Silas bowed. “Yes, General.”

  She stepped up to me and swept her gaze over. “You are powerful for one of your level. Very powerful.”

  “Yes, General.” I copied Silas, not wanting to do anything to upset her just yet.

  “You may call me Selka, if you wish.”

  “Sure thing, Selka!”

  “Why do you wear no clothing?”

  “My inferior gear wasn’t up to my most recent enemy, so I ate it.”

  That garnered a bit of muttering behind me, but Selka took it in stride. “Your race name is Latin for All-Devourer. You can eat anything?”

  I nodded.

  “And you must be the one who ate one of the control spheres,” she said with a nod of her own.

  “Sort of, yes. Let’s go with that.”

  “That is good. At least it was one of us and not some weird monster or something worse. How many spheres do you have?”

  “Ninety-three, and you must have at least fifty, as you have turned off the experience gain within your bubble.”

  “I will not have our group weakened by free experience. Nothing good is free. As for the spheres, we’ve been sending out groups to find any straggler spheres and consolidate the survivors. Your group, or what I presume is your group, was going to be the last incorporated, as the location was easiest to track. The last group of trackers should be back in the next couple of days with the remaining spheres.”

  “That is surprisingly good news. That said, would we be able to speak privately?” I asked.

  “Silas, go check the eastern edge with your team.”

  “Yes, General!” he said with a hasty salute, dipping out of the door, which he closed behind him.

  She plucked a burning chunk of metal out of the furnace with her bare hand and held it out to me. “Have you ever had superheated iron before?”

  Shaking my head, I grabbed it and decided to show her one of my skills. A mouth formed on my hand as the metal was consumed. It tasted spicier than cooled iron, and I mentioned it as such. She chuckled as she surprised me by taking a bite of some herself.

  “You have an enchanted object making that heat for you?”

  “I have something, yes. What did you want to discuss?” her tone hinted heavily that she already knew what I was going to say. I pulled up my secret objective to make sure it read the same.

  SECRET OBJECTIVE: Gather all 199 Control Spheres into your Soul Chamber.

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  Control Spheres within your Soul Chamber: 92/199.

  Control Spheres Controlled by You: 93/199.

  Total Control Spheres Controlled: 199/199.

  Seeing no reason to lie, I told her the truth. “I need to complete a secret objective to collect all of the control spheres into my Soul Chamber, which is basically an internal storage space.” I opened a mouth on my chest and produced one of the Control Spheres.

  “And how would that be of benefit for me and mine?”

  “Keeping the spheres hidden away will presumably help with whatever the next phase of this tutorial happens to be. Plus, you are already a general, or have at least declared yourself as one. I see no reason for that to change. I can give you system access to the functions of the control spheres without needing to have one in hand.”

  “How is that possible?” she asked, steepling her fingers.

  “I have no idea how it works, only that it works. I can demonstrate if you don’t mind me getting one of your spheres.”

  She opened a pouch at her side and handed one to me. I slipped it into my Soul Chamber and felt the connection to this bubble. I sent her a prompt and her eyes widened.

  “I can make you an admin and you can set up others to be able to operate some of the functions of the bubbles.”

  “This makes no sense. Why would you do this? There is no gain for you.”

  “Selka, do I seem like the leader type to you?”

  “Not really, no, though I’ve only met you several minutes ago.”

  “You have a good eye, because I do not want to be a leader in any way but name. Could I have come through here in a whirlwind and simply taken what you have? Probably. You are the strongest one here and my stats are close to yours even before my boosting skill. Do I want to do that? Obviously not, or I would have. What I want is the freedom to do my enchanting and monster consumption without having to deal with the bullshit tedium of rulership. Bethany from my group is more the secretarial sort, though she is well liked, as I can tell you are. The person before I came to ‘lead’ them was an asshat named Jarrod, who is no longer with us.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  I laughed, “Of course not. I didn’t even kill Jarrod myself, the group he was with did. Your group hasn’t killed you yet, so you must be a decent enough leader. You have Pre-System military experience, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hence the title of General. Again, I see no reason for that to change, unless you force my hand. I suspect that the next phase of this tutorial thing is going to happen at the 30 days left mark, and we’ll need to work together to ensure our survival.”

  Selka sat in silence as she mulled over my words. I pulled a chunk of concrete out of my amulet and popped it into my mouth, savoring the odd chalky sweetness. After several minutes, she sighed and stood.

  “The fact that you didn’t attack any of my people and came to speak with me right away speaks volumes to me. I know, based on what I can sense from you, that if you were more of an asshole you could kill most of the people in my camp before many of us could flee.” We chatted about what she expected in return for cooperation, which was all reasonable to me, and then we walked deeper into the building to a large, rune covered vault door, which she promptly swung open, revealing rows of Control Spheres. We worked together and soon I had them all in my Soul Chamber. Two more notifications appeared before I checked my secret objective.

  As you have surpassed 100 Control Spheres into your Soul Chamber, bubbles can be moved by any with appropriate access within the bubble. Access level required: Admin. Additionally, communication systems are now active.

  As you have surpassed 150 Control Spheres into your Soul Chamber, administrators can now grant access to teleport between bubbles. Once one has teleported, they cannot do so again until 24 hours has passed.

  As you have surpassed 180 Control Spheres into your Soul Chamber, groups of followers of 25 or larger can create localized protective shells that last for up to 12 hours. Once this is triggered by a group, they cannot use the shell again until 48 hours have passed.

  SECRET OBJECTIVE: Gather all 199 Control Spheres into your Soul Chamber.

  Control Spheres within your Soul Chamber: 195/199.

  Control Spheres Controlled by You: 196/199.

  Total Control Spheres Controlled: 199/199.