With seven Protectors covering less than 60 people, the trip was relatively uneventful. By now, Ben and team had also optimized their route, keeping in mind the limitations of some of their protectees. There were actually quite a few attacks, both from regular as well as dire wolves, and even a moose, but they managed to contain everything before it could become a threat for the larger group.

  On the second day, Ben needed a bit of a break from all the people around him and had taken to scouting ahead. That was a skill he would never master to the same degree as Michael, but his interpretation was simply being the first that could be attacked if disaster struck.

  He amused himself with these thoughts as he heard a loud screech from up ahead. He drove his considerable body weight into a sprint to see what they were facing.

  In a small clearing, he found a dire wolf that was circling a bird. An eagle, to be exact—but not a typical one. Its brown feathers now largely shimmered golden. It was almost a meter in height, its wingspan was hard to judge, not the least because one of the wings was stuck awkwardly to a side, the reason why it wasn’t flying away.

  Golden Eagle. Evolved local fauna. Tier 1.

  Ben processed the information in the moments that it took him to close on the dire wolf. The beast evaded his first axe swing, but its move brought it close to the eagle, that used the opportunity to hack at it with its ten-centimeter curved, gleaming beak.

  The wolf howled in pain, but Ben ended its existence quickly with another swing of his axe.

  Only now did he have the time to fully pay attention to what his [Analyze] skill had told him earlier. Evolved local fauna. Ben was intrigued by what that meant, and whether the creatures would be hostile as well.

  Meanwhile, the eagle had hopped onto the wolf’s carcass and tore at its chest, quickly opening a large wound. Within seconds, it had found the gleaming Energy core and swallowed it whole.

  “Hey, you thief!” Ben chuckled.

  The eagle looked at him imperiously, clearly not accepting any wrongdoing.

  Ben took a step back, trying to signal that he had no ill intentions.

  The eagle screeched again, loud enough to wake the dead, and then flapped his wings carefully a couple of times, testing. There was a snap that sounded painful, but it looked like it had actually helped whatever had been wrong before and with a final look, the huge bird took off and screeched a final time as it had reached the canopy.

  ***

  They made good time and arrived late in the evening. Given that the sight of the settlement had drastically changed since the last group from Simonston had joined, the ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ were even more pronounced than before. Ben had to admit that their home looked beautiful with the soft light of the moon reflecting on the white marble and gold.

  He inspected the five-meter-deep rows of spikes that lined the palisades, which the citizens had built over the last week or so. Slowly his eyes rose over the wall, after a moment of observation he froze. Had Adam built something new while he was gone? A building at least as big as the HQ stood in the northwest corner. Right where… the library! With all the books they had scanned, the library must have grown. A wide grin spread on Ben’s face.

  “Are you alright, boss?”

  “Never better, my friend, never better!”

  He couldn’t wait to explore it, but first, he had people to settle in. As he didn’t see a lot of sense in having people that had made a dedicated decision to join them settle in the inn first, Ben had everybody become a citizen, built six new apartment buildings, after converting a bunch of Credits to SCs, and had everybody move into their new homes right away.

  Now it was time to explore the library. What had once been little more than a shed was now a majestic, two-and-a-half-story building, where on top of the two main floors a glass dome sat, with reading niches all around.

  As Ben entered the wide two-winged door, he stepped into a large lobby with a wide reception desk in the middle.

  Through glass doors he could see into the lower floor main room, with rows upon rows of books. As he looked, more appeared. So many. It didn’t make sense.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” he heard Rose’s voice from behind him.

  “I saw that you were back and was sure you would come here right away,” she said with a laugh.

  “It is incredible, but I am not quite sure whether my perception is acting up or what is happening over there.” Ben pointed towards the main room.

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  “I thought I would go crazy as well, at first… Deepika helped me to understand. There is some sort of spatial enchantment going on that makes the inner part of the library larger than the outside. She could probably explain it better.

  “At first it was the library that grew when you started to scan more and more books, but at some point we had reached the maximum size – at least for now – and then it started to expand internally.”

  “Amazing, Rose. There is so much suffering,” Ben had to think of the friends lost, and the suburb of Keiling, “but there is also so much incredible stuff happening. It is an emotional rollercoaster.”

  “You are so right, Ben.” After a moment of silence, she continued, “the size of the building isn’t everything. We also have new functionalities, for example, if you want a book you can just bring it to one of the copy stations, and it will create a version just for you that will disperse after four weeks. That means we will never run out of a specific book. Also, if you wanted to keep a permanent copy, you can pay credits for it. The amount is calculated on some logic that I haven’t fully understood yet, but it is not too expensive. All of this means that there will be less work for librarians to chase books and sort them. However, I would like to hire some more librarians, that would then serve more as guides for people in their respective sections.”

  Ben nodded vigorously. “That makes lots of sense. You should discuss this with Barry, I am sure he will be supportive.”

  “There’s more, but I’m sure you’re most interested in the rewards we got for all this…” she smiled knowingly.

  “To be honest, I had almost forgotten, and I think this building with all its features is already a great reward, but I am always happy for more,” he chuckled.

  “We got books for ten different crafts, from tailoring, to smithing, to enchanting. I think it is still basics, but it is a massive leap forward from where we were before. Also, we got various books on martial arts, that Barry is all over. And finally, we got this…” she walked over to a cabinet behind the reception desk, unlocked it, and pulled out a silver-covered book.

  On its cover were three interlocking circles, in the middle of them it said ‘Triune’, below, ‘Out of Three, make One.’

  “It is a rare book, that provides guidance on how to train for the three perks for each attribute that combine to give an attribute boost. It seems to be one of the most fundamental benefits that the systems provide to all people – independent of background, tier, etc. I believe you have it already for Body.”

  “Wow, that will be so helpful! This can also be copied?”

  “Yes, but creating a permanent copy costs 3,000 Credits.”

  “Ok, that is a lot, but anyway. This will be an enormous boost for the Protectorate. Let’s make sure lots of people have access to it.

  “Btw, we met a helpful librarian in town, should she decide to join us, I will introduce you.”

  “That would be very nice. Maybe she can even take over my job eventually. I enjoy this a lot, but can also see myself focusing 100% on teaching again. Either way, no need to discuss hypotheticals…”

  Ben took a copy of the Triune book along, resigned to working through the three Mind perks to make it to tier 2, but hopeful that he now had a clear path forward.

  ***

  The next morning, he caught up with the rest of the Council.

  “We are now almost 270 people, which means that we need to change some of our processes. It’s just too many people to have everybody have meals at the same time at the same place. Financially, we are doing ok, but in the last week alone we spent 25,000 Credits to build apartments. And even though we now produce much more food, we still spend about 1–2 Credits per person per day at the System Store to supplement it. At our current size that is almost 15,000 Credits a month. That does not include things like clothing, toiletries, etc.,” Adam said.

  “But with the Lizard dungeon we are doing ok right now, right?”

  “Yes, we do. But I think we need to introduce two shifts for the morning training, and very soon we need to move to a model where people prepare some of their meals on their own.”

  “I told you, boys, you need to start thinking about giving people their own money, and have them pay for stuff.”

  Ben nodded slowly. “I hear you. It just seems like a big project with the potential for lots of stuff to go wrong.”

  “Our friend, the abbot, might say: ‘If something is worth doing, do it firmly. Do not live with the regret of inaction,’” Barry said with a smile.

  Ben looked at Adam, “Ok, let us work on that over the next couple of weeks. Depending on how it goes, we can introduce it with the new month, but at the latest before we reach 500 people.”

  ***

  Over the next few days, Ben returned to his preferred rhythm—training, running dungeons, and interacting with the people in the settlement. He also skimmed some of the new books they had received. He felt it was important to gain at least a high-level understanding of what others were capable of, and he deep-dived into the Triune compendium.

  He had a lot of fun being Barry’s guinea pig for the new martial arts styles they had received. Barry was trying to understand the nuances as well as how hard they were to learn. His big plan was to create an advanced version of his style, blending techniques from Earth with the new ones shared by the system.

  There were, of course, many happy reunions during that time. Julia was ecstatic that so many of her friends had joined them. Relative to their population, the medical profession was now clearly overrepresented—a good thing in Ben’s mind.

  Deepika had reunited with her students and they had apparently already started to brainstorm new hypotheses to test. Ben smiled and nodded as one of them spoke about gravity in the context of spatial enchanting, though he mostly tuned out.

  Even Steve Taggert had been surprised with a colleague. Doctor Tauber’s brother had also been a police officer and had happily joined the Guard—even though that wasn’t a full-time job, yet.

  Liz and Zack’s friends were very excited about the chance to explore biology in an Energy context.

  ***

  It was the third day since their return from the city when Ben was slowly coming out of the light trance that he had managed to achieve in the meditation session under the abbot’s guidance. He felt deeply refreshed and calm, ready to face the rest of the day—when he noticed the golden notification waiting for him.

  Congratulations, thanks to your dedicated practice and a highly capable instructor your perks [Calm] and [Breathing] have merged to [Meditation] — Significantly increases control over emotions and recovery speed for an extended period after a meditation session. Uncommon.

  He was shocked; that was not something he had expected at this moment. More notifications began to show up. Before anything else could happen, Ben jumped up and raced towards his apartment. It was time for Tier 2.