Chapter 43

  There were a number of factors that went into the decision of where to place their Haven. The first was the fact that they didn’t mean to hoard it. If that was the case, they would have used Eli’s house as a base. But the goal instead was to make it relatively open to the public, while claiming a small portion of it for themselves.

  The fact that it would be open to the public meant that, ideally, there would be public utilities nearby to support a population of refugees. This narrowed the options down significantly. Showers, kitchens, and places to for the refugees to sleep were ideal. Schools, large gyms, and hotels were considered.

  In the end, the Campos family’s house was selected, being less than a block away from the high school where the teens attended. Or where they had attended school before the world had begun to end. They weren’t certain that the Haven would extend to the entire high school or not, but it should cover a large part of it.

  According to the officials, a Minor Haven Creation Token was enough to empower a mansion sized house. A Lesser Token could power a small block. Eli thought that there were a few grades between Lesser and Greater but couldn’t find any information on them. Which meant that if the area growth kept on track, then they might have a few blocks of coverage with their haven.

  Hopefully enough to cover the school but who knew for certain?

  When they arrived, they sat in the Campos’ living room for a moment while they discussed whether or not this was really the right direction to go.

  The leader of the security force was there, but she was mostly silent. One of her vans had remained behind to deal with the bodies of the agents who the party had killed, promising that they would handle all of the details.

  “The world is changing. You’re not the first returnees who have decided to defend themselves against the old world powers,” she said flatly. “The government doesn’t like it, but I’m not certain that it will escalate. Especially when its official goal is to interrogate Eli.”

  “We’ll be going back into the dungeon in a week,” Eli said. “We just need to remain out of the government’s control until then.”

  “Are we going back?” Jose asked. “I mean, we almost died on floor eight. We thought you did die, Eli. Did you ever consider what that would do to your mom?”

  “If we want to survive the Antithesis, then the dungeon is the only way,” Eli said flatly. “Don’t you get it yet, Jose? This entire thing is following a progression. First the goblins and weak monsters like Zombies. Then things which pose a threat to us at the level we reached fighting those. And then when we grow accustomed to those threats, a new threat. It’s going to keep finding new threats to throw it us until we’re dead, or until we’re ready for the Antithesis.”

  Jose was quiet. “I’m not certain what good it is to bring me with,” he said eventually. “But I’m not letting my daughter go into that forsaken place without me.”

  “I’m going back,” Maia said immediately.

  “Me too,” Peter agreed. His sister agreed a moment later, and Elaine nodded as well, because there was no way that she wasn’t going to protect her children.

  Junior and Luke were similarly dedicated, and their parents dedicated to them. Which just left Erik and Lucy. Lucy eventually shook her head.

  “I’ll wait on the surface,” she said. “I’ll enchant your clothes for you as best I can, but I only get in the way.”

  “If you’re certain,” Eli said, and she nodded.

  “Right. So, here’s the part of the discussion we need to have that I haven’t been looking forward to,” Eli said, wincing in anticipation of pulling off the bandage. “We’ve been challenging Hard Mode all of this time. I didn’t tell anyone, but Gabri talked me into it.”

  “We know,” Mattie said flatly.

  Eli blinked. “What?”

  The others looked at him like he was an idiot.

  “We’ve known since floor two, you idiot. You know, when it popped up in the summary?” Sophie said helpfully. “When the vote to abandon was overturned. Most of us thought that’s what the vote was about. Honestly it never occurred to me that you thought you were slipping something past us.”

  “You idiot,” Maia agreed.

  “Dummy,” Luke teased.

  “Well, I’m relieved. I thought...there are a few messages I got that I was pretty sure were restricted to party leaders, and I thought that maybe you hadn’t seen those screens,” Eli confessed.

  “You mean about the Biases?” Jose said. “We know. We couldn’t assign them, but we could see what you assigned. Aside from when you took points away from me—and I admit I can see why you did that—everyone else was satisfied with how you were distributing things. So nobody said anything. Even I held my tongue.”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “Okay,” Eli said, relaxing. “That, um, well, that makes things easier then. So the next question I guess is what do we name our team? We’re going to be famous pretty soon, and we should pick a name before someone picks it for us.”

  “Eli’s idiots,” Sophie said, teasing.

  “Asty’s Sacrifice,” Luke said. He swallowed. “We shouldn’t forget him, even if he’s part of the dungeon. We—we didn’t know what we were doing but we—”

  “No,” Maia said. “We don’t put that in our name. Whatever that is to us, and we need to talk about it before I’m certain what it was, we hold it inside ourselves and keep it private.”

  “You don’t get to decide that, Sweetheart,” Alaina, her mother, said. “If the others need to talk about that then that’s their right.”

  “Well I’ll quit the damn team if we name ourselves after that,” Maia said flatly.

  “Fine,” Luke said. “Forget I said anything.”

  “What about ‘Fatekeepers?’” Junior said. He looked at Eli. “These idiots who showed up after the shooting started have been calling you Runekeeper. I’ve thought about it, and I’m pretty sure it’s because that’s your title that the system gave you. I haven’t said anything, but I have a title of my own. ‘Fatebreaker.’ Does anyone else have a Title?”

  Maia raised her hand. “Oathkeeper,” she admitted.

  “Peacekeeper,” Elaine said with an ironic laugh. She’d been a cop, after all.

  “Shadowkeeper,” Sophie said.

  The room was silent, and they decided that meant that they had declared all of their system titles. So they brainstormed for a while, and settled on “Truthkeepers,” which wasn’t a title that any of them had but one which they could all agree on.

  “So the next matter, and one which we might have just solved, is what do we name our guild?” Eli said. “We don’t need a guild to activate our Haven Creation Token, but if we associate it with our guild we get additional bonuses for guild members. So we should create the Guild first. What does everyone thing of ‘Guild of The Truth?’”

  “I think that we should name the party something else and name the guild Truthkeepers,” Luke volunteered.

  They discussed this matter for a while before someone suggested the word for Truth and Keeper in Bokuto, the universal language that the system had instilled in them. The combination was Arashantos. It didn’t look like a word when written down in English, but when pronounced it was readily recognizable to any speaker of the Language of the Birds. Which was, presumably, one hundred percent of the population at this point.

  Satisfied with these names, Eli activated the Greater Guild Creation Token and got a new menu interface even as the small crystal which he knew to be the Token vanished into nothing.

  You are Creating a New Greater Guild

  Name the Guild

  ~#: Arashantos

  Members of this guild will receive a 10% bonus to Experience and Contribution Points when partying with other guild members (does not stack)

  Maximum occupancy: 50,000 per guild level

  Starting Guild level: 1

  Complete Guild Tasks to level up Guild

  GuildMaster: Elias Mathews

  You may merge this guild with lesser guilds given a 90% vote of the lesser guild and a 70% vote of the Greater Guild

  Invite Party Members? Yes/No

  Eli swiftly selected yes, and then navigated the menus for a few minutes. He set up a rank hierarchy which went from Guild Master to Founder, followed by Officers, Rankers, Delvers, Newbies, Support Staff, and finally Protectees.

  They then discussed whether to invite the members of the security team to the guild or not, and eventually decided as a party to withhold the decision until they had gotten a bit of rest. The security team accepted this decision with equanimity.

  Once that was done, the next step was to activate the Greater Haven Creation Token. Eli was once more selected to do the honors, and when he pressed his mana into it, it suddenly presented him with something he wasn’t expecting.

  He could see an outline of the area where it would take effect, he realized. It was giving him a mental view like he was in a helicopter extremely high in the sky, and he could see the outline of the territory that the Token would claim.

  It was expansive. He’d been worried about claiming the high school. He claimed the high school and twelve more city blocks, laughing when he did so. The others looked at him with concern as he explained.

  “When it says ‘greater,’ it really means greater,” he said, smiling. Then he told them exactly how much territory he’d just claimed for their guild, and they all celebrated a little bit.

  The crystal to establish the Haven likewise vanished, but ‘Haven Management’ appeared in Eli’s interface. The first thing he did when he opened it was list the other party members as his heirs in the event that he died, since that was a recommended thing to do on the forums. That way, it would take a complete wipe for the haven to vanish.

  And if a complete wipe happened, then the people in the Haven would hopefully be able to find a new refuge before the monster spawns returned. Not that Eli would care much, as if the owner of this refuge ever changed hands, it would mean that he’d died.

  He resolved to keep that from happening prematurely.

  ?