Chapter 4: The Family Fortress
The second Randolf and Aurora tapped the glowing 'Accept' button, the tiny apartment vanished.
With a soft swoosh, the two adults were yanked through space and time. When they opened their eyes, the smell of boiled cabbage was gone, replaced by the crisp, salty scent of the ocean. They were standing on the same pristine, sugar-white beach that Ran and Mia had discovered earlier.
The transition was so sudden that Randolf stumbled forward, expecting to hear his heavy work boots hit the wooden floor. Instead, he felt soft, warm sand between his bare toes.
"Oh, wow," Aurora breathed out. Her eyes were wide as she looked up at the endless sapphire sky and the crystal-clear water lapping gently at the shore. She reached out, her fingers brushing against the leaves of a large, vibrant green fern. "It's so warm here. It feels more real than home."
"It's incredible," Randolf agreed, looking at the dense jungle just beyond the sand. "I've never seen trees this tall in the city. The wood must be amazing..."
Then, a cool, refreshing ocean breeze swept across the beach.
Aurora suddenly gasped. She looked down at herself, then looked at Randolf. Her face instantly flushed completely crimson.
"Eek!" Aurora shrieked, her motherly dignity vanishing in a split second. She immediately crouched down, crossing her arms tightly over her chest and diving behind the large fern she had just been admiring. "Randolf! Goodness gracious! Why are we—?!"
"I—I don't know!" Randolf panicked. The large, tough, muscular carpenter suddenly did a very clumsy, frantic dance, trying to cover his lower half with his large hands while his teeth started to chatter from the breeze. "Ran! Ran, what kind of world is this?! Where are my pants?!"
Ran and Mia were standing a few yards away. They had already spun around and were facing the ocean, covering their eyes.
"I bought extra clothes! I'm tossing them now!" Ran yelled, trying hard not to laugh. He opened his inventory and threw two bundles of coarse brown linen over his shoulder.
"Turn around, Dad! Don't look at Mom!" Mia squeaked, covering her face with her hands.
"I'm not looking at anyone! I'm trying to put this ridiculous potato sack on!" Randolf grumbled loudly.
After a minute of frantic rustling, fabric snapping, and a lot of embarrassed throat-clearing, the noise finally stopped.
"Okay. You can turn around," Randolf said, sounding incredibly exhausted.
Ran and Mia turned around. Randolf and Aurora were now wearing the same baggy, scratchy brown tunics and trousers as the kids. Randolf, being a massive man, looked like he was wearing a shirt that was two sizes too small, but at least everyone was decent.
"Right. Sorry about that," Ran coughed, hiding a smile. "The system's rules are strict. No outside items are allowed inside. You start with absolutely nothing."
"I can live with nothing, but I draw the line at being naked in front of my children," Aurora scolded lightly, though she was still blushing. She stepped out from behind the fern, smoothing down her rough tunic.
Randolf cinched the rope belt around his waist and looked at Ran with a serious expression. "Alright, son. We are here. You said this is your world. Tell us the rules."
Ran nodded, his face turning serious as well. He gathered his family in a small circle on the sand.
"This is a Private Pocket Dimension called Sayfrid. The System chose me to be the Lord of this island," Ran explained. "Right now, we have a one-year protection period. That means a magical barrier is keeping other players from invading us. We have exactly twelve months to turn this beach into a fortress."
"Invading us?" Aurora asked, her voice tightening with worry. "You mean other people will try to attack us?"
"Yes, Mom," Ran said honestly. "There are millions of other Lords out there. Some of them are already rich and powerful in the real world. When the barrier drops next year, they will come looking for resources to steal. But that's a problem for the future. Our biggest problem right now is what lives in that jungle."
Ran pointed toward the dense, dark tree line.
"The island isn't empty?" Randolf asked, stepping in front of his wife protectively.
"No. It is filled with wild beasts and monsters. They are the original inhabitants of this world," Ran explained, sharing the knowledge he had gained from his Golden Finger. "Here is the catch: the inhabitants are completely random for every Lord. Some lucky rich kids might get a world filled with sleeping dragons or mythical beasts. Other people might get stuck with a world full of useless horned rabbits. I still have absolutely no idea what kind of monsters are hiding in our jungle."
"If they are dangerous, why don't we just hide on the beach forever?" Mia asked nervously.
"Because the beasts are the key to our power," Ran smiled, his eyes shining. "If we kill them, they give us massive amounts of EXP and drop valuable loot. But if we are smart, we can capture or subdue them. If we capture a powerful beast, we can harvest its soul to use as an external martial soul! In the real world, buying an extra soul costs millions of credits. Here? They are ours for the taking. But right now, we are too weak to fight."
Randolf's carpenter instincts instantly kicked in. He evaluated the tree line with a critical eye, then looked down at the soft sand.
"If there are unknown monsters in there, we can't just stand in the open," Randolf said, stepping into his role as a father. "We need a fallback point. A defensive base. Somewhere we can put our backs to the water if something charges out of the woods."
"Exactly, Dad," Ran smiled. "And that is our first mission."
Ran opened his Lord System interface and tapped a few buttons. "Before we start, I am initiating a Group Bond. The System usually sees you as my 'subordinates'. But with the Group Bond, it means we share the workload. If you chop wood, I get EXP. If I build something, you get EXP. We grow together. Nobody gets left behind."
Ran swiped his hand, and a blue screen appeared in front of all of them.
[Mission: Gather Resources and Construct a Workbench]
[Objective: Collect 50 Wood, 20 Stone. Use the free blueprint to build.]
"Alright, team," Randolf clapped his large hands together. "We don't have tools yet, so we do this the old-fashioned way. Mia, gather the fallen branches. Aurora, help me find loose stones near the water. Ran, help me break down these smaller dead trees."
The next hour felt less like a desperate survival mission and more like a chaotic, happy family camping trip.
Mia was incredibly energetic. She dragged massive palm fronds and thick branches across the sand, laughing even when she tripped over a vine. Aurora found a pile of smooth, heavy rocks near a tide pool and carried them up to the dry sand. Randolf used a sharp, jagged piece of stone he found to hack away at a dead, dry tree, using his pure physical strength to break the wood into usable planks.
They piled the resources in the center of the beach.
Ran walked up to the pile. He opened his system menu, selected the 'Basic Workbench' blueprint, and tapped the 'Craft' button four times.
Instead of needing hammers and nails, the magic of the Private World took over. The pile of wood and stone glowed with a bright blue light. The materials lifted into the air, spinning and snapping together like puzzle pieces. In less than ten seconds, four sturdy, perfectly built wooden workbenches dropped onto the sand.
Ding!
A joyful system chime rang out in everyone's ears.
[Mission Complete: 350 EXP Distributed.]
But before they could celebrate, a much louder, more melodic chime rang directly inside Ran's brain.
The normal blue screen shattered, and the glowing golden screen of his Golden Finger system appeared.
[UNIQUE SYSTEM TRIGGERED]
[Action Detected: Family Bonding. You chose to form a Group Bond and share your Lord's power equally, rather than monopolizing the EXP to make yourself the strongest.]
[Judgment: Extremely Unique. Most Lords use their subordinates as slaves. Your action contains high-level emotional resonance.]
[Reward: Passive Skill – Family]
Ran quickly read the skill description, and his jaw practically hit the sand.
"Hahaha! Yes! Unbelievable!" Ran burst out laughing, throwing his hands in the air.
"What is it, son?" Randolf asked, startled by the outburst.
Ran couldn't explain the Golden Finger cheat to them, so he lied smoothly to protect his transmigrator secret. "The Lord System just rewarded us for building our first base! It gave us a passive skill called 'Family'."
"What does it do?" Aurora asked.
"Usually, when you form a party, the EXP is divided. If we earn 1,000 EXP, we each get 250," Ran explained, his eyes practically glowing. "But this skill breaks the rules. We aren't sharing anymore... we are duplicating! If we earn 1,000 EXP, every single one of us gets the full 1,000!"
The realization hit the family like a physical weight.
"Wait," Randolf said, his eyes widening. "If we all get the full amount... then we need to gather as much as possible right now! We have a few hours left before the sun goes down!"
"Exactly!" Ran grinned. "Let's grind!"
For the rest of the afternoon, the family turned into an unstoppable resource-gathering machine. Knowing that every single stick and stone gave duplicated EXP to the whole family, they worked like madmen.
Mia ran up and down the beach, harvesting massive piles of glowing Spiritual Grass and wild berries. Aurora hauled hundreds of stones from the tide pools. Randolf, fueled by pure adrenaline, ripped dead trees out of the ground with his bare hands. Ran organized the piles, sorting the wood, stone, and magical grass into their digital inventory.
By the time the sun began to touch the horizon, turning the sky a deep purple, they finally collapsed onto the sand, panting and laughing.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
A cascade of level-up notifications flooded their screens. Warm, golden light surrounded all four of them, instantly washing away the exhaustion in their muscles.
"Look!" Mia squealed, pointing at the air in front of her. "My status! I hit Level 5!"
Ran checked his own screen. He had also rocketed from Level 1 straight to Level 5. In the real world, children couldn't start leveling up until they officially awakened their souls at age fourteen, but in the Private World, the raw EXP completely bypassed those rules.
But the biggest shock came from their parents.
Randolf was staring at his glowing hands, completely speechless. He had been stuck at Level 9 for his entire adult life because he couldn't afford to hire a hunting party. The EXP required to break past Level 9 was a massive bottleneck for poor people.
Now, the screen in front of him clearly showed the number 13.
"I broke through," Randolf whispered, tears welling in his eyes. "I'm Level 13. My Spring Rabbit soul... it unlocked a new skill at Level 10! It's called Double Jump. I can literally kick off the air to jump a second time!"
Aurora walked over, placing a trembling hand on his arm. She was glowing, too. "I hit Level 13 as well, dear! My Gentle Light soul evolved. It upgraded to Minor Healing at Level 10. I can actually close deep wounds now, not just stop the pain!"
The parents hugged each other tightly. In just a single afternoon of picking up rocks and chopping trees, they had achieved what would have cost them thousands of silver coins in the real world. They had completely shattered their limits.
Ran watched them, feeling a massive wave of pride.
"We are going to be unstoppable," Mia giggled, doing a victory dance in the sand.
"Yes, we are," Ran said, his expression turning serious as he looked at the darkening jungle. "But that brings up the most important rule of all. Mom, Dad... we have to exit the world now. Nighttime is when the unknown beasts come out to hunt. And Dad, tomorrow morning, you need to go to work at the construction site as usual."
"Work?" Randolf asked, confused. "Ran, with this Spiritual Grass and our new Level 13 stats, I don't need that construction job anymore. I can quit!"
"No, you can't," Ran insisted firmly. "We have to blend in. If the poorest family in the western sector suddenly quits their jobs, buys a mansion, and shows off high-level skills, the military and the rich guilds will notice. They will investigate us. They will torture us to find out how we leveled up so fast."
Ran looked at his family, making sure they understood the danger of this world. "We level up in here. But out there, in Glory City? We pretend to be the exact same poor, struggling family we have always been. We hide in the shadows until we are strong enough that absolutely nobody can touch us."
Randolf looked at his son, deeply respecting the mature wisdom in his words. He nodded slowly.
"You're right, Ran. We stay in the shadows," Randolf agreed. "Let's go home."