“No,” Matthias said flatly.

“But come oooon!” whined Alyssa. “I’m not asking for that much. A few thousand NEX here and there, no biggie really. It doesn’t take much from you.”

He stared at the tiny fairy in front of him and snorted. “At this point in my operations, that’s a significant percentage of what I have available. No. I will offer you five percent of any resource you find and a five hundred NEX bonus for anyone you bring to me who initiates the contract. That’s the highest I am willing to go.” He held up a finger to forestall her argument. “If you do well enough, and we expand operations, there may be room for renegotiation in the future. But we both know you are already getting highly favorable terms compared to literally any other corporation or company I have ever heard of.”

“Fiiine,” she blurted out in exasperation. Then, in typical fairy fashion, she did a one-eighty with her attitude and perked back up. “So Boss, what do you need me for? Scouting? Exploring? A little bit of rapid skullduggery? I have some poisons if you need me to take someone out. Dragons are an issue though. And Wyrms. Outside of that, I should be able to-“

Matthias cut her off. If he didn’t she would probably talk until he died of old age and his bones had turned to dust.

“None of the latter bits, at least not yet,” he explained. “Right now I need you to scout the area. I’m looking for resources, deposits of minerals, and any local creatures or villages that you may be able to find. There is also a weird-as-hell forest next to us, stay out of it if you can. There is… something in there that I don’t really understand. Avoid it for now and focus on finding resources and civilization.”

He tapped his cheek in thought for a moment and then added, “Oh and lions. Sabertooth things I think. I had one jump on me while I made my way here. I have no idea if they are normal creatures or if they are beasts. Either way, if you underestimate them you may become lunch. Outside of that, I have no idea what threats there may be, so be very careful. Especially if you want to be paid.”

Alyssa saluted him. “Copy that! How long would you like me to be out and about? Do I get supplies?”

“That’s… a good question. Why don’t you come back at dusk each day or if you find a significant threat or resource? It may limit your range initially, but that may be the best option for now until we know what we are working with,” Matthias outlined. “Oh and try not to lead anyone back to us. I don’t really want anyone, or anything, to know where we are. There isn’t anything in the way of defenses in place yet. My Golems are making a run to pick up my supplies but won't be back for probably a day or two. They aren’t that fast.”

Alyssa nodded rapidly, practically vibrating in place. “Got it Boss! Anything else I should know?”

“I have no idea what world we are on. None. The System works here, so it's been Integrated. Outside of that treat this as an unexplored realm.”

Another round of nods from the fairy confirmed she understood. “Super exciting! I could be the first Fairy to explore this place! Yay! More levels for me!” She spun and zipped up the tunnel so fast she left a glowing aftertrail behind her.

Matthias just rubbed his face. Getting levels was grand and all, as you had to complete actions that directly related to your class, but he was locked out of that. His class strength and personal power were purely dependent on how much wealth he had to throw at a problem. No NEX, no Power. No Power… well he was probably dead at that point and wouldn’t have to worry about it. Thinking that over, he checked his status screen. He hadn’t looked at it for a while and was a bit curious if he had progressed at all.

MATTHIAS R. MOB

{RACE}

SHADOW GOBLIN

{SUB-RACE}

INFERNO IMP

{CLASS}

NEXMANCER

{CLASS GRADE}

LEGENDARY

{STAGE}

1

{LEVEL}

1

{STATS}

CONVERTED TO POWER

POWER

25

{ABILITIES}

CONVERT WEALTH

CONVERT POWER

CONTRACT

POWER OVERWHELMING

POWERHOUSE

BALANCE SHEET

Sighing he dismissed the screen. As usual, his level and stage remained the same. Nothing he did seemed to increase them. He wasn’t sure if they could even be increased. He didn’t have stats after all, and increasing either your stage or level seemed semi-dependent on those. His abilities provided him all the latitude he needed to accomplish what he required at any moment in time, given he had the NEX and Power to do so. Thinking that over, he activated a skill he hadn’t used since he had arrived.

{BALANCE SHEET} was an ability that allowed him to immediately know what his net worth and Power balance were. His status screen didn’t actually show his Power balance, so the ability was invaluable just for that purpose alone. Tracking his NEX balance was just a bonus.

{BALANCE SHEET}

REMAINING POWER – 162

NEX BALANCE – 205,000

DENOMINATIONS

10K GOLD NEX BAR– 1

1K GOLD NEX COINS – 52

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500 SILVER NEX COINS – 327

“Still in the black for now,” he reasoned aloud. “Although I am burning through my reserves like crazy. I still need to worry about disguising the entrance, setting up defenses, and getting some basic monsters and creatures made to sell. Product lines are going to be important. I really need that Assembler here.”

The Golems would bring back the storage coin as quickly as they could. But they were still Golems, and being slow but methodical was part of the very nature that made up what they were. Matthias could have created something far more efficient, fast, and intelligent, but that was expensive. And he didn’t have the resources to spare in order to conduct such experiments.

Not even close.

With the Assembler here, however, he could find raw organic stock and being creating genetic profiles of any creatures he defeated. He would then, in turn, print those creatures out. They would be stable, with a transferrable loyalty to their buyers, and would be fully editable by his own abilities making them custom-tailored to any buyer.

This would be an entirely unique service for the {BAZAAR} and any local clients he could find. Custom creating any kind of living being or construct was immensely time and resource consuming. The fact that he would be able to do it at will and basically at cost? That would open up revenue streams for him. Then he could really start fortifying.

For now, however, he would have to temper his expectations and be cautious with his spending. Promising as much as he did to the fairy already made him a bit nervous. That was potentially a lot of NEX. If she was as good at and took her job as seriously as she promised she would then he could be losing out on a lot of cash. On the other hand, such an investment was required for his current situation.

Sighing, he leaned back on the stone chair and winced. He really needed something better. He had to head up to the top of the tunnel and check the progress of the Golem’s anyway. They were supposed to be done about now, but they hadn’t returned to the main chamber yet. Not unsurprising, as his instructions could have possibly triggered some kind of conflict with their actions. It happened, sometimes, with the less intelligent and non-intelligent constructs. They usually froze up and required manual input to clear their instruction que.

Getting up, Matthias made his way up the tunnel. He was only halfway up when he heard the unmistakable sounds of combat. Eyes flaring, he drew his Gauss Pistol and ran forward. If someone, or something, was attacking the Golems he had to intervene immediately. While he could eat the loss this time, it was going to be prohibitively expensive to continue making or buying them.

He burst out into the sunlight and froze at something that he certainly didn’t expect.

The Golems were going about their work, finishing up the last few piles of stone from their assigned excavation duties. They were working in the usual slow and methodical manner while entirely ignoring the massive sabretooth cat that was attacking them in a whirlwind of teeth and claws.

The feline was bouncing between each Golem, scratching, biting, and clawing at each one before changing targets and attacking the next nearest Golem. It wasn’t causing any damage to the constructs, although it was occasionally tipping one over using its body weight as a tool. But even though it was bouncing between the Golems like some kind of giant, angry, furry pinball, it wasn’t achieving much.

Matthias recognized the cat for both the threat and the opportunity, it was, however.

“Grab that cat!” he ordered, causing the Golems to drop what they were doing, spin in place, and immediately charge after the intrusive feline. The giant sabretooth, however, had other ideas.

Realizing that the Golems were not made of flesh and blood and that it had accomplished exactly nothing up to this point, it decided to charge Matthias. With a roar it used a Golem as a springboard, flying over the line of constructs advancing on it and landing nimbly on its feet not more than a dozen feet from him.

Cursing, Matthias drew his gauss pistol. The weapon was an amalgamation of clockwork and advanced fusion technology. It could fire a solid sphere of nearly any metal material fast and hard enough to puncture anything but a heavily enchanted shield. While it was a single-shot weapon, ammo could be found pretty much anywhere on any world and it did not need charging of any kind.

Leveling the weapon at the charging feline he took a second to line up his shot. Matthias braced for the recoil and pulled the trigger with the beast not more than four feet away. The weapon rocked his arms backward, nearly spinning him in a circle. This ended up working in his favor as it carried him out of the path of the enraged feline.

Or what was left of it.

The shot had left the barrel of the pistol, slammed into the side of the sabretooth’s head and ripped a large chunk of its skull away. The now dead cat was still moving due to built-up momentum and skidded through where he had just been standing. It came to a rest an arm's reach behind him, settling into a pile of fur and meat that was busy leaking out all over the doorstep to his cave.

Matthias’ heart was pounding and his mouth was dry as he eyed the new corpse. Then his hands began to shake as he struggled to holster the gauss pistol. That had been the first time he had ever been in anything resembling combat, and he couldn’t say that he liked it. Bravery was more for people with more heroic names. Raymond or John or something. Not him. He was an administrator, not a fighter.

He took deep, steadying breaths as he struggled to work through the oncoming panic attack. He hadn’t been attacked the entire trip here but had nearly died the moment he stepped out of the cave. That meant one of a few different things. The first was that the cat may have been stalking him up to this point. It certainly didn’t seem shy about attacking the Golems.

An equally possible, but much less likely, is that the creature had been guided here by someone. Thinking about that possibility, Matthias’ mind went back to the laughter he had heard in the forest. Its possible that something there wanted him dead and couldn’t kill him itself, or that it wanted to test him somehow. Either possibility was worrying. The fact the cat had targeted him the moment he had given a command, though, definitely told him the creature was intelligent.

Taking several deep, long, gulping breaths of air helped him calm down a bit, allowing Matthias to eye the creature's remains analytically. “On the bright side, having a few of those around would come in handy. I bet they would make decent scouts,” he muttered. He turned his attention back to the Golems,

“Go back to your previously assigned task. If anything, else attacks you, kill it and pile it with this one,” he ordered, pointing to the dead sabretooth.

The Golems immediately moved to obey. They weren’t good fighters, but they could work like no other automaton or summon. Little to no upkeep required.

Once the body was stored where he wanted it, Matthias took a look around his little area. The rock towered over him, making him think of a movie he had seen from one of the Earth dimensions about a family of lions. Shaking his head to clear the amusing, but unwanted, thought, he eyed the clearing around the rock formation.

The clearing didn’t extend far, maybe a hundred feet out. The cavern complex below was certainly larger than that. Outside of the clearing itself was the forest and the plains. The perfectly spaced trees still gave him the creeps, there was definitely something in there. The plains, on the other hand, were absolutely filled with chest-high golden grass. It gave him strong feelings of Elysium, a realm of the dead for God’s that had once existed.

He was deep in thought about that when Alyssa came zipping back up to him, startling him out of his reverie.

“That was fast. Did you find something interesting?” Matthias asked, genuinely curious as to what she found.

The Fairy nodded rapidly. “Oh man Boss, you have no idea. No idea at all!” she said rapidly. “This place is insane. Like, totally crazy! And I get to explore it all!” she cackled with a near madness level zeal.

“Can you… just slow down a second and tell me what it is, exactly, that you fund?” he prodded, getting annoyed. When you come back from a task you should report in, not babble incoherently.

“Boss this whole place isn’t anything like you would think,” she said excitedly after taking a moment to calm her excitement down. “This whole place, the forest, the plains, your rock… it’s a giant island! In the sky! There isn’t anything on this island but a bunch of giant lizards, cats, deer, and stuff… oh, and a dragon. But I can see some other islands off in the distance, and I bet there are a ton more species out there too. I even saw what I thought might have been some kind of giant bird! Could have been a smudge on my goggles too. But anyway, yeah this whole place is a gigantic island. I mean, I only got to one side of the place, it was like a hundred miles or something like that. I don’t really know distances. Only took me a couple of hours. It’s crazy though, I’ve never seen anything like it!”

Matthias struggled to absorb everything the Fairy had just told him. That they were on an island. Floating in the sky. He made a footnote in the back of his mind on the other creatures Alyssa had seen as she roamed their area but then froze when the last creature she mentioned finally registered.

“There’s a fucking dragon?”