26 Days (Part 4)

For the rest of the day, Grant led the groups of fighters throughout the surrounding area, clearing and searching on building at a time.

When the day was coming to an end, Grant once again led the group back to the dungeon.

Instead of continuing the hunt as he had the day before, Ally, the kids, and him returned to their house to have a good nights rest.

Before turning in for the night, Grant stopped off and had a meeting with Jerrod.

Since Grant had taken such a large amount of people out to fight, Jerrod had been concerned about the lack of manpower for the building of the town, but the skilled laborers that had come from the CRMC camp had more than made up for the loss of people so progress had actually increased rather than decreased.

Jerrod was also ecstatic about the large amount of resources that were pouring in every day due to the exploration so he had made plans to ramp up the production of town essentials.

First and foremost was to finish the building of a town hall meeting area so that the people would have a place to visit when they had issues or concerns that needed to be resolved.

During that conversation, Jerrod brought up something that Grant had basically completely forgotten about.

"The group of women that you brought back that are accused of trying to poison you are still being held in captivity. What do you want to do with them?"

Grant instructed Jerrod to interrogate them in a non torturous manner before putting them on trial. Although they had failed in their attempt, they had still tried to kill the leader of the town and needed to be held responsible.

He would retain some aspects of the old judicial system and allow the people to make the decision on the women's punishment.

Since this was also a good opportunity to set up a system for handling issues like this, Jerrod and Grant spent a few hours working through the structure of the new system.

When the two of them were satisfied, Grant bid Jerrod farewell and headed home for the night.

The next three days were much of the same for the people of the town.

Grant, Ally, the kids, and a large fighting force would depart in the morning, periodically send back supplies throughout the day, and then return at night for rest before repeating the process once again.

The people who were not fighters, would work throughout the day to build as much of the new town as they could before they too were allowed to rest during the night.

On day five, of exploring the surrounding areas, the group of fighters had managed to reach an average level of 15 while the transporters were somewhere between 8 and 10.

Far from enough, Grant instructed them that after that nights rest, they would be venturing out far enough away from the dungeon that they would no longer be able to return to the dungeon to rest.

They would need to start learning how to sleep and survive the nights wherever they could.

On day six, as he had said he would, Grant sent the groups of fighters, 10 each, out on their own. Rather than head to the south of the dungeon though, they decided to head the opposite direction this time.

Grant allowed them to split up and put some distance between each other, he instructed them to move in a north, northeast, and northwest direction so that they would still be within range of each other if they encountered any problems.

Grant handed out Walkie Talkies, that had been discovered in an electronics store on day three, to the leaders of the groups and instructed them to radio in on their progress every few hours or in case of emergency.

To encourage the teams to be quick and efficient about their hunting and searching, Grant decided to have a little fun.

He handed on a scorecard of sorts for a competition.

- For every 5 pounds of food they returned to the dungeon at the conclusion of the expedition, 5 points.

- For every 10 pounds of lumber and materials, 5 points

- For every survivor they rescued and returned safely to the dungeon, 50 points.

- For every mana core, 50 points.

Grant had absolutely no hopes of anyone finding a mana core since very few of the people in the fighting force were capable of fighting Enlightened Tier monsters at this point, but he still decided to add it to the list.

If the teams worked together, it was possible that they could bring down an Enlightened Tier monster.

Grant also knew, that the more confident teams would definitely attempt to bring one down. Which would serve to purposes. First and foremost, they would quickly discover their own strengths and weaknesses, accelerating their own growth. Secondly, they would quickly discover their own strengths and weaknesses, which would curb their growing arrogance.

It was obvious that some teams had started to think themselves invincible.

They had been able to take down all the monsters they had fought to this point with almost no effort at all which had lead their egos to inflate.

What they had not realized was that Ally, Richard, and Robin had been going ahead of the groups and clearing out any stronger monsters to level Ally, while leaving the weaker ones behind to allow the fighting force to gain levels in a relatively safe environment.

Since Grant felt that they needed to learn the dangers of the new world eventually, he decided that now was as good a time as any and sent them on their way.

Within hours, they had received distress calls from more than one group and had to quickly respond.

These were the teams that had overestimated their abilities and had bitten off more than they could chew.

Although Grant had managed to save most of the fighters, they still lost a few throughout the day.

Some teams bounced back quickly and learned from their mistakes but their were members that were instantly traumatized and refused to return to the fight.

Knowing these people would never make it in the coming struggle for Earth, Grant quickly dismissed them back to the dungeon and reorganized teams on a case by case basis.

Over the next five days, of the 200 fighters and 100 transporters; 21 fighters and 4 transporters had perished while 19 fighters had outright quit.

Since the transporters maintained a large distance between them and the fighters when they were actively engaged in a battle, they were less likely to die. Of course that didn't mean that they weren't prone to sudden ambushes by monsters, but it was rare.

Although people had been lost, their deaths were more often than not a result of human error or hubris.

The 160 fighters that remained were slowly but steadily improving their skill set, equipment, and fighting styles.

At the beginning of Day 11, Grant recalled the fighting force and allowed them to return to the dungeon to rest and collect themselves. Grant knew that too much all at once would have a negative effect and he needed these people to be in top shape as they expanded further away from the dungeon.

As the fighting force returned to the dungeon however, Grant, Ally, and the kids decided to venture deep into the heart of the city.

Ally was fast approaching level 25 and Grant was determined to get her onto her Path before the Earth's evolution.

He was also frustrated that even after 10 days of searching, the expedition force had yet to find a single survivor.

Refusing to believe that no one in the area had managed to survive, he hoped that someone had just beaten him to the area and saved the people before he could.

Since Tempe and Chandler were in the southeastern portion of Phoenix, they headed in a northwestern direction. Rather than search the building for any survivors, Grant would simply sweep his senses throughout the area as they moved.

If he was able to sense any life, they would quickly investigate. Whenever it was a monster, they would quickly dispatch of it and then continue their search.

One the night of day 11, the four of them were sitting around a fire on top of one of the taller buildings and eating dinner.

Of course, the light from the fire attracted monsters but it seemed that after the pile of corpses that had been tossed off the side of the building reached a certain height, the monsters learned from their fellow monsters' efforts and stopped attacking.

The four then had some time to relax and chat with each other.

Richard and Robin were disappointed that they had yet to run into any monster strong enough to force them to use their Path skills because they were itching to show off to Grant.

Robin was especially disappointed that, according to her, 'They hadn't run into any monster cute enough to tame.'

Everyone laughed when she complained about that because they all found it really hard to imagine a monster that could be considered 'cute'.

As the night progressed and the group finished their meal, Grant suddenly noticed something out of the corner of his eye that made his heart jump.