Jake shook off his forming cloud of depression. He couldn’t afford to go there. He had a home to create for some lost people. His family. He wondered how his brother Rex was going to respond to him being a stone. A pink stone. Well, a diamond, but still pink. Probably not well.

He looked around the interior of Max’s. It was a big empty room now that he’d cleaned it up. There used to be some other rooms in the interior before he’d cleaned them out. What used to be a men’s room, a women’s room, the stocking area, the manager’s office, the employee’s breakroom. He’d gained some Loot patterns in the process. Bar Trestle Table, Wooden Bench, Toilet, Shower, Urinal, Mirror, Locker, and a bunch of odds and ends.

He looked at his material’s creation skill and saw that he could only create dirt and balsa wood. Neither of which helped him. He needed walls and doors and windows and gates. He needed stuff that would allow him to create a sanctuary for his folks, at least for a while. He also needed to create a place that he could grow things in. They were probably going to be low on supplies, he needed to set up gardens and other stuff that would keep them from starving. He also needed them to get stronger so they could defend themselves from sullen man’s friends.

The first thing that he decided was that he needed to get the dungeon entrance out of Max’s. The idea of having kids and a dungeon entrance in the same space didn’t seem right. OSHA and DHS would not approve. Right now he had a big empty room, 115 meters by 70 meters and about 7 meters high. About midway down the east wall, he had two entrances, one the tunnel that Baxter dug, the other the stairs that almost reached the surface next to Baxter’s tunnel. The stairs hid under a block of foundation. He guessed that if anyone were to jump up and down on the foundation, they hear an empty boom from the space beneath, but allowing for that, no one should be able to tell the stairs were there.

He decided to make the best of what he had. Since the Bobs had granted him Balsa wood, he’d make balsa wood walls. He started using his new skill, outlining a wall around the tunnel and stairs. He made the wall ½ meter thick and it only took half the mana. Since it was a Level 1 material, using half the volume it only took 13 mana points to use. He used it again and again. Along about the 9th use, he got a notification.

Experience gained.

Skill Level Gained

Create Materials

Rank: Bronze

Level 2

But, unlike the other times he’d gotten a notification, he didn’t get a chance to choose a way to lower the cost. But, the next use he saw a real difference in the cost of materials. It dropped to 6 mana.

After another twenty-five uses, he got another notification, but once again he didn’t get a chance to lower the cost of using the skill. Level 3. He kept on. He figured that he still had about 143 uses to go, fortunately, the mana cost was falling.

Another 33 uses and another notification. Level 4. Still no cost reduction choice on the notification, but on the next use, the cost had dropped again, this time to three mana points.

One last notification occurred when Jake reached Level 5, but this time the mana cost per usage didn’t go down. But after thinking about it, he figured out that the Bobs were rounding off and he got the shaft. But he could understand, who wanted to keep track of decimals, but then he started thinking about all the constants that existed and felt robbed again. 3.14159126. Do they just say it’s three now? Lazy bastards!’ he thought.

He looked at the create materials skill and saw that with his new level of five, he had more options. He could actually create sandstone, black ash wood, even iron! Just for grins he actually created a block of iron, one cubic meter and the price was kind of shocking. 125 mana points. He did the same thing for sandstone and got the same price. And was now 250 mana points poorer. If he’d had hands, he would have smacked himself. Duh! Plus now he had two big cubes sitting in the middle of his floor. Duh! Duh! ‘New motto,’ he thought. ‘Think before you create!’

He looked over his enclosure and was actually kind of proud of it. Three seamless wooden walls, that ranged in color from pale reddish-brown to a white to off-white or tan color, sometimes with a pink or yellow hue. There were no seams or joins, the wood looked as if it was all one big board that ran from the limestone floor of Max’s up seven meters to the metal roof. The wood somehow joined seamlessly with both materials, metal and limestone. It also joined with the stone outer wall of Max’s.

He really wanted to put glass in Max’s windows, but that came at Rank 2, Level 4. He still had no idea what Ranks were. Did they come at 10 levels? Or 20? Or even 100? He hoped not the latter two. His help files weren’t helpful. He thought about asking Baxter to ask Hildi, but even the idea of trying to communicate the question through two-word sentences exhausted him. He put it on his 'Things to Ask Hildi When She Gets Back' list. Who knows, maybe the Bobs would tell her.

He had the rat come up and run his claws over the surface of the wall. It left a scar, but not as big a one as he would have expected. The only real thing he knew about Balsa wood is that it floated really well and that you could make airplanes out of it. Oh wait, and from High School Spanish, he knew that Balsa meant ‘raft’. He couldn’t hear the rat’s claws on the wood from inside the room and when he had it squeak and hiss, he couldn’t hear that from inside the room either.

‘So,’ he thought, ‘Balsa walls for all my friends! Soundproof! Probably better than drywall. Hell, it’d have to be better than drywall. Half a meter of Balsa wood verses 2 less than 2 cm sheets. Oh yeah, my Balsa’s better.’’

He thought then about all that he needed to get done. Rooms for kids, rooms for single adults, rooms for families, toilets, showers, bathing pools, beds, closets, dressers, heaters, air conditioners, glass for windows, doors, stoves, kitchen stuff, greenhouses to grow things in, a gym, and then stuff that existed in fantasy novels, forges, enchanter’s studios, mage towers. The list went on and on.

“I need more mana!” he shouted.

“Huh?” asked Baxter.

“Nothing buddy, I’m a little frazzled by all the stuff that I’ve got to get done.”

“Ok,” he said. “What frazzled?”

After he got the dog’s questions answered, he learned that right now the group coming was 22 adults, two of which were ‘not there’ or ‘don’t move’ or something else. It was hard to understand what Baxter was saying. And there were also fourteen kids not including Billy or Jon Jon, his youngest brother. According to Baxter, his sisters were now adults. Something about they being offered a class on their thirteenth birthday and Fern made the decision that if they could choose a class, they were adults. He thought that’s what Baxter said, but put it on his 'Things to Ask Hildi' list to be sure.

Finally, that thought that had been buzzing around the back of his mind made itself known, ‘what’s my level’?

“Status,” Jake said.

Doh! You need to check this more often, just saying.

Status

Name

?

Level

22

Class(es)

Mana Font

Titles: First Bonded!

Dungeon Points

86

Attributes

50

Skill Points+

72

Strength

0

Intelligence

61+

Dexterity

0

Wisdom

62+

Agility

0

Perception

60+

Constitution

0

Charisma

58+

Vitality

0

Luck

63+

AC

0/∞

Health:

0

Mana:

3690

Qi:

3690

Stamina:

0

“HOLY SHIT!” Jake shouted.

“What wrong?” asked Baxter.

“I’m a level 22 Mana Font,” Jake said.

“Yes,” said Baxter.

“You knew?” asked Jake.

“Fu Dog. Need Temple,” said Baxter.

“Wait, you mean that when you got the class Fu Dog, you made me a Mana Font?” asked Jake. He wasn’t sure but it seemed like his place in the power dynamic needed some re-evaluation.

“Need Guard,” said Baxter.

“So I’m what you guard?” asked Jake.

“Yes,” said Baxter. “There soon. People slow.”

“When did this happen?” he asked.

“Meet Hildi. Bad Man,” Baxter answered.

Jake thought about this for a while. He guessed it made sense, the first time the dungeon was really threatened, the Bobs must have stepped in and given Baxter his class. Or hell, maybe the dog made his decision then. He wondered what other classes, if any, Baxter had a chance at. He wondered if it was before Hildi bonded or when he killed the sullen guy? Or when Baxter offered to kill the sullen guy? He guessed that it didn’t matter that much. He liked the fact that he had a class now. Before he hadn’t even had a chance to make a choice. Now it looked like his available points had shot up.

And he had dungeon points again. Plus he had skill points. Although, he didn’t know what skill points were. But he had them! So much had changed. He noticed that his status screen looked almost identical to the one that Hildi had shared with him. He even got the row of body type stats, although they were all set to zero. He noticed that he’d upgraded to having Charisma and Perception too. Both would probably come in handy in the future. Dealing with his mom would be a lot easier if he had a higher charisma. Not to mention making any deals with the group of people that she had with her. He thought about everything that he had to do still, explore skill points, visit the Bobs again and spend some dungeon points, and assign his attributes as well as all the building that he needed to do upstairs to get ready for the coming group.

Just then, his rat heard a voice outside of Max’s.

“You sure Drake said he was coming here?” said a man’s voice. It sounded like the man who’d told Hildi to come out.

“Yeah,” said another man, this time sounding like the guy Jake had mentally labeled as “Squeaky Voiced Man. “He said he didn’t believe the girl was dead. He was gonna check out the inside of Max’s. He said he wasn’t afraid of no big mice. He kept talkin’ about her. Saying she looked fine. That a piece of ass that good wouldn’t die that easy. She ran away from us so fast, she could’ve run away from a big rat.”

“Yo Drake! You in there?” the first man said. From the sound of it most, if not all the original group had come back a second time. There was a pause then as if the group of men stood and listened for a response.

“Yo Drake! Stop fuckin’ around. Answer me,” the first man said again. The men weren’t on the porch. Jake had his hawk fly over about a 100 meters in the air and saw a group of ten men clumped outside the front doors of Max’s, just off of the porch.

As the hawk passed over, the men rushed up onto the porch trying to gather under the eaves of the building. Jake could hear them now since they were on the porch. He could see them too. When Max had rebuilt the old Walmart, he’d added a wooden porch with an overhanging set of eaves on it. He’d also added a bunch of rocking chairs and a wooden railing almost like a fence at the front of the porch, leaving an opening in it every five meters or so, for the customers to get up onto the porch from the parking lot. The idea was to make the place look like an old western saloon or something. Originally there were some troughs like you’d let your horse drink out of, but they quickly became filled with cigarette butts and trash, so Big Mike the former manager had converted them to planters and had put little desert roses and miniature pine trees in them. They still were on the porch, but the desert roses and pine trees weren’t as little as they used to be. Also, the planters seemed to somehow connect to the ground below, allowing the plants to grow down and gather water from the dirt below.

“What the fuck!” shouted a voice that Jake recognized as the ‘kid had a gerbil man.’ “Did you see the size of that fucking hawk? If I still had my Marlin .30-06 I’d put a bullet so far up its ass,”

“Shut it!” said the first man, quietly.

Gerbil man did.

The group of men waited and watched the sky from the porch, quietly, not moving or talking.

Jake had the hawk fly over again, this time about 900 meters overhead, just drifting through the sky, it’s enormous wings riding the thermals. The men shifted then and judging by the faint sighs of relief the rat could hear, relaxed a little.

“What’s Wade’s rules about monsters?” the first man asked.

Gerbil man said, “Sorry Matchstick, I forgot. It’s ‘be quiet, get under cover, and don’t move unless you’ve gotta run’.”

“That’s right,” said the man who Jake now knew was named Matchstick. “Remember that. It’s how we stay alive. Don’t any of you fuckers forget it, you hear me?” The group all nodded or mumbled that they did.

“Cleet, you’re up,” said Matchstick. “Duck inside and see if you can see Drake.” Once again the group shifted. This time it was as if an invisible current pulled all the other men away from the man who’d shouted.

“Why me,” said the gerbil man.

“Because you’re the dumbass that shouted when a monster was near. Get inside,” said Matchstick. Matchstick’s voice was thick with violence. He was a big man, about 1.88 meters. He’d obviously put most of his stats into either strength, constitution or agility. He was a black man. Dirty like all the men were, although he seemed possibly a little cleaner than the rest of his crew. He looked to be maybe 30 or so, but moved like he was younger.

Cleet looked to be around 24 or 25. He was white, brown-haired, with acne still on his face. He seemed a little greasy.

“I don’t think it’s fair I gotta go inside,” he said, looking around, trying to make eye contact with the others in the group of men. “I forgot!” The other men in the group wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“He just forgot?” said Matchstick. “You hear that? Oh, that’s all right then. You damn near kill us, but it’s ok, cause 'you just forgot'? Is that what you’re telling me? Telling us?”

“What? No, why you treating me that way. I’m sorry, Ok. I didn’t mean it,” said Cleet.

Matchstick removed his shirt and laid it on one of the rockers that were still on the porch. There was a small sigh that went through the group then. It had only been a week, but these men were getting used to a rougher life, rape, stealing, killing. Typical bandit, gang lifestyle. A couple of the men in the group looked like they might have gone to church on Sundays, been fathers at little league games. Not Matchstick though. He had some tats, not ink, tats like a bored man with a high tolerance for pain and nothing much to do might carve onto himself. “Inside or we gonna have a thing go down right here,” he said, looking at Cleet.

Cleet looked around once more, but nobody met his eyes that was willing to help him. Some of the men did, but they just looked excited, like they were looking forward to seeing what Matchstick was laying down.

The windows and doors to Max’s had changed, Last time the men had come here, they could vaguely see through them. Now it was as if a curtain of blackness stretched over them.

“What’s it gonna be, Cleet? We gonna have us a thing here, now, or are you gonna do what you told? Huh? What’s it gonna be?” Matchstick turned from the rocker and took a single step towards Cleet.

“I’m going. I’m going. Just hold on a second,” Cleet said while backing toward the window. He looked around but nobody was willing to step up for him.

Squeaky Voice Man said, “What’s with those windows? They’re black. Last time we were here, they weren’t like that, were they? I could see in a little bit, couldn’t you all?” The men all shook their heads and muttered a bit. Nobody liked it. Especially Cleet. It was mid-afternoon and the sun was shining. There was enough light that at least some of the inside of the building should have been visible. Just like last time.

Cleet looked around one last time. Matchstick took another step forward, toward him, and with a gasp that was almost like a sob, Cleet turned and stepped over the window and into Max’s. As he broke the plane and his head passed through the window, he started to say, “What? I just got this window thing…”

The large rattlesnake that had been sunning itself in the light from the windows had been listening to the conversation. Not really interested, not understanding it, just taking in the noise. When the men had run up onto the porch, Jake had the big snake move back further into the room.

The snake had done that and coiled up. Jake had told the snake not to rattle. He didn’t want to give these assholes any warning.

When Cleet came through the window, Jake released his hold on the snake. In the battle with the rats, all the snakes had become more powerful, had grown in size, their poison had become more venomous. Instead of a 10-meter snake, the snake was now 14-meters long. Its scales were harder, glinting like they might have a bit of metal in them now, and its fangs had changed completely to some dark red metal. The skin of the snake had darkened from the tan and black that it used to be to a dark brown, almost pecan color on the scales to a deep black on the banding. The bands were no longer irregular, zigzags, instead they’d become almost perfect chevrons running up and down the length of its body. Even the inside of its mouth had changed, whitening to the color of bleached cotton sheets. The most interesting change was the smell of the snake. It no longer was odorless or smelled of its prey rotting inside it. It now gave off a spicy odor, almost a cinnamon musk.

The snake had been waiting. Jake had the other two snakes move up to support this one, just in case the men decided to come inside. The first snake stuck Cleet just as his back foot cleared the window sill. It’s new, harder fangs easily penetrating the man’s chest.

Jake told it to rattle then and it did. The rattle of the snake had changed as well. It was no longer the brown almost translucent skin remnants of before. It now gleamed like steel in the light from the windows. And when it rattled, it sounded as if big rocks where trapped in an oil drum and shaken rapidly.

Cleet made a kind of ‘urkk’ sound as the snake struck him and then paralyzed him and soon afterward he died. The snake kept Cleet’s body in its mouth and winding its coils slid back towards the center of the room.

“Cleet?” shouted Squeaky Voice Man. “What’s going on? Talk to us?”

Another of the men stepped forward to the porch in front of the window where Cleet had stepped through. He knelt and rubbed his hand over the surface of the porch. The blood spray from where the snake’s fangs had penetrated through his chest lay on the ground in little almost invisible drops. The majority of the blood had coated the inside of the wall and floor next to the window. When the man held up his hand, his palm and fingers stained red.

“What the fuck?” he said. “This is blood. Something killed Cleet.” All the other men stepped backward off the porch. The man with the bloody hand watched them for a second before his eyes grew big and he leaped off the porch to join them, turning in midair to watch the window.

Jake almost subconsciously cleaned the mess up. The walls and floor of the inside of Max’s seemed to suck the moisture out of the blood leaving a dry, dusty, iron-red remnant for a brief second before it vanished too. The small smear of blood that the man had created on the porch vanished too.

“What the fuck?” the man said again. The nine remaining men looked at the window and backed up even further. Matchstick started to move towards where his shirt draped over a rocking chair and then paused, stopped and glared at the shirt, bare-chested.

It remained quiet then. Jake had stopped the snake’s rattle soon after it had begun. He caused his hawk floating in the sky to screech once and then float out of view of the men. The men gathered closer together but still didn’t move away from the window. Waiting on something else to happen.

After a couple of minutes, Jake had one of his snakes come forward and rub its body along the wall, pressing past the lip of the window. He hoped that the snake’s skin would show outside the room, a big torrent of skin and muscle writhing past in one long train. It worked, he could tell from the reactions of the men that they could see the snake passing.

“Holy fuck!” yelled another of the men. “What the fuck was that?” All the men sounded off.

“I don’t know,” said Matchstick. “But we’ve got to tell Wade about this.” And with that, the rat heard all the men leaving. The last thing that Jake could hear was Matchstick telling another man to give him his shirt.