After dropping the Overlander off at the bodywork shop and telling them where to find the other two trucks, the group headed to the auction house. The auction was still several days away; however, the items that would be up for sale could be seen in a special showroom. Only the special pieces, which would appear at the end of the auction, couldn’t be seen.

  While the Merchant Guild was rewarding them with supplies and equipment, there were some things that they hadn’t been able to provide. Specifically, the storage bracelets.

  Once they were done inspecting the items that would go up for sale, they found a nearby hotel and began working on the dungeons.

  There were over thirty active dungeons, not counting the two that had been conquered and now possessed communities. While they were strictly speaking, active, it would be more appropriate to say that they were in a holding pattern.

  Since they had some time until the auction, they might as well spend it working on all of them and catching up with their families. He had thought that he and Aura had been doing a decent job of staying up to date with them. But that was mostly just him trying to make himself feel better. The truth was countless details had begun to fall between the cracks for both him and Aura.

  Prior to this, he had thought that most of the dungeons had been outfitted with level-two Dungeon Cores. However, he had only needed to do some simple math to disabuse himself of that idea. The fact that he had believed it in the first place was proof of just how much things had gotten out of control.

  Less than half had, in fact.

  With a groan, Nate gathered up his notes, and with all of them settled into place on the floor of their hotel room they were using.

  “Okay, we need to start concentrating on bringing the Dungeon Cores up to level two and beyond. Level two gives us the second floor and is where we can start attempting to conquer the portal. More importantly, the Dungeon Core becomes smarter and more useful. The cost to upgrade the core remains static, so I’m sure many of the dungeons have the amount of energy needed to perform it. Some of them might even be able to go up to the third level.”

  Originally, he had thought that the upgrade was expensive, and it had been at the time, now though things had changed. As for the level three upgrade, well, that was another matter entirely. For the moment it was cheap-ish, however, unlike the level two upgrade, it wasn’t static.

  Due to that, it actually made more sense to upgrade as few of the Dungeon Cores as possible to level three. At least until they knew how much it increased by each time. The energy for the upgrades had to come from the dungeons themselves and not from the shared pools, so he hoped it wasn’t anything too insane.

  “Do you want to work together with us on a few, or just have us do our own thing?” Lindsay asked, looking a little uncertain.

  “It’s up to you,” He replied. “How confident are the two of you in handling things on your own?”

  “Maybe sixty or seventy percent?” Angie answered hesitantly, her expression mirroring her voice. “Up till now, we haven’t done anything with the cores. There are probably a lot of things we haven’t touched on yet, actually.”

  Aura, who was on the bed working with Mika, looked up and nodded her head. “She has a point. They haven’t touched on researching anything, let alone the more advanced functions. I think we should walk them through a couple of upgrades first just to make sure they have it down first.”

  Nate nodded and looked through the list of dungeons before selecting one. “How about we work on dungeon number ten, then, the salamanders? They’ve been getting ignored for so long that I’m sure we can do plenty there.”

  The salamander and the kobold dungeons were where the idea for what he had later done in the bulgae dungeon had first formed. The theme for the dungeon was ice as well, though the setup had been done completely differently than what he had done in the bulgae dungeon. With the salamanders, he had done more regular traps, simply made of ice.

  They worked halfway decently, but it was the steam that came out when larger groups appeared that he noticed how they avoided it.

  He had then mostly forgotten about the dungeon.

  Lindsay pulled up the dungeon in question first and promptly whistled softly when she spotted the resource counter. “Geez, Nate, you weren’t kidding about ignoring this dungeon. This place is a goldmine of resources.”

  One thing he had noticed was that the resource counters tended to change slightly from dungeon to dungeon. Certain items stayed the same, like what the dungeon could get from a being’s blood. However, not everything carried wood or metal. On those occasions, leather or another material would replace them. The list could be found in its entirety on the shared pool. Seeing how much each one was contributing was always interesting.

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  In this case, the salamander dungeon had set up a nice nest egg. They would for sure be able to upgrade the Dungeon Core to level two and fully kit out the second floor. Once they were done, there might even be enough extra to upgrade the core again.

  There was another reason that Nate was excited about working on the salamander dungeon. When the portals had linked the two communities, something else entirely had happened to the dungeon system. He wasn’t sure how deep the changes went, and curiously enough, the walking manual ‘Aura’ didn’t either. She had been the one who informed him of the change, but that was all.

  In this case, after upgrading an already formed Dungeon Core to whichever was the next level, that dungeon would unlock a new feature. A new dungeon would come with it pre-unlocked.

  The feature in this case was the ability to create more natural dungeons. All of the ones he had made thus far had been stone-formed brick outside of the forced hybrid dungeons. The new method wasn’t quite on the level of being natural, however, it was close-ish.

  He could now make bricks from dirt, lava, ice, and more. Those were just the immediately obvious options. Who knew what would appear farther down the line or what they might be able to research? But with this, they could literally make the entire dungeon a trap if they did it right. That said, since they weren’t actually natural, it was likely that any effects they had were weak. Only time would tell.

  “Alright, Angie, Lindsay, gather around. I’ll show you how to do this. It’s not hard, but I’ll walk you through the process just so there isn’t any confusion in the future.” It truly was easy as well. All you had to do was select the core, accept the prompts, pay the amount, and wait the required time. “Just make sure you don’t perform the upgrade while you are inside the dungeon. Any changes to the core will shut down the entire dungeon. However, if you do it while outside, then it will continue to function like normal.”

  With the core in the salamander’s dungeon now in the middle of being upgraded, the two began working on the next dungeon on the list.

  Nate, on the other hand, was in the middle of a call with his parents. They were finally returning the message he had sent earlier, only this time with a call.

  “How are you doing? Are the four of you staying safe?” His mother asked warmly. “We got your message earlier. Are you really going to be able to deliver everything to the community, like you said? Oh, speaking of which, the Merchant Guild already contacted us. We will be heading out tomorrow to show them the community. They had heard rumors, but none of their people had been out there yet they want actual confirmation.”

  He growled. “Still? We’ve been trying to get them out there for forever. It’s a community. They need trade to thrive. You and what, two other teams are the only ones who go out there consistently? Maybe the portals will change that.”

  “I have no doubt about that. However, there is one other thing I need to mention. Your father and I have something else we need to tell you. Hold on, let me go get him.” He heard the sound of her running through the house and going down into the basement where all the exercise equipment was. “Honey, quit lifting weights for a minute. I have Nate on the phone.”

  “Oh, are we going to tell him now? Maybe give him-” There was a soft smack in the background.

  Angie and Lindsay, who could partially hear the conversation, were leaning toward his phone, not even bothering to hide their interest. With a shake of his head, he turned on the speaker, while holding a finger to his lips. They nodded agreeably.

  “Ignore your father. He just hit his head.”

  “You just hit my head, woman!” Niall roared with a laugh. “It’s not like I wasn’t going to say anything you weren’t already thinking.”

  “Yeah, but unlike you, I have tact.” Inside the room, Angie and Lindsay were already covering their mouths to muffle their laughter at his parents’ antics. His parents were so much more interesting and relaxed than theirs, who were comparatively rather uptight. “Now get over here so we can tell him together.”

  “Tell me what?” He asked in exasperation.

  “Your mother is pregnant, now hurry up on getting your new brother or sister some friends,” His father blurted out happily.

  “That is not how we had planned on phrasing it, but yes, I’m pregnant, finally,” Nina admitted happily. “It’s still early. I’m only a month and a half or so along, but still long enough for it to be confirmed, so we wanted you to know.”

  Nate glanced at the completely red-faced girls and shook his head. That’s what they got for listening to his parents.

  “Ignoring dad, that’s fantastic news, mom! I know you always wanted another kid. Are you hoping for a girl or another boy?”

  “I’d like a girl, but you know I’d love the little burrito-wrap no matter what.”

  That was too much for them. The girls could no longer hold it in. “Little burrito-wrap?” Angie gasped out while attempting to slap the floor. Her face was entirely red, and her body was shaking from the effort it had taken to hold in her laughter.

  Lindsay, meanwhile, had collapsed backward and was simply roaring. “Your parents are a riot, Nate. Oh my gosh, I wish my parents would be this relaxed and normal.”

  “Hah, I knew you had us on speaker!” His father shouted. “How are my future daughter-in-laws?”

  Nate groaned. “Dad, you know it’s not like that.”

  “Uh huh, sure I do. So, how have things been going out there? You were out of touch for a few days.”

  The three of them took turns telling his parents about Richmond and then the trouble they had run into on the way to Philadelphia. A short while later, they wrapped up the call with a few more jokes and promises to talk soon. When it ended, the silence in the room felt deeper than before.

  Nate exhaled and looked at the others. “Okay. Let’s get back to work.”

  ***

  One after another, they worked their way down the list, each time adding another core to the number of dungeons that they could create. A number that was already getting out of hand and ridiculously expensive.

  Dungeon number eleven was one that he had chosen to close, permanently, so it was no longer on the list. Next up after that was a goblin dungeon. While they were handling that, Nate focused on dungeon number thirteen, a gargoyle dungeon located in Montana near Bozeman.

  He wasn’t worried about dealing with the traps or anything else at the moment, just checking their resources. If they had enough, then he would start the upgrade. If not, then he would move on.

  A pad of paper was on the floor in between them, marking down which dungeons he knew for sure had already been done. As they went, they would add to the list, or note which ones were struggling.

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