No one in the settlement had seen when, but at some point Jim had strolled right up to the opening left in the dirt wall. He glances around and nods, “decent enough defense for most things. Most things.” He sighs and shakes his head before walking in. One of the guards moves up to stop Jim, but another grabs them.

Jim continues to stroll through the settlement, glancing around. There aren’t any wood buildings yet, but the earth mages had been working overtime. Not only had they managed the settlement’s wall, but a lot of dirt huts now dotted the area. He shakes his head, ‘dirt is a little demeaning. It looks like they have dredged up quite a bit of clay from the river. Even with magic it couldn’t have been easy to haul it over here in such a brief period.’

All around him the entire population has gathered as Jim makes his way to the council’s meeting area. Once he is close enough the crowd splits and he can see Ace who has his face all scrunched up as he rubs one of his temples.

As Jim saunters up to him, Ace groans, “you don’t happen to have good news do you? Or maybe you have something you can report without causing everyone to panic or some such nonsense?”

Jim laughs and shakes his head, “as if I would leave my forest for anything short of something dire.”

Ace sits down in defeat, “can we at least talk about this in private?”

With a pained smile Jim shrugs, “no can do. If you haven’t noticed, I am not exactly an agent of order. Now if you had been better prepared for the pack, I would have let you do some groundwork before revealing it. As it is though, you need everyone to either come together or let them escape. Out there in the deep forest, a massive pack of wolves is making its way here. They are coming here for the dungeon but they won’t just go past you guys. This tiny town is on the chopping block.”

Ace looks up and glares at him, “that sounds bad, not bad enough though. What’s the actual danger?”

One of the people in the crowd then yells out, “yeah! Tell us about the alpha wolf!”

Jim gives the guy a scornful look, “even in this fantasy powered world, alpha wolves aren’t a thing. Even the person who put forward that theory after more research proved it was wrong. He even spent the rest of his life trying to undo the harm his original idea had caused.”

Jim turns back to Ace, “on average a wolf pack will have about six wolves though it can go up to about 36. A pack tends to be made of the so-called alphas. You know, the parents of the family. As well as the current year’s offspring and some yearlings. Magic doesn’t change this dynamic much. Though some longer-lived varieties will have more members as the children will stay with the pack longer.”

“From what I learned with a skill, each pack will tend to be of one type of wolf. Flame wolves live with flame wolves. Makes sense, right? Sadly for us, that only counts for places that have settled down. Out in the deep forest a family of normal wolves all experienced a change. From what I have dug up, the original pack had about 27 members.”

“Some of them turned into stone wolves. Nasty beasts with stone armor. More became wind wolves. Apparently a common variety, though their ranged wind blades can be deadly for the unprepared. A handful are now dire wolves. Not the extinct species, but rather dire in the sense of a more savage, larger variety of a normal animal. It seems to be a modifier any non-sapient animal can pick up. Finally and most troublesome, the pack mother became a lesser shadow wolf.”

“Lesser because she still isn’t sapient which is both good and bad. Good because I wouldn’t be alive to report this if she had an actual mind instead of just instincts. Bad because if she did have a mind we might have managed to negotiate a deal.”

Ace shrugs, “that sounds bad but I think we can deal with 27 wolves even if they do have a variety of magic.”

Jim shakes his head, “I said the pack had 27 members. The count has ballooned to a good 96 members. The original members stuck together because of whatever reason, and other wolves of matching types joined up with them. So yeah, 96 elementally charged wolves heading this way and a shadow wolf who will likely be able to walk past us with no one noticing.”

Ace shuts his eyes and puts his palm on his forehead. He hyperventilates for a moment, “oohkay. It is what it is and we can only deal with it.” He turns to the crowd, “guards! What are you doing away from the wall? Go back to your posts! Everyone else? Go to your homes and get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow we will have a plan for what to do.”

“Jan, you gather the healers up to help anyone that has a problem getting to sleep. If you’re too tired after that, just go to bed. We need all of you well rested. If you’re fine though come join me and the rest of the founders. Speaking of which, I want the rest of the founders right now. You as well Jim, no getting away after dropping such a bomb on us. Oh, and I want Doctor and the Barrais as well.”

It takes a while but the crowd disperses, especially with the questions of why Doctor was exempt from healing for the night. Around a small campfire all the important members of the community have settled in. Ace looks around and nods, “well, the thirteen of us have gathered here. Ten founders, a doctor, and a married couple.”

Jim tries to speak up and deny being a founder, but Sammy smacks him upside the head. Ace shakes his head, “get ready to be inducted into the fold. Don’t think I am going to let you get away now that everything is going down the drain. Whatever else, the rest of us no longer accept Jan as a founder and eeny, meeny, miny, moe, your it. Now stay there while I lay down this little community’s biggest secret and induct you into the inner circle.” And Ace proceeds to inform him about the dungeon's aura.

Jim whistles, “well then. The forest calls me. I must go and prepare for the coming horde!”

Ace gives him a dead eye stare. “You can shut up and sit down. I am tired and under a lot of pressure. Thank you for giving people the motivation to rebel against the two gangs, but that doesn’t mean you can skip out on responsibility. Also, now that you know there isn’t any escape. If any other group takes the town and finds out about the aura, they will hunt you down to plug any leaks. Though we should move onto tonight’s topic. The wolves and why we aren’t going to just move to the side and avoid them.”

This gets a rise out of everyone else around the fire. As Jack puts it, “Why try and stop a truck when you could just step off the road?”

After Ace calms them down, he shakes his head, “we need the dungeon. It is our road to food and levels. Even with the help it has provided, we are still being threatened by a pack of wolves. Lose it and any advantage we have in this new world is blown away. We let those wolves into it in any kind of quantity and it could die.”

“We have a variety of magic users to help build our defense. Dig pit traps, lay out spike traps, and stuff like that. I will put the one wood bender to forming arrows non stop and the two smiths will have our full support in getting a forge up and running. More importantly, we can forge a stronger community.”

“As it is only the thirteen of us and a handful of guards know about the dungeons regen aura. With time others will find out about it as things are going. Out there we have many people who can’t just accept how the world works now. The weak willed who follow our orders just because. The hopeful who would turn on us the second someone in a military uniform shows up claiming to with the government. There should even be a few left over from the gangs who we didn’t manage to suss out.”

“The foundation of the community is like a pile of loose sand. We stand on it right now because nothing is happening but any disaster and it will disperse. This disaster however gives me a chance to shape what it leaves behind. The sand might be loose right now, but some of it bears a greater potential. To stretch this metaphor even further, we just need to forge it and extract out the iron.”

“We can take the wolves as long as we don’t need to worry about the defender next to use running away or the person behind us sticking a knife in our back. I will stand out there in the front as long as the people behind me stand with me. My lawyer has helped whip up some system enforced confidentiality contracts. Here is one for each of us and I will have everyone who stays with us through this sign a similar one later.”

“Through this we will prevent our secrets leaking and also develop the start of our core citizens. The others that leave might come back after we beat the wolves, but they will be second-class citizens even if they don’t realize it. If it wasn’t for the danger I would honestly think of this situation as a godsend.”

“We needed to sort out the trustworthy so people could start training in the dungeons aura. As it is we are strong but not nearly enough for the way our world now works. Give it a hundred years or so and maybe things will get closer to how it was before this all. But most of the people out there won’t live that long. Us thirteen? I will be very disappointed if any of you die before then. For all the system has brought chaos, it has also brought the possibility of life.”

He claps his hands, “now what do you all think of this?” Everyone is quiet for the moment so Ace takes the chance to look around. Doctor and the Barrais are neutral though Ace gets the feeling that the three had expected something like this. Jim is similar if exacerbated by the whole situation. Ruby and Jack have a slight look of distaste but they should know how serious this is, so he ignores it for now. Kelly? She hasn’t even bothered to look up from her notes. For not the first time Ace hopes that she doesn’t have a mad scientist class path or some such.

The last four in the group are a bit more of an enigma to him. Ace has enough interaction with the other five founders, but these four have mostly kept to themselves in the recent days. The first has kept a blank face for as long as Ace has known him. Kellinger took the concept of being stoic to the extremes and the rumor is he is some kind of fist fighter. Though that might just come from him wearing a karate gi all the time. No one had seen him fight during the rebellion, but when people found him he was standing over a number of dead gang members.

Next to him was the other couple in their group. Not married or at least they don’t have a shared last name but that doesn’t stop Bill and Tess from hanging onto one another any chance they get. The two are actually lost in their own world at the moment as well. No question about their weapons of choice, though. They fought on the front lines. Bill with a pair of clubs and Tess with a staff. Honestly? Ace wanted to categorize them as a regular young adult couple. There is just something about them that keeps him on edge. Not that they are a danger to him, but just that they are dangerous.

Finally there is Og, pronounced as oh gee. His full name was Og Pwner. Yes, he took the end of the world as a chance to name himself with internet slang. Overly enthused with improvised thrown weapons, but whatever paths he has taken both now and before the end have led to him being exceptionally good. Ace had personally seen the guy throwing glass shards like a machine gun and taking down armored goons. At the moment he was throwing bits of gravel at the mosquitos that had gathered near the group. He wasn’t always hitting but his accuracy was still scary.

Finished with observing, Ace sits back and waits. Either someone would speak up or they would all just sign the contract. His bet and hope would be on someone speaking up, but that remains to be seen.

Akhier

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