Back at Camp Stymphalian, Phong was fighting his own battle.
It was called fatherhood.
Elven fatherhood, which turned out to be worse.
He learned the first problem almost immediately. The newborn elves were level one, that part sounded harmless right up until he checked their status more carefully and realized their stats were ridiculous anyway. Every single one of them started at thirty minimum.
Thirty.
At level one.
Just for a bit of bitter context, Phong glanced at his own stat. The highest one was his intelligent: at 10.
The elves' stats were not enough to threaten the trolls, the treants, or most of Phong's defensive plants.
But they were more than enough to make life miserable for one tired farmer.
Because when children cried, they threw a tantrum.
When elf children with absurd baseline stats threw their tantrum, they flailed hard enough to bruise.
One of them threw itself dramatically at his leg after being told no to climbing a moletato mound and nearly kicked his shin hard enough that the nearby plants rustled in alarm.
Another started sobbing because Phong would not let her chew on a garlic mine and managed to headbutt him in the ribs with the force of a personal grievance and a low-grade battering ram.
By the third time a crying elf child nearly triggered the plants into defensive response, Phong made a decision.
"Rico," he said flatly.
The raccoon looked up from where he had been trying to hide behind a basket. "No."
"Yes."
"I'm too small for this responsibility."
"It's you or me. At least you had your Kamen Rider armor."
"That is unrelated."
Phong bent down, picked up one of the elves who had attached himself to his leg, and deposited the child directly into the raccoon's paws.
"You're on babysitting duty."
Rico gasped like a nobleman sentenced without trial.
"This is oppression."
"This is delegation."
"This is child labor."
"You're not a child."
"I'm barely 3 years old."
"By raccoon standard, you're already middle age."
Phong pointed toward the treant territory. "Take them somewhere safe and keep them busy, uncle Rico."
Rico opened his mouth to protest again, looked around, saw six bright-eyed elf children now focusing on him as if he had suddenly become entertainment, and realized the trap too late.
The raccoon sighed with the weight of a man carrying civilization.
"Fine," he muttered. "Rico will lead the small leafy menaces into the woods to do Rico's stuff."
Phong did not ask what that meant.
Mostly because he did not want to know.
Rico waved at the elves with forced confidence. "Come, children. We go commit harmless nonsense."
That was apparently good enough.
The little elves followed him at once, fascinated by everything about him. His tail. His paws. His ability to speak in full sentences while also being obviously shaped wrong for normal authority.
Within a minute, Rico had led them into treant territory, muttering under his breath while six elf children marched behind him like a tiny cult.
And Phong, for the first time since they hatched, finally got a breather.
He stood there in the blessed quiet and did not move for a full ten seconds.
Then he got back to work.
The scorched land still needed healing.
Little Fireball peaked out from his hood, chirped loudly, and demanded the attention she deserved. Apparently, the retired floor boss in the form of a chick didn't like to share the attention of her caretaker.
Now that the elves had hatched and moved to camp, the patch had changed again. The pod grove was gone. The thick wrongness of gestation had faded. In its place, the terraforming continued, steadier now, likely due to the bulk of nutrients no longer being constantly drained by the elves pods. The moletatoes had kept working beneath the soil, breaking up the dead layers. Green had begun returning in patches where blackened earth once dominated.
Phong helped it along.
He moved tomatoes there first, then basil, then dill. None of his mutated plants, not yet at least. Just useful, living things that belonged in healing earth. The scent changed almost immediately once the herbs settled in. The sort of smell that made a place feel less cursed.
He crouched near one patch, brushed loose dirt off his hands, and let himself breathe.
Then, while taking a short break, he pulled out his phone.
News.
Mindless surface noise, something to let his brain idle for a few minutes without having to solve a new crisis involving children, gods, or ancient monsters.
That was the plan.
He noticed almost right away that he still had a French news tab open from when they visited Lyon, and he had forgotten to close it.
Phong stared at it for a second, then shrugged.
Out of curiosity more than anything else, he tapped it open.
The stream loaded.
And on the screen was Olen.
Phong sat up straighter.
Olen looked sharper than before. Harder around the face, more practiced in front of cameras too. And his level, clearly displayed in the segment overlay, had climbed.
Level 21.
The bastard was speaking fluent French.
Phong blinked once.
Then twice.
That alone would have been enough to annoy him.
But behind Olen stood trolls.
Not just one or two, but an entire army of goat head mossy monster.
Twenty of them, at least from what the camera showed.
Large. Armed. Obedient.
Phong's eyes narrowed.
The clip continued in rapid French, too fast for him to catch more than scraps. So he opened the translated comments and pieced the context together the ugly way, one clue at a time.
Olen had gone to France. He had farmed trollings, maybe through the help of French mercenaries and the auctioned Vorpal Sword. Then, before those trollings matured into full trolls, he had tamed them.
And now he had a personal army of regenerating bodyguards.
Phong stared at the phone for a long moment after that.
Then leaned back on one hand and exhaled slowly.
"…you creative, ingenious bastard," he muttered.
Phong gave credits where credits were due.
Olen was still Olen. Still a hypocrite. Still a rich parasite with too much confidence and too little shame.
But this?
This was clever.
Disturbingly clever.
Phong looked at the screen again and began picking apart the logic behind it.
The most likely theory came together fast.
Step one: Olen hired French divers and killed enough trollings to level up and gained a troll-related skill. This also meant he had unlocked the condition to use the ability given to him by Em. Step two: using his weird ability, Olen ate the flesh of a troll raw, and assume the form of a full grown dungeon troll. Step three: he used this form to approach the trollings as an alpha.
He likely have tamed the trolls that way.
By the time they matured, the connection stayed.
Phong grimaced.
It fit too well.
And worse, it worked within the same kind of ugly creative space that Phong himself lived in. System loopholes, monster biology, farming logic taken somewhere nobody expected. That made it dangerous, because clever enemies were worse than strong enemies. That was also nauseous, because it reminded him how similar he and Olen were, yet so different at the same time.
A shout in the distance broke his concentration for a second. Somewhere over in treant territory, one of the elf children yelled, "Rico, higher!"
Rico screamed back, "Leafy children are menaces!"
Phong looked up toward the trees, listened to the treants groaning in what might have been amusement, then lowered his eyes to the phone again.
Olen on the screen looked confident and sharp. He was not like Josh. Josh was like a Michael Bay movie: loud, expensive, lots of explosion, in your face action-packed, wrapped into a heroic package. Olen though, the bastard was Games of Thrones. Cold, calculating, efficient, ruthless, and hiding the ugly ass rotten core right at the ending.
Olen had found a working angle and was leaning hard on it.
Phong locked the screen and slipped the phone away.
The scorched land still needed work. The tomatoes needed settling, the herbs needed water, the camp needed him grounded. Phong could not afford to spiral over a French news segment, not when a floor boss had personally told him results were expected.
Still, the thought stayed with him.
Olen the bastard was growing along side him, just like what Em wanted.
That felt like he just bit into a cake, then saw the front half of a fly wiggling on it.
Bad news did not stop there.
Phong switched from the French tab to a US news stream. Mostly because he had already grown customed to the sound of people speaking around him, and he missed conversations. The other reason was: if his mood was already ruined, he might as well let the knife go in properly.
It did.
Josh was on the screen.
Joshua Harlan stood with a pile of dead trolls at his feet, armor bloodied just enough to look impressive. His expression set into that practiced mix of determination and wounded nobility rich bastards always seemed to learn young. The headline bar beneath him was already doing the work.
LEVEL 35 DIVER JOSHUA HARLAN LEADS PUSH AGAINST DEATH PEAK!
Phong stared.
Of course.
Of course that was the angle.
Josh, now level thirty-five, claiming he was leading an expedition to strike at Death Peak and expand human controlled territory, and putting America to where it belong: at the top of the world. The campaign was familiar: big goal, big patriotic energy, clear enemy, easy to understand narrative. Exactly the kind of thing the Harlan media machine could polish until the public forgot what he really was.
And it was working.
Phong kept watching, jaw tight.
Clip after clip rolled in. Josh helping wounded divers, Josh pulling strangers away from danger, Josh stepping between civilians and monsters. The camera shook, the quality dropped to mushy 240p, static ran rampant all over the screen. The Harlan media knew exactly when to pull the "found footage" strategy and it was clearly working.
Josh slowly turned from a lunatic coward to a young hero trying to redeem himself out of guilt.
The internet loved a redemption narrative, especially when it came wrapped in violence, patriotism, and confidence.
People on socials didn't react to truth, they reacted to emotions.
Phong remembered that from his professor in E-Marketing.
Then came the part that made Phong's stomach sink harder.
Emma.
Josh appeared on camera talking about her with the careful sadness of a liar who had rehearsed remorse until it sounded sincere. He said leaving her behind had been wrong. He "took responsibilities", but slip in an angle for the marketing machine to spin: he was scared, he just wanted to survive, selfish instinct took over, public pressure for him to remain a knight in shining armor led to lies and cover-ups.
Josh apologized, voice low, eyes cast down at exactly the right moments, and "took the breakup with full understanding".
And the media took that and ran.
The truth if he was guilty or not didn't matter.
All they needed was the emotions he could trigger. They spun the story into proofs that Josh had felt bad, felt guilty, and had trying to be better person. and proof that Emma's accusation had maybe just been a misunderstanding born out of stress, fear, bad timing, battlefield chaos.
On socials, the hashtag #everyonedeserveasecondchance trending like crazy. Rappers, singers, actors, KOLs in multiple niches like health, fashion, cooking all chimed in with their own redemption story.
"We have grown better, so can Josh" was the story they were trying to sell.
Phong watched the spin happen in real time and hated how cleanly it moved.
Then... Josh made it worse.
A reporter asked about Emma's strength, about how dangerous she had been in the conflict, and Josh, in that same falsely reluctant tone, let one detail slip.
"Duration."
Just that.
A careless reveal, positioned as part of his regret and battlefield explanation.
But it was enough.
Phong's eyes narrowed.
Josh had just aired the biggest weakness of Emma's class on live TV in such a way that sound like an accidental slip up rather than a petty malicious revenge.
The comments below the clip were already crawling with it.
People started defending Josh, saying that he had been under pressure, that any man would choose survival first, that Emma was being unfair with how much of a burden she was in that survival situation, and that selfishness was natural.
At the end of the day, far too many modern men followed egoism the way other people followed faith. Dress it in the language of realism, survival, masculine logic, and they would forgive almost anything.
Phong lowered the phone slightly and thought.
Then the worse truth hit him.
Josh had not given up.
None of this was about redemption.
This "expedition" against the trolls, this push toward Death Peak, this call for manpower and public support, all of it had another purpose: to bring people to his door. Camera footage could not expose Camp Stymphalian. The Sky Emperor's influence and the dungeon's weirdness had already made that unreliable. So Josh was changing methods.
If enough bodies pushed toward troll territory.
If enough human forces advanced.
If enough eyes physically reached the right elevation and the right angle.
Then Camp Stymphalian would come into sight by naked eyes.
And once enough witnesses saw it, Phong would be in deep water.
The realization settled cold in his chest.
Camp Stymphalian stabilizing the ground on Floor 1 had never been all upside. Losing the threat of Shifting nearby had made their zone safer, more stable, easier to build in.
It had also made it predictable.
Predictable territory could be mapped. Approached. Planned around. And humans were very, very good at adapting to predictable problems.
Phong looked out over the camp, over the healing land, over all the impossible things he had built and all the lives now depending on that secret staying hidden a little longer.
He needed to escalate.
Quickly.
But the plants had to stay hidden. Bringing mutated plants to defense the trolls mountain would exactly be what Josh wanted. Providing the trolls with consumables from his garden would be another way, but then he risk letting this buffs fell into the hands of the expeditioner. And that would be all the proof Josh needed. If mutated plants that granted buffs existed, then the existence of a camp that could mass produce them would not be so implausible after all.
And finding that camp would have a potential profit so big that it outweighed all the opportunity cost in the world combined. Phong would be the target of a joined witch hunt by every corporation in the world.
That left him but one choice.
Phong needed to bring other pieces to the chess board.
Phong stood at once.
He headed toward the lake.
By the time he reached the shore, his mind had already narrowed into practical lines again. That was what he did best. Panic got maybe three minutes of his time. Then he focused on the practical part of things: solving the actual problem.
He called for a formal meeting with the queen of the lizardmen, which was very unlike him. News of the farmer of camp Stymphalian wanted a formal meeting with the lady on the Scale Throne sent ripples across lake Baratok.
Still, the message went through the proper channels quickly. Camp Stymphalian's relationship with Lake Baratok's people had long since passed simple tolerance. Honorary vassal, ally against the black bamboo ants, joined defense for the lizardmen eggs, important trade partner. Enough weight existed now that when Phong requested an audience, the request mattered.
The queen came with her royal guards: 40 lizardmen in silvery scaled armor, wearing a golden circlet. 20 on the left were warriors, each held a trident on their hand and was a bit taller than Phong. The half on the left carried a scepter, back hunched from old age, eyes gleamed with the deadly edge of wisdom and experience.
The queen herself walked between the guards, carrying herself in that proper diplomatic manner of a descendant from a long line of royalties. Her scales gleaming under the dungeon light, posture regal in the cold-blooded, watchful way lizardmen nobility always seemed to carry. The lake behind her reflected the faint mana glow from above, and for a moment the whole shoreline looked like a place older than human politics deserved to stand in.
Phong bowed his head just enough to respect rank without pretending subservience that did not fit their relationship.
"Your Majesty."
The queen studied him for a beat.
"You asked for formal speech, farmer."
"I did."
That was enough for her to take the matter seriously. Ever since she heard about this farmer 9 moons ago, the queen had never once heard or seen Phong being this serious about something. The corner of her mouth curled up slightly. The lizardmen biology was too alien for Phong to realize her mischievous smile/
He got straight to it.
"Human forces are beginning to mobilize toward Death Peak," he said. "Not only for trolls. Not really."
The queen's slit pupils narrowed.
"They seek your camp."
"Yes."
He did not waste time dressing it up.
"If they push far enough, and in enough numbers, Camp Stymphalian risks exposure."
The queen was silent for a moment, the lake breeze barely moving the edges of the cloth and armor around her.
Then she said, "And so you come to me."
Phong nodded.
"Yes."
He held her gaze.
"I want to hire mercenaries to defend the troll mountain. Lizardmen first, if you are willing. And any allies you can gather."
One of the guards shifted at that.
Mercenary work was one thing. Wasting the lives of their good men to defend the trolls for a human farmer was another. But the queen herself only looked thoughtful.
Phong continued before silence could harden the wrong way.
"I will pay in crops and harvest."
That mattered.
Not a favor, not a promise, not those metal trinkets, but actual benefits: sustenance, buffs, a chance to live another day without starving. In the dungeon where civilizations were fractured into various tribes of monsters, food was the strongest currency, a truly universal currency. Phong had just offered the only kind of payment that could speak with the monsters.
The queen's eyes rested on him longer now.
"You ask me to place warriors between humans and another allied mountain."
"Yes."
"You ask me to do so not for my territory, but for yours."
Phong let out one slow breath.
"Yes, but it would not only be in my interests," he said.
That made one of her attendants flick its tongue once in quiet interest.
Phong pressed the advantage.
"If Death Peak falls under human control, the next pressure point is obvious. The line only moves closer to every allied territory tied to Camp Stymphalian. Today trolls. Tomorrow forests. After that, lakeshore."
The queen knew that already. He could see it in the way her posture shifted by half an inch.
So he added the last, most useful truth.
"And if humans learn how many monster factions now stand together under mutual trade and support, they will come harder next time."
The queen actually respected that.
She was wise enough to know that the farmer wasn't fear mongering, but rather, he spoke of a pattern that the lizardmen had recognized after various encounters with human divers. Humans, despite starting out weaker than their tadpole, grew stronger terrifyingly fast. They were crafty, relentless, they learn and adapt so quickly it almost baffle her.
The queen looked out over the water for a few seconds, thinking in the still way predators did.
Then she looked back at him.
"And the trolls?"
Phong did not blink.
"Losing them means your force will be thinned out, one more front line, one more side of the lake for the human to attack, the side that was closer to their home world too. And with the war with the Kamohai still yet to be settled, you can't afford another prolonged defense line. A swift attack to stop the humans in their tracks is your best bet."
That earned him the faintest change in her expression.
At last, the queen spoke.
"I can call warriors."
Phong stayed quiet.
"I can also send word through debts and exchanges. There are some who will listen."
She stepped nearer by one pace, close enough that the formal weight of her title did not soften the hardness beneath it.
"If I do this, farmer, then the harvest you pay must not be late."
"It will be paid out in due time."
"If I gather others, they will expect the same."
"I know."
"And if your crops fail."
"They won't."
That answer came too fast to be pride.
It was promise.
The queen studied him one last time, then gave a single sharp nod.
"You would be considered to be committing treason if this got out, farmer."
"I know my own kind... they would tear this camp apart and loot everything valuable off my corpse if they found it."
He stopped for a moment, then sighed:
"I'll tell the the trolls, the treants, and whoever comes to aid to keep the casualties at the minimum. That the most I can do."
The queen nodded.
Then she spoke:
"Kamohai needs food. That was the reason they attacked us. I'll negotiate a cease fire with them. And you, farmer, will feed them in my place."
Phong nodded at that.
Only just now did he realize, camp Stymphalian just escalated a war by stopping another.
And he now had power that looked dangerously close to what politicians had.