FAFO

  Drake arrived in his core room to find a rather humorous sight. The majority of the assault group the guilds had sent were stuck in pit traps and the remainder of them were trying to figure out a way to get them out. He watched them for a while before he turned to Binxie, “Did you get enough to activate Dungeon Contracts?”

  “Right after they entered.” Binxie answered.

  Drake nodded. “Did any die before then?”

  “No. None have died yet. The pit traps seemed to be sufficient to delay until you arrived.”

  “Okay. I’ll go talk to them and see how they want to train. We’ll get a measure of what we are working with if these are the best.” Drake said before stepping down the long hall avoiding the traps to arrive where the assault group was slowly climbing up a rope to get out of the pit traps. Walking up to stand beside the three people holding on to the top of the rope, he looked down into the pit. “No, trap detection skills. That won’t matter much for this integration, but it’s definitely something all of you should put on your to-do list to prepare to explore the universe.”

  The two at the rear of the rope looked up in surprise and dropped the rope before stepping back from Drake. The man closest to the pit was pulled into the pit as the rope and the person trying to climb it fell back to the bottom. “Let’s speed this up a little, Binxie. Raise the bottom of the pits.”

  When the series of pits were removed and everybody was standing in the corridor with Drake, he asked, “Do any of you need to leave the city within the next few days? Speak up now. I don’t want to cause any inconvenience.”

  The group seemed confused, but they all shook their heads. Drake nodded, “Good. That means you can all train. Who is in charge here?”

  “You are?” one man asked, causing everybody to scowl at him. He shrugged. The answer seemed pretty obvious to him.

  Drake chuckled. “Technically correct, but I meant who is in charge of your group?”

  Five people stepped forward and stood before Drake who smiled as he saw how they positioned themselves. “Good. I’m Drake. This is my dungeon. Your city will soon be included in my dungeon. That will be important to remember when you are offered a contract. The city will be part of my dungeon.” Drake wondered if he should stomp his foot and give an exaggerated wink as he said it a third time. “Now with that done, How would you like to die? We can set up a series of defenses for you to attack, we could run waves of attackers at you, or….”

  The only caster in the group cast a spell that encircled Drake in spikes of ice that all slammed into him. The melee fighters attacked in a series with a slight delay between each attack. They had obviously seen his display when he introduced himself and assumed he was a caster and were trying to take down his shields in hopes of a quick kill. There was only one problem with that plan.

  “Excellent. A quick spar it is. Give us some space, Binxie. Now that was a well executed attack assuming you were trying to take down a high level spell caster. The only problem, well there are two actually. The first being, I am entirely too high of a level for you to have a chance.” Drake spoke while he let the ice spikes shatter against his skin and he turned and leaned slightly making all the attacks miss while he casually reached out and gathered the weapons of the group leaders. “The second problem being that I am not primarily a caster.”

  Putting the weapons into one arm, he grabbed one of the swordmen and spun him around and adjusted his position before handing him back his sword. Drake, moving faster than the leader's eyes could follow, and continued speaking. He explained some minor adjustments to better align the attack providing more speed and power without any loss of balance. While he was helping the swordman improve his form, Binixe expanded the room and the entire group encircled them watching in confusion.

  The other leaders found themselves holding their weapons again as they all once again faced the emperor from a moon shaped formation about one and a half meters from him. “Normally, I would limit my speed and power to just slightly more than yours, but I promised to be back in the city in ten minutes. Shall we begin?” Drake asked.

  The leaders all looked at each other. “Waves. We’ll take on the waves.”

  Drake was a little disappointed, but nodded. “Okay. That’s probably better due to the time crunch, but you can work the details out with Binxie. Remember, the city will be included in the dungeon shortly, so as you fall, you won’t be stuck just in here.”

  A glowing ball appeared and Drake disappeared.

  *****

  “What’s the plan when we get our own dungeon?” Lorem asked Jim as he was creating new dungeon cores. Jim was looking at maps on the laptop.

  “We’ll head south. We need to save the most divine creatures on the planet.” Jim said before standing up and closing his internet browser.

  ‘Oh? What would that be?” Lorem asked as Jim began stretching.

  Jim looked at him in confusion. “Latinas, of course. Delicious. ” Jim said, smacking his lips. Lorem connected to the internet and downloaded information on the creature Jim was speaking of. However, most of what he found wasn’t what he was expecting.

  Lorem quickly came to a conclusion, “You seek a mate with a big boot…”

  Laughing, Jim cut him off. “No. You dirty perv. Stay off those sites. Greatest cooks in the world. It would be a shame for the most delicious culture to be lost.”

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  “Then why did you say Latinas instead of Latinos? Are you not going to rescue the men too?” Lorem kept downloading information on Central and South America. “We should add some of these creatures to our dungeons. Bushmasters, Fer-de-Lance, jaguars, camen, wandering spiders, anacondas, piranhas. Maybe we’ll find some interesting system variants.”

  “Look into Boxing and Jiu Jitsu. There should also be some humans with interesting classes too. Natural resources. And I suspect we will find ancient essence veins to enhance the dungeon’s growth. And we’ll collect some crystal skulls for you and the dungeon to research.”

  “Absorbing some of the terrain would also provide some excellent templates for levels.” Lorem said while absorbing more information from the internet. Much of the information he had discovered while browsing wasn’t that useful for him, but he suspected he could figure out a way to transfer it to their core.

  John walked in and said “That’s enough cores for us for now. Sparky can only nurture so many at once or it slows his growth. We’ve got plenty to keep him going for a while. We’re approaching Denver. Should be interesting dealing with the guilds there. They’ve agreed to meet in front of the Museum of Nature and History.”

  *****

  Brad and Frank and a few others from John’s peanut gallery were waiting near the cordoned off area where the old fart’s dungeon ship would land. A silver shape was spotted in the distance and everybody in their group chuckled at its classic UFO shape. As it hovered, a beam of light shot down from the disc. It flashed brightly and there stood the metallic form of John sans tentacles with an old man who had a large book hovering over his shoulder. Behind them was a group of more normal looking people.

  Brad tapped Frank and they held up their signs. Brad yelled, “Frogs suck. My whirlwind barb does five levels higher than your stupid shaman.”

  Frank chimed in with, “Asmoncritikal was doing level 160 last night. You should watch his streams and learn how to play, newb.” John turned towards them and suddenly appeared right in front of them looking at their signs.

  “Free metamucil and depends? How original. You brats haven’t grown up at all.” John said as a group of enforcers from one of the guilds rushed over to remove the apparent protestors before any problems occurred. John cut them off with a shield and said, “Leave the little heathens alone. They are just mad that their mom doesn’t have their nuggies ready yet.”

  Brad froze when John’s eyes met his. The power he felt in that glance was beyond anything he could imagine. “You two seem to be in charge. Organize a list of where everybody not from Denver lives and we’ll pick them and their families up as soon as we can.’

  “We’ll get the information to you.” One of the enforcers said. “The guild leaders are in front of the Museum.” John nodded and reappeared with his group of people as they walked towards the official party.

  Frank took out a notebook he had hoped to get John’s autograph in and flipped to a backpage. “All right. If you want Grandpa to pick up your home with his dungeon, let me know where you live.”

  *****

  Drake returned to the meeting with the guild leaders in just a few seconds. When he suddenly appeared, everybody froze. Smiling he said, “Your assault team is training in the dungeon.”

  “So they are still alive?” One of the leaders asked.

  “Yes. For now.” Drake replied knowing exactly the impression he was giving. After a sufficiently long pause, he explained further. “If they are killed, they will be offered a dungeon servitude contract…”

  One of the heavily armored leaders jumped to his feet in anger, “You’re making slaves out of them? Force them to serve you and your dungeon.”

  Drake shook his head, “No. Slaves are a waste. Very inefficient. They never reach their full potential. They just won’t be able to leave the dungeon until they repay the essence debt they owe the dungeon. Binxie has it set at a minimum, so it won’t take long. Several days at most if they do nothing, much faster if they decide to train while in the dungeon.”

  One of the other leaders stood and put a hand on the shoulder of the tank who had stood previously, “You’re against slavery because…it’s inefficient?” She looked at Drake with a combination of confusion and disbelief.

  Drake nodded, “Nobody ever invests enough in their slaves to allow them to find the path that fits them the best. One of the often ignored truths about the system is that the best way to ensure that you stay free from someone’s control is to help as many people as you can become as strong as possible. Well, that and work your butt off to level your skills and abilities. If you’re strong, people will be interested in investing in you. If you’ve got a lot of strong friends, people will think twice or…what is it Gummy alway says…FIFO.” Drake shook his head as he realized the acronym was wrong. “FAFO.”

  Most of the leaders chuckled when they realized what Drake was saying. The standing leader asked, “So now that we are in the find out phase, what happens?”

  “We absorb your city into the dungeon and move on to gather as many people as we can. You can train in the dungeon and we’ll prepare you to fight off the invasion from inside the dungeon. If any of you prove yourselves, we’ll have some dungeons we can make you masters of and …”

  The tank was fired up again, “So you’re just taking over? We have no say in the matter?”

  Drake looked at him for a second and the man felt the sudden need to sit back down and shut up. “Let’s hold questions until I ask for them. As I was trying to explain, we’ll have some additional dungeons ready for your people to take over as masters and after they are trained, we’ll send them out to gather people from smaller cities while we add the larger ones. While I’m thinking of it, do any of you have a somewhat current map showing where we can find the largest cities? It will help us decide where to go next.”

  Several people nodded. Drake waited for someone to offer him one and noticed everybody was sitting very still. “Anyone willing to consolidate your system maps to share with me? Once that’s done, you can start asking questions.”

  One of the administrative people huddling at the side of the room volunteered and went around the room. The process was expedited by all the guilds having updated consolidated maps. When that was finished, they went through several rounds of questions as to how the dungeon operated and how they could take advantage of their time there.

  Drake was a little surprised at some of the massive holes in their system knowledge. They understood what Gummy always referred to as “cultivation”, but no one had discovered a way to create dense essence zones to accelerate the process. They had also mistakenly assumed the gains from physical training ended at very low levels. When they were done, he provided them with several guides that Xeno and the Drake academy had put together and also pulled out some copies of what Gummy called “Elvins Cultivation for Dummies.”

  When they finished, Drake shared two projections of the assault team. One of the individuals still fighting off the waves from a defensive position. The other of the fallen members of the assault team.

  *****

  John’s meeting with the leaders of Denver and its surrounding areas went quite smoothly. Apparently Drake had already absorbed Toronto and its residents were sharing information freely on what remained of the internet. Plus they had a few days to plan what they wanted as they waited for Grandpa John to arrive, having heard he was coming a few days before.

  Their biggest hang up was trying to understand how the dungeon was able to take the shape of vehicles and move around. The Battlemaster handled those questions with a brief history lesson on the Drake Empire and its dungeons.

  After the meeting, the group returned to the dungeon minus a few representatives of the groups they had picked up on the way down to Denver. Sparky landed and changed into a small building and began spreading his influence to encompass the entire metropolitan area.

  John had Sparky create a copy of the map John and Lorem had shared with the dungeon core to begin plotting their path to the west coast before Sparky interrupted him with news that he had been waiting for. John immediately went down to where he hoped to find Jim to give him the good news.

  Walking into the section where Jim was mining while the book protected him from a hoard of dungeon creatures. John cringed as he was struck by the most horrific mental attack imaginable. He quickly snapped his fingers and moved himself, Jim, and the book outside of the dungeon.

  “Don’t tell my book. My grumpy, evil book. I just don’t think he’d understand. If you tell my book, my grumpy, evil book. He might blow up and destroy this planet. Aaaaaaahhhh!!!” Jim stopped singing and screamed as he nearly impaled his leg with his pickaxe. “What the hell John?”

  “You are banned from the dungeon for at least one week for singing that song. The damn thing nearly got me fired when I didn’t notice one of my programmers had added it to the file before I downloaded it.” John explained. “Anyway, I’ve got good news for you.”

  “The dungeon is ready?” Lorem asked.

  John whirled on the book and pointed a finger at him. “Don’t ruin the surprise like that you infernal tome. Anyway. Have fun.” He said as he flipped the core at Jim who easily caught it. “Your dungeon is subordinate to Sparky, so he can find the way back to us if you want to drop off some of the people you save.”