“This rain has been going on for three weeks straight.” Winter stood naked staring out the window, my eyes could only look at one particular spot and it wasn’t the window. I couldn’t believe how perfect elven anatomy is, especially from this point of view.

“Mm, progress has all but halted on nearly everything. I can’t even get my workshop’s foundation started. Thankfully Aerith and Lemon worked quickly and made a drainage system.” Standing from the bed, I walked over to the window and looked out myself.

The first two days had been exciting, but now we were truly tired of the rain. The buildings were all water proof and could handle this rain easily, but our worry is that it’ll continue into the Nexus event, which would hinder us in several ways, such as impairing our vision.

“Aerith and Dawn were advancing, right? They should be done soon.” Winter turns away from the window and sits down on the bed. Following her, we sat beside each other feeling rather bored. Aerith and Dawn were the last two to advance out of the eight who went to fight against that butterfly that day. Lemon and Sheep had swapped with the two, due to Aerith wanting to be involved in the planning and construction of the moat around the base and needing to plan and build the drainage around the base.

The others had all advanced, all of them becoming a different race though none of them had done anything dramatic like the grass and plants that bloomed from our advancement.

“Well, we have about a week to kill, shall we get back to our ‘entertainment’?” Winter gently placed her hand on my thigh, causing my heartbeat to speed up as she slowly slid it up, her soft breath on my ear. Just as she moved her hand up to my inner thigh, a loud knock resounded throughout the house, making us both jump. Quickly getting dressed, I opened the door to our house and resisted punching the face that appeared.

“Sheep, why are you here?” Holding back my anger as much as I can, I step to the side as he enters, a grin forming on his face. I knew that he had become aware he once again interrupted us.

“Because Geralt’s team is back. We’re to meet with them in thirty minutes.” Sheep hadn’t changed much. He had a unique option like us, but retained most of his human traits except for his eyes. They were now a deep black with gold outerrings. One of his racial talents involves his eyes, allowing him to see through all forms of deceit and illusions, though if they were cast by a being far stronger then his eyes wouldn’t work.

“I expected them back a week ago. You could’ve just radioed it in, you know.”

“You think I got myself soaked just to come here and tell you they’re back?” Pulling a sack from his coat, he placed it down. “Mana crystals from the refiners. They’ve uploaded their most recent research about using mana as an energy source and wanted to also give you some crystals to experiment on.”

“Ah, I forgot I asked for some before. Thanks.” Accepting the sack of mana crystals, I put them on the table as Sheep left the house. Sighing, I returned to our room and told Winter about Geralt returning with her swearing to get revenge on Sheep at some point.

After moving through the rain to our office, I changed into another set of clothing from my office before heading to the office room on the second floor where everyone but Aerith sat.

“We go away for three weeks and return to see you’ve all changed. I thought we had returned to the wrong base for a minute.” Hearing Cass giggle at her own words, I sat down and opened the laptop I had brought with me, connecting through the ethernet at the centre of the table. I had yet to incorporate wifi with part of me not wanting command laptops on an open connection.

Geralt unfurls a large map and places it on the table, several markings on the map as he starts talking. “Thanks to the efforts of a Cartographer in our team, we’ve been able to get a more detailed account of our surroundings. There is a lot of danger out there now compared to before, swarms are everywhere. We had to go on foot a lot of the time to explore certain regions which is what increased the time we took, but we found a lot. I want you all to look at these red circles.” Geralt places a finger on one, and standing I saw there were dozens of them scattered around the map with our base in the very centre.

“These locations are the apparent Dimensions. In total there are 46 within a fifty kilometre range of us, all of them having various notifications from the System.” Pulling out four pieces of paper, he passed one to each of us. Looking at it, I pursed my lips.

On the paper were numbered lines, showing different messages from the System. The first Dimension showed that two months remained until enemies would spill from it. A recommended level had been provided as well, stating a mix party of ten Lvl 1s and ten Lvl 2s or 1 Lvl 3 was recommended to clear it out. These numbers changed, there were even Dimensions that would ‘Break’ in seven years and needed four Lvl 4s to safely clear. Looking back at the map, I saw that each location is marked with a number.

“In addition to these Dimensions, new locations have seemingly just appeared.” Geralt points to one of a dozen blue marks. “For example, this is a town…village…well, it’s got like ten houses but from a distance it seems to be more magic orientated than anything we’ve come across. We didn’t explore any of these locations as they had strange monsters protecting them. Nothing like that Butterfly you lot ran into, but since we know nothing about them we decided to simply catalogue them.” Handing out yet another piece of paper, I saw that just like the Dimensions, the new locations were all marked with numbers.

“How strange. These new locations suddenly appeared and most of them seem to be focused on mystical power, yet this world had been first focused on machinery and guns. Is this a sign we should switch to magic?”

“No. If that’s the case then why offer machinery or gunpowder based Jobs and Classes? I think the right answer is a mix between the two, combining both modern weaponry and magic.” Responding to Jupiter, I looked at the map and saw arrows. Asking Geralt he responded saying they were attempting to track the swarms, but their pathing had been random so they gave up after a while.

With the help of the others, we slowly catalogued everything onto the server with Sheep working on forming a priority list of which Dimensions we should attack first. Jupiter worked on which locations we should raid first and with me shooing them away, Geralt and Cass went to rest.

Seeing the other two work, I told them I’d be in my office and heading up there, I opened a second laptop which is what I used to program with. I already had started working on writing an operating system for a phone and pulling said phone out from my desk, I once again started on coding, intending to finish the operating system in the next day or two.

Two days seemingly flew by and with only five days left before the Nexus event, I had finished and loaded the operating system with no issues, even including the camera function and a way to upload them. Stretching, I looked out the window and noticed that the rain continued to pour down heavily, and with a sigh I stood up and decided to go for a walk, heading towards the farm.

The preparations for the Nexus event had been largely left to Sheep as he had a more level head when it came to planning out combat. Our plan remained the same, regardless of the rain, except we couldn’t use vehicles to move supplies around since the ground had become far too soft. The upside is that we have built a dozen more rain tanks and no longer needed to fear a water shortage when the well needed to recharge.

We would be in trouble if there were flyers though, since other than me, we had no other ways to deal with them before they reached the base. I knew that we had others who had taken up the sniper and while I hoped they would be good shots the pressure to take out flyers would be immense. An idea came to mind as I considered the possibility of putting a dome around our base, though it would need to be well made.

Arriving near the farm, I could see a collective effort had been made to at least build up protection around it, with helpers erecting what protection they could, including making a wall around it. This is in case there is a breach during the Nexus Event, the worst case scenario is the farm being wiped out and the animals killed. The rain continued to fall all around me as the spirits started to float towards me, resting on my shoulder and head as usual, their mood seemingly unaffected by the downpour.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Holding a hand out, I watched as a few of them landed on it, swaying peacefully. I could see with my vision that they too were drenched thanks to the rain but they acted as if they weren’t.

“I wonder if I could ever communicate with you all…” Seeing them so happy, I couldn’t help but continue to think why they acted like this towards Rebecca and I. At first, I figured it’s due to us being Elves, but that didn’t make sense since I was the only one who could see them. Rebecca couldn’t even sense them and would be clueless when they surrounded her.

Just as I’m about to walk in another direction, the hairs on the back of my neck stand as the feeling of being watched closely intensifies. By reflex, my hand nearly snaps to my handgun but resisting the urge I instead leaned against the fence and looked towards a certain spot, a smile forming on my face.

“A bit spooky, Ghost.”

From the shadows of a nearby tree, a figure materialised out of thin air, revealing Ghost. He looked like a normal, everyday human being, but that wasn’t true anymore.

“Only you and Winter can sense me like that, Midnight. I’ve got something to report to you…out of the rain that is.”

When it came to Ghost, if he didn’t want to be seen, you couldn’t see him until he attacked or revealed himself. He hadn’t changed physical forms nor did he have a transformation, but his evolution made him into a higher form of Shadow Stalker that had been offered to me, but had been a unique evolution for him, being able to blend in perfectly to the shadows of anything and with so many shadows of people and buildings there wouldn’t be any hope of seeing him.

Following Ghost, we walked through the farm and arrived at a small shack. Entering after him, he locked the door before pulling a large box away from a corner, revealing a hole with a ladder.

“Fancy. You need to hide it better.”

“Working on it. For now, this is a place only Melody and I are allowed to access and everyone accepts it. It helps when they think Melody and I use this place for ‘fun times’” Winking back at me while I shake my head, he leads me down and after a short climb and walk, we arrive in a small room with a desk and chair.

“An underground study room? Brian, don’t tell me this is going to transform into some super spy room or something.”

“Damn, that’ll be sorta cool, won't it? Pull a lever and the walls go up, revealing all sorts of assassination weapons, a spy car and a computer network. I’ll add it to the list of things to do.” Brian chuckles before walking over to the desk and from the pile of notepads, he picks one up and walks towards me. “Now, for the reason I brought you down here. As you suspected, they are people getting a bit too…comfortable.” Brian hands me the notepad and making sure my hands are dry I take it and start reading it.

It describes nine individuals from Trinity’s group that had started to act suspiciously. After Ghost had advanced and told me about his traits of being able to completely blend in with the shadows, I had him check all individuals and investigate them, leading to these profiles being done. Reading the notepad, I silently read while Ghost waited for me.

According to the notes, the nine Ghost had found were all Jobless and Classless. They were working and building either the wall or buildings for storage or housing. Recently, in the last few weeks, they have become agitated about their ‘treatment’ in the base, mainly about being underfed and forced into working constantly. Frowning, I continued to read each profile, finding that they had at some point started to meet up as a group.

Nothing really came out of these meetings, at most they were complaint sessions, but in the last few days they had started to discuss some dangerous topics. Ranging from stealing the occasional fruit or bread to discussing the potential of ‘taking over’ the leadership, in other words, a coup d'état…

“Ghost, how are these nine treated compared to the others? Are they being overworked?”

“No, they work up to ten hours and rest for the remainder. They get two days off and they get the same amount of food and water as everyone else, three times a day. I confirmed it multiple times as well, they’re treated rather well but it seems like they believe otherwise.”

Reading over the notes, the only conclusion I could come to is that they were unhappy with having to work when they might die at any point, even though they don’t mention it. My main concern is that they were admitting to stealing the odd piece of fruit or bread every now and then since it could escalate to something more. Especially with weapons and magic so readily available since all it would take is one person from these nine to do something that could upset the balance.

“With the Nexus Event coming up, we need all hands on deck…but we can’t ignore this either, we need to nip it in the bud.” Handing the notes back to Ghost, I leaned against the wall and folded my arms in thought.

“Imprisonment could work? Remove the threat from the rest of us, I could do it silently.” Placing the notepad back on the pile, Ghost turned to me.

“No, not a good idea. It may come back to bite us in the arse later if others find out we’re imprisoning people because they’re complaining. I doubt they’ll do anything until after the Nexus Event has passed and by then things will ease up workwise. Continue to monitor them, if you truly believe they’ll be a danger before the Nexus Event, then imprison them. Is the farm steady enough to increase the food allowance for everyone?”

“Barely. Maybe one or two extra pieces per person, but it’ll strain us. The expansion of the farm is basically on hold, but what we did before moving people away should be ready in another month or two. Then it’ll be easier to provide more.”

Staring at the ground for a minute, I sigh and shake my head. “We expected this sort of problem to crop up when we eventually grew in numbers, but to think it’s over having to do work.”

“Well, you can’t expect everyone to be happy. From their point of view, they’ve gone from one hellhole into a new one where they’re forced to work. Perhaps a reward for everyone once the Nexus Event is done will do them some good?”

“Reward? What can we offer five hundred people?”

“Vacation time?” Ghost grins before turning serious. “Managing so many people and ensuring they’re happy isn’t easy. Remember, Ruby, they’ve all got their own issues, personalities and more. Most of those out there are like we were before you guys returned to our world. They likely hate being here, hate how they’ve been shoved into a life or death world where they need to work around the clock to ensure their safety.

“Providing them some relief would be nice. Entertainment would be nice as a distraction, you guys brought a ton of hard drives back with anime, TV shows and more, right? Hook that shit up to that fancy network you’re building, build TVs people can obtain with contribution points and allow them access to that entertainment.”

We had indeed brought hard drives filled with entertainment, all four of us that met up had. Jupiter and Melissa had also done the same, but we hadn’t used them at all. Thinking over what Ghost had said, all of it is possible, I’d just have to ensure Night Rose can be used for media files and build an operating system for TVs. It would be a lot of work, but providing entertainment in some form would work well.

“Did anyone bring music?” Looking up at Ghost, I nod slowly. My phone had far too much music downloaded to it and hearing Ghost’s question, I had an epiphany.

“Right, we can play music throughout the base. We could even install music into each house or dorm room…with a little work I can also make it so they can customise the music they can listen to.” My mind spun with ideas for the contribution system, an excitement of building ‘smart homes’ that could be integrated into Night Rose, allowing everyone to have individual entertainment in their own home or dorm room.

“Heh, seems like you’re going to be busy.” Ghost slaps me on the shoulder as I grin in return. Following him back out, we hid the entrance to the tunnel and headed back through the farm.

“Brian, how are things with you and Gemma?”

“Ah, going well, though I do wish things would slow down a bit. Originally it had been just a ‘friends with benefits’ deal while you guys were gone, but after a few nights we just kind of fell for each other. Things are great though, she’s happy and so am I…it’s weird, even though it’s only been a few months, it’s like the two of us have known each other for a lot longer.”

“I guess that’s what happens when you could die tomorrow. I’m happy for you, Brian, you were always bad with relationships before.”

“Ah, don’t remind me. How’s things between you and Rebecca?”

“Same old. We’ve both changed slightly since coming here, more talkative. She’s been a lot happier these days.” Brian and I spoke a bit more, before parting at his house. Practically rushing to my house through the rain, I arrived and after undressing and drying myself off, I headed to the basement and wrote everything down that came to my mind, the ideas flooding onto the paper about the contribution system and the plans to provide entertainment to everyone.