A week passed by in a flash. During those 7-days, Daz simply kept to himself as he managed his territories.

A lot of his time was spent in the new Adjustable Repeatable Dungeon. Every day he would venture into its depths at the hardest difficulty in an attempt to earn stat points, which, of course, he had successfully done.

Omitting all unnecessary information, Daz's status now looked like this.

Host's Status Energies Lifeforce: 100,000/100,000 Death Energy: 90,500/105,000 Worldforce: 17,500/17,500 Stats Strength: [LR] 1,500(2,250) Dexterity: [LR] 2,000(3,000) | Item Boost: +50. Constitution: 2,333(3,399) Intelligence: 783(1,074) Transparency: [Limit Reached!] 780(1,140) [+30] Agility: [LR] 1,325 Charisma: 1,863 | Item Boost: +15 Defense: [LR] 2,000 | Item boost: +3,000. Immunity: 1,548 Soul Power: 16,410 Luck: [LR]1,250 | Item Boost: +375. Justice: 3,150 Corruption: 0 Wisdom: 1,933 | Item Boost: +250. Regeneration: 1,233 | Item boost: +100. Mana Sensitivity: 774

Whether it was lucky or unlucky was up for debate, but Daz had gained a stat limit increase of 10 points a total of three times, and each time it was applied to Transparency. On top of that, the only time he had gained raw stat points as a reward, they were granted to Transparency as well.

The other 3-days he had received items that were less than worthless to him so he chose to raffle them off to his citizens instead. At least that way he could increase his reputation and also find some potential use for the items.

Something else of note on his status was the fact that his Death Energy was now drained by an additional 5,000 points. This was because he was using that energy to maintain the soul of Edward's daughter, whom he had turned into a spirit as soon as the skill had cooled down.

Jenna's spirit happily bound itself to Edward's left eye, oddly enough. It was very energetic and it was clear to see that the girl had retained most of her personality after dying, which greatly boosted Edward's overall mood and his loyalty to Daz.

In regards to Daz's other citizens, well, during the past week, over 2,000 new faces had shown up to enlist under his rule. He was happy to accept them, and any who were evil or had particularly nasty criminal records were sent to serve under Mu or Crusher with only the most heinous going directly to Crusher specifically.

In raw numbers, Camp Waterford had gained 208 citizens, Fort Skip had gained 540 new residents, and Waterford City saw its population grow from absolutely none to 1,306.

Of course, this new influx of people gave not only Crosius and Lyle a headache, but also Sandy and the building crew a veritable migraine.

Even with the additional help from the new arrivals, Sandy had no confidence to build enough houses for everyone or even enough temporary shelters to keep a roof over everyone's heads while Lyle and Crosius were flooded with more work than they and the keep advisors could ever possibly handle on their own.

In light of this, Daz spent all of the taxes and new weekly base points from Fort Skip to heavily improve the keep's governmental infrastructure while Waterford's points were spent solely on good-quality housing.

It was regrettable spending points on houses, of all things, but it was an emergency, so Daz saw no other choice. He couldn't accept being the king of over a thousand homeless people, after all.

Naturally, Fort Sky saw GriD CrosS regaining a tiny part of his core once again while Atlantis went neglected. Daz had no plans to return to Atlantis until it was at least possible to breathe there, so he'd chosen to let it just accumulate base points while he resourced the free upgrades he needed as planned.

A lot of important projects were also coming along very smoothly. According to Sandy and Vanessa, the broken airship had already been 20% repaired, so another month or so would see it being fixed completely.

In regards to the church dedicated to Pala, a meeting had been held with all of the influential persons under Daz's rule in Waterford and it had been decided that instead of creating a church solely for Pala, a cathedral that welcomed worship and prayers to all gods of the champions under Daz's rule would be erected.

Additionally, the two twins who wanted to make a shrine for Rimmy had petitioned for the golem to be included in the pantheon since he was so symbolic and was idolised by Fort Skip's citizens.

Daz saw no reason to refuse. He owed the gods nothing, so treating his best friend as their equal was fine as far as he was concerned.

The cathedral was a massive structure since the minds behind it were taking into consideration how many champions Daz would soon come to rule over. In fact, amongst the over 2,000 people that had joined, six of them were champions of lesser gods, so it was certainly a wise idea to think to the future when considering this topic to avoid too much potential time and resource-wasting for possible future renovations.

Returning to the topic of Rimmy, the golem had almost completely consumed and absorbed The Third King: Melophadite. All that was left of the king now was a football-sized lump of condensed blackness near the centre of Rimmy's main body.

Daz had still been unable to contract any new gems even despite trying every day, but he had avoided using his unlucky dice to assist him, so perhaps he'd have to do that again once Rimmy was back to full health and had finished assimilating the third king's power.

"You're sure you want to come with me? I didn't expect you to have a contest with Maddy to see who'd be my plus-one, to be honest," Daz asked Rose as he held Madison's hand to console her since she was pouting heavily with her eyes.

Rose shrugged. "Maddy sucks at communicating, I don't. We don't know how that Japanese admiral will take it when you tell him that you only got the Overgiant's head, not his whole body. Plus, I know pretty much everything about not only him and the person he answers to now, but also about Emma Cromwell and New York. I'll be the most useful person by your side on this 'business trip'."

"I don't doubt it, but Maddy'll be lonely," Daz said as he felt the hand locked with his tighten around his fingers.

"Miss, you, both, but, manage," Madison claimed. "Happy. Look, after, Waterford."

"I'll be counting on you and my clones, for sure," Daz responded before he pulled Madison in and gave her a kiss. "We'll be back in a few days. Make sure to remind one of my clones to kill all of the evil people still under Crusher's command if they are, well, still evil. That is if we aren't back in 4-day's time."

Madison nodded coldly. "Mmm, will."

"I'm counting on you. Also, I'll try to find some swords for you while I'm in Japan. That place's culture is heavily related to swords, so It shouldn't be too tough," Daz claimed.

He had tried to give her the Overgiant's sword, but apparently it was too strong and couldn't be assimilated into Madison's blade, Family, unless she was happy with the possibility of the Overgiant's sword becoming the main one, meaning that Family would be lost.

"Heh," Rose laughed condescendingly. "We need to figure out the whole head business first before you can go asking about weapons from them. Don't get cocky." After saying that, she opened the passenger-side door to the Ridomochi Final Model and clambered on out of her wheelchair and into the car.

Daz sighed. "Right."

Madison gently grabbed Mr Barrier who was peacefully lazing about on her head before she handed him over to Daz. "Take, with. Keep, Rose, safe."

Mr Barrier didn't seem to mind as he made Daz's head his new home.

Daz chuckled faintly. "Have you seen what her wheelchair can do now?" he asked as he put that very chair in the car's trunk. "She's been upgrading it with quest rewards all week and she also got the gnomes to enchant it."

"Safe, rather, than, sorry," Madison claimed in a pouting tone.

"I'm perfectly happy bringing the fuzzball around. He kills my intimidation factor a bit since he's cute, but he's incredibly powerful, so I think that's a worthwhile trade-off," Daz said before he wrapped his arms around Madison and kissed her. "I love you, Maddy."

Madison returned Daz's hug and smiled softly with her eyes. "Love, you, too..."

"Hey, Sleepyhead, we're here," Daz said in a quiet voice as he shook the drooling Rose awake.

Rubbing her eyes a bit roughly, Rose complained, "Already? It's so bright..."

Daz laughed. "Haha, well, yeah. Even if it only took us an hour-and-a-half to get here, Japan is still, like, what, 8-hours behind us?"

Rose stretched before replying, "Yeah, 8-hours in most of Japan, 7-hours in a tiny part up north... So, this is Tokyo?"

Daz nodded silently as he very carefully drove the Ridomochi through the air slow enough for any normal person to be able to see it.

"Hmm..." Rose opened up her laptop and began typing away. "I wonder if most smaller countries did the same. Y'know, collected all citizens to one central city. It makes sense if you don't have a lot of good and trustworthy people under you to manage all of your territories."

"You haven't already looked into that?" Daz asked.

"Nah. It's not important enough yet. I'm still too busy finding all of the champions in the states. That eats up a lot of my time. If I'm not doing that, I'm in the V.R machine," the girl explained with a shrug.

"Right." Daz frowned lightly as he kept his eyes on the massive cannons he could see attached to almost every skyscraper which had survived the past month. "This place's ruler. What do you know about them? Last night you just off-handedly said that the admiral isn't the top dog, so, tell me, who exactly are we going to meet?"

"Nishikawa Shinichi." Rose pulled up a picture of him for Daz to see. The man seemed to be about 30-or-so-years-old, he was average-looking but his eyes held a certain coldness and decisiveness that gave him the aura of a powerful leader.

"He's actually pretty amazing. It was only yesterday that Admiral Fudo and his fleet joined forces with Shinichi. In fact, it was only a week ago that Shinichi even took over Tokyo and began unifying Japan. He's as strong as Mu, a champion for sure, charismatic, and a good leader it would seem," Rose claimed nonchalantly.

"Hmm... And who was he before the apocalypse, exactly?" Daz asked.

Rose shrugged. "A manager at some infomercial company. No one special. Well, supposedly, anyway. He actually had connections with the Yakuza through his brother. He happened to be holding a knife and was in the middle of murdering a rival Yakuza member to save his brother's life when the system came. He's killed before and is more than willing enough to do it again."

"Perfect," Daz emotionlessly stated. "That means my chains'll work just fine on him without having to spend any Justice."

"That's what you took away from that?" Rose rolled her eyes. "Anyway, land over there. Like I said last night, I already made contact with Shinichi's people. Him and Admiral Fudo are waiting for us in that building," she said as she pointed at the largest and most exotic of the city's skyscrapers.

"Got it," Daz replied.

Many eyes were drawn to Daz's flying car. It was only natural since it was so elegant and also due to the fact that it could, well, fly.

Not minding the confused or awestruck Japanese citizens going about their days, Daz used his car key to store the Ridomochi Final Model and he then entered the building Rose had pointed out to him while he pushed her wheelchair in front of himself.

"Daz-gaikoku-no-ō and his sister, Rose-sama, I assume?" the receptionist asked in Japanese. "Please, follow me."

Clearly, the people here either knew that both of them could understand Japanese, or they simply did not care and expected them to understand it out of courtesy.

Daz suspected the former since he'd already talked to Admiral Fudo in fluent Japanese, plus, Rose had probably contacted them in Japanese as well.

Rose burst out laughing with a big snort. "Ahahaha! Did you hear that, Daz-gaikoku-no-ō? Hah!" she teased loudly in English.

"Foreign king, right? It's more respectful than 'sama', 'san' or no suffix at all, so I don't see why you're laughing," the reaper stoically replied as he and Rose followed the woman like they had been requested to.

"That's exactly why it's funny. Japanese are real sticks in the mud about how they address folk, so if that's what the officials are calling you, then that's what the whole country will call you. Imagine a country full of Lyles and Crosiuses," Rose said.

Daz frowned at that. "Okay, that's a creepy thought."

With that in mind, the two siblings got on an elevator with the receptionist and patiently waited as it climbed the building's many, many floors. Occasionally, the employee's eyes would wander to the lazy Mr Barrier who was snuggled up on top of Daz's head.