The longer Gus spoke, the more Rick wanted to kill him.

“I’m going to be honest, Rick. Our Earth weapons won’t be effective for much longer. Even the tanks I have outside. I imagine that once a person gets to a certain level, they’ll be able to eat a damn tank if they want.” Gus said.

He’d been monologuing for what felt like hours. What it boiled down to was that Gus wanted: Oil, control over the surrounding area, and unlimited access to Rick for duplicating items he purchased from the Shop.

On the surface, it sounded reasonable enough for what he was getting in return. What bothered Rick, was that he’d be actively making this power-hungry asshat one of, if not the most, powerful men in the world. On the other side of the coin, Gus was still a better alternative to anyone who would use nuclear weapons on a large scale.

Still, if he helped Gus fend off these invaders, or whatever they were, he needed a backup plan for once it was all over. Rick wasn’t about to just completely roll over, but if he agreed to help him today, he’d buy himself some time to find the man’s weakness and exploit it when the time came.

Deep down, Rick was still a haggler. Making himself sick by communicating was a small price to pay to get just a little bit more than what was offered. Producing a pen and paper, he realized he was low on Energy and zapped some of the water pooling in the pond.

This room will be off-limits to anyone other than whom Jimmy and I give access.

The dungeon lurched as Gus picked up the paper and read it, “I’m guessing that I don’t have access.” He sat and pondered for a moment, “Yes, that should be fine. We can conduct meetings elsewhere. The creatures I saw on the broadcast are no threat to me, so any room will do.”

Rick chuckled to himself. Now he had even more motivation to turn the Auxiliary Room into a magnificent city for Jimmy and whoever else wanted to pay the price of entry.

Those white teeth appeared again as Gus smiled, “I prepared a gift in the event we came to an agreement. I have to admit, I wasn’t sure you would be so level-headed after watching those broadcasts.”

What’s that supposed to mean? Rick thought. “And what the hell is with this guy pulling shit out of his pockets all the time?” he said aloud.

Gus pulled what looked like a bone out of his pocket and placed it on the grass table. “So, I saw that you like wolves. How about a lion?”

Rick stared at the bone in confusion. How was he supposed to make a lion out of that?

“The half-life of DNA in bones is 521 years. I killed this while on a special hunting trip only three years ago, so there should be plenty of DNA in there to work with. I have the rest of the skeleton in a storage unit. The head is taxidermied on my wall of course. If I brought you the rest, I imagine that you could recreate it,” Gus said, kicking his feet up on the table.

Rick had never thought of recreating anything living before. He had only hired minions from the Dungeon Shop and they created children. Creating one from his registry? He supposed he could. Everything about the people he absorbed was in the registry, but he didn’t think anything of it. In fact, he actively avoided looking at those people.

“I see you haven’t absorbed it yet. Is there a problem?” Gus asked.

Rick decided to further his sickness with a simple note: Thinking.

Gus nodded and relaxed again, sipping his water.

Then it clicked. The glass of water Gus was drinking now had his DNA all over it. Rick would be able to absorb it and have the man’s DNA in his registry. That would give him a year to experiment with it. Hopefully, he would be able to find a way to arm Jimmy and his friends against Gus to hold over him when the time was right.

“This still feels like I’d be crossing the line somehow,” Rick pondered aloud. It always helped him to just hear his thoughts. Billy and his minions didn’t offer any advice on the matter as they knew he was just working it out for himself. “Fuck. New rule: No recreating humans other than Gus experiments. That’s just… too fucked up, I don’t know. I’ll test this lion out and see what happens. That’s it,” he promised himself.

The smile on Gus’ face widened as he watched the bone vanish from the table. “It was a pleasure. I’ll see you around,” he said and finally exited the dungeon.

The moment Gus left, Rick absorbed the glass of water and found the man’s DNA in his registry.

Rick immediately sifted through his registry and dove into the DNA from the lion’s bone. Once he got a handle on the lion, he’d dive into the human DNA.

Rick didn’t know anything about genetics, but his registry filled in a lot of the blanks. The lion’s DNA was surprisingly around 85% similar to the humans in his registry. The difference was the sequencing of the nucleotides.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

But now that the sequence was in his registry, he could effectively clone the lion that Gus had hunted down. The problem was, what would happen if he did? Would the lion not have access to the System? Or would the System reject it?

These thoughts made Rick think about all of the other wildlife on the planet. Hell, he should find out what’s going on at the Phoenix Zoo. Penny certainly had access to the System. Adam had even told him that a snake had become a dungeon core.

But, those were all here when the integration happened. This lion’s DNA wasn’t alive at the time, and clearly, the integration had affected everyone’s DNA to grant them abilities and power that were never possible before.

“Fuck it, let’s see what happens,” Rick mumbled. “Billy! I’m going to try something. If it doesn’t work, I’ll tell you to kill it.”

Billy perked up and pulled out his guns, “Ready, sir.”

Rick didn’t have to think very hard to produce items in his registry, but this was different. He could easily recreate the bone, but now he was trying to recreate the original organism that the bone belonged to. The only experience he had was making food that he was very familiar with and the compounds were extremely simple in comparison.

“Alright, here we go,” Rick said and started to produce the lion’s DNA and expand upon it. What was produced was a mess of bones similar to the original and a gloop of mutated lion DNA. It was just a mess of sticky yellow material that resembled pus more than blood.

“Please — please absorb that,” Billy said, taking a step back from the bubbling pool of gloop in front of him.

Rick obliged, “Sorry about that.” The gloop he absorbed was a nonsensical mess of scuffed DNA nucleotides, “Yeah, this might be beyond me. Maybe there’s a book or some sort of information in the dungeon shop.”

“I think I took damage from the smell,” Billy said, looking nauseous.

“Oh, get over it,” Rick said. “Maybe I’ll figure it out if Gus brings the rest of the bones.”

Billy shook his head and went back to work on his building.

Despite Billy’s head start, Yosk had truly been a fast worker. Maybe a combination of his class and the fervor with which he did everything attributed to it. Yosk had already dug the fork in the stream and led a small bit of it to his area.

The fork turned into what appeared to be little veins or microstreams. At the end of each vein, Yosk had dug a deeper hole.

“What are those holes for?” Rick asked the lizardman.

“Percolation pond. The water will slowly soften the earth surrounding the area,” Yosk said enthusiastically.

Rick had heard of “dry ponds” before in the real world. People had been testing them out in Arizona with the hopes of preventing water runoff on the rare times it rained. He supposed these veins would work similarly with so little of the stream trickling into them.

“Won’t the foundation be weak if the ground is all soft and mushy?” Rick asked.

“No sir,” Yosk replied and continued to work on carving one of the stones to form a small window.

“Why not?”

Yosk paused his work and looked up, “Magic. I’m a builder. I can strengthen the foundation through skills.”

The answer satisfied Rick enough to not ask any more questions and to just trust Yosk’s talents and class. The building that the lizardman was working on was covering Elza’s eggs. They hadn’t hatched as quickly as Rick had thought based on how fast the Ceaseless Wolves came out of Stella.

The building for the soon-to-be lizardfolk children had halted his progress elsewhere, but Rick was impressed. His child-self would have been very jealous of their setup.

First, the eggs were neatly tucked in a circular bed of grass, surrounded by a four-foot well of warming stone. This ensured that the eggs were kept warm as well as provided air for them if they hatched.

Then, the room opened up into a much wider circular formation, about eighteen feet in diameter. Around the edges were six bunk beds. None of that was what would be exciting for the child version Rick. But around the walls was a smooth spiral from ceiling to floor. At the highest point, a small stairway led to the ground.

Lastly, in the middle of the circular room was a small pool of water, large enough for kids to swim in. For a human, that would be a terrifying prospect, but he had a feeling lizardfolk were natural swimmers.

Yosk had even made rudimentary drawings on the walls with the red clover leaves. One looked suspiciously like a warrior lizardman holding a machete above his head. The muscles were exaggerated an incredible amount.

Rick chuckled and promised to check the dungeon shop if there were any toys for lizardfolk children. In the meantime, he found a stuffed animal in his registry. It was a gray bunny that he remembered absorbing. While he had absorbed or burned the trash that came out, sometimes he’d come across something that tugged at his heartstrings.

The bunny must have belonged to a little kid. Rick couldn’t help but wonder what happened to the child, so he kept it as a reminder. A reminder that while the world had been ugly before, the System made it uglier. While he might be part of the problem, at least he could give the kids a small gift. Something to hold onto and talk to when nobody else would listen.

Rick was startled out of his thoughts as Yosk yelled and slammed a sledgehammer against the wall making a hole between one of the bunkbeds. “Yosk, what the hell are you doing?” Rick asked.

“Putting in the window, sir. I thought the kids might like to poke their heads out and watch their old man ravage some Challengers once in a while,” he said, flicking his tongue out excitedly.

“Yeah… Good call, Yosk. I’m sure they’ll never be embarrassed by their old man.”

Yosk scratched the top of his head, confused.

Suddenly the broadcast Alert began and all the minions snapped to attention. What came in, surprised Rick. A child, maybe seven or eight years old came in, trembling and holding a white cloth above his head.

“What the fuck. None of you touch him! Finn, Stella – lay down,” Rick shouted.

The wolves obeyed his orders and watched the young boy curiously.

“Billy, go find out what the kid wants. Under no circumstances do you hurt him. Understand?”

“Yes, of course,” Billy said and began to make his way toward the entrance.