“I know you guys don’t understand what I am saying,” John opened up to the monster currently trying to put out the fire covering it by rolling around, “but I really missed you guys.” The enemy was then put out of its misery by Aclysia stabbing through the little gap between the eight eyes, set on the front of the carapace.

It was refreshing to kill something that actually just existed for the purpose of giving him a way to level-up, rather than people with friends and families. Came without the whole ‘sting of regret’ thing. It was doubly nice that these were not any old monsters.

Those were the current iteration of his old friends. It was always fun to beat those guys around. No matter what version, the strategy was basically the same: Stay away from the darkness and bait them into controlled engagements.

Granted, staying away from the darkness was a bit hard now that they were in some monolithic cave where the only light sources were John’s shoes and a certain crocodile hanging from his belt in his item form, but they managed. It helped that there was a hack for this environment in the shape of Shadowflame just putting every enemy around them to the proverbial torch.

“Lots and lots of darkness to set ablaze,” the combination of Siena and Salamander cackled in pyromantic delight as they advanced and just cooked the enemies on the way. Eventually, her time was up and they had to advance more carefully. At least for the half-hour that it took until she could form again.

With Salamander igniting their path and Gnome leaving markers to make sure they didn’t run in circles, the group explored the cave and its many, many winded paths. It took eternities, since they had to move methodically.

Not that John cared; he was in the dungeon with the express purpose to waste time. It had been six days since the start of phase 3 and they were moving ahead of schedule. In the business world, that was good, in the emulation of a realistic war scenario, that was bad. Scarlett needed more time to make sure she got the situation on her side just right.

Meanwhile, he had gone through issuing the IOUs, conquering all of his old territory back, adding a whole bunch more and a few different things. The official reason why Collide’s continuous assault was halting right now was consolidation. In other words, the girls not with him in this I.D. were taking turns being bodyguards to Magoi or other newly appointed government officials as they checked that the territories they now controlled abided by their constitution.

John had made a few of those diplomatic visits himself. Particularly enjoyable was the one to the Ikea, where he was celebrated like a returning hero when he disposed of Trebba for the second time. He had dragged the slave trader back to the Guild Hall and put him in with the fishmen and other prisoners.

Originally, John had intended to make a decision on all of them after the war. With how quickly the prison population was growing though, and the difficulties that came with trying to hold people that had superhuman strength and magic, it became apparent rather quickly that a decision needed to be made.

After having spent two days rolling around with his eyes open at night about whether he should just kill them all and be done with it or how he could ethically judge them all, John had arrived at the logical and obvious solution. He couldn’t. What he could do was set-up a court system, write some laws, and get them voted on by a hastily formed cabinet consisting of the leaders of the individual barriers he had taken over.

Not only did that lift a lot of the moral burden from John’s shoulder, as he was now running a democracy and not a dictatorship, but it was also a nice test-run for how to form his eventual government.

‘I should make one of those visual representations of how the government works that were in my history textbooks,’ John thought. He could basically see it in front of him already.

‘Undoubtedly not perfect, but what government ever is? Especially as a flow chart?’ John congratulated himself to this open beta-stage plan and then stopped as he saw something peculiar in the darkness next to him.

There was a door shaped hole in the wall. In the otherwise natural caves, the upright rectangle stood out immensely. “Huh,” he spoke out loud. “Salamander, could you?”

“Sure thing, boss,” the endflame elemental conjured a new fireball along with her semi-sarcastic sounding comment. It was just a low-energy one, no reason to use a lot of mana just to make some light. It flew down the narrow passage and revealed nothing aside from the fact that there was some room by the end of it.

“Mhm,” John wondered how to best get through there. They could only walk through one by one, leaving at least some of the group in shadow with the limited light sources they had. Unless he added an extra one to the mix.

Reaching down to his belt, he plucked off the golden egg and let it fall to the floor. On the way, the accessory began to grow, forming an about one-and-a-half metre long creature that was fifty percent tail and a set of deadly jaws.

10’000 mana sounded like a lot, but these days that was something he spent easily during a dungeon crawl. In essence, that was just over twice his current maximum mana. Sadly, he had not been able to scout out yet where Stage 3 was starting, his guess was at 100’000. That would put Stirwin at 4 points per level, which wasn’t good but certainly acceptable.

“You know, I used to be confined in a star,” Stirwin joked; he took the whole situation in good humour. From the blatant amusement that radiated from the crocodile’s soul, it was evident that he wasn’t using sarcasm, which was nice. Just genuine, happy crocodile. “Now I am a percentile of that size and am being used as a flashlight. Funny that. Want me to go ahead or be the tail light?”

As he asked, Undine equipped herself to John. As he could only wear one elemental at a time, the slime girl had been oozing alongside him all the time, but now she saw her opportunity of being carried. “We are going Aclysia, you, me, Salamander, Gnome,” he told everyone. “That way we have tanks at the back and the front.”

“What about me, what about me?” Sylph asked, flying in circles around him like she was caught in a tornado. “I am not in that list, where am I on that list? I demand to be a - have a list! Lists are fun, especially shopping lists! Can I write the next shopping list? It would read something like: gummy bears, Toblerone, marshmallows, cookies, more cookies, I feel like cookies. Hey, Aclysia, can you bake some cookies later? With extra-large chocolate chips?”

“I will consider it,” the weaponized maid answered, while already leading the group into the passage. Sylph just flew right by her head, showing the reason why she wasn’t on the list: she was the only one small enough to move freely.

The moment the whole group was in the narrow passage, the enemies jumped out of the shadows. With the staccato of skittering legs, they closed in on Gnome. They had the advantage of being somewhat flat and able to climb the walls, meaning they could fit two or three in one row.

“Why me?!” the stone elemental cried out, waving her hands about in a bit of a panic but gathering herself in time to make the correct decision. Reinforced by mana John sent her, Gnome stomped on the floor and caused the ground to rip upwards. Thorns of rock ascended, killing two of the Underdark Ravagers and otherwise sealing the passage behind John’s group.

‘Here goes hoping nothing worse is blocking the other side,’ John thought as they continued on. If they had to genuinely fight right there, all advantages of being in a group were basically null and void. Once they reached the wider confines of the room, they would be in way less danger.

It seemed that Gnome had cut the cave off from behind them quite well, as any gaps or holes would have meant that the Ravagers could have followed them still. The fact that they went without harassment for the rest of the passage meant that that wasn’t the case.

The room they stepped into was odd. The walls were a perfect sphere, but a rock structure that reminded John of a spider net (thankfully without any of the stickiness) gave them something to walk on. Having an Agility of 100 paid off nicely in that situation, as he found his footing quite easily.

At the heart of the web was a bed and, in that bed, illuminated by purple fire candles, lay a gorgeous dark elf. She had basically no breasts but long white hair and the typical greyish black skin with long ears pointing up from each side of her head. Clad in only a thin robe that stuck to her body, she raised a hand and waved him closer with a single delicate finger.

Now, John was having a hard time not being hard around this time. His weakness towards pretty women was well-documented, he hadn’t fucked a drow yet (and he really wanted to) and his newly raised Libido didn’t help. As he had promised Rave, he was currently getting his least useful Stat up to 50. The sex had been amazing with every point along the way.

Anyway, all of that made his pants quite tight and him hoping that this was a treasure room. ‘Sadly, I am not naïve enough to run face first into such things,’ John thought and threw an Observe at the drow female in front of him.

‘FUCKING HELL!’ John thought as his erection did him the favour of disappearing rather quickly. This wasn’t just a trap room, this was a TRAP room!

“It was worth the try,” the androgynous voice of the confirmed male sighed, before he conjured a bunch of spiders. They crawled out from under the bed, dropped down from the darkness under the ceiling or simply appeared between Draconis’ hands. They weren’t big, only about fist-sized, but there were a lot of them all closing in on John.

Four things happened at the same time. John used Arcane Echo. Salamander reinforced that Arcane Echo with her unleashed bonus. Simultaneously, she created a torrent of fire. A torrent that was then further reinforced, in turn, by Sylph creating a large gust of wind. What that combined into was a quick-moving blast of devouring heat and arcane energy that swept quickly through the small room, taking out the wave of spiders immediately.

More would follow quickly though, if they didn’t take care of the source. Aclysia was already on that, breaking through scattering ashes of dissolving monsters and towards the bed. Eclys cut the air in front of her, creating a silver line in the darkness that sliced apart the resting place. Draconis was already on the run from the weaponized maid, who was out for vengeance for the drow sexually confusing her master.

Overall it seemed Aclysia was the quicker one, but on his home-turf the dark elf had the advantage. One John aimed to take away, as he poured mana into Gnome again. “H-here goes nothing!” the stone elemental declared ramming her fists against either side of the narrow passage they had entered through. The net crumbled at several places as destructive tremors rocked through it.

One of those places happened to, luckily, be under Draconis’ feet. John had just wanted the whole structure to collapse, causing the lower part of the sphere to become an improvised arena, but that worked as well. Throwing out his right arm, he extended a large tentacle of water towards the elf.

“Oh my, that could be abused erotically,” Draconis managed to get a last quip out, as the tentacle wrapped around his thigh. With one footing lost and the other leg in hold, he didn’t manage to dodge anywhere before Eclys sliced open his back.

Two books fell to the floor, neither of which John had any interest in. At least this had been worth a buttload of experience. ‘Never think that word in the context of traps again,’ he scolded himself as they went on to finish the rest of the dungeon.