I appeared in a white room. Blank walls. Maybe twenty feet square. Absolutely nothing else. Before I could even look around for some kind of interface, more Notifications appeared.

  I hadn’t gotten this many Notifications at once since the Tutorial.

  YOU HAVE ENTERED YOUR COMPOUND FOR THE FIRST TIME. THE COMPOUND IS A BLANK SLATE AND MUST BE GENERATED ACCORDING TO YOUR PREFERENCES. YOU ARE LIMITED TO THE BEGINNING FACTION RANK AND UPGRADES MUST BE PURCHASED BY EARNED MULTIVERSAL POINTS.

  CREATE THE FACTION COMPOUND FOR CLAN HOWELL?

  Not the most original name for the Clan, but when I’d been given the option to create and name it, I had a tough time coming up with a cool name. Of course I had wanted a cool name and not something crazy like Clan Darkdeath or something like that. I had come across Clan Darkdeath and the Clanchief was just what I had expected.

  I had thought about naming the Clan after my favorite Star Wars characters. But Clan Solo didn’t sound right and Clan Wedge was a no. It was Katrina that had suggested just keeping it simple. Which was something she told me all the time.

  Nick, keep it simple stupid.

  So we went with Clan Howell.

  Jackson wanted it to be Clan Howl, like what a wolf did at night. No ‘e’ or second ‘l’. But no, I nixed that one real quick.

  The System was waiting for me to answer it. That had been a big surprise the first time, how interactive the System was. Thankfully the Tutorial taught us how to interact with the System Notifications.

  I thought ‘yes’ at the System and the white room was replaced with a kind of interface I’d recognized from the games I played in the old world. That had been the other big surprise when the Celestial Challenge System came to Earth. The interface was extremely gamelike. The Tutorial told us that it was on purpose as the games were actually meant to help train us to interact with the System and to make the transition a little more seamless.

  It was anything but seamless.

  The System also told us that most of our myths, the creatures from fantasy and such, were real and existing in the Multiverse. The Multiverse had bled into our world through dreams and legends, helping us prepare for the Multiverse. Another thing to help make it seamless.

  Judging by how badly I had gawked in the Market District, it was anything but seamless.

  I wasn’t really in my body but kind of looking down at what was going to be the compound. It was set up in a series of squares that gave me the overall size I had to work with. Forty by forty. Each square was about five feet. The compound was bordered by pine trees with a hill in the upper right corner. I glanced around for a compass but didn’t see one. Assumed that meant that direction didn’t matter. I hadn’t really looked at any of the other compounds but got the feeling that each was its own pocket dimension so things like direction didn’t really matter. What I’d seen stepping out of the obelisk had just been an image, not reality.

  I’d have to remember that when it applied to Crossroads. Everything was made by the System and wasn’t real. It was real as in it could be interacted with but was truly more a very high end hologram.

  It was all very headache inducing and no one thought about the physics behind it anymore because well…

  MAGIC!

  My compound was mostly grass and had a thin stream running down one side that ended in a small pond. That took up some room but I liked it and decided to keep it. The road was on the bottom of the compound, a dirt path leading from the road and into the compound. Now it was time to get building.

  With a thought, a series of images appeared. All kind of premade style of buildings. Nothing that was as crazy as what I’d seen already, but those designs had belonged to other races. All these designs were based off Earth and all had a kind of medieval feel to them.

  There were Greek and Roman temples made of white marble or sandstone. Lots of columns and open areas. Oriental construction. Yurts and teepees that looked like something I’d seen in North American history books. There were sandstone construction I’d seen in deserts. Pyramids. Some of the stuff was similar to what I’d seen in the Market District but those had still had an otherworldly feel where these options just looked like they came straight out of history books.

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d been searching through the images, there were a lot of them, but I finally found what I was looking for. I had been hoping for a giant tree that could put a large inn into the branches. That would have worked great since my territory was called Solace and I’d always wanted the Inn of the Last Home, and those stories were where the name had come from. But I couldn’t find anything like that. So I settled on my second option.

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  Which was still a great option.

  Jackson was going to love it. Nathan would laugh. Harry was going to hate it. Gary would be indifferent. He was indifferent to most things. Tracy would love it just as much as Jackson.

  Kat? Kat was going to hit me.

  A low dirt mound appeared around the perimeter of the compound, creating an inner circle. The mound was about fifteen feet high and covered in grass and moss. Where the dirt path came off the road, there was a wooden arched gate. The stream exited under the mound, where there was a small stone arch culvert. The mound ended at the hill on two sides. I spotted a couple of doors that led into the mound. A couple of dirt steps were carved into the side of the inside mound to give access to the top.

  Next came the first buildings.

  Because my compound was small to start, and was meant to only house a half dozen people since it would be a long time before I needed more space, I was limited in the overall size. From what I understood, looking through the interface, I could have a huge compound and no buildings or a small footprint and a tall tower. It was completely up to me. The restrictions on the number of people and basic size was due to Clan Howell’s low Faction Ranking.

  At the beginning Rank, I could only have two guests. There would be a portal that connected to the Clan’s storefront in the Market District, so had to account for that. Probably would want some kind of crafting area, since one of the guests was going to be a high-Leveled Crafter from Solace to start making Earth-unique products to sell in the Market District.

  Going through the building options, I selected the ones I wanted and placed them.

  A Viking Longhouse went in the middle. I customized the dragon shaped totems at the ends of the beams to be bears, since a bear was the symbol on the Solace flag. Two totem poles were placed at the bottom of the stairs, the top were bears, underneath were eagles and the bottom was just a tree trunk base. I knew that totems like that didn’t really match the viking theme, but didn’t care. Two more totems were placed outside the gate.

  They just looked cool.

  The longhouse took up most of the space in the middle. The roof was thatch, the walls were made of logs. Three wide steps led up to a wide landing outside the double doors that led inside. Windows lined the sides, the entire thing up on posts so underneath was open. A chimney hole was in the middle of the roof. It looked just like I’d imagined from all the books and movies I’d seen. I could imagine Ragnar coming out of the doors.

  Next came the crafting building. I put it in the upper left corner. The way the stream flowed through the compound, it kind of isolated that corner. The building was almost the size of the longhouse and the interface told me that it contained workbenches for a variety of crafts. There was even a watermill in the stream. The compound was sloped, the crafting building in the high point, the stream moving down a couple of levels to make some small falls.

  I kept calling it a stream, but the thing was actually about five feet wide. Not quite a river. Brook? What was the difference between a stream and brook?

  With the crafting building and longhouse, there was space for three or four more buildings. That would use up all the available space and I didn’t want that. I liked cleanspace. On new Earth, I’d seen some Clan cities that had buildings right on top of each other, like the cities of old. I hated it and had made sure Solacetown, and the other villages and towns in the territory, had plenty of park and clean space between the buildings. Maybe not the most efficient but I didn’t care about that.

  With greenspace in mind, I placed two more buildings. Both were small homes. That done, I added a bridge across the stream, I was still going to call it a stream because I wanted to, and then added the portal arch. It was built into the side of the hill, looking like the entrance to a mine. The dirt road came through the gate, snaking around the longhouse where there was a wider patch of dirt out front, and then around the back to end at the portal.

  And just like that, I was done designing the compound. The whole thing would change over time but it was good for now.

  With a thought, I turned off the building interface and found myself outside the gate.

  The totem poles were about six feet tall, each totem about two feet. The arch was ten feet wide and eighteen high, just a couple feet above the mound. It wasn’t much, just a couple poles with a wide curved board along the top. Carved into the middle of the board was the Clan’s symbol.

  A roaring bear with a mountain behind it.

  The gate was open, made of some wide planks.

  With a smile, I walked into the compound, liking how the longhouse looked directly ahead. One of the houses was to the right, the other was in the back behind the longhouse near the hill and the portal.

  “Wow,” I said aloud, looking around. “Not bad.”

  “Indeed,” a strange mechanical voice said.

  I sighed, turning to see a person standing right next to me. What was it with Crossroads and people wanting to sneak up on the noob?

  The person was not a person but an image created by the System. This had to be the Guide that had been mentioned. He stood about six feet tall and was thin, covered in a long gray robe with some flashes of light blue. He had one of those sashes that hung over the shoulders and down his front, like would see a graduate wear. The sash was still light blue but a brighter shade than the trim on the robe. His skin was a dull gray, with long fingers he crossed behind his back. He was mostly bald with long white hair along the back tied in a ponytail. Thin nose, thin black eyes. I had no idea what race he was, but might not even be one as the Guide was a System created image.

  “Greetings,” the Guide said, bowing his head. “I am called Stylo.”