Mathew and the few others that were in the truck rolled up to a swirling portal. Sitting outside of it was an imp and wolf. Both of them looked beaten up, but very much alive.

“Hey, Boss! I didn’t expect you to come and visit, we just came out half an hour ago. Tending to some wounds and such.” Agnox had half his armor off. Mathew saw the majority of the steel parts were covered in black soot. Same with Jeffery’s armor.

He hopped out of the truck and walked over to his familiar. “Mind telling me what happened?”

Agnox looked up at Mathew, curiosity on his face. “Wwwweeelllll, there was a bit of a mishap, but I took care of it for you. Just a few people trying to steal the dungeon. They are dead now, as well as the boss and other dinosaurs. I have all the loot in the bag including the gear from the dead people.”

Agnox glanced at the bag next to him, “Well, the gear that wasn’t damaged beyond repair at least.”

Mathew looked down at the imp. Visually he looked the same. “Alright, we no point in you guys walking back.” Mathew turned to look at the truck. “Anyone here a guard or a member of the adventures guild?”

Two hands were raised. Mathew pointed to them both. “You two stay here and guard the portal until more help comes. It will be a few hours until someone comes since we have to go back and send people here. So please be aware the whole time. I doubt anyone else will come anytime soon, but I’m not taking any risks.”

One of the two groaned, “How much are you paying us?”

Mathew was about to get upset but realized paying them would be easier. “How much do you want?” Mathew asked.

“A million UC.” One of them said and appeared to be serious.

“Alrighty, 3k each. Another 2k if you stop people from taking the place.” Mathew said. If they wanted to be idiots, he will just pick his price.

The one who hadn’t said anything shrugged, “Works for me. 3k UC for half a day’s work of standing guard doing nothing. That’s easy money.”

Guards taken care of, Agnox hopped up into the truck. Mathew unsummoned Jeffery since there was no room for the oversized wolf.

On the ride back, Mathew looked at Agnox. Both physically and at the connection between them both. Mathew could just tell Agnox had an entirely new Axiom. Something different than his Axiom of Embers. It wasn’t physical, so his idea of something related to the sword or flying was out the door.

He kept his mouth closed, not wanting to talk to the imp until he was behind closed doors on that subject. He did ask him for more details about who tried to steal his dungeon.

“Three humans. I say there were on par with me in power. If not for Jeffery, I had zero chance of winning. One of them was a lightning mage. Every attack from her caused me to stiffen up for a moment. Then the other two, an axeman and gunner, stayed on top of me or Jeffery. I just kept burning things until they died.” Agnox finished with a shrug.

“Why didn’t you leave and get help?” Mathew questioned.

“Then they would have taken the dungeon. I couldn’t let them do that. If they just let it absorb into the HC, then it’s gone forever.”

Mathew just slightly smiled impressed with Agnox. He did exactly what he would have wanted the imp to do. He was growing into the perfect summon.

Once they rolled through the gates, Mathew directed the driver to the guard section. He walked into Captain Henderson’s office. He saw the same man sitting there.

“Oh, Mr. McGonald, evening sir.” Sergeant Mope, his name Mathew remembered as he saw a nameplate on the desk, stood up as Mathew entered. “How can I help?”

“I need a unit of guards at the Volkar Dungeon ASAP. I have two people guarding it right now who will need to be replaced sooner than later. Don’t expect too much opposition anytime soon. I imagine someone will show up in a day or three to investigate what happened to their missing people.”

“Of course. I can get five there right now.” Sgt. Mope walked around his desk and out the door. “Walk and talk. Who can we expect to fight.”

Mathew followed, “No clue. Another zone tried to take our Dungeon. I don’t want to just kill people for no reason, but if they press the issue, we will take them out. I’m going to put up a large bounty on figuring out which zone sent those people. Soon as we find them, we can talk things out hopefully.” Mathew filled in the man.

“Understood. I’ll send out a party of five. Henderson wanted everyone to train equally, but she started making teams before she disappeared. Groups of four to seven can cover the roles of a group. Tank, Fighter, and Healer are the main three. With one of each Tank and Healer and two Fighters as the minimum. One of the first groups is on call right now, I’ll assign them one of our gas trucks to get them faster with equipment.”

“Thank you, sir. I want guards there 24/7 until we figure out what is going on. In the future, let’s keep guards at every portal we claim. We can build a structure there for people to rest and if a dungeon goes poorly, for those who went in to recover without traveling for hours to get healed.”

Sgt. Mope nodded, “Put in the paperwork, approve it all, and once I see it on my desk I’ll figure out the logistics.”

Mathew liked Sgt. Mope more and more as the conversation went on. He was a man of action. He got things done with a few questions asked.

There was no more reason for Mathew to be with him, but he did watch the on-call group leave. To his surprise, Airman Brown was the healer of the group. The man was surprised to see Mathew and just smiled at the summoner before loading up into the HUMVEE.

With that taken care of, Mathew went to the office building, sending a runner to track down Mr. Melton at his house in case he wasn’t in his office. Once in, Mathew drafted up a document stating an official order for a guard rotation. He then put in a quest for people to find the zone that attacked his dungeon.

He put a hefty 50k bounty on it. Ensuring this was a priority for even the laziest of people. 50,000 UC bought a lot. Whoever was able to complete that quest would be set for a decent upgrade to their gear, crafting tools, or whatever they wanted to spend it on.

Once all that was taken care of, it was late into the night. Most people wouldn’t notice the quest till morning. With nothing else he can do at the moment, Mathew returned home.

Cherry was asleep on a couch, apparently waiting for him to return home. He didn’t bother her, letting her sleep. Tomorrow would be a day filled with too many things. He led Agnox to the back patio.

Along the way, Mathew grabbed a bottle of wine and a glass for himself. He filled the cup halfway with the red wine, left over from his evening with Lindsey. “Okay, fill me in. I need exact details on what happened in that Dungeon. Leave nothing out.”

Agnox told him the entire story. From entering to finding no enemies to fight. He included talking with them since he assumed they were from Blue Oaks. Then he summarized the fight to him as just killing them with Jeffery’s help. Mathew held up a hand.

“No, I don’t want just the actions. I want your thoughts. Your emotions. Everything.”

“Well. I couldn’t let them take the Dungeon. We need it. I knew you couldn’t lose something valuable, especially our only real dungeon resource. So, I had to take care of the problem for you. Even if it meant I would die, I was going to kill them.” Agnox’s eyes narrowed, the emotions of the fight coming back to him.

“I pushed through the pain. I burned them away Mathew. The entire forest caught up in the fire. If you were there, you would have died for sure unless you could outrun the flames. They were all enhanced by my Axiom of Embers.”

Mathew nodded, listening to the rest of the fight. “Open your menu. What did you gain from it?”

Agnox did so. Mathew didn’t care to look at it right now, it would change too much tomorrow for him to care how it looked now. “I have a new Axiom called the Axiom of Persistence.”

“And what do you think it does for you? What does Persistence mean to you?”

“To continue even when I’m supposed to stop,” Agnox said without a thought. “Constantly I’m on the line to fight for you. I have never felt more purpose than in what I’ve been doing in serving you, Mathew. Fuck, I doubt the word serve isn’t right. More like it’s my duty. Something I want to do.”

Mathew nodded, a slight grin growing on his face. He took a long drink of his wine. “Now, I’m going to tell you something things I discovered right when you gained that Axiom. First, our connection is now seamless. Perfect. I can focus on the part where our souls connected those months ago when I almost died. Before, there were imperfections between us. Those have slowly gone away, but there was more to it than I realized at first.”

“The constant stress of you gaining Axioms caused my soul to grow stronger where we connect. The constant conflicts and strife we encountered together have caused us to improve and grow. I believe that is how I will repair my soul. Stealing a word from your Axiom, I too will persevere. One day, Cherry and I will be this close hopefully, and all those in the future I bond with in this way.”

Agnox smiled like a madman. “You are crazy Boss. Putting your soul under more stress to fix it? That’s going to kill you.”

Mathew could only think of one analogy, “It’s like a wall that is constantly damaged from battle. After each successful one, it is repaired. It grows stronger as it heals. Imperfections are discovered and fixed. A cycle that continues until it is a fortress that can’t be scratched by the strongest of attacks because it is far stronger.”

The wine glass was refilled, “Go get some sleep. Tomorrow we will get your class. After that, I have some personal focus to attend to. Once the next zone is discovered, we are going to show the world what it means to mess with me.”