In the end, Natasha convinced Ryan to accompany Victor and the others who would return to their base. For the time being, six of Victor's subordinates will stay behind to guard the dungeon, and they will take turns with Irina's people. As for Irina, she was going to return to her city since she had no business with Victor.

"Let's hope this won't be a massive waste of time," Ryan said. "Or worse, let's hope that they won't attack me once we arrive there."

"You can relax, Victor is a nationalist that respects strength above all else," Natasha said.

"While you don't belong to his army, you also fought alongside his men to defeat some monsters that were threatening our country. So, at the very least, he won't attack you without a good reason."

Victor's sense of values was weird, but Ryan decided to trust Natasha on the matter. Ryan traveled on Furball's back the whole time, so he got the attention of many soldiers. They even frowned since he constantly made Furball do backflips and play dead. Making him use magic would speed Natasha's learning process even more, but Ryan didn't have any reason to make himself look even more suspicious.

Regardless, since he had some free time, Ryan decided to check the dungeon shop. He broke his record of coins in his wallet. While that was good, money was only useful when it could be used. Much to Ryan's surprise, he finally had the chance to buy something he really had been waiting for.

Space Manipulation tome

Effect: it gives you the power to manipulate space up to a certain extent. The more you level up this skill, the more things you will be able to do later on. Currently, you can connect reality to a space in your head where you can store a certain number of items.

Price: 35.000.000

For some reason, the skill didn't have a cost in mana, and there wasn't a specification as to how many things Ryan could store in there. Still, he didn't hesitate in buying the tome since it looked, he could do other things aside from storing things in another dimension and greatly interested him.

After using the tome, Ryan learned that the skill only had a cost when he created a space in his mind to store the things. Also, to keep that space connected to reality, he had to spend one point of mana per second. It wasn't that bad. The only problem was that Ryan couldn't have two of those spaces, nor could he increase the size of it after its creation. He could destroy one then make another, though.

Ryan used all his mana and managed to create a space that had the shape of a cube that was thirteen meters long, tall, and wide. It was pretty spacious. Moreover, Ryan could see the place in his head, as if it was a completely white warehouse that had no walls, ceiling, or ground.

"Interesting…" Ryan muttered.

While Ryan wanted to experiment more with his new spell, he decided to do that later since he was drawing too much attention to himself. In any case, Ryan expected that they would head a little more toward the West while they were accompanying Victor and his henchmen, but much to his surprise, they were heading South-East.

"We only recovered this area of our country and that is the amount we can manage right now due to the vast number of dungeons," Natasha explained. "We are planning to eventually head more toward the West, but… I don't think it will be possible in the short term."

Too bad for Natasha, but Ryan knew that delaying that will only cause more problems for them in the future. More dungeon breaks will happen, the monster population will increase, just like their workload. Hopefully, some other survivors will be dealing with the problems on the other side of their country, but it was hard to hope for that since they didn't find any sign of them so far.

"We are getting too close to Mongolia and China, aren't we?" Ryan asked. "Is there a reason why he set his camp near the border?"

"Yes, as you already know, Victor is muscle-head nationalist," Natasha replied. "While such problems didn't happen yet, he is always expecting that other countries' survivors might attack us at any moment."

While Ryan couldn't care less about Victor's opinions or reactions, they were fortunate enough to be walking a little behind Victor's soldiers. Victor himself couldn't hear them, and his soldiers couldn't understand English, so Natasha felt pretty much free to say whatever she wanted.

In the end, after marching non-stop for a full day and an entire night, they reached the extreme South-East part of the Russian territory. In a place where they were only a few hours of travel in which they could reach Mongolia, China, and even North Korea. Ryan also wasn't so far away from Japan. While he didn't follow the coast as he had planned, he apparently saved a lot of time.

Natasha probably thinks that Victor is a borderline lunatic who always fights imaginary enemies, but Ryan could only respect his cautious nature. Even with his limited resources and personnel, he managed to create several posts around the border in which his men kept watching everything that might enter Russian territory. While they were moving, he saw hundreds of those posts before reaching Victor's camp.

Ryan's surprises didn't end there. Instead of rebuilding a proper city or camp to house his subordinates, Victor used his power and influence to build a massive war fortress in front of a tier-three dungeon. Aside from the entrance and some small windows, Ryan couldn't see anything that could bring sunlight to that massive building. It had at least seven floors, and it was five hundred meters long and wide. Given how arrogant Victor was, Ryan imagined that his camp would be a castle and he would sit on a throne, but he was a crazy militaristic man to his very core.