"Okay, everyone, listen up!" I yelled. We had finally gotten all the people unloaded from the buses, and I was standing in the middle of the crowd. My first attempt at getting their attention hadn't gone well. But thanks to Connie and some vocal enhancing magic, this yell had been loud enough to drown out everything else. It may have also scared away many local animals. I'd probably want to find a more localized effect in the future.

"This giant next to me is Trolke. He and Glorp have been working to get you a rudimentary shelter put in place. Obviously, there are a lot of you, so not much has been done in the little time we've had. To that end, I want everyone who has any experience cutting wood, construction, or anything like that to report to Trolke. Everyone who worked with John on meals while we prepared for evacuation is to report back to him, unless you have the aforementioned experience with construction. That one takes priority for now. Everyone else will report to your mayor, and he will sort out what you can best do to help!" I attempted to keep my voice encouraging as I yelled these words.

Several yells and more muttered affirmatives from a crowd of incredibly stressed people followed. I understood the frustration. This was just more work on top of everything they had already gone through, but to their credit, people were moving about with purpose now. It looked like they had every intention of getting through this together.

"Glunderlin, once you've got your people mostly in order, I want you to join us in that building over there," I said, pointing to the dining hall. That was going to need to be expanded again now that I looked at it. Did we need to become closer to an actual city hall at this rate? That seemed more possible considering the workforce increase, assuming they were willing. I was not about to start this empire off with any sort of slavery.

"I'll be there. Once again, Dave, thank you for everything," he replied. It was long past awkward how much gratitude he continued to attempt to heap on me, but I accepted it with a smile while I scanned the crowd for Pryte. He and I needed to have a talk with a certain mad scientist before the bigger meeting.

I found the smaller man hanging toward the back of the crowd, having his own discussion with all three of the former librarians. "Ladies, could I borrow Pryte? I need to have a discussion with him," I said once I had pushed my way through the crowds to him.

"Yes, I believe we were done here anyway. We were just discussing getting the dungeon safely connected to your growing capital city," Elody said with a slight smile on her lips. I knew she intended it as a joke, but at the same time, she wasn't wrong.

"What's up?" Pryte asked.

"Just wanted to borrow you for a quick talk with Ivan about some things," I replied, trying to keep it vague.

Not only did I want to keep Karlinovo's name under wraps for as long as possible, but I didn't want the other two entirely in on some of my plans yet. While I liked them well enough so far, I wanted to know them a bit longer before they got access to everything here. The days of it just being me who was affected by my trust of people were long over. I had too many others relying on me to go those routes anymore.

"Got it. Ladies, I'll see you all for dinner." Pryte's words were accompanied by a wink at Yorela. She returned the wink with a glare.

I almost questioned how those two had ever been a pair, but then I remembered my own dating history. Opposites often attract. The reality was that love was a strange experience, and incredibly hard to quantify. I had so many happy memories with Laura. They easily dwarfed the bad times, but still, the bad times took precedence in my memories, and I know she felt the same way. Perhaps unlike the two of us, Pryte could rekindle his old relationship.

"So what are we calling the city?" Pryte asked me as we made our way to my former garage, now a half-finished workshop.

"You would have to ask the questions I try not to think about," I replied, shaking my head slightly.

"Elody may have been making a joke back there, but she isn't wrong. This is likely the capital of your empire now. We could ignore that when there were only a handful of us, but you have people now. Glunderlin may be mayor, but he certainly considers you a ruler above him. And I'd wager a guess most of his people do as well," Pryte said, keeping his tone serious.

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"Can we vote on it somehow? Maybe make the Reltleons feel included? There are a lot more of them in this new city than there are of us. Only seems fair," I replied. I was determined to keep as much democracy as I could in place for now. There would one day have to be talks of all kinds of governments, but that could hold until the Empire was much bigger.

"Yeah, that's certainly doable. Hell, probably a great idea. We can figure out the mechanics of that vote at dinner tonight," he replied, as we walked into the workshop.

"Oh good, you're both back," Karlinovo said. He had looked up from the table he was sitting in front of, something entirely disassembled in front of him. Was that my old microwave?

"Taking my things apart, are you?" I asked.

"It seemed to be unused. I found it sitting in a corner out here, and I wanted to see how this planet had developed in terms of technology. It's very interesting, honestly. You've managed to replicate a lot of what different civilizations used mana for. I'm impressed you used something like this just for cooking food, and even managed to do so safely. This bodes well for what we can do with the existing technology on this planet," he answered.

"Good. There's a lot we are going to need to do there. That said, did you have time to think about what I asked about imbuing orbs?" I asked, hoping he had. The faster we worked on getting those functions in place, the sooner we could increase our mana flow.

"I did, and these three are ready to do what we need. At least what I assume you wanted. We will need to determine if our mana flow already has a type or not. With how weak it is, it's entirely possible it has yet to attune to anything in the area," Karlinovo replied, pointing to three mana orbs on another surface.

"It's already attuned to plants thanks to Cecile's efforts. The cloud tree probably helped there as well," Pryte added. I wasn't sure if that was good or bad. If it helped with the food growing efforts, I could see it being extremely beneficial, even if I might have preferred a knowledge one.

"Wait, does that mean our entire planet is going to be plant attuned now?" I asked, hoping that wasn't the answer. I didn't think it was, but this was another topic I had only slightly skimmed the details of during my time in the archives.

"No, as the mana flow grows, it will find different attunements in different places. High-tier imbuing orbs will let us alter that as well. Plus, there are some more very specialized mana orbs we could utilize to fine-tune the exact typing of the mana flow. That will get into the very complicated field of sources versus types, though, and that isn't a conversation we will want to have now," Karlinovo answered.

"That's fine, but it will be something we need to have later. I've got some class abilities tied to it that have been confusing me a bit, to be honest. But back to the matter at hand. I want to speed up the mana flows expansion rates using those extra orbs. I can swap mine for one of the ones with the higher tier mana skills already unlocked, but I imagine we need someone else willing to spend their skill ranks on another," I explained. I wasn't sure how much of a problem finding that person would be. I'd prefer it be one of our core group if possible for now, though.

"If we swap yours, we need to get it to someone else to continue to grow as well. In fact, we need to establish a program with the Reltleons where all our mana orbs are constantly being infused by soul-core reactor energy. We need to get as many mana orbs tiered up as quickly as we can. It will help with the experiments we need to run, not to mention the defense of this world," Karlinovo replied.

"I agree entirely. I had already had that idea cooking. As for the other two imbuing orbs, I can take one for now, and I think we can convince Glorp to take the second. He's the ideal one to have his own attunement points placed around here with how fast he can move between them anyway," Pryte added.

"Perfect. This much we can discuss at the meeting as well. What I don't want to talk about there is potential security systems we tie to this, or what exactly is going on with these twelve cores." As I said this, I pulled the strange cores I had collected from the archives out of System storage.

As I did so, I heard the other one yell in a rage at being left behind. On whim, I grabbed them too. Perhaps it was time for another attempted conversation with them. I doubted it had the power to get into Pryte's mind, and Karlinovo was now a mana beast, one that possibly belonged to a different dungeon core.

Finding the pieces of your own sanity, scattered deep within your mind after they have been broken by an encounter with something you can barely recall, let alone describe, is a horrifying experience. The worst part is I still somehow see these creatures in my dreams, and yet despite knowing that I have, I can never recall just what I encountered there. Will I ever truly know a night's rest again? I know I fared better than the other members of that doomed crew, save Squidlin himself, but that doesn't change my own shame at how things had gone. I should have been able to protect the others, dammit, what good is being a Eldritch Slayer if I can't even slay one?!

Yorela in her first interview after her doomed voyage.

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