The ravine wasn’t very big, just a crack in the ground about twenty feet wide and a couple hundred feet long. There was a rough path down to the right, a shelf in the rock more than a trail, that angled down to the base in a long line. Only a couple feet wide.

  Ideal for monsters to attack while we walked down.

  “You first,” Sunie said.

  “That just puts you higher up the trail, easier for monsters to pick off.”

  “Hmmm, maybe I’ll go first,” he said, taking a step forward.

  I beat him to it, starting down the path.

  “It’s my duty to go first. I am the tank afterall.”

  That got some chuckles.

  “Lots of loose rock,” I said, as I continued down the path.

  It was only about three feet wide, not very comfortable with the cliff face on one side, all jagged rock and straight up, and the drop on the other. I could see the bottom of the ravine, only about thirty feet down. Not a drop that would kill either of us, but could hurt and maybe break some bones. So nothing we wanted to experience.

  I kept one hand on the wall as we walked. With that contact, I could feel motion through the rock. Only a limited degree and radius, but it had served as an early warning system in the past. I didn’t normally try to use my Abilities that way, but with a three foot shelf there wasn’t much room to move. Anything jumping out at me, stood a good chance of knocking me off the trail.

  We’d kept up a good chatter while walking through the plains, getting to know each other, talking about the different cultures. We stayed away from anything business-related. Sunie had nothing to do with that end of the Sunrise Formation and I wanted nothing to do with it on the Solace Fellowship side of things. Now that I had Fields and Tammy set up in the shop, I hoped to keep away. I knew I’d be involved in the big meetings, but the little stuff was all them.

  Sunie was the youngest of twelve siblings. Which he said was pretty common when you could live for hundreds if not thousands of years. When got strong enough to be functionally immortal, that tended to lead to a lot of kids. Which was why planetary expansion was so important. Each homeworld, no matter how much Arcanum was infused into the world, could only sustain a certain number of people and growth. The race had to expand somewhere.

  The Teraleis, Sunie’s family, had half a planet in a neighboring system to Cryim. Sunie himself had been born on Cryim as though the family controlled their territory, his parents spent most of their time on the Capitol dealing with the politics that came with being powerful and controlling a lot of territory for the Sunrise Formation.

  That was stuff that Solace would someday have to deal with. I didn’t know how it would all shake out, since Fred wanted all of Ur and probably Nuna. Subatai wanted Pangaea and eventually everything else. I just wanted my little corner of Ur. I was sure Fred and I could work something out, but with the threat of Subatai, it might not end up in Earth’s best interests. I didn’t know, I just wanted my quiet-ish little corner. I’d kick Subatai’s ass from one end of the world to the next if that was what it took.

  But then where would Solace expand to?

  Because at some point we would need to expand. We’d run up against someone’s borders. To the northwest was the Yukon Triumvirate. They held most of the northern eighth of Ur, where it was mostly all snow and ice. If we want north, we’d hit their borders and then what? Fight to see who wins the other’s territory? They were slowly expanding south, just not at a fast rate. Decent people from the few times I’d interacted with them. But they wanted their independence, which is why they hadn’t offered the territory to me or Fred when the option had existed way back when at the first World Council.

  Those were just so much fun. The next one was coming soon. Being open to the Multiverse would change how the World Council’s went. Subatai would, again, push to have one ruler of Earth. Fred and myself would be the big ones opposing him, with the others all lining up behind our strength.

  When it happened, and I knew it would someday in the future, I’d offer the Triumvirate the same deal that all the various factions under the Solace Fellowship banner got, the same one that the Gray Wolf Clan just got. A little different since the Yukon Triumvirate was much bigger and made up of a bunch of smaller factions. But the same principal. They would give up some of their independence to be part of the Fellowship, but then when we all eventually met up with Fred’s borders, what would happen?

  And that was where other planets came into it, helping to somewhat solve that issue.

  It wasn’t just the land space that would become a future issue, but the Resources. Earth had a lot of Resources now, a lot of Dungeons, but the more Awakened we had and since the System had come, anyone that had survived the arrival and now anyone born under the System was Awakened, there were a lot of people that would live for at least centuries.

  And spawn a lot of kids, like Sunie’s folks had. All those kids would live for centuries and pop out a bunch of kids. So on and so on. All those brats needed a place to live and even if one faction controlled Earth, the population would number in the trillions pretty quick. I didn’t know what the post-Arrival population had been, but in the twenty-five years since, it was going up steadily. The first years had seen another dip, but once everyone got used to the new world and their Abilities, we stopped dying regularly. People still died, the world was pretty damn dangerous, but not in the numbers we had in the early days.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  I wasn’t sure if we were yet at the point where the births far outnumbered the deaths, but would be there someday. Kat would know the numbers better. She tried to keep a handle on Solace’s overall growth and talked with her equivalents in the United American Alliance and other strong factions, even chatted with Subatai’s people at the World Congress.

  Which kept coming back to expansion. Where and how? It was going to happen one way or the other. Either as the Solace Fellowship or part of the United American Alliance or something else by that point. But how would we expand? We needed to be strong enough to claim and hold a planet.

  There was no point in claiming a small planet that didn’t have any Resources. The whole reason of planetary expansion was to provide a place for the colonists to go and thrive, growing the overall strength of the faction and its people. That meant Resources or other things that others would want. Which meant others trying to grab those resources.

  And defending a planet meant having the strength, population and initial Resources to provide the defenders and equipment, all that, needed to defend the planet.

  I could feel a headache coming on.

  Thankfully, I was saved from the thoughts future-me would have to deal with, by a screeching that filled the ravine.

  We were halfway down, right at the sweet spot for an attack.

  “Here it comes,” Sunie said, sounding excited.

  “About time,” I replied. “I was doing some deep thinking. It sucked.”

  Sunie laughed.

  The screech came from the south. Looking that way I could see a couple shadows moving in the heavier shadow of the ravine. The noise got louder, striking us with a physical force. Three large bats flew out of the shadows, into the area of the ravine we were out. There was barely enough light coming from above, just enough to show us the size and shape of the bats. About five feet long, humanoid bodies with bat wings and heads, wingspan of ten feet. Small and compact. They flew up high, twisting down and diving at us.

  The bats led with the screech, waves of sonic pressure pushing against us. With only three feet of space, there wasn’t much room. I spread out my kinetic field, locking me in place. I wasn’t sure what I could do for Sunie but it looked like he had it under control. With a wave of his staff, a shimmering barrier appeared in front of him. I could see the sound waves smacking against it.

  The bat came at me, leading with the taloned feet. I twisted to the side, grabbed a foot and yanked the bat down. It was far lighter than me, even with the momentum of the flight as it tried to dart back up, I had no problem pulling it down and smashing it into the ground. The body twisted, the bat trying to reach for me. I flung it off the path. It twisted in the air, righting itself, and flew at me again.

  I waited and then punched, catching it in the chest as it tried to flail at me. It flew back, the screech becoming a kind of cough. It hung there for a bit, so I threw a force lance at it. Pierced right through the chest. The bat still hung in the air before it realized it was dead and fell to the ground.

  “Dammit, now we gotta go hunt it down for the loot,” I muttered, watching the body hit the ground.

  A second later, another bat hit the ground.

  “Whoops,” Sunie chuckled.

  I sighed.

  “Come on, maybe we’ll run into a couple more on the way down. At least make it worth finding the bodies. They better drop some Essences.”

  ***

  We killed four more and got two Sound Essences along with some bat hide. Would be cool if the hide had some sonic resistances. I knew that in the south of Ur, in Fred’s territory, there were some bats that had that arcanum infusion. Having another source of the resource would be useful.

  The bottom of the ravine wasn’t empty. Dog-sized spiders ran around. Of course, none of them counted toward any of the Floor Quests or Hunting Permits. Just more things to kill. We made our way through them. Twelve of the things, which gave us just ten MC and TP each.

  Not that much.

  Also found out that Sunie actually liked spiders. I thought about dissolving team right then and there. What kind of messed up individual likes spiders?

  But maybe it was a cultural thing on his world?

  Were spiders their version of dogs? If so, that was really messed up.

  I liked the guy so was going to try to not hold his weird spider-like against him. It was going to be hard though. It didn’t stop him from killing the things, which was good. I didn’t think I’d be able to kill dogs as easily.

  We finally made it to the dungeon entrance, a crack in the wall at the end of the ravine. It was pretty shadowed at the end, making the crack harder to see. A darker black against the black wall. We stopped in front of it, the crack about four feet wide and ten high. I could see the shimmer that indicated the dungeon entrance portal.

  Just how many portal did the Multiveral Nexus and Infinite Tower contain? Where in the multiverse were all these little pocket dimensions? How did it all stay together or even get created?

  All questions that really didn’t matter. It worked. That was all I truly cared about.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  “After you ol’ fearless tank,” Sunie chuckled.

  “As soon as I’m inside, I’m ducking,” I said, walking forward. “Let the first trap spear you instead of me.”