Solomon took his time disassembling the raccoon corpses. There were enough of them that the mana consumption dictated that he pace himself. More importantly, everybody needed a break after what was, for many of them, their first real taste of combat. Rushing through and getting his hands dirty carving out the valuable parts as quickly as possible would be pointless.

Even taking his time, he depleted his mana about halfway through the pile. He sat back on his haunches to wait for his MP to recover. Tiffany was sitting cross-legged a few paces away, and looked to be deep in thought. Julie was sitting nearby with her back against the alley wall. Her brothers had wandered away and looked to be reenacting their achievements during the battle. Solomon shook his head.

He couldn't hold a little bragging against them, not really. The recent battle was probably the first time they'd really been in danger of dying. That would shake anybody up. Whatever they wanted to do to boost their spirits, he shouldn't judge. The only reason he hadn't gotten in the habit of talking himself up to anybody else was because he'd been all alone, cursing out the system, when he had his first trial by fire.

He turned to Julie. "How are you holding up?"

She jumped a little, but spoke up before he could apologize for waking her up. "All right. I'm doing all right. I didn't think they'd be on us like that right from the beginning."

"Yeah," Solomon said, "the system likes to set a tone."

"This whole thing is so crazy," she said. "It really makes you wonder why."

Solomon shrugged. "I don't think anybody knows what the system really wants."

He'd never been the kind of person to dwell too long on philosophical questions. Especially when his life was on the line. Admittedly, figuring out what the system was trying to do might be important to keeping himself alive, but he didn't even know where to begin. Something like gun technology he could wrap his head around. Today he had a bolt action rifle, maybe in a week or a month Hank or somebody could figure out how to make a proper modern weapon work. He could picture it in his head.

Figuring out why the system was doing what it was? All they had to go on were the messages in the little blue boxes, and they weren't very forthcoming.

"Those assholes on campus, though," he said, "they only care about the bottom line."

The invaders were a lot easier to understand than the nigh-omnipotent system. The profit motive was universal. Multiversal, even, if the system could be believed. They wanted to make money and they didn't much care what they had to do to get it.

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"The campus is just the start," Solomon said. "They want to grab what they can and squeeze us for anything they can get."

"You don't have to tell me twice," Julie said. "They tried to dress it up all nice sounding, but I could tell what would happen to people who didn't get with the program."

The venom in her tone surprised him. Solomon looked at her in concern and saw that she had clenched her fists hard enough for the knuckles to turn white.

"You all right?" he asked.

She shook her head, then took a deep breath. When she exhaled, she deliberately opened each hand and spread her fingers out.

"Not really," she said. "I mean, nothing happened, they didn't really do anything, but I knew they would eventually if I didn't give in."

Solomon nodded in sympathy, then glanced at Tiffany. It was hard to be happy that his sister had been put through what sounded like psychological abuse, but he was glad that he had gotten her out before the invaders had escalated past the soft sell.

"We've got to get clear of those guys for now," Solomon said, "but once we've got the system figured out, we'll be coming back."

He didn't want to run off to the forest and set up some kind of survivalist compound and wait to be rescued. He knew that right now he himself, and all the people he had who were at least listening to his advice, all of them working together would be run over by the invasion that was coming down the pike. They had to retreat.

That wouldn't always be the case. The invaders might have a history of the system and might have a head start mastering the bonuses it handed out, but humanity had its own history. Obviously, a lot of what people had learned about how to fight wars had been made irrelevant by the advent of the system. For now. If Solomon could put together an army toting assault rifles modified to work under the system, well, he'd be willing to take the chance of taking the invaders head on.

Even then, sticking around in Eugene was a bad bet. His territory would offer a bolt hole. He thought he remembered that one of the proverbs about war was to first make sure that you had a secure base of operations. Something like that. Having somewhere safe and secure where people could live in peace while others went out to wage war, that was a much more practical idea than trying to charge in and cut the invaders off at the knees right away.

Julie smiled. Her hand dropped down to caress the handle of her spear. Solomon figured he could count on at least one person to be by his side in the coming war. Even if it wasn't exactly coming from a healthy mindset, he could hardly turn her away.

He sighed, then stood and made his way over to the remaining raccoons. They weren't going to disassemble themselves, and nobody else was about to grab a non-combat skill. He could dream all he wanted about the dramatic battles that the future might hold, but it wouldn't do to lose sight of the present. Or the near future, which he hoped would feature a lot of dead raccoons and relatively healthy humans.

It looked like everybody had pretty much caught their breath. Once he finished his business with the dead, it was time to find out what else the dungeon had in store for them.