“What are you thinking?” Loth asked after the marriage ceremony was over and all the gnomes returned to their bunkers, the groom pale as he was dragged off to an unfamiliar bunker by a gaggle of tiny…gnomettes?

“This could be a good Floor for a waystation.” Will said. “Nobody’s gonna stay in the 19^th Floor, because fuck that. There are no naturally spawning monsters, so if we can get the gnomes to work with us, it could be pretty safe.

“There’s the problem of no XP for whoever you make the lordling of this Floor,” Loth said.

Through whatever means, monsters had been entirely exterminated on this Floor. Will wasn’t sure if that was because the machines slaughtered them as soon as they formed, or if there was some fundamental change in the miasma of the Floor that prevented it.

Or some combination of both.

“I would think that just like the people who live here, whoever makes a home on this Floor would have to build their lives around the Key Site.” Will said. “If there are no monsters to earn Influence, they’ll just have to make some. Thankfully three of the four Keysites already have empty housing built around them.”

“For influence…Bugs on the Key Site?” Loth asked, prompting Will to nod.

There was no easier way to force a monster into an existence than to put some hapless animals on a Key site and flood their bodies with Miasma.

Farm that, and you could earn a trickle of Influence, even if the rest of the Floor didn’t have any monsters.

It takes eight thousand Influence to skip the 18^th and 19th^th Floors, but I would absolutely recommend doing so to anyone who wants to travel through these parts. If Will could establish a Lord on the relatively safe 17^th and 20^th Floors, he might be aqble to build a relay system that would allow him to travel back and forth without spending too much time. In exchange for a LOT of Influence.

Of course we can just tuck everyone away in Mason if we know both landing points are safe, lowering the overall price somewhat. Still expensive though, but not bad, considering Jorn will earn me plenty of Influence on other Floors and I can just pay the resident Lord beforehand.

For the first time in years, Will felt like a pioneer again, carving a path through the Tower that others could follow, albeit with the extra burden of being a Lord dragging on his momentum.

And there are our levels to think about, Will mused.

They hadn’t stopped to level since everyone hit level 70, mostly because the differences between levels wasn’t that big anymore, and also the 18^th, 19^th, and 20^th Floors were all unsuited to hunting monsters for one reason or another.

We’re going to need to keep our eyes open on the next few Floors.

The 20^th Floor meant the max achievable level was eighty, unless the pattern broke, which he wouldn’t be surprised to hear.

I’m not in a wicked rush. If the world ends, it ends, Will thought as he came to a decision.

“Let’s stay here until my cooldown on buying myself a door elapses. Let’s use that time to reset our Abby’s miasma tolerance, and make sure Mong and his bride don’t kill each other. I also want to see if there’s anyone willing to move into one of the empty bunkers and make a waystation for travellers.”

“Sammohan would be a good choice for that.” Loth said. “I’m sure there are materials on this Floor that are unique to it, and he’ll be eager to make a profit. If you give him free reign and he finds something valuable enough, some of his men might be persuaded to get off the Mason bus here to form a more permanent mine and waystation.”

Sammohan has several hundred men on his crew, a Lord unto himself in all but title.

Will snapped his fingers, pointing at Loth.

“Perfect. Make it so.”

Loth and Will broke off to their respective tasks. Will wanted to ensure the survival of these gnomes, because if there were dangers or secrets on this floor that might jeopardize long-term settlement, they would be the ones to know about it.

If he allowed them to go extinct, a vast wealth of knowledge would also be lost.

Will visited the Flock clan next, sitting down for a meeting with the clan head and his wife.

The gnome woman gave Will a searing gaze for ‘giving away her only son to monsters,’ but Will suspected that she was more upset about being forced to inscribe her own clan’s spell-tattoos on Mong’s wife, which would give the Juniper Clan the opportunity to decode them.

Funnily enough, Mong appeared to be getting along rather well with his new bride, since the two of them had a lot in common.

All’s well that ends well, I suppose, Will thought, ignoring the hateful gaze and manifesting a map of the nearby valleys, spreading them out on the table for the leader of the Flock clan to see.

Will highlighted the other bunkers and made them blink.

“From my scouting, these bunkers here are completely empty,” Will said, pointing at the other three. “The inhabitants died from one accident or another hundreds of years ago, and their automated defenses continued pummelling away at each other, but without orders to push an assault on the main bases, they’ve simply been slowly rotting away.

The valleys are filled with scavengable scrap that could benefit you and the Juniper clan-“ Mong’s father clicked his tongue at that. “Or should I say it will benefit your grandchildren?” Will said.

“…Damnit.”

“Only a few war machines are still being deployed, and we could easily cut them down and salvage them, but the hard part comes after that. Their bunker defenses, having never been assaulted, are in pristine condition.”

Will pointed out the two closest ones.

“I will help your clans crack open and loot these two bunkers.”

“What do you want?” The white-bearded little man said, squinting suspiciously at Will.

“After they are looted, I want one of these bunkers to be converted into an all-hydroponics production plant shared by the two remaining clans, and I want the other for my own uses. It will become a waystation for people like me to pass through without having to fight your people for it.” Will said.

“Share? The Juniper Clan is filled with nothing but venomous snakes, and we’d die before we shared a scrap of food with-“

“Your grandchildren.” Will reminded him.

“Damnit! Fine!”

Marriage diplomacy is the best, Will thought, suppressing a smile as the white-bearded gnome clutched his temples, seemingly at war with himself.

“You did say you would do any underhanded method to win the war.” Will said.

“But…But…this sucks!” The old man shouted. “We’re supposed to trample over their defenses with righteous fury and purge them so that the chosen ones can repopulate the world at the end of the Forever War. This is just…wrong.”

Will checked his map.

“If it makes you feel any better, they’re treating your son well, he’s enthusiastically carrying out his duties, and you can expect grandkids soon.”

The gnome blew out a breath that fluttered his beard.

“Yeah…fine. Whatever.”

Never thought I’d get to see an old man sulk like that, Will thought with a smile.

They drafted up a plan to raid the southernmost bunker first, using primarily Flock personnel, supplied by the Juniper Clan.

Will took Travis and Jorn, while Loth took Sammohan prospecting, looking for any resource deposits nearby that would make a good enough reason to build an outpost on this Floor.

When they came across the machines battling each other between the two bunkers, the response to their presence was anemic. There were only a handful of machines in working order and they did little more than turn and fire in their direction.

Travis sent illusions ahead to soak up their attacks, while Jorn unleashed a flood of powerful rams the size of buildings, who knocked the metal crabs over on their sides, rendering them helpless.

They disabled the remaining machines in short order and left some of Jorn’s watchdogs to keep an eye open for salvage machines who might try to snag some materials for their respective bunkers.

Once that was done, they turned their attention to the hard part: Cracking the bunker.

Like the other bunkers, this one had large cannons buried in the mountainside, but it also had hundreds of undeployed defensive machines.

Unlike the Flock clan, these unfortunate gnomes had died before they got the chance to scavenge their own defenses for parts. This meant that as soon as Will and company touched the bunker, it would erupt like a kicked beehive.

How best to crack it, then? Will thought, sitting outside the bunker and reviewing its map in his mind.

Like any other place within twenty miles, Will’s Map Ability automatically filled in the details, and so the interior of the bunker held no surprises for him.

It was just…a tough nut.

The bunker had some kind of shielding on the outside that conformed to the shape of the land, making it difficult to sneak his Phantom Hands in there without triggering the defenses.

On the inside, the hangar was lined with hundreds of machines of every kind, ready to spring to action at a moment’s notice.

So those are what those empty bays in the Flock hangars were supposed to have.

Will scanned the map of the base until he found the hangar doors, then used used Titan’s grasp through the map to flip the lever that operated the hangar bay doors.

The mountain in front of them began to creak open as the massive camouflaged door rolled up to reveal row after row of metal crabs and the tiny boxlike explosives, whining into the air as they had been roused from their slumber by the unplanned gate opening.

“Pull them out, Jorn. Don’t push into the base itself before you’ve cleared out the majority of the defenses.” Will reminded him.

“Why aren’t we trying to preserve the machines too?” Jorn asked. “Wouldn’t it be better to get them undamaged?”

“They’ve all gotta be completely scrapped,” Will said.

“Why?” Jorn asked.

“Booby traps. They might explode if they realize they’re being stolen, or carry other nasty surprises. Best to melt them down completely and reforge them, even at a slight loss. Or at least that’s what the old man told me.” Will explained.

“Makes sense to me.” Jorn said, pulling a couple bone totems out of their sheaths. In a matter of seconds a wave of blade-limbed lizards hopped forward like a phalanx, smashing into the defensive machines before pulling back.

This seemed to impress the combat-wizard gnomes afforded Will by the two clans, who murmured appreciatively to each other, giving Jorn respectful gazes.

Will found that amusing, because it followed the age-old rule of people granting more respect to things they could see.

They could see what made Jorn powerful: An army of monsters deployed at the drop of a hat. They could not see what made Will so dangerous, so they were uneasy around him, waffling between fear and disbelief that he was strong enough to force a compromise between the two remaining clans.

The machines, without an intelligence to guide them, simply followed the blade lizards forward, marching in lockstep as they drove Jorn’s summons back.

“You’re up.” Will said to Mong’s father once the machines had been sufficiently drawn out by Jorn’s retreat They were extended like a turtle’s neck drawn out of it’s shell, and just as vulnerable.

I never got Mong’s dad’s name. I probably should’ve.

“Take ‘em in the side!” Mong’s dad shouted, leading the gnomes up and over the berm, catching the machines in the side and dealing a devastating amount of damage.

Will watched in fascination as the gnomes channeled charge through their tattoos, which resulted in Abilities being fired off by the dozen, melting, freezing and exploding the machines before they even had the chance to turn their cannons towards the new threat.

In a matter of minutes, it was over, and Will only had the stationary internal defenses to deal with.

Will made sure to take sketches of all the variety of spell-tattoos on display.

I think it’s about time I give them a taste of why I’m Jorn’s boss.

“Alright, everyone form up behind me! Will shouted once they caught their breath. “I’ll lead the capture team to the Miasma converter!”

The gnomes fell in line behind him and Will marched at the head of the line into the ancient bunker.

Skeletons lay where they had dropped who knew how many years ago, weapons strewn around them and brown stains on the walls where they had seemingly gone mad and killed each other.

As he walked, Will kept a close eye on the map of their surroundings, noting several buried turrets and magical traps designed to catch intruders.

As they approached, Will used his Phantom Hands to wrench the turrets out of the ceiling, crush them and tear them away from their source of ammunition, leaving behind sparking pits in the ceiling above.

Will walked through the shower of sparks without missing a beat, the gnome combat-wizards clustering in behind him, watching the bunker’s robust defenses be torn apart by an unimaginably powerful invisible force.

They still couldn’t see what made Will dangerous…but they accepted it.

By the time they reached the Miasma converter, the whispered comments about why they should be listening to a foreigner had died down entirely.

He paused in front of the miasma converter while the Flock clan codebreakers flooded past him and took their places on various stations around the Key Site, attempting to seize control of the entire bunker.

Will’s gaze took in the miasma converter even as he reviewed it in his Map, which allowed him to look inside the machine.

On the outside, it looked like a massive metal cylinder, much like a distiller.

On the inside, it had multiple doughnut-shaped rings filled with metal fluid, much like mercury in appearance.

The silvery metal liquid sloshed around inside the machine seemingly heated by the beam of concentrated miasma passing through it, and cooled by the lower-concentration miasma outside the beam, the circulation of which drove a pump of some kind that…

Creates Charge! Will thought, blinking in surprise.

It was pumping both Charge and refined miasma out through waist-thick pipes in the bottom of the machine, and that was what powered the entire base.

Taking a sketch. Sammohan definitely needs to get me some of this.

I wonder if we could build a facility like this inside of Mason. Actually, in order to do that, we would need a Key Site inside him.

I wonder how a Key Site works?

Will turned his attention on the map towards the Key Site below the miasma converter and saw nothing but a black void in the shape of a pyramid.

Unhelpful. Will thought, frowning. The System seemed to be censoring Will’s view.