In the center of the main city near the center of the safe zone on the eastern coast of the continent, nestled between a forest volcano zone and a plains terrain zone with large sinkholes, Lord Ghost sat in his throne seat at the end of a long conference table. There were eight other people sitting at the table with him and they were going over weekly business. Ghost was tired of daily random meetings and wanted to be able to leave and everyone knew they could see him once a week for sure to hash out problems and make big picture decisions. He would tell himself and anyone who questioned it, that it was because of the next monster wave coming from the ocean, but he knew it was because of the impression that Lord Ash had left on him.
Questioning their prisoner before faking his escape, Ghost had not been sure if he could have won in a fight against him. The story Drak told of their fight and the information that he had shared about the power of the system transformations not being enough drove him to get stronger. From all indications, Ash didn't want to interfere with anything going on inside the safe zone, but he could not shake the fear in Drak's eyes when describing their fight. He needed to be strong enough to defend himself and his holdings or risk them being taken and with him being level 90 now, he felt like he was making progress. The problem was the people in the south, especially the ones closest to Ash's base, did not feel they needed to pay taxes for the hunters since Ash would protect them.
That was just one of the things to be addressed by this meeting, but it was the only one that Ghost would pay close attention to. After talks on taxes, population compliance, hunter squads, and public relations, they finally got to the good stuff and Ghost cracked a smile. This is where he paid attention and spoke up.
One of the men dressed like a fantasy wizard stood up, "My Lord, All information and assessment points to you being our only chance at dealing with anything related to Lord Ash." the man cleared his throat, "So the council has voted that any matter dealing with Lord Ash shall be considered your responsibility since the rest of us are not equipped to handle it."
Ghost's face turned angry to hide his fear and started yelling, "So, what you're telling me is that out of all of you work for me, but are more afraid of Ash than you are of me!?" Everyone in the room went stiff, but Ghost took a deep breath and calmed himself. "From my conversations with Ash, I believe that he just wants to be left alone and even help if it saves lives. He simply doesn't need anything we have, he can't get in here either way. The only option I see for the short term is to leave him, and especially his people, alone."
"My Lord," the wizard hat guy responded, "when you say his people, do you mean all of them?"
Ghost sighed heavily, "Obviously, but from your tone I'm assuming something has already happened."
"Yes and no, the four women from his group were seen entering the city early this morning so we dispatched someone from assassination to follow them," another man from the table explained.
"Just follow right?"
"Yes, she is highly capable, it is unlikely that she will be discovered."
"Good, because if they do, her blood is on your hands and I will drag you to them for execution if they ask for it. We have to play long term games with them, everyone has just been reacting for survival which mostly leads to short term decisions. We need to capitalize on those, not make them ourselves." Ghost paused and thought for a second, "Actually, is this assassin pretty?"
"She is better than average, but so is everyone after a body upgrade."
"See if you can get a word to her, have her get noticed enough that they try to capture her and she can spy from the inside for us," Ghost said with a smirk.
"A message has been sent," one of the quieter men at the table said. A man who Ghost had forgotten was sitting there and just remembered that was the man in charge of the assassin group. His will skill was scarily effective, it made everyone around him temporarily forget or not notice him unless he wanted them to. Ghost would have made him keep it off if he didn't think using it to fool himself was a good gauge on how it would work against other lords. Just another thing that gave him confidence to move forward with plans to force taxes from the smaller towns, but not with direct violence, just the withholding of protection from monsters, or whatever else might take advantage of a town with no defenses.
**********************
Eli, Stevens, Cody, and Beau were sitting around the table in Stevens' room, the constant growth of crater town over the past week or so had given even the smaller huts a queen bed, a fire place with a cooking pot hanger, and a table with 4 chairs and enough for room for all of them to sit comfortably. The tea they were drinking was made by Stevens and not bought from the system store, which they all loved the taste of, it was like drinking bitter sweet pine sap with a hint of vanilla and caramel. While he was pouring it, he explained that it was an herb he got as a monster drop after killing a plant monster.
"So you are going to be a cook then?" Cody asked.
"Well, the way I see it," Stevens said with a slight southern accent as if he was winding up a long story, "the women I'm attracted to don't seem to be the domestic cooking type. So I might as well get started cooking so we can eat better food."
"I'm the opposite," Beau interjected like he has argued this before, "I like domestic women, the kind that enjoy having separate roles in the relationship. The world is full of competition and survival of the fittest. I want to come home to a place where I know what's expected of me and I don't have to try and out perform anyone in those expectations."
"I have no idea what I want in a woman," Said Cody, he was a little embarrassed but happy to be part of the guys club and included in the conversation. "I need a girlfriend, but it's not like we get time off and every girl here is into Eli except Arinya and Stevens told me he called dibs so.."
"Wait," Beau interrupted, "He told me he had dibs on Lucy."
All of them were looking at Stevens who tried to hide his face in his mug of tea, and then they all started laughing. Stevens shot hot tea out of his nose and they all laughed even harder. Once they collected themselves they all were smiling, clicked their clay mugs together and took a drink of their tea.
Eli cleared his throat and said, "I realize I somehow draw the attention of the women here and I know you all want to find women of your own. After this dungeon run, we are going to take some time to settle into this new world and this new life we have to live to be in it. I'm going to do some travelling and I want you guys to head into the city and see if you can't accomplish more than one goal. Recruitment for the group and maybe find yourselves a relationship. Don't skip training, but slow things down and get used to this life, because it isn't changing."
"That's easy for you to say," Stevens said, "we can't just walk up to a woman, flash her our glowy eyes and perfect hair and have her legs go weak. How do we know we won't just be adding to your harem when they meet you?"
"I'll inform all four of them that they need to keep any new girls away from me," Eli said.
"Without killing them?" Stevens asked, pointing a finger at him.
"Without killing them, yes. I won't be here anyways. I'll take a couple of the girls with me too, so you should have nothing to worry about." Eli said as reassuringly as possible.
"Were are you going to go?" Beau asked.
"I have a feeling that this dungeon we are going to is special and related to the zone somehow, and if that's true then there will be five more to conquer after that. I plan on clearing them all."
"Sounds like you'll be gone for a long time," Cody said.
"Ill come back after each one, in case someone needs a break or wants to come along that didn't get to go."
"Well, it sounds like an adventure, I wish you the best of luck," Stevens said. He had a confused look on his face, it was a mix between happiness for some down time and disappointment that he didn't get to go run dungeons.
**********
Theodore was in his hut, as he had been pretty much since he arrived in Crater town. No one bothered him or came looking for him and that's how he liked it. After the initial shock of coming here, he didn't mind it so much, and the perks were wonderful. On the second day of his arrival Bethany had spoken with him about what he would need to raise his profession skill, she paid attention and asked the right questions. An hour later she returned with everything he asked for and then some, it turns out that everyone here didn't really seem to care about money and just pitched in a bunch of random materials from monster drops. There were scales, claws, teeth, bones, hides, herbs, affinity gems, and a whole pile of stuff that he didn't even know what it was or what it was made out of.
Over the past couple days he had been sorting his things and making twice daily escorted trips to the safe zone to buy even more things, all paid for by Bethany. She had told him that it was the Lord's money, but he thought she was just trying to impress him so that he would join. Now, though, he didn't care, he stood and looked at his home which had turned into almost all workshop except the bed. Storage cabinets were almost half his hut with the workbench, bed, and a small anvil and furnace taking up the rest. Before getting to work he felt he needed a reset, he went to the fountain, ignoring anything he heard from the others and got some water and was just dumping it onto himself. After a nap in the warm sun he was dry again and he was eager to get started crafting.
The system made crafting pretty simple, if it would turn into something the system would recognize as an item, it would smooth out the edges and make it look more like a finished product. The rarity of the item would determine how much assistance you received. The tricky part was intent, or what he heard this group calling will, a crafter had to hold a detailed image in their mind of what the item would look like while pressing down with their will. This had to be steady and focused during the final parts of the crafting. A simple copper ring would was easy to imagine and finish, but with lackluster materials, it wouldn't hold any benefits and would break if you tried. If you put too much will into giving more bonuses that the material could handle the craft would be unsuccessful and the materials would be ruined.
On the other side of that process, if you don't put enough will into the process for good quality materials then you are leaving bonus effects on the table that could have gone into it. Once an item is made, it can only be destroyed, not broken back down for parts. Another tricky part that Theodore learned was that the bonus you imagined, had to be similar enough to the materials to make sense. For example, you couldn't add a speed bonus to an item made of turtle shell. However, now that he was ready to craft he had no idea where to start, looking through all of his materials, nothing was coming to him until a faint glint shined off of something as the clouds in the sky parted and let the sun shine in his hut.
There was an odd bit of black metal ore on a high shelf over his workbench, he had to stand on his tip toes to put it up there, but now it almost felt like he floated up to it just as it was lowered to him. Picking it up, it seemed to weigh more and less than he expected which left him with a dizzying dissonance so he sat at his work station. Holding the ore in his hands and staring at it intently, he noticed that the deeply black surface had small imperfections on it, or rather in it. These tiny imperfections in color seemed to move slowly, intermittently, and in random directions. Without a thought in his mind he was mesmerized by the metal and suddenly, like a brink to the mind, the image of a bracelet appeared in his mind's eye. It was simple looking, a perfectly circular loop of metal in the shape of a thin donut twisting on itself once. It was time to get crafting.