A steady stream of trash and junk had been tossed into the dungeon for Rick to either burn or absorb for the last few hours. The floor had begun another rapid growth, but Rick didn’t allow himself to fall into a trance again. This time, he made sure to check in on his minions and Penny as well as watch the door open and close.

All of this may have been a waste of time, but it was the only tactic he had to prevent losing himself in the task. One thing he had noticed was that the frequency of Challengers had greatly decreased already. Maybe Jimmy could increase the incentives for Challengers or increase the number of Challengers allowed inside at once.

This worried Rick because he desperately wanted to level up and gain more Challenge Points before the Dungeon Shop opened. The Cartel hadn’t sent any of their people to the dungeon either as they prepared for their assault on the Eagle Empire.

So for now, he could do nothing other than closely watch the door while he grew the dungeon floor. Someone had thrown in a bunch of river rocks earlier, and he figured his minions would like to have a little running water.

Rick switched from growing the floor size to carving out a thin ditch that wove through the grassy hills, covering nearly two miles of distance. He then began to line the ditch with the river rocks. It probably wasn’t worth it to expend this much Energy, but now he had committed to finishing the project.

Once he had the skeleton of the stream in place, he realized that he’d need to find a way to either absorb or use Resource Burn on the water at the bottom of the stream and produce an equal amount of water at the top. Obviously, Resource Burn would be the best method. His ability to split his attention grew by the day, but this might be too much.

“There has to be a way to automate this. Maybe I can have someone get a big ass water pump for me?” Rick wondered aloud. To test it out, he made a small hole in the ground and began pouring water into it. Once the water hit the ground, he matched the producing speed with Resource Burn. As he thought, it was easy, but still required a small amount of attention.

Looking at all of the information he had about water in his registry simplified things for him. He knew the temperature of what the water needed to freeze, melt, and evaporate. He focused on producing the water below its freezing point of 32 degrees Fahrenheit. To be safe, he went with a round zero degrees.

A small sphere of ice appeared in the dungeon and Rick did an internal dance. At both the highest point of the empty stream and the lowest point, Rick dug large holes. Each hole was about twenty feet deep and had diameters of forty feet. For the hole at the highest point, he began to produce a large glacier. Building the glacier rapidly drained his Energy so he needed to burn the remaining trash and junk anytime some was tossed in through the door.

Finally, the glacier was a good eighty feet high and filled most of the hole, but he left enough room for melted water to pool. Rick had made sure to shape it like a miniature mountain peak so that it would melt down a slope and into the stream.

This way, he wouldn’t have to worry about it other than maybe creating a new glacier from time to time. The best part of it was that once the pond area at the bottom filled up, he would have a readily available Energy source to use Resource Burn on.

The System must have recognized this and evolved his Resource Burn to Level 2. It now gave an extra ten Energy per use for a total of fifteen Energy when burning useless trash items.

“That’s how you do it, folks,” Rick tooted his own horn for only his minions and Penny to hear.

Finn and Billy were already wandering over to check it out. It would probably be a few days before the stream started to really get moving, but they were still interested in the giant glacier. Finn climbed down the hole and happily licked the cold ice.

The door opened again, revealing that it was night on the outside, and Rick hoped it would be a Challenger to push him over to Level 5. Instead, he saw two familiar faces in Jimmy and Kara. Both wore somber expressions.

“Hey Jimmy, what’s goin’ on?” Rick asked.

The Dungeon Attendant didn’t respond and Rick didn’t push him as he saw his friend do something he had never seen before. The big, jovial Jimmy had silent tears running down his face.

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Once the doors closed, he and Kara embraced in a deep hug. They both started to cry then. Sobs shook Kara’s body while they hugged. Rick desperately wanted to know what was going on, but didn’t interrupt them. In an effort to cheer them up, he opened the door for Penny to join them and produced a couple of beers for them.

Jimmy was the first to notice and let out an unsteady laugh, tears still in his eyes. He rubbed behind Penny’s ear and reached for the beers on the ground, handing one to Kara. Her face lightened a bit too as she gave Penny a small pat on the head and took the other beer.

A few minutes went by with both of them just sipping on the beer while they recovered from the burst of emotions.

“Hi Rick,” Jimmy croaked in a raw voice.

“Wanna talk about it?” Rick asked. He had never been in this situation with his friend. Sure, he’d seen Jimmy freak out many times, but never with this level of sadness.

Jimmy took a long gulp of his beer before answering, “It’s all fucked, Rick. The crazy shit that started happening after you became a dungeon was one thing. It’s been hard and there’s been some terrible shit going on in the world. Hell, we even led people to their deaths for our own gain, but —” Jimmy struggled to speak.

Kara squeezed his shoulder supportively and looked up, taking over for Jimmy, “News has been spreading. At first, we thought they were just rumors, but it’s been confirmed too many times now. The entire East Coast of the United States has been nuked off the map.”

“What do you mean entire East Coast?” Rick asked. On one hand, it was too much to believe. On the other, it didn’t surprise him. The world turned upside down for everyone. There was bound to be a cataclysm of some kind.

Jimmy shook his head. Kara couldn’t hear Rick’s questions so he had to continue, “All of it and more. We don’t know who, how, or why it happened, but it’s rumored that most major cities in the world have been hit. Here, the entire East Coast was hit before whoever is behind it was stopped.”

“I don’t see why our President would do something like that. Was it another country?” Rick asked.

“Like I said, we don’t know. It’s all speculation, but there are people out there confirmed to have mind-altering skills. Some believe that one of these people got to the President,”

“Damn. And I’m sure there’s no way to detect these mind fuckers?”

Again, Jimmy shook his head, “Nope, but they’re being hunted down anyway. It’s too dangerous to let those people live.”

“I wonder if they can manipulate my mind.”

“Maybe. If they got to your core. You gotta put some more precautions up, man,” Jimmy said.

“Yeah, you’re right. But what about you?”

“There’s not shit I can do, Rick,” Jimmy’s voice trembled. “Everything is so unbelievably fucked out there. Last week, we were running a pawn shop, playing with diamonds and random bullshit. Today, every minute could be my last. It’s fucking wearing me down, man.”

Rick was at a loss for words, but tried anyway, “You can stay in here as long as you want, Jim. I know it’s shitty out there, but I’ve gotta say, I can’t believe how proud of you I am. I would have already broken both out there and in here if it weren’t for you. You’re stronger than you know.”

Wiping another tear away, Jimmy nodded, “Thanks, Rick. Think you can hook us up with more beers? I just want to get hammered and forget the world for a little bit.”

Kara chimed in, raising her hand, “Yeah, me too please.”

“Of course, wish I could join you guys,” Rick said and produced a small hoard of beers.

Instead of watching them drown their sorrows, Rick started making a couple of the hobbit houses like the one he made for Billy. The beds were still just grass mounds, but they were better than the hard floor.

“Ok, that’s pretty cool,” Kara said as she watched the little houses emerge from the ground.

Jimmy grinned, “Not exactly the penthouse you promised me, but it’ll do.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll get to it. Quit your bitching,” Rick chuckled.

By now, Rick’s Energy was nearly depleted and he had just run out of junk to burn. It also felt weird for him to watch as Jimmy and Kara depressingly drank, so he went to go see what his minions were up to while he let the news sink in.

How many people was that? How many worldwide? Billions, surely. And all he was doing was adding to the death toll through his dungeon and launching an assault on more people. Rick stopped his line of thinking right there. The Eagle Empire deserved it if they were going to keep his parents captive. The Challengers had a choice.

But, he couldn’t control what people did in the world. He never could. Bad things happened all the time. But the scale of nuclear weapons wiping out entire cities made him feel sick. The destruction was too much to fathom for him and thinking about it would just become unhealthy.

“Ok, how are my wolves doing?” he cooed, trying to push the bad news out of his mind.

Rick could sense Stella’s body temperature was sky high as she panted. He had been anticipating a couple of weeks before she gave birth to the litter, but he was pretty sure Stella was in labor.