Nate found both his parents waiting for him in the living room when he stepped through the door of the house. They were talking softly to each other, completely oblivious to his presence.

He eavesdropped for a couple of seconds before clearing his throat. “What’s going on?”

Niall looked over the back of the couch at their son and waved him over. “Just about the meeting I had this morning, and then the phone call we just got finished with.”

“Right.” He had forgotten that his father was meeting with Jace’s parents. “What did they have to say for themselves? Anything useful?”

He shook his head. “No, not like what you’re thinking, at least. They hadn’t heard anything from Jace since yesterday morning when, apparently, he emptied out a bank account they had set up for him and then went after you three. They don’t even know when he hired those four cultivators that were working with him.”

“Do you believe them?”

Niall slowly nodded. “For the most part. I think they know more than what they told us, and that they might even have an idea of where he went, but I don’t think they were directly involved in what he did.” He leaned back and sighed, running a hand across his face. “At least not more than any other terrible parent is responsible for what their kids do. I’m not entirely convinced they were fit to be decent parents in the first place, but it isn’t my place to decide.”

Nate listened as his father recapped the meeting from that morning for him. It was mostly just the parents involved in interrogating Jace’s parents, it seemed. Which was an act in futility, they discovered.

“Sounds like you had a fun morning. At least they agreed to pay to get my core upgraded a couple of times.” That had been a nice bonus that he hadn’t been counting on. “What was that phone call you mentioned earlier? Was it about my first expedition tomorrow?”

His mother nodded. “Angelica and Lindsay are going to be accompanying us on our weekend expedition this time.”

Nate nodded. “I figured that would be the case. I invited them along this morning. The group that they were meant to go out with isn’t available until next week, when they were originally scheduled to create their cores.”

His parents groaned and leaned back on the couch. “Thanks for the attention this will bring to our new company, but you know dealing with people like them isn’t what we’re equipped for, right?”

“I know, and if it makes you feel any better, I doubt they’ll be coming alone. I’m sure both of them will have guards or something.” Nate shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seemed nice to have the only two people I can actually call my friends along with us.”

Twin looks of anger and disappointment were seen on his parents’ faces before they were quickly able to disguise them.

Nate hadn’t always been a loner. He used to have a lot of friends, in fact, some that he would have even considered close, same as most people his age. Then the original attack occurred that crippled him, and everyone had abandoned him. There had been a certain amount of fear that came with hanging out with someone that had been targeted like that.

Even after justice had been somewhat served, they still left him alone. Then he changed schools, and it was too late. Life was like that sometimes; Nate had learned that lesson the hard way in his first life. Few people who proclaimed to be your friend actually were.

He had never believed that to be the case when it came to Angie and Lindsay though. The girls certainly had made his life more interesting and exciting, but he had always believed that they actually wanted to be friends with him. In the warehouse against Jace and the cultivators, they had proven their intentions when they hadn’t run away at the first opportunity.

So, yes, he wanted to foster the friendship he had with both girls and to keep them safe, if at all possible.

True friendships were worth fostering, and he hoped that was what they would become.

“Have either of you spoken with George?” He asked suddenly, remembering why Angie had approached him in the first place. “I’m actually rather surprised that he didn’t stop by last night to check us all over.”

His parents groaned. “I don’t know if anyone ever reached out to him. He is a guild master. No matter how close the Chrightons are to him, he must be a busy individual.”

Nate pulled out his phone and sent off a quick text, along with an apology. “Let’s hope he isn’t too mad at us for forgetting about him.” He picked up his bag and stretched. “I’m going to finish the rest of my homework so I can be ready for this weekend. I’ll talk to you more over dinner.”

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His phone dinged and vibrated with an incoming message before he could leave the room. “It looks like George will be here for dinner as well.”

He waved to them and hurried upstairs, anxious to get back to working on the dungeon. Homework could wait, getting that second floor into proper working order, however, no longer could.

All day long, one monster after another had poured into the first floor of the dungeon. The traps that he and the Dungeon Core had worked so hard to perfect had been keeping them at bay. Still, whatever limiter had been preventing the beasts from coming through in large numbers before had been shoved aside.

Whether that was because they were now aware something was wrong or creating a floor on their world had changed the rules, he didn’t know. All that mattered was something had changed.

The dungeon wasn’t quite being swarmed. They were beasts, not insects, but it wasn’t far off either. The only truly beneficial thing that had arisen from the mess was the barrier. It was an energy shield of some sort that had appeared as the dungeon continued to absorb ever more energy and other materials.

The barrier was what had been keeping the more powerful beasts and other monsters at bay. While their presence pressed against it, causing a drain, the continual flow of weaker monsters kept making it ever stronger.

That did mean, however, that Nate would need to be careful in how much energy he spent constructing the new traps. It was a definite downside considering everything he did used a lot of energy. At least he wouldn’t need to worry about any of the other resources. At this point, the dungeon had gained them all in excess.

There were only a few times that he had ever needed to pay attention to the other resources because of how basic he kept most of the traps. Considering the amount of them that he was going to need to create though, it was better to have more than not enough.

Settling onto his bed, Nate pulled out his laptop and notebook and opened all of the dungeon screens. He would need as much screen real estate if he was going to do this while wasting as little time as possible.

He ignored the beasts that had made their way to the first floor and continued on. The traps that were already in place there were managing to take care of them for the moment. It wasn’t a long-term solution by any means, but they were fine for now.

Opening the trap menu, he viewed the wide-open space around the portal. Sucking some air through his front teeth, he decided to see what the limits of this floor truly were.

Walls burst into being around the portal, creating a small room with a single opening. He didn’t bother putting a door or anything on it just yet. He had something else in mind that he wanted to do first. Doors could come later.

The area immediately around the newly created room sank into the ground, creating a pit several meters deep. It was wide enough that none of the beasts would hopefully be able to jump across the space. Just in case though, the thing he did was fill it with bubbling acid.

When he put the acid in and created the moat, he was also forced to create a bridge. The beasts needed a way across to the portal. It worked along the same methodology that prevented him from putting traps in the portal room on the first floor. Of course, that didn’t mean he had to make the bridge particularly wide or sturdy.

In an instant, the number of beasts getting through to the first floor was cut by four-fifths. The limited room available simply wouldn’t allow for more than that to pass through at a time.

It was an amount that the Dungeon Core could handle without being completely overwhelmed. Unless another of those shadow monsters came through that were stronger and faster than the others.

Nate shook his head and cracked his neck. A quick glance at the resource counter told him he still had plenty of everything to go around. Creating the moat had been expensive for everything but energy.

This was only the first step. He needed to go through the traps the Dungeon Core had already put in place and create more. Then he needed to separate the wide-open space into rooms. The beasts had too many advantages in large spaces, like the one that currently existed.

The Dungeon Core might be at level 2, whatever that even meant, but it didn’t seem to be making the most intelligent of choices. Not that he could really blame it, neither was he. It had taken him some time to learn as much as he had, and he was still learning. He had just held higher hopes for something with a name like that.

Each area near the moat had a slide introduced to it that would send the beasts careening down into the acid. The foolishly curious ones met their mortal fates soon after.

That was the easiest trap to put in place. The rest were either arrows or spear traps that were already being mostly avoided.

After seeing that, he decided to take this step by step instead of concentrating on just one thing at a time.

To make the most of this open space, Nate was going to need to create rooms and the traps for them at the same time. It wasn’t how he had wanted to do it, but it was probably better for the long term.

Pulling his notebook close, he began to review how he had designed the first floor. At the same time, a light sketch of the new floor began to appear on one of the pages. There were no traps in it at this point, just a general layout.

The best way to go about creating the rooms, with the beasts already inside the dungeon, was to start from the portal and work back.

He wanted to keep each of the corridors small and the rooms numerous. For the moment, he was even forgoing the use of any labyrinth setup like he had on the first floor. He had decided that initially, the best way to get everything running on this one was to just use a lot of trapped rooms.

Nate still held on to the belief that he shouldn’t trap the corridors between the rooms. There needed to be a break between everything. He could make that break as short as possible, which is what he was going to be doing on this floor.

Each hallway was going to be a barely there affair, and then there would be another room with traps. With all of that decided, he turned back to the dungeon and began working.

Using the menus to construct a room only took a minute of time. A short time later, the bridge had been blocked off from the front. It could still be reached from the sides if something wanted to take a leap of faith over the moat. That was also assuming they could avoid the slides into the acid.

He was rather proud of the setup, considering how quickly he had come up with it.