First there were the fires to put out.

He met the evacuees from Melloram as they streamed back towards the town. Councilman Aimes was at the head, and tried to get Sam into a conversation.

“Not right now. Go back to your homes or to the dungeon and its spare rooms. Either one. We’ll be making more soon for those that want them.”

But surely—

“No. Town or dungeon. Make your choice. I’ve got work to do.”

After that was the dungeon residents. Cora messaged him to find out what was going on. He directed her to Ma or Pop. Bugruk called. Same deal. Nat and Emmy and Zed met him on his way back to the dungeon. He told Nat about what the dragon had said, and noted the look of awe on his friend’s face. He would talk to Nat later, when his soul wasn’t covered in steel and ice. He spared a nod and what he hoped was a kind word for the two younger elves behind Nat, and vowed to actually take some time with all three of them soon.

Soon. Not now, but soon.

Next: Anti-teleport defenses. He couldn’t afford to get taken by surprise by the lich king again. Scrolling through his Build menu, he saw two different types of teleport-denial buildings. A closer inspection showed that one was for dungeons, while the other was designed for outdoor use. Perfect.

He marched back into Melloram, ignoring calls and looks alike, heading back to the town square. There, he was relieved to see his parents and the woman who looked like Marie were gone. Probably headed back for the dungeon. Good.

He used his new Guardian power to summon an Outpost Core in the center of the square. The thing appeared in a flash of light, twice as big as Cora had been but made of some strange dark metal and covered with mana runes and capacitors. No gem on this one. Belatedly, he realized it was almost perfectly similar to the cores Rakun the revenant had attacked the dungeon with a few days ago. Which made sense. Rakun had had access to these powers, probably it was a higher tier ability he had used that was similar to this one.

With the Outpost Core placed, Sam opened up his map. The pale green circle of Cora’s influence radius had expanded now to include almost all of Melloram and the area outside the dungeon. Perfect. He jogged to the perimeter and started placing new constructions, one anti-teleport field generator every hundred paces or so. The fields overlapped, so the loss of a single generator would still not leave a gap in the defenses—though the loss of two would. But the things were expensive and he didn’t have time for triple-redundancy right now.

Once the first generator had been set—the wireframe placed right next to the outer walls of the town and changing to a pile of materials and tools in the same way, he put out a call on the Dungeon Workers channel for bodies to come and start assembling them. He got a chorus of replies—some of which came from mobs he did not recognize. Cora must have been spawning more while he had been busy with other things. Good. They were going to need the extra manpower.

It took him an hour to get all the generators placed and assembled. He had Char assign lookouts to the walls to keep an eye out for enemies or anything else that was out of place. The sun was gone and the light fading by the time he was satisfied that Melloram, at least, would not get taken by surprise again.

Gods, he was going to have to figure out how to defend that place in addition to the dungeon.

It took him another half-hour to set up teleport-denial generators inside the dungeon. Fortunately they were all pieces that could fit into existing rooms, so he didn’t need to carve out new spaces for them. His body ached and his mind was starting to spin by the time it was over, and the Dungeon was as secure as he could think to make it.

He told Bugruk to handle the patrol and lookout assignments. He asked Char to handle the worker assignments and to dig out new rooms for the townsfolk who would surely be coming. He got Pearl to get paperwork started along the lines of a census, so they could look over how many new mouths they would have to feed, and what it would take to actually run a dungeon alongside a town.

And he asked Cora to step up spawns of both workers and fighter mobs. They were going to need more bodies for the war that was coming.

The box rattled and bounced in his mind. It would fail soon, releasing the storm again. He considered heading for his room and just going to sleep, but discarded the notion immediately. Sleep would never come, not in time to seal the box away. He considered going to the mess hall for a drink, but the idea of a large, loud, brightly-lit room where anyone might come in and speak to him filled him with nausea. Gods and devils, he wished he had—

He blinked. Then he sighed and dropped his head into his hand. Well of course. Why hadn’t he thought of that before?

He went up to the second level, which had become the de-facto residential floor, and moved to a blank section of the main corridor. There he used his hammer and his Absorb Minerals guardian power to carve out a small square empty space.

Then he went into his build menu, and scrolled down past the mob generators and the equipment rooms and the trap consoles to the ‘support rooms’ category. Two rooms after ‘Mess Hall’ he found what he was looking for.

Room Name: Dive Bar

Room Type: Support/Recreation

Room Space:3x8

Room Cost: 500 mineral

Room Pre-Reqs: None

Build Time: 25 minutes

Effect: +2 to mob generation per hour. +10% physical attack and defense after 1 hour spent drinking.

Description: Serious drinkers know that bars come in many different types. You’ve got your high-class bars, where they have multiple bartenders and low lights and fancy liquors behind a chrome countertop. Then there’s your neighborhood bars, where Jimmy-Bob and his friends get together after work to talk about the latest sportsball match and toss back a few brewskies to take the edge off a hard day’s work.

Then there’s the dive bar. Smokey, cramped, smelling of sweat and stale alcohol, where they serve unnamed spirits in dirty glasses and where everyone is one funny look away from starting a brawl. Drinking in here is almost a religious experience. Say the wrong thing to the wrong person, and presto, you’re off to meet your maker.

Try the Dragon’s Breath.

The description got a tight smile out of him. Perfect. Exactly what he was looking for. And, using his hammer’s Poof-Ding ability—which allowed him, once per day, to build a room or trap in the dungeon without needing to wait for workers to actually assemble it—he built himself a Dive bar.

The bar flashed into existence already full of smoke and the scent of alcohol. There were no patrons, obviously, but a broad troll bartender stood behind the bar, wiping a glass mechanically and peering around like he was wondering where all his customers had gone.

Sam stepped into the bar, and immediately felt an entire day’s worth of stress drop from his shoulders. He’d spent a good portion of the last few years in places like this, drinking with Bugruk, or with Tilly, or any of a dozen other Dungeoneers after a hard day’s work. The bar counter’s varnish was starting to crack and peel, the stools were rough and uncomfortable, and there was even a series of dark stains on the floor that made it look like the aftermath of a dozen brawls.

Perfect.

Sam slid onto a stool at the far end of the bar and motioned to the bartender. The troll grunted, turned mechanically, and plucked a semi-transparent brown bottle from a rack of similarly mysterious spirits, plodded over to Sam, and plunked it down in front of him. Sam dug into his inventory and produced a pair of silver coins that he handed over wordlessly. The troll nodded and turned away, and Sam reached for the bottle.

The stuff tasted like paint thinner and burned like acid all the way down to his belly, where it sat like a ball of broken glass. He gasped at the first swallow, closed his eyes as it went down, then paused just long enough to savor the burn before he brought the bottle to his lips again and took another swig.

And after the third swallow, he closed his eyes and let the box inside his mind open.