After gathering the last two goblin cores, Solomon retreated back to the questionable security of the goblin fortifications. There he spent the rest of the fifteen minutes watching the timer count down and waiting for the other shoe to drop. It seemed the goblins had been thoroughly scared away from his earlier display of martial might, though, and he was gifted a rare few moments of peace and quiet until the timer flipped over to zero.

The system announced his victory with a triumphant fanfare. In front of him, the altar that had held the Outpost Totem receded into the ground and was soon replaced with the familiar stone plinth and ball of light.

Congratulations! You have conquered the Outpost!

2000 dungeon coins have been deposited to your account!

You have been awarded a Zone Command Token (2/3) for being the first to conquer this Outpost!

Solomon checked his inventory out of habit. The cash and command token had been tucked in there, just as the system promised. As much as he disliked the system, he had to admit that it had been honest with him. Whether honest was the same thing as fair, well, he'd ponder that one when he had a little more time to think.

Touching the ball of light gave him the option to exit the Outpost. One nauseating whirl later, Solomon found himself back in what he was starting to think of as the dungeon's anteroom.

Solomon stepped forward and touched the dungeon doors. If the pattern held, it should give him a hint as to what he was going to have to do in order to pick up the third token.

Choose your destination:

- Dungeon

- Outpost

- Arena

Back to the Arena? That was ominous. He'd managed to win his first battle there, but it wasn't an experience he wanted to repeat. Solomon drew his hand back and headed over to Mort's store.

For once, Mort was waiting for him behind the counter. "How'd it go?"

Solomon ruthlessly pushed down the memory of shooting the first goblin in the back of the head. The memory of chopping up helpless foes like pieces of meat.

"Nothing to it," he said. Whatever else Mort might be, he wasn't Solomon's therapist, and Solomon wasn't even really sure he was a friend.

The two men looked at each other for a moment.

Solomon brought the tokens out of his inventory and set them on the counter. "What's waiting for me in the arena?"

Mort broke into a grin when he saw the pair of tokens. He pulled a cigar from inside his robe and lit it, taking a few puffs while he gathered his thoughts.

"All right, with two tokens," Mort said, "you're entitled to know more about what's going on."

Solomon grunted. "I'm all ears"

"You ever play chess?" Mort asked. "Checkers?"

"Never had to kill anyone over it," Solomon said.

"Yeah, yeah," Mort replied, "before you start, you have to set up the pieces, right?"

Solomon nodded.

"That's what's going on right now," Mort said. "The system's setting up the board."

Solomon had been through more near-death experiences in the last day than he had in the whole rest of his life. And he was one of the lucky ones. He hardly wanted to think about what was going on in the city.

He shook his head. "A hell of a way to start."

"I know, I know," Mort said. "Long story short, if you wait around long enough, everybody with a token gets dragged into an arena fight. Winner gets the zone to start with. Once you own a zone, you can cross the grid barriers."

He should have known that winning the battle to get hold of the tokens was just enough to buy him an entry ticket for a new battle. Solomon squared his shoulders. As hard as he'd worked, the idea of one last battle to finally settle things wasn't too bad. He wasn't sure what he would do with ownership of a square mile in the middle of nowhere, but at this point he'd just be happy to have a safe place to lay his head for a while.

Solomon hadn't started feeling sleepy even though he'd been awake for more than twenty-four hours by this point. He assumed that the system had something to do with that. He didn't want to stay up too much longer, though. Even if he wasn't feeling physical fatigue, it wouldn't be good for his head to just keep fighting twenty-four seven. The world was going crazy. The last thing he needed was to start eroding his own sanity.

"Now that you have two tokens though, you don't have to wait," Mort said. "You can go kick off the battle right now."

Solomon cocked his head in surprise. He'd thought that he would have to go through some final gauntlet to pick up the third token and skip the showdown Mort had mentioned.

"Wait, who has the other token?" Solomon asked. "I thought I was the only person in this zone."

If Solomon was all alone in this zone, and the barriers preventing people from moving between zones were still up, he didn't see how anybody else could have taken the third token out from under him.

Mort took another puff on his cigar.

"I thought I told you, kid," he said, flashing him a grin. "You're up against interplanetary competition, now."

Solomon groaned. In the first dungeon he'd been up against monsters that attacked him in a mindless rage. While some of them had been much stronger and faster than him, he'd been able to plan his way around them. In the outpost, against what he'd been given to understand were basically dumb meat-puppets for the system, he'd been caught by surprise in an ambush. He still wasn't sure whether he had really outsmarted the goblins or if he had just smashed his way through with superior power.

Now he was going to be up against another player. Somebody whose mind wasn't warped by the system. Somebody who, in all likelihood, had grown up studying the system. Solomon wouldn't have been confident in his ability to take on another human being in the arena, let alone an alien ringer.

Solomon took a deep breath. If he could have handed the battle off to somebody else, somebody more capable, he would have done it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, there was nobody else ready to step up. It was just him standing between the alien and this zone.

He exhaled, letting his shoulders relax. For a moment, his mind turned to the potential explosive power represented by all of those goblin cores in his inventory.

If he was going to do this, he was going to give it his best shot.