Nightmare Realm Summoner

Alex didn't let himself get too excited about just how significant the Embassy's benefits were. Having an entire extra town to upgrade and interface with — one that was situated in the Mirrorlands — was huge. But they still had a Region Boss level monster that was going to be showing up at their doorstop within a few days at the longest… and their town didn't even have walls. Still, it was a chance. That was a fair bit more than what they'd been working with before.

"We don't have much more time to prepare before the Region Boss arrives, so we need to maximize our time as much as possible," Alex said. "Is there anything else we should know about the Mirrorlands version of the town?"

Claire shook her head. "I don't think so. Nothing that I'm aware of, at least."

"Is this going to be enough?" Anna asked from within the crowd. She shifted nervously. "To beat the Region Boss? It sounds like a lot… but the other cities I've seen have looked a lot better defended. Not that I'm complaining, of course. This is more than we ever could have hoped for. We're all thankful for that. I—"

"It's fine," Alex said through a chuckle. "There's nothing wrong with not wanting to put up a good fight. Getting this far has been a lot of work. It would really suck if we just got squished the moment the fight with the boss started."

"I think I'm a little more concerned about dying," Aaron said, clearing his throat. "I couldn't care less how we win the fight."

"We've all got our motivations," Alex said with a wave of his hand. "The honest gist of it is we've got a shot at winning this, but it definitely won't come easily."

"There's a way for us to temporarily swap this town with one in another location," Claire added. "One with different buildings, including one that will obscure the town with mist while confusing monsters that try to get into it. It isn't exactly a full defense, but it'll make it a lot harder for the Region Boss to get too close."

"Do we have a good way to actually damage it? If it's even stronger than the Field Boss, it might have flight or something," Aaron said. "Couldn't it fly out of range of the mist and blow us up from there?"

"I mean, technically possible," Alex allowed. "The Region Boss is definitely going to be powerful, but I think that might be a bit of overestimation. The System isn't going to throw enemies that can destroy entire towns at this point. A challenge like that isn't surmountable. I'd expect its attacks to be blowing buildings up more than entire cities."

"That… somehow isn't as reassuring as I was hoping it would be," Aaron said with a small frown. "Do we have a way to actually damage something like that?"

Alex's thoughts drifted to the weapons his newest ability upgrade had earned him, not to mention how much stronger all of his monsters had gotten in recent times. His lips twitched in a mixture of excitement and amusement.

"Yeah, I'd say we've got a way to attack it. If I have enough time, I can take the monster out. Claire could probably do some serious damage as well. The bigger issue will be if we don't get an opportunity to attack."

"Either way, I don't think it's something we should waste energy worrying about right now," Claire said, pursing her lips and tapping a foot on the ground. "This isn't the time for theory. It's the time for action. Now that we've actually got a home base, we need to begin preparing again. Training in the Mirrorlands, setting up what battlements and defenses we can get, everything. That goes for Alex and I as well. The stronger we can get before the Region Boss arrives, the more chance that we minimize losses."

"What should we do to help?" one of the campers asked. It was an elderly man, one of those who hadn't been healthy enough to train in the Mirrorlands. "Anything would be better than just sitting around and waiting for the end. Should we collect wood to make stakes?"

Claire smiled. "Well, if you're asking…"

***

A few minutes later, every spare set of hands in the camp was at work. Claire had everyone doing something, whether it was collecting resources or mapping out the area around them to have a better understanding of where people could be sent with the Warp Shifter.

And, speaking of which, Alex and Claire had spent a fair amount of time grilling Rhyss over the abilities of the town buildings. The answers had been largely satisfactory but not particularly helpful and could be boiled down to the buildings are intuitive and will work.

There was one major drawback that the advisor made them aware of. The buildings didn't break the laws of reality. Everything still took energy, and the town was no exception to that. Since Alex didn't have any proper energy-gathering sources such as the Black Gate, that power would have to come from the people operating the buildings… and it wasn't going to be an insignificant amount.

With the relatively low level of strength the average person in the camp had, they would have to keep nearly five or six people aside just to operate the Warp Shifter properly during the fight. And, even doing that, it probably wouldn't last more than ten or twenty minutes of constant uptime.

That wasn't the end of the world since many of the campers were nowhere near skilled enough to make a real difference in the fight, but it was just another potential problem they had to be aware of. If monsters actually managed to get into the town or injure the people working the buildings, everything would collapse.

But, like Claire had said, they couldn't afford to just sit around theorizing. What mattered was that they had the beginnings of a strategy. None of them knew just how much time they had before the Region Boss' full awakening. Alex could still feel that their fight was getting closer, but it was far from an exact science.

He wasn't about to waste a single second of time before then. While Alex wanted to get in all the training he could, there was one thing that he planned to do before anything else. Something that he'd been waiting so long for that a part of him wondered if it was even still possible.

All the way back in Towntown, there was someone waiting for him. A merchant by the name of Finley, and Alex's last trick to cash in. He was sitting on 80 credits. Credits that Finley desperately needed.

If the merchant was still there, Alex was confident he could get some huge benefits for the town that would give them the final edge they needed. There wasn't going to be anything he could buy that could guarantee a win, but every single thing helped.

He just had to figure out how to actually get back to Finley.
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"Where," Alex asked Rhyss, glancing around with a furrowed brow. "Is our Starstone thing? Aren't we supposed to have a way to teleport to the other towns and the like?"

"That doesn't come for free," Rhyss said. "Any towns that are built after Initialization need to create it themselves."

You have to be fucking kidding me. I mean, I guess that makes sense. It would be weird if we just randomly got a building popping into existence without doing anything for it, but still. Seriously?

"And how do we do that? Do we have to use a Boon to make every single building?"

"No, of course not. You need an engineer," Rhyss said with a shake of his head. His lone eye blinked. "Someone whose Class is focused on creating magical structures. Gaining access to the Astral Map isn't actually too—"

"Astral map?" Alex interrupted. "What's that?"

"What you think of teleportation is actually using an invisible set of energy leylines that flow through the world. The more magical power in a location, the more energy is pulled to that direction and the easier it is to establish a connection with the rest of the network. There are obviously exceptions, such as locations with intentional defenses, but you get the gist of it. Starstones are objects that have immense energy stored within them. They almost instantly connect to the Astral Map."

"I see," Alex said with a frown. "So if we could get one of those, we could teleport to Towntown?"

"Starstones can only connect to the closest major point on their own. I suspect Towntown is a minor town rather than a Hub city, so no. But if you were to make a building that harnessed a Starstone or a different power source to access the Astral Map, then yes. You would be able to establish a two-way connection to this location."

"What else would work as a power source?" Claire asked. "And do you know where we could get one?"

Rhyss chuckled. "No. My assistance is limited entirely to buildings and advice directly related to the town. I cannot answer all of your questions, but energy sources are energy sources. Anything that gathers power would hypothetically function as a source. You would need a suitable individual to create the building once you had the source as well."

"I don't suppose anyone in the town is an Engineer?" Alex asked.

Claire shook her head. "I already asked around. All combat classes or things like baking."

"We have a baker?" Alex's eyes lit up. "Fresh baked bread. That sounds fucking incredible. Can we—"

"And no bakery. He can't do anything right now."

"Figures," Alex grumbled. "But if we survive this shit, the first building I'm having constructed after the fight is a bakery. I want bread."

"If you want bread, then you better think of what might work as a power source and who can build that building for us," Claire said, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "Because I'm stumped. Maybe we could grow magical plants strong enough to use as fuel?"

"Would still need someone to build the thing, and that'll definitely take too long," Alex said with a shake of his head. "We need something now. Something that already exists. You know, we could always try to go through Valley Ford. We could sneak in and use their Starstone."

"Not a bad idea, but it means we'd have to teleport back to Valley Ford as well," Claire pointed out. "That would be pretty dangerous. Invictus knows what we look like. Even if most people think we're dead, the chances of getting caught are pretty high… and I don't think we want to try to fight Invictus inside his town. Getting into it wouldn't be too hard, but actually using the Starstone would bring a lot more attention onto us."

"True," Alex agreed with a frown. They would definitely lose if they tried to go up against Invictus when he could use Valley Ford's powers against them. He'd seen what the town's water attacks could do to an entire horde of monsters.

Something tickled the back of his mind. A thoughtful look crossed over his features.

"What is it?" Claire asked. "Do you have an idea?"

"Well, we could probably try to recruit an engineer from Valley Ford. That means we just have to find a power source, right?"

Claire nodded.

"What about that big silver thing in the Mirrorlands?"

The Dhampir's eyes widened. "The Disruptor? But where are we… oh, bleed me. You want to steal Valley Ford's Disruptor from the Mirrorlands?"

"I mean, it looks like a giant spaceship. Surely it's got some form of power source… and it isn't like there's anyone in the Mirrorlands to protect it. We can even get some training in by fighting monsters on the way over to it. Win-win."

Claire started to laugh. "That seems like a fair point. The Disruptor definitely has energy of some sort. Stealing right from the Great Tide Family after yanking the Town Token out from under their noses… now that sounds fun. But isn't Valley Ford a bit of a trip?"

"It is the normal way," Alex confirmed with a nod. "But distance isn't exactly one to one in the Mirrorlands. The only things that get fully reflected over are high-magic areas. I've never actually measured, but I'm sure that means we should be able to cover ground faster there."

"Or slower, if something else showed up between us."

"Or that," Alex admitted. "Only one way to find out. It's not like we have another way to get an engineer or a power source right now. If it takes too long, we can just turn back and we'll at least have gotten some training from fighting monsters along the way."

Claire pondered over his words for a few moment before slowly starting to nod.

Rhyss said nothing. Either he didn't know enough about what they were talking about or their topic wasn't close enough to the town. It didn't matter. They had a plan.

Alex and Claire exchanged a grin.

"Let's do it."