Shane and the others were in a small clinic near the bureau facility. Several rooms had been dedicated to taking care of them and their various injuries. Some were as simple as extreme dehydration, while others were more serious.

  Seeing them enter his room, Shane greeted them and sat up stiffly. The man was covered in bandages, and several of them were covered in streaks of red. He had suffered some serious wounds, but appeared to be intact, unlike Rudy and the bandit leader.

  They stayed and talked with him for a while before leaving. Nate couldn’t speak for the others, but he found the entire visit somewhat awkward. This was a man who had almost given his life for them and wasn’t even mad at them about what had happened. He had been enlightened about some of the intricacies of the bureau guard program, which came with a form of insurance.

  All the teams involved had been paid well, originally by Nate and the girls, the Richlow Group, and then when they returned by the bureau.

  Still, had he been in their position, he doubted he would have been able to hold back from laying at least some blame at the feet of the clients. He simply wasn’t that mature or nice, and he hadn’t been in his first life either.

  Outside the clinic, Nate and the others said their goodbyes before separating for the final time. The Richlow Group had accomplished their goal. Now it was time for them to find some new guards and head back home. As for Nate, Angie, and Lindsay, they would be moving onto New York City.

  ***

  The inside of the RV was quiet as they left Philadelphia behind them, save for the occasional knock from the arbalest on the roof. The modifications had been well done, but they had still only been done in a workshop. They had never been able to properly test out certain items, like how quiet the holders were, or if any movement would eventually be introduced into the system.

  In this case, it seemed like both were coming to pass as the large crossbows shifted about, creating noise. The humans found it easy enough to tune out after a while; Aura, and Mika, on the other hand, were having a far more difficult time with the noise.

  Shortly after leaving the city, they were forced to stop and wrap some towels around the offending noisemakers. If they hadn’t, then Mika would have been likely to bite one of them. As it was, the poor weasel had been hiding beneath several pillows and a thick blanket in an attempt to block out the noise.

  Back inside the RV, Nate transferred a small portion of the rewards they had gotten from the Merchant Guild into the storage bracelet Angie had won at the auction. It obviously didn’t have the same amount of room as any of their wrist computers, or even his mother’s storage bracelet, but it wasn’t terrible.

  He would hate to have to depend on one as a merchant, but he had become spoiled.

  “Let’s never become guards,” Lindsay said at last, her voice breaking the silence that had persisted since they had stopped to take care of the arbalests.

  Angie, who was sitting next to her in the passenger seat, snorted. “Linds… I think that is obvious. Did you see the condition Shane was in?” She looked out the window and let out a single laugh devoid of any mirth. “He and the other team leaders were at least as strong as our parents, and look what happened to them! No, frankly, I’m a bigger fan of us being able to move quicker alone.” She sighed and rubbed her face. “Not that it will matter if we come across someone with actual strength.”

  “Eh, you, Lindsay, and Aura would be able to escape; it’s me and Mika that need to be worried,” Nate told her from his place at the table where he was attempting to get some work done despite the terrible road conditions.

  “Not for much longer,” Aura told them, glancing up from where she had been teaching Mika. “The concentration of qi in this area is higher than where you live. Mika is getting close to forming her core.”

  Lindsay twisted around, and Angie quickly leaned over to grab the steering wheel. “Already? Have you managed to teach her how you speak telepathically as well?”

  “That comes next,” Aura told her. “And yes, it has happened somewhat quickly. I don’t mean to brag, but it seems like I have some talent as a teacher.”

  “How long does she have?” Nate asked her.

  “If the concentration of qi remains constant, then two days, if it gets any higher, then that time will decrease.”

  Lindsay, who had retaken the wheel, pursed her lips. “Two days… That would put us inside New York City by that point.”

  It was just short of a hundred miles between Philadelphia and New York City. The old pace that they had been managing before no longer applied as the route between the two cities was regularly traveled and maintained. The roads still wouldn’t be on the level of what Nate had experienced on OE, but they were much better than everywhere else.

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  Maintaining a speed of thirty, or even fifty, miles an hour, for several minutes at a time was common. Then they would come across a section of potholes, or a recently wrecked portion of forest, and had to either store the Overlander or go around.

  It slowed them down, but as a whole, they were still making significant progress. By the time they stopped that night, they were seventy-five miles outside of Philadelphia and only needed to go a little farther to reach New York City.

  During the day, Nate and Angie had been working on the dungeons. Angie had taken to working on the second floor of their current dungeons. Designing traps and redoing the floor layouts as needed.

  While she was doing that, Nate was spending energy like water and creating one new dungeon after another. He was no longer even trying to be careful with how he picked the locations. Instead, simply doing it at random.

  One in Alaska, another in Britain, one in India, two in Japan, one in China, three in Russia, around where he thought Moscow was located. Up to that point, he had been mostly focused on North America, outside of the one dungeon in South Korea, but now the dungeons were truly going international.

  If the communities could bring people closer, then he wanted to use them to bring the entire world closer.

  He could have over eighty dungeons by that point. It was just a matter of having enough energy to create them. The themes, traps, and everything else would be taken care of after the dungeons had been formed. The only thing he did with each one was to hide the core.

  It was only after the dungeons were in place, and he knew what was in each location, that he would start building them out. It was the new method he had begun using with the last few dungeons.

  Mika had been curled up on the bench next to Aura all day, working to create her core and absorbing a small amount of qi. From what Nate was able to understand, animals and beasts had their own innate meditation model and didn’t need to develop one. However, animals like Mika did need to be shown how to properly access it.

  Once they did, they would eventually gather enough qi to form their core, and then they could begin working with their meditative arts, which were also simplified compared to the versions humans used.

  Lindsay yawned as they made camp that night, at an area that was already occupied by several other trucks. This close to two major cities, they had been encountering others all throughout the day. Nothing extreme, but comparatively, it was far more traffic than they had been experiencing on the highways up to that point.

  It made taking care of the occasional beast and monster attacks much safer than before, as there was always someone else within a half-hour of you.

  A bunch of the people who had arrived before them had set up a communal gathering area and were cooking a meal together.

  “Do we want to join them?” Lindsay asked as she did some stretches. The seats in the Overlander were comfortable, but no matter what, sitting in something all day made your body stiff.

  “I’m fine with that. It looks like some of them came from the New York City area. Maybe they have some useful information for us.” He shrugged and eyed her speculatively. “Do you want me to drive tomorrow? It’ll give you a chance to enter the dungeons and get some nice exercise in.”

  She began to shake her head, and then slowly nodded. “We’re only an hour or two from the city, but that will be enough time for me to do a short run and then get some work done.”

  They removed some food from storage and headed out to join the others.

  The groups were each from a different vocation. With some being merchants, others were returning from their expeditions, and more. Despite their differences, they were all gathered around the proverbial and literal fire, sharing food and stories in equal measure.

  As they joined them, Aura stayed by Nate’s side, ensuring that no one would accidentally brush against her tails. When she had only possessed four, it had been manageable, if occasionally stressful. With five, it was getting harder to keep them hidden under her illusions, as they simply took up too much room now.

  In the future, they would need to tie her tails together, creating one large, extremely bushy tail.

  That was something Angie had only thought of once they were out and mingling with the others.

  A short while later, Nate found himself sitting in front of the fire, a plate carefully balanced on Aura’s back. She was lying underneath him, so her tails would be hidden underneath his chair, where no one would stumble upon them. In front of her was a plate of food that Nate had prepared according to her wishes.

  Off to one side, Angie had found herself chatting with the merchants. Meanwhile, Lindsay was talking with the younger drivers, each of them acting like they were behind the wheel of a fast car.

  At the fire, there was a mix of everyone, though it was mostly hunters.

  Nate bit into his hamburger and listened to the conversation going on around him. They were talking about the different monsters that each group had come across, and the different materials that could be taken from them.

  “What’s the general realm or stage of the monsters coming out of the dimensional zones around here?” Nate asked as he polished off the last of his hamburger.

  “I’d say that the zone we were at is somewhere between the sixth and eighth realm. There were a few monsters in the third stage, but most were in the second stage.” The hunter closest to Nate replied tiredly.

  Nate pulled out his notebook and quickly scrawled out the locations they mentioned. The arbalests could supposedly handle anything in the second stage, that is, the seventh realm and below. Anything above that, and they would need to get extremely lucky with the placement of their bolts.

  The larger issue was the creation of future dungeons.

  The strength of the dungeons was tied to the level of their Core. If Nathan put a dungeon in one of these higher-tiered areas, then the walls inside wouldn’t even slow the monsters down, let alone whatever traps he came up with.

  Despite how long he had been creating the dungeons, there was still a lot he hadn’t experienced. Not that he particularly wanted to experience them. Still, he knew it was only a matter of time before he created a dungeon in the wrong spot, encountered the wrong enemy, and lost his first dungeon.

  Nate put his notebook away and leaned back in his chair, looking up at the night sky. “Hey,” He began suddenly as a thought occurred to him. “Do any of you happen to know an idiot named Jace McFadden? He would be around our age and looks like the love-child of a sewer grate and a Ken doll. He probably showed up around November or December.”

  Everyone around the fire fell silent, something that he only noticed when Aura directed his attention to it.

  Sitting up, he focused on them, finding each one glaring at him silently.

  “Wow, I see you have met him then,” He said dryly. “It looks like your opinion of the butt-nugget isn’t much better than ours. So what did he do to you all?”

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