The last group of first floor farmers called themselves entrepreneurs and smirked as they left Wolf’s Rest. None of them really talked about their plans to one another, but they all had the same idea. They were already semi-rich and had connections to most merchants that visited Wolf’s Rest so the obvious answer was to lord it over less fortunate settlements.

So, one by one they trickled out to find a settlement to call their own. The idiots. Many of them didn’t even manage to make it all that far from the place up river. One man against the wild just isn’t what it used to be. Others found splinter settlements. Places that formed when a group would split off from a larger group.

The ones who found those groups were both the luckiest and the most unlucky. Some would strike it rich by bringing in beef and other such supplies they bought and then marked up for the locals. Others would find themselves buried in a shallow grave as not all of those splinter groups were nice people. Some were proto-bandits and others were just violently exclusionary.

Then there was the last group which went to the already connected settlements. Those mostly ended up living in mediocrity. Their money was spent to buy goods and then sell them again at a slim margin. After all, the merchants already were selling stuff in those places piecemeal. So while it was convenient to sell it all to one person, it also wasn’t worth too much of a discount.

Though not all of these people were as they seemed. While no new people were allowed into the core group, that didn’t mean they hadn’t been working to develop people. It would be pointless to try and be circumspect about it, the Barrais and Jim set up their own group of ninjas. Though more towards the classical covert agent style of ninja than the funny hand signs to do magic ninjas.

Not that they couldn’t learn those things, they just focused on stealth, blending in, and gathering information. So yeah, that third group? Every settlement had at least a couple middlemen who were more than meets the eye.

Jim in particular was happy with the outcome as it allowed him to set up a bunch of sub-guilds in secret. That way, it will take a bit of time for others to realize just what his position actually entails. Though in some of the tutorial settlements it took all of the training, the ninjas had received to place the sub-guild without notice.

On one hand, the process itself was simple enough. All it required was an official writ bought from the system for ten gold. Then a person had to bring it to a system recognized settlement and either get whoever was in charge to sign the writ or if no one was in charge, they could use it right away.

The place upriver ended up being the easiest to take care of since they had Ben around to sign it for them. The others? Well, that is what the ninja skills were for. After all, it didn’t involve any sort of system pop-up or anything and the person didn’t actually have to read the document to sign it. A bit of a gray area when it comes to ethics, so good thing Jim had ninjas doing it and not paladins.

Though even with all the people who left, Jim still had a large problem. It wasn’t obvious at first, but when groups started to consistently not come back, everyone realized something was wrong. That problem was that the sixth floor had the most effective counter to counter people from winning with numbers. All of the cattle simply stampeded you down if you had more than six people on the floor.

Quite the headache for Jim as they simply had no easy method to tell if someone was left on the sixth floor. Except there was a method and Jim has simply been avoiding it because of the cost. He and the rest of the core remembered how tough it was just to afford the town anchor. Every single writ he had to buy was like squeezing blood from a stone and now he needed to spend 100 gold for a simple option in his guild menu.

That much gold represented a staggering amount of work and the only reason they had the cash was that merchants preferred to pay in coin. Still, even with how much loot flowed out from the dungeon every day, that much money represented a couple weeks to a month of work. If it wasn’t for the fact that the dungeon tended to drop more money for guild members, Jim would not have been able to afford it on top of the already crazy amount of money he had to put down for the sub-guilds.

In the end, though, he had to unlock the option. Jim couldn’t leave things the way they were as none of the floors starting with the boss floor had any instances. It would be too simple for someone to get another killed by poking their nose in where they should be. At least the option came with a ton of sub-options and quality of life features.

{Display Instance Availability: [Y]/n

Prevent raiding on non-raid floors: y/[N]

Warn People before they enter an active instance: [Y]/n

Allow People in an instance to prevent others from entering: [Y]/n

Max time people can have an instance to themselves: [3h]/n}

And that was just the first panel of options. There were also a ton of less straightforward ones that allowed Jim to customize how people could handle things. Though for the most part, Jim kept it simple.

People in an instance could prevent others from entering during the first three hours they were on the floor and that was cumulative until they left the dungeon. When someone tries to enter an instance that is in use, those in said instance are polled on if they want to allow more people in. Though they can choose a default answer if they are a guild member.

If people do choose to raid a floor, the guild will be alerted. Along with that, guild officials have the option to enter an instance without alerting those already in it. That and a few other secret functions made for a much better flow of delvers.

However, even with all this extra info, Jim was still in the end limited in what knowledge he had. The system would only inform them if an instance had anyone on it. Whether that meant a full team of six or a single person hiding somewhere with both legs broken. He happily accepted these limitations as any information was worth it.

There was however one bit of information that Jim would have dearly loved to have. That of how many floors the dungeon had? All the system would tell them was up the farthest floor someone had gotten to, returned from, and reported to the adventurers guild about. So, if Ace and his team ended up beating the eighth floor and there was a ninth floor, Jim wouldn’t have information on it until someone from Ace’s group reported it. An interesting limitation that annoyed Jim quite a bit.

All that aside, the purchase meant that both the town and the guild were going to be tight on coins. Not quite as bad as when they were first starting out, but then again, there was more stuff to be bought with the coins. Jim could only shake his head, they wouldn’t have needed to do this if they could have simply unlocked the next rank of soul lamp. The damn plates only worked until the fifth floor.

Jim can only shake his head. The ability for him to tell which floors are actively being delved will be useful in the future even if they unlock the next grade of lamps tomorrow. Though if they did unlock it tomorrow, well, he would need some time alone to let off some steam.

It did not unlock the next day. In fact, it didn’t unlock until five days later. That was still way too soon for Jim’s taste. Not that Doyle even noticed this bit of drama.

Doyle had taken a break only for Ally to inform him about the change with the dungeon. So, after hearing about that had happened, he checked the options he had and was overall happy with what Jim had gotten. Though he did notice the option to unlock the next tier of soul lamps had popped up since so many people were delving the post-boss floors..

The upgraded soul lamps would have unlocked naturally once the tenth floor boss was beaten, but Doyle decided not to wait. Though much to everyone’s annoyance, the new soul lamps didn’t tell them how many floors it would work for. Not even Doyle was informed if they would keep working even past the tenth floor.

Doyle didn’t let this get to him, mostly because there was something more interesting going on. Ben had been in town for a good bit at this point and Doyle decided to use the rest of his break on figuring out how he was doing. After all, he would have had time to put down roots in the town and who knew how much Ace might have done to help him so Doyle was feeling optimistic about his situation.

Ben wasn’t feeling quite that optimistic. The town had provided a house in the outer ring. Quite a nice house in fact. If not for the fact that he needed all the space to house the people that had followed him. At the start of this whole mess, he would have been sure of himself, knowing why they followed him.

Now? Ben was definitely falling into depression and wasn’t sure why they bothered staying with him. Though even talking about it as depression caused problems because he couldn’t have that! He was supposed to be large and in charge.

Doyle quickly switched away from watching him as it was clear how things were going. Instead, he switched to one of Ben’s followers? Friends? Whatever you call them, there was one who was doing more than just hanging around in their house.

Not only that, but Doyle recognized her. It was the lady from the group who had tried to take over Wolf’s Rest when it was just Ace and company. A relatively peaceful interaction if you don’t count the threats involved. Anyway, she was the one holding their group together at this point.

The only problem was she still wanted Ben to take charge and lead the group. Doyle could tell that Ace really wanted her taking over, but he wasn’t going to force things. Though there was a big difference between not forcing things and a gentle push in the right direction.

Of course, Ace wasn’t personally doing this, rather he had handed this duty off to Doctor since he had been dabbling in psychology. It was not enough to offer to help people, but it didn’t stop him from pulling the right strings to start her thinking about it. After all, at the moment Ben was still the system recognized leader of the place up river, but if they let it sit too long, who knows what their council would do if they felt like taking the title?

Doyle didn’t even watch this little soap opera play out for all that long and he could already see what was up. Though he would be the first to admit he wasn’t the best person to ask about social problems. If it was him, he would have just taken over until Ben was well enough to hand the responsibility back over.

Maybe the lady didn’t trust herself to give the power back or that Ben might never be ready if he wasn’t forced to recover? Not the healthiest things. Then again, Doyle’s opinion was that he would rather not be in charge of a group. And yes, he does recognize the irony of saying that when his job as a dungeon is pushing him into that exact kind of position.

Akhier

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