They had fought, they had slept for a few hours, and now they were huddled in another grove that had been protected by an ogre.

  Michael had just returned from a scouting run and shared what he had learned.

  To clear the node, you need to eliminate all Ice Howlers. Once you enter the clearing, the village citizens will come for you in waves, first the inexperienced, then the mature, then the experts. Once the node has been attacked you cannot stop until it is cleared.

  He had seen roughly forty Ice Howlers in total in a large clearing with staggered huts, containing Howler Scouts, Warriors, and Shamans.

  “I guess we don’t want to fight forty Howlers, even if staggered, especially if they include Shamans, which the ambush groups in the forest didn’t,” Ben looked at the others who emphatically declined.

  “Very well. We are now at 400 points and 78 cores. I would suggest we return to the portal, grind in the tundra for points and then call it a day. OK?”

  ***

  Half a day later they had increased their points to 500 and were back at the portal, ready to exit, and if Ben understood the logic of the dungeon correctly, the 500 points should get them five days until the dungeon would break again. It was the first time that they did not complete a dungeon and harvest the dungeon core, which was disappointing; they hadn’t even seen the sub-missions that had been mentioned at the beginning. But it had been their first Tier 2 dungeon, and it had been on extra hard. Ben hoped that if they exited now, the dungeon would lose its “broken” status and become easier on their next run. In combination with further upgrades on their end, it would hopefully set them up for success.

  He touched the portal and was prompted whether they wanted to register their points. It took a moment until they got another message after he confirmed.

  Congratulations on achieving position 1 on the leaderboard and earning 500 points.

  Your rewards are increased for being the first to enter the dungeon, for the dungeon having broken, for your average party strength being below actual dungeon strength.

  Good luck.

  With that, golden lattices formed in front of each of them, they were twenty centimeters wide and finger-thick. They quickly resolved into solid shapes and turned out to be books.

  Ben opened the leather-bound volume with brass corners and analyzed it.

  Training manual for Ben Jackson: Protector’s Axe Mastery. Condensed insights on perk evolution. Can only be used by intended recipient. Will be destroyed once insights gained. Does not include perk evolution itself.

  Ben had been struggling with the evolution of his fighting techniques for some time. He had made a lot of progress and Barry had helped tremendously, but to pull all his insights together into a comprehensive fighting form had been a struggle.

  If this book could help him along that path it would be invaluable. He would still have to understand it and apply it – and pay for the evolution – but it seemed incredibly helpful to where he stood right now.

  He looked towards the others and they had similarly wondrous expressions on their faces. If they could get a few uninterrupted days of training with these manuals, they would hopefully be in a much better position to tackle this dungeon.

  ***

  They returned three days after they had left the settlement and ninety days after Arrival Day.

  The first thing Ben did when they returned was hand six Tier 2 cores to each of his teammates. “We need to discuss how we are going to handle dungeon loot in the future, now that we are finally launching our economy in the Protectorate, this is just to get you started and incidentally would be worth two rounds in the EEEC.”

  Akira looked at him funnily. “What is the EEEC?”

  “Oh, I am sorry, it is easy to forget that you just joined a week ago. It stands for Energy Enhanced Evolution Chamber.” He pointed towards the building in the northwest of the settlement. "It enables the evolution of rare-grade perks but each attempt costs three Tier 2 cores.”

  “What?! That is amazing! And you all have already used it?”

  Ben laughed. “No, so far it has just been standing around. We would be the first to use it and we will also make it available to people in other cities, most likely.”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Akira shook his head as he walked away. Ben could hear him muttering. “I am not sure they realize how fantastical this whole place is.”

  He chuckled to himself as he walked to his apartment in the HQ but before he could get there, he sensed Hercules, his bonded Golden Eagle, sweep from the roof of the building. He sensed the pleasure of the bird of seeing him and the pride of his own developments. As he landed in front of Ben, he was taken aback because previously the bird had reached Ben’s hip, now it was closer to his chest, not quite but close.

  His feathers had turned even more golden than brown and his eyes were shining brightly with intelligence.

  Hercules. Golden Eagle. Evolved local fauna. Tier 2.

  Hercules had evolved to Tier 2. What that would mean in detail was unclear yet, but just looking at the beak and talons of the bird of prey made it clear that it was a significant step forward.

  Somehow Ben got the impression from the bird that he was particularly eager to swoop down on enemies and he was keen to see how that would work.

  He scratched the eagle on the head which the bird acknowledged with soft screeches.

  Now it was up to Ben to strengthen himself. Before that, he wanted to get a shower and meet with Adam and the rest of the council on their building plans.

  ***

  Ben was refreshed after a shower, new clothes, and a few bites to eat.

  With a bit of distance he could regret that they didn’t finish the Frozen Wasteland – not the least because they didn’t manage to add it to the infrastructure before the end of the month – but he thought that he had actually taken a lot from the dungeon.

  And with that he did not just mean the manual that he was eager to dive into, but also how the team had found its way with the addition of Akira and how he had come to some realizations about his leadership style and the gaps in his approach to fights and challenges.

  Overall, a worthwhile adventure and he was looking forward to kicking that dungeon’s butt once they had found ways to grow stronger.

  He was equally happy to sit with his fellow councilors in his office to discuss their next steps on spending their hard-earned credits.

  “Hit us with the numbers, Adam, what do we have?” he asked his friend.

  Adam grinned. “It’s funny, compared to a month or two ago we have an incredible fortune, but at the same time it is not enough.”

  “It’s never enough!” Allison added with a laugh.

  “This month we got a whopping 10k, a little more actually, in SCs. That is due to the large number of new citizens plus we now have a few Tier 2s that give more SCs and the dungeons that we have. All of that gets modified by the 10% increase that we get from having a Pillar of the Protectorate. Combined with what we had in the bank we have 10.5k in SCs and 150k in Credits plus a potential of another 75k in Credits from the Tier 2 cores that you have brought back.”

  There was a moment of silence as they reflected on how far they had come.

  Barry cleared his throat. “We really, really need to keep Tier 2 cores for Ben to grow his perks.”

  Ben nodded. “Agreed. I already gave some to the rest of my team for that. Mom as another Tier 2 also needs some, and so do I. My take is that we should convert at a maximum half of what we have to Credits. That would bring us to… let’s say… 180k Credits. Let’s keep 100k out of that for the Protector Fund and 30k for our operational expenses, that leaves us with 50k that we can convert to SCs, meaning we have up to 15k in SCs available.”

  “I don’t want to make it too complicated but we need to consider that some of the Protector Fund money will also go into buildings, for example there are quite a few workshops and store fronts that we need to build. Also, some of the Protector Fund needs to be handed out in cores directly, so that crafters can work with it. None of that changes things dramatically, just to keep in mind,” Adam said, building on Ben’s comment.

  He continued. “I have good news, though. After having dug a bit into it, I now understand the logic of the spatial nodes a bit better. Let’s say for the Guild Hall to get the ability to have others run our dungeons costs 10k SCs. That is a one-off cost. However, it does include the first spatial node. Once we have a spatial node in a place we need to pay a reduced cost to make that ability available at the spatial node. In this example it is 3k. So let’s say we stick with Allison’s wish to build the first spatial node in London that would cost 10k and if we then build one in let’s say Tokyo, it would be another 3k. The good thing, though, is that the spatial node is applicable for all effects. That means that if we want to add the EEEC functionality, the initial cost is reduced from 5k to 3k, and every further node costs 2k.”

  Ben looked at his friend with a raised eyebrow. “Was that a very, very long-winded way of saying that we save 2k per function per city?”

  Adam looked at him with a slightly open mouth. “Sort of…?”

  Allison knocked on the table to get them back on track. “Boys. Let’s get to it. What do we want to buy?”

  Adam had recovered. “Okay, if you just want my list it is dungeon access for London, auction house, surveillance network. That is 13k. If Ben gets the systems mission done, we can do the dorms and attract faculty and students for the Academy. Despite my initial enthusiasm, I would postpone the EEEC add-on until there are more people on Tier 2.”

  Ben thought it through. He had to admit that building the upgrades for the Academy now probably wasn’t necessary. They needed the time to really understand what the facilities offered and get their own people settled in before they brought in people without being able to offer them a true place to live and work. Having come to that conclusion he had a modification to Adam’s plan.

  “I am fine with the short-term build plan. The auction house will help us allocate resources better and saving a few SCs now on the big things can also enable us to build more workshops etcetera. Our next SC influx should go to more spatial nodes, though, I think. If we hook up New York, Tokyo, Paris, and others like it we can monetize the large investment into the Guild Hall better and it should bring a lot more money in the short term. We can give Barry a month or two to have everything in order before we bring in other people.”

  Adam’s eyes flickered briefly in thought but everyone nodded.

  Ben would have to talk with his friend after the meeting.

  “Very good. Let’s do this!”