“No! No! Not Detroit! No! Not Detroit! NO! NOOOOO! LET ME GOOO!!”

“Oh shut up Casper!” Carlyle shouted. “It’s not like I’m asking you to live there! Besides! You can teleport! That and with your level, it doesn’t matter how many gangbangers shoot up your car! If they even shoot up your car! It’s been ten years since that happened. I doubt it’ll happen again. So get in the car and teleport us there already!”

Casper was not having it. He kicked and buckled ferociously. Fighting and twisting against coach Russell and James Robertson’s grip like a snake in the jaws of a mongoose.

“I’m not going there! You can’t make me!”

He teleported a few meters away and began to sprint, until coach Homer tackled him from the back and put him in a chokehold.

I stared throughout the whole thing. Saying nothing. Until I started inching over to Elsie.

“Is Detroit really that bad?” I asked her quietly.

“Nah.” She said with confidence. “At least, not the nicer parts of town. You’re not likely to get shot around the hotel where we have rooms.”

She was nodding along her own words, as if to convince herself.

“As for the place where grandpa wants you to put the Dungeon, well… Hard to say. But you don’t have to worry about that in any case. Not with our stats. The two of us could get hit by a speeding truck and it wouldn’t be enough to kill us. Mess us up, yes. But not to kill us. You don’t have to worry about someone with an assault rifle or a handgun. If they had a couple of anti-tank rifles lying around well… that would be something. But I don’t think you need to worry as things stand right now.”

“You know, that fact that you casually mentioned those guys down south walking around with assault rifles isn’t making me feel any better.”

“It’s fiiineee! I’m just exaggerating things to tease you. We won’t get shot at. Probably. At least, not when we’re close to the hotel and the venue in general.”

“Right, so what’s this party anyway?”

“An emergency economic forum.” She said with some mischief. “Relating to food and farming equipment. A few manufacturers are in trouble because they’ve been putting lots and lots of computers into their tractors and then charging outrageous prices through a monopoly to repair those tractors. It was a problem when the harvests were running as normal, and food prices were more or less stable across the first world. Now, things are so bad that farms have been failing and going bankrupt left right and center. Those companies that had squeezed the farmers are finding themselves squeezing stones. Or worse, the bankers that held the deeds for the farms. Those farm equipment companies are therefore extending loans to new farmers so they don’t go belly up right away, while also looking to sell to farms that are actually shelling out produce.”

“Meaning us.” I said at once.

“Meaning us.” She agreed. “But you’ve been creating more and better drones from the Dungeon in North Korea to help with the farms. They and the new townsfolk getting Cores there mean that we have all the manpower we need. The tractors might have helped regular farmers who can’t afford to have thousands of monsters working around the clock for no pay, but it’s a waste for us.”

“Not to mention the fact that the first ten floors have been turned into massive farms of their own.” I reasoned. “With how much we’re producing, what we need is more teleporters and trucks. Not tractors.”

“Exactly. Which is one of the reasons we’re going to this conference.”

“The other being to start another Alaskan incident with my weaker monsters.” I said with confidence.

“True, true, but there is another reason besides that.” Elsie urged. “Care to guess?”

“Well, I don’t think there’s any kind of natural Dungeon around those parts. I think the Dungeons in the US are deeper inland.”

“True again, but I see that you’re getting closer.”

I thought about it some more. Recalling the history of the city as best I could. I knew it had been a hub of manufacturing, once upon a time. And that several car companies had made their homes there. Using the precious metals around the area in conjunction to the proximity to the lakes and rivers there to boost trade. Building train stations and sending cars all throughout the states.

I knew from documentaries that in the 50s, the place had been one of the nicest cities in the world. With a higher standard of living than most cities in the United States. After that, one company after another had left and with them, went the wealth and power of Detroit.

The last pictures I’d seen had been on the news, where some serial killer called the Detroit Cannibal had been hacking young women to pieces and leaving their torsos in bushes and in front of run-down houses, while presumably consuming some of the organs.

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

The police had sworn up and down that they’d caught their man and that their reign of terror was at an end. They had claimed the same thing with the second man they’d caught, after the murders continued and then they had repeated the debacle with a third and fourth man.

That had been the case when my family first came here to Dunstonberry. If the whispers I’d caught from Oscar were to be believed, they were up to the ninth suspect as of last week. With little in the way of progress.

“Are we going there to catch the serial killer?”

“No.” She said. Suddenly becoming sullen and downcast. “The police are looking for a man. But they’re imbeciles. The real killer, the first Detroit Cannibal, was a woman when great-grandpa Carlyle lived. Though no one ever found out her name or who she was. She had the 4th Stage Core, [Chimera], and used it to turn into a sort of werewolf, with a scorpion’s stinger for a tail. She was strong, but not nearly as strong as you. Great-grandpa Carlyle killed her, in 2026, but by then her victims had grown into the hundreds. Apparently, her head never turned back and the DNA tests were inconclusive, so we still don’t know who she was. Grandpa and dad and a bunch of family members make it a point to go over to the city every now and then. Hoping to catch an errant thought but it’s of no use. Great-granpa says there’s a good chance she was one of the first people to ever have Magic and that it was her [Bloodlust] Skill that drove her to murder. So it’s completely possible she’s going around killing normal people as a level 1 or 2 even as we speak.”

‘Fool.’ Pool-Cecil hissed. ‘Abandoned her wits to her stomach. Fool indeed. She would have done better to brace herself and get as strong as she could manage, before making herself known. She picks fights in hubris. Thinking the mortals are all she has to fear. A big fish in a small pond. Only when you are strong beyond all other challenges, can you afford to indulge in baser desires. We should kill her now, before she is discovered. Her life and example may serve to push normal against us, if they were to make the connection. Dispose of her quietly and without fuss. The police have obviously been guessing. Let them keep guessing.’

“Well that’s absolutely horrifying.” I blurted out. Though not at Pool-Cecil for once. “And you’re telling me we’re not going to try and catch her?”

Elsie shrugged.

“I mean, we will try Cecil. We’re not heartless.”

“It isn’t about being heartless. My Skill just told me something that makes a lot of sense. We’re a couple of years from showing Magic to the world at large. How do you think the average 9 to 5 worker in a factory is going to react when they learn that there’s a serial killer using Magic and that she’s been active for years? We should catch her right the frick now and save ourselves the trouble.”

“And we will.” Elsie assured me. “But that is a more long-term goal. Right now, we’re looking to make significant material gains.”

She poked my side jovially.

“Care to guess again?”

I thought of her words and of the things I’d heard just now. Putting two and two together.

“You want to buy a whole lot of farmlands from the owners who’ve gone bankrupt.” I mused aloud. “From Detroit itself, and from anyone else that might be attending the conference. Our own farm in North Korea is putting out enough produce to feed tens of millions every week, but the world has a lot more people that need to be fed, and the shortfalls are only going to keep increasing the more conventional farms keep failing. By buying up those farms, not only can we get more food out to people that need it, but we can also potentially recruit more people into the conspiracy at the last minute and give them Cores worth a damn.”

“And the press.” Elsie chided. “Don’t forget the press.”

“Yeah.” I muttered. “Now that you mention it, Carlyle did say that a lot of people had a lot of questions as to where the food was coming from.”

I turned to her.

“Don’t you think they’ll see what’s going on once the Magic apples and melons and barley start springing up in seconds?”

“Only if we put in as much Magic as we’re using in the Dunegon town.” She corrected. “We won’t need to concentrate so much farming into so little terrain if we buy it out normally. We just need to grow crops at the same rate or slightly faster than before. Giving them enough Magic that they don’t fail, while keeping up appearances. The FDA will get their inspections, including DNA tests and the local states will get their pound of flesh in the form of taxes and generous job postings. We will have to buy farm equipment for those farms too, though grandpa James had balked about the prospect of buying those fancy new tractors. We’ve actually started our own company to take care of that, though not under our own name.”

“Who owns that company then?” I asked her.

She replied by smiling and showing me an article from a newspaper.

“Fowler Fieldworks opens new factory in Kentucky. 20, 000 jobs created.”

The picture showed uncle Uter. Smiling stiffly. Clasping the hand of another man who seemed far too happy to be there.

“Holy cow.” I blurted out.

“Yeah, we actually considered that as the name of the company, but your uncle didn’t like it.”

I was about to say something else, when Carlyle and James dragged a beaten and despairing Casper over. And from there, a flash came over us. So that we found ourselves in the middle of a deserted street.

“See Casper?” Carlyle cooed. “It wasn’t so bad was i…”

“Hands up! Gimme everything you got!” A voice shouted from the side.

We all turned as one. To find a group of seven men and women. Each holding a pistol and showing expressions that would have cured constipation.

“Get away from the car old man!” Another man shouted. Even as he rushed over, placed his hand on the handle through the open window and opened the door.

He was inside the vehicle within the span of a blink and from there, he was off.

The car screeching into motion and disappearing down the road.

Carlyle and James Robertson stared after it. Faces frozen solid in a mask of incredulity.

Casper’s face, in contrast, was nothing but righteous vindication.

“I told you! You shouldn’t have left the keys in the car!”

“Ah. Um. Hum. Ah.” Carlyle spoke.

“Hey! Wipe the drool from your face old man! Gimme everything you have or…!”

I [Spawned] a tide of roaches within the span of a second. Sending them rushing at the remaining six with all the speed that 3 levels granted them.

I explicitly ordered them to avoid inflicting wounds and to simply crawl over them. Yet the screams that erupted were such that people nearby might have guessed the Cannibal was at work.

They snapped the two elder Robertsons and Elsie from their stupor and they swiftly sent psychic bolts to the would-be robbers. Pinning them to the floor as they lost consciousness.

Throughout the event, all the nearby houses had their lights on, though no one had come out to check. Now, those lights went out, one by one. And no one seemed likely to come out any time soon.