"This manor is huge."
"I cannot believe you secured all of this for our headquarters. There is so much land."
Rune laughed softly, already knowing what waited for them inside. The group made their way up the path to the main building, footsteps echoing as Rune pushed open the ornate double doors.
The interior was impressive.
Stone walls accented with marble trim. A wide central hall opened up before them, curved staircases sweeping upward along the sides. Light spilled in through tall windows, casting long reflections across the polished floor.
Then Carl noticed. There was nothing in it.
No tables. No chairs. No rugs. No beds.
The space was completely bare.
"Um, sir," Carl said carefully, "is this place furnished at all?"
Rune shook his head. "Nope. Not a single item."
Carl's shoulders sagged.
"That is your first job," Rune continued easily. "I am transferring you some merits. You are in charge of setting this place up."
He took Carl's hand and completed the transfer.
10,000 merits.
Carl froze.
That amount alone was more than most people saw in weeks of work.
"I am guessing no one wants to sleep on the floor," Rune said. "Figure it out so everyone has proper rooms. If you need to, convert one of the outbuildings into a bunkhouse. Just make it comfortable."
He paused, thinking.
"Oh. Go to this location too. I know a woodworker there. I am not sure if she makes furniture along with weapons, but it would not hurt to ask."
Rune passed Carl the information for Elizabeth's and William's shops.
Rosa's eyes lit up as she took in the hall again, excitement creeping into her voice.
"So," she asked, "what do you want the rest of us to do?"
"First things first," Rune said, lifting a hand. "This goes for all of you. Drop the sir. Drop the Immortal. Drop the goblin."
He looked around at them, expression steady.
"I am Rune. Just call me Rune."
A few shoulders eased at that.
"As for what I want you to do," he continued, "I want you to run the dungeon. But I want you to do it the way I did."
They listened closely now.
"Go in with the assumption that death is not an option. No more leaning on the temple like it is a safety net you can fall back on whenever things go wrong."
He paused, choosing his words.
"I want you to separate yourselves from that system. Learn how to grow on your own. That is the only way you find out what you are actually made of." His gaze sharpened slightly. "I do not care if it takes you weeks. Months. Even longer to clear the first floor. What matters is that you keep pushing forward."
Silence followed, not awkward, but thoughtful.
Chris turned and looked at the others. Rosa. Talik. Jenna. Hobbes.
They had not known each other before coming here. They had been strangers thrown into the same broken situation, surviving by sheer stubbornness. They had died together. Failed together. Kept standing back up together.
Now, for the first time since arriving in this world, Chris could see something else in their eyes.
Hope. Not borrowed. Not forced. Real.
Someone had finally given them a path forward. It was not an easy one, but it was theirs to walk.
Chris faced Rune again and nodded.
"Do not worry, Rune," he said. "We are ready to put in whatever effort it takes to secure our future."
He glanced back at the others, then returned his gaze.
"And in that, we are putting our trust in you."
Over the next few days, everyone threw themselves into the dungeon. Everyone except Carl.
Chris and his squad split their time between the spider side and the sentinel side, rotating paths and encounters until the patterns began to sink in. They focused on steady progress, learning spacing, timing, and restraint. More importantly, they learned what it meant to fight without leaning on death as an escape.
They moved carefully. Slower than most groups. But with purpose.
They had not reached either boss room yet, but progress was undeniable. Not one of them died. Injuries happened. Cuts and fractures and burns. The kind that forced them to stop and reassess instead of rushing ahead.
Rune pointed them toward Tessa for healing and made sure they understood the rules.
"Bring meat," he told them. "Good meat. Elves love meat."
Each day they came back more tired, more battered, and more confident. The dungeon stopped feeling like a place they were meant to throw themselves into blindly, and started feeling like something they could learn. Something they could overcome.
And for the first time since arriving in this world, they were doing it on their own terms.
Rumors began to spread through the city, the same way they had when Rune first arrived. People knew Chris and his group were not the same immortal Rune seemed to be. They knew their reputation. Weak. Desperate. The kind of people others expected to fail.
That was why it stood out.
They started seeing them come back from dungeon runs battered and exhausted, walking through town the same way Rune had. Bruised. Bandaged. Still standing.
People talked. They whispered about how none of them had died as they struggled. About how they kept going back every single day. About how they walked with a different kind of confidence now.
And, just like Rune before them, the city gave them a name.
The Relentless Goblins.
They took the name and ran with it.
The first squad of the newly formed Revelis faction was born, with Chris at its head. What had started as a handful of stranded people became something real, something others could point to. A group that went into the dungeon and came back standing.
Carl, meanwhile, had his own mountains to climb.
Furnishing an entire manor was no small task. Bedrooms. A bunkhouse. A room suitable for a faction leader. Offices. Kitchen equipment. Storage. All of it needed to be sorted quickly if the place was going to be livable rather than just impressive.
And that was only the first problem.
Carl had designated one of the outbuildings as a storehouse. Between Rune repeatedly clearing dungeon wings and the others farming materials at a steady pace, it was already filling faster than he had expected.
Ore. Webbing. Cores. Salvage.
Too much to move by hand.
He needed porters. People to haul goods from the headquarters to the Ledger and other buyers. The Ledger offered a transport service, but the cut was brutal. It would eat straight through their profits. There were hauling factions as well, groups that specialized in moving bulk goods, but Revelis was not large enough yet for those rates to make sense.
Carl stared at the numbers late into the night, ledgers spread out in front of him.
Resources were coming in faster than they could afford to move them.
And that meant, sooner rather than later, something was going to have to change.
Then Carl had an idea, but he was not sure Rune was going to like it. To him, it was the only thing that both fit the idea behind the creation of Revelis and one that would work.
Rune was making preparations to finally try and tackle the 4th floor. The faction was set up, the new recruits were working well and progressing, and Rune needed to as well. Carl just had one more thing, but he needed Rune to make it happen.
"Rune! I have an idea on how to sort out our porter problem, but it needs you specifically."
"Oh? What do you need me to do?"
"I need you to go speak with some people and recruit them. Bring them into the faction, or at the very least bring them into the district and give them the job of being your porters. If you pay them, they should come."
"Who do you have in mind?"
In the city of Precipice, in this world built on war and the endless push toward the Apex, many people have children and then leave them behind.
Watching a child grow to 20 and then stop aging unsettled some. Others simply did not want the burden. So they left.
Those abandoned children gathered in one of the city's empty districts, clustering together in buildings and forgotten streets. Most people avoided the area entirely.
In a world where merits were survival, those kids had no way to earn them.
They starved. And starving was not an end.
They would die, revive with full stomachs, and then starve again.
Every day. Over and over.
All they could do was endure it.
Because of that, people avoided them even more. Called them strange. Broken. Unhinged. It was easier to pretend they did not exist than to face what that kind of existence did to a person.
Rune hearing about it for the first time, took it personally.
Those same whispers, the same looks, the same quiet fear and dismissal were what had followed him since the day he arrived. And instead of breaking him, they had driven him forward.
He could not ignore that parallel.
At the very least, he would go and meet them.
He would give them a choice to live a different way.