Xavier found the elven leader of the invasion force within the fifteen-storey compound to be quite cooperative. Surprisingly cooperative, actually. The man could clearly see how strong Xavier was, and didn’t try to challenge him in any way. At first, Xavier thought that was rather cowardly, then he put himself in the man’s shoes.

It would be beyond foolish for him to challenge me. If I were him, seeing someone able to control over a hundred people with nothing but his mind, I probably wouldn’t challenge me either…

No. I’d do just about anything I could to stay alive.

Xavier paced around the penthouse throne room.

“My… my name is Famarial.” The elf, Famarial, swallowed. “What do you want with us?”

“You’ve invaded my world, Famarial. I want you to pay for what you’ve done. And I want answers about the sectors. About other invaders. I want to stop the invasion of Earth,” Xavier said.

“We haven’t hurt anyone!” He glanced at his people, then dropped his head. “At least, we probably haven’t.”

Xavier shut his eyes. Released a breath. Then opened them again, staring full into the elf’s face. “You don’t even know?”

Famarial shrugged. “I haven’t been outside of this building. Only my crew have.” The elf was on his knees before Xavier. It looked like he wanted to throw himself entirely on the ground and prostrate himself before him. Xavier hoped he wouldn’t. He could understand the man not trying to fight him—such a thing would be futile—but he didn’t like how pathetic he looked. “Please, you must understand, we’re not invaders!”

“Not invaders?” The anger in Xavier’s voice made the elf shrink back and start shaking. Xavier opened his arms, motioning toward the penthouse, filled with the elf’s things. At the other elves he’d brought to this world, every single one of them carrying a weapon. “Then how do you explain your presence in this world? You don’t look as though you’ve come to make friends.”

“We’re just scavengers!” the elven man blurted out. He tucked his long blond hair back, revealing his pointed ears. His face was sweaty, now. Sweaty with fear. And those blond locks were sticking to his forehead. “It’s how we get by! We remain low level so we can scrounge through newly integrated worlds and gather pre-system technology. We don’t even like fighting!”

Xavier’s eyes narrowed.

What the man was saying certainly didn’t seem like a lie, not from everything Xavier had seen so far.

He scanned Famarial, as that was something he hadn’t done yet.

{Elf - Level 5}

Xavier blinked. Their leader was only Level 5?

“Why would you do that?” Xavier asked. “What do you need our old technology for? I thought it didn’t work?” He struggled to imagine himself being in this man’s position—forcibly not levelling up just so he could steal stuff on other worlds?

Levelling up, becoming stronger, that was the best part of what the System had given Earth.

The man swallowed. “We sell it. That’s how we make our money. And, well… there are ways of making it work.”

“Sell it?”

Famarial nodded emphatically. “Do you know how many bored, rich Denizens there are out there in the Greater Universe? And do you know how valuable this stuff is? Especially from worlds and cultures that might not exist very soon…”

That flared Xavier’s anger once more. “Earth isn’t going anywhere. I’ll protect it from any threat that comes.”

Famarial stared at Xavier, a blank look on his face, the emotion seeming to drift away, slowly turning into bafflement. “You can’t think you could protect your whole world?” The man’s eyes widened after his words slipped out. He bit his lip. Looked away. “I mean of course. You are a mighty warrior—”

“Don’t patronise me,” Xavier snapped. “If you’re going to lie about how you feel to my face, your use will quickly diminish.”

“Patronise? No, no! I wouldn’t dream of it!” The elf moved forward on his knees. He pressed his hands together, as though in prayer, and stared up at Xavier. “You don’t need my people. If it’s answers you’re looking for, you can get them from me.” He looked at the three elven women who’d been doting on him, then at the hundreds of elves Xavier had brought up to the penthouse with his mind control. “Let my people go. Keep me here. Please, you don’t need them.”

Xavier tilted his head to the side, a little surprised. He hadn’t expected this elf to make such a selfless move. What would be in it for him?

Perhaps I’ve judged him to be someone he isn’t.

Maybe the elf was just here to scavenge tech.

Xavier shook his head. “I’m sorry.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. The elf’s words had given him pause. “I can’t let any of them leave this world. At least, not yet.”

Famarial shrank. His shoulders slumped. He looked the image of sorrow. “I understand,” Famarial said. Then he frowned. “Well, I don’t, actually. Are you going to make my people into slaves? You… you asked if I was under a binding contract.”

Actually, I’d simply been planning to kill them all, Xavier thought, but didn’t say.

Xavier had taken a hard line against any invaders who’d come to his world, figuring that just by being here they’d forfeited their life, but he also wasn’t a stranger to compassion. To mercy. In fact, it was what he’d started with. Though this new reality promoted conflict, and he was ready to reap the rewards from the Greater Universe—literally and figuratively—that didn’t mean he wanted to be malicious in his actions. If he could ensure the elves in this compound were not a threat to those of Earth, perhaps it would be better to let them live.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The problem was, if he did let them live, what would he do with them? He definitely wouldn’t be letting them leave. Even if he bound them all with a contract that said they couldn’t say a word, he imagined people on the other side of that portal would grow suspicious if they simply returned through it early.

Something tells me there are ways of gaining information from those who are bound by contracts.

Even if these people couldn’t willingly give up secrets, or even give them up under torture, that didn’t mean someone couldn’t pluck the information straight from their minds if they had the ability to read it.

That would definitely be a skill that would come in handy… perhaps I’ll be able to recruit someone with that ability, or train someone to have it.

But no. He couldn’t let them leave, even if this elf was right and they hadn’t harmed anyone from Earth. It was simply too big of a risk. But he couldn’t let them carry on as they were, with no oversight except for this one elf.

Xavier sat down on the plush couch the elven man had been on. He released a sigh. He needed to think this all through. “Your people. They follow your orders. Why?”

Famarial shrugged. “I pay them. We’re… we’re all a team. They trust me, and I trust them.”

Xavier frowned. “They aren’t under contract?”

Famarial shook his head. “Only a business privacy contract, nothing more.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It would be rather rude to bind one’s employees to a contract for simple jobs such as these.”

Xavier motioned toward the women. “None of these people are bound?” He narrowed his eyes. Though he certainly didn’t like the idea of a slave contract, he was beginning to see how it might be necessary. He didn’t have a way of imprisoning people, and if he decided not to kill someone, to spare their life, but not to let them free… what was he to do?

Still, having these women dote on someone—and who knows what else—because they were contracted to obey? That was absolutely disgusting, and not something he would tolerate. If this man had been responsible for that, Xavier would look for his answers elsewhere.

And he’d have another head to send a message with.

Famarial looked confused. “They are not System-contracted to me. They are my assistants.” He paused. “They are paid handsomely.”

Xavier peered at the elf, unsure if he was lying. He removed his mind control from one of the women. “Is this man telling the truth? I will not harm you for speaking the truth.”

The elven woman, no longer controlled, looked terrified, shaking where she stood. “He’s telling the truth.” She nodded. “We’re here by choice.”

Xavier nodded.

He put his head in his hands. This was all… too morally complex.

Just because they aren’t here to invade, doesn’t mean they aren’t a threat. They’re still stealing things from Earth.

Did he put them all under contract? Then what?

An idea occurred to him. He sat straight. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it. Whether it was strictly… ethical or not, but it seemed like the right choice to make in this situation.

“Do you want to live?” Xavier asked Famarial.

“Of course I want to live.”

“Do you want your people to live?”

“I would—” The elf swallowed. “I would die for them.” He raised his hands. “I’d rather not have to, though.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Xavier said. Famarial visibly relaxed. “Not if I can help it,” Xavier added.

The elf stiffened, nodded sharply.

“But I can’t just let you free.” Xavier tapped a finger on his opposite forearm. “Make a contract with me, one that forces you to only tell me the truth. I am going to ask these questions again. Then, if I like what I hear, I will tell you what’s going to happen.”

As it turned out, Famarial hadn’t told a single lie.

So Xavier moved forward with his idea. He still wasn’t completely sure about it. There were risks to doing something like this. Risks he hadn’t fully explored the consequences of. But he also knew that if he wanted to protect Earth, and not just protect Earth, but make those Denizens on Earth strong enough to protect it themselves while he and the other Champions were off stuck climbing the tower, then he would need as many resources as he could get his hands on.

One thing he was sure he didn’t want to do was contract people—especially those who he considered his enemy—to fight for him. Indentured war slavery wasn’t something that sounded like a good idea to him.

But he could have these people work for him, especially if they wanted to earn their freedom back.

“Five years?” Famarial said, he sounded as though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You’ll let us go in five years?”

Xavier raised his chin. “I think that’s rather fair, considering you were plundering my world.”

Famarial nodded. “It’s more than fair! I, uh, was just surprised by such terms.” He hung his head. “I thought you would make us slaves for the rest of our lives. The world we come from… it requires such things. It’s why we have become scavengers in the first place, to avoid slave-contracts in exchange for power.”

That made Xavier pause. He was about to ask more questions of the elf, about the world he’d come from, but now wasn’t the time. As much as he wished to gain information about the other worlds in this sector from Famarial, he had other pressing matters to attend to.

There would be time for that later.

“I don’t want to make slaves of you at all.” Xavier hadn’t only questioned their leader, he’d questioned the other elves, too. All of them. Though to the other elves, he’d posed only a single question, “Have you killed anyone from Earth?”

They hadn’t harmed a soul.

And now, thanks to Xavier, they would never get the chance.

Famarial prostrated himself on the ground before Xavier, just as Xavier had been hoping the man wouldn’t. “Thank you, my lord! Thank you for your generosity!”

Xavier sighed. “Sit back up, Famarial. And please, don’t call me my lord.”

It only took a few minutes for Xavier to get the terms of the contract to his liking. A contract that would have these elves working for him—for Earth—until the planet opened up to the Greater Universe, with all of its restrictions taken away. Famarial seemed especially grateful for this last part, as Xavier had told him his people could leave twenty-four-hours prior to that deadline.

He figured that by then, any information on Xavier they had wouldn’t really matter.

Five years feels like a long time. I’ve barely been back on Earth for a day, and I’ve already accomplished a lot.

The portal in the basement was to remain open for as long as it was deemed safe. Famarial and his people would continue to remain in this building, and continue to scour the city for abandoned, pre-integration Earth tech.

They would even continue pushing goods through the portal, and selling them off on the wider market.

The only change would be that Famarial would be under a five-year contract of servitude and silence, and all of his people would be contracted to Famarial under the same terms—without Famarial having permission to break their contracts until his own was broken.

This way, Xavier could command Famarial, and the orders would trickle down to the rest of them.

The only difference to the elf’s operation would be the fact that 80 percent of his profits would go directly to Xavier—or whoever Xavier deemed they should go to whenever he wasn’t available.

Do I need to have some sort of treasurer, to deal with all the money matters? Or would the Guardian Golem be able to manage all of that? And will I be able to set up a permanent portal between the compound and my base?

He would have to answer those questions later.

After the contracts were all settled and agreed upon, and the compound of fifteen hundred elves from another world were no longer a threat, Xavier left Famarial to his business.

He would return to the man soon, to obtain those communicators from him, among other things.

If he knows how to get our old tech working, that could really come in handy.

Xavier left the compound feeling a little better about his time in Fronton. He may have let that murderer, Alistair Reed, slip through his fingers, but he’d at least taken down a few invader camps.

And he’d now created a source of income for his people.

I also managed to execute some mercy along the way. I don’t have to solve every single one of my problems with violence.

Violence was the easy way out—he wanted to find other ways.

Now that he’d finished with Famarial, it was finally time to attend to something he’d been putting off.

[Adranial, are you there?] Xavier asked through the Communication Stone.

[Eager, ready, and waiting, Xavier Collins.]

[It’s time I settle our deal, then.]