Thankfully, it only took Diane a few minutes to return, her brand glowing once again. “You haven’t gone anywhere, have you?” she asked quickly, looking around to confirm our location.

  “Wasn’t planning on it before you returned.”

  Hearing that, Diane let out a small sigh. “Good. We’re in Stormforge right now. That last realm we went through should have been Thalassia. Going by the time, we just need to wait a little bit. When the portal shifts, it will link with Zephyros first, and then after that it’s Chimeris. Just stay here for half an hour, and we’ll be able to head back.”

  I nodded my head in understanding. If it were just myself, I could use the king’s portal to return to Fallcry. However, I still wasn’t sure if that would allow me to bring others with me. And, if it didn’t, I didn’t want to strand these two in another realm without any way to return without just waiting for me to come back.

  Thus, I created a platform beneath myself to settle down and wait. As I did, Bella couldn’t help but glance around suspiciously. “How did they find us in the first place, though? If they had seen us flying over the city, they wouldn’t have just waited for a few days before chasing.”

  “They probably saw a sponsored clip,” Diane explained, shaking her head. “If there was a clip of us flying over the city, all they’d need to do is head north with someone able to see through high-level stealth.”

  I grunted softly, distinctly aware of the drawbacks for the sponsorship system. I had known from the start that this would likely lead to events where those pursuing me could track my location. “Hopefully, they won’t be willing to attack Fallcry itself if they know that Kelly is there. If even she isn’t enough of a deterrent, I’m not sure what we can do.”

  The other two seemed to agree, watching as the portal trembled, shifting into nebulous shades of grey. According to Diane, we just had to wait for another fifteen minutes, and we would be able to return to Chimeris. “Honestly, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to tackle more fire-attribute dungeons, now that we have this skill. We could probably afford to farm the fire spirit dungeon near Nora’s village, as long as we’re careful about the final boss.”

  Bella seemed to consider this for a moment. “That might not be a terrible idea. Although the wave rewards were pretty good at the arena, there weren’t many monsters for us to fight.”

  Diane smiled wryly behind her facemask. “True. We weren’t able to get too many levels from that dungeon. Though, I’m more concerned about how much the monsters will have proliferated while the dungeon was sealed.”

  As we were discussing this, the rift changed again, this time shifting into a mismatch of green, red, white, and brown. Recognizing the coloring for this rift, I took off, flying through and back to Chimeris. Although we had pretty much decided to tackle the spirit dungeon next, we still needed to offload the rewards we had obtained from the arena. Of course, I landed a short distance outside of Fallcry, allowing the other two to dismount before returning to my normal form and ending my stealth.

  The first thing that I noticed was that the streets were far more lively than they had been just a few days ago. Perhaps it was because of the mimic embryos sold by Hammerhead, or the advertising done by the Twisted Eye, but regardless, there were a lot of unfamiliar players walking the streets.

  Seeing this, I remembered something else that I had wanted to do. “You two take care of the loot. I’ll catch up with you soon,” I told them, trading my excess loot to Diane. The two looked at me for a moment, before nodding their heads.

  As they walked off towards the bank, I made my way to the center of town, sending a message to Nuoda. If there’s anything that you want to keep in the mansion, you should go ahead and pack it up. I’m about to build the new palace.

  My player already packed everything the other day, Nuoda responded. Though, it is a surprise to see you back at this time.

  We just got chased out of our last dungeon, so I thought I’d take care of this while we were here. As I sent that message, I found the manor at the heart of the town. As Nuoda had said, it looked empty. Even with my Tremorsense-X, I couldn’t sense anything moving within the mansion. Can you send out a public announcement that the palace is about to be built? Don’t want people panicking.

  “I’m already working on it,” Nuoda’s voice spoke up from nearby as she walked over, one finger busy typing away. Soon, she finished the message, and I saw a city-wide broadcast that construction work was being done on the king’s palace.

  “How have things been going while we were gone?” I asked, focusing my Instant Fortifications-X skill to deconstruct the current manor, replacing it with the blueprint of the Sunspire Palace. Compared to creating the entire Sunset Isles city, this palace took almost no time at all, the entire building complete in under a minute.

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  “There have been a few troublemakers,” Nuoda sighed, shaking her head. “Thankfully, Kelly’s been willing to step in when they were too much for our local players. The Twisted Eye has also agreed to send players to supplement the defense of Fallcry on a rotating shift.”

  “Aside from that, there have been a little over three hundred people coming to register as citizens of the nation,” she crossed her arms under her bust as she said that, just in time for me to finish the palace.

  “How’s the finances?” I asked hesitantly, turning back to face her.

  Nuoda blinked, but shook her head as she explained, “There haven’t been any problems yet. Between the sales of the Transform skill books and the loot from the nation’s resource dungeons, we’re still turning a profit. Speaking of which, a new dungeon appeared the other day, not long after you left this last time.”

  “What type?” I glanced back towards the city walls, as if expecting to see the dungeon nearby.

  “It’s a tower,” she pointed off towards the west. “It appeared in the forest, so I asked the Twisted Eye if they could help us investigate it, and potentially secure the dungeon key. If they couldn’t, I was going to have to ask Kelly to intervene.”

  “The interior of the dungeon is larger than the exterior would indicate, and it is filled with storm spirits. The dungeon exploration division of the Twisted Eye set out and spent a full day raiding the dungeon. From what I understand, quite a few of them lost several levels in the process…”

  “According to their intelligence, the monsters hover around level three hundred. Most of the loot is pretty standard, with one novice Martial skill that drops, as well as two intermediate Martials and one Magic. However… when they fought the boss of the dungeon, two of them received a grandmaster skill book called Chaining Strikes.”

  My eyes widened at the mention of a grandmaster skill book. Of course, this skill wouldn’t be nearly as strong as one that evolved from the start. However, it would allow someone to immediately gain a powerful skill. “Are you certain that it’s a grandmaster skill?”

  As far as I knew, there wasn’t any way to appraise the ranking of a skill book. However, Nuoda seemed confident. “I am. Mister Avenborough ran a check on the player forums, and found that someone had managed to evolve the skill themselves from a dropped master-rank book. According to the information he found, it should be part of the Shocking Grasp skill tree.”

  A grandmaster Martial skill… I was tempted to ask for a copy. However, I wasn’t very far from evolving Lightning Lash to its master stage. After that, it was just one more evolution, and then I would have the superior version of Chaining Strikes. Besides, if they really used human wave tactics to attack the dungeon and died that many times, they deserved the skill book themselves.

  “Anything else of note?” I asked, glancing from the western wall back to Nuoda.

  She thought about it for a moment, before shaking her head. “Nothing else of significance. The monsters around the city have begun to repopulate, but the group from Twisted Eye has been able to keep them in check.”

  I nodded my head thankfully, waving goodbye to Nuoda. Although there were a few shocking discoveries from that conversation, there was nothing that threatened to immediately harm the nation, aside from possibly the dragons. Thus, as I walked to meet up with Bella and Diane, I stopped by the training area to inform Kelly. She didn’t seem particularly bothered by the news, and just said that she’d keep an eye out for the ‘overgrown lizards’.

  After that, I found the other two waiting at the northern gate of the city. Bella smiled, waving at me as I approached. “You get everything taken care of?” she asked.

  “That’s right,” I confirmed. “There’s been some other stuff going on, but I’ll fill you in on the way.”

  As I spoke, I pulled the car back out of my inventory, driving us up and into the sky towards Nora’s village. While driving, I explained the news that Nuoda had shared with me. Both of them seemed just as surprised about the new dungeon as I was, Diane looking out the window to see the tower vanishing behind us. “In any other game, that dungeon would become an instant tourist attraction,” she said, shaking her head. “A major skill like that dropping as a boss reward, even if the odds were low, would bring in hordes of players to challenge it.”

  “Are the odds really that low?” Bella asked, confused. “I mean, two players got it on their first fight against the boss!”

  Diane smiled bitterly behind her mask. “From what I know, there are about nine hundred players in the dungeon exploration division of Twisted Eye. Their standard tactic when exploring a dungeon is to flood it with bodies, uncovering every secret through brute force, and stepping on piles of corpses to defeat a single enemy.”

  “For only two people out of nine hundred to get the skill, that shows that it has a very low drop rate. Though, if the drop rate were any higher, I would be legitimately concerned about what else that dungeon was hiding.”

  Bella blinked, nodding her head slowly as she processed those numbers. “Right, I forgot that they have… quite a large group.”

  That’s an understatement, I thought to myself. To have nine hundred people willing to charge blindly into an unknown dungeon, overwhelming powerful enemies with sheer numbers… I wasn’t sure if that said something about the size of their group, or the mentality of players as a whole.

  As I thought about that, I began to descend over the clearing near Nora’s village. I could already see Nora standing within the training ground, practicing with a wooden staff as we landed. Her ears perked up, and she turned to look at us when the three of us got out of the car. “Ah, you’re back,” she said, having immediately lost interest when she noticed that it was us.

  “Were you hoping for Kelly?” Bella asked with a knowing smile, causing Nora to clear her throat.

  “It’s just been a while since I was able to check in with the instructor. I was looking forward to reporting my progress,” she defended, glancing off to the side. Ever since their first meeting, Nora had been trying to obtain the All Weapons Expertise skill, following the training plan set by Kelly. Given Nora’s fixation on strength, it was no surprise that she was excited to obtain such a powerful skill.