“I still can’t believe you killed her,” Corey complained. “I could have had someone to talk to!”

“I thought you didn’t like other dungeon cores.”

“Yeah, well. Some exceptions can be made.”

“I’m getting the sense you thought this other dungeon core was hot. How is that even possible?”

“When you are destined to live as long as I do, you hope that someday you can find love that will last as long.” Corey said this all as if he were a desperate romantic. “I just hope you didn’t kill the love of my life today.”

“Can you even be considered alive?” I asked. I’d been wondering it myself many times.

“I’m not sure a monkey can even answer that question,” Corey said snidely. “I don’t even know how monkeys determine that they are alive.”

“I think, therefore I am,” I said. “Foundation for enlightenment philosophy.”

“Well, by that logic, then I am alive as well,” the dungeon core intoned smugly. “I’m as self-aware as you are. Possibly more. I would argue that means I should have more rights than you.”

“And I would argue that you’re a rock that fits in my backpack next to my spare underwear and socks.”

“Oh, don’t be like that. I’m just making a philosophical argument.”

“And I was making a practical one,” I said. “How am I doing on my legs?”

“Very well,” Corey said. “If you keep this up, you should only need another hundred or so dungeon cores to gather enough energy to completely soothe your legs.”

“A couple hundred.” My voice was flat as I said it. “That could take forever.”

“No, it won’t,” Corey scoffed. “There are dungeons all over the place. And they are still weak. Now is the time to conquer them! And if you don’t get stronger at the pace of the dungeons, they will grow so strong you will never be able to kill them. Humans will be forced to delve into the dungeon to kill the monsters over and over again to release the energy and keep the dungeons from getting out of control with wild energy.”

“That will probably take a while, though, right?”

“Yes, I would guess about a year.”

“Hold on, one second,” I said, trying to make sure I understood. “You mean that any dungeon we haven’t captured or destroyed in the next year will probably be around for good?”

“Good monkey, get the snack! Oh, I don’t have snacks. Hey, if you put me in the ground and let me gather power for the next year, I promise to send you snacks.”

“I am not letting you become a permanent dungeon. If I had it my way, there would be no dungeons left on my planet. That would make it safer, right?”

“Oh no,” Corey chuckled. “You don’t get it. Dungeons are a control mechanism for wild mana. They absorb it from the air, and infuse it into monsters. What would happen if you didn’t have dungeons?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“Exactly what is happening right now!” He wailed. He just looked like a glowing rock in my hand, but he somehow changed the color of his core to red. “There is wild energy all over your planet, and people — regular people — are being turned into monsters. There are no dungeons to absorb enough of the wild mana to prevent that from happening.”

“Okay, so having no dungeons would be bad. How many do we need to keep around?”

“How should I know!? I’m supposed to be trying to take over the planet, not answering questions from an ignorant ape.”

“What would happen if I just tossed you into the deepest part of the sea?”

“You mean where there are lots of sea creatures for me to capture and no humans to interfere with my ability to grow stronger over time? I don’t know, let’s find out.”

“I’ve thought it over, and I think it’s a bad idea.”

“Only if you want the ocean and coasts to become uninhabitable.”

“But didn’t you say that any interesting places would become a dungeon?”

“Yes.”

“What about the wreck of the Titanic? Wouldn’t that be considered an interesting place?”

“What is the Titanic?”

“Enormous ship that sunk to the bottom of the ocean.”

“Lots of people live on the bottom of the ocean, do they?” The question was a trap. I just couldn’t see how.

“No.”

“If people don’t go there, then it isn’t an interesting place.”

“Not many people go to a cemetery, but they still turn into dungeons.”

“Lots of people go to cemeteries. Every time someone dies, there’s a party where everyone gets together and lies about the dead person. People show up at the cemetery to see a box put into the ground, then they go their separate ways. A cemetery is a very interesting place, even if no one wants to actually be there.”

“That’s just mean.” I scowled, though I doubted Corey could even tell.

“Yes, it is.”

“You know what I just realized?” I asked.

“How could I possibly know that? There is so much information in the world that you do not know, I couldn’t even create a list of what you could come up with. Probably something to do with bananas, though.”

I ignored him. I was getting good at that. “What if I just put you in the ground every day to gather energy, then I absorb that energy?”

“You are a heartless individual. I love it. It would work, but it would send off a beacon to anyone in the area that a dungeon is there. Monsters would be drawn to it as well, which is how I capture them. So, you could spend the entire day protecting me while I cultivate, then stealing my hard-earned energy. What a bitch.”

“So possibly, not a short-term realistic approach to gathering energy faster.”

“It could work in the long term, once you’ve decided where to settle down and give up on this useless trek.”

“It’s not useless; I’m going home.”

“Oh, sure. You’re going home to your family that is probably already dead, but let’s waste the time you could be spending getting stronger and healing.”

“You are about to go back into the sack.”

“No arguments from me,” Corey somehow sent me a mental shrug through our connection. “I have nothing valuable to add anyway.”

“One more question,” I said before I put him down.

“Only one? Seems improbable.”

“It’s about my cores,” I said. “I have four of them.”

“Ah, yes. I was wondering when you would notice that.”

“Why do I have four cores, while everyone else only has one?”

“I have no clue. Cool, huh?”

“What does that mean for my… progression? Yeah, what does that mean for my progression?”

“See, there’s another question. But to be honest, I’m not entirely sure. My guess is you will be able to condense and use four times as much energy in your body as most anyone you have met. It also means it will take four times as much mana condensing to move to the next stage of your progression. I don’t know what that means when it comes to condensing your Will, but you don’t have to worry about that until the next stage anyway.”

“So, you have guesses, but you don’t actually know.”

“I am a dungeon core, not a human. I know how it works for pure intelligence like me. That might not translate to a meat sack monkey like you.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“You’re very welcome. Now, get some sleep. You have to get back on the road tomorrow. And you have to get to your home before you’ll put me in the ground and let me become a real dungeon again.”

“That is not going to happen.”

“Can’t you at least pretend?”

“Nope. It’s called honesty.”

“Asshole,” Corey muttered.

“Rock,” I fired back and tossed him into my travel pack.

Four times as much mana. I already needed more mana to heal my legs. It looked like a long time before I could rank up to Jade. But at the same time, I had a way to increase my mana consumption. And the dungeon cores would only gather more mana for me to consume. I grinned at the memory of the energy flowing into my body from the dungeon core earlier that day.

We’d immediately returned to the hospital with Zapata’s body, and I’d called a halt to the rest of the day’s proceedings. Lieutenant Vance had held me personally responsible for Zapata’s death, telling me that I would no longer be responsible for any more training of his soldiers. Empty words from someone who hadn’t spent time in the blood and shit of the new world. My three days were up regardless, and I wasn’t going to spend more time training soldiers who wouldn’t be coming with me.

I rolled onto the mat I’d spread on the ground for a bed. The windows of the hospital room were broken, but the glass had long been cleaned up and tossed out the window. A mixture of now-useless appliances hung out the window, the cracks filled by medical curtains, towels, and linens. There were few drafts, and the air wasn’t cold enough to bother me if there were.

I lay on my cot for several more hours, thinking about my family, before I finally slept.

*****

My foot kicked something hard when I woke up. I couldn’t remember what I’d left sitting at the foot of my bedroll, and when I looked, I saw an unfamiliar box. It was a simple, black box, smaller than my wife’s jewelry box. It looked strange, since it was shaped like a perfect cube. It was so perfect in its dimensions that it looked odd.

I reached out and touched the top of the box. The moment my fingers made contact, a seam opened near the top of the box, and a lid popped up, revealing a small plastic bottle inside. There was also an index card with a note on it.

I picked up the index card first. The message was short. Two sentences, if you could call them that. It said, “Good fight. For your legs.”

“What does that mean?” I wondered aloud. I reached into my pack and pulled Corey out to ask him about the note.

“Drink it, you idiot!” He mentally screamed at me.

“Calm down,” I said.

“I will not calm down until you drink what’s in the bottle.”

“I’m not drinking something when I don’t know what’s in it.”

“I can sense the mana in it. It’s for mana recovery, but if you drink it, it will completely heal your legs. This is a particularly strong concentration of mana in liquid form in there, but the magic started leaking away as soon as you opened the box. Drink it before it becomes useless!”

“It will heal my legs?”

“Yes!”

“Completely!”

“Ten seconds ago, yes. Now, I’m not sure.”

I looked at the bottle in the box. The interior of the box was lined with silk, linen, satin, or whatever that smooth fabric is. The bottle was the size of those liquor bottles in the mini bar of the hotel. In my mana sight, it glowed like the sun, it had so much magic stored in it. Even as I looked at it, however, I could see some mana leak out of the bottle, permeating the surrounding air.

“Oh, what the hell,” I said. I dropped Corey back into my bag. I picked up the plastic bottle. The cap was a screw top, just as classy as I was. I twisted the cap, lifted the bottle to my mouth, and tossed the contents back like I was in college again.

*****

The second time I woke up that morning, I was awoken by something strange again. This time, however, Carter was shaking my shoulder.

“You okay, LT?” she asked when I lifted my head off the floor.

I was lying on the cold, hard floor, only my knees down were still on my bedroll. The cold from the tile floor had seeped into my clothing, and I shivered as I pushed myself up to a kneeling position.

“Uh, yeah,” I said. There was something I couldn’t remember. Something I did right before this… my gaze fell on the box at the foot of my bedroll, and it all came back to me. I immediately sent a tendril of mana out from one of my cores and into my leg. Sure enough, there was no indication of strain left in my legs. The mana flowed smoothly into my legs, making them feel stronger than ever.

“You’re going to miss breakfast,” Carter said. “And we gotta hit the road soon.”

I said something noncommittal, and it seemed to work as she left the room. I picked up the box and opened it. It was still empty.

The card lay on the tile next to it. I gingerly picked the paper off the tile and re-read the message. Who had left it there? And who could make something like this? Someone who could watch the fight, but definitely none of the others who were participating. I picked up Corey from my bag.

“Do you know who sent this?” I asked the dungeon core before he could say anything first.

“Not a clue. Very exciting, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, because we didn’t have nearly enough of that already.” I dropped the core back into the bag, put the card back in the box, and added it to my backpack as well.

The hospital had a cafeteria where the breakfast was served. A line formed outside the hospital, leading in through an emergency exit, winding around the small room with its tables bolted to the floor, then back outside. It was terribly efficient. Five people in the room at a time. When someone went out, another would go in. There was a private standing just outside the exit, then two more just inside the door.

When I made it to the front of the line, I grimaced at the familiar sight. Oatmeal and ground squirrel patties. I took two patties and held them in my hand when one of the cooks handed me a bowl of gruel. I made my way outside and sat down next to my team, who ate in an unusual silence.

I was comfortable with the silence, though it meant there were no distractions from the food. The meat was still warm, but stringy as I bit into it. I forced it down regardless. The oatmeal was a different story, however. I wasn’t quite sure how the cooks could both burn it and still manage to serve it cold, but they were nothing if not consistent the last three days.

“Pack up,” I said at last when I was done using the meat patty to sop up the last of the liquid in my bowl. “We’re heading out immediately.”

By this point, daylight illuminated everything around us, even though the sun hadn’t fully crested the horizon. We didn’t have much left to pack, and we were on the front steps of the hospital in five minutes.

“So you’re really taking off?” Christensen asked. I noted that he left off my rank. So, an informal discussion.

“We are,” I said. “I have family up north, and Andy wants to reconnect with a central military presence.”

“You really think there’s much of a military left out there?” Peterson asked. The boy who’d barely met my eyes the first day now stood with his back straight and chin up. His hair was now the appropriate length, though it was still dyed black. I nonchalantly wondered what color it would return to, since he wouldn’t be able to find more easily.

“I’m not sure,” Andy said next to me. “But until I know the entire country has gone to hell, I’m prepared to serve as best as I can.”

Peterson’s eyes flicked to Andy’s arm, and I could practically feel the man stiffen next to me as he must have noticed the glance too. The boy, to his credit, turned red at the slip-up, but did not look away from Andy’s stare.

“You could stay here,” Christensen offered tentatively. He looked concerned about the answer, but I couldn’t be sure if he was worried we would decline, or if we would say yes.

“No.” My response was curt, but polite. I looked at the other members of my team. “Everyone is free to do what they want, but I will not be staying.”

“And I can’t let them have all the fun,” Chavez spoke up, his face cracking in a grin.

“And someone has to make sure you don’t have too much fun,” Carter added.

“Buzz kill,” Chavez whispered. She backhanded him on the arm.

“You stay safe,” I said, and I took my position at the front of the fire team, checking that my sword would clear the scabbard on my back easily.

When we made it to the street, I turned around to look back at the hospital. Christensen and Peterson stood by the front entrance of the building. I looked up to the third floor and saw a figure looking out the window at our group. With my improved eyesight, I could easily make out the face of Lieutenant Vance, flanked by his sergeants. I nodded to him. He did not return the gesture.