After saying goodbye to Liza and Monica, having parted on good terms, Luke entered the DIA headquarters. It wasn't just Monica's headaches and tattoos that were gone, but her scars as well. The women had mixed feelings about that, but they were grateful for the healing, at least.

  Johanson waited right inside the door, and he ushered Luke to what amounted to a clean room, where they'd prepared a host of instruments, tests, and machines. Once cleared of any lasting radiation damage or activity, Luke found himself brought to another room, one he knew well at this point. The same one he'd been in after leaving the Tutorial Dungeon. It was more crowded this time, full of familiar faces from every combination of three letters you could think of.

  Without going into it too much, they had Luke explain everything that had happened in the dungeon, before, during, and after he set off the nuke. The DIA had acquired something called a Snooper from the Integrated shop. With that, they, with Luke's permission, snooped into his inventory. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, except perhaps a few monster corpses and a ton of monster cores, and certainly no nuke, they were satisfied. Pissed off, but satisfied.

  Glad he had handed Leslie's meta-heart over to Smudge, Luke exited the building and headed for the third appointment of the day. He'd have to grab breakfast on the way. And coffee. A lot of coffee.

  Stuffing his face with a ready-made sandwich and washing it down with some terrible coffee, Luke hurried back toward the guild headquarters, going over the new available skills again. While he had a ton of skill points, it wasn't enough to pick them all, not that he wanted that. Even with the few active skills he'd acquired so far, he often found himself forgetting to use some of them, even now, after so many battles. Juggling a host of new ones wouldn't work well for him. So, he needed to pick a couple and get used to them, then add a few more.

  Some of the new ones, he didn't necessarily want or need. Well, one of them. Weaver's Whip? What kind of nonsense was that? Some of the other skills even felt like scams.

  Draft Insight [Passive]: Read the intent in the weaves of others.

  Destabilize Spellweave [Active - Mana Cost: Moderate]: Destroy spellweaves with Threads of Mana.

  Bountiful Recovery [Passive]: Any healing power claimed may stay within the core of your being.

  The first two, he'd been doing for a while now, and the system should've just handed him the skills for free. Bountiful Recovery was a concept he'd touched upon even before the nuke. Storing healing mana in his meta-heart and mana channels was the key to Relian's resuscitation. Luke just knew it. For now, the healing mana didn't stay there. At least not for long. Perhaps Bountiful Recovery would solve that.

  What better way than to just check? Having selected and confirmed his choice, Luke flooded his meta-heart with healing mana, like injecting pure health into the core of his being. Holding his breath, he waited for it to dissipate. It didn't.

  "Holy shit."

  The healing mana remained. Doing the same to his mana channels didn't work, however, except it kind of did. Not like with the meta-heart, but the healing mana stuck around for a bit even in the mana channels, and even longer when Luke did it a second time, then concentrated on trying to hold it, almost like he was holding his breath. Forgetting himself, Luke held his breath until he couldn't stand it any longer, and gasped.

  "Maybe when I get the skill to rank two."

  Slicing into his arm again to make sure, the healing mana from his meta-heart rushed out into his mana channels and closed the wound. Perfect.

  He was getting closer to headquarters now, but there was still time to test out another new skill.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Guardian Weave [Active - Mana Cost: Low-High]: Shield structures within yourself or another.

  Using the skill around the physical heart drained quite a bit of mana, but resulted in a thick net-like creation of mana threads that gave off a faint glow to his senses. A shield, then, like he'd suspected. It stayed even without being supplied with mana. No, Luke realized when regeneration kicked in. His mana pool wouldn't go back up to a hundred percent.

  "Ninety-four percent," he said, nodding to himself. "It's taking off the top to keep it going."

  It would be a balancing act then, keeping himself protected with the new skill while still having enough mana to be effective. A small price to pay, that, for what the two new skills meant for his survivability. In one stroke, he'd gone from squishy meat-sack to an auto-healing meat-sack with some hard bits inside. Not bad.

  He was getting close now, so there was no point in starting up with another skill. That could wait until later. Instead, he checked headlines on his phone as he walked. The first one made him stop dead in his tracks.

  MAJOR GANG IN CHICAGO DISAPPEARS. ALL MEMBERS GONE - A MODERN MYSTERY?

  Headquarters showed up, towering behind a couple of smaller apartment buildings. You didn't need to be a genius to understand what'd happened. They'd killed them, they'd killed them all. Or if not killed, they'd taken them somewhere where they wouldn't start any more trouble. It was almost frightening how resourceful Alan was, the lengths he would go to get what he needed or wanted. This was just one more example of that. Still shaking his head, he tapped into a local newspaper instead to find out more, but there was nothing. Everyone was stumped, even the FBI. Other gangs had moved into their territory and were fighting amongst themselves in the power vacuum.

  Some other interesting but unrelated tidbits showed up as well.

  NEW BELGIUM REPELS NATO FORCES - CONDEMNS THE ATTACK.

  INTEGRATED RECRUITMENT SPEEDS UP IN US FORCES.

  UNREST IN SOUTHEAST ASIA.

  INTEGRATED FACE OTHER SYSTEMS IN DUNGEONS? - A 'HOAX' CALLS DEPARTMENT OF INTEGRATED AFFAIRS.

  SEVERAL COMPANIES ACROSS EUROPE AND SOUTH AMERICA INVEST IN MONSTER CORES AS A POWER SOURCE.

  CANADA IS STILL FINE.

  US UNEMPLOYMENT AT AN ALL-TIME HIGH - TIME TO RECLASSIFY?

  NASDAQ JUMPS +8% IN A SINGLE DAY.

  There was so much going on in the world. Ripples from the arrival of the system affected everything and everyone. At this rate, society would be unrecognizable in a few years, if not sooner. The stuff with New Belgium was worrying as well. If Integrated took over countries, what would that mean for governments around the world? Well, in the case of the good US of A, it meant recruiting Integrated. Of course it did.

  The news article about Integrated from other systems was perhaps the most interesting one out of the bunch. That meant the ones Luke and the others happened upon weren't the only ones. Would it even be possible to enter another system through their portal? That would be cool... and also stupid. So, stupid. Luke grinned. He wanted to try it. Anything to learn more about what was going on.

  As expected, someone waited for him in the lobby of Integrated Solutions Group's headquarters.

  "Hey, Viola," he said.

  "You are in so much shit." She shook her head and glared at him. "And because of that, so am I!"

  "Huh?"

  "You violated your contract by going into that dungeon. You didn't think we'd find out? Mr. Schmidt himself is waiting for you. He flew in just for this."

  She turned and headed to the elevators.

  Luke followed. "That's bullshit. Why should they get pissed at you for my actions?"

  "I'm your lieutenant." Viola pressed a button, and the elevator doors dinged open. "Don't you get it? If an employee messes up, it's not just that person's fault. It's also their manager's, at least in the higher-ups’ eyes."

  "Then I'll quit," Luke said with a shrug. "If that'll help you. The reason for my joining is gone."

  "Pretty sure you're about to be fired. Using a nuke inside a dungeon? That is just fucked up."

  Luke sighed. "I don't disagree. Still don't think he'll fire me, though."

  She crossed her arms over her chest. "No?"

  "No," he said, holding up the keycard to his new apartment. "A guy in my apartment just handed me this."

  "Just do whatever he wants, please?" She begged as the doors opened. "I need this job."

  Luke left the elevator and turned to look over his shoulder. "You're not coming?"

  "I don't get to meet the big boss."

  "Stupid rules," Luke grunted. "I'll put in a good word for you, or something."

  He was about to keep going, but stopped. "About that gang?"

  "They don't tell me anything," Viola answered, a haunted look coming into her face. "But I suspect you've got the right idea if you read the news."

  He nodded. "Fucked up. I didn't ask them to do that."

  "I think they've got their eye on that other Lifeweaver now. Dorothy? Make the best of what you've got, because soon you might find yourself discarded."

  "Unless I discard 'them' first," Luke said, heading deeper into the floor and to Alan's door.