Not Yet a King Without a Kingdom

His lone footsteps echoed in the sunlit stretch of the Eastern Wing. The sealed rooms, clearly marked by the smaller bricks that blocked their openings, alternated from right to left and back again until he reached the end. The first displayed its requirements in a more stylized edition of the old hologram:

EXPEDITION OFFICE
The central office to manage Adventurers (summons temporarily disconnected from, but still loyal to, their master), and their expeditions into known Kingdoms or simple barriers. As Adventurers, they can be converted back to normal summons in the Temple, or they can be sent out alone or in groups to hunt enemies, harvest materials, or carry out particular tasks in barriers or known Kingdoms, provided they have means to do so... and means to return.
Construction Cost: 2,000XP, $20,000
Construction Reward: +2 temple level, +3 levels to summon/dismiss

The implication of the room was almost enough for him to miss the change. There's no sacrifice option? Curious, John jumped to the garden on the other side of the plaza; there, too, the construction options had been limited to the one requiring only XP and cash. Did the temple's change limit my options...? Even if I wasn't going to use it, I'd hate to lose functions or possibilities...

He resumed his review of the eastern wing, checking if any room still had the choice left:

DOJO
Where new skills and abilities may be passed on to one's summons. The Dojo requires no attendant, but the summoner must spend the time with his summon to bestow a non-Gamer spell, ability, or style onto them, with higher level summons being more difficult to teach. Summons without mana who are taught magic will gain mana through the power of the Dojo.
Construction Cost: 3,000XP, $3,000
Construction Reward: +1 temple level, +1 cleric spirit

TRIAGE
A bare-minimum medical facility that can allow for some medical care for summoner and summon alike. Must be attended by at least one summon to function, and only by a select few types thereof. Can be upgraded to Clinic.
Construction Cost: 1,000XP, $18,000
Construction Reward: +1 temple level, +1 cleric spirit

None, though the indication that "select few types" could be clicked for more information gave him pause. He pressed it, and was treated to an idea he had only briefly considered:

Triage, Clinic, and Hospital all require angels, eudaemons, or similarly benevolent, celestial types of creatures to function correctly.

Angels...? Well, I guess if demons are real, but... do they live in the Abyss, too? Until now, John had assumed the Abyss, no matter how tied it seemed to people, bore at least some default assumption of evil or infernal qualities. Dark elves were murderers; moon elves were matriarchal genociders; even Captain Woofroot was originally determined to eat a helpless elf. Tara fused with some kind of hellfire, the Brightons fought evil from the Abyss... indeed, rare was the clue that the Abyss could hold anything but the worst. But where else would I find an angel...? More questions for the Brighton Estate... or for Tara, when the former fell short. He continued his review:

WORKSHOP
[Requires Craft and Alchemy.] Distinct from the Forge, the Workshop is used to create or modify summons instead of items. Construct summons can be crafted wholecloth by default, and additional knowledge and special materials can allow for the creation of living summons as well. Workshop also adds storage for created summons equal to 50% of the temple's normal capacity. This storage can be further improved with additional construction costs.
Construction Cost: 2,000XP, $30,000
Construction Reward: +1 temple level, +1 cleric spirit

WAR ROOM
[Requires Kingdom.] Requires at least one Attendant. Attendants become Officers, and each Officer is assigned up to one full platoon of a Kingdom's military, or the equivalent thereof. Officers enhance their commanded unit's abilities both passively and as direct authority figures under your command, and can project their orders from the War Room no matter where the platoon members are located. Officers may also be assigned non-military personnel duties, so long as the personnel are tied to the Kingdom.
Construction Cost: 10,000XP, $15,000
Construction Reward: +1 temple level, +1 cleric spirit

Learning Alchemy was now mandatory for two rooms, and he needed a Kingdom for a third... presuming he ever had a chance to acquire one. Presuming I'd even REALLY know what the Hell a Kingdom was, aside from what I've been told... Looking at the three rooms available, only two of which could even function, John started to see a hint of it: of the power that could be his, if he could manage to earn it. Gamer's brand meant most of his summons didn't even count against capacity; he could capture hundreds of summons, warriors or mages or whatever, each as strong or stronger than anyone in his school, and each completely subservient to him.

He could be a King with subjects loyal to a fault... if he only had a Kingdom to house them. A dark vision, or memory, stirred... but did not surface.

EXPEDITION OFFICE unlocked!
DOJO unlocked!
TRIAGE unlocked!
HARMONY GARDEN unlocked!
Summoner's Temple is now level 18!
Summon/Dismiss is now level 7! Summon/dismiss can now call up to four summons at once.

John was 8,000XP and $43,000 poorer, but he sighed with the relief of stats tick up. The three ghost-like attendants phased through the bricks even as they were not done peeling away to reveal their respective rooms, and flew down the hall, likely to help their beleaguered senior in restoring the bedroom. Tita and Woofroot both went into the garden after John as he looked it over: more a greenhouse than anything, the so-called garden hosted plants of obviously unearthly design. The first and most prevalent of them was a root that grew three feet out of the black soil, spotted orange on a green base and broken or disconnected at several sharp turns of its structure, held together seemingly by tiny bolts of electricity that shot between the severed halves. Upon the roots gnarled tip grew something hauntingly close to a smiling face, and around it, like a mane, grew bushes of blue leaves with veins that pulsed as if with blood. Among these manes, then, grew the tiny blueberries, the only evidence that this might be a plant at all, if they were truly blueberries. John plucked one experimentally, and the face sighed with relief.

Magical item: manaberry. Consume to regain 100mp. For anyone other than the Gamer, the same, but then half that much with each successive fruit eaten within an hour's time, rounded down. Any excess health is lost. Can be parted to divide its effect appropriately among multiple doses or consumers.

I'll have someone else pick these... John eyed the ecstatic expression of the plant, and its matching companions in the long row of soil in a raised potter, with just a bit of discomfort. He looked to the more familiar-looking tree, of the same coloration as the life-fruit plant in his sanctuary but far larger, reaching up from a patch of soil on the ground and touching the glass of the ceiling. A whole bounty of the peach-like fruit grew upon it, and he plucked one to get a better understanding of its properties.

Magical item: lifefruit. Consume to regain 100hp. For anyone other than the Gamer, the same, but then half that much with each successive fruit eaten within an hour's time, rounded down. Any excess health is lost. Can be parted to divide its effect appropriately among multiple doses or consumers.

Along with his manaberry, the lifefruit was stashed within its inventory, and this too would be more appropriately harvested by his idle summons. I wonder if the cleric spirits would take care of it...

Far away from John's thoughts, in his Sanctuary, the four cleric spirits buzzed angrily over the loudly snoring Tara, whose spread out limbs on the bed burned, and then re-burned the sheets where they rested as the spirits continuously repaired them.

The rest of the room was a series of empty pots of soil built into the ground or in planters, possibly for future expansion. Curious, he grabbed a pinch of the soil-like substance and analyzed it.

Magical item: summoner's soil. Capable of growing virtually any seed.

John considered it for a moment...

... No. I'm really in no position to try that out right now.

The other three rooms were far less impressive: the expedition office looked like a boring, if expensively-decorated, 19th-century trader's office, complete with hand-carved wooden furniture, quilled pens and parchments ready for recordkeeping, maps of the known world plastered on all three walls and a slowly rotating device that John mistook for eye candy on a credenza. Coming closer, he looked at its finer details: a rotating disk of stars, the center of which featured the sun and, presumably at its very center, the earth, around which the sun incorrectly rotated. From the centermost point of the tiny sphere of Earth, the only three-dimensional object and the axis for this spinning mini-galaxy or universe, were erected four axes of thin, glittering metal, reaching ever outward and balancing ever-larger panes of glass at equally spaced junctures, with each pane a different, prismatic color. The topmost pane, the ninth and the largest, was glowing white. John hoped analyzing it might reveal some more:

Impossible item: contemporary map of the Dream. This object is an accurate lie, and consists of dreams made real, and the real made illusory. The shuffling of feet might bear out more truths in paths than this, but it may suffice to ride dishonesty into the heart of truth, given the velocity of a bold con artist and the voracity of a Gamer. This map was never true, except when you made it so. Through its lens, your birth is predicted, and your is remembered.

A glint of silver. John peered up from the rotating star map and saw a tenth glass pane: it spun like a coin, perfectly round and floating over the ninth, square pane of glass beneath it. Its surface was blackened, and past this strange new portion of the "map" he looked at the actual map of Earth, upon which shimmered metallic lines that crisscrossed the nations and oceans in a chaotic pattern. As is natural habit, John's eyes drifted to his hometown... and noted that two of those silvery lines crossed over the United States, and seemingly perfectly on top of Springfield. A third line, the only one that seemed to move, inched closer to cross his hometown a third time-

The glass pane of black froze. A face appeared on its surface, and John remembered and forgot the visage in the same breath. A pain spiked in John's head so viciously as to screw his eyes shut while he staggered backwards, sitting unexpectedly on the low desk. When his eyes finally opened anew, the widget was still idly spinning... but the lines on the map were gone. John looked at the map, but earned no special notes of its properties. Again he looked at the spinning widget-

(Temple) Magical item: hypothesized map of the Kingdoms. This map will be automatically updated with Kingdoms as you visit them, and allow Adventurers to accurately target a previously visited Kingdom. Temple artifacts like these do not work outside of their implementing rooms.

John slowly stepped out of the office, one of the few chambers lacking a glass ceiling, and felt a sense of relief wash over him as he was back in the light of his temple proper. He didn't look back at the strange device, or even the office. Something unnerved him too greatly in there, though his mind refused to acknowledge what.

The Dojo seemed a cheat: it looked exactly like the Training Pit, but the dirt floor now bore padded mats, and the ring of emerald-studded rope was replaced with a painted line of grainy blue. Rubbing it with a finger, John realized it was something like sapphire imbedded into the mat, and received a popup explaining its mechanics.

Required: two entities possessing skills, spells, styles, or other abilities. Choose a compatible spell, skill, style, or ability possessed by one entity (master) to be taught to the other (student). This costs the student or the master a variable amount of XP or TP, split up as the temple owner chooses. The received skill, spell, or ability starts at level 1. Compatibility is based on the student’s level, nature, and their relationship with the master. Once taught, a student cannot learn more via the Dojo until they master the ability learned.

Style... wait, could I teach my summons how to use Spiraling Snake? That seems... powerful. They'd also have to be "compatible," whatever that even means. But if I could, and if I had summons with really good mana pools...! John added it to his list of ever-growing ambitions before moving on the triage... and finding nothing but an oddly cold, laminated chamber with an uncomfortable-looking bed and a door labeled "BATHROOM" at the far-end. A nearby credenza bore drawers and cabinets, inside which he found a few tubes, empty syringes, and a number of fairly elementary first-aid guides that made him scoff. The bare-bones chamber was clearly magical, and perhaps would offer more information or functionality once he found an Attendant... but for now, he felt just a bit screwed over for opening it at all. They can't all be winners...

Tita and Woofroot both left the garden satisfied, her for the touch of nature and Woofroot for a chance to happily rub up on a tree for warmth and comfort. John slowly walked out of the Eastern Wing with a pensive glare all around the temple plaza. "Master," the moon elf called, "will you rest with us by the pools? We've missed you so..."

"I don't have time," he muttered. "I have to get some grinding done before class tomorrow... and whatever else I won't see coming..."

"Pfft." John shot a glare up at Fairy, who's folded legs hung over the back of his statue. Her ass was nestled cutely on the stone hair of his effigy, and she sneered down at her summoner with her usual disdain. "Oh! I didn't mean for you to hear that, Master!" she declared sweetly, leaning forward and squeezing her tits together with her biceps. "It's just so wise of you to be so cautious... I mean, after letting a succubus run rampant in your house, risking your life for a girl who tried to control your mind, signing on with an Order of murderers only to then sign on with some kind of bounty hunting service with prices on the Order's head, it's... oh, it's just such a refreshing about face, Master."

Fairy grinned down spitefully at her master. He grinned back, but for a different reason.

Fairy
Level 12 Fae Daemonica
HP: 250/250
MP: 556/556
A greater demon fairy who once attempted to prey upon human victims, only to have her first such harvest be the Gamer. Her lust for power, and familiarity with her captor, have begun to affect her feelings thereof.
Relationship: +5

Fairy stopped grinning, and scowled. "I hope you don't expect me to come along for this one, do you? After what you did to my poor body..."

John's grin widened. "I do, actually. You can thank me later."

Meanwhile, on Earth...

The art room rested in the sacred darkness of night, but would be, for the second time this week, disturbed. A presence passed through its front door without so much as touching the front knob. It glided past the desk covered in thin, painted sheets of vellum, but none so much as stirred. The locked supplies cabinet remained locked, though it did not bar the passage of this presence. The form, only now taking a truly physical shape, came to the far corner of this tiny chamber... and drew close to a coffee mug filled with brushes. Its fingers pushed between them in a hunt, tapping and touching them until - ah! - the right one was found. Clutching its prize, it withdrew... and held up the cracked paintbrush. There was nothing more to it, to novice layman and novice mage alike... but under this creature's watchful eyes, the cracks glittered green: an echo of the power that caused them.