The pre-made traps were typically not something that Nate liked to use. They worked just fine, but they weren’t as strong as the ones he made from scratch. As traps meant for skeletons though, he felt they would suffice, and if not, then that was something he could fix later.

  He was in his avatar sitting on the first floor of the first dungeon when he felt the change come over the place. As if in confirmation of what he had already suspected, a notification appeared before his eyes.

  ‘The yearly event Samhain has begun. At this time, the veil between all worlds is at its thinnest.’

  He peered over at Aura and lightly poked her nose. “Are you going to cross back over and try to find more of your family? Want me to come with you?”

  She hesitated, the idea seeming to really appeal to her. Finally, she shook her head in the negative. “No, I haven’t grown enough during our time together, and you are even weaker than me. We would only end up running into a situation that we couldn’t handle and dying.” She gnashed her teeth, swiping away the notification angrily. “Perhaps next year. Hopefully, it won’t be too late then.”

  He placed his hand on her head and lightly scratched her ears. “Alright, if that’s what you think is best. Just know that I’m here for you.”

  Aura nodded, her head drooping. “I do want to, but even if we made it past everyone on the second floor, we would need to still traverse the distances of my world. At the moment, we are too slow to go any significant distance and then make it back again.”

  That was a very good point and not one that he had even considered prior to that point. However, with his storage function, it wouldn’t be a problem to store a dirtbike or any number of other things. The problem with that was how loud they all were. On a world consisting of beasts, something mechanical would stick out like a sore thumb.

  They had a year to work through the issue. For now, he could only hope that one of the other races he would eventually create dungeons against had something useful.

  Suddenly, Aura perked up. “Pull up your camera screens. It seems one of the community beasts just entered the dungeon.”

  The beast in question was a flying squirrel that had paused just inside the doors of the dungeon. It bowed its head and began to squeak.

  The screen in front of Nate provided subtitles in the form of translation. ‘Oh, great Dungeon Being, please allow me safe passage back to my people so that I may converse with them. I wish to tell them of the wonders that await them on this side, and also bring news of our princess’ survival.’

  A prompt appeared in front of him by way of the Dungeon Core, asking if he wanted to grant the request.

  Nate cursed, his mind scrambling. He ignored the prompt for the moment and instead pulled up a bunch of camera screens.

  Despite having just mentioned Aura going back through the portal himself, he hadn’t fully considered the implications until the squirrel appeared. Many of the blighted elves inside the second dungeon were taking the chance to cross back through the portal. At some point, a group had even taken the map they had created of the dungeon.

  Over in the first dungeon, they were attempting to do the same thing. However, due to the second floor being a part of the dungeon, and therefore also containing traps, they were struggling to make any headway backtracking.

  He clicked ‘Yes’ on the prompt and sat back with a groan. “Well, this complicates things. If all the future groups that enter the second dungeon portal are ready for it, then we’ll have an even harder time raising its level.”

  As it was, they were actually getting close to the energy levels required for the second level of the Dungeon Core. After the scare of having the dungeon shutting down before, he didn’t dare upgrade the Core until they had an excess.

  With all the research the core had been doing for the traps, they had become more efficient. The costs were slowly coming down, but the fear had been driven into him. Now that the first dungeon was only contributing a small portion of the energy it earned to the shared pool, he needed to be even more careful. The community in the first dungeon required a lot of energy to keep running. A new sub-pool had been created for exactly that purpose, and everything concerning the community was taken from it.

  That included the energy to create new buildings, along with the energy that was used to fuel the transformation in the beast’s minds. All the building materials were taken from the normal resource pools.

  Aura nodded, her eyes flicking across screens only she could see. “They will be much better prepared in the future, that is for sure.”

  Nate cracked his neck and sighed. There was nothing he could really do about it, not really anyway. If he simply wanted to kill everything, then placing a series of doors directly in line with the portal and a railgun would do the job. He couldn’t put traps inside the portal room, but he was fairly certain that one would work. And truthfully, it was an idea he might do at some point in future dungeons, depending on the inhabitants.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  However, he had already decided with the creation of the community that the goal of the dungeons wasn’t to kill them all. He certainly wasn’t against doing so. After all, once they left the dungeon, that is exactly what they would do to humans. It was just that it now served a purpose for him to leave more of them alive, if possible.

  At least that was the case with the thinking races. It was doubtful there would be anything useful from the skeletons.

  The two watched the goings-on inside the dungeons for a while longer before shutting everything down. They wouldn’t be able to get any combat practice in that night, and Nate didn’t really feel like working on his meditation art at the moment. All he wanted to do was get some sleep.

  ***

  The next morning, Nate ate the second alchemical core enhancer. It was a bit much for his body at twenty-three points. The strain was handled by his backup-core without a problem, despite how it made him feel.

  At breakfast, the conversation was dominated by two subjects. Samhain, and the work that was to be done in the city that day.

  The adults had apparently decided that one of the first items that needed to be rebuilt -along with the other items they had decided on the night before- was the schools. There were too many kids just roaming around and getting in the way. The need to get the younger ones out of the way had become apparent as more reports came in.

  There was a lot to be done, and the days had already been growing colder. The adults with their cultivator abilities would be able to handle what promised to be a harsh winter relatively easily. The kids and older teens who hadn’t formed their cores wouldn’t have those same advantages.

  Not all of the schools would be rebuilt. Many of them had been getting old as they were before they were destroyed. As they rebuilt the schools, they would be making them bigger, and able to handle more kids. They wanted each one able to handle a larger portion of the city.

  That meant that they needed to have people going around to each of the schools that would now be defunct and collect everything. Each of them had valuable libraries of energy skills, meditation model information, and meditation arts.

  This is what Angie, Lindsay, and Nate would be going around doing that day, along with a large group of other people.

  The oldest and most damaged schools had all been marked down on multiple maps. Everything they grabbed would be going directly into trucks and then moved to one of the schools that would be made larger later.

  It was not a project that would be done in a couple of days, but it needed to be started. On the plus side, they would be able to take their pick of any energy skills they happened to come across.

  The kids would have eventually received more energy skills from their own schools. They were just speeding things along a little, assuming they even found anything interesting. Not every school had a large library of energy skills.

  Outside in the city itself, more people were talking about Samhain, but their interest in the yearly event was definitely muted. Normally, the thinning of the veil would have been a big deal for them. It was when they had a chance to crossover to another world. There was also usually a lull around that time, due to the beasts and other portal invaders also taking the opportunity to go back home.

  Unfortunately, due to what had happened with the attack on the city, none of them had more than the bare amount of interest.

  Nate had been expecting it to be a huge deal previously. It was something he was looking forward to, and then everything had gotten ruined.

  If there was a silver lining to working at the schools, it was uncovering the bunkers. The newer schools didn’t have them, as they had gone out of style with the introduction of the wall. However, all the older schools had large bunkers buried beneath their gymnasiums.

  It didn’t look as though they had been maintained at all, and yet they had held up. Each of them was full of families and teachers. Finding the additional survivors was a huge event, and more people were promptly called in for each of the old schools throughout the city. Finding temporary housing for all of them was a struggle, but that would be a problem for weeks to come.

  At least food wasn’t an issue, yet. There were multiple beast body processing centers, and despite some of them having been destroyed, the remaining ones were able to keep up with the demand.

  The three teenagers and Aura were absolutely filthy when they finally dragged themselves back to the estate. Night had fallen hours ago, but they had gotten caught up in uncovering the bunkers.

  They all but collapsed on the couches after entering the house. It had been another physically and emotionally exhausting day for them. Uncovering the doors to the bunkers and helping all those people had helped to push aside the memories of all the bodies they had found the day before.

  Right now, they were all starving, but they didn’t really feel like moving either.

  A while later, Nate finally dragged himself into a shower and then into the comforting embrace of his bed. A few minutes later, Aura joined him. She had been subjected to Lindsay somewhat forcefully absconding with her to a larger, more luxurious shower.

  “Traitor,” She muttered before sinking into his chest.

  “Oh hush, you know you liked the attention. Besides, my shower wouldn’t have been big enough to clean you properly.” He yawned, barely managing to keep his eyes open long enough to open the menu. His hand fell atop the bed stretched out toward the computer on his wrist, soft snores filling the room.

  The third dungeon would be finished that night. However, his inspection of it would need to wait until morning.

  Book 2 – End

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