While the town is arguing over what to name the place, Ally speaks up to Doyle. ‘I noticed something about the sixth floor. You don’t seem to have used the farm zones there?’

Doyle turns away from the town, ‘The sixth floor is special being the first after my first boss, so I added something special of my own. A farm zone would have let the floor be a lot more sustainable. However, I already made this floor quite special with how delvers have to beat all the monsters to progress.

‘Now, what would happen if I noticed a tough group of delvers are steamrolling through my dungeon? Well, before now there wasn’t much I could do. There, of course, is always the nuclear option like what I used against the wolves. Just lineup all of the floor’s monsters near the entrance to bum rush the enemies.

‘The thing is, farm zones prevent that. You only get that sweet 90% discount on the farm monsters if they can’t join in on the fights on the floor. Now it should be obvious what the plan is, but I would think a stampede of over a thousand cattle would be pretty deadly. They don’t even have to stop and turn around to continue the stampede. Once I put the floor in death mode, it will cycle that stampede into an infinite flow of angry cows.’

Ally laughs, ‘Well that is one way to handle things. Plus, with how most of them have the teamwork skill, even though the skill is underdeveloped despite the floor bonus, will make it a true stampede.’

Doyle pauses, ‘Wait, what was that?’

Ally shrugs, ‘Stampedes, well, true system recognized stampedes are one of the uses for the teamwork skill on non-sapient creatures and mobs. It is actually kind of nifty. The beings in a proper stampede can move around in the group as if by magic and the collective consciousness of the group will cycle around beings so people can’t just target down specific beings.’

Doyle shakes his core, ‘That is interesting, but I meant the part about the floor bonus.’

Ally claps, ‘Ah, right. That wasn’t a part of the tutorial stuff, was it? Anyway, by now you should have realized that a monster with three levels in teamwork isn’t exactly going to do much good. At higher floors than the minimum level of the monster, they get a boost to their skills.

‘This isn’t even a system thing but rather just an effect of the denser world energy when you create the monsters at deeper floors. The importance of a monster’s starting skill level is more about how quickly it will grow. The actual starting value isn’t even all that important though it does give a slight boost. Rather, what is important is the ratios between skills.

‘So you have two monsters, one with a skill at level one and another at level two. The other monster has a skill at level ten and the other at level twenty. Both are a one to two ratio, so will be mostly the same. Higher levels tend to just show up on monsters with higher minimum levels. After all, you can’t expect a dragon to start with a single level in breath attack or what have you.’

Doyle can understand that and nods, ‘Good to know. I guess having the power of reality mainlined into you at creation would have a few benefits. Anything else to it besides skill levels?’

Ally shakes her head, ‘Not that I know of. Mind you, lower floors will have more powerful monsters on them, but that is represented by them having higher levels. Skills are about the only thing not affected by levels and so goes unnoticed. After all, the only monsters that will gain skill levels are the sapient ones.’

At this point, Doyle is interrupted by a system alert.

{The town you reside in has been named!

Welcome to the town of Wolf’s Rest}

Doyle whips his attention back up to the meeting, which is beginning to break up. It takes Doyle a minute to catch up but when he does, he really wants to laugh. If Doyle was to be honest, he would have voted for the bone road name. Sure, it was cheesy and used a fake language, but he personally felt “Osto Strato” rolled off the tongue. In the end, though, only a third of the people felt the same.

On the other hand, Ace’s suggestion did even worse so Doyle didn’t feel too bad. A third of the people were still double what Haven had got. That, however, means that Jimmy’s random suggestion got over half the votes. Apparently, the desire to give a big middle finger to Jan and crew for leaving them to die was more important than the other names.

Though Doyle did find a decent bit of irony in the fact that most of the people thought Haven was too generic when Ace had gone on about how calling the place Dungeon Town would have been too generic. Though Doyle did admit to preferring Haven over Dungeon Town himself. If only because then you avoid the problem of what do you do when it isn’t a town anymore. Not that there isn’t humor in a future where the place is still called dungeon town despite being the biggest city or some such.

After that, not much else happens and the night passes peacefully. A good thing too because Ace and company definitely needed their beauty sleep to prepare for the ruckus that started up nice and early the next day. Jan had subverted expectations and roused her entire group well before dawn so she could get to town just as the sun came up.

Now, people had been starting to get up around then as the lack of sustainable light sources was hitting them pretty hard. Even so, most had not gotten into that rhythm yet. The only saving grace for the town is that Jan couldn’t get her people to be quiet on their approach so the town had enough warning to get everyone up. Even the people visiting from up river were roused, though more to get them out of the way than any desire for their help.

So there Ace was, standing on top of a much more professional looking wall as Jan approached. And boy, did she not bother with tact as she yells up at him, “We’re here reclaim the settlement! Nice to see you survived but now I can take back over as the leader.”

Everyone on the wall looks down at her in silence. Jan’s patience isn’t much though so she continues, “I might have left you in charge but that doesn’t mean you can get uppity now! This is my settlement!”

Ace shakes his head and without yelling, but rather entirely through force of will and projection responds. His voice spreading out over the hundreds of people in the mob behind Jan. “This is my Town. These are my people. You were never in charge here. Your only claim to fame is a path you didn’t have. All ten founders of the settlement are up here on the wall.”

And with that, Ace, along with Jim, Og, Ruby, Sammy, Jack, Bill, Tess, Kelly, and Kellinger command the system to share their ten founders path with everyone nearby.

Jan, of course screeches, “You’re Liers! I Am THE Founder! These are MY lands! You will not deny me! Through my healing, I was the one that saved the two towns and founded this place. You all are just delusional idiots who stayed behind to face a massive pack of elemental wolves for no reason.”

Ace shakes his head, “If we are so delusional, then why were we able to beat the wolves with less than 30 people? If we are so delusional, why do we have the path for saving this place? I know at least some of those behind you were there when it all happened. Are they so blind and forgetful as to not remember the pains we all went through? The trials we all faced together?

“You are the one who abandoned the place. We are the ones who stayed and made something of it. And besides, no matter what claim you falsely want to use to try and take this place, it isn’t the settlement you left anymore. This is the system recognized town of Wolf’s Rest for here is where we put the wolves to rest. I am the one the system recognizes as the leader of said town and either you recognize this or you will be banished.”

The long shadow under Jan cast by the rising sun begins to pool up as she screeches back. “How dare you take my place! How dare you usurp my position! Surrender or else my loyal guards will rend the flesh from your bones as my magic keeps you alive to suffer through pain unending!”

The pooled shadow extends outward towards all of the stronger people behind her. Then, as those shadows connect those people all step forward and move around Jan in a protective formation. The people left behind all pull back and those on the wall with Ace who have the skills or stats for it can see they all have looks of fear and pain.

Ace sighs and shakes his head again, “I know you all aren’t slaves and since you all came from the original people who left that can only mean something has caused you to forget our sacrifices together. If this was before the system, I would try harder to reason with you but ever since magic came we have all had to make hard choices.

“One of my hardest choices was letting you all leave with Jan, despite knowing she was just a con artist. Clearly she has advanced past that into a full on tyrant and you so called guards have supported that. Those who attack our town will die. This is not a hard decision for me and that grieves me as it should be. Make your decision, do you continue to follow the increasingly delusional and narcissistic Jan or do you follow her to whatever afterlife is waiting?”

Jan laughs, “I have over fifty people here all over level fifteen! Have you all even managed to reach level ten yet? Besides, there are less than 30 of you up on that wall and my scouts confirm you don’t have any other backup. When I left, only a handful of you were combat trained so what are you going to do now?”

Ace stands up there without responding beyond one simple sentence. “Make your choice.”

Of course, this doesn’t follow the script that Jan expected. She wanted a shouting match and Ace hadn’t even raised his voice. She desired impassioned pleas to the sheep behind her that would prove her hold over them. Where were the attempts to justify their position? Ace’s refusal to play Jan’s game ground at her.

She should have expected this. Ace and the other founders hadn’t ever really played along with her. But she was too full of herself to realize they accepted her stepping out of line so as to keep the settlement running. Now though, now she realizes that before they hadn’t been bending to her will. That they had been simply ignoring her.

All around Jan the area is quiet. Even the birds off in the forest remain silent as a pressure builds and her face turns red. She hyperventilates and the shadows below vibrate even as the newly risen sun tries to erase them. In a nonstop loop, all Jan can think is that this will not stand.

With an incoherent screech, she lifts her hand and points at the wall. Those around her raise their weapons and charge forward as one mass. Not her, of course, that would be dangerous. Instead, Jan stands back with a smug look. She knew that Ace wouldn’t be easy to beat, but she had been forcing her people to train against the most vicious wild life her scouts could find.

Akhier

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