Ben was growing increasingly agitated the longer it took for them to reach the safe zone. They hadn't spotted any more monsters visible from the road, nor had they come across anything particularly strange. No, Ben was obsessing about the book that sat in his backpack. He kept eyeing everyone around him with suspicion if they even got close to him or the pack. He was tense and unhappy, his mind was wandering down the endless path that the book provided.

Ben knew what he was dealing with here, he'd seen enough movies and anime to identify this particular item himself. This thing was pure power, enough to establish a new kingdom on the earth. He shut down his thoughts, a paranoid urge telling him that someone might have picked up a Telepathy skill and hid it from him. So he stood silent, both in body and mind, waiting to get somewhere safe.

'Thank god,' he thought to himself 'Nobody's trying to talk to me or touch me. I'm afraid of what I'd say or do if they did.'

“Aaaaaa- this is the captain of the New Afganistan monster safari vehicle,” Vaughan's voice came over the radio, imitating a pilot of an airplane “Aaaaa- the 'Green House',” the air quotes were obvious to everyone “is in sight. Please turn off your cellphones and wifi while the plane is landing. Aaaaa- I hope you've enjoyed your flight, this is your captain, Osama Bin Washington, signing off.”

“I really wish he would cut that New Afganistan stuff out,” Polk said, an expression of frustration on her face “I'm afraid it'll stick.”

“Yeah,” McCrea said “I'm thinking we'll need to have a discussion about it.” Louden nodded her agreement, and Ben said nothing.

Ben's motorhome, thankfully, was untouched. The remains of their fire from a few nights ago and beer cans and bottles were all that greeted them. Everybody got out of the truck, except Ben, who stood there, frowning, wracked with internal conflict. Finally, he grabbed his backpack and climbed out of the back of the pickup, going over the side and using the tire as a foothold to get down. Quickly, before he could think too hard about it, he handed the backpack to Polk.

“Keep this away from me,” he muttered, then joined the group as they gathered around the fire-pit to talk.

“Why?” she asked, taking the pack.

“I don't trust myself with it,” he said as he sat down, then put his face in his hands.

“Ok,” Louden said, taking the lead because nobody else was “First order of business. New Afganistan,” Vaughan cheered loudly. “It's a stupid name and we don't want it. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” everybody but Vaughan said.

“What! It's an awesome name! It's badass,” he said, an overly distraught expression on his face.

“Ok, well you've been overruled. We'll let you take another swing at the name though, how about that, tiger?” Vaughan mumbled something about everybody's lack of good sense.

“Agreed,” he said, without too much enthusiasm.

“Next order of business! How long do we want to make this little field trip? Personally, I want to get Ben's business with this Casimer guy done as fast as possible and start the process of moving this gold somewhere more useful than the fucking-,” she coughed “than the ground. Anyone want to suggest something different?”

“Personally,” Vaughan said, already recovered “I'd like to go hunt some more monsters. I didn't even get to shoot the last one, and besides, it dropped some pretty strange stuff. Speaking of,” he said, looking at Ben “Didn't you say that the dungeon could only drop stuff that had been brought here? I'm pretty sure nobody brought a magic book and monster blood. You didn't bring that stuff, right?”

“No, I didn't,” Ben said “And that's the way it's been working so far, but clearly something's changed. That monster we fought wasn't one of Casimer's, or at least I've never seen something like that around here before. I'm pretty sure that's part of what he wanted to talk to me about. In any event, those lizards that attacked Louden and the uh. . . I'm not even sure what to call it, that thing we killed, they were way outside the boundaries of the dungeon. I don't want anything to wander out and get back to town, let alone somewhere more populated. I second the motion, we should stay at least an extra day and thin their numbers out.” Ben paused “Provided it's not too dangerous, of course.”

“Third the motion,” McCrea said “Those drops were pretty interesting, and that Boon of Discovery and the First Item bonus seems like something we'll want to take advantage of. I've got a feeling this might be our only shot to acquire some really powerful stuff.”

“I'm with them on this,” Polk added “I'm not in it for excitement or treasure. That thing looked really, really dangerous, and if there's more like that out there, we've got to take them out. There's no way I'm letting something like that get loose and start killing people.”

“Ok,” Louden said “That's a supermajority. We'll take a day after Ben's done to do some monster hunting. Third order of business,” she said, and there was a glint in her eye “Gold. Cash money, people! We're sitting on a king's fortune here, and it's been vastly underutilized. Anyone got any ideas? Any gigantic nerds, for instance,” she said, staring directly at McCrea as she said it.

“Right,” McCrea stood up and started talking “So, there's no way we'll be able to liquidate that much gold all at once. It's just not happening, period. You all should know why, but I'll make it easy. Selling that much gold will attract attention, big attention. Federal and international attention. If any of you ask me why that's bad, I'm not going to be your friend anymore.”

“What we can do, however, is take a shipment of gold out of here, enough to fund us and sell it bit by bit up and down the coast. We'll draw a hundred mile radius around Hope and visit pawn shops, coin shops and metal brokers and mints outside of that radius. It couldn't hurt to get our own mint going and melt what we've got down into bars or coins. I don't know about you, but I can't think of an explanation as to why the Gold we've got looks like it was pried from a solid block with a pickax.” He looked at Ben with humor in his eyes.

“We'll sell no more than a few thousand dollars worth at a time, I've got some guidelines written up on exact numbers, so don't worry about that. We're going to treat this like it's stolen, because as far as the rest of the world is concerned, it is. Eventually, we're going to have to get some professional criminal help to move this stuff, and I really don't want to do that till we can negotiate from a position of power. Do any of you happen to know anyone from China, Russia or India? No? Shame, they've been buying up every scrap of Gold they can get their hands on for years now.” He paused, and when nobody said anything, he sat down

“All in favor?” Louden asked.

“Aye!” It was unanimous.

“Final order of business, Ben's Book. He wanted to have a discussion about it, so Ben, you've got the floor.”

“I can't take that thing,” he said, face in his hands.

“What?” Polk asked, glancing down at the backpack and then back at Ben “Why the hell not?”

“You guys don't understand,” he said, and there was a voice in his head screaming at him, screaming loudly, that he needed to shut the fuck up. “I-I just can't. I want it too bad, I want that thing so much it's driving me crazy. I don't know if you've thought about the implications, but that thing's pure power. Whoever's in control of it, they've got the keys to the kingdom, they can bestow power on themselves and others at will. That's a top tier ability. I can't tell you the number of stories I've read or watched where that exact ability, almost to a 'T', is the power of the villian. I want it too bad, and that's not something a hero should be feeling,” shut the fuck up Ben, shut the fuck up! “If you give it to me, I can promise you it'll corrupt me. I can promise you I'll abuse it. I know it for a fact.” Ben looked up.

Everybody was staring at him.

“All in favor of giving Ben the book, say aye,” Polk said, making eye contact with him.

“Aye,” they all said in unison.

“Nay!” Ben said, standing up in outrage “Fucking nay! Didn't you hear me? I'm a bad choice for this! I already joined up with the dungeon rather than destroy it, don't you get that? I'm selfish, I'll use it for selfish reasons and,” Vaughan started laughing “and,” soon the rest of them were laughing too.

“Book's yours dude, we voted on it,” Louden said, pulling it from the backpack and holding it up. “Clearly you've got a better idea than the rest of us how to use this thing, and honestly? I think I'm speaking for everyone here when I say this too, we're following your lead on this. None of us had the balls to approach this place again, let alone make friends with some kind of evil god or whatever so that he wouldn't destroy mankind. You're the boss, and this is yours.” She put it in his hands and let go, forcing him to catch it.

“All in favor of making Ben the official leader?” She asked.

“He only gets one vote same as before, right?” Vaughan asked.

“Obviously,” Louden said.

“Aye,” they all said together. Ben looked at each an every one of them, searching their eyes for even a hint of doubt, even the slightest hesitation.

“All right,” he said when he finished his examination “I'm doing it.” He looked at the book, and the status screen appeared a moment later.

Name: The Blank White Book. Rarity: Original. Rank: Perfect.

This item unlocks the Limited, Unique class of Sage (1 of 7), and will be consumed upon use. The SoHA class system is not operational yet. Due to this, the use of this item will be modified until the system is fully online. This book grants the ability to record and grant skills. Skills must be manually added. This is the original, and only Blank White Book.

This item can be Soul-Bound! Beware of thieves until this item has been bound.

+500% Duration of granted skills

+200% Rate of skill growth

+100% chance of successfully learning a skill from this book

+200% charge rate from Mana crystals

This book can accept monster and dungeon cores for the purposes of charging.

This Book has a zero percent chance of being consumed on use.

This book can contain both active and passive skills

This book can be used to attach a skill to an item

This Book can hold an unlimited number of skills

Skills recorded in this book have a very small chance of spontaneously evolving to a more advanced tier.

This book allows every user to permanently select two skills for unlimited use, without restriction. There is no limit to the number of users who can use this ability.

Would you like to Soulbind this item?

“Yes,” Ben said out loud.

Congratulations, You have become the Soulbound owner of The Original Blank White Book!

Ben looked up at them and smiled, a huge and open smile. Whatever darkness inside of him that had seized control seemed to have vanished entirely, like the surface of oily water after a drop of soap is added.

“I can't wait to show you guys around here. You think you know, right? You think you know all about this place. Let me tell you something, you've got no idea how cool Oasis Mountain is. But!” Ben stood up, his heart nearly bursting from his chest from the overwhelming love he felt for his friends “Right now, I've got to figure out how to load skills into this book. We should head out before sunset, so give me a couple of hours? I'm going to be in my room if you need me. Walkie talkie's on, let me know if you see any monsters sniffing around.”