It was almost embarrassing how easily their plan worked after they spent so much time on it. Jake made the door in the kitchen. They moved it from the dining room because they didn’t want to have all the kids watch them kill a man.

Then Fern counted down and on three they threw open the doors, rushed out and fired at the men who thought they were well hidden in the trees.

The men in the trees saw the arrows and crossbow bolts flying towards them, evidently forgot they were in a tree and hurled themselves to the side. Of course, they lost their grip, whereupon gravity took over and the result was no surprise to anyone watching. When Fern and Will and the other two walked over to ensure that the men were dead, there was no doubt about it. Both had fallen thirty to forty meters and landed head first after flipping a couple of times around the lower limbs on their way down.

“I don’t know how to feel about that,” Fern finally said. “I came out expecting to have to shoot a man and instead he, well they, both fell out of their trees.”

“I know,” said Will. “I can’t tell how I feel. On the one hand, I’m glad I didn’t kill them, but on the other, well, I didn’t kill them.”

By this time Rex and Joseph had come running around the building and were standing with Will and Fern.

“Did you,” began Fern, then stopping.

“What hun?” asked Will.

“I’m just going to say this and ask a question. I got experience points from that. Did you all?”

“Yeah,” said Rex.

“That’s pretty messed up,” said Joseph. “I knew some guys in the service that talked like that. Now it’s for real.”

There was a quiet pause as they all considered that they could grow stronger by killing. And not just killing monsters, but people.”

“Let’s not talk about this with anyone, Ok?” asked Fern. “I don’t know what this is going to do to us? I have no idea what or even how I feel about this.”

“Do you think that you only get experience if it’s a righteous kill? If it’s a bad guy you’re taking out?” asked Joseph.

“I don’t think so,” said Jake. “I think it’s you kill them, you get the experience for it.”

“Jake doesn’t think so,” said Will.

“Wow,” said Rex. “That means those true killers…” and then just kind of petered out.

“Yeah,” said Fern. “That’s going to have an impact on society once people figure it out. You get to a high level and people are going to look at you funny.”

“Or people with high levels may start viewing other people as walking experience farms,” said Will.

“Why does this feel like the old west is getting started again? Gunfighters strolling into town, calling the sheriff out,” said Fern.

“Do you think that Wade and his bunch have figured that out yet?” asked Rex.

“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t bet against it,” said Will.

The group stood there looking down at the man that Fern and Will had killed. Thinking about who knew what.

“What are we going to do with them?” asked Fern finally. “Do we leave them? Bury them? What are we going to do with their bodies?

“I think it’d be better to dispose of them some way,” said Joseph. “Make them guys wonder if the two of them took off on their own, don't you think? Heck, we might even get a couple more tomorrow. If we’re lucky.”

“Ok, then. Drag them into the woods?” asked Rex.

“I can handle that,” volunteered Jake. “Pick them up and set them on the front porch. I can, well, clean them away.”

“Let’s set them on the front porch. Jake says that he can dispose of them. Don’t drag them though. Carry them. Try not to leave any marks. Don’t know what skills those guys have yet, but I’d be surprised if at least one of them didn’t have some kind of tracking skill,” said Will.

“What about the arrows and bolts?” asked Rex.

“I have no idea where they went,” said Joseph. “They missed when these guys ducked and kept going. Do you want to look for them?”

“They’re probably stuck in some tree,” said Fern. “We’ve got to get moving. It’s about 9 o’clock now. We need to get the teams off.”

They picked up the dead men and set them on the porch where Jake used his cleaning ability on their bodies causing them to disappear. It was the first time Jake had really paid attention to the ability. Everybody else was standing around watching them disappear, so he focused on it too.

The bodies seemed to soften at their edges and collapse downward into nothingness. The process didn’t seem to need any energy from Jake and only took a few seconds. The blood that was pooling at the bases of the bodies' heads and from the other wounds they received from their fall out of the tree vanished too. There may have been the faintest glow, a faint grey aura that the body was falling into, but it was so slight that it could have been just something imagined.

“Well, that’s something you don’t see every day,” remarked Joseph. “It sure makes killing a lot easier.”

Nobody really had any followup to that comment, so they just stood there for a while, enjoying being outside.

“What’s with this grass?” Joseph finally said. “I don’t remember it being here the other night.”

“What’s it look like,” asked Jake.

“It’s about four inches tall, fescue-colored and gives off a faint lemony scent when you walk on it,” answered his mom.

“How much has it spread?” Jake asked.

“It started by the front porch it looks like. It’s spread out about ten meters in this big carpet. It’s grown underneath all those rickshaws we left parked out front. Then it seems to have been growing around the building. Its edges look like it’s putting out runners like Bermuda grass does,” she said.

Jake checked his senses and his area of perception had grown. He hadn’t realized it, not having thought about it. The area that he actually claimed on the surface had grown to match what his mom had described. He also could feel where the four of them were standing. Just as a sense of pressure, a notice that something was there. And when they moved or stepped, he could locate their new position.

He also could feel the sun, the mana, the heat of the day. He could feel a small animal, maybe a field mouse nibbling on the grass.

“That’s the grass I planted last night,” he said.

“That’s the grass Jake planted last night,” his mom echoed.

“Holy crap!” said Joseph. “Kudzu ain’t got nothing on you.”

“It will only grow a certain area around me. I tied it to the higher mana level that I produce. It won’t take off and eat up the countryside like Kudzu did. It’s even edible,” Jake said.

“It’s tied to him. It needs the high mana level around him. It’s even edible,” she said.

“No shit?” Joseph exclaimed.

“Really,” Jake said. “You could live on it. It tastes a little lemony. High in vitamins C and D. And it’s high in mana too.”

“Taste like lemons. High in vitamins C and D. Mana too,” his mom relayed.

“Wow,” Joseph exclaimed again. “What else does it do? I mean, why did you create it?”

“Well, it also claims the area it grows on for me,” Jake said. “And I can sense where you are standing. Or other things are standing too. I can feel a mouse nibbling on it too.”

“He can feel people standing on it,” she said. “Please keep that on the down-low though.”

“So it’s spy grass?” said Joseph. “Who would have thought? My lips are sealed.”

The morning sun was already beating down, the cool breeze whispering through the trees. Jake’s hawk was floating high in the air, keeping watch toward the camp where Wade and his men stayed.

“Com’on folks,” Fern finally said, “We need to get the teams off.” And with that, they went back inside, closed the kitchen door and, after setting the teams off, closed up the front door as well.

** 2/29

Once inside Fern and Will were struck by how busy everyone seemed. Besides the meeting going on with the kids, there were many small meetings going on. People meeting in bedrooms, by the side of the pools, meeting while picking fruit or harvesting vegetables. People were busy talking classes, talking over the new Adventurer’s Guild, talking about the Dungeon Born. It was amazing to see the excited discussions going on, especially when they remembered the quiet, almost sullen crowds that had arrived at Max’s

“Jake,” asked Fern. “Can you tell us how many people here have taken mages as a class?”

Jake answered, “I can if I identify everyone. If they don’t have a hidden class or the ability to lie to the identify ability.”

“Is that possible?” she asked.

“It may be possible,” he answered. “Billy and I were talking and he said in his stories, high-level rogue or thief types could do it. There also were spy classes and whatnot that could also do it. But the odds were good that people now are still so low leveled that it’s not likely. We just need to keep it in mind. We might want to mark down those people that have well, “dark classes” just to be aware. Also, our identify capability is not that high a level either so we won't be able to see through even beginning level confusion abilities.”

“So, just like the old days, watch what somebody does, rather than what they say they did or say they are doing,” she said.

“Exactly,” Jake answered.

“Dato likes knowing things about people,” his mom mused. “She’s always been sneaky. I think I might assign her to be our identify specialist. Cast the spell or use the skill all the time to get it high enough up there to be really useful. Mine, aside from the use of the interface, is a spell. What’s yours?”

“Most of what I can do are skills,” Jake said. “For instance, ‘Create Materials’ is a skill. That’s why I think the Bobs control gold and the making of it. If they’d just handed out a spell, everyone could learn it and do it. But since it's a skill, they can more tightly control it. The other things I’ve got are abilities, like Identify. They can increase, but who knows when. I get kind of a feeling when I’m getting close in a skill, but nothing when I increase abilities. It just seems to happen.”

“Huh,” said Fern. “Can you learn spells?”

“I can,” he said. “But I haven’t yet. At least I think I can. I’ve got a spell’s window in my interface.”

“Can you learn Qi abilities?” Fern asked.

“I have a window, but haven’t learned any yet,” he answered. “I think I also produce Qi too. Just like the mana. But I don’t know for sure. I haven’t got any way of testing it either. Just like mana. Billy and I are talking about how to measure it. By the way, when I talk about abilities I’m not talking Qi abilities. I just haven’t figured out what to call the Qi abilities yet.”

“You like him, don’t you?” she asked.

‘I do. He’s smart. Wicked smart. I mean my intelligence and wisdom are both off the charts now thanks to my levels, but he keeps up with me. It’s weird. It’s like the high starting point that he began with gave him an advantage or something. Anyway, intelligence doesn’t appear to be just numbers. I like him, he’s fun to talk with, plan things out with. He knows what I am and doesn’t judge or even seem afraid of me. That’s kind of hard to find.”

“He’s only ten,” she said.

“Yeah, I know,” he answered. “But I’m a pink rock that’s slightly more than two weeks old. I try to respect my elders.”

She laughed then. “Ok, but remember Hildi’s got her eyes on you,” she said. “Tonight, after Billy gets done with his kid’s meeting, I want you to get with him and figure out a way to swap spells. We’ve got this Cal guy sitting on a bunch of useful spells and we need to get them out to everybody.”

“So are you going to ask him to give up his spells?” Jake asked.

“What do you mean? We’ve got to build houses, a village. Why shouldn’t he give up his spells?” Fern asked.

“Well, they’re his. Why should he?” Jake answered. “He can build the houses on his own, take his time. Maybe get paid for building them. Why should he give up the spells?”

“So, back to this economy thing. We’ve got to get something going,” she said.

“Yep,” he said. “Back to this economy thing.”

“Ok,” she said. “I’ll make a note. We’ll talk about it. Maybe this afternoon. I can throw it out there as grist for the idea mill.”

“Huh?” asked Jake.

“It’s what I’m calling the big sessions in the dining room. Like the Adventurer’s Guild. I throw out an idea and they all work it over. Hopefully, they’ll come up with some results,” she said.

“What has an IQ of 20 and a hundred feet?” asked Jake.

“I know, I know, a committee. You and your father are so alike it’s crazy. But it gives them something to do. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but we’ve got fifty-one adults in here. And for entertainment, we've got a couple of decks of cards, a couple of games of Life which the kids have hidden the pieces too, and no TV. What do you want me to do?”

“Sorry mom,” Jake said. “I know things are crazy. But you’re doing fine. Keep it up.”

“Thank you dear!” she said.

“Cal,” she said spying her next opportunity. “Can we talk for a minute?” And then she bustled away.

Jake looked around, well-focused around, since he didn’t have eyes anymore. Everyone did seem to be busy. Talking, arguing, even looking at their status pages in the corners of the rooms.

Some of the adults were busy practicing their spells. Evidently Billy had shared the ability to ‘low cast” spells with the group. He hoped that the knowledge that it was possible to reduce the mana of a spell and still cast it didn’t escape and become widespread. It made a huge difference in earning experience points.

He noticed that his mom and Cal and his dad and a bunch of the men who’d had ‘volunteered’ to be members of the ‘army’ were standing outside on the porch, talking.

“Fern,” said Cal. “I can make walls. Although, I thought that we weren’t going to do that. I thought we were going to depend on killing the local monsters. And then having an army or some kind of unit that would kill any wandering monsters.”

Fern said, “Well, the walls aren’t really for the monsters. They’re for the people inside them. Make them feel safe. Protected. You and I and anybody that takes the time to think about it know that they aren’t worth a damn. But they'll give the illusion that we’re doing something. Making a difference.”

“That’s a little bit uh,” said Cal pausing, not knowing how to continue on with the sentence.

“I believe the word you’re looking for is manipulative,” Fern continued. “And you would be right to use it. But we haven’t got a monster squad yet. And we also haven’t driven off or killed all the local monsters. So we’ve got to work with what we can do. And that’s your walls and your houses. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re running in place here. Treading water. Whatever metaphor you want to use. I’m trying to save people and bring them back to here so we can hopefully jumpstart society again. With my son Jake’s help, I can get them fed. Now with yours and hopefully some of these other folks in there who took mage classes, we’ll be able to create new and safer houses. That’s what I’m trying to do. Will you be a part of it?”

Cal sat and stared at Fern for a while, taking his time, thinking about his answer. Then he looked around him at the land outside of Max’s. Looking at the trees that seemed tailormade to provide shade that had replaced the aluminum gas pump canopies and their gas pumps. Looking at the other strange trees that he’d never seen before, like the reddish tree that smelled of cinnamon. The curious lack of undergrowth for an Oklahoma woods area.

“I can create walls for you. And houses like those ones over yonder,” he said pointing towards where the little circle of huts stood under one of the large shade trees. “But I’m not sure about what good it’s going to do. People won’t be safe out here.”

“I don’t believe any place is safe anymore,” his mom said. “But we’ve got to get back and start reclaiming our place on the food chain. We can’t all be living in a big box, waiting for our next meal to be delivered up to us. We need to start taking risks and learning from them. We’ve got to start learning how to live in this new world.”

“Ok,” he finally said. “But it’s on you when a monster breaks through and slaughters some folks. I’ll be trying my best, but I know that right now, that isn’t enough.”

“Heck, Cal,” said Will. “None of us are good enough, but we’re trying. And that’s all that really counts, isn’t it?”

“I hope you're right,” Cal said. “But it still isn’t going to make me feel better when a monster comes calling. Now, where do you want this wall?”

“It’s about 9:30,” said Fern. “Sunset is around five, five-fifteen or so, so we’ve got, let’s say until four-thirty before those men come back. So that gives us about seven hours to make a wall. How much can you make in seven hours?”

“I’ve got 67 mana points. So I can cast ‘Create Wall’ six times according to what the spell description says. Then since Hildi taught me how to meditate, I can replenish my mana in about twenty minutes. So that means 18 times per hour, so 126 times. I could make a wall three meters tall that ran about 378 meters. So I guess if I made a circle I could make it have a radius of about 50 to 60 meters. Probably closer to 60. I’d have to calculate it to know for sure.”

“Sixty should include Max’s without any problems,” Jake said. “It’s a rectangle 115 meters by 70 meters. You could make a big circle around it. Of course, you may not want to do that. Maybe you want to have all that space for growth. So you could create a circle in front of Max’s or to one side. Heck, if you did it in front or back, you could leave those tree blinds untouched.”

“We could make a circle with an opening facing Max’s front door? The walls stretching out toward the road. We’ve got enough room to have an enclosure out front between Max’s and the road,” said Cal.

“Why don’t we do that? The gang will come back, see a wall and find the blinds untouched, but empty. They’ll wonder what happened to their men, might even try to ask or post new ones,” said Fern.

“Ask?” said Will.

“And you know what our answer will be, right?” said Fern, raising her hand, middle finger extended.

The men and Jake all chuckled.

“Where do you want to start the circle?” asked Cal.

“Why not about twenty meters in front of Max’s front door? Tomorrow we can build a gatehouse that will cover both the openings in Max’s and the circle,” said Fern.

“What do you all think?” She looked around at Will and the security team.

She watched them walk through the plan mentally and then they all shrugged their approval.

Cal asked for some rope, about 60 meters long, which Jake was able to supply him with. Evidently, it came from a type of silk that would have come from a giant spider that tended to live in jungles. It hunted and bound its prey up with the silk rather than capturing them with webs. Its leg’s chiton was as hard as steel and it used its legs almost like swords, leading to its name, the Fencer Spider. Jake got all this from the pattern workspace when he created the loot. He didn’t get the spider pattern though.

Cal tied one end of the rope to a spike also supplied by Jake and then used the security detail to start marking an outline of a circle using another spike tied to the opposite end. After they had started scribing the circle, he began following their marks with the wall segments.

At first, Cal had to wait for the surveying team to make their marks, but after he created the sixth segment of wall, he had to stop to meditate to regain his mana, which allowed the surveying team began to pull ahead. The marks weren’t a complete circle, but more like x’s left where the surveying team could get a straight shot around and through the underbrush. Cal was making the circle from mark to mark, trying to make walls that had the right curve to them.

It was the first time that the men on the team had, for the most part, been outside and they worried about monsters. Two men stayed at the center pivot, three men pulled the rope through the woods and Will and Fern stood watch over Cal. This was pretty close to the entire group of people in the army or security force, less the teams that were out gathering up people.

Jake had his spies out looking, the owls in the treetops, the hawk overhead, but it appeared that they were lucky. All Baxter’s nighttime forays had cleaned out this section of the woods. Or the monsters had migrated away from Max’s. He thought that might be the case. Baxter must have liberally anointed this section of woods and the other areas surrounding Max’s. Claiming it for his own.

His grass was still growing, not visibly, but at about 1.7 meters an hour, it was almost visible. Well, if you took the time and watched the edges, you could make out the growth. It was about like watching dough rise. If your time scale was slow enough, it could be interesting. He figured that in six days he ought to have covered the inner parts of the circle enough to have claimed it.

He still wasn’t sure what claiming ground outside of his dungeon granted him. So far, it seemed to only grant the surface and the four inches of space that the grass grew through. It allowed him to sense the sunlight and the moonlight, but he couldn’t see the sun or the moon, just feel their effects when they cast their beams upon him. He figured he’d have an excellent view of people’s feet. He wondered if when he claimed the walls that Cal was raising he’d just get the walls or if the fact that it was an enclosure would allow him to see everything up to the top level of the walls.

‘Well, in six days, I ought to find out,’ he thought. ‘Well, maybe sooner. That estimation only accounted for growth in a single direction. If I grow the grass around the walls and then into the center, I’ll have many areas of growth. It should happen quite a bit faster then 6 days. Like bacteria in a petri dish.’

Jake was getting deluged with requests. Not from his family, but from all the people inside Max’s. It was a little weird. Actually a lot weird. People would just stop what they were doing, a conversation or studying their status screens and say something like “Jake, I don’t know if you’re listening, but I could sure use a knife right now for my class. One of those Kukri like you made for Hildi. Thank you.” This was happening over and over. It was almost like people were praying to him.

‘This isn’t right,’ he thought. ‘There is no way I’m going to be able to do even half of this. What the hell people, get off your ass and make it yourself!’

Of course, he had no way of talking to these folks. The ones he could talk to, didn’t ask for stuff. Well, except for his mother, but even she didn’t do it that often and when she did, it was something for the group, like the chalkboards. The people seemed to have an unrealistic expectation of what a dungeon could do. It’s like they thought he had endless mana and was put here on earth to take care of their sorry asses.

“Mom,” he said. “What the hell?”

“Uh, can you be a little more specific?” she asked. She was still outside watching over Cal as he meditated and created wall segments.

“These damn people are asking for shit like I’m their new god. And I’m better than the old one ‘cause I give them shit. This is getting old. For instance, I just had a little girl getting out of the pool ask me to give her a new towel.”

“Really?” said his mom, laughing.

“Yes really! A cute little redheaded girl. Stood right there at the edge of the pool and said, ‘Jake, I need a new towel please’. And the weird thing is she seemed like she really expected me to give it to her. She was a cute one, so I almost did, but still, this is getting old quick!” Jake said.

“So what’s the problem?” she said. “Just ignore them!”

“Oh, like that’s going to work. Every time I make something for someone, people are going to get pissed. I can hear it now, ‘Why did he make that for them? I needed something and he wouldn’t make it for me! That ain’t right!’ It’s a lit fuse. And it’s going to explode someday.”

“Will, did you hear that?” asked his mom.

“Yep,” he said. “It sounds like a problem we’d best get ahead of.”

“What can we do?” she asked. “We can’t tell people not to talk to Jake? And we need him to make stuff for us. If he quits making those ‘Scooby Snacks’ we are in trouble. Plus people know he can create stuff now. There’s those lights, the bronze block, heck this whole place.”

“Maybe we can disguise it somewhat?” Will said.

“What do you mean,” she said.

“Well, do the Wizard of Oz thing. Create a place where they have to come to make requests, put some bureaucracy in the way. Make things harder,” he continued. “Well, like that circle he created on the front porch. We both know that was bullshit, but it kind of made sense. Have him make a column or something where people have to fill out and submit their requests. Maybe even have a person standing by to talk with them to figure out what they really need and help them figure out a way for them to get it.”

“Will Silvestre, I had no idea you had this deep and dark of a cunning streak in you. I approve,” she said. “What do you think Jake?”

“If I understand it, I think I like it. We could make a booth, set up Sammy in there. Maybe share time with Bernie and Dato too. Give them some rules and some forms that a person needs to fill out to make a request. Then have them file the request somehow? Girls keep one, the other gets eaten by the machine? Or whatever it is I create. Is that what you meant?”

“I think so,” said Will. “You’ll just have to never respond to a person’s request away from the request booth. Otherwise, they’ll just keep asking.”

“OK,” said Jake. “I’ll make something tonight after everybody goes to bed.”