Despite my exhaustion, I didn’t sleep well that night. It wasn’t the mattress—Ryker had some of his people haul in a king-sized Old World mattress into the City Lord’s Mansion in Reed City.

The sheets and blankets even smelled like they had been freshly washed with Old World detergent, giving the whole room a calming, centered feeling.

Ryker had a good eye for the small details.

But from the moment I closed my eyes, I was plagued with nightmares. Abelino’s weathered face, smiling at me, as he slices off my hand.

A hundred Void Pistols pointing towards me, firing infrequently enough that I was almost able to dodge each Void Bolt. But each time I would try, I would glance down, and see another part of me was missing.

One Void Bolt caught my fingertips. Another caught an ear. Another caught my ankles.

I woke up gasping, and glanced down at my body to see, to my relief, that I didn’t have any gaping, bleeding holes in my body.

I could tell from my frantically beating heart that I wasn’t going to go back to sleep, so I readied myself to start the day early.

Last night, with Abelino’s help, Adia and the organization she had joined, the Ravens, quickly took control of Fayette City. Anyone who protested was offered teleportation, free of charge, to their location of choice. Most former Armed Forces members who left headed towards Dauphin City in Pennsylvania.

In other news, I had been receiving frequent updates from Justin and Feng. They reported that Ethan hadn’t been excited about defending Nova City. He had rushed off at the earliest moment he could, searching for nearby Region Lords that he could defeat.

Everyone else was on their best behavior. The men and women Ryker had chosen for the task were eagerly collecting the Mana Beads, and Justin and Feng fell back to the City, supervising the machinery and the output of Mana Shards, as well as trimming the ever-growing Belian Brambles that took up most of the space inside Nova City.

They had already delivered a few shipments of Mana Shards to Dawnbreaker.

The hordes of monsters around the Zone had not thinned out, but the Region Lords had.

There had still only ever been one Region Lord that appeared at a time in each Region, and Samantha assured me that wasn’t going to change.

I walked through the empty City Lord Mansion, entering the room that I had converted into a Rune Masters’ Lab. I had decided to deposit the majority of my raw materials here, but I held onto my tools, in case I needed to make anything on the fly.

This morning’s focus would be Personal Mana Shield Amulets.

There was a reason Samantha had insisted that I pick up this blueprint, among all the other items Lord Ignatius had dropped.

The Personal Mana Shield Amulet was the gold-standard of defensive equipment. Most notably, it was capable of blocking Void Bolts and Spiritual attacks.

The Personal Mana Shield Rune Pattern Blueprint could actually be transferred to Amulets, or to rings, but Samantha insisted that the Amulet was easier to learn.

Samantha started.

Samantha paused for a brief second, and then answered her own question.

As Samantha talked, she guided me on the delicate runes that required all my floating points in Dexterity to complete.

“What about the shield the woman in purple used towards the end of the battle? The shield that felt like I was hitting a brick wall?”

Samantha sighed.

Sensing that I had no further questions, Samantha continued on a different line of thought.

I felt like Samantha was building up to something. Like she was winding up towards a pitch that she suspected I might not like.

Samantha said.

I checked my current wealth in my Status Window. “Ten million? That’s more money than I have right now.”

Samantha tsk-ed.

I shrugged. Sounds like a plan.

I finished up tracing the runes on my first Personal Mana Shield Amulet, and then I teleported to Nova City.

It was a nice feeling, not having to worry about traveling in disguise, or an ambush on the other side of a portal.

There was a guard from Reed City manning the portal. Someone I had seen before, but I had forgotten his name a half dozen times already.

“Sir,” he said, giving me an awkward salute. Then he corrected himself. “My Lord.”

I paused, and glared at him. Hearing the words My Lord reminded me of Lord Ignatius. “Not that. I don’t care what you call me, really. Jarek would be great. But definitely not My Lord.”

The man trembled his apology, but I was already moving.

Leaving the teleportation building, the first thing that I noticed were the Belian Brambles. It looked like the people in the city had done a decent job trimming its circumference, but the brambles had grown taller instead, almost scraping against the Mana Shield that covered the city.

Samantha said.

“Did you really fight a South American Hell-mode challenger?” Justin asked, running over to me. “Are you okay?”

“Where did you hear that?” I asked, giving Justin a brief hug. “I’m fine. And if Abelino wanted me dead, then I would be. I only had to fight a few of his mind-controlled clones.”

“Only,” Feng said, with a smirk.

“Anyway. I’m a little short on money,” I said, turning to Justin. “Do you have around 50,000 coins?”

Justin stared at me, not moving for a second. “Wait, you’re serious? Don’t you have like tens of millions of coins?”

I gestured around the city, at the Extractor and Compactor. “These factories aren’t cheap. I need to build another one.”

“Sure, sure,” Justin said, holding out his hand. We shook, and he gave me the money I needed.

“Any news on Petra?” he asked.

“Not yet. But with the Armed Forces’ influence shrinking, there are only so many places she could be. Uman should have a lead, soon.”

Once I had the money, I instructed the Schema to build a Compressor—yet another giant, blocky, industrial building.

“I think you missed the genre memo,” Justin said. “This isn’t steampunk.”

Name:

Jarek

Level:

33

HP:

43/43

Physical Defense:

18

Strength:

31 (+5)

Mental Power:

14

Dexterity:

10 (+5)

Agility:

14 (+14)

Perception:

20

Luck:

22

Mana Pool:

103 (+10)

Mana Regeneration:

48 (+10)

Available Points:

0

Coins:

0

Class:

Mana Modulator (D-rank)

Profession:

Rune Master

(E-rank)

Titles:

Region Lord (E-rank)

Skills and Spells:

Identify (E-rank)

Mana Modulation (D-rank Core)

Death’s Defier (A-rank)

Mana Sensing (E-rank)

Healthy Magic (E-rank)

Don’t Mind Me (D-rank)

Aquatic Respiration (E-rank)

Polyglot (E-rank)

Soul Communion (D-rank)

Cursed Lightning (D-rank)

Affinities:

Internal Mana (D-rank Low), External Unattributed Mana (E-rank Low), Soul Magic (D-rank Low)

Equipment:

Vampiric Blade (D-rank): +5 Strength, +5 Agility.

Bloodied Battle Robes (D-rank): +5 Mana Pool, +5 Mana Regen.

Imperial Scout Boots (E-rank): +4 Agility.

Greedy Gloves (D-rank): +5 Mana Pool, +5 Mana Regen.

Bonded Blades (D-rank): +5 Dexterity, +5 Agility.

Communication Amulet (E-rank):

Interdimensional Pouch (D-rank):

Missions:

Zone Offense

Renegade Bounty Hunter