Nate snuck away from the party as soon as he had a moment to take a look at the note George had given him. He read the hurriedly scrawled message and then looked back at George, who had been watching him. The older man gave him a slight nod and raised his hand before turning away.

  It would seem that a new location had been added to their little journey, the Grand Canyon. There was a dimensional zone that had some floating jelly beings that were reported to have the space affinity.

  It wasn’t perfect. He could readily admit that. The space affinity wasn’t the dimensional element that he really needed. However, it was a step closer, void would be better yet, but that had been impossible to come across. This was the first time he had even heard mention of the space affinity being seen in the wild. If he wanted to make the most of his affinities, and cultivation benefits, then this is what he needed to do.

  Strength wasn’t as all encompassing in their society, not like it was in their old cultivation novels he had read in his first life. The concept of cultivating power was still to new here for that. Given time though, eventually they may fall into the same trap of might makes right. He had already experienced it to a degree, multiple times in fact.

  After basic ties had evolved into binding ties, the skill had unsurprisingly changed and become more powerful. He wasn’t ready to fully tackle the project he had begun nearly a year ago, in creating a meditation art that would let him work with more than one affinity at a time. However, he had managed to do some work on it over the last few months.

  What the new, more powerful version of the skill allowed him to do was something else. Borrowing on his existing knowledge of meditation arts, he could now use the skill to examine how an affinity was bound to a person. It was a slow process, but using what he learned would allow him to create a new meditation art. The original function of the skill would then help him to fix any errors.

  There was more to the evolved skill, but that was the function that had drawn his immediate attention.

  Of course, only he knew, still, that he could simply create a dungeon and begin watching them right away. Something that he planned to do that night. It might raise suspicions from George, but he trusted the man. At this point, he had practically taken the position of being Nate’s grandfather… maybe not; he wasn’t quite old enough for that. Regardless, he was family. Any suspicions he had, he would keep to himself, until he could either ask Nate directly or his parents.

  As for Nina and Niall, well, they knew something was up. They also understood that keeping them in the dark was for their own good. So, they pretended that Nate’s story about dream walking through the ever increasing number of dungeons made perfect sense and left the matter at that.

  Nate folded the note up and discreetly stored it away.

  Mira Moorish, their old teacher, had joined the party at some point and was talking to his parents. As always, she was dressed to impress. While talking, she kept self-consciously pulling the left sleeve of her blouse down. During the attack on the city, she had gotten a scar that ran nearly the entire length of her arm. It had lightened considerably through the use of creams and alchemical creations. Still, she remained fully aware of how it appeared on her once flawless skin.

  Nate thought she was ridiculous and that the scar wasn’t even that noticeable anymore. Angie and Lindsay’s opinions tended to swap depending on how they were feeling that day.

  He spotted the inseparable duo, in deep conversation with Angie’s mom, Trissa, who spotted him looking their way. She waved him over, pausing the conversation until Nate had joined them.

  “This involves you as well, so you should probably hear what I have to say.” She said in way of greeting. “We received word that Jace has finally been seen. He went back east to New York City.”

  The girls hissed. That was going to be a long trip. On Nate’s Original Earth, most of the nation’s highway and interstate network had been constructed during the 1950s and 1960s. A time in which the dimensional portals had already appeared on this Earth, and thus no such project had ever happened.

  The older roads were still there, of course, and speed limits were a thing of the past. That said, the last hundred years hadn’t exactly been kind to the condition of the roads. So, while the speed limits might be gone, realistically it didn’t actually matter as you wouldn’t be speeding along anything. Not if you didn’t want to destroy your vehicle anyway.

  They would be taking a heavy-duty RV overlander style truck for the trip. Something that could go wherever they needed, or wanted it to go, but wouldn’t exactly be the fastest thing around. As long as they were careful, and took care of it, then they shouldn’t have any issues.

  “It sounds like we can finally finalize our route,” Nate said wearily, just thinking of how long this trip was going to be. “George gave me a hint for a dimensional zone location with monsters that have the space element affinity.”

  Trissa raised a brow in surprise. “Where did he manage to find something like that?”

  “The Grand Canyon,” He replied wryly.

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  Angie’s mother sighed, her hand going up to begin rubbing at her forehead. “This trip of yours just keeps getting longer and longer. Make sure you all call or message regularly if the option isn’t available.”

  ***

  Nate collapsed onto his bed for the last time and stared up at the ceiling. The going away party had lasted for far longer than he had originally expected it to. He was so tired and just worn out. Hours of socializing with people, even if they were people that he actually liked, were simply too much.

  Then there was the time he had spent with his parents and Aura afterward.

  The entire day had been draining.

  He took a moment to breathe and then opened the menu to enter his avatar. The second dungeon had become largely unused since Samhain. It was the dungeon that he visited the most when he simply wanted to sit and plan.

  Nate took in the resource counter and then the number of actual dungeons he had already created. This one in the Grand Canyon would be number thirty seven, and the Dungeon Core would cost three hundred and sixty thousand energy. It was a heavy investment; however, he did have it in the shared resource pool.

  He had been very careful with the last few dungeons he had created. Choosing their locations with as much care as he could using the limited information he had available. As a result, they rarely took energy from the shared pool and donated more than they took. At this point, he was ready to create a couple more Dungeon Cores and the dungeons with them, if he was careful. He just had to commit to doing it.

  Opening the Dungeon Creation menu, he navigated to the general area where the Grand Canyon was located. Once that location was pulled up, he removed the note from his storage to find the exact area it mentioned.

  It was near the north rim, close to Marble Canyon. It was some place that had originally been called Kincaid’s cave. The name sounded somewhat familiar, but he couldn’t place why.

  Either way, with the location now identified, it only took him a few moments to find the right spot. A minute later, the new Dungeon Core was under construction. It would be finished in three days.

  Nate didn’t plan on doing any training in the dungeons that night. He wanted to get some proper sleep for once. Instead, all he wanted to do was take some time to look over a few of the other dungeons.

  Most of his currently active dungeons had level-two Dungeon Cores in them. The first of the exceptions was the first dungeon, which had a level four. Along with providing him access to another dungeon slot, one of its functions had been to help strengthen the mental growth of the inhabitants living inside its community. Something that it had been already doing before, but at a great cost in energy, the process had been greatly optimized when the fourth upgrade had occurred.

  The second exception was obviously the dungeon with the blighted elves, which remained at level one because of its rare use.

  There were others but they were all newer dungeons, as the only requirement for upgrading the Core was energy.

  Moving on from the newer dungeons, he stopped at one of his older dungeons. It was a mixed dungeon of zombies and skeletons, along with the occasional lich. It was related to the two portals he had already conquered and closed. Unfortunately, the difficulty of the monsters in this particular dungeon was much harder to deal with. The tactics he had used in the other two dungeons just didn’t seem to work as well. Whenever there was a lich nearby, the infernal being was always strengthening them or bringing them back to life.

  In comparison, the dungeons with the kobolds and rats were much easier. The ant dungeon was a pain though, that one… it was just plain weird. Something had happened during its construction, and he wasn’t sure what, but he didn’t like it. There had been a couple of other dungeons with similar effects, but none as pronounced as the ant dungeon.

  Then there was the final dungeon he was going to look at that night. It had been an experiment more than anything.

  He had found one of the many dimensional zones off the coast of Florida and created a dungeon around it. Right there, in the middle of the water. It was… well; it wasn’t a dungeon that he could ever enter, at least not until his realm was much higher. It had also taken some tinkering to get the traps right.

  The beings that came through the portal were some sort of water elementals. In the water they were king, so he put doors in each room of the dungeon and then pumped out the water. It still wasn’t perfect. But it actually worked rather well, though he did feel a little guilty. The elementals were more or less restricted to the water, so unless someone was attempting to cross the ocean, they would never even encounter them.

  Researching the water pumps, along with the water elementals, language, and subtitle function, were some of the first things he had done. He had discovered that the water elementals did talk to each other, however, their level of intelligence was not very high. They were beings with the minds of a young child, and gradually grew more intelligent as they became stronger.

  At their current stage, they were fairly innocent, even playful creatures. In the ocean, after they had gained strength and intelligence, it was a different matter entirely.

  It took him a few minutes to review each of the dungeons and see how they were doing. All of them, save the one in the ocean, had been discovered by people living near them. After some thought on the matter, he had decided to continue with the treasure chests in active dungeons. That meant the first dungeon no longer had them, and neither did the second.

  He had changed what he was putting in them. No longer were cultivators getting gold and gems. Instead, they were getting the occasional herb, along with small bottles of spices. He had eaten enough bland Mexican and Indian food over the last year that was missing essential spices to make that particular decision easy. Each dungeon gave a different spice, and as a result, he had even been able to decrease the number of traps in certain areas.

  It required a shift in priorities, but that was fine, he was playing the long game. There were tons of dimensional zones that needed to be dealt with. He was looking at a project of decades, not years.

  Eventually, it would reach a point where so much energy was coming in that he could create as many Dungeon Cores as possible. He wasn’t there yet, and even if he was, he would still need to find some way to take care of them all. That was still a concern for the future.

  He went through each of the dungeons, making notes on each one, before closing everything up. Even working quickly and doing nothing more than reviewing them, the process had still taken more than an hour. Aura hadn’t even bothered to come inside and join him this time around. She had chosen instead to remain sleeping on the bed, knowing that he wasn’t going to be doing anything interesting this time around.

  Opening the menu one final time, he exited his avatar, and everything went dark as he entered his sleeping body.

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