Jack and Elicia didn’t show themselves in person. Instead, they appeared only in holographic projections.

Both had been called upon by the people on their dungeon, time and then time again. All of the Island’s residents went to the dungeon as soon as they could.

The surface wasn’t safe, but, after seeing that nothing happened to Dragon King’s mountain and that the dungeon’s floor’s walls were untouched, they then proceeded to flood the place.

Another World wasn’t so populated in the first place, since not many people have had the guts to kill themselves in order to go live there.

Still, Dragon King’s Island (2) counted with at least fifteen thousand-ish players living in it’s main city as well as the lands around.

Now, one third of that population had died. The surrounding ten thousand, understandably, where both enraged and fearful.

It had been thirty years, but not everyone had Max-Leveled their skills. In fact, most just max-leveled what they liked to do.

Training like a crazy man and actively looking for a dungeon to develop in order to create huge monster waves which could barely increase their Main Levels by 1 or 2 was just stupid on their minds.

People like Jack and Elicia who could produce such monster waves with hundreds of thousands of grinding-optimized monsters in a regular basis were fewer than few. Most regular players, even after Max-Leveling, would need a decade to produce a single one of these waves, while Jack and Elicia could produce one every five months or so.

That is not to mention Jack’s ridiculous “10x EXP increase” bonus. Even people who had brought thousands of 2x or 5x EXP increase bonus at the Squeam days had either sold or used them long ago. Those who hoarded such items were fewer than few. If they knew Jack had a natural “10x EXP bonus” on top of having started the game with stats higher than an average Max-Level player, they may as well puke blood and die.

So, it wasn’t a surprise for so many to have died when a bunch of Level 100 attacks hit Dragon King’s City.

What WAS a surprise to them, was for Jack’s dungeon to not have been damaged in the least.

A little bit after everyone had evacuated, people begun to discuss amongst themselves. Jack had made a dungeon which could sustain that level of damage on its own. However, the entire Island counted as being inside his Dungeon’s space.

If he wanted, he could have made the buildings and the very stones under them as sturdy as these dungeon walls.

Instead, he did it to his dungeon only.

People felt wronged. They had to pay taxes. They had to give him every single piece of gold they had on them after arriving on the island, and, if they went out of the island and came back with any on them, then they had to give it to him as well.

Hadn’t they been paying him for protection? Wasn’t this the deal?

To them, it seemed like Jack was breaking the “deal” they had - he would offer protection and they would pay. Just like royalty and servants.

However, that was not how Jack saw it. His idea of why people paid taxes was pretty simple - they were living on his island, they may as well pay rent.

He never sold protection. He would turn the monster spawning rates on the surface to zero, build grinding spots for them, and that would be it.

Also, the gold thing, in his mind, was due to people paying an entrance fee which would serve as payment for living on the houses he had spawned himself with his Dungeon Master powers.

Miscommunication, one could argue. However, the attentive would notice things weren’t so simple.

Jack indeed acted like that and left things clear on the first place. However, he would also kill overly strong monsters and help people who happened to be in dire situations, and also inside his territory.

He had the last saying on the governmental council, difficult matters which involved the interests of many would be sent to Elicia to solve, and his and his wife’s words were law on the island. If, for instance, someone of high power wronged someone else, the weaker part could ask him for help - and most of the times he or Elicia (the last way more than him) would then judge the person.

His actions weren’t properly the ones of a landlord, who is roughly on the same level as the people who rent form him, but more on the level of, indeed, a protector noble.

So, it didn’t matter if he saw all of those as favors people asked him - these kinds of things were the norm, not the exception, and now his angry subjects wanted an answer as to why did he let this happen.

Yrwin, Lillian and Raphael did their best to gather people’s opinions and listen to their requests. They knew Jack wouldn’t talk to this much of people, and he would probably be unreasonable - he had a good heart, but hated to feel pressured, and they knew that. He was the kind of guy which would give you a house on his terrain and charge some rent but wouldn’t increase it just because you were making more money. Indeed, he would even help you become richer and, if you ever wanted to leave, then he would wave you goodbye and sincerely hope you had luck, no strings attached - but which would kick you in the face if you complained about how the terrain was smelly because the previous owner liked to keep pets. “If you don’t like it, then find somewhere else to go! I’m not going to clean someone else’s shit, I don’t want to, there’s something good on TV!”. This kind of thing.

In the end, the worst outcome would be if people decided to rebel. Jack hadn’t shown any great proves of might, so people may as well think things like “I want to blast a Godly Maximized Higher Fireball to his face!”.

Of course, both Jack and Elicia knew that. And they knew the people on the dungeon were angry as well. Some had even sneaked to the lower floors, entering the forbidden zones. They forgave them, since they wouldn’t be able to go further than a few floors down, but that still bothered them.

Two days later, once everyone had calmed a little bit, they then appeared in front of the City Council.

[- I’m not going to go to war.]

Yrwin smiled wirily. With a single sentence, Jack had already gained the antipathy of everyone.