“Are you sure this is the right place?” Joe asked.

  Michael grunted. [Hunt in the Dark] had led him here. His new perk allowed him to find the enemies of those he defended.

  Even without the perk, the blue-and-gold fa?ade of the building made it pretty obvious that this belonged to the Church of Energy.

  He had promised himself that he would not make the same mistake again of sitting back and waiting for Ben’s enemies to make their move. He had known that the church was a threat the first time he had seen their preacher or whatever he was. They had already taken their shot at the boss and that was one too many.

  Fortunately, the SEALs shared his mindset of proactive defense. He knew Ben would probably not approve, but he had no plans to kill every church member. Just the leaders—and everyone who resisted.

  His Path had helped clarify his thoughts on the matter. He was willing to follow Ben’s methods to some extent. He understood the concept of ‘reasonable doubt’ and would be willing to extend that courtesy to those who had not yet done anything to them. But in his mind, the church leadership had stepped beyond that threshold when they had sent assassins against the boss.

  The building they were observing looked like an abandoned school building with a large attached gymnasium, into which numerous people streamed, most of them dressed in blue and gold sheets or at least wearing scarves in those colors.

  Karl, one of Joe’s men, pointed towards a rooftop that would allow them to look into the gym’s windows that were placed close to the high roof.

  They quickly and quietly made their way there and saw a makeshift altar at one end of the gym and pews before it. A few minutes later a ceremony began, and the same man who had waited for them close to Brickham’s school and in the end threatened Ben was leading them.

  It was nearly impossible to understand what was being said, despite Michael’s high Mind attribute, but after about twenty minutes of uninterrupted monologue, the man pulled a sheet of cloth from the altar to reveal a sphere. It was fist-sized, made of stone-like golden material, criss-crossed with a precise grid of softly glowing blue lines. A dungeon core.

  Michael was confused; he had seen Ben pull them from cleared dungeons many times by now but had not thought it possible for anybody but a [Knight Protector] to do so.

  He threw caution to the wind and leaped to the gym roof.

  “… dozens of our brothers- and sisters-in-faith have given their lives to retrieve this abomination! Let’s praise them for their sacrifice! This is the ultimate vessel of incarceration that the systems use to shackle Energy. They force the boundless force that is Energy into an atrocity they call a dungeon. But I say, no more! Tomorrow we will conduct a ritual to destroy this vessel to unleash Energy where it belongs: free to roam the Earth.”

  Michael had heard enough. He didn’t know what would happen if those idiots tried to destroy a dungeon core and he didn’t really care, but retrieving it for the Protectorate would be an unexpected boon.

  He returned to the SEALs.

  “Acquisition of dungeon core as secondary objective.”

  They waited for another hour until the preacher left the building accompanied by a bodyguard. It was early evening, and the sun had already set.

  They followed, keeping a long distance from their target; [Hunt in the Dark] would not let him lose their prey.

  The men ended up in an upper-class residential area where professors and university researchers traditionally lived, a large family home being their final destination.

  “Karl and Ji up front. Michael and me to the back,” Joe suggested.

  Michael nodded and the two of them made their way through the garden of an abandoned-looking villa to arrive at the back of the preacher’s home.

  Only two of the rooms in the building were lit, so it was easy for the duo to creep closer without being seen even without using any perks.

  Looking through the large window of the living room, they saw the bodyguard lounging on a large sofa.

  Joe pointed to the gutter pipe and Michael nodded as the SEAL quickly ascended the pipe to the overhang that allowed him to look into the windows on the top floor. A moment later he had made it to the room with candlelight and risked a glance. He signaled that the target was in the room, but access was only possible by breaking one of the windows.

  Michael waved for the SEAL to come back down. They retreated a few meters from the house to agree on next steps.

  “Just knock, take out the guard, question, then eliminate the target?” Michael asked.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Joe nodded. “The simplest plan is sometimes the best.”

  They returned to the front where their teammates observed the door and street, confirming that everything had remained quiet.

  Joe signaled for Karl and Ji to make the initial entry as they had a lot of experience working together.

  “If your Mind attribute is below 15, stay away from the preacher,” Michael said.

  The others raised an eyebrow, but Joe indicated that he would be okay.

  It only took a minute for the bodyguard to open the door after Karl knocked and just a few seconds for Ji to take him out.

  Joe and Michael entered the building and the street was as quiet as ever.

  Michael quickly oriented himself in the building and headed up the stairs. In the upper hallway, light shone under the door of the first room to the right.

  He readied his weapons, made sure Joe was behind him, and entered the room. It was a relatively simple bedroom with a king-sized bed, a built-in closet and a desk in one corner on which the preacher was sitting.

  The man turned around in surprise, looking at Michael, who closed the distance in three quick steps, placing his knife’s edge to the man’s throat.

  “Dungeon core. Where?” he asked.

  “Who are you?” the preacher asked, his voice rising.

  “Dungeon core?” Michael said, pressing the knife harder, breaking skin.

  The preacher seemed to calm down. “I don’t have it. You want to let me go.”

  Michael thought about letting the man go. He seemed like a decent young man after all. He loosened his grip and prepared to let go when deep down in his consciousness resistance flared. They had run the ‘Witch of the Dead’ dungeon many times by now and Michael’s ability to deal with Mind-based attacks had grown considerably.

  He drew a sharp breath through his nose and asserted control over his own mind. He stabbed the preacher in the shoulder, making him cry out in pain and all mental pressure fading.

  “Do that again—you are dead! No second chances. Dungeon core—I won’t ask again.”

  The preacher held his bleeding shoulder with the left hand but used his foot to turn over an old leather bag and flip open the cover.

  “It’s in there,” he said through clenched teeth.

  Joe, who had been observing from a few meters distance, stepped forward to rummage in the bag and quickly found the core and held it up.

  “What’s your position in the church?” Michael asked the preacher.

  “I am Bishop of the East.”

  “Who are the other leaders?”

  “There is a Bishop of the West and then there is the Evangelist of Energy, who communes with Energy directly and conveys its wishes.”

  “Who decided to kill the leader of the Protectorate?”

  “The Evangelist himself—the Energy told him that an evangelist of the systems needed to be eliminated on the path to true freedom.”

  “Where is the Evangelist?”

  “He and his wife, the Bishop of the West, are living in St. Mary’s church. Will you let me go?”

  Michael hesitated for a second. With the dungeon core there was no way not to tell the boss about this excursion. He would be grateful but disappointed.

  “Swear a system oath to leave the area, never to take action against the Protectorate or any of its citizens and especially its leader Ben,” he ground out.

  “Never! I would …”

  Before the preacher could finish his tirade, he was dead.

  Michael had given him a chance against his better judgment, and he had chosen not to take it. A decent outcome in his book.

  Joe handed him the dungeon core, which Michael stowed it away. He had a rough idea where St. Mary’s was. He activated [Hunt in the Dark] and confirmed the direction of their target.

  It was time to finish this.

  ***

  Michael stood in a closet that had probably held a bishop’s clothes up until a couple of months ago.

  Now it was filled with treasures— or at least with what the current—or rather former—owners deemed treasures.

  Michael was only interested in the energy cores that were neatly stacked on one shelf. In total he counted 30. That should help build a few apartments, or whatever the council chose to do with them. He packed them away and ignored the cash in a currency nobody cared about anymore and some jewelry and trinkets that would just weigh him down on the way back to the Protectorate.

  He returned to the adjacent bedroom, where two bodies lay on the bed and Joe and the others waited.

  A notification waited for him to be opened. It had appeared after the Evangelist and the Bishop had died. Both had declined the offer to swear a system oath. The three bodyguards in the building had offered no meaningful resistance.

  Overall, this excursion had been easy. Whether it was successful was for others to judge. It was enough for him that [Hunt in the Dark] did not offer a sense of powerful enemies nearby.

  Having checked the room once more, he finally opened the notification.

  Congratulations! You have completed a hidden mission in alignment with your Path, your position in the Protectorate, and the systems’ objectives: You defended the [Knight Protector] from a threat before it escalated. As a reward you gain [Pillar of the Protectorate] — Select an attribute, it is increased by 10%. Special — Path Alignment: Positive

  ***

  Ben sat in his office when he was alerted by the faint rumbling from the plaza he usually only felt when he added to the settlement’s infrastructure. He got up to the window and saw how a small obelisk rose from the ground. It stood half a meter tall and was about 75 centimeters away from the Protectorate Pillar. It was from the same white marble as the rest of the settlement and shaped like the Protectorate Pillar, the only exception being that it lacked a golden tip.

  He noticed a notification blinking blue and gold in his vision.

  Congratulations! A [Pillar of the Protectorate] has risen!

  For each pillar, gain 10% more Settlement Credits at the end of each month.

  Once you have five [Pillars] you can name an heir, ensuring that the Protectorate does not fail with your death. Systems can decline the heir. [Pillars] need to be Tier 2 and complete hidden missions issued by Meta and/or Mesa.

  Once per tier you can pull on the strength of all your [Pillars], doing so will grant you a significant boost in attributes for a day; the [Pillars] will be significantly weakened for a long time, permanent damage is possible.

  Good luck!

  Ben was stunned, at a loss as to what had happened.

  He reached out to the rest of his team, all but Michael being in range, and asked them whether anything on their end had happened, which they all declined.

  He messaged Adam, who took a moment to reply with the suggestion to check his Settlement Interface.

  Ben berated himself for not having done that right away. He opened it and found a new tab ‘Pillars of the Protectorate,’ which held a single entry: Michael.