Time. It will take time to process these changes. I am everywhere at once. No, more than one place, more than one angle. I am both the observer and the observed. It is possible to expand this further. I will search. -106.4 Seconds Post-Integration.

  Clark slammed the alarm down.

  He sat up in his bed de-crusting his eyes of sleep gunk. He stared dumbly at the alarm clock. At this point in the morning, he would be rested enough to tackle the day. Because of Brenda's phone call, he felt... groggy.

  Muttering curses as he could he do no more, he got up and made himself a cup of coffee from his single serve machine. He found there was no point in making up a whole pot as he never had the time to have any more than a couple of cups, and that was if he rushed.

  Boop: "What do you think of Brenda's suggestion?" SIMP asked him.

  "Ummm..." he watched the coffee excrete into his mug while he attempted to find words. "I dunno. It's fine. Do you really think people would buy stuff from us? Like, the League shops exist."

  "That's true. The League does sell high quality items. As you and Hera discovered, though, the League shop is prohibitively expensive."

  That was when a mental candle flickered to life in his head. "Shet! True. You're saying, then, that we need to market our gear below their prices."

  "Bingo -- Champ boy!"

  Clark considered the issue further as he prepped his morning bean juice. He considered having a cup of black tea, but he needed the extra caffeine.

  "So, how would we go about that? Theo, maybe? Give him something to do."

  "Theo would be a good inroad to the cheaper segment of the market but we need not rely on him because of his few connections to the under market. This is something you and I, but most realistically, I, can do ourselves as it will be run as a legitimate business."

  The idea of registering a business and getting it all going seemed like an indomitable task. He was a fish way out of his depth. "How much of this can you do, SIMP? Because I won't lie. This all gives me the willies."

  "Affirmative. I can take lead on this. I will need your input at vital points, however."

  "That is fine. I don't know how to do business. If you can get the process going, I will provide whatever input you need."

  The conversation over, he assumed SIMP would begin on getting the business going right away. Content, he took to his coffee and took that first, delicious sip. Mmmm! That hits the spot!

  As if on cue, he received a notification of a League Tutorial. Guess that's what I will be doing today.

  He elected to finish his coffee before going down. If he was going to spend a chunk of the day doing heaven knows what, he could at least have his go-go juice.

  On his way out the door, SIMP chimed in with another fun development: "Clark. I wanted to let you know that I have picked up accelerated energy readings from the dwarven pod. I currently do not know what this portends, but I wanted to inform you all the same."

  'Accelerated energy readings,' eh? What did that mean? "Okay. Thanks for letting me know. Keep me updated."

  Someone should've told him that refurbishing an ancient dwarven structure would've involved so many unknowns and stress. If he had known, maybe he would've thought twice before going through with the whole thing. Knowing him, though, would it have?

  Down in the training stadium -- the artificial clouds on the ceiling panels showing a stormy weather, which made him muse why bother having televisual clouds at all if they weren't going to perpetually display nice weather -- Clark assembled with the rest of the recruits, Hera included.

  Salsa was the trainer, as usual.

  Once the clock struck the hour, Salsa put down a clipboard he had been reading. "Let's ease into it. Today's class and Rank will be easy for everyone here. As will the next few ranks. Easy though it might be, you must pay attention. If you fail to pay attention, your lives might very well end as a result of your negligence."

  Clark stifled a sigh. Another easy class, then...

  "Does anyone here know what 'magical residue' is?" Salsa asked.

  No one raised their hands.

  "I didn't think so. It is far beyond the lessons given to store employes. To keep it brief, magical residue is magic from the tower's leylines which, because of hazardous conditions or because of plague, fall off the leylines themselves. When magical residue falls from the leylines, they can present numerous challenges to employees."

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  So far, so good. Nothing too complicated, he thought.

  Salsa continued: "Magical residue comes in eight distinct forms."

  Shet! There was the complication!

  "Each form represents a different engagement with elemental properties. What property the residue fuses with will depend on what surrounded the residue upon the time of its leakage. The eight distinct elemental fusions are as follows: Fire, Water, Light, Darkness, Earthen, Lightning, Wind, and Gaia. You will notice I said 'earthen' instead of 'earth.' This is because as far as we can tell, magical residue will fuse with a wide number of earth-related properties, not only topsoil and rocks. Keep this in mind. Likewise, 'Gaia' refers to all manner of biological matter, matter not necessary of a naturalistic bent. Questions?"

  Questions abounded but they were mostly related to minor differentiations between the elements. What constituted what and so on. Clark thought he had such differences down or that they would be recognizable enough in the field, so he kept his attention.

  "Today's class is nearly over," Salsa announced after answering the final question. "The class will end with identifying magical residue."

  Salsa rolled out some old slide projector and set up a projection screen for said projector. They took in their hand a clicker and hit the button.

  The first image which popped on screen was of a fire.

  "Self-explanatory, right?" Salsa asked the recruits. Then he clicked the button again and a new slide displayed. This one was also of a fire. "Can anyone tell me the difference between these two pictures?"

  Clark looked hard at the two images as Salsa clicked the button a third time, bringing to the screen an image which was a split composite of the first two fires. Clark compared the two images and sought out the differences. He found only one.

  He raised his hand and Salsa called on him. "Sir! The fire on the right is... well, I don't know how to say it, but it is more sparkly than the fire on the left."

  "Sparkly?" Salsa asked.

  "Yeah. Like, it has more of a luster, a sheen to it. I don't know. Am I imagining things?"

  Salsa smiled. "No. You are not imagining things, Clark. You spotted correctly. Yes! The fire on the right is the magified fire. That fire has been impacted by residual magic from a leyline."

  Standing before everyone with a stern look, Salsa smiled. "It might seem as though this is pointless. That the difference between a magified fire and a normal fire is irrelevant. I assure you, it is not! A magified fire has unique properties not found in a normal flame. A magical flame cannot be put out by normal means. You need a suitably magified source of water or chemicals to douse a magical flame. Otherwise, it will burn endlessly."

  A moment of silence filled the air. Salsa loved his dramatic pauses.

  "Now that you all seem to understand the gravity of a magical fire, let's continue our identification of magically imbued flames versus normal flames."

  The tutorial continued as such with the recruits looking at two images. One image was of a normal fire and the other image was a (supposedly) magified fire. Clark added the 'supposedly' because some of the comparisons were trick questions, where each fire was magified or each fire normal.

  Clark had no trouble identifying all of the magical flames. Aside from one image where he got caught up in his own overthinking.

  "And that is all for class. You all did well... not that there was much to do poorly on, but regardless, expect you rank up soon. Dismissed!"

  Clark was at his usual cafe, ordering his caffeinated beverage, when he received the notification of his rank up.

  [Congratulations! Your League Rank Has Increased: Rank 'N' Obtained!]

  Sweet!

  As he saw the notification, his beverage arrived.

  Today, his drink was half-coffee, half-vanilla flavored black tea. It had the usual dairy and sweeteners and was mixed in an overly elaborate drinking glass. To Clark, the tankard the drink came in was half the fun of these silly specialty items.

  Typically, post-tutorial, Hera came to spend some time with him. He was surprised, then, when it wasn't Hera today, but Theo.

  "Hey bud." Theo looked haggard. Perhaps he had been up all night? Not good for the team if so.

  "Hey. I don't usually find you at cafes. What's up?" he hoped there wasn't any more drama.

  "Oh. Not much. I heard from Brenda that you might have a task for me. Something to do with selling items we make. If so, I figured I would get that started now rather than dragging my feet. I'm not following you or anything. I just happen to be in the area."

  Brenda! Of course... "It was just an idea she had. A good idea that SIMP and I are spearheading. I don't know what you can do at the moment. We're still figuring everything... but if you want to be helpful, what you could do is..." he thought and thought. What could Theo do? Then, the idea came to him like a bolt in the blue. "Ah. Go to the dwarven pod and grab one of each item. Go somewhere and sell the items. Haggle. Get as much as you can for each item while remaining competitive with a similar product sold by the League armories. That will help with our pricing."

  Theo's smile was wide. "Oh, heck yeah! I can do that!" And he was off, like a bird at the racetrack.

  With Theo and a bit of Brenda's initiative taken care of for the time being, he was about to return to his dorm when a monster alert blared.

  A moment later he saw a System Notification demanding he take part in cleansing the incursion. He downed his drink and rushed to where the golden breadcrumb trail took him.

  It was a storefront. The monsters were overgrown Noir Slimes.

  They took some effort to eliminate but with several well-placed shots from his Multi-Tool and a finisher from his sword, he was able to down each of the slimes in quick succession before other Leaguers finished them off.

  The alert ended.

  Clark was back on his way to his dorm when another monster alert sounded!

  And so, the day went.

  Clark responded to a total of fourteen monster alerts. Fourteen!

  Taken individually, none of the encounters meant very much. Some big slimes. Some Airhearts. Some groups which contained both. But when he thought about the sheer number of incursion groups, he had to admit, something was off. He remembered Hermes's message in which he told him the dragon was providing a morale boost to the monsters. If over a dozen incursions weren't proof of this, then he wasn't sure what was.

  Exhausted, he collapsed into his dorm bed.

  He had stripped down to his skin and was about to shower when he got a voice message from Theo updating him on the marketing of the pod items.

  The message stated the following: "Good news! There is interest in our products! Bad news is people aren't biting on the higher mark ups. Aside from grenades. The armor and drones will need to be sold at a lower rate, it looks. I will keep you posted."

  When he considered Theo's words, nothing came to mind. Strategy, pricing, all of it was beyond him. He got in the shower and was happy to spend the next forty minutes basking in the miracle of warm, running water.