The guy goes back over to his raft and starts poling his way up the river as Ace is left with ten people who very much do not look happy over how they were just talked about. Not that he cares all that much. While he doesn’t have any sort of ability or skill to judge their stats directly, he is more than able to get a sense for how much of a threat they are. And honestly? While he doesn’t think he could take them alone, it isn’t far off. In fact, he would be willing to throw down with them as long as anyone else in his settlement was there for backup.

Ace shakes his head, “Okay, You heard the guy. Be on your best behavior or leave tied up like a holiday ham. Now, do you want to familiarize yourself with the place a little or skip right to the part where you die in the dungeon?”

One of the guys in the group steps forward in a huff, “I don’t like that attitude. Maybe the other idiot can talk down to us with his connections but you’re just a part of this podunk little dead end place. I know people! Not only at the ramshackle place I’m forced to live at right now but in the Government! People so high up you’ll be in jail before you even have the chance to figure out which three letter agency is doing it!”

Ace rubs the bridge of his nose, “Well, I know why you managed to get where you are now. Bad news though, We don’t subscribe to your government here. Like, we don’t even know for sure that we are on the same continent and you want to claim you can get us arrested? By what force? Everyone was scattered everywhere! Of course most of the people seem to be from the same culture group to a certain extent. But in this small group I have at least five who came from overseas.”

The guy bristles at this, “So you’re letting illegal immigrants just live here! Turn them over to me this instant! I am going to frog march them all the way back to my town and lock them up!”

Ace shakes his head, “You and what army?”

The guy shouts back, “Our government’s army! You need to respect my authority!”

Ace raises an eyebrow, “I don’t see that army backing you up at the moment. In fact, my side sort of out-numbers yours three to one. So, do you want to look around or go into the dungeon?”

The guy throws his head back and snorts, “Take us to the dungeon! And don’t expect us to wait in any lines or what not. I’m requisitioning the whole thing!”

Ace, clearly fed up with this nonsense, just gestures towards the dungeon entrance. The guy sticks his nose in the air and proudly stamps off towards it while behind him the others follow. The other men in his group flex their muscles and glare at Ace as they fall in behind him, looking like a mix between a bodybuilding competition and a military parade. Behind them the four ladies follow, though clearly with some trepidation.

Seeing how the women are acting makes Ace shake his head again. They clearly fear the idiots’ threats of knowing someone. Not that Ace necessarily doubts that either. He feels like the idiot son of some politician who thinks that because his daddy makes the rules, he can break them. Ace doesn’t even blame the other settlement for putting up with his nonsense. If there was even the smallest glimmer of a chance of the old order coming back, those threats would hold a lot more water. At the moment though, there is no way for the old structures to survive in a way that would give the creep any actual power. Hopefully things won’t be reduced purely to survival of the fittest and whoever has the biggest fist rules, but things are moving in that direction.

Heavy thoughts in mind, Ace watches the group enter the dungeon. Then promptly leave it in a huff. The guy power walks out of the hallway leading to the entrance and shouts in Ace’s face, “What’s with the funny business!? We all entered but four from my party weren’t with us!”

This surprises Ace and so glares at the guy, shutting the idiot down. Ace turns to the side and gestures at Jeremy, “Gather some people. We need to figure out what is going on.”

The guy catches himself and shouts, “Oh, you know what’s going on! I demand an explanation for this!”

Ace rolls his eyes, “We never go in with more than six people. There aren’t that many of us after all. So if things happen after the sixth person tries to enter we wouldn’t know about it. Now let me figure out what is going on. This is probably some new thing. The dungeon is developing at a decent speed so who knows what this means.”

It takes a moment for Jeremy to gather enough people, all the while Ace continues to shut down the idiot, but soon enough he has twelve other people gathered. They all try to enter as a group but find themselves split into two parties of six and Jeremy is all alone.

After hearing the other twelve confirm what happened, Jeremy scratches his head before getting five people to enter first, then three, and finally another five. Each of those groups end up in their own instance. After they all leave again, they test all entering at the same time but thinking of themselves as being in those groups. That, however, doesn’t work and they end up in two groups of six with Jeremy all alone again.

For their fourth attempt it is exactly like the third except they vocalize their groupings and this time when they enter, the groups are properly split up. After a few more tests in a similar vein, Jeremy nods to himself, “Okay, I think we have a handle on how this is working to a certain extent. Just one final test. I want everyone to state they are in a group by themselves and enter the dungeon one at a time. After you’ve entered, wait for a minute so everyone can get in and come back out.”

As they enter one by one, the sixth person ends up in the same instance as the first and so on. Jeremy, upon learning what happened sighs as everyone turns to him to explain.

Jeremy shrugs, “So, have you ever played MMOs?”

Ace nods but the idiot who is still standing there in a huff snorts, “What even does that mean? Sounds stupid!”

Jeremy squints at the guy but decides to humor him just in case someone else was in the dark. “Massively Multiplayer Online video games. Not exactly my choice for spending time but I try to stay up to date on what is happening in the world. Anyway, with so many people it would be near impossible to have dungeons be a single place in the world or else the places would be swamped 24/7. To make up for this the games generally have instanced dungeons. A dungeon where when you enter with your party you get placed into a private space with a copy of the dungeon so everyone can delve into it without fighting over everything.”

“Apparently that is another thing our games got right, at least partly. At some point the dungeon has developed instances, at least for the first floor. If you try to enter with more than six people, it will split off any extras into a new instance based on the order in which you enter. If groups of less than six enter but are clearly separate groups either by spoken intent or simply enough space between them, those groupings are respected. Presumably once we get a real adventurers guild or what have you there will be more official groups and the dungeon will probably respect that as well.”

“Anyway, there are five available instances at the moment. This could be some set amount for the entire dungeon, maybe each floor has its own pool of instances, or it could just be the fact that we delved the first floor so much the dungeon developed in a way to provide more of it. What I do know is that overflow will be put into already existing instances. There is of course more testing to be done but I feel this should be enough for the moment. Especially since the next test I would like to attempt is to see what happens when all the instances are full and someone else tries to enter.”

Ace smiles, “Well that’s some good news. Though yeah, we will have to test if these instances go all the way through or some other nonsense. I know that in games the dungeon as a whole is a single instance, but that has more to do with convenience for the developers than anything else. This is a growing dungeon so even if eventually all floors will end up instanced that doesn’t have to be the case right now.”

And Ace turns to the guy who is very much unhappy with being ignored, “Well, it sounds like the dungeon itself is placing a limit of six people in a party. There isn’t anything we can do about it so what do you want to do?”

The guy snorts, “I’m sure you could do something about this but I don’t want to bother with someone so insignificant as you. The four babes were mostly here for moral support anyway so they can stay out for now.” He turns to them, “You hear that? The four of you stay out here. Maybe get to know the other chicks and see if any of them want to leave with a real man! Oh, and I expect a hearty meal when I come out.” The guy strides back into the dungeon with the other five guys who, despite Ace not having been paying attention to, had been aggressively flexing at him.

No one really has a chance to respond to this and Ace is left just rubbing his temple, hoping this doesn’t cause a stress headache. Still, there is enough stuff to do, so he turns towards the four women that had accompanied the guy, “So, he’s going to likely die a painful death in there. What do you four want to do?”

One of them shakes their head and steps forward, “Not much we can do, really. His father is someone important, and we had to hang around him since before the system came. Plus, I don’t think he is going to die that easily. Those five with him used to be special forces, though if the rumors are true they left not of their own volition. That and the fact they six probably have the highest level of everyone here. He used those guys and the weaker animals around our town to grind out level after level. Last time he showed it off the group had a level average of 15 and by now that might have grown to 20.”

Another one sighs, “The four of us still haven’t even had a chance to level and I don’t know what good it would do. He loaded us down with housework skills while not letting us get any experience.”

Ace rolls his eyes, “Well, that just proves how much of an idiot he is. Rushing your levels isn’t exactly a sound strategy. You four, even with non combat skills, will likely end up more powerful than he is given a few paths. Though that is another question, he is using paths right?”

The first one shrugs, “He should be. At least he has bragged about having paths related to how much political power his dad had.”