On top of everything, an errant wind had blown through and pulled the tarp off of Ben's tow behind trailer, revealing the load of gold. Everybody saw it, but kept their mouths shut. Alice, suffering from a fit of exhaustion had excused herself from the situation and was sleeping in Ben's room. When he had opened the door to show her in, his mind had chosen that exact moment to remind him that his room was also where he kept all his trophies.

Ben had been the one to tell Casimer about the gaming convention of monsters occasionally dropping a statue of themselves, usually made of something valuable, and he had immediately implemented the suggestion. Some, like the hideous insect chimera statues, of which Ben had three, were made of a solid gold, or the copper giant spiders, or silver mimics with their teeth exposed. Some of the later models Casimer had created were finely detailed composit metals, showing the color and shading of the creature they depicted, the statue inside of a snow-globe style base with a clear, suspended in a clear viscous mineral oil to prevent tarnishing. The latest models had little wind up mechanisms that caused them to produce some simple music, along with the sounds that the creature would make before it attacked. There were many varieties of monsters Casimer had created, some of which were extinct, but Ben had multiple statues of each. He was an avid collector, and Casimer was an avid craftsman.

Before he had left, Ben grabbed one of the most recent additions to his collection, which was incidentally one of his favorites. It was a snow globe style, depicting an eagle in flight with a murder of crows. Hanging from a strong looking chain of gold was a small key, which Ben inserted into a hole in the bottom and began to turn, the sound of a spring ratcheting clear in the air.

“That's not a fucking music box,” Louden said as the simple melody began to play “. . . is it.” She muttered something like 'I've had enough of this shit,' and popped a pill into her mouth. “It's a fucking ibuprofen,” she said in a snide, sarcastic tone. Much to Ben and Louden's surprise, it was Polk who started yelling first.

“Ben, what the fuck is going on!” she looked like she wanted to ask a lot of questions, yet her mouth just moved like a fish, having summed up the entirety of her desire with one sentence. Ben sighed, shifting his attention away from the pleasant music and towards the unpleasant task at hand.

“Do you mind if I make up some coffee?” Ben paused “Actually, do you mind if I grab my bong too?”

Somehow, a look of relief entered Polk's eyes, and Louden threw her head back, apparently the ibuprofen was kicking in pretty hard and mumbled something like 'just fuck already'.

–

“After I left the mountain for that first time, I didn't want to come back, I was scared shitless as soon as I walked through my door. Then I took a look at this,” Ben said, pulling the necklace off and hanging it high from the string so all could see.

“It's harder to explain than it is to show you,” Ben said, lowering it and unscrewing the top. Inside, instead of the water Ben had filled it with in the morning, was a small rotating icon with a picture of a status window on it.

“I can't split it, so you'll have to rock paper scissors who gets to try the skill out.”

Louden, head rolled back, much more relaxed than she had been earlier, lazily raised a hand and threw a rock. Polk, in an involuntary reflex to the motion, threw scissors at the same time.

“Gimmie,” Louden said.

“Are you crazy?” Polk asked “Do you have any idea,”

“Lady,” Louden said “I've taken way crazier. Besides, Ben's fine. Hell, he looks great. If I didn't know he was a total pussy I'd be all like 'heeeey boy' and throwing down some moves.” She took the necklace, and Ben said 'you drink it', and she immediately threw her head back, swallowing.

“Nothing came out,” she said, handing it back. Then, she started looking around at everything, eyes rapidly moving “Woah. Woah! I'm tripping out here Ben, I'm tripping the fuck out!”

“No you aren't, you're using Analyze. Bottom left corner of your vision should tell you how long you have.”

“It says I've got four minutes, and thirty seven seconds,” Louden said automatically, then put her hands over her mouth. Her eyes brushed over the trophy music box, then locked onto it “Ben, according to a little blue window that Deagle snow globe is worth six-hundred fifty thousand fucking dollars.”

“You should see the gear work inside of it,” Ben said dismissively “Apparently there's a clockmakers guild, and apparently they'll pay a fucking mint for these things.” Louden's eyes moved from the trophy and landed on Ben, then they got wider and wider.

“Ben,” she whispered, eyes reading an invisible status window and occasionally glancing at his eyes “oh my god, Ben. I don't know how I understand this, but I don't want to anymore. How do I turn this off?”

“Turning off a skill is a, skill, in and of itself,” Ben said, his voice rising an octave and shifting into a more exact cadence, referencing one of Melchee's stupid jokes. “It's a little involved to explain it. Just go outside and enjoy the rest of your trip. Analyze is pretty fucking cool.”

Louden got up and walked outside, and occasionally Ben and Polk could hear her exclaim something in surprise.

“I let her win on purpose,” Polk said when she was outside “by the way. She would have pitched a fit anyways if I had won.”

“That's fine, I don't think she was all here anyways,” Ben said.

“So what happened next? You got that, what is it, that 'Skill' and then what?”

“I started coming back. I meant to come once a week, but it ended up being every day. I'd fight monsters and generate mana for Casimer to eat, bring in tools and trinkets so he could reproduce them, harvest resources. Whenever I finished doing that, and it really only took up about half of my day, Casimer an I were talking. We've gone over human history up until the present day, we've discussed wars, technology, medical, culture, youtube videos, memes, religion, everything. . . Polk, you have to understand something. The dungeon isn't just some human eating monster, he's not. . . he's smart. He's freaky smart. You know, he made an atomic bomb once?”

Polk's eyes widened as Ben opened a drawer and pulled something out.

“Ben,” She said, sounding terrified, until she saw the rolled joint in his mouth.

“Oh!” Ben said, smiling, “Sorry, I can see what you might have thought there. No, we set off like twenty for the fourth of july. For such small bombs, man!” Ben took the joint from his lips and smiled broadly “What a fucking show. I'm amazed nobody noticed twenty a-bombs going off, but whatever. He absorbed the radiation shortly after, so it was all good. No contamination.”

“Anyways, like I was saying, he's smart. He knows he needs a lot to survive, but he also has a lot to offer. Imagine being able to dump all the radioactive waste in the world here? Or hell, just all the garbage on earth? He could make it vanish, wiped from creation, just like that,” Ben snapped his fingers “Then there's medical,” he said, growing more excited “do you have any idea how many time's I've been poisoned, or had my skin burned off, or straight up lost a limb?” Ben pulled up his left sleeve, revealing tiny lines of stark white scar tissue around the elbow “A mimic got me, I set my pack down for a bit and it snuck in and replaced it, waiting for me to return. Ate my damn arm, bit it clean off. Casimer just built up a new arm for me, right there, had some vial of red fluid I'm calling a health potion, or a regeneration potion, haven't decided yet, and had me drink it while he pressed the new arm against the stump.”

Ben made a strong fist with his left hand.

“Works great, by the way, exactly like the original. Move beyond medical,” Ben said, now very excited “Imagine what he could do for manufacturing! We wouldn't need to drill for oil anymore, we could advance our technology a thousand years if we wanted too, possibly more!”

“Ben, this thing made the mimic that ate your arm!” Polk said, reaching out a hand and gently grabbing him by the elbow, a look of extreme concern on her face “From what you told us when we were out there, it's likely killing people right now, and eating them.” Ben's face got red for a moment, then he sighed.

“And that's the problem. He could eat anything, but people are the highest quality food he's encountered so far. I'll say this for him, he could have found a way to go mobile and really wreak some fucking havoc, really, he could have killed the whole planet by now if he wanted, just generate a fuckload of radiation and let it spread till everything was dead.”

“That's not doing anything to make me feel better,” Polk said, folding her hands in her lap, body stiff.

“It makes me feel better. Casimer has expressed great interest in peaceful coexistance. That's pretty much all we talk about these days, how we can strike a fair balance between humanity and the him, how to negotiate that peace.”

Polk didn't look convinced. Ben continued, undeterred.

“That also gets me back to my story. We discovered inside of a month that if Casimer creates a lifeform, then destroys it, he gets nothing back. If a person, a natural person, kills a monster, it's a net benefit for both Casimer and the human. The longer the monster has been wandering around, the more mana it accumulates, and the more both parties get when it's destroyed. We accumulate mana too, when we're in the dungeon, by the way. ”

“I'm contaminated?” Polk said, staring at herself.

“That's a really negative way of looking at it. Anyways, what I've been doing lately is planting whatever kinds of seeds I can get my hands on. He can support their growth, providing water and sun, siphoning a little energy from each blade of grass, from every bud of weed,” Ben said, winking at Polk “from every tree, every clump of moss, all of it.”

“Then why's he eating a bus full of people? No, don't tell me. I'm getting overwhelmed here. Give me some time to think about things, I'll be outside with Louden.”

Polk got up, not waiting for Ben to continue speaking, and left.

“Don't mind me,” Ben said quietly to himself “I've just been saving the world for the last nine months. Fuckers.”

Ben, for the first time in a long time, lit a joint while feeling an unhappy, sour emotion in his chest.

“Fucking people,” he said “Now I'm starting to remember why I moved.”