Philadelphia was so much larger than any of them imagined when it appeared on the horizon, and it only continued to grow as they got closer. The group had thought Richmond was large, but it couldn’t even compare to the scale that was this city.

  Before leaving the protection of the trees, they switched back to their original vehicles and flipped up their antennas. While they drove, Jane was attempting to get in touch with someone inside the city and explain everything that had happened to them.

  Finally, Nate called Aura back from her time inside the dungeon, and she settled onto the front seat beside Mika.

  After passing through the border -a process which took some time- due to the need to again explain everything that had happened. They were escorted to the licensing bureau offices and asked to go over everything in detail, only this time there was a map on a table and a sketch artist nearby. The location where it had happened was easy to reveal, but the only one that they had seen for more than a few seconds was Rudy.

  Eventually, they were released, and the two groups separated, with the promise to meet up again at the auction in a couple of days.

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  Please take a moment to rate the story. As the author, I am only putting this story on RoyalRoad at this time. If you are reading it anywhere else, please let me know as it was stolen.

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  Angie watched their large semi, trailer, and tow-behind vehicle drive off. “They’re heading to the merchant guild now, but we can do that over the next few days. For now, let’s just get some sleep and then in the morning find a place to get the Overlander fixed.”

  Lindsay nodded with a yawn. “Sounds good to me. I’d rather not drive around this city in the dark. I’m not familiar with how the people here drive yet, and the RV is rather wide.”

  Nate shrugged. “That’s fine with me. There is plenty I need to do with Aura tonight inside the dungeon anyway. There have been several inquiries about the cross-dungeon mercenary and champion system. But there are no actual applicants. They’re curious about how it will work, but until they get more information, they’re being cautious. So, we need to spend some time talking with them, then working on the second community, among other things. I really want to get the mercenaries system up and running, so more dungeons can be conquered.”

  Lindsay parked the Overlander in the back corner of the parking lot and pulled the shades. “It would be nice if their presence also generated energy for the dungeon. Maybe we could finally do something with the blighted-elves dungeon.”

  “That… Would indeed be nice,” Nate agreed with a cock of his head. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Not sure how we would convince them to go to that particular dungeon anyway though, considering it’s almost always empty.”

  He would be going inside the dungeon with Aura, while the other two slept. It had been a long day for everyone, and while he had the avatar that would allow his actual body to sleep, that wasn’t something the others had. Aura, who would be going inside with him, had spent much of the day asleep.

  A short while later, the two were jogging through the dungeon and quickly left through the entrance. The community had continued to grow over the last few months, as large apartment complexes had been constructed. Each was somewhat different from the next due to the sheer diversity of the inhabitants living in the place.

  They went directly to the council building. It was the same building that Nate had brought his parents and everyone else to months earlier. While the community was controlled by the dungeon, they still needed some form of local government, and that was where the council building came into play.

  Aura, as a member of the ruling class on their homeworld, had a seat on the council. It was more honorary than anything, and she rarely attended or did anything with the authority it provided her.

  Pennsylvania was two-hours ahead of Colorado, so while it was still late, it wasn’t quite as late. There was also the matter that a lot of beasts were nocturnal. Both items combined meant that the two entered the building right at the tail-end of one of their meetings, just as they had hoped would happen. It made it easier to explain the specifics of the mercenary and champion system when the leaders were already gathered, instead of them needing to have others fetch them.

  Standing off to the side, he opened a few windows to watch the dungeon that had been created in the Grand Canyon. It had taken a lot of work, but he had managed to rework an existing cultivation method to fit the spatial element. Ideally, he would have created his own method from scratch, but that was beyond his skills. He had then been running the reworked method through binding ties, slowly fixing every problem as he came across them. It was more or less the exact same way he had corrected the errors in his current cultivation method.

  While he was doing that, Aura conversed with her fellow council members. She made sure to include him in the conversation whenever she spoke. He could have opened a screen to display subtitles for the meeting, but that would have been too distracting.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Nate,” Aura called out to him, getting his attention.

  “Hmm?” He looked up. “What’s up?”

  “They’re asking about how we wanted to handle the portal, and letting other people use it.”

  Nate had already given the matter some thought and was ready for it. “There is a cost to maintain the new portals, and it’s taken from the energy generated by the inhabitants. So, I was thinking that they would get to use the portal for free once a day. There really isn’t a reason for all of them to go through it just yet, but that limit will keep it under control in the future. As for non-members of the community, each use will require them to pay a beast-core of the first realm. I can place a hopper near the portal where they can insert them.”

  She nodded and began talking to the other council members again. The inclusion of beast cores meant they needed to hash out several new details. The cores didn’t only come from the beasts who left their portal, but in this area, the majority would, of course, come from their kin or the half-breed children that had appeared over the years.

  There were still plenty of beasts that came through the dungeon and decided not to live in the community. They had originally come through the portal in the search of power, and while the portal seemed to exasperate that desire, it was still originally theirs. Some simply wanted that power more, while others instead had been in search of adventure or simply something new.

  As the meeting drew to a close, the various council members promised to speak with the members of their community the next day. Aura would also be putting a more comprehensive post of information on the community board where everyone could see as well.

  Nate was getting close to being able to switch over to his new spatial cultivation method. However, now that the meeting was over, they had other things to do. Aura was going to put the information together and then create the post on the community board. While she did that, he was going to be modifying the rewards a little bit.

  For the most part, the rewards were handled automatically by the Dungeon Core of whichever dungeon they went to. In that way, it was the same method as how it worked for him and the rest of his party, though the amount of rewards that they received would be much less.

  All Nate was doing was making certain dungeons have additional initial rewards, so they would be more likely to be chosen. This was his way of nudging the odds against the dungeons that were already closest to being conquered.

  With the help of the mercenaries and champions concentrating on those particular dungeons, then they would be conquered quickly. He had already seen how the timer had continued to fluctuate both times around, decreasing faster as time went on.

  Next to him Aura stretched out, her tails shaking, and then settling back together, so they looked like one giant fluffy tail. “Shall we get going?” She asked.

  They still intended to get some hunting done for her that night. With any luck, they would be able to get her almost to the point of completing her current realm. She just needed a few rainbow cores, or alternatively, to cultivate for a while.

  Nate nodded. “Let’s go. Which dungeon are you thinking about heading to?”

  “I was thinking about number twenty-one. The dungeon with the centaurs.”

  Nate had hated designing that particular dungeon. It wasn’t mixed, not in the same way that the ant and dwarven dungeons were. Instead, it was just large, with massive rooms and giant corridors that allowed them to run about. Unfortunately, the sheer size of the place made creating effective traps both hard and incredibly expensive.

  “That… actually isn’t a bad idea. They use bows as their primary weapons, though I’ve seen a few crossbows as well. The dungeon hasn’t been wanting to upgrade my crossbow lately; this might be a good opportunity.” He agreed readily with her choice.

  The centaurs weren’t like the fantasy calvary-esque creatures he had read about in novels.

  These centaurs were carpenters, woodworkers, and not knights. The weapons they used were all made of beautiful wood, and strong, but had stone tips. The armor they wore was made from dense layered wood covered in resin and sap.

  He honestly wouldn’t have minded getting one of their bows for his mother, though he didn’t think they were better than the one she already had. They were just that good-looking. Form and function almost always came before looks when it came to weapons. If someone had a pretty weapon, then it was a mantel piece decoration and not truly functional.

  The centaurs though, had managed to carve and decorate their bows without compromising them in the slightest. If the dungeon would just stop absorbing them all, he would already have a collection.

  Before heading to the next dungeon, Nate pulled up the information on the centaur dungeon. That right there was a dungeon that had been ignored for too long.

  Most of the thirty-one dungeons he had created had level two Dungeon Cores, or at least he had thought that was the case. This particular dungeon was still sporting a basic level one Dungeon Core, something that he promptly fixed by beginning the upgrade, which would take several hours. Still, it made him wonder how many of the dungeons he thought had been upgraded, that actually weren’t.

  He would need to find some time within the next day or two to go through them all and find out which ones he had missed.

  Once the upgrade finished, he would be able to create another dungeon, along with access to the second level of this dungeon. It was no wonder that things had begun to fall through the cracks. Angie and Lindsay were helping, but they were still new. Level two Dungeon Cores were meant to help manage the dungeons, and they did help, some. It wasn’t until level three though, that they truly became properly useful. Until then, he was still fixing mistakes and holding its hand. The core did learn, but the problem was that he had to do it each and every time.

  Appearing inside the centaur dungeon through the use of the portal, Nate already had his crossbow out and at the ready. It was a good thing he did, as there were three centaurs just lounging in the room with them.

  Aura walked through the portal next to him a moment later, and the previously stunned beings leaped into action. Bows appeared in two of their hands, while a spear long enough that Nate thought the fellow was compensating for something was snatched from the floor next to the third.

  The duo didn’t wait for them to attack. The bolt in Nate’s crossbow sped through the air, and Aura’s second tail, the one that was the greenish blue of deep arctic ice, flicked into action.

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