Next morning, Phong changed the rules of the food stand.
He didn't take away any of the food, but he added work instead.
The usual meals still went out. The hatchlings still needed feeding. The old still needed feeding. The injured still needed feeding. Phong kept those who could not support themselves alive. But from that day on, anyone strong enough to work could trade labor for extra portions, better portions, or priority access to supplies.
It solved two problems at once: the famine, and the recovery of lake Baratok.
The lizardmen were the first ones he hired.
Phong had them reshape the outer look of Camp Orthrus so that, from afar, it would pass for one of the lake outposts under Scale Throne influence. The lines of the walls, the slope of the watch points, the way the banners and carved posts sat near the perimeter, all of it was adjusted just enough that ordinary divers would think twice before getting closer. It was not perfect, but it was a good enough camouflage to fool most divers investigating from a distance.
Telescope and drones couldn't work well in mana dense environment, and no one other than Phong's circle had sailed the lake yet. So they should be safe once the lizardmen created some more housing along the camp perimeter and moved there.
After them came the mice of the Great Burrow.
They were small, fast, and very, very good at tunneling where Phong needed precision more than brute force. He had them dig irrigation channels for the expanding plant beds and reinforce weak parts of Camp Orthrus's walls from below. The little andromorphic mice moved like a living construction crew, carrying dirt, stone, and roots in lines so efficient that even the moletatoes seemed to approve.
The Kamohai got heavier work.
So did the cricket folk of the United Tribes of Giant Crickets.
Phong sent them into the crescent-shaped wood at the back of camp with one goal: take down enough trees to widen the usable ground without opening the camp too much to the forest. It was dirty, loud work. Chopping down the tree, dragging them back, processing them. But the Kamohai and the giant crickets did it well, each people in their own way.
The Buforians and the Inkborn got a stranger task.
Phong hired them to help maintain the freezer.
The frog folk and the octopus people were both more comfortable around cold moisture and water-work than many of the others, and together they proved surprisingly suited to supporting and extending the frost magic being used there. With their help, the frozen storage stayed stable longer, and Phong no longer had to grit his teeth every time he looked at his meat or fish reserves.
The lizardman mages approved this immensely.
By noon, Camp Orthrus no longer felt like a half-finished emergency base.
It felt like a growing frontier.
Messy? Yes. Uneven? Absolutely. Too dependent on one farmer and his absurd influence. But it was alive, and that was what truly matter, especially after a Pillar decided that ecological disturbance was their next problem.
That was when Rico returned.
The raccoon came out of nowhere as usual, carrying the exact air of someone who had just done something impressive and dangerous and wanted an audience immediately.
He plopped down beside Phong with dramatic exhaustion.
"Coffee."
Phong handed him some without question.
That was the irritating part for Rico.
The raccoon took the coffee, stared at Phong, and waited. Phong sipped his own drink and kept watching workers move around camp. Rico's tail twitched.
Nothing.
No "where were you?"
No "what did you do this time?"
No "what type of chaos do you have in store today?"
The raccoon got visibly offended. His whiskers vibrated a little, and it was not because of the amount of caffeine Rico was chugging. Because yes, he wanted the coffee. But he had also clearly come back hoping to be asked.
Phong knew that, and chose not to reward it yet.
That made Rico sulk beside him, clutching his caffeine with all the tragedy of a performer denied stage time.
Only after the meal lines had thinned, the extra portions had gone out, the work crews had rotated, and the day had settled into something almost orderly did Phong finally glance sideways.
"What do you want me to ask."
Rico straightened instantly. That was all the opening he needed.
The raccoon puffed up. "Camp Stymphalian maybe got new allies."
Phong raised a brow. "Maybe?"
"They not here yet," Rico said quickly. "One day. Two day maybe."
He clearly wanted a bigger reaction.
Phong gave him almost none.
"What kind?"
Rico grinned in the way of someone holding back a surprise solely for personal satisfaction.
"Secret."
Phong looked at him for a moment, then shrugged. He did not ask again.
That somehow annoyed Rico even more. Because a raccoon could survive many things. Being denied curiosity as a social reward was apparently not one of them. In Rico's world, that was a crime almost as big as not getting a daily dose of caffeine.
Still, if Rico said he had found possible allies, Phong believed him. Indeed, Rico was many problems and chaos disguised as a raccoon, but when he came back smug instead of panicked, it usually meant the situation was real and not immediately lethal.
So Phong simply pointed toward the lime-oak.
"Go to Floor 1. Fetch the elf children."
Rico stared at him in horror.
"No."
"Yes."
The raccoon put a paw to his chest. "I did diplomacy."
"And now you do transport."
That was not the answer Rico wanted, especially because "transport" meant one thing: Horsey.
He looked toward the tree with deep dread, already hearing the elf children in his future. Still, Camp Orthrus had one fatal weakness from Rico's point of view. No proper caffeinated drinks, no coffee stash worth stealing. Not even soda strong enough to matter. Phong had decided that camp Orthrus would be where he stacked his tea, and leafy caffeine was the only type of caffeine Rico dislike. He looked down at the cup in his paws, then at Phong, then at the road to his suffering.
At last, with all the misery of a heroic victim marching toward doom, Rico surrendered.
"Fine," he muttered. "But raccoon remembers this betrayal."
Phong waved him off.
Rico trudged toward the lime-oak like a condemned man going to execution, already dreading the moment the elf children spotted him and decided Uncle Rico had returned for the sacred purpose of being a horse.
Phong watched him go, took another sip of coffee, and turned back to the camp.
There was still too much to do.
That night, after the food stand closed and the workers drifted back to their people, Camp Orthrus finally grew quiet. Lake Baratok was never truly silent. There was always water moving somewhere, a lizardman patrol changing shift, a Kamohai laugh carrying too far over the shore, orsome Timato rolling by with the air of a tiny thug on night duty.
But it was quiet enough. At least, enough for Phong to sit alone inside his lodging with a lamp turned low and let his body remember what rest should feel like.
He did not sleep.
Instead, he reached into his bag and pulled out the Steam Deck from a while ago.
For a second, just holding it felt strange. Too normal, too surface, too much like the kind of thing a college student should be doing on break instead of a farmer trying to hold together a cross-species relief effort in a world dungeon.
Then he turned it on.
The screen lit up softly.
Among the installed games was one only he had access to.
Kamen Rider Rico.
Phong stared at the title screen for a moment and could not help the faint twitch at the corner of his mouth.
Of course Long named it that.
The coffee guru had made a platformer game, put it on steam in a closed beta stage, and gave only Phong the key to download and install.
He opened the game, put the code Long had given him into the prompt window, and waited.
The title screen barely had time to finish loading before a private system message slid into view from the developer.
Phong opened it.
The message was quite long.
[Joshua Harlan went to Kyoto to dive there until March. His father, Daniel, had plans.]
Phong's eyes narrowed immediately.
He set the device more firmly on his knee and opened the rest of the report.
It was written in Long's usual way. Sparse, direct, with barely any wasted words, but enough context to let Phong build the picture himself.
Josh's mother was Kurosaki Kitahara - heiress of the Kurosaki yakuza.
Phong's gaze paused there for a second, then moved on.
She and Daniel Harlan had not married for love. It was political. Business dressed as a 'bond of love' in the language of these elites. Josh himself had been born through surrogacy, and after that, Kitahara had returned to Japan to live with her lovers. She had no affection for Daniel, but she still saw Josh as her son.
That part mattered.
Because it explained the next move: Kitahara thought Josh had become too obsessed with dealing with "small fry."
Phong let out one short breath through his nose at that, then continued.
She had taken Josh back to Kyoto to cool his head and prepare him for the diver league in March. Which meant one thing: Josh would be out of New York. Out of Daniel's shadow for a while.
And Daniel, left to his own devices, had started moving.
Phong read on.
Daniel Harlan had funded top researchers for the past two years to study Shifting patterns. The report named several institutions, several grants, a dozen shell fronts. And among them sat one detail that made Phong's eyes harden further: The new major at the university Phong used to attend. The same major Selena had just been awarded a bachelor's degree from earlier this year.
Of course.
Of course Daniel had shoved money into that place too.
Long's report didn't stop for Phong's dislike.
The research had finally produced a result.
Daniel planned to visit a "stable spot" near the gate to Manhattan. Good news: it was not the ruin between Lake Baratok and Death Peak. It was somewhere else. A place where shifting behavior had supposedly shown enough regularity to predict and exploit. Bad news: Long hadn't managed to crack the encrypted file containing the location to this "stable spot" yet.
If the findings held up in person, Daniel planned to move hard and fast: invest heavily, lobbying a law on ownership of dungeon real estate. His plan wasn't just buying land near a gate, but pioneering the legal and practical framework for treating sections of the dungeon itself as profit-bearing American property. If this plan succeeded, it would help Daniel immensely in drawing investment.
Phong stared at the words for a long time.
The sheer arrogance of it would have been laughable if it were not so believable.
That was how men like Daniel Harlan looked at the world. Not as something alive, not as something shared. It was not even a battlefield already full of peoples, monsters, factions, and buried grief for people like him.
It was land to be acquired, assets to be controlled, profits to be made.
The report ended there, useful, but incomplete.
Phong lowered the Steam Deck slightly and leaned back against the wall of the lodge.
Outside, the camp kept breathing around him. Somewhere far off, a lizardman hatchling made its first croaking sound. Somewhere nearer, wood popped in a fire where well fed elf children snored. Somewhere even nearer, Little Fireball shifted in sleep inside his hood hanging by the bed.
But inside the room, it was just him and the report.
Josh in Kyoto, probably would run into his family in Vietnam during dungeon diving. Daniel making his move toward a stable spot near Manhattan.
It was a chance.
The thought came ugly and fast enough that Phong knew it had already been waiting inside him. When the gazes of the elites were consumed by the divers league in march, this would be his chance to kill Daniel Harlan, to make the father vanish the same way the son had shoved hell into Phong's life.
To make Josh felt what he had felt.
To make that bastard suffered the same way Phong had these past 2 years.
To make Josh's world collapsed under him in a single moment.
Phong closed his eyes.
He did not have a concrete plan yet.
But, with his spy network comprised of both the Eardropping Woodears and the mice of the Great Burrow, Phong felt like he was barely inches away from taking the first step of his revenge against the Harlans.
And that was enough to make his blood boiled over with excitement.