The door to the girls’ room at the back of the Overlander was open, allowing them all to talk from their separate beds.

  “Wait, so you’re-” Lindsay stopped to yawn. “You’re telling me that Jace tried to create his own personal harem shortly after arriving here? A place where he had no power base?” She snorted. “It’s no wonder that the pig was captured even before his parents arrived.”

  Nate propped his head up and nodded into the dark RV. “I know, right? Even I didn’t think he was that stupid. I mean, I knew he was driven by his hormones and emotions, but that is next level stupid.”

  “Did they mention where he or his parents are now?” Angie asked.

  “None of them seemed to know anything about the McFaddens themselves. As for Jace, his core was destroyed shortly after he was put in prison by another inmate. Before he ever made it in front of a judge, his sentence had been carried out. Supposedly, he is still in the city somewhere, but it’s been long enough by this point that all the energy would have left his body. He’s nothing more than a normal person at the moment.”

  “Wow, I uh, humph,” Angie slapped the bed and turned over to scream into her pillow.

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  “I guess it’s nice knowing he got what was coming to him, but it’s a little annoying not being able to do it ourselves,” Lindsay said.

  Nate silently agreed.

  Her next words shocked them all into silence. “If he has already been taken care of… Is there still a reason for us to go to New York City?”

  They were right outside the city, and yet they were suddenly thinking about turning around and beginning their trek back home without actually finishing those last few miles.

  The discussion went around in circles, before slowly falling off as they fell asleep, one after another. Nate had originally meant to deliver the items to the community at the dungeon back home, but that would have to wait until the morning.

  ***

  The next morning, Nate delivered everything to the community for the city, depositing it in a warehouse near the dungeon itself.

  The size of the community was tied to the level of the Dungeon Core. The Core for this dungeon was level 4, the highest of all his Cores. Fitting, as it was also his first dungeon. Still, the size of the community was no larger than what he would have considered a decent village.

  If the need arose, then they could always dig down and get more room that way.

  As soon as Nate finished delivering the supplies, he sent a quick message to his parents and then exited his avatar. Back inside the Overlander, he opened his eyes to find Angie and Lindsay at the table with Aura. Mika was on top of it, trembling softly in concentration as she tried to form her core.

  “Stay up there for the moment,” Aura told him telepathically, being the first to notice that he was awake. “Little Mika is getting close to awakening her core. Nothing can disrupt her right now.”

  He nodded and rested his chin on the side of the bed in an easy spot to watch without causing a disturbance.

  Over the next several minutes, the qi inside the Overlander began to stir and move as it congregated around the weasel. Shortly after that, it began to take on a distinct flavor and even smell. It was the difference between naturally creating a core and using a beast core to speed the process along as they had been forced to do.

  The entire RV smelled of the earth, nature, loam, and wet leaves. Mika’s affinity was earth-related, likely either wood or forest-related. Which made sense, considering weasels tended to like wooded areas.

  “It’s starting,” Aura warned them.

  Indeed, as they watched, Mika’s tail began to take on a green, wooden appearance. It covered up her entire tail and then began to crawl bit by bit up the rest of her body. A minute later, the process had finished, and Mika was covered in an iridescent green material made of wood.

  Then, with a flash of light, it vanished, leaving Mika looking normal again as she sleepily opened her eyes. Her tongue flicked out, and she shot over to Lindsay’s neck, cuddling up to her human companion.

  “Now that she has formed her core, I’ll begin teaching her how to speak telepathically to everyone,” Aura told them. “Though she should be able to convey her intentions to Lindsay in a basic form already.”

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  The girl in question nodded as she patted Mika’s head. “Right now, she’s tired and extremely happy. There’s more as well, but I don’t understand it yet.”

  “Just give it time, you’ll learn,” Aura told her with a yawn.

  Nate slid on a pair of pants and scooted out of his bed, and hopped down to begin preparing breakfast with the girls.

  He quickly hip-checked Lindsay out of their tiny kitchen and sent her to clean the table while he and Angie finished making breakfast. Lindsay couldn’t stop petting Mika, and he had to keep pulling hair out of their vegetables.

  A few minutes later they were all seated around the table, or on the floor next to the table in Aura’s case, eating sausage-egg-and-cheese bagel sandwiches. The egg portions were actually an omelet, with a mix of vegetables inside it. The result was odd, and not anything like what they were expecting. It wasn’t bad, but it was different enough from normal that it was hard to say it was good either.

  Angie had finished half of her sandwich before she set it down and looked at her companions. “So, where are we going? Do we finish going into New York City, or just turn around now?”

  Nate finished chewing and swallowed. “Well, the main reason for our visit to the city is gone. But is there any shopping or sights anyone wants to do or see?”

  Lindsay fed a piece of sandwich to Mika and slowly shook her head. “The two biggest historical tourist draws were both destroyed in the early days of the dimensional zones’ appearance. The Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. Since then, the Empire State Building has been rebuilt using materials gathered from monsters. As for the Statue of Liberty, it was decided that it was better to leave it unrepaired, as a reminder of what happened. They sealed the edges, so it didn’t corrode, but that’s all.” She fed another piece to Mika. “I don’t think I really want to see either of them, is what I’m saying. How about you Angie?”

  “No, I don’t think so, and I don’t really want to do any shopping here either. I think I would rather just leave.” She admitted, just as a loud thump came from outside in the middle of the encampment, shaking their vehicle.

  Rushing to the door, they spotted a small crater, where someone had violently hit the ground with their back.

  Floating in the air above them was a woman, her long fiery red hair flipping about in the wind as it pulled free of her ponytail. She had a ferocious expression on her face. Despite the clear anger she was showing, her weapons were still sheathed. Instead, it was her fists that were dripping with blood from the vicious beat down she had just inflicted on her opponent.

  After a moment, she drifted down and touched the ground next to the man groaning in his little crater.

  “Well, we got to see someone flying in person, so I think we’re good to leave,” Nate quipped.

  Both girls nodded, and after a moment Lindsay scrambled for the driver’s seat to get them out of there. There was no reason to hang around and watch the excitement any further.

  In a whirl of dust, their tires kicked up dirt and dust as they sped back to the road behind the hunters who had gotten ahead of them.

  Nate hopped into the passenger seat while Angie remained at the table to finish eating. He opened the map and spread it across his section of the dashboard. The plan was to take a different path on the way back home, but they would need to backtrack some to get on the road they needed.

  Deciding that there was time, he opened the dungeon menu and began checking over the new dungeons that he had created the night before. They had each finished coming into existence during the night and were now ready for him to see what each one held.

  The Alaska dungeon had wendigos. Britain held golems, except they weren’t elemental golems. These ones had a form of writing on their forehead akin to the golems from Jewish lore. The dungeon in India held djinn. While the two in Japan, had efreet and naga. The dungeon in China held sirens.

  Then came the problem, Russia. He had created three dungeons there, and yet before he could even do anything, one of them had already been destroyed. It was the first dungeon he had lost. He knew it would happen at some point; he just hadn’t expected it to happen like this. The other two dungeons held gremlins and ettins.

  Now that he knew what each one held, he could start on their themes and traps. He was more concerned with the Dungeon Core that had been destroyed. Since he hadn’t seen it happen, he didn’t even know if the culprits were monsters or humans.

  He had, of course, hidden the Core, just like he always did, yet it apparently hadn’t been enough in this case. The other two dungeons he had created in Russia were also somewhat close to the destroyed one. That meant he needed to start working on the traps for those two first, just in case.

  Before that though, he needed to review the dungeons that were getting close to being conquered. There were three of them, the fifth dungeon, which had kobolds, the twelfth dungeon with its goblins, and then the twentieth dungeon, which possessed banshees.

  All three were down to a day or less on their timers. As long as nothing went wrong, then they would be conquered by that time tomorrow.

  After finishing his inspection, Nate refocused on the two dungeons in Russia. He just needed to decide which one to work on first. Did he want to deal with the tricky gremlins or the strong and brutish ettins? Gremlins were known to enjoy taking things apart and generally causing havoc. Ettins in turn was just another word for giant, though in some tales it involved them having two heads. That wasn’t the case with this dungeon, at least.

  Which one did he think would be more likely to get attacked in this instance? Honestly, neither seemed that likely, but he wasn’t willing to risk it.

  Nate vaguely recalled watching an old movie on OE called ‘Gremlins’. In that version, they were a form of ‘Mogwai’ or demon and had a few weaknesses that were somewhat nonsensical. The gremlins in this dungeon were more related to the mechanical gremlin variety people were always cursing out than what had been in the movie.

  How were you supposed to create effective traps against a monster that could affect anything even semi-complicated?

  In this case, he decided not to even try. He had two dungeons that needed to be worked on, and for the moment he would simply ignore the gremlins and concentrate on the ettins.

  There was something he wanted to try with this dungeon. He still hadn’t decided on a theme, which would determine what sort of traps he used. However, giants offered certain opportunities that most other races didn’t. Rather, they could, but it would be annoying for him as well.

  He needed the corridors, ceiling heights, and doorways to maintain a certain width and height for his and the girls’ own use. If it became annoying for them as well, then they wouldn’t be able to fight at their best. Of course, that went for the monsters as well.

  The key was to make the walls of everything thick enough that they wouldn’t get destroyed by the massive beings simply walking by.

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