Getting Sarah's last level was easy enough and didn't end up taking that long. The monsters on the first floor were still low-level enough for her to defeat, even if she thought her class was weak. She had been trying to hunt creatures far higher level than her and concluded that she was weak rather than the level gap was too much.

Her bow skill was enough to breeze by most of the first floor by herself even without my interference. She managed to get her last level mostly alone, with me having to step in only once when there was a group of monsters she couldn't take down alone.

After hitting level 10, Sarah jumped with joy before I ushered her along to find Hal and get her the last skill. I was thinking a bond skill would be best but we would ask Hal first before we went through with anything.

Even if he didn't look into those skills much, I knew Kyle would have talked his ear off about them and Hal probably had some residual knowledge kicking around in his head.

And it was a good thing too, because he pointed us in a completely different direction than I had originally planned.

"[Bond] and [Companion] skills are good but I don't think that's the direction you want to go in. You're trying to make her into Kathy, right?" Hal asked.

"Yes,"

"Then I think taking [Soothe] is a better option. It builds up to [Tame] skills and is a better path toward Beastmaster. Bond and Companion skills could still lead to hundreds of different classes but [Soothe] puts her on a direct path toward Beastmaster." He explained.

[Soothe] worked to calm wild animals and made the taming process quicker and easier. It led directly into [Tame] skills and increased their effectiveness. The reason I hadn't considered it was because it didn't directly do anything for taming. By itself, it only calmed whatever you wanted [Soothed]. It could work on humans to a lesser degree but any kind of mental defense was enough to brush off the weak skill. It wasn't meant for mind control.

What he said made sense and made me wonder what skill Kathy took to get where she did. It would have made things so much easier if she had just told us.

I felt Hal's idea held more weight than my original plan and had Sarah take what he had said.

[Soothe] didn't seem to do much on its own but I trusted it would get us where we wanted to go. There wasn't a restriction when ranking up to G-rank so Sarah could have gone ahead and done it but that would have killed the plan in its infancy.

We would take a few days to get her used to the skill and some experience using it before we even considered ranking up. None of us were sure if the offered list of 5 could change or not yet.

Every time someone ranked up, they chose one of the offered five. When we asked, no one in the caravan had delayed after seeing the list either.

It should be possible but we didn't know for sure. Why would you be allowed to delay the choice if the options couldn't change? That seemed counterintuitive for that to be an option if that was the case.

While Sarah spent a few days practicing [Soothe] on wild animals, the rest of us began to pack up. We ended up spending a week at the dungeon and everyone got more than enough time to run through it.

Our crafters were especially happy with all the different materials coming out of the dungeon. They were gluttons for choice when making things now rather than the other way around.

One thing I hadn't realized when the material started coming out, was the crafts that couldn't be made from them.

Most in our company already had weapons and armor from the tutorial but some didn't, or they were in need of replacing, but some things weren't able to be made.

Anything metal was fine, swords, spears, even great swords, were being sharpened and polished for use, the dungeon had given plenty of the stuff for crafts, but leather was harder.

The squares the dungeon offered were a few feet wide and tall, which only covered the front of my torso before the material ran out. To make a full chest piece or leggings it would take multiple of the squares sewn together.

While that didn't sound like a problem, and we were pulling a decent amount of leather out of the dungeon, the problem was the leather was all different.

Every square came from a different animal, had a different affinity, different toughness and durability. It was hard enough to find enough of the same affinity to use, let alone the same animal.

The variation made making anything large difficult. There wasn't enough of the same leather to combine together into something useful. Wearing the lesser gear we had now was better than the mish-mash the crafters could put together with the pieces we had.

If we had stayed longer, that wouldn't have been a problem. We would have continued to pull out material and matching pieces would come around, but none of us knew how long that would take and I wasn't willing to stay to find out. The pieces got bigger depending on the floor they were pulled out on but that was still too little for complete pieces.

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It was easier to wait until we found the material elsewhere.

After a week of staying in the same spot, we were on the road again. Well, it wasn't a road but the sentiment was the same.

The strengthened carts held up better to travel and we were able to make it further than before and keep a faster pace. The added levels everyone had also helped.

People had more strength and pulling the carts was easier than before. The added weight of the new materials offset that somewhat but we were faster overall.

One thing I hadn't anticipated about our stop was I had to come up with a policy regarding money. Most had gotten at least a coin or two inside the dungeon and they were unsure if they were able to keep it.

Our caravan was made up of people from multiple different tutorials but leaders like Tracy were common in most. People who took control of everything that came into people's possession.

People were talking about it and we needed to come up with our policy regarding it. It was something I hadn't thought of yet as I expected to have more time.

I tossed the problem around within our council but we weren't able to come to a consensus.

Speaking of our council, it had grown since our return. Or stayed the same size based on how you looked at it.

In the tutorial, it consisted of Me, Austin, Abigail, Hal, Sam, and my father. The 6 of us worked out ideas and plans for what we were going to do.

That number was cut down to 5 when the tutorial ended but my mother was added after our return, bringing us back to 6.

I offered it to Gabriel but he didn't want to be a part of it. He felt it was a waste of time and didn't care either way.

Some of the 6 wanted to keep the same ratio as before when we were earning points rather than coins, a 50-50 split. Others wanted more, some less, but no plan had a majority to it.

I was thinking farther ahead into the future with it and wanted to make it the same as what our tax rate on dungeons would be after we created the city. It would set it now so we wouldn't have to change it after we arrived.

Knowing that we weren't just setting a temporary rate for the caravan, but the future rate made the discussion more adamant rather than less.

"50% seems fair to me. We give them shelter and security while they still get to keep half of what they make. Anything less is not enough!"

"Where in the world had a 50% tax rate!? That's straight extortion at that point. No one will want to live in a city that takes half what they make."

"What then? 10%? That's certainly not enough!"

It was a balancing act where everyone fell on different parts of the line. Thinking of all the things this decision would affect only made it harder.

If we set it too high, no one would want to live in my city. Too low, and we wouldn't have enough money to run the city.

"How 'bout an even quarter? 25% seems like a good compromise."

"That still seems high to me though,"

We had been going around in circles trying to come up with a rate and it was beginning to give me a headache.

This would be so much easier if we knew what other cities were doing.

If we knew what others did we would be able to go based on theirs, but we didn't and it made coming up with one all that much harder.

"Why don't we think about it differently," I broke into the conversation, "How much would you be willing to give up as you leave a dungeon? Say you live in a city and you delve into the dungeon for a living and as you exit you have to give up an amount. How much of what you earned would you be okay with giving up and continue to live there?"

Everyone quieted to contemplate their answer while I did the same.

If my livelihood depended on making money through clearing dungeons, how much would I be alright with giving up?

My immediate answer was zero but that was unfeasible. If someone owned the dungeon they would want something out of letting me into it.

My next answer was as low as possible but that didn't help either. I was the dungeon owner in this scenario and as low as possible wasn't an actual rate.

One in ten?

One in five?

Giving up one coin in ten didn't sound too bad. It didn't give the same knee-jerk reaction as one in two. One in five was pushing it for me personally, but it might be doable if it was a particularly good dungeon.

Like one that gave out expensive loot as a reward.

The fact my feeling was conditional based on the dungeon made everything harder.

"Anything higher than 33% is pushing it for me," Hal started the conversation again.

"Yeah, I was thinking closer to what Sam said before, 25%" Austin mentioned.

Abigail seemed pained to admit it but chimed in saying 20%. She was the one pushing for the higher percentage but I had a feeling it was because she was the one using it.

She knew how hard it was going to be to run the city and wanted as much cushion as possible, even if 50% was entirely too much.

Both Sam and my Mother came in at the lower end, one said 10% while the other 15%. Sam drastically lowered her position after thinking about what she would be willing to give up.

It was funny to see how it gradually got lower but that still didn't help us decide.

"It seems like the average is around 20%. I say we start there as a base and adjust it accordingly. Things may change that rate but One in Five seems like a good starting point." I concluded to everyone's nod.

"While that sounds fine for dungeon tax, what about a city tax?" Sam brought up, "People choose whether or not to go into a dungeon, but what about the people just trying to make a living elsewhere, like farmers or crafters?"

Ah, geez. That was going to make this conversation way longer than I wanted it to be.

"We can figure that out later. We are still months away from even reaching the place we are going to build and that doesn't need to be decided now. Plus, we will get to see what others do while we travel and we can get a baseline based on that." I said.

Everyone was alright with that answer and seemed fine shelving that for later.

The next step was to announce it to the caravan. People grumbled and badgered but ultimately seemed okay with what we had come up with.

It helped we were only taxing the coins right now as the material was needed by everybody. Equipping everyone in decent gear was what came first and we could decide on a sales tax after everyone was at least geared.

Plus, we weren't really in a state we could do that. Everyone was helping everyone right now and that wasn't something we could afford to break up.

We could maintain what we were doing for a while and it would only cause problems when our population grew too large and we would change things by then.

Technically, it was my first official headache as a leader and I thought it went over alright but it didn't leave me feeling good inside as I laid in bed that night.

All I could think of was the future issues that would pop up and we only made it through one today. Just thinking of all the things we would need to decide made me shudder.

It was times like these when I questioned my decision to make a city.

No, Christopher. Think of the castle.