[Chapter 173. More Storage then one needs]

Searanox stared at the flickering system message. This is far more than I had expected.

He thought this as he pocketed the meager physical loot from the cleared boss chamber. The physical rewards were secondary now. The real prize was the influx of City Points. The other dungeons he had cleared today had followed a predictable pattern; some provided more, some less, varying based on their initial level and the density of the beasts contained within. The City Dungeon had been a baseline, but the Webbed Tunnels, with its endless swarms of arachnids, had proven to be a goldmine.

After he cleared the last dungeon on his mental list, he leaned back on his intermediate travel drone and opened his Status window. It had been a long time since he had truly looked at the numbers that defined his existence.

`Tonight I will reach Gold Rank.` He thought. A sense of grim satisfaction settling in his chest. `It’s a shame that I won't return to the city with it immediately, but the progress is undeniable.`

As his gaze shifted toward his actual stat totals, the slight disappointment of being just short of the next rank vanished, replaced by a dark, knowing smile. He had already broken through the two hundred mark in his key categories.

`What would that be in terms of a normal Awakened without any of my bonuses?`

His mind performed the calculations with the cold, swift efficiency of a machine. He gasped as the final result clicked into place.

"I have the raw stats of a Level 90. I am much higher up the food chain than I ever dared to expect."

He pondered the staggering implications of that information as he exited the dungeon. The forest below flew past him in a blur of green and brown as his travel drone accelerated, the canopy giving way to the vast, open plains. The fact that the Nightmare Wolves had still been a bit of a challenge for him earlier spoke volumes about the threats that were yet to come.

If a Level 27 with Level 90 stats still felt pressure from a node, the 'True System' was going to be a bloodbath.

"Maybe I should enter the Grand Labyrinth after all," he mused.

He quickly shook his head, clearing the thought. `One step at a time.`

`First, I have to make sure everything is in order inside the city. I have to change the layout of the Atrium and add a dedicated floor for storage. I can't have mountains of food and raw materials lying in the open like a medieval bazaar.`

He looked toward the horizon, where the obsidian walls of Androxis were beginning to peek over the curve of the earth.

`I think I’ll take some inspiration from the old stories—the guild halls from the anime I used to watch. I’ll add some reception counters for applying to specific services and trading. I have an entire tower that can house the staff needed to man them.`

He let out a soft, weary sigh. The wind whistled past his ears as he pushed the drone to its maximum speed, accelerating toward the distant, looming silhouette of the black walls. The city grew on the horizon, a stark, perfect geometric shape against the wild, untamed landscape—a bastion of absolute order in a world of spiraling chaos. A faint sense of pride, cold and territorial, stirred within him. It was a cage, a cage of his making. And it was a far better cage than the dying world outside.

As his drone closed in on the entrance to the Fortress Tower, the high-altitude winds died down, replaced by the ambient echoes of the city. He could already hear the exasperated voice of Samantha echoing from the entrance.

"There is no way, Iris! How has he even collected all of this stuff? It’s physically impossible!"

His drone swept into the Atrium, flying low over the light-gray floor. Before it even came to a complete halt, Searanox dismounted in one fluid motion. The drone coasted a few meters further before dissolving into a cloud of blue sparks. Samantha and Rayan were standing with Iris near the low outer wall, looking at the massive, disorganized piles of supplies he had dumped there without regard.

"I collected them," Searanox spoke, his voice calm and steady as he approached the trio. "Did you think that I, the one who stripped everything of worth from the Corps Lantern Cave, wouldn't do the same to every other dungeon near my base?"

"No, my Lord..." Rayan said, quickly bowing his head in a show of deference. "It is just... the sheer volume of it."

Searanox lifted a hand to silence him. "It's alright. I went a bit overboard in the past. I hold a strict 'better to have what you don't need, than to need what you don't have' mentality." He looked over the mountains of beast parts, high-tech scrap, and the survival supplies he had liberated from commercial stores before the System had descended.

"I want to reshape this place," he said, gesturing to the vast, empty sections of the Atrium. "I want it to be a hub for the Awakened. A counter on each of the sections for administration. I’m still not sure what exactly the aesthetic should be, but I don’t want tables in here—that’s for certain. This is not a pub. This is a center for the formal services of the city."

He tapped his chin, his eyes scanning the blank, dark walls and the towering heaps of materials.

"Continue what you were doing," he told the two humans. "In the meantime, I’ll see what I can do about organizing these supplies."

He turned toward the glowing node in the center of the hall.

"As you wish, Searanox," Iris said, turning her attention back to the two.

Searanox engaged the Guild Interface. A translucent map of the tower appeared in his mind's eye. He selected the option to add a new floor, and the window shifted to show a blank, circular room. The moment he visualized the walls and doorways, they manifested on the projected layout—the stone following the path of his thoughts just as it had when he built the prison for the Lich.

He sectioned the new floor into four massive, specialized chambers. Each was identical in design. As he thought about storage shelves, the System packed the chambers with high-density storage units. Systematically arranged rows filled the entire space, stretching back into the darkness.

Planning the new floor took less than five minutes. It was a simple, functional design, and because the System could interpret his direct intentions, the process was far faster and more efficient than he had hoped.

With a thought, the new floor was added to the tower’s registry. A violet flash later, Searanox was no longer in the Atrium. He stood in a small, sterile hall with four large, reinforced double doors on the walls. He walked over to one and pushed it open. Behind it lay a staggering amount of storage space. The shelves reached all the way to the vaulted ceiling, and he had to crane his neck just to see the top levels.

"How is anyone supposed to get up there?" he murmured to himself, walking back to the central node of the floor.

The interface appeared again. `Is there a way to have a platform or a desk to extract and input items automatically?`

The thought triggered a shift in the layout. The walls inside the individual rooms moved, closing off the shelves themselves behind a solid partition. All that remained was a small room, no larger than four square meters, with an object that resembled a stone altar at its center.

Searanox walked through the open door and inspected the solid gray block of stone. He frowned, his eyes scanning the empty, minimalist space. The raised stone was two meters square and occupied a good portion of the room.

"It would have been too simple to just have ladders," he said with a sigh. "Looks like I have to come up with something of my own design."

He placed his hands on the solid block of stone, leaning his weight against it as he looked around. The moment his palms touched the cool surface, a window snapped open in his vision.

He could feel the vast, empty space behind the walls just as clearly as he felt the contents of his personal storage ring. He looked up at the dark gray wall, noting the violet glowing conduit pulsing along the base.

`Eight thousand cubic meters of available storage behind these walls... Holy shit, that’s a lot of space.`

After a moment to gather his common sense, he walked back to the center of the floor. In another flash of violet light, he reappeared in the Atrium. He summoned twelve cargo drones, their thrusters humming in unison as they fanned out over the mountains of supplies.

The drones began their work, hovering over the mountains of supplies and vacuuming them up into their spatial holds in one synchronized movement. They held nearly thirty metric tons of cargo between them, yet even with their combined capacity, there was still a significant amount of scrap and material left on the floor.

He stood stunned for a second, realizing exactly how much he had looted over the past few days.

Searanox shook his head in disbelief before teleporting once again to the newly formed Storage floor. His drones followed him, splitting up toward the different rooms he had designated. They began unloading their cargo onto the stone platforms, where they simply vanished into the void of the city's internal chambers.

The food supplies went into the first storage chamber. The non-consumables he looted from the stores were funneled into the second. The beast parts he had looted from dungeons were deposited into the third.

After the third trip, the Atrium was finally cleared. The floor was void of clutter, and without the mountains of materials, the space looked deserted—vastly larger and more imposing than it had before.

"Did you just move all of that... in only a few minutes?" Samantha exclaimed, her eyes wide as she looked at the empty floor.

Searanox turned toward her and gave a short, sharp nod. "Yes. I’ll show you later where I put it all. I already have new ideas for the ground floor, now that I found out something interesting."

He looked at the empty, echoing hall. The design of the Atrium already in his mind.