“…and so we want to support you unconditionally. I have no intention of challenging you for leadership of the territory,” said the man with a charming smile.

Ray stared at him as Nyx spoke, “Lie. The last part. The first part is truth, he does want to support you unconditionally, at least until he can usurp you. Another Kevin in the making.” She reported.

Ray and Nyx had discussed the use of his power and tried several experiments. It turned out that he could, indeed, give someone additional abilities. The problem was that they were horrendously expensive. The two quickly found out, however, that the cost changed depending on the type of ability and the pros and cons to using it. Ray eventually found a way to give Nyx a basic truth-detecting ability for only twenty-eight power. Granted it was extremely constrained in its use, which reduced the cost so much.

Nyx had to be within ten feet of him to use the ability. The ability allowed her to discern the truth of a statement or if it was a lie, but she could not read minds. On top of that, she could only use it for three hours a day, at most, before the ability would stop working until the reset at midnight. Overall, they considered the experiment a success, and if there were ever any issues Ray was sure he could alter it in the future as well.

Bringing his thoughts back into the present, he eyed the slick looking man who was now nervously tapping his foot. “Yeah, want to rethink that? You can either become a part of the community and help us all working towards survival or you can fuck right off and take your chances with the roaming hordes of undead and monsters outside of my territory.”

The man slumped, “Look can you blame us? We used to hold-“ he began, but Ray cut him off.

“Yes. I can blame you. Every action you fucks take that causes me to use resources or people to fix makes us weaker. We are already stretched razor-thin across the territory. If we get weaker, if we spend strength fighting ourselves internally, then we will fucking die. And I don’t want to die. Do you?” Ray explained harshly, pointing an accusatory finger at the men.

“No?” he said, very quietly.

“I didn’t fucking think so. Something you nitwits need to get is that the System tied the territory to me. It's not something a rebellion can just take away!” he said, exasperated. “If I die you lose everything here, and I literally mean everything. According to everything that I have found out, all the territory improvements go inert. This means you morons would have to clear every building, kill every monster, slay every undead, and reclaim the territory using a Territory Beacon from the shop… which wouldn’t work here anymore. Do you get it now?”

The man's eyes were wide. “We would literally be killing ourselves, wouldn’t we?” he whispered.

“Yeah. Yeah, you would be,” Ray confirmed. “Now. Are you in or out?”

The man straightened his shoulders and looked at Ray seriously. “In. I… didn’t realize that things worked that way. I will get the rest of our group straightened out and in line. You can count on us going forward.”

“Truth,” Nyx confirmed from next to him.

“Good. Now, get going. I have a lot to get done today and I’m already behind,” Ray said, causing the man to get up and scamper out of his office.

Ray sighed and rubbed his eyes. The whole politicking thing was not for him. He would much rather be out here killing monsters, making things, and exploring this new world. He had much better things to be doing. Aside from all the projects he had, people just wouldn’t stop coming to him with their problems. And he still had to find the time and Power to conduct his own experiments.

That and finding his friends.

Standing up suddenly, he startled Nyx. “What Ray? Is something wrong?”

“Yeah. I’ve had enough of this shit. I need Power and time. Since I cant get more time it's time to get more Power,” he said.

He stepped out of his fifth-floor office overlooking the rapidly clearing inner section of the fortress his territory had become. Derrick and the engineers had conducted controlled demolitions of the buildings around them, sorting them into raw material piles with the help of the immensely strong Orkin. Their goal was to stage material piles around the edge of the hex to significantly lower the cost for Ray to create the walls. Doing it this way dropped a wall segment from a hundred points to twenty. This would decrease the amount of time it took to fully fortify the hex significantly along with letting Ray keep as much Power as he could available for other things.

With Nyx in tow, he headed down to the second floor where the shop was located. There, Talla was busy talking to a line of people queued up. It looks like more than just he had business there, although it was interesting to see that others had the NEX to spend. People could make NEX by killing creatures, selling goods and items, or selling their time and skills. Outside of that, there weren’t really a whole lot of ways to generate the currency.

Passing the shop he gave a quick wave to Talla, who waved cheerfully back, before heading towards the back portion of the floor. A whole section, an entire floor worth in old building terms, had been set aside as his laboratory and playground. It was here that he did most of his experimenting with Power. In addition to his own area, Derrick, Rivea, and a few others had sections set up. But he was the only one that was under active guard.

Nodding at the two Orkin warriors standing guard, and the secretary that Derrick had found him who was sitting at a desk just outside a mundane seeming door, he headed inside. Nyx was hot on his heels, staying silent and watching her contracted human.

The interior of his lab was sparsely furnished, with a half dozen tables of raw materials, a desk with notebooks, and a smaller table with rare reagents that he had plans for. One of those was the Mana Crystal that they had salvaged.

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Dismissing that for now, he went to the table holding the steel and copper that Derrick had gotten him. Picking up a piece of the metal he focused on it. He examined every faucet, side, and part of it. He felt it, the cold material was dense and heavy in his hands. Then he set it back down. Stepping back, he focused on the materials on the table in front of him and mentally activated {MODIFY II}.

The metal melted slowly at first, then more rapidly as Ray expended the Power he had set aside for the experiment. Once the steel and copper wire were liquid on the table, they slowly rose into the air and formed a large one-meter squared cube. The copper rose first, forming the frame of the cube. The steel then rose over it, covering the frame and filling in the gaps.

Ray began sweating and breathing hard, but he didn’t lose focus. He felt a wetness on his face, however he didn’t let his concentration wane until the last of the steel had flowed into place and solidified. Then he let out a massive breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding and staggered to one side, dropping to a knee.

Nyx rushed over to his side, “Ray are you ok? You have blood all over your face!”

He lifted a weary hand and touched his face, realizing that the capillaries in his nose must have burst sending a curtain of blood down his face and onto the floor.

“I’m… okay I think. That just took a lot out of me. I don’t think I can do that again without really hurting myself, not until I’m a lot stronger,” he said slowly, his voice dry and cracked. He tabbed open his stats to look at his Power. It showed that he had two points left.

That scared him.

Turning to Nyx he asked, “What do you think happens if you use all your Power? Can you go negative? I used it all. Everything but two points.”

“I imagine you might die,” she reasoned slowly after thinking it over for a moment. “I… would not do that again until you have much more energy to utilize. I think you came perilously close to, what was it that they say? Fucking around and finding out?”

He chuckled dryly, standing up. “It's fuck around and find out,” he corrected as his canine friend chuffed in response. “Now, let's see what we’ve made here.” He focused on the cube as its information came up:

{ENHANCED POWER CUBE}

STORES EXCESS POWER FOR LATER USE

CAN BE POWERED BY ANY ONE

STORAGE 0 / 150

ATTUNEMENT: NONE

“Ah, I think I know why it was so damn expensive,” Ray muttered, relaying what the information he saw about the item.

Nyx barked in surprise. “That’s astonishing. Really. The fact that it was increased by twenty-five times over your previous attempt. I wonder if the material had anything to do with that?” she pondered.

Ray shrugged, “Possibly? I plan on making a couple of smaller ones to find out. I figure I can make a couple from various materials and see if it affects anything. I’m also curious as to what Attunement may mean.”

He reached out and touched the cube. When nothing happened, he probed it more deeply by spending a point of Power to examine it more closely. The moment he did the Enhanced Power Cube flashed once, bright blue, illuminating everything and blinding him completely. With a yell he fell backwards, prompting the Orkin outside to burst in.

“Everting okay Boss?” he growled out, searching the room for threats.

Ray waved his concern away, “Yeah! I’m ok. Could you do me a favor and go grab Derrick for me?” he asked, rubbing the spots from his eyes.”

“Yeah Boss,” the large green man grunted, closing the door behind him. It was good to have good help.

Ray and Nyx discussed the cube and its properties. He had her try and imbue it with her Power, but the cube didn’t accept it at all. He theorized that it was because of the kind of being that was attempting to make a ‘donation’. Nyx was a summoned creature and tied closely to Ray and his power. It was more than possible that the {SOUL COMPANION} simply couldn’t donate by virtue of being a summon.

Derrick came into the room as they chatted about the concept of Power donation. Closing the door behind him, he froze when he saw the much larger cube on the desk.

“Is that… what I think it is?” he asked cautiously, making his way over. “Woah, it is! That’s another Power Cube!”

“Enhanced Power Cube, actually,” Ray said with a bit of pride. “I’m,’ just going to call them PC’s and EPC’s. More acronyms to come, because it's ridiculous to say that every time.”

The engineer shrugged, “Fair enough. But seriously, I didn’t think you were going to make another one so soon. What prompted you to try again so quickly?”

“Lack of Power,” he explained simply. “This one can have others donate to it. In fact, I plan on having anyone who has spare Power at the end of the day donate to this one. If I have a big ass battery to pull from I can get a ton of wall segments and other projects done. If I can figure out how to make them more efficient and make them smaller, I can produce them like batteries and sell them for shitloads on the market. If Argyle was any measure of accuracy, the one there should be worth one point five million NEX.”

Derrick nodded, “The entirety of the wall for the territory would cost twelve million to buy through the System. We could be done in… a week? Tops?” he muttered, doing the math quickly in his head. “And we could afford better weapons, tools, and god knows what else!”

“I need this one for now. Finding a smaller, optimized size and shape is a better deal than selling this one outright. Can I get you to look through the System Shop and find some materials for me? Any mineral you think may hold the energy better. Hell, I wouldn’t even mind trying to make batteries out of other things, like bone or powdered reagents.”

Derrick nodded as he thought about it. “Ok, yeah. We can do that. We have about twenty thousand left after the sale of the other cube to that demon guy. We need to get food production going fairly quickly too. Stuff we need to discuss. Today. With the council.”

“… right. I pretty much forgot about that,” Ray said, wincing. He hadn’t realized they had burned through so much NEX so quickly. Even a few hundred people took a ton of resources to feed, clothe, and house. Not to mention all their territory upgrades for defense.

“Shit, I’m sorry Derrick. I… I had no idea that we were so short on cash,” Ray apologized.

The engineer eyed his friend critically. “You have to be more aware Ray. You’re the Boss here, remember? You have to make these decisions. We have a very, very basic structure for leadership right now. But there isn’t anyone who can assign budges and NEX but you. We need a much more thorough structure for this kind of thing, a government really, but we don’t have the qualified or trustworthy people for it. Honestly, we need to recruit. Something else that we can do through the Shop and Talla, but that only you can actually do. We can just advise you at this point.”

Ray nodded, getting serious. “Let’s go right now. Get everyone together for a discussion. If we absolutely have to we can sell the cube to Argyle and his company to get the cash we need. Actually, scratch that. Maybe we can set up a short-term contact for a few smaller cubes in return for some immediate NEX?”

“That’s a great idea!” Derrick said, flashing a grin. “I know nothing about business, but that sounds like something that we should have thought of immediately the last time he was here. We should go ask Talla right now!”

The engineer grinned a bit wider, “But there’s something we need to do first Ray, and it’s a tad more important than getting down to the Shop immediately.”

“Yeah, what’s that?” Ray responded, quirking an eyebrow.

“You need to clean up all that blood. It looks like you killed someone,” his friend said, his grin widening.

Ray signed and touched his face, his fingers coming back red with wet blood. “Fuck.”