Ben reached out to the dungeon portal and a blue notification appeared in his vision.

  Congratulations on reaching a Tier 2 dungeon, which operate differently from Tier 1 dungeons.

  Instead of a defined end, Tier 2 dungeons usually incentivize the gathering of points that are gained for defeating Energy-born creatures, achieving sub-missions, and/or clearing nodes.

  Rewards are gained when leaving a dungeon based on the achieved number of points relative to the party’s strength.

  Leaderboards keep track of points gained and achieving the top position awards additional rewards.

  Note: as [Knight Protector] you can gain access to the dungeon core if you achieve 1,000 points during a single run.

  He nodded to himself. That was indeed quite a significant change from what they had experienced so far.

  Despite the variance in creatures and settings, the Tier 1 dungeons had a high degree of similarity.

  It seemed like the training wheels were now coming off. Excited to learn the specifics of the dungeon ahead of him, he touched the portal.

  You are about to enter a dungeon.

  Theme: The Frozen Wasteland

  Tier: 2

  Min / Max party size: Up to 4 parties at the same time; max 6 members per party

  Difficulty: T2.1-T2.3 Attention! Dungeon has broken, expect significantly increased difficulty level

  Points required to prevent break for a day: 100

  Leaderboard record: 0

  Again, quite a few changes.

  There was no indication of instances. Together with the unlimited access, that likely meant that multiple teams could enter at the same time.

  The difficulty was referencing the relative strength assessment from the guild hall. It therefore was at the lower to mid-tier of Tier 2. He was interested to see how the range of difficulty would work, given that there were no levels. The elephant in the room was that the overflow of Energy likely had shifted the difficulty higher.

  Ben stepped back and indicated to the others to go through this as well so that they all had the same understanding of what would await them.

  He was very tempted to look into the dungeon, but he was sure that this would be a death sentence for him and the team.

  “What does the difficulty mean?” Akira asked.

  None of the others had been with Ben when he visited the guild hall for the first time, so they didn’t know either.

  Ben explained the logic as they slowly made their way back.

  “So we should do the assessment when we are back at home?” Anne asked.

  Ben shrugged. “Sure. But I am fairly sure that everyone in the team is stronger than the average. Which means that we should have a team strength of T2.2 or higher. But we certainly need to prepare well before we make the attempt to clear this place out.”

  “Winter clothes,” Jamal said.

  Ben chuckled. “Probably that as well.”

  They were slow—and Ben was the cause.

  Jamal stopped and went through some exaggerated stretching, then patted his shoulders. “Come on, boss. Hop on. Like in the bad old times.”

  Ben stared at his friend and remembered the times when he had returned from the hospital. They had trained hard to get Ben back on his feet and sometimes, when they had overdone it and Ben really couldn’t go any further, Jamal had carried him home.

  “Are you sure? I think I have gained quite a bit of mass…”

  “I have gained quite a bit of strength as well. Get to it, boss.”

  Ben had hoped to never be in that situation again but he swallowed his pride, knowing that they would not make it home in a reasonable time with the speed he could currently walk at.

  Jamal bent his knees a bit and Ben slung his arms around his neck and Jamal grabbed his legs until Ben could ride piggyback.

  “I’ll report to boss mom how lazy you have become now that she isn’t around.”

  “I know you will, Jamal, I know you will.”

  They were clearly a lot slower than in the morning with everyone being tired and carrying their loot as well, but they eventually made it.

  There were a couple of minor altercations that the team could handle easily without Ben—the Tier 1 enemies felt almost trivial after the day they had had—but they made it home shortly before midnight.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Ben had insisted on walking the final stretch so that nobody in town would think him severely hurt, whether that was pride or a reasonable concern for morale, he did not know.

  The moment they entered the settlement he made for his apartment, went to bed, and did not wake up until late morning the next day.

  ***

  Ben woke up and was still weak as a kitten, but after a long shower he at least felt much better—being out of the stressful environment up on the mountain also helped.

  His wounds had all already healed on their way back from the dungeon portal, anyway.

  After getting dressed, he stepped towards his windows overlooking the plaza.

  He saw quite a few protectors moving in and out of the Guild Hall and one team went to a dungeon portal where they held a golden emblem against the gate, which then turned into the familiar golden hue through which they stepped.

  Apparently, his mother had already established some new processes. He nodded to himself. As much as he enjoyed having her with him, she could make a big difference focusing on her role as councilor and Guild Master.

  He still hadn’t taken a tour through the Academy main building, where his gaze swept next. It would still have to wait a bit longer.

  First, breakfast.

  He tried to move normally as he strode across the plaza towards the inn, which was relatively empty given how late it was already.

  Having somehow heard about his whereabouts, Adam joined him after a few minutes.

  “I heard I have a shot at beating you in arm wrestling!” Adam grinned, but Ben saw the concern in his friend’s face.

  “Let’s do it. Unfortunately, I am a bit busy for the next few hours, but how about tonight, before dinner?”

  “Ah, well, maybe not. I am comfortable in the knowledge that I could beat you—no need to prove it…”

  “Sure,” Ben chuckled. “How are things here?”

  “All good. Your mother already had all the protectors go through the assessment and the systems have produced a mission for saving two villages yesterday. We got 70 new citizens.”

  Ben raised his eyebrows. “Wow, that is great. Things are moving. I also brought you something.”

  He pulled out two Tier 2 cores.

  “It seems to have been a profitable trip. I just saw some hides earlier. This will help.”

  “Oh, wait. I forgot something,” Ben pulled out two more Tier 2 cores.

  “Four. That will make allocation much easier if we want to give them to crafters!”

  “Now that I think about it, wait!” Two more cores were added to the table.

  Adam looked at him with a frown. “Are you having fun?”

  “I am!”

  “How many?”

  Ben tilted his head thoughtfully. “Now that you ask, I think there were a few more…”

  He pulled out a total of 34 Tier 2 cores.

  Adam was speechless.

  At least for a moment.

  “34 Tier 2 cores equals 102 Tier 1 cores! That is more than fifty thousand Credits in a single day.” He looked at Ben seriously now. “Was the price too high? Did you overdo it?”

  Ben shook his shoulders slightly. “Maybe. But that was because of the dungeon breaks. I hope that the dungeon itself will be more manageable. But we will have to see. I don’t know how Tier 2 dungeons work. But I believe that it will be doable, otherwise the systems wouldn’t have given us the mission to do it now.”

  Adam nodded. “I believe you, but you have to be careful, ok?”

  Ben held out his hand for a fist bump. “I promise.”

  They talked for a while longer before Adam left. Ben asked for one more thing. “We learned yesterday that we need to improve our gear. Can you please inform Marcus, Carter, and whoever else that we need to accelerate the production of Tier 2 armor with the hides we brought back yesterday. It does not need to be fancy, I suspect that we will get more material in the dungeon itself, but as a stop-gap measure we need something that helps us stay alive.

  “We also need some of that money,” he pointed towards the Tier 2 cores, “to invest into the System Store. For example, Jamal needs a Tier 2 shield…”

  Adam nodded. “Sure. Let me talk with them and I’ll also tell Jamal and the others that they should let me know what they need so that I can buy it for them.”

  “Great, thanks.” Then he took away one of the cores. “This one is for Hercules.”

  “Your eagle?!” Adam seemed slightly exasperated by that notion.

  Ben nodded. “Yes, he needs to grow into a big boy.”

  Adam just laughed and left Ben to finish his expansive breakfast.

  ***

  Ben walked over to the Guild Hall.

  Two clerks were working on the reception desk and several protectors were looking around.

  The mission board was active and it looked like one mission was listed under the Tier 1 column.

  Ben asked one of the clerks for directions to find his mother and was pointed towards a door in the back that led to a staircase.

  Her new office was on the top floor of the building, overlooking the plaza, just like his, but a bit smaller. It was decorated with some of the family photos that she had had in their small old office from before Arrival Day.

  The conference table in the office held a map of the Protectorate, similar to his but apparently a bit more focused on the defensiveness of their settlement.

  Allison sat behind her desk and was looking at a dynamic screen on one wall that listed Protectors by their strength assessment.

  Ben was on top but there were quite a few clearly getting close to Tier 2. The rest of Ben’s team had not gone through the assessment yet.

  “How are things going, mom?”

  “Good, son, very good. People are very excited about the opportunity to run missions. I am also pretty sure that I will want to establish a point system. That way we can make sure that the missions don’t just go to whoever comes first, but to those that do some of the boring or unpleasant work like guard shifts etc.”

  “That makes sense to me. My suspicion is that things will get even more interesting once we have Tier 2 dungeons integrated into our infrastructure.”

  He went on to explain what they had learned so far and was honest about the troubles they had faced as well.

  “The Tier 2 area is no joke. This was just the entry to the first of four dungeons up there.”

  “Should we launch an expedition?”

  Ben thought about it. It was tempting to get the area cleaned up once and for all. But then he remembered the names on their Wall of Heroes from the Draknik battle.

  The Tier 1 Protectors would suffer enormously, and they would likely have casualties. No—better to go through this slowly and limit it to those already in Tier 2.

  “Maybe once there are a couple of teams on Tier 2, for now it would be too dangerous.”

  After catching up for a few more minutes, Ben was outside again and sent his emotions out to Hercules.

  The big bird had been resting on top of the HQ and came flying down, landing on one of the dungeon portals.

  Ben held up the Tier 2 core he had reserved for his [Evolved Bond]. Hercules looked at the core with much more greed than on the day before. He picked it up from Ben’s hand with his long, powerful beak, but instead of swallowing it right away he flew back up to the roof, apparently wanting to make sure that he was undisturbed while he digested it, which was fine by Ben.

  He would spend the rest of the day training and incorporating some of his recent learnings into his fighting style and hopefully also making some progress on the Mind Triune.

  The next day they would return to the Frozen Wasteland to attack their first Tier 2 dungeon.