Daz returned to his throne of iron and tungsten. Once sat upon it he called for Crosius to summon Lyle, Master Merit, Crusher, Owen Murphy, Greg Miller and William Retford.

He also made arrangements for Rocky, his grandmother and Pai-han to meet him via holographic projection.

The first to arrive were Lyle and Master Merit after about 10-minutes of waiting.

"What need have you of us, My High King?" Lyle asked respectfully as he bowed with grace.

Master Merit took off his top hat and held it to his rotund chest in respect. "I am at your service, High King Daz. You need only tell me what to do."

Daz briefly summoned the two men's loyalties to him before speaking.

[Lyle Middleton]'s [Loyalty] to his ruler [High King Daz]: Max.

[Jeremiah Merit]'s [Loyalty] to his ruler [High King Daz]: None.

'No changes, then. It's funny. Lyle's loyalty has been maxed ever since that encounter with whatever resides within him and Master Merit's has been set to none since day one,' Daz remarked internally. 'Yet, regardless of that, I cannot trust Lyle fully and Master Merit is one of my most reliable aides. Funny how loyalty isn't as cut and dry as I so dearly wish it would be.'

"Master Merit," Daz addressed the short moustached man.

"Yes, Your Majesty?" the man replied with that oily grin of his spread across his lips.

"I need you to make the appropriate changes to the bank to give every citizen a savings account which cannot be withdrawn from until the end of semester two. You already have the needed permissions so I trust you can do it in a way that's most profitable for the kingdom, yes?" Daz asked.

Confidence and pride oozed out of the small middle-aged man. "Oh, child's play, Your Majesty. I'll have those workers at the bank simply begging for me to add the requested upgrade."

"I hope so. And remember, souls are not up for bargain," Daz warned. "You don't even have the option to offer, then don't try."

"Of course, Your Majesty," Master Merit responded joyfully. "Botund Relox will never get what he wants in that regard. Not from me, at least."

Daz nodded then looked at his personal advisor. "Lyle, I need you to make preparations to immediately draw up a bill that will require every citizen under my rule to store exactly 744 merit points into the account Master Merit will be arranging. The bill needs to account for the needed initial sum's rise as the weeks go by."

"I assume that includes making the idea appealing to the masses?" Lyle asked respectfully.

"Yes. This needs to be done before next Monday. Every Monday we wait, the more money each citizen who hasn't deposited the needed sum will be forced to tuck away for safe-keeping," Daz explained lightly.

Both men already knew of the issue regarding Daz's 800-billion merit point fine, so there was no point over-explaining here.

Lyle was an excellent colleague of Rose's when he wasn't helping Daz be a king, and he specialised in propaganda and boosting the public view of Daz and his government's action. He could be counted on for this task.

Master Merit, on the other hand, was a master of, well, merits. His loyalty remained with the coin. So long as money was involved, no one was more suitable for Daz to put his faith in.

He hashed out a few more smaller details with them like allowing Master Merit to give crow incentives for participants in the savings scheme.

Daz hoped that would help since the local currency's popularity and usage were increasing as each day passed thanks to Master Merit's expertly implemented efforts.

Soon though, the reaper was face-to-face with his generals and Crosius. "I'm glad you could all make it on such short notice."

Crusher shrugged. "I was still in town since this morning's meeting. Not like it's a tough trip though with the new public transport network and the teleporters."

Owen Murphy nodded. "I was still in Fort Home as well."

William Retford and Crosius said nothing since one was the general stationed at Fort Home while the other was the head advisor of Castle Skip, so they never left the city anyway.

Greg Miller stayed silent as he saw no reason to speak. If Daz willed it, he'd crawl on all fours to hear his words personally.

Daz had honoured his promises and helped the man rebuild his life and regain contact with his estranged son. For that, his loyalty was now only trumped by Crusher, Lyle, Madison, Rose and Rimmy.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"I've gathered you again to tell you that I've been informed of a very serious issue by the head of the NCIA. My sister, Rose, tells me that our people are going missing. Most concerning is that she doesn't know how or why which has led her to believe the Truthians are behind it," Daz stated coldly.

Crosius frowned. "That is most concerning, Your Majesty. How can we work to stop this?"

"I'm not entirely sure, though I have a few ideas I want you all to work towards accomplishing. Owen and Will, both of you will work to increase security in western North America. Slowly make preparations to ease the populace here to enter a lockdown. If we can't catch anyone red-handed, why not make it impossible to leave the kingdom?" Daz asked rhetorically.

"It'll be a strain since we don't have the manpower for a militaristic lockdown, but I'll try my best," William Retford declared.

Daz nodded. "I'll make some upgrades to your home barracks, Will. That should grant you more soldiers."

"Thank you, Your Majesty," the lion-like man replied with a thump of his chest.

Owen Murphy pursed his lips. "This could be tough on my end. I'm not as established as General Retford is in New Earth. I'll do what I can though in Oregon since I'm still the de facto king there."

"Do your best," Daz ordered with a nod of the head.

Daz looked at Greg Miller and Crosius then said to them, "I'll need you two to work in concert with Rose to see if you can catch any of these kidnappings as they happen with your scouting and spy teams. I know they aren't training for a situation as specific as this, but we need to do something."

Both men nodded seriously and agreed without hesitation.

Finally, Daz gave Crusher her orders. "I think it's highly likely the Truthians are, as Rose thinks, responsible for this. I need you to work with Mu, Lindsey and Master Sorola to train all of the new Ember-wielders to better protect themselves and prepare them to kill with their new powers. We're going to war very soon."

"Fuckin' finally," Crusher sighed joyfully. "I'll give it my all as a vet of the ways of the Ember, haha."

Daz nodded then dismissed them all. After that, he gave similar orders to Ho Ran, Pai-han and Rocky to do the same as him in their subsidiary kingdoms.

A few hours of making preparations passed before Daz finally had a moment to rest. He was still seated upon his throne but now Madison was with him relaxing upon his lap as she snuggled up to him.

He was running a hand through her hair as he embraced her. In his free hand, he held the Skill Empowering Tokens and Skill Combining Tokens he'd been rewarded for completing his semester one goal.

'System, what's the difference between a Skill Empowering Token and a Skill Upgrade Token?' This was Daz's first time hearing of a Skill Empowering Token and while he had inspected the item with his Crystal Digger's Master Identification, he wanted more clarity from the system itself.

Confirmed. While a [Skill Upgrade Token] will boost a skill by one entire rank when possible, a [Skill Empowering Token] will give a skill a new ability it normally would not possess.

"Hmm..." Daz pondered over the subject for a while as he cuddled Madison. 'I can't use these on skills with Stars of Eternity, can I? At least, I can't have them remain permanent too. Is that the case, System?'

Denied. It is possible but it would require 5 [Tokens of Empowerment] to have the effects of one be granted the influence of a [Star of Eternity].

"Ohhhh..." he exclaimed with wide and hopeful eyes.

Madison giggled monotonously a bit and laughed with her eyes upon seeing Daz react to seemingly nothing.

He rolled his eyes and kissed her on the nose. "Don't make fun of me. I just learned something good."

Madison stuck her tongue out then kissed his nose right back. "Do, what, want. Act, funny, laugh."

"Yeah, yeah," Daz dismissed with a content smile before hugging her closer to himself.

He asked the system a few more questions and soon came to learn that this rule of needing five was universal.

He could upgrade a skill and retain the Star of Eternity with the better skill version if he used five Skill Upgrade Tokens.

The same was true with Item Upgrade Tokens and even his new Skill Combination Tokens. That last one didn't really matter right now since it would just retain the combined state of the skills if he ever got stripped of his system upgrades.

He had more than enough skill slots for that not to matter and the Skill Combination Tokens were just for trimming down on skill slot usage, sadly. They didn't synergise and power up skills.

With that in mind, he immediately used the Skill Combination Tokens to combine two different sets of skills.

First, he combined Space Adapted Body, Waterbreathing and Soundless Steps. He got to name the new resulting skill and decided to call it Body Modifications.

The last two tokens were used to combine Craftmanship and Advanced Engineering. Daz never personally used Advanced Engineering, but ever since beta had self-learned it, he'd paid to upgrade it twice now.

He hadn't invested a lot in it but his clone seemed to appreciate his willingness to spend money on it so he felt no reason to get rid of the skill.

If it was sticking around, he may as well put it into his new skill category; Building & Tinkering. With that done, his total skills had gone from 35/55 to 32/55.

'Didn't Pheldorapod boast about having over 300 skills? One, that must be insane to manage. Can he even use them all efficiently regardless of if they are all passive like he said they were? And two, how many of those are combined skills?' Daz wondered.

He'd get no answers for his speculations from the system since the topic related to a player, so Daz instead started to think about what he'd use his Skill Empowering Tokens on.

Soon, Madison had to leave since it was lunchtime for Fort Home's academy and she made sure to go every day to interact with the kids at that time.

He also couldn't use the throne room as a snuggle den for much longer anyway.

While Daz had, in recent months, invested in a court system so he needn't judge every case of criminal activity, the most heinous as well as the most unclear criminals were still brought to him to be judged.

He spent the better part of the afternoon going through such cases as New Earth's High Judge. Once that was done, he remained upon his throne as he thought more on the earlier matter.

"It's gotta be Rimmy or Astral Crystal Control, right?" he asked himself. "I need to choose one of them to make impervious to ashification."

He really couldn't decide between the two. Both had many merits.

If he used the tokens on Astral Crystal Control it would make his summoned gems as well as his controlled diamond needles immune to the Truthians' most powerful weapon.

On the flip side, while Rimmy's basic form wasn't overly strong it has a lot of distraction potential. If Rimmy just got destroyed immediately, then what use would he really be during the fighting?

Daz shook his head. "I can't choose. In that case, let's use the dice, shall we?" he muttered to himself.

Altros' Unlucky Dice Set had served him well thus far when he couldn't come to a clear-cut decision like when he gained Fort Sky.

In light of that, he felt it would be wise to go to a remote area and clean off the dust that had been building on the powerful and mysterious cubes of chance.