The Forgotten Legacy

As soon as Eric had said that they would be here in about a week he decided against going in to any of the dungeons, what he did do was search each mountain and find the dungeons, only managing to find two of them before he was contacted nearly a week to the day later.

‘Hey Shaun, we see the walls. Where do we get in?’ Shaun had been waiting for this message, practically counting down the days until they arrived. It had been a long time since he had seen them and he was excited to be able to drop all pretences and say hello. That and he was more than ready to get a move on with the dungeons.

‘Keep moving to the wall, I will meet you there.’ It was an easy enough job to follow the direction of the stone and get to the wall closest to where they would approach. It still took him some time to cover the distance from where he was to the wall but that also gave them time to actually get there.

By the time he got to the wall, standing atop the walkway that looped around the entire area, he looked down and saw that they had beaten him there. He didn’t delay in jumping off of the wall and landing on the ground next to them. They saw him coming so he didn’t feel the need to announce his presence. Along with Viv and Eric there was three other people with them, all looking tired.

“Its good to see you guys. I guess I should say welcome.” Eric came up to him first and gave him a hug. The others gave him wary looks but each gave him a dip of their head to show their respect.

“This is Jas, Will and Izzy. We trust them with what we need to do here. They have all sworn themselves to me.” Viv said noticing the look that Shaun gave them.

“Good, we have lots to do. You ready to go? I can show you the plan first and then we can head to one of the dungeons and get started.”

“Shaun, how are we supposed to get over the wall? You didn’t make a gate, did you?” Eric questioned him with a raised eyebrow, clearly already knowing the answer to the question and finding the entire situation comical.

“No….I didn’t. Wasn’t exactly planning for company here when I built it.” He gave them all a look before coming up with a solution. “Guess I will give you all a ride then.” Before they could object he tightened the air all around them, binding them all together with hardened air and took off into the air himself, dragging the others with him. It was a strain and thankfully he wouldn’t need to do this often. Eric chuckled and Viv an indignant huff, the other three were not expecting to be suddenly lifted into he air and the noises they made were beyond entertaining to hear.

When they landed on the other side of the wall none of them were too steady on their feet. “A bit of warning next time, please.”

“Sure, or maybe learn to fly. Come on I will take you too where the others are and we can stop by the replica so you can see what needs to be done first.”

With how tired the others were Shaun didn’t push them to move that quickly. It took a good few hours until they arrived at the houses where he introduced everyone. As soon as they arrived they were offered food and water and a place to rest which they all agreed to. They asked a lot of questions on Viv, specifically around what changes they were going to bring and if they would have to move. Shaun didn’t get involved with the conversation as he knew Viv would take care of them.

Eventually he told Viv it was time to get moving, she agreed to follow him although she looked like she could sleep for a day before having the energy to do so. Eric followed them as well as the other three. When they made it to the replica they found Jeff and his team working hard at battling down the last ward, although failing miserably at it. They were all drenched in sweat but still giving it their all. They stopped training when Shaun approached with the others and after some quick introduction he got down to business.

“This is what I am going to put in place, the replica shows the walls and all the gems represent the settlement crystals. All those lines and runes are going to need to be terraformed into the areas and connected up. The issue is when they are placed they cant be moved otherwise the protections fail.”

They all walked around it until out of nowhere Viv took out an arrow and powered up what looked to be one of her most powerful attacks and sent it flying at the ward. The arrow tried to pierce through but immediately the gems glowed and it came to a standstill in the air before dropping to the ground.

“So you plan to scale this but around the entire cluster?” After he told her that was the plan she started listing off changed. “We will need to make some changes, people will need to be let in and out of the walls. I think we will need four gates equally spaced out, can you do that?”

Shaun nodded at Viv and allowed himself through the ward and started to look at where the best place to make changes were. He found four places he could manage to change up without weakening the ward, but it did leave the gates mostly unprotected. He made some changes alterations to the doors so that when they were closed the ward would cover the area, but when opened it was mostly undefended. They watched him the entire time he made changes to the replica and when asked he pointed to where they had entered over the wall, making sure to put a gate very close to it. When he was done he saw Viv pull something out of her inventory and close her eyes and concentrate.

“She is contacting Xavier.” Eric said when he gave her a questioning look.

“Shaun,” Viv said, not moving or opening her eyes. “What kind of ward is it?”

“An Epic grade Convergence Ward.”

“How long until it is operational?”

“When I complete the E grade dungeons it will be able to be activated.”

“If you made all of the runes and lines that are on the ground into roads, will that work?”

The question threw him for a second but what she was saying made sense. “Only if we invest enough TE into it to make them conductive to mana and near indestructible. You won’t be able to use whatever material we make the roads out of for anything else otherwise it would screw the whole thing up.”

A few moment of silence followed before Viv spoke again. “Xavier said as long as you are confident in this succeeding it is worth the TE to invest into it. These types of wards are apparently near impenetrable as long as there is mana to sustain them. He also said that getting this up and working is a priority, you okay with that?”

“It was the next thing on my to do list after you got here.”

It took a little while longer before Viv opened her eyes and came back to herself, but when she did she smiled at him. “Xavier said he is disappointed, that you didn’t join us. Apparently, there is an open invitation to reconsider if you choose to. But for now, lets get started. Can we go to the dungeon closest to where everyone will be entering? We will start out there as once the rest of our people join we will want to get them settled pretty quickly.”

Rather than drop off the other three to rest they all moved together to get to the dungeon they had requested. They moved even slower now than they had before but it gave them time to properly catch up. They didn’t talk about anything too serious, just light conversation about their time since they last saw each other and what Shaun had been up to. They didn’t try to press him for more information on where he had gone and he didn’t offer any.

When they finally arrived they approached the dungeon. “I am only getting an option to enter the F grade dungeon, nothing else.” Viv looked at him. “You will need to give me permissions when we are done.”

“I know, like we agreed, you get full permissions when I claim all the E grade and then again when I claim the D grade. Let me know when you are ready for this.” She gave him the go ahead so he pulled up the options again.

**Current options available for F grade settlement:**

Current buildings available for placement.

Fully merge all claimed F grade dungeons (Can not be undone)

Place settlement crystal. (This can only be moved by the owner of the settled land)

Manage settlement and resources.

He picked the option to fully merge the F grade dungeons, when he did he felt the areas start to change and fully flow from one to the other, as if before they had been blocked off. The change could also be felt through the air, a rush of mana rushing in and then dispersing, increasing the overall mana density of the F grade area. As soon as the changes were done the option disappeared from the screen. “All done, now I need to place a settlement crystal. You happy for me to place it where it need to go for the wards?”

“Do it.”

When he selected the option to place the crystal he got the option to place all 15. Now that the area had been combined he had access to everything across all of the dungeons, not just the one. He was given access to the map, like he had previously, and checking his designs he placed all twelve of the crystals where they needed to go and confirmed his choices. He felt each of them fully form in seconds and start to pull in mana from the area, powering them up. The moment he placed the crystals he lost the ability to do any more changes, instead getting a message.

**Settlement crystals placed, please go to a crystal for more options**

Once he told the others they all started moving to the closest crystal. When they arrived he was someone shocked at the size of the thing. The crystal hovered in the air and was the size of him. It glowed a soft blue hummed with power. The moment he got close he got the options back.

**Current options available for F grade settlement:**

Current buildings available for placement.

Manage settlement and resources.

He chose the manage settlement and resources option and he was overwhelmed with the choices. He skimmed through most of it only paying attention to the ones he needed. The first was an option on mana storage. When he clicked into it he found that the crystal stored mana up to 10 million. It was low at the moment, only a quarter full, but it was slowly climbing. It would work perfectly for his ward. The next option he went into was one called settlement structure. In it he found the ability to appoint people into positions and to even hand over the settlement to someone else.

“At the moment I can make you a Sub Mayor, it gives you pretty much all the permissions I have outside of being able to take control of the area. Is that okay with you?” He asked Viv. When she agreed he made the choice and he now had her name as his Sub Mayor. “Can you access the screen now?”

Viv stepped forward and started looking through all of the options. “There is a lot more in here than I expected. Some of these buildings are expensive too.” He cleared his throat to get her back on track. “Sorry. Terrafroming now, right?”

Shaun went into the terraforming option, which he found would only work until the year is up, after that it all had to be done by hand. He asked Viv if he could see what he was doing on the map and when she confirmed he got to work. Making the adjustments to add the gates was easy, but putting in all of the engravings and rune work into the middle of the walls using a conductive material was much harder to manage. From there he put down the roads, needing to continuously upgrade the material used until he was happy with it. In the end, across the entire F grade area, including the changes to the wall. The cost was 1.8 million TE.

“That’s expensive. Really expensive. And that doesn’t even include the E grade areas.” Viv was hesitant when she saw the number, but for him he had more than enough and had already factored in needing to spend a lot of TE on getting this done.

“Its fine, I can cover this. Besides, if it all works out Xavier said I would be getting paid in coin for it. As long as you are happy and won’t be making any changes to it I will confirm.”

“Okay, do it. I will be able to spend time while its being created to plan out what needs to be done for all of the people that are coming. We have a lot of space here, and we ae going to need to have a real plan on how we want the cities here to be structured.” She nodded as she spoke, already onto her next task.

“Glad its you and not me.” Shaun accepted the changes and was informed that it would take about a week for all of the changes he had requested to be implemented. Viv groaned at the message but he just shrugged. He still needed to complete 5 E grade dungeons, that would take longer than the week just in travel time so he wasn’t to put out by it.

Viv decided to stay for a few hours to look through the options on the crystal, planning out all of the buildings and costs. After they made their way back to the houses for the night, every one of them wanting to get a good sleep before they really started getting into their plans for the next day. For Shaun his admin work was now done, tomorrow he planned to go to one of the E grade dungeons he had already found and get to work. He didn’t know what to expect from these dungeons, it could be a wave dungeon or something more complex. He had read that dungeon varied a lot and sometimes it could take days to complete one, even at E grade, especially if it involved traveling large distances. He was excited for it though, it had been too long since he really pushed his skills, and now that there was no one looking over his shoulder he could really take on higher level monsters and build up his levels.