We escorted about five hundred people back to the settlement. The largest group by far. Many of these people were taking refuge in the church and elementary school that the former community had built up around. Fuck, we got a problem. With the hospital populations I’m going to be well over one thousand people. That’s if everyone sticks around. I currently only had two apartments for families that were designed to house a total of one hundred people each. I needed to get with Johnny and see if there were better options than the five story apartments we had been queueing up.

I looked at the space within our walls and noticed it was getting pretty cramped. Then I looked at my current SP. It seemed people were already training in the dungeons. Veep explained how I actually earned SP from people going into the dungeons affiliated with my settlement. It basically amounted to every Skill level gained was worth five points in SP to my settlement. It would be ten, but I was splitting the haul with the Valkyr and Daemons. For every actual Class Level a person in my dungeons earned, we split one hundred points of SP. If the dungeon group completed specific challenges I’d also earn a bit of SP based on the difficulty of the challenge.

For example, Lord Shubin reset the Nightmare Dungeon for raid groups of ten people of level twenty or higher. One of the challenges however was to complete the dungeon at level fifteen. Just as my party had done. A greater challenge was to do the dungeon at level fifteen and not lose anyone. While the majority of the dungeons were tailored so that there was little chance of groups dieing in the dungeon as long as they prepared properly, the Nightmare Dungeon was a different matter altogether. It was designed to be a grueling test of teamwork and competence. And no one was allowed to attempt it until they had completed five other lower ranked managed dungeons or had proof of clearing two or more wild dungeons.

Before I had left to engage with the people of Indian Heights I possessed roughly one million Settlement Points and some change. I was now sitting at a little over 1.2 million points and it was slowly increasing. If people kept diving the dungeons and leveling I would have the points I needed to purchase all of the defensive options I had planned. As I looked over the people behind me and back at my plan I realized I was going to have to shift it to accommodate the sudden influx of new residents.

“Veep, connect me to Eli and Johnny.”

A moment later I was connected to both the men in my mind's eye, once the greetings were completed I broke down the problem I was having for them. “As you can see, if we wait for the SP to build up, it’ll be several days at best before we’re able to get the full defensive setup built. In the meantime we’re looking at just over a thousand residents, which actually pushes us into eligibility for small village status. And unlocks more perks. But we have to be able to house and feed these people.”

“Ok, why not make more apartments?” Eli asked as he stroked his mustache.

Johnny responded before I did, “Not everyone will stay if the only housing option is apartments. Of course, no one will stay if we start building townhomes outside the walls either.”

“That is correct, however, I think I have an idea that will meet our defensive and housing needs for the meantime. I think we start small on the defenses.”

“Even with the Valkyr shoring up our manpower, it was going to be a bit overwhelming to man the fortifications and bunkers the way you envisioned them, Sir.” Eli commented while looking at the plans on his end with intensity.”

“What if we put small guard posts within our residential areas, here and here? We keep our current fortification, place a pair of new apartment buildings just North of our current position, and proceed with your riverside Townhomes” I said to Johnny and let him consider it.

“I would put two guard posts on each of these proposed housing areas. Place them so that each one has a view of two cardinal directions. For example, one post has a view of the North and the West, while the other is positioned to cover sight lines South and East.”

“Ok, I like it. Johnny?”

“Yeah, I think that will work. Apartments to the North, about two dozen townhomes along the New Winslow River?”

“That’ll work, make the apartments rent free, and set a fair rate on the townhomes. We also need to decide on tax rates and such for the kiosk and dungeon usage. I was thinking something between 5-10% flat sales tax in the market and kiosk. We need to pick a rate and stick with it, there’s nothing I hated more than the incremental tax creep those fucker politicians would implement.”

“I can’t say I disagree with that line of thinking myself, Sir.”

“Let’s just go with 8%, Arizona sales tax was already set that high, so no one should bat an eye at it.”

“Alright then, I’ll make that official now, any other thoughts on building out our settlement?”

“None that I can think of, Sir.”

“Johnny?”

“Nothing right now, I’ll let you know if something comes up.”

“Well, let’s make it happen then, I’ll set the tax rate now. Johnny, you handle the build order, and Eli, keep it all safe till I get home.” With that I finished the call and set the tax rate.

SooHoo Settlement universal tax rate set at 8% for all future purchases and earnings.

“You just set the tax rate? Good. That’s a fair rate, not the best, but fair.” Junipher commented as we rode by the column of human refugees.

“Yeah, the state tax rate was already around that, so we figured it wouldn’t ruffle too many feathers, I wasn’t going over 10%. Ever. I decided to adjust my defense and housing plan considering we essentially doubled our number in the span of a single morning.”

She laughed in my arms, “Indeed. I think you are doing good, Karl.”

I smiled and we rode on in silence. We moved down Third Street as it gave us a straight shot to the settlement and took in the scene of devastation. The remains of Winslow. The train yard still had a spot around the dungeon entrance that had sprung up there that was still on fire. More like permanent fixtures of brimstone and smoke. I noticed two groups of adventurers were coordinating outside the entrance to the dungeon, likely preparing to raid it. Banners representing everyone gathered with their names scrawled across them speared the ground. It seemed this would be how adventurers marked a dungeon as occupied, and how you would know who was inside.

“I believe that is how the Valkyr mark their dungeons, seems your people are adopting that method as well.” Junipher eyed the colorful streamers attached to the top, indicating dungeons cleared by the gathered individuals.

“It’s kind of like my time in the Army, we had something similar called a guidon. You would get a streamer added to your guidon for completion of a deployment or a specific training exercise. Some were permanent and others were passed when another company achieved greater glory.”

“So a competitive thing?” She smiled and continued, “We had similar symbols that we passed amongst our strongest warriors.”

She suddenly changed the subject, “Have you heard from Phil and his daughter?”

“No, I should send them a message, which begs the question, shouldn’t we be able to trade messages now that the Universal Network is up and running?”

“Unless they are in a dead zone. Our current range of transmission is 20 miles. We can communicate with Flagstaff because it’s considered a Large City and has a transmission range of 100 miles. It’s communication range overlaps ours so we are able to piggyback off their network node. There’s probably several communication dead zones keeping us from communicating further south.” Junipher informed me as we rode.

“So, if there are settlements in these dead zones, they’re too small to connect to the overall network, we got lucky being so close to a large city like Flagstaff.”

"Mmhmm.”

I thought about this for a minute and realized we had already reached the unofficial outskirts of our settled area, the New Winslow River. It raged and frothed as it flowed quickly and I wondered how long the squat bridge would hold out against such pressure. I made a mental note to look into reinforcing the structure as soon as possible. I could see the SP had been allocated as we had discussed previously by the telltale blue glow of mana ‘growing’ the townhomes and security checkpoints from the ground up.

The train of people I was leading stalled and stared in wonder at what was happening, Anna stepped forward, the unofficial leader of the highway refugees, and asked, “What is going on here?”

“Mana. It’s building some premium townhomes along the river, and should be ready by the end of the night. Further north we have a few apartment buildings going up. Those are free, the townhomes are not.”

“Oh.” Her thoughts trailed off as she considered what I said.

“The apartments are quite nice, two bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen and living room. Better than what I lived in before the System.”

“Oh. Really?” She asked skeptically.

“Look around”, I gestured with a wave at the collapsed, wrecked, and burnt out buildings around us, “I know it doesn’t look it, but Winslow was a shithole trapped in some weird twisted dream of the 60’s when it used to be the place to be.”

She looked at me askance, clearly perturbed by my statement.

“I wasn’t a fan before. Now, through some sick twist of fate, it’s mine.”

In the span of that short conversation we reached the main settlement gate where Johnny and Eli waited for my return with several dozen guardsmen ready to process everyone and find them somewhere to sleep. Soup and bread was waiting at the end of the processing line, an incentive to finish the processing in an orderly manner. Junipher and I slid off Kaia who bounded over to the kennel to greet his pack mates, and probably brag about his solo boss kill.

“Alright, gentlemen, we ready to upgrade our status?”

“I believe so, Sir.” Eli responded with a small smile forming on his face while holding his hands behind his back.

“Please?” Johnny smiled, “We need a proper city planner and can’t get one til you authorize the advancement.”

“Fine, Veep?”

“Yes, Master Karl?” She bobbed in amusement.

“Oh, Jesus Christ! Do it!”

Congratulations! SooHoo Settlement is now recognized as SooHoo Village (Tiny).

You have unlocked the City Planner position. This position allows you to zone land owned by the village to be sold to the villagers, allowing more natural city development.

You have unlocked new buildings and facilities, check the Village interface to review the new build options.

Captain of the Guard position has evolved to Militia Commander. As the Militia is responsible for the defense of the village, you have unlocked the Sheriff, responsible for maintaining law and order within the village. As your village is currently ranked [tiny], the Sheriff may assign [1] deputy.

“My rank changed from Captain of the Guard to Militia Commander?” Eli muttered through glazed eyes.

“Looks like we have an official position for law enforcement now. I’ll leave finding the appropriate individual to you, Commander.” I said with a smirk.

He looked at me sourly and nodded all the same, “Of course, Sir.”

“Johnny, I think I might have someone in mind for City Planner, Colleen. She was running the Indian Heights people, she may or may not show up. If she does, offer her the position, if she doesn’t, find someone else. This should take a weight off your shoulders. You will stay the overall administrator while I’m away and be the final decision maker when our other administrators can’t come to a consensus.”

“Ok, I can do that, I’ll keep a look out for Colleen.”

“Eli, did you send my team to link up with Nandi?” Nandi’s team had taken some losses when they were ambushed in the night. She was down two of her front line fighters. I was still hoping to bring the Dwarves on before I left, though I had decided not to wait any longer.

“They left this morning, Sir. Nandi was happy to hear help was on the way. They pulled the women down last night, one did not go back up.” He grimaced at that last bit of information, Are you sure you will only need them to liberate Flagstaff?”

“These fuckers aren’t even going to see me coming. And I’m even going to walk through the gate.”

Eli chuckled and Johnny had already left to attend to his duties. “Wish I could see the look on their faces, good luck, Sir.”

“Ok, Veep, you got my infiltration kit ready?”

“By infiltration, you mean your airsoft wannabe tacti-cool kit?” Veep had been getting snarkier and snarkier. I wasn’t particularly sure how I felt about that, so I chose to ignore it.

“That’d be the one.”

“It is. I even found a suppression bag and a status spoofer. You should be good to go.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic!”

“You’re enjoying this too much.” Junipher laughed at me.

“C’mon, let’s go grab my shit and get outta here.”

“Fine” She smiled and we headed over to the kiosk and gathered my packages.

The so called infiltration package consisted of some low grade uncommon ranked gear with shitty mismatched stats that weren’t worth mentioning. A cheap black airsoft tac vest, a pair of khaki cargo pants, a grey t-shirt, a brown duster and a Glock 23 with a couple extra mags of HP ammo. This crap gear cost almost nothing, the things that cost a hefty credit were the status spoofer and the spatial bag that had a secret compartment designed to evade System detection. It wouldn’t last forever, but by the time I was where I wanted to be it shouldn’t matter.

The status spoofer would also mask my real name, class, level and other vital attributes to passing scrutiny. It wouldn’t hold up to a concentrated scan, but if I can get in without them knowing I’m there, all the better. The plan was that I would go in alone, get a look at the place and assess the situation from the inside, then decide how I want to overtake it. Which amounted to whether or not I did so with or without bloodshed. I was leaning towards lots of bloodshed.

“You ready, love?” I asked Junipher as she sat watching me sort out my gear.

“Of course, my sneaky giant.” I laughed at that and called for Kaia.

As we exited the front gate to make for Flagstaff two things I had been waiting for happened at almost exactly the same time. The first being a red eyed Colleen walked up to the gate as we were exiting. She looked up at me with a large rucksack slung over her shoulder

“Headed off to Flagstaff?” She asked with a barely contained sniffle.

“Yeah.”

She looked to the side and nodded her head then turned back to me, “Good, you said you had a job for me?”

“Yeah, that there is the Admin Building.” I pointed behind me, “You should find Johnny on the first floor, back right office. He’ll get you set up.”

She sniffed again and headed off toward the Admin Building. Once outside the gate we climbed atop Kaia and started off back the direction we had traveled this morning. We made it about as far as the bridge when I noticed a figure standing in the desert with a pair of large dogs, as well as a mountain lion. Then I realized an oversized hawk of some flavor soared in circles directly above him.

Behind him a pair of squat looking humanoids had crawled up to join him on the rock he stood. The man with all the animals nodded at me and walked off while the two short men walked towards me with a purpose in their stride. A dozen more short men and women crawled onto the rock cropping and looked around.

“Ho there, rider! Are you the one known as Karl?” The burly man raised a hand as he approached. It was clear he had been in the desert for some time as he looked to be sandblasted to hell and back. A thick sheen of dust clung to his red braided beard. He wore a simple linen cloak over broad dark shoulders and was probably just shy of five foot tall.

“I am, you must be Gregor.” He looked surprised as I continued, “Queen Freya has already joined us, we were expecting you a couple days ago.”

“Aye, we should have left with her people, we got lost in the damnable desert and its twisting canyons. If it weren’t for that young Beastmaster we would probably have found ourselves right back at Flagstaff where we started.”

“I’m headed there now, gonna have a little talk with the Mayor. Probably end up killing her. Want to come along?” I flashed the short man a wicked grin. His eyes flashed with rage and his beard parted to expose white teeth underneath.

“Aye, I think I would like t’ go wit ye.”