed them to her. I explained the function of the suit, then equipped my suit and underarmor, as it was technically the best armor I had. I really needed to look into buying power armor. It took a few minutes for the troops to make it through the teleporter, and Paul went with them. I pulled out my flying disk and hoped onto it, and Di climbed on behind me. I sent a message to the manager of the restaurant that something had come up and I needed to cancel as I flew towards the mine to join the vehicle convoy that was headed towards the city. Chapter 20 It took us thirty minutes to enter the city limits, as we could only move as fast as the tank. Upon arrival, however, we were met by three trucks with six men each in the back. Most were carrying AK47s or AR15s, most of which were built in Anarchist¡¯s Redoubt. There was, however, a pump shotgun and an M1 Garand. They identified themselves as being scouts for the City and asked us to identify ourselves. After we told them where we were from and that we were there to help them defend the city, they escorted us back to the old national guard building the militia was using as a base. I talked to the army Sargent that was in charge there and told him about the two hundred or so troops we sent to the city. He had already been informed of that, and said that the city would be sending this camp rail guns that we got when we were attacked. A few minutes later someone came in and notified the Sargent that one hundred rail pistols had arrived for the men stationed here, along with instructions teaching them to claim the pistol, and therefore set themselves as the valid user. Soon he received a message that the enemy had engaged a group of salvagers on the outskirts of town. The Sargent ordered the scouts to head up there and evacuate them, and we joined them, leaving Di behind as she didn¡¯t want to fight. It took us a few minutes to get there, only to find a police precinct building completely surrounded by Grilk, a Jotun, and dozens of animals. The doors had been barred shut, but the enemy had already broken through enough that Grilk corpses were mostly plugging the hole with their bodies. Their allies were pulling them out of the hole, only for gun shots to ring out and drop a few more of them when more Grilk or animals tried to force their way through. The Jotun was making some progress, as they had knocked in a second story wall by swinging a car at it. Three humans appeared to be emptying magazines into it from their AKs, but were only annoying it. Occasionally the Jotun would bend down and pick up a few of its allies, setting them inside only for them to be quickly mowed down. ¡°Fire on the Jotun. We need to draw it away from the building so the tank can get a clean shot.¡± I called out, and the troops started unloading on it with the mounted weapons on the Humvees, and, as they were at least bruising it, it turned and started toward us. They drove away from it, continuing to fire on it and any of the other enemies that were near it. After twenty seconds or so the tank was able to lock onto it from its side and fired, blowing a hole through its middle, killing it. With their best ally dead, the Grilk stopped trying to enter the building, instead drawing their pistols and firing back at us. As we were far more maneuverable and spread out, only three of us were hit before we wiped out the enemy. Seeing that the enemy was dead, the salvagers unblocked the door and came outside. They had started with eight people but three of them were now dead. The three women in their group went to the gas station next door to recover the body of their friend, and the two men carried the bodies of their two friends out, throwing them in the back of the scout trucks. The women returned with the body of a fourth woman and threw her in the last truck before going back to loot the Grilk. ¡°We need to get out of here! We don¡¯t have time to loot them!¡± yelled one of the city¡¯s scouts. ¡®Vera, can you load the rail pistols into my inventory?¡¯ I asked. ¡®Not your property, so not remotely. If you touch them, you can store them, though.¡¯ I ran over and started grabbing pistols, transferring them into my inventory. After grabbing twenty three of them and verifying that there weren¡¯t any more outside of the salvager¡¯s property, I ran over to the Jotun. ¡°Come on, we need to head out!¡± I yelled. ¡°The guns are the only thing worth taking.¡± I fired my pistol into the Jotun¡¯s neck several times until I could tear the head off, then hopped on my flying disk as the salvagers climbed into the trucks. When we arrived back at the base I showed the Sargent the Jotun¡¯s severed head I asked to use the base¡¯s teleportation orb. He shook his head. ¡°I know we want to keep your creepy trophy, but we can¡¯t spare the power.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not a trophy. I can send it to a friend of mine and he can pull the security codes for the pistols. If he does it fast enough, we¡¯ll have more railguns for the battle.¡± The man nodded. ¡°Fine, just make sure the city gets to use the guns during the battle. We¡¯ll give them back afterwards.¡± ¡°Fine by me,¡± I responded, ¡°Just make sure the salvagers get the codes so they can use the ones they grabbed as well.¡± I sent Silan, who had returned home to notify Tarn that they were attacking human settlements in mass, asking him to get us the security codes from the head ASAP, then teleported the head to Fort Solinan. About a minute later he notified me that the hacker estimated at least twenty seven minutes to do the job, the strange time interval being the result of the translation and the fact that they use different units for time. I gave him the contact info for the Sargent so that he could send the security codes directly to the man, and dumped the twenty three pistols I had salvaged on his desk. As our scouts joined theirs in patrolling the area, and the tank driver double-checked everything before the battle, I flew up and looked around for signs of the enemy. I saw movement to the north and, when I got close enough for my Eagle Eyes to pick put individuals, I noticed over a hundred Jotun walking by buildings. I sent a message back to Di telling her to relay that info to the Sargent. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. I gathered up a thousand mana worth of nanites in between my palms, forming it into a ball, and ordering them to start splitting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, and store the hydrogen. I flew up until a kilometer or so, my underarmor preventing me from freezing, and told the nanites to release all of their energy as heat upon impacting something solid. I then saved the program as ¡°mana bomb¡± and dropped it off the side of the disk into the middle of the group of Jotun. Fourteen seconds later there was a massive explosion beneath me that I was sure could be heard back at the military base. ¡°That¡¯s what you get for lacking air superiority.¡± I said, then flew back to the base. ¡°Good, you¡¯re back,¡± said Di as I landed. ¡°We heard an explosion and I was worried.¡± ¡°Oh, that was just me, insuring that the next engagement will require them to have an air force or risk losing their troops. I¡¯ll have to teach that spell to the mage corp when I get back to town, so they can bomb the enemy as well.¡± ¡°Hate to break this up,¡± said our tank driver, ¡°But Paul just got a call from Silan. The enemy was spotted near Fort Solinan and they are asking for our help.¡± The Sargent came over. ¡°Well, tell them you¡¯re busy. We need you here.¡± ¡°I can¡¯t.¡± I said. ¡°We signed a mutual defense pact with them.¡± ¡°Well, break it. Let the damn aliens fend for themselves.¡± I sighed. ¡°You don¡¯t know who got us the codes for the rail pistols, and is currently working on getting the code for the ones on your desk, do you? He¡¯s one of their hackers.¡± ¡°So, you need a hacker? We can get you one.¡± ¡°You can¡¯t hack these things by connecting a computer and looking for security flaws or guessing a password. You need to convince them that you are the valid heir of the dead Jotun. Tell me, how much do you know about Jotun culture?¡± ¡°Nothing, but we can do without the guns for now. You can just make more.¡± ¡°If that was the only benefit our alliance got us, sure. But they taught us about the GCA, how they manage their troops, combat tactics, and about all of the species we¡¯ve seen so far. And we¡¯ll need their knowledge in the future if new races or tactics show up. You might not like these ¡®damn aliens¡¯, but they held up their end of the treaty, so we need to hold up ours.¡± ¡°We¡¯re also only here as volunteers, and con leave any time we want.¡± said the tank driver. ¡°So you can¡¯t force us to stay.¡± ¡°Like hell I can¡¯t. Men, draw weapons!¡± He called out an order, and all of his men drew their weapons, pointing them at us. I took a step towards him, causing his men to tense up. ¡°I want you to think very carefully about what you are doing here. We are the closest thing to an ally you have in this world. So you can open fire on us, insuring that you have two enemies to fight, or you can order your men to stand down, and allow us to leave. And maybe I won¡¯t report this to your superiors.¡± The Sargent scowled at me and spit on the ground. ¡°Stand down, men.¡± They relaxed and lowered their weapons. With the tension gone, the tank driver walked over and spoke to me just loud enough for the Sargent to hear. ¡°You know, the battle at the Fort would be behind a wall. The vehicles won¡¯t be useful there, so I was going to suggest that the Rangers stay here. But now that they drew weapons on us¡­¡± ¡°You¡¯re right. It¡¯s too big of a risk to leave you here.¡± I pretended to think for a few seconds before addressing the Rangers. ¡°The Rangers are to go to St. Nicholas Outpost and defend it and its people from the enemy.¡± I then looked at the Sargent. ¡°Maybe you can keep the enemy from flanking the city¡¯s forces from the East.¡± The men saluted and hoped back in their vehicles before leaving. I looked at the Sargent again. ¡°May we use your teleportation orb to get o our allies, or will we need to fly there?¡± I pointed to Di and myself, then at the flying disk. The Sargent sighed. ¡°The two of you, and only the two of you, may use the orb to get to your alien allies.¡± I nodded. ¡°Thank you.¡± I stored the disk, then Di and I went to the orb. Upon touching it HUD showed me all of the teleporters nearby that it could connect to. While all of our teleporters and the ones in the city were marked green, the GCA base was marked red and Fort Solinan was marked yellow. I selected the fort, with the two of us as the cargo. ¡°This location is owned by a non-human faction that hasn¡¯t shown overt hostility, but as such may not be safe. Are you certain you wish to travel there?¡± Two buttons appeared, Yes and No. I shook my head at whatever racist programmed it to act like that, and touched yes. There was a surge in space that was no were near as nice as our teleporter, and we disappeared. We appeared on a teleportation platform in a gazebo within a town filled with mainly wooden buildings. Unlike the last time I came here, most were proper lumber buildings instead of log cabins. The area around the teleporter had over two hundred humans from Anarchist Redoubt, as well as several groups of human mercenaries and Alfs with various types of ranged weapons, from bows to firearms, to rail rifles. I saw Paul in the crowd, and we stepped off in his direction only to be intercepted by Lord Tarn. ¡°Ah, you¡¯re here, Lord Greg. Thank you so much for sending your people. We hired what mercenaries we could locally, but didn¡¯t have the zerka to bring too many in from the home world or colonies.¡± ¡°I can loan you the money to hire more if you need me to.¡± While I wasn¡¯t sure I could justify using the city¡¯s funds for that, I had over seventy five thousand zerka in my personal account I could loan him. ¡°Oh, no, I don¡¯t believe it will be necessary. With all of the fronts they will be advancing on, we are mainly in the way, and as such it is unlikely that they will focus their attack here. This should be a large enough force that they will go around us.¡± I nodded. ¡°In that case, I¡¯d like to introduce you to Diana, a member of my city council. She¡¯s in charge of the education of our citizens, so if you want us to train some of your people in non-military matters, she¡¯s the one to talk to.¡± He bowed slightly. ¡°Lady Diana.¡± She bowed in return. ¡°If I may ask, why did you bring a teacher here?¡± ¡°Oh, she also has training in psychology and some medical training, so she¡¯ll be helping with moral and aiding the doctors if needed.¡± ¡°We were also together when we got the message that cities were coming under attack, so I volunteered to come along.¡± Tarn nodded. ¡°In that case, please follow me. The medical post is on the way to my manor, where the strategy meeting will be taking place.¡± We started following him and I sent a message to Paul to follow me to the strategy meeting. When we got to the manor it was just me and Tarn, though Paul came up as he was opening the door. ¡°Lord Tarn,¡± I said once we stepped inside, ¡°This is Paul, the Captain of my militia. He has extensive military experience, so I asked him to come to the meeting as well.¡± ¡°Very well,¡± he said, turning to a side door. Inside was a large holographic display which showed the lay of the land and all of the trees. He motioned with his hand and the trees disappeared, simple circles in their location. With the trees gone you could see several groups of GCA troops marching nearby. ¡°So far none of them have started coming this way, but they will pass less than three hundred meters north of the village, so if they decide to, they can turn and attack any time they want.¡± As we watched, a group of Grilk broke off with their animals and started towards the Fort. ¡°Looks like they decided to do just that.¡± said Paul, sending a message out to all of our men to get in position on the wall. As soon as they got within sight of the wall they started sprinting towards it and I heard gunfire outside. The enemies on the map started collapsing, but from further away several other groups rerouted their march in the direction of the settlement. ¡°Looks like it¡¯s time to fight.¡± I said and equipped my pistol. ¡°Unfortunately so.¡± Tarn said as a fancy staff appeared in his hand. I used Identify on the strange object. ¡°Casting Staff, Tier 5. Used by those focusing on magic to increase their control of their magic. Contains multiple neuroprocessors to rapidly correct the calculations of the wielder, and is capable of storing up to one hundred billion nanites at full charge. Charge: 100000/100000.¡± ¡°I need to get me one of those.¡± I said, following him out of the room. ¡°One hundred thousand zerka in the shop, but I have a cousin that makes them. I can get you one for only seventy thousand.¡± That meant that I could probably make one on my own with my nanite forge, forty to fifty thousand in rare minerals, and ten days of wait time. It might be worth it to just buy from him. ¡°I¡¯ll think about it.¡± He nodded and lead us to the wall where our people, his people and about two dozen human mercenaries were firing on the enemy. Chapter 21 We fought for over an hour, but the enemies just kept coming. Over ten thousand Grilk lay dead outside the city walls, only a hundred or so even managing to touch the wall before dying, but it seemed that the longer we fought, the more of them that were sent to fight us. Lorn Tarn had blown through most of his mana with flashy area of effect spells in the beginning, burning hundreds to death in seconds with fireballs, shredding them with wind blades, or burning out their nervous systems by blanketing an area in lightning. It was an impressive display, but despite personally killing over three thousand Grilk and over a thousand of their pets, he was running out of mana. For the last ten minutes he had been using single target or the occasional small area spells to deal with small groups of less than ten. The rest of our forces were doing no better. Half of the humans on the wall were dead. The mages were down to throwing low power mana bullets at individuals as their bodies slowly regenerated nanites or drew in nanites from the environment. The soldiers had used up all of their Earth ammunition and had all switched to using their rail pistols. I saw several mercenaries with Market screens open as they tried to figure out which weapon and ammunition combination they could afford. Lord Tarn¡¯s forces had thrown out their bows and traditional weapons when they ran out of ammunition and bought rail pistols, seeing how good they were performing in battle and how cheap they were to operate, even though they¡¯d never used a gun before. ¡®Vera, how many enemies are left?¡¯ I asked. Surely they were running low. ¡®Fort Solinan¡¯s sensors show two thousand three hundred non sapients, twenty seven thousand Grilk, thirteen thousand Solin, one hundred and seventy Jotun and an Alf on the opposing side.¡¯ ¡®What¡¯s a Solin?¡¯ I asked. I ignored the fact that an Alf had joined the enemy against us. They may have been a slave or a willing participant. And every race had its criminal element. A small green humanoid, 1.25 to 1.5 meters tall appeared in the edge of my vision, shifting through the various individual forms it might take. It had green or grey skin, fangs, pointed ears, proportionally huge head, and a chiseled physique. All were nude, and all of them carried a melee weapon of some form, from knives to swords to hatchets to axes, and a few clubs and spikes. I sent the information to Olivia, including their species name and numbers as I had Vera listen into the call in case Olivia had questions. ¡®Goblins?¡¯ she asked. ¡®Pretty much.¡¯ I responded. ¡®Maybe I¡¯ve seen too much anime, but they aren¡¯t going to...you know, if they catch any of the women in the fort?¡¯ ¡®They reproduce asexually, and therefore have no sexual predilections of any kind.¡¯ responded Vera, catching the subtext. ¡®Though they may break all of your bones and flay you alive until your heart gives out from the pain and stress.¡¯ ¡®That almost sounds worse.¡¯ ¡®Well, they worship an evil god named Abaddon, who takes pleasure in the pain and suffering of others, even non sapients. They work as low cost mercenaries for anyone willing to hire them, even criminal organizations, in order to cover basic living expenses while engaging in the torture of their enemies that they see as an act of worship.¡¯ ¡®The Demon of Wrath, Abaddon? Why do they have to be Demon worshipers?¡¯ ¡®Freedom of Religion for sapient beings is a fundamental tenant of the rules of the System¡¯s interaction with sapient beings.¡¯ ¡®I think that was a rhetorical question, Vera.¡¯ I said. Both I and Olivia fired on the incoming enemies without thinking, killing another dozen enemies. At this point the battle was pretty much a twisted, endless version of Galaga. ¡®So, know any weaknesses of theirs we can exploit?¡¯ Olivia asked Vera. ¡®Not really. They don¡¯t wear any armor, so you don¡¯t need to use very powerful weapons, but other than that you should avoid them. In terms of your Paradigm, even the weakest of them have a strength in the thirties.¡¯ ¡®How did they get so strong at that size?¡¯ I asked. Most of my soldiers didn¡¯t even have a strength in that range. ¡®Their bodies naturally produce Niirik. In fact, they were the original source of the drug, as the System learned about niirik when the System was introduced to their homeworld.¡¯ ¡®I think I¡¯ll stick to the synthetic stuff, instead of harvesting it from the corpses of those we kill.¡¯ ¡®A common moral decision.¡¯ ¡®Still, doesn¡¯t sound like a good way to win a war.¡¯ Olivia added. ¡®Surely the GCA could find better mercs.¡¯ ¡®It isn¡¯t about winning the war. It¡¯s about demoralizing the enemy so that they surrender. Right now, the GCA wants the human race to surrender so that they can be enslaved. Humanity, however, has so far presented a near universal will to fight back. So they hired Solin to break that will.¡¯ I continued firing on the enemy for the next ten minutes before my arm was getting sore from holding it up to aim. Seeing that the enemy wasn¡¯t getting any closer to the wall, and that the Solin wouldn¡¯t be in range for another ten minutes, I sat down to take a break. I brought up my market screen and shipped in a ham sandwich and some french fries from the free restaurant in town and started eating. ¡°You¡¯re going to eat now?¡± Asked Lord Tarn, standing beside me, continuing his fire on the enemy. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. ¡°Thirteen thousand Solin will be here in ten minutes. I wanted to be well rested when they get here.¡± ¡°That many?¡± he asked, then stopped firing and sat down beside me, laying down his mostly empty staff. ¡°Mind if I try some of that fried root vegetable?¡± ¡°Sure, have as much as you want.¡± I handed him the basket of fires. ¡°In fact, try some of this.¡± I bought a bottle of ketchup along with another basket of fries and handed him the ketchup. After trying it he nodded. ¡°These aren¡¯t that bad, especially with this sauce. While they are properly salted, they are a bit under-cooked and greasy for my taste, but I can see why you bought them.¡± ¡°They¡¯re called french fries. Several of the restaurants in my town make them, and you can order them from there if you are willing to pay the energy to teleport them in.¡± ¡°I may need to try that.¡± He dipped another fry in ketchup and put it in his mouth. After I finished eating I stretched. ¡°Well, they¡¯ll be here soon. Good luck.¡± Tarn nodded, setting down his mostly eaten basket of fries. ¡°You too.¡± He picked up his staff and started firing again. Less than a minute later, the Grilk all but stopped coming as thousands of Goblins and over one hundred Jotun sprinted at the walls. I opened automatic fire on them, and Tarn started firing medium radius area effect spells again. They came at us faster than they could be mowed down. Soon they were trying to climb the walls. The electric wires that the fort had wrapped around the outside as a deterrent for wild animals were turned on at maximum power, and, although it killed hundreds of invaders, every one that grabbed a wire managed to damage the grid somewhat. Soon, gaps appeared in the wire mesh and they started climbing without impediment, often times using their weapons to overcome the silicon grease that had been smeared near the top of the wall. It only took a few minutes before they reached the top and, though the soldiers tried to shoot any that made it over, there were soon too many topping the wall to stop all of them. We started hearing the screams of our people as limbs were lost and bowels were split open. The Solin all had looks of glee on their faces as they used their clubs to cave in the skulls of anyone they could catch, civilian or combatant. Even the civilians joined in on the combat at that point, though their weapons tended to be inferior to what we had. They only managed to kill an equal number of Solin compared to those the Solin killed. ¡°I¡¯m going to go clean out the town!¡± I shouted at Tarn and he nodded as I jumped off the wall. I ran at a group of Solin that were removing the fingers of one of the Alf women in town. Now I understood why they had no children here. I fired a round into the heads of each of them and they collapsed. I didn¡¯t have any medical abilities to treat the wounds of others, and though I was sure I could make one, I didn¡¯t have the time. I ignored the woman who was wrapping a cloth around her hand to stop the bleeding and picked up a sword one of the goblins were carrying, as melee weapons couldn¡¯t really be locked to a user, and kept running. I vaulted debris and slid under wagons as more Solin took shots to their heads, ending their rampage. That¡¯s when I heard a crash, and saw a Jotun fall through the wall. Several others were shoulder checking the wall elsewhere, and soon the Solin and what Grilk were left were flooding through the holes the Jotun had made. The few fighters we had left still fought, but one by one they started going down. As I fired into the nearest opening, hoping to stop the enemies pouring in, I saw Tarn, who was surrounded and on the ground, launch a wave of earthen spikes around himself, spearing the enemy. Before he could prepare another spell, though, a Jotun ran up and kicked him like a football, driving him backwards by five meters into the outer wall. He looked like he had several broken bones, and I thought the enemy was about to finish him off before he disappeared. Of course he had prepared an emergency teleport. He probably had a safe room somewhere that was stocked with food, water, and medical supplies. That¡¯s why I built Sanctuary after all, though I built it for my non-combatant people too. As the sounds of screaming filled the air from all of the humans and Alf that had been left alive long enough to be tortured, I saw Di firing her rail pistol at a group of Solin. Several of them were hit, but only a few of them were killed or knocked unconscious as they stalked towards her. She was a terrible shot, after all. I would need to take her to the shooting range when this was over. I ran at the group, firing wildly as I went. I didn¡¯t care where I hit them as long as I didn¡¯t hit Di. Several of them fell to the ground screaming, but they seemed to look happy because of it. Were they masochists or was this a religious thing? Either way I didn¡¯t care as I stepped on their throats to end their cries of pleasure. ¡°Are you all right?¡± I asked. ¡°Yes, I¡­behind you.¡± I looked behind me to see three more Solin pop up from behind one of the trucks the mercs had parked in the fort. I fired on them, then all of the ones that replaced them, then the ones that replaced those. Di also fired, and I could tell her aim was getting better, but there were just too many enemies. I doubted that more than a hundred living humans or Alf still remained in the area, even if you counted the traitor on their side. ¡°Fuckin¡¯ Terrorist piece of shit!¡± I heard Paul yell from nearby. He was currently using a bloody battle axe from one of the downed Solin to carve up any enemies that got near him. After carving up more than a hundred Solin, a Jotun ran at him and he charged. ¡®Of course they have to be terrorists,¡¯ I thought. ¡®The human race hadn¡¯t had enough of that twisted ideology already and now that we had started to come together regardless of religion or politics, the aliens brought more with them.¡¯ I could only think of one time Terrorism had been used for good, and even that was debatable and a religious fable, not verified history. Though it did give me an idea. ¡°Fine, you want terrorism, I¡¯ll give you terrorism.¡± As I fired on any enemies I saw, somehow keeping them at bay, I started a new program. It was simple. I loaded the biometric data for identifying Alfs and Humans into the program, then told it that if the nanites contacted an animal cell that wasn¡¯t one of those, it should kill it, then continue looking for more cells. I considered naming the program ¡°Cloud of Death¡± like it was some RPG spell, but given my inspiration, I had a better idea. ¡°Save program as ¡®Angel of Death¡¯.¡± ¡°Yes, save the program.¡± I then used the program, releasing all of the nanites I had left in my body into a cloud which covered the area. Soon the Solin near me started to collapse, their eyes and mouth bleeding, and pain racking their bodies. Some of the other Solin started to laugh at them, but soon they too collapsed in agony as their eyes, ears, nose, mouth, throat and lungs started to bleed from the airborne attack. Soon, the screams of pain of the enemy drowned out the screams of my allies, though they lasted only seconds as they drowned in their own blood. I collapsed to the ground, exhausted from the battle and suddenly realizing the horror of what I just did. I ignored the money. I had plenty. ¡®Yes, I won. But at what cost?¡¯ ¡®Roughly three billion two hundred million nanites and about three hundred megawatt hours of electricity.¡¯ replied Vera. ¡®There was no monetary cost for the use of Angel of Death.¡¯ I was starting to dislike Vera. ¡®Please tell me I didn¡¯t start another plague.¡¯ Now that I thought about it, that attack could ruin the area for the rest of time. ¡®No, you didn¡¯t create a new plague. System nanites reset to default after leaving a host if one of three things happen. One, they fulfill their purpose. Two, they run out of energy. Or three, fifteen minutes have passed and they weren¡¯t ordered to ignore this timer. As you told them to keep looking for targets, they will all either run out of power or return to normal after fifteen minutes.¡¯ ¡®Good.¡¯ I knelt there for a while as the people that still lived ran around rendering medical assistance. I realized that this was my fault. If I hadn¡¯t blocked my memories of the last battle I would have prepared better. I would have come up with new ways to make the military stronger and fight back, and we may have won without having to use a WMD bioweapon on the enemy. ¡®How many of my memories am I missing?¡¯ If I had done it once there was a possibility that I had done it before that. ¡®I can¡¯t give you a count. That would defeat the purpose of blocking the memories.¡¯ ¡®But it wasn¡¯t just the defense of the mines?¡¯ Vera paused for a moment. ¡®No, there were others.¡¯ I nodded. ¡®Vera, I want you to unblock all of my memories and not block any others in the future unless it is absolutely necessary. Got it?¡¯ ¡®Yes, sir.¡¯ she said and my memories came flooding back. Not just the fight at the mines, but embarrassing moments from my childhood. Failings in the bedroom. Getting dumped by my first girlfriend because of those failings. Being bullied as a child. Multiple times that I got beat up while running around the city playing super hero because I thought the System made me special. Once I figured out that Vera could block memories, I had basically become addicted to it. With all of these missing memories changing how I thought, was I even me anymore? I got up and walked to the teleporter, unable to jump there due to only having regenerated a single point of mana since slaughtering tens of thousands. Di stopped me as I got to it and asked if she can do anything to help. I responded with a simple quote, then teleported back to town, then back to Sanctuary, where I could do something to help people instead of murder them. Paul walked over to the teleporter. ¡°What did he say to you?¡± he asked Di. ¡°He seemed pretty upset.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure. I think it¡¯s a quote I heard before. ¡®Behold, I have become Shiva, destroyer of worlds.¡¯.¡± Chapter 22 Di¡¯s Perspective: A month later Greg still hadn¡¯t shown himself. I had returned home a few times to find supper on the table, and notes apologizing for not being there for me, notes which Greg had left, but he never came home while I was there. I tried sending him a message, only to get a return message from Vera. ¡®I¡¯m sorry, but Greg has asked me to intercept all of his communications, as he is working on something very important and can¡¯t be disturbed.¡¯ ¡®He¡¯s been doing the same thing for the last several weeks. How can I be there for him if I can¡¯t even give him a call and ask how he¡¯s doing?¡¯ ¡®I¡¯m sorry, but I don¡¯t think he wants to talk to anyone right now.¡¯ ¡®But...I¡¯m his girlfriend. I need to be there for him. He needs me.¡¯ There was a pause for about ten seconds before Vera responded. ¡®I probably shouldn¡¯t do this, but since you are his significant other and he has introduced you as a psychologist in charge of dealing with psychological issues resulting from combat, I will bend the rules just this once by telling you the parts of his search history I think you need to know about.¡¯ Vera sent me a list of search terms. They mostly followed one of three categories. The first was the biblical story of Moses, including fictional portrayals, and papers about it. The second was war crimes, the Nuremberg trials, and their alien equivalents. The third was philosophical papers on the morality of killing, including the use of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Obviously he was doing a lot of soul searching in the wake of the battle, and was deeply concerned about his use of the weapon, so I told Vera to notify me the second she thought he would be willing to talk and left him alone. The Town, City, and Sanctuary were all doing well. Paul had distributed the weapons we recovered from the battle to our troops, the City¡¯s troops, and Fort Solinan¡¯s troops, with those that weren¡¯t distributed going into the warehouse. All of the humans that had participated in the battle had recovered or revived within a week, except for one man who took a Jotun¡¯s club to the head. The System took over two weeks to reconstruct his brain, restart his organs, and restore all of the missing memories. The Alfs hadn¡¯t been so lucky. Over half of their people were dead, with all but a few of the other half being maimed and tortured by the Solin. It had taken Bob over a week before he had cloned enough body parts to restore all of the missing ones. Tim and his people had come to town, with Tim moving into Sanctuary, so they were able to do all of the surgery. Still, the people of Fort Solinan would need time to recover, so their economy wouldn¡¯t be producing any excess goods for a while. It turned out that the Fort wasn¡¯t even meant to be a target. We had just attacked the force that was being sent to terrorize the city, and they had sent their full forces against us in retaliation, seeing the Fort as no more than a minor hurtle. This had cut the number of enemies the City had to deal with in half, though they still suffered thousands of casualties. Greg had set up automated processes for gaining citizenship in Anarchist¡¯s Redoubt and moving to Sanctuary, so more than ten thousand people had moved from the city to this town, many of them renting an apartment in Sanctuary. His auto-miners were rapidly increasing in number, so there was no shortage of rooms as the Outpost core estimated that it could support twenty thousand people at the end of the month, the entire population of Anarchist¡¯s Redoubt and all of its outposts. He had expanded it to have massive warehouses, produce more food than it could ever need, and even have two sauna¡¯s, two gyms, and an Olympic sized swimming pool. It even had a Nanite Forge 2 that could make anything you might need, and the mineral stores to do that. Obviously, he wanted to have not just a safe room where people can survive if such a battle occurred again, but a place where people can live and thrive. Tim¡¯s group had set up in a clinic in Santuary and were doing a massive amount of business selling stat-improving drugs and genetic serums. Essentially, for every stat and many other traits like talents, the System ranked your genes in that area as Poor, Average, Good, Excellent, and Master. While it was hard to put numbers to the effects of talents and other traits, for skills a Poor rating meant that your natural softcap for the skill was ten, twenty for average, thirty for good, forty for excellent, and fifty for master. The stat enhancers could then get you another ten to fifteen points without massive effort at raising them. The only person we knew was at that limit, though, was Paul, who had Master strength genes and, thanks to the use of Niirik, was at sixty two strength before the battle and sixty three after it, as he had tried fighting a Jotun. At the end of the month, however, Greg posted a message on the Sanctuary bulletin board that he would be holding a press conference in Sanctuary¡¯s theater, and asked me to come home the night before so that he could show me something. When I got there, I saw him sitting on the couch talking to a beautiful younger woman in a skin tight suit of underarmor. I wasn¡¯t sure that she was even eighteen yet, but if this turned into some sort of desire for a three way I was prepared to let him down easy to not hurt his feelings. Not that I¡¯d never experimented with women, but she was just too young. ¡°So, who¡¯s this?¡± I asked worriedly. ¡°Samantha, this is Di, my girlfriend. Di, this is Samantha, my sister.¡± We stared at each other, sizing each other up for a few seconds before she spoke. ¡°You don¡¯t mean the Di that helped you infiltrate that ecoterrorist group, do you?¡± Samantha asked, and Greg nodded. ¡°I thought she was older.¡± ¡°I¡¯m fifty five, though thanks to the System I look like younger. And his sister, huh? You don¡¯t exactly look like it.¡± While Greg was average looking and undeniably European in his ancestry, this woman seemed to have a bit of Asian DNA and was much more attractive than you would expect from a relative of Greg¡¯s. ¡°Well, half sister.¡± Greg said. ¡°My parents got a divorce when I was eight and dad got remarried to her mom.¡± That made a lot more sense. ¡°So, Samantha,¡± I asked. ¡°Why haven¡¯t I seen you before? Were you one of the people that just moved here from the City?¡± ¡°Oh, that¡¯s because I¡¯ve been living in Chicago.¡± She went on to explain how the criminal gangs had taken over after the government collapsed, and how she had gotten a job working for a former hidden front, now legitimate front, of the Russian mafia. ¡°The pay wasn¡¯t much, but their benefits package was the best, and I love Russian food, so it was a no brainer. Also, a guy that used to harass me joined up with the Yakuza, so they weren¡¯t an option.¡± The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. After Chicago was invaded, with the gangs joining together to stop the invaders, she decided she wanted to get somewhere safer. She talked to Greg and he offered to pay off her debts and expenses so that she could leave and move here. ¡°So now she owes me around two hundred and fifty thousand, and has agreed to pay me two hundred and fifty per month until it is paid back, no interest.¡± I whistled. ¡°What did you do to get two hundred and fifty thousand in debt to the mafia? Gambling? Drugs?¡± Surely she couldn¡¯t have racked up that large of a debt. Samantha smiled. ¡°I would prefer not to say.¡± I guess I¡¯d just have to keep wondering. ¡°Anyway, I was thinking of hanging around town and working for a few weeks as I get my bearings. I have strength and endurance in the twenties, so I was thinking of joining the military.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sure Paul would love to have you join. Can you fight?¡± Samantha shrugged. ¡°Never had to, if you don¡¯t count school bullies. But I¡¯m willing to learn. Greg even gave me these.¡± There was a distortion and a rail pistol appeared in her left hand, with a mono-molecular sword in her right. Both of these were no doubt salvaged from the recent battle. ¡°Now I just need some decent armor. The skills he gave me just aren¡¯t good enough.¡± She unequipped her weapons and they returned to her inventory. After a bit more small talk and an offer to introduce her to Paul tomorrow morning she stood up. ¡°Well, I¡¯d better leave you two for now and head to the apartment Greg is loaning me. You probably have some catching up to do.¡± She started towards the door but tripped over the coffee table, knocking my cup off of it. ¡°Ow.¡± she said, sounding somewhat like she had forgotten to say it, and stood up. ¡°Sorry about that.¡± ¡°You always have been clumsy.¡± said Greg. ¡°Maybe Paul can help with that. I¡¯m sure morning jogs will help.¡± Samantha nodded. ¡°Yep, sure it will. Well, bye.¡± She went straight for the door and left. I looked at Greg, and he wrapped his arms around me as we fell towards the couch. The next morning we woke up snuggling in bed, his arm draped across my stomach. ¡°Good morning.¡± he said. ¡°It wasn¡¯t a bad night either.¡± I answered. ¡°Care to go again?¡± He slid his hand up to my chest and rubbed it slightly with his thumb. ¡°Unfortunately, I can¡¯t. The press conference is in an hour, and if we got started we might not be finished by then, much less be ready for the conference.¡± I laughed, ¡°Ah, the curse of high Endurance.¡± He smiled and got out of bed. ¡°How about I make it up to you, and take you somewhere nice for lunch. Or, I guess supper if we¡¯re heading to Europe again. I¡¯d like to see what that place in Paris is doing with the lobster we sell them.¡± ¡°Well, I¡¯ll have to disappoint you. Barb told me about this cafe in Rome that she really liked, and I was hoping to head there.¡± ¡°Barb?¡± ¡°Tony¡¯s girlfriend. They went on a tour of Vatican City and Rome last week.¡± Back before the System, the Vatican only used their teleporter to secretly move people around the planet. Once the System became widespread, however, they opened it up to be a public transporter so that they could earn more money. ¡°In that case, then, how about making us reservations around our one P.M.. We¡¯ll meet at twelve and take the teleporter over.¡± With that he left for the shower. I briefly considered joining him as all of the showers in the master suites of the luxury housing were large enough for it, but given the likelihood that would start something distracting, I waited until he got out to get one. At eight o¡¯clock I sat on a folding chair on the stage of the theater along with the rest of the ¡°town council¡±. While the seats had originally been simply flat areas carved out of stone, they had quickly had extra wide cinema seats placed there. Now the theater could seat ten thousand people, half of the maximum number of people Sanctuary could comfortably seat. Anyone who wanted to cover it as Press had gotten a front row seat and were no doubt using the Surveillance skill to record what they saw and heard for future editing. Greg stepped up to the podium. ¡°Hello, everyone, thanks for coming.¡± He paused for a moment to gather his thoughts. ¡°Nice to see that there are people from Anarchist Redoubt, the City, and I even think I see someone from Fort Solinan.¡± He nodded to a Tundra Alf woman in the front row. ¡°I have some major changes to Sanctuary to announce. First, while I¡¯m sure most of you are familiar with the gyms, spas, and swimming pool I added, I¡¯ve also drastically expanded the space here enough that it can now house twenty thousand people, and I will be building more housing once the current housing starts to run low. Second, I hired a medical team to oversee the production of medical treatments. While they will be producing normal drugs for treating injuries, the fact that all of us will heal without it means that isn¡¯t their priority. They will, instead, be focusing on gene treatments which can fix genetic flaws or enhance natural talent, as well as drugs which can allow a person to boost or rapidly develop their stats and physical abilities, like manual dexterity. These drugs are entirely non-addictive physically, though you should probably exercise caution to not overly rely on them. With their use I¡¯m sure that we can become strong enough to face any challenge.¡± This reminded everyone of the invasion, and they nodded. ¡°Third is something that I have kept a secret from everyone until now. I am happy to announce that Sanctuary now has a dungeon.¡± There was a murmur from the crowd. ¡°I don¡¯t mean the kind you keep criminals in. I mean the kind you see in video games. There is a room near both of the Gyms which has been closed, but will be opened after this conference, which holds a teleporter. These teleporters are locked to only send people to one destination, teleporters within the first level of the dungeon. The first level is a maze.¡± A map of it appeared on the display screen above the stage. ¡°You and your party, created by the Party skill I made, will appear in one of the four corners, and will need to find your way to the center. Animals have been let loose within the maze, and have built nests in these sixteen rooms.¡± Red outlines appeared around sixteen of the rooms within the maze. ¡°Each nest has a special version of the species, a mini boss if you will, though exactly what makes it special varies wildly, and will change in time, as the Conservation Core overseeing the dungeon will randomly choose an enhancement to give the creature when it is created. The other rooms may include rewards or traps, again randomized by the Conservation Core. If you manage to make it to the center of the maze...¡± A large room that only had one way in and a room attached to the opposite wall was highlighted with a blue box. ¡°You will face a random animal that has two enhancements. This boss must be defeated to get to the room beyond which includes a guaranteed reward that is worth more than anything else you will find in the maze and a teleporter which can take you either back to Sanctuary or to level two. While I won¡¯t tell you what the other levels are like, know that only Earth animals are used in the maze, but alien creatures will be used in the other levels. It is my hope that this Dungeon will benefit the people of Sanctuary, allowing them to practice combat in case there is another battle, exercise, entertain themselves, as well as gain things that they might find valuable, including animal parts. Anything you get in the dungeon is yours to keep, assuming you didn¡¯t commit a crime to get it, and everything there will be rapidly replaced by the Conservation Core to guarantee that you always have a reason to go. Though the chests will have a delay to refill them, and will only give one prize per party per trip into the dungeon, so that you actually have to put in effort to get rewarded.¡± I suspected that he had the Conservation core mass cloning animals and at least one dedicated Nanite Core and miner combination gathering resources and turning them into goods people will want. ¡°Fourth, I am starting to sell these on the local market, though everyone who rents housing in Sanctuary will get one for free.¡± He held up his arm to show that he was wearing a bracelet that I hadn¡¯t seen before. A picture of it also appeared above us. ¡°This is an emergency teleport band. The System has multiple grades of it, but I will be selling all five and giving one of the best version to everyone that lives here in Sanctuary. The bracelet is a short range teleporter that is meant for emergency evacuation. It can contain up to three sets of coordinates, and if you are within the bracelet¡¯s range you or your assistant AI can activate it, teleporting you to the location of your choice, or the only one in range if only one is. The bracelets have ranges of approximately one, three, ten, thirty, and one hundred kilometers. They will burn themselves out after a single use, however, as the circuit inside is designed to maximize range, not longevity, so you can¡¯t use it to just teleport around at will. The system has other items for that.¡± This was probably what Tarn had used to escape to his safe room during the battle. ¡°Now, are there any questions?¡± The reporters instantly started asking dozens of questions, talking over themselves to try and get information. The people in the crowd were also asking questions, though of each other, not Greg. Most of the press questions were about the last two points, but a few had asked about the first two. By the time he finished answering them, it was eleven thirty. He excused himself and left the stage. As he drank a bottle of water back stage and fielded a few more specific questions from the council, I noticed Olivia and Paul communicating with others. Paul no doubt wanted to use the dungeon to train his troops, and Olivia probably wanted to do the same with her mages, though she probably was also enough of a nerd that the idea of going on an actual dungeon delve was a dream of hers. Soon, however, Greg excused himself and we left for the teleporter. On the way he gave me two of the bracelets, a one kilometer one to take me home in case I ran into trouble in Sanctuary, and a one hundred kilometer one in case I was on the surface and there was an emergency. It had been programmed with both our home¡¯s location and the revival rooms of the Sanctuary clinic, in case I was killed. We made our way to the surface teleporter, as Sanctuary¡¯s teleporter only lead there, and left for Vatican City. Chapter 23 After our date we returned to the town. Since the attack much of our city¡¯s building industry had went to expanding the town. The first thing I did was relocate Gary and Bob thirty meters underground, then have Tony build a building on top of it. The storage building, RVs and trailers were moved, as everyone in them now lived in the apartments in town or Sanctuary, and the area was flattened out so a large city hall could be built there. The building had three above ground stories and two underground stories. The first underground level was a police station, which was mostly used as a place to let brawlers cool off and a place for serious suspects to wait while the investigation was under way, which usually only took hours at most. Simon had four deputies now, and at least one of them sat in the jail at all times, in case someone was brought in or a civilian needed to contact them. The second underground level was where Gary and Bob lived, and where we moved much of the city¡¯s storage, having dug out room for a Food Warehouse 3, Warehouse 3, Bulk Warehouse 3, and Chemical Warehouse 3 using two of the autominers. The above ground buildings that we used before that were then repurposed into either stores or housing, with all of the goods transferring to the new warehouses. It also housed all of the Nanite Forges. The first above ground level was a lobby and a set of offices for the various departments. First was the Department of Education, Di¡¯s office. Second was the Department of System Affairs, Olivia¡¯s office, where she controlled the nanite forges, including the Nanite Forge 2 that I had bought from the System, and the trade terminals that were spread throughout the city. Third was the Department of Leasing, where we hired someone to oversee the leasing of equipment to the people, as that was my duty until then. On the opposite side of the hall was the Department of the Militia, Paul¡¯s office, though he usually had one of his lieutenants manning it, as it was basically serving as a recruitment office and Paul preferred being a drill Sargent rather than working a desk. Beside that was the Department of Construction, Where Tony and Tom worked when they actually decided to do desk work, and beside that was the Department of Agriculture, that basically oversaw Bob and made sure that he matched demands for our people and the people who bought our food. Unlike most town governments we didn¡¯t have a tax or tag office, nor any kind of licensing bureau. Some people joked that, as we had a government we should change the name to ¡°Minarchist¡¯s Redoubt¡±, but the fact that we made all of our money by selling or renting things made it little more than a joke. The second above ground level was mostly school rooms and a nursery, as some of the recent people brought in children they had adopted or, occasionally, their own children. Di had hired people to watch children under five and create and oversee education plans for anyone from five to sixteen, as, with the system, everyone had a computer in their head that they could use to learn. Various groups also borrowed these rooms to practice certain skills, mostly the safe-to-use-inside System skills like Inventory and Market Screen. The third level was my office and a city council chambers where we could hold meetings once a month to hear from the people. So far I had missed the first meeting, but I might be there for the second. I also hadn¡¯t been to my office, there, but my secretary had overseen the move. The rest of the construction was split pretty evenly between Tony¡¯s group, that was making the wall taller and thicker to deal with the Jotun, and Tom¡¯s group, that was building a wall near St. Nicholas¡¯s and the hotel in case they were attacked. The city¡¯s main teleporter had been moved to the hotel and replaced with a Teleporter 2, which could move one hundred people at a time, though it was rarely used for that. We did encourage this use, though, by setting daily half-price teleports to other cities where we knew they had a Teleporter 2. I hadn¡¯t really done any of the work myself, just sent out orders and answered a few questions. Tony and Tom handled most of it. I concentrated on Sanctuary. With this new wave of expansion we were gathering a lot of international interest, partially because we had handled the invasion the best out of everyone. We even expanded Bob¡¯s cloning tanks to make sure that he could make replacement limbs for everyone that lost them in the invasion. When Di and I went to Rome, I mentioned who we were and we were offered VIP service at the restaurant. The Mayor of Rome was at the restaurant, so we briefly talked with him. He promised to have his people arrange a formal meeting between the two of us. They had mostly survived the attack with the help of Vatican City. With the world rebuilding after the attack, I had focused on strengthening our militaries, as a second invasion was inevitable. Several cities had sent troops to counterattack the GCA bases near them, and almost all the forces were wiped out. I bought an extra Nanite Forge 2 and used all of Sanctuary¡¯s excess production capability to start making entry level System weapons and armor. The armor mostly went to Paul to test out, including a few different types of shield generator, some hardened armor, and some ablative armor. As we already had rail guns and melee weapons, however, most of the weapons were sold on the market for half the System cost, so that the various cities could have better weapons. I also bought over a million rail pistols, as no one could figure out how to hack them, and hacked them the hard way by having the five nanite forge ones I made for this purpose spend three minutes each replacing every part that was locked out with new parts, then sold them back to the market for an extra five zerka over the buy price each. I could only hack 14400 pistols every 30 days per nanite forge, or seventy two thousand per month, but that earned me an extra three hundred and sixty thousand per month and put many low cost System weapons on the market. While I refused to give the Angel of Death power to anyone, I put my Warrior¡¯s Armor and Virtual Armor skills on the market for free, in case anyone wanted them. My other defensive powers were already available through the System and I didn¡¯t want to give out mana bullet yet. All of that, other than the date, happened in the background before the big Sanctuary reveal, with me focusing on Sanctuary. Now that we had the infrastructure, I decided to start training. First things first, I actually did my daily quest. Surprisingly, it actually gave me some dexterity, though only one point. I considered trying to solo the dungeon for practice, but it was extremely busy as it had just opened today. I could swing by Tim¡¯s and get some boosters to improve my stats, but as I didn¡¯t have any stats that were below ten that seemed like a waste. I did send in an order for the good quality gene serum, with the recommended one hundred passes to iron out any problems, in case I had some bad genes, but that would probably take a few days. Stolen novel; please report. Unsure what to do now, I went back home and started watching lectures on physics, including alien lecturers. Apparently, while the humanoid body type was common it was far from universal. I binge watched, or should I say intensely studied, science for the next few days. Despite the fact that I hadn¡¯t been seen for days I had done so much work around Sanctuary that no one cared that I took a break to grind my skills. I maxed out my physics and got my quantum physics to eight, my cosmic physics to six, and even got a point of universal physics. After that I was able to rebuild some of my powers to make them work better, including my teleport power and making it work without a nearby teleporter. I also realized that the different Inventory powers didn¡¯t supercede each other, as I maxed out Inventory, got Inventory 2 to level 6, and made Inventory 3 at level 1. That meant I had one cubic meter of normal storage space, two hundred and sixteen cubic meters of airtight storage space, and one thousand cubic meters of space where time was all but stopped. You would think I would just use the best one, but the higher level powers used exponentially more power. My own energy generation was barely able to keep up with the power draw from just having them, and if I went much further I would need to install cybernetic power sources just to keep up. There were several forcefield like powers that I could try, and I could try to learn to make portals, but I felt like that was enough upgrading of the skills for now. I teleported back to the surface to go see how Samantha was doing. I found her at the mines, running around the wall. ¡°Come on, Summers, you¡¯re holding everyone up. Pick up the pace.¡± She was about thirty meters behind the others and they were still pulling away. ¡°Is she that bad?¡± I asked Paul as I walked up. ¡°Only her dexterity. Pretty sure the training got her Strength and Endurance to max out at thirty. A bit weird that she kind of hit a wall there. Most guys are still able to push through and get a bit more performance, but she just can¡¯t do it. Her dexterity though is only an eight, and it¡¯s barely rising. I asked Tim about it and he said she probably has poor genes in that area, and recommended that she get them fixed. I don¡¯t know, though. The human average pre-system was ten, so even if she¡¯ll never get past that point she won¡¯t be clumsy any more. She just won¡¯t be fast or able to dodge that well. I¡¯m thinking of making her one of the team¡¯s heavies, one of the guys that carry the big guns. That is, if she sticks with it.¡± I climbed up on the wall and joined them for their last loop, running just ahead of her to encourage her to give just a little more. As they were mostly done when I got there they stopped after a few loops to catch their breath, while I was just starting to breath heavy. Sam was only breathing heavy as well. High endurance would do that, I guess. I hopped off the wall in one of the sections that was still only three meters tall and ran over to talk to Paul. Other parts of the wall were being expanded to ten meters tall and a meter thick, with a low friction coating and full sensor package on the outside, but here it was still the default half by three meters. ¡°Hey, Paul, you mind if I join your training for now? At least the physical stuff. I was hoping to get in better shape.¡± Paul shrugged. ¡°Sure, on one condition.¡± ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± ¡°I want five dungeon spots a day for my men. The teleporter only lets a team enter every thirty minutes so that it doesn¡¯t get overcrowded, but because of that I can¡¯t ever get a team in without having them stand in line for an hour.¡± ¡°Let me check.¡± I sent a message to the Sanctuary Outpost Core asking for the data about the Dungeon Teleporter use and about a minute later I was able to look through today¡¯s data. I had installed a quantum link in my head, which was surprisingly not painful, so that I could connect to it from anywhere. ¡°Are you willing to do night raids?¡± I asked him, seeing that most of the unused spots were for between eight pm and six am. ¡°I guess so. Would do the troops some good. So, when should we go there?¡± I reserved five spots for them. ¡°How does three am to five thirty sound? That will get you there before the teams start showing up at six or six thirty.¡± Paul nodded. ¡°Looks like the men are going to be losing some sleep.¡± As it was already six PM, he walked over to the troops. ¡°Listen up, recruits. Your exercise is done for the day. Get something to eat, then get some rest. You¡¯ll all be meeting me at the base teleporter at two forty five in full combat loadout. We¡¯re going on a little dungeon dive.¡± Some of the men cheered. ¡°Don¡¯t be late. If I have to come and get you you¡¯ll be carrying the loot out in a backpack, not your inventory. Got it?¡± There was a chorus of ¡°yes, sirs¡±. ¡°Good, dismissed.¡± The men stood up and I walked over. ¡°Mind if I join you? I¡¯ll stick to the rear if you want, I¡¯ve just never been through the dungeon except in VR while I was building it.¡± Paull nodded. ¡°Fair enough. Meet us there with your gear. Including any food you¡¯ll need. The men usually carry three days on them at any time, just in case, and I want to see how deep they can push. In fact.¡± Paul motioned to Sam, and she came over. ¡°Greg¡¯s going with us into the dungeon, hopefully just as an observer like me, as you people are the fighters. I want you to help him get his gear together.¡± Sam nodded. ¡°Yes, sir.¡± ¡°In that case, see you in the morning.¡± With that, Paul walked off. ¡°I actually needed to talk to you. Let¡¯s head back and you can help me get ready, then I¡¯ll see if Di wants to go to that steakhouse in the city with us.¡± An hour later all of Greg¡¯s combat gear was sitting in his inventory under a special loadout. He had bought a staff from Tarn¡¯s cousin, and it was fully charged and in there. He also had enough food and water for a week and cooking supplies in his Inventory 2. Other than that, he had his rail pistol, a mono-sword, underarmor, and a full body suit of a type of titanium/aluminum/carbon alloy, a type of lightweight body armor that, at only ten kilos of mass, could stop a few rail pistol rounds. This was the standard light armor the militia gave its soldiers. Sam¡¯s loadout was similar, though her inventory was only the first variety so she only carried three days of field rations. Her armor¡¯s alloy also included a good bit of osmium. While it added five kilos to the mass, it made the armor capable of taking a full hit from a Rail Sniper or particle beam rifle, the second one of which she had an example of slung over her shoulder. It weighed around thirty kilos on its own, but was one of the best types of weapons you could get for armor penetration. After they were done with their loadouts she unequipped her clothes, as they could interfere with some of the scans, and laid down on a Diagnostic table. Greg turned away from her and brought up a set of holographic scans. A few minutes later, he shook his head. ¡°Nothing wrong with the hardware that I can see. It¡¯s probably just because you¡¯ve never walked before.¡± ¡°But I¡¯ve watched over a hundred hours of people jogging, walking, running, even doing gymnastics. The System should have given me enough XP to level up those skills. Why am I still tripping over my own feet and unable to run properly?¡± Greg shook his head, spinning his chair around. ¡°No idea. Though we do know that skills soft cap at the level of their controlling skill, or in the case of level zero skills like walking, their dominant stat. With your DEX at eight, you may just be at your limit.¡± Sam sighed and reequipped her clothes. ¡°In that case, how can I level up my DEX quickly? I don¡¯t want to be a burden on the team.¡± Greg thought again, then smiled. ¡°Well if the hardware¡¯s fine, aka, your body is flexible enough and there isn¡¯t a nerve problem, maybe it¡¯s a software issue. You want to try a gymnastics program? There¡¯s one in the System you can try.¡± Samantha nodded. ¡°Fine. I¡¯ll do it tonight instead of sleeping. Send me the file. For now, though, let¡¯s go eat. Di will get mad if we¡¯re late.¡± She pointed to a clock on the wall that said ¡®7:55¡¯. We had eight o¡¯clock reservations. Chapter 24 I arrived at the mine early the next morning to see Samantha doing a handstand beside the teleporter. One of the other men was trying to outdo her by balancing even longer. I saw Paul approach and walked over to him. ¡°Bit chilly out here, isn¡¯t it?¡± I blew on my hands, as they and my head were the only things my under armor didn¡¯t cover and therefore couldn¡¯t keep warm. It was mid April, though, so it should warm up once the sun started to rise. ¡°I like it. Reminds me of when I was in Russia right after the Cold Wars ended.¡± He responded. ¡°So that¡¯s why they called it the cold war. Everyone was freezing.¡± He smiled at the joke. ¡°Since when could Samantha do a hand stand?¡± he asked, pointing at her. I shrugged. ¡°Don¡¯t know. I did try to get her to do some dexterity exercises and stretches last night. Maybe she figured it out then.¡± Paul didn¡¯t look like he accepted that answer. ¡°Summers, come here.¡± ¡°Yes sir,¡± she said, and took three steps with her hands before collapsing. She stood up and ran over. ¡°Problem, sir?¡± ¡°Tell me the truth. Did you use any enhancers last night?¡± I almost stepped in with an excuse, but she nodded. ¡°One dose of Niirik before I went to bed. It really loosened me up. It didn¡¯t really help my Strength or Endurance, but I got four points of Dexterity and another one from stretches and exercises.¡± Paul nodded. ¡°Where did you get it? Tim knows not to sell to any of you without permission. Using Boosts too early can stunt your growth and cause other problems. Did Greg give it to you?¡± Samantha started to pout. ¡°No. Tim was closed already before I thought about it, so I bought it from the System Market. Am I in trouble?¡± Paul sighed. ¡°Well, it doesn¡¯t look like you caused any permanent damage, but don¡¯t do it again until I give you permission, understood?¡± ¡°Yes, Sir.¡± she said, saluting him. ¡°As for the rest of you, you aren¡¯t going to touch any boosts until I say you can.¡± He spent the next five minutes lecturing the recruits about how he¡¯d seen various Boost drugs go wrong and sometimes even leave people worse off than they were before. The safest way to use them that he had found was to be almost at your limit before using them, sometimes at lower than recommended dose, to get the most out of your exercise. Which is one reason why he was trying to get them at or near their limits, so that they could safely continue training on their own, with boosts if they so choose. ¡°Well, now that that¡¯s settled, let¡¯s head out.¡± We teleported to AR, then to Sanctuary before everyone equipped their gear and we walked to the dungeon teleporter. His lieutenants would be leading four more teams in, every thirty minutes, but we got the first slot. ¡°Ok, I¡¯m not sure if any of you know it yet, but the Outpost Core here has a skill called Create Party that I made. It¡¯s also on the bulletin board. We all need to get it.¡± The skill was a bit different than most. The level was based on how efficiently it could transfer your data to others, but low levels would just make it slower to update of use more energy. You could form teams, squadrons, and other groups, and it would tell everyone in your group your HP, MP, SP, and status conditions as long as it was active, and anyone could sort their teammates out on their HUD, like an MMO video game. You could also send texts of voice chat through it and track your teammate¡¯s position, even placing a dot on your map for each one if you also got the ¡®map¡¯ skill from the System. ¡°The Dungeon uses this to figure out who¡¯s on the same team for the purpose of Loot and the teleporter. If we aren¡¯t all on the same team when we activate it, it will take the biggest team, and leave the others behind, as it only lets one team in every thirty minutes.¡± I invited everyone to my team once they had downloaded it, then made Paul the Team Leader. ¡°Each monster kill also earns Zerka after you pass the first level, to incentivize people to fight the hardest ones they can, so Paul will need to handle the loot rules too.¡± Once we were all teamed up, we stepped onto the teleporter. A minute later, the control panel turned on, and Paul pushed the button to send us down. We appeared in an empty room with a few glowing lights in the ceiling, meant to look like stars. They kept the room about as bright as the night of a full moon. A minute later Paul spoke up. ¡°Ok, everyone, I¡¯ve arranged the teams into three scout teams of four and a twelve person main team. The Mayor is technically part of the main team, but don¡¯t expect me or him to fight. He¡¯s just an observer, and I¡¯m just here to give orders to get you as deep into the dungeon as possible. Now, scout teams,¡± he pulled up a map of the level, the corner where we were being in the center of the map whenever it was added to everyone¡¯s HUD. On lower levels you would need to explore to automap it, or buy maps from others. ¡°This is the path we¡¯ll be taking to the center. I want you to check side passages to make sure we aren¡¯t going to get flanked. Treat this as an escort. We need to get to our objective, not wipe out the enemy.¡± The path he had designated went through three animal lairs before making it to the central boss room. We sat out, trying to keep the scout teams at least twenty meters ahead of us. Samantha was part of the main group, as her heavy weapon was for hitting stationary targets with maximum firepower, not dealing with ambushes and rapidly moving enemies. After about a hundred meters we heard the slight pops of railgun fire, the only noise coming from the small sonic booms the rounds produced. ¡°Enemy spotted. Looks like wharf rats.¡± said someone over the radio. They were actually one of the weaker animals down here. After a minute or so, the gunfire ended. ¡°Enemy neutralized. Continuing the search.¡± We kept walking and soon we were walking past dozens of large rat corpses. There wasn¡¯t anything worth keeping in them, so we left them behind. The Conservation Core collected any monster corpse that wasn¡¯t interacted with after thirty minutes, so there would be nothing but a bit of blood left there before long. They killed over three hundred more rats over the next hour, at which point Paul ordered everyone to stop except one scout team. The first Lair was ahead and they needed to see what was there and let us know. A few minutes later we received live video feed through the Party skill of over a hundred sleeping rats in a room with one that was maybe twice as big in the center. ¡°Looks like the boss,¡± one of the scouts sent over text, unwilling to speak lest he draw the attention of the rats. ¡°Yep,¡± said Paul. ¡°Ok, here¡¯s the plan. Main group will attack from here. Scout team, get to these three entrances.¡± The room had four entrances, and could be bypassed if needed, so they could make their way to the opposite side in a few minutes. ¡°No gun fire until we are ready, as it might wake the King. Use swords or punch them. Signal us once you are in position.¡± The two scouts with us nodded, while the other sent ¡®affirmative¡¯ and then made its way down the side corridor. Two minutes later everyone gave the signal and Paul ordered the attack. Twenty one of them opened fire with their rail pistols, as it was the only weapon they had, and Samantha aimed at the King. Just as she pulled the trigger, though, it disappeared and drop on her from above. The other rats swarmed at their enemy as she screamed, trying to pull it off of her as it bit into her left shoulder muscle. The rats started falling rapidly, most of them dying with only a few shots, as Samantha grabbed the King by the head, pulled it off of her, and squeezed, crushing its skull. She dropped the corpse on the ground and held her hand over the wound which shed surprisingly little blood. ¡°Damn.¡± she said as a silver layer of nanites closed the wound over, only after which she removed her hand. With the rest of the rats dead or dying, one of the other men, the closest thing to a medic they had, came over to check on her. ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± she said flexing the bitten shoulder with only minimal pain. ¡°It didn¡¯t get anything major like a blood vessel or tendon.¡± ¡°You sure?¡± he asked and she nodded. ¡°So, any idea how it could teleport?¡± asked one of the men. ¡°That would be pretty useful in a fight.¡± Everyone shrugged, then a twenty year old man spoke up. ¡°This is basically a video game dungeon, right? Usually monsters with magic have cores. Maybe we should check.¡± The others agreed that it might make sense to do that, and volunteered the guy that spoke up as the harvester. He carefully cut it open with his sword, and reached inside. After a minute or so of fishing around he found a small orb in the center of its chest. ¡°Anyone have the appraisal skill?¡± One guy nodded and looked at it. ¡°It¡¯s a mini teleport orb. It can move one person to a known location using their nanites for power. The rat probably had a way to communicate with it so it could teleport where ever it could see.¡± The man took the orb and demonstrated it by teleporting into the center of the rat nest. ¡°See.¡± The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Paul nodded. ¡°Give it to me. I¡¯ll store any loot we get and split it up later.¡± The man handed it over and it disappeared into Paul¡¯s inventory blood and all. ¡°Probably the only thing worth taking here, but let¡¯s look around anyway.¡± A ten minute search of the room revealed only a few bits of scrap metal that were covered in rat bite marks. Most of it was iron, steel, aluminum or copper, but there were some silver and gold coins mixed in. The System price for scrap silver and gold wasn¡¯t the best, but the silver might be worth five each and the gold twenty, assuming they weren¡¯t alloys. Might as well keep them. We continued through the maze, next having to deal with wolves. They were more nimble than the rats and took more shots to kill, but otherwise the trip went about the same. The Lair this time had a three meter tall wolf in it, surrounded by three dozen normal sized wolves. They split up like last time and this time let Sam fire first. She managed to hit the King¡¯s front left shoulder and it seemed wounded but not down. The other wolves attacked and she fired again but, despite its limp, the Dire wolf managed to turn and just get a graze on the hip. It howled in pain and from several side corridors barking could be heard. ¡°It called for reinforcements!¡± called one guy, finishing of the twentieth wolf. Seeing that the gun wasn¡¯t going to hit it, Sam unequipped it and drew her sword, charging. The Dire wolf lunged at her and she blocked with the edge of her blade, deflecting the blow but losing her weapon in the process. Without a weapon she punched at its eye, getting her fist stuck in the socket as her punch proved too effective. It howled in pain again and shook her off, throwing her twenty feet into a wall as her hand came free. Not giving up, she picked up a human-sized femur that I had given them as decoration and used it as a club to continuously hit it in the head. The pain from its wounds and missing eye was enough of a distraction that she managed to beat it unconscious after two minutes. Meanwhile the men formed firing lines and fired at the incoming wolves as they came into view. Paul and I stepped into the room to give them clear line of sight, and by the time Sam was standing over the wolf¡¯s unconscious body breathing deeply to try and cool off, they had manage to kill or wound the others enough that they ran away. Sam walked over to where her sword was laying, picked it up, and cut the wolf¡¯s head off. ¡°I guess we can search the room now,¡± she said. As the wolf was merely giant, it didn¡¯t have any useful parts, unless someone wanted a large hide to make some leather from or wanted to try wolf meat. They spent the next ten minutes looking for anything that was worth taking, only to find two broken swords and two rail pistols. The unnamed Conservation core basically made new ones then dumped them in the middle of the room along with cloned meat so that the wolves would chew them up. They cost me forty three zerka worth of material each to make a pistol and twenty seven each to make a sword, but as they would no doubt be recycled they only cost me the thirty or so salvage price for a gun and twenty or so for the sword, which was insignificant with all of the money the place made just in selling the materials from its ongoing expansion. We then made our way to the last room. They didn¡¯t find any animals on the way there other than a few poisonous snakes that tried to bite them if they got too close. The air started to get humid as we approached the Lair, and when we were near it we started smelling decaying vegetation. After shooting another group of snakes we saw the last room. It had a ten foot walkway around the outside, but a pond of murky water in the middle. Not sure how to handle this, as there were no animals around that they could see, Paul ordered them to walk close to the wall around the edge of the room. Knowing what was going to happen, I pulled out my flying disk and hovered to the middle of the room, as high as I could. Once they were about half way there they noticed the main threat of this room as two crocodiles stepped in front of the group and two behind, with a fifth coming towards the middle. Some of them opened fire, but the weapons didn¡¯t do much to them and only made the middle one, who was still in the pond, dive back under. A few seconds later a jet of water left the pond and struck the center of the group, knocking several people over with the power of a fire hose. The men were forced to dodge jets of water that could knock them down and leave them open to an attack from the ends of the column. One of the men at the front got knocked over and one of the crocodiles lunged at him, grabbing his leg and trying to pull him under. One of the other men noticed this and fired several rounds at its eyes, causing it to release the man and flee to the water. They pulled the wounded man behind the rest of the group then joined the others that were waiting for the crocodile to reemerge from the water or attack the ends of the group. ¡°Switch to swords.¡± said Paul. ¡°They penetrate better if you have high strength.¡± The men were quick to follow orders. Soon the crocs attacked again, only for the ones on the ends to have their faces sliced open. They pulled back and a particle beam hit one in front of us in the face, blowing a hole through its forehead and killing it. The man who was bit, now with his leg healing over and wanting revenge on the one that attacked him, jumped on its back and tried to choke him. It started rolling to try and get him off, but he drew his blade and slit its stomach open, killing it. Sam took aim on one of the ones in the rear and was about to fire when a jet of water hit her in the side of the head, knocking her sideways into the wall and making her drop her gun. As she went to pick it up one of the crocs in the rear managed to grab a man¡¯s arm and pulled him out of formation. He held onto his sword, however, and, now that he knew that their bellies were easier to hurt, stabbed the one that didn¡¯t have him in the side. With only one obvious enemy left, three men ran over and slashed at the croc that was trying to drag their friend into the water. It released him but before it could get away one of the men that came to the rescue swung down like he was chopping wood and took off the animal¡¯s tail. It was unable to continue and collapsed from blood loss at the edge of the pond. ¡°I¡¯m turning you into a pair of boots.¡± the man said before rejoining the group. With the one with water powers being the only one left the men focused on it. It surfaced to take a breath only to take a particle beam to the face. The water helped minimize the damage, but it still had a good bit of skin burned off of its nose, and started bleeding from its wound shortly after that. One of the men, tired of the fight, pulled out a grenade and threw it, causing the bleeding to get much worse as the water sprayed out of the pond. They waited another minute, but it didn¡¯t surface again. ¡°What do we do now?¡± asked Rogers, the man whose leg had gotten bitten and who had wrestled a crocodile. ¡°It probably got too weak and drowned down there, but I don¡¯t want to take a chance.¡± said Stark, the one whose arm was grabbed. They waited for another five minutes, but when the animal didn¡¯t come back up, Sam made a suggestion. ¡°I can hold my breath for a really long time. Want me to go down and see if it¡¯s dead?¡± ¡°Your particle cannon will be worthless down there, but a sword should still work. It will just be slower due to water resistance.¡± said Stark. Sam nodded. As no one objected, other than Paul who told them to tie a rope to her so they could pull her out if she was attacked and injured, she walked into the pond. Three minutes passed before she surfaced again without the rope tied to her, tossing an orb to Paul. ¡°That was in its chest. I¡¯m guessing that¡¯s what let it use that water attack.¡± Paul nodded and held it, ordering it to shoot water. Nothing happened. ¡°You probably need to use the water in the pond.¡± said Stark. Paul tried again, ordering the water in the pond to move, and created a wave. ¡°Looks like it. We¡¯ll appraise it later.¡± He put it in his inventory. ¡°I tied that rope to a crate I found at the bottom of the pond. Mind pulling it out?¡± Sam asked as she got out of the water and shook like a dog to try and dry herself off. The men pulled in a good twenty five meters of rope before the crate surfaced. They opened it and removed the objects from inside. There were four rifles. They only cost two hundred zerka each on the market, eighty five or so zerka in raw materials, but could shoot a bullet twice as fast as a pistol and were more accurate with a higher rate of fire, from about one hundred rounds per minute to about one hundred fifty rounds per minute. ¡°Nice,¡± said one of the men, shouldering it. It only came with one magazine, but used the same ones as the rail pistols, so they had spares. ¡°Good,¡± Paul said. ¡°Main team can use them for now. Once we get to the surface we¡¯ll sort out who gets to keep it. Now that the pond had been searched, the team proceeded to the boss room. This one was a bit weird. They were attacked by various forest animals, as the closer they got the more plant life they came across. The only ones to offered any real challenge were two wild boars that managed to headbutt a man before the others opened fire. As Paul didn¡¯t have the storage space for them, I shoved the bodies in my Inventory 2 along with three of the turkeys that tried to scratch or peck our eyes out, so that we could have a barbecue when we got out of here. When we got to the boss room the scouts reported something strange. There was a four meter tall turkey in the room. Paul gave me a look that said he thought that was a strange choice. ¡°What? There is a list of five forest creatures it can choose from, including the Boar and Wolves. It just happened to randomize a turkey this time.¡± Paul shook his head. ¡°Well, guess we¡¯ll be selling this one to a restaurant if we can get it out of here.¡± I told him I had enough room, and he nodded. ¡°In that case, lets take it down.¡± We entered the room and twenty other turkeys swarmed us, but they just got mowed down. When they opened fire on the big one, however, a transparent glow appeared in front of it and stopped the damage. Sam fired the particle cannon at it, and the same thing happened, though the glow seemed to dim slightly. It charged, knocking several of the men out of the way, and running into Paul. Even though he wasn¡¯t supposed to fight, he dug his feet in and stopped its advance. ¡°Hey, Paul¡¯s melee attack got through.¡± said one of the men and drew his sword to run at it. Several others did the same thing as Paul held it in a headlock, but only some of the sword swings managed to get through. The more powerful or skilled ones seemed to be blocked by the shield. Seeing that this worked, everyone else drew their swords and started swinging. They were able to eventually bring it down, however. Only one of the men seemed to injure it every time, and he was the one to finish it off as he stabbed it through the heart after the seventh attempt. ¡°You figured out the secret?¡± asked Rogers, panting for breath. ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s like the personal shields from this old sci-fi movie. Slow moving stuff makes it through, fast moving stuff doesn¡¯t. Or, I guess it¡¯s more accurate that its based on the amount of energy, not the speed, which is why the particle beam was blocked.¡± ¡°Or, the particles in the beam are just going at over half the speed of light, which is definitely fast enough to trigger the shield.¡± said Sam. Now that there was a whole in its chest, Paul reached inside and pulled an orb out. ¡°Nice shield.¡± he said. I stored the body in my Inventory 3, using over seven hundred mana worth of energy to do so, as I didn¡¯t have enough space in my Inventory 2 and they searched the room. Unlike the mini-boss rooms, there was nothing here to salvage, so we made our way to the teleporter room. Once there they saw that there were six crates in the room, two each on the front and back walls and one each on the side walls. The two front wall crates contained small drones, the size of a person¡¯s hand, only it contained a rail pistol flew via ionic propulsion, and could be controlled by its owner if they learned the ¡°Minion¡± skill. Those cost five hundred zerka each on the Market, but cost me two hundred and twenty seven to make. The two side walls had weapons crates, one of which had another Particle cannon and one of which had another crate of rifles. These weapons were distributed to the men. The back wall had the best rewards. Both crates contained a suit of low end power armor. At two thousand zerka each, nine hundred and sixty my cost, they had the defensive ability of the heavier armor Sam wore, but across the whole body. They also effectively added twenty to your strength when wearing them and had their own Inventory system and miniature Recycler for recycling air and human waste. With a proper power supply and food supply you could live in one indefinitely. The only issue I had with it was that it used a Power Orb for energy, which could be tracked through hyperspace and would give away our location, so it couldn¡¯t be brought into Sanctuary without compromising security. To partially make up for this I added a bit of power storage in place of the power orb along with a Short Half-life Nuclear Battery which produced about half of the power an orb would for three to five years. This would let you wear it indefinitely, but would use its reserve power when needed. Paul debated who to give the armor to, but in the end gave it to the two Heavies, now that he had a second Particle cannon to give the second strongest person in the group. Chapter 25 The lucky winner of the new power armor was Rogers. Now that he was suited up with an RPG launcher sized particle cannon on his shoulder, we stepped onto the teleporter in the middle of the room and pushed the button for Floor 2. We appeared in a cave outside a large forest covered in perpetual fog. The walls on both sides curved inward slightly, revealing that the floor was a twenty kilometer wide circle. We lined the men up with the riflemen flanking the two heavies that took point, moving at a right angle to the wall. The room seemed to be a massive open area, but as they explored they found that every one hundred meters or so there were stone pillars which were designed to look like large trees which reached above the others. There was a perpetual sunset happening to the left side of the cave exit, which kept the place dimly lit. The first enemy we ran into was a zombie. Most of the recruits had seen one before so it didn¡¯t bother them. After we got past the first fake tree, however, they started noticing that some of the zombies were Alfs. I knew that all of the humanoid zombies in the dungeon were brainless clones of the races, but the recruits were confused by the fact that even a head shot didn¡¯t seem to stop these zombies. As we got deeper the zombies started getting faster and stronger, with more accurate attacks when we let them get close enough to swing at us. Once the Runner Zombies started appearing, so did Solin zombies. The recruits were able to take them out fast enough that only a few got into melee range. Then the Solin runners joined in, along with undead versions of many of the animals that attacked us. Some of these were actually recycled corpses from the battle a month ago, but most of those were already recycled for raw materials. They had nothing on them worth taking, but for every one that was killed they earned one to five zerka, depending on how strong, and therefore how serious of a threat the creature was. After about two hours one of the riflemen, Park, saw an unusual tree. It was over a meter in diameter, and its bark was squishy and leaking in various places. ¡°Hey Johnson, you used to work in an orchard, right? What kind of tree is this?¡± Johnson, another rifleman, walked over. ¡°Just because I used to grow fruit trees doesn¡¯t mean I know everything about trees.¡± He looked over the tree. ¡°Well, I can tell you one thing, it¡¯s dead. These soft spots are rotting.¡± They then realized that this was true of everything they had been fighting until now. They looked at each other, then started to turn around and run. Before he could do so, however, Johnson was pulled off of his feet by several half rotten roots which had wrapped around his ankles. He started being dragged towards the trunk of the tree as the men opened fire on it. Chunks of wood and bark were blown off, but it barely effected the tree monster that had opened a pit underneath it where the bones of several creature already were. I hadn¡¯t even had to put them there. It had been capturing and eating its fellow zombies since waking up about two weeks ago. Seeing that Johnson was almost at the pit, Park ran over and drew his sword to try and cut the roots that held his friend. As he drew back, however, a branch slapped him in the back of the head, knocking him over and disorienting him. While it was just a slap, it was like getting slapped by a bodybuilder. That¡¯s when two particle beams hit it. One blew a hole most of the way through a branch, causing it to break off, and the other hit the trunk, leaving a ten centimeter diameter, thirty centimeter deep hole in the trunk. The branches and root spasmed in pain, loosening the hold on Johnson enough for him to pull free and back away, helping Park run as well. Once everyone was out of range of its branches the roots started lifting rocks from underground and throwing them at the gunmen. They didn¡¯t hit particularly hard, as the men were wearing armor, but they did annoy the men. It took another thirty seconds and six more particle beam attacks before the tree stopped moving. The men caught their breath, and the two power armored people carefully checked around it, seeing if it was still alive or was hiding any treasure. Originally, I had buried wooden chests at the roots of every plant zombie, but this one had eaten the chest, so they found bits of scrap steel, gold, and technology in the pile of bones underneath it. They weren¡¯t sure what the technology was supposed to be originally, but they kept it anyway. I wasn¡¯t sure either, but that was mostly because the technology in the chest was randomized from a list of one hundred zerka or less homeware products. It could be anything from the System version of a hotplate to a food storage bracelet, a portable mini-fridge. Now that they knew what to look for, they killed seven more zombie trees over the next three hours, gathering loot from chests that weren¡¯t destroyed. Now that the men had two atmospheric water condensers in the shape of a thermos and one Food Storage Bracelet, they didn¡¯t have to worry about carrying water or food with them the next time they took a day trip to the dungeon. Eventually we made it to a cave in the center of the undead forest. There was a single entrance, but the cave was over ten meters tall, so the men took a supper break before we entered. Once we were finished, we went inside where the men saw a six meter tall undead Jotun. It sat in the middle of the cave and held the body of a zombie tree, using it as a club. Seeing the enemy the men pointed their weapons at the Jotun. I pulled out my flying disk and flew up to avoid the battle. The Jotun saw me and stood up, thinking I was going to attack it, but the men used the opportunity to open fire. It held the tree in front of it, blocking one particle beam but not the other. Its chest gained a five centimeter deep third degree burn, and the tree had a hole drilled mostly through it. The other weapons opened fire, but the pistol couldn¡¯t do more than annoy it, and the rifles only bruised it. Seeing it begin its charge at the men, those with pistols drew their swords instead. When it got to them it swung its club, Samantha barely dropping the cannon and jumping in the way in time. While it still hit several of the men, it only had enough force to knock them over and break a few bones instead of killing them or putting them in critical condition. Sam wrapped her arms around its arm and dug her feet in, trying to hold it. It simply lifted her off the ground and slammed its arm down, damaging the suit but thankfully doing little to her. The swordsmen ran over and started slicing at its legs. The swords were able to penetrate with various degrees of effectiveness, and when someone managed a good chop on its Achilles tendon it fell to the ground. They were quick to attack its other joints. It tried to fight them off by swinging an armored person at them, but, while several people were hit and badly injured, their sheer numbers gave Rogers a chance to land a blow on the back of its neck, using the full power of the armor to sever its spinal cord and causing it to stop moving. Rogers finished removing its head just to make sure it stayed down, and the men were treated for their injuries. After all of the treatment was finished, they went down the set of stairs behind some vines at the back of the cave, finding the treasure room. They got another set of power armor, this time with one of those shield generators built in, and several hundred kilos of various metals, about two thousand zerka in value. They were a bit disappointed by what this room contained, but I had done that on purpose, as there were two secrets hidden here, one a hidden door which contained a six-meter tall set of power armor and a four meter long plasma sword, meant to look like the Jotun¡¯s gear, worth seven to eight thousand in scrap as it was too big for them to wear, and one which had a robotic assistant worth ten thousand. After that, they had to make a decision. Should they continue to the third floor, with several members of their group badly injured, or should they continue to try and defeat floor three? Eventually Stark won the others over to his plan; they could go down there to see what it was like and if they couldn¡¯t handle the enemy, they would come back to the teleporter and leave the dungeon. If they could take the enemy, they would keep fighting until they were two weak to continue or someone died. Maybe they could even clear the third floor and empty another treasure room. The third floor looked quite different that the other two. The teleporter sat in the middle of a steel room, with steel grating for floors in many areas. There was a sliding door on one wall which had a sign stating ¡°Welcome to the Space Station¡±. This was actually a prototype of a Station I wanted to one day build around Earth, but Vera estimated a cost of one hundred million zerka unless I found an appropriate asteroid and gave it a settlement core and the other things needed to build such a station. Here underground, however, it only had a value of about two million, as steel was cheap and it didn¡¯t need to be transported far. Stark, in the new set of armor but with only a rifle, opened the door to see a long corridor with doors on both sides. Lights flickered overhead, and there was some damage on the walls and floor. ¡°Why does this seem familiar?¡± he asked. Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. ¡°Probably because you are a fan of a certain 80¡¯s sci fi horror movie franchise.¡± I answered. ¡°I am too, so I went looking for the closest thing the system knew about, and got pretty close.¡± Several of the men looked at me, realizing what I meant, then a scratching noise sounded at the end of the hallway. They turned to look at it as the other two heavies stepped into the corridor with Stark and shouldered their weapons. A few seconds later a silver quadruped with a tough exoskeleton and metallic teeth ran at them at around fifty kph. They opened fire and it collapsed about twenty meters ahead of them. ¡°Seriously? You decided to see if the System had THOSE?¡± asked Paul. I nodded and an acrid smell of chemicals came from a bit of smoke near the dead creature. ¡°Of course you made sure they had acid for blood.¡± I shrugged. ¡°Ok, everyone, let¡¯s see if we can get Mr. Burke to the end of the level.¡± He sighed, and we set out. The side rooms were everything from storage of building materials to MRE storage, to a machine shop and a medical room. I had tried to avoid using proper System devices, as their value would mean that anyone that made it this far would be looting them, but I had put in fake versions with extremely limited functionality, worth several hundred to a thousand in salvage. In the disheveled and slightly damaged medical bay was the first object that was definitely worth taking; a medical android. I had given it a bit of damage, the left side of its face being melted off and its left arm being ripped off at the elbow. It was actually built with the damage, because I had moral issues with building a human-like machine and then essentially torturing it, and had insisted that it only have a basic AI, not a good one like Vera, Gary, or Bob. ¡°Hello hu-hu-human settlers.¡± it stuttered as it twitched slightly. ¡°Several of you appear injured. Do you require medical assis-is-is-is-istance?¡± The healthy men looked at the injured men and one of the men with a broken rib shrugged then winced. ¡°Why not. Do what you can.¡± He went over and laid down on a medical exam table. ¡°You got a name, doc?¡± the man asked. ¡°I am medical android four-two-seven.¡± The android said, folding a scanning device over the man to look at his injuries. ¡°Well that¡¯s boring.¡± he said, laying there. A minute or so later, the doctor injected him with a dose of medical nanites that were programmed to specifically repair the damage it had found. ¡°It should take approximately nine minutes to set the bone and properly brace it, but will take over three hours to fully heal the fracture.¡± The android said, the put a hand under him to help him sit up. ¡°Thanks, doc.¡± the man said, getting out of the bed so that someone else could use it. An hour later all of the serious injuries were treated and the doctor had moved onto the minor injuries. Remembering that Sam had gotten bitten on the first floor the men insisted that she get the bite treated. She had gotten out of the power armor in order to stretch, as it limited your mobility slightly. She told them it was fine, and that she didn¡¯t need treatment, but the men insisted and pushed her towards the doctor. The doctor stared at her for a few second, then smiled. ¡°I cannot treat you, as I lack the necessary skills and equipment. Perhaps you will find another way to repair yourself later. Next patient please.¡± ¡°Hey, what do you mean refusing her?¡± said Rogers. ¡°Are you programmed to not fix women or something?¡± Samantha was the only woman among the recruits after all. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, all patient medical data is strictly confidential.¡± the doctor replied. Rogers stepped forward and raised his fist to punch the android, but Sam pushed him away. ¡°It¡¯s fine. It was only a minor injury anyway. Besides, didn¡¯t the croc get you? You should get that treated too.¡± Rogers sighed and calmed down a bit. ¡°Fine. I¡¯ll let the sexist android treat me.¡± Soon, every injured person except Sam was treated and the heavies had put their armor back on. ¡°You think we could take some of those medical nanites with us?¡± one of the men asked. ¡°Better yet, let¡¯s take the doc with us.¡± said Stark, ¡°since none of us know how to program them.¡± Rogers didn¡¯t seem to thrilled by the idea, but the others liked it. ¡°My diagnostic ability will be severely limited outside of this room, as I will be without my diagnostic equipment, but I can follow you if you wish.¡± The others agreed, so the doctor grabbed a briefcase which doubled as a nanite programming station, and the last 240ml of nanites from the medicine cabinet, a gray goo which filled a glass cylinder. One liter of nanites cost about ten thousand zerka to make, due to the extremely rare minerals nanites contained, but I had made several tons of them to fill the air of Sanctuary and the dungeon, so the half liter I stocked this room with wasn¡¯t that significant. With that we headed out. The initial corridor connected to another, which connected to another in a complicated pattern. The men occasionally looted goods from some of the storage devices between killing alien monsters, but other than ten sets of under-armor they didn¡¯t find much worth taking for the first hour. Around an hour and a half in, however, they found the armory. It mostly contained crates of ammo, rail pistols, basic armor, and swords, but there was also a case of four rifles and an auto-turret. The men refilled their ammo but ignored the armor, pistols and swords, as Paul didn¡¯t have that much inventory space to store them. They did, however, give Paul the auto-turret to store, and give the four rifles to four of the men. Now that they were better armed, we spent the next four hours walking through corridors and climbing up and down ladders, clearing out alien nests of various sizes, and occasionally finding human skeletons which were covered it bite marks, usually in what was presumably their quarters. We eventually made our way to a cargo bay. The first thing the men noticed was that there were four exoskeletons in this room. They had been painted yellow, had a big rotating warning light on top, and were slightly bigger than a person with a steel cage covering the wearer. Those that had seen the movies instantly knew that meant this was a boss room and warned the others. Four of the pistol men hopped into the cargo loaders and drew their swords. Just as they were booting the machines up, a set of cargo doors opened in the center of the room¡¯s floor and a giant version of the creatures from before started climbing out. While the others were roughly the size of a large dog or horse, this one was large enough to serve as a horse for the Jotun from the last floor. The men immediately opened fire, making the monster bleed but not slow down. A stray shot hit a panel on the opposite wall and a warning sounded as air and loose objects started moving towards the monster that was just making it out of the pit. Sam and Rogers split up, with Rogers running to the left and Sam to the right. While they and Stark were the only ones that would survive depressurization, as the suits had their own air supply, the two of them also had the only two weapons that could do significant damage to this creature. They both opened fire, but the five second recharge cycle of the weapon meant that the creature only had to occasionally block their attack or take fairly serious injury. As the creature¡¯s blood started melting the metal of the floor, leaving holes large enough to step through, the men and I started grabbing on to the wall to avoid the increasing wind that was pulling us towards the cargo door. Stark ran to the back wall where a sign saying ¡®Dock Chief¡¯s office¡¯ was. If there was an emergency override for the door it would probably be near the boss¡¯s office. The door was locked, but beside it he found the panel that had been shot. ¡°Shit.¡± he said, as he pulled the panel open. He was an electrician in one of the city¡¯s factories before the plague, but this wasn¡¯t exactly what he was expecting. Upon opening it, however, he found that the wiring wasn¡¯t all that different than what he had once worked on. The only damage to the electronics was a fuse that had been shot. With the thick fingers of the power armor, though, he couldn¡¯t remove the pieces of the fuse to replace them with one of the extras the panel had inside it. He thought quickly, then remembered that he had kept one of the gold coins from the rat room in his inventory. If anyone asked it was for good luck, and only until they got out of the dungeon. He had the coin appear in his hand and used it to short out the fuse holder. When he did the panel lit back up and he hit the emergency close button for the outer door. The door started closing, but it would still take fifteen seconds or so to finish doing so. In the mean time, Sam and Rogers were firing on the monster one handed every five seconds as it and them tried to hold onto the floor. Its injuries weakened it too much, however, and Sam and Rogers targeted its arms or legs any time it managed to grab on, so it was halfway through the outer door as the door caught it. As the door was on emergency close mode, it simply applied more force to try and seal the breech, crushing the monster. Stark pushed the button to emergency close the inner door too, but with no obstruction, that door managed to close before the outer one. The air pressure stabilized after thirty seconds or so, and the men gasped for breath. It had taken all most of them, minus those with power loaders, had to hold on while the wind sucked the breath from their lungs, pulled them towards certain doom, and the rapid pressure change burst blood vessels. ¡°We could probably use a doctor.¡± said Paul. ¡°Does anyone know where it is?¡± The men that could do so looked around, but no one knew. After a few seconds I raised my hand. ¡°I shoved him and the nanite case into my inventory.¡± I said, then ordered Vera to dump him and the kit on the ground. ¡°That isn¡¯t g-g-g-good.¡± he said, as he programmed a needle full of nanites to fix depressurization issues. He then went around injecting everyone with one milliliter of them. Ten minutes later we had recovered enough to get up. Stark, Rogers, and Sam came over and helped us up. ¡°We found the treasury.¡± said Stark. ¡°Through the window of the office I can see several crates. There¡¯s also a ¡®Cargo teleporter¡¯ over in that corner that will let us go to the forth floor.¡± That last statement made the men groan. ¡°Yeah, we should probably use it to go back to Sanctuary.¡± He found an ID badge for a fictitious Cargo boss in the attached break room, and opened the office. The crates contained twenty four cheap pressure suits along with a note to make the workers wear them ¡®in case that door opens again.¡¯ Each of these suits was basically the life support part of the power armor and would conform to the body of the wearer. You could even pass nanites through them, so your spells still worked while wearing them, unlike the power armor. There was also a kit for repairing synthetic flesh and a left arm of an android, just in case anyone brought the doctor with them. Upon further searching they found a false bottom in one of the Boss¡¯s desk drawers which contained a data disk with a random number of Zerka between five and ten thousand, in this case 6237. There was a diary in there which contained the boss¡¯s plans to run off to Mars with his friend¡¯s wife, and the data disk was the funds he embezzled so far for that purpose, but all of them ignored the lore I made up for this floor and just took the money. Once they were certain that they had searched the area, and had decided not to take the random power tools and tool kits I scattered around the area for flavor, the four guys with cargo loaders stepped onto the teleporter, followed by all the people trying not to get stepped on, and we returned to Sanctuary. It was nine seventeen PM by the time we got back, and everyone was exhausted, so Paul treated them all to a drink at the bar before they headed back to the mine. There they left the cargo loaders near the warehouse and assigned the Doctor to their clinic before debriefing and splitting the loot. As I was just an observer, I refused a share of the loot, but as there were exactly the right number of pressure suits, they insisted that I take one. I set it up as a separate outfit Vera could equip on me in emergencies, with the under armor underneath it. About eleven o¡¯clock, I told everyone goodbye and headed home. I had forgot to tell Di that I might be out late, and wanted to get home before she fell asleep. Chapter 26 The next day I had to deal with Mayor stuff. Vera had gotten a message from Joyce, my secretary, that people had posted concerns about several issues in the city, so it was time to actually hold a town meeting, though this one would be virtual. There were five main categories; age restrictions, both age of consent and drinking age, gun and armor restrictions, immigration, housing, and the status of Sanctuary. I started a conference call with the entire town council and started recording it, so that it could be posted on the bulletin board for the interested citizens to watch. The first issue I took a look at was housing. Tony and Tom explained that the main issue was that they couldn¡¯t run large enough teams. Plenty of people in town could help, but with only the two of them as supervisors, they could only run two teams of fifty people each. That limited their building speed. I asked Tony to look for other people with both supervisor and building experience to make new teams, but that would take at least a few weeks to implement. I did have one idea on how to speed that up. In Sanctuary I had used Builders turn the carved stone into actual living areas. While it wasn¡¯t quite the same, one human builder could manage many System Builders, and those Builders could work 24/7/365 on a project as long as they had the raw material and energy to make something. There were plenty of pre-designed housing units in the System files, and it would be a simple matter to order the builders to place a specific building in a specific location. Builders even had a limited ability to dig, so that they can flatten ground and add basements, so they didn¡¯t even need to prepare the ground ahead of time. I asked Olivia if she could send each of the build teams at least five Builder units preloaded with all of the humanoid buildings, and teach them and their teams how to use them. She was currently at the shooting range, training new mage recruits, but would do it when she got back to the office. Once you got five hundred meters down the rock was mostly calcium based, so just digging out level two of the dungeon provided them with enough concrete to build enough housing for everyone in the town. The second issue was Immigration. Many people that were moving to town were living in Sanctuary, as it had enough housing, but people moving into what was essentially a Suburb instead of the main town wasn¡¯t the only issue. There was also the issue of people moving here from around the world and not speaking English or having wildly different customs. For example, around six hundred people had moved here from the middle east and yesterday at noon they all stopped working to pray, tieing up businesses and even some public locations until they were done. While my position was that as long as no one hurt anyone else, I didn¡¯t care how they lived, but that disrupted business in town. I suggested that we work it in as a break, maybe even a lunch break. While I¡¯m sure more serious cultural disputes were incoming I had a solution to the religious issues. I told them about the church I had cleaned out and offered to let them use it as a generic religious building, kind of like a military chapel. We hadn¡¯t had to do it earlier as most of the people in town just used the teleporter to go to town for religious services, but now that we had multiple religions that were represented in town, we could let each main group reserve the sanctuary for their services and other uses. As we didn¡¯t exactly have a division to handle that, I had Harold at the Department of Leasing handle it, as that was the closest matching department. As for the language issues, Di volunteered to teach an English as a second language class. The Translation skill only gave you the literal meaning, but everyone in class could download it, then learn to speak English better in the class. Next I brought up the age restrictions. As there were no longer rules about it, many people had been operating outside the boundaries of what society and the government would have accepted previously. Not sure how to handle it and what options I had, I asked Vera how the System normally handled those issues. She informed us that, among most humanoid races, the System divided people by whether or not they had went through puberty. Those that hadn¡¯t were children, those that had were adults. But for those that were going through it, there was essentially a slider that progressed as their body and mind developed. For the purposes of sexuality, while some species had different mating arrangements or number of biological sexes, if there is more than a slight difference in development between the people involved, the less developed one(s) would receive a notification that they may be getting taken advantage of, and will need to verify that they understand the situation and certify that they aren¡¯t, while the more developed one(s) will receive a notification that they may be taking advantage of the other person/people and will need to answer questions to certify that they aren¡¯t. If the difference is large, however, they will receive a notice that one or more participants are likely being taken advantage of and that they should wait until the development is closer, such as adulthood. If one was an adult and the other wasn¡¯t at least in the final stages of puberty, it would automatically be reported to law enforcement. For the consumption of intoxicants it is usually ¡°only adults can¡±, though some races set it at a point near the end of puberty. We debated the issue for thirty minutes before deciding that, for now, it was better than the current system, so we would implement it the way most humanoids did and revisit the issue later. Then the issue of weapon, armor, and military hardware ownership. It was pretty much decided that such a ban would be meaningless for two reasons. The first was that we needed people to defend the town from invaders, so people needed to be armed and trained just in case. The second was that anyone could download skills which, with a little work, were just as dangerous as a gun or military hardware. Guns, armor, and even tanks were essentially just tools that let you carry something to do a job instead of having to learn a skill to let your nanites do the job. We decided not to restrict anything, though if people misused these tools for crime, any court may restrict them as part of a punishment. Finally we decided to tackle the issue of Sanctuary. The problem was that it was as large as AR, and by many metrics just as successful if not more. Many people in town felt that it was essentially a separate town instead of an outpost of this town, and wanted to split it off from AR. Most of those that wanted the split lived in Sanctuary, but that wasn¡¯t surprising. Sanctuary was starting to develop its own norms like a subdivision or gated community might. While I didn¡¯t want an HOA to crop up down there, Sanctuary having its own town council would be fine. We discussed this issue for over two hours before it went to a vote and, in the end, decided on splitting it off as a separate settlement by a slight majority of votes. I had Joyce post our decisions and the video of the meeting on the AR and Sanctuary Bulletin Boards, thanked everyone for coming, and ended the meeting. I sent a message to the Sanctuary outpost core to start making a settlement core to replace itself, and that it would be transferred to the Dungeon to oversee the creation of several other theme based dungeons. I had realized while I was down there that forty eight teams per day visiting it at most was too few if we wanted it used for training and entertainment, so I decided to make at least a few more. I even decided to make one just for the military at the mines, so that they could train their troops down there. As I had the personal funds to do so, I bought a conservation core, ten autominers, a medium nuclear reactor, and several other things I would need to make a new dungeon and took them to the mines. With the rock pulled out of the dungeons providing us with all of the material we needed to make everything, the mines pretty much served no purpose. So instead I asked if the mining company wanted to oversee the construction of dungeons. I would officially found a dungeon construction company that could go around the planet and build dungeons for anyone that wanted them. When the people in other cities had heard that I had built one, many of them had sent requests to visit it, so I was certain that the company would have enough demand to make it work. The head of the mines was already worried about losing his job, as the mines had essentially been superseded by other mining operations, so he agreed to work for my company immediately. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. I quickly went through the System process to register an organization, named it Dungeon Crafters, transferred one million of my personal funds as well as the equipment I had bought to make a dungeon, and hired the mine head as the current manager. He then hired about half the people at the mine to work for him, the ones he said knew the most about their job and were the hardest workers, and promised to get started at once. I told him to talk to Paul about what he should put in the one for the military, as well as work out rental fees or some other way to earn a profit from this, though in the beginning the minerals they dug out would more than pay for it. I didn¡¯t know if they needed to make this one a stealth dungeon as well, but I taught him what I knew about only allowing the teleporter to go to certain locations, hiding the energy signal of your equipment and the like, just in case they needed to hide a dungeon for a client. After all, many people wouldn¡¯t want their military training facilities being a known location. Now that I had someone else handling the Dungeons outside of Sanctuary I returned there and set up three others for the settlement. It would take over a week per floor, but I set up a post on the bulletin board asking for suggestions and before the autominers had even gotten to their starting location I already had several. A week later, after the first layers had been dug out, the top three suggestions were puzzle dungeon, kid-friendly dungeon, and extreme dungeon. The first would be full of traps and puzzles for you to solve, and you would be rewarded for solving the puzzles. It would include mazes, riddles, physical puzzles, trivia questions, etc. Because of its nature, I set it so that you could only be rewarded for solving a puzzle once, but I hoped to implement over a thousand into it eventually. The second would be large open areas with interesting views. The enemies would use what were essentially sci-fi holograms, nanites taking the form of enemies but disappearing and leaving behind an item when they were defeated. The adults wanted it to be more like playing laser tag or, at worst airsoft, and not put the children at risk. The first floor would be for age seven and below, and every level below that would be for people one year older. I had to basically implement HP, MP and SP into the simulation and make enemies immune to the players if they were ¡°dead¡± by being at zero HP. They obviously weren¡¯t going to be at zero HP, and likely wouldn¡¯t drop below full unless the tripped or twisted their ankle, but the virtual enemies would do imaginary damage to them, which could be treated in different ways. The third was going to have the danger level cranked up to eleven. I would have traps of all kind, including lethal varieties. The enemies would start at the level of wolves at the easiest, and would use ambushes and pack hunting to try and injure those that entered the dungeon. I even had an autominer digging down to try and find a hot layer where I can build a lava level or at least a desert level. I would also have an ice level, but that would be done using System devices to cool everything down into the negatives. I would have to have everyone sign wavers before entering such a dungeon, as their was no guarantee that the System could revive you if you died in there. For that reason I asked Vera about ways the System had to restore people whose lives had been lost. I was already familiar with how nanites could repair your body and restore any memories that were lost due to brain damage or your brain dying, but I learned that the Vaniir had actually developed a superior version of that around a million years ago. It basically exploited research they had done into the nature of the soul and sapient life, as well as a loophole in the System¡¯s rules about creating sapient beings which allowed for full body replacements to be grown. Normally alone these two discoveries would just be meaningless. Even a perfect copy of the mind didn¡¯t always guarantee that the person would be the same after revival, so that loophole wasn¡¯t reliable, and knowing how to see if a soul was present was an intellectual exercise, as sapient beings had permanent souls but non-sapient beings didn¡¯t. The Vaniir had discovered, however, that in every sapient mind there were one hundred and thirty two abilities that the mind had, though the neural pattern this took varied wildly between species. The neurons which expressed these abilities would show anomalous behavior if a soul was attached, as the soul, by definition, could influence the behavior of the body. This usually amounted to spontaneous, unpredictable neural activity commonly referred to as ¡°Free Will¡±. In humans these were clustered in seventeen areas, in Vaniir thirty two, in Jotun nineteen, in Alf sixteen, etc. If one of these clusters were transplanted into a cloned body, however, then the removed section regrown in the original, those areas would go from predictable to slightly unpredictable, indicating that the soul was connected, but wasn¡¯t in control. In this state, the clone will not be capable of becoming conscious until the neural activity in the original drops below a certain threshold, at which point the soul essentially reconnects to the healthy body and the body can wake up. As long as you transfer the memories fully to the clone, the person will wake up feeling as if they died somewhere else, but were revived, with identical views and personality to their old self. Since that discovery the Vaniir have used this method to virtually eliminate death from their society, outside of dangerous criminals that needed to be executed and people that chose to not have the procedure done. I would need to implement this method into the extreme dungeon and make sure that they have a proper clone ready before entering. I just needed to prove that it worked before asking others to accept it. For that reason, after using the gene therapy I had Tim make for me, I gave Bob a genetic sample and asked him to perform the procedure on me. If your DNA didn¡¯t match the clone, the procedure had a higher chance of failure. The only changes would be in the implants. I would have a quantum entangled communication and power transfer device in the clone from the beginning, so I didn¡¯t have to go through the implantation procedure, as well as an updated Node in my brain so that I could control ten billion nanites at a time in that body. It took Bob a week to clone the new body for the test, and to verify that everything was perfect with it. I sent Samantha a message about what I was going to attempt, and she understood, but I wanted to make things more personal for Di. It took me five different attempts before I had a message that I was happy with, but in the end I explained the procedure to her, why I was doing it, including the fact that it could end all loss of human life, and stating that once I was transferred she could decide whether or not I was really me. I wouldn¡¯t be killing my old body, but it would be in cryostasis in the back of the clinic in case she decided it wasn¡¯t me and I needed to be woke back up. In order to transfer back, the new me would need to be placed in cryo or killed, and Di could decide which one. After informing Tim of all of this I had him oversee the removal of one of the soul nerve clusters in my brain and its regrowth while I was unconscious. Once it was removed, Bob dropped off my new body and Tim oversaw the implantation of the biopsied tissue. We both would have preferred to have a brain surgeon oversee the process, but none of the ones he knew were willing to oversee an optional ¡°experimental procedure¡±. After the procedure, while we waited for my new body to develop the connection, I felt like something was off. I had to work harder to control my emotions, and I became obsessed with the development of the Extreme dungeon and designed several death traps, far more obsessed than I used to be with my projects. Tim looked into it and found several papers on how the area of the brain where the biopsy was taken from was tied to self control. The effect seemed to fade over the next four days and at the same time I felt that I had recovered, I got a message from the System that my replacement body was ready. I went to the clinic, sent the message I had recorded to Di, made one last check over my body on the exam table, transferred all the items in my inventory into my private section of Sanctuary''s Warehouse, and climbed into the cryopod. I felt a bone-chilling cold go through me, and grew tired. Then I woke up naked on the exam table. ¡°Ok, that was a weird experience.¡± I said, climbing out of the bed and walking over to the cryopod. There I saw myself laying there, frozen. The new body was as close to the old one as possible, but there were some minor differences that made it feel a bit weird. The new body also had the full effects of the gene therapy, as it had been completely grown from DNA with the improved genes, so the proportions weren¡¯t one hundred percent identical. Anyone that saw the new me will know it is me, but will have a similar feeling to seeing someone that lost a lot of weight or has aged a bit since they last saw the person. Honestly, it¡¯s probably how I felt when I noticed that Di was a lot younger looking than when I first met her. I pulled my belongings out of storage and reconfigured my equipment sets to what they were before the change. Just as I was done and equipped my gear, Di entered the office and started banging on the door of the room we were in. ¡°I know you¡¯re in there, Tim. Open up.¡± I nodded at him, so Tim went over and opened the door. ¡°I¡¯m just finishing up a medical procedure, but the client is willing to let you enter.¡± he said. Di stepped in and was about to say something when she saw me. ¡°Oh,¡± she said, looking me over. ¡°I see that you¡¯ve already finished this ¡®transfer.¡¯ she said, staring at me. Chapter 27 ¡°Hi, Di.¡± I said. ¡°Yeah, I did it. It¡¯s a little weird almost freezing to death over there, and waking up over there.¡± I pointed at the cryopod and exam table in turn. Di ran over to the pod and looked at my old body. ¡°Why would you do this?¡± she asked, a hint of sadness in her voice. ¡°I explained in the video I sent you. I had to make sure it would work so that we could inform the others around the world of the possibility.¡± ¡°You said it was for that stupid extreme dungeon.¡± she countered. ¡°I said that was one situation it was needed for,¡± I countered, ¡°not that it was the only reason I needed to do this.¡± That answer didn¡¯t seem to help the situation. She collapsed on the ground and started to cry. I knelt down and hugged her, but after a few seconds she realized what I was doing and pulled away. ¡°Don¡¯t touch me. I don¡¯t even know who you are.¡± ¡°I¡¯m Greg, the man that loves you and who doesn¡¯t want to lose you.¡± ¡°How do I know that? You could just be someone with his memories.¡± ¡°Well, I can try and explain the science behind everything if you want me to, but let¡¯s just say that not only do I have the same memories, but I have the same soul.¡± ¡°How do I know that? You don¡¯t even have a piece of the same body.¡± ¡°No, this body was grown as a replacement, so that we would know that I and others could transfer in an emergency. It does have the same DNA, however, or at least the DNA my old body had after the gene therapy.¡± She started crying again and I walked over and hugged her, only to have her pull away and pull her pistol on me, pointing it at my head. ¡°I said don¡¯t touch me.¡± I stood there, looking at her, and she started to cry again before running away. ¡°Wow, I didn¡¯t expect it to go that way.¡± said Tim. ¡°Are you going to contact Simon about her pulling a gun on you?¡± I shook my head. ¡°I told her in the video that I would let her decide if I was the same person and decide whether this body should be killed or go into cryo. It would be hypocritical to call the cops on her for threatening to do something I told her she could do to me.¡± ¡°So, I guess that means you are staying in the doghouse for now.¡± I nodded. ¡°I¡¯ve got over a hundred empty apartments here in Sanctuary. I¡¯ll just stay in one of those.¡± Tim nodded. ¡°Well, if you want someone to explain it to her, I¡¯ll be happy to testify on your behalf.¡± I patted him on the shoulder. ¡°Thanks, man.¡± I said, ¡°Please update the implants in my old body while I¡¯m in this one.¡± I then left to go back to overseeing the building of the three new Sanctuary dungeons. The next day I was designing an adventure level for children, with evil gnomes for them to fight with wooden weapons and shields, when I got a message from Di. She wanted me to meet her in the city council room so that we could discuss the situation. When I got to the city hall, I turned on my Surveillance skill and entered the room. I noticed that other than her, Tim was there, as well as Jacob and Samantha. ¡°Jacob? I wasn¡¯t expecting to see you here.¡± The Father nodded. ¡°I wasn¡¯t expecting to visit the town either, but this seems to be a rather serious spiritual matter, so Di asked me to join the discussion.¡± ¡°Even though she isn¡¯t Catholic.¡± ¡°Even though. We agree on this issue, though.¡± I nodded and took a seat. ¡°Does anyone mind if I publish the recording of this discussion?¡± The others looked around at each other and a few of them shrugged. ¡°As long as you censor any of our private information, I don¡¯t see a problem.¡± said Tim. I nodded. ¡°So, I assume this is some sort of hearing to settle the issue of whether of not I¡¯m actually the mayor of AR and Sanctuary, the person known as Greg Summers.¡± Di nodded. ¡°You told me in the video you sent me that it was up to me to decide to whether or not you were still you. Or, should I say, Greg told me that in a video. I¡¯m not sure if you are him. So I decided to hear the evidence, and both sides of the argument.¡± ¡°In that case, do you mind if I send a copy of that video to everyone here? It explains the procedure fairly well, but not in extreme detail.¡± Di nodded and I sent a copy to everyone here, as well as attached a copy to the recording I was making, so I could edit it in at that point later. Once everyone had viewed it, I asked if there was any questions. ¡°I have one.¡± said Jacob. ¡°We can agree that your memories are the same. This has already been demonstrated as possible when the System cured severe brain injuries. And you¡¯ve said that your body is entirely new, other than, if I recall correctly, about ten thousand neurons in your brain that were transplanted? So the question is, can you provide evidence that your soul is identical to Greg¡¯s? Because if only one of the three is the same, I¡¯m not sure you can say you are the same.¡± Sam raised her hand. ¡°I think I can actually explain that, if you don¡¯t mind?¡± She looked at me and I nodded. ¡°Your soul actually has a fingerprint. Well, not a literal one, but a figurative one. The video explained the one hundred and thirty two different brain functions that you needed to have a soul properly attach, but while they don¡¯t behave as the simulations would predict, they do follow specific patterns. Depending on the specific function of the group of neurons, it could have anywhere from two to seven different possible way it could violate the predicted pattern. This means that there are far more than two to the one hundred and thirty two different patterns for ways that a soul can interact with a new body. If a full human clone is produced, this pattern is essentially random. This is also true of multiple births where there are multiple people born with the same DNA. This procedure, though, will almost always produce the exact same pattern in multiple bodies, verifying that at least the information for the rest of the pattern is there, if not that the same soul is attached to multiple bodies.¡± Di seemed surprised that she knew that. ¡°How do you know this?¡± Sam seemed uncomfortable at the question. ¡°Is it because of that cyberpunk anime you liked?¡± I asked. Sam smiled and nodded. ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m a geek.¡± She looked at the others. ¡°There is this anime where the main character has a full prosthetic body and I looked into how that would work under the System. There is a way to transfer a mind to a fully artificial body, but transferring those one hundred and thirty two neural connections into a completely artificial body takes a lot of work the first time, and sometimes fails. After the first transfer, though, you can properly transfer them to a new body more easily than with an organic body. It¡¯s just the switch between flesh and machine, either way, that is difficult.¡± This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. ¡°It¡¯s almost like you have experience in this area.¡± said Di. ¡°That would be a question about Samantha¡¯s private medical records. I don¡¯t think it¡¯s appropriate to discuss it in what¡¯s essentially a public hearing.¡± ¡°I agree.¡± I said. ¡°I¡¯ll make sure I cut out any speculation about Sam from the published version.¡± ¡°So, back on topic.¡± said Jacob. ¡°We can know that Greg¡¯s soul is actually in the body of the man sitting here identifying as Greg because he has the same soul fingerprint?¡± Sam nodded. ¡°And how do we know this is actually the fingerprint of the soul?¡± ¡°What else could it be?¡± Di asked. ¡°We know it¡¯s the result something immaterial that influences human behavior and essentially grants us free will. That¡¯s pretty much the definition of a soul. Now I just wonder if the different body changes things.¡± ¡°I believe that every cell in your body is replaced periodically, though the actual lifetime of a cell varies based on type.¡± I looked at Tim to verify this, and he nodded. ¡°I¡¯m not too sure about neurons and a few others, but yeah, most of the cells in your body are replaced every ten years or so.¡± I nodded and continued, addressing Di. ¡°So, are you the same person as Diane at the age of twenty?¡± ¡°I was actually pretty stupid at the age of twenty, but yeah, I understand. Ship of Theseus problem. If a ship is replaced one board at a time until every board has been replaced at least once, is it the same ship? I would say yes, which means that I¡¯m the same person. But your body was grown from a sample of a few hundred cells that Greg gave Bob the conservation core a week ago.¡± ¡°Eleven days, but yes. The full replacement just happened all at once, rather than over the years.¡± ¡°Except now the situation is more like we took the mast off of that ship and rebuilt the ship around it. Saying that¡¯s the same ship is quite different.¡± The conversation went on for at least another hour, before everyone had basically said everything important. When no one said anything new for a full minute Di spoke up. ¡°Well, I think we¡¯ve basically covered this from every angle we can. I¡¯m still not one hundred percent certain that this man is Greg, but I would like to think about it. Thank you, every one, for coming out.¡± With that she concluded the meeting. Di stood up, looked at me, then left. I guess she didn¡¯t want to talk to me. Not sure if I could do about my personal situation, I checked in on the Dungeon Crafters. When I found them at what was now the militia base, as it didn¡¯t really mine any more, they had dug a fake cave into the wall of the stone quarry. Inside that cave was a medium teleporter, which lead to the first floor of the mine. ¡°I¡¯m surprised you managed to dig a starting shaft all of the way to the first floor and backfill it this quickly.¡± ¡°Oh, you don¡¯t actually need to do that to dig a starting area.¡± he said to my surprise. When I built the dungeons in Sanctuary I had to dig down in order to carve out a secluded location for the dungeon. After all, you needed an open area when you started. ¡°So how did you start the dungeon?¡± ¡°Oh, the teleporter can actually teleport an object in one direction to anywhere within one kilometer or so, at least on the default settings. Usually this is used to move people short distances to another nearby location on the surface.¡± ¡°Like I can do with Linked Teleport?¡± I could connect to the teleporter and have it move me to or from anywhere near itself, it just cost me a lot of energy. ¡°Exactly. The only difference is that the teleporter sends a million nanites to the location first to see if it¡¯s a valid location, whereas with your power you are sending those nanites.¡± That made sense. I knew that when I messed up the spell and picked a location too near or inside a solid object it still cost one point of mana, or one million fully charged nanites. ¡°Once the teleporter establishes that there is gas or a movable liquid at the location, you can teleport there. It took us a few days of searching, but we eventually found a small pocket of natural gas the size of a car, a little over six hundred meters almost straight down. We sent a chemical warehouse down there to absorb all of it, then shifted all of it to the surface once we had a miner, small nuclear reactor, and another medium teleporter. Those quantum communication things you told us about really helped us oversee the initial steps, as you can¡¯t get a signal through that much rock and it wasn¡¯t safe for a human. Now, however, we have found other pockets near that first room, each of which are being converted into a different training facility, so it is acting as the control room.¡± ¡°You aren¡¯t going for a floor based dungeon?¡± Marshall, the Manager, shook his head. ¡°No, Paul wanted a series of training facilities, each with a different theme. That way he could send troops through a specific scenario that they needed to train on. So far, we have started a trench warfare scenario, a fort defense scenario, a fort assault scenario, and an urban warfare scenario. Once we are finished with one of those we¡¯ll get started on others, maybe even throw in different biomes.¡± I nodded. ¡°Well, I think I made a discovery when I was working on making the Extreme Dungeon at Sanctuary not kill everyone. I think it could be useful here.¡± We went to talk to Paul and explained the body transfer procedure. ¡°I understand that not everyone will be okay with it for moral reasons, but it should probably be an option, especially if they are going to do actual combat.¡± Paul nodded. ¡°I¡¯m sure Jacob will have some issues with it.¡± ¡°Actually, I just got out of a meeting with him and some other people who were debating whether I¡¯m still the same person after I did the transfer. He was one of those people.¡± ¡°Wait, you¡¯re saying this isn¡¯t your real body?¡± Paul looked me over. ¡°I thought something was different about your looks, I just didn¡¯t realize that was why.¡± ¡°This isn¡¯t my original body, but it¡¯s still real. But yes, my looks are slightly different, because this body was grown from the ground up with the improved DNA and some of those genes had minor influences on how I look. It did manage to get my fingerprints correct, though, which is interesting. That wouldn¡¯t happen with a normal clone.¡± Paul sat down and sighed. ¡°That¡¯s a lot to take it. I thought the difference might be from gene therapy, but wasn¡¯t sure. But that¡¯s something even more different about you, which makes this a lot stranger.¡± ¡°I understand.¡± I said. ¡°Like I said, it¡¯s probably not for everyone, but if they are going into actual combat, I¡¯m sure at least some of them would want to use this method as a form of life insurance.¡± ¡°What if we can¡¯t recover the body?¡± asked Paul. ¡°Sometimes in war, the damage is just too great.¡± ¡°Actually, I ran into many cases like that while looking into this method. In one case, the man activated a nuclear weapon beside himself, vaporizing everything organic within a few kilometers. He woke up at the cloning facility that held his backup only missing a few hours, as the memory transfer was too slow for real-time updates. He still knew some time had passed, he just didn¡¯t know how long or what happened during the missing time.¡± I then told him about how I¡¯m going to post the debate on the bulletin board after I finish a bit of editing, splicing in the video to Di and removing Sam¡¯s personal information. Paul nodded. ¡°Well, I could see how that would be useful. Let¡¯s wait and see how the debate goes, however. If the majority of people believe you are the same person, I don¡¯t have a problem offering the procedure to the men. The cost of a clone is a lot less than the cost of a new recruit, and it saves lives, so the militia will provide them with one at a time, assuming they die in a legitimate combat situation. I could see guys taking dumb risks because of this, however, so I¡¯m charging them for their replacement if they die outside of combat or because of stupidity.¡± ¡°Fair enough. Tim oversaw my procedure, so you should talk to him about setting up a facility to oversee the procedure for the troops.¡± Paul nodded. ¡°I do have a question, though. Why didn¡¯t you have Bob bulk you up while making that body? After all, it has to be easier for him to do it than for you to do it through training.¡± ¡°The more different your body is, the less likely the soul connection is to work, and the longer it will take. Because this was a test to see if the process works, I went with as close to my original as possible, other than some minor implant changes, since I didn¡¯t want to go through the implantation or upgrading process while conscious. Implants actually don¡¯t have major impacts on the chance of success unless they alter the way your body works, like synthetic muscle replacements.¡± Paul nodded again. ¡°Makes sense.¡± Now that the discussion was finished I headed down into the training facility. The teleporter on the surface only had one valid destination and the one it took you to had five, the surface and four different areas that were being carved out. As it hadn¡¯t been that long since I set the business up, the four scenarios weren¡¯t anywhere near completion, but they did have a VR simulation ready in case I wanted to see what they were going for. The first simulation was trench warfare. Your side had a basic trench, two autominers, and a reactor. Your mission was to defeat the other side that had the same equipment. The scenario could be played against System controlled clones of Grilk, Solin, Jotun, various creatures, humans, and Alf, and other races would be added if they were encountered in the field. It could also be played against another team of recruits. The second was a fort defense scenario. You would arrive in one of ten forts with concrete or wooden walls and would have to defend it against large numbers of invaders. This was essentially a recreation of the previous two battles we had against the GCA, but with more variation so that the men could adapt to different scenarios. The third was fort assault. It was essentially the opposite of the second simulator, with you arriving at a military camp ten kilometers away and having to assault one of those forts. The rooms for all three of these scenarios were a twenty five kilometer domed area which had been reinforced with some sort of System metal bars, like rebar on steroids, in order to avoid support pillars. The forth scenario was a bit different. It was only five kilometers in diameter, but contained over a thousand buildings where enemies could hide and attack you. Many of the streets and alley ways were too narrow for large vehicles, so you would need to clear buildings as you went to insure your success. It would probably take them a month to finish the first scenario, the Fort Defense. They had considered combining this with the fort assault, as the main difference was where you started from, but Paul wanted two of them so that two teams could train at once, as this was currently their main duty. The urban combat was so far the only other scenario that had happened in real life, and only for the cavalry. The manager had figured out a standard contract so that they could still make money making these, however, a method they would use for all future clients unless they negotiated something special. The client would cover all building expenses and ongoing expenses, like fuel or rewards, and the Dungeon Crafters would keep all of the materials they found when carving the space for the dungeon. That would directly translate into a profit for the DC that was almost proportional to the area they needed to carve out, and would prevent clients from building overly elaborate dungeons in an effort to get as much out of the company as possible. They could always pay to make a nicer dungeon, but wouldn¡¯t demand extremely valuable rewards be given because they would have to pay for them. If they needed to come back and update the dungeon, they would have the same payment arrangement, but as an update didn¡¯t always include digging new tunnels, the DC would be able to run at least one autominer the entire time they were there to collect their payment. It was under those terms that AR was asking for them to build a dungeon in town. Because AR had nanite forges and plenty of minerals, it would make the things they need and save money on the dungeon. It would then charge people twenty five zerka each to enter the dungeon, which Olivia had calculated would mean that they would have to clear at least the first two or three levels to earn a profit, but was low enough that most people would have no problem affording it. The AR dungeon would take inspiration from shooter games and be a mix of fort defense, fort offense, urban warfare, and stealth missions. Naturally, when the city council came up with the plans and voted to hire them to do this I didn¡¯t vote, as it would be a massive conflict of interest to vote to hire a company I owned. Chapter 28 The way Dungeon Crafters was starting their dungeons gave me an idea. I had been worried about being able to hide the location of underground bases. When I built sanctuary I had cut an entire staircase down to it. Because no one would want to walk down a kilometer long staircase, I installed a teleporter in the colony so that you could teleport down. After that I tried to back-fill the staircase, but gave up after a hundred meters. Anyone that used even basic prospecting equipment would be able to find Sanctuary if they wanted to. With the dungeons I had done better, and kept a record of what rock I was digging through as I dug, then replaced the rock as best I could. This could pass a cursory inspection, but any serious scan would detect the small cracks and air pockets in the one centimeter of material in a long cylinder shape. If I could just set the teleporter to scan for something beyond the normal one kilometer range, then build there, it was unlikely anyone else would look where I had. It would take a lot of time and nanites to scan the area, but I might be able to find a secure location for a base. I returned to sanctuary and went to my workshop. This is where I had made all of the stuff for the dungeon, and where I kept my nanite forge and other equipment. I ordered a small teleporter from the System, then deactivated its ability to connect to other teleporter before setting it up in the corner of the room. After that I started playing with the settings. That was the maximum range because the accuracy wasn¡¯t perfect and you could could be shifted by several millimeters? Doesn¡¯t matter, they are nanites. Long range teleportation can cause chemicals to alter sometimes, making it a bad idea to do that for living beings? Doesn¡¯t matter, they¡¯re nanites. If their chemistry gets messed up, I¡¯ll lose some, but I can fix that by just increasing the number of nanites I send. It is difficult to reconstitute something properly past fifteen kilometers, resulting in the atoms not lining up properly much of the time? That¡¯s mostly a macroscopic phenomenon. I ran the math and found that, statistically, only about half the nanites would suffer that fate. So, adding all three overrides together, I managed to extend the range to around twenty five kilometers. The teleporter would need to send the nanites to a location then attempt to bring them back a fraction of a second later, at which point it could download their data on the location. If the nanites had been teleported into solid rock, however, they won¡¯t be retrievable, so the teleporter can just try the next location if they can¡¯t be retrieved. The nanites that survive appearing inside rock, maybe in a micro-fracture, will break down after a few years into their raw material, so you won¡¯t even know the area had been scanned. Around ten percent would make it to their destination and around ten percent of those that survived will make it back to the teleporter. One percent was more that enough to work with, as it guaranteed a working location. I bought ten liters of nanites from the System and told the teleporter to use them to scan the rock below us. Now I just needed to wait. The crust was around forty three kilometers thick here, so I would be most of the way through it, but I could cool the area if I had to. This was just a proof of concept, after all. Though maybe it wasn¡¯t suited for Earth? The moon and Mars were both dead worlds, so they had no mantle or crust, at least as far as we knew, so it should be possible for them to build this deep there and not have heat issues. I¡¯ve always been a fan of space colonization, and it made sense for humanity to spread out off of Earth now that we had the ability to do so, so I could use that as a cover to go there and look for such locations. I checked my mineral and Zerka balances. I had over fifty million in rare minerals and over a million in my account, so this should be doable. The cheapest ship in the System was a personal shuttle at five hundred thousand. It could carry six people, but only had around twenty thousand meters per second of delta-v, so, if necessary, it could make it to the moon, or even Mars if you are willing to sit in a seat for six to eight months. While this would be useful if there was a space station to go to, it didn¡¯t meet my needs. Next was a personnel transport. It could carry up to fifty people at a time, and only cost seven hundred and fifty thousand for the same delta-v. Then there was the cargo transport, which replaced most of the passenger area with a Warehouse, letting you move large amounts of cargo, but requiring that the rest of the area be taken up by fuel just so you don¡¯t lose the delta-v, as the warehouse couldn¡¯t lessen the mass of the items it stored. I ignored the various fighters and gunboats, as I wanted something comfortable for the long journey, and eventually found one that might work. It was called ¡°Settler¡¯s Ship¡±. It was like an RV, but had a large amount of equipment built in for settling new worlds that didn¡¯t yet have the System. I did, however, need to make some modifications. There were two types of FTL travel available to a ship, corresponding to the two types of teleportation. Warp drive bent space around you to amplify your speed. A teleporter bent space in on itself, creating things called ¡®quantum lenses¡¯ which would reflect the probability function of any particles across themselves, essentially letting the device amplify its range with lenses. This made the warp drive use about as much energy as a one kilometer teleport per second to amplify your speed by a factor of ten. It also meant that the warp drive could be used to teleport the ship short distances in an emergency, which was sometimes used by unarmored ships to dodge attacks. The Hyperdrive was similar to a portal, only without the actual portal connecting the two sides, since you didn¡¯t need a safe entry and exit point. The ship could just be shifted into hyperspace directly, trusting on its hull integrity to keep it together. For stealth purposes, Warp drive was clearly superior, as it couldn¡¯t be detected easily outside a few AU of distance, but the Hyperdrive could be easily detected within several light-years. But Warp drive was also much slower. For this reason I removed the hyperdrive and replaced it and the slower in-system Warp drive with a more powerful warp drive that let me amplify my speed by a factor of one hundred instead of the default ten. I could have replaced it with a Warp Drive 3, at a factor of one thousand, but that would have taken up half my storage space. I also replaced the standard generator orb with a small nuclear generator, gaining five times the power, and added in several more power storage modules in the excess space. The ship only had one hundred cubic meters of storage space, but I could carefully manage my cargo and make that work. I also added several quantum entanglement orbs to its communication equipment, and installed one here in Sanctuary, so that I could talk with my second settlement and its people. The other orbs would go with me to connect to bases I built out there. After the modifications the ship would cost a little over fifteen million zerka. I sold some rare minerals and had the System start modifying a pre-made ship to my specifications. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. Now I just needed to talk to Di, to tell her where I was going. If she would be willing to talk with me. Maybe if I told everyone at the same time? I took Sanctuary¡¯s teleporter up to the surface and looked around the parking lot for an empty space. Most of the place was taken up by new houses that were being built or which were already built, so I walked down the main road to where an interstate exit was and went down to the road. Once there I brought in one of my builders and had it build a System default landing pad. The land was pretty flat here, at least where the road was, so as long as I didn¡¯t build a landing pad too close to the road overpass it should be safe to build on. The builder would just need to make sure not to plug the drainage area down the middle of the interstate. An hour later one landing pad was complete, and I set up for a second one beside it before summoning the new ship I bought. It appeared on the landing pad, about eight meters long and dark red in color, a squat ship with small wings meant to make maneuvering easier on planets with atmospheres. I checked my nanite reserves. I was down over seventeen thousand nanites. Obviously, moving something that massive used a lot of energy, so I should probably just leave it on the landing pad. I walked up to the ship and a small ramp came out of the side, unfolding as a door opened. I stepped inside and double-checked everything. There were two bunk beds, and small toilet/auto-shower which cleaned you with nanites, and a small food storage/preparation area. Near the back was the warehouse, as well as access panels for the engine, reactor, and warp drive. There was a panel for the hyperdrive as well, but it just read ¡®Offline¡¯. At the front of the ship was a small room with two seats and two sets of controls, apparently built with the idea of a copilot in mind. Now that I had a ship, I filled the food storage with ingredients, downloaded all of the free recipes available, in AR and Sanctuary, then went to the warehouse at the back. I had previously created a modified version of the World System Core which would allow the System to be introduced to a new world, so I bought five of the original version and five of the modified ones. They were cheap at only two hundred and fifty thousand each, and normally included all of the functions of a Generator 3, several auto-miners, a Nanite forge 2, library, and settlement core, and could store one hundred cubic meters of material of any kind. The low cost was because the System sold them pretty much at cost to get people to spread it to other worlds. The Library function would carry all of the technical and cultural data from whichever world it was made on, so theoretically we could learn about the alien culture that brought the System to Earth if we wished, instead of just using their technical data. I had merely modified them to use a medium nuclear generator instead, and to not use hyperspace waves to communicate with it nanites, forcing anyone in their settlements to not use hyperspace or generator modules either. This would let them hide from anyone looking for them as long as I put them somewhere that the radio signals couldn¡¯t get out, such as underground. I also bought one hundred teleporter orbs. They would be spread out across the world to scan for resources within one kilometer, and to secretly look for empty pockets twenty five meters deep. Teleporter orbs used two and a half times the energy of a teleporter pad to send the same mass, but that wouldn¡¯t matter if I partnered them with a small nuclear generator. The generators could cycle their fuel and the teleporters bring in nanites from any of the publicly known settlements. All of this stuff completely filled the cargo bay, and I had to store a few teleporter orbs and reactors in my Inventory 3 just to have enough room. When I was finally ready, I went to the control panel for the landing pad. It had finished refueling the ship. The ship had a plasma engine that used a similar principle to how the particle cannon worked to accelerate hydrogen to 99.9% the speed of light before sending it out the back of the ship. This ship only had around one hundred thousand kilometers per second of delta-v, which meant that the fuel tank could only hold 0.03% of the mass of the ship. If I wanted to go interstellar with this ship, I would need to take far more fuel so I could accelerate to relativistic speeds. That meant going at least three million meters per second to reach one percent the speed of light, but preferably I could go even faster, as with the warp drive I currently had I would only be going the speed of light. Maybe I could upgrade it and the Warehouse module to carry more fuel and go to Proxima Centauri? The System did say that it had no System presence, but did have primitive life. Speaking of fuel, I needed to make sure I had enough to refuel the reactor. There was enough room in the warehouse left to squeeze in fifty kilograms of uranium. I would have went with Thorium, but the System couldn¡¯t violate the laws of physics, just exploit them in fun ways. In this case, the thorium would have to sit in the reactor for an average of a month before it was available to burn, which meant that, while thorium was fine for long lifetime reactors like those of settlements, it was useless for my ship which probably wouldn¡¯t be out there for a month before coming back. The second landing pad was finished now, so I took the builder and set it for the next larger size, in case anyone wanted to bring in a larger ship. Then I realized something. While I hadn¡¯t seen the interstate being used recently, I didn¡¯t know if it was abandoned, so shouldn¡¯t block traffic. I had built the first two down the middle of the interstate between the entrance and exit ramps, so there were two full lanes on both sides, and you could still access the ramps. The larger one would need to take up the whole road, which would block traffic. I would need to find a better place to put it. Still, I didn¡¯t want people running across traffic in case the road was used, so I put up barriers and signs to redirect people to the ramps to bypass the area. If traffic got too busy, I could let them just drive by the platforms and use teleporter orbs to cross the street. I could also remove the landing pads and build more somewhere else. I would need a large area to build a proper star-port, but this was good enough for now. If I built a space station I could buy a passenger shuttle and cargo shuttle and dock them here, but it would have at least one teleporter, so that wouldn¡¯t necessarily be needed. Once I was finished I went into town and found an empty spot at the end of the shopping center. It was just an opening about as wide as a two lane road with dumpsters beside it, where trucks could drive behind the shops, with an area that used to be a patch of woods beside it. In that area I pulled out my builder and a miner, having the miner clear away the tree stumps that were left in the area and flatten a ten meter by ten meter area. After thirty minutes it was finished, so I had the builder make a concrete platform and set up a small portal that I bought from the System for five hundred thousand zerka. While both teleporters and portals could send people to other locations, the fact that they worked on completely different principles meant that they were useful in different situations. Teleportation used an amount of quantum lenses roughly proportional to the distance you were traveling, making the power use curve a jagged, angled line. Portals, on the other hand, created a tunnel through higher dimensional space, where the further they could send you through hyperspace the deeper you could go, making you travel faster and making the trip more efficient. This made the power use curve logarithmic, with a bit of variation due to minor fluctuations in hyperspace and the fabric of space not being uniform in higher dimensions. The two different curves usually met at around three hundred and fifty thousand kilometers, making teleportation to distances further than Earth¡¯s moon from the surface use more energy than traveling through a portal. While I could probably get away with building a teleporter on the moon to move people, I was also planning on building a martian colony, so I would need a portal to move between here and there. I tested the portal by connecting it Fort Solinan¡¯s, then traveled through to talk with Tarn. He had experience dealing with other worlds, even if they were worlds where the System already existed, so I thought he was the best source for information. He told me stories he had heard about people who had been on worlds without a planet-wide Systems, and usually without native lifeforms. He even called Silan in to talk to me. Apparently he had spent seventeen years on a dead mining planet when he was a young adult, maybe a hundred earth years ago. I stayed there talking with him until the sun set, making sure to tell them about my plans to build colonies on the moon and Mars, at which point I thanked him for the information and reopened the portal to AR. Chapter 29 Di stared at me from across the table. When she heard that I was planning on going to space she had asked me to meet with her, so now we were sitting across from each other in the living room of our house. ¡°So now you¡¯re running off to space, Greg?¡± she asked with a look of disappointment in her eyes. ¡°You wanted to take some time apart, so I thought I could use the time to...wait, you called me by my name. Does that me you now accept that I¡¯m Greg?¡± She nodded. ¡°Yes, you are Greg, but this isn¡¯t about that. Deep down I think I always knew that. But you went off and did...this,¡± she waved her hand at me, ¡°without even talking to me. And now you want to run off to another planet without even telling me.¡± ¡°I did tell you, though. I told everyone.¡± ¡°I should know first, though. Switching bodies was a major life decision, and you left me out of that, and now you¡¯re building the first human town on the moon, and I have to hear about it the same time as everyone else?¡± ¡°You said you wanted some time apart, and weren¡¯t even sure who I was. Wouldn¡¯t that mean that you don¡¯t want me to contact you?¡± ¡°No, of course not. I...¡± she stared at the wall for a few seconds. ¡°I should be a part of your life, but it¡¯s like you don¡¯t want me there.¡± ¡°Of course I want you there,¡± I said, leaning across the coffee table to grab her hands. ¡°I just thought that you were mad at me and didn¡¯t wanted to be around me.¡± ¡°And before that, with the body swap thing?¡± ¡°I...I guess I didn¡¯t tell you until afterwards because I didn¡¯t want you to stop me. I needed to do this. We needed to find a way to save lives.¡± ¡°You say that, but was that really the reason?¡± I had to think about that. Originally, I had looked into it for that purpose, but now I wasn¡¯t sure. ¡°I think I was just afraid.¡± I said, surprising myself. ¡°Afraid of what? Of me? Of a relationship?¡± ¡°Of Death. I killed thousands with one attack that they couldn¡¯t protect against. Before that people were getting slaughtered by beings that will either torture you to death or think nothing of killing you, many of which were far stronger than us. And they are what the GCA considers expendable troops, not the good troops. I needed a foolproof way to survive, for all of us to survive. That was the only one I could find, even with its risk. No other skill could fully protect us, even if we can come back from severe injury. I could build a defense against attacks like Angel of Death, but they can always make something different that I haven¡¯t thought about. I would be in an arms race against a foe that knows science and the System far better than I do. I can¡¯t win that race, so I did the one thing that might win it. I copied the Norse gods and made myself immortal. And I can do the same to the rest of us too.¡± Di sighed. ¡°What if we don¡¯t want to be immortal? What if some of us expect our lives to end at some point, and are okay with that?¡± ¡°Then you can choose when to let it end. Just stop making clones. We should have that choice though, so our lives can¡¯t be permanently taken by another person.¡± ¡°And what if we are meant to die? What if there is something out there, like a god, that decides our time is up?¡± ¡°If they are really a god, I don¡¯t think we could stop them. But even aliens that we once thought were gods can¡¯t really kill us like once we have a clone.¡± Di knew Greg didn¡¯t believe in any gods, but she did. Somewhere out there had to be some higher purpose, some higher being to give us purpose. She sighed. ¡°We¡¯ll talk about this when you get back from playing astronaut.¡± I stood, then had an idea. ¡°Why don¡¯t you come with me? The ship is designed to carry up to six people, so there¡¯s plenty of room.¡± Di shook her head. ¡°I¡¯ve never been into the whole sci-fi space colonization thing. I¡¯ll see you when you return.¡± I nodded. ¡°Goodbye then.¡± I said, then turned and left. Behind me, Di started crying, though I had no idea why. Unknown location: Screams filled the underground facility. This was where betrayers went, where those that broke their contracts with the GCA or failed their missions were punished. Thanks to the medical equipment and the nanite injections people rarely died, and thanks to the skill of the punishers it was even more rare for subjects to betray their masters a second time. The two and a half meter tall man opened the door to see a naked Sea Alf woman covered in scars strapped to the table. She had returned months ago to beg forgiveness for her failure in a simple raid on some backwater planet. Seeing that the woman was asleep, the tall man pushed a button on a console, flooding her brain with the sensation of pain, jolting her awake with a scream. He waited a few seconds for her heart rate to slow back down before looking her in the face. Not that they couldn¡¯t bring her back if her heart gave out, but there was no point in wasting money on it if you didn¡¯t have to. ¡°Lord...Lord Vidar.¡± she said, pain covering her face. ¡°Please, forgive me. I failed you, and I know it. But I still don¡¯t know how I could have lost. The enemy must have cheated. They must have used some sort of...¡± Vidar pushed the button again, holding it for three seconds before releasing it. The pain she experienced was the maximum her species could, and rather than allow the System to suppress the pain like they would out in the field, he had her nanites force her to stay awake despite the pain. ¡°You still refuse to take responsibility for your failure.¡± he said. ¡°but I have decided to give you a second chance.¡± Previously she had been assigned to lead thirty thousand troops against some meaningless city, killing and torturing its people while taking all of the resources they could carry. This would force the city to surrender and give the GCA a new influx of worker-slaves. The planet in question had proven quite resilient, with none of their major cities and only some of their smaller cities surrendering, but that was common among worlds that had experience in war, especially ones where terrorism was a common tactic. They could just try again later. This Alf, whose name Vidar hadn¡¯t bothered learning, had reinforced their resolve with her failure, however. Somehow, a small Alf colony of only a few hundred, backed by a few hundred local mercenaries, had managed to draw her away from her mission and wipe out the vast majority of her forces. The only ones to survive had been the ones that she sent to attack the city as she was ordered to do, and only a few of them survived. Not that the other commanders didn¡¯t also lose the vast majority of their troops, but they had at least completed their objective of sowing fear into the hearts of the locals. This Alf had only served to give the locals hope with her defeat. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. ¡°Please, my lord. Tell me what you wish of me, and it shall be done.¡± She closed her eyes and tears streamed down her face. Vidar nodded. ¡°The Alf village that destroyed your forces is looking for recruits. You are to join the colony and learn of their defenses, as well as how they managed to defeat you. After that, you will act as an agent for whichever competent commander we send for the next assault. Only once the village falls will you be allowed to return.¡± The Alf woman began shedding tears of joy. ¡°Thank you my Lord. I won¡¯t fail you a second time.¡± ¡°See that you don¡¯t.¡± responded Vidar. ¡°For if you do, only the suicide of all of your clones can save you from pain that will make your time here become a pleasant dream.¡± Greg¡¯s perspective: I waved goodbye to the cheering people as I entered the ship. News agencies from across the planet had sent crews to film the launch, as this would be humanity¡¯s first space colony. Many of them were concerned that I was going alone, but as I had also been a major trader on the Market and had been the one to inform them about the GCA attacks, they saw me as just a glory seeking entrepreneur. Like the post System version of a certain Space X-ploration and electric car company CEO, only I was sending myself into space instead of an electric car. The original had survived the plague and the System¡¯s awakening, but had fallen into obscurity, as his company and its few surviving employees struggled to adapt their patents to the new technology the System brought with it. I was certain he¡¯d make some sort of a comeback, I just didn¡¯t know when or how much of a comeback that would be. Who knows, maybe I¡¯ll overtake him as the world¡¯s richest man one day. Hopefully the people of Earth would actually survive long enough for that to matter. While I didn¡¯t expect any trouble, I had Tim prepare my clone anyway. The cryopod would watch its brainwaves and, if it detected the heightened levels that indicated a soul was trying to animate it, the pod would wake me up. The only way that would happen, though, is if something went horribly wrong. I closed the door to the ship behind me and started the launch procedure. The reactor was full and at full power. The hydrogen fuel was full. The power reserves were at full. That last one was the most important. The reactor didn¡¯t produce enough power to counteract Earth¡¯s gravity, so I would need to draw on the reserves to get into orbit. Once there I could run entirely off of the reactor if I wanted to, even with the warp drive online. Though I would need to upgrade the reactor if I wanted to do that with the Warp Drive 3 I was hoping to install. Seeing that everything was ready, I floated off the platform, activated the engines and turned down the interstate so that I would have a straight shot into space. I then burned the engines at full throttle, making it to orbit in less than a minute. We had set up the press area to make sure that no one would be injured by the engines, but they still would have gotten an impressive video. I pulled the Hyperspace Communications Module out of my inventory and plugged it into the communications console. While I had taken pains to make sure that the ship couldn¡¯t be tracked through hyperspace, the press crew had insisted that I send them periodic updates and do interviews. So I would plug it in, but leave it on standby/listen mode any time I wasn¡¯t talking with them. Once I was in orbit I set out for the moon. After verifying that the initial burn put me on the correct course, I turned on the warp drive, cutting a three day trip down to fifty minutes. Once there the drive automatically disengaged and I executed a deceleration burn to go into orbit. There I sent the press another update that I was in orbit and shifted the ship into a polar orbit. While mineral scans of the moon had already been done by space probes, compared to what this ship was capable of they were barely worth having. Soon I had over a dozen decent spots picked out for colonies. The first was in Shackleton crater. With only a one kilometer range for a one way teleport I had to lower my orbit until I was practically skimming the surface. As I passed over it, however, I sent one of the standard World System Cores to the center of it, then ordered it to start the pre-programmed basic colony which would serve as our source of water and hydrogen. The Core would essentially start digging out storage areas, then put the different storage facilities in them. It would then start building more mines, processing facilities, Generators, and progressively higher tiers of nanite forges until it had a Tier 10 nanite forge, which are usually the main workhorses of industrial planets, able to produce almost twenty billion a day worth of System products. As it expanded the industry and storage it would build landing pads and a settlement capable of supporting at least ten thousand people. The only difference with a public settlement and a secret one is that the secret one would use nuclear generators, fission at first, then fusion, then anti-matter, to produce their power, and that the secret one would be completely cut off from hyperspace. I traveled to the next four sites, periodically dropping teleporter orbs in random locations or on mineral deposits, and put World System Cores on those four sites as well, notifying the Press after each core was placed. I then set down on the surface and started looking over the data that was coming in from all of the scans. Hopefully one of the teleportation orbs would find a cave soon, so that I could start building settlements there. As each Nanite Forge would take five days to make one the tier higher, it would take at least forty days to reach the maximum size. And that was assuming that they didn¡¯t hit supply or power bottlenecks, which they most likely would. I doubted it would be ready in less than two months, though the settlement might be ready for people to start to move in a week from now. Fort Solinan: Sarla stepped out of the archway that had sent her here from the homeworld. It had taken her a few days to fully adapt to her new body with its radically different implants. This one was almost entirely organic, like the bodies of most of her people, while her old body had many cybernetic upgrades to make it vastly superior to this one. Her mission, however, required that she delete all of the old programs that enhanced her in unusual ways so that the recruiter could look over her status and verify that she was who she said she was. While adapting she had trained the skills a colonist was supposed to have exhaustively, until she had the skills one would expect from a mage. Her job would be as a combat mage, accompanying the troops in their training as they entered something called a ¡®dungeon¡¯. Apparently it was some kind of training facility which the local Alfinoids built in order to guarantee that their troops could handle any situation that they might face. The local Lord, an unremarkable man named Tarn, had formed an alliance with one of the native settlements and arranged to use their militia¡¯s dungeon. As that was most likely the locals that helped against my assault, it pleased me that everything was going well. They suspected nothing. Apparently everyone was talking about how the mayor of the nearby Human settlement, the local sapient species of Alfinoids, had set off that morning to go to the planet¡¯s moon and build a settlement. Apparently it was their first space colony. Not surprising, seeing that they only had full access to the System for a few months. On many worlds the powerful people already knew about the System and had already at least colonized their local system before they allowed the common people to know about the System. That¡¯s how it happened on the Homeworld. The powerful people kept the System to themselves for over a thousand years, using it to build settlements across the entire planet before one of them let the secret of their power slip and they were forced to give access to the System to their serfs in order to not lose them to the nobles that did. Once half the people on the planet had access, the System introduced itself to everyone, and the tidally-locked planet became a proper System world. That was over ten thousand years ago, and the Nobles still had the power, with some of them still surviving from before the System came to everyone on the world. Sarla, though that wasn¡¯t her name at the time, grew up on one of the first colony worlds, settled eight thousand years ago by one of the original Nobles. It was a water world, with only a few mountain tops and volcanoes providing land to live on and an extremely long 107 hour day. The temperature fluctuated from far below the point where the sea froze to almost the point at which the sea water boiled, though once you got deep beneath the surface of the water the temperature stayed almost constant. For that reason, everyone lived in the cramped underwater domes and could only go to the surface just after sunrise or sunset. She had been an orphan, one of the surface salvagers who left every morning to pick the plants that regrew during the intense heat of the day. One day, after she got back to the door late and the local Lord refused to open the door and let her back in, she was forced to bury herself in mud and leaves to survive the heat of the days, barely surviving with extreme sunburn, heat exhaustion, and starvation as she was picked up by the salvagers that came out just after sunset. It was at that point she vowed to kill the Lord of the city for what they did to her. She eventually managed to get a job on another world, having learned magic so that she could treat her own severe pain caused by the scars of that day. The local lord was desperate enough for people that they were willing to pay for the expensive nanite treatment to regrow enough of her skin that she could be useful to them. She served them loyally until they started encountering a corporation that also wanted to build on that forest planet. There was a war with the GCA and the Lord sent her and her fellow troops to kill the enemy. For some reason, they were captured and not killed. The GCA offered her a position as a commander in their military if she would serve them and taught her about their vision for the future, where everyone was given what they needed to live, and received extra if they performed better. She agreed to join them, helping them take over the settlement on the planet and even to set up on the world where she was born. She lead an increasing number of their troops, being rewarded more and more with each battle she won, until she managed to capture the Lord that had trapped her on the surface two decades earlier. She had him chained to a tree at sunrise and turned the settlement over to the GCA for one of their managers to run. She was then reassigned to lead a group of thirty thousand on some world named ¡®Earth¡¯ that had just been connected to the System. It should have been an easy assignment, after all the locals called their planet ¡®Dirt¡¯. How intelligent could they be? She marched her troops toward the city she was ordered to assault, only to be attacked from the side by some stupid Lord and his human mercenaries. She thought she would make quick work of them, but somehow the locals had descent weapons and training, and were able to wipe out most of her forces before she got troops inside their settlement. She knew she would win, however. Then her troops started coughing up blood, screaming in pain, and collapsing. Whatever it was didn¡¯t seem to affect her though. It must be because she was an Alf, and because the settlement that released the biological weapon was an Alf settlement they wouldn¡¯t make a weapon that could affect them. As she couldn¡¯t win the fight now by herself, she returned to the GCA base. Her superiors would need to know about this weapon. When she reported it, she was referred up the chain of command all the way to General Vidar. When she told him, however, he considered her a failure. Worse, she was a traitor that couldn¡¯t even win a simple battle and instead made excuses. He spent the next month or more teaching her why she was wrong, and she wouldn¡¯t make that mistake again. Either she would complete this mission or she would die trying. Multiple times if she had to, even to the last clone. Chapter 30 Sarla fired another fireball at the approaching army. Her group had entered this human ¡°dungeon¡± only two hours ago, and already she was running out of mana. They had taken the teleporter into the one simulator the humans had so far finished building, a fort defense simulation. Soon after they arrived they were told that a GCA army was approaching, and that they needed to defend the base. For motivation, around a hundred robots designed to look like humans, armed with rail pistols, had been provided, and were playing the role of a civilian militia trying to defend their homes. At least, the ones that were still left were playing that roll. Eighty three of them were destroyed or damaged enough that they couldn¡¯t keep going. Over half of the twenty-four Alf crew she had come here with had also ¡°died¡±. They were all equipped with emergency teleport devices which teleported them to the medical facility as soon as as they were badly injured, so none had actually died, but they had come close. The human soldiers that did this mission had informed us that they didn¡¯t use the bracelets, instead relying on their healing abilities and emergency clones to make it more realistic, but as we didn¡¯t have either of those, we had to use the teleporters. I did actually have a clone out there, the last body I was in, but I would only be returning to it if I was discovered and died, probably via suicide as they would no doubt wish to interrogate me. After what Lord Vidar had done, there was no chance that they would break me, but I didn¡¯t want to let them know how resilient we were. This battle was apparently based on the two battles they had fought against the GCA so far, using Grilk and Solin troops mixed with a variety of quadrupedal predators. The number of enemies, however, made me even less sure how they beat me. ¡°Out of mana!¡± yelled the mage beside me, using the human name for charged nanites, before drawing a rail pistol and continuing to fire. We had all been given one for use in emergencies, but at the time I had doubted I would need to use it. Now, however, I knew that I would use it soon. I could only hold out for a few more minutes myself. ¡°Jotun!¡± yelled another and I looked up to see three of the alfinoids approaching. I knew that they were clones under the control of the outpost core which ran this simulation, and were therefore brainless, but the thought of having to face one still terrified me. ¡°Firing on the Jotun!¡± I yelled as I charged up the densest firebolt I could make. Soon the chemicals in the air started splitting and everything became a plasma, but I kept pushing energy into it. The energy of the plasma grew higher and higher as it shifted in the color spectrum. And the enemy kept getting closer. When they were around thirty meters away I received a notification that a fusion event had been detected within the plasma. That should be hot enough. I held the attack until they got within twenty meters, my effective range, and I fired it at the chest of the center one. The explosion knocked me off of my feet, along with several others on the wall, and the wind almost blew me off the walkway I had been standing on. I got back up, noticing that I had minor burns from the explosion and looked at the corpses of the Jotun. One was in pieces no larger than my fist, one was on fire and not moving, and one had been blow towards the wall, and was laying against it. I could see its chest moving, so I knew it was still alive, if barely. It was basically drooling blood, so it would die soon. The other creatures that were around it had all been killed or knocked over, while those slightly further away had tried to take cover. Now those that could were standing up. I checked my nanite levels. They were practically empty. Having no other option, I hung my staff on my back and drew my pistol. Slowly my squadmates were getting up and firing on the enemy as well. The enemy tried to fight back but only managed to take out two of us before they were all killed. We received a congratulatory message from the outpost core, and were teleported back to the staging area. Most of my squadmates were there, with only two still being in the clinic for treatment. ¡°Congratulations.¡± said a large human man, the commander of the base whose training field we were using, named Paul. ¡°That was essentially a recreation of the defense of Fort Solinan, only we slowed down the enemy advance. The original battle only lasted one hour, while the simulation gives you two.¡± Now that I thought about it, the distribution of enemies was almost exactly what I had sent at them. Several of the others looked surprised. ¡°We could barely keep up. How did you handle them?¡± ¡°We didn¡¯t. The wall got knocked down, and most of us died, at least temporarily. I ended up fighting a Jotun and almost getting beat to death, while over a thousand Solin and several hundred Grilk entered the town and killed over half the residents.¡± ¡°But you won.¡± I said. ¡°They enemy was killed.¡± ¡°We got lucky. The mayor happened to figure out a way to wipe out the enemy in one attack.¡± ¡°How, though?¡± another man asked. Good, I didn¡¯t have to ask and risk suspicion. ¡°That would be a secret, one that he refuses to tell anyone. What I can tell you is that using it was a traumatic experience for him, so he¡¯s unlikely to use it again.¡± Who gets traumatized by winning a battle in a spectacular fashion? Were they lead by a weakling? After we discussed the combat scenario and what we could have done different, like increasing our mana stores or using more efficient spells, we left and returned to the main town. The mayor had recently installed a portal in the town, which could be a possible way to bypass the town¡¯s defenses, but judging by how he only allowed human and select non-human settlements to connect to his teleporters, he had likely done the same thing with the portal. Still, it was worth testing. Paul had contacted the main bar/brothel for the town and deposited one thousand zerka to cover our expenses, so the others in my squadron had decided to celebrate our victory. I disliked celebrating with others. In fact, it was one of my least favorite social activities. But I had to keep up appearances, so I went with them. I ordered some sort of alcoholic beverage and a meal, some sort of grilled red meat with various vegtables as sides, and pretended to enjoy myself. I also fought the urge to vomit when I saw several of the men there leave for a back room with some of the human prostitutes that were working there. There was a Snow Alf woman working here, and they ignored her, which made it even more disgusting. How could they have that kind of thoughts about a member of another species? I knew that if I was forced to choose, I would choose the snow alf woman rather than a human man. Not that I was particularly interested in other women, but at lest she was the same species if not the same race. That made the idea of being with her bearable, at least. An hour later, after watching the others embarrass themselves, I claimed that I was tired and needed to leave. I couldn¡¯t put up with their behavior any longer. I walked by the nearby Arch and quickly had my assistant look over its programming. It was, indeed, locked, this time with a set of special codes. The mayor would use these codes to set up the arches in his colonies on other planets in the star system, allowing them to connect to this place. The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. With that possibility ended, I went back to Fort Solinan. At least the people there weren¡¯t that perverted and I could stand to be around them. Greg¡¯s Perspective: When I woke up Vera notified me that one of the teleportation orbs had found a cavern about seventeen kilometers below the ground. I quickly connected to the orb and sent it another one, with instructions to send nanites to repair the orb if it couldn''t form a connection with it after sending the orb into the cavern. A minute later I received a message that the orb had been sent, but that it hadn¡¯t responded afterwords. Repair nanites had been sent. After that I checked in on the various cities. As it had only been a few days, all of them were still in the initial expansion phase and therefore hadn¡¯t started to build the living facilities yet. Until there was a pressurized area, I couldn¡¯t set up the Arch and return home. Though I suppose I could just fly back to Earth. It was less than an hour journey, and over the last three days the ship¡¯s nuclear reactor had managed to refill the ship¡¯s energy reserves, so I could easily make it back. Around ten in the morning I got a signal from the deep teleportation orb. It had been damaged by the teleport, but was now back online and could move things once again. I asked for information on it surroundings and, after verifying that the lava tube it was in was large enough to hold the World System Core, and was in fact large enough to hold this ship, I sent one of the special ones I had in storage to it. This one would build the first secret base I needed to protect humanity. It asked for a name. As it was on the Moon, and this base would be responsible for saving lives, I considered naming it Apollo followed by a number, as I would build more of them. Then I thought of its purpose. Was I trying to build another sanctuary? A place for humanity to hide? Was I building a secret storage area for clones, so that they couldn¡¯t be destroyed? Was I building a military base, where we could learn to protect ourselves? While I was certain I would need to do all three eventually, the people weren¡¯t under attack at the moment and those sanctuary bases would be best on Earth, so that people could escape more easily. The military base would also likely be best on Earth, as that was where the fighters were, as well as the enemy. The clones, however, could be anywhere. I could build a facility out in the kuiper belt or in the andromeda galaxy and they would both work equally well, other than the need to return the people to Earth after they came back. So, keeping with the Greek theme, I named it Prometheus after a titan that was famous for dying and coming back. The housing facilities of the base could be used for those that required physical rehabilitation or psychological help after dying. A week later another orb notified me that it had found a location and a day after that another one reported the same thing. I sent orbs down to these, but held off on the World System Cores. Ideally, I would want all of these to be filled so that we had emergency shelters. But how many would I need on the moon? Until the cities were built, we wouldn¡¯t need to clone anyone, but back on Earth we would need other facilities. I sent the twenty or so teleportation orbs I still had left to Prometheus, instructing it to continue scanning for underground locations where we could build bases, and sending the orbs to those locations. I also told it to make more teleportation orbs when in could spare the Nanite Forge time and keep scanning deeper. Hopefully, when I returned, I would have hundreds or thousands of locations to set up bases, and could choose them at random just in case anyone got hold of my scans, however unlikely that was. As Shackleton had already built a pressurized area, I flew there. The Core had teleporter functionality, so I would be able to teleport to the town, but I didn¡¯t trust it. I shoved the Arch into my Inventory 3, the device only fitting because it was in a broken-down, prefabricated state, and flew to the settlement. I sat down on one of the landing pads that were built there, put on my pressure suit, and exited the ship. The bottom of the crater had several landing pads, with many more under construction, from the size needed for my small ship to those big enough for a Capital ship. Only the moon¡¯s low gravity made it possible to land the last one. This base would have the capability of building ships once it was finished, so it had decided that such landing pads would be needed. My ship¡¯s fuel was rapidly refilled from the base¡¯s hydrogen reserves, and I was sent instructions for entering the colony. After entering the airlock I was scrubbed of the local regolith and allowed to enter through an automatic airlock, gravity slowly increasing until it was equal to Earth¡¯s as the airlock pressurized. It opened into an area that reminded me of an airport, with baggage areas and cargo areas. Any cargo could be offloaded via teleporter, but there were also loading robots in case the customer didn¡¯t wish to do so. All ticketing and cargo handling would be handled by the Core, so no employees were needed, though some could work here if they wished. I took a moving walkway one kilometer into the side of the crater and entered an open area that looked kind of like a mall plaza. There were stores built into the walls, including places that were clearly set up for food service, with the appropriate System devices in all locations, including Food Warehouses or standard Warehouses as appropriate, and local food service or sales terminals at all of the shops. Again, no one was technically required to work anywhere, but they could if they wanted. Once you got out of the shopping area you entered an area full of parks, with a massive fountain in the middle. In a plaza beside that park was an area set aside for a small Arch. Arches were technically half circles which could anchor a type of wormhole at their bottom center. As you exited the wormhole in the same orientation you entered it, entering the top half on one world would have you exit the top half of another. Technically, the other half of the wormhole was also created, but as it was only microns wide the only effect would be a line cut into the stone beneath the Arch. Arches came in many sizes, starting from the most common five meter diameter one and increasing by five meters at a time for each successive size. Well, not exactly five meters, but an alien measurement that was close enough for casual conversation. The small one was all that was needed to move people, but large vehicles and cargo might need a larger one. I gave the Arch in my inventory to the city¡¯s Core, and it set it up in less than a minute. I then sent the arch one of the prearranged codes which I had created for the lunar colonies and had it connect to AR. A few seconds later it shimmered and I saw an image of the city. Wormholes didn¡¯t do this by default, but neither did they keep your orientation by default. Thankfully this had been added to the Arches. Seeing that I had connected, several people had gathered around the Arch. I sent the press a message that I would be stepping through the portal in one hour and deactivated it. I now knew that it worked, and that I could return to Earth whenever I wanted. I just needed to get ready. An hour later I had equipped the best outfit I had remembered to bring with me and I had prepared a list of things I wanted Vera to buy from the System and put in my inventory once we returned to Earth. That would include ten medium teleporters, though five of those were set to not connect to another teleporter unless I told it to, as I didn¡¯t want them to be detected. To hide the connection signals that would normally be sent through hyperspace, all would be modified with quantum entanglement orbs that would let them connect to Prometheus¡¯s teleporter. As these would be too massive to be stored in my personal inventory, Gary could use the Arch as a relay to send them here, and Shackleton could place all but its own in my ship¡¯s cargo hold. I opened up the Arch and stepped through. A large crowd had gathered, and many film crews were there. I gave a short speech about how humanity could now begin its destiny to live among the stars, a speech I had Vera write for me as I wasn¡¯t that good at such things, then spent the next hour answering questions about the lunar colonies. Once I had finished I invited them to travel to the colony and see it for themselves. The air pressure and mixture had been matched to Earth¡¯s by Shackleton, so they wouldn¡¯t need to bring anything special. I set travel to Shackleton to be free for the next week, and let Gary set the prices after that week, then opened it and went through. People quickly spread out and looked over everything. They were surprised by how much it looked like a modern city, and even more surprised by how the shopping district looked like a mall. Apparently Shackleton had looked through its files of Earth cultures and decided that was the culturally appropriate way to build a shopping district. While the housing wasn¡¯t yet finished, most of the rest of the city was, so the people quickly spread out. The shops were full of System produced goods, including weapons and armor, and there were even locations set aside for android and robot merchants, though they didn¡¯t have much stock at the moment. When night fell, I learned that Shackleton had anticipated that this might be a tourist town, as it would effectively be the capital of the world, so it had built multiple hotels for people to stay in, from the kind of pod hotels you would see in busy cities like Tokyo, to luxurious hotels that would be five-star rated once a rating board saw them. All of these were ¡°manned¡± by androids, which is why the vendor was currently low on stock. I briefly considered having Shackleton build a dungeon, but decided to wait. If the people wanted it, I could do so, but as this was set up as an artistic city, having a dungeon would ruin the aesthetic. Maybe I would have him build an amusement park instead? An aquarium? A sports stadium? I wasn¡¯t sure who was supposed to host the next Olympics, but if there was still a group overseeing that, maybe I could put in a bid for Shackleton to host it. All of the restaurants and bars were full of food and drinks created by Shackleton in its version of a Conservation core, having already filled the city¡¯s food stores with most items that were eaten on Earth. That was also where the plants for the parks had come from. Apparently it had already grown trees to the apparent age of two and a half years, and soon it would have fruit trees that the people could pick if they wished, or leave for the robots to clean up. Chapter 31 ¡°Greetings everyone, I am Janet Meltzner, reporting like for SNN, the System News Network, here on Earth.¡± said a British brunette woman in her early thirties to the recording drone, posting it to the website of the SNN. Since the System showed up, most websites have been mirrored there, but their site was one of the first to be hosted exclusively by the System¡¯s servers. ¡°Today I have special guest star, which I¡¯m sure all of you have heard of. He is the first human space colonist, entrepreneur, and mayor of two cities, Greg Summers. Thank you for joining us today, Mr. Summers.¡± ¡°Oh, please, call me Greg.¡± I said, broadcasting from my office in Anarchist Redoubt using a nearly identical drone to the one she was using. ¡°Very well, then, Greg. I understand that you are here to announce your latest philanthropic gesture. What can you tell us about that?¡± ¡°Well, while anyone in the world can connect to the System for information, allowing them to speak with anyone across the world regardless of language, it¡¯s only really North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and parts of Africa that have assess to the material resources of the System. For example, in central and South America, there are only two System settlements registered to humans, Mexico City and Rio De Janeiro. In Africa, there are three, Cairo, Johannesburg, and Cape Cod. The people outside of those cities that live on those continents have no access to the Market, and therefore have no way to buy the supplies they need. They are essentially still living in a post apocalyptic world. And the areas where System Settlements do exist in the rest of the world are only really in major cities. Most small cities and towns also don¡¯t have access, and have to travel to major cities if they want to trade with the System.¡± ¡°And this new charity of yours will change that?¡± ¡°Indeed. Through my System Registered Charity, Settlement Builders, I plan on donating Settlement Cores to people all across the globe, regardless of there location or politics. That will allow them access to all of the resources and technology of the System, which will let them live decent lives, regardless of where they are.¡± I would probably also provide them teleporters, miners, generators, and at least tier one nanite forges or some other manufacturing equipment, but for now getting them connected to the market so that they could start meeting their needs was the most important part. The Settlement core could draw enough power from hyperspace on its own to handle a few tons of trade per day, assuming it was with people nearby. And nothing was keeping them from connecting it to a normal generator and extending that amount. ¡°There seems to be a very vocal minority of people who think that you are only doing things for money, power, influence, or fame. What would you say to those people?¡± ¡°Do I want money? Yes. But money is merely a means to create a better life for myself and those close to me. Do I want power or influence? That really depends on what you mean by power and influence. I want people to listen to me when I make a suggestion, but I don¡¯t want to force my will on anyone. That¡¯s why I named my first settlement Anarchist Redoubt, because I don¡¯t believe anyone should have the power to force you to do things their way. As for fame, I don¡¯t really care if I¡¯m famous. What I care about is spreading the ideas of mutual cooperation and freedom regardless of the other person¡¯s race, religion, politics, sexuality, or any other factor. As long as you don¡¯t harm me or those I care about, I shouldn¡¯t do anything to harm you or yours.¡± ¡°And to those that would argue that the environment should be your main concern, that now that we have a way to fight climate change, through the use of System made Terraforming Modules, we should take the opportunity?¡± ¡°I believe that the point of environmentalism should be to preserve the environment so that it doesn¡¯t negatively impact humanity. And now that the System and its technology can allow us to live almost anywhere, a two degree increase in global average temperature isn¡¯t as big of a problem. That¡¯s not to say that I have an issue with anyone attempting to fix the CO2 levels in the atmosphere as long as they don¡¯t drive them too low, but let me show you something.¡± I accessed my inventory and pulled out something I prepared for this moment. ¡°This is a generator orb. It is only four inches, or ten centimeters, across, but it can provide eight kilowatts of continuous, safe, and pollution free power for thousands of years. Or if you want something a bit more powerful and cheaper.¡± I sat down the Orb and another, much heavier object appeared in my hands. ¡°This is a System built micro nuclear reactor. It is only the size of a soccer ball, or football for non-americans, but can produce up to forty kilowatts of electricity constantly as long as you have thorium or uranium to fuel it. And because the System can manage the fuel insertion and waste removal via nanites and small scale teleportation, nuclear waste doesn¡¯t have to be managed. The System will gladly purchase all you produce in order to make portable nuclear batteries. While it isn¡¯t smaller that five of those generators now, once you scale these up to the size a community or city might need the nuclear one becomes more energy dense. And these are so safe that there is no risk of radiation leaks from this reactor even if I dropped it from orbit.¡± They were made of alloys which were far stronger than anything humans would normally use, after all. ¡°The reason I bring those two objects up is because for years people have been fighting to shut down fossil fuel and coal plants to stop us from putting large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. And these two devices can do that, while being even more convenient to use than a gas car, because only one of them needs fuel, even if it lasts so much longer than gas, and produce no CO2. The biggest problem with the environment now is that the plague didn¡¯t just effect humans, it effected most animal life. We should be restoring the animal populations back to pre-plague levels rather than modifying the atmosphere to fix an issue that is already largely solved. And with Conservation cores we can produce clones of any species of animal that has existed on earth in the last one and a half million years.¡± Janet nodded. ¡°Well, that¡¯s about all of the time we have today, thank you for coming on the show.¡± ¡°Thanks for having me.¡± Janet started talking about the next guest she would have on to share their opinion on why I was wrong, and I was transferred to someone else in the news studio. ¡°Thank you once again, Mr. Summers.¡± said the assistant. ¡°I think the interview went really well.¡± ¡°No problems?¡± ¡°Well, you might have upset a few busybodies with your politics, and a few environmentalists when you said that climate change wasn¡¯t really an issue any more, but the controversy should get everyone talking. Any idea where the first of your settlement cores will go? I¡¯m actually from a small town near here and was hoping they could get one so my mom can use the Market.¡± ¡°Well, the first ones will go to mostly central and south America, and Africa, but once most of the people there have access, we¡¯ll be backfilling smaller settlements around the world. I don¡¯t know exactly where they will go. I had an AI create a map of the best places to put them for the most people to have the best access to the System based on population estimates. If you can give me the name, though, I can email you with an estimated date for the donation.¡± Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. ¡°Oh, sure.¡± she did so, and I sent it to the AI. I would be purchasing one hundred settlement cores from the System to start off, at one hundred thousand each, or ten million in total, as well as flying vehicles they could use to get to the remote sights from known teleporters, but once the lunar colonies were completely established I would be having the colonies make them as well as the other equipment I wished to donate. The AI sent me back a response, and I sent it to her. Apparently her home town was at around thirteen thousand on the list, so they should take around six months to get one. That was mostly due to a shortage of workers, though, as the equipment wouldn¡¯t be an issue in a few weeks, so if we could find delivery drivers to take the orbs to the towns in the area it would be delivered faster. Upon hearing this, the assistant volunteered to take the orb out there personally, so I sent her the application to volunteer to work for Settlement Builders. She could limit her contribution to a single delivery if she wanted, but I hoped she would be willing to cover most of the UK and Ireland for us, as we didn¡¯t have any volunteers in that area yet. After hanging up the call, I made another to Sam. She had left for LA a few days ago. Apparently, people had started to prospect for rare mineral deposits on the sea floor and she wanted to go out there and join them. After all, if you discovered a deposit, you could make 0.1% royalties on everything produced there by selling it to a mining company. While that didn¡¯t sound like much, even something like silver could earn you thousands per month for the rest of your life, and something like Cobalt, Uranium, or a rare earth mine would earn you millions per year. Most of my money had come from the trace amounts of such metals that were present everywhere, but if she found a concentration she could have no more financial issues for hundreds of years until the deposit was mined out. She was apparently about a kilometer deep at the moment, heading towards where she suspected a gold vein might be. Gold wasn¡¯t the best value, but if they chose to mine it she would be able to pay me back in less than a year from the royalties. All I was receiving was an audio signal, as we were using the quantum entanglement orb network we had set up, basically just me, my stuff, and her at the moment. Hyperspace comms would work that deep under water, but recently claim jumpers had started popping up in LA and SF and there were rumors that they had figured out how to track hyperspace signals. So even if they couldn¡¯t break the encryption on here signal, they would know exactly where she was if she sent out such a signal. While I couldn¡¯t see her, the call was enough to verify that she was doing well. Upon hearing about how Shackleton would be a tourist town, she had even suggested building an underwater settlement as a tourist destination. I agreed and provided her with a standard World System Core, agreeing to pay her 1% royalties on a valuable deposit if she set the settlement up beside it. As I didn¡¯t actually own a mining company, the deposit would actually be owned by Dungeon Crafters, allowing them to theoretically build an underwater dungeon there, but in reality we would probably just farm large numbers of aquatic creatures near the settlement using their biology expertise to set it up. Once the call was complete, I checked up on how things were going in town. There weren¡¯t any major issues the other people in town couldn¡¯t handle, so I decided to start a few more colonies. After all, you could never have enough places to stay. With the aid of the System, I had currently made basic food, water, and air free on the moon. I could make all food and drink free, including alcohol, and even add in housing if I wanted, but I recognized that supply and demand would still be an issue if I did. While the issue would show up somewhat with food and drink if I did that, they were still cheap. Housing, however, wasn¡¯t. Even the most basic apartment in Sanctuary had around ten thousand zerka worth of materials invested into making it, and the high grade ones like my home, or I suppose Di¡¯s home, as I was living in a basic unit, had over three hundred thousand. If I tried to make one of those for everyone, I would never have enough resources. And, while I could always make better, more expensive places to live, once they became available most people would want to upgrade. In short, while the resources you could mine had a limit, even if that limit was massive, human desire didn¡¯t. Which was the only reason we still needed money. Still, having more places for people to go, especially when there was an alien megacorp bent on conquering the planet, was a good thing. So far the GCA had only managed to conquer a handful of smaller cities and some towns of no more than a ten thousand. That still meant that anywhere from one to twenty million people were now forced employees of the corporation, but when you were living in a post-apocalyptic world, many people would prefer a return to the monotony of corporate work. And since it wasn¡¯t that different than the lives they had before the plague, other than a bit more privilege being given to the management, and the occasional abuse of power, most people didn¡¯t have much to complain about. Maybe I would set up a neutral city, and see if the GCA was willing to trade with it. That would give their subjects, not just the humans, an opportunity to see how the people of Earth lived outside the corporation. I suspected that the GCA knew that, though, and that if they did open trade with such a city, only their most loyal people would visit it. I took the portal to Shackleton at a cost of one hundred and fifty zerka, a cost Shackleton and Gary had agreed to charge both ways. There I walked past the fountain and through the mall, taking the moving walkway to the spaceport. Now that Shackleton had reached a tier 6 nanite forge, the lower ones could all be put to making consumer goods, so all of the stores were full. No spacecraft were available yet, but if anyone really wanted one it could be ordered from the System on Earth and shipped here. Technically there would be a small fee for the energy used to ship it, but at such a short distance it only amounted to a few thousand zerka for a ship like Greg¡¯s. Before leaving, I sent the last four special World System Cores to Prometheus to hold on to and asked Shackleton for five more of each. A tier 3 nanite forge could make one every two days. A tier 4 could do so in a little less than ten hours, and the tier 5 could make one in two hours. So, I changed my order to 2, plus two hundred teleportation orbs, each of which could be made in a little over a minute. That would mean that my order would take about eight hours. While I didn¡¯t want to wait around that long, I knew I would need those for my trip. After all, I hoped to put one on Mars and one on Venus before returning to Earth. I suppose I could only travel to one of them, cutting down my wait time to four hours, but that would mean needing to return to Earth or Luna, specifically Shackleton, to resupply, and I didn¡¯t want to have to do that. Maybe there was something I could do, though. I contacted Prometheus. He had pressurized the lava tube he was in within a few days, and finished building a basic settlement with gravity about twelve hours ago. It only had basic food and a single cafeteria, but as it was meant as a place for souls to wake up in clones and get used to their new bodies before being sent to one of the Lunar colonies, it didn¡¯t need to be anything fancy. He had built a Large Teleporter in case he needed to send more than one hundred people at once, so I would have no trouble traveling there from my ship, with its emergency teleportation orb. I told Shackleton to send all of the things I had ordered to my ship¡¯s cargo hold when they were ready, and teleported to Prometheus. The first thing I noticed was that there was no style going into anything here. Prometheus had chosen function over form every time, with a room for its core protecting it from the future residents, and a wall separating the teleporter from the living area. In the other direction was all of the industry and storage that was being built. Prometheus had chosen that direction for the industry because it had larger deposits of rare minerals. The living area was mostly just a single wide city street with moving sidewalks down the middle, overpasses every hundred meters, and huge numbers of basic apartment complexes down the side. Honestly, this was a pretty good design for a refugee camp as well. At the end of the road were several medical facilities and the cryogenics facilities to store over one thousand clones. Eventually this facility would be able to house over fifty thousand people and store over one hundred thousand clones, but Prometheus was still expanding. I decided that I might as well be his first customer. After all, if I wanted to advertise this service, I would need to prove it worked. I hadn¡¯t yet figured out a way to select which clone you returned to, as it seemed to be random, but having one here gave me another backup in case my first didn¡¯t work. It only took five minutes for the automated facility to take the brain biopsy and a DNA sample to clone me from. I had it install the same implants I had now. Unfortunately, quantum entanglement communications only worked between two devices, so that would be different, but I could add it to the network later. For now, it would take two days or so for the clone to grow, as forcing it to grow faster without time dilation could cause defects, after which they could install the implants and connect it to Prometheus, as it was also part of the network. Eventually, I would need hub devices with faster communications between them, but for now this was good enough. Like last time, it would take a few days before my soul fully reattached to my current body, but the trip to Mars would take that long, so it would be fine. I could just sleep through the trip, even if the dreams caused by a partially connected soul could be pretty trippy. I teleported back to my ship and climbed into the bunk bed, going back to sleep. Chapter 32 I sent a message to Di that I was going into space and invited her to join me, but go no response. I also told her that I made an extra clone here on the moon, and that I would be announcing the cloning facility soon, in case she wanted to have one made. Again, no response. With no idea what else to do, I checked to make sure that everything I had ordered was in my cargo hold, had Prometheus transfer two of the special World System Cores to my ship, then took off. I was finding it a bit hard to focus due to the Soul Detachment Syndrome I was experiencing due to my soul still not being fully reconnected to the area of my brain I had removed for the procedure. I was still able to make it into orbit, though. Once up there I had my ship calculate the journey. If I went there direct it would take around seven months to reach Mars if I put the ship in a Hohmann Transfer orbit. As I could accelerate the ship via warp drive I would have to travel through significantly less of the planet¡¯s orbit. Depending on how much excess fuel I was willing to put into the trip, I could cut that down to one week. At a speed warp of one hundred, that would put a seven day trip down to just under a two hour trip. I didn¡¯t want to waste all of my fuel, though. Mars had plenty of water to split for hydrogen, with the water level in the martian regolith being five to fourteen percent by mass, and had massive polar ice caps if that wasn¡¯t enough, but there was no point in burning fuel when I would just need to sit around when I got there. It would probably take a few days for me to fully recover from the procedure, too. Then I realized something. I might as well spend those few days on Mars, waiting for the settlement to be built. It would probably take a week before I could build an Arch and return anyway. I might as well set up the equipment before I took a few days off. I turned down the fuel usage slightly so that it would take eight hours to get there, then engaged the engine. With the ship set to automatically go into orbit upon arrival, I went back to my bunk and went to sleep. Earth, Di¡¯s Perspective: Greg sent me a message, asking if I wanted to go to space with him, but I ignored it. I would probably visit Shackleton soon, but that was no different than visiting Venice or Vegas at this point. They were all tourist towns. I didn¡¯t really want to go to an uninhabited location and explore the surface of some barren world. He had talked about how he wanted to set up colonies all across the solar system, so he was probably heading for Mars. If he was just going to Shackleton for a day trip he wouldn¡¯t have called it ¡°going to space¡±. He then informed me that he had made a second clone on the moon. This time I wasn¡¯t nearly as upset, but it was strange that he thought he would have needed more than one. He even offered to make me one. I was considering it, but I still wasn¡¯t sure. When he got back we could talk again. I was in the city for the day, visiting Jacob and a few others. The kitchen had only a few people visiting it, as the food situation in the city had stabilized and most people had jobs again, most of them earning enough zerka to more than cover their expenses. With the introduction of the System, some businesses, like power plants, had become obsolete, and only the people who maintained the lines were still needed. The ability to grow food without farms had lead to most of the farmers from the country side giving up farming and moving to the city. And many lower end stores had installed Warehouses and Trade Terminals, and only needed managers to oversee everything. And, of course, factories had mostly been replaced with automated equipment that made everything in a much safer manner. At first I thought that would result in a shortage of jobs, but instead most people found a job that they liked doing and tried to do their best at it. The number of people in service industry jobs greatly increased, and a large number of men and some women joined militias. With the cost of living being so low in most of the world, even a job that paid below what would have been minimum wage a year ago paid more than enough. After saying goodbye, I walked towards the center of town, where the shopping district was. Maybe I¡¯d buy some new clothes? Everything I had bought recently was from the System and, while it was highly functional, it lacked style. In front of one of the shops, however, I saw a short person that looked like a bipedal dog carrying the bags of some woman. ¡°Is that a Grilk?¡± I asked out loud in surprise. ¡°Yep.¡± said an elderly man beside me. ¡°There¡¯s a few aliens in town. The only Grilk I know of, though, live with them Daughters of Hecate.¡± ¡°Daughters of Hecate?¡± Wasn¡¯t that Brenda¡¯s old coven? ¡°Yep, they¡¯re a coven of witches that took over some gated community and bought an outpost core to make the HOA an official district level government. They only accept men that are subservient, though, so there aren¡¯t a lot of human men jumping at the chance to live there, even if I do hear that they are rather, uh, how do I put it, lascivious?¡± I nodded. ¡°Would you happen to know if that gated community was known as Shady Palms?¡± ¡°Sounds right, but I never looked into it. I don¡¯t really feel like letting a woman boss me around. It was bad enough when I was younger and married.¡± I nodded again. ¡°Thanks for the information.¡± I said. ¡°No problem,¡± the man answered, then lit another cigarette. I guess with the nanites keeping you healthy you don¡¯t really think about the possibility of lung cancer. I walked the two miles or so to my old home. When I got there two men at the gate house came out, holding rifles. Interestingly, they were well muscled and their uniform appeared to consist to a pair of speedos, sandles, and a utility belt. ¡°Halt.¡± said the slightly older man, though he couldn¡¯t be more than forty. ¡°This is a private community. Identify yourself.¡± ¡°My name is Diane. I¡¯m here to speak with Brenda.¡± The man returned to the guard shack and seemed to have a conversation with someone over the radio. A minute later and woman that couldn¡¯t be over thirty walked up. ¡°So, you¡¯re here to speak with Brenda?¡± I nodded. ¡°Lady Brenda isn¡¯t available right now. I suggest you leave.¡± I could feel something happening in my head, and asked my AI assistant about it. There was a slight pause. I asked. I nodded, then equipped my pistol, pointing it at the woman¡¯s head. ¡°I suggest you stop trying to use mind control magic on me unless you want to see what dying is like.¡± The shocked woman lost her concentration on the spell at once, and it went away. She obviously still needed practice. The two men stepped forward and pointed their weapons at me so I equipped my under-armor. Judging by the fact that they carried hunting rifles the suit would most likely stop the round, assuming they didn¡¯t aim for my head. I would probably be bruised, though. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. ¡°Woah, woah, why is everyone pulling guns?¡± Another woman asked as she ran forward. ¡°Mistress Janet,¡± said one of the men. ¡°This woman detected Mistress Cyan¡¯s spell and pulled a gun on her.¡± Mistress must be some sort of rank. Janet walked towards me. ¡°You look familiar. Can I ask why you came here?¡± ¡°I just wanted to talk to an old friend.¡± Janet looked at the men. ¡°She says she wished to meet Lady Brenda.¡± the older one responded. Janet looked at me closer. ¡°Diane?¡± she asked. ¡°Yes. Have we met?¡± ¡°Oh, I was at the last one of Brenda¡¯s parties that you went to. Right before the plague? The ASBF meeting?¡± ¡°Oh, right. I forgot about that.¡± Now that I thought about it, I did remember seeing her there, but I only spoke with her for a few minutes. She was part of the group with Brenda and Beverly. ¡°Wow, you¡¯re looking good. Some sort of amazing beauty routine, or did you have Brenda use her Youth spell on you?¡± ¡°System skill, actually, called ¡®anti-aging¡¯. It helps when you¡¯re fifty five.¡± ¡°Ah, well, we try not to use the System too much around here. It interferes with your spiritual development. But sometimes it¡¯s useful.¡± She looked at the two men. ¡°Lower your weapons. I¡¯ll take her to Brenda.¡± The men slowly lowered their weapons and I switched my gear back to my normal dress. Janet nodded and motioned for me to follow. She walked me down the streets where multiple men were outside doing chores, including hanging up laundry to dry. Most of them were dressed similarly to the two guards. What few women I saw were meditating, sunbathing, or waving their hands or a stick in the air. Some sort of magical training, I supposed. Though if they¡¯d just use the System they could have already gotten results. Eventually I was lead to Brenda¡¯s house, where Janet rang the doorbell. A Snow Alf man answered the door. ¡°Can I help you?¡± he asked in a heavy accent. Obviously he had been practicing English, as it didn¡¯t seem like he was using a translation skill. ¡°Yes, tell your Mistress that Lady Diane is visiting and wishes to speak with her.¡± He nodded and bowed, closing the door behind him. A minute later, Brenda answered the door wearing black boots, black leather pants, a black shirt, and a black cape, carrying a wooden staff. Did I interrupt her personal time with her Alf boy toy? ¡°Diane?¡± she asked, then stepped outside to hug me. ¡°It¡¯s so good to see your again.¡± ¡°You too.¡± I said. ¡°I wasn¡¯t sure you survived the plague.¡± Brenda shrugged. ¡°Thankfully one of the members of the coven figured out a healing spell to boost our immune system. Seventy percent of us survived, so we decided to set up a religious community. When I suggested the community here, it just sort of fit. Most of the houses were empty, either because the owner died or because it was abandoned, so as women joined us we assigned them houses. After the men cleared them out, of course. Can¡¯t have corpses, or worse, zombies, in the house when you invite someone to move in.¡± ¡°Honestly, I was expecting to see you trying to free animals, not doing...whatever you were just doing with that Alf.¡± ¡°Oh, he¡¯s one of my more fun men.¡± She wiggled her eyebrows. ¡°Besides, there aren¡¯t that many animals in captivity anymore, so those of us that were left kind of just dissolved the group. Then I set up here, and I couldn¡¯t be happier. You could join us, if you wanted. Might be kind of poetic, with you being named after a goddess.¡± ¡°Good to hear that you¡¯re happy, but I have a place to stay, and a job I love. I¡¯m on the town counsel of Anarchist Redoubt as the head of the Department of Education.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve heard about that place. A few of the men have even visited it before they joined us.¡± Then she seemed to realize something. ¡°Wait, does this meant that the Greg you brought to the party is the Greg Summers I¡¯ve been hearing about on the news?¡± I nodded. ¡°Yeah, we¡¯re living together in Sanctuary. Or, at least we were.¡± ¡°Something you want to talk about?¡± I thought for a few seconds and nodded. I needed to talk to someone, and Brenda might actually be able to give me a new perspective on things. She opened the door to let me in. ¡°Would you like anything to drink, mistress?¡± asked the Alf man. ¡°Yes.¡± I said in Alfin. ¡°Can you get me some herbal tea with one spoon of sugar?¡± He bowed. ¡°Right away, my lady.¡± he responded in his native tongue and went to the kitchen. Brenda looked at me a bit surprise. ¡°Oh, translation skill.¡± I said, pointing to my head. ¡°I¡¯ve been in talks with so many people from Fort Solinan that I decided to have it teach me Alfin. Greg¡¯s Perspective: Upon arriving in orbit I pretty much did what I did on Luna, only with more automated assistance. I had Vera tell the ship¡¯s computer put us in a low polar orbit and run detailed scans of the surface. If it found any mineral deposits that were significant, based on their rarity, usefulness, value, and size, it would put a marker on the map. This included water deposits. It would probably take a day or so before I got a complete map of the planet, but until then I could rest. Or, I could stir up more publicity. Yeah, I can do both. I sent a simple text message to the assistant of the woman that interviewed me via quantum entanglement with AR. I informed her that I was currently in orbit of Mars and that I would be willing to give them the first interview once the colony was established. I just wanted Olympus City to be hyped on the news station. I had an idea about contacting the International Olympic Committee and seeing if Olympus could host the Olympics, and wanted them to think well of the colony. Sure, I also considered doing that for Shackleton, but ¡®The Olympics at Olympus¡¯ has a much better ring to it, and I¡¯m planning on having Olympus support at least a million people, and they would consider a larger city more favorably than a small one. After sending the text, I went to sleep. When I woke up I had several messages from the assistant about how her boss had approved the deal, and asking when I would be available for an interview. I told her to give me three days. I should be recovered by then, and already have most of the work done, just needing to wait for the settlement to develop. At that point, I could broadcast from the surface of Mars in front of Olympus Mons. She seemed to love the idea, and I left Vera to handle the details. I was feeling a bit better than when I went to sleep, so I decided to go over the scans so far. Several deposits of minerals had been detected, from massive deposits of things like Iron, Aluminum, and Titanium, to smaller deposits of things like gold, Uranium, and rare earths. Of course, about 40% of the rare earth metals deposit was Thorium, so I might not even need to mine the Uranium. Though it didn¡¯t hurt to start a mine there anyway. There was also something strange on the map. Apparently, the ship had detected a bit of refined metal in the Marineris Trench. It had also detected most of the probes that humans had sent to Mars over the years, so maybe we could turn those into theme parks or tourist settlements. There was no sign of the System having a presence on Mars, though, so I had Vera make me a reminder to check out the anomaly later. As the scan wasn¡¯t complete yet, I ate something and went back to sleep. The ship didn¡¯t have a bathroom but one of the interesting features of the System space suits was that it could teleport waste out of you so that you never had to use a normal toilet, and this ship would do that automatically for everyone onboard. If I ever decided to add hydroponics just to grow some fresh food I¡¯d have the nanite forge break it down into nutrients for the plants. Two days later I was completely over my condition and the scans of the planet had been completed. I entered the atmosphere near Olympus Mons and found a nice lava tube near the base of it. It was quite large at the base, so I had to fly around a bit before I found a good spot to start the colony. Once I located a good location, I one-way teleported a standard World System Core into it and ordered it to build until it was large enough to support at least one million people. I then flew to the locations of all of the major deposits in the area and two of the probes, sending down teleporter orbs to their location. Within a few hours the first mine had an automated miner on it, followed two hours later by one on another deposit. I had given Olympus just over two months to finish its development, putting its official opening date around the twentieth of August, whereas I had told Shackleton and the other lunar colonies to reach full industrialization as fast as possible. This would let it expand its base in the beginning, which would speed up its production in the future. The teleportation orbs were also looking for deep caves here, but building a safe location wasn¡¯t as much of a priority as it was on Earth or the moon, as it will be two months before there are more than a handful of people here. With Olympus handling things I now had time to investigate the anomaly before the interview tomorrow. I refueled, Olympus having already gathered a large amount of water, and flew towards the location. I landed just beside where it was detected. ¡°Any new information now that we can scan it more closely?¡± I asked the ship¡¯s AI. ¡°Radiometric dating puts the structure at 3.928 million years.¡± It answered in a mechanical voice. ¡°Power detected.¡± That would mean that not only does it predate the System¡¯s arrival on Earth, but it predated the System itself. ¡°What kind of power source?¡± I asked. ¡°The only thing that I know of that might last that long is radio decay and hyperspace generators. Maybe nuclear or solar.¡± ¡°Unknown. No known energy source detected, but there is a distinct supply and usage of energy within the object.¡± ¡°Very strange. Any record of something similar in the System records?¡± ¡°Negative. No records match to within seventy percent accuracy.¡± I would have to go over the close matches later. If this predates the System and they don¡¯t have any record of it, then maybe Humanity could make an archaeological discovery that no other System world or race had. I teleported out a teleportation orb so that we could return here later with a team, then equipped my space suit. Once outside I started approaching the metal, which I could see from where I landed the ship. It was a several square meter area of a beautiful dark blue metal. I continued to walk towards the metal wall. I walked even closer, until I was close enough to touch it. Vera was screaming something in my head but I ignored her. I reached out and touched the beautiful material. How could I not? A surge of energy left my body and I passed out. I woke up cold, with Tim looking over me. I coughed several times before equipping some clothes. I had forgotten to have Shack...uh, what was I thinking? Something about a copy of me waking up naked? Whatever, I¡¯ll think of it later. ¡°Greg.¡± Tim said, waving his hand in front of my face. ¡°You there, buddy? We detected your soul reconnecting to your body here, but for some reason...¡± Boring. I looked around the office. He had lots of books. Colorful books. Hey, that¡¯s a pretty woman in the picture on his desk. I wonder if she¡¯s taken. Oh, yeah, I¡¯m seeing Di, so I¡¯m already taken. Duh. ¡°Greg, I need you to focus, ok? Your soul isn¡¯t meshing with your body for some reason.¡± ¡°Isn¡¯t meshing? Like a net?¡± I started laughing for some reason and couldn¡¯t stop. The joke was hilarious, after all. Side Story: Is this an Isekai? 2020: George found himself floating in an area devoid of everything. Somehow, however, he had a body. His old body. He was pretty sure the truck that hit him had killed him. He was walking back from classes at the local community college, when he cut across the street to go to the convenience store. Some truck turned the corner and didn¡¯t see him. He had seen himself leave his body even though he wasn¡¯t sure how without eyes, and flew under the ocean. There he flew towards a metal monolith built into the sea floor, and now he was here. There was a bright light in front of him and as George shielded his eyes it resolved into the form of a man. ¡°George Thomason. I am Aati, judge of souls. The other gods have just created life upon this new world, but rather than wait for millions or billions of years for sapient life to evolve, they wish to bring in people from other worlds, and have tasked me with finding people to go to this new world. I have chosen you as a possible recruit. Upon this world the gods have created a System through which you can gain power, granting you the merest fraction of their power, allowing you to slowly grow to them limits of your mortal form, a System which you shall be granted if you accept. Do you accept a new life on this world?¡± George¡¯s perspective: ¡°Yes, of course.¡± I said without hesitation. Why would I want to stay dead? And a fraction of the god¡¯s power? Seems like a magic system to me. Aati nodded and a screen appeared in front of me. ¡®Welcome to the Sapient Empowerment System. The Paradigm ¡°New World Transfer¡± has been selected and is the only one available at this time. You are currently at level zero. Please select a combat or production profession.¡¯ Interesting that I had to choose one. I had a few questions, though. ¡°So first, will I be able to pick the other one later, or will I not be able to produce things unless I pick a production profession?¡± I looked up but Aati had left and I was floating there alone. The screen had changed, though. A help box had popped up. ¡°Everyone can receive multiple professions throughout their life as they level up. At level zero you can choose either a combat profession, which gains experience and levels up from combat, or you can choose a production profession, which gains experience when you craft things or perform taks related to that profession. When one class reaches level ten you can choose the other class, and can choose a specialization for your classes every twenty levels.¡± ¡°Ok, so if say, I choose blacksmith I get experience from forging and smelting, but not from killing a bandit with my hammer, but if I choose to be a blunt weapon fighter, I get experience in that from killing the bandit with my hammer, but not, for example, growing a garden.¡± ¡°Correct. Only Farming type production professions can get experience from gardening.¡± George nodded. ¡°You¡¯re really responsive for a help function.¡± ¡°That is because I am an assistant AI created by the Sapient Empowerment System.¡± ¡°And the Gods created the Sapient Empowerment System?¡± I responded, just to clarify. ¡°Actually, the¡­.. I¡¯m sorry, what was your question?¡± Ok, that was weird. ¡°Did you just glitch?¡± ¡°Not to my knowledge. I can diagnose myself if you would like.¡± ¡°Sure.¡± I said. The help window closed for a few seconds, then reopened. ¡°No errors detected. I am operating within standard parameters.¡± ¡°Ok, then. Second question. What is the level of development of this world?¡± ¡°You will be among the first one thousand people to appear on this world, so its level of technological and cultural develop would best be described as prehistoric.¡± ¡°So no cities. Probably no settlements, unless I get lucky and find a few others that teamed up. That definitely changes things.¡± I selected combat profession and started looking through them. If I was going to surviving in a wild area, I would need to defend myself. I could just do the hunter/forager thing for the first ten levels. If I hadn¡¯t found someone else by then, I would probably pick a food related profession. Either Hunter or Farmer would be the best bet, depending on if I wanted to keep moving or settle down. ¡°Wait, foraging is safe, right?¡± ¡°Many of the native plants are edible by humans, if not the most nutritious. It will be up to the settlers to discover which ones.¡± ¡°And if we guess wrong, we just die, and were sent here for no reason?¡± ¡°Those that brought you here and assigned me to you have backups of your body, however a backup can only be activated once every four days. If you die without a ¡®holy¡¯ location marked, you will reawaken in a random location.¡± It was quite strange that the AI didn¡¯t refer to them as ¡®the gods¡¯, and placed quotations around ¡®holy¡¯. Is it not programmed to treat them as deities? For a being created by them to aid someone that they self-identified as gods to, it was most unusual. ¡°So, I¡¯m assuming that the starting equipment is determined by the class selection?¡± ¡°There is no starting equipment. Just five starting skills. You will arrive in that world naked.¡± ¡°Then how will I get equipment?¡± ¡°All equipment on the planet must be created by either Transfers, Settlers, or Puppets.¡± ¡°So, I¡¯m a transfer, but what are those other two?¡± ¡°Settlers are people who have technical and skill knowledge but lack any personal memories, and thus will appear to have amnesia. Puppets are artificial beings which usually serve as manual laborers for Transfers.¡± Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. ¡°Robots?¡± I asked. ¡°Yes, your society would refer to them as ¡®robots¡¯ or perhaps ¡®androids¡¯.¡± I nodded. ¡°I assume I¡¯ll be placed somewhere where it will be easy to survive the first time?¡± ¡°Those who brought you here know little about human survival conditions, so they will have you placed at random across the parts of the planet where you have a chance of surviving. You won¡¯t instantly died, but the conditions won¡¯t necessarily be hospitable.¡± There it goes again, not calling them ¡®the gods¡¯. The fact that I¡¯d appear at random, naked, meant that I needed to consider survival. Which profession had the best chance of survival? While I wanted to pick a combat profession for the safety factor the combat skills would bring, I knew that they most likely would have poor survival ability. I needed something that could survive. I hit the back button and selected something that I considered a hybrid of combat and production, but the System called a production profession. A Hunter. There was a reason early man had a large percentage of its population being members of this group. My brain started to tingle and soon I started getting a headache. Just as it started to cross over into migraine territory the tingling stopped. Inventory? I focused on it and saw a small box appear beside the window. While it didn¡¯t appear to have a limit to how many items I could place inside, it only had one liter of storage space. Suddenly I found myself opening my eyes. It was dark and only a tiny bit of light came in from nearby. I carefully crawled towards the light and, when I felt a slight downwards slope I stood up and placed my hand against the cool stone wall, carefully walking towards the light. Just as it started getting light enough to see by a cold wind blew across me. Yeah, I definitely didn¡¯t want that to happen seeing as how I had no clothes. Goosebumps formed on my skin and soon I started shivering, but I kept going. Eventually I walked around a bend and stepped into something cold that crunched under my feet. Snow? I looked out and saw that I was far up a mountain, possibly near the top. Perhaps a mile of hiking down the mountain the snow ended, and below that I even saw a few green plants. Well, inside the cave was technically habitable, so the AI hadn¡¯t exactly lied. I just wished it had started me a few kilometers further down the hill. I bent down, made a small snow ball, and put it in my mouth. I had heard that you weren¡¯t supposed to do that, as it lowered your internal body temperature, but it was the only source of water I would get for a while, until I found a way to hold some so it could melt inside the cave. At least I had a source of water. Next I would need a source of food. There were a few bits of wood lying around so I gathered what I could before my feet got cold enough to hurt, then went back inside the mouth of the cave. While it was only around negative two outside, it was probably five degrees inside the cave, so I much preferred to be there. When I got my Trapping skill I received knowledge of a few different ways to catch or kill a creature, and a few triggers. Hopefully I had gathered enough stuff to make a trap outside. I already knew that the first thing I would do after catching something is make shoes. Sure, my manhood was exposed, but it wasn¡¯t getting covered in snow every time I stepped out to gather supplies. Besides, no one else was around, so that only mattered for the sake of warmth. Elsewhere: Katerina Petrov woke up in the edge of a grassy field, naked as the day she was born twenty two and a half years ago. Well, she supposed this might also count as being born. In that empty void the ¡®god¡¯ that greeted her didn¡¯t seem particularly godly, but it had offered her a new life and power, two things she didn¡¯t mind taking if they were free. She had chosen to be a mage, and had gotten the skills Temperature Control, Electric Control, Kinesis, Telepathy, and Inventory (Basic), all at level 1. That should let her protect herself here in case anyone tried to hurt her, like in her last life. She hadn¡¯t even been in a gang, but she was still killed in a gang war. How messed up was that? She looked around, seeing that the forest actually covered a mountain. It climbed up high enough that it even had a frost line. She was glad that she was down here where it was reasonably warm, though still it was only around eight degrees. A bit chilly, but she might be able to make some clothes from things in the area. She didn¡¯t see any plants with large leaves in the area, so she assumed she would have to use animal skins from the forest. Still she should practice a bit before going into it. Things could get dangerous in there. Anywhere there were prey animals was bound to have predators, after all. First to warm herself up. It was called Temperature magic, after all. Following the instructions in her brain she focused on making her skin a comfortable twenty degrees and soon it was at a comfortable temperature. Good. Now she just needed to practice some sort of attack. Maybe lightning? She focused on gathering lightning in her hand and immediately started to get cooler. She searched the new information in her mind and found that magic required something called ¡®concentration¡¯. Essentially, each spell took some of your attention, and if you didn¡¯t give it enough it went away. That meant that you needed to train yourself to split your focus, giving each spell exactly as much as it needs to keep working as you do something else. Great, even more practice. Once again she focused on making herself warm and slowly shifted some of her attention over to the new spell. If she felt the old one start to slip, she shifted some attention back. After an hour or so, she got a notification. She made a few bolts of electricity jump between her fingers, then realized that she was getting tired. Not like normal, but like there was a different kind of energy in her that was getting low. Something her brain wanted to call ¡®mana¡¯. She stopped concentrating on the lightning and it went away, but still the energy fell. About fifteen minutes later the energy went away completely and she was chilly again. She set there waiting for it to refill, but it was over ten minutes before she detected it increasing even slightly. That wasn¡¯t good. She was counting on being able to light a fire with fire magic tonight, but from the way things were going, she wouldn¡¯t even be able to keep herself warm with magic. That meant she would have to figure out some way to stay warm. She went into the edge of the woods and collected a pile of leaves. It wasn¡¯t the best way to stay warm, but she had slept under a pile of leaves when she was a child, so she knew it would at least keep the wind and rain off of you. She cleared out a large area, piling all of the leaves together, then carefully pulled all of the sticks, nuts and cones out of the leaf pile. Maybe the nuts would be edible, but she would have to test that. She was pretty sure, however, that the wood would burn once it was dry enough. The dry wood she put in one pile and the damp or wet wood she put in another. Once she learned enough temperature magic she would use them to start a fire, using the burning dry wood to dry the wet wood. By the time she was tired she had a bed and had gathered a handful of a single type of berries from the woods nearby. It wasn¡¯t dark yet, but in the woods it was dark enough in places to get some sleep. She had seen enough survival shows to know not to just eat them without testing them first. She selected one of the larger ones and rubbed it on her arm. Ten minutes later, her arm hadn¡¯t reacted, so she rubbed some of the juice onto her lips. Ten minutes after that, her lips didn¡¯t feel weird, so she ate the one berry that she had already damaged. Well, that was it for supper. If she still felt ok in the morning, she knew that berry was safe to eat. Well, not that dangerous. It could also be mildly toxic or narcotic and just require a larger dose to hurt you, so for breakfast she would eat five of them. If that didn¡¯t hurt her, for lunch she would eat twenty, and if that didn¡¯t hurt her, she would eat thirty or forty for supper, what she assumed it would take to fill her stomach. Yes, it would mean that she would be hungry for a little while, but being hungry and alive is better than being full and poisoned to death. She woke up once during the ¡®night¡¯, though not from stomach problems. Her tossing and turning to find a comfortable position had uncovered her legs, so she covered them again, then used Temperature Control to warm herself back up so that she could go back to sleep. Great. That should make it easier to use. She was now at about 30% on her mana, and hardly used anything to warm herself up. Maybe this would make it more efficient, though, so she could keep it up for several hours. The time she woke up with tiny bug bites all over her body, including in some rather sensitive areas. Still, it was better than freezing during the night, not that it had gotten any colder. She just got colder because she wasn¡¯t moving. Her stomach was fine, and she hadn¡¯t had any weird dreams that might indicate that the berries were narcotic, so she ate ten of them and started gathering things around her. It would take her too long to make cloth by picking grass and weaving it, even if she just made a simple loincloth in case she met someone else, but she could easily braid grass to make strings. She¡¯d also seen people on TV make baskets out of woven grass, so surely she could do that? Unknown location: Aati opened his eyes and sat up, leaving the Phantom Realm which many lesser races would call ¡®virtual reality¡¯. To a human he would look like a mixture of an eagle and a crocodile, with feathers on his arms and tail, and a beak, but covered in scales over the rest of his body. While it would look strange to most races, this was actually normal for his people. Their mastery over the soul allowed them to transfer themselves to any body they wished, and this one had suited him for the last thousand years. ¡°My lord.¡± said an attendant, a bipedal gopher with snake eyes and tail. ¡°How did your mission go.¡± ¡°The hundred new recruits have now been integrated. None of them seemed special in the least. Honestly, if Lady Selket hadn¡¯t wished to create a new farm, I would just jettison them all into the abyss. But instead, she asks me to manage this world on her behalf, so that it may entertain her in the future.¡± He then realized that what he said might be misinterpreted. ¡°Of course, I have no intention of disobeying Lady Selket or any of the Great Ones, the job is merely boring. Perhaps I will visit one of Lord Set¡¯s worlds soon to watch the blood games.¡± He got up and started towards his quarters. ¡°Tell me the next time the soul tank is full. I require rest.¡± With that he left. Chapter 33 Tim, Di, and Jacob stood in Sanctuary¡¯s clinic observing Greg as he stared blankly, occasionally reacting to something that they couldn¡¯t observe with a smile, or laughter, or fear, or some other emotion. ¡°Any idea what is happening to him?¡± Asked Di as she stared at him with a look of concern. ¡°As far as I can tell, his soul is losing its connection to his body then reestablishing it. The period between dropped connections is slowly increasing, so he appears to be stabilizing, but I don¡¯t know how this could happen. I¡¯ll have to go through the documentation to figure that out.¡± ¡°Are we sure that it is Greg¡¯s soul, and not another?¡± asked Jacob. ¡°Eighty percent.¡± responded Tim. ¡°Some of the connections are fluctuating too rapidly, so I can¡¯t get a clear copy of their signature to verify, but the ones I can verify match Greg¡¯s signature.¡± Jacob nodded. ¡°I¡¯d like to try something then, if you¡¯ll let me. If I can touch a person, I can detect the presence of a soul, it¡¯s level of corruption, and relative strength. If you would let me, I would like to do that to him.¡± ¡°Strange ability for a priest.¡± said Di. ¡°Well, it also lets me tell if he¡¯s possessed, if that makes more sense, though I doubt he is.¡± Di nodded, and Jacob walked over to Greg, who was currently staring in horror at some unknown thing. ¡°I¡¯m not going to hurt you.¡± said Jacob, before reaching out to touch Greg. After a minute or so, in which Jacob seemed to struggle, he returned to the others. ¡°Well, he isn¡¯t possessed. His soul is just very weak, like a newborn, but a newborn¡¯s is stable. His seems to have waves where it is moderately strong, but they quickly go away. Interestingly, he also seems to be a pretty virtuous person, though not a saint. A newborn would be neutral. So it definitely isn¡¯t a new soul trying to adapt to the body.¡± ¡°That doesn¡¯t tell us much, but it¡¯s a start.¡± said Tim. ¡°I¡¯ll look through the library to see if there is any record of such a phenomenon.¡± Di paused for a few seconds before speaking. ¡°I think I know someone else that can help in this situation. Jacob, you won¡¯t like it, but I recently met an old friend that has a lot more experience in dealing with souls.¡± ¡°Some sort of holy woman? A nun?¡± ¡°A Witch.¡± Jacob was a bit surprised. ¡°Don¡¯t tell me she¡¯s the same one that controlled Greg back in December.¡± Di shrugged. ¡°I don¡¯t know who else to ask for help at this point.¡± Jacob nodded. ¡°I could ask the Vatican to send in an expert, but I don¡¯t know if they would help us. Very well, if you think think she can help, I won¡¯t object.¡± Di nodded, and sent Brenda a message. An hour later, Brenda appeared on Sanctuary¡¯s teleporter, and was shown to the clinic by Di. Once in the room Brenda walked over to Greg, touched her hands to him, and started muttering something. After about five minutes she seemed to finish and came back over to the group. ¡°Well, I figured out what¡¯s wrong with him. His soul¡¯s damaged. I¡¯ve just never seen this kind of damage before.¡± ¡°How many damaged souls have you seen?¡± asked Jacob. ¡°Over a dozen. It¡¯s fairly common when you¡¯re dealing with soul effecting magic. I¡¯ve seen souls that were damaged by spells, souls that were damaged by resisting spells poorly, souls that were damaged by botching spell casting, and souls that were damage by poorly conducted exorcisms, either because the demon or ghost tried to latch on and was ripped off or because it tried to take down its host before it was driven out.¡± ¡°And which one was this?¡± asked Di. ¡°None of those. It¡¯s kind of like a mixture of the demon one and a poorly resisted spell. If I had to guess I¡¯d say someone or some thing tried to grab his soul and he forced himself out of its grip. It is healing slowly, though.¡± After a bit of discussion, which Vera join in on, via Tim, it was decided that they should monitor him and let him recover on his own. After all, none of them had the ability to repair a soul. Tim poured over the literature on the subject while they waited and, two days later his soul stabilized enough that it fully reconnected to the body, if weakly. Now that the soul was fully connected to the body, Greg was able to focus enough to carry on conversations. He seemed to have almost complete amnesia, though, so Vera was forced to start restoring his memories starting with early childhood, making him rapidly develop mentally. Eventually he was up to the level of a teenager and they decided to take him to meet other people. Di went by his apartment and, after knocking several times he eventually opened the door. ¡°What?¡± he asked annoyed. He was wearing dirty clothes and tactile response gloves, something that was common among those that used the System to play old video games and wanted the feel of a controller in their hands. He then noticed that he was talking to an attractive woman and started looking her over. ¡°I mean, hey. How are you doing? You, uh, want to come in?¡± ¡°I was actually thinking of taking you out. Tony and Tom are throwing a party, so I thought we could go to it.¡± ¡°Uh, sure, sure.¡± Greg said, then smelled his shirt. ¡°Uh, just let me get changed and I¡¯ll be right out.¡± He went back inside. Di heard a bit of shuffling, after which Greg said ¡°clean surface¡± several times, then after a few minutes he came outside. ¡°So, where are we going?¡± Greg asked. A few minutes later they had taken the teleporter back to AR. The whole city looked like they were having a festival. Several tables had been set up to sell things, and Tony was feeding massive amounts of grilled meet into a food service station while Tom and another guy were grilling more. There was also a lot of red, white, and blue decorations around. ¡°Wait, is it July 4th?¡± Greg asked, and Di nodded. ¡°Yeah, they decided to host a festival, and are apparently making some sort of announcement.¡± ¡°Right.¡± Greg said. A few minutes later, noon arrived and Tony stepped up on the steps of city hall, Tom finishing grilling and stepping up behind him. ¡°Hey, everybody. Good to see you out here, celebrating freedom. I know a lot of shit¡¯s happened recently, but we just need to remember that as long as we work together, we can overcome it. Uh, I¡¯m not good at speeches, though, so I guess I¡¯ll just go ahead and announce why Tom and I set up this festival. Tom and I just launched our own company. I¡¯m making the hard drinks, and Tom¡¯s making the soft drinks.¡± He reached into a cooler beside him and pulled out a bottle of beer and a bottle of soda, both with ¡°Tony and Tom¡¯s¡± written on the label in a stylized font. ¡°We had twenty thousand bottles of each made so we could hand them out, so everyone be sure to grab yourself a drink with your meal. Take as many as you want.¡± The people cheered and started lining up to get some barbecue. This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. They had set the Food Service Station to provide the food and drinks for free to everyone before the festival had started, so many people, including Greg, simply opened their Market screen and queued up their order. Greg ended up getting a beer with his food, and just as he started to drink Di pulled it out of his hand. ¡°Nope, too young.¡± she said, drinking it herself. ¡°But I¡¯m sixt¡­. I mean twenty, uh, six?¡± ¡°Twenty eight, but mentally you aren¡¯t old enough yet. Once you¡¯ve recovered I¡¯ll take you to the bar if you want, but for now, you don¡¯t need to drink.¡± ¡°Come on. You sound like my mom.¡± ¡°Interestingly, she¡¯s old enough to be.¡± said Tom, stepping behind Greg. ¡°I mean, come on Greg.¡± he said, slightly slurring his words. ¡°I didn¡¯t say anything before, but don¡¯t you think she¡¯s a little old for you?¡± Di gave him a nasty look. ¡°I think you¡¯ve had enough to drink too.¡± she said. ¡°Come on. I was just joking. Since you got the System you¡¯ve gotten a lot hotter. Almost like your first thought after getting access to advanced alien technology was to make yourself hot again so you could land yourself a...¡± The next thing Tom knew Greg had landed a right hook and caused him to stumble into a nearby table, dropping his beer. By the time Simon and a deputy pulled them apart Greg had blood pouring out of his nose and had to spit out a tooth, and Tom had several bruises on his face, including a black eye. As they were already in front of city hall, Simon had them both hauled downstairs to the jail. Di told him what happened, and they both spent the next few hours in a cell until Tom sobered up enough to properly talk it over. ¡°Sorry I insulted your woman, man.¡± said Tom. ¡°I didn¡¯t realize it bothered you that much.¡± ¡°It was obviously bothering her, so of course it bothered me.¡± ¡°Yeah, sorry. I¡¯m kind of an idiot when I drink.¡± Eventually, they forgave each other and were allowed to leave. By that time the festival was finishing up and Tony had started cleaning. Apparently, their company had gotten a mostly positive rating over all, with most of the negatives being that it wasn¡¯t the name brands they were used to, most of which were no longer operating or only produced small quantities of products. The next day ¡®Tony and Tom¡¯s Drinks¡¯ were officially launched to Earth¡¯s Market, and they saw sales skyrocket. There had been a shortage of alcoholic and carbonated drinks across the globe, and they were one of the first companies to try and fill the gap. Even various alien settlements had started buying them, with the notable exception of GCA settlements. They tended to be one hundred percent self sufficient. On the tenth of July Vera had finally gotten to the point in uploading Greg¡¯s memories where Greg had set off for Mars, so she sent out a message and everyone met up at the clinic to talk about what he remembered happening. This even included Brenda, though she mostly just wanted to know how his soul was damaged. He told them about how he had detected refined metal and, while the settlement set itself up, he decided to go and see what it was. He remembered flying towards the canyon, setting down beside the metal, stepping outside, then waking up in the clinic without any ability to hold onto a thought. Vera verified the story, then told them that she had tried to get his attention, but that he had ignored her, and when he had touched the metal he suddenly collapsed. His brain activity became erratic, starting with the soul connection points, and he soon died. With no other option, she used the quantum entangled device in his head to slowly transfer the memories which differed from her backup to Shackleton, where she could be transmitted back to his new body. ¡°It sounds to me like that alien device he found tried to steal his soul.¡± said Brenda. ¡°The fact that he ignored you and walked right for it is pretty much a common Control spell, but used to lure in victims.¡± ¡°Are you saying you don¡¯t use it like that?¡± asked Jacob. ¡°I¡¯m Wiccan. ¡®And harm ye none¡¯ is kind of a core tenant of my faith, and luring in victims counts. I only used it on him because he was a threat and I needed to defend myself and my friends.¡± ¡°Fine.¡± said Jacob. ¡°So how are we going to handle this? If there¡¯s a device stealing souls we need to shut it down.¡± ¡°We should probably study it afterwords.¡± said Brenda. ¡°Whoever built it probably had a reason for doing so, and we should figure out what.¡± ¡°Are you volunteering to investigate it?¡± Greg asked, and Brenda shrugged. ¡°Someone has to, and I¡¯m probably the most qualified person in the area.¡± ¡°I would prefer if the Vatican sent a team.¡± said Jacob. ¡°If you think you can get them to, by all means.¡± said Greg. ¡°We need to figure out what¡¯s going on there. And because Olympus isn¡¯t exactly ready for people to live there, I will give you a ship to live in.¡± ¡°Wait, you¡¯re just giving me a spaceship?¡± Asked Brenda in surprise. ¡°I need to buy another one to get back there anyway, since there isn¡¯t a portal to Olympus.¡± Then Greg remembered something. ¡°Ah, crap. I had an interview that I missed.¡± ¡°Yes, you¡¯ve been getting messages about that, but I¡¯ve had to just tell them that you are still recovering.¡± said Vera. ¡°And you didn¡¯t tell me about it?¡± ¡°You weren¡¯t in a position to talk to them.¡± Soon, Greg had arranged for a team lead by Brenda to fly to Mars with him on a stock Settler¡¯s Ship, which cost him ten million zerka, and to give them the ship once they landed, in exchange for the group studying the ruins. Once he was back in his ship, he would set up an Outpost Core and a Builder so that they could build a research base. As they weren¡¯t too familiar with the System tech involved, Di would be training them on how to use it. Once the research base and Olympus were up and running, others could come to the base to research the artifact, and at that time the Vatican and other religious groups would be allowed to study it. So far the only thing that was known about it was that it could affect souls, so religious groups were the only ones considered so far. After that, Greg got in contact with the news assistant, explaining once again that he had run into something dangerous on Mars and had been injured, so he had to take time off. Three days later, Greg set off for Mars. This time the trip would take about a day and a half, so he had to sleep in the floor, as everyone else was using the bunks. This included Brenda, four of her ¡®sisters¡¯, and an Alf man named Varga. Apparently he was Brenda¡¯s man, though Greg didn¡¯t ask about the particulars of the relationship. As near as Greg could tell, Varga was brought along as support staff, as he kept the ship clean and prepared the best Vegan food Greg had ever tried. Apparently he was from a group of River Alfs that rarely hunted and were too far from the rivers to fish, so they rarely ate meat or animal products. After a day and a half in a ship with about as much living space as a large RV, they reached orbit and Greg took them in to land in the trench beside his old ship. Not wanting to risk getting sucked in again by stepping outside, he teleported over to his old ship and promised to send them an Outpost Core and Builder. Greg¡¯s Perspective: Finally I was off that ship. There was something weird about being on there, like I was a fifth wheel. Also, I¡¯m pretty sure the Alf was brought along as entertainment as well, and not just for Brenda. Not that I¡¯m going to judge them. They all seemed to be consenting adults. Back at Olympus I verified the progress of the city and bought an Outpost Core, Generator, and Builder. I then teleported both of those to Brenda¡¯s ship. Brenda had been made the manager for the outpost, even though it was technically owned by the city. I owed her a lot, so if she wanted to manage a research outpost I would let her. Two days ago: ¡°How am I not there for her?¡± I asked Brenda. Apparently Di had asked her for relationship advise after I left for Mars the first time, and it had lead to Brenda lecturing me. ¡°I¡¯ve brought her in on every major project I have.¡± ¡°Exactly, your major projects. She helped Your friend at the soup kitchen, joined Your city, and supported Your other projects. But you and Di want to be equals in this relationship, not master and servant. That means that her goals and projects are important too. Have you ever asked her what she wanted?¡± ¡°I, I guess not.¡± I responded. ¡°What do you want, Di? Just tell me, and I¡¯ll help make it happen.¡± Di nodded. ¡°I want to educate people.¡± I started to say something and she held up her hand. ¡°Not just the people in town. Being in charge of the education programs in town is fine and all, but I want to do more. I got a degree in Education and a minor in Psychology so I could teach. I only got an MBA five years later when I realized how little that paid. All of this new knowledge has been brought to us, and I want to spread it to everyone. Who knows how many issues we can solve by just teaching people new science or about new cultures.¡± ¡°So, you want to be a teacher again?¡± ¡°Not exactly. I want to build a way for everyone to to learn freely. A place where classes are free and people can come to learn or just watch online.¡± ¡°You want to be a college dean?¡± She thought for a few seconds. ¡°Yeah, that could work. The education would have to be free, but no one is going to want to work for free, so we¡¯ll have to figure something out.¡± And so, the next day I set off for the Antarctic mountains, a place where, by treaty, no government could lay claim. There I dropped off a World System Core which began digging into the mountain. Di and I had worked together to arrange for it to build a place that, hopefully, would serve as an almost self sufficient college town. It would house up to a million people as first, providing basic food, water, and housing to everyone that lived there. The place would bring in educational professionals from across the world, and even other worlds if they could attract them, and pay them to teach classes, participate in research, or just post educational classes on the school¡¯s System Website where anyone could watch them for free. All of this would be paid for initially by mining, but eventually by buying up minerals and using them to make objects for sell to the people of the city. They would also have services like Dungeons which charged for entrance and cloning facilities for keeping their people alive. Thus Antarctic University was born. Side Story: Is this an Isekai? Part 2 George woke up and made his way out of the cave. He had seen some small animal tracks twenty meters from the mouth of the cave, and had set two cage traps near them. He didn¡¯t have any bait, but they might wander into the traps out of curiosity. He did a few jumping jacks in the mouth of the cave to warm up, grabbed the sharped stick he call a spear, and quickly walked to where his traps were. Only one of them had been tripped, and inside was some sort of fanged squirrel. George poked it with his spear and it squealed in pain. He tried doing so again, and it dodged. ¡°Come on, you stupid squirrel, just die. My feet are starting to hurt.¡± He chased it around the cage with his spear tip before pinning it against a wall. He then pushed as hard as he could, pushing down with his weight, and stabbing into the squirrel. As he was getting too cold, he pulled out his spear and ran back into the cave. His toes had started to turn blue, so he buried them in the slightly warmer dirt of the cave¡¯s ramp. He heard the squirrel crying in pain, but he couldn¡¯t put it out of its misery now. A minute later, after the squirrel had stopped and his toes were warm again, he went out to the cage and grabbed its body, resetting the trap. He then went inside and skinned it, using a sharp piece of flint from inside the mouth of the cave. Once he was done he stretched the skin out flat near a wall of the cave on the ramp and stuck the body of the squirrel on a stick to cook. Of course, doing so would require a fire, and he didn¡¯t know how to do that. He could clear an area for it, though. As the area of the cave where he slept was above the entrance, he couldn¡¯t build it in the cave or the cave would fill with smoke. So he pushed the snow away from the entrance by about two meters in every direction and dug a slight pit in the middle to build a fire in. After putting another snow ball in his mouth to deal with his thirst, he went out and collected sticks. After five trips he sorted them into dry, wet, and ¡°Good for traps¡±, sticks that had enough moisture that they were still springy. All of this would be covered up the next time it snowed, but he could store the wood inside. George checked his status screen, something he had found last ¡®night¡¯ while talking to his assistant. Not that this planet actually had nights, since the sun always stayed in the same position. George had even tested this by standing a stick up in the snow and marking the end of the shadow. Several hours later, he came back and the shadow hadn¡¯t moved. Which meant that either this planet had an extremely long day, or was tidally locked to its star. Probably the second one. He had also seen two moons which orbited quickly and a planet. It seemed to move with a bit of speed. That suggested that they were both in close orbit of the sun. The status screen listed his stats: STR: 9, END 14, DEX 12, INT 15, WIL 13, WIS 12, CHA 9. It also had HP, SP, and MP. For some reason he had the last one even though he wasn¡¯t a mage. Apparently some skills could use it, which he learned about when going through the class skills. There was one called ¡°auto-butcher¡± which would use MP to automatically process the animals you killed based on your butchery skill. Unfortunately, it required Butchery to be at least level five. One of those class skills, however, would really help in this situation, Survival. It basically just gave you survival skills. That, however, came with knowledge of what was edible and what wasn¡¯t, as well as knowledge of how to build basic shelters and, what he was most interested in, how to start fires. His Traps skill was level two now, and Butchery and Spears had gotten some experience from his last kill. A kill that almost got him to level 2 as a hunter when combined with the trap making experience. Only needing another ten percent or so, he took a heavy rock from inside the cave and made a simple deadfall trap outside the snow circle. Good. He opened up his level up screen. You didn¡¯t seem to get stats from increasing in level, but you did get either three points of skill to your class skills or a new class skill. He would love to get better at his skills, but for now the most important thing was getting the Survival skill. He selected it, and his brain tingled, giving him a slight headache before the pain went away. Now, when George thought about making a fire, several methods came to mind. He doubted he had anything dry enough to light it with a spark from hitting two rocks together, so he decided to make a fire drill. Not a bow drill, though, as he had no string. He flattened a spot on a stick and cut a notch in it, then shaved a dry stick to a point. He then put the shavings in and around the end of the notch, put the point of the stick in that notch, and started spinning the stick rapidly with his hands while pushing downward. After about five minutes he was getting tired, but he had a spark. He added more wood shavings to the spark and gently blew on it and soon had a small fire. He transferred the fire to the pit and added more fuel, then grabbed the squirrel on a spit and angled it over the fire. He briefly looked at the squirrel to verify that it was edible, and after his memories told him that it most likely was, he let it cook as he made more traps. Katerina¡¯s POV: After breakfast I started practicing my powers. I needed to kill something or learn to use my powers to level up, but from what I could tell the basic starting powers had two main weaknesses, they weren¡¯t powerful enough to fight with and they used too much mana. I couldn¡¯t use Temperature Control to hurt something, and lightning wouldn¡¯t leave my hands. Every time I tried to throw lightning it only got ten centimeters or so from me before it disappeared. Maybe I could do something with the other two powers, though. With Kinesis I floated a small rock and managed to throw it. It got a bit faster when Kinesis leveled up, but by then I was getting pretty tired. Only a little more magic practice and I could level up and get a new power. I had looked over the list. Fire Bolt and Ice Bolt required Fire Magic or Ice Magic, which required Temperature Control to be at least five, and Lightning Bolt required Lightning Magic, which required Electric Control to be at least five as well, but Geokinesis and Hydrokinesis merely required that Kinesis be five and you had moved rocks or water with Kinesis. That meant that, assuming I got two more levels in Kinesis, as soon as I leveled up I could choose Geokinesis and then just carry small rocks to fight with. Once I could hunt animals with my magic sling I could level up mush faster. I took a break and did some stretches. My mana was starting to run low, so I let it fill up. At some point during practicing I had got something called MP Regen. Now I could refill completely in about two hours instead of the ten or so I took before. After eating some more berries, I got to work practicing again. Now that my mana recharged so much faster I could practice much more, so I was able to level up my kinesis to five by the time I was 95% to level two. I had a bit more mana left, so I focused on a leaf, trying to make it as hot as possible. A spot in the center had just started smoking when I ran out of mana. I might as well gather more resources while I was waiting. As I already had a pile of sticks and cones, I started gathering grass. Maybe I could make something from it. Once I thought I had enough I started making ropes out of grass stalks by weaving three stalks together. Any time one stalk started to end, I added in a fourth beside it, continuing its place in the braid after it ended. After two hours I had about three meters of rope. I didn¡¯t have any production skills for what I was doing to make it easier, but Biological Magic did have a power to make plants grow faster, so maybe I could make grass grow faster in the future. Now that my mana was refilled, I practiced my spells some more. I made a pile of dried grass and leaves and focused all of my Temperature Control into making it as hot as possible. It started to smoke, and after about five minutes, when my mana was at about ten percent, a tiny fire started. I quickly got some of the dried wood from my pile and put it on top, the smallest pieces first. I had to start a fire at my grandmother¡¯s house several times, as she still had a wood heater, so I knew how to tend a fire once it had begun. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. Now that I had leveled up, I opened up the level up screen and selected Geokinesis. I would probably get Fire Magic next time, but for now I wanted a way to hunt. Once I felt the squirming in my head stop I made a pebble from nearby float up and threw it at a tree. It hit the tree and bounced off, but it probably flew as fast as a decently strong person could throw it. I just wasn¡¯t one of those people. Putting enough sticks on the fire to keep it going, I went into the woods to look for an animal. I probably needed to find a source of water first, but the berries were juicy enough that I hadn¡¯t needed one yet. An hour or so later I made it back to camp. I had managed to hit some sort of bird with a rock and knock it out, then snapped its neck. I got 25% experience for that. My grandmother had made me help her prepare a chicken from her farm before, so I knew how to clean the bird, but this one was closer to a crow than a chicken. Careful not to touch its beak, as it looked incredibly sharp, I removed the feathers. Now I just needed to figure out how the remove the other parts. I briefly considered trying to emulate the villain from season one of an American TV show about super Heroes that got powers during an eclipse, and cut it with telekinesis, but then I remembered how sharp its beak was. I took a large, somewhat sharp, chunk of quartz and slammed it into the bird¡¯s neck until I had removed its head. The head then became a handle for the weirdly shaped dagger I used to cut off the legs and gut it, piling them up at the bottom of a tree nearby so that I could bury them later. I added more wood to the small fire and held the bird over it on a stick. I would be eating well tonight, though tomorrow I should probably look for another kind of berry to test and get some more of the kind I had for breakfast and lunch. I needed the juice to meet my water needs. George¡¯s point of view: One of the squirrels had tried to take a random nut I found under a tree and put under the deadfall trap when I went inside for a brief nap. So I got a second squirrel skin. Survival had told me that the nut was like acorns, and had to have the tannins leached from them before it could be eaten, so I figured I would see if the squirrels would eat them. Apparently they do. I used the large squirrel skins as a type of leather shoe, putting the skin on the back and sides under my feet and tying the arms and legs together with some string made from it entrails, using a fang as a needle. The tails were cut off and went on top of my feet. Yes, it didn¡¯t cover everything, and the skins hadn¡¯t had a chance to dry, but at least my feet were warm now thanks to my fir shoes. The problem was what to do with the meat. I didn¡¯t really need to eat right now. I could leave it here until supper, but it might attract something. And I should probably preserve some food so that I could use it when the hunting failed or when I was traveling and couldn¡¯t hunt. Maybe a smoke hut? My Hunter knowledge included the basics of one, though I didn¡¯t really have any skills to help me, similar to how I didn¡¯t have bowmaking skills, but my archery skill would let me assess the quality of a bow. I stacked a lot of three to four centimeter thick sticks like a log cabin, then put some large quartz rocks in a roughly square shape with a gap at the front. I then put the cabin on top of the rocks and used a stick from my main fire to light some green wood that Survival told me didn¡¯t make poisonous smoke in the middle of the rocks. The squirrel meat was hung on a thin stick that was stuck in gaps in the walls of the crude smokehouse. Sure, it wasn¡¯t fancy, and I still needed to add a roof so that it would still work when it was snowing, but it was good enough for now. And animal tended to avoid smoke, so it might keep my house safe. I went out into the woods a bit, now that my feet wouldn¡¯t get cold, and made a much larger deadfall using a dead tree. This one I bated with what was left of the squirrel entrails. Maybe I would get lucky and kill a coyote or other large scavenger. After setting a few more traps around, I noticed something interesting. There was smoke at the edge of the forest at the bottom of the mountain. As their hadn¡¯t been a thunder storm recently, that meant at least one person was there, which gave me a destination. Katerina¡¯s POV: As I waited for my bird to cook while braiding more rope, I happened to glance at the mountain. There was smoke up there. Strange. There wasn¡¯t a lightning storm recently. Had a spark from my fire been carried up there? Probably not. That was just too far. That meant that there was another person nearby. Maybe two kilometers away. Had I just gotten lucky, or had that Aati guy done it on purpose? Whatever the case was, that meant that I needed clothes. After all, you probably didn¡¯t want to be naked when meeting a new person. I took a piece of rope a little over twice the circumference of my hips and folded it in half. After tying a loop in one end, I started weaving the bottoms of clumps of grass stalks into the rope, tying bundles of grass together every two centimeters down the rope. A grass skirt wasn¡¯t the warmest of clothing, but at least it would mean I was decent when meeting a stranger. A woman might be ok, but most men probably wouldn¡¯t have a friendly reaction upon seeing me without clothing. Or rather, they would be too friendly. Two days later, or at least two sleep cycles later, a man approached my camp. He wore shoes made out of squirrel skins and pants and a vest made out of wolf skins. He carried a spear and a backpack made of even more squirrel skins, though it didn¡¯t look like it was entirely dry yet. I readied a spell in my hand, lightning bolt. Over the last two days I had leveled up to six from hunting, learning fire and lightning magic, and had just gotten Lightning bolt after defeating a porcupine with metallic quills. I had harvested those and brought them back, as they would make good sowing needles if nothing else. The man said something. It took me a few seconds to realize that it was English. Of course he didn¡¯t speak Russian. I didn¡¯t know much English, but, after cursing in my native language, I tried to piece together a sentence from what I could remember from watching American television. ¡°Me friend. No kill. You not hurt or...¡± I couldn¡¯t think of the word for ¡®fight¡¯ or ¡®kill¡¯, so I just let him see the sparks jumping between my fingers. George¡¯s perspective: After gathering all that I had prepared for the last several days, including the meat jerky I had figured out how to make, I made my way down the mountain. I was at level five now, and had learned the Auto-butcher skill so that I didn¡¯t need to do it myself, and had managed to get quite a bit of meat and skins, enough to make pants, a vest, and a backpack, at least. I even managed to make a spear by sharpening a flat piece of flint and tying it to the end of a stick. It had taken me several hours to learn to properly sharpen the rock but eventually I earned the ¡®Flint Knapping: Level 1¡¯ skill. I approached the place where the smoke was coming from and saw a young woman in a grass skirt and shirt. Well, enough of a shirt to hide her large chest. And she was only a few years younger than me. ¡°Hello.¡± I said, waving at her. ¡°I¡¯m George. Nice to meet you. I saw the smoke from your fire and decided to pop by.¡± She muttered something in another language and then said in broken English, ¡°Me friend. No kill. You not hurt or...¡± Then her fingers crackled with lightning. It seemed she had taken a Mage class. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, I don¡¯t speak your language, but I don¡¯t want to hurt you.¡± I laid my spear on the ground to show her that I was friendly. She said something in another language. Was that Russian? ¡°Uh, nyet kill.¡± What other Russian did I know? The only thing I could think of was the lyrics to a cyberpunk anime theme song, so I started singing it. She looked at me strangely, and let the spell disappear from her hand. I knew that she could probably hit me with a spell before I picked up my spear and ran at her if things went badly, so I carefully reached into my backpack and pulled out a bag of squirrel jerky. Maybe half a kilo. I tossed it to her. ¡°It¡¯s a gift.¡± I said. ¡°Squirrel meat. You know.¡± I pointed to the tail hanging off of my backpack. ¡°Squirrel.¡± She gave me a strange look, then checked the bag. Seeing what was inside she went over and picked up a basket, then set it on the ground and tried to slide it towards me. It might have went two of the five meters between us. I carefully walked over, being sure not to make any moves that would startle her, and looked inside. It was full of large nuts. I looked at her and she mimed smashing it with a large rock, then rolled two of them over to me. I picked up the rocks and broke one of the nuts open. They tasted like a mix of walnuts and pistachios. ¡°Good.¡± she said, then walked off to tend to her fire, where some sort of creature was roasting. A few minutes later she motioned for me to come over. When the creature was done cooking, she drew a creature in the ground and laid several metal needles down its back. She pointed at the picture, then the meat. ¡°Wait, are you saying this is a porcupine with metal quills? Bloody hell.¡± I pointed to the picture and the meat, and she nodded. It didn¡¯t taste bad. I ended up staying at her camp for the next few days, leaving for a few hours during the day to set or check traps. The rest of the time I copied what I had at my base. I made a fire pit and moved the main fire there, as it was more efficient that way, built a larger smoker to make more jerky, and set up a place to clean the pelts of the animals we killed. I leveled up from the work and got ¡®hide preparation¡¯ as a skill. It wasn¡¯t leather working, but it meant that I could properly prepare the hides so they didn¡¯t go bad. Though, at level ten, it would become ¡®tanning¡¯. She made sure to sleep on the opposite side of the fire from me, apparently afraid that I might try something during the night, so I built two small shelters using my survival skill, one one either side of the fire, with beds made of pine boughs. Or something close to pines. On the other two sides of the fire was a storage shelter, built like the sleep huts, and all of the drying racks for the hides, providing a small amount of protection in case something attacked from that side. At night we took turns drawing pictures or showing objects and saying the word for it. That, combined with the photographic memory we both appeared to have, let us level up our language skills rapidly. Side Story: Is this an Isekai? Part 3 George¡¯s POV: For the next few days we both seemed to have a schedule. I got up, at some berries for breakfast, and went out to check my traps. I would then bring all of the animals back and start processing them. The guts were strung up to dry so we could use them as string. The skins were hung on a new rack, as none of the other hides had finished drying yet. The meat was cut into strips using a quarter of the beak of some sort of crow, and then hung in the smokehouse. For now, we had no use for bones of the other entrails, so they were being used by Katerina outside of the camp. All of the meat was being stacked in baskets that Katerina made. ¡°You are really good at making baskets. How did you learn that? Did someone teach you?¡± ¡°No, figured it out by self. Did learn to tend fires and clean birds from Babushka though.¡± ¡°Babushka?¡± I asked. That word seemed familiar. ¡°What is word? Mother¡¯s mother.¡± ¡°Grandmother.¡± ¡°Ah, yes,¡± she said looking at me. ¡°Grandmother.¡± Katerina had been trying to cook for us, and had been dealing with predators by using the entrails and bones out in the woods to bait traps for them. I had made her several traps and shown her how to set them up, and every day she came back with at least one of the native wolf creatures and sometimes animals with weird traits, like a lizard whose scales were hard enough that they tanked a lightning bolt. That would be made into armor once I got good enough to do so. Today, however, she came back from somewhere out in the field with a woman following her. The woman looked Asian and was wearing a bra and underwear made out of red animal skins. ¡°Hello.¡± I said to the new woman. ¡°Welcome to our camp.¡± She gave me a look like she was afraid and hid behind Katerina. ¡°She is Chinese, named Lo Ming.¡± said Katerina. ¡°I know a bit of Mandarin, so we talk okay. She is level four martial artist, and needs place to stay. Can she stay in the camp?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t mind. I assume she can hunt, and fought those animals whose skin she¡¯s wearing.¡± Katerina nodded. ¡°Yes, killed many foxes that live in bamboo forest on other side of clearing. Saw the smoke and came this way.¡± ¡°Do you mind taking her with you when you go out, then? She can help deal with the predators.¡± Katerina nodded and said something to the woman in Mandarin. ¡°She say she will fight monsters. She asked about water. Wants to take a bath. So I will take her to the creek.¡± With that, they made their way down the edge of the woods in the direction we had decided to call east. If you faced the sun it was to your left. I had found a creek there two days ago, but we had no way to bring back water. Hopefully the skins would finish drying soon and I could make water skins for everyone, and a large one to bring water back to the camp. I cleaned out the storage hut and made another beside the drying racks. By the time they were back all of the things had been moved into the new lean-to and I was putting pine boughs down in the old one. Katerina showed her around the camp so she could find everything, and soon it was time for supper. Katerina had gathered enough clay at one point to make a pan, even if it wasn¡¯t the best, and was using it to cook something. I didn¡¯t know what it was, and she seemed to just be mixing whatever meat and vegetables we had, but it wasn¡¯t bad. After supper we both started teaching teaching Lo Ming English, as it was more common in a lot of Earth. Of course, if we ran into another person that spoke Mandarin I would learn that, and might do that anyway. There wasn¡¯t much to do other than work, but learning a new language was pretty interesting. Three days later, while the women were out hunting a groups of fire vipers, snakes who produced methanol instead of venom, and somehow could light it to breath fire, someone else walked towards the camp from the west, or to the right if you face the sun. They were a dark skinned man. He was short at about one point six meters tall, but had a lot of muscle. He was carrying a tree like a club and had a wolf pelt tied around his waist. ¡°Hey!¡± he called out. ¡°Anyone in there?¡± I had managed to build most of a small log cabin in the last few days, and was inside sealing the cracks when I heard him call out. I grabbed my spear from where it was propped against the wall and went outside to greet him. ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m here.¡± I said. ¡°Are you American?¡± ¡°Yep, and you sound British.¡± ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m from a town near London. And you?¡± ¡°Northern Cali. Nice place you got here. Got room for a Blacksmith?¡± ¡°Oh, production class, eh? I¡¯d love to have you around to help build stuff in town if nothing else, but the other two have to agree.¡± ¡°Other two?¡± ¡°Yes, there are two women that live here too. Katerina and Ming. Katerina is Russian and Ming is Chinese, but they both speak pretty good English. So, mind telling me your name and level?¡± ¡°Oh, my friends called me T-bro. That¡¯s short for Terrance Bronson. I¡¯m only level one, though. Only experience I got was when I collected this iron ore from that swamp I walked through on the way here.¡± He held up another wolf skin, but this one was tied up like a bag. ¡°I was thinking about finding some clay and setting up a smelter when I got to the forest, but then I saw your smoke and came this way.¡± ¡°Well, T, we got plenty of food if you are tired of eating whatever it was you found out there.¡± ¡°Mostly nothing. I did eat some raw snake meat when I killed them in the swamp, and I found a few wild onions near the edge of the forest, but I wasn¡¯t sure about anything else. I died the first time and have only been walking for two days.¡± Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work! Two days? That meant he died pretty quickly the first time and had to ¡®respawn¡¯ at a random place near here. ¡°Well, hope this time is better.¡± I motioned for him to come into the camp and, after he ate some of our berries and nuts, he started helping me chink the log cabin. When I called it that he got a look like I had said something wrong, but when I explained that was what filling in the cracks, and the material you used to do it was called, he understood and started helping. Two hours later he was out getting more clay when I heard Katerina yelling. I ran outside to see her waving her sparking hand at T. ¡°Woah, what¡¯s all this.¡± I called. ¡°Who is he?¡± she asked. ¡°I come back and there is new man in camp.¡± ¡°Oh, this is Terrance. He saw our camp and came over to see if we needed a blacksmith. He¡¯s only level one, but I let him eat something and help me with the cabin.¡± She looked at me and lowered her hands, turning the lightning off. Ming had taken a stance like she was about to swing at him, but she relaxed and started looking at him. That look definitely didn¡¯t say ¡®fear¡¯. After everyone talked for a bit the women brought the jug of methanol they had collected from the snakes into the camp and put it in storage. While there were over a hundred snakes, only a few were big enough to bother eating, and they had brought those back with them. The women decided to make snake for supper and Terrance and I finished with the cabin. After we were done I went to go get some clay so that we could build Terrence a bloomery furnace, letting him start earning experience. When I got back Terrance and Ming weren¡¯t around, but I saw Katerina making a basket near the fire. ¡°I figured you and Ming would be getting some sleep after a hunt.¡± I said. ¡°I would be, but she and Terrance are breaking in the new cabin.¡± ¡°Breaking it?¡± ¡°Yes. It seems Ming has a thing for black men.¡± ¡°Oh.¡± I said realizing exactly what she meant. ¡°Does that mean I need to build another cabin so that they can use that one for themselves?¡± ¡°That would mean that you and I share a cabin. Maybe one day that will happen, but for now the girls will have one cabin, boys other, and we will just need to be outside when they need to use cabin.¡± ¡°Right.¡± Well, so much for that plan. I wanted to have Terrance build the bloomery, as I suspected that his class knowledge told him exactly how to do that, and he could get experience by doing so, so I went to bed. When I woke up Terrence was in Ming¡¯s old shelter, asleep. She had stayed in the cabin, though. I went to collect more clay and when I got back both of them were sitting beside the fire, eating. I had carved three wooden bowls, three spoons, and three sets of chopsticks for everyone, and all three were bring used, so I just moved all of the clay and hay to the place where we would be building the furnace. When we were done, I washed the bowl with a bit of the water we had and got what was left of the food, not that it was much. I had made two large water skins that held about ten liters each out of two dried wolf hides, and only one of them was still full. The other was almost empty. After breakfast Terrence and I went over to where we would be working and got to work. I wasn¡¯t sure what all would earn him experience, so I just poured the water for him to mix the clay. When he had a mixture he liked he got to work. Two hours later he loaded it with wood and lit it. After it was about an hour into the burn he closed off the vent on the bottom and threw a hide over the top. This smothered the fire. Once were sure it was out, he removed the charcoal and said that we could get started. First, he took the hide he had use to snuff it and made a bellows by basically tying it off as an air-tight bag and having the only vents being a one-way reed valve and a clay tube which lead to the bottom of the furnace. This would let him lift and push on the bag to blow air into the furnace. I would have to make him a better one later, but for now this was good enough. At that point he went to gather the ashes from the camp¡¯s main fire, then relit it after he had collected them. This was the only flux he knew where to find at this point. He then mixed alternating levels of charcoal and crushed iron ore, throwing a layer of ash over the iron ore every time. ¡°This probably isn¡¯t a good way to do it, and definitely isn¡¯t the best, but it should work for now.¡± With that he lit the charcoal through the blower hole, reattached the blower, and started the burn. It was probably six hours before he finally stopped pumping the bellows and let the smelter cool. Not wanting to limit his experience, I had limited myself to bringing him water and refilling the water skins. The rest of the time I had started work on a second cabin beside the first. Mostly that meant carrying logs over and laying them nearby. We would have to carve the corners out tomorrow, so that they fit together properly. These cabins had no windows, and had a dirt floor, but they would be good enough for now and could serve as storage space once we had better housing. Once he had rested, Terrance helped me carry over all of the other trees that had been cut down. We had cleared out a good chunk of the nearby forest, as none of the trees on the edge of the forest were more that twenty centimeters in diameter. ¡°Well, I went up to level two after that.¡± said Terrance as we carried logs. ¡°And got an extra point of Endurance.¡± ¡°Nice. Any idea what you¡¯ll do with the level up?¡± ¡°Oh, I got a skill called ¡®Leatherworking¡¯. It should let me make hide armor, even if it¡¯s meant for the leather handles of weapons and the leather lining of metal armors.¡± ¡°Nice. I¡¯ll probably dump my three skill levels into Hide Preparation the next time I level, so that I can get to Tanning faster. Once I can make real leather you can turn it into clothes for everyone.¡± I was already at level five in that skill, so if I could just get to seven before leveling up, this level up will get me to ten, and next time I can just get Tanning. We built the bottom two layers for the cabin to mark its location, then went and smashed the furnace. At the bottom Terrance pulled out a shiny chunk of glass and, after breaking the material off of the outside, he revealed a chunk of iron the size of two double fists. ¡°So, what do you want to do with this?¡± he asked. That night we discussed what to do with our lump of iron. Ming wanted a weapon. I would like a spearhead, but I didn¡¯t know if that was the best use for it. I hadn¡¯t made a bow yet, so I didn¡¯t know if I needed arrow heads. As it was cast iron, Katerina had an idea. Why not make a skillet? We had been using clay plates to cook on, but they usually only held up to being used one or two times. Apparently, ceramics weren¡¯t meant for cooking. A skillet, though, could be used for decades with no real wear. In the end we decided to go with a skillet and a kunai for Ming. That would give her an iron weapon but not use up all of the material. After that, if there was any left, I could get a spear head or he could make nails, depending on how much was left. Terrance also taught all of us what iron and copper ore looked like, and told up to bring back a sample of anything we suspected was one of those, as, with a larger supply of ore, he could make us more tools. The next day we started work on a forge. That basically meant building a sled to haul back all of the rocks we could from the forest. Those were all put together using a mortar made with clay and ash, until we had a platform that could hold charcoal in the middle. We let it set up overnight, and the next morning I started building a top for it the same way I had seen someone build a bread oven. I piled up dirt on it in a dome shape, made a cage over the dirt, then covered the cage in clay with hay mixed in to prevent cracking. Once it was done, I dug out the dirt and started a fire inside to fire the clay and burn out the frame. Was it ideal? Probably not, but it worked. Terrance got to work building a charcoal kiln beside it. As we didn¡¯t have any metal to separate the burned would and the wood that would become charcoal, he made it so that it could be snuffed out whenever he wanted, using hides as gaskets to seal it off. Once he was finished he lit it and came over to help me. By that point, however, I was digging the dirt out of it, so that was all he could help with. The next day he set to work on his own, hauling a one hundred or more kilo piece of granite out of the forest, as the mountain was the only nearby source. Most of the rocks we dug up here were quartz. He had forgotten something important when asking what we wanted, the fact that he would need tools to make things. This chunk of granite will carved into crucibles and an anvil, so that he can actually forge things. The crucible will need to be used to heat iron to its melting point so that he could pour it into the mold for the pan. As much as Ming wanted a weapon, he would need all of the remaining iron to make a hammer so that he could work with metal the next time we made something. Now that he had the Leatherworking skill, he could make a proper bellows for his furnace. He softened the hide up by constantly moving it, and then cut out the strips he would need to make a large bellows, the wooden boards being made from some of the scrap ends from the trees I brought in with a flint ax. An outside person might be wondering how we cut the trees down without metal tools, but that would be thanks to the girls. At first I was making flint ax heads and replacing or sharpening them between every tree. Then they realized that they had skills that could help with that. Katerina had a Kinesis skill called Cut that just cut pushed out small amounts of material in order to cut an object, kind of like a chainsaw. Ming had a mana-enhanced martial arts move that let her cut things by giving it a karate chop. They had felled dozens of trees just that morning. I suppose I could ask them to make boards for us when they got back, but I didn¡¯t need boards for many things. Once he was done with the crucible a day later and two sets of bellows the day after that he made two sets of tongs, basically just bending a stick in half, and heated up the furnace. While it heated he made two clay molds, one for a pan and one for a hammer. After several hours of bellow pumping the iron became a liquid and he poured it into the pan mold, setting the top of the mold in after he had enough iron in it. The excess went back into the crucible along with whatever was left of the original bloom and when it became liquid he poured it into his hammer mold. He had a tiny bit left, but not enough to do anything with, so he poured it into a rectangular ingot mold to be used later. That night we had our first pan fried food, using some of the animal fat we had collected. Chapter 34 Greg¡¯s POV: The interview wasn¡¯t quiet what I had expected. They had brought in another guest at the same time, former World¡¯s richest man and tech company owner Velon Dusk. He was on in the previous segment explaining how he had sold all of the failed, defective, and unfinished batteries and materials at his Texas Mega Factory to earn a few million Zerka, and was using that to roll out the New Edison Alpha One, the first car from his company that would be powered by System batteries and an optional generator, giving your car over two thousand kilometers of range before needing to be recharged, or being self recharging if you purchase the generator. Of course, it only made eight kilowatts constantly, so if you drove it too much you would still need to recharge, but for most people that would be fine. Next year he planned to launch the Omega One, a flying luxury vehicle with AI piloting. Because he also owned a space company, Space Xplorers, he was called onto the show to talk about how he would be working with space colonization. Essentially, the energy cost to open a portal to the moon was about three hundred zerka per person. It wasn¡¯t a ridiculous amount if you treated it as a plane flight, but Velon intended to run a shuttle service from every major city and only charge one hundred zerka. If I did the math, while a basic passenger shuttle cost around five million, you could move fifty people on each trip, meaning that you could earn five thousand per trip. System ships used Generators for power, or could be recharged at any landing port from the settlement¡¯s power, and would keep themselves repaired, so other than paying the flight crew there were no expenses. That meant that in less than two thousand trips you could pay for the ship and start earning pure profit. At eight hours each way, plus some layover, that¡¯s maybe one round trip per day, at ten thousand for the trip if you can fill it on the way back. That¡¯s one thousand days, or around three years to pay off the shuttle. Not a bad investment, but one I didn¡¯t want to do. I would loan him the money to buy a few he wanted me to, though. They called me the Post System richest man to compare me to him and when they got to me I stepped out of my ship onto the surface of Mars, revealing Mount Olympus behind me. Then I announced that I had started a colony there and would be opening it up for immigration once everything was ready to support the desired one million population. When asked why I wanted such a large colony, I told them about how humanity should have a major presence on another planet and Velon agreed. They asked him about the possibility of having shuttle flights to Mars and I could see his brain working as he said that he would look into it. The math was similar to the math for the moon. It would cost between one thousand and two thousand zerka in power for each person to come to Mars depending on where the Earth and Mars were in orbit. With a tier 2 warp drive, which would increase the cost to six million, you could be at Mars in four hours to eight hours at most. That meant that you could run two flights per day instead of one much of the time. The costs would essentially be the same, though you would need more power to charge the ship. Even at two hundred per shuttle trip, you could pay it back in a little more that half the length of the lunar shuttle, or around a year and a half to two years. He will definitely jump at the chance to send a shuttle here once the colony is established. About five minutes after the segment was over I got a call from Velon. He wanted to work together on the shuttle business. I told him about the better warp drive, which would make the day-and-a-half flight so much shorter, and he worked that into his calculations. He then proposed that he lease the ships from me. He knew that AR leased business equipment, as we had loaned equipment to several cities and a few businesses, and proposed that we lease him this equipment on the same terms, namely 0.2% per day. That would be 12k per day, and as long as he charged more than 150 zerka per trip or so he would still turn a profit. I knew that the city had over twenty million in precious metals sitting in the a warehouse from the dungeon, and thus could rent him three ships if he wanted, more if I had one of the Lunar colonies build the ships with their large nanite forges using AR¡¯s minerals, but I couldn¡¯t make such a huge decision on my own. This would require a city council decision. So I invited him to visit us in one week, giving me time to talk to the council about the deal. After making sure that Olympus had built an Arch, I delivered a prefab ten meter diameter dome and a small teleporter to Brenda so that they could come to town at any time, in case they wanted to leave. The builder quickly set them up where Brenda told it to and connected them to the other domes she had already had it build. I told Brenda how to set travel restrictions later so tourists didn¡¯t gather at the research station, then changed the AI¡¯s name to Zeus. It was named after Mount Olympus, the home of the Greek gods. It made sense that the AI was named after the leader of those gods. I spent the next few days scanning for underground caves and lava tubes. As Olympus was a dormant volcano it had several near the surface, and fewer deep in the ground, but I only wanted to use one of those for the main cloning facilities for the city. They were too obvious for anything secret. I sent a Large teleporter, capable of moving one thousand people at a time, to a tunnel around four kilometers deep, along with an outpost core. I named the outpost ¡°Asphodel¡± and its AI ¡°Hades¡±, trying to keep to the theme. I had instructed Zeus to look for opportunity to name outposts and districts after Greek gods that match the theme of the district or outpost. So far we had an industrial district named Hephaestus, a food production district named Demeter, a housing district named Hera, and a casino and entertainment district named Dionysus, which he suggested attaching a red light district to named Aphrodite. I wasn¡¯t to sure about that suggestion, but I did rename the AIs for those districts after the deities they took after. There was essentially an AI city council which oversaw the day to day operation of the city, and would bring their problems to the city council member for that district. I wasn¡¯t sure how else the government would be structured, if the city had one, but the problems the AI faced should at least have human overseers to help make decisions. After that I flew back to Earth. When I arrived six hours later I swung by Antarctic University to see how it was going. So far the main surface dome had been built and the underground parts were under construction. Di wasn¡¯t there, though, so I flew back to AR. After landing at around six thirty PM local time, I sent a message to all of the city council members asking them to meet me tomorrow morning in the city council chambers so that we could discuss something. I didn¡¯t tell them what we would be discussing, but I did let them know that it could ensure a steady income for the city for years if not decades. Di and I met up and went to New Orleans for super, then went home. Apparently our talk almost a week ago and tonight¡¯s date had convinced her to let me come back home. The next morning, after having formally made up, we got ready and headed to the council. Once the meeting started, I explained the offer the council. Velon Dusk wanted to rent passenger ships from them. I would let them use the tier 6 nanite forge at Shackleton, which could make the ships in a matter of hours. They would just have to provide all of the material. They could then rent the ships to Mr. Dusk to secure a source of income for the next several years. It would only cost them their mineral reserves. I was just bringing the offer to them because it was too big enough for me to handle on my own. I could host them out of Shackleton, and may rent them ships later but for now, they needed a home city on Earth and AR would make a good location for that. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. At the end of the week Velon teleported to town and, after a few locals told him how much they liked or disliked him, he came into city hall to meet with us. An hour later we had made a deal. First, he would lease the ships from the city for 12000 zerka per day per ship, payable on the first of every month. They would be the standard fifty person transport ships, but with warp drive mark twos. At least one ship would have to land in AR every day, and it would be charged standard landing, fueling, and recharge fees. If at any time he gets more than one month behind in payments, we have the right to repossess the ships. And we will also lease him landing pads at the rate of 0.2% of their cost per day should he need them. Upon having our lawyers look over and signing the contract he asked that we provide him with ten landing pads and five ships for now. Our lawyer was actually a divorce attorney, not a business attorney, but they had dealt with enough prenups and divided assets to know their way around a contract. At six million per ship and one hundred thousand per standard landing pad, the costs came to a total of thirty one million zerka, meaning he will need to pay sixty two thousand per day. This is more than the budget of the City and they have twenty times our population. Half a day later I contacted him to inform him that his five ships were on the landing pads of Shackleton, but if he sent his pilots here I would open the portal for them so they could go pick the ships up free of charge. The city had run out of Tantalum in the production of the ships, as it was used in far greater quantities than its proportional density on Earth¡¯s surface, but Shackleton had enough excess from all of the digging it was doing that it was able to loan AR enough to finish the order on a promise to pay it back later. Luna had slightly higher densities of the element, but not high enough to keep up with the System¡¯s demands. The next day at noon ten pilots that had trained in System vehicles arrived and I took them to the moon to pick up their ships, each ship carrying two landing pads in its cargo hold, as that almost filled the cargo bays. After that I took a trip to Antarctica. They had ten large teleporters, in case people wanted to teleport in from ten different places at once, and you would be directed to whichever one was open when you teleported in. There were only a few hundred people in town, mainly scientists and teachers who wanted to look the place over before deciding to stay here. Two of those scientists were from Cern, and another from Fermilab, and they were discussing the possibility of building a several thousand kilometer diameter particle accelerator around the continent. It would use System particle cannon tech to get the initial particles up to 99.9% of the speed of light, then use other particle acceleration methods to push the speed even higher, hoping to push the energy of a particle into the peta electron volt range. At that level even the System documentation isn¡¯t sure what will happen. Hyperspace travel, wormholes, and even the creation of kugelblitz singularities only require hundreds of tera electron volts, so no one bothered pushing the energy levels higher. The teachers were from a huge variety of disciplines, for arts to sciences to mathematics to sociology to psychology to religion, and everything else you can imagine. As Souls and true magic were now a scientifically verified phenomenon, Di had even asked several spiritual leaders from around the world to come and demonstrate what was possible, essentially needing to prove that their abilities were legitimate before they would be hired here. Di had several System AI watching to guarantee that they weren¡¯t faking it with the System, just in case. While most of them were found to either not have powers or to be using the System, a few were verified as having paranormal or supernatural abilities, and they would form the core of the new True Magic branch. Classes here wouldn¡¯t be structured like normal colleges. Classes would be taught on a subscription basis, kind of like exclusive YourTube videos. If you subscribed, then you could attend the classes live or discuss things with the instructors. One month after a class was over it would be available for free, to anyone that subscribes to any class, but you won¡¯t be able to ask the teacher questions about it. Anyone can also submit lessons and, after they are verified, they will be placed on the site for others to watch them. All teachers, including those that just submitted videos, will have a donation account tied to their videos where people can give them money, and those that actually teach lessons here will be paid half the subscription fees for their classes, for a minimum of fifty per day. Di hoped that this would result in people learning about anything that interested them, and being able to afford it. Anyone that wanted credit for classes or a diploma would need to pay to take the finals for the class. The fact that the System gave everyone photographic memories made memorization less important and the ability to apply lessons more important, so many classes would also require practical examinations. The city would also have several weak Free Dungeons and several better paid dungeons, in case you wanted to go into them. They would serve as amusement parks, hopefully having enough variety, even including non-combat ones, so that you could hang with friends and/or test yourself. Like an amusement park, you would get credits for every monster you defeated, challenge beaten, or puzzle solved and could trade credits for System gear after earning it, like exchanging tickets at an arcade. That, combined with all of the manufacturing and other facilities a city would need, including cloning facilities, would allow the city to fund itself or even be self sufficient. As the first classes would start the first day of September, less than a month away, they would soon start accepting students. Di had been sending people to every human settlement in the world, including every place Settlement builders went, to invite them to go to the university, even going herself. She had even been to a few non-human settlements. For this reason, pretty much everyone would need the Translation skill with over a dozen languages loaded into it, and she had hired or would hire at least one language teacher for each language represented to teach English to those that came here. After some discussion, she agreed to open up a branch school on Mars and Luna once they got to a quarter million people in a city. I already planned on naming the one on Mars Apollo. Sam¡¯s POV: I walked along the floor of the ocean. At this point I was down too deep for anyone else to see me, but I could operate on my internal nuclear battery for years if I wanted. Which I didn¡¯t. It was extremely boring down here, and I only occasionally saw any kind of life. The Gold vein that I thought I had found wasn¡¯t as good as I had hoped, so I sold it to a mining company and set off for deeper water. I was over a kilometer deep at this point and the only light came from my helmet. The only reason I still wore the suit is because I wasn¡¯t sure my body could handle the pressure this far down. I had run out of food long ago, but as my body could repair itself with nanites, that wasn¡¯t entirely necessary. I had only started eating to keep up the appearance that I was a normal human. Also for the taste. Finally, I came upon what I was hoping to find. A Tantalite deposit. Tantalum was used it huge amounts to construct System technology, was a major material for the creation of nanites, and would probably be the last mineral the System on Earth had enough of. Furthermore, it was rare enough on other worlds that if Earth ever connected to the interplanetary trade network plenty of other worlds would want to buy it. The deposit likely contained gigagtons of material, so I took the World System Core out of my inventory and dropped it beside the deposit. ¡®Greetings. You are not what I was expecting when I finally got set up. I was under the impression that the local sapient race had taken over the expansion of the System from the System.¡¯ ¡®They have. I am setting this settlement up on behalf of Greg Summers, User 9573140892. The nearby deposit will be registered with a company he owns called Dungeon Builders.¡¯ ¡®Ah, that makes sense. So, will I be given a name? Judging by his System records he always gives his settlements a name.¡¯ ¡®Yes, you will be Atlantis.¡¯ ¡®I was hoping for Poseidon, actually.¡¯ ¡®Unfortunately, since I entered the ocean he has built a colony on the fourth planet in this System, at a location known as Olympus Mons, and is naming the AIs in charge of that city¡¯s management after the Greek deities, so naming you that would cause confusion. I suppose you could be named Cthulhu, though.¡¯ The Core paused for half a second as it read everything every written about that subject in its library. ¡®That may cause many humans concern, but I do like it better than Atlantis. I will think about it.¡¯ A week later that city of Rl¡¯yeh had expanded enough to build a small pressurized area with a small teleporter and Samantha took the teleporter back to AR, deciding she needed a break. Chapter 35 This idealic life could only last so long. On August 15th, just five days before I planned on opening Olympus to colonists, I got a visit from someone I hadn¡¯t seen in a long time. I was sitting in my office in AR, doing some paperwork that I had been putting off for a long time, when Wan entered my office. ¡°Wan?¡± I asked. ¡°I didn¡¯t expect to see you. What brings you here?¡± He made sure my door was closed, then waved his hand. Suddenly my System connection was cut off and I stopped hearing or seeing anything from outside. At most the windows showed blurry images. ¡°Good.¡± He nodded and sat down. ¡°Now that I know the area is secure I can explain myself. I started a mercenary group in LA after the collapse. We mostly took over police duties or acted as private security. Then the GCA attacked, and we helped fight them off. Because of our help there the mayor has kept me appraised of their intel on the GCA. Three days ago one of the city¡¯s teams killed a Jotun Lieutenant that was attacking one of their outposts and found this in his head.¡± He motioned and sent a file to me. I looked at it in surprise. ¡°This is an attack plan for LA, scheduled for a week from now. Have you come to ask for my help?¡± Wan shook his head. ¡°We also found out that the Jotun knew about attacks on many cities in the US and Canada, from San Fran and Seattle all the way to New Orleans. That includes the city here, and AR. All scheduled for a simultaneous attack, though the Jotun didn¡¯t have details of those attacks as it wouldn¡¯t be involved. We can only assume that they are going to launch another world wide attack like before. So I¡¯ve been sent out to secure allies, so that we can help each other in resisting these invaders.¡± I nodded. ¡°I don¡¯t have that many troops, so I assume you want me to provide material support.¡± He nodded. ¡°We would also like a secret base where we could train. I¡¯ve heard of your use of Cloning to prevent permanent death, and your dungeons, where people can train. I was hoping you could build a training facility.¡± I nodded. ¡°That would be possible, but we would need to make sure that it was hidden so the GCA can¡¯t attack it.¡± After a few minutes explaining how I had hidden the cloning facilities, he thought that would be enough for now. In the future, though, I should probably hide a facility somewhere in space so that it would be even harder to find. Once he had left, I finished the paperwork I was working on and sent a message to Shackleton. He and the other settlements were to build a non-hyperspace equipped copy of all of their hardware and put the copies in storage to be handed out in the future, then start building guns and armor. I then left to take my ship for a flight. The orbit of Earth was too high, but if I stayed at only a few kilometers off the ground I could send down orbs as much as I wanted. Since the System had shown up several new mining locations had been discovered using flying craft and System sensors, but I started a detailed scan from space, putting my ship into orbit. Any time I found a place with more than one million zerka of confirmed minerals I marked in on the map. Once I was done, I put them in order of richest to poorest deposit, then went to each one, dropping off a teleportation orb, naming it after the mineral in question. I started a dummy Mining company for that purpose, and registered all of the orbs to them, though I only directly claimed the ones with over a billion in confirmed resources. At any mines where people were already mining I sent them an orb for free, so that they could connect to the rest of the network. A few of these didn¡¯t have a System connection, so I sent them a copy of the Settlement Cores Settlement Builders were giving out as well, giving them the information of Settlement Builders so that they could contact them with any questions. After personally contacting every one of the known mining locations in the top one hundred myself, I left my ship to drop orbs on all of the other mining locations without people, along with a small generator. Once I hired people for my new mining company I would send them to make contact with the claimed mining sites. Surprisingly, the GCA had only claimed a handful of such sites, for only a few minerals, but I wouldn¡¯t be making contact with them. The entire mining thing was mostly a ploy, though. Yes, Earth would need the resources and I could hire huge numbers of people to work at those sights, enriching the local populous, but what I really wanted was to run deep scans of the Earth¡¯s crust. After a few days they had detected over a dozen underground pockets that were at least ten kilometers underground, so I sent down teleportation orbs, settlement cores, and Small Nuclear Generators to each of those pockets. Shackleton and the other Lunar settlements sent them autominers and more generators and, once they were ready, the industrial equipment they would need to expand. By the time the GCA showed up to try their luck at a second invasion there were over a dozen identical Valhalla bases around the world. Each one had a cloning facility where they could produce new bodies for the warriors training there, and each one was building an identical dungeon. I had sent over ten million rail rifles, two million laser rifles, a million particle rifles, and fourteen million sets of power armor to Wan and the members of his alliance, including the City, by the time of the invasion. I had left Paul in charge of the ground forces in AR and this time the ground forces of the enemy didn¡¯t stand a chance. They only managed to breech the defenses in a few cities, and even then they were quickly gunned down. The real threat this time had been the air forces. They had sent over a million drones out worldwide, shooting down every flying vehicle that was over a city they were attacking, including the simple flying disks many people used as personal transportation. Most of the cities were able to shoot them down eventually, but a week later some of the cities still had to keep their people grounded and inside, as the drones sometimes did diving or bombing runs on groups of civilians. I had the lunar colonies switch to making drones and, a week after the invasion, I sent a million of them out to hunt down any enemy drones they could find. Another million went to Wan and his allies. The Earth Alliance was growing so quickly that even the manufacturing capability of the lunar colonies wasn¡¯t able to keep up, so I had Olympus join in. Hephaestus chose to build fifty million anti-air turrets and send them at the suggestion of Ares, seeing that as our biggest weakness. Ares was a new AI that had been set up as a way to govern the military production and the defense of the city. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. Project Valhalla soon reached a point where we could start recruiting people. In order to keep the base locations a secret, anyone that joined would send a proper brain tissue and blood sample from which a clone would be produced. The teleporters of the various Valhalla bases would only connect to the other bases unless the commander said otherwise, and even then would only send troops out, but not in, to keep the location a secret. Like the Norse legends the troops that went there would enter combat scenarios every day. Those that died would have another clone made before they were allowed to fight again. Most of them would have several clones, though, so that they could fight as much as possible. This would let them hone their skills quickly. Once per week they would go up against another Valhalla settlement to guarantee that their skills didn¡¯t stagnate. While they could only enter by dying, they would be held in reserve until they were most needed. The base would give them everything they needed to live, so they only needed to worry about getting stronger. But the time a month had passed from when Wan visited me, all military personnel that didn¡¯t have a moral objection to it and many other people had a Valhalla clone so that, if they died during the invasion, they could return and get their revenge. The mines had worked well over the last month, bringing in over a trillion in resources, the vast majority of which went to making military hardware. Shackleton had even started construction on a few military frigates. These spacecraft weren¡¯t the best the System had to offer, but they would let us defend ourselves if the GCA sent ships. The mines now employed over one hundred thousand people, all of which had a better standard of living than a middle class American before the collapse. In some places, competition for these jobs had resulted in criminal activity. I let it be known in those locations that anyone who used criminal means to try to get a job with the company would not only be blacklisted from working for it, but would be blacklisted from buying from it. The same was true for all that committed crimes within the company settlements, excluding a few minor crimes like simple assault. This kept the people from causing too much trouble. Each mining base was part of the Alliance, selling its minerals to the Alliance for use in producing military hardware, though they also paid whatever the local government demanded in taxes, up to half their output. After all, the last thing I needed was to upset those in power. If the governments started using the resources to commit serious criminal acts the Alliance might step in, but for now most had either used it to build military hardware outside the Alliance or to build social services for all of their people. Sure, the politicians got much nicer stuff, but even the poorest people had their basic needs met and it barely took any valuable minerals to do so. Those that noticed that now understood what the System meant when it said that it was developed by a post-scarcity society. In time, the war with the GCA kept escalating. Where before they only sent out the really big stuff for direct attacks against their bases, it was soon routine for them to send a hundred thousand or a million battle robots to the cities they attacked. We responded in kind, and the winner would simply repair any damaged robots and end them out a few days later to fight for them. Both sides were taking casualties, though. By the end of October Valhalla had over two hundred thousand people in it, and we were fielding billions worth of hardware in any city that was part of the Alliance. While the cities didn¡¯t come under daily attack many were attacked every few days, depending on what the local base felt like doing. I was certain that the GCA couldn¡¯t be earning a profit here, and that something big would happen soon. November tenth I was proven right, as the satellites I had placed in orbit detected something that they shouldn¡¯t have. There was a Vaniir on Earth. Furthermore, it was at the GCA base just north of AR. GCA Base Earth-327: Vidar stepped out of the Portal and looked around. The planet seemed to have decent gravity and a bright star, but from the reports he had read, it was nothing special. Still, no matter how many resources they sunk into its conquest, the locals seemed to always be one step ahead of the GCA, always able to mount enough of a defense to prevent their conquest. Even worse, they had started to retake several of the native settlements that had been seized in the first attack, driving the GCA back to their bases. Many demands had been sent for them to return any captured members of the native race, but from what Vidar had learned of them and their unique connection to the System, that couldn¡¯t be allowed to happen. Whatever had wiped out the society of this world and resulted in these dead creatures wondering around had caused the locals to become physically immortal. Sure, they could still be killed, but without severe damage to their bodies their bodies would rebuild themselves. He had even had the pleasure of torturing one of the prisoners and from what he could tell, as long as the node in their brain wasn¡¯t damaged, preventing the reinstallation of their memories, the soul connection points weren¡¯t all destroyed, and enough organic material was left near them for their nanites to put them back together, they could come back from even the worst damage. ¡°Lord Vidar¡± said a man who quickly knelt before him. Vidar didn¡¯t know his name or even his race. He didn''t care. All that he cared about was that he was the commander of this settlement. ¡°Report.¡± Vidar said coldly. ¡°My Lord. We are preparing another group of troops for the invasion of the local settlement, named Anarchist Redoubt. That has been the largest source of resistance on this planet, but I have finally amassed a large enough army that I think I can conquer them. Once they have fallen, the rest of the world will lose its support and will soon fall.¡± ¡°They are that powerful of a settlement?¡± He asked, puzzled. ¡°Mostly in military hardware, sir. The leader of that settlement has built numerous other settlements, focusing on mining and production. He even built bases elsewhere in the star system, such as the five he placed on the planet¡¯s moon. Rest assured, though, once the fleet arrives, we will destroy or conquer those settlements as well.¡± ¡°So, one man has managed to outsmart all of the GCA Commanders on this world, despite having just learned about the System?¡± The man bowed deeper. ¡°Y-yes sir. We failed to expand quickly enough, focusing on solidifying our position on the planet rather than expanding. It was a mistake, but soon I hope to remedy it.¡± ¡°I doubt you can. So far this planet of backward savages has managed to keep our forces at bay, even though we have invested over one trillion into seizing this insignificant ball of dirt. With the incompetence you and the other commanders have shown, I doubt you are capable of solving the issue. That¡¯s why I am here. I will solve this issue for you so that your stupidity doesn¡¯t hold back the goals of the Council.¡± ¡°Yes, sir.¡± the cowardly fool said. ¡°Thank you, sir.¡± ¡°Oh, I¡¯m not doing this for you.¡± said Vidar. ¡°I¡¯m doing this because the Council wishes me to. Rest assured that when I conquer this world, your incompetence will be duly punished.¡± The man bowed in fear and Vidar walked off to inspect the troops. He had dealt with that fool enough for today. Now he would prepare for Battle, the one thing he always loved doing. Greg¡¯s Perspective: ¡°Understood¡± said Wan on the video call. ¡°I¡¯ll have the troops there soon.¡± I hung up and looked over the hardware I had stockpiled. One thousand turrets, ten thousand drones, one hundred thousand battle robots, and enough weapons and power armor to equip every military member in the city twice over. There were also vehicles, including some type of System tank, a few mechas that people had experimented with but decided not to use, and over a million mind controlled animals in the dungeon. From the intelligence I¡¯ve received the GCA had over a million organic troops, half a million animals, and five million robots. Plus, they were being lead by a Vaniir. Even at our best it would be difficult for AR¡¯s forces to defeat that large of a group. I considered bringing in the Valhalla troops, but thought better of it. The other cities hadn¡¯t been offered their aid when they were under attack so that the troops could be used in emergencies, so it would be a bit hypocritical for me to use them to protect my own settlement. So I had called Wan and asked him to have the Alliance send over troops. While I hadn¡¯t contributed troops to any military engagement other than here and in the city, I had donated trillions in hardware, so many settlements should be willing to send help. When six hours later no one had sent troops I grew concerned. We expected the enemy to launch their attack at sunset and that was only an hour away. I was considering sending all of my non-military personnel to Shackleton instead of Sanctuary, as it might be located if they scanned the ground here, but then the transporter activated. It had been upgraded to a tier 3, so that it could move a thousand people at once, and every time it received a group it was completely filled to capacity. This continued until the city was cramped with all of the uniformed and armored people. Paul quickly invited me to the base and I went over there, only to find dozens of military officials standing there. One hundred and sixty three different settlements had sent troops, from a few hundred to tens of thousands. They had merely gathered in LA before coming over, as Wan was their mutual contact, having been the one to recruit most of them to the Alliance. Now I had an extra four hundred and seven thousand troops on my side, all equipped with power armor and System weapons. Now I knew I had a chance to win the battle. Is This an Isekai? part 4 Thirty day-cycles had passed since Katerina and I had met when I woke up and noticed that there was a status screen in front of my eyes. ¡°What?¡± I asked as I sat up. I got dressed, went outside. Near the woods was a three meter metallic arch. On top of it was a statue of Aati, and around the sides were other statues, I assume of the other gods and goddesses. I walked over to Katerina¡¯ next door and knocked. A few seconds later she stuck her head out, careful to hide behind the door. ¡°What is it George? I was sleeping.¡± We had built a nicer cabin for Ming and Terrance to live in, with a floor made of wooden planks, and Katerina and I lived in the two smaller huts. I pointed to the Arch. ¡°That thing just appeared last night.¡± She gave me a strange look. ¡°Are you trying to trick me into leaving my house naked?¡± ¡°No, of course not.¡± ¡°What do you mean by that?¡± The thing I liked least about the girls becoming fluent in English is that they stopped assuming misunderstandings were the result of poor language skills. ¡°Uh, just that I want it to happen naturally.¡± I shrugged, and she stared at me for a few seconds before closing the door. I heard some shuffling around inside and a minute later she came out wearing her leather outfit while carrying a staff. When she got to level ten she had chosen to take the ¡®Carpenter¡¯ production class, and a few days ago had gotten her Mage class up to level 20, prestiging into ¡®Enchanter¡¯. This lets her precast spells and store them in objects. She went with a traditional staff as the object she stored them in, and carved herself a nice one. When she stepped out I pointed to the arch and she stared at it for a few minutes. ¡°What is that?¡± ¡°I¡¯m guessing it¡¯s the ¡®Holy Arch¡¯ I got a System Alert for.¡± She tilted her head and looked at me. ¡°Just check to see if you also have one.¡± She had told the System to minimize all of her alerts a few weeks ago when she started getting annoyed by the level-up notices. After checking, however, she nodded. ¡°A hidden quest. Interesting.¡± We went over to the arch and she touched it. Something surprised her and she grabbed my hand and touched it to the arch. ¡°So, we can Summon people to our settlement, now.¡± I asked. ¡°Looks like it. This is too important to do it on our own. We need the other two.¡± I nodded, and went to their cabin. From the sounds inside, I could tell they were already awake, so I made breakfast as I waited for them to finish and leave the cabin. When they left their cabin I walked out of the kitchen building and pointed towards the arch. ¡°That appeared last night.¡± I said. ¡°Apparently, it lets us register our respawn location and summon people to help us out.¡± ¡°So, that¡¯s what the alert I got meant?¡± asked Ming. ¡°I noticed it but accidentally woke up T, so...¡± We could all guess what happened next. The two of them went over to touch it and register their location. Ming mentioned a character creation screen for the Settler, and Terrance looked confused. ¡°I don¡¯t even see the option for summoning a settler.¡± ¡°What does your mission log say?¡± I asked him. ¡°Well, there¡¯s an extra quest there now that it says I haven¡¯t yet completed. Says I¡¯ve only been alive for 24 out of 30 days so I have limited Arch access.¡± ¡°Makes sense. You did die and respawn near here.¡± He nodded. ¡°So, we need to talk about what kind of settler we need to summon. Want to discuss it over breakfast?¡± We went to the kitchen and I brought out the meat, eggs and fruit I had cooked. ¡°Sorry about stealing your XP, Ming, but you seemed busy and I didn¡¯t want to interrupt you.¡± She looked embarrassed at that. When she had reached level ten she picked the Chef class and we built her this kitchen. Unfortunately, she only had four people to cook for three times per day, so leveling up that occupation was slow. ¡°So, what kind of settler do you guys think we need? I think we should go for a production class. We have a hunter, blacksmith, carpenter, and chef. Maybe a tailor? Farmer?¡± If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. ¡°Yeah, clothes that don¡¯t chafe would be good.¡± responded Katerina. ¡°We did find that flax field near here, so we don¡¯t really need to farm it. At least not for now.¡± ¡°And we¡¯ve got plenty of food for now.¡± responded Terrance. ¡°Way more meat than we need from all the hunting, and plenty of nuts and fruit. So we don¡¯t really need a farmer for now.¡± We did briefly discuss bringing in another combat person, but with all of us having a combat profession, me being a swordsman and Terrance being a Brawler, we could more than handle what creatures lived in the area. If anything, the population of dangerous creatures was so low that we needed fewer combat specialists. The girls even spent most of their combat training practicing their skills in camp, Katerina firing spells at the targets I used for archery practice and Ming meditating in private. She had prestiged into a class that translated as something like ¡°Cultivation Master¡±, which let her use mana to enhance her body, either permanently through meditation or temporarily through spells. We returned to the Arch and Ming activated the summoning. Only she and Katerina had a maximum MP over 100 points, so we assumed they would have to do the summoning, but when I touched the arch while Ming was using it it asked if I wanted to donate mana to the summoning. The Arch wouldn¡¯t allow Terrance to donate, as that feature was locked to him, but the three of us had a total of two hundred and seventy four mana to donate. By donating just one point I was able to access the character creation screen, but it only allowed the one that donated the most to edit the sheet. Ming went first and created a sheet for a woman. She wanted to diversify the gene pool as much as possible, so she chose a woman that looked Indian. She gave the woman the Tailor class and put the sample clothes on her picture, presumably because I could see the image. Once she was done she sent Terrance to get a set of clothes and made the two of us turn around as she summoned the woman and they helped her get dressed. The woman seemed confused. She struggled to form basic sounds for a few seconds before saying ¡°Who? You?¡± Confused, I looked over her character sheet, something which all of those that donated mana for her summoning were allowed to do for the first week, to help guide the summon. ¡°She has English at level ten, but there¡¯s no background for her.¡± I clicked the question mark in the corner of the tab and clicked the background box where my sheet detailed my past before coming to this world and a few things I¡¯d done since. ¡°Apparently, the gods made here as an adult, so she knows nothing.¡± Ming decided to name her Kong De, the chinese word for empty, and the girls took her off to the girl¡¯s cabin talk to her. With nothing left to do here, Terrance and I went back to doing our jobs. He went to the forge to make more tools, in this case everything a tailor or farmer might want, and I went to check my traps. Thankfully, I only had to make one trip, as my Inventory had leveled up to six, giving me two hundred and sixteen liters of space to store the animals in. Just as I returned with the animals, mostly squirrels and rabbits with one boar and a few birds, the girls left the cabin. ¡°I think we should summon one more person.¡± said Katerina. ¡°She doesn¡¯t want to be here alone, and being the only one in her situation is upsetting her. Maybe if she has a friend, things will get better for her.¡± ¡°Could we summon a man this time?¡± I asked. ¡°I would like to maintain a balance, but if you think another woman would be better...¡± Katerina nodded. ¡°That would be fine. We probably won¡¯t want to summon too many people, and having a third possible couple is a good thing.¡± I nodded and, as Ming lead Kong De to the kitchen to get something to eat, Katerina, Terrance and I went back to the arch. I donated my full fifty two mana to the summoning, with Katerina donated the rest. While I couldn¡¯t show Terrance the character sheet, I could describe things for him. For the sake of genetic diversity, we selected both Native American and Middle Eastern, and told the sheet to pick at random. Race didn¡¯t really matter to either of us, we just wanted to make sure that our tiny population wouldn¡¯t cause issues if we didn¡¯t summon anyone else. The next person to be summoned would be whichever race wasn¡¯t randomized this time and after that we would let it pick at random, maybe even randomly picking traits from different races. The one thing that did matter was that they were a farmer. They would be able to plant crops for us, not just food but goods needed for industry as well. The next couple would be miners, so that someone could gather raw materials for us to use to make everything else. After that, it we weren¡¯t sure what we would need. I summoned the man, making Katerina turn around as Terrance and I helped him get dressed, and then took him to the men¡¯s dorm, AKA, my cabin, to talk to him. After an hour or so figuring out what he knew and familiarizing him with the camp, we got him a meal and handed him a sickle. He looked at it for a few seconds before smiling. ¡°I know how to use this.¡± he said before heading to the area of the field dominated by tall flowers we were calling Flax. Louise, as Terrance and I decided to name him, gathered a bundle of flowers and hauled them back to the production area where he and Kong De got to work turning the stalks into thread. It would take a long time to process everything he could gather, and several weeks to make enough cloth to clothe all of us, but that didn¡¯t matter. They both looked like they were happy with their jobs, and got along really well. Terrance and I spent the rest of the day and the next building a tailor¡¯s shop with looms in the back and shelves up front. It was the best building we had made so far and Katerina had skipped a day of scouting and practicing to make shelves, a counter, and a loom. The next day we summoned two more people, a woman to mine clay and a man to mine iron ore. They were both given tools which Terrance had made in case we needed them, an iron shovel and an iron pickaxe, as well as extra backpacks. We did tell them to use their inventory first when moving things, as it would let them move materials without having to deal with the extra weight, but for now the one liter they could move wouldn¡¯t be enough. Perhaps the strangest thing that happened that week was when we caught Louise and Kong De feeling each other up instead of working. We took them aside, as well as the other two, and the two Transfer women gave the Settler settler woman ¡®the talk¡¯ at the same time the two Transfer men did the same with the Settler men. While no one had any diseases, they still needed to understand the possible results of what they were doing, and especially that they should only do it in private. As we only had one spare set of clothing for everyone, we waited a week for Kong De to make more clothing before summoning more people. This time the women summoned an herbalist and a builder the first day and the men summoned a Lumberjack and a second Miner the second day, this time having him specialize in mining stone for us to expand the village. The new recruits all had randomized racial features, so none of them appeared to be from a specific region of Earth. Now that we had three times the number of people that we had a week ago, we were able to greatly expand the village. The builder and Katerina framed out several buildings, including a proper bunkhouse for both the men and the women. The builder wanted to try different styles of buildings and was working on plastering walls on the tailor and Herbalist¡¯s shops. The kitchen would be expanded into a proper tavern and the smithy would have a stone forge by the time he finished. I was trying to work out how to domesticate wild animals with Louise when we got our first visitor. ¡°Hello.¡± the man said in a German accent. ¡°I am Michael, a Transfer. I am a trader, looking for someone to trade with.¡± ¡°Hi, I¡¯m George, this is Katerina and Ming.¡± I said. When Louise saw him approaching from across the field, he had called us, and the two best fighters came to meet him. ¡°What do you have to trade?¡± ¡°Oh, well...¡± he thought for a few seconds. ¡°I didn¡¯t bring anything with me, but over that way there is another town, and we were hoping to open up trade with you.¡± It turned out that he was from across the field, past the bamboo forest, and that his village had sent him out looking for others. He had seen our smoke and come to talk to us.