Ace's choice caused many reactions out in town, except nobody really knew what was happening. Sure, the officials, such as they were, had some odd things happen during work. Outside of that, though? No one else was directly affected.

Though some would debate you on the definition of "directly". Ace, however, decided to go with the definition of getting an actual message from the system or having said messages changed. Because more than a few petty criminals had some knock-on effects, such as the fact that the one semi-corrupt guard wasn't able to let them go anymore. Oh, and that guard was captured soon after as the system recognized his attempts to do so as illegal and it sent the other guards to arrest him.

Ace was very disappointed to find there is already a corrupt guard. He had done a lot to prevent that kind of nonsense, having been fed up with how things were run pre-system. This, of course, meant the corrupt guard soon found himself exiled from Wolf's Rest with a mark of shame.

What's a mark of shame? Well, the Barrais had been experimenting with magical dyes and found that the spores used by the myconids to talk had an interesting property. You could imbue them with a message and if used as a dye would create a shifting color that made anyone that saw it want to "read" it. So yeah, the town wasn't too happy when Ace had the corrupt guard tattooed with the message declaring his crime on the back of his dominant hand.

Suffice it to say, finding out one punishment you could suffer is to have your crime tattooed onto your body? Not a popular choice at all, and no one trusted Ace to use this punishment in moderation. Worse still to the public was the fact that all you had to do to read the message, was to sense it with any power.

Of course, this was why Ace did it that way. If all they did was tattoo some text on the guy, it could be covered up, fade over time, or simply removed. While the spore dye might be physically removed, the message is attached to the concept of where it was placed. While that meant if you removed that hand, the message would be gone. If you ever grew the hand back or even simply wore some kind of prosthetic, the message would be there again.

Now, of course, they haven't exactly had the time to test such things for durability and lifespan, except Ruby was mostly certain that as long as the message was there it would last. The myconid spores used a fancy trick where they powered themselves to pass the message along off of the recipient's power. So when used as tattoo ink, it sustained itself off of the beings power.

In fact, Ruby theorized that if you could apply enough such tattoos and the person was low enough level, it would zero out their power regen rate. A nasty punishment, blunted only by the fact that power refill potions, any amount of investment in regen rate, or simply going to an area with more power would be enough to get around it. Still, the possibility is there and Jim is more than happy to point out that the guild has some fancy handcuffs which basically do exactly that, except they can also suck power out of a person's power pools.

Not that the public at large even knew about this side of things. They were just riled up by what they saw as unjust punishment. Nevermind they didn't have a better idea of what to do. Then again, most were too used to a misbehaving cop getting off scot-free with the only punishment being that they have to move a town over to keep working as a cop. Which is exactly why Ace went with this punishment.

He was not going to perpetuate the stupidity so many allowed pre-system. A guard being corrupt wasn't just a crime, it was a betrayal of trust and Ace needed his guards to be trusted. So no, he would not protect them with immunity and such. They would have to know, and more importantly, follow the rules they were meant to uphold.

Of course, Ace wasn't completely unsympathetic. He got to work with a clean slate and they only had to deal with the laws of this one town. Pre-system, the legal structure was heavy with rules, some not only so old as to be nonsense, but also more than a few contradictory. Ace wasn't going to let things get to that point anytime soon, though he is under no illusion that once other places got in order, the complexity would mount.

The good news? There were skills and paths to help guards and law enforcers. Of course, on the other side of the coin, the criminal element had counter skills and paths. Then again, that is sort of expected. Hell, it was part of how the corrupt guard managed to hide himself for so long. Even something as simple as a specialized danger sense to point out when someone might snitch on you would go a long way.

And because of such things, Ace admitted to himself that things would never be completely free of corruption. Though he did have some ideas of making corruption a part of the job after things get complex enough. Or rather, if all Ace controlled was the light side, that would only throw a darker shadow.

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Now, he wasn't expecting to rule everything with an iron fist. However, having some people guiding the illegal elements of society so they don't step too far out of bounds would be helpful. Not that he wanted to bring in the black guild coalition yet. Because, of course, there was going to be guilds for thieves, assassins, and whatnot.

Sure, they technically weren't backed by any multiversal power like the Adventurers Guild or even a universal power. Except they did seem to also sprout up when the Adventurers Guild set up shop somewhere. Because yeah, open secret, the dark guilds were something the Adventurers Guild setup behind the scenes. After all, the same skills that let you pick a lock and avoid an alarm also happen to be quite useful in disarming traps in a dungeon.

And the assassins guild? Well, sometimes you need certain monster elements to be removed that an obvious party of adventurers just can't manage. So a nice stealthy type with training in crits and one shot kills is just what you need. Plus, even the darker side of the community wants to delve the dungeons and the Adventurers Guild isn't going to miss out on getting their fingers in that pie as well.

Now, Ace understood that his stance on this matter would eventually come out, the same as the Adventurers Guild work with the dark guilds was an open secret. It was inevitable given enough time and he planned to have all the time in the world. Still, he had made his choice. Wolf's Rest was his and if that meant people called him a dictator or worse, well, who could blame him for proving them right?

Of course, the answer to that is his fellow founders. Not all of them were too happy with Aces recent trend towards despotism. In particular, Jim was quite conflicted as he had literally joined as the local figurehead of by all metrics, a worse organization. At least Ace was local and knew the situation. While the Adventurers Guild did a lot of good, well, refer back to the fact it tends to start up the local branches of the various dark guilds.

The most vocal, though, was Og Pwner. He changed his very name hoping to be reunited with his loved ones and here Ace was, turning his town into his own little kingdom. Sure, right now Ace had been doing alright, but as far as Og is concerned, the tattoo thing showed the dark paths he was willing to walk. Besides, he believed in that old saying about power corrupting and, boy, does Ace seem to be aiming for absolute power.

For the moment, though, everyone agrees to play nice. While it certainly isn't just Og who is against this trend, they also know what the other settlements are like. Yes, going for the lesser of two evils still means you're going for an evil, but in this case, it is the one they know. And of course, they hope that they can guide him away from it with time.

Ace, on the other hand, mostly shrugs it off. The unrest he sees as a reaction caused by them not realizing the true enormity of what life now holds for them. Yeah, most of them accept they'll probably live at least 200 years at this point. Ace, however, is planning for the long run. From now until the planet itself dies, he plans to make his home, his. Whether it is one hundred years or one hundred thousand years, he wants a solid foundation.

And to him? That means taking control. Maybe at first he was optimistic. It was just about thirty or so people all pulling together for survival and nothing could stop them! This was an easy attitude to keep until that lady returned with the rest of the original group of people.

Her toxic words? Her plan to take without giving? Ace wasn't going to let someone like her to worm their way into power without his ability to remove them. But that was the end of it.

Maybe if things had just stopped there, he would have kept to the middle path. Some control, but a willingness to let others have a say. If they were all still here to have that say, things might have gone differently. But they weren't all here, were they? One of their numbers was missing.

Ace put in a strong face along with Jim, guiding everyone through the horrible moments afterwards. Except during that time, he took a foul lesson from it. The nasty parasitic thought about how he shouldn't trust others with running things because he couldn't trust them to always be there. Ace wasn't warped by grief, but by loss and false betrayal.

It made no sense. That death wasn't a choice anyone wanted to make. Yet now, in the back of Ace's head was the niggling thought that at any moment, they might leave him. He wasn't quite hubristic enough to truly believe he himself couldn't die. However, selfishness crept in and allowed him to think dark thoughts about how what happens after he is gone won't matter because he won't be there.

To him, everyone else needed to be replaceable except for himself because the town wouldn't truly exist without him, anyway. Doctor saw some of this and tried to help. He tried to help all of the core people, but he was only a medical doctor and a therapist. Sure, he had a few half remembered classes and a number of college textbooks to go off of, but that wasn't enough.

Still, while Ace was straying towards a dark path, he hadn't truly fallen. There was some amount of self consciousness and reflection. He understood that the loss had broken him in some ways and so moderated his actions. Except he still did it. He kept that path open, as he justified it to himself, "just in case they needed". Yes, "they", because this totally wasn't all on him. Ace turned it into something for the group.

The Barrais stayed out of this all, keeping an eye on things. If anything, they had a deeper understanding of mental health than Doctor. Except all their training was on how to break people. So they watched as things progressed, ready to step in, yet hoping they wouldn't have to. Because if ever they needed to move against Ace, they couldn't risk just capturing him. After all, he had too much power.

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