James, Lindsay’s father, hopped into the driver’s seat of the RV, while the rest of the adults took up positions where they could watch. In the back, the three teens settled down to rest, while Aura was semi-forcibly cuddled up to by Lindsay. Her mother, Lisa, was watching with ill-contained jealousy.

  The drive back to the destroyed city took a while and night had fully fallen by the time they reached it. They hadn’t had any problems getting back, and the trip had been as quiet as the dark ruins of the city they were now driving through.

  Up front, Nate could vaguely hear their parents talking about reconstruction efforts, and what the city needed to do next. He had been napping on one of the beds, but it sounded as though everyone was intending to stay in the city.

  His idea of showing them the community had worked. They had understood the value that such a location held, along with the future opportunities as well.

  It wasn’t only about the items they might get from the beasts. Those were negligible in this instance, as the beasts were mostly uneducated before being sent through the portals. However, it remained to be seen if their version of uneducated on the subject was the same as the humans. The beasts came from a world with far more knowledge on certain subjects than the humans had managed to glean in the last hundred or so years.

  No, the real value came from the increased safety the city would experience as a result of the changes to the dimensional zone. The beast community was another layer of safety for the city, so nothing like this destruction would ever happen again.

  Of course, that wouldn’t stop them from rebuilding the walls and making them even better.

  Back at the mansion, everyone separated with the agreement to meet again in the morning. They would cover everything that they had learned with those who hadn’t come with them.

  Nate and Aura tried to leave, except Lisa finally saw her chance and glomped onto the kitsune. Her husband eventually pulled her away, though it took him a few minutes to pry her fingers and arms off the fluffy beast companion.

  Finally, alone in their guest room, Aura let her illusion drop and shook herself thoroughly. “Are you ready to select a location for the next dungeon?”

  He pulled out his notebook and laptop and opened them. “I’ve limited the number of possible locations, but I haven’t made a final decision.” He spun his pen around his thumb as he thought. “I’m not sure it really matters though, each of the options is mostly the same in strength. Supposedly anyway, I’m working off rumors and information from the internet here.”

  “What are the invading species at each of these locations?” Aura asked, flopping onto her back and wiggling around as she used the carpet to scratch her back.

  “There are six options, with a possible seventh one that the information I was finding is divided on. They are goblins, kobolds, orcs, zombies, and skeletons together and separate, and then the last one is called gu. They are a form of insect race that seems to be able to take control of hosts, but also has their own form of attacks and abilities.”

  Aura shook her head. “Any race that can take hosts, while also possessing their own attacks and abilities, is not an enemy to be taken lightly. I have no idea what the humans on your internet are thinking in dividing their opinion.”

  “That’s mostly my thoughts as well. I mainly included them to see what you thought about them.” He grinned at her. “We want an easy dungeon, something that we can use to generate energy for the shared pool and give us quick access to another dungeon.”

  He had come up with a rough plan on how they might be able to make use of an easy-dimensional zone. It mainly involved getting the Dungeon Core to level 2 as quickly as possible. At that point, they unlocked the second floor, along with a new dungeon. If it was an easy dungeon, but the monsters also swarmed, then he would let one or two through the portal occasionally so the portal wouldn’t close this time. That way, he could keep getting energy for the shared pool without worry. Nate doubted he would be creating a community from any of these races.

  “In that case, let’s go with the skeleton location. Then after that, we can do the goblin location, and then possibly the zombies.” Aura mentioned her thoughts.

  Nate nodded, appreciating her opinion on the matter. “You just don’t want to deal with stinky zombies.”

  Her eyes went blank as she stared at him. “You have no idea how sensitive my nose is. If they are stinky for you, then it’s thousands of times worse for me.”

  He opened and closed his mouth, nodding in acceptance. “That’s fair. Hopefully, smell less skeletons it is.” Nate glanced at the date and tilted his head thoughtfully. “How worried should we be about Samhain?”

  “Why?” She asked suspiciously.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “The second Dungeon Core took three days to create. Assuming that is the normal amount of time, then that means the new dungeon will come into being on Samhain, on Halloween. Now I know that the veil between worlds is supposed to thin around that time, but that’s all. I don’t know when exactly it will happen, or how long it will last.”

  “It’s already started. It begins when the first leaf falls.” Aura explained, only a little surprised that he didn’t know this. “When the veil is at its thinnest, however, is on the day you call Samhain. It begins with the falling of the sun and ends when it rises.”

  Nate tapped away at his laptop, taking some notes. “Okay, so if we start the creation of the Dungeon Core now, then we can just barely head off the worst of it for this location. No idea how bad it would be since the skeletons are supposed to be easy to defeat, at the same time, since they are undead, they may come through in greater numbers or something during that time.”

  From the limited amount of information about that particular portal, it seemed as though the skeletons were already fairly numerous. The only reason they hadn’t taken over the area was because of how weak they were.

  Nate selected the option for ‘Dungeon Creation’ from the menu on his wrist computer and waited. In only a few moments, the screen had begun to expand and drift off his wrist until it settled in front of him. At roughly the size of a hundred-inch screen, he now needed to stretch to touch everything.

  ‘Welcome to the Dungeon Creation system. You are currently limited to three dungeons at this time. Please, choose the location of your third dungeon carefully. These are the currently open incursions to your world, colloquially known as ‘Dimensional Zones’ and their associated portals. Please make your selection from these options.’

  On the plus side, with that much real estate, it was far easier to navigate things quickly. He pinched the screen, zooming out a little more. The next dungeon was not exactly close by. The first dungeon had obviously been the closest, while the second had been a state and a half away in Missouri.

  The one he was looking for this time was located in Nevada.

  There were innumerable dimensional zones in between not only his current dungeons but also in the intervening distance between Nevada and Colorado. The problem there was two-fold. Not all of the portals were known to the humans. Some of them existed in old, abandoned mines, deep underwater, or in the backcountry where no one had stepped in years.

  People had consolidated into their cities, instead of spreading out like they had on his Old Earth. Many once burgeoning towns had been left to rot and return to nature when the portals first appeared. Some of them would have been excellent candidates for proper cities due to their proximity to dimensional zones. Unfortunately, humanity hadn’t known enough back then and had lost many valuable chances.

  However, this led to the second problem. If the portals weren’t known, then their invading species also wasn’t known. The display in front of Nate didn’t give him that sort of information. He had to gather it on his own. That was why he hadn’t touched any of the portals that appeared on the screen in between his already-created dungeons.

  Without knowing how dangerous they were, the risk was too high until he could create more dungeons and have a buffer of some sort.

  It took him a few minutes of pinching and flicking at the screen to finally find what he wanted. However, he did find it curious that there were four portals located in the remains of the Area 51 Air Force Base. He hadn’t realized dimensional zones could exist that closely together. There was also the matter of what had made the base famous. At least on his Earth, it was one of the places the remains of the aliens from the crash in Roswell had been brought. Another location that had multiple portals.

  The problem with that, in this case, was that the crash had happened in the 1940s. The portals would have already been here by then. So, it was unlikely that the event had even occurred, or if it had, the knowledge had never been spread around. Regardless, it was a curiosity simply because it didn’t fit the normal pattern, while also seeming to be affected by outside events.

  Nate pushed the matter to the side for the moment and selected the dimensional zone he wanted. It was just outside of Reno.

  ‘Incursion Zone selected, are you sure this is the area you would like to create your third dungeon in?’

  He promptly selected ‘Yes’. With the limited amount of information he had, it was either the right one, or it wasn’t. There was no way for him to know for sure, though he was reasonably certain it was the correct location.

  The screen went blank for a moment before a new message appeared.

  ‘The Dungeon Core for the new dungeon is now being constructed. During this time, construct the interior of the dungeon using the resources available at your disposal. Now that you have fully taken over a portal, the primary goal has been shown, if not completed. The other goals are the same as before. They are to protect the Dungeon Core first and prevent access to the outside world second. As the dungeon and its Core grow in strength, it will be able to merge with the portal and create additional levels inside their world as needed.’

  The message had changed yet again from its prior versions. They weren’t major changes, just interesting little modifications.

  Closing the message, he saw the timer in the corner appear, the same as last time. It even had the same amount of time on it, which was something that he had been counting on but knew might not be the case.

  He had three days to construct a dungeon for a potentially unknown enemy. Hopefully, it was skeletons, but if not, everything he had created could be wasted.

  By this point, it had become clear to him that the dungeons liked having themes of some sort. He thought he had come up with the idea on his own the first time around. However, clearly it had been a prod from the dungeon system or wrist computer or whatever, to put him in the right direction. Thankfully, the themes could also be somewhat loosely defined.

  The issue was skeletons needed to be bashed to pieces. He couldn’t see a regular piercing sword doing much damage to one of them. It would break the one rib bone it had hit, and that was it. That meant the theme of this dungeon was going to be blunt attacks in all its forms. Maces, hammers, heavy-tipped blunt arrows. There were lots of options, really.

  A laser wouldn’t be as effective against skeletons, not that he would be able to build one with the theme of the dungeon. That was also the issue.

  It was going to be a purpose-built dungeon. If he had got the location wrong, these traps wouldn’t be as effective against another species.

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