Bon messaged his friends, ‘A portal opened up in Oakland. Can you make it?’

‘Yeah, just saw the news. Toby and I are close by,’ Phil replied. ‘We’ll be there in five.’

‘Can’t make it :-(’ Bojana texted. ‘I’m too far away.’

‘Next time, Bojana,’ Bon wrote.

“Errel,” he said, “Are you coming?”

“Of course,” said Errel, “But how do we get there? I can’t fly like you.”

“Who says you can’t?” Bon grinned. “Let’s go.” He took a wooden chair from the dining table and walked to the balcony. Errel followed. “Sit,” Bon instructed. Errel sat down, looking very perplexed. Bon wrapped mana around the chair and used telekinesis to lift it off the ground. Errel looked shaken for a moment, but soon adjusted. They took off into the air.

“Could you turn the chair around?” Errel shouted, a little later, holding onto his hat. “Flying in reverse is very disorienting.”

“Oh, my bad,” Bon turned the chair so that Errel was facing forward.

They arrived in front of the train station in Oakland where the portal had appeared. There were a lot of people crowding around it, taking pictures and videos. Were they being brave or just stupid? A few even pointed their phones at Bon and Errel in the air. There were three police cars in the vicinity, but they weren’t doing anything to control the crowd. He wondered why they were just sitting there and watching.

Bon landed and a few people immediately asked him questions while pointing their phones at him.

“Are you two Players?” one of them asked.

Bon nodded, “Yes we are.”

“You’re here to close the portal?”

“That’s why we came,” Bon smiled.

“Why is he sitting on a chair?”

At that moment Bon heard some folks calling his name. It was Phil and Toby. “The rest of my teammembers are here,” Bon said to the people. “It’s time to get to work.”

Errel got up from his chair and the group of four equipped their armor and weapons. They walked into the portal cautiously, prepared to be attacked at any moment, while the crowd of people cheered them on.

Just as Bon had feared, the entrance chamber of the dungeon was full of monsters. They looked like ants, but were about three feet high, and five feet long. The dungeon seemed to be underground. Or maybe it was an ant hill. He used chain lightning to kill a few of them, and watched as his party slaughtered the rest. These ants were fast but fragile. There were two ants slightly bigger than the rest, and purple in color instead of orange. They were a lot tougher. They must have been soldier ants, while the rest were workers.

“We’re here to close the dungeon this time,” Phil said, in between breaths. “Not to train. Let’s just finish this off quickly.”

“Fine,” said Bon. He summoned about fifty Sword Slaves, their blue skin shining in the dark. The black horns on their head made them look like demons straight out of hell. They were like glass cannons, capable of dealing high damage very quickly. They were very fast as well. They would be perfect in this environment. He sent them out in groups of five through the ant tunnels.

Cast Illuminate, will you?” Phil asked. “I can’t see all that well in here.”

“Sure,” Bon did as instructed. “Follow me. Let’s finish the Boss.”

It took them an hour to reach the Boss room. His Sword Slaves had cleared the way for them and they moved very quickly, taking the shortest route. This dungeon was much bigger than the previous one.

“Are you sure you don’t want to train tonight?” Bon asked. “This is a good opportunity to practice on a Boss.”

“Let’s try for a little while,” said Toby.

“Fine,” said Phil, and Errel nodded.

Bon opened the metal door of the Boss room. The door had the familiar emblem of the Twin Serpents on it. This dungeon must have belonged to the same faction as the last one. The Boss was a flying queen ant. She was ten times the size of the soldier ants. She screeched as soon as she saw them.

“I guess she’s anti-human,” Bon said.

Toby chuckled while Phil groaned.

“You and your stupid puns,” Phil said. “Let’s go.”

Phil attacked first, Toby not far behind. Every time the ant swooped down at them, they managed to do some damage to it. They weren’t bad, but without a full team it was impossible for them to take down the queen. The Boss didn’t have an HP bar Bon could look at, but he could sense that the barely visible shield around its body was regenerating very quickly. Neither side could do any substantial damage to the other. Still, this would help his team get a feel for this kind of Boss. After an hour, they had had enough. Bon finished the queen off with a fireball, and then walked to the dungeon core which was embedded in the wall. He had to use some force to pull it out. The dungeon immediately vanished around them.

He could hear the crowd of people cheering loudly after the dungeon vanished. They were now standing behind a barrier. The police had sealed off the area while his party had battled in the dungeon. There were many Players surrounding Bon, all wearing the logo of Hunter’s Paradise on their chest armor. Jim was there, talking to the press.

“Like hell I’m going to let him steal credit from us again,” Phil said through gritted teeth.

“Weren’t you the one who said to let it go last time?” Bon asked.

“I didn’t think he’d do it again. Also, things have changed now. I want to show my uncle that we are worth investing in. Our reputation will also help us when we bid for contracts. I know you don’t care for money and fame, Bon, but we do.”

“I don’t want my family to ever take a loan again,” said Toby.

“I want to build a great guild,” said Phil.

“I don’t like liars,” said Errel.

“That’s right Errel. None of us do. Come on. Let’s go tell them the truth.” Phil scowled at Jim and walked forward, followed by the rest of the party.

“And here we have the brave team from our Hunter’s Paradise who closed the portal,” Bon heard Jim say as they came closer. All the cameras pointed at them, but before the reporters could ask them any questions, Phil laughed.

“Like hell we’re from Hunter’s Paradise,” he said to Jim, clenching his fists. “We wanted to join but you wouldn’t let our leader in. And when we closed that last dungeon you just shouted that we were from your guild and took credit for the whole thing. You’re a liar.” He turned to the cameras, looking much calmer, “We’re from a new guild called Aegis. We still haven’t formally set up yet. And we’re not part of Hunter’s Paradise, let me make that clear.”

“What was it like inside the dungeon? What sort of monsters were there?” asked one reporter.

“There was a colony of giant ants in the dungeon. There were a lot of them. The final Boss was a queen who could fly,” Phil said animatedly.

“Did you find the dungeon core, like the one they found in the German and Australian dungeons?”

“Yup,” said Phil. “Our leader will show it to you.” He nudged his head in Bon’s direction.

Bon took out the dungeon core from his inventory and held it up, while all the cameras focused on it. “I also want to say,” said Bon, taking advantage of the media’s attention, “That within the Tower we found a way to make ordinary people stronger. It’s called qi cultivation. You can find videos of it on sevenchakras.com.”

“How much stronger can people get with this qi cultivation?” asked a journalist.

“Depends on how talented you are. Most people should be able to reach the third level within a year, if they take the necessary supplements. At the third level you can bench two thousand pounds. My father has demonstrated his progress on the website. You can find it all there.

“What are your names? Where are you from?”

They each introduced themselves in turn. All of them, including Errel who was wearing his hat, said that they were from San Francisco.

“What are your levels and classes?”

They each gave the journalists their information. When it came to Bon’s turn he just said he was an all-rounder and that his level was very high. Nobody would have believed him if he told them the truth.

“How high exactly? Over three hundred?”

“Way over,” Bon smiled. “Do you have anything else you want to say?” Bon asked his friends.

“We’ll be recruiting soon,” Phil told the cameras. “That’s all.” Phil and Toby pushed their way through the crowd to get to their car, while Bon searched for his chair. The chair may have been cheap but it was part of his dining table set. He soon found it, stashed to one side, and Errel sat down on it.

They flew back to his flat and Bon then took a long bath. After that he watched the news. Their interview was playing on the local channels as well as the international news channels as well—CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera.

“My hat looks quite dashing,” said Errel, staring at himself on the screen.

“It’s a nice hat,” Bon laughed. He wondered if he had made the right decision in advertising Cultivation. Maybe it was too early. Their preparations weren’t complete. The qi gathering pill would take some time to roll out, but there was no harm in drumming up public interest before the launch.

The next afternoon he got a call from his father.

“Bon, what did you do?” His father asked him. “I’ve been getting calls non-stop about our Cultivation classes.”

“I kind of advertised it on the news last night,” said Bon. “It must have been in the morning papers as well.”

“I haven’t read the news yet,” his father sighed. “What exactly happened?”

“We closed a dungeon and the press talked to us about it. I mentioned our yoga studio in the interview.”

“That’s great,” his father said, “But we just don’t have the capacity to deal with this kind of demand. There are a few talented level one students I can ask to become trainers, and we can start taking three sessions a day, but it’s going to be tough.”

“Dad, do you need more help? I can ask Du Feng to send in more trainers, and we can expand. His people are already familiar with Cultivation. They should make great teachers.”

“Maybe that would be a good idea. Alright.”

Bon called Du Feng and arranged everything that was necessary with him. New trainers would be coming to the city very soon, and Du Feng was ready to begin the Seven Chakras studio’s expansion all over the world. There was a whole lot of legal mumbo jumbo that still had to be done, but Du Feng said he would handle it all. Sarah’s cousin, who was a lawyer, would double check everything before Du Feng got final approval.

A few days passed. Bon and his friends’ new celebrity status in the city meant that they were hounded by people asking for selfies whenever they stepped out in public. Siobhan and Al had finally come to the city. Al rented a flat in the same building as Bon's. Phil was over the moon, now that Siobhan was so close. He had already met her parents. If things kept going this fast, they would get married before Bon and Sarah.

Bon and his friends went to an Italian restaurant after they had finished registering their guild.

“Al,” Bon said, after they had ordered. “I have a gift for you. Let’s do an Inventory trade.” Bon transferred the Legendary Gunslinger set to Al.”

“That’s quite a gift,” Al said, taken aback. “I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

“Don’t sweat it. You’re one of us now.”

Phil rubbed his hands, “Now that Aegis is official, it’s time we recruit. I’m thinking of putting an ad online. There’s a Players website, dealing with recruitment, item trading, and so on. That would be the perfect place for our ad.”

“That would be great,” said Bojana. “We have to be careful of who we recruit though. We need someone we can trust to have our backs.”

“We need a Paladin,” said Phil. “That’s what we are lacking the most. I say we recruit about five people, two Paladins, a Mage specializing in ice magic, a strength focused Fighter, and an Archer. Maybe even a Druid. We have enough funds for that much at least.”

After lunch, they visited the place Phil had picked out as their guild office. There was nothing fancy about it. It was a single story house with three large rooms within, and a small foyer. There was also a huge backyard.

“It will look great after we get the interiors done,” Phil said. “We can train in the backyard. I’ll also soundproof and reinforce one of the rooms, so that we can train inside. As long as we don’t go crazy with our skills,” he looked at Bon, “It should do fine.”

“Hey, don’t look at me,” said Bon. “I’m always careful.”

“Yeah right,” Bojana rolled her eyes.

“Siobhan and I are going to buy some furniture for this place tomorrow. You’re all welcome to join us.”

Everyone said that they had things to do. They didn’t want to disturb Phil’s alone time with Siobhan.

“Y’all have a good time,” said Al. “I think it’s about time I headed back,” he stretched his arms and yawned.

“Let’s call it a day,” said Bon, and he and Errel joined Al.

Several days passed. In that time, portals had opened in cities all over the world—Shanghai, New Delhi, St. Petersburg, Prague, Sao Paulo and Dallas to name a few. Local Players were able to make it to the scene in time, and the big guilds acted quickly to send teams over to close the portals. The reports said that more than three hundred people had died in Dallas to the monster attack. Some cities had it much worse. Cultivation would give more people a chance of surviving the Invasion. Even if they couldn’t fight back, they should be able to escape.

All the legal work with the Cultivation business was now finally over. Du Feng must have had some massive pull with the authorities to get things done so quickly. Bon had been putting off studying the dungeon core, wanting to finish off all this other work first. It was finally time to tackle this problem.

“Errel,” Bon said, “I’m going out to study the dungeon core. Want to come?” Maybe Errel would discover something that he had missed.

“Of course,” Errel picked up a chair and set it down in the balcony. “Let’s go.”

Bon took Errel to the same place he had gone the last time to pry open the secrets of the dungeon core.

“Stay back,” he said to Errel, as he took out the core. He then cast many barriers around himself and Errel. “I’m going to open it now.” He sent an enormous amount of mana into the core and the projection of the Duke of Qultar appeared just like before. This time Qultar did not attack straight away.

“You again,” he said, anger blazing in his eyes. “Why are you targeting my dungeon cores? There are so many others you could have taken instead.”

“I didn’t know it was yours,” said Bon. “You sent this one to near the same area as last time. Why are you invading my planet?”

“Does the ant need to know why I’m kicking the ant hill?”

“Funny you should mention ants,” Bon smiled.

“Oh, so this was that one. I can afford its loss. When I come there, I will be sure to flay you alive. I hope you survive till then.” The projection faded away. He hadn’t even tried to attack this time. Maybe he thought that he wouldn’t succeed, after failing the last time.

Bon gestured for Errel to come forward. “Can you detect the self destruct mechanism?”

Errel frowned in thought as he stared at the levitating dungeon core. “The secret is in the lightning,” he said. “If you can absorb that energy then the self destruct will stop.”

Bon nodded, and began to absorb the shooting blue arcs of lightning. It was a raw and wild energy, and Bon felt pain shoot through his body when he took it in. The pain was bearable, and nothing like the pain he had experienced while dying and reviving in the Tower. He discharged the energy through his feet, letting the ground absorb it slowly. The lightning within the core soon stopped and Bon nodded.

“Let’s go in,” he said. He turned the mana key and a portal appeared before them. Bon and Errel stepped through it and found an empty ant tunnel. Bon spawned the ant queen and pressured it with his qi as soon as it appeared.

“Tell me everything you know about the war,” he said.

The ant just screeched at him. Was it incapable of speech? What a waste of time.

“Errel, see if you can find a way for me to control this monster through the core,” he said.

“The core is bound to you,” Errel said. “I can’t see what’s on the interface. Since we stopped the self destruct there might be some other lock we have to open before it can display its full functionality.”

Bon let the core absorb more mana, while the ant stood still staring at everything. Indeed, there was another key he could shape within the core. This one was much more complex. After several hundred tries he finally managed to unlock it, mostly by luck. Thankfully, there were no self destructs when he failed.

New options appeared on the dungeon core interface. He chose the commands option and there were several settings he could adjust. One was a setting for deciding friend or foe. There were two ways of doing this. One was to command it to ally together with everything that had a specific marker in their bodies that they could detect, and kill everything else. The life force they gathered would be fed into the dungeon core. The other option was to manually enter the parameters of friends and foes. It would take some trial and error before he was able to master this setting.

He also saw a command for the core to evolve into a fort. It required a certain amount of life force before the core could evolve. The counter was now stuck at zero. There was another command for the core to consume another core. He wondered just how strong this dungeon core would get if he fed it thousands of cores. He deactivated the dungeon core and they returned to the woods.

Apart from how to work the dungeon core, Bon had learned a crucial piece of information that morning. Duke Qultar had said that he would soon be coming in person. Bon could tell that he was very strong since even his projection had been enough to wound him. Bon would have to train harder if he wanted to have any hope of surviving.