Chapter 430 – Establishing a beachhead


    An hourter and after realizing that it was pretty hard to find a hotdog stand at 9 PM on a Saturday, even in NYC, he returned to a slightly smaller camp. With a hotdog in his stomach. Just because it was pretty hard, didn’t mean it was impossible.


    The decision reached evidently hadn’t satisfied everyone. “We ept the offer, Mister Newman,” Seth respectfully said. Now the man was smaller and weaker than him and thoroughly in the worse position, but John still felt incredibly weird being called a mister, especially by someone more than a decade older than him.


    However, his response was distracted by a few windows.


    Well, there went two more Guild Perks, which he immediately put down in the Wealth category.


    Just one more and he would get his first Guild Hall Tier upgrade. Anyway, that was not the thing he should be concentrating on right now.


    “Please, just John is fine,” he told them as he looked at that new Vassal menu he had gotten. Apparently, he could set tax rates and everything. When he tapped the slider once. Seth and those who seemed to hold some positions of power within the group gasped as they were surprised by a window. “Sorry, just experimenting with stuff. My powers are weird and I am still uncovering new stuff. For now, I will set the tax to zero, going to let you build without much interference…” John looked around. “Speaking of building, I think I can drastically improve your situation already.”


    They began reorganizing this little slums from a spontaneously grown field to a properlyid out area of makeshift buildings made by Gnome. While somewhat artistically textured, Gnome still blushing whenever this was pointed out to her, they were a far-fetch from proper houses. Still, an upgrade from sheds and tents. John also nted the endpoint of the Transport Station at the centre of it all, right in front of the memorial. It looked exactly like the original over in his Guild Hall, a pavilion with bronze tiles on the roof and a blue floor, which now activated, glowing a bright blue where he stood.


    John checked his watch, it was now almost midnight. “Okay, I will call it quits here for today,” he said and yawned. “Seems like only guild members can use this thing. Metra, would you do me the favour and guard this thing for the night?”


    “Sure,” Metra rolled her head, “better than patrolling that empty corner of the ind, something might actually happen here. You guys got booze? Alcoholised metals? I feel like getting drunk.”


    John left her to it and went back to the yacht to sleep.


    _______________________________________________________________________


    “I guess this will at least somewhat break the monotony,” John said as he put down the new special building he had unlocked. The Transmutation Forge was special in that it didn’t cost John anything to build, not even Room Slots. ‘Guess that’s the case for the other Perk buildings as well then,’ he thought and looked at his new acquisition.


    It reminded John of a big chimney: a metal tube, decorated with rings of sigil covered stone, sticking out of a square body on the floor. With the intent of testing it, a window opened while he was close to it.


    He was presented with a list of different crafting materials, most of them either basic, real life stuff or somemon Abyssal ones he could find in dungeons between level 5 and 25. In other words, it wasn’t that great right now. However, the materials were also cheap. A nk of wood three metres long was just five dors, no matter what kind of wood either. “Mhm… okay, I can work with this,” John decided and bought a shorter one to experiment with. A confirmation window asked him if he was sure and if he wanted the materials transferred to his inventory, the Guild Bank or simply spewed out into reality. For the moment, he picked thest one of those option.


    The money was withdrawn from his vast wealth of over 300 million. The Abyss Auction had been working quite well for him recently. He was still over two thirds off his goal of a billion, but he was getting there. In response, the Transmutation Forge, began to work, smoke rising from the chimney until the short board began materialising bit by bit from the square base, eventually falling into the grass in front of the apparatus.


    John picked it up and tested it by bending it a little and such things. It was just a normal piece of wood, not enchanted with anything or special in any way. “Time for the next experiment,” John decided and walked over to the Transport Station with the board in his hand. He ced it on the floor before the teleportation was activated, then he found himself in front of the memorial. Looking at his feet, the board was still there. “Interesting,” John mumbled and ced the board in Aclysia’s hands. The weaponized maid was apanying him for the moment, although she did say she wanted to buy groceriester.


    “There you are again,” Metra was walking around with Qiada, swinging the halberd around like only a bored martial artist could. “I was wondering when you would show up; Jane and Eliza went out hours ago.”


    “I took the time to sleep in, didn’t get that luxury recently,” John told her, being well aware that those two would check out New York atrge. He trusted that they were strong enough to get out of whatever trouble they could find themselves in. Despite her hot-headed nature, Rave had survived this world longer than he had, so she must have been doing something right. “Could you do me a favour and point me to Seth really quickly?”


    The man was indeed quickly found and then, much to his confusion, ced on the teleportation pad together with Aclysia. “What’s the idea here?” he asked, nervously looking at the blue radiation beneath his feet.


    “Only Guild Members can use the teleporter, but I want to see what we can and cannot transport with us,” John told him, “and where the border lies. Aclysia will now attempt to teleport herself back to the Guild Hall without you, then she wille back and do the same but wanting you toe with her. This shouldn’t take too long.”


    It indeed didn’t and the simple result was the expected one. When Aclysia wanted to take something on the tform with her, she could; if she didn’t, it would stay behind. Seth quickly scrambled from the tform when the experiment was done with.


    “Okay then,” John looked at the guy in an obviously unwashed bakery outfit. “Time to give you people everything to fix yourself up.”


    “Uhm, don’t you mean fix you people up?” Seth asked.


    “No, I meant what I said. I am not here to y nanny; if you want to have a good life, you will have to build it yourself. I am happy with providing the environment and lifting you out of helplessness though.” John checked his clock, he wanted to have some time to run some more dungeons today. “I will spend the next two hours dumping some construction materials in this barrier. What you do with them is up to you, although I rmend you at the very least get a bathhouse going. Also, take this,” he handed Seth a hundred thousand bucks casually.


    “That will go a long way in easing out creditors,” he said thankfully.


    “What? No, that’s to pay the people that help in the whole building thing,” John was quick to rify. “Give them money, tell them to go out and buy themselves some nice meals, some new clothes, that type of stuff. I am going to deal with your creditors in other ways. For the moment just concentrate on making this a sessfulmunity, leave all the worries about things that might threaten you from the outside to me.”


    Seth looked at the stack of cash like he was suddenly shouldering a lot more responsibility than he had signed up for.


    “Don’t go disappointing all yourrades now,” John pat the smaller man on the shoulder and then went back to his Guild Hall to fire up the Transmutation Forge again.


    _______________________________________________________________________


    In the end it didn’t even take two hours to dump more material on the Enve than they could have possibly hoped to do anything with at the moment. To not clog up things needlessly, John then left them to it and started a run of the Tier 23 version of the Elves dungeon. It was the first Tier 23 he challenged.


    “Master, may I inquire why we are not guiding their efforts in construction?” Aclysia asked as they spawned into the unfamiliaryout. John liked core floors. Sure, it was nice that the four Tiers prior always shared the same enemy and map type, making the grinding nice and predictable, but there was just something nice about the challenge the core floors represented. Not only were they unique, they also tended to have stronger than usual enemies and bosses.


    “For one, I have no idea how to construct amunity,” John told her. “So, I wouldn’t be a big help even if I stayed. All we could do is help carry some stones, I can’t help in getting a working mana generator or electricity or anything and I would much rather learn to delegate that to people who know how to do it than do it myself. Which is another reason: I really don’t feel like micromanaging what my ‘subjects’ do.” He couldn’t bring himself to genuinely describe them that way, just felt wrong. “I meant what I told Seth, as you very well know, you beautifuldy that partly lives in my brain.”


    “If I went to look there, I wouldn’t be able to ask you questions and hear you talk, Master,” Aclysia reminded him of her slight obsession with his voice. “What is our n then? Continuous levelling?”


    “Basically, yes,” John answered her. “Although I will be going at it a bit more rxed about it for theing days. The efficiency will increase greatly once Magoi gets here, theoretically. Aside from that I want to wait for the loan sharks to make their first move on us. I am not in a hurry. Maybe we should rx this evening, how about I read you something?”


    “Can’t you try to tell me another story? I liked that,” Aclysia asked, alluding to the time on the cruise he tried to make her dream.


    “Mhm, first let’s try beating this dungeon before talking more about that, okay?”


    “Understood.”


    There was a thing about the Elves dungeon that made them especially random, which was that the name didn’t specify what kind of elves. With Orcs or Undead, John always knew what he had to expect. Between an orc n and an orc warband, the only real difference was proficiency at warfare and the asional special unit. Compared to the massive changes between dark elves, wood elves and high elves, to name the three widest known categories of the very intricate fantasy race, that was basically nothing.


    It seemed that they hadnded in a wood elf dungeon this time around, unsurprising as the four Tiers before this also had been filled with the brown-skinned knife ears. Still though, therge trees were covered in shimmering blue leaves, their dark bark illuminated by the sun shining through and blue crystals growing out of them.


    ‘I guess a forest floor is a kind of floor,’ John thought as he looked around. There were no pre-defined walkways like was usual with this kind of dungeon. There were very few points he could orient himself on, thankfully he didn’t want to draw this time around either. “I am halfway tempted to tell you to just burn it all, Smander,” he joked.


    “Ready when you are,” the endme elemental raised a hand with a sizable me already hovering over her open palm. When she realized he wasn’t serious, she squashed it in her fist and clicked her tongue in a disappointed fashion.


    “I think Siena will be the MVP here,” John told everyone as an elf suddenly fell out of the trees above, throat slit, hitting the floor and turning into a cloud of quickly scattering particles. In the many shadows that the branches above cast, the nightmare elemental had awork of high-speednes only essible to her that also reached up the high trees. The crystals did little in the way of stopping her, only making her route a bit moreplicated.


    “Like that is anything new,” Siena stated dismissively when she appeared back in John’s shadow. They made their way into the forest to the sound of some minor bickering between her and Smander.


    John was halfway unsure that this even qualified as a core floor as they made their way through. The asional elf they encountered was the same as the one from the previous Tier, just levelled up. Did Gaia fuck this up again? Wouldn’t be the first time.


    The answer came when he was suddenly showered in arrows and throwing spears, eliminating most of his pre-charged Mana Protection. He looked up to find a very interesting boss. It was a mixture of octopus, spider and tree hut, a slow-moving base that slung its tentacles around trees one at a time to get forwards. At the rim of it stood several dozen wood elves, along with a queen that was wearing nothing but leaves to hide her privates.


    Not for the first time, John regretted that he didn’t have some sort of a taming skills to get beauties like that dragged out of their theoretical existence inside Illusion Barriers and add them to his very real harem. The sad reality was, they wanted to kill him, so he would have to return the favour.


    John jumped behind a tree to save himself from the second wave of fire. He wouldn’t be of great use in this fight, but at least getting to safety was easy enough. That’s what he thought until the wood elf queen summoned a javelin of thorns that only missed John because Gnome reacted in time and dropped him into a hole. The construct of wood had prated straight through the tree he had been hiding behind.


    Seeing the roots around him, John didn’t assume that this was a safe ce either. ‘That boss is definitely new,’ he thought, crawling out of the hole and then scrambling to gain some distance. He didn’t need to be close for his elementals to do their thing. Gnome and Aclysia were quick on his tail.


    In the meantime, Smander and Sylph decided that this was a good time to put their heads together, literally, andbined. While Smander despised doing so, the firepower thus obtained would probably be needed.


    The result was a girl by the name of Sylfrena. She had light skin and pale red hair of average length. Her chest definitely took after Smander, having shrunken only a bit to a D-cup, hidden underneath pale green fire that covered most of her torso under an ever-shifting leotard. Translucent mes of the same colour took the shape of insectoid wings behind her back that beat with such speed that they became just a blur of fire.


    “Do I go? I think I will, yes, yes!” Sylfrena shouted out and became a streak of green that left only burning air in her wake. She circled the hut-spider at enormous speed, with the simple goal of dealing as much damage to the tentacles holding it as possible. Attempts to stop her came in the form of homing spells of nature magic, all of which failed to catch up to her.


    One tentacle gave in, then a second and third one. The whole spider was dangerously nted but still held on until Sylfrena sent a powerful strike at a fourth one, causing it to shrivel up and lose its grip. That was thest line, and the whole creature and the structure atop of it came falling down.


    The sound of shattering wood and chitin were the signal for Aclysia and Siena to descend on the wood elves buried within. John supported them by sniping those he saw with Shardbound, Gnome protecting him in turn from whichever elves identified him as the biggest threat.


    When they killed the queen, unluckily fallen and trapped under half the hut she had ruled over, they had officially beaten the dungeon. ‘That was a rather short one,’ John thought. ‘I guess this one is packed with optional content or something? Well, I can find that out another time.’


    They gathered up the loot and left.