Nina decided that the goat had experienced enough fun and buried one arrow after another along the length of its spine. The glow surrounding its horns gradually petered out as it slumped in place with a final weak bleat.

  The goat may have been strong, but Nate’s mother had an enchanted bow. Enchantments, which she had just managed to use without alerting the others.

  Well, most everyone. George once again showed how attentive to details he could be when Nate caught him eyeing Nina’s trembling fingers. She had made those shots without a finger guard protecting her from the metal of the bowstring. They weren’t bleeding this time, but it was close.

  Nina had been meaning to add a protective wrapping to the area of the string where her fingers touched. She would leave a spot blank for the arrows to nock into position properly. However, with how busy life had gotten, she had kept putting it off. It wasn’t a big deal to wear fingerguards, usually.

  George raised a brow at Nate but didn’t say anything aloud. The older gentleman knew enough to keep other’s secrets.

  “Well, that was exciting. Should we leave it down there where its core can be easily eaten, or bring it up here where it might not scare off the other beasts?” Nate asked the gathered group.

  Landon mumbled out his own utterly PG version of a curse, though it was still enough to receive a look of disproval from his mother. “I forgot about that for a few moments there. Its corpse could actually serve as a dinner bell for the stronger ones. They’ll want its core since they’ve gone mad, but even more normally, they’ll want the energy inside its meat and body. We need to move that thing before it starts to release its smell all over the place.”

  In the heat of the moment, it was something even the more experienced expedition hunters had managed to forget. You didn’t use beast corpses as warnings; you used them as bait.

  Without delaying, Anna and Landon hurried from the wall, grabbing people as they went. They needed to bring the beast inside the walls of the estate before it caused them more problems. At least they had gotten some food delivered to their doorstep.

  “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m tired,” Nate told the others as he and Aura began heading back to the house.

  “Hmm, yes, I believe that is a good idea as well. Nina, dear, walk with me? I had something I wanted to talk to you about earlier, but didn’t get the chance to.” George requested, as he leaned back and popped his back with a sigh of relief.

  It had been a momentary bit of excitement, but in the end, that was all it was.

  Everyone dispersed just as quickly as they arrived, with only a few extra than before staying behind to bolster the forces on the wall.

  ***

  Inside the dungeon that night, Nate’s attention was glued to the countdown that had continued to decrease at an abnormal pace.

  He had given up on trying to estimate when it would actually finish, as it kept changing. Right now, for instance, it was saying five minutes. Even as he watched though, seconds would occasionally be skipped. By themselves, they meant little, but those seconds added up. Which is how he and Aura had found themselves with a dungeon that was finishing a day or two ahead of its original schedule.

  “Are you ready for this?” Aura wondered as the timer ticked down.

  He snorted in disbelief. “You’re joking, right? I have absolutely no idea what the options are going to be, let alone what I’m going to do. I don’t even know if there is a right choice in this situation. Is closing the portal the right one? Because if I do that, then I screw up everyone’s way of life and what has become a part of our eco-system. Just because we don’t like it, doesn’t mean it’s not best to leave things the way they are.”

  Nate pulled at his hair. “Argh! This is why I’ve been trying to avoid thinking about this. No matter what, until I actually know what the choices are, I won’t even know if there is a good or even decent choice.”

  In the top corner of the expanded wrist computer screen, the timer reached zero and began to flash. Prompting a new message to appear on top of the various camera views he had been keeping open.

  ‘The dungeon has completed taking control of the portal at this location. The portal and dungeon will now be sealed until a decision has been made regarding their future status. Available options for this location will now be presented.’

  1. Be Done with This Location – Erase the Portal, and Dungeon.

  2. Keep everything as it is – No Change (All future contributions to the shared pool will be significantly decreased.)

  3. I Like the Fuzzies – Enhance the properties of the portal and strengthen those that come through it.

  4. You ALL Shall Pass – Permanently change the portal and allow for dual-transference all the time.

  …

  25. The Best of Both Worlds – The purpose of this dungeon changes and a mild form of mental compulsion is used to enhance the intelligence of lesser beings and to create a community among all who enter.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  Nate blinked at the myriad of options that were presented to him. He had been expecting something like three or four options, not this list. Many of them were similar to each other but just swapped sides in case he wanted to favor the beasts over the humans. His guess was that was Aura’s influence on the choices, but it also might truly be that the dungeon system just didn’t care.

  Despite what he had said to Aura a few minutes earlier, this didn’t actually help him decide. None of these options leaped out at him. There were several okay ones, and sure, many of them were interesting. It was just none of them had that draw he had been hoping for.

  The closest was probably number twenty-five, but he was hesitant to select that option for one simple reason. He had no idea what a community between their two races would even look like. Everything he came up with inevitably turned into some version of pets or beast companions, and he doubted that was what the dungeon system had in mind for a community.

  “Which one do you think sounds the best?” He asked Aura with a sigh.

  “I think we can forget number seventeen, despite your race’s odd fixation with cats, I don’t believe they want to actually be ruled by them. Number four could be interesting, though I would rather we try that on a world I owe a little less allegiance to.” Her eyes tracked up and down, reading a screen only she could see. “It has to be twenty-five.”

  “I’m worried about what kind of community would result from that.” He admitted.

  “I’m not. My people may not be quite as industrious as your own, but we do have our own way of creating things. We have crafters, healers, scholars, and more. It’s just… you’ve only seen the one side of my race. Choose that one, please.”

  Nate took another minute to look over all the options before pulling the trigger on option twenty-five.

  Immediately afterward there was a flash of light, and he was ejected from his avatar form. The next thing he knew, he was rolling out of bed the next morning.

  Everyone outside was being noisy, and he decided to put his burning curiosity about the changes to the dungeon to the side for the moment. He wanted to find out what was going on outside first.

  Aura leaped out of his chest as he hurried to change and was the first one out the door.

  Outside, Nate saw her running ahead of him toward the wall and was left to snag a cart by himself. The wall itself was absolutely packed with people. Just finding enough room to make it to the top was a struggle and took him several minutes.

  What he saw once he reached it though, was completely unexpected. The devastated city was empty.

  All the beasts that they had been wracking their brains over the last couple of days on how to get rid of had simply vanished. There wasn’t a single beast in sight, as they were now all gone.

  “What happened?” Nate asked the person closest to him. “Where did they all go?”

  “We don’t know. The people on the wall are saying that some kind of pulse of energy came from the dimensional zone last night. All the beasts turned and left right afterward.”

  Nate and Aura shared a look as they slowly edged their way back off the wall, careful not to dislodge any of the others.

  “Come on, let’s see what sort of changes this thing made to the dungeon when we weren’t looking.” He muttered to her, driving the cart back to the house.

  Securely ensconced in the guest room he had been assigned; Nate pulled up the menu on the wrist computer. Right away, he noticed a few key differences in how it looked now versus before.

  He had gained a new entry under the ‘Dungeon Interface’ selection, for one, along with that he was now able to create a third dungeon.

  The new dungeon was a nice surprise, but it wasn’t what he was interested in at the moment. Nate clicked on the ‘Conquered Portals’ option and finally saw what had become of his first dungeon.

  The first thing he noticed was that his connection to the world outside the dungeon had been strengthened. He could maintain the original dungeon structure if he so desired or change it to something else. However, the most curious thing was that he now had limited control of the dimensional zone immediately outside the dungeon as well. It wasn’t by much, just the size of the clearing that extended around the building.

  Maybe a hundred and fifty feet in every direction or so.

  When he pulled up the interface for the space outside the building, he finally understood what it meant when it had said community. There were options for everything -that didn’t involve traps- even if he didn’t understand how they worked with the animal-like beasts.

  He had selections for building an apothecary, alchemy shop, meeting halls, something called a slime-vat, and more. At the same time, the dungeon itself was still there, operating as usual, though he now had the option of refusing entry to anyone he wanted.

  In a way, it was the next evolution of everything, and he just knew it was going to cause problems.

  Nate raised a protective wall around the space, ensuring it was tall enough that the nearby trees weren’t a problem. Then, for the moment, he created a large single meeting hall off to the side of the dungeon entrance.

  Later he would see if he could leave the dungeon in his avatar form, or if a special trip out there needed to be made.

  “What do you think?” He asked Aura after he finished making the building.

  “It’s different from what I was expecting.” She admitted readily. “Assuming this works, it will create a form of community that you humans will want to come trade with. I do believe the early days will be fraught with trouble though. We need to get the others on board and have an expedition sent there as quickly as possible. Also, may I please be the one in charge of its development?”

  Nathan blinked in surprise. It was fairly rare for Aura to make an actual request of him. “Of course you can. They are your people still. Make sure you carve lots of little kitsunes into the walls, so they know who is responsible for their safety.”

  She laughed, her sharp teeth flashing wickedly.

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