Ben found himself staring into the golden eyes of an eagle.

  He twitched as he tried to process what was happening. Sarah and Jamal were laughing loudly behind his back.

  Coming to his senses, he realized he was back in the grove—and the same eagle that had been trailing him for days now sat across from him.

  “How long have I been out?”

  “Just a few hours—it seems like [Clarity] helped a lot, assuming you were successful,” the professor said.

  Ben slowly nodded, not wanting to startle the eagle unnecessarily.

  “It worked, Randal, thank you. But how long has the eagle been here, and what is it doing?”

  “It’s been around since the start. It seemed to be attracted to the Energy infusion you got from [Clarity],” the professor replied.

  “Do you plan on eating me?” he asked with a chuckle.

  The eagle screeched loudly and took off until it sat in one of the branches of the Silent Sentinel Maples.

  “Anyway—tell us what you got!” The professor leaned forward, eager to hear the outcome.

  Congratulations, your insights have allowed you to transform the perk [Frenzy] into [Unyielding Retribution] — Once per confrontation, when you or a nearby party member is targeted by an attack—whether it hits, is blocked, or dodged—empower your next strike in this confrontation to deal a multiple of that attack’s effective damage to its source. Rare — Path Alignment: Positive

  Ben broke into a wide grin as he read the notification and his new perk.

  It was perfect—exactly what he had had in mind.

  It provided the burst damage that he felt he needed. Sure, you could argue that it was reactive, but it had no impact on his Body attribute as [Cleave] had. Most importantly, it did not interfere with his sanity.

  He relayed the new skill to the others and got a lot of shoulder claps for having created his first rare perk.

  Soon after, they started back toward the settlement. The eagle accompanied them, gliding from tree to tree—disappearing for stretches, then returning again.

  “Boss, what do you think he or she wants?”

  “I have no idea, Jamal, but if I had to bet, I would say he wants cores…” he said with a chuckle.

  “How do you know that he is a he, boss?”

  “I asked one of our biologists—we have a surprising number of them.”

  “That’s why you’re the boss, Boss.”

  “Are you making fun of me, Jamal?”

  “I would never, boss!”

  As they returned to the settlement, the appearance of the eagle caused some concern with the night watch, but Ben quickly calmed them down and was happy to see their feathered friend find his place on top of the HQ.

  He safely delivered Sarah back to her parents and returned home, happy for having made significant progress and being rid of [Frenzy].

  ***

  Former Prime Minister Clotilde Mercier sat in a meeting room full of people who had been important at some point—just like her.

  Now, they were mostly shuffling papers around, but even that was running out.

  Clotilde had always been slim, supported by her long-distance-running hobby, but over the last few months she had lost even more weight.

  She was worried—not for herself or her dwindling meals, and certainly not for losing the title of Prime Minister. What worried her was that the military had slowly taken over almost every institution and decision-making process that was left.

  She had been grateful to them as they had secured the farms and hunted for meat, and given the state of civilization one had to be happy about any institution that still worked. However, they had changed. Day by day, week by week, they had turned from dedicated servants and protectors of the people to lords—if not tyrants.

  Curfews had been established even though there had been no riots or other turmoil that would justify them. They had taken over all food distribution and allocated it based on who was useful to them, not who needed it most.

  She had tried to convince them to help those in need, and maybe she had been able to sway them a bit, but it was becoming increasingly hard.

  Maybe all of this was preferable to the alternatives—but she wasn’t convinced. She would stay and try to influence their leadership as best she could, and if all else failed, she could try to gather her friends and leave for another city—assuming they would make it.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  ***

  Ben sat in his office with Adam and a woman he recognized but had never spoken to in depth.

  She was probably in her late forties, had long dark hair, and a round, open face.

  “We are late compared to our self-imposed deadline, but anyway, here we are. I brought Madeleine along; she is an economist who worked for a bank in Simonston and joined us a couple of weeks ago. Following the guidance you gave before recent distractions, we collaborated to flesh out the economic framework for the Protectorate,” Adam said.

  “That is great, thank you both. It is good meeting you, Madeleine.”

  “My pleasure as well. Let me start by recapping your guidance: you want a market-based economy that rewards risk-taking—especially in defending the Protectorate and running dungeons—while ensuring no one falls through the cracks, and sustaining strong infrastructure, education, and defense. And we have to do that without a source of debt funding. Is that correct?” Madeleine asked.

  Ben nodded slowly, trying to get back into the mindset for the topic. But what Madeleine had summarized felt like something he would say.

  Adam took over. “I have done a deep dive into the Settlement Interface to understand what our options are, and it turns out the system is quite flexible regarding the taxes or fees we can manage with its help.” He nodded to Madeleine. “Why don’t you take us through our thinking.”

  “Very well. The first thing that stands out is that as of today the Protectorate—which is, in effect, you—owns all the assets: the buildings, ground, and dungeons. Plus—and this is critical—you will continue to do so, as the only way to extend all of this is via the Settlement Interface, meaning you.”

  Ben nodded along with Madeleine’s exposition, even though he had never thought about it in these terms before.

  “We suggest, therefore, that rent for homes and places of business will be a core source of recurring revenue for the Protectorate. The second source of income will be taxes. Our suggestion is that we tax Credit transactions in the Protectorate—a very low percentage for everything below 10 Credits, a bit more for everything above, and then twice that for the System Store, as it is our understanding that you want to incentivize building our own industry rather than being dependent on the Systems.

  “In general, price setting will, of course, happen via the market; however, we predict that everything will be anchored on the rents that you charge…”

  Adam raised his hand. “Sorry for interrupting, Madeleine, one thing you need to know before we deep dive, Ben, is that we can arrange for a request system in the Protectorate Pillar where people can ask you to build a specific building for them—for example, a workshop or a fancier home once those become available.”

  “Interesting. How does that play into this?” Ben asked.

  Madeleine continued after a glance at Adam, who nodded. “We suggest two mechanisms for rent. The first is for basic housing, as it is currently provided, for which we will set a fixed price. For places of business and everything that will be requested in the future, it will be an auction system. So when it comes to a workshop, people will say that they are willing to pay a certain amount of rent per month, and the highest bidder will get the lease on the asset.”

  Ben frowned slightly as he tried to think this through. Even though it was quintessential to what a market was, he was a bit skeptical of the auction mechanism. After all, he wanted a broad set of industries to be created. But thinking about it some more, he came to the conclusion that it probably made sense. If Deepika wanted an immediate workshop for her spatial-enchantment business, she could probably afford to pay a high rent due to its potential profitability, and if somebody wanted to open a basic tailoring workshop, they might have to wait a bit longer, but they would also pay a much lower price for that workshop.

  “I’m following so far—please go on.”

  Madeleine smiled lightly. “The next source of revenue would be the dungeons. We propose a fee of 500 Credits per level of the dungeon—the livestock dungeon falls under the auction rule, not the dungeon fees, by the way.”

  “That I am not sure about. I could see that being a thing if we come to a point where dungeons are a scarce resource. Right now we have to be grateful for anybody who is willing to put in the work to clear them.” Ben paused for a moment, then continued. “What I would suggest is that we announce this as something that will happen if we reach certain milestones, but that access to the dungeons—and the ability to earn money from them—comes with obligations to the Protectorate. One of those obligations would be that cores need to be handed over to the Protectorate for now, and people would earn extra money from resources they bring out.”

  Adam and Madeleine looked at each other, both with a smirk.

  “The truth is, we weren’t entirely sure about that part. One reason being that the resources from the dungeons are such an essential part of the whole economy that any kind of constraint on availability would probably lead to inflation and a reduction of economic activity,” Adam said.

  “Good. What about food?”

  “Well, food would be treated just like anything else. Fields, greenhouses, and the livestock dungeon would all go up for auction. Whether they then want to go direct to consumer or sell via a merchant is up to them.”

  “Currently we are very dependent on Liz and Zack. What do we do if they don’t want to run a business?”

  “I suspect that there will be quite a few people with whom we will need to have a conversation before we implement this. They are some of those. The options I see for them are either going into business and taking over one or more of the greenhouses, or they could become part of the Academy, do their research there, and we charge those who go into the farming business an extra fee for the insight they create. We could even dedicate one greenhouse as research space for the Academy.” Adam seemed to have already thought about this, which reassured Ben.

  “How do we prevent monopolies?” Ben asked—something that had always bothered him in the world prior to Arrival Day.

  “The Protectorate Administration will have oversight of the economy and the right to intervene if monopolies appear. We also suggest having what we call an Economic Constitution, which links back to our values and outlines how we expect people to behave,” Adam said.

  “I like that a lot!” Ben agreed. “I’m sure I’ll have more questions later, but for now—one last thing: how do we make sure nobody falls through the cracks? Let’s say somebody wants to create a business, but we don’t have the SCs to build a workshop—how do they earn money to feed themselves?”

  “First of all, we will ramp up rent over time so people can get used to it. Also—and maybe we should have led with this—we will provide a basic income for everyone. We have orphans, elderly, and a constant flow of people who will join us and won’t have a job from day one, so it’s simpler to grant everyone a small Credit stipend and recoup it through transaction fees rather than micromanage individual cases.”

  Ben nodded vigorously. “That sounds good. Thank you both so much! I am very much looking forward to the Economic Constitution and how the math works on all of this.”

  “Did you just give us homework while thanking us?” Adam asked incredulously.

  “Isn’t that how a boss is supposed to behave?” Ben asked innocently.

  “I will tell your mother about this!” Adam exclaimed in fake outrage.

  ***

  It was the middle of the night and Ben jolted out of his bed as a message violently wormed its way into his consciousness.

  Alert – Incursion registered – Rally to defend Earth.