What does being on our side even mean?” Matt asked.

The dungeon system was not wrong when he guessed that trust was not something that Matt had in ready supply. He trusted himself, he trusted Lucy, and he kind of trusted his traps. The dungeon system had been helpful, but, once upon a time, so had the main system. That hadn’t worked out so well in the long term.

“Well, for one, it means litigation. The main system has to follow its own rules, but as you have experienced, rules can be bent, if not entirely broken. I suspect that normally, it doesn’t need to do this. And when it does do it, it usually gets away with it. After all, who else would know the system rules as well as the main system?”

Matt was beginning to understand a bit of what all the system announcements earlier were about.

“Another system?”

“Precisely.” The dungeon system waved his arm again at the screen, pulling up a much denser block of text, one with thousands of words. “The nice thing about communicating system to system is that you can cover a lot of ground quickly.”

Matt walked up to the text and tried to read some. To his unsophisticated eyes it was dense and indecipherable near-nonsense, like the terms of service on a video game. He almost immediately gave up.

“I’m not reading this,” Matt said.

“That’s fine. I don’t expect you to understand all the details, but the practical upshot here is that I was able to successfully argue that the main system had demonstrated bias against you, since it couldn’t successfully show that the dungeon break was meant to make you grow.”

“That wasn’t clear? He sent King Kong after me.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised. Remember that in normal circumstances, you’d be expected to act as a world-shaking hero. This isn’t that outside the norm, categorically. His mistake was one of overreach and frequency. But either way, we got him.”

“Meaning?”

Ding!

“I’d advise you not to open that now. The main system had quite a few rewards tied up in a sort of legal limbo that I suspect he intended to sustain forever. That particular logjam has been cleared, but there was quite a bit piled up. Might take some time to get through.”

Matt grinned. The main system had been clearly enjoying screwing him out of adequate rewards lately. He guessed it wasn’t too pleased about having to dole them out now.

The dungeon system made Matt’s day even better. “I also left something in there as well. Killing that ape wasn’t a small thing, and it gave me some room to do something I find amusing. I’d recommend you get back to your estate before opening it.”

Matt sat back down. He was glad the dungeon system had been able to put the thumbscrews to the main system, but that didn’t mean he was out of the woods yet. A few more prizes wouldn’t be enough to suddenly boost him to ape-slayer levels.

“Speaking of …”

“Yes, yes. The dungeon breaks. I’m glad to say that’s part of the package. Don’t misunderstand this conversation to mean the main system is entirely defanged. It still wants you dead, for reasons I don’t entirely understand and might not be able to discuss even if I did. I’ll keep an eye out on things, that’s half of your long-term benefits from this whole ordeal. The main system got caught this time. If it wants to do the same kind of thing in the future, it now has to do it smarter.”

“And the second half?”

The dungeon system waved its arm towards the screen, highlighting a smaller portion of the text. “I’m a dungeon system, Matt. I’m supposed to walk in lockstep with the main system, but the fact that I’m not doing that doesn’t strip me of rights and responsibilities. I can’t keep the main system from doing dungeon breaks in the future, but these paragraphs of text boil down to the fact that the main system now has to consult me first for balance.”

Lucy broke into the conversation. “Meaning what? The dungeons are meant for groups. There’s plenty of ‘balanced’ scenarios that still end up with Matt dead.”

“Meaning specifically, Lucy, that dungeon breaks can no longer come from dungeons beyond Matt’s level, and that the main system can’t specifically design scenarios meant to force his failure. Dungeon breaks are possible, but in the future they will be much closer to the difficulty that Matt has been experiencing in the dungeons he’s been in before.”

Matt still didn’t fully trust the dungeon system, but it was possible that it was acting in good faith. He wasn’t going to keep treating the dungeon system like an enemy on the off chance it actually was. People, or systems, deserved a chance.

“Listen, if this is all true … It’s big. I really do appreciate it. More than you know. Is there anything you want?”

“There’s very little I want, less that I need, and almost nothing you can give me. Honestly, the most you can do for me is continue to go about your business. It’s been fun to watch, Matt.”

“Are you sure?”

“I suppose there is one thing. It’s a bit … embarrassing. I’ll generate it as a quest for you later.” He waved his hand, dismissing that part of the conversation. “It looks like we are running out of time. There is one last thing. Something I think might be as important as your system authority. And I can talk about this openly, at least for now.”

Matt’s ears perked up.

The dungeon system continued, “As good as I might be at making arguments, I doubt I’d stand much chance against the main system at its full strength. I didn’t expect to win, but I did. As much as the main system is lazy, it isn’t entirely incompetent. It sent you to a dead planet where death was the most likely scenario for you. There’s no upside to that. It’s expensive to migrate souls, Matt, and the main system doesn’t usually waste resources.”

The dungeon system waved his hand again, flipping the screen over to a simple flowchart, one that showed “main system” at the top, branching off into “dungeon system” and “main system instance” at the bottom.

“The main system only sends an instance of itself to each planet. But between sending you here, leaving me alone for long enough to evolve sapience, and your main system instance’s apparent inability to get support from off-planet, something is wrong.”

He waved his hand again, creating some glitchy interference between the main system block and the blocks below it. “I can’t be sure, but I think it’s a reasonable guess to say something unusual happened on this planet, something that went beyond mere eradication and rendered it a rare blind spot for the main system. Your guess what is as good as mine, but make of it what you will. It might be useful to know.” He glanced at his wall clock. “And with that, I’m afraid our time is up. I trust you can show yourselves out, and I apologize for not having more to tell you.”

The door opened up behind them, and Matt and Lucy got up to go. As they reached the door, Matt turned.

“Hey, Dungeon System? Thanks again.”

“No problem. And, Matt? One last thing.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve seen you trying to level your Eat Anything! skill, and I think you are on the right track. But I would say that perhaps you rely on the dungeon spaces for meals a bit too much. Just something to think about.”

And then they were out.

Matt dug his shovel into what must have been his thousandth shovelful of dirt, and turned it. Gaia measured land in agricultural units, a measurement not that far from an Earth acre. Tilling that much soil with a shovel wasn’t a small job, and he was glad to be done.

“Wow. I thought for sure you’d give up, Matt. That was mind-numbingly boring,” Lucy showered a rare compliment.

“Well, kind of. There’s a sort of Zen to it, once you get in the flow.”

The job would have been much, much bigger if Matt didn’t have a lot of new buffs helping him out. Their return to the estate had been blessedly uneventful, but they had prepared for it as best they could by dipping into their backlog of system notifications and the corresponding rewards that came with them.

As an added bonus, it turned out that the main system had not expected Matt and Lucy to ever see the notifications it had been holding back, and the texts reflected that.

Holy Moly

How did … That shouldn’t have worked. NOTHING should have worked. Oooh, I’m Matt, look at me, I’m messing everything up AND I have bombs. Wheeeeee. Just great. More work for the system, ugh.

Estate of the Union

I swear if I ever get my hands on this guardian, I’m going to cut her in half and mail the pieces in opposite directions towards infinity. Not listening to her boss, helping this guy get her boss in trouble by giving him an entire continent to work with you dumb freakign afdjs;jfkldssakjfdjksafda;;jk

10x Dungeon Run Plus

You completed ten dungeons within ten days, as well as completing your tenth dungeon in a single day. It doesn’t matter. You’re about to be absolutely minced by a giant ape monster so you don’t screw up absolutely every possible thing anymore. Enjoy your rewards you will never see!

Ape Escape

You have managed to evade the superior endurance hunting of the Gaian Great Plains Ape for over two days. But you look like you are getting tired, Matt. It’s only a matter of time now.

Ape Shit

No way. Shit, shit. Shit-shit-shit. Dammit. Dammit.

There were pages of these, all in the same tone. Matt relayed each of them to Lucy, taking a rare moment of real relaxation as he watched her holographic gleefulness at the system’s rage. Unpacking all the rewards took another chunk of time, but left Matt in much, much better shape.

Matt Perison

Level 9 Survivor

Class XP: 155/160

HP: 90

MP: N/A

STAM: 55

Assignable Stat Points: 4

STR: 13

DEX: 18

PER: 12

VIT: 20

WIS: 14

INT: 6

Class Skills: Survivor’s Instincts (LV5), Survivor’s Combat (LV5), Eat Anything! (LV2)

Killing the ape was the biggest chunk of growth, driving his strength, Survivor’s Instincts, and Survivor’s Combat up while providing him with a massive influx of Survivor’s XP.

The skill increases were significant, but not a step-level improvement. They did the same stuff, just better. Matt would take it, though. Any iota of progress was important.

On top of everything else, Matt picked up a few pieces of equipment, which would come in handy.

Survivor’s Shield

A simple shield that expands from a wrist-mounted strap for use and contracts for easy carrying. Durable and protective despite carrying no enchantments besides those related to storage, this shield is sufficiently sturdy to block most minor attacks.

Doubles as a cooking skillet.

Survivor’s Spike

Need to hold something in place? Whether it’s a tent or a hostile arthropod, the Survivor’s spike is good for nailing things to other things.

This item is specifically designed to work in tandem with the Survivor’s spear pole.

Matt leaned his shovel up against the shack they had purchased as a prerequisite to buying anything else. “That’s about it. Are we ready to plant?”

“Pretty much. Matt, don’t forget that present from the dungeon system.”

Matt had forgotten the dungeon system’s reward for killing the ape. For fear of accidentally opening it early, he hadn’t even read the achievement. Eager to get on with things, he called it up.

[Ape-les to Ape-les, Plinth or Bust]

Dear Matt:

As cool as it was to see my plinth eviscerate an ape, I’m forgoing the usual description to let you know a bit about the prize you won by doing that. Unlike most rewards, this one will only materialize when certain prerequisites are met. I can’t tell you what they are, but I doubt you will miss them.

I tried to pick something you’d need, but probably would have forgotten to budget for. Enjoy!

Reward: ???

Matt immediately opened the reward, only to have nothing actually happen. “Looks like we have to wait to see what that does. Prerequisites or something.”

Lucy shrugged, then looked down at her invisible-to-Matt system interface. They had created their token-spending plan together, but he left the actual programming to her. He was glad to authorize her to do the work. She was better at it anyway.

“No problem. Ready?” Lucy asked.

“Ready,” Matt replied.

Lucy hit some unseen button, and for a moment, she and Matt stood in silence. Then, all around the property, plants began to sprout. Driven by the improved soil they had purchased and whatever magic the estate purchasing system granted, the plants soon showed early signs of blossoming into dozens of different varieties. They ranged from food plants, to flowers, to trees.

All of them were too small to be useful yet. It might be months before they created anything useful. Matt didn’t care. His eyesight blurred as his eyes filled with tears. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

System Alert: Reward requirement met

Across the property from the shack, a large crate appeared on the ground, bustling with movement. Matt moved closer to it, only to find that the entire thing was crawling with tiny winged primates. Miniature apes.

“Dungeon System, what the fuck?”

A system window immediately popped up to explain what he was looking at.

Ape-iary

Plants need pollen transport to reproduce. These customized little guys are overpowered in that task. One Ape-iary will automatically populate your first ten agricultural units, and further pollinator apes will naturally spread from that stock.

They also produce honey. Are you brave enough to try it?

All at once, several of the tiny apes lifted off, buzzing towards the plants to get to work. They were the dumbest thing Matt had ever seen, but he couldn’t care less. He watched them for a moment before collapsing to the ground and weeping. Lucy said nothing and just looked on, smiling.

For the first time in what might have been eons, life had returned to Gaia.