Duke arrived in the Inn section of the Lake Front Dungeon only to discover that it was much more crowded than it had been over the past weeks. There were Legionnaires in groups at many tables eating, drinking, and generally having a good time. He decided to quickly slip up to his room and not interrupt them.

“Sam, I have questions.” He didn’t direct the question anywhere in particular, knowing Sam could hear him regardless.

“What sort of questions?”

“I need a rather specific item created, perhaps as a dungeon reward.”

“Sure, I can do that but if it’s something truly special, the challenge will have to meet or exceed the prize. Is this for one of your Legionnaires? I am really happy to have them back in the dungeon by the way. They attack challenges with such zeal, it’s fun to watch and they are getting strong enough that I can give them more and more training levels. They’re sticking around here for a while this time, right?”

“I hope they will be here for a while, so keep them challenged. What I need is an item that can carry communication across a dungeon’s dimensional barrier.”

“That’s a tall order. Something like that is not part of any dungeon’s normal range of items. It requires a rather special set of requirements. I could make something like that, but it would have to be the prize for a particularly difficult level, one that you wouldn’t be allowed to complete and receive here.”

“So, I’m shit out of luck then.”

“Not necessarily. It could be the prize for another dungeon. Once of my offspring, perhaps. I could develop the item and show one of them how it is made. But it will have to be difficult to reach. The challenge for one of them would have to be the peak of what they can throw at you and you would have to complete the dungeon without using your DUNGEON MANIPULATION Ability.”

Duke thought about it for a few seconds before answering. “Set it up. I’ll get the group ready for it.”

Sam nodded and faded away but was replaced by the Overmind’s Avatar. “Hello again, Duke.”

“Overmind. Are you here to tell me to not pursue this course of action?”

“If you ask me, I’d tell you to TELEPORT into their court, throw the head on the floor and kill them all while they are still in shock. But you don’t follow my advice all that well.”

“Maybe because I have a conscience. I’m not going to just go out and kill people at random.”

“These are the leaders of a nation that is hostile to you. Killing them wouldn’t be random. All your current plan will do is give them a chance to build up power to challenge your kingdom down the road. Of course, if you take my original advice and walk away from the whole running a kingdom thing, that wouldn’t matter anyway. Is that what you are doing? Setting up the war so that you can wipe out your neighbor’s army, gain power from it, and hand the kingdom off to someone else? I like that plan.”

“No, I’m going to let them tear each other apart so we can forget about worrying about them for a while and build up our own kingdom.”

“Fine, fine. Do it your way. But I do have a serious question for you. Why haven’t you planted the rest of the dungeon seeds? You know the cores only have a limited viability before they begin to degrade.”

“I have been busy but it’s on my list.”

“Move it up your list. Sam has more cores budding right now. By the time you get to his chamber, you’ll have ten cores to plant and since Sam is sticking to this Inn Archetype you need to find roads or even cities to plant them in. This is your true path to power. Do not delay or neglect it.”

With that statement, the Overmind’s avatar vanished leaving Duke alone with his thoughts.

I get what he is saying about more rapid paths to power but that would go so far against my moral code that it would change me in ways that I do not want to see. But planting dungeons, I like doing that even though it leaves me with so many more questions. How do I make sure that they are well-defended? Is there a tipping point where I gain more power per dungeon. The Overmind hinted at that – somehow upgrading my Title. That might be it.

Duke decided to stop by Sam’s core room and pick up the new cores. They were fully budded, and Duke was quite familiar with the process now, snatching them all up and placing them into the special bag he carried them all in. He placed them in specific pockets so that Duke could keep track of which ones were the oldest and didn’t accidentally hold one for too long. He did not stick around to chit chat.

A quick TELEPORT later, he was flying above the area, following the road from Cloudspire that headed north in the general direction of the Ansky Empire. There was a significant amount of unclaimed land between the kingdoms that was full of monsters, mountains, and the occasional bandit group. He liked that there was a buffer between his kingdom and another empire. He had enough to worry about on his western border with the Kingdom of Pahst. A lot was hinging on his plan to destabilize his kingdom’s neighbor working as planned.

It was not long before Duke landed in a well secluded mountain pass. There were the remains of what had once may have been a cabin. If Duke didn’t have a dungeon seed to plant, he would have been tempted to RESTORE the cabin. Instead, he planted a dungeon seed and waited for it to sprout up into an Inn.

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The process was as quick as usual, this one having the look of a large log cabin lodge. Duke rather liked the look of this one as it aligned with his former retirement dream to have a log cabin on a mountain, far away from society’s idiots. When the building finished and the sign formed, Duke headed in to check it out.

“Welcome to the Twilight Mountain Inn. What can I get for you, Emperor?”

Duke paused at the title but smiled and responded. “Please call me Duke. What’s your name?”

This was the first minotaur dungeon innkeeper that was not white furred. This one’s fur had a definite crimson tint to it and almost resembled blood. “You can call me Xander.”

“Well, hello, Xander. Do you have some scotch available?”

“Of course.” He poured Duke a short glass of scotch with a smile, apparently already knowing Duke’s tastes. Duke found it to be just as tasty as he had expected.

“Thanks. This is great.” He looked around and found the dungeon entrance. It was as clearly marked as the others had been. “What sort of dungeon do you have set up in there?”

“Traps, puzzles, and shapeshifters.”

“Shapeshifters? Doppelgangers or lycanthropes?”

“More along the line of doppelgangers than lycanthropes. Some really nasty mimics in the middle of trapped areas at the deeper levels. My favorite is one where there’s a shaky walkway suspended over a deep pit that is about twenty meters wide. Not too many could jump over the pit but there are other ways to cross it besides the walkway. But most will take the walkway anyway. The mimic will wait until you are halfway across before revealing itself.”

“That’s insidious. Try not to kill all the travelers that come through here, eh?”

“That’s at one of the deeper levels like I said. Most can run the first few levels and pass by the puzzles and traps with some effort. They can backtrack and leave at any time so it’s a bit more forgiving than most. And it also allows me to set up a supply shop over here.”

Duke watched as a section of the Inn folded back to reveal what looked like a well-stocked mountain wilderness supply shop. A smaller minotaur with blue fur smiled at Duke. “Welcome to my shop. You can call me Jay. Can I interest you in some healing rations?”

“Healing rations?” Duke asked intrigued.

“Yes, they are special rations that heal your body as you eat. Much better tasting and far more satisfying than sticky potions.”

“Clever. I have no real use for them myself, but I think I’ll take some anyway.” Fifteen hundred gold later, Duke had enough healing rations to give out as snacks to his team. “Thank you both. Keep the Inn safe and reach out through the network if you are ever in trouble.”

Duke’s departure quickly followed. He returned to Cloudspire and started down the southern road towards the Kingdom of Tannish. He had not been through this part of his own kingdom and was pleased to discover that there was an extensive community of farms and small villages along the road. He decided to stop by one of the larger villages along the way and check it out. Activating his LASTING DISGUISE, he TELEPORTED behind a copse of trees and made his way to the road.

As he walked along the road, he noticed that it was well-maintained crushed rock. He had no idea who maintained infrastructure like this, and he now had the thought that he needed to know. He had a suspicion that he was going to need to appoint someone and put a bunch of resources towards it.

His thoughts were interrupted by a trio of figures stepping out onto the road before him, having used a faded red barn to conceal themselves. All three were armed, the one in the middle had a crossbow pointed at Duke. “That’s far enough, strangah.”

Duke made the snap decision to see where this was going before acting. His instinct was just to kill the three bandits and move on but something about their postures didn’t sit right.

“Far enough for what? What do you want?” Duke played dumb.

“We don’t want no more ‘fected comin inta our village. Go back north where y’all live and be leavin’ us alone.”

“Fected? What the hell are you talking about?”

“The half living. The dead that walks. We want no more o’ that ‘round.”

“I killed the whole army of the undead. Are you saying that there’s more around here somewhere? When’s the last time you saw any?”

Looks passed between the three before one finally responded. “month back.”

Duke chuckled. “Then you can relax. The undead are gone. I’ll be on my way now and be careful who you point that thing at. Point it at the wrong person and you’re in for a world of hurt.”

The puzzled looks from the three individuals made Duke continue to chuckle. That is, until the trigger on the crossbow was pulled. The bolt was launched at about half the speed it should have, showing the poor maintenance of the weapon. Slow enough, in fact, for Duke’s 1,000 points in Agility to give him the time to grab the bolt out of the air.

Duke’s chuckle drew into a broad smile as he handed the bolt back to the man with the crossbow. “You dropped this. Now, I’m going to be on my way into the village.”

They stared at him, dumbfounded as he passed by, whistling a tune from his past. There was a moment of tension where they considered chasing after him, but even they had enough sense to leave him alone and go back to their “patrol.”

“Jeffin, did yous sees that? Took th’arrow right out da air.”

“Shuts up you.”

The argument faded into the background as Duke entered the village proper. He noted that the road bisected the village and it quickly became clear that the villagers were having some difficulties. An argument was in full force when he arrived at the center of the place. Not that there was much to the village, perhaps 45 buildings in total with the worn façade of the general store being the most prominent and indeed center-stage for the current argument. Duke was thankful that his XENOGLOSSIA had finally gotten through the awful accent, and he could hear them clearly.

“But where else can we sell our crops if you won’t take them?”

“I’m sorry, Helms, I don’t have the storage room or the coin to buy all the crops this year. The harvest has just been too good and too quick. The crops shouldn’t have been ready for months!”

“But they are ready, and we need to replant for the next crops. Can’t you pay us in trade?”

“What do I have left to trade? You all have bought everything with your bounty, and I’m left with storerooms overflowing with crops that I might not even be able to trade. I have done the best I can for us all, but I am at my limit.”

Duke decided to step in as he realized that this quite literally was his fault. “I’ll buy the crops.”

Heads snapped towards him as he approached the crowd. “You’ll buy the crops?”

“That’s what I said. What do you have on offer and what price would you say is fair for such crops out of season?”

For the next few minutes, Duke was inundated with farmers trying to sell him everything they could as well as the lone merchant in the village. When he was done, he was seven hundred twenty-five gold poorer but had secured the majority of the crops from the entire village in his INVENTORY. That trick had stumped them all but to the farmers, having gold in hand was worth the price of not asking questions.

“Pleasure doing business with you all.” Duke quickly made his way out of the village noting that even with all the crops he had bought, his INVENTORY still had plenty of open space. With over three hundred thousand cubic meters of space available, the space inside his INVENTORY was immense, only growing as the Ability continued to level up.

Duke continued down the road, taking flight once he was out of sight smiling as his travels continued.