The mood was obviously somber. It was spread amonst everyone who wanted to know about the requirements to integrate the Traits, which of course was basically all of us except for the kids.

  Either we could start doing some exercise down here or maybe, and this was a thought that crossed my mind, leave and enter the dungeon almost instantly and just stay on one of the earlier floors and fight for as long as we possibly can without killing the boss to see if that meant we could integrate our Traits faster.

  But the book made it very clear even by doing that it could take months or years nowadays, and even in the best case, it didn’t say weeks.

  The natural way and the recommended way was obviously going to take time, time that we did not think we had. We had food provisions down here, but my family members didn’t have enough hands or time to grab everything we had in store. It would probably last another week or two at best, and that was only for those of us who were on the higher end of the level spectrum of the F grade.

  My younger cousins for example were not, and who’s to say they would even make it a full week down here. We simply couldn’t stay down here that long, hoping and praying that something above ground would change.

  And the warnings about the second option all gave us pause, but I knew it. All the men in the family were thinking it. It was obvious on every single one of their faces, especially my cousin. Without a shadow of a doubt, we were all likely going to end up moving towards the second option.

  The decision was already made. The waiting around now was just a buildup to something that was already set in stone. Well, perhaps it was set in stone until my grandfather spoke up, his deep voice entering all of our ears and shattering any delusional plans we had.

  “All right, I know what all of you are thinking, but that’s enough, and don’t say anything at all because I already know, so please just listen to this old man before you go and do something stupid. These people have taken two sons from me. Everything else is fine. The house? It can be rebuilt.

  “Anything that was destroyed in the house, even if it had sentimental value, I got my pictures of your grandmother, that’s all right. Or even the fact that they destroyed my boat, that’s all right. But they have taken two sons from me, two. They will not have another, nor will they have any of my daughters, nor will they touch my grandkids, not anymore.

  “I’ll give them my other arm if it means that every single one of you would be safe. So, listen to this old man as I tell you what I’m about to do. That second option that book mentioned, I will do it, and I will succeed. And when I come out of it, I’ll fuse my Traits, and I’ll succeed in that too, and if that isn’t enough, I will evolve and move to the E grade as well. Do you understand me, all of you?!

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  “I will do it. If it is the last thing I do for this family, I will do it. They have taken two sons from me, and there is no way while I breathe that you touch a Williams and get to be happy about it the next day. Now this is a burden I will hold and carry as the elder in this family. Who knows how much longer I’ve got on this earth.

  “These skills and these levels and all this XP and all of that, maybe it only gave me an extra year or two, but the fact remains I am an old man, and if it is my life that needs to be given so you all can live, so that the two sons they took away from me can rest in peace, then give it I shall, god dammit. So, listen to me and listen well.

  “None of you are to go down the second path. All of you have read enough of my books to have a good understanding of what this world is and likely just how big, strong, and powerful we could all get if we survive this mess. So, while I still breathe, while I can still hold a spear, none of you are to cripple your futures while I have something to say about it. So, hear this old man one last time.

  “I will integrate my Traits, and I will fuse them with the same success rate, and once again if that isn’t enough, I will evolve to the E grade as well. Whatever it is I have to do, you best believe Lance Williams will get it done. They took two sons from me, so it’s only right that I take something dear from them.

  “Now, I’m gonna be selfish here and ask as your grandfather, father-in-law, or father to not fight back against this plan. Let me carry this weight. I would rather die than watch one of you throw your future away while I can still breathe. Don’t stress an old man out. They already took my arm. One of you doing something like that is gonna break my heart, so let me be selfish.”

  And that last bit of what he said was essentially the final nail in the coffin.

  All of us, my dad and my cousin and my other uncles, couldn’t say a goddamn thing to my grandpa. I mean, what the hell were we gonna say? No, you can’t do that, we’ll join you? Or go behind his back and try to do it anyway? There’s no way in hell we could do that, especially not after he finished his little monologue. You win this round, grandpa, you win this round.

  After that, it was time to come up with a plan, and all the members of the family put our minds together to think about the best way to go about doing this.

  And obviously it couldn’t be done out here. There were too many eyes and too many variables that could come into play, especially when we assumed that grandpa would need to be extremely focused during this process.

  Maybe if we had partitions we could put up or curtains or something, it would’ve been easier to do, but that wasn’t the case. And going outside and finding somewhere remote to do it also likely wouldn’t be too possible. So, we were then left with only one option, to do it on a higher floor, and considering the setup of floor number one, that would likely be the easiest floor to do this on.

  Though that means even if it’s brief, we will need to leave the dungeon for the briefest of moments so we could once again enter floor number one.

  Just in case, I’ll be one of the people going with grandpa, and when we initiate the teleportation, I will already have Crushing Descent active. If we face attack for even one second while we’re out there, it could end very badly.

  Hopefully with that skill active, it’ll give us more than enough time to once again enter the dungeon, where a couple of us will ensure that no snakes bite our grandpa while he sits in the back and completes the integration, and if time permits and his body is stable enough, then the fusion as well.

  The road was tough, but at least there was a path ahead, however arduous it was.