Corey: Dave, whatever you did, I now have access to an attribute menu, and I have five points available to spend in several categories.

Dave: Good, I was hoping that would happen. What categories do you have?

Corey: Generalized Mechanosensory, Visual, Auditory, Manareception, Corereception, and Soulreception.

Dave: Okay, what did they each start at?

Corey: The first three started at 1. The second three started at 3.

Dave: Interesting. I’m guessing they’re terms for sensing those energy types, and we know you can do that already, so that would make sense. I wonder how your auditory and visual senses work. I know you likely can’t explain it, but it’s an interesting thought experiment. We should ask Elody what she knows about core senses when there’s some time.

Corey: What should I do with the five points?

Dave: I can’t tell you that. This is your advancement. You get to make your own choices as to how you do that, and we’ll find a way to work together however you choose to advance.

Corey: I think I would like to be able to sense mana pools better. This may allow me to better understand yours, as well as sense our enemies' pools in the future. I can see a large tactical advantage in investing there.

Dave: As long as that’s what you want to do, not just what you feel you have to do, go for it.

Corey: I will. Thank you, Dave.

Dave: How’d it go?

Corey: At the moment I can only sense your own mana, but I assume that is because I am within your System storage. One moment.

Corey: Yes, after leaving and entering the garage with the others, I can now sense all your mana pools. Sanquar’s seems quite strange, though.

Dave: Yes, it’s because I believe it was damaged. Alright, well, I’m glad this worked, feel free to explore the bounds of it. I’m going to talk to some people about some other information I want.

Corey: Understood.

“Good news, Corey can now level up. They can’t act fully independent of me yet, but they’re capable of gaining their own levels and attribute points when I invest in the linked class abilities,” I said to the three men in the garage as Corey floated out the open door.

“Let’s add that to the list of shit ya don’t tell people. To be clear, I don’t actually know if it’s a problem, but everyone who uses dungeon cores keeps a tight lid on how they’re doing it,” Mel said. I wasn’t surprised about that. With what he had told me about the general public’s reaction to dungeon cores, it made sense that it was best to limit letting others know of your own connections to them.

“Yeah, I figured you might say that. So, I’m down eleven levels. Nothing critical lost with the drop,” I explained. Mel nodded along, seemingly unbothered by my level of loss.

“Hey, I’ve made up a decently sized lunch for everyone and I think we all need to have a big talk about what happened this morning,” John said as he opened the door to the garage from the kitchen.

“Yeah, and what d’we need to talk about?” Mel said gruffly before I had a chance to speak. That would need to stop. He could be as much of a dick as he wanted to, to me, but not my kids.

“For starters? Resource management, not to mention living space. You just founded an empire while we were already a little short on food supplies. So now we need to solve that problem. So next time, be a little less of a jackass before asking questions. I expect everyone inside within ten minutes,” John said, slamming the door behind him. Mel looked slightly deflated after that dressing down. I was glad to see John able to handle that himself.

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“You heard the man. Mel, could you go find the others? And Timon, I’ve got some folding chairs buried over behind you; wanna help me get those inside as well?” I said, phrasing my questions more as orders. Neither man said anything, but both did as I asked. Good to know there were some upsides to being an emperor.

Ten minutes later, we were all gathered in an even more cramped living room than we had the day before. The only new resident that was missing was Pryte, as he was still away doing whatever it was he needed to get the class orbs. John had managed to make enough sandwiches to feed us all, which was probably a good choice as I wasn’t sure how long my bread would be good for anyway. While we were eating I noticed Timon was keeping his eyes on Rabyn pretty strongly. I was starting to question if the mantis was really only a pilot. He always seemed to be paying attention, even when you didn’t notice.

“Alright, we need to talk logistics. I’ve done the math on the food Dad has in storage, and I wasn’t sure it would last more than a month before. Now I’m sure it won’t. Right now the world isn’t in any shape that we can easily just go shopping, so we’re going to need to handle that before anything else,” John said after he had finished his food.

“Timon, what do we have on the bus?” Mel asked.

“We can probably double what’s in the house, but I’m guessing John didn’t take into account the added caloric needs of our fighters here. You and me can skip out on the extra food, but they’re gonna need it pretty badly,” Timon said. He was right. I hadn’t mentioned that at all to John. He had no way of knowing that I needed extra food to replenish my core energy, damn.

“Rabyn, how much are you storing?” Mel asked the orc next.

“Much more than that, but if we start depleting my larder, it will severely hurt our climbing capabilities,” he answered.

“Yeah, I’d rather not do that either if we have any other choice. How’s the hunting around here?” Mel asked.

“Probably pretty good. I was never a big hunter myself, but we do have moose, and those are some of the bigger animals on the planet that hunters go after, tons of meat,” I answered. Hunting was likely trivial with my abilities, but we’d still need to butcher and store the meat. That wasn’t a thing I knew anything about. We did have Rabyn now, though, so he might know something. I wasn’t sure if John knew much about game meat, but he was also a strong possibility.

“Alright, then what we’re gonna do is load up as much shit as we can during our free time at the Arena. Plenty of food there, so if we all fill up our storage every time we can, that should add a ton to our stock here. Let’s keep hunting as the second option and only dip into Rabyn if we ain’t got any other choices left. Cecile, how soon can you get a farm going?” Mel asked one-half of the twinogs.

“Already started; I mapped out a clear patch last night. I’m hoping one of my class options speeds this all up. Otherwise, we’re looking at at least four months for the first crop. The ground has no mana at all, so I’ve gotta slowly build that up first,” he answered. I assumed that had to do with the fact Earth was mana-barren.

“That’s actually faster than I thought. Does this sound viable, John?” Mel asked, surprisingly respectfully this time.

“Yeah, I think we can work with that, but we need better sleeping arrangements too. Yes, we can all fit in the house and bus, but not comfortably, and if I understand what happened this morning, that means we need to figure out how to handle living together long-term. So we are going to need more buildings,” John said. I had already started considering that. I wanted my own independent workshop as well, and we would need something for indoor training, as well as a library. I very much intended to start collecting as many Spiral books as we could safely have here.

“Yeah, that’s gonna be something else we have to handle. If we can manage to make do with the space we have now, I think we should have enough that we can trade for some basic building supplies once we get the traveler’s gate here, maybe even lure in a carpenter if we’re lucky. Also, I think John has elected himself quartermaster for the Empire of Dave, and considering none of the rest of us even thought about these issues, he’s the only one apparently qualified for it,” Mel said.

“Motion passed,” I said, smiling at my son, who sighed loudly but didn’t voice any complaints, possibly because he had none or, much more likely, because Maud’s laughter had drowned out any feasible attempt.

“So something that’s been bugging me since this started, why do we have to fight in the Arena exactly? Why is that a requirement of having a faction?” I asked. I knew the judge had mentioned showing our strength, but it seemed like we would have to field a squad eventually, no matter what. But why did we have to?

“New factions aren’t required to field an Arena squad unless they have holdings. This new empire started off by holding this planet and will likely hold the universe should we complete the judge’s demands. There are a lot of differing historical claims as to why this is required, so I can’t give you an exact reason for it. I also don’t know exactly how the scoring system works,” Elody said, speaking up first.

“Yeah, well, I can explain that part at least. She’s right on the history being lost to the ages unless Sanquar knows something, but it was likely long lost by that point, too,” Mel said.

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The majesties of the worlds in the place the Spiral labeled chaotic space is something I find hard to describe in these diaries. Grom was right to convince me to join him on this journey. There are so many uncontacted universes across the wildways, but beyond that there are even those that know of the Spiral and choose to remain apart. I wonder how much of the lost knowledge of the Spiral has been retained in some secret hidden corner of a maelstrom. The mind boggles at the immensities of what I have seen.

Personal Diary of Ronald Tammen