SHIVERS-IN-SUNLIGHT

Since Shivers received xir new vision, xe had no problems seeing in starlight. This combined with the fact that xe did a lot of resting on the previous day and now seriously couldn't anymore meant that xe noticed the approaching passenger drone before xe heard it. Xe immediately was confused. Normally, these bubble-like structures would not approach the area, they would fly to other directions and destinations. Xe hoped that they just wanted to go to a different dungeon and that the Village-of-the-Oasis-of-swimming-flowers-that-is-the-source-of-the-river-that-feeds-a-million-mouths was just a place they would fly over. Xe even assumed that they timed the flight in order not to worry any citizens of the village. With the flight not causing any vibrations, it would not disturb the people sleeping there and being burrowed, the noise would be muffled and the scorpions would be able to remain resting. Xe just wondered what the destination was. If they were about to get to a different dungeon. Were these the same people who the rest of the group had to rescue from the grade 19 dungeon? Xe gave them interesting looks as xe prepared the snail feed and portioned it out. Recently, food and feed preparation related skills started to exist based on the ideas of concepts like fermentation and pickling and thus the groups often wanted to know how he evaluated their new experiments. His skills could give him good ideas about the suitability of food for snails. And if food would keep longer, it would mean that the fields no longer needed to provide harvestable fresh food around the year during all seasons. Instead, it was possible to instead have larger fields containing the same constellations of plants, all sown, ripened and harvested at the same time. The efficiency of that was fascinating, but before it could be done, the stability of these foods needed to be assessed.

As xe pondered food and feed, xe saw the bubble touch down near the town. Xe immediately perked up and scurried to them as xe didn't assume they wanted to talk to anyone else. Especially as the group around Skips and Teki was still out and about clearing dungeons. And it was the only group that was able to communicate with them.

Xe finished portioning out the feed and then, before feeding it to the snails, rushed outside to greet the people.

CVETKA KRALJ

The passenger drone touched down at dawn and she had a bad feeling. The settlement looked like a mediaeval town if it was at the same time a nomad settlement without any fixed structures (apart from the walls). And as she saw a section being moved for one of the scorpions to scurry out and then being fixed in place again, she realised that even the walls seemed to be merely temporary structures. She shuddered at the primitive place. She wondered how these primitive folks could exist and not be ashamed. They didn't seem to have the interest to trade with the human settlement even though they still hadn't not only not discovered indoor plumbing, but they didn't even have discovered indoors. They still slept in tents and spent most of their time in the blinding sun and sweltering heat of the desert. And while she was told that they were actually pretty good at getting food off the infertile ground despite the hostile climate, they seemed not to even be aware of the wheel, preferring to carry loads on their backs. They didn't seem to experience deprivation from what Skips told her, but their standard of living was miserable. Yet they seemed not to care about the fact that items like communicators and passenger drones existed.

One of the scorpions walked to the group and moved his stinger in a strange back and forth pattern. "Hello, I am Shivers-in-Sunlight. What brings you to this place?" She noticed that his eyes gleamed with a rainbow sheen in the light of dawn.

Rush walked to the scorpion: "Hello, I am Rush. I came here to apologise. I accidentally took a dungeon reward as I accidentally, and, you know, out of habit attuned to it." He handed the hoe to Shivers who took it. "I would like to apologise for the oversight."

There was a pause, then Shivers spoke: "Are you sure that you can sustain your own repository without it? I thought you chose this as a reward as you are fully reliant on food from elsewhere."

She looked at the scorpion, then at Rush, then back at the scorpion, trying not to let her anger of being considered worth special consideration for their unworthiness show.

Rush said: "Oh, don't worry. We are receiving regular shipments from another planet. We are not at risk of hunger."

While it was difficult to even try to understand the shift in the posture of the scorpion, the lowering seemed vaguely threatening: "Is that okay? To impose on another community and repository so far away while you set up your own? It seems like a bit of an effort to me. Windrush is not that close."

Rush looked at the scorpion: "Windrush?"

Cvetka reminded him: "That's where our supplies come from. One of the Sygian planets that requires people to turn into the special blend of Sygian or to level up past, like, 30 to survive with any quality of life."

Rush nodded: "Oh, right, I remember our supplies coming from a Sygian hellhole. They are close by and the weather is better to withstand if you are basically not used to anything better."

Shivers asked Rush: "You… don't know? If we get goods from another community, we generally do know. Because someone needs to carry these things over the plain. And the group needs to welcome them. They need a good meal, a place to burrow, potentially a place to shade before returning to their community. It requires the community to prepare, doesn't it for you?"

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Rush shook his head: "Oh no, they eat and sleep on their own ship. So they don't need to be fed or accommodated here."

Shivers asked: "So, they bring you things and you don't even offer them your hospitality? Then why do they keep bringing you things if you snub their carriers that much?"

Rush explained: "They bring us things because they get paid for that. That is our equivalent to making a whole production out of receiving someone from a different city."

Shivers considered this for a moment. "So, you run dungeons to pay these people? Is that why you were sent here? To collect coins and to use some to reward the folks who bring the food and water and set up the… large tents… in which you burrow and bring more back to your repositories?"

Rush made a vague gesture: "No, not quite. The dungeons don't bring enough revenue to afford the trip. It is more… educational."

Shivers asked: "Educational? I am not sure I understand. Do you mean that it is a means to teach skills to people?"

Rush nodded: "Yeah, kinda."

Shivers looks confused, even to a human: "Then, why did you never ask? We love teaching what we know and would like to learn skills from you."

Rush stammered a bit: "Not in the same sense. Certain advantages are only available on newly integrated worlds. So to get these, our family sent us there. We pay them back by having better stats and skills for our families."

Shivers rose and lowered the body and then moved the claws: "So, you mean that what you looked for on Tsanh, you could have gotten anywhere else?"

Rush breathed in, breathed out, seemingly collected himself. Then he nodded.

SHIVERS-IN-SUNLIGHT

This news hit Shivers like a ton of bricks. In theory, Shivers had been aware that integration into the strange, black system that thrived on conflict was something that had no particular reason, but hearing it from one of the humans, especially hearing that they had no particular reason to choose Tsanh and not any other integrated world apart from timing, hit xir.

Xe realised that xe needed to be careful. These people didn't just use Tsanh as a place to level themselves up, they used Tsanh as a place to take opportunities away from the natives. Every scorpion, every spider should work at preventing their level ups, their titles, their advantages. Shivers had never considered sabotage. Xe had never considered making xirself succeed at the cost of someone else, but in that very moment, it was the first time xe considered it the right way to proceed. Xe shuddered, xe realised that going that route would add skills to the repository of xir settlements. Skills that xe was not sure xe wanted anyone to have.

Xe considered xir options: There was the chance to teach them about the values of Solidarity and cooperation, but xe was not sure if they were amenable to that. Skips was but then, she had been failed by the system in many ways. The others, xe assumed, weren't. Or if they were not to the same point. Rush was someone who scared Skips to this day. Cvetka was someone who seemed to be in control of things, and Crystal… xe wasn't even sure what she was up to. Igor seemed unpleasant from what he talked about when he deemed himself out of xir earshot. Xe had little interactions with the others but didn't believe they would be more willing to abolish their sense of competition and leave the local advantages to the locals. That was when xe realised something else: These advantages were purely transitory: Only one generation would ever be able to get them. And only a few people of any generation would. So the best way to handle the situation was not to think like a human and struggle against others, be it on the battlefield or in a battle of ideas. Xe had to handle this in a Tsanhian way to make these advantages available for everyone.

JAARU ANIIK

There was no reception of any external radio signals in the dungeon. However, the magic of the new System was still possible to update her on the state of the repository. As such, she felt the change that came with the broadcasts. She slept very badly and every time she woke up, she realised that the repository gained more people, more skills and it even levelled up. She tried to ignore them but it was difficult. Something in her demanded attention that she was too tired to give it. She felt like something in her was stretched like a hair tie. Eventually, she managed to get a bit of consecutive sleep despite the light of the dungeon and fell into an uneasy sequence of nightmares.

As she woke up, she felt miserable. She felt weak. She could barely get up. She checked her notification and gasped:

The repository Breezeplains-Windrush has reached its maximum capacity, thus outgrew the need for an established founder. As such, the connection to the repository has been cancelled. Please establish a new repository to allow the overflow to integrate.

Due to the disassociation from your repository, your level has been reset to 1.

She stared at the messages, then sighed. She saw Init and waved at her: "Hey, Init, how does it feel to outlevel me?"

Init looked at her and looked surprised: "I am only level 42, what do you mean?"

Jaaru shrugged: "Guess who disassociated from the repository and was reduced to level 1."

Init raised an eyebrow, then checked her: "Wow, I never heard of anyone levelling down! Can you… like… get up again?"

"Yeah, if I create another repository. Except that I don't really know how to. Maybe I need to wait until I once again get that strange feeling?" She asked.

Init nodded: "I'd not be surprised if that was the case."

Jaaru checked her own Solidarity status screen and gasped: Her affiliation with the repository Breezeplains-Windrush was changed to "Breezeplains-Windrush (unstable association. This repository has reached maximal capacity. Please affiliate to another repository or found a new one)". She realised that associating with new skills was possible but only for level 1 skills.

Init smiled: "With how many people are waiting to be integrated in Breezeplains, get there and found a new repository, preferably out in The Backwaters where most of the folks live!"

Jaaru clambered to her feet and then nodded: "You all need to defend me, I cannot remain out there on my own!"

Init nodded: "We will. And remember: It was you who said skills beat levels!"