Matthias stood at the edge of the fortified baily as he watched nearly a hundred Saurians, Dark Fairies, and Alyssa march off with a contingent of Golems on the newly finished road.
It had taken more than a week, closer to two actually, in order to get everything that they needed together for a proper strike force. During that time the attacks had ramped up at the mining sites, and while the raptors ignored the villages themselves anything and anyone traveling between them became a valid target.
He wanted them all dead. Now.
Specicide was not exactly something that he was willing to commit to, but in this case, it was a necessity. They would only be dead for a little while anyway, as he had plans to bring them back as mounts for the Saurians after a bit of modification. However, the current opposition couldn’t be allowed to stand.
Ora and Vera stood next to him, watching the procession march away. Ora, the elder sister as Matthias had learned, watched with confusion on her face as Vera watched with what looked like unrestrained jealousy.
Curious, Matthias asked why.
“I was born to fight, have fought, and miss fighting. Nothing has come into the forest to challenge us for a very, very long time,” Vera explained. “I thought I was going to get to fight you, but when you leaped over the River of Life I decided anyone strong enough to do that more than likely wouldn’t be defeatable without considerable sacrifice. It was when we decided to observe you instead of obstructing you.”
He just chuckled. “If you had I promise exactly one thing would have happened,” he said with a grin.
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“You probably would have rolled right over me,” he said chuckling. “I burned nearly all my Power with that one jump. It wasn’t until almost a day later that I had more to play with. Definitely would have steamrolled me.”
Vera and Ora looked confused at the wordplay but eventually shrugged it off.
“I know not what a steam roller is, but it sounds powerful indeed,” Vera agreed a bit hesitantly. “Regardless, having seen you fight I have no doubt that it would have been a challenge. You are adaptable to a point of near ridiculousness. Even had I not won I have little doubt you would have found a way to escape and flee.”
Matthias shrugged, he wasn’t so sure about that. He hadn’t seen the Dryads fight yet, but they moved with a lithe gracefulness that he had zero doubts could and would be applied to the battlefield. He had also seen their abilities to control nature, as well as Vera’s overwhelming physical strength. She had, after all, simply picked up and moved a Golem that had gotten in her way.
Like it was a half-ton toddler made of stone.
“So, what can I do for you?” he asked, turning fully to the two Dryads next to him. Ora had eyes burning with questions yet unasked while Vera seemed cautious. The change in the two over the time he had known them was both startling and wonderful. They had opened up and come into their curiosity about Matthias, the Corporations, and the world outside of their own.
Ora was the first to speak as she practically shouted, “The Grove Mother wants to meet you!”
Vera and Matthias stared at the excited Dryad, who seemed to realize what she had just said it. And how. Her skin turned dark purple as she flushed in embarrassed excitement. “I mean, Mother wants to meet you. She very much enjoyed the delivery of jewelry. The way you crafted it was, in her own words, ‘exquisitely unique’. Now my sisters want some! And…. maybe me too?”
Some time ago Matthias had asked the Dryads what he could do to repay them for helping bring the Waters Styx into the moat through a large hollowed-out root. Ora and Vera hadn’t been sure, so they took the question to their mother, the Mistress of Thorns Grove. The response had been both curious and a serious challenge to him.
Jewelry.
The Grove Mother wanted Jewelry made of a specific hue, shape, and color. Specifically, something called amber shaped into twin tree of life earrings. Matthias hadn’t had any of the required material on hand, so he had purchased it through the {BAZAAR}. With some help from Alyssa, he had hand-crafted the material into two identical earring pieces and gave them to Ora and Vera for delivery. He hadn’t heard anything else until now.
“Absolutely. We can certainly set something up. I am a bit swamped right now, so why don’t we plan something for after I take care of this raptor issue?” he asked, hoping that it would be alright to delay the request to meet for a little bit.
Vera nodded, “Of course! Mother understands that you have a myriad of challenges in front of you currently. Her exact words were, ‘Have him visit when he isn’t in danger of being eaten by anything.’ Mother is quite understanding,” she said with a little laugh, eliciting a grin from Ora as well.
Matthias couldn’t help but chuckle. The Dryad sisters were nothing but friendly to him, and they demonstrated this regularly through their visits and methods of communication. That and Ora constantly wanted to wrestle a Golem. She was allowed one intense wrestling session per visit, but no more. Golems took time and some things NEX to repair, especially after she was done with them.
“Great. I am glad that she was understandably accommodating,” Matthias said, glad that he wasn’t going to be required to visit the equivalent of the Dryad Royal Court at Her Majesty’s leisure. He shook his head. “I have a few meetings to take care of. Ragvar has more questions than anyone I’ve met and somebody on a dying Earth needs farming mobs in quantity. Something about the undead.”
Vera expressed her condolences at home busy he was before Matthias headed back inside. Getting to his office, he dialed up Ragvar and had a two-hour-long conversation with the man. The Massive Viking was incredibly interested in the Saurians but was saddened to hear that they were not for hire yet. Being honest with himself, he didn’t think he would ever outright sell them.
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The pair talked about farming, how the Lizard-Kin were working out, and updates on Ragvar’s eternal war against a series of portals that had invaded his reality and were dumping monsters and aliens all over the place. It sounded very chaotic and dangerous, but Matthias also gleaned enough information to know that the humans there had enough structure to have built massive fortress cities. While not ideal, they were far from going extinct. But food was an issue constantly, one that Ragvar was currently solving.
Exchanging farewells Matthias disconnected with the huge, loud, and vibrantly alive man. Placing his second call for the afternoon, he input the contact details into the {BAZAAR} for a man who was on Earth Four. From everything that he knew, that particular Earth was in the throes of going through an Integration, System rebalancing, and complete rebuild of the planet itself while rinsing off a self-inflicted gunshot to the head in the form of an undead apocalypse. That all summed up to one thing in his eyes:
Opportunity to make a ton of sales.
Raymond Finnegan was one of the larger territory holders on Earth Four and was constantly looking through {BAZAAR} listings for goods, equipment, and people. He only just recently found the {BAZAAR} itself and all the direct-to-consumer services that were provided from companies like Mob Inc. His message to Matthias had detailed his fascination with the Lizard-Kin, but he needed something a bit more robust for combat and wasn’t interested in the Saurians.
Matthias had considered custom orders and discarded them before, as many did not want to invest in an entire army. Raymond, on the other hand, had a different request. He wanted to know if Mob Inc. would be interested in staffing a local dungeon with creatures, replenishing them as needed per whatever contract stipulations they agreed upon.
This was a huge opportunity for his fledgling corporation. Dungeons were well known for creating their own monsters and traps but had to spend their energy resources to respawn them and expand. If Mob Inc. provided the creatures that would free up a staggering amount of energy for the dungeon to do nothing but expand. It would also pay out well, providing the massive NEX payout that he had been looking for in order to finally bring in specialists to expand their holdings on the island.
Tapping the System message, the call went through. A rough-shod man dressed in reinforced leather appeared in front of him. His dark hair was cropped close to his skull and his intense amber eyes looked up as the call began. He immediately put down the papers he had in his hand and smiled showing white and well-maintained teeth.
“Hey there! You must be Mathias Mob. Did I say that right?” Raymond asked, grin remaining.
Matthias smiled back, “You got it in one. You must be Raymond I assume?” he responded, getting a nod in return. “Fantastic. I got your inquiry through the {BAZAAR}. I understand you have a fairly unique issue at hand regarding a dungeon?”
“Yes I am, but please call me Ray. And yeah. Yeah, we do,” the man replied, nodding, and launching into his explanation and request. “See, we have a shit load of undead here. Tons. With more spawning on the edges of our territory on a daily basis. It’s a constant tide that I probably won’t see the end of in my lifetime.”
Matthias could understand that. Most undead infestations took generations to remove. He couldn’t imagine how long it would take to purge an entire planet.
“Mixed in are quite a few creatures and monsters, but nothing that we can capture or that would follow us into the dungeon,” Ray continued. “That means the dungeon is only limited to the base creature that it started with. In this case it's…” he shuddered for a moment and shifted in his seat as an obviously painful past memory rolled through his mind, “Squirrels. They don’t give a lot of experience and fighting them only brings our folks up a little bit in ability. We need more, but we just can’t get anything.”
Matthias sat back and considered the problem. It was not exactly as he had expected but was fairly close. The undead had overrun the planet to the point there were literally no other creatures for the dungeon to spawn. It needed something to wander in and die within its confines in order to create more of it.
“So, you wanted me to provide custom creatures to the dungeon, correct?” Matthias responded, a bit warily. “That is a bit of a losing proposition for me. I give you a single creature and the dungeon spawns an infinite number of them. I get a single sale, and you get everything you could possibly need for an expansion.”
Ray shrugged, “Yeah. But that’s what I need. What we need. You are the only one that offers custom creatures that I could find on the, uh, the {BAZAAR}. So I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask if it was a possibility. Sounds like it isn’t though,” he said, annoyance crossing his features.
“Not how you proposed it, no,” Matthias responded, leaning forward.
“That’s not a no.”
Matthias chuckled, “No. No it’s not,” he replied. “There is an opportunity here for you to get more than what you are asking for, on a regular basis, and for me to make a profit. Something I need to do in order to both expand and survive to expand further.”
Ray was nodding along, his expression changing from annoyance to cautious curiosity. “Ok. I’m hooked.” A paw slapped him on the side of the chair, causing him to wince. “Fine. Sorry, I have others here listening and advising. I was told to ask what exactly a delivery schedule would look like. We are a tad desperate for a training ground.”
“It would be at least a month out,” he admitted. “No longer than that, however, and you will need to talk with both your dungeon and its Fairy to make sure that my plan is acceptable to them. It would require some fairly invasive movements and allowances, at least at first.”
Ray stared at him, “Define ‘invasive’.”
“I want to set up a mob manufacturing facility within the dungeon,” Matthias said as Ray’s mouth opened in surprise. “I will manufacture the mobs at cost, and in return, the dungeon will pay me a percentage of the NEX it gains through interactions with delivers and the System. I was thinking something like fifteen percent. In return, it saves all of that energy and NEX and can focused entirely on expansion.”
Ray’s mouth remained open as he turned to someone off-screen that Matthias couldn’t see. “I know… no! No, I don’t want that!” he paused. “Maybe? I was thinking more like jiujitsu training. I… it's like folding clothes, only there’s still someone in the clothes and it isn’t consensual. No! Not anything… that could be fun. Enough! We can talk about this later.”
The man on the screen turned back to Matthias looking harried. “I will chat with the dungeon and… it’s Fairy. This sounds too good to be true, but I have no idea what kind of resources we are talking about here,” he said tiredly. “Can you send me something that I can share with them? Some kind of example contract?”
“Absolutely. I drafted up terms before we spoke to make sure I had something on had to give to you as an example of how the agreement may look,” Matthias said, sending the offer to Ray via the System. “Review that and let me know what you all think. If you have ideas or want a part of the contract changed just make the changes. I will review them in turn and we can all meet together to finalize it, if it’s something you want.”
“Got it. I will let you know what we decide. Thanks for taking the time to speak with us,” Ray said. The call ended summarily, leaving Matthias to think that it may have been an accidental disconnection.
Chuckling to himself, he got up as Mab walked into the room with a deep frown on her face. “What’s wrong? Did another Golem go swimming?”
“No. Not that, and we still haven’t fished that one out,” she said, deadly serious. “And that’s only part of the problem. We have visitors and not the kind that we like.”
Matthias frowned a bit in return. He had no idea who would be capable of stressing Mab, a literal Queen of Fairies, out to such an extent. What bothered him more, however, was the fact that someone had not only located where he was but had come for a visit.
“Who is here and why are they going to be an issue?” he asked directly.
Mab only frowned more and said a single word that had his hair standing on end.
“Lawyers.”
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