“Ahem, Lao, can I talk to you for a moment? In private,” Sam said after a moment’s pause.

Lao nodded and followed Sam into another room.

“So, you're wondering why I picked Claude as a captain, are you not?”

“What-” Sam began. “How did you know?”

“Let me just say, old men have some tricks. No, seriously though, I sensed your intent through my Dao. Claude may seem untrustworthy, but I saw great honor in his past as I screened him for the captain position. He has an unfortunate tendency towards being secretive and he doesn't bother to keep his motives hidden, but I assure you that he is a good man. I swore not to tell anyone about his history, but trust me on this.”

“Fine. But if he does start acting up…”

“I assure you, I will be the first person to deal with it,” Lao said, with a grin that told Sam that he was not expecting anything of the sort to happen. Sam nodded and left the room. Claude and Ava had already left, and it was just him in the hallway. Rax had gone off to do whatever the herpetopede did in his spare time, and Sam didn’t have any reason to go looking for him. Instead, he sought out Eduardo. As Sam left the city hall, he called over a random passerby.

“Do you know where Eduardo, sorry, the Angel of Death is?” Sam asked the woman. She looked extremely flustered to be speaking with him, but she still answered.

“Um, he’s surveying the walls, sir.” She immediately snapped off a salute, which Sam waved away.

“I wish everyone would stop saluting me. Makes me feel like some tinpot dictator in some banana republic.”

“Yessir,” the woman said, completely ignoring what Sam had actually said. Sam sighed and left the woman, walking towards the walls. He took his time doing so, savoring the fresh air on his face and the lack of responsibility that had for the moment. At a brisk walk, which for him was like a run for a normal person, he reached the walls in about an hour. Eduardo was not there, but Sam ran a circuit of the walls until he had found the man. Eduardo was inspecting a turret on the walls, and he was tinkering around with it. Sam climbed up the stairs, and made his way to him.

"Hey, Eduardo. I was told that you were working on the defenses. How are they going? I want to make sure that we’re all prepared for the quest to come.”

“Oh, Sam. You startled me. Uh, the defenses are going quite well. We have turrets every hundred feet, a mana cannon every thousand, as well as quite a few cannons within the city. As well as that we have the main mana cannon in the center of the city,” Eduardo said.

“Sounds good. By the way, I recently came into a large pile of credits. Is there anything you could do with, uh, let's say 10 million credits?”

Eduardo perked up.

“Quite a lot of things actually. We could upgrade the walls and defenses, as well as soup up the big mana cannon. Doing so would allow us to take out any threat up to high F Rank.”

“That’s good. Well, I’ll transfer them into the city coffers then.”

The two men ran back to the city center, and Sam set up the Metropolis Core for Eduardo to use. A few minutes later, the ground rumbled, as multiple upgrades were completed across the city. A dull roar could be heard from the superior mana cannon, and Sam ran outside to look at it. The weapon had almost doubled in size, and a faint haze of light surrounded it. It was now taking in mana from the air around it, meaning that it would require far less outside input. Sam smiled as Eduardo followed him out. The other man whistled as he took in the new size of the cannon.

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

“Those 3 million credits that I spent on this weapon suddenly feel worth it now.”

“Hang on, 3 million?” Sam exclaimed. “Why did it cost that much? Oh wait, I remember. Didn't the cannon itself cost 1.5 million? It makes sense that such an upgrade would cost double the amount.”

Sam walked over to the cannon, and saw that there was a small screen on the bottom of it, displaying a few different numbers.

Superior Mana Cannon #1

Charge:1350/250,000 Mana

Charge per minute:2500 Mana

It would take the weapon about an hour and a forty minutes to charge to full, so it would be ready to test soon enough, with plenty of time to recharge it for when it was really needed. Sam withdrew and gave Eduardo a wide smile.

“This seems really good. 250 thousand mana is a lot of power to be directed into one attack. Keep up the good work. I’m going to get a final bit of cultivation in before all hell breaks loose.”

Sam left Eduardo, who was now pursuing the interface for the cannon. Sam walked straight over to the Dao tree, noticing that there was now a large fence around it. It had a scanner on the side, which looked like some sort of biometric lock. Sam walked up to it, and studied it. As he approached, a familiar robot walked out from behind the tree.

“Halt! This is a restricted area! You need a time slot token for this. Wait, it’s you. Never mind,” Sarge said.

“Sarge? What are you doing here?”

“What does it look like? I’m guarding this Dao tree. Seeing as nobody could keep up with me in a sparring match, they put me here instead. I haven’t been bothered yet, so I’ve been doing a lot of thinking with my newly enhanced mental capacity. I’ve found out some interesting things too. My body has become almost identical to that of a human, except for my appearance. Also, I can change that now too.” Sarge’s skin started to twist and warp, and then it snapped back into place. He had turned into a middle aged man, with a long beard. A moment later, he was a woman, and then a boy. Shifting back to his normal form, Sarge smiled. Sam winced. He suddenly realized why the robot was so anatomically correct.

“Sarge, do you have any idea why you were given a gender and the ability to change your appearance?”

“Of course, it is in my directives. It is to provide my master with quote ‘a realistic training environment within all avenues of life, including the bedroom’. Does that satisfy your question?”

“Unfortunately, it does.”

Sam had no idea why he was being so prudish about the whole matter, but it just seemed strange to him that the robot could so effectively masquerade as a person, for such a purpose. Sam shrugged and walked up to the fence, before putting his finger on the scanner. It beeped green, and the gate opened, letting him in. There were a few people meditating around the tree, and he sat down with them. Upon seeing him, they tried to get up, but he told them to stay. They had earned their time here, and Sam had basically just walked in and took a place. He was not going to be the sort of leader who stole from his followers for personal gain.

As he sat down, the insights that he had been collecting slowly started to swirl around within his mind, and he directed them towards his Dao. It began to glow a tiny amount as he channeled the power into it, and he soon sank into a rhythm of Dao cultivation. It was a mostly mindless task, as he had already collected the information that he needed, but it was one that was still somehow mentally taxing. Over the next few hours, he sat there in silence, not noticing as the other people came and went. There had been some sort of schedule set up with the Dao tree, and who could use it, and Sam’s presence was surprising to the others. Of course, nobody complained, and Sam didn’t pay any attention to them. Perhaps the fact that Sam had been using his Dao Pedagogy skill to slightly boost their comprehension speed as a small sign of his gratitude had helped.

He began to grow closer and closer to a breakthrough near the end, but something was stopping him from getting there. Some final unconscious insight that would catalyze his Dao vision, allowing him to reach the next level of his Dao. Unfortunately that was not to be, and Sam was jostled out of his meditation by Sarge.