They had walked to what in Ben’s mind would be the Academy district. Currently it was mostly the, admittedly impressive, library and the training ground.

  Tracy, their fitness instructor, waved at them as the council stood one block away from her and closer to the gate.

  Ben navigated mentally to the notification, placed the building in the blueprint of the emerging city, and activated the build command.

  A five-by-five-meter platform rose from the ground. On top of that platform, a relatively small marble chamber—perhaps three by three meters—rose, while on each of the corners of the platform a water fountain emerged. While most buildings in the settlement had flat roofs, the glass dome on the library being the most prominent exception, the chamber had a golden dome that was decorated with lines of crystals, similar to those on top of each dungeon portal. The door looked more like a portal than a typical door in a settlement building.

  Congratulations for building the Energy Enhanced Evolution Chamber. The minimum cost to use is 3 Tier 2 cores or 9 Tier 1 cores. Price can be defined by owner. Duration of use is dependent on users’ ability to form the perk. Maximum duration can be defined by owner. Future upgrades include epic tier as well as multiple instances.

  Good luck!

  Ben read the message to his fellow council members.

  He had barely finished when Adam’s eyes began to dart and he seemed briefly distracted.

  “Wait a minute… wait a minute… hold on! Are you serious?!?” Adam started talking to himself and got increasingly more agitated, waving his arms in the air.

  Ben reached for his axe, getting ready for action.

  Anne, Jamal, and Michael appeared from somewhere, forming a circle around the council.

  “Adam, what’s the problem?! Now!” Ben yelled at his friend.

  Adam looked around, noticing the commotion he had caused, and glanced guiltily at Ben. “No physical emergency, sorry.”

  Ben sighed and looked at the three teammates that had appeared to protect them. “Thanks, guys, but why are you here?”

  “Just making sure, boss.”

  “Making sure what?”

  “That nothing happens, boss.”

  “Jamal, we are in the middle of the Protectorate, what do you expect to happen?”

  “Boss, you never know. It could be anything.”

  Ben briefly had a déjà vu—as if he had had that conversation already—and shook his head.

  “Okay, we can talk about it later. Now,” he turned to Adam, “if this wasn’t a physical emergency, what kind was it?”

  Adam’s guilt had already dissipated and he was excited again. “An economic emergency. If I understand this chamber correctly—and more importantly, the add-on—this thing has the potential to be a complete paradigm shift for our finances…”

  “A paradigm shift? You mean, a game changer?” Ben had to think of the wording that Mesa had used. “How?”

  “Well, I am making assumptions here, but if I interpret this correctly, we can place a spatial node—something more powerful than the spatial anchor we bought for ourselves—in another city, and people in that city, or whatever will be in the area of effect, can portal into this room and use it. And our ability to set a price means that we can charge people for one of the most valuable commodities on the planet going forward: the ability to grow within Tier 2! How many places like this exist on the planet, you think? People will be willing to pay any price—and the people for whom this is useful have the means to pay for it as well!”

  Ben raised his hand; he was afraid that otherwise Adam would never stop and forget to take a breath. “I hear you. If that is true—which we can’t tell until we have forked over 5,000 SCs—it would be very valuable, but we still have a lot of expenses ahead of us, as we just discussed half an hour ago.”

  “It was you that told me that we have quite a bit of money saved up, though!”

  Ben grimaced. “True…”

  “Son,” Allison interrupted him, “the systems have treated us well so far. They have not just given you this building; they have also given you the option to buy this add-on. 5,000 SCs is a lot, but think about it: the base cost is 9 cores. Let’s assume we charge 12…”

  “Which would be too cheap!” Adam interjected.

  Allison looked at him and he closed his mouth. “Let’s assume we charge 12, that would be a profit of 1,500 Credits. Now, I am not very good at math but…”

  “33! Just 33 users!” Adam shouted.

  “Jamal, next time he interrupts me you have my approval to kick him,” Allison said, grinning.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Adam raised his hands, retreating.

  Ben used the exchange to think about the add-on. The payback was indeed very good. If things worked like Adam had suggested—and it was a reasonable assumption—it was a must. The only question in his mind was timing. He agreed that they could somehow afford this now, but how many people would be ready to use it in whichever city they would place it?

  He clapped his hands to put an end to the clowning around him.

  “I agree that this is a game changer. I agree that we have to do this. I agree that we should do this quickly. But I don’t think right this very second; there are not enough Tier 2 people in any one city. Think about it—we only have five in the Protectorate!

  “We should buy another greenhouse, build some more apartments to be prepared for a greater influx of people, we also need to desperately build more workshops—I would suggest we double the number to eight right away.

  “In parallel, we have more teams running the dungeons to a deeper level, and if all goes well, we can buy the upgrade in a week or, at the very latest, in 18 days when the next month ticks over. Does that work for everyone?”

  Adam looked like he wanted to argue some more but in the end nodded, accepting the decision.

  “I think that makes good sense, son. When we build the anchor, I want it to be in London, though.”

  “London? Why?” Ben had no objections but was truly at a loss for his mother’s motivation.

  “It’s a very large, very dense city. So it makes sense. Also”—she grinned—“it’s where I spent my honeymoon with your father and I have only the best memories!”

  Ben chuckled. “Okay, I assume one metropolis is as good as the next; we can go for London.”

  Barry pointed towards the door of the chamber and raised an eyebrow.

  Ben nodded. “Yes, let’s check it out.”

  The door, or rather portal, shimmered with the same golden hue as the dungeon entrances. He stepped through and had the same slightly disconcerting feeling that a transport to a dungeon brought with it.

  He stood in a dark room illuminated only by the golden hue of the portal. In the center of the room was a golden circle which was padded for a comfortable seat.

  On the opposite side of the portal was a plinth that had a hollow on top. Ben assumed this was to deposit the cores to pay for the required Energy.

  He turned around, surprised that nobody had followed him, and stepped back outside again.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “When you entered, the crystals started to shimmer and nobody else could enter,” Anne explained.

  “Okay, good to know. Feel free to check it out.”

  ***

  They walked to the south side of the settlement as Adam pointed at two adults that approached them. “This is the couple we picked up along the way from the city, I think Darren and Kimi are their names; they were already trying to get here.”

  The two stepped toward Ben, smiling. “Are you Ben?”

  “I am, yes, welcome to—”

  “EVANGELIST OF EVIL!” yelled the man, stabbing at him with a knife that was blocked by the golden shield that Jamal projected.

  Ben pulled his axe free and sliced forward, taking off the man’s hand in the process.

  Michael stepped forward and stabbed the woman who had lunged toward Ben as well. He killed her with a well-placed strike of his knife, but not before she managed to land a tiny scratch on Ben’s leading hand.

  The wound sizzled and he was sure that it was poisoned, but the amount was so small that he was confident that even without his latest evolution of his Constitution he would be able to handle it with [Resilient Body].

  The man was on the ground, holding his arm, Anne standing over him.

  “You are a traitor of mankind, traitor of Energy, your existence is blasphemy, your end is foretold.”

  Ben held up a hand to Adam, who wanted to pick up the knives that the attackers had dropped. “Careful, they are poisoned.”

  Adam stepped back. “Are you hurt? Do you need a healer?”

  “Nah, should be fine.”

  Jamal placed a hand on his shoulder and clearly activated [Guardian’s Bond] as even the minor damage that he had felt passed away.

  “Friends, I am really grateful for your concern—and clearly it is warranted to some extent—but we need to talk about what you are doing. You are not responsible to watch over me 24/7. Also, I am pretty sure I am one of the, if not the most, durable people on the planet…”

  “True, boss, but it seems like you are increasingly being targeted.”

  Ben shrugged. “I don’t think this is a trend, it is just bad luck. The attackers on the volcano were just thieves using an opportunity, and these”—he pointed towards the still-writhing man and the dead woman—“are a problem, but now that we know that the so-called Church is getting more active, we can take precautions.”

  Jamal looked to Allison for help.

  “I don’t think that Ben needs bodyguards in day-to-day interactions in the settlement. But maybe Adam and I can talk with Steve about assigning a small Guard team to protect our key buildings—like the HQ, the cold storage, etc.—and for special occasions, you”—she looked at Jamal and the others—“will be there anyway.”

  Barry pointed at the would-be assassin. “What do you want to do with him?”

  “Inform Steve and Arthur to have a trial for him.”

  Adam nodded. “I will deal with it.”

  They continued towards the southwest where the existing greenhouses stood.

  Allison turned to Barry. “How are the SEALs doing?”

  “Excellent. We will have an advanced course, that you all should attend as well, for small team tactics. I have also started working with them to integrate their fighting style into ours—where feasible. I’ll leave it to you to choose the best candidates to complement their team.”

  “That is good to hear. I was actually thinking about rotating people into them to give them a sense of how professionals operate. After a couple of dungeons, we switch and bring in others. That provides a learning experience for new Protectors, and it gives the SEALs the opportunity to scout for people that they want on their team long-term.”

  Ben nodded along, happy that the others were already in the process of making the best of their latest citizens.

  Adam had messaged ahead, and Liz and Zack were waiting for them.

  “How are things going for you two?” Ben asked the duo that had been the very first to join the settlement before it even was one.

  “We notice a gradual improvement in yields, in particular in crops that have been exposed to both Liz’s and my perks. We are currently conducting several experiments that will hopefully prove some of our long-held hypotheses on the end-state yields per crop.”

  Ben looked at Zack and nodded slowly.

  Liz patted Zack’s back. “We are doing very well. The work is truly exciting, and we have a lot of people helping us with all of the work. We are mostly focused on research these days and, of course, using our perks, but a lot of the hard work is done by others.”

  “That is great to hear. You might have heard that we are now exporting food to Simonston to help them out. We were thinking of building a new greenhouse to increase our production. Any concerns from your end?”

  Both shook their heads and Liz responded. “No, we have discussed with Adam in the past that from our perspective there is no limiting factor. There are a large number of folks happy to work here, and the systems provide everything else.”

  Ben nodded. “Very good. There is no better time than the present!”

  Again, he accessed the building blueprint and executed the build for the next greenhouse, increasing their food production capacity significantly.

  A new blue notification appeared in his vision.