Solomon saw the group that had gathered to wait for them before he saw the dungeon entrance itself. Almost twenty people, gathered together and working themselves up to an outburst of violence. A week ago he would have crossed the street to avoid them, but today they would be his comrades in arms.

Julie stepped up to greet Solomon and his sister. "Everybody's here. You two make twenty. That's all the dungeon will accept."

"Good job, Julie," Solomon said. He took a look over the crowd. Besides Julie's brothers, it was mostly people he knew by sight but not by name. A couple of teenagers and a lot of people in their early twenties, mostly men. The sort of people who would volunteer for a fight.

The entrance to the dungeon was off to the side. It was one of the more overt examples of the system meddling with the world that Solomon had seen. What had been nothing but a storm drain had been molded into a spiral staircase of stone bricks. It was the kind of thing that would have looked right at home in a medieval castle. He'd had his suspicions about the tunnels that had led to the dungeon back in his territory. Seeing the local dungeon just confirmed that the system had a certain sense of showmanship, at least.

He looked up from the dungeon entrance and realized that the crowd had gone silent. They seemed to be waiting for him to say something. It still felt strange to him to be treated like an experienced veteran.

"I'm, well, think of me as your insurance policy," Solomon said. He pulled the rifle off his back and held it up for the crowd to see. "I can't shoot everything down there, but I'll be ready to turn around any really dangerous situations."

He looked around to find that most everyone was looking at the rifle with interest. The story of his shooting exploits must have already gotten around. That was good. Solomon wasn't sure how many of the people here would follow him out of town and how many just wanted to get combat experience to protect their own homes. He hoped that showing off some firepower would lure in some followers.

"We're doing this for two reasons. First, if we don't, the monsters in the dungeon will break out and go wild up here," Solomon said, slinging the rifle back over his shoulder and holding up a finger, then extending another. "Second, if we're successful, we'll get paid for the first clear and for any valuables we pick up inside. I can loan everybody some coin to pick up better gear to start out. Just pay me back from the earnings."

Once they got inside, it would be do or die. Anybody who survived would be able to pay him back. Getting the whole group killed while he kept a big pile of coins in his inventory would just be embarrassing.

The group lined up gratefully enough for their loans. Each of them took the money and headed down the stairs toward the dungeon store. Eventually it was just Solomon, Julie, and his sister still above ground.

The thought of dying with wasted resources in his inventory jogged Solomon's memory. He pulled the pair of gloves he'd gotten from the boar out and handed them over to his sister.

"These will boost your strength," he said.

She looked at him quizzically. "Don't you need them?"

He smiled ruefully. "It only works if you wear them both."

He'd gotten to the point where he didn't rely purely on strength to fight, which took some of the sting out of the useless boss drop. It still irritated him if he thought about it too much. At least his sister would get some use out of them.

She nodded at the explanation and pulled the gloves on. As Solomon had half expected, they sized themselves to fit.

He just shook his head and pulled out the dungeon coins he was loaning to Julie. She took them with gratitude, but didn't immediately run off down the stairs.

"Hey," she asked, "do you have any advice?"

"About what?" Solomon asked. He'd gone through a lot of trouble working through the dungeon before, but as he thought about it, most of the advice he would give boiled down to killing the monsters before they could kill you.

"Things to buy, skills to aim for," she said, nodding at the rifle. "You had to work pretty hard before you got a gun, I bet."

Solomon nodded. "I did what worked for me. You'll have to figure out what works for you."

"Really?" she asked, pouting slightly, before gesturing at the air. "I know enough about games to know that there are good builds and bad builds."

"This isn't a game," Solomon said. "You can't buy a skill that will make you good at swinging a sword. You might be able to buy an ability that makes your sword cut better, but you'd have to be able to get the most out of it."

He scratched the back of his head for a moment in thought before he continued. "I don't think there's good or bad choices, overall. Just choices that are good or bad for you."

"So I have to figure out how to be the best me?" she asked, smiling. "How zen."

"The best you for killing things," Solomon said. "At least for now."

The system had taken away centuries of technological development. However, it was handing out nigh magical abilities in compensation. For now, there was a pressing need to use those abilities to kill things. Some day, though, Solomon hoped that they would be able to turn the system's powers to more productive use. History was rife with examples of technology developed for war that later formed a foundation for scientific progress. It might be a little trickier to get there from things like Power Strike than it had been for the internal combustion engine, but who knew what kind of things were lurking in the higher tiers of the system.

Of course, that was a dream for another day. Today, tomorrow, and most of the next month was going to be about the practical use of violence to kill their way to a better future.