For the first time in a long time, getting home was relaxing. Without the threat of unexpected death looming over them, both Matt and Lucy felt free. They could stop subconsciously scanning for threats, take a deep breath, and just stroll. Even so, it didn’t take them long to get back to the farm. They had been walking farther and farther afield to get to unexplored dungeons, but newly reset dungeons meant that they’d be able to work closer to home for a while.

Before the armor-and-sword guy’s arrival, Matt had finished clearing out the last of the big rocks from a new plot of land. His subsequent dungeon runs had furnished just enough credits to annex the land. Now, with five thousand estate tokens in hand, it seemed a bit silly to use them up on that. Considering their soon-to-happen token land rush, Matt figured they’d be better off saving the credits for more plants, water sources, and tools.

“So do you think we should spend all of them? Just … cash in all five thousand tokens, all at once?” Matt asked.

Lucy shook her head.

“Most of them, sure. But I feel like we should hold back a hundred or so, just in case we need them for something later. It’s not like we’re going to be using all that land tomorrow. We might find some other use for the tokens, or something. It makes sense to hold some back.”

Matt shrugged and mentally reallocated the number of estate tokens he intended to spend.

“The only exception I can see to that is if we spend four thousand nine hundred of them and don’t hit whatever weird surprise Barry indicated he has cooking. If that happens, I’m cashing the rest in.”

“Oh, yeah, in that case, sure.” Lucy’s eyes lit up. “I’m not passing on a Barry-surprise just to be careful. That’s dumb.”

One of the nicer parts about having both a tree and high DEX was the ability to climb up for a better view. About twenty feet off the ground was a nice, forked branch that was easy to sit in and offered a miles-far view of the surrounding nothing. Once he and Lucy were up there, Matt fired up the nearly five thousand tokens and waited.

Nothing visible happened. Which, in retrospect, made sense. It was a shift in authority, not so much a shift in anything about the land.

Ding!

Land Ho

Hi, Matt. Barry here. So, you’ve just used the tokens. The functional part of this message is telling you that you now own a pretty massive amount of land, but you already knew that. I’m imagining you are sitting somewhere right now, disappointed that there weren’t any pyrotechnics or anything.

Well, hold on to your hat. And don’t forget my envelope once it’s all done.

Leadership Status: Active

In terms of the sheer amount of land under your direct control, you have justified the title of ‘leader.’ You may now select a leadership focus, an aspect of the improvements that will be shared with all your directly annexed properties. As your territory grows and you lead more people, additional leadership focuses may be assigned.

Please choose a currently owned property improvement as a leadership focus.

Matt and Lucy had seen this “leadership property” on a few of the improvements they had bought before, but hadn’t been able to figure out a way to do anything with it. In trying to figure it out, they had enough discussions about it that picking an improvement wasn’t very hard.

Arable Soil Selected.

10 percent of the effects of arable soil will be applied to all annexed properties.

Now was the time for the fireworks. From the very center of his property, an almost invisible wave of energy started to spread out, slow enough that he could have kept up with it at a walking pace. As it spread, it transformed the dead, burned Gaian soil to something between that and the arable soil his main property already had. Where it had been unnaturally red, it now settled into a healthy, only slightly reddish brown. Where it had been hard-packed, it loosened.

“Holy shit, Lucy. That’s more than I thought it would do. That’s ten percent?”

“It’s ten percent of the best soil a garden planet could come up with, Matt. Have you seen the turnips we’ve been growing? They’re HUGE. This is magic stuff, and even ten percent of it is a lot.”

“THE TURNIPS ARE READY?!”

“Focus, Matt. The turnips will wait. Let’s watch this happen.”

They sat there for a while, watching the soil improvement spread. After a while, it stopped, leaving a visibly improved area that represented his entire, much expanded estate. It was huge.

“Whoa.” Lucy was shocked by the sheer size of it. Matt was in the same place. This was an insane amount of land.

“What’s more insane is that this is just the start.”

“Agreed. Now, where’s that surprise Barry promised?”

Ding!

Leadership has combined with Gaian Authority to produce Pillager’s Rights.

Pillager’s Rights has discovered a hidden Gaian resource on your land.

Gaian History Museum Artificial Dungeon (derelict).

Surfacing resource.

Gaia was, above all things, quiet. There was no wind to speak of. There were no storms. It had sat in perfect silence for what might have been centuries before Matt and Lucy got there. Now, with them both holding their breath, it wasn’t surprising that they could hear a sudden rumbling. Twisting around, they found the source as the soil in one particularly distant part of their property began to visibly shake and roil. Suddenly, a slim spike of metal pierced the earth, followed by meters and meters of similar metal. And it kept coming.

Eventually, the whole building was surfaced. It was a slender spire, and from afar it looked like a knife cutting the sky. Its size was accented by the relative void of objects or other buildings. Matt’s enhanced PER gave him plenty of details about the building that he would have otherwise missed.

“Lucy …”

“I see it, Matt.”

“It’s beat to shit. Absolutely wrecked. I can’t believe it’s still standing.”

“We can fix it, Matt. I mean, probably. It would be weirder if we couldn’t.”

“And … Pillager’s Rights?”

“Sounds pretty dark, honestly.”

“Well, ‘system guardian’ sounds like a big, scary fighting robot with a broadsword. Not”—he gestured at Lucy with a sort of vague, floppy movement of his arm—“whatever this is.”

“Hardy har, Matt. Hardy har.”

They sat there for a few moments waiting for further dings until it was evident no more were coming. Suddenly, Matt remembered the envelope, pulling it from his pocket and ripping it open as fast as he could.

Pillager’s Rights Announcement

Okay, Barry again. I wasn’t kidding about the showmanship aspect, right? I can’t see you right now, but I’m guessing you are pretty gobsmacked about everything that happened. I’ll do my best to explain.

A couple of things happened between the ape incident and the last time we talked. The first is that I grew. I’m getting better and better at this personhood thing. I’m now more aware of the status of the various dungeons, which means I can run them better. Second, Matt, I started to be able to see things that weren’t quite dungeons. The closest and biggest of those is what you now see before you—the Gaian History Dungeon.

If I’m being honest, I don’t know what it is. I know you own it now, that I can see it because it’s kind of a dungeon, and that it’s repairable. And that’s about it. But, I also know that the system instance has no idea about this and for a short amount of time, he can’t learn about it. You have a buffer in which you can mess with this thing before he has any chance of interfering. The timing, I’m saying, couldn’t be better.

As for WHY you own it, and WHY you can repair it, that’s a more complex story. It’s not really like this, but imagine that when I go to bat for you with the system instance, it’s a lot like a court case. He files arguments and evidence, I file arguments and counterevidence, and then both of us judge it. Since we are both bound by certain rules, there’s only so much he can do to resist this process.

The last time we argued in this way, the system instance was trying to justify bringing a hired killer to take you down. And even though it listed a thousand ways to justify this, it turned out the only real justification was the need to take down a real, actual, world-threatening threat. Think something like a demon lord from one of your mangas. A bad guy, basically.

We both know you aren’t a bad guy, Matt. But it looks like you have some of that power. The system instance didn’t give you Gaian authority. It wouldn’t. The planet did because as far as it knows, you conquered it. That comes with certain rights, like restoring special resources that got “destroyed in battle.” I don’t know what all these rights are, honestly. But I do know you aren’t supposed to have them.

Note that I can only tell you all this because, wink-wink, I’m actually telling you not to pursue them at all, and they are astoundingly dangerous, wink. And because the system instance is asleep, and it can’t do much to stop me right now.

It’s noncontroversial to tell you that evil, world-ending threats tend to have a certain type of power that they use to end the world. Hero types are given special powers to stop them, but it’s a completely different kind of power. You know who gets both?

Nobody, Matt. Nobody except you.

For now, that’s all I have for you. Do with it what you will.

Best,

Barry

PS: Enjoy the next ding. I think it will be locked for a while, but it’s interesting to think about, at least.

“Wow.”

“Wow is right. Matt, you are a demon lord.”

“Lucy …”

“I knew there was a reason you sunburned so easily. Your natural color is a dark, evil red. It’s your blighted skin seeking equilibrium with the furnace that is your diseased heart.”

“Lucy.”

“Fine, fine. But yeah, this is big. Really big. Really, really big. You’ve found a loophole the size of a galaxy somehow, Matt. I don’t know if I should be scared or happy.”

“But it seems mostly useless.”

“For now, maybe. But we can start on that museum over there and see where it takes us. It’s not like we don’t have time, and this seems like the best way to …”

“Put a hurt on the system?”

Lucy grinned. “Yeah. That.”

Ding!

Pillager’s Rights: Invasion Repulsed

You have faced an outside invasion force, survived it, and repulsed it. Your power is intact.

Because the invasion was unprovoked, your authority is expanded to allow for a one-time invasion of the following territories:

Ra’Zor, Realm of One Thousand Bleedings

Rewards for an invasion are adjusted for invasion force size and power, the change affected on the invaded territory, and other general metrics of success.

System Alert: No active structures or powers capable of transporting you to Ra’Zor have been found. Invasion temporarily locked.

“Again, holy shit.” Lucy spoke first this time.

“It doesn’t do us much good right now, though?” Matt asked.

“I think it does. Did you read that real closely, Matt? The whole message?”

Confused, Matt reread it. Lucy looked happily smug during the entire minute it took for him to see it.

Repulsed. Not destroyed, not killed. That’s a retreat word.

“But we have his corpse.”

“Matt, you left a corpse on Earth. If you go to Ra’Zor at some point, you’ll probably leave a corpse here. It doesn’t mean you really died. I don’t know how, but I think that guy ran away.”

“Really?”

“Really. I can’t know for sure, but yeah, Really.”

Matt had been ignoring a big, big weight on his shoulders, the kind that made every step heavy and every breath troublesome. Now, at even the hint of hope that he hadn’t actually killed that kid, he felt it melt away. Not entirely. But mostly. He felt better.

“Well, not much we can do to confirm it right now, anyway. I don’t feel ready to invade a whole other planet yet, even if we could.” Matt smiled.

“Me either. Besides … I think it’s about time.”

Matt nodded, and jumped down from the tree, using his much-improved stats to land without injury.

“Yup. You ready?”

“Actually, one sec.” Lucy thought hard for a moment, and her clothes suddenly morphed from the Survivor’s garb duplicate she had been wearing since Matt met her to match his new, better armored garb.

“See? Now we match.”

Matt smiled.

“Come on. It’s time we found out what happened to this place.”